"Pleeeease can the Republicans in Congress start fighting bitterly with the Administration?"
It's not as if they've not made a start with immigration, Dubai Ports, the yuan, the Hamas bill, and other issues.
And even months ago many Republican candidates started running away from having Bush or Cheney show up at their events, or at least managing to get curiously lost in traffic on the way to their own events where Cheney was in attendence.
As per my normal paranoia -- the Bush Feds seem to be spinning the various prosecutions to discredit Congress itself. They were pretty laidback on Cunningham and (of course) DeLay (which was a state prosecution anyway), but they went after Jefferson (D) full-bore with an FBI raid. And apparently they're now investigating (and wiretapping?) Congressmen looking for the NSA leak.
There are principled reasons why it's dangerous for the executive to use its police powers against the legislative branch, and maybe the prosecutions of the Rs Cunningham and Delay, by sucking in the Ds, open the door for an assault on a lot more people.
The predictable Instahack claims to want to have **every** Congressperson raided. The right wing in this country expresses various sorts of political ideas, but by now you have to wonder whether they have any at all -- except militarism, the Bush cult (which is fading), and liberal-hatred (which trumps everything else). ALL the constitutionalist and little-government principles they used to harp about have been thrown down and danced upon by now.
He seems to be doing a lot of time for someone they "laidback" on: what do you mean?
"And apparently they're now investigating (and wiretapping?) Congressmen looking for the NSA leak."
I'd like to read more about this if you can offer a pointer.
"There are principled reasons why it's dangerous for the executive to use its police powers against the legislative branch,"
Also principled reasons why it's dangerous to let corrupt legislators go unprosecuted within the bounds of the law; there's hardly anything new about that.
1. No FBI raid of Cunningham's office. FBI raid of Jefferson's office.
2. The investigation of Congressmen regarding the NSA leak is pretty new. Keep your eyes peeled. (Note my "apparently".)
3. Also principled reasons why it's dangerous to let corrupt legislators go unprosecuted within the bounds of the law; there's hardly anything new about that.
Holy shit! That's brilliant! Why didn't I think of that?
Are you aware of any indications he was hiding anything relevant in his office? If not, why on earth would they raid it?
And, you know, he pled guilty. In the face of overwhelming evidence. That seems also rather a relevant distinction.
"The investigation of Congressmen regarding the NSA leak is pretty new. "
Again, I assume you have a cite about this?
"Why didn't I think of that?"
Dunno what you think, John, except when you write it down where I can see it. Didn't see you mention that such investigations can be (and usually historically have been, which doesn't mean that that's relevant to the Bush Administration, but not everything done by every career civil servant in the federal government is commanded by the political masters, either, and DoJ has done a fair amount of righteous stuff even under the present fools, down to Comey and even effing Ashcroft resisting the NSA wiretap program [I trust I don't need to link on this, but just ask if need be]) perfectly legitimate.
I'd really really really like to know about the investigation of Congressmen regarding the NSA leak, though. Pretty please?
I'm not aware that Jefferson was hiding anything relevant in his office either. Cunningham took a good long time before he pled guilty, and no raid.
Keep your eyes open, Gary. Get someone to help you do it, if necessary. As I remember, Armand Hammer propped his eyes open with toothpicks toward the end of his days. As I made it clear, my post was pretty speculative. I do not have a cite! I might be able to get one, and something might show up later.
If you want careful documentation of all speculations, I suggest that you go somewhere other than here, and hopefully stay there. Unfogged is not a site of record for definitive statements of breaking news, AFAIK.
A premise of my speculation was a reasonable distrust of anything whatsoever that the Bush administration does, with particular attention to their contempt for due process, the separation of powers, etc.
I also have a grudging respect for the Bush/ Rove/ winger ability to turn issues to their own advantage with counterattacks, and they've been trying for some time to puff up the NSA leaks into a Plame-equivalent, and also to spin the Congressional corruption scandal as bipartisan.
Perhaps Bush is willing to try to discredit Congress as such even at the cost of angering Congressional Republicans. Hastert seems to interpret the Jefferson FBI raid that way, and also seems to interpret it as a Bush initiative contrastive to the Cunningham prosecution.
For what it's worth -- I honestly don't know -- the Cunningham prosecution was started off not by an FBI probe but by some San Diego Union-Tribune articles reporting that Mitchell Wade had bought Cunningham's house at an inflated price just before landing a bunch of defense contracts. I don't know if Jefferson fell into their laps like that.
(And yes, the DoJ still deserves some credit for prosecuting once it fell into their laps; they always have the option of twiddling their thumbs and whistling, as we can see with the illegal wiretaps.)
"As I made it clear, my post was pretty speculative. I do not have a cite!"
Um, you wrote: "And apparently they're now investigating (and wiretapping?) Congressmen looking for the NSA leak."
Now, to write this, you have to have heard it/read it somewhere, no?
I'm just asking where. Even "I heard it via my teeth" or "I saw it in a vision in a cloud" would be a start, though I trust you actually read it somewhere, or at least had another human tell you it at a watercooler, or something related to another human being, no?
"If you want careful documentation of all speculations, I suggest that you go somewhere other than here, and hopefully stay there."
