I saw a portion of that. Really lazy, pandering, and childish. Do they really believe things were better under Obama, or would be better under H. Clinton, or that Trump is the cause of the world of shit in which we reside? Trump is possible only because the world is in shit shape, in great part because of the actions of our rulers (the plutocrats behind the "people's representatives").
CORRECTION: There is one Christmas sketch idea that is more stale than an "It's a Wonderful Life" parody. That would be a "Christmas Carol" parody. But "SNL" doesn't get credit for avoiding that abysmal triteness because that's exactly how they went after Trump last week.
"... to describe how President Trump seemed to take Russia’s side during his summit meeting with President Vladimir V. Putin in Helsinki, Finland. But as with every major controversy that Mr. Trump has faced, it’s unclear if anything will happen as a result."
An excellent topic, well-explored on the NYT "Daily" podcast with Michael Barbaro. I recommend listening to the whole thing. There's no transcript, but from the notes on the show:
Under fire for contradicting United States intelligence reports of Russian interference in the presidential election, Mr. Trump asserted on Tuesday that he had misspoken at his news conference with Mr. Putin, and that he had meant to say, “I don’t see any reason why it wouldn’t be Russia,” rather than “would.” He added, “Could be other people, also.”
Never in the modern era has the word “treason” become part of the national conversation in such a prominent way. Some of those who voted for Mr. Trump struggled to endorse his approach, but many are reaffirming their support.
On the subject of the prominence of the term "treason," there's a link to an article from yesterday that says:
[John O. Brennan, the former C.I.A. director... called [Trump's] performance “nothing short of treasonous.” The late-night hosts Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel also invoked treason on their shows. The front-page banner headline for The New York Daily News declared “OPEN TREASON.”
Max Boot, the former Republican who has become one of Mr. Trump’s sharpest critics, noted in a column on Monday in The Washington Post that accusing him of treason was once unthinkable. No longer....
Mr. Trump returned to the White House on Monday night as protesters outside the gate shouted, “Welcome home, traitor.” Even Dictionary.com trolled the president, tweeting out a definition: “Traitor: A person who commits treason by betraying his or her country.”
It later said that searches for “treason” had increased by 2,943 percent. By Tuesday afternoon, the word “traitor” had been used on Twitter 800,000 times and the word “treason” about 1.2 million times....
When I hear "treason" used in political discourse like that, my mind drifts back to 1964 and the rise of Barry Goldwater. One of the key books of that time was "None Dare Call It Treason." I look it up, and what they hell? The first hit is the NYT obituary for its author, dated yesterday!
John A. Stormer, whose self-published 1964 book, “None Dare Call It Treason,” became a right-wing favorite despite being attacked as inaccurate in promulgating the notion that American government and institutions were full of Communist sympathizers, died on July 10 in Troy, Mo. He was 90....
Communists, Mr. Stormer wrote, were bent on infiltrating the American government and had largely succeeded, as evidenced by American and United Nations economic support for Communist countries.
“The Communists have sworn to bury us,” Mr. Stormer wrote. “We are digging our own graves.... From where has the money come to build and finance the vast collectivist underground which reaches its tentacles into education, the churches, labor and the press?” he asked. “Amazingly, the fortunes of America’s most successful tycoons, dedicated by them to the good of mankind, have been redirected to finance the socialization of the United States.”
That was the deployment of the word "treason" that went big in the 60s. People who were not right-wing, of course, viewed it as anti-communist hysteria, a throwback to the McCarthy era, and that's the way I've seen the word "treason" all this time. But John Brennan threw it back into the American discourse and the Trump antagonists have run with it. Nothing else has worked to stop Trump, so why not crack open this 100-foot long gushing fissure?
IN THE COMMENTS: Robert Cook writes:
It's really outrageous and alarming, this tsunami of people shouting "treason" at Trump for...what? Because he disputes our intelligence agencies? That does not fit the definition of treason. And besides, fuck our intelligence agencies!
This must be a coordinated effort to drown Trump in shit to the point where he can't move or speak, where he is immobilized. I don't say this as a fan of Trump--I think he's terrible in just about every way--but to recognize that there are powerful forces who will do whatever they must to stop any president from pursuing courses of action that they do not approve of. The Military/Industrial complex that Eisenhower warned us of, by whatever name it should be known now, is more powerful than ever, and sees itself as sovereign over us all. Those who hate Trump may cheer this now, but they will cry when the same tactics are used by these forces to paralyze the efforts of a president whom they do support.
"He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself." Thomas Paine
I got a lot of interesting answers. Robert Cook went for what I see as the traditional feminist answer:
"Editrix" is anachronistic, as are terms such as "waitress" and "actress," etc. The terms "editor," "waiter," (now "server"), and "actor" are not innately masculine in their connotations, and so are suitable--preferable--when referring to females working at these jobs.
"Editrix" is anachronistic, as are terms such as "waitress" and "actress," etc. The terms "editor," "waiter," (now "server"), and "actor" are not innately masculine in their connotations, and so are suitable--preferable--when referring to females working at these jobs.
