Is this some kind of joke? Thomas Friedman, hands down.
Twitter really is the nadir of human discourse.
Political journalists seem to be really into Twitter, I guess because politicians are too.
All major pundits will one day rumble into the street
Incensed by comments
Intent on generating tweets
Just words, just words
You said they wouldn't hurt
Just words, just words
This thread is the nadir of human discourse. An opportunity to lose yourself in a bloody reverie about your most despised pundit, and you'd rather talk about Twitter yay or nay. #smh
Doesn't comment one sort of settle the issue, though? Who else is a candidate? Richard "I guess slavery was bad" Whateverhislastnameis?
I'm not even sure that Richard is his first name. Oh look it is. Richard Cohen, walking shande far di goyim.
9 -- it's your fucking fault for assuming the pundit would win. We (using the royal we here) want to fantasize about drinking the blood of Krauthammer and ... hmm Robert Samuelson and, fuck it, Josh Marshall, in our helms, mixed with mead, while pieces of their throats are still stuck to our battle-axes.
It sounds like ogged wanted more details about the fight itself, for some reason.
See, he just needed to wait for Halford to show up.
Tough call. Jonah Goldberg is a definite contender though. I can totally imagine him getting all puffy when he's drunk in a "don't you know who I am" kind of way and then quickly breaking down into tears as the beating begins.
15 -- agree. Here's my outside-the-box plan for Goldberg: repeated, hard slaps to the face from an extremely effeminate gay man. At first he'd be all pompous buffoon-like fake macho dismissive laughing. Then the slaps get harder and the tears and the blubbering.
9: I don't know, I don't spend as much time hating columnists as most people here. Like Maureen Dowd is horrible so I stopped reading her a very long time ago and don't have active murderous feelings about her. I guess it would be fun to get in a drunken brawl with Manuela Hoelterhoff? Because I'm a feminist? Actually this reminds me that I do read music writers I hate. So, final answer: Norman Lebrecht if I could cut off enough heads quickly enough to slow him down before he got any venomous fangs into me. He's not the worst of the worst, humanity-wise, but he's consistently like orange juice and toothpaste in writing. Better?
It's a shame that it seems so unchivalrous to fantasy fight the horrible women pundits. For example, having McMegan face the battle axe seems wrong; she should just be forced to be a desperately poor homeless single mother, shunned by everyone who ever knew her, for the rest of her life.
Hmm, I might go with Steven Hyden from Grantland. Hate him. I would also enjoy fighting Bill Plaschke of the L.A. Times.
Oh my fucking God Plaschke. No axe is dull and disease-infected enough.
I would've voted Friedman if he weren't already a punchline at this point. Watching Marshall squander his credibility this way, though, makes me want to test out the Hogan Leg-Drop and/or the People's Elbow on him. What a cunt.
Wait the original tweet was from a month ago? That's like 10 years ago in twitter time.
Halford in the other thread has reminded me that I would like to drown Grover Norquist in a bathtub.
22: Looks like more than 2 months, actually. May 23.
Huh, right. I didn't notice the date until I'd scrolled down to July. Political journalism twitter is a slower moving cesspool of newspaper-style comments than I would have guessed.
Now I know what you're thinking: it's awfully hard to drown a grown man in a tub, and he'd be a struggler. But I would first fill the tub with cold water, and, being unable to regulate his core temperature, he'd soon grow sluggish and unresisting.
That actually makes it even weirder, since it would have been well before the latest Israel/Palestine blow-up.
Everyone knows my answer is David Brooks, and has been for a decade. I promised myself long ago I would punch him in the face if I saw him, and then I saw him, and remembered that I would probably have to go to jail for a while and I had exams. *shame*
Not facing that kind of moral dilemma is one advantage of not living in New York.
Can someone remind me who was the pundit whose name repeatedly appeared in an article by someone else on women's reproductive health, the author sheepishly explained, because while emailing drafts back and forth, his paper's net nanny withheld it because of too-frequent use of the word "vagina," so in draft form, he used the name of....
David Brooks is a coastal elite pretending to be heartland guy pretending to be a coastal elite.
Wait, Brooks was born in Canada? Did this come up in the earlier thread? Was he a childhood friend of Rob Ford?
Sadly, Googling "mark steyn vagina" brings up a loooooot of hits, so I'm still tracking it down, but it brought me joy at the time. It was about a performance of "The Vagina Monologues." OK, it was originally this bit from AB at the Guardian, but I can't find the version where it initially said "The Mark Steyn Monologues."
The Vagina Monologues, which we intended to refer to in eBay, Manga and murder, page 2, G2, April 19, became, bizarrely, The [Mark Steyn] Monologues.
Bizarrely!
Sadly, Googling "mark steyn vagina" brings up a loooooot of hits
Really? What are they?
Oh, shit like this. Mark Steyn has a lot of thoughts about "vascularized vaginas."
Can I choose this guy? Because his cousin, a dear old friend, put this on Facebook as a "sane and concise" take on the fighting, and I gingerly expressed my reservations about his #2, leaving everything else alone, and now he's FB messaging to insist that
There is no moral equivalence between the election of Netanyahu and the election of Hamas, because Hamas's raison d'etre is not to bring peace, security, and prosperity to its people - it's to annihilate the State of Israel and the Jewish people along with it. People who celebrate death are not the same as people who celebrate life.
Of course, he's a bad pick, because he's ex-IDF and would probably kick my ass (or call in an airstrike on it before I got close). Back to hundredpushups.com.
39: Yeah, probably best to stay away from Israelis in this context. American pundits who say insane things about Israel aren't that hard to find, after all, and they'd generally be much easier to take in a fight.
Is 33 mixing D. Brooks with D. Frum? The latter is Canadian.
It appears Brooks was born in Toronto, although he grew up in New York.
I sometimes actually look things up before posting comments.
At least he didn't provide a citation, presumably following the Perlstein model of "my citations are on some other website somewhere."
I was paraphrasing Wikipedia editor ###.##.###.#, a renowned expert on David Brooks' birthplace.
I can't really think of any pundits, tbh. But there are several politicians that I'd punch without a second's hesitation.
Cameron, and Osborne, for a start. Certainly Cameron, who provokes a visceral almost physical reaction in me.
48: well, it's not really a case of which you would punch so much as which you would punch first. Cameron before Osborne? Cameron before Gove? Gove before Lilley?
I guess Gove is sidelined. So, Cameron first. Osborne I'd probably want to kick in the balls, tbh.
I get to punch William Saletan.
A nice upward swinging kick to the nads is sometimes jokily referred to as an 'italian whip-kick [fouette italienne]' in Frenchy boxing. I've no idea if that's because Italians are reputed to be dirty fighters* or because of the ballet movement of the same name, which has the same upward swing:**
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtrgKD6bg8g
So, Osborne, with that.
** standard savate fouette:
What Salem Assli is doing in slow mo' between 14 and 16 secs and again at 1:09:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Yj3x521VaM
* juding/ref'ing international events, they are prone to go down claiming they've been victim of a nut strike, trying to get penalties awarded against their opponent.
Speaking of pundits, Ezra Klein sat in for Chris Hayes last night, and it was interesting to see how less comfortable he was in the role of host as opposed to guest. Not a criticism, similar but different roles are very different, it was just quote apparent that he was pushing his comfort zone.
But, he comes off as very punchable; although I am probably still overly influenced by the histrionic squeakathons he and Chris Hayes engaged in last October/November when all of liberal proceduralism was in danger due to healthcare.gov. Joan Walsh proved she could take them both in a fight.
Who can we poison with polonium?
Let's mix it up with an old Unfogged tradition and ask which pundits would fight most viciously against a horde of 7 year old children and what tactics do you think they would employ?
George Will would bore them to death.
Friedman would totally kick a kid in the face. Brooks and Douthat would be in a race to see which one could send more kids to the hospital from spankings. Brooks would wind up in the hospital himself with carpal tunnel from delivering too many vigorous spankings.
49 reminds me of a comic when I was a kid in which the hero infilitrated the Nazi A-bomb project (in an alternate timeline where it actually made progress). With his last bullet, he had the choice of Professor von Nogoodnik (or whatever) the evil genius/mad scientist, or Hitler himself. He decided on the scientist on the grounds that another fanatic could step into Hitler's shoes, but the Germans would never be able to replace their nuclear genius (having gassed or exiled all the others for being Jewish).
Similarly, if you were to render Cameron hideously disfigured and unable to appear in public without mass vomiting, they could promote Osborne to PM, or Eric Pickles, or some other reptile. But without Osborne...
49. And don't forget Francis Maude. ho would actually be third on my list behind Osborn and Drunken Spliff.
I could fight 50 pundits.
50 duck sized pundits?
With Tories it would probably be more like "would you rather fight one Tory cabinet minister or his three horse-faced daughters" than anything like a horse-sized duck.
I am going to hell, aren't I?
Someone tried the '50 kids' thing, but it was football:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7Jjeadvbzc
[There's a similar video with Real Madrid versus 100 or so.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfzPBgR-E1E
]
Pundits have the muscle conditioning of veal. You give Jonah Goldberg a loaded .45, you're still kicking his ass. The question is how many pundits could you fight and still win.
I've long since identified Jonah Goldberg as the exception to my meek, Christ-like love for all creatures great and small,* even twisted perversions of the human like John Derbyshire and the punker-than-thee ressentiment-wankers at Gawker Media.
* That scans as a lot more anti-semitic than I intended.
How anti-semitic did you intend it to scan?
"would you rather fight one Tory cabinet minister or his three horse-faced daughters"
The minister. I've read too much Wodehouse to fall for that one.
How anti-semitic did you intend it to scan?
Not very?
I'd like to suggest pushing someone off a slippery slope into a canyon. Krauthammer, maybe?