Really, John, this seems a bit unnecessarily unpleasant in reply to a perfectly polite and reasonable query.
"A premise of my speculation...."
Wait, you didn't say anything at all about a "speculation."
You wrote that something was "apparently" happening. Not "I suspect" or "I'm guessing," or "I bet" or "I speculate" or "I predict," or anything at all to indicate a "speculation."
Oh, okay, so you are just making it up.
No wonder you can't answer.
But, really, getting mad at me for correctly reading what you wrote, just because you wrote something different than you meant: well, sorry that's your reaction.
Thanks for the Raw Story link; their credibility in my eyes has risen in the last year.
Gary, you have a habit of making even reasonable requests in an annoying way. I thought that your 3-point response to me here (which was not primarily a request for a link) was, like several others of yours I remember, unnecessarily confrontational and obtuse.
To me, saying "apparently" makes it a conditional statement rather than a confident assertion. Apparently you disagree, at least when you're in your mood.
"Gary, you have a habit of making even reasonable requests in an annoying way."
Sometimes, true. I don't think so this time, but we can agree to disagree on that.
"To me, saying 'apparently' makes it a conditional statement rather than a confident assertion."
Indeed, but that doesn't turn it from a conditional assertion of fact into a speculation.
Don't think I was or am in a mood; just a careful reader, and perhaps a more careful reader than you happened to be a careful writer in that casual comment. No biggie at all, even remotely, in my book.
But I'm happy to drop this now, before the horse begins to smell.
Well, I am 47, though not balding. And I do have some neuroses. (Mostly about money; none about sex; a couple about fear of rotting food, oddly enough; a couple about self-discipline -- no, I said not about sex!)
And I am, in fact, literally an uncle, since circa 1999 or so, although estranged from my biological family.
Though I am 12 years your junior I became an uncle a couple of years before you, in 1997. But my consciousness rebels against the idea of my being an online uncle. Neurotic, ok.
For obvious reasons, I too am interested in the boundaries or JM's category. I think it's more than just age; a certain aura of isolation and consequent eccentricity, plus what reads as pent-up urgency and passion seems germain. Therefore Michael H. Schneider, Idealist and I don't exactly fit, although certain old-guy-icities do show.
I often wish we had regularly-posting women from this age cohort.
I'm an aunt four times over. I'm "auntie JM" to my cousins' kids, too, which adds another ten bairns to my count. (My selfish genes are mostly satisfied.)
But surely we can agree that there is something in the internet uncle generis that is neither dependant on literally being an uncle nor being older?
Agreed of course about literally being an uncle -- I don't know about whether Emerson, Lake or Palmer Thullen or McManus is one -- but I think being older is a necessary ingredient.
"a certain aura of isolation and consequent eccentricity"
I probably qualify for that. Probably not by "probably," either.
"plus what reads as pent-up urgency and passion"
Sometimes that, too. Other times not so much. More of an "it depends" thing.
"I often wish we had regularly-posting women from this age cohort."
Especially hot single ones. And not that she was single, but when was the last time Domineditrix (whose nom de internet I had trouble calling up for a few moments, since I think of her by her real name given that we first met in 1973-4) sighted in these parts?
"But surely we can agree that there is something in the internet uncle generis that is neither dependant on literally being an uncle nor being older?"
Wait, it's a metaphor? Who'da thunk?
"...but I think being older is a necessary ingredient."
I'm not "older." It's just that this place is infested with the younger.
My sister-in-law has a half-brother more than 20 years younger than her. Her daughters were born before he was, so he was an uncle the day he was born.
Especially hot single ones. And not that she was single, but when was the last time Domineditrix (whose nom de internet I had trouble calling up for a few moments, since I think of her by her real name given that we first met in 1973-4) sighted in these parts?
She left abruptly -- IIRC she changed jobs to something less compatible with timewasting.
I always had a broad indifference to being perceived as a nut, no doubt to my professional and personal detriment, but it is true I encounter much more tolerance now that I'm an old guy.
I think if more mature women posted here, and if they didn't all hate their jobs, that the whole thing would seem less frivolous. Not that that would necessarily be a good thing.
I encouraged my former boss, who would be terrific, to post here.
(sung by Connie Stevens and Suzanne Somers). In successive iterations, iirc, although the idea of a duet rocks, and would give John Madden a reason to lurch into a floor display.
Yeah, excellent. Although none of you tell "I remember when" stories to illustrate a point so much as I do. LB and B do to some small extent, but our "late 30s +" female cohort would not be recognisable as such w/o outside information. And I return to a hobby-horse of mine, which LB will recognise and roll her eyes at: The women posting at this site fit entirely, or almost so far as I know, within two narrow bands, mid-to-late twenties, mid-to-late thirties. The men much more widely distributed by age: couple of undergrads, some mid-to-late fifties. Why?
There's not really that many people commenting regularly -- I can't count offhand, but I'd say under thirty. More than half, I would say, are men, most are under forty, we've got at least one over-forty woman, and at least one undergrad (Hi, L.), possibly more and had more in the past. With all that, I don't think there's anything that needs to be explained.
