What a sentence. https://t.co/j8HYkJAA8d pic.twitter.com/pvo8pY2Cn5
— Philip Bump (@pbump) October 24, 2021
I wrote this about a recent goblin party, and coverage of the greater goblin community. https://t.co/OLZpO7n7RC
— David Roth (@david_j_roth) October 28, 2021
Dave Roth, at Defector, for the win:
… The problem, if you are an idiot like me who helplessly seeks out and reads things that help me get and remain upset, is that the business press mostly writes about business things. To be fair, there is no shortage of upsetting stuff in that arena, including some very promising new buying opportunities in the Dadaist Financial Nonsense and Greasy Techno Hucksterism spaces. But in its linearity and patient unpacking of material cause and downstream effect, business writing can also seem insufficient when it comes to describing a time in which the relationship between those two things frequently seems to have come uncoupled, and sometimes not exist at all. For all the ways in which bad political and cultural coverage reliably falls short in terms of passing on useful or usable knowledge, it is at least also as confusing and overheated and conflicted and multiply incoherent as the moment it describes.
This might just be a matter of differentiating between the lyrics and the music, but when all these discordances come together and you get the clean descriptiveness of good business writing and the blinding raw perversity of everything else, the effect is remarkable. This story from the Financial Times about the return of the Milken Institute Global Conference is one such story. In a sense, it is just what it sounds like, which is a story about an annual celebration of rich-people things, rich-people ideas, and the panel-conversation format hosted by former junk bond grandee and convicted (and, in 2020, Trump-pardoned) financial fraud Michael Milken.
There’s some color that identifies it as happening in 2021—the money managers and finance lordlings wearing black KN95 masks; the culture’s reigning teacher’s pet Bari Weiss telling a rapt audience of the richest and most powerful Deal Guys in America how oppressed, actually, they are—but nothing that suggests that reporters Sujeet Indap, Miles Kruppa, and James Fontanella-Khan are really putting their thumbs on the scale. Which is not to say that every sentence of the story is not unspeakably, howlingly demented, because every sentence absolutely is. The intensely deranging effect of reading it just happens not to arrive through the familiar postulation and projection and scrupulous/fatuous framing of political reporting, but entirely through a faithful recounting of what happened when a bunch of extremely rich people got together for the weekend at the Beverly Hilton to talk about the state of the world and how best to extract ever more wealth from it.
That these rich guys complain about lèse-majesté from everyone else is unsurprising; the involvement of Weiss, the moment’s premier chronicler of the things that make dull rich people upset, was inevitable. But all of it is pretty clearly what it is, and the blustering, oblivious, self-delighted particulars are perverse enough to stand on their own. If you do not have time to read the whole thing, or to try to wriggle around FT’s paywall, I have selected my seven favorite sentences from the story and ranked them below.
7. “’It’s gotten harder to steal stuff,’ lamented on stage Howard Marks, the Oaktree Capital founder who at Citigroup in the late 1970s had been one of the first buyers of Milken’s revolutionary debt.”…
2. “Her interviewer, the conservative political pollster, Frank Luntz, implored Weiss to throw her hat in the ring for the open US Senate seat in Weiss’ home state of Pennsylvania, an idea that was greeted with a burst of applause, marking the rare Milken conference talk where those in the audience were not fiddling with their phones.”…
these people genuinely do not have enough real problems to worry about and i think that should change https://t.co/uxSxxpo9vR
— ?? ?? GHOSTLIKEHELLMACHINE ?? ???? (@golikehellmachi) October 24, 2021
What’s funny is that for her whole life, she’s been arguing that the sun revolves around her.
— Adam Eli Clem (@AdamEliClem) October 24, 2021
let’s start a war with the martians and send them off to cement their claims to bravery
— ?? ?? GHOSTLIKEHELLMACHINE ?? ???? (@golikehellmachi) October 24, 2021
Maybe Weis is just nervous about a new contender in the ‘Cancel Culture’ marketing sphere?…
Vladimir Putin, welcome to the Intellectual Dark Web pic.twitter.com/dZSvEUZzPo
— Berny Belvedere (@bernybelvedere) October 23, 2021
NotMax
An’ the Gobble-uns’ll git you
Ef you
Don’t
Watch
Out!