40 is evidence that at least that part of the early Zionists' dreams has been fullfilled.
It would be important to tape any pundit beatdown, since otherwise no matter how humiliated they were it would just make them more self-righteous.
(My money is on Coates.)
Because he's the only athlete while the rest are scrappy?
No, because I figure he has the most practical experience.
He has written a fair bit about overcoming a propensity to violent confrontation.
And know Knecht wants to pull him back in. Reprehensible!
79: yeah, and fighting an old jewish guy! You're going to get him arrested!
74 et seq.: I feel bad for the poor man's TNC at Slate, Jamelle Bouie. I'm sure he'd love a shot at Wieseltier and he'd presumably be cheaper.
Wasn't Klein a high-school (college?) wrestler? Might get him through a few rounds.
And Coates writes mostly about having been not particularly successfully violent in a violent culture, IIRC his memoir correctly. Internalization of violent norms, but I don't think much personally achieved violence. Of that group, he's a biggish, fittish, youngish guy, but I wouldn't count on his personal history to make him an unstoppable pundit-crushing machine.
an unstoppable pundit-crushing machine
That inevitably turns upon itself in a riot of self-destructive logic when Captain Kirk points out that it is itself a pundit.
74 Watch out for Yglesias, he's a hair puller.
For a fair number of the combatants, that's not a particularly useful tactic.
86: Another reason we need more women in the media.
No one wants to pummel me? Andrew McCarthy chosen over me as a conservative hack? I guess I am truly finished.
What's left for me? Accept Larry Flynt's offer to pose nude for Hustler?
A little off-topic, but I've been trying to remember when the last time was that I gave or received a serious blow: punch, kick or slap. I can't do it, it's been so long, at least 30 years. I'm not talking about shoving matches that don't escalate beyond epithets, or the--scary, heart-pounding--times I've faced somebody down without contact. That sort of thing occurs still every few years.
But my memory of actual violence, while vivid is based on events from long ago.
A little off-topic, but I've been trying to remember when the last time was that I gave or received a serious blow
After the recent thread, I was expecting a different word to follow that.
89: You really get into near-physical confrontations every few years? I can count the number of such things in my life on one hand. I'm more confrontation averse than most men, so maybe that's it.
A drunk British guy tried to start a fight with me a few months back. I brushed him off and tried to de-escalate, and he went for the classic Euro head butt but he was so drunk that he just toppled over face first onto the ground. That's the most recent example I can think of. But certainly every few years sounds about right. No actual fight since ... college I think? Which is a long time now.
Actually if we're counting stare downs it'd have to be at least once every six months on average.
I think we had the same conversation when we talked about Coates a few years ago, but I'd be really surprised to hear anyone I knew in RL tell me about a fight or near-fight: I've never seen one in the US as an adult (and not really as a kid).
Seriously? I haven't had experienced or dealt any physical violence since high school sports. Outside that context, not since jr high.
In conclusion, halford, grow the hell up.
What the fuck? I haven't been in any kind of confrontation like that, stare-down or otherwise, since high school.
I've never seen one in the US as an adult (and not really as a kid).
Never really saw a fight as a kid? Did you look away?
I think I posted something after the cab driver jumped out of his car and semi-charged at me the other day, right? He was clearly trying to pretend to want to fight, although it wasn't very believable.
I'm trying to decide whether it will be more fun to blame crossfit, paleo, lawyers, or Halford personally. No, wait. Sorry the divorce has been so contentious, Halford.
Yeah, for me no physical confrontation or anything approaching it since eighth grade.
Does it count as a fight if you get hit in the head a few times and don't think to fight back?
That's my glorious fighting career as an adult.
Does it count as a fight if you get hit in the head a few times and don't think to fight back?
...by your three-year-old?
95 -- seriously? (Also, fuck you). IRL I am actually not at all confrontational, but it's pretty hard to go to bars or sporting events or just deal with crazy men in a city without getting into an occasional stare down.
Does running down the sidewalk while yelling at the driver of a car that almost hit you count?
97: Well, mostly I was reading, so I could have missed a lot, but my elementary school was quite calm.
In my experience that happens a lot more in California than anywhere else I've lived. No idea why. Lead, presumably.
104: did the driver get out of the car?
go to bars or sporting events
I have done these things! Still no confrontations. You were an asshole even before you started commenting here, right? I'd hate to think that your online persona is responsible for getting your ass beat.
After my confrontation with the smirky asshole who feared for my kids' lives at 8:30 am, another guy approached my car window and tapped in nearly an identical scene, as I was leaving Amarillo yesterday morning. I had a huge adrenaline rush and rolled down my window, and he asked "How do you get your knowledge?" and handed me a Jehovas Witness tract, and was very sweet about the whole proselytizing thing. His giant gelled hair and outfit was so phenomenally old school 80s televangelist, and his manner so meek that I couldn't really fault him.
For example, the confrontation with drunk British guy went something like this -- crowded situation, we bump into each other, I spill some drink on his shoes, I say "sorry about that," he says "what the fuck," I say something like "hey, I said I was sorry" he goes for the head butt and topples over.
Actually given 108, now I'm wondering if it isn't all because of Halford.
A drunk British guy tried to start a fight with me a few months back. I brushed him off and tried to de-escalate, and he went for the classic Euro head butt but he was so drunk that he just toppled over face first onto the ground.
I hope he didn't injure his war owl.
People went to middle and high schools that didn't have tons of fights?!
The wings actually provide valuable aerobraking in a fall.
I think I feel my street cred enhancing.
102: I wish. Account of both incidents are in the archives.
"How do you get your knowledge?"
"Wikipedia, mostly."
Another example I can think of (this one is a few hear ago) is some noisy teen talking loudly on his cell in a movie theater, I ask him politely to be quiet, and then there's a stare down for a bit before he shuts up.
Having been unfair, let me be fair: one reason I typically avoid bars and sporting events is that there are a lot of crazy people in those places.
A friend has a very funny story of a movie theater stare down that's a bit too long to recount, except to say that his wife, also a friend, is the epitome of the fiery redhead, and as he tried to de-escalate, she was standing beside him escalating. Wife of other dude says "You don't want to make him made." Our friend says "Are you abused?" And so on.
119 -- well, if you were a man of serenity and maturity like Annelid Gustator, you could go to those places without ever having to worry about a confrontation.
Once every six months still seems high, even to Fair Ogged, so you're still an asshole, but maybe not a crazy outlier.
I think I feel my street cred enhancing.
You're in Texas. I though that down there you had to get in knife fights in order to have street cred, and that real Texans consider regular fist fights effete.
Actual real fights fairly regularly through my teens, although they were fairly often things with multiple people -- getting jumped by football casuals, or whatever -- rather than one-on-one things. I've still got a couple of scars from being bottled, and from having my teeth kicked completely through my lip.
However, almost nothing beyond a bit of empty posturing since I was about 21. So, twenty years, basically. Although there have been a few scary or semi-scary things that could have turned very nasty since, but got resolved without actual blows. Although the sincere threat of blows was involved.
I do spar [boxing or kickboxing] most weeks, though. So it has been only three days since someone last punched me in the face.
107: No, but he stopped to yell also.
There were a few kids at my middle school who started fights, but they got expelled. Nothing at high school, not at the actual school anyway. Of course I've never been in a fight. A guy challenged me once, I think because I was tall.
re: 113
Quite a few in my school. Most violent country in the first world, and all that. But I'd expect the majority of boys went through high school without getting in fights. They tended to be instances of bullying -- where the ordinary kid wouldn't a target -- or, much more often, various hard-cases fighting each other. If you were a nice ordinary kid, who didn't stand out either through being particularly vulnerable, or particularly aggressive, you probably wouldn't have any fights at a level above a bit of shoving and shouting.
I feel like driver-cyclist staredowns must happen constantly. Except, of course, to man of peace Annelid Gustator.
I'm sure I've recounted before that boxing was still offered for PE credit at OSU in the seventies, and I took it. Professor was an old urban Italian guy, full professor nearing retirement, who gave us to understand that he maintained the course against opposition.
After a session I'd carry a ringing sound in my ears around to other classes for hours.
I have never had a physical fight and sometimes wish I had, just so it wouldn't be this totally unknown thing. So like the time a year or two ago when someone just about ran over me in an intersection and I thwapped his truck with my umbrella and he got out and started running toward me yelling "you little shitbag!" I would have had a clearer idea of what to do rather than stand there thinking "someone is probably about to hit me." (I mean the best thing would have been to rip the top off my takeout container of VERY HOT fish ball chow fun soup and boil his face, except for the felony charges, which I assume are also the reason he did not in fact hit me.)
In elementary school we would have elaborate conversations about who we could and could not beat up. I think even then I knew I was completely full of shit for even having the conversation. I was never sure if the other kids actually did get in fights or just talk about it.
re: 128
Luckily most of my sparring tends to be controlled contact, so while a solid punch to the head can sting a bit, it's rarely at true head-ringing levels. I had a similar experience to you at a university boxing club, though, where everyone just wanted to bash away, full power.
Halford is about to blow.
I know I've told the story of the kid in middle school who challenged me to a fight and the next thing I knew I was in the principal's office with the kid saying his lawyer had advised him not to fight. True story. I need to move.
127: sure, except drivers don't get out of their cars, because why would you voluntarily give up your deadly weapon?
Natargacm: "I barely get into fights, except of course for your normal shoving and shouting matches."
Halford: "I get into fights all the time, by which I mean threatening eye contact."
129.1: it took me a long time to realize that the truth of dudes acting like they want to fight is that very, very, vanishingly few dudes in fact want to fight. They just want to act like they want to.
"How do you get your knowledge?"
An eclectic web magazine, I should have thought, would be the answer.
