I assumed this thread was about Russert and arrived ready to suggest that it's not always a bad thing to speak ill of the dead.
Speaking of underage sex trials, HBO's "Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired" documentary is very good.
What's the over/under on time until some winger puts this verdict beside the OJ one to prove that blacks get preferential treatment from the criminal justice system?
4: That's not what I've heard. Also, you're 27 in the other thread is one of the best blog comments I've ever read. And I hate you for it.
you're 27 in the other thread
Ari, your obsession with Tweety has gone too far.
My favorite R. Kelly parody, here, inspired by Same Girl.
When was the last time a jury convicted a famous performer?
5: I dunno. If you're into purity balls and sex-related promises between fathers and daughters, I'm guessing that you think "She had the ass of an 18 year-old" ought to be a complete defense.
Once a year I say something moderately amusing, then return to my lair of tedium.
1: We've already had that discussion. (Not that Russert in any way deserves the kind of opprobrium leveled at Buckley.)
5: I guess less likely they'd put it next to Russert to prove black people get preferential treatment from god.
So how the fuck did R. Kelly manage to be acquitted? The Mole, I know, but that seems so weak. I guess he can be thankful he didn't have an HD camera.
Has anyone followed the Kelly trial closely enough to know if this was a strange result? I assumed he was headed to jail because the prosecution had a video, but I didn't really read up on it.
When was the last time a jury convicted a famous performer?
Er, Wesley Snipes?
This post made me laugh O.L.
The case against him was actually terrible. Reasonable doubt out the yingyang.
I take the high road, Ari.
Just like Apo!
and arrived ready to suggest that it's not always a bad thing to speak ill of the dead.
Tsk. One merely need note that:
Today, the world is a better place.
Tomorrow, Broder.
max
['This sort of thing happens in threes, right?']
15: I'm guessing the argument for acquittal hangs here:
Prosecutors had argued that a video tape mailed to the Chicago Sun-Times in 2002 showed Kelly engaged in graphic sex acts with a girl as young as 13 at the time. Both Kelly, 41, and the now 23-year-old alleged victim had denied they were the ones on the tape. Neither testified during the trial
Interestingly, as regards #5:
Of the 12 jurors, nine were men and three were women; eight were white and four were black. They included the wife of a Baptist preacher from Kelly's Chicago-area hometown, Olympia Fields, as well as a compliance officer for a Chicago investment firm and a man in his 60s who emigrated from then-Communist Romania nearly 40 years ago.
This was pretty bad for the prosecution too:
The star prosecution witness, Lisa Van Allen, became teary eyed as she told jurors she engaged in several three-way sexual encounters with Kelly and the alleged victim, including once on a basketball court. Kelly videotaped the trysts, she said.Van Allen also claimed Kelly used to carry a duffel bag stuffed full of his homemade sex tapes.
The defense called several witnesses in a bid to discredit Van Allen, accusing her of trying to extort money from Kelly. Under cross-examination, Van Allen admitted she once stole Kelly's $20,000 diamond-studded watch from a hotel.
But wasn't it obviously him on the tape? Or, at least, wasn't that the consensus going into the trial?
16: Thanks, Joe. I forgot about Wesley Snipes, but even he was acquitted on the felony charges.
Is it ok to go ahead and try Spector in the media and find him guilty? I liked Barbarian Queen much more than anything Spector did. Also, Spector is an abusive psycho fuck.
When George Harrison and Phil Spector joined forces, something terrible happened, and not in a good way.
I liked Barbarian Queen much more than anything Spector did.
barbarian. that's like saying you don't like Wagner, just because of the Nazis.
Doris Kearns Goodwin...
The most extraordinary thing about him was that he just had such unparalleled empathy for whoever he was talking with. You never had the feeling he was trying to get somebody, he just wanted to get them to talk and wanted to get the record straight and his emotional self was as strong as his intellect. As a journalist there was such a strength of his person who everyone who knew him knew. He was just beloved.
talking about R Kelly, I assume. Because she can't mean Russert.
Any reason is good enough not to like Wagner. Hitler is just the icing on the cake.
What's your brief against Russert, Ari?
I trust Ari to keep it classy. Anyone who doesn't like Jews as much as Ari doesn't like Jews is ok, deep down.
I endorse everything Ari has said or will say about Russert. I have no specific information and want to avoid making disgraceful comments during the next 24 hours.
I'm not writing Shakespeare dialogues like I did last time, unless Gonerill starts it.
You know who says something like "blah comment in the other thread is one of the best comments I've read," without linking to it, or even mentioning the name? Hitler. Hitler says something like that. Do you care what Hitler has to say about Tim Russert? I thought not.
Anyone who doesn't like Jews as much as Ari doesn't like Jews is ok, deep down.
It's always the Jews, isn't it? When will people acknowledge the damage done to civilization, culture and luscious white womanhood by those damned Druids?
