You should dress like LB and then we'd all take you as seriously as we take her.
Oh, I'd need references to sell that one to people I know -- that's a story calculated to draw a "Really? Nah, not really. Really? You're sure? Really?" from anyone even halfway cautious.
1: Today, orange plaid! (and I'm not even kidding about that.)
I think it's more an in-person versus online thing - the crazy stories here are provided complete with helpful links. Plus the patriarchy to some extent.
3: That's practically the legal profession's uniform these days.
3: LB is a Red Weathered Innes? Or a MacDonald?
There any number of subjects that in real life that I could speak on with an authority that I would never dare to presume here. It's just the nature of the site, I think. For example, to an ordinary person I seem well-read. Here among on the world's most over-educated dilettantes, I'm practically illiterate. I would never spout off my half-assed theories of literature here.
Here among on the world's most over-educated dilettantes hive-mind . . .
Always remember that, as smart as the people here ar,e, it isn't actually the case that each individual commenter is expert in five obscure fields, just that for any obscure field there are likely to be multiple commenters with interest and/or expertise in that field.
And there's a fair amount of bluffing going on. I get involved in the literature conversations, despite knowing nothing about literature not derived from having read a whole lot of it in a simplemindedly naive kind of way.
I consciously avoided commenting on or forwarding that story because it seemed overwhelmingly likely some important details were being elided. And thus tyranny prevails.
And there's a fair amount of bluffing going on.
Seriously! It's like a freaking grad school party! Of course everybody sobers up right quick when it's obvious that the bluffing has stopped and the "No, really, what are you talking about?" commentary begins.
Seriously! It's like a freaking grad school party!
Isn't that part of the draw? I wouldn't want to be at a grad school party but having the opportunity to eavesdrop on one and occasionally interject isn't a bad thing.
Though, really, I think unfogged is less like that these days than it was.
Perhaps I am overestimation the ratio of useful information: social posturing at a typical grad school party but unfogged seems pretty good at providing useful information.
The grad school parties I used to go to had way more awkward pauses and people looking like they'd rather be home chatting online.
Perhaps I am overestimation the ratio of useful information: social posturing at a typical grad school party
I'm sure it depends on the school and the departments involved, but this place is pretty much exactly like the grad school parties I went to (which were populated chiefly by philosophy, political science, sociology, history and sometimes literary criticism people). They weren't dumb, not by a long shot, but there was posturing. There's not a lot of sharing information at a party at which everybody sees each other routinely anyway, is there?
But yes, sure, it's part of the draw for me; it's a comfortable dynamic.
My grad school parties were more like this party. Actually, they were exactly like that party in every respect.
15: I know you went to law school, Halford, but I don't think of law school and other professional schools as being "grad school."
And to follow up on Walt, dsquared is definitely much smarter than I am and more informed in more areas (often wrong about a lot, but more informed). And there are many people who are quicker and better writers.
There are others, but he's one of the people who is not an academic, about whom I ask, "how does he hold down a successful day job?"
I am depressingly illiterate on all kinds of social theory. I know almost nothing about Marx, and I only heard of Gramsci about 5 years ago.
It's absolutely true that law school may have blinded me to the fact that academic grad school parties are not, in fact, very similar to the party linked in 15. My sincere apologies.
There are others, but he's one of the people who is not an academic, about whom I ask, "how does he hold down a successful day job?"
I rely on my superficial charm, BG.
18: You joke, ajay, but you and Alex are a couple of the others.
17 - A stunning example of someone calling a standard Unfogged bluff.
There are others, but he's one of the people who is not an academic, about whom I ask, "how does he hold down a successful day job?"
I don't understand what you're getting at here. Are you saying that you think these people are too smart to be successful outside of academia? Or that they spend too much time commenting on blogs? Or...?
I think the implication was "How does someone who presumably spends a normal amount of time holding down a full-time job nonetheless have the spare attention and energy to have strongly informed opinions about obstetrics and war owls?"
19: well, Alex doesn't hold down a successful day job because he's only 11 (or something; depressingly young anyway) and I am a master of multitasking and delegation.
And also manage to comment during the day. Academics can always work weekends or whatever on their own research. As long as they ultimately perform, it doesn't matter how they get there. This is less true of other professions, though it should be noted that there aren't many doctors commenting here. I suppose that psychiatrists might have an easier time doing it, since they may have a gap in their day, and they usually have a 10 minutes or so between patients.
22, 24: Thanks for the explanation! Probably belonged on Standpipe's blog, but I guess Unfogged is becoming a kinder place for the not-so-bright.
