Yadda yadda yadda, one year later they're married, his daughter's started hanging out with a nicer crowd, and he's finally at peace with himself.
Hella weak, even for musical theater.
What do you expect from The Conservative Voice, great drama?
I'm pretty sure This American Life already did that Minuteman story, with the additional filip that he was a sucker for weepy Mexican ballads.
His wife was a tuba player and loved nothing more than bomping out those mournful bass lines.
The young foreign born woman always gets a raw deal.
he gets iton like gangbusters with his new father-in-law.
Then we can cover all the right wing phobias.
I can forward you some emails from redstate if you'd like to continue this exercise.
5: dang. I was regretting my phrasing already ("weepy Mexican ballads" would have been so much better as "lachrymose sureño balladry"), but that's just humiliating.
The young foreign born woman always gets a raw deal.
Somewhat like hypens in that regard.
8 - Play it like a nod to Roth's The Plot Against America written in the style of Riddley Walker. I'd believe you!
See, Ben, post like this are why *you* never get denounced by the Catholic League.
One might also note the author's technique here:
Big media is swooning over him like love-sick teenagers.
The author refuses to commit to either "Big media are swooning over him like love-sick teenagers" or "Big media is swooning over him like a love-sick teenagers," thus highlighting the paradox of Big Media as a collection of individuals supposedly representing a multitude of perspectives who can act only as a single entity.
Bravo, brave scribbler.
On my naming day when I come 57 I gone front rifle I shot a beaner on the border he musta been the last one to attempt the crossing anyhow I aint seen none for a long time before him nor I aint lookin to see none agen.
In this world full of neglect, jms, all we can do is love one another.
14: How will we tell when ben actually has gone batshit crazy?
I would avoid making that diagnosis before researching the subject, myself.
The introduction to this post reminds me of travel writing.
"For some reason, I've felt compelled to spend every weekend of August and September travelling to our country's great state fairs."
"I don't know how it happened, but late last year I, my girlfriend Krista, and a dog named Bosco found ourselves on the Trans-Siberian Railway."
This is the result of compromising between the obligation to write in the first person, and the obligation to not sound like you took the trip just in order to write about it in your capacity as a professional travel writer.
Now I'm not saying ben w-lfs-n subscribes to conservative mailing lists just so he can serendipitously come across things to blog about. But a lot of people do.
I really don't know how I got on this mailing list. Really, truly.
I think your comments on the sentence --
People are acting as if he's the greatest celebrity on Earth or even some sort of cult leader ...
-- are right (if a little wordy; sorry). But isn't the strange thing here the use of the word "even"? The term "celebrity" implies widespread agreement on who is to be celebrated, but a cult leader, by definition, is somebody who is celebrated by only a few.
It was from buying that Kinkade with your credit card.
http://thomaskinkadegallery.com/?gclid=CPWvl721mJUCFRIcawodLHCzPA
swetbacks
Shouldn't that be ¡wetback¡ , if you're going to use... whatever you were trying to do there?
Yadda yadda yadda, one year later they're married, his daughter's started hanging out with a nicer crowd
Nonono.
a young (24)(15) illegal immigrant who's crossing the border to look for work in the States so that she can send money back home to her own ailing father
Which gives us:
Yadda yadda yadda, one year later they're married, his daughter's started hanging out with a nicer crowd, and he's finally at peace with himself. At the wedding, he gets on like gangbusters with his new father-in-law. And then he gets arrested for being a Mormon. But she's still a US citizen, so she can bail him out.
max
['It's a tragicomicdrama with a happy ending.']
Shouldn't that be ¡wetback¡ , if you're going to use... whatever you were trying to do there?
I succeeded in doing what I was trying to do there, thanks much.
19: I'm guessing Manhunt sold them a list with your name on it. That's probably the behind-the-scenes story of how the CEO got fired.
Field Notes
In re: 17
Aug. 18, 2008
Following Saturday's regrettable episode, subject has managed to reconnect to reality by linking to a writer, thus "linking" one of his delusional personalities to a real person. (The delusion of being a writer persists, however.) We may contrast this with his "eb" personality, which can interact, or "link" to people only if they behave like characters from folklore.
18: Heh.
"Somehow, someone on the NAMBLA list-serv got my email and sent me some spam about a John Wayne Gacy fan club and link up, which is so not ok, really. Anyway, my interest was piqued, though only because of a professional curiousity with necrophilia, and I decided to put on my favorite circus clown make-up and attend incognito as it were...."
22: Robert Brandom uses superscript S's for "scare quotes" to distinguish them from single quotes, which are used to mention the word, and double quotes, which are used to represent the fact that someone else is using the word.
Brandom is the only person I know who follows these conventions. (Well, I guess, now, Ben is a second person.) You would think that people who write about conventionality, group norms, and language use would be more sensitive to the difficulties of making up symbolisms whole cloth.
I only use the superscript S like that, hm, not quite ironically, but not really seriously. So I guess I should have little superscript S's around the superscript S's: "ssswetbacksss".
making up symbolisms whole cloth.