Actually if we're counting stare downs it'd have to be at least once every six months on average.
They don't count if you make out at the end. Otherwise yeah.
I remember a conversation in the Principal's office after a fight with one of our high school bullies which I'd [completely unexpectedly, and against form and character]* won in a fairly one-side fashion.
(Deputy) Principal [to sobbing teenage boy, with burst nose]: So, what seems to be the issue here?
Boy: He burst my nose.
(Deputy): and he attacked you did he?
Boy: No.
(Deputy): and he hit you first?
Boy: [Sob] No.
(Deputy): Looks like you made a mistake then, didn't you?
* I'd guess if you'd re-run that fight several more times, I'd have lost each one.
134 is definitely true. And I specifically said that I did NOT get into fights. The disbelief (for men of peace Annelid Gustator and Ogged) was that staredowns that do not result in fights occur sometimes.
A staredown every six months is still suspicious, Sunday School.
Looks like you made a mistake then, didn't you?
Oh god, the reasonableness of it all. Here it was all solemn and serious and fighting was that than which no worse could be conceived. If anyone had actually drawn blood? We couldn't even contemplate such a thing.
I gave a kid a bloody nose once, but it was an accident. Sort of.
re: 139
I just got asked to leave the office, and not to take matters into my own hands again, or some sort of platitude. This was mid-80s, so I can't say that it'd necessarily be handled the same way now, although I suspect it probably wouldn't be wildly different. The kid in question was certainly 'known' to the deputy head. Maybe things would have been different if he'd been a different kind of kid. That said, I head-butted someone* in history class once, and no action was taken, other than a telling-off by the class teacher. I expect that wouldn't pass without further disciplinary action these days.
* provoked, honest!
140: Me too! Also sort of an accident.
Well, I punched him in the nose on purpose, but I guess I didn't know my own strength.
This was in 2nd grade.
provoked
"Your mum's a Scot!"
[headbutt] "Yes, yes, I suppose she is."
142: hah!
143: yeah, something like that.
It's Columbus time:
I'd been attacked and beaten several times by older boys, almost randomly, glasses broken etc. when I lived in the true north strong and free, but nothing formalized or ritualized.
In working class Columbus, Hilltonia MS, then Junior High on W. Mound St. fights were matters of squaring-off, and nearby girls would rush over to shout encouragement, or disappointment if nothing seemed to be happening. I was winning one when an older kid intervened and punched me hard on the jaw. But one time a locker banging shoving match escalated into stomach punches. I won that one, and years later an OSU basketball player told my brother he remembered it. Lucky not to have been observed by officials.
Worst I ever saw was at Jones JHS in tonier Upper Arlington. Kid slammed repeatedly against chain link, bleading profusely. I was in a really formalized one there, challenge, meet up after school, seconds, the whole bit. Lost badly, face swollen, my friend had to clean me up.
My experience that it might be more vicious up the income scale, contra Ogged, was confirmed by my son's experience at MS in Lincoln Park. He saw hair-raising things.
re: 144
Heh. I had long hair, and the kid* behind me deliberately put a load of chewing gum in my hair [without me initially noticing] and then when I did notice, rather than keeping quiet about it, he bragged loudly to the whole class that he'd done it, and seemed to think that mocking me would have the desired effect of making him look big and me look small. He was somewhat surprised when I dragged him over the desk and 'butted him in the face. No real harm done, though, it wasn't hard enough to cause real damage.
His ego took a smack, though.
* as part of an on-going social-class related attempt at psychological bullying by him and another rich mate of his.
No fights since junior high; nothing really that could have led to one. But then I've lived a cosseted and cloistered existence and only six of those years were in Beirut.
Sifu jounced the limb.
Kids don't still have to read that, do they?
Never been in a real fight, fantasize about it fairly often. The problem is that the only real-world scenarios in which I'd start a fight involve someone doing something bad to someone I love, and imagining the specifics of what that'd have to be puts a damper on the fantasy.
Halford, I think that between this and the defense of drunken misbehavior that takes place on college campuses, you possibly are personally responsible for normalizing like 2/3 of all bad behavior everywhere.
[gives you the fisheye]
[what are you gonna do about it, huh?]
No fights for me, no fights when I was in school. I am not above using staring and significant eyebrow movement to force teens I don't know to pick up their litter or otherwise behave better, but that's not really a staredown. Lee yells and gesticulates at other drivers with the window open, which I'm still convinced will eventually get her killed or something.
149: Where do you think all this interest in slash fic comes from if not spurred by "great" literature?
My working theory is that the blogging law prof who was shot in Florida was the victim of road rage. The fact that they're looking for a Prius argues against this, I know.
The fact that they're looking for a Prius argues against this, I know.
What? No way.
No way they're looking for a Prius, or Prius drivers are just as murderous as anyone else?
I mean, if we exclude outliers like southern kids rolling coal in F-350s or Halford or whatever.
I certainly had road rage when I rented a Prius, although it was exclusively directed at the Prius.
Well, I'd imagine them to be "you're not following the rules" death-stare types, rather than get out and shoot you in the head types, but in the South, this might be a distinction that doesn't hold up.
You know what's a really decent car, though? The electric Honda Fit. Too bad they're not marketing them well enough.
I have very much (if to a lesser degree) identified with TNC's comments about readjusting from a violence-based world to one in which one-on-one violence is never acceptable. Until I was in my mid-20s or so I had a serious problem not reacting to panic with violence. It still flashes to the surface sometimes and is very worrisome.
I was talking to a colleague here who grew up in an extremely violent neighborhood where fighting established all social hierarchies, and he still brags about breaking bones and knocking people's teeth out. The legacy of that is that he is obsessed with handguns. He's a PhD in a super-rural area with almost no street crime, and he illegally carries a gun with him at all times. The panic he feels when someone comes around the corner suddenly is intense. I quietly suggested that maybe that's all the more reason *not* to carry a gun on one's person.
I've seen increasing numbers of these Honda Fit vehicles on the road recently, and find them ... attractive. To look at, I mean, enough so that I noted the make and model.
Back to the OP: no love for William Kristol? Probably my number one candidate at this time, he of the recent Weekly Standard piece advising Republicans to 'kill the bill' (immigration / border bill), which they more or less did, with arguments along the lines of those sketched by Himself.
I can't quite decide how he'd acquit himself in a fight, in part because I'm not a physical fighter in the first place.
He's a PhD in a super-rural area with almost no street crime,
People specialize in odder and odder things.
I've long wanted to punch that smirk off Kristol's face.
149, 154: Newt was assigned A Separate Peace for summer reading this year. I have no idea on earth why. I mean, exploring different cultures through literature is valuable, I suppose, but wealthy New England boys in boarding school in the 1940s struggling with self-loathing inspired by suppressed homosexual desire wouldn't be high on my list of cultures they needed to learn about.
I drove a regular Prius and hated it. My Prius C is fun though--especially when I need to make a quick turn left in the city.
Yes, the Prius C is much better than the Prius regular.
Yes, the Prius C is much better than the Prius regular.
I think we've had this discussion before. We have a Prius (my wife had it before we got married). It's slow, but in the city, what difference does it make? And in the unmonitored definitely rural West of New Mexico, it would still do 100, which is about as fast as I'm willing to go in this, my dotage.
Why is the Prius C particularly good at left turns?
Well, if your argument is "I'm lame, why shouldn't my car be lame?" I can't really argue with that.
Have I mentioned that Buck had a midlife crisis moment and bought himself a Dodge Challenger a couple of months ago? Silly thing to do, but it does go around corners in a satisfying kind of way.
172: I'm glad someone else asked.
re: 163
The panic he feels when someone comes around the corner suddenly is intense.
That seems odd. It doesn't fit with my experience of people who've grown up somewhere rough and are no longer living somewhere rough, at all. I'd expect something very different.
Dodge Challengers do look good, in a sort of stupid-American-muscle-car way. Being European/British, my taste runs to small fast cars that corner properly on narrow windy roads. But there is something aesthetically interesting about the big-stupid-US variety, too.
174: he should rebadge it like a LeMans and you can re-enact the French Connection chase.
166: I've long wanted to punch that smirk off Kristol's face.
How would that go, though, is the question.
Sifu jounced the limb.
Sifu swept the leg.
I was talking to a colleague here who grew up in an extremely violent neighborhood where fighting established all social hierarchies, and he still brags about breaking bones and knocking people's teeth out...The panic he feels when someone comes around the corner suddenly is intense.
That panic doesn't sound like someone who was holding his own in physical confrontations.
SXT or R/T? Also "cornering" not generally on the list of the Challenger's great attributes, but it's a hell of a car and I know what you mean, it does corner in a satisfying somewhat 70s-esque way.
Also please tell him he has my permission to use whatever money you have to upgrade to a Hellcat this year (only 707hp).
SXT or R/T?
No idea. He has been talking admiringly about the Hellcat, but we'd have to talk the kids out of going to college first.
if your argument is "I'm lame, why shouldn't my car be lame?"
You live in LA. I live in Chicago(ish). A fast car in an urban setting is an almost complete waste. I mean, enjoy those awesome highway merges. A nice car is different, if it's quiet, has a good sound system, etc., because you're mostly just sitting in it like a living room.
182 before I saw 177, but yeah, what ttaM said.
(My main point of comparison on the 'cornering' thing was the elderly Ford station wagon we drove until it died a few years ago. I may merely have been reacting to a car that was definitely not going to have any parts falling off it if I turned abruptly.)
A fast car in an urban setting is an almost complete waste.
Yeah. If I had my old car around here (not that it was so enormously fast) I'd mostly just feel bad about how it was silly for me to have my old car around here. "Man, I am going to jam through the three or four thousand miles I drive this year!"
Sifu jounced the limb.