Specifically, he may not have created the latest iteration of gotcha political journalism, but he perfected it. Perish the thought that any candidate or elected official should ever talk about matters of substance, Russert would always have a quote handy, absent context, from 1634. "So, Senator ----, I know you're on the show this week to talk about global warming. But in an interview with the Dubuque Cornian, you said that Kaus fucks sheep. But we all know he fucks goats. Why the mistake? Do you have a problem with sheep?" [/rant]
And so it went, on and on. Seriously, I'm very, very sorry for his loved ones that he died. But it's not a loss for the public sphere. And reading people like Ezra Klein saying nice things about him is enough to turn me into McManus raving about the blogosphere.
Ezra says, by way of an encomium: Whatever my issues with Russert's coverage, he was there, week after week, night after night, playing the bulldog against politicians in the way he thought best.
Oh, come on. Don't get me started on all the net-negative people who are just behaving "in the way [they think] best. Spare me the piffle. Why do all political bloggers think that they have to comment on this? And why, if they're going to comment, do they feel compelled to try to say nice things about the man's work? Why not just say: "He was reputed to be a great guy. He loved his family. He worked hard."
37: I tried to link. It didn't work. And the Godwin in your comment cracks me up (though I won't link to it, bitch), because I was going to have my comment above include the following: "Hitler was just trying to make the world a better place in the way he thought best." But I thought better of it. Why? Because I'm a better person than you, that's why.
I bet that Hitler would have loved Phil Spector's "Wall of Sound" if he had lived to hear it. He died 13 years too early, alas.
[rant -- again] You know how did well with this: Yglesias. Here's his Russert post: "Shocking news that Tim Russert has died of a heart attack at the young age of 58." It's particularly good if one reads it as a nod to this. [/rant]
And the best part of the above is at 2:30 or so: "Taft was."
From beyond the grave, Hitler's favorite song is "River Deep, Mountain High." His favorite blog? "Edge of the American West".
Hitler would have been an NBA junky, you can be sure of it. If he ran the show there'd be no ref problem, believe you me. There's be a special ref labor camp for the ones who made bad calls. Also for players who choked in big games, and for players who flopped all the time.
So, was Russert next in the line of succession to be dean of the Washington media if Broder had to find a new host body? Who's assistant dean now?
49: That's what I would have said if I hadn't self-censored. I have a reputation to keep up, you know, if I plan to advance to higher things.
No, I post everything on my own volition, though I have no memory of making that Hitler post.
Wait, what's this hand up my ass?
49. Wonkette? Maybe it reverts back to Helen Thomas, and thence passes through the distaff side.
if I plan to advance to higher things.
You mean Heaven?
f I plan to advance to higher things.You mean Heaven?
No, he means that he knows of a job opening that's just come available.
I'm negotiating with MSNBC, yes. I have to avoid scandal and intemperate remarks.
I will say this: it's going to be weird watching election returns without Russert bloviating and scratching out nonsense on his little whiteboard. Okay, the first part of that was almost nice. Try to concentrate on that, people, after I die.
You people are just so horrid
In other news, tho I know I will never get credit, I like to think I may have broken Obsidian Wings
There hasn't been a good liberal lawyer fight, oh, since HRC conceded.
Tim Who? I am very close to that age, of course. I hope you will treat me with the same respect should there be a sudden cessation of Bob-commenting. My dogs may notify you of my sudden demise, after they eat me.
22: Prosecutor: What would it take to convince you Mr. Kelly is guilty?
Dave Cappelle: Okay, I'd have to see a video of him singing "Pee On You," two forms of government ID, a police officer there to verify the whole thing, four or five of my buddies and Neal taking notes, and R. Kelly's grandma to confirm his identity.
R. Kelly's Grandma: That's my Robert, always peeing on people.
my first thought when i heard about the passing of the bluest of blue collars was how pissed he would have been had he known he'd die on a friday afternoon.
Jesus Christ, people. Give the Russert-hatred a rest. The American press corps was fucked up long before Tim Russert got a job at NBC - long before he was born, in fact - and nothing he did in the course of his relatively by-the-numbers career merits the kind of grave-dancing I've seen in this thread.
And for fuck's sake, he died of a sudden heart attack at 58. My parents are older than Tim Russert. This kind of shit scares the hell out of me. Jesus fuck.
I feel so ashamed. There's quite so embarrassing as having an assassin tell you you're an asshole.
There's NOTHING quite so embarrassing...
Now I really do feel ashamed.
62 makes a good point, but was it really necessary to go presidential-assassin for that comment?
64:And well you should be if you can't think of anything more embarrassing than that.
66: Really, you think it's a good point? Huh, maybe I do feel a bit bad then. Still and all, I don't think anyone was dancing on Russert's grave. I meant what I said above: I'm sorry for his loved ones; I can believe that he was a nice and decent man; but I think that the cloying praise for his work is misplaced. And really, I'm especially sick of the press patting itself on the back. The coverage of Russert's death, then, just seems like an EP of a pretty dull single that I already know too well.
Well, I'm older than Russert and could croak tomorrow, but, you know.
I ended up watching 40 minutes of the Olbermann tribute, and at the least balanced out any harm we've done here with equal and opposite harm. Chris Matthews used it as a sign of Russert's greatness that Bush knew that Russert was the one he had to fool if he wanted to fool America. I am not kidding.