26: Well, no. I was not so clear.
I recall having similar thoughts back when the blogospere was new (to me anyway), but now I just take it for granted that no one that works at a computer actually is doing work. Everyone is like me, except smarter.
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I have a question about the NotW stuff, which I haven't followed. I am only now finding out who Rebekah Brooks is, and am reading that before she was arrested, she was a Murdoch favorite who is alternately disliked by her targets or called a "flame-haired temptress."
My question is, is there any support for calling her a temptress besides the fact that she wears her hair down? Is this just an utter failure of thought on the part of some sychophants? A google image search doesn't show her vamping, or even looking at the camera, nor using sexual cues in her presentation. Joan Holloway on Mad Men is a temptress, as in, she is using sex to tempt men. Brooks doesn't appear to even be trying to do that. Why is anyone calling her that?
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the fact that she wears her hair down
That, and standard tabloid style, it seems to me.
All redheads ooze sexuality, Megan. We just can't help it. On the NOTW front, they're pretty sloppy for criminal masterminds.
I mean, I'm willing to believe any number of bad things about her. But one that does not show up in the first page of pictures of her is that she is using sexuality to increase her power.
32: I hadn't heard that temptress bit, but I do think that by acting as the executive of a tabloid she is sort of acting as a temptress--no more than a man, of course.
I was sort of feeling the tiniest bit bad for her, sicne she worked her way up and was so close to Murdoch, but then I heard her interview naming and shaming pedophiles, and I lost any and all sympathy. Prying on the prurient appetites of people is kind of based on using titillation as a sales strategy.
Not completely ugly + had a celebrity husband obviously = temptress in tabloidese.
is there any support for calling her a temptress besides the fact that she wears her hair down?
Something more is required?
I hadn't known she had a celebrity husband, and would have thought it was almost entirely her hair (which is awesome, by the way). That and the fact that there are a couple of photos out there of Brooks and Murdoch in which he looks like he has a shit-eating grin on his face.
So it seems like there should be a higher bar.
in tabloidese.
This is the key, of course. If the NYT was referring to her thus, it would be different. Certainly Ms. Brooks herself would endorse this characterization herself, were she not on the business end of it.
It would seem that wearing one's long hair down is similar to the way in which you all said, years ago, that wearing dangly earrings signals sexual availability, as every woman allegedly knows, such that she does not engage in this behavior unless she intends to so signal. I can't find the relevant thread, but that's not important right now.
is there any support for calling her a temptress besides the fact that she wears her hair down
I get the impression that in English public life, having red hair is proof positive (for women) that you're a slut, or (for men) a nerd.
In fact, google for "flame-haired temptress" and ignore references to Ms. Brooks, and you will find that the phrase simply means "woman with red hair."
My own mother, in re my two black eyes, etc., just told me: "You look like H/e/dda Nu/s/s/baum." One of those NYC horror story names (like the Collyer Brothers or Eit/an Pa/itz) that will never fade from memory.
Brooks does seem to be signalling something with the red hair, but I don't think it's sexual availability. It seems to me (in her case) more along the lines of the stupid red braces etc. that finance types would wear in the 80s, which were intended to signal powerful buccaneering 'don't-give-a-fuck'-ness. That's consistent with its being a re-purposing of something (e.g. Pre-Raphaelite hair) that might in other circumstances signal conventional femininity. Then you've got your Glenn-Close-in-Fatal-Attraction thing, which is a related but distinct semiotic deformation. And there are benign versions, as in the feminist red lipstick craze of the 80s/90s (a look still effectively deployed by the likes of Tilda Swinton).
(YMMV, of course. I'm now worried that I'm playing the Alvy Singer role in the bit of Annie Hall where Alison Porchnik tells him dryly that, no, she just loves being reduced to a cultural stereotype.)
She looks like Robert Plant.
I hadn't known she had a celebrity husband
Which she beat up like a redheaded stepchild, allegedly. Made funny, for tabloid levels of funny because said celebrity husband was best known for playing hard men on the telly.
But temptress? Not with that pram face.
This seems like as good a thread as any to ask how you feel about Dedication to My Ex.
google for "flame-haired temptress" and ignore references to Ms. Brooks, and you will find that the phrase simply means "woman with red hair."
Exactly. Were she blonde, she would be "blonde bombshell Rebekah Brooks" - the point is describing a tabloid editor in tabloidese. Private Eye does this a lot, referring to "gorgeous, pouting Paul Dacre" and so on.
"gorgeous, pouting Paul Dacre"
That's a mental image I am going to have to try hard to shake.
