Doesn't matter what Biden says or does if the media isn't interested in talking about it. The NYT gave him a nice run yesterday (and even right now) but I think elsewhere, Trump's attacks on Biden get more play than Biden's on Trump.
I think the lesson is to go to Hazelwood to attack Trump.
Or maybe it's because it's becoming impossible to avoid noticing that Trump is unhinged.
From the other thread:
The NYT did a video reconstruction thing of the shooting of the Trump supporter, like they did for the shootings by Rittenhouse. AFAIK no one has been charged in the Trump supporter death, but the story multiple times highlights a "possible gunman". That's waaaaaaay out on a limb for the NYT so they must know something more than what they show in the videos.
To clarify- not just text saying that there was a possible gunman, but in the videos circling a guy with a caption "possible gunman" when there's no video of him actually doing the shooting, just being nearby. It reminds me of some idiot right wing sites after the marathon bombing who ruined some Indian kid's life by using videos to "prove" he was the bomber. For the Times to do that I'm guessing they have sources who are pretty confident he'll be charged with the shooting.
The shooter "under investigation" according to the Oregonian, presumably the same person in the videos, is a 48 year old antifa guy previously charged with having a gun at a rally in July although charges were dropped. If it was in fact him I think that will be the first confirmed killing by a declared member of antifa.
I'm guessing that the Portland police didn't give him snackies first.
MSNBC is the liberal tv network, but a Joe Scarborough was a Republican, and he was going after Trump hard on this Issue this morning. Specifically, he criticized Trump for not condemning right-wing violence. He also said that Biden was doing a great job representing himself as the guy who condemned all violence.
There is a place in my heart for antifa but having them be armed with guns is bad.
You can read the Rittenhouse complaint here. I really don't see how this DA thinks he's getting first degree murder charges past a jury. First vic actively pursues Rittenhouse who is running away, tries to take his gun, gets shot. Rittenhouse runs away a second time, gets pursued by multiple persons. Rittenhouse falls, second vic grabs Rittenhouses gun with one hand and tries to club him with a skateboard in his other hand, gets shot. Third vic then runs up on Rittenhouse holding a handgun and takes a close range gunshot to the arm and runs off.
Trying to take a gun from someone not legally old enough to possess one seems like it should be credited as necessary enforcement of the law.
Unless the actual point is just "guns are for white people."
I suspect that the DA doesn't want to win this, but is covering for the evident truth that if KR was Black, he would not have left the scene alive. He's one of the clearer demonstrations of the underlying undeniable truth of the BLM movement, and of the toxic nature of police culture. A lot of adults fucked up this kid's life: his mom, the police officers that saw an untrained kid with way too much firepower walking into a volatile situation and did nothing (at best), etc. Blaming him is necessary for the system that negligently destroyed him. And they'll see his acquittal (or conviction on some lesser charge) as vindication, when the reality is that if those officers belonged in the job, they'd have tried to get him to leave the weapon in the trunk of his car, or better yet, to just go home.
11: Two things that are really bothering me about the KR shooting is just how fast the right seems to have gone for "it was obviously self-defense" when the kid is defending himself against people trying to take him down because he just shot someone. (If someone starts shooting people in my classroom, and we all rush him like we've been taught, he doesn't get to shoot us in self-defense. Maybe Lanza was just defending himself against the six-year-olds he murdered? Give me a break.) Second thing is how many of the adults in his life are "responsible gun owners" who talk a good racist game and their kid believed their bullshit.
It's a strange set of laws that would let you deliberately insert yourself unnecessarily into a situation you know to be fraught while packing heat and then shoot down anyone who looks at you funny because you feel threatened.
Didn't he shoot the first guy in the vmbacj? Fuck him, I hope he rots
A lot of adults fucked up this kid's life: his mom, the police officers that saw an untrained kid with way too much firepower walking into a volatile situation and did nothing (at best), etc. Blaming him is necessary for the system that negligently destroyed him.
This is right. He's one of the people whose relationship with guns is deranged. Going to Kenosha he thought he was going to be part of a bunch of good guys brandishing rifles in a standoff with a bunch of bad guys brandishing rifles. He didn't see a lot of bad guys with rifles, so he kept wandering around, still secure that having a rifle was a totally normal thing to do. Then he heard a gunshot, not directed at him, probably somebody dumb firing into the air, and he freaked out, because in this situation he is to the Kenosha police, who at least have some training, as the Kenosha police are to actual military. Then people started chasing him, because he had a rifle, which is objectively NOT NORMAL.
