Well, that escalated quickly…
You guys, I think Trump just called Senator Gillibrand a slut:
Lightweight Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, a total flunky for Chuck Schumer and someone who would come to my office “begging” for campaign contributions not so long ago (and would do anything for them), is now in the ring fighting against Trump. Very disloyal to Bill & Crooked-USED!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 12, 2017
Is there a German word yet for that feeling when you think something has to be from a parody account but it’s really not? The senator clapped back:
You cannot silence me or the millions of women who have gotten off the sidelines to speak out about the unfitness and shame you have brought to the Oval Office. https://t.co/UbQZqubXZv
— Kirsten Gillibrand (@SenGillibrand) December 12, 2017
I’m out of can’ts to even.
For reasons too convoluted to explain, I’m hanging out alone in a remote cabin that had Fox News blaring when I walked in the door. There is a bewildering array of remote controls, none of which seemed to affect the volume or power.
I follow Fox News on Twitter to see what the bastards are up to, but watching it live is another experience altogether. Non-stop fear-mongering! Even the commercials portend doom; it’s all survivor seed packets, bunker rations and gold.
I found a button that changed the channel and jumped out of the frying pan into the hell-fire — an old-timey evangelical preacher! I frantically pushed every button at once and landed on Dan’l Boone TV show reruns. That’ll do, although it’s vaguely disturbing that there’s a raccoon HEAD on his coonskin cap!
Hope your day is less of a catastrophuck!
If there’s ever a remake of Deliverance, FOX News and random AM Right-wing blabbers will be a constant leit-motif in the background.
And yes, the President of the United States just heavily implied that the Jr. Senator from New York is an actual, by the dictionary’s definition, whore.
This is the world we have been cursed to exist in.
*hums “I Need a Hero” to himself*
Oh brother
NYC mayoral elections
Conclusions:
Too many to write down
As I commented below, this could mean he wants to elevate her.
Of course, it could also just mean a woman criticized him. He never can let those go.
OK. Now I want to know the cabin story.
Trump suggesting that Gillibrand offered sex is unbelievable and yet expected.
Betty, what the hell state did you go to that has terrible cable options?! Break out the Xbox games and pray to Wolfenstein II
I need more information on this cabin adventure.
When Gillibrand dared to suggest that Bill Clinton should have resigned for his skeezy conduct, the Clinton machine attack dog Reines used the same arguments: that Gillibrand benefitted from their past relationship so how dare she now question the hand that fed her.
Not really surprising that Trump and the Clinton machine operate out of the same playbook.
Another sequel to “The Evil Dead”?
@Aleta: OMG they are all ignorant, lazy, incompetent idiots in that family.
Today is the day Kirsten Gillibrand truly became president.
If you want to live a just life, just do the opposite of whatever Il Douche would do.
@Aleta: WHERE IS HIS BIRTH CERTIFICATE?
@Amaranthine RBG: you are one strange duck.
You can always pull the power cord out of the wall. :-)
A raccoon head on Dan’l Boone’s coonskin cap? I never noticed that back in the day.
@B.B.A.: I surely hope not! And that seems a little premature.
@magurakurin:
Turducken.
The voice came from an oblong metal plaque like a dulled mirror which formed part of the surface of the right-hand wall.
WinstonBetty turned a switch and the voice sank somewhat, though the words were still distinguishable. The instrument could be dimmed, but there was no way of shutting it off completely.…we need to give them good reasons for thinking their world is coming to an end…rejecting Roy Moore would be an accomplishment, but raining a storm of fed up woman down on all those smug sexist bastards like T***p would be acceptable too…
@magurakurin: Berniebro scum. PIE him.
Gillibrand accuses trump of sexual harassment, not of her but of other women, and calls for a congressional investigation.
trump responds by accusing Gillibrand of being a political whore.
which kind of proves how trump views women and how vulgar he is towards them.
OT: Well this hasn’t happened to me yet, but I just saw a post about a woman yelling at two other women for speaking in Hmong, asking them to speak in English. WTF?Though English is what husband kitteh and I converse in most of the time, we do use other languages too and sometimes even when we are out in the public. So what is it to anyone else if we do speak occasionally in a language other than English?
…sounds like a good working definition one…where’s Bruce Campbell when you need him…?
@WaterGirl: That’s what I would do too.