SiubhanDuinne
@NotMax:
I didn’t know anybody still knew or even heard of, let alone quoted, James Whitcomb Riley!!
eddie blake
she and bill maher should hook up. they’re both SO sure the universe revolves around them
eta- oh, THOID!!!
craigie
I would like some evidence of wokeness in Russia.
HumboldtBlue
When a Russian-bought sniveling seditionist gets his ass handed to him by a woman who knows her shit.
Mousebumples
Open thread, hopefully?
Celebrating a Packers win tonight, and saw this image on Twitter and felt the need to share-
HumboldtBlue
@Mousebumples:
pretty sure this was a giveaway: (I’d wink but you can’t see me wink so did I really wink at all?)
Late Night Open Thread:
JWR
I’m watching local news, and they’re talking to local teachers who’ve now been fired over the vaccine mandate. It’s so weird. When asked “why not just get the poke?”, they all say they have religious objections. And medical reasons, also too. But they never specify which medical reasons, or which bible verses they’re relying upon for their objections. Buncha dickhead Foxbots, far as I’m concerned. Screw ’em.
eddie blake
@JWR: afaik, every major religion, every major denomination is down with vaccines. they’re full of shit.
Mousebumples
@HumboldtBlue: hah, fair point. ?
dmsilev
@JWR: Some of them will say ‘stem cells harvested from aborted fetuses’, which is still nonsense but I guess it is at least tangible nonsense.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mousebumples: Woohoo! I did not see that ending coming.
Feathers
@eddie blake: The problem is that when only religious exemptions are allowed, all the reasons for not wanting to become “religious.”
NotMax
@JWR
Ah. for the days when no one so much as batted an eye in indignation over things such as this.
Kay
They cancelled it because they’re opposed to cancel culture:
Add “might be gay” to critical race theory.
ian
@craigie:
wokeness= catch-all term for things right wing people don’t like. Right wing people don’t like things that make Putin sad. QED everything Putin opposes in Russia=woke.
Drink some vodka before you question the proof.
Kay
Hudson resident connects the dots:
Kay
eddie blake
@Kay: yeah, the same way those knobs keep talking about all the cities that got burned to the ground by BLM and ANTIFA, i wanna just ask, “which ones?”
why no one asks these fucks? they’re like, “we wanna ban CRT!”
“…ookay, what’s CRT?”
(i mean really does ANYONE still have a cathode ray tube?)
Cameron
This is disgraceful.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/ohio-school-board-president-to-resign-after-refusing-to-vote-against-anti-racism-resolution/ar-AAQ4bFg
JWR
@eddie blake: I read about a study that tracked violence at the BLM protests, and it found of the thousands of marches, something like 3% had trouble with violence or looting. I don’t remember if who caused said violence were tracked, but right-wingnut and police provocateurs’ certainly come to mind.
HumboldtBlue
@Omnes Omnibus:
Rodgers is gonna look good in midnight green next season as he hawks Wawa, cheesesteaks, and Tastykakes.
Omnes Omnibus
@HumboldtBlue: He won’t leave GB.
eddie blake
@JWR: well, you can’t mention THAT, like i said, they’re talking about whole CITIES burnt off the face of the earth.
…and yes, the alphabet agencies caught a BUNCH of fascists who were trying to spark rahowa, but i’m sure dozens more slipped their grasp.
Feathers
If anybody wanted duck content: https://twitter.com/twistybonce/status/1453624795363414016
eclare
@Feathers: Awwww….
JWR
@Cameron: From the article:
Not typically taught in grade school? Try never.
Kinda like when reporters / journalists talk about “voter fraud”, they almost always insert the word “widespread”. So instead of saying “there was no evidence of voter fraud”, the R approved “there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud” is almost always used, indicating that there was indeed some level of fraud, which there always is, but the number of instances of actual fraud is miniscule, and can usually be attributed to voter mistakes. (Or Rs attempting to demonstrate how easy it is to commit voter fraud, in which case they s/b jailed.)