I thought that was some slang bit of anatomy I wasn't familiar with.
a strange set of laws that would let you deliberately insert yourself unnecessarily into a situation you know to be fraught while packing heat and then shoot down anyone who looks at you funny because you feel threatened.
George Zimmerman says hi.
For several years it's been pretty obvious the open goal of the right is to use gun rights plus the police shooting black people holding any object as a way to reassert a kind of Jim Crow.
14 I haven't studied it, but was going with the impression (which is, I think, shared by CN) that he was already running away before he fired his first shot.
13 Some state laws have exceptions to self-defense if you're the aggressor -- maybe it's burden shifting, I don't know.
It does seem to me that charging KR now, especially over-charging him, serves the twin purposes of turning down the heat on the streets right now, and letting the police (and the system) off the hook later when a jury decides that the state can't get over reasonable doubt on every element.
11: Third clip, shaved head guy with the maroon shirt with dark pocket is Rosenbaum, the first vic. Does seem like a bad idea to let someone like that take your gun.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=neUnhYO2Ehc&bpctr=1598978355
20 All the more reason not to get near him with a gun.
(even if 20 last is a valid inference to draw from the videos)
If Rittenhouse keeps this lawyer the DA may get their conviction yet. What a clownshow.
https://twitter.com/NBCNews/status/1300609591085064194
Seems like the situation would have been a lot better all round if someone like that had taken his gun away, because then no one would be dead, rather than two people being dead.
25: The two dead guys can't have guns either! Rosenbaum is a felon that did a bunch of time for sex with a minor and Huber is a repeat domestic violence offender. The entire situation is an all around mess.
17: I think this is worse than the Zimmerman case because Zimmerman had less reason to expect violence. Rittenhouse went to Kenosha because he was expecting to face violence.
police shooting black people holding any object as a way to reassert a kind of Jim Crow
If my memory of the Michael Brown case is correct, the 'holding any object' bit is optional.
24: How strange, it's hard to believe but it seems an expert can't find a good argument for a right-wing nut who can't legally own a gun to shoot someone in the middle of a riot triggered by right-wing nuts.
I'm not very interested in the specifics of this case. This is making the rounds in my Twitter: https://misinfo.substack.com/p/the-right-wing-defense-of-kyle-rittenhouse If it hold water the felon claim is untrue.
Does anyone else know more about this: https://usa.streetsblog.org/2020/08/30/the-flag-covered-assault-truck-is-trump-2020-ad/
This stuff sets an atmosphere for me. It helps me understand better why they like Trump's lying so much.
Q: What is best in life? A: To crush my enemies. To drive them before me, and to hear the lamentations of their women.
I think as is that's a little to raw for most people, but if they can tell themselves a story where they are the good guys everything is fantastic. So Trump's lies don't have to be good, because his followers are strongly motivated to believe them. It's great as long as they get to kill who they want to kill.
https://twitter.com/jonrog1/status/1300268824357343232
Rosenbaum is a felon that did a bunch of time for sex with a minor
Haven't seen a reputable news source report this. Did see a lot of bullshit news sites reporting it, along with a Twitter screen shot of his name on the Wisconsin Department of Corrections Sex Offender Registry. You can search the name Rosenbaum here. Spoiler alert: All Rosenbaums appear to be clean in Wisconsin.
New York Daily News says this:
Many social media users also sought to justify the killings by accusing Huber and Rosenbaum of provoking the suspect and highlighting the pair's criminal history.
Online arrest records show Huber was arrested several times on battery, drugs and other charges. Rosenbaum had an open criminal case on battery, disorderly conduct and domestic abuse charges, according to the Wisconsin Circuit Court website. His previous record could not immediately be confirmed.
So even the semi-reputable Daily News is unclear on the concept of "criminal record." All it has here is arrests. The most recent address carries this boilerplate:
All charges against Joseph D. Rosenbaum in this case have been dismissed. These charges were not proven and have no legal effect. Joseph D. Rosenbaum is presumed innocent.Looks like his domestic abuse charges were dismissed because he's dead. (They were dismissed yesterday.)
The fastest way to get a criminal history is to get shot by a white person, especially a policeman, while doing nothing else.