The word you’re looking for is zschäutzkügelpflieglerschümpfengeudelmießbauerknochtenmölle.
@Aleta: Snark aside, this is what voter suppression looks like. It’s not that the rules are hard, it’s that many of them are pretty arbitrary, or that the information is difficult or impossible to confirm. Anyone else know what birthdate is on your voter registration record? Anyone even know how to confirm that information?
@Aleta: Maybe none of them has voted before. Or at least not voted absentee. They didn’t need their candidates to win. Their money gave them power enough.
@Villago Delenda Est:
How many weeks did you spend knocking on doors for the Clinton campaign in 2016?
You are dumb as a fucking post.
@PaulWartenberg:
I read that as accusing her of being an actual whore.
Drumpfismus? Zwiebeltod? Schnellrollendesgrab? Satireunterfall?
@Amaranthine RBG: Go crawl back under your rock. What is WRONG with you?
@🌷 Martin:
This really is an opportunity. Gillibrand should say, “I attempted to fellate Trump but his weenis was just too small.”
He would have a picture of his weenus up on twitter within a day.
Betty, I think you need to consider buying a diesel motorcycle — be prepared for those days after the EMP!
@MisterForkbeard:
Let me guess, you were one of the many commenters posting here a few days ago about how Gillibrand was now dead to you and that you would never vote for her in 2020?
Do I have that right?
@🌷 Martin: You beat me to it. That’s what I thought, too.
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et Al.):
You’re just making that up.
What the fuck is this “USED” all about?
@MisterForkbeard: He’s diehard Berniebro scum.
@🌷 Martin: I’m always struck by how, in some ways, Orwell’s dystopian future is so…tame. We pay for our telescreens. We have them in every room, even the bathroom. We never shut them off voluntarily, some people freak out if you do. We even have portable versions we carry with us.
ETA: yes, Trump called Gillibrand a whore. There is no other way to read that statement.
ETA: my paranoia is such that I would not dismiss the notion out of hand that Trump did this in collusion with Gillibrand to divert the growing rage towards Gillibrand’s successful power play in getting Franken bounced from the Senate. That’s America today. Trust no one.
T***p strikes me as being the kind of guy who thinks any woman would happily be a whore if offered enough money…especially for a “stud-muffin” like himself. He needs to be disabused of this notion…with extreme prejudice…
@MikeEss: In his world every human being has a price. T is what happens when a society elevates profit over everything else.
@schrodingers_cat:
Why was she mad at them, anyway? Were they trying to communicate with her in Hmong?
@Amir Khalid: I never make things up.
@Amaranthine RBG: Not really surprising that this person would equate Clinton and Trump.
Would be surrising if any other human did it.
@schrodingers_cat:
Recently, i was in a store. The couple in front of me were speaking a foreign language (don’t ask me, I barely speak English). The man in front of them turned around and told them to speak English. i piped up with “But they’re not talking to you.” He turned back around without another word.
One day, I’m going to get myself shot.
@Amaranthine RBG: You’re absolutely wrong.
Let me guess – your first reaction to this news about Trump and Gilliband was to come here and who he about how Clinton and Trump are EXACTLY THE SAME? Or their supporters are the same, like you always do? Wait, we know that because that’s what you did.
Fuck off and get some perspective. Come back when you’re sane.
his sentences are so confusing to me, that I actually thought he was calling Schumer the whore.
I wonder if he can be goaded into bragging about bribing someone.
@🌷 Martin:
As if Trump differentiates between the two!
@hueyplong: Objection, assumes humanity not in evidence.
Apparently Dolt 45 is too stupid to realize a lot of Democrats were really pissed off at Gillibrand for what they saw as a pre-emotive political move on Al Franken. The Dotard just helped close ranks with that tweet.
@Villago Delenda Est: a long suffering individual. And I thought bitterness and bile were my companion… apparently I only get them one weekend a month and holidays. Old mate has them the rest of the time.
@Amir Khalid: No they were just talking to each other. Here is the report
Yesterday Trump’s sex abuse of women is the subject of a news conference.
Today Trump backs up his reputation with verbal sexual abuse.
@gvg: He can be goaded into anything with minimal effort. Hillary warned us all about that, pretty much every day she was running.