Sifu swept the leg.
Out of the night he burnt like a dead white star. Sifu opened his arms. Sifu kissed her on the lips. Sifu possessed it.
This moment brought to you by the very loose associations that happen in my tiny brain.
174, 178: I agree it looks good, as does the Mustang. The Camaro looks like a talking character from Cars.
My son's gotten into guns and hot cars out there in ruralia. Partly because it's not hard or crazy in such a sparsely populated area, and no doubt to go against prevailing norms at the college.
Sifu jounced the limb.
Sifu swept the leg.
Out of the night he burnt like a dead white star. Sifu opened his arms. Sifu kissed her on the lips. Sifu possessed it.
A banner with the strange device, EXSIFUSORE!
Stormcrow way upthread at 54: Ezra Klein sat in for Chris Hayes last night, and it was interesting to see how less comfortable he was in the role of host as opposed to guest. Not a criticism, similar but different roles are very different, it was just quote apparent that he was pushing his comfort zone.
This is interesting: I didn't see it that way. Klein has guest hosted for Hayes a number of times before, and he was a lot more cocky and smirky (a literal half-smile on his face). He's been sitting in this week for a couple of days, and the smirk is off his face; his affect and vocal range is much flatter. He actually looks and sounds now like he's taking things very seriously, which is a nice change.
This is possibly because he's had a re-think on his stand regarding Israel. The sober face is an improvement.
On a starred night Sifu Tweety uprose.
There was at least one drive-by shooting outside my high school, but I don't think anyone was killed and the authorities were quick to point out it didn't involve current students.
Most of the fighting was run of the mill or involved freshman getting "jumped" which may or may not have been basically a mugging on school grounds. Closest I've been to a fight was trading shoves on a camping trip at the end of an argument. That was also in high school but not a school trip.
I do worry about provoking someone's road rage these days so rather than drive defensively I usually drive resignedly, inevitably getting cut off a fair bit. And still I end up cutting people off myself, like this morning when someone did that thing where they see you use your turn signal and immediately try to take the space in the lane you want to move into.
Wait, so the Dodge Challenger is your family vehicle?
Strictly, we don't really need (and haven't had for the last few years) a family vehicle; we'd been getting by on public transportation and occasional rentals. It is the only car we own, if that's what you mean.
My new office is 420 convenient. Which is to say, my new office is 419.
No idea. He has been talking admiringly about the Hellcat, but we'd have to talk the kids out of going to college first.
Grrr. No, you wouldn't. You just wouldn't be able to help them pay for it.
We've been around this one before. Yes, I could throw them out of the house at eighteen and say "Root, hog, or die." Not going to, though.
You live in LA. I live in Chicago(ish).
Worst argument ever. Buck lives in goddamn Manhattan and got himself a sweet Mopar muscle car.
Yes, I could throw them out of the house at eighteen and say "Root, hog, or die," AND HAVE A 700HP CHALLENGER HELLCAT. Don't forget that part.
172: I stopped mid comment, because the ENT came in the room.
I mentioned left turns in particular, because I can accelerate quickly from a stop sign and make the turn even when oncoming traffic is approaching. Turning right, avoiding oncoming traffic is not an issue. In the UK, of course, I would notice it while making right turns.
We've been around this one before.
Yes, but it still makes me growl.
Honestly, my universe is rocked by the revelation that the Breath family rolls Challenger. So great.
I would like to know more about the Challenger. Which engine does it have? What color is it?
Buck's a country boy, raised by two generations of Chrysler mechanics. I'm bemused, but as long as I still have access to public transportation, however he gets around is fine with me.
I had a quality old fashioned scrap the New Year before last; some little scrote had grabbed the landlord of the Irish pub on Kentish Town Road (not Quinn's, the nice one) by his tie and was giving him trouble. So I wandered over and grabbed said scrote by the neck and he let go. Then he sort of struggled and half punched me, then I punched him, then he ran away. It was all quite dramatic although everyone present was pretty drunk. I don't think I even got a free pint out of it.
White. On the engine, I think it was the largest of the available options, but I honestly don't remember. Some kind of weirdo semi-manual transmission, where it's an automatic if you leave it alone, but if you want to shift up or down you can. (But paddles on the steering column -- no stick, no clutch pedal).
That may be all I know about it.
The SXT is a V6, the R/T is a V8.
I think the R/T only comes with a real manual, though, not a Tiptronic automatic, so it must be the SXT. Time to check.
177/182: Yeah, though he admitted that part while extremely drunk. Most of the time it's all hard talk about how men gotta have guns to protect their families and shit. "You come between me and my kids, we've got problems," etc. Plus zombie apocalypse ha ha ha. I'm like, uh, it's not a ha ha ha if you're actually packing heat everywhere you go. He claims not to bring it on campus at least.
Texting Buck gets the following response:
5.7 liter v8 hemi engine, 375 horsepower with sport extensions and track pack suspension and 20 inch rims.
Is that roughly what you wanted to know?
Great, now urple and Halford are jerking off at work.
211: urple needs to know the color to get off.
On cars (and getting off): If you haven't tried Mimi Smartypants' game of putting the word "Anal" before car names, I highly recommend it.
But wouldn't an Anal Fiesta be even more fun?
198/202: I bit my tongue, but it pleased me that Urpie didn't.
So here's what I just do not understand. The sensation of speed is really fantastic on a motorcycle, especially low to the ground, or in sharp turns. Honestly, anything else is a distant second.
Having a big engine while in a metal box is kind of cool, but that sensation is basically improved on by a locomotive.
Cars just seem like an unfortunate midpoint between a responsive dirt bike and a maglev.
To 214, who broke up with whom, did you leave Jennifer or did she leave you?
You've got different issues, though -- Urple has a problem with paying for college at all, you just think there's no reason it should be expensive for someone who has any sense.
213 is great.
Buck is, of course, insane for buying such a car in Manhattan.
Anal Corolla
Anal Prius
Anal Camry
Anal Sienna
Toyota must have a filter for this game.
Anal 535i
Anal S550
Nope. Dumb game.
Anal Torque.
Cars just seem like an unfortunate midpoint between a responsive dirt bike and a maglev.
If you think of them as an incredibly fast and controllable stagecoach that produces a surprisingly small amount of horseshit, on the other hand, they're awesome.
221.2: That subject was raised.
No, my recollection is that Urple and I saw things more or less the same - that a perfectly good state education (ie Binghamton) is a reasonable thing to guarantee to your kids, and anything above that they can secure funds for, good for them. (I personally believe that your kids would be able to secure scholarships to a higher ranking school, but I also agree that it's not guaranteed, and that it's perfectly fine to send them to Binghamton if nothing else pans out.)
To 214, who broke up with whom, did you leave Jennifer or did she leave you?
Jennifer? Which one?
214! I meant 214 is great. 213 is fine. There there 213.
The "anal" game only works well for Ford and Dodge.
My husband really wants one of the new Challengers, but has to pay down more on his Camaro before he can trade it in. I can't believe I'm married to a car guy.
Nissan wins here-- armada, maxima, quest, cube
223: If to you, $160K (eight years of SUNY) isn't an alarming prospect, more power to you.
Halford and dsquared confirm: never go to a bar.
Where you might run into either of them.
226. Aniston. Ever since Brad Pitt left her for Angelina Jolie, I have been curious about her actual personality.
Even Toyota's got the Tundra, 4Runner, and Sequoia.
My growling was actually just a reaction to the very classist idea that kids whose parents can't afford to pay their way through college don't go to college. (Or at least, not to one worth going to.)
Oh, and what she drives of course, because cars give us freedom and simultaneously express our true inner personalities. Much more so than a capacity for reason or compassion or any of that other superficial bullshit.
236. Dude, they're not going for the education, they can get that anywhere unless they're biologists or historians. They're going for a cohort effect that will both set norms and pay off in job contacts later in life.
I.e., "He has been talking admiringly about the Hellcat, but buying one would mean we couldn't pay for the kids' college" wouldn't have produced a growl.
229: We've been discussing our next car (which, knock wood, won't be for a couple of years) for the past three years. Then again, this thread makes me think we should just ask Halford.
Then again, this thread makes me think we should just ask Halford.
If you're basing your decision on performance, this is probably a good idea.
231: If my kids got absolutely no merit scholarships in that situation, and I didn't feel comfortable taking on 160K in loans, then we'd talk about what portion of the loans would be in their name. Or if they wanted to do the first two years at a community college.
I really hate myself for typing this out instead of letting sleeping dogs lie.
You know what's great? Minivans.
If that special someone in your life wants a fast car, tell him to buy a used 240Z or S2000 or WRX. Fast, fun, cheap, doesn't really matter if you wreck it!
I have very current feelings on my minivan.
Seriously, let's not malign bars because some of us have bad tempers.
236: I got you. Does it help if I explain that my thinking was not that going to college was impossible without ones parents paying for it, but that parental guilt would make that level of frivolous spending impossible unless the kids promised not to want help paying for college? Driving up to campus in the Hellcat while the kids accumulated a crippling burden of student loans would take all the fun out of it.
It's no Challenger, but in terms of a compromise between performance, fuel economy, cargo room and all around utility, I've been very happy with my TDI sportwagen.
The last sentence of 249 is clearly wrong.
I went to a fancy college, paying for the tuition with scholarship and loans, while my parents were able to cover room and board and help with books. At the time, tuition was $30K a year. (Tuition there now is about $42K.) The deal we struck in high school was that I could go to any college I decided I could afford, but that I couldn't expect support for tuition, which meant I had to turn down Chicago.
I don't actually think LB should buy a Hellcat with college decisions imminent. That is reasonable. Anyway, what's a hellcat?