32: Rosenbaum is also not in the sex offender registry because he's dead. That's SOP. The prison time was in AZ, you can still pull his corrections sheet there.
https://inmatedatasearch.azcorrections.gov/PrintInmate.aspx?ID=172556
I guess we'll get to find out if militias can include child soldiers and still be considered "well regulated."
Previous criminal records (real or supposed) for the victims don't seem relevant to the shootings in Kenosha. Obviously, it is a common cop tactic to share criminal records when they kill people but it is interesting to see that expanded to smearing Kyle's victim as somehow deserving it. About 8% of the US population has felony convictions https://news.uga.edu/total-us-population-with-felony-convictions/
I am really worried about the antifa guy with a gun who may have shot the Trump protester. That has all the makings of a Horst Wessel problem at the worst possible time.
I am really worried about the antifa guy with a gun who may have shot the Trump protester. That has all the makings of a Horst Wessel problem at the worst possible time.
34: Quick work by the authorities! And people say the government is inefficient.
Looks like he was 18 years old at the time of his offense, which was 18 years ago. Not entirely sure how to read his subsequent rap sheet, but the original offense got him 10 years.
The "well-regulated militia" notion is just embarrassing. Let's presume a militia, unrelated to the police force, privately organized, actually has something useful to contribute, if it is actually well-regulated. Which is scary but maybe presume it's constitutional. If this kid was a member of that militia he would not have ended up surrounded by hostile forces, out of touch with any of his allies, panicking as soon as someone confronted him. In the real world... did any of the people orchestrating the right-wing show of force even know who he was? Was the "militia" even organized, let alone well-regulated? Complete amateurs.
I am really worried about the antifa guy with a gun who may have shot the Trump protester. That has all the makings of a Horst Wessel problem at the worst possible time.
Surprisingly this doesn't seem to be happening. Maybe it's that Fox News viewers all think this has been happening all the time anyway.
Maybe it's because they are rich and just smart enough to realize how much they have to lose if they destroy the county that let them get rich?
It does step on the "Antifa are murdering and raping your white women!" message to broadcast "Antifa actually killed someone for the first time!"
41: I hate how much I end up hoping this is true.
42: I feel like that kind of "stepping on" presumes a sort of logic that just isn't in play here.
Local radio personality calls for more state-sanctioned murder in desperate attempt for new job on the TV.
Because, for those who aren't familiar, she lost her old TV job for racist Facebook posts a few years ago. It's reprehensible that that radio station still gives her air time.
She's trying to get fired so she can move to the big leagues.
Yesterday was "Covid isn't real" from her.
Bouie's piece in the NYT cracked me up -- and he plays the joke in such a straight-faced fashion that I actually wonder whether, in fact, he might actually be serious. He suggests that Trump needs a "Sister Souljah moment" in what reads like a direct parody of stupid centrist punditry of the sort indulged in by that racist asshole Andrew Sullivan.
The in-flight racist asshole of Air Force One.
Hah! Bouie, in a video on Twitter, acknowledges up-front that he was kidding around, but that he understands that he wrote this piece in such a way that people will take it seriously.
I do not want to understand the Rittenhouse situation well enough to stand on any claims. That said, the main argument here, that this is such a clusterfuck of stupidity that it can be argued indefinitely, seems very likely true. We could maybe honor a fine essay by not arguing it indefinitely.
About twelve hours after I read it, I though of another uncategorized facet of the stupidity but then I forgot it and don't want to work hard enough to get it back.
51: Oh wow, there's a site I haven't seen in years.
You killed the blog with the power of nostalgia.
It's hardly surprising, but it ought to be noted that anarchists/antifascists/various left-wing radicals *never* brought guns to protests in the past. Even after Jonesboro. There just wasn't much point, nobody wanted to kill anybody, and why take a serious felony when most protest charges get dismissed after a few months of blustering from the DA? I think it was really the Teabaggers who set this all up. Crazy old rich white fuckers just like doing violence and killing people. Nobody around here was talking about bringing guns to protests until 2017 or so, but my sense is that quite a few people do it as a matter of course nowadays.
That old Hitler quote about the only thing that could have stopped the brownshirts was if they'd been massively, violently opposed when they were small never got much traction with white liberals, but man, if we ever needed proof of its truth, the last 10 years of US politics have furnished more than enough.
Anyone sharing the purported criminal histories of the victims is an asshole. Anyone using them to defend the shooter is a contemptible fucknut.
Oh, hey, it's the cop. What a surprise.
If antifa and the brownshirts could just resolve their differences with a huge paintball fight, maybe we could emerge from all this with our civilization intact.