I remember when it was a big deal that the sitting president didn’t have the opposition party over for dinner enough…didn’t reach out enough and so broke our government and politics. I can only assume that Trump’s tweet is Obama’s fault as well.
@🌷 Martin: Yeah, there’s nothing political about “and would do anything for them.” Although I’m sure Sarah Sanders will liesplain it to us later.
@schrodingers_cat: Some yrs ago Des Moines Register had article about anti foreign language sentiment in IA in WWI. There were many different nationality communities in state. Cops were called on people speaking Dutch or Norwegian in public, eg busses. Have read that in NE law was passed making it illegal to use German in church services.
IIRC there were 40 plus German language newspapers in IA alone pre WWI.
@MisterForkbeard:
The irony is that Trump and Sanders and their cults are virtually indistinguishable in their targets and their talking points. Trump and Trump Lite.
@gvg: He has a way of implying things without actually saying anything.
Even back in the ’80s, his infamous “Bring Back the Death Penalty” ad never actually called for the Central Park Five to be executed – which would be ex post facto and unconstitutional, even setting aside that they were innocent. I have to wonder if that was conscious or unconscious on his part (or whether his lawyer gave the ad a once-over).
@gvg:
Goaded into it? He bragged about “buying politicians” during the campaign!
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: They have the same puppet master, so its not really surprising.
@Mike in NC: Bradley Whitford sits in a control room somewhere, determining the form of her doom.
The pigeon has a lot of poop for that chessboard.
@Feebog: a lot of ways to look at that, but Franken was not a major candidate for president. He will be 68 in 2020 and the skeletons in his coke fueled days in the 70’s even he has alluded to as being disqualifying. Kirsten knocking out a competitor, though, is a silly take on it in my opinion.
@Amaranthine RBG: How many times are you going to use that as a reason to excuse every asinine thing you say?
I just called my favorite junior senator, and said to the nice aide who answered, “God Bless our Senator Gillibrand! Tell her she has our support, and tell her to never stop fighting back!”. Then I gave him my zip-code.
On days like this, I imagine that the aides may like to hear a bit of support.
@schrodingers_cat:
\
They assume you are stealth insulting them because they can’t understand what you’re saying.
In all fairness to them, sooner or later they’re right.
@Rob in CT: i was hoping for something specific enough to convict on. I am pretty sure he HAS bribed his way out of some trouble before. I don’t think he understands that doesn’t work too well as US President because everybody in the whole world is watching closely and nothing that position does is perceived neutrally.
Well, we’ll see how women vote. If sexual harassment/assault is something they start voting on then people like Donald Trump will be held accountable.
If not, then not.
He got a complete passoin going into the teenage girl dressing room and leering at them, which is just so gross because it also involves this fucked up idea of employers owning employees. This isn’t an “allegation”. He bragged about it.
@Feebog: no, I think he paid attention to that and sees her as a wedge candidate who would get the same treatment that Clinton got, good and bad. He’s won that one before.
@Feebog:
No, not really.
I suspect a lot of people are now rooting for mutual destruction.
@glory b: All of them, Katie
@schrodingers_cat:
Paranoia. Obviously the only reason for using non-English in a public space is so that others won’t understand what you’re saying – & the only reason you wouldn’t want others to understand is because you’re saying bad things about them, if not conspiring to rob or kill them, verdad?
You think I kid? I was sitting in a tavola calda in Venice one day in 1980 with 3 older folks from Provence, conversing in French, & the
dingbatyoung lady from the Upper West Side of NYC who’d been my traveling companion for a couple of days kept whining in panic, What are they saying? What are they saying? (And in the end we were talking about her – she’d been such a complete PITA they asked me, horrified, You’re not going to marry her, are you? & my outraged Mais non! – I was about to shove her on the next train to Paris & good riddance – relieved them.)The tongue of my immigrant grandparents is my fourth language because, instead of teaching it to their kids, my parents used it (badly – they spoke wildly different dialects from widely separate regions) to talk about things they didn’t want us to understand. (ETA: I ended up learning enough of it in my 30s in night school to do some family research back in the Old Country.) /tmi
@The Moar You Know:
Who is this we you speak of?
@debbie: you are not a true American unless you speak Russian.
@Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady): Trump did the same thing with Romney so it’s his mode of operation.