Mary Beth did the research:
Yeah, like early 20th Century, when the word was first used. Google Ngram shows it becoming popular in 1911, except for one fluke blip in the graph in 1838. It actually looks like it's becoming more popular.
We don't need gendered nouns in a non-gendered language so the use of one seems like an affectation. It was still the most interesting thing in what I read.
Though rhhardin joked us in a childish direction — "Editrix is for kids" — quite a few minds went straight from "-trix" to "dominatrix." Owen said:
"Editrix" should be "editrice." Sounds less like black leather and fishnet stockings, more classy.
And Ignorance is Bliss said:
I find a sudden urge to check if PornHub has and editrix category, just to see what that might involve.
And I think that's something of what's going on in the mind of tim in vermont:
As a man, I can only say "editrix" communicates female power and competence. But we men know nothing, we think that the sexes are different in many ways not visually obvious.
Similarly, FIDO:
["Editrix"] is perfect for a controlling female authority figure, adding a little panache to an otherwise dreary field.
I'm front-paging all that because I thought this was quite a coincidence yesterday: I was continuing my reading of Mary McCarthy's "Up the Ladder from Charm to Vogue" (in the essay collection "On the Contrary: Articles of Belief"), first blogged about in this post on April 3d (which I was reading because I'd done the research and discovered that it is the first published appearance of the word "Orwellian" (in 1950)). And I encountered the word "editress."
Unlike the older magazines, whose editresses were matrons who wore (and still wear) their hats at their desks as though at a committee meeting at the Colony Club, Mademoiselle was staffed by young women of no social pretensions, college graduates and business types, live wires and prom queens, middle-class girls peppy or sultry, fond of fun and phonograph records....
But beyond the attempt [by Vogue] to push quality goods during a buying recession like the recent one, or to dodge responsibility for an unpopular mode (this year’s sheaths and cloches are widely unbecoming), there appears to be some periodic feminine compulsion on the editresses’ part to strike a suffragette attitude toward the merchants whose products are their livelihood, to ally themselves in a gush with their readers, who are seen temporarily as their “real” friends.
There are 2 other appearances of "editress" in the essay, including one, I realize now, that was in the excerpt I put up on April 3rd:
As an instrument of mass snobbery, this remarkable magazine [Flair], dedicated simply to the personal cult of its editress, to the fetichism of the flower (Fleur Cowles, Flair, a single rose), outdistances all its competitors in the audacity of its conception. It is a leap into the Orwellian future, a magazine without contest or point of view beyond its proclamation of itself, one hundred and twenty pages of sheer presentation, a journalistic mirage....
I'm not going to insist that Maureen Dowd read my blog post, but if it's more than coincidence that her next column uses a feminine form of "editor," I wonder if she considered the word "editress" and opted instead for "editrix" and, if so, why? I think the answer is up there in what various commenters said: "editrix" sounds more exciting and dominating and "editress" is condescending. Mary McCarthy certainly meant to sound condescending as hell.
The OED says the "-trix" ending began in English with some words adopted from the Latin — administratrix, executrix, persecutrix, etc. And: "The suffix has occasionally been loosely used to form nonce-feminines to agent-nouns in -ter, as paintrix n. instead of the regular paintress. The commoner suffix in English is -tress suffix...." That is, when you go for "-trix" rather than "-tress" to goof around with feminizing one of those nouns about things people do, you're being weirder, and therefore going for an effect, like making us laugh or get excited, which is what Dowd did.
The editors at USA Today — which I got to via Instapundit — make a good point, while protecting their credibility within mainstream media with staunch anti-Trumpism, e.g., "Campus protesters are right that President Trump's America-first nationalism is a grave threat to many Americans. But unfettered First Amendment rights are the answer to the threat, not its cause."
But come on... "they played a roll..." If the editors of a newspaper are going to purport to instruct the plebes on what they ought to believe, they ought to take care at every moment that they are — in the most fundamental sense — editors.
I've also seen actors play 2 roles, e.g., Patty Duke playing Patty and her cousin Cathy on the old "Patty Duke Show." I've even seen actors play 3 roles. Indeed, I've seen Peter Sellers play 3 roles twice. He was Group Captain Lionel Mandrake, President Merkin Muffley, and Dr. Strangelove in "Dr. Strangelove," and Grand Duchess Gloriana XII, Prime Minister Count Rupert Mountjoy, and Tully Bascombe in "The Mouse That Roared." He also played 3 roles in "The Prisoner of Zenda" — Rudolf IV, Rudolf V, and Syd Frewin — but I haven't seen that. And I've also not seen "Soft Beds, Hard Battles" (AKA "Undercovers Heroes"), which takes the most beautiful piece of chocolate cake that you've ever seen. In that one, he played 6 roles — Général Latour, Major Robinson, Herr Schroeder, Prince Kyoto, The President, and Adolf Hitler.