The random assholes with trucks and paintball guns isn't nearly as deadly as some things lately, but it would be enough to make be consider carrying caltrops if similar would be expected.
Or similar. You need something you could pick up afterwards.
56: Paint is peaceful, Spike. You can't have fights with it.
It would be very hard for the casual protestor to be able to positively identify a tactical paintball rifle being wielded by an asshole e.g. riding in an oversized pickup as a not-intentionally-lethal weapon at a glance.
Serious question: does "tactical" just mean "large, yet portable"?
That old Hitler quote about the only thing that could have stopped the brownshirts was if they'd been massively, violently opposed when they were small never got much traction with white liberals, but man, if we ever needed proof of its truth, the last 10 years of US politics have furnished more than enough.
But this quote is just obviously nonsense. We had brownshirts. Well, greyshirts. What stopped them wasn't massive violent opposition, it was them losing every election they stood in, and us voting for people who were anti-brownshirt.
I am not sure that one should be looking to Adolf Hitler for insightful commentary on anything, especially not on 1930s German politics, a subject on which his ideas were wildly ill-informed and erroneous.
Nobody around here was talking about bringing guns to protests until 2017 or so, but my sense is that quite a few people do it as a matter of course nowadays.
And, to quote another rather better politician... "how's that workin' out for ya?"
"Anyone sharing the purported criminal histories of the victims is an asshole. Anyone using them to defend the shooter is a contemptible fucknut.
"Oh, hey, it's the cop. What a surprise."
Seconding.
re: 63
I agree with the basic idea. But .... it is also true that there were fairly regular instances of Mosleyites getting their arses handed to them. as well.
66: much less than happened to the actual brownshirts, though, and they still won. What stopped the BUF was that people didn't agree with their ideas and so didn't vote for them. They didn't see the BUF as patriotic Brits supporting law and order, they saw them as foreign stooges who were always getting into fights.
re: 67
Yeah. I also think there was a big difference in how the upper reaches of the establishment reacted to the fascists (here, and in Germany).
Exactly. You didn't, obviously, have the German population thinking that the brownshirts sounded suspiciously German. And also by the time the BUF got going the British trade union movement, and the British left in general, was far less militant and far less sympathetic to Communism than it had been ten years previously. Back then it would not have been irrational to look at the slaughterhouse of Communist Russia, look at the domestic political groups - many of them openly committed to violence - who supported what was happening there, and think "well, anything's better than that". Less of a problem in the mid-1930s in Britain.
This is what people miss, looking back: Soviet Communism was a murderous shitshow from the start to the end, and anyone with any sense could see that and wanted to avoid it. We know Fascism is bad now because we know what it did when it got into power. But, just as Soviet Communists allied with Fascists to help defeat their real enemies in the West, a lot of people in 1920s Europe were willing to ally with Fascists in order to stave off Communism.
a lot of people in 1920s Europe were willing to ally with Fascists
Where, though? Not Spain until Franco; I don't think you can count Pilsudski as fascist; Hungary under Horthy doesn't seem too fascist until the late 1930. Do you count the royal dictatorship in Yugoslavia?
I only recently learned of the existence of the 43 Group in postwar Britain.
71: Yes, I was looking for places beyond those two. But even so, in the four Weimar elections of the 1920s, the proto-Nazi and then Nazi parties won 0 - 32 - 14 - 12 seats. Their best showing, in May 1924, put them in sixth place. In 1928, they placed ninth, with about half the seats of the Reich Party of the German Middle Class.
The UK was probably helped by its lack of proportional representation. If you're a national party that's coming in sixth to ninth place, you're getting zero seats. What would've happened if Mosley had had the national platform of Westminster (as a fascist; he had been an MP for various parties previously)?
Skimming his wiki page and it's very weird to think that Mosley was against the Black and Tans. Just generally he's way weirder and ideologically inconsistent than I thought, so maybe it wouldn't have mattered.
74: I don't even want to know, do I?
75: Sure, sure, but this -- "a lot of people in 1920s Europe were willing to ally with Fascists" -- is where the discussion started. By the 1930s, the number of European countries that kept their democracies becomes considerably smaller than the number of those who threw theirs away.
Would it be interesting to discuss which ones we would now consider fascist?