Yeah, that's so fetch.
swetbacks is ben's shoutout to Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song.
30: Oddly, I had the exact same thought.
On the filial piety tip, I thought it was interesting that filial piety is a major plot point in Night and the City. Those Mediterraneans!
I really don't know how I got on this mailing list. Really, truly.
Really, truly, I believe you. I got on the same mailing list a couple of years ago. I was mystified, not to mention horrified; I put a 'block sender' on the address.
B. hasn't asked, but surely she would like it if the Mineshaft would offer up a few suggestions for interesting and/or offbeat topics for her to blog about from the convention. Last time around, someone (from the Boston Globe, IIRC) did a story on the delegates from poor districts (e.g. native reservations) who attend the convention but don't get invited to the swanky parties can't afford to go out on the town or even stay in a proper hotel room. Along the same lines, I think a blogger like B. could shine a light on some aspects of the convention that the circulation and advertising driven media don't bother with.
And with that, I'm about to take off on an overnight flight, so y'all be good.
We may contrast this with his "eb" personality
I object to the implication that the "eb" personality is "linked" to someone else.
And with that, I'm about to take off on an overnight flight, so y'all be good.
This little nugget of potentially interesting information just casually dropped, and almost after-the-fact, as it were... Ah, the world-weary sophistication of the Unfogged commentariat, who are of course way too hip to call themselves the "jet set," unless of course ironically intended.
So? Where're you going to, anyway? I don't mind admitting to a bit of curiosity.
Knecht is a hitman, MC. If he tells you, then you'll be an accomplice.
If he tells you, then you'll be an accomplice.
It's okay, though, I'm no longer a non-Resident Alien, I've got my papers. Not that I'm advertising my services as a hired gun, I hasten to add.
36: the problem, based on my experience last time, is that bloggers are on the very outer outskirts of the outside, peering in vain that they might get the merest glance in, and mollified from time to time with special blogger-oriented events. The only people less connected are the college democrats.
Has anyone suggested that B do Edwards fellatio liveblogging?
42: Sort of a reverse Al Goldstein-Linda Lovelace interview?
Do conservatives still not know that the best evidence that something isn't funny are the words 'humor and wit' in its marketing? It's like the Wal-Mart salami that says 'LUXURY' on the outside.
Wal-mart crap doesn't tend to be *that* blatant in advertising its crappiness.
Along the same lines, I think a blogger like B. could shine a light on some aspects of the convention that the circulation and advertising driven media don't bother with.
I doubt she'll let the press corps snort coke off her ass, if that's what you mean, but I do imagine she'll manage to ferret out the poorly hidden misogyny of the incumbent political culture, and then bitch about the shocking state of the principals' cummerbunds.
"People are acting as if he's the greatest celebrity on Earth"
Mostly the McCain campaign, in my experience.
Ben,
You are a great person to know - for learning me the word 'otiose' if for nothing else!
Sorry to my critical posse, but the needle of my broken record has slipped back into the authoritarian groove, skip this if you want.
I think this alert is speaking directly to their authoritarian base. That base knows very well what cult leaders and followers are, because they themselves are very much cult followers.
So this alert is saying - look out, this guy is dangerous, because he's got a cult following and you ALL know how powerful that can be! Ooooooh!
Now we reasonable people will say how ironic, they denounce cult followers while being one. Indeed the Daily Show frequently uses that style of humor.
Maddeningly though the authoritarian followers are unable to see that connection. Really. Their compartmentalized brains simply cannot make that connection!
So this alert speaks directly to the base and also to the authoritarian follower streak that may exist to some degree in all of us.
So I conclude that pointing out the internal conflict will simply not work with this group. Reasoning with them will not work with them either. The only thing that might work is time - time for them to eventually see the cognitive dissonance. Personal experience might work, too, but that is hard to give on a large scale.
Exposing one of their leaders works temporarily but other leaders quickly step forward and capture them back since they are such easy pickings.
Putting things bluntly we've got a large potentially dangerous cult in our midst. If we were amoral Republicans we'd steal them and use them for our own purposes. Or we might splinter them into smaller groups to fight against themselves.
Instead, being reasonable people, we try to reason with them and wonder why we always fail.
Oh, and Ben, I totally share your artistic vision of the report.
May I suggest that the Minuteman himself is estranged from his own Father because he was emotionally poisoned by his mother who was embittered when his father had an affair with one of the Mexican workers who left him with the love-child who was the Minuteman. The Mother used the Minuteman as a passive aggressive way to get back at her wayward husband while doing the outwardly Christian thing of raising the child.
The Minuteman knew none of this and his adoptive Mother is dead but hearing about the Minuteman's upcoming wedding his Father visits and confesses the whole thing even though he made an oath to his wife that he'd never tell his son the truth about his son's heritage.
Oh, and the honey that the Minuteman marries can be the granddaughter of his real mother - no, wait, she'd be his niece, yuck, no, she is from the same village as his real mother and had been taken in and raised by his real mother.
Or something.
Thanks, Wrongshore.
I like you a lot.