In other news, the woman I ended up watching with met Brokaw when he started his career around here 40 years ago, and said that he was perfectly nice. She also gets a $900 SS chack and thinks that that's darn good money. And she still hates Roosevelt because WWII screwed up her life when her husband went off.
Really, you think it's a good point? Huh, maybe I do feel a bit bad then.
Oh hell. Now I feel a bit bad about making you feel a bit bad, especially since I do agree with your original comment. Hey! I know! Let's have a contest: your Jewish guilt against my Catholic guilt, and whoever feels the most shame and remorse by the end of this thread has to buy the other one a dozen doughnuts.
Well, I guess 62's "relatively by-the-numbers career" does go too far in letting him off the hook. I feel weird about criticizing someone on the very day he died, though, but probably that's wrong because it doesn't distinguish between public and private.
The media's self-referential coverage of the media is always appalling, of course.
Both you guys are from Canada, right? Bears!
1. Hitler would be mourning Tim Russert.
2. Hitler would weep over Krauthammer's useless legs.
3. Hitler would be gay for Eli Lake.
Hitler would fuck a bear in a New York minute.
I was taken aback by the hangin'-with-Megan quality of Dana Goldstein's reaction, about what a gentleman he was, etc.
It's not that people shouldn't have human feelings for those whom they've met and interacted with, shared trips and meals; it'd be wrong and worrisome if they didn't.
But the village aspect, the sense that journalists understand each other and cut each other slack, also those who shmooze and hang with them, like John McCain, that leaves us wondering just how much these feelings and trusts impact their work, and what we rubes in the provinces should remember about it.
Ari's just mad because Russsert's passing was so unexpected. I too thought we'd have many more years to try and hurt his feelings.
I like to think I may have broken Obsidian Wings
I don't understand the claim. But I've been mostly out of that loop (with a notable exception) for quite a while . . .
Tim Russert: a giant-headed man with giant-size feelings to hurt.
76:I don't understand the claim.
And that's OK.
A little scared to run around the coopted blogosphere. I can remember the day they weren't hacks. Even Drum was independently centristly boring, and you had Billmon and Gilliard for relief. Jesus help me, it's gonna be a long eight years.
78: you can troll the poor man if you want, Bob.
77: Those of us with hat sizes 7 5/8 and over may be relieved to note that macrocephaly has not yet been implicated as a complicating factor in his demise.
80: wow, that's a bigger head than mine, even! Throwback!
Although come to think of it not much bigger. I forget if I'm 3/8ths or 5.
An interesting rule of thumb is that probably 70% of men think they have anamolously giant heads.
Not bigger than mine, I blush to observe.
The kicking of the corpse says all one needs to hear about how much of the blogosphere's particular combination of flavors emanates from principle and how much from thwarted spite.
Let's have a contest
If I don't win, my grandmother will think she failed. And then I'll feel even guiltier. So just hand over the donuts, okay?
Actually I didn't mean to be harsh. It seems like a tragedy for his family, he seems like a hard worker and good friend, and in the scheme of our fucked-up media wasn't more than a well-paid pawn.
83: An interesting rule of thumb is that probably 70% of men think they have anamolously giant heads.
About the same percentage who think they are above-average athletes (I recall seeing a result like that once, but couldn't find it online), which contributes greatly to some of the behaviors described in the Dick Ball thread.
anamolously
This is killing me. Just great.
I had not been aware until fairly recently that men worry about the size of their heads. My sense is that self-described pin-headed men worry more.
Is there an inches-to-hat-size comparison chart for those of us following along at home, who may never have bought a sized hat? I mean, this time we can measure decorously in a public place.
"anomalously", f'in anal cunt Sifu.
What's average, anyway? 7 5/8 must be bigger than average given the difficulty in finding hats that fit, but I don't have much idea what's "normal."
That's binary, linear, Piscean-Age Second Millenium thinking, Flippanter. Principled spite is the triumphant new paradigm. The left brain, the right brain, and the reptile brain all joined into a powerful, seamless unity.
If I don't win, my grandmother will think she failed. And then I'll feel even guiltier.
Oh, no fair bringing in your grandmother. You win.
89: head circumference divided by ok, per wikipedia.
My beloved 3.6 y.o. grandnephew is already proud of his big head. No fake humility at all, he just comes out and brags.
90: Sorry! Battlestar Galactica is on. They don't know how to spell "fuckin'", there.
Principled spite is the triumphant new paradigm.
This is so excellent.
An interesting rule of thumb is that probably 70% of men think they have anamolously giant heads.
Hat size, she don't lie. One of the more alarming episodes of parenthood was having to take one of my daughters in for a hastily-requested MRI after their 18-month checkup, when her cranial circumference was found to be off the charts. I spent a day frantically researching hydrocephaly, when in retrospect I should have just told the pediatrician, dude, you should meet my family.
98: I was delivered by Caesarian, what with my head being too darn big to fit.
My nephew was in the 100th percentile for head size in his state. Delivered via c-section, thank god.
In my hat buying odyssey one store just outright turned me away, having nothing whatsoever in my size.