Not Spain until Franco
I'd think that Primo de Rivera was a lot closer to mainstream Fascism than Franco ever was
OT: I just got a campaign fundraising email where Yo Yo Ma asked me to give money to Biden-Harris. Even though I told myself I topped out for this year, I might donate just to encourage more cellists in politics.
Some people want more cellists in politics. Some people want more politicians in cells.
I might donate just to encourage more cellists in politics.
Moby condemns the violins on all sides.
76. Don't forget to watch the relevant "Peaky Blinders" season, too.
I'll admit I basically assumed Mosley was the guy from The Wall but old-timey.
We've been going back and forth on whether to watch Peaky Blinders--we both think it'd be a fun period piece, but we've heard that it's violent in ways that'd make it unpleasant watching.
The main thing I've recently read is the book Hitler's Thirty Days to Power, which pointed out that when Hitler was in a position to be made chancellor, he held out to also get a Nazi as interior minister*, so his first big post-power coup, arresting all the Communists, could be done unilaterally and under color of legal authority. Plenty of street violence after that too, but then they were in charge, so thumb on the scales. If this is correct, is it actually plausible to say relative numbers or tactical matters at the street-violence level really turned any outcomes?
*The point of the book being this was a risky negotiating strategy that succeeded for reasons largely independent of Hitler, more the stupidity of those trying to make use of him, especially von Papen.
I've quite enjoyed Peaky Blinders and it has surprised me that other people haven't, due to the violence. I hadn't realized before that I'm basically desensitized to that kind of thing. Maybe because I watched a lot of Quentin Tarantino movies in the '90s?
64: I certainly don't advocate shooting people at demonstrations -- inefficient and very easy to get caught. Just doesn't make any tactical sense. As to 63, yes, now it is far too late. I'm talking about 2010, 2011, when the real fascist organizing was ramping up. Frankly, anyone who thinks "just vote them out" is a reasonable solution to the current crisis has not been paying attention. Voting them out doesn't work when they've managed to subvert most of the electoral processes already. The fascists are ascendant and there's absolutely nothing that can be done except endure and eventually bear witness. As I said back in 2016 though, this is our recreation -- you can't streetfight climate change.
76.last Concern troll was very concerned that Biden's response to Trump's America blowing up was flatfooted. Something like that.
Thanks Ed.
The bar is so low for acceptable behavior from a white conservative right now and so very high for anyone not white or openly liberal (especially the first). I got to wonder what that will do in the long run because "I'm from a group with an openly expressed culture permissive of violence and rejecting responsibility" seems like a bad idea when trying to get a job or something.
"I'm litigious and will follow Russian trolls if they disagree with your policies. Give me a job."
"Don't worry. All my assault convictions were for shooting paintballs at people at least twenty miles from here."
83. PB is definitely very violent. I think some of the Brit & Scandinavian police procedural noir is even more so at times. We've watched a lot of them thanks to covid, and some are pretty hard to take. (Most recently, "Happy Valley.")
Happy Valley was great. And yes, violent.
It's interesting that the same people who condemned Michael Brown as a "strong-arm robber" based on pushing a convenience store clerk once, are also the people who see nothing wrong with Rittenhouse murdering two people because he'd provoked them into chasing him off.
Also, rightwing nutjobs (they would be 'terrorists', except that terrorists are of course only ever black or brown and have ideologies that We Don't Like) have continually murdered or attempted to murder people at demonstrations in this country for several years now. Why exactly should they get the benefit of the doubt?
Yeah. I wonder how this is going to play out in juries. If things keep going, there are going to be lots of self-defense claims.
On Peaky Blinders and violence: it really depends. It's just another thing to process. Sometimes it requires a lot of work or stress to get through, sometimes it'll feels so alien (Game of Thrones) or cartoonish (basically anything that'd get a PG-13 rating) that it'll just be the usual for American/Anglo popular culture and it completely washes over me. I don't have a great a priori theory of what'll push things over the line, but we have a lot of shows that we want to watch now that don't have that issue at all, so PB is a lot lower down the list than it would be otherwise. Maybe we'll get around to it and find it's good despite the violence, or maybe even good because of the violence. But it's a negative weighing factor.
On the more serious conversation: if there are a lot of unclear or implausible self-defense claims, could we be entering a new age of jury nullification?
The Bundy Ranch people have scored themselves a couple of jury nullification. Apparently juries will let you violently occupy a federal building as long as part of a wildlife refuge.
You mean, like the jury counts the Bundy Gang as wildlife?