HumboldtBlue
@Omnes Omnibus:
I can see him running the steps to the art museum now, ponytail and all… (wistful sigh)
Elsewhere.
Sweet mother of Tchaikovsky, I love listening to Anne-Sophie Mutter plays this concerto.
Cathie from Canada
Remember in Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy when they found out that the ancestors from whom we are all descended had actually originated on another planet, and that home planet had gathered up all its PR people, politicians, civil servants, lawyers, upper class rich twits and telephone sanitizers, and sent them off on the first ships to Earth, telling them the rest would follow later. And then of course they actually stayed happily on the home planet, having gotten rid of the people they considered useless?
Maybe that’s what we should do again now with all these useless folk.
Of course, it didn’t work out so great in Hitchhikers, really — turned out all the people who remained on the home plant eventually succumbed to an infection caused by dirty telephones.
Frankensteinbeck
@eddie blake:
Portland and Seattle. I dare say individual wingnuts have other specific cities they think are in flames, but when they talk about rioting and arson Portland is the city they go on about. They take it as universally known fact that BLM turned Portland into a war zone of looting and arson.
To be fair, they think LA is like that normally. They live in a bizarre fantasy world.
Major Major Major Major
Saw Dune. Pretty fun. A little too aware that it’s Dune-the-phenomenon.
eddie blake
@JWR: no, it’s mostly republicans cheating.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/10/22/nevada-republican-who-claimed-someone-voted-his-dead-wife-is-charged-with-voter-fraud/
eddie blake
@Frankensteinbeck: pretty sure portland is still there. as is seattle. they claimed new york had gone up in flames, but….nope, we’re still here, too.
prostratedragon
@SiubhanDuinne: Actually I thought of that poem just the other day. Must be something in the air
ETA didn’t recall then that it was by Riley.
eddie blake
knicks beat the bulls 104-103, but the bulls are demanding an audit.
JWR
@Frankensteinbeck: Speaking of L.A., I’m reminded of the time the LAPD had a large group of BLM marchers sitting on the street in plastic cuffs while half a block away, actual looters were going about their business. Even the LAPD-friendly news helicopter pilot was quite surprised. Chief Michael Moore was questioned about it the following day, and all he said was that sometimes those “hard decisions” about who to arrest have to be made.
Frankensteinbeck
@eddie blake:
I saw them trumpeting online about a riot in Portland and Portland residents were going “What riot? What are you talking about? I’m downtown and everything is fine.” It was that one block protest where the Black Bloc anarchists broke windows of the local Democrats office.
eddie blake
@Frankensteinbeck: in other words, arson, firestorm, city-wide, london- esque devastation.
JWR
Thursday afternoon’s Background Briefing:
Lauren Windsor, (2nd interview), travels around posing as a supporter of TFG, and she got John Eastman, on tape, admitting that what he told the media about his coup memo was a bunch of BS. Here’s hoping he’s been asked to testify before the January 6th Committee.
HumboldtBlue
History will be made this weekend as the Boston Symphony Orchestra will feature an electric bass soloist for the first time. Grammy-winning bassist Victor Wooten will showcase an original concerto.
El-Man
@Cathie from Canada: Hmm, I wonder if that’s really Elon Musk’s real agenda with these Mars missions… anyone know if he’s a Douglas Adams fan?
NotMax
@HumboldtBlue
Sounds like something straight out of Tom Swift Jr. Dang robots are popping up everywhere.
:)
Dan B
@eddie blake: Glad to hear Seattle is still here (he says from Seattle). We may be eliminated by the Bomb Cyclone and today’s Atmospheric River. Parts of downtown are struggling with boarded up storefronts and empty skyscrapers. On top of that there are more homeless encampments and the struggle between the powers that want it cleaned up – gone versus people who want housing that is affordable and / or subsidized, mental health care and social services. And our most regressive in the nation tax structure and untaxed billionaires. So BLM got attacked by the police and then a few returned the rage. Sigh.
And did I mention our Proud Boys adjacent Police “Union”?
eddie blake
@Dan B: sooo… mostly there.
eta- but yipes. hopefully the cops who are pb adjacent will resign so they don’t have to get vaxxed.