(Oh, there are probably more older men than older women bumbling about online -- the older generation of Internet types seems to be drawn disproportionately from those of a geeky bent, which in that age group is disproportionately male -- I just don't see any Unfogged only effect here.)
OK, a small sample. But I think the "banding" I referred to is real; particularly if you were to apply a graph with frequency of post multiplying age cohort in five year increments, the women would show two very tall columns.
actually, I just looked at EileenFisher.com, and what I saw was very appealing.
By the way, I haven't read PL in years, and might very well come to agree with your assessment. But it's been so long, and I'm such a different person now than when I was twenty, that I'd like to find out.
actually, I just looked at EileenFisher.com, and what I saw was very appealing.
By the way, I haven't read PL in years, and might very well come to agree with your assessment. But it's been so long, and I'm such a different person now than when I was twenty, that I'd like to find out.
Since my Anti-PL tirade, I've been thinking I should go back and reread it. I'm actually not sure I agree with my assessment. I mean, I'm sure M's a misogynist, but maybe his virtues compensate to a greater degree than I remember, or was willing to grant at the time.
Paradise Lost, Milton, and Eileen Fisher looks pleasant in pictures, but I've generally found the clothes unwearable. (Except for a mid-thigh length cream-colored sweater-dress I had as a teenager, in which I was smokin'.)
51: Then you will just have to give your Official 50th Birthday Box of Eileen Fisher to the salvation army, and take your chances.
I've seen her name used by some fashionista or other as a metonym for all the sad encroachments of time. As in "Goodbye Dolce&Gabbana, hello Eileen Fisher." But I like her anyway, and I appreciate how forgiving her clothes are. The Venn diagram representing the time when I'd have looked hot in Prada and the time when I could afford it would be two circles with no overlap at all.
I'm not sure why IDP thinks the presence of older women would make the place less frivolous. Is it because everyone would be too embarrassed to flirt in front of someone who could be their mom? Because I don't think that's going to work, as we're all invisible here. Anyway, I'm actually a man. 47 years old. With a moustache.
I'll see if I can find a course in remedial avuncularity. I think that in US culture it has something to do with enabling mild transgressions, and being non-judgmental. The parent is the disciplinarian, which leaves the uncle free to front the $5 and the condom (or whatever the modern equivalent may be).
Eileen Fisher's ads are the only clothing ads that don't make me feel rather queasy and unclean. Their models look, well, nice.
Or maybe I'll skip the course and return to those thrilling days of pharmaceutical mellowness. That will help me face with equanimity the image of a 47 year old mustachioed guy wearing Eileen Fisher.
Back from therapy. No, I wouldn't want anybody not to flirt, I want the opposite. But it would seem less frivolous to me if there were, as I prescribed, mature women who didn't hate their jobs regularly sharing the banter here. mcmc comes here enough to count, and I'm very pleased to know it.
I'm not thinking about what the people who do come here are up to, but what the people who don't. The implicit rebuke, to me that the absence of such means they have too much to do, are too tired, too stressed, or find what we do here juvenile. Many people of all ages will think that, but the presence of some women of my age would make this pattern more a matter of taste and less one of morality and responsibility.
IDP, repeat after me: "it's not about me." Why people do or don't hang out on a blog that you yourself don't write, isn't something you need to worry about. ;)
64: Well yes and no. If you're saying to me "you're not important here" I guess that's not for me to say. I thought of this not as "written" by anyone, but consisting of posted topics mostly significant for the discussions they stimulate. And that LB's thirty or so regular commentators were collectively the writers of the blog. I suppose that's not the only way to thing about it, but that is the way I think of it: as a community, as a group, and that that was why the composition of the group, and what that composition might mean, was important to me.
mcmc, is your full name then mc Frivolity mc? or is the first mc an honorific -- are you in fact a Master of Ceremonies? Then I guess you would be M.C. m Frivolity c.
Only LB herself knows what she meant, of course; I read her comment as referring to the entire body of commenters, although upon reflection I see that it could also possibly be construed as referring to women only.
67: To be clear. I wasn't giving you shit, I was just teasingly saying, hey, why people do or don't do things isn't all that easy to figure out, and I think that your hypotheses are maybe kinda random. Hell, maybe X group isn't commenting here b/c they're all off commenting somewhere else that's *more* frivolous. I suppose I have to admit that I do sorta mind the idea that, if older women don't comment here, that's somehow an "implicit rebuke" to anyone. Let alone you, personally. I mean, it doesn't do any good to worry about social justice issues in terms of how they make one feel, nor is it really a social justice issue to say that older women, as a particular subgroup or other, don't comment on one particular blog. It strikes me as a silly thing to worry about.
Most of my friends don't spend their workday in front of a computer, so they haven't discovered the life-devouring charm of blogs. A lot of them are driving that last high-school kid around to soccer or whatever, and don't seem to have time for anything. And then I find a certain number of women of my age group are actually rather offended by cock jokes. Finally, of course, the rest of them are all over the blogosphere, but are pretending to be 22.
"Most of my friends don't spend their workday in front of a computer, so they haven't discovered the life-devouring charm of blogs."