The thing about 252 is that the discount rate for fancy colleges can be extremely high, so the tuition doesn't really matter if the scholarships are being spent on attracting a big talented population. At my alma mater, almost everyone came because of a big scholarship, which meant that we were spared having to spend four years with all rich kids. I had a bigger package offer at another very good school, but they only made a few scholarship offers, so most of the other students were from wealthy families, so I didn't want to go there.
249: yes, okay, that actually does help. You think college assistance for the kids is a more responsible use of money than buying a Hellcat. Nothing wrong with that.
TDI Jetta sportswagen is a very respectable choice. The new GTI sounds like the best all purpose lifestyle supportive price/value car out there right now. Haven't driven one but am thinking about getting one. If you want something sporty/practical, that or a WRX. Also a big fan of the Caddy ATS as a reasonable value luxury car. If you need a bigger wagon the new Volvo actually looks very good, or an old 3 series.
Did you explain your drunk-libertarian thing yet? I missed a lot today.
255: Methinks you missed the extended, ill-tempered (me), not-well-resolved argument that this is building on.
I am amused at the thought of scholarships as the price that schools have pay normal people in order to get them to spend four years with rich kids. The more rich kids there are on campus, the bigger scholarship they'll have to pay!
If only the world really worked that way.
I wish that public universities were still affordable and reasonable alternatives to private education. I'll be paying back my undergraduate loans for a long time, while friends who did well at the local, reasonably priced, excellent university also ended up with great lives (in and out of academia). On the whole, I think going to a good state school would have been a fine choice in 1997. But now, state schools are getting more expensive, classes are more often taught by adjuncts, and you're less likely to be wooed by the kind of discount you'd get at a private school. At the college where I teach, we guarantee that anyone who is accepted will not be put in a position of taking more than a very particular loan cap. If they're accepted, the college makes it financially feasible for them to come. (Problems arise when, say, a sibling drops out of college and the expected family contribution doubles.)
Anyway, if LB's fears are that she's worried about footing a 160K Binghamton bill, then I've vastly misunderstood her concerns and we can declare comity.
261: This is not far from the case. Those big discounts are to get a more diverse group onto campus. Cosmetic diversity serves to convince the world (and the students) that they're living in a little meritocracy, where everyone deserves to be there. God knows if it weren't for our enormous discount rate, almost no person of color would choose to live where I do.
242: That is basically how most of the car conversations go now. These conversations make me silently (or not so silently) wish that our current car continues its run of good health because I'm not looking forward to having a car payment. It's funny that Halford's taste in cars is very similar to ours.
I bit my tongue, but it pleased me that Urpie didn't.
Yeah, I wouldn't like urple biting my tongue, either.
263: I am still considering paying for non-SUNY colleges; $160K -- the cost of SUNY -- was meant as a low end ballpark for the size of the problem. If that means no comity, then no comity.
Our Anal Golf has been perfectly good to us and LB is still being weird about anal scholarships to anal-tier colleges.
People put orange wedges in beer now. I don't know why this is allowed. I warned people that it wouldn't stop with Corona.
267: My impression was that Binghamton was in the realm of unacceptable schools for reasons that pissed me off. If it's a safety school and you want to build up from there, have at it.
My impression was that Binghamton was in the realm of unacceptable schools for reasons that pissed me off.
I completely fail to understand why this is something you feel entitled to be angry about.
Stop trying to find comity, Heebie. No one wants to live in Texas, ok?
271: Because some of your reasons included dismissing giant portions of people as being too racist for your children to be exposed to, and implying that this wouldn't happen at better institutions. What a presumptive asshole I am to take that personally.
I drove through Binghampton about ten years ago. It was sort of a shit hole, if appearances are anything to go by.
If that's your entire issue, I will say (a) I have no reason to believe the students at SUNY Binghamton are any more or less racist than those at Yale, and that consideration forms no part of my thinking in relation to that school (b) I should not have used different standards of what level of racism/homophobia it might be acceptable to publicly express as a synecdoche for my concerns about the social atmosphere in a small rural school with a predominantly local student body in the South as being an unpleasant place for my kids to spend four years, given that I haven't actually attended such a school myself, and I apologize for doing so.
Now, is there anything else you're angry about?
I completely fail to understand why this is something you feel entitled to be angry about.
Made me think of this passage from Frank Kogan.
It's unintentionally poignent when Flavor Flav says, "I got a right to be hostile, man. My people been persecuted." This reminds me of Chuck Eddy's "the Bad Brains have earned their anger" accolade, and it has the same problems. Hostility is a feeling not a right. But Public Enemy have to justify their hostility before they can feel it -- or at least before they can express it. Normal everyday hostility's not good enough -- it's got be righteous hostility. It's got to be world-important, or it's no good. So Flavor Flav's feelings are only real to himself in the context of "his people's" victimization.
Heebie can feel angry about anything she wants. You, of course, don't have to respond to that anger by changing either your opinions or actions, but you seem comfortable with that.
The lack of economic opportunity in up-state New York?
At the college where I teach, we guarantee that anyone who is accepted will not be put in a position of taking more than a very particular loan cap. If they're accepted, the college makes it financially feasible for them to come. (Problems arise when, say, a sibling drops out of college and the expected family contribution doubles.)
Just today we were informed my son's loan amount will be reduced by the amount my wife's institution's parity contribution increased, so his loan for the coming semester will be in 3 figures. His loan burden will be very small by contemporary standards.
Nope, that was the bulk of it.
The way you phrased (b) makes me wonder about the non-synecdochal concerns, but if they're not based in overgeneralizations about a conservative/racist student body, then that addresses my anger.
Awesome. I'm so glad we can put that behind us.
Isn't CUNY still very cheap, and by definition not in a small town? This may be very out of date. Anyhow, every time this comes up, I push the Webb Institute, clearly the best value in American Education, plus you get to learn to build and sail on boats.
275: I'm angry that we're not doing more to combat global warming.
And I know that Cooper Union isn't free anymore, but isn't it still cheap?
I'll do my best not to jump on your case if you chat about Sally's application process as it unfolds. No promises.
281: Jesus, Rob, give me a chance to get them out of the apartment. I love them, but I don't want them living at home. (Although it would be cheap.)
Not being used to being around white people accustomed to segregation was the big reason I turned down the rural southern college where I got the big scholarship. (That was my impression during my visit, not one I brought with me. Rich whites with rich whites, poorer whites with poorer whites, and I was not introduced to any people of color there by my white hosts.) It turns out there were still some of these people at the college I attended, but since it was in a 60% African-American urban area, they were the ones who had to get over it.
Careful, AWB. Them's fighting words.
I'm openly hoping you say Carson-Newman.
Damn. But I have a pretty negative impression of 291, myself.
290 to 281, 291 to 288. I realize that it's possible I had a bad sample, but even the girl I stayed with told me, tearfully, not to come. We got to be really close during my visit because she was so lonely.
All I can say now is what the everloving fuck.
The people I know who love WF are all sort of awful.
Sorry, I was out all afternoon and will proceed to extend moribund subthreads:
Being European/British, my taste runs to small fast cars that corner properly on narrow windy roads.
I was raised this way by my mom, whose first car was a TR3, and just this afternoon I saw what I'm pretty sure is the only TR3 in town (it has vanity plates, and is immaculately British Racing Green, which was the color my mom wished hers had been, so I always pay it attention). I don't give a shit about American muscle cars. Well, a small shit; I went to HS in North Jersey.
I was going to marvel at adults engaging in confrontation when I remembered that, maybe 10 years ago now, I brandished my bicycle at an asshole who got out of his car to yell at me (basically for being on a bike; I hadn't been breaking anything resembling a law). If he'd taken about 2 more steps, I would have swung it at him, but I think he read that I was angrier than he was.
Other than that, I don't think any confrontations since Jr. High. Maybe a staredown or two in HS, nothing memorable. Like togs, I'm pretty non confrontational.
I stayed at WF for a night on a break from a college trip, and I do remember it striking me as a super-Southernified and likely racist place. I think we went to some kind of hay ride party and there was not a single person with any drop of color anywhere in sight.
Unlike the Webb Institute, which is free, full of minorities, and you get to build and ride on boats.
Can we all pretend that 296 is about ogged's favorite supermarket chain?
I will say that the WF admissions people were so incredible. They were really open and welcoming and warm. I remember their first question during my interview was something about my expressed interest in French cinema, and we ended up gabbing about the future of French filmmaking for the whole hour. And the girl I stayed with was really sweet and smart--obsessed with Buckminster Fuller. She wrote me letters in colored pencil for months afterward. But holy shit I hated every other person I met there.
I'd need to compare with BioHazard, but I've probably got the most experience here with 1st generation muscle cars. This would have been in the 70s, when they were a few years old, although still highly-prized. Drove an early Firebird quite a bit. I'm endorsing Ogged's suggestion to get an older sports/muscle car you can be a little more relaxed about.
My wife's grandfather kept his '67 Charger registered into the 90s, and I had the job of taking it for its emissions tests. Out Lake Cook near Milwaukee, if I remember correctly. I'd take it on the Edens for a "poor man's tuneup," a couple of full-to-the floor accelerations, starting from slow on the ramp to stay legal as long as possible. Now that I think of it I'd probably have been safer on the toll road but was too cheap/dumb. Acceleration was fun, not like a motorcycle but not like most cars either. But the steering was really sloppy, and the car fishtailed a lot trying to get back down to legal speeds. Drums all around, bias ply tires, not maintained. Hairy, as we used to say.
My brother's Viper, my only other comparison in recent years, was not very refined either but was a lot better than that.
Anyhow, what is LB worried about. Her kids will be fine at random Southern backwoods scholarship college as long as they show up in their sweet ride, the Challenger, especially if they can show pictures of Dad's new Hellcat.
They can paint it orange, to fit in better.