Speaking of cake and free speech, what about cake makers who won't write what customers want on their cake? I'm seeing this story — about ShopRite's refusal to put a 3-year-old child's name on a birthday cake. The father said: "There's a new president and he says it's time for a change; well, then it's time for a change. They need to accept a name. A name's a name." The year was 2008, the new President was Barack Obama, and the 3-year old was Adolf Hitler Campbell.
UPDATE: USA Today has corrected the roll/role mixup, and Instapundit has corrected it on his post as well.
IN THE COMMENTS: I get very involved in the question whether Chaplin — in the scene Depp paid homage to — used rolls or potatoes. I would have used the Chaplin clip if I'd thought Chaplin used rolls, but I'd always seen them as potatoes. This is me in the comments:
1. "'Depp's "roll" playing is a rip from (or homage to) Chaplin's doing the same thing in THE GOLD RUSH' [wrote Robert Cook]"/Yes, I know, but I couldn't use Chaplin here, because Chaplin used potatoes."
2. "Here's Chaplin with the potatoes. Of course, it's better than what Depp did, but Depp was good as a guy who tried to be like Chaplin. Or am I wrong? Is Chaplin using dinner rolls? Now, I have to look it up. I think Depp's use of rolls has caused people to see Chaplin as using rolls. I think it was potatoes!"
4. "In the Chaplin scene, the woman on the right clearly has a potato on her plate. Is that causing me to perceive Chaplin as spearing potatoes on his forks when in fact he's got dinner rolls? But why would they pose the potato on the woman's plate like that if not to orient the viewer to understand what the relevant items are?"
5. "Or am I wrong about that being a potato on the woman's plate. It looks like a split-open baked potato, but on further viewing, I'm willing to believe it's one of those dinner rolls that are baked after cutting a slit across the top."
6. "Okay, this convinces me that those were rolls, not potatoes. Also, Chaplin wasn't first. He got it from Fatty Arbuckle. (Video at the link.)"
IN THE COMMENTS: Meade writes: "I agree with the professor. He did the right thing. Most people wouldn't bother. He was doing the business owner a big favor and the owner blew it." And in person, he says: "You fell for click bait."
ALSO IN THE COMMENTS: Robert Cook said:
I think the professor was right to question the price difference, and he should have accepted the offer of a $4.00 refund. That he insisted on a "3x" refund--$12.00--and kept escalating a minor matter in this way just shows him up as an entitled shit.
I responded:
If a business systematically overcharges everyone but give a refund and only a refund to any customer who: 1. Notices and 2. Confronts, there's no disincentive. This is why class actions were invented. You can make a lot of money taking small amounts from a lot of people. The remedy needs to be more than the small amount that gives back what you took from only one person.
I think this reality is hard to see because a Harvard professor is such a ripe target, and his tenaciousness in making his point is so unusual and so displayable on line.
The most interesting sentence in the correspondence between the professor and the restauranteur is: "The more you try to claim your restaurant was not at fault, the more determined I am to seek a greater sanction against you."
ADDED: Even where the customer noticed and confronted, this restaurateur's first move was to say only that the website was "out of date for quite some time" and he'd "make sure to update it." I think many customers would simply back off and say something like "Thanks, I'm glad I could help you, and by the way, I really do love your restaurant." The professor teaches the law here, and there is a Massachusetts law that makes it "a serious violation to advertise one price and charge a different price." Do we believe in this kind of law or don't we? If we don't and we think the professor is a prick for being a stickler about it, then get rid of the law and stop burdening business owners with the appearance that there are rules that must be followed.
The book is a pain to read if you're not into [it]. I would never force anyone to read that book. The writing style is enough to give nightmares.
Robert Cook said:
Oh, rather like THE GREAT GATSBY, eh?
Let me answer that here on the front page, because this is important. Yes. It is like "The Great Gatsby." Neither book should be forced on anyone. It's destructive of the capacity to appreciate exactly what is most notable, the strange locutions. If you are not in the mood to get inside those sentences and luxuriate and ideate, it's a damned pain. If you've been assigned the book and so you feel like powering through it, everything that's good about it will feel like a speed bump. People hate speed bumps. These English teachers who imagine they are serving up delight are making it hateful.
I've said this already, but I don't keep repeating it as I've blogged about isolated sentences from "The Great Gatsby" in my "Gatsby" project. So let me point out one place where I made the point clearly:
My initial motivation was love. I thought of all the high school students — I remember being one — who were assigned this book and made to read the whole thing. That being the task, the really interesting sentences are speed bumps. They're completely annoying. You can't take the time to figure them out. What should be loved is hated. Later in life, I reread the book and enjoyed it, because of the worthiness of individual sentences.
The writing style of "Beloved" is, in my opinion, much, much worse than "The Great Gatsby." Chances are, a high school student will resist the project of reading this material, especially since the teacher might not emphasize the artistry of the style. It may be administered medicinally, by a teacher who wants her presumably bland and cosseted students to vicariously inhabit the condition of slavery. This is a terrible idea. Recommend "Beloved" for optional, outside reading and give the students the 19th century narratives written by Americans who were themselves enslaved. That's real and that's free of the pretensions of poetry.
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