Some of those I know are still on Usenet. Others are still on IRC. Obviously, some must still be in AOL chatrooms. Others do nothing but IMing. Some have Second Lives. Others are still on MUDs and MOOs. Others have gone MMORPG. Others phone text. Some sign. Heck, some are still doing mimeoed apas.
And around here in the People's Republic of Boulder, where I live a couple of blocks from Naropa University, a bunch focus on their auras and chakras and past life contact and whatnot.
It's not like blogs are something remotely revolutionary, contra, well, many.
72, 73: No, you're right, and you're being quite nice about it. And Gary's right, not that I've denied it, that the composition is fluid. I've been impressed, not only at how quickly I was engaged, but how quickly others have been while I've been watching. People here write to one another like nowhere else I've seen.
Sorry eb, I've read and commented on both your blogs, and even though you describe yourself clearly, carried away a mistaken impression.
I notice mcmc's 75 lists exactly the reasons I had in mind, without jumping to the moral judgments that led to B's and LB's justifiable decision to dump a bucket of water on my head. I'd still like that point of view, of the mature woman, to be more-explicitly part of the discourse.
"Pleeeease can the Republicans in Congress start fighting bitterly with the Administration?"
It's not as if they've not made a start with immigration, Dubai Ports, the yuan, the Hamas bill, and other issues.
And even months ago many Republican candidates started running away from having Bush or Cheney show up at their events, or at least managing to get curiously lost in traffic on the way to their own events where Cheney was in attendence.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 05-25-06 7:19 PM
For fun, though, recall that Bush doesn't do nuance.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 05-25-06 7:24 PM
But what would they have to argue about, since they have no moral principles whatsoever?
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 05-25-06 7:44 PM
"But what would they have to argue about, since they have no moral principles whatsoever?"
Issues that affect their fund-raising, and getting votes, of course.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 05-25-06 9:27 PM
As per my normal paranoia -- the Bush Feds seem to be spinning the various prosecutions to discredit Congress itself. They were pretty laidback on Cunningham and (of course) DeLay (which was a state prosecution anyway), but they went after Jefferson (D) full-bore with an FBI raid. And apparently they're now investigating (and wiretapping?) Congressmen looking for the NSA leak.
There are principled reasons why it's dangerous for the executive to use its police powers against the legislative branch, and maybe the prosecutions of the Rs Cunningham and Delay, by sucking in the Ds, open the door for an assault on a lot more people.
The predictable Instahack claims to want to have **every** Congressperson raided. The right wing in this country expresses various sorts of political ideas, but by now you have to wonder whether they have any at all -- except militarism, the Bush cult (which is fading), and liberal-hatred (which trumps everything else). ALL the constitutionalist and little-government principles they used to harp about have been thrown down and danced upon by now.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 05-25-06 9:28 PM
"They were pretty laidback on Cunningham"
He seems to be doing a lot of time for someone they "laidback" on: what do you mean?
"And apparently they're now investigating (and wiretapping?) Congressmen looking for the NSA leak."
I'd like to read more about this if you can offer a pointer.
"There are principled reasons why it's dangerous for the executive to use its police powers against the legislative branch,"
Also principled reasons why it's dangerous to let corrupt legislators go unprosecuted within the bounds of the law; there's hardly anything new about that.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 05-25-06 9:33 PM
Emerson, it's good to have you back.
Posted by Bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 05-25-06 10:27 PM
Is Someone Protecting Denny
emptywheel at Next Hurrah connects some dots, speculatively
Posted by bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 05-25-06 10:33 PM
1. No FBI raid of Cunningham's office. FBI raid of Jefferson's office.
2. The investigation of Congressmen regarding the NSA leak is pretty new. Keep your eyes peeled. (Note my "apparently".)
3. Also principled reasons why it's dangerous to let corrupt legislators go unprosecuted within the bounds of the law; there's hardly anything new about that.
Holy shit! That's brilliant! Why didn't I think of that?
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 05-25-06 10:50 PM
"No FBI raid of Cunningham's office."
Are you aware of any indications he was hiding anything relevant in his office? If not, why on earth would they raid it?
And, you know, he pled guilty. In the face of overwhelming evidence. That seems also rather a relevant distinction.
"The investigation of Congressmen regarding the NSA leak is pretty new. "
Again, I assume you have a cite about this?
"Why didn't I think of that?"
Dunno what you think, John, except when you write it down where I can see it. Didn't see you mention that such investigations can be (and usually historically have been, which doesn't mean that that's relevant to the Bush Administration, but not everything done by every career civil servant in the federal government is commanded by the political masters, either, and DoJ has done a fair amount of righteous stuff even under the present fools, down to Comey and even effing Ashcroft resisting the NSA wiretap program [I trust I don't need to link on this, but just ask if need be]) perfectly legitimate.
I'd really really really like to know about the investigation of Congressmen regarding the NSA leak, though. Pretty please?
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 05-26-06 1:16 AM
I'm not aware that Jefferson was hiding anything relevant in his office either. Cunningham took a good long time before he pled guilty, and no raid.
Keep your eyes open, Gary. Get someone to help you do it, if necessary. As I remember, Armand Hammer propped his eyes open with toothpicks toward the end of his days. As I made it clear, my post was pretty speculative. I do not have a cite! I might be able to get one, and something might show up later.