303: Yes, you're supposed to distinguish between specific colleges and not assume that Agnes Scott is going to be Southern Gentrified like Wake Forest. That's why I said it's the overgeneralizations about conservatism and racism that make me see red.
Agnes Scott isn't rural, though. Decatur's nice.
The new GTI sounds like the best all purpose lifestyle supportive price/value car out there right now.
Anecdotally, VW's seem kind of prone to electrical problems.
To be fair, even a lot of the grand old Southern schools have been working like hell to integrate since I looking at colleges. W&L used to be one of the worst, and I've heard it's gotten a lot better. I didn't even apply after visiting campus in 1995. I had racist drunken white rich shithead tremors for a week after. But it's getting considerably better, from what I hear.
I had a quality old fashioned scrap the New Year before last; some little scrote had grabbed the landlord of the Irish pub on Kentish Town Road (not Quinn's, the nice one) by his tie and was giving him trouble.
Hey, I like Quinn's. Also, it's not really an Irish pub, despite the name and the appearance. It's a Belgian beer pub.
Guess which former Kentish Town resident was responsible for that post.
You have no idea how much your reaction has reinforced my concerns. Anyplace where people are so touchy that things like the following:
To get specific, I think my kids would have a really hard time anywhere they had to listen to casual racist language, or where people were aggressively hostile about atheists. I'm not worried about them in the South or West, but the very local non-cosmopolitan bits of the South and West, I'd be afraid I was setting them up for four years of being outraged and being that NYC asshole who thinks they can tell everyone else how to talk.are a setup for being pissed off for months, I'd really hate to be stuck there for four years.
People put orange wedges in beer now.
The non-smoky bar does that with all their wheat beers, which I think is pretty common. For anything else, probably a monstrosity.
Catching up to the more recent comments, I believe that I commented last time generalizations about the South came up that I think it's fucking hilarious that it's supposed to be slanderous to make generalizations about the racial politics of the region that decided to abandon 120 years of fervent allegiance to the Democratic Party the moment that the GOP committed to being more racist than the Dems. Sure, it's only an electoral majority; if you consider all the nonvoters who disagree, I'll bet it's just a substantial plurality, same as all those states that don't uniformly vote for the Party of White Resentment.
For the record, I bet LB's kids would be pretty unhappy at Lock Haven University. Would I trust Central Pennsylvanians to be one iota less racist than rural Texans? No.
If they go to the Webb Institute, the kids could have the Challenger, Buck could have a Hellcat, and the kids could also have access to boats, the capacity to build boats, and guaranteed jobs far away, like a freighter off the coast of Malaysia. This is the plan where everyone wins.
308 -- oh, yes, don't get a pre-2011 VW for sure. Description applies to new model only, it won't be the most reliable car on the market but it probably won't have the ridiculous issues plaguing VW in the late 90s-mid 2000s. But a WRX is definitely way more reliable and if you're looking used you should most def look there.
The new GTI sounds like the best all purpose lifestyle supportive price/value car out there right now
We would not, still, buy a car from that country. Something about cars, especially that make. The prohibition does not extend to dishwashers, thank goodness.
Then again, I've a Korean-Friend who's grown up avoiding Japanese electronics, which is harder.
The service academies are also free, except that people here don't believe in serving their country.
Sally's got a friend who's hoping for West Point, actually. She's not much of an athlete, though, and I kind of think that's required, isn't it?
309: To subvert 314, I'd be pretty shocked if Generation Gay Marriage isn't substantially more racially enlightened, even if it's not quite a sea change. I strongly suspect that the process is one of refining the populace from a lot of people with broadly held racism to a core of genuine, committed racists (who may hold self-justifying delusions along the lines of "undeserving poor", but nonetheless identify as the right sort of people).
I'd be afraid I was setting them up for four years of being outraged and being that NYC asshole who thinks they can tell everyone else how to talk.
OMG, this is my life. Yes, yes, yes. It is horrible. Every single thing I say is interpreted as some snobby crap that east coast elite types say. And this is from people with PhDs. Being anti-racist, or interested in art, or wishing aloud that one could have sushi or curry in a restaurant turns me (no joke) into a blind item in student blogs and the school paper, where I see my comments repeated as a joke about those crazy coastal snobs. If you read restaurant reviews on Yelp from my town, they all say, "Oh sure, maybe this food ain't good enough for those snobby coastal elite professors, but it's good enough for me!" Any conversation I have here with a new person doesn't go two sentences without the person musing, "Well, you're sure not from here" and turning around. I am positive that not all rural colleges and towns treat their professors this way, but it makes me extremely wary about accepting a similar position again.
I feel like my mommy and daddy are arguing. Don't blog divorce!
Then again, I've a Korean-Friend who's grown up avoiding Japanese electronics, which is harder.
316: If they were Korean-Amish it would be easier.
supposed to be slanderous to make generalizations about the racial politics of the region that decided to abandon 120 years of fervent allegiance to the Democratic Party the moment that the GOP committed to being more racist than the Dems.
Not slanderous, just intellectually sloppy and amusingly self-congratulatory.
For the record, our '04 Passat wagon had one pretty substantial electrical issue during the warranty period, but otherwise none in the last 10 years/81k miles. But I don't doubt we've been luckyish on that front.
Great car, though. For a long time we talked about replacing it with something a bit bigger, so as to accommodate 2 kids with a friend each (think Mazda 5, available with a stick), but lately we've been talking about investing a chunk of money in this car with the goal of getting it past the point of having 2 kids at home.
Right, should have been Korean-American friend...
IME, rural stereotypes hold more true than South/North stereotypes. I'm not in the South, and certainly rural Pennsylvania and parts of Ohio are like Nazi territory. We have Nazis here too. When I don't want to go to the bar frequented by Nazis, I am told this is because I am a coastal elite snob.
I am surprised at comments re: coastal snobbery in student blogs + school paper; must not a fair number of students come from citified places?
Come on, Nazis have great bars. It's like you haven't seen any WWII movies or that episode of Hogan's Heroes.
327: INDEED. In fact, two students who quoted me this way in the paper this spring are from famously liberal urban places. But part of getting along here is proving your allegiance to the middlebrow by selling other people out.
When I don't want to go to the bar frequented by Nazis, I am told this is because I am a coastal elite snob.
You coastal hipsters probably prefer to hang out in bars frequented by the Iron Guard.
"The Iron Guard? They're a pretty obscure fascist group. You've probably never heard of them."
"I was bored with the Nazis before the Anschluss."
Oh God, and the Yelp review I'm thinking of (we don't have many) that goes on and on about upper-class San Francisco snobs not appreciating the food (at this fucking vile pizza place, which he admits is not good, while giving it 5 stars) is a former student who lives in DC.
I am really irritable on this topic and should stop thinking about it.
amusingly self-congratulatory
Call me the moment a CSA state elects a senator as progressive as second generation douchebag Casey.
Look, I'm sorry you hail from/identify with a region that sucks even worse than sucky northern states (and they're pretty sucky! ask about contract housing!), but it's not clear to me how pointing out that not literally every Southern white is an unreconstructed racist is a defense. The defense is when you can point to electoral majorities that favor progress over resentment. We're not talking about isolated rural districts here; it's an entire large, varied region united by one electoral trend that's 200+ years old.
It's not statewide, but do the mayors of let's see Houston TX and Jackson MS satisfy you? I guess the socialist who was mayor of Jackson died.
In other words, 326 gets it right.
the mayors of... Jackson MS
Did I just see a profile of this guy somewhere? Can't remember his name, but he sounded spectacular.
pointing out that not literally every Southern white is an unreconstructed racist
Riiight.
I'm not interested in defending anyone against their own smug certainties, so I guess I won't be calling you.
I'm a bit of a connoisseur of Fascism: in Malaga 25 years ago I wanted to look for Leon DeGrelle's house but my companions thought I was nuts.
338: The guy I'm thinking of just died recently, I don't think I know anything about the current mayor.
318: One of my former students transferred to West Point, just finished his first year there. I've been appalled by pretty much everything he's told me about it w/r/t to the conservativism & anti-intellectualism of the student body. This student is a conservative evangelical himself (though not at all anti-intellectual), so I assume the situation must be dire if he's complaining about it.
Re:WF, I used to spend a weekend there every year during high school, as they host the national early bird high school debate tournament. The main thing I noticed at the time was all of the fancy ashtrays indoors.
The fact that southern governors are shitheads who refuse Medicaid expansion has very little to do with whether a kid might have a really great experience at Tulane for four years before moving somewhere else. It's actually sometimes great to live somewhere unexpected for four years.
(Also, my husband informs me that his Camaro SS is faster than Buck's Challenger, even though it has a smaller engine.)
(Also, my husband informs me that his Camaro SS is faster than Buck's Challenger, even though it has a smaller engine.)
It's too easy.
Tulane: in one of the coolest cities in the world.
343: Has anyone said a bad thing about Tulane? I admit I didn't list it specifically, but from the prior thread:
The thing is, off that list, Emory or Rice or Georgia Tech would be absolutely just fine with me;
The comments that were offensive enough that you were stewing over them since April certainly weren't a blanket condemnation of all schools in the South.
I'm not rebutting anything, just wondering if we have any examples of a rural Southern college or university that's just wonderful. Most rural Northern colleges and universities also suck socially, but I can think of quite a few that don't.
Maybe William & Mary? Sort of? It's not very Southern or very rural, but many super-cool people I love went there. I just visited Williamsburg and that area of VA (if not the resort town) is very integrated and friendly.