I was just thinking that things like mentioned in 44 plus things like general Donald Trump-tweets, it would be a bad lawyer who didn't try self-defense for any protestor accused and it's not actually part of the law that the richer person has the greater right to self-defense.
OT: Apparently Ellen can just go on TV and be really nice and everybody is pretending they never read the internet.
Well the authorities have footage of the entire situation and decided to charge him. In general if they think you have a valid Self-Defense claim they don't bring a charge. If I had to guess, it's that The perp was threatening people with a gun and so was the aggressor.
Ignore the last. It seems they are arguing that he fired first, and then the struggle over the gun occurred. If you try to shoot someone you can't claim them trying to disarm you is an attack. That seems to be the move.
What if you're someone supported by people known to not care what the truth is if it helps them?
96. We watched some Shitt's Creek episodes, having heard from lots of people that it's awesome. Maybe I'm a curmudgeon but it seemed totally predictable, underwhelming, and not at all very funny. Perhaps my problem is that I never found Eugene Levy or Catherine O'Hara to be funny.
It isn't violent, though.
ADL figures on murders linked to extreme right-wing activity (count is number of incidents):
2020 to date: 11
2019: 19
2018: 18
2017: 19
2016: 16
2015: 30
2014: 20
2013: 20
2012: 22
2011: 20
2010: 17
2009: 22
2008: 22.
105: I became increasingly endeared to the Rose family overtime (and townspeople), and also felt like the show improved in latter seasons, but I also find Catherine O'Hara to be an utter delight, so YMMV.
105: I knooooow. I'm so mystified by why so many very funny people love that show. I just cannot get the hang of it.
They were my least favorite dog owners in Best in Show.
Except for the guy with the hound.
But he was also directing, so he probably had too much on his mind.
We're watching Schitt's Creek, too, currently on the fourth season. First season was fine, but it gets better. They're awful people, put in a situation where their awfulness doesn't help them. They're assholes to each other but they also clearly do love each other, and come to love the normies and weirdos they live among. They learn that they can't be rent seekers and have to be productive members of society as they gradually accept that the deus ex machina escape value they're hoping for isn't coming. The tension between all those makes it great, especially as the writers better get the characters, combined with O'Hara being completely over the top in every possible way.
"Over the Top" was one of the worst movies I have ever seen in the theater.
Perhaps my problem is that I never found Eugene Levy or Catherine O'Hara to be funny.
I also tried Schitt's Creek, which my wife loved. But I, too, didn't think much of it. All kinds of smart folks who share my sense of humor are fans of Levy and O'Hara, but I don't get it. The whole Second City thing of that generation never did it for me.
115 before reading 109. I'm not just sucking up to The Management.
Re Schitt's Creek: I think a lot of people just want to watch a low-stakes show that is about small-town life but isn't made for country music fans. So the options are
- Trailer Park Boys / Letterkenny (about drunken bozos - not for everyone)
- Bless This Mess / The Ranch (more like rural life than small town life)
- Schitt's Creek
- Gilmore Girls
- Hallmark movies
- Joe Pera Talks To You
- ?
117. The Returned and Dark are both set in small towns. Lodge 49 is set in Long Beach.
118: By low-stakes I meant not about murders, monsters, supernatural conspiracies, etc. Just people living in a town. Lodge 49 might qualify.
If you want low stakes, big city, there's Midnight Diner.
Anne Helen Petersen talks to Portland residents. The final interviewee is great.
119. In the interval between 117 and this, I was thinking "Stranger Things." Never mind. I'm coming to believe that most monsters/supernatural horror stuff is set in small towns because they are really about fear of Others who will mess up their idyllic lives.
The USA Network used to have a brand of "sunshine" shows that were like comedy-dramas, mostly about crime or legal stuff but nothing sordid or lurid or depressing. White Collar, Suits, Burn Notice, Royal Pains. Especially Royal Pains, it wasn't even about crime and wasn't set in the city. There really aren't many shows like that that I know of, that you just watch to relax. There are more over-the-top shows like Claws and the Ryan Murphy and Shonda Rimes entertainment empires.
Isn't Parks and Rec the canonical answer to 117? (skip season 1.)
The USA Network used to have a brand of "sunshine" shows that were like comedy-dramas, mostly about crime or legal stuff but nothing sordid or lurid or depressing. White Collar, Suits, Burn Notice, Royal Pains.
I should look for "Royal Pains." I didn't like Suits or Burn Notice, but am fond of White Collar as a very charming low-tension show.