If you want careful documentation of all speculations, I suggest that you go somewhere other than here, and hopefully stay there. Unfogged is not a site of record for definitive statements of breaking news, AFAIK.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 05-26-06 3:53 AM
A quick Google got this: Link
A premise of my speculation was a reasonable distrust of anything whatsoever that the Bush administration does, with particular attention to their contempt for due process, the separation of powers, etc.
I also have a grudging respect for the Bush/ Rove/ winger ability to turn issues to their own advantage with counterattacks, and they've been trying for some time to puff up the NSA leaks into a Plame-equivalent, and also to spin the Congressional corruption scandal as bipartisan.
Perhaps Bush is willing to try to discredit Congress as such even at the cost of angering Congressional Republicans. Hastert seems to interpret the Jefferson FBI raid that way, and also seems to interpret it as a Bush initiative contrastive to the Cunningham prosecution.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 05-26-06 4:13 AM
MArk Kleiman on FBI raid
Posted by Anonymous | Link to this comment | 05-26-06 4:15 AM
For what it's worth -- I honestly don't know -- the Cunningham prosecution was started off not by an FBI probe but by some San Diego Union-Tribune articles reporting that Mitchell Wade had bought Cunningham's house at an inflated price just before landing a bunch of defense contracts. I don't know if Jefferson fell into their laps like that.
(And yes, the DoJ still deserves some credit for prosecuting once it fell into their laps; they always have the option of twiddling their thumbs and whistling, as we can see with the illegal wiretaps.)
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 05-26-06 5:58 AM
"As I made it clear, my post was pretty speculative. I do not have a cite!"
Um, you wrote: "And apparently they're now investigating (and wiretapping?) Congressmen looking for the NSA leak."
Now, to write this, you have to have heard it/read it somewhere, no?
I'm just asking where. Even "I heard it via my teeth" or "I saw it in a vision in a cloud" would be a start, though I trust you actually read it somewhere, or at least had another human tell you it at a watercooler, or something related to another human being, no?
"If you want careful documentation of all speculations, I suggest that you go somewhere other than here, and hopefully stay there."
Really, John, this seems a bit unnecessarily unpleasant in reply to a perfectly polite and reasonable query.
"A premise of my speculation...."
Wait, you didn't say anything at all about a "speculation."
You wrote that something was "apparently" happening. Not "I suspect" or "I'm guessing," or "I bet" or "I speculate" or "I predict," or anything at all to indicate a "speculation."
Oh, okay, so you are just making it up.
No wonder you can't answer.
But, really, getting mad at me for correctly reading what you wrote, just because you wrote something different than you meant: well, sorry that's your reaction.
Thanks for the Raw Story link; their credibility in my eyes has risen in the last year.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 05-26-06 6:56 AM
John Emerson is the cranky online uncle.
(McManus the paranoid one, Thullen the loopy one.)
I wouldn't take it personally, Gary.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 05-26-06 7:19 AM
Gary, you have a habit of making even reasonable requests in an annoying way. I thought that your 3-point response to me here (which was not primarily a request for a link) was, like several others of yours I remember, unnecessarily confrontational and obtuse.
To me, saying "apparently" makes it a conditional statement rather than a confident assertion. Apparently you disagree, at least when you're in your mood.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 05-26-06 7:28 AM
Here is a good cite, by the way.
"Gary, you have a habit of making even reasonable requests in an annoying way."
Sometimes, true. I don't think so this time, but we can agree to disagree on that.
"To me, saying 'apparently' makes it a conditional statement rather than a confident assertion."
Indeed, but that doesn't turn it from a conditional assertion of fact into a speculation.
Don't think I was or am in a mood; just a careful reader, and perhaps a more careful reader than you happened to be a careful writer in that casual comment. No biggie at all, even remotely, in my book.
But I'm happy to drop this now, before the horse begins to smell.
And I now think you were right, as it happens.
16: JM, dare I ask what sort of uncle I am?
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 05-26-06 7:43 AM
You're not an uncle.
I'm not exactly sure what my criteria for uncle-dom are, before you ask, but they're pretty absolutist.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 05-26-06 7:45 AM
JM, you got some weird standards. Farber is totally in the old-guy club with Emerson, McManus and Thullen. I think he is the neurotic uncle.
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 05-26-06 7:48 AM
you got some weird standards
You are not the first to say so.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 05-26-06 7:57 AM
Well, I am 47, though not balding. And I do have some neuroses. (Mostly about money; none about sex; a couple about fear of rotting food, oddly enough; a couple about self-discipline -- no, I said not about sex!)
And I am, in fact, literally an uncle, since circa 1999 or so, although estranged from my biological family.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 05-26-06 8:00 AM
Though I am 12 years your junior I became an uncle a couple of years before you, in 1997. But my consciousness rebels against the idea of my being an online uncle. Neurotic, ok.
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 05-26-06 8:09 AM
For obvious reasons, I too am interested in the boundaries or JM's category. I think it's more than just age; a certain aura of isolation and consequent eccentricity, plus what reads as pent-up urgency and passion seems germain. Therefore Michael H. Schneider, Idealist and I don't exactly fit, although certain old-guy-icities do show.