Sifu's head is like Sputnik! Spherical, but quite pointy in parts.
Oh, no fair bringing in your grandmother. You win.
Never bring a knife to a gun fight*, Marty Catherine.
* aka a battle over guilt with a Jew
MC, don't let him fool you. It was really you Catholics who killed Our Lord. The Jews have been fraudulently claiming credit all these centuries.
My dogs may notify you of my sudden demise, after they eat me.
OK, this is totally creepy and awful, but this made me think about what if a commenter died and his or her loved ones didn't know that they should notify us? Everyone go please put instructions in your safe deposit box.
105: dogs won't eat you. Cats will eat your face, but that's all.
I was in the Portrait Gallery today, and you know who has a head that's all out of proportion? Gen. Sherman.
Sifu will never know how wrong he is, but the people who find him will know. They nuzzle you for awhile mournfully, and then after awhile shrug and say to themselves (in dog language) "What the hell, might as well go for it."
94: owned by iPhone predictive text entry.
105: subject came up in a thread in my first few months, Spring 2006 or thereabouts. Maybe before or since that I don't know about.
Most have some real name/personal connection with some other commentators, so that word would get out. For the proudly or otherwise anonymous, an instruction like you suggest would probably be effective, although I don't know of any instances.
109: well, shoot. Excellent point, as mods.
108: I have cats. Call me no-face!
My dogs may notify you of my sudden demise
you never know when you'll die and actually i'm not afraid to die, not at all, rather curious like what will happen
i saw for example 20 people to die in my life, some were my patients, mostly from the multi-organ failure, one dies and one's face changes instantly, like the switch off
two people from my hs the same graduation yr already died, one from leukemia, another just disappeared in China, his family couldn't do anything to find him
and two people from my uni class too, one died carrying a patient to the town center, drowned the whole emergency car driving on the frozen lake
another one died during giving the birth
so life is fleeting, should try to enjoy it while can
Don't know what "ok" means, size appears to be diameter of circle with circumference of your head, which is not circular, i.e. circumference divided by pi.
Mine appears bigger than it is, being wide but not so long.
7 1/2.
Sometimes when I wake up at night, I find my cat sitting on my bedside table, staring at me. I think she's hoping I've died, and is wondering whether my eyeballs would be tasty.
115: ok means pi, yes. Stupid iPhone.
105: I have thought about that, but been comforted to think that someone I know IRL will appear here and tell you I've come to my demise.
Just over 7 5/8ths, on measuring.
It's not Russert per se that got to me; he was not a very good journalist but not a remarkably bad one either, just ridiculously overrated, & in any case is nowhere near the level of evil-doing it ought to take to make me unwilling to observe basic social norms about speaking ill of the dead. It's the whole corrupt Village that appointed him its elder.
I don't know my hat size. I really do think it's pretty enormous, though, particularly in comparison to my puny little shoulders.
Original comment that sat in preview for a couple of hours deleted, but only because I lack the courage of Ari's convictions. (Katherine in 122 sums it up pretty well.) So I'll save gnawing on his ginormous skull for later. But two predictions:
1) They are so going to name something after him. (I'm thinking a broadcast journalism award.)
2) There will be a moment of silence for him at the first presidential debate this fall.
And the lurkers? Must they pass unmourned?
Mine appears bigger than it is, being wide but not so long.
7 1/2.
This comment is best read out of context.
I can remember the day they weren't hacks.
What day was this, exactly?
125: Hardly, the other lurkers withhold their comments out of respect for their passing.
what if a commenter died and his or her loved ones didn't know that they should notify us?
Is my circumstance. The lady doesn't know about blogs, and doesn't want to. Not much different than online scrabble or something to her.
Another reason to feel guilty in hell.
rather curious like what will happen
I'm rather not. In a Pascal's Wager thing, I started saying the child's morbid prayer, and now it's a habit. Funny I can't seem to shake the last shred of uncertainty. Lord help me in my unbelief.
Heck, I just didn't care about Russert. I didn't like or dislike him, I have watched him in more than glances maybe twice in ten years. Just a guy. I can't bring up the feelings I had about Vonnegut or Heath Ledger or Friedman or Saddam.
I know it tolls for me & thee. I know. After a while it just all kinda blends into this great big thing, so a baby born you see the graduation and marriage and grandchildren and wake all at once, like the tubes in Donnie Darko or the end montage of Six Feet Under. Even the compassion and callousness tend to merge.
I hard to work to remember Steve Gilliard's name today.
I think speaking ill of dead journalists is completely in order. It's what we do to the living for our living, after all. But this is not a widely shared view. Just recently I wrote a piece about a dead colleague -- a bad journalist and a nasty man -- and from the fuss his colleagues made you'd have thought I had spoken ill of Hitler or something.
You wrecked Hitler's car! What did he ever do to you?
My nephew was in the 100th percentile for head size in his state.
Impossible.
You know, I saw that. And I said to myself, "I wonder how long will it's going to take Ben to notice this." I have to admit, I'm surprised it took you this long. Your reaction time seems to be slowing. Maybe you should check in on the aging thread.