@gvg: Just like his Tweets, there are speeches for any occasion. Time – Donnie’s announcement speech:
HTH.
Cheers,
Scott.
@schrodingers_cat:
Correct.
It sounds like a lead in to a horror movie…made even worse with almost inescapable Fox News. Lock the doors!
@Uncle Cosmo:
Which three (or more) outside of English?
@TenguPhule:
Really? I am not talking about random crazy people when I speak in a language other than English. That’s how we (husband and I ) speak, its the natural flow of our conversation. That’s how many multilingual people speak, carrying on a conversation in multiple languages, its not that rare actually.
@magurakurin: Indeed. As Gillibrand has raised her profile on the issue in the last few days, it seems to me that she considered Franken to be an obstacle to making a stronger case for holding Trump accountable, not a political opponent for a possible presidential run. The allegations alone would have prevented Franken from running, but the rejoinder from Trump would always be to clean out your own closet first so long as he remained. Indeed, Kellyanne Conway was making that point practically on autopilot from the day the first allegation was made against Franken. Trump isn’t going to resign over his lecherous conduct towards women and I remain conflicted over Franken.
@Barbara: Let’s dispel with the notion that Gillibrand doesn’t know what she’s doing. She knows exactly what she’s doing.
Balloonjuice is broken. Too many ads, too much scripts hogging memory. Now its crashing.
@schrodingers_cat: Longer reply got eated. Short reply: Yes. It happens.
@Uncle Cosmo: Sometimes, a language is just a means of communication not code against anyone.
@TenguPhule: What happens?
@schrodingers_cat: You know that, we know that. They don’t know that because they can’t understand whats being said.
@schrodingers_cat: People take advantage of being able to speak without being understood to make fun or insult other people.
@TenguPhule:They don’t have a right to be privy to all conversations happening around them.
@schrodingers_cat: This upsets me every time I hear this reaction. It’s like being offended that an actual private conversation that doesn’t involve you is taking place. As @debbie said, no one is talking to you! It’s clearly that it’s like “what’s your real problem, that you cannot tell if they’re gossiping about you?” And logically it seems non-sensical to me. I mean does this happen a lot to people who are using ASL too? Is that a thing too? The “speak English” reaction is simultaneously so rude and bigoted, it leaves me gobsmacked.
Secondarily, this reaction annoys me, because while living in France & England in college “guess the language of people I’m voluntarily or involuntarily eavesdropping on” became one of my favorite subway car games. Probably my favorite moment of this game was when I realized I was gaining fluency in French, when it took me more than a second to place “Scottish accented English” on the metro. Another language related game was “see if I can fool fellow Americans by speaking French with my friends so if they ask for directions they ask me if I speak English.” (I haven’t practiced that one in a long time, but yes, I’d still try to be sneaky like that if I had the opportunity).
@Uncle Cosmo: My older son is reasonably fluent in Spanish. A few years ago he was working as a cashier at Ikea. A couple checking out was talking amongst themselves in Spanish and complaining about some store policy. He was their cashier so he responded in Spanish and explained their misunderstanding of the policy. Apparently they freaked out and accused him of spying on them.
@SFAW: Francais[1], Deutsch, italiano. Some study/tutoring in Greek (dimotiki), Czech, Hungarian. Smatterings of Russian, Serbo-Croat[2], Turkish. Enough phrases in Ukrainian, Portuguese, Danish, Polish, Catalan.to get a smile in a shop. (And if&when I need to know Spanish I will take a month & learn it.)
—-
[1] Add diacritical marks as appropriate, this PC can’t.
[2] Now claimed to be 2 (or 3) distinct languages – Serbian, Croatian, maybe Montenegrin. Bullshit. A hundred words of difference, an extra syllable, & some top-down-imposed grammatical quirks do not a separate tongue make. The Sicilian of my paternal ancestors is more at variance from l’italiano fiorentino.
12 short months later, and Gillibrand is ready to take a stand.
Bold.
@Uncle Cosmo:
Damn! That’s amazing.
When I was a kid, I thought the head made it about the most awesomest hat ever. I guess my tastes have matured…a little.
@magurakurin:
As long as you remember that he hates all powerful women, especially politicians, then his spoutings make sense. He only likes Gillibrand when she’s losing.
@schrodingers_cat: Yes, but good luck trying to convince them of that.