Another comment from the prior thread:
I don't think I'm doing that -- big schools down south are fine with me, so long as they're big/prestigious enough to be used to outsiders. It's the idea of making them spend four years being targets. I don't know, specifically, how much that's going to be a problem at any given school in a conservative area that doesn't get a lot of students who didn't grow up within shouting distance. But I don't think I'm being completely closed-minded in worrying that it might be a enough of a problem in that kind of school to make being a city kid raised as a semi-socialist difficult.
So, the intolerable generalization was that there might possibly be social problems for my kids in some schools with a very local student body.
348 -- Appalachian State, Berea College, New College of Florida (not really rural, but close enough for LB's purposes), each and every one of the flagship state universities in every single southern state, except maybe Ole Miss and Alabama. This is all based on reputation, of course.
Yeah, I have a (non-white) friend who teaches at Alabama, where he is friendless and spends a lot of his time being the guy to whom students from the black sorority tell about the crosses burned outside their house.
I mean I don't really know how awesomely wonderful any of those places are, but they're most definitely not just hayrides with blonde sorority racists.
A couple friends of mine really loved attending Auburn; both very socially liberal, one from Alabama and one not.
350 - Are you prepared to die on the hill that is "Gainsville, Florida, is just wonderful"?
333: if the most recent review on the Chinese place in your town is any guide, a) I'm kinda on the locals' side and b) you're not the only coastal snob for them to complain about.
(I'm actually really curious as to the story behind that review. I want to punch whoever wrote it in the face.)
I'm half-hoping at least one of my girls will choose Berea, especially if it meant I could justify buying a loom for us to share or something. Messing-about-in-Boats U sounds more up Mara's alley at this point. And tuition issues are different for us, too.
I never know what to say about the southern stuff because my not self-identifying as southern is part of the whole dynamic. I just think talking about southern white people as comprising The South means you're missing a lot.
Sort of OT: I just witnessed the most horrible family fight (my wife's family, actually) that I've ever seen. There was no physical violence -- nor any threats on twitter -- but it was extremely uncomfortable. I suspect we're off to a hotel in a few minutes!
Oh yeah, Auburn counts, as long as you don't mind football. It's a great school with neat students.
353: yeah, one of my friends (who grew up in Alabama and is very liberal) went there and seems to have liked it quite a lot.
a rural Southern college or university that's just wonderful
There are some very nice places in the NC mountains--UNC-Asheville, Warren Wilson--but they aren't that academically high powered. Everything I know about Wake Forest involves basketball, so I can't say anything about the culture there. I can only think of one person I know who went to Wake Forest, and he's more of an imaginary internet acquaintance.
But yeah, the issue is rural versus urban, not rerally southern. The Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill-RTP is way way more liberal than just about anywhere in Idaho or Montana.
Both of my parents went to Auburn. Chapel Hill is, of course, a goddamned awesome place to spend four years of your early adulthood.
350 - Are you prepared to die on the hill that is "Gainsville, Florida, is just wonderful"?
Um...
A Muslim friend of mine had a terrible time at Chapel Hill, which surprised me. To him, the whole experience was conversations about how great Gone with the Wind is. But I think it was his first year in the US and everything was pretty isolating.
Say, I haven't been keeping up with this thread, but it just occurred to me today that people tend to make a lot of generalizations about stereotypes and stuff, and that's really wrong. Everybody should be equal, you know? And if everyone is equal, then we shouldn't criticize what they do, because we're really being just as bad as the people we're criticizing, for the stuff that they don't actually do, but we do do, except that since we're all equal, we don't do it either, I guess?
You could probably come up with a pretty informative map that drew a twenty-mile (or so) radius around every decent-sized (10,000 students?) secular college in the country. Those are safe zones. The rest: gonna be weird.
Asheville is fabulous. Was high on our list of places to move. Too many trees though. Hate trees. Also, "not humid for the South" is still pretty fucking humid.
The comments that were offensive enough that you were stewing over them since April certainly weren't a blanket condemnation of all schools in the South.
Haven't gone back to the thread, so I don't actually remember very well. If that quote is the extent of everything, boy am I a jerk. I do remember you protesting that you had no way to distinguish a culturally awful school from a nice one, and also persisting in arguing against Heebie U, which I was in no way arguing in favor of.
The real question is where are you likely to have the opportunity to fight a future pundit? Sadly, the Ivy League dominates this category too. But a fight with a future editor of a [State] Monthly or [something] Quarterly Review may be just as satisfying.
conversations about how great Gone with the Wind is
Wow does that not line up with my experience at all.
366 fails utterly for VW's new institution.
352: but they're most definitely not just hayrides with blonde sorority racists
On the other hand, the schools that are just hayrides with blonde sorority racists have some amazing grant packages.
Now that everyone is on to other topics, I can quietly note that I just remembered that I completely flipped my lid at a stranger in public about eight years ago. Hey, it happens. We're all adults here. Let's move on.
But seriously, what's wrong with Gainesville, or am I being trolled, aren't I.
371: Mine neither. But I have friends whose experience of NYC is all housewives talking about what their husbands like for dinner, and I'm like, wha? Sometimes you fall down a weird social rabbit hole and have a hard time getting out.
A 20-mile radius is way way too big. The abortion signs start less than 5 miles out of town where I live.
375: I'm going to Gainesville early next year. Tell me what to do there if I have free time.
A 20-mile radius is way way too big
Yeah, I think you're right. 5 miles sounds better.
I have a grandparent-level relative who was several times nat'l uphill motorcycle racing champion of USA, there's Indy 500 pit crew bosses in the near family tree, and not too far back rodeo champs as well. I seem to have dodged the relevant speed, derring-do and fascination with things that go genes sufficiently thoroughly that I often cannot find our car in a parking lot. The nuture of LPs of Bonneville flats drag races played after Thanksgiving dinner fell on stony ground chez moi.
369: If that's your reaction to that quote, I'd actually appreciate it if you reread the whole thread. I just did, and I don't think what I said was more offensive than that.
Too many trees though. Hate trees.
This has probably come up before but I'm surprised anyway.
I had an overnight visit at Duke in highschool when I was looking at colleges. I don't remember it all that well, and don't remember having a particularly bad time, but I sure came out of it with the impression that it was not for people like me in a way that has lasted far longer than why I thought it. I don't think it was racism as such, more some sort of rich coolness that I found very offputting.
Trees aren't so bad one at a time. Get a few trees together though, and suddenly you have a forest. And where there's a forest, that's right, bugs.
I was surprised to learn that an essay author I am reasonably fond of went to Sewanee and really loved it. Because I am hopelessly provincial, it hadn't occurred to me that anybody with any particular redeeming qualities (at least on an intellectual level) would have gone there.
The person I know who went to Sewanee is pretty great too.
375: I'm going to Gainesville early next year. Tell me what to do there if I have free time.
Go see some alligators! Lake Alice is walkable from campus. If you have a car, go to Payne's Prairie or one of the sinkholes.
Campus area has ordinary levels of campus-y charm: there's probably live music and guest speakers. There is not much in the way of charming Southern cuisine, but there's normal-decent Thai and Indian and Cajun restaurants.
I also have a friend who went to Sewanee (and played football there!).
Sewanee has a very liberal seminary attached to it. But otherwise that place really does look on a first glance like the worst of the worst.
I always thought it was just for senior citizens who didn't get out much.
Here's a charming quote to make LB's point from a Sewanee alum:
"I think they ought to leave it the way it is," said Dr. David W. Aiken, an alumnus who is an orthopedic surgeon in Metairie, La. "I wouldn't be for changing anything. I think they're doing quite well. What is the purpose of making it a more national school? Do I want kids from California, New York coming there? Not really."
Apparently they have a really excellent fiction program?
Oh wow, the college thread again. Wheeeee!
Holy shit, they have stained glass confederate flags in their fucking chapel.
I visited Sewanee, but didn't apply. I think women had to wear dresses to class, which was a dealbreaker. But a friend of mine went and loved it, despite really not fitting in socially. She talks a lot about being too poor, not preppy enough, etc., but she got a great education and still has a lot of college friends.
So far on that thread,
Comment 138:
LB:Leaving NYC, fine, and expected. Leaving urban areas generally, also fine. Going to a small rural school where they don't ordinarily get people who grew up more than four hours drive away seems like it could be sort of horrific;
Me: My impression - and again, everyone should be doubting my credibility - is that it doesn't mean going completely rural, but perhaps to a city of under a million.
So I wasn't arguing in favor of rural, then. Back to that thread.
To be clear, my friend who went to Sewanee is from rural Alabama.
Continuing on:
141 (LB): I honestly don't know, I just worry, but in terms of the student body in the sort of place you're talking about, would being located in a small city make much of a difference in terms of how much of a freak a Harlem/Washington Heights kid would be treated as?
I'm getting riled up all over again.
I think Sewanee was on my list of places to apply at some point. I don't remember why except I got mail from them and didn't have a clear sense of how high I should be aiming.
+1 about trees sorta, especially in light of 384. Similar feelings about hills, it turns out. A few small, tasteful ones are pretty. A bunch of them that obscure which way to civilization and if starts to feel adversarial.
398: At my college, we picked on the rural kids quite a bit for not knowing how to cross the street and being afraid of black people. It's not unreasonable to assume that urban kids can get shit on a bit in rural places.
there's Indy 500 pit crew bosses in the near family tree
This really piques my interest, I know a shocking amount about those guys in certain eras. Really living a monastic and nomadic life, like the artists they were.
Some things are true even though Tom Wolfe says they're true.
Also love traditional hill climb bikes, with those long rear suspensions. And Bonneville.
I've expounded at length about the horrors of my experience going to a tiny rural college in NW Wisconsin, the main of which was getting into a feud with the assholes who hung Confederate flags in their windows, so I won't go into greater detail now, but it sure seems to me, that, based on that experience, LB is absolutely right. I mean, I was at a school with a plurality of kids from Madison, Milwaukee and Rockford, and it was still pretty isolating and creepy and racist and weird.