You wrecked Hitler's car! What did he ever do to you?
ACK! ACK! New song butchery!
[To the tune of 'Take the Skinheads Bowling']
Every day, I get up and pray to Jah
And he decreases the number of fucks by exactly one
Everybody's Kinder, Küche, Kirche these days
Last night the SA made me yawn
[Chorus!]
Take Hitler bowling, take him bowling.
Take Hitler bowling, take him bowling.
Some people say that bowling alleys have big lanes (totally insane x2)
Some people say that asiatic hordes all look the same (got no names x2)
The Chancellor's first name doesn't rhyme with anything (on the brain x2)
Had a scream last night but I forgot what it was about (bullshit buzz x2)
Had an iron dream about schadenfreude, my friend
Had an iron dream - I was sleeping with sturm und drang
Had an iron dream - I wanted to steal your fees
Had an iron dream - it was about whatever
[Chorus]
max
['Ow.']
You know, nobody should feel guilty about dissing an overpaid mediocrity who even died in a boring way. You can't beat Byron's ode to Castlereagh in nastiness anyway. Just be disappointed it wasn't O'Reilly.
133.---No, that's what I said! But then my sister replied that it meant his was the largest head on record. She is an honest-to-god scientist who does like statistics and shit.
You can't beat Byron's ode to Castlereagh in nastiness anyway.
Byron could, maybe.
Look, there's obviously some threshold at which the normal rules of tact and decency regarding the recently dead don't have to apply, and above that threshold is a large class of villains and monsters - dictators, child molesters, former presidents - but do we really want to be lowering that threshold to someone like Tim Russert? What, exactly, was his great and terrible sin, other than success in a field defined by mediocrity? He worked in an environment where the standard for journalism typically meant - and had meant for decades - mild questioning of authority in largely trivial areas, where the ultimate function of journalism is to act as a mouthpiece for the powerful. Do people like Ari really imagine that the world would be a better place if Tim Russert hadn't been here? Because that seems completely naive to me. Russert filled a certain ecological niche, and if it wasn't him on Meet The Press doing the inconsistent quote act it would've been someone else.
There's a certain kind of media criticism within the blogosphere that's relentlessly focused on individual actors - Chris Matthews one day, Joe Klein the next, Wolf Blitzer or Charles Gibson or Tim Russert the next - that strikes me as hopelessly misguided. All of these people are products of a corporate media - and, ultimately, an economic system - that has certain economic motives to push media coverage in certain directions, and to make other kinds of media coverage taboo. The problem has never been the Tim Russerts, and behaving as if this were a problem of just a few bad apples, or even just a "village mentality," is woefully misjudging the scope of a disease whose root lies in corporatized capitalism itself.
I can sympathize with Tim Russert as a human being working in a flawed and stupid system. I've made my share of compromises, and I've embraced my share of mediocrity. (I realize that a lot of the commenters here work in academia, and simply can't identify with this kind of thing, so you'll just have to use your imaginations.) That doesn't make Russert a hero or someone especially praiseworthy, but doesn't make him worthy of the grave-pissing attitude, either. If mediocrity were a mortal sin, we'd all be hellbound.
139 seems to completely ignore several comments above.
I've made my share of compromises, and I've embraced my share of mediocrity. (I realize that a lot of the commenters here work in academia, and simply can't identify with this kind of thing, so you'll just have to use your imaginations.)
?
?!
?!?!?!?!
141: Don't feed the presidential assassins, rob.
141: For exactly this was the interrobang created.
‽‽‽‽
Do people like Ari really imagine that the world would be a better place if Tim Russert hadn't been here?
I do, but I'm not "a person like Ari", goddammit.
Russert filled a certain ecological niche, and if it wasn't him on Meet The Press doing the inconsistent quote act it would've been someone else.
That's what Eichmann said. (In other contexts he would say "Be the change you want to see in the world", "If not me, who? If not now, when?", "In a hundred years it won't make any difference", and "Today is the first day of the rest of your life".)
I can sympathize with Tim Russert as a human being working in fattening up on a flawed and stupid system. I've made my share of compromises, and I've embraced my share of mediocrity.
Mediocre people look much worse when they're pompous, rich, and dishonest. Cheney was able to use Russert to stovepipe disinformation to the America people, and Russert was unembarrassed by that.
I agree that it's the system as a whole, from the top down, that's the primary problem, but the bylined individuals are totally implicated in the system. They profit from the system, whereas other suffer from the system.
141: Academic people have no imagination.
The patsy is making a mockery of the presidentiality guidelines.
I interrupt this never-ending decency dispute to point out that one of the NRO people commented on the R. Kelly acquittal by using the word "micturate," which makes me irrationally happy.
139: Again, Lee, I regret that I've offended your highly evolved sense of decency. One really does try to avoid running afoul of assassins. But really, you seem to be pretty willfully misconstruing some things I've written. So either read up, shut up, or go back to being dead, okay?
In case neither a, b, nor c will work for you, I'll clarify one more time: Russert always seemed like a genial enough fellow to me. By all accounts he was a great friend and a wonderful family man. He certainly loved his father enough to write not one but two hugely profitable books about that relationship. And, having myself lost loved ones, rather suddenly, to heart disease, I'm genuinely very sorry for those who cared for him.