Burn Notice was great because he protagonist was always sharing cool tips about how to be a spy. Never know when you will need those!
A Poem
The Whine of the Mediocre White Man
fifty seven years old
and neither black nor blue
does my life matter too?
No no no no no, "unloosed" is not a word at all and it is definitely not a word that belongs in the NYT. DOOMSDAY IS HERE.
(I mean... it's not, right? Right?)
Mere anarchy is unloosed upon the world, Yeats did not write
128. Lots of online sources say "It's okay."
Now, the Boston Globe having recently published a banner headline in which "they're" was used for "their": can't anyone spell anymore?
128.1: It's a malapropism for unleashed, right?
Nobody ever could spell, but there used to be copy editors.
129: I just noticed that in consecutive lines, "mere anarchy" and "the blood-dimmed tide" are both "loosed". I think I'm going to have to lower W.B.'s grade.
"Then, York, unloose thy long imprisoned thoughts" - Henry VI, part 2, V.i.88.
134:. That's early Shakespeare. He was still learning English.
"Unloose" and "loose" are acceptable synonyms? Or the former is replacing the latter (which is the only one of the two I've seen before this week because I have not read all, nor remember every word of the subset I have read, of Shakespeare's works)? Are there any other pairs like that? There are self-antonyms like "stem," but this seems like a morphological oddity.
Anyway, a) I also have that doomsday feeling and b) I need a powerful charm to keep me from clicking through to this latest story of racial appropriation.
Mark 1:7, KJV: "There cometh one mightier than I after me, the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to stoop down and unloose."
Ngram comparison, using the past tense versions to avoid false matches of "loose" as an adjective. Looks like "loose" has always been much more common.
English is not a consistent language!
So there's descriptivism (good!) and prescriptivism (bad!), and then there's the God-given right of all English speakers and learners to hate individual words with a passion. I feel I've said my piece.
I think it's inevitable that I'll continue being a basket case for the rest of the year, but I clicked through to the appropriation story and I am 99% exhausted and sad that innocent students and people of all sorts get taken in by liars and grifters, and 1% super curious to livestream LB's facial expressions as she watches this video.
That's the white professor who was passing as Bronx Afro-latina? That is an interesting accent. I'm kind of surprised she was successfully passing -- if she was talking like that I would think she'd be getting side-eye. I guess GWU is in DC; I honestly can't tell if the accent is glaringly off or if it'd pass if you didn't know anyone from upper Manhattan/the Bronx.
If I heard it, I'd think that the person grew up in a household that spoke with a white accent. Like maybe a child of color who had been adopted from a young age, and hadn't been exposed to nonwhite people until they were teenagers.
I wouldn't have second-guessed her racial claims, but it sounds...white, for lack of a better word.
"Unloosed" is a real word. It means "I'm blocking at the word 'unleashed' but I know I'm fumbling in the right ballpark."
Like when Jammies told me that the covid safety guidelines he's proposing for the local baseball league are nonchalant. It's the 3rd definition, "I'm blocking on the word 'uncontroversial'."
I don't think I've ever used it that way.
The threads I see on Twitter about 144 keep boiling down to "The more you worked with her, the more she seemed mentally ill and unprofessional and disrespectful, but I chalked that up to the trauma she had gone through" and "As someone who actually has the background she claimed to have, I thought she seemed kind of weird, but I'm not about to start policing people's expression of Blackness, because I'm so sick of that. Now I see that oh, it was literally a minstrel show. That's why."
I don't claim to personally have a BS detector, but if we're around someone for years and something never stops seeing "off"... we can at least trust our instincts and ask around if other people share the same suspicions.
"He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword" but "He unloosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword" scans just as well, though you loose er lose that extra "hath."
Speaking of dumbass, one of the more popular questions on Google about "Battle Hymn of the Republic" is "Was it a Confederate song?" Lincoln wept.
A cop being prosecuted under California criminal law rather than federal for shooting someone, it seems partly thanks to last year's reform!
Just for voluntary manslaughter, though. There was a murder trial for the killer of Oscar Grant 10 years ago; he ended up with involuntary manslaughter and served 11 months.
I'm always too late to get in these conversations in real time but regardless/irregardless. You get to decide for yourself what part of the 143.1 options applies.
"Possible gunman" above killed by police when they tried to apprehend him. I guess if you join the side of BLM protesters you get treated like a Black man.