I often wish we had regularly-posting women from this age cohort.
Posted by i don't pay | Link to this comment | 05-26-06 8:12 AM
I'm an aunt four times over. I'm "auntie JM" to my cousins' kids, too, which adds another ten bairns to my count. (My selfish genes are mostly satisfied.)
But surely we can agree that there is something in the internet uncle generis that is neither dependant on literally being an uncle nor being older?
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 05-26-06 8:17 AM
Agreed of course about literally being an uncle -- I don't know about whether Emerson,
Lake or PalmerThullen or McManus is one -- but I think being older is a necessary ingredient.Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 05-26-06 8:22 AM
"a certain aura of isolation and consequent eccentricity"
I probably qualify for that. Probably not by "probably," either.
"plus what reads as pent-up urgency and passion"
Sometimes that, too. Other times not so much. More of an "it depends" thing.
"I often wish we had regularly-posting women from this age cohort."
Especially hot single ones. And not that she was single, but when was the last time Domineditrix (whose nom de internet I had trouble calling up for a few moments, since I think of her by her real name given that we first met in 1973-4) sighted in these parts?
"But surely we can agree that there is something in the internet uncle generis that is neither dependant on literally being an uncle nor being older?"
Wait, it's a metaphor? Who'da thunk?
"...but I think being older is a necessary ingredient."
I'm not "older." It's just that this place is infested with the younger.
And the pictures -- they've grown smaller.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 05-26-06 8:34 AM
My sister-in-law has a half-brother more than 20 years younger than her. Her daughters were born before he was, so he was an uncle the day he was born.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 05-26-06 8:34 AM
I think the being-older enables the other "certain something" that IDP and I are trying to get at.
Could it be a broad indifference to being perceived as a nut?
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 05-26-06 8:35 AM
Especially hot single ones. And not that she was single, but when was the last time Domineditrix (whose nom de internet I had trouble calling up for a few moments, since I think of her by her real name given that we first met in 1973-4) sighted in these parts?
She left abruptly -- IIRC she changed jobs to something less compatible with timewasting.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 05-26-06 8:38 AM
I always had a broad indifference to being perceived as a nut, no doubt to my professional and personal detriment, but it is true I encounter much more tolerance now that I'm an old guy.
Posted by I don't pay | Link to this comment | 05-26-06 9:00 AM
I think if more mature women posted here, and if they didn't all hate their jobs, that the whole thing would seem less frivolous. Not that that would necessarily be a good thing.
I encouraged my former boss, who would be terrific, to post here.
Posted by I don't pay | Link to this comment | 05-26-06 9:03 AM
"Could it be a broad indifference to being perceived as a nut?"
Remember the old Almond Joy jingle? Or are you too young? :-)
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 05-26-06 9:11 AM
(sung by Connie Stevens and Suzanne Somers). In successive iterations, iirc, although the idea of a duet rocks, and would give John Madden a reason to lurch into a floor display.
Posted by I don't pay | Link to this comment | 05-26-06 9:21 AM
I often wish we had regularly-posting women from this age cohort.
[waves hands in air, jumps up and down]
Posted by mcmc | Link to this comment | 05-26-06 10:17 AM
Excellent! We're less frivolous!
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 05-26-06 10:21 AM
33 - I am now going to have that in my head all day long.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 05-26-06 10:28 AM
Yeah, excellent. Although none of you tell "I remember when" stories to illustrate a point so much as I do. LB and B do to some small extent, but our "late 30s +" female cohort would not be recognisable as such w/o outside information. And I return to a hobby-horse of mine, which LB will recognise and roll her eyes at: The women posting at this site fit entirely, or almost so far as I know, within two narrow bands, mid-to-late twenties, mid-to-late thirties. The men much more widely distributed by age: couple of undergrads, some mid-to-late fifties. Why?
Posted by I don't pay | Link to this comment | 05-26-06 10:34 AM
I blame the patriarchy.
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 05-26-06 10:38 AM
There's not really that many people commenting regularly -- I can't count offhand, but I'd say under thirty. More than half, I would say, are men, most are under forty, we've got at least one over-forty woman, and at least one undergrad (Hi, L.), possibly more and had more in the past. With all that, I don't think there's anything that needs to be explained.
(Oh, there are probably more older men than older women bumbling about online -- the older generation of Internet types seems to be drawn disproportionately from those of a geeky bent, which in that age group is disproportionately male -- I just don't see any Unfogged only effect here.)
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 05-26-06 10:43 AM
OK, a small sample. But I think the "banding" I referred to is real; particularly if you were to apply a graph with frequency of post multiplying age cohort in five year increments, the women would show two very tall columns.
Posted by I don't pay | Link to this comment | 05-26-06 10:53 AM
35: "[waves hands in air, jumps up and down]"
So, what are you wearing?
37: "I am now going to have that in my head all day long.
My work here is done.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 05-26-06 10:53 AM
42: Eileen Fisher. They send you a big box of the stuff when you hit fifty, and arrest you if you fail to wear it.
Posted by mcmc | Link to this comment | 05-26-06 11:39 AM
And the punishment is?
actually, I just looked at EileenFisher.com, and what I saw was very appealing.