Ruckus
@eddie blake:
Their religion is that they are free to do whatever they want, that society has no right to tell them or make them do or not do anything.
And oh by the way, they don’t think that right extends to anyone but them.
Ruckus
@dmsilev:
Tangible Nonsense?
I may be way off here but I don’t see how those two words go together.
OK in the world of conservative politics. maybe, because in their world everything is nonsense but really, is any of it tangible?
eddie blake
@Ruckus: right. i get it. they’re full of shit.
eta- the church of FYIGM.
NotMax
@Ruckus
The votes for striking sapiens from the species designation edge ever upward in light of the evidence.
//
prostratedragon
@HumboldtBlue: Well all right! Classical is opening up rapidly all of a sudden, judging by things like this, Fire in My Bones (excellent, just saw it this week on the HD),
and a wealth of new recordings in regular rotation on my local classical station.
prostratedragon
@Kay: Oh I’m sure there was a lot of irony contributed by faculty advisors. One advantage of dealing with the culturally panicked is that they miss a lot of things.
Frankensteinbeck
@Ruckus:
That most of all they are free to hurt others. The current form of conservatism is a frothing battle for the right to be assholes. Look at it from that framework and it all makes sense. All this ‘woke’ and ‘cancel culture’ and ‘CRT’ rage is their being utterly furious that they get socially slapped down for being assholes. They elect assholes to be assholes. They are ecstatically assholes about it all. Trump’s appeal was being the ultimate asshole.
A black man was elected president and they lost. Their. Shit. Down an emotional rabbit hole way past the racism that launched them into it.
eddie blake
@Frankensteinbeck: “i do believe you’ve got it surrounded, mister morden.”
yup, you’ve got it right.
opiejeanne
@SiubhanDuinne: I’m 71. I ran across that poem several times at school, and I’ve read other of his poems out of curiosity when they crossed my path, but that’s the only one that has stuck with me.
opiejeanne
@eddie blake: My cousin in Wyoming thought Seattle was a smoking hell-hole, burned to the ground. She was worried because my daughters both live in the city. She’s married to an extreme libertarian/RW asshole, so that’s probably where she got that nonsense.
NotMax
@eddie blake
Q: What’s the worst place to work in the Babylon 5 universe?
A: The souvenir kiosk on Z’ha’dum.
JWR
eddie blake
@opiejeanne: your cousin doesn’t have google maps?
Shalimar
@HumboldtBlue: “Grammy-winning bassist” drastically understates Victor Wooten’s talent. He’s a musical genius on par with anyone else alive today.
satby
@dmsilev: The POPE said that that was a spurious objection considering the more immediate threat to life of covid itself.
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
@satby:
Of course if Dump was in office they wouldn’t have any of those “concerns”
satby
@David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch: Didn’t even the great white savior get booed when he told people to get vaccinated at one of his rallies? Even he can’t control them any more.
mrmoshpotato
Vlad, both you and your orange shitstain can get fucked.
mrmoshpotato
I prefer Goblin concerts.
Some early morning dancing.
mrmoshpotato
@satby:
Fixed, and yes. Even a conman doesn’t want to kill too many if his marks.
S. Cerevisiae
I was down in Minneapolis last weekend and it certainly didn’t look like a smoking crater, as a matter of fact I had a lovely 3 mile walk down by St. Anthony Falls with Bella and a local friend. The freeway construction in downtown St. Paul is kind of a pain right now but otherwise the Twin Cities are still intact.
opiejeanne
@eddie blake: I asked her that once because every time there was a wildfire in Eastern Washington she’d call us in a panic. We’re about 11 miles from downtown Seattle, and she’s been here.
Maps wouldn’t help her to know if Seattle and Portland are burnt out cinders. I told her that the only fire I knew of during the protests, was one in a large trash can in front of a closed storefront. The stores in the area were all shut down because of Covid. I also told her that the “riot” in Seattle was mostly caused by cops and anarchists, not BLM.
moops
Where is my huge Friday news drop? why is Matt still walking around a free man?