That said, the media's -- and in this case some bloggers' -- kneejerk response to anoint him a hero of modern times is just too much. You ask if the world would be a better place had he never lived. I have no idea. But I do think our discourse would be better. I explained why above. You can read my comment again, or for the first time, if you'd like. Or don't.
As to your point that media criticism gets bogged down in personalities, well, that's because the media is personality driven. Which, in no small part, was the foundation of Russert's career. He made no effort, so far as I know, to reform the corrupt system that made him a hugely rich man. And yes, I expect that everyone here, including the vast majority of people who are nice enough not to speak ill of the dead, know that we're talking about a structural problem. But Russert was a key part of that rotting structure. Rather than acknowledging that rot, he reveled in it. He loved the media, thought it was doing god's work (perhaps literally), and never missed the chance to clap one of his press pals on the back.
In sum, spending time saying nice things about the man's work, as distinct from the parts of his life that net positives, seems like a rather ill-considered project, yet another way that the media, as you say, props up the status quo. Why you're on board with this passes understanding. But hey, you killed a president, right? So looking to someone like you for sane readings of the culture might actually be my most naive move yet.
139: I should note also, PGD, that this was some pretty good trolling. You got five paragraphs out of me, the classic middle school essay!
Right. It's not that he did anything nearly bad enough for me to say he's hellbound, be glad he died of a heart attack, to not be sad for his family, to think the country's better off, etc. etc. etc. But it grates a bit to hear him praised to the skies for his unflinching journalistic quality, willingness to speak truth to power, etc. etc. by people who equally lack & congratulate themselves on those qualities. Even if you were observing a general "hold your tongue policy" on Strom Thurmond's or Jesse Helms' death it would annoy you to hear the GOP Senate caucus praise him for his commitment to racial justice, right? (Not that Russert is at all comparable to Thurmond or Helms, but a bold speaker of truth to power he was not).
146: The patsy is making a mockery of the presidentiality guidelines.
Oh, I just assumed he was actually Big Russ.
Let me make one attempt to pull this thread back in by noting that R. Kelly has thrice paid settlements to underage girls he *allegedly* had sex with. LEt me also point out that as per Slate, a major component of the defense was that *if* that girl in the tape was really R Kelly's 13 yr old goddaughter, her family would have beat Kelly up. Sicnce 13 yr old girls cannot be expected to keep secrets and since Kelly was not beat up, she must not be in the tape.
152: Sybil, if your point is that R Kelly is a worse person than Russert was, I agree. And I'll go one better: When R Kelly dies, if I happen still to be alive and commenting here, I won't tolerate eulogies that are soft on pedophilia.
Speaking for myself, I've stated my own two fundamental principles of politics already: 1.) The American people don't agree with you about most things, and 2.) Beggars can't be choosers.
I'll add 3.) Major improvements are not to be expected within my lifetime. (IE, the Reagan-Thatcher transformation will not be overturned in the next 20 years or so, but only moderated).
A wretchedly bad but firmly-entrenched media has played a major role in pushing me toward resigned reasonableness, and Russert was a big part of that (even though he was in the less-bad half, compared to Limbaugh, O'Reilly, Savage, et al.)
So along with resigned reasonableness comes quite considerable resentment and nastiness: "principled spite", I call it. Please don't deny an agéd man one of the few small pleasures remaining to him.
S/B The American people don't agree with you me about most things
My point has nothing to do with Russert, whom I am uninterested in discussing. My point is fully that R Kelly is a fuckwad and I can't believe he got acquitted.
i also thought 139 were PGD
i'm getting so good at reading people here :)
i always wonder why people are like spiteful, i mean not this particular thread
if the deceased was not a killer or rapist or something like that, equally evil, the moral thing to do is just don't speak ill about the deceased for some time that decency requires'
just b/c he/she was another human being with all his/her mistakes and sufferings and it's over
this judging people posthumously on what the one was, conservative or liberal, is pretty narrow minded for the liberals i would say
My point is fully that R Kelly is a fuckwad and I can't believe he got acquitted.
It seems parallel to the set of trials involving Michael Jackson: buy the kid off, beat the rap, and repeat. Sad, but at this point, I don't think it can be considered unexpected. Maybe it points out how hard it is to win a sex crime case without the support of the victim; that's something I hadn't had a sense of before.
157: read, that isn't what people were saying, I think. The point was that he wasn't a great journalist, he didn't speak truth to power, he didn't push the bounds of the system he worked in. He was a bog standard (for today) media `personality', and happy to play along.
So while there is no reason to speak ill of the guy, as you say, there is also no reason to pretend he was something that he manifestly was not. It really doesn't matter what his politics were.
The point was that he wasn't a great journalist, he didn't speak truth to power, he didn't push the bounds of the system he worked in.
you can say what you think about him, sure
just not this hastily right after his death
everybody will get judged sooner or later according to his deeds, but for the sake of one's own conscience maybe it's better to refrain doing things you'll regret afterwards imo
156: Sybil, I hear you. What are the odds that R. Kelly will *allegedly* have sex with more underage girls in the future? It's really appalling that he gets away with it.