By the way, I haven't read PL in years, and might very well come to agree with your assessment. But it's been so long, and I'm such a different person now than when I was twenty, that I'd like to find out.
Posted by I don't pay | Link to this comment | 05-26-06 11:55 AM
And the punishment is?
actually, I just looked at EileenFisher.com, and what I saw was very appealing.
By the way, I haven't read PL in years, and might very well come to agree with your assessment. But it's been so long, and I'm such a different person now than when I was twenty, that I'd like to find out.
Posted by I don't pay | Link to this comment | 05-26-06 11:56 AM
And the punishment is?
day-glo orange jumpsuits, of course. very hard on teh complexion of the older woman.
Posted by mcmc | Link to this comment | 05-26-06 12:04 PM
Since my Anti-PL tirade, I've been thinking I should go back and reread it. I'm actually not sure I agree with my assessment. I mean, I'm sure M's a misogynist, but maybe his virtues compensate to a greater degree than I remember, or was willing to grant at the time.
Posted by mcmc | Link to this comment | 05-26-06 12:24 PM
The enthusiasm of our young women, admittedly 18c specialists, is what convinced me. I'm curious.
Posted by I don't pay | Link to this comment | 05-26-06 12:40 PM
PL? M? Is this another game of Botticelli?
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 05-26-06 12:49 PM
Think very hot mature women in sexy, comfortable clothes and the meaning of PL and M will be obvious to you.
Posted by pseudonymous weiner | Link to this comment | 05-26-06 12:53 PM
Paradise Lost, Milton, and Eileen Fisher looks pleasant in pictures, but I've generally found the clothes unwearable. (Except for a mid-thigh length cream-colored sweater-dress I had as a teenager, in which I was smokin'.)
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 05-26-06 12:54 PM
When did Paradise Lost and Milton go into partnership with Eileen Fisher?
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 05-26-06 12:56 PM
I was aware they had smoking jackets back in the day. But I've never heard of this smoking sweater-dress you speak of.
Posted by M/tch M/lls | Link to this comment | 05-26-06 1:18 PM
More on the infighting. I particularly liked this:
Note also the Schumer quote. And meanwhile Republican Senator Vitter is having at Hastert. The eating of the not-so-young continues.Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 05-26-06 2:41 PM
51: Then you will just have to give your Official 50th Birthday Box of Eileen Fisher to the salvation army, and take your chances.
I've seen her name used by some fashionista or other as a metonym for all the sad encroachments of time. As in "Goodbye Dolce&Gabbana, hello Eileen Fisher." But I like her anyway, and I appreciate how forgiving her clothes are. The Venn diagram representing the time when I'd have looked hot in Prada and the time when I could afford it would be two circles with no overlap at all.
Posted by mcmc | Link to this comment | 05-26-06 2:45 PM
at least one undergrad
Two.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 05-26-06 2:50 PM
Excuse me, but I post here in order to be frivolous.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 05-26-06 3:00 PM
56 - I didn't realize you were that young, Teo.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 05-26-06 3:04 PM
58 -- yeah. I think he's frontin'.
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 05-26-06 3:06 PM
I have in fact mentioned my exact age here.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 05-26-06 3:06 PM
B, frivolity is my middle name.
I'm not sure why IDP thinks the presence of older women would make the place less frivolous. Is it because everyone would be too embarrassed to flirt in front of someone who could be their mom? Because I don't think that's going to work, as we're all invisible here. Anyway, I'm actually a man. 47 years old. With a moustache.
Posted by mcmc | Link to this comment | 05-26-06 3:08 PM
I'll see if I can find a course in remedial avuncularity. I think that in US culture it has something to do with enabling mild transgressions, and being non-judgmental. The parent is the disciplinarian, which leaves the uncle free to front the $5 and the condom (or whatever the modern equivalent may be).
Eileen Fisher's ads are the only clothing ads that don't make me feel rather queasy and unclean. Their models look, well, nice.
Or maybe I'll skip the course and return to those thrilling days of pharmaceutical mellowness. That will help me face with equanimity the image of a 47 year old mustachioed guy wearing Eileen Fisher.
Posted by Michael H Schneider | Link to this comment | 05-26-06 3:35 PM
Back from therapy. No, I wouldn't want anybody not to flirt, I want the opposite. But it would seem less frivolous to me if there were, as I prescribed, mature women who didn't hate their jobs regularly sharing the banter here. mcmc comes here enough to count, and I'm very pleased to know it.
I'm not thinking about what the people who do come here are up to, but what the people who don't. The implicit rebuke, to me that the absence of such means they have too much to do, are too tired, too stressed, or find what we do here juvenile. Many people of all ages will think that, but the presence of some women of my age would make this pattern more a matter of taste and less one of morality and responsibility.
Posted by I don't pay | Link to this comment | 05-26-06 4:15 PM
IDP, repeat after me: "it's not about me." Why people do or don't hang out on a blog that you yourself don't write, isn't something you need to worry about. ;)
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 05-26-06 4:19 PM
By at least one undergraduate LB meant women, teo. I know you and eb are.
Anybody have any response to my woman-age-cohort-activity-band notion? Aside from LB's "too small a sample?"