@🌷 Martin:
Here in California, you can confirm that online with your county’s voting website — ours is LAVote.net.
I don’t know what poor unfortunate souls in other states have to do. Probably sacrifice a chicken at the dark of the new moon
@Amaranthine RBG:
I’m still trying to figure out how you were knocking on doors for Kathy Tran in Virginia from your home in Sacramento. Haven’t seen a good explanation of that.
And it’s kind of amazing how your “service” for Hillary keeps growing every time you talk about it. Now we’re up to “weeks of knocking on doors,” not just trips to Reno to register voters. Intriguing.
This is what happens when you give Capt. Queeg a Twitter account.
@Uncle Cosmo:
Heh. I still remember an Indian-American high school friend and her mother bickering in front of me, with her mother speaking in Hindi and my friend responding in English.
@TenguPhule:
But first those other people have to disclose to the people with multiple languages that they are idiots or assholes. Just standing in line minding your own business won’t get you insulted.
Talking about the fake news you saw and believed on Faux TV will get you insulted mentally by everyone who hears you. In every language they know.
@Mnemosyne: I just looked mine up (our website isn’t as easy to remember) at http://clerk.slocounty.ca.gov/voterstatus/ and all looks good – not that I’d expect otherwise since I vote every time and haven’t had any trouble. Admittedly, CA actually wants people to vote.
@Uncle Cosmo:
One of the things I like about Windows 8 is that it has an international keyboard function. Beats having to input ASCII codes all the time.
@J R in WV:
This is not actually true.
When whites are a minority they get treated like a minority.
@Uncle Cosmo: @Mnemosyne: This is essentially what happened to Yiddish in most Jewish homes. My Great Grandparents spoke it at home, the kids born here, my Grandparents, learned it to speak with their parents and spoke English outside, and then that generation used it to talk in secret in front of the kids. So my parents had a few words, or had to pick it up by osmosis only. It’s kind of the normal progression for losing ancestral languages. (I gather from reading I don’t remember what, some families sped up the process around WWI & in the 1930’s because Yiddish does sound a lot like German).
ETA grammar
ETA2 I remember my Grandma playing mah jong with her girlfriends talking about me “da kinder” in Yiddish.
The guy I hitch a ride in to work with, much older gentleman, listens exclusively to AM radio. HOLY SHEET is that a cesspool! Fox News turned up to 11. I’ve taken to reading articles on my phone because the amount of misinformation/fear-mongering is just fcking insane. Gotta fire Mueller, special counsel for Mueller, they’re all liberals who hate Trump, investigate Hillary… fcking alternate reality indeed.
He absolutely did.
And he said nothing sbout the THREE MALE SENATORS who said exactly the same thing Gillibrand did.
There’s a reason the GOTea has a high Tenther population. It has nothing to do with Original Intent.
@Ladyraxterinok:
It wasn’t directed at church services. * The law forbade teaching German in school, or teaching school in German. It affected German-speaking schools (almost all the Lutheran parochial schools, but also German-speaking Catholic schools) very severely. In Meyer v Nebraska, 1923, the Supreme Court overturned the conviction of a teacher at Zion Parochial School, who had been fined for teaching 4th Graders to read the Bible in German.
The purpose of the law?? The attorney for the state said, “it is the ambition of the State to have its entire population 100 per cent. American.”
According to German Heritage.com:
* . . . though German-speaking churches did attract a lot of abuse — stones and mud being thrown, mobs of “ruffians” surrounding the churches, no help from the authorities etc. I know, from histories of St Louis churches and southern Illinois churches, that congregations were pressured/forced to cancel German services, switch to English, or move the German speaking service into the evening. The pressure continued after the war — I heard from one man that his phone line was cut because people on the line heard his parents speaking German. But my mother’s baptism certificate, in Akron, Ohio, in 1922, was in German.
“100 per cent. American” has always included people speaking various languages. My mother — baptized using the German language — became a WAC 75 years ago this summer. She was in London on D-Day and in Paris for V-E Day.
@schrodingers_cat:
NONE of their phucking business and, if it ever happens to you, I hope you tell the muthaphucka just that.
@MisterForkbeard:
At least mclaren was funny. This clown is just a tiresome, sanctimonious prig.