Wasn't Wisconsin recently named the most racist place in the US? Quite a distinction!
Milwaukee has been the most segregated big city in the country for decades.
What we were specifically arguing about was schools whose student body was primarily drawn on a 400-mile radius, such that LB's kids would be at a geographic advantage. Context for
364 (LB): I don't think they'd be happy spending four years someplace where objecting actively to bigotry made them weirdos. I think they'll handle situations where they have to interact with bigots fine, but I don't want to trap them for four years in a small school where they're too heavily outnumbered.
That's what it is. (Cleveland gave a huge *whew*.)
Right but that's because of Southrons.
Me in 377:
I haven't even been telling anyone to go rural. Go to a city.
I have a close relative who loves Gainesville. I'm not sure why. It was absurdly humid.
Let's just copy the entirety of that other thread into this thread comment by comment, rather than readjudicating it in the indirect fashion prosecuted thus far.
The wonderful band PopCanon was from Gainesville so it must be pretty decent.
400: My response to that comment from that thread:
Kids just aren't treated like freaks according to where they're from. Kids are treated like freaks according to their charisma or lack there-of. Almost no one is treated like a freak in college, because it's not mandatory to spend endless hours with people you hate. Everyone who basically forms friendships easily will be fine socially; people who have trouble forming friendships will have trouble, regardless of how closely they resemble the median student.
I am ashamed to say that most of my knowledge of Gainesville comes from my comprehensive reading of Pat Hughes's Diary of Indignities blog.
Oh yeah, it's crazy humid there. Unbearably so. That's a valid criticism.
I have one of his team shirts around the house somewhere. Uphill dude, there's a very dramatic picture of him coming off a bike near the top of a hill sometime in the 30's, maybe early 40's, still shows up in bike shops, on calendars, etc. Relatively recently his name was still widely recognized. Fairly miserable individual as a human being, but definitely knew his way round bikes.
403: Worst place to be black, I think.
That's a valid criticism.
Your criticism has been judged valid, Citizen Hick.
My recollection of The Great Debate was that the issue was whether the LB offspring would be OK serving as geographical diversity in a distinctly regional college in the South/West. I took Heebie's side in this but I have to say that most (but, importantly, not all!) of these regional universities in the South look absolutely terrible socially while at the same time many of these places in the West are totally great.
Gotta say that almost all of these Southern regional colleges also look pretty intimidating for a NYC kid.
As for the West, I've never heard of most of these places, even the ones in Southern California, and let's ignore one listing in particular, but at least you have some good cities to choose from.
Here's a less-spectacular pic of him, from earlier:
http://genealogyimagesofhistory.com/images2/Harley-Davidson.jpg
Funny, mostly in family pics I don't remember him on a harley. In real life most of my memories of him are of waiting in the parking lot while one of the adults dragged him off a bar stool to come out blinking in the daylight and subject himself to seeing/being seen by the kids.
420: I had cousin who got kicked out of Okla. Baptist for being *too* Baptist. We do not fuck around.
LB's kids should go live with Halford for a year to establish residency*, then go to UCSD so they can have a chance to be in the Geisel Library when it lifts off to join the mothership.
*And also to condition their wheezing, etiolated urban physiques to proper standards of brutal troglodytic superiority.
Jesus h crust, UC is over 12k per year now? Obscene. And recently found out UCB doesn't let undergrads take composition classes so there goes that plan.
The Geisel Library is a pretty fun building to hang out in. Shitty library, but who cares.
Northwestern students can study in Oman or Romania and pay the on-campus tuition price, or they can stay in town and participate in student clubs and events.
Um, ok. Something tells me the letters were starting to swim around 3 am when the US News blurb-writer was considering Northwestern College (of Iowa).
I assume you're talking to me not-so-young neb. You are correct. At our wedding, instead of dancing, we asked the placidly seated guests to give us advice about a happy marriage. No one wanted to go first, so I called on baa.
Sally is nothing if not brutal and troglodytic.
we asked the placidly seated guests to give us advice about a happy marriage
...he explained in a thread titled "Just Words".
Which has been making me hum "More Than Words" all day long.
A friend of a friend does a weekly Wednesday comedy game show thing. My friend goes semi-often. It doesn't start until 9:30 or so and runs late.
I never, ever want to actually go out and put on real clothes and be around strangers until I'm maybe at least not pregnant. But given that I've got a long time to go, tonight's as good a night as any. But now that it's time to change, I just want to go to bed.
so I called on baa
He had a better answer at the wedding.
until I'm maybe at least not pregnant
IANAOBGYN, but I didn't think that was one of the possible conditions, unless you're pregnant with Schroedinger's Cat.
Ugh, I just found out that it's basically standing room only. No no no.
Back to the OP, Erick Erickson making a bold pitch to be everyone's preferred target [not linking]:
Not every Christian survives. Many are martyred. We, as Christians, should understand each person is called by the Lord in different ways. Ann and I are called to our keyboards to write and speak boldly. Dr. Brantly was called to Africa.
I shouldn't even bother to say this, but the mockability of that line aside, the column isn't really so bad (it benefits from being a response to Coulter, who is the saddest of all things these days: a desperate troll).
I guess now we know which pundit ogged doesn't want to fight.
You know in the old days
When a desperate troll was a strong troll
All the people they'd step back
When a desperate troll walked by
"[A] body nourishing social gospel"? He really didn't think that line through, did he?
He doesn't need to think about what he writes. The Lord has called him to the keyboard, and whatever comes out is the pure essence of the divine.
Damn you Stormcrow! NOw I have this stuck in my head
People try to put us down
Just because we troll around
Why don't you all f-f-f-fade away
and not try to tweet what we all say?
310: the beer at Quinn's is fine and the food not too bad, but you have to admit it is at the stabbier end of the spectrum. What's the one I'm thinking about called? Reilly's or something. I don't even live in Camden anymore.
it took me a long time to realize that the truth of dudes acting like they want to fight is that very, very, vanishingly few dudes in fact want to fight. They just want to act like they want to.
As I seem to remember remarking in another context, the thing to understand about truly dangerous people is that, if they want to hit you, they will hit you. They will not spend quarter of an hour beforehand puffing up their chests and informing you in detail of how much they want to hit you.
I never, ever want to actually go out and put on real clothes and be around strangers until I'm maybe at least not pregnant.
Staying in, not putting on any clothes and being around people you know really well seems like a good way to not become not pregnant.
They just want to act like they want to.
In other species of ape, ethologists describe this as an "aggression display".
310: the beer at Quinn's is fine and the food not too bad, but you have to admit it is at the stabbier end of the spectrum. What's the one I'm thinking about called? Reilly's or something. I don't even live in Camden anymore.
Maybe the Kentish Town spectrum, but not the London spectrum. It's not the loveliest of pubs, I'll grant, but it's not particularly rough. And, yes, I assume O'Reilly's is the one you're thinking of. Can't say I ever drank there myself. Too far away from my flat to be convenient and nothing in particular to get me to go out of my way.
422: OK, I can't stop wondering - too Baptist?
I got in a fight at a party in college once. This dude said Malaysian crabs were better than Maryland crabs, and it came to blows. Afterwards, we drank more beer.
449: not just apes. Very common for males of many species, usually when trying to impress females.
Ann and I are called to our keyboards to write and speak boldly.
[Choking sound, teeth grinding south, rustling and clunking while I look for a hardcover edition of something appropriate with which to beat that little twerp unconscious.]
They will not spend quarter of an hour beforehand puffing up their chests and informing you in detail of how much they want to hit you.
The closest I came to a real fight involved a jerk doing basically that. He actually tried to kick me in the face but misjudged the distance. I talked myself out of the situation but all the while hoping he'd try the face-kick move again because now that I was expecting it I was ready to answer with a swift one to the bollocks. The funny thing is that my sister knew him (she ran with a rougher crowd than me) and bitched him out until he was at the point of tears.
The other unusual feature of his childhood was more mundane: but it meant the removal of all practical obstacles throughout his entire career. Hardy, with his limpid honesty, would have been the last man to be finicky on this matter. He knew what privilege meant, and he knew that he had possessed it. His family had no money, only a schoolmaster's income, but they were in touch with the best educational advice of late nineteenth- century England. That particular kind of information has always been more significant in this country than any amount of wealth. The scholar- ships have been there all right, if one knew how to win them. There was never the slightest chance of the young Hardy being lost -- as there was of the young Wells or the young Einstein. From the age of twelve he had only to survive, and his talents would be looked after.
This is from C. P. Snow's introduction to G. H. Hardy's A Mathematician's Apology
This passage resonates with me because we've lived the American analog to the phenomenon. As despite our own marginal success we've steered our kids through the Chicago Public Schools, to selective programs and schools, to scholarships and financial aid at good liberal arts colleges, we've employed the same kind of information, of privilege if you will, as Hardy's parents.
But the word survive, at the center of the last sentence, is equally important. The parents can steer, prepare and plan, but the child has to be subject to the rigors that accompany the privileges. There was never a question about Hardy taking his scholarship to Winchester, despite his thin skin and delicate nature, and Winchester was an awful place to be like that. Orwell tells a parallel story in Such, Such Were The Joys, and he was tough and hard even as a boy.
In fact, a few paragraphs on from the quoted passage, Snow tells the story of Hardy at Cambridge, earnest in his atheism, forced by the dean to write his parents about it if he would avoid compulsory chapel.
.if they want to hit you, they will hit you. They will not spend quarter of an hour beforehand puffing up their chests and informing you in detail of how much they want to hit you.
However it is still worth sloping off to the pub down the road, as they often change their mind about whether they really want to hit you towards the end of the evening when they've had a few more, or been wound up a bit by their idiot friends.