What Ari and Katherine said. I do struggle with the timing of the discussion, but the since the media apparently cannot control their impulse for self-puffery by lavishly overpraising someone like Tim immediately upon his death (to the level that they think the ratings will tolerate), I feel no compunction to withhold some relatively mild balancing words. I wish that it were not so, read, but then again I note that the media machine itself, which enriched Tim Russert by tens of millions of dollars, shows no such restraint in their treatment of folks like Anna Nicole Smith immediately following their untimely demises.
John does have it right with "principled spite". Sad, but silence in the face of blathering reinforcement of unprincipled hegemony is assent.
Does anyone wonder whether there was a racial aspect to the R. Kelly acquittal? I.e., a sort of "those people can't be controlled/trusted/expected to behave decently" view of the victim, witnesses, etc., by the jury? If I recall the Slate pieces correctly, the jury was 8/4 white/black.
well, i don't watch tv and did not know who the person was until yesterday, maybe i watched him sometimes not recognising though
everybody follows what he/she thinks is right, one can't change people's mind, sure
i can speak only for myself and what i'd tell to my kids, that's all, i did not intend to preach etc
usually i follow the principle of loyalty to who is closer to me, so, JE's principled spite maybe is rational and good for the greater good
who knows maybe i'll learn to enjoy it someday
163:You're the only one.
I don't have any idea who Kelly is, but I did watch the HBO Roman Polanski doc Thurs night mentioned at the top of the thread. I have little to say about it, except if you haven't ever seen Fearless Vampire Killers you should. Polanski and Tate were an unbelievably beautiful couple madly in love with each other. 60s Polanski was awesome.
The girl, now an attractive woman with two kids, never looked badly damaged, even at 13. She just hated that kind of attention. And God knows Polanski has suffered enough. She forgave him, and so do I.
Back to spite. Boo tools.
this is a decent piece, and a cute story.
Now that R. Kelly's been exonerated, he's bound to be right back at the top of McCain's short list.
166: Yeah, I suspect it was a bit tricky for Leibovich to write and it shows through a bit, I hardly knew Tim Russert personally, and I hesitate to even relay this for fear of appearing to. Leibovich is a bit of an "edgy" writer by beltway standards and you can see him balancing that image against an implicit "you'll never eat lunch in this town again" threat if he goes to far. Goes into the file with Sally Quinn's late '90s piece as primary source material on the ways of the Village. The bobblehead anecdote is great.
166: I like that one, too. Unlike the bland king-making eulogy, it's a nice description of the odd, somewhat hypocritical position Russert was in, and how he managed it with some grace. I was never a big Russert fan, and that hypocrisy annoyed me, but he was never among the worst of the worst, just a guy balancing a reputation for toughness against an easily-punctured rhetorical gambit so that no one would actually avoid an interview with him, and it flattered them to be seen "holding up" against his shallow criticisms. The whole truth-to-power thing is absurd, since his interviewing style seems to have been crafted to provide the mildly intelligent with simple exercises.
AWB, just yesterday you said "I RUN THE FUCKING LEAGUE." And now this. Are you opposed to easy fitness for the mildly intelligent?
The girl, now an attractive woman with two kids, never looked badly damaged, even at 13.
Yea, well, it's probably that Polanski never pissed on her. On film.
170: Alas, I am the Tim Russert of Prospect Park softball. I can't hate.
We anxiously await the unveiling of the AWB bobble-head doll.
In 1969 or so I met a bright middle-class LA 14-year old who had already had more sexual partners than the average adult. Some friends of mine ran a private school out in the boonies and she had been sent there to cool her jets a little, but she'd already met a local hippie in his 20s and I imagine that nature took its course.
Note: I never touched her. I am a theorist of age-of-consent, not someone who needed to know the law for urgent personal reasons.
At that time she seemed pretty much undamaged unless you thought of promiscuity itself as damage.
Kelly seems creepy in multiple ways, this is in reference mostly to Polanski, who also had a thing with Nastassja Kinski who was about 15.
I wonder if being very short had anything to do with it. He claimed 5'5" but he seems much shorter.
Seriously, maybe we could have a Dolly Madison / Abigail Adams thread where women here could talk about their experiences with much older men and including their underage experiences. It's not a topic that it's easy to talk about ooenly for a variety of reasons.
Seriously, maybe we could have a Dolly Madison / Abigail Adams thread where women here could talk about their experiences with much older men and including their underage experiences.
Perv.
Such prurience ill behooves the anti-relationshipist.
Love of truth is what drives me, AWB. Perviness is secondary.
Polanski's victim:
Geimer never had therapy for what happened, saying the frequent retelling [to reporters] "pretty much took the place of going to a therapist."
Most of the women I know who had relationships with much older men when they were teenagers seemed "relatively undamaged" afterwards, if you don't count being kind of neurotic and low self-esteemy. And a lot of people have that.
That said, the men are still pigs.
I wonder if being very short had anything to do with it. He claimed 5'5" but he seems much shorter.