@Ladyraxterinok: if you goo back and read the chain of supreme court cases that led to the findings of substantive due process and a right of privacy, they start with the finding that a law forbidding people to teach their children German violated the constitution.
Thus, the policy of punishing linguistic minorities led inexorably to Roe v. Wade.
@B.B.A.:
“Dispel” or “dispense with.” Pick one.
@TenguPhule:
I’ve been a minority, speaking English in Spanish speaking towns, an Anglo in Hispanic/Native American towns, in Italy, in Spain, in bars in Basque towns in Spain and in rural France. Never treated differently as far as I could tell.
When I whipped out my tablet to help with a transaction in a small electrical (not tech, lamp sockets and fuses and wiring boxes) shop in Basque country, the shopkeeper was delighted, amazed, and happy to see such a thing in his small town, and wrote down the brand and model number.
Other people told us they spoke no English, but turned out to have enough for us to communicate my needs, to pay for what I asked for, and tip people for their kindness, which was appreciated with smiles and handshakes. Most people went out of their way to be friendly and helpful. Perhaps my full gray beard helped or not…
I think your comment speaks to your paranoia and odd beliefs about discrimination here and elsewhere. Perhaps counseling or therapy can help; maybe you just need to travel and work in different places? People don’t actually treat people different in most cases. Parts of Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi excluded, some other areas as well.
@Barbara:
I agree with this. I suspect she knew in advance that the allegations against Trump were about to resurface and wanted to make sure she had standing to go after him forcefully without inviting claims of hypocrisy. I’m have no strong opinions about whether it was the right move, but I don’t doubt that her motives, while still political, were well intentioned.
@J R in WV: I’ve seen it happen. I’ve seen people disciplined by their boss for doing it. Its not a common event, but it does happen on rare occasions. That doesn’t justify the paranoia about it, but its not completely baseless.
@debbie:
Good on ya. You did the right thing. A community has to watch out for its members.
My wife is afraid I’m going to get shot in similar fashion.
@TenguPhule:
Sometimes people will badmouth other people, even strangers, for their clothing or behavior or whatever. Sometimes they’ll do it in a non-English language. So, yeah, I can understand wondering if the people talking behind you in Spanish or whatever are talking about you.
But they’re probably not. Because you’re not that interesting. And even if they were, so what? You can’t be insulted by something you literally don’t understand. The only thing that yelling at them to speak in English accomplishes is that now they probably will be talking about the crazy bigot that yelled at them.
ETA: To be clear, I’m saying ‘you’ in the general sense.
@J R in WV: I’ve been white in sub-Saharan Africa. White privilege is universal.
@schrodingers_cat: Indeed. My wife and I speak to each other in a mixture if English, French, and German depending on where we are.
Why didn’t Gillbardi say “well Trump, that was back when you were registered a Democrat. It’s a bit hard keeping up with the way you flip flop on positions. And we women supposed to be the ones who can’t make up our minds?”
Trump wants low blows, painting him as effeminate is legit.
One of these days I’m gonna build a TV-B-Gone.
@burnspbesq: B.B.A. is mocking an infamous statement from Marco Rubio during the 2016 primary debates that is widely considered to have sunk his campaign; he kept robotically repeating it even after Chris Christie called him out on doing so. The “dispel with” formulation was part of Rubio’s statement. And yes, it’s incorrect. But, exclusively in the context of mocking Rubio, it’s OK.
@SFAW: Not really amazing when you’ve traveled in most of those countries & had to pick up a few phrases just to get by. And things get easier with a language within a group you already know something about – Italian grammar was fairly straightforward after 4 years of high-school French. Scariest moment was walking half-asleep through the Oslo train station one morning – after glancing at a newspaper headline & immediately understanding it I suddenly realized it was in Norwegian, which I had never studied (cross your eyes & it reads enough like German to kindasorta figure out).
I really wish I’d had more luck with Czech – I thought it’d be my entrée into the Slavic world (I have native friends in Prague who try to help) but it’s a bear – verbs especially. And Polish is worse. Russian is worse…
@Mnemosyne: IIUC this is quite common – it’s easier to learn to understand a language that’s spoken to you than to learn to express ideas using it. My grandparents (both sides, from what I was told – both of my grandfathers were dead before I was 2) spoke to their kids in their Italian dialect, the kids responded in English, & everyone understood one another.