doppelganglander 6/21/2020 5:37:54 AM

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JCM 6/21/2020 6:51:24 AM

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Community members outraged and saddened over fatal shooting at the CHOP

Really? Why? All of us saw that coming since you kicked the cops out. Natural consequence of your actions.

JCM 6/21/2020 6:54:41 AM

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Community waiting for response from city leaders to deadly shooting in CHOP

Dear G-d these people are morons.

Occasional Reader 6/21/2020 7:06:52 AM

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Occasional Reader 6/21/2020 7:10:48 AM

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Reply to JCM in 3:

Not to mention: 

"Many people have questions for Seattle city leaders about the deadly shooting inside CHOP. They’re asking if that shooting could have been prevented or if emergency response fell short.

Who writes this dreck?

Who are these "many" who are "asking if that shooting could have been prevented"?   Is there some other group who insist that nope, the shooting was utterly inevitable, no power on Earth could have prevented it?   And might the "fell short" status of emergency response have had something to do with their being denied access to the area by a violent mob? 

Occasional Reader 6/21/2020 7:18:02 AM

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Meanwhile, across the pond:

Three dead, three wounded in mostly peaceful stabbing spree in Reading, England, by a, you know, man

Rioting overnight in Stuttgart by, you know, youths

Turning and turning in the widening gyre...

buzzsawmonkey 6/21/2020 7:43:07 AM

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In #5 Occasional Reader said: Who are these "many" who are "asking if that shooting could have been prevented"? 

That's "mene," as in "mene, mene tekel upharsin," i.e., the Handwriting on the Wall at Belshazzar's Feast.

buzzsawmonkey 6/21/2020 7:44:35 AM

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buzzsawmonkey 6/21/2020 7:50:25 AM

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Someone here the other day was mentioning the "inept father" character who appears in so many modern-day TV shows.  

Not so long ago, the picture was very different.  You had Competent Single Fathers in the Andy Griffith Show and The Rifleman, reasonably-competent single fathers (with help) in A Family Affair and My Three Sons, and reasonably-strong father figures in both Leave it to Beaver and Ozzie and Harriet.

lucius septimius 6/21/2020 7:56:05 AM

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Reply to Occasional Reader in 4:

And a happy daddy's day backatcha.

lucius septimius 6/21/2020 7:57:15 AM

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In #7 buzzsawmonkey said: mene, mene tekel upharsin

Which, as I recall, means "Mene mene what's it to you?"

lucius septimius 6/21/2020 7:57:57 AM

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Reply to buzzsawmonkey in 9:

This is true.  To that list add My Three Sons.

Occasional Reader 6/21/2020 8:02:41 AM

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In #9 buzzsawmonkey said: Someone here the other day was mentioning the "inept father" character who appears in so many modern-day TV shows.  

That was I. That was me. That was the author of this post.

/hat tip: Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

buzzsawmonkey 6/21/2020 8:02:50 AM

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In #12 lucius septimius said: This is true.  To that list add My Three Sons.

I mentioned "My Three Sons" with "A Family Affair" above---separately from the "Andy Griffith Show" and "The Rifleman" because both of the former had "proxy" intermediate dads, Uncle Charlie and Mr. French, respectively, while the latter two did not. 

lucius septimius 6/21/2020 8:05:35 AM

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Reply to buzzsawmonkey in 14:

Obviously I need to clean my glasses.

buzzsawmonkey 6/21/2020 8:07:36 AM

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The reflexive condemnation of blackface as "racist" is ahistorical, ignorant and asinine.

The tradition of "the comic menial"---someone permitted, by virtue of their lowly social position, to say inflammatory (i.e., true) things---goes back centuries. The medieval "court jester" was such a person, privileged to, in the current ugly phrase, "speak truth to power" because he was The Comic. In Shakespeare's plays, the only people who speak the truth are the "comic menials" and the insane. Sancho Panza, the realistic foil to the mad Don Quixote, was a comic menial.

Like it or not, blacks were the menials---first as slaves and then, after Emancipation, the waiters, porters, maids, shoeshine boys, etc.---in America. Thus, assuming the mantle, or, more properly, the mask of "black," whether one was black or white, was a way to immediately signal that one was "a comic" and thus be permitted to "speak truth to power." Masks are a theatrical tradition going back to the ancient Greeks, and theatrical makeup is merely a flexible mask.

Both blacks and whites used blackface---there's a sequence in "Stormy Weather" where two black comedians are "blacking up" for their performance. The point is that "blackface" is merely an American variation on the centuries-old tradition of the Comic Menial.

buzzsawmonkey 6/21/2020 8:15:38 AM

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In #13 Occasional Reader said: /hat tip: Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Kurt Vonnegut is an interesting figure.  Like George Orwell, Vonnegut was in many ways socially conservative, and like Orwell, Vonnegut could clearly see the hell that Leftism offered (his story "Harrison Bergeron" is but one example)---yet, also like Orwell, Vonnegut remained committed on some level to far-Left politics.

Occasional Reader 6/21/2020 8:22:02 AM

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Reply to buzzsawmonkey in 16:

yeah but like history is all racist n’ shit.

/scholarly response, by today’s standards of academia

buzzsawmonkey 6/21/2020 8:26:14 AM

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Reply to Occasional Reader in 18:

As I've noted before, one of the things that distinguished Mark Twain was his conscious decision to assume a "whiteface" persona---something that is, I believe, unique to him. 

He typically dressed, especially for his performances/lectures, in a white suit recalling an antebellum planter---and, using that "whiteface" appearance, was able to speak about what he saw as injustices or uncomfortable social truths from the position of a pre-Civil War ghost.

buzzsawmonkey 6/21/2020 9:20:40 AM

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Kosh's Shadow 6/21/2020 10:26:19 AM

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Repost where more people will see it:

Hammer, meet nail

Shklar warned that liberalism can degenerate into a cult of victimhood that permits our sadistic desires to be passed off as unimpeachable virtue

Article

Kosh's Shadow 6/21/2020 11:43:47 AM

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One of my father's day presents was a bag of this (link)

A somewhat smaller bag, though, as I won't drink a large bag fast enough.

Black Coffee Matters! (boy could I get in trouble in some circles for saying that)

buzzsawmonkey 6/21/2020 1:04:14 PM

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In #22 Kosh's Shadow said: Black Coffee Matters! (boy could I get in trouble in some circles for saying that)

Black Coffee

Occasional Reader 6/21/2020 4:47:42 PM

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OK, little guy and I are currently finishing a dry aged ribeye steak, which I seriously think is one of the best steaks I’ve ever prepared. Absolutely delicious.

I also just gave him a pop quiz, asking “what is eight cubed?“. He did not even look up from his dinner, answered it in about one second.  I’m a mite scared...

buzzsawmonkey 6/21/2020 4:53:58 PM

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In #24 Occasional Reader said: I also just gave him a pop quiz, asking “what is eight cubed?“. He did not even look up from his dinner, answered it in about one second.  I’m a mite scared...

"Eight-cubed?"  That's easy: a vain attempt to make Starbucks coffee less bitter...