If the image is in your mind, you can make him shake any way you want to.
Were she blonde, she would be "blonde bombshell Rebekah Brooks"
But temptress is based off a verb, to tempt. She doesn't appear to be trying to tempt, which makes me think the descriptor may not be strictly accurate, and that calls everything else into doubt!
Unless the standard for 'trying to tempt; seduce' has been reduced to 'being female and wearing one's hair down', in which case I am implicated.
She doesn't appear to be trying to tempt, which makes me think the descriptor may not be strictly accurate, and that calls everything else into doubt!
At all costs, Megan, you mustn't let your faith in the essential honesty of the British media be shaken.
The standard for "being a temptress", just for reference, is "being female and having red hair". If you have black hair, you can't be a temptress. You can be (I think) sultry, or exotic if your skin tone is anywhere south of Dulux Eggshell White Gloss, but that's it. If you're blonde you can be a bombshell, as I mentioned, but not a sultry one.
Men, meanwhile, can be ashen-faced, tight-lipped, or bronzed and fit. Or indeed all three, like Neasden FC's legendary manager Ron Knee.
I have brown hair, worn loose. What are my options?
You really only have one option if you want the tabs to notice you at all - not death, but definitely dyeing.
If you have black hair, you can't be a temptress.
I get 23,000 results for "flame-haired temptress" and 27,900 for "raven-haired temptress".
Murdoch Apparently Attacked With White Foam During Hearings
The hearings over the News Corporation phone hacking scandal were briefly suspended after a man apparently attacked Rupert Murdoch with a plate of white foam. Murdoch's wife, Wendy Deng, hit the man back before he was pulled away and taken away in handcuffs. Sky News identified the man as comedian Jonnie Marbles. Marbles tweeted shortly before the incident: "It is a far better thing that I do now than I have ever done before #splat."
57: "Free spirit"
"Earth mother"
"Frump"
Ooh, 1,340,000 hits for "brown-haired slut". You're in luck, Megan!
61: any hits from the British tabloids, though? I am willing to admit the existence of raven-haired temptresses if presented with adequate evidence thereof.
Foam seems to combine the worst of all worlds.
Never mind, I assumed styrofoam, like he hit him with a tin full of packing peanuts.
re: 66
A photo of Hedy Lamarr?
70.--I would wear the hell out of that hat.
OK, "raven haired temptress" is an option. But I refuse to believe that the tabloids ever refer to brown-haired temptresses.
Rebekah, Flame-Haired Temptress Of My Dreams
What about brunette? Maybe you're googling the wrong hair reference.
Are temptresses still "dusky" or is that out of style, like henchmen being "swarthy" or "browless brutes of the criminal classes"?
Are temptresses still "dusky" or is that out of style
Sultry or exotic, I think.
I'm working on "tawny", but the early results aren't promising.
"Peeling-nosed temptress" is pretty much out of the question, Eggplant.
Only two hits for bald-headed temptress.
In fact, google for "flame-haired temptress" and ignore references to Ms. Brooks, and you will find that the phrase simply means "woman with red hair."
Yeah, this. I mean, she's obviously flame-haired. And once you're there, temptress just automatically follows as far as the tabs are concerned. It doesn't signal anything. It's just a stock phrase.
80: I guess you'll just need to buckle down and work harder at your tempting.
78: I should think so. Is that a definition of tawny?
83: well, you said you were working on "tawny" but it wasn't going well, so I assumed sunburn was involved.
In the 1980's, Tawny Kitaen was a flame-haired temptress.
On my back and chest, you can see the hand prints from when I was half-assed about applying sun screen. Fortunately, I don't think it will peel.
Ah, no, I meant I was fucking an eagle. And, yes, it didn't go well.
82: Some people get everything handed to them.
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What the **** is this "successful investor" idea? Who thinks this way? I know, economists. Who not only thinks this way but assumes everyone else thinks this way? Economists who live in DC.
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I don't see that Pre-Raphaelite hair ever signaled conventional femininity; more of a "I eat men like air". Surely that works well for a tabloid editor, especially one born with that wonderful hair.
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My ex-PI continues to bring me the crazy. Current PI is backing me from a distance, but the shoals are treacherous.
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I don't see that Pre-Raphaelite hair ever signaled conventional femininity; more of a "I eat men like air".
That's really not the impression I get from looking at red-haired Pre-Raphaelite women.
Like this one:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lady_of_Shalott_%28painting%29
Or this one:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esther_%28Millais_painting%29
Or this one:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Magdalene_%28Sandys%29
In fact, Pre-Raph man-eaters tend to be black-haired (Medea, the Siren).