Posted by I don't pay | Link to this comment | 05-26-06 4:22 PM
I know you and eb are.
eb is not an undergraduate.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 05-26-06 4:26 PM
64: Well yes and no. If you're saying to me "you're not important here" I guess that's not for me to say. I thought of this not as "written" by anyone, but consisting of posted topics mostly significant for the discussions they stimulate. And that LB's thirty or so regular commentators were collectively the writers of the blog. I suppose that's not the only way to thing about it, but that is the way I think of it: as a community, as a group, and that that was why the composition of the group, and what that composition might mean, was important to me.
Posted by I don't pay | Link to this comment | 05-26-06 4:31 PM
I'm just saying that I think you're reading too much into it.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 05-26-06 4:59 PM
"The implicit rebuke, to me that the absence of such means they have too much to do, are too tired, too stressed, or find what we do here juvenile."
That's completely unfair. Sometimes I make the rebuke quite explicit.
"And that LB's thirty or so regular commentators were collectively the writers of the blog."
Speaking from my Senior Position of First Commenter (and Linkee) Here Ever, I'd point out that blog dynamics are dynamic. Things change.
Just ask Unf.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 05-26-06 5:19 PM
mcmc, is your full name then mc Frivolity mc? or is the first mc an honorific -- are you in fact a Master of Ceremonies? Then I guess you would be M.C. m Frivolity c.
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 05-26-06 5:33 PM
Only LB herself knows what she meant, of course; I read her comment as referring to the entire body of commenters, although upon reflection I see that it could also possibly be construed as referring to women only.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 05-26-06 5:37 PM
67: To be clear. I wasn't giving you shit, I was just teasingly saying, hey, why people do or don't do things isn't all that easy to figure out, and I think that your hypotheses are maybe kinda random. Hell, maybe X group isn't commenting here b/c they're all off commenting somewhere else that's *more* frivolous. I suppose I have to admit that I do sorta mind the idea that, if older women don't comment here, that's somehow an "implicit rebuke" to anyone. Let alone you, personally. I mean, it doesn't do any good to worry about social justice issues in terms of how they make one feel, nor is it really a social justice issue to say that older women, as a particular subgroup or other, don't comment on one particular blog. It strikes me as a silly thing to worry about.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 05-26-06 5:40 PM
Shorter 72: 40 gets it right exactly.
Why am I even *in* this thread?
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 05-26-06 5:43 PM
"mcmc, is your full name then mc Frivolity mc?"
I thought she was a square.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 05-26-06 5:45 PM
Most of my friends don't spend their workday in front of a computer, so they haven't discovered the life-devouring charm of blogs. A lot of them are driving that last high-school kid around to soccer or whatever, and don't seem to have time for anything. And then I find a certain number of women of my age group are actually rather offended by cock jokes. Finally, of course, the rest of them are all over the blogosphere, but are pretending to be 22.
Posted by mcmc | Link to this comment | 05-26-06 5:46 PM
70: the latter is correct.
74: right, Gary, a magic square!
Posted by mcmc | Link to this comment | 05-26-06 5:50 PM
"Most of my friends don't spend their workday in front of a computer, so they haven't discovered the life-devouring charm of blogs."
Some of those I know are still on Usenet. Others are still on IRC. Obviously, some must still be in AOL chatrooms. Others do nothing but IMing. Some have Second Lives. Others are still on MUDs and MOOs. Others have gone MMORPG. Others phone text. Some sign. Heck, some are still doing mimeoed apas.
And around here in the People's Republic of Boulder, where I live a couple of blocks from Naropa University, a bunch focus on their auras and chakras and past life contact and whatnot.
It's not like blogs are something remotely revolutionary, contra, well, many.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 05-26-06 5:51 PM
"74: right, Gary, a magic square!
I figured you were saying you had energy. Though I didn't take it to mean you were formulaic.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 05-26-06 5:53 PM
Hell, maybe X group isn't commenting here b/c they're all off commenting somewhere else that's *more* frivolous.
On mommy blogs.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 05-26-06 6:07 PM
A few days ago I was a woman. Now I'm an undergrad. You're all wrong. I'm actually 90 years old. Now, GET OFF MY LAWN!
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 05-26-06 6:16 PM
72, 73: No, you're right, and you're being quite nice about it. And Gary's right, not that I've denied it, that the composition is fluid. I've been impressed, not only at how quickly I was engaged, but how quickly others have been while I've been watching. People here write to one another like nowhere else I've seen.
Sorry eb, I've read and commented on both your blogs, and even though you describe yourself clearly, carried away a mistaken impression.
Posted by I don't pay | Link to this comment | 05-26-06 7:20 PM
People here write to one another like nowhere else I've seen.
Only at Unfogged would I wonder what Standpipe thinks of this sentence.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 05-26-06 7:26 PM
I notice mcmc's 75 lists exactly the reasons I had in mind, without jumping to the moral judgments that led to B's and LB's justifiable decision to dump a bucket of water on my head. I'd still like that point of view, of the mature woman, to be more-explicitly part of the discourse.
Posted by I don't pay | Link to this comment | 05-27-06 9:36 AM