Sharon Tate was tall & buxom, with a stable & even dominant (earth mother?) personality. Natassja was never emotionally fragile, and from what I can tell from the doc, neither was Geimer. These three, and E Seigner AFAIK, were very strong centered women. Looking for a mother?
We have two examples of Polanski & underage females, and only two, AFAIK. And I don't know that Kinski counts.
Most of the women I know who had relationships with much older men when they were teenagers seemed "relatively undamaged" afterwards, if you don't count being kind of neurotic and low self-esteemy. And a lot of people have that.
I can easily imagine that self esteem in this group is lower than average, but even then there is an issue of the direction of causation. Most likely we are dealing with reciprocal causation, as usual.
I love data-free sociology.
She [Kinski] has stated that as a child she felt exploited by the industry and told a journalist from W Magazine, "If I had had somebody to protect me or if I had felt more secure about myself, I would not have accepted certain things. Nudity things. And inside it was just tearing me apart". [2]Wiki
...oh well
Next up, Milla Jovanovich
179: IME, I feel like my relationships with much older men were not totally a bad thing, in that no one else was paying attention to me and it gave me what I wanted, which was sexual experience and knowledge. OTOH, most older guys who perv on young women tend to be really controlling and dommy, which makes the young women learn to be super-flexible, easygoing, eager-to-please subs. Now that I've sort of grown out of that phase, and I'm turned off by older, manipulative dudes, I often feel stuck in a sort of emotional no-man's-land. I don't ask for anything in relationships, not because I'm shy, but because I've never really had a chance to figure out what I would want if I did feel free to ask for things. I have quite a bit of kinky sexual experience, which apparently is somewhat intimidating to guys my age, and I'm just starting to understand what it's like to have sex with someone, as opposed to sex being something you sort of take turns doing to one another. (Until recently, I didn't even realize that the latter had been my experience.) There's a lot I don't know about romantic relationships that aren't based in unilateral control, so I probably seem pretty wishy-washy or emotionally blank, when really I just don't feel like I have language for talking about those things. I know how to be funny, crude, sexy, smart, and chummy, but not how to be lovable. And I'm feeling that as a loss for the first time over the past few years.
I don't blame the older men I dated---I wanted exactly what they gave me. But I do fear it was a dangerous precedent to set in my emotional life, to be 28 and realize I know nothing about companionate relationships between equals.
Actually, seriously, I'd like to see that thread. Quite possibly a pattern would emerge. I have no idea what the pattern would be. As I've said many times before, this strikes me as an anthropologically peculiar transformation of American life, and the permissible discourse seems to be either victimization stories or sexsationalistic tell-alls (Pamela De Barres). So maybe the Unfoggedegyniat could step forward with their tales of woe or otherwise.
A friend of mine used to work with a woman who had the most famous teen-adult relationship in Oregon history. In legal terms, of course, the definition of that relationship is "statutory rape". She was apparently kind of fucked up, though how much of that came from having sex with the mayor is uncertain. My friend said that she used to threaten to expose him, despite being paid hush money, but the truth came out anyway.
Jovovich?
if being very short had anything to do with it
infantilism of one's mind plays a role i think
if one's mental self-image is that of 14-16 yo, one's going to be attracted to the younger people, like even underage, he perceives them as equals maybe
and the reason why one would stop growing mentally after that age is explained by the childhood trauma etc
have no idea whether Polansky suffered that, but if one grew during the WWII, all kinds of trauma is possible maybe
I know how to be funny, crude, sexy, smart, and chummy, but not how to be lovable.
Gosh, I would think being funny, crude, sexy, smart, and chummy is enough to make you lovable. I never really asked for more.
188: Naw, I promise, there really is something missing, and I realize it especially at times like these, when I'm trying to figure out how to proceed in a relationship. There's a way that I feel myself thinking about this situation as some game I can figure out the rules to in order to reach the objective. I've talked to several girlfriends about it, and they all said it never would have occurred to them to think about a situation like this in this way; if they cared a lot, they'd contact him and ask what's up, and if they didn't, they'd let it drift. They admitted that doing the former often creates awkwardness, but that they couldn't help but express their feelings. And because I can't even begin to understand what I want, feeling-wise, from any relationship, it's much easier to think about relationships exclusively from the perspective of sex.
It's quite possible the guy I've been seeing is no longer interested in me because he doesn't see it becoming the kind of relationship he wants. From the perspective of sex, it's a lot easier for me to say, "Well, he's an idiot if he gives this up; we're having fantastic sex." Since the former seems to happen every time I try to date someone who's not pathologically manipulative, I have to consider the problem that I'm just not the sort of woman an emotionally healthy guy wants to be with for more than a month.
Or that you're the sort of woman who doesn't know what you want, and that what the guy wants is irrelevant.
Maybe you just want a relationship where you only have to be funny, crude, sexy, smart, and chummy.
B, check your e-mail for a very important message.
You may have won a million dollars, B.
Even more important than that (hint: it's about video games).
...that they couldn't help but express their feelings.
Express their what? What their feelings? I'm not following you.