Shalott fell in love inappropriately and is dead; Mary Magdalene is obviously still being sinful in that picture; and Esther is breaking her husband's rules. Those weren't proper feminine women to the Pre-Raphaelites (I'm reading _The Duke's Children_ at the moment, which is largely about how impossible it was to be a proper feminine woman.)
I shouldn't have said 'ever'; the choice of no-more-than-two of [beautiful, alive, virtuous] is, I guess, now conventional femininity.
Mary Magdalene is obviously still being sinful in that picture....
"She holds an alabaster ointment cup, a traditional attribute which associates her with the anonymous sinful woman who anointed Jesus' feet in Luke 7:37."
And, behold, a woman in the city, which was a sinner, when she knew that Jesus sat at meat in the Pharisee's house, brought an alabaster box of ointment, and stood at his feet behind him weeping, and began to wash his feet with tears, and did wipe them with the hairs of her head, and kissed his feet, and anointed them with the ointment.... [redtextforjesus]Wherefore I say unto thee, Her sins, which are many, are forgiven; for she loved much: but to whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little.[/redtextforjesus]
I'd say the sinful/weeping/forgiven was a big ol' sexual charge to the P-Rs. It adds that spice of suffering not available with your plain old sexuality.
Anyway, look at her face. Pouting! Heavy-eyed!
Anyway, look at her face. Pouting! Heavy-eyed!
She's not Paz de la Huerte, clew. I find your Magdalene-shaming offensive.
I think there's a Philip Kerr novel in which the murderer kills one of his victims while same is admiring some Pre-Raphaelite paintings and feels slightly justified thereby.
Note to any murderers: I like the rich light and domestic scale of Chardin.
My story, and I'm sticking to it, is that anything involving swooning (understood broadly to include languishing, drowning, etc. in the manner depicted) is conventionally feminine.
While the Lady of Small Onion, Mary Magdalene, Ophelia etc. may have been unconventional in the sense of transgressive, their transgressions were of a sort conventionally associated with passion, as opposed to action, and hence with femininity.
Private Eye does this a lot, referring to "gorgeous, pouting Paul Dacre"
NME used to have the same running joke, though the canonical formulation was "luscious, pouting".
And here's John Peel deploying it self-referentially.
99.last: That's interesting. You're reading passion as passive? Surely it's figured as passive primarily for women -- hence the swooning. Passionate men are often active. Real men don't swoon, obviously.
But there's also passion as suffering.
Next up: land-use planning in Thomas Kinkade!
Yes, I was intending "passion" etymologically - "passivity" would probably have been clearer.
A passionate man, while often moved to action, is still passive in the classical sense that what he is moved by is (not reason but) emotion, which is construed as a matter of being affected (hence terms for emotion like "affect" and "the passions"). A woman's passion, in this picture, is a more paradigmatic case, however, because the emotion supposedly tends not to lead to action ("Take me, big boy!", etc. etc.). This picture doesn't make sense if we accept the doctrine (as in Hume) that all action is ultimately motivated by the passions (because then we can't distinguish passionate action from action motivated purely by reason) but it's still there in the etymological background of our talk.
None of this is news to you, I'm sure - just wanted to get my meaning out there on the table.
75: Are temptresses still "dusky" or is that out of style
They're articulate.
102: I don't know if you meant this, but passion as suffering stems from the same usage as the others. To suffer is to passively bear/endure/tolerate/allow ("Suffer the little children to come unto me", "Suffer not a witch to live"). It's just that in contemporary usage we tend to restrict it to enduring pain, evil, etc.
it's still there in the etymological background of our talk.
It is. And it's interesting.
Big thunder and lightning here at the moment, and I'm wondering whether the power will go out, so I'm off.
Real men don't swoon, obviously.
Dammit.
|| For those of you keeping score at home, this will annoy the crap out of our friends at Exxon. |>
109: Can't believe it took over 12 hours for that shoe to drop.
112: Jesus, first the nod that the writer knows they are being an asshole, "It's always risky to attach politics, social status, or cultural affinity to a hairstyle--to endow it with too much meaning." and then the payoff, "That was look-at-me hair--stare at me, remember me. Me, me, me". [emphasis in the original]. Turns out it is written by the always predictable Robin Givhan, she of Elena Kagan needs to cross her legs and Hilary's cleavage. But I guess if you're the fashion editor that is the lens you see the world through.
I think Brooks's hair is very nice, however wrong she might be otherwise.
