"A party advertised on social media drew as many as 300 young people on Saturday night to a public housing complex in Manhattan’s East Village..."

"... where residents said partygoers paid $10 to enter a basement room usually reserved for tenant meetings. The music was blasting as the crowd, which included teenagers from an elite public high school in Brooklyn, spilled into the courtyard. Barely an hour had passed before residents of the development, the First Houses, called the police at about 10 p.m. But someone upstairs had decided to do something about it. White paint and a caustic chemical were poured from overhead, burning at least 10 of the teenagers in the courtyard, the police said on Sunday.... After the paint and chemicals rained down, some partygoers rushed the East Third Street building’s front door and attempted to force their way in, slamming their fists against the door’s glass panes, cracking one, said Michael Strachan, 60, who lives in the building. One of the residents who had gathered in a first-floor hallway went to the door and showed her government identification to the young people through the glass, witnesses said. The group quickly scattered at the sight of the ID and the arriving police, who told them to back off.... 'I’m concerned because this is a gated community,' [one tenant] said. 'No one should have been in the gate to begin with unless they live here.'"

From "10 Teenagers Burned by Acidlike Liquid Thrown From Above at Raucous Party/The teenagers, some of them students at Brooklyn Tech, had been partying in a rented basement room at a public housing complex in Manhattan’s East Village" (NYT).

That's a lot of chaos. Count the manifestations of failure of empathy.

It's a very old-fashioned remedy — I think I used to see it in the old comic strips — pouring a liquid from the upper story onto somebody who's bothering you in the street below. But this was a "caustic chemical," an "acidlike liquid." Cruel, depending on what, exactly, the liquid was.

If it were a private house and the homeowner discovered that teenagers had broken in and were having a party, what could the homeowner do? Here, you have people living in "a public housing complex," and they want to think that the rules and the gate protect them from intruders. What can they do? We hear that they "called the police at about 10 p.m. But someone upstairs had decided to do something about it," but we're not told what time that person upstairs made that decision. Was it 15 minutes later? And hour later? 2 hours later? I don't know. I do know that if I called the police and reported an unauthorized party in my basement, they'd be here in 5 minutes.

Clearly, the NYT's sympathy is with the burned/"burned" teenagers. The tenant is made to look like heartless and privileged: "I’m concerned because this is a gated community." A gated community! But it's East Village public housing. Shouldn't these residents feel secure in their homes? I'm not defending pouring acid on teenagers. I'm saying people want security and if they don't get it from the authorities, they tend to resort to self-help.

IN THE COMMENTS: Observing that the NYT wrote "caustic chemical" and "Acidlike Liquid," mockturtle wrote, "Well, which is it? Caustic is alkaline."

"If Bill Clinton hadn’t twisted my arm, I would have stayed at Wisconsin forever."

Bill Clinton twisted Donna Shalala's arm, according to Shalala, who was the chancellor here at UW-Madison until she became Clinton's Secretary of Health and Human Services. Upon leaving that job, she became president at the University of Miami. She's still there, where the UW football team will play Miami in the Orange Bowl on December 30th, which is why there's an article about her today in the Wisconsin State Journal.

Shalala says her "loyalties are sort of half-split" — loyalties to the 2 football teams.

We're given a truncated list of famous alumni from the 2 schools. From Miami:

... actor Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, singer and songwriter Gloria Estefan, former White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus of Kenosha, Pro Football Hall of Famers Jim Kelly and Michael Irvin, and U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla.

From Wisconsin:

... Earth Day founder Gaylord Nelson, author Joyce Carol Oates, Sierra Club founder John Muir, architect Frank Lloyd Wright, astronaut Jim Lovell and John Bardeen, the only two-time recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics.

As long as we're catching up with Donna Shalala and thinking about Bill Clinton twisting her arm, here's a CNN report from September 11, 1998, "Clinton apologizes to Cabinet":

One of the participants, speaking on condition of anonymity, said... Shalala told Clinton that women feel a special bond with him because of his policies, but they are especially sympathetic toward his wife and daughter.... Shalala listened to Clinton apologize, ask for forgiveness and promise to improve as a person. "To say it is one thing," she was quoted as saying, "to demonstrate it is another."...

IN THE COMMENTS: mockturtle said...

Sounds to me like physical abuse, man vs. woman, ergo, sexual assault.

Rob said...

"If you're a president, they let you do it, you can do anything--twist their arm."

"Ann, I wonder if you and Meade believe it's worth it to stay in Madison now that you are retired."

"One of many reasons we left Seattle after my husband retired was for lower property taxes," writes mockturtle in the comments to my post about the GOP tax bill, where I mention that Meade and I pay more than $17,000 in property taxes on our house in Madison.

We're still here, so that means that so far with think it's worth it, but the high property tax does bother us, and when we think about where else we might want to live, taxation is a factor. But I care a lot about living somewhere that is interesting to me, and I want a house where I can walk out the door and, right from that point, have many interesting walks.

One of the places I'd consider is the one mockturtle says she left: Seattle. Washington State has the benefit of no income tax, but obviously the revenue must be found in some other way.

Sure, there are lots of places with low taxes, but name one where I'd enjoy living. We have many things here that we love, and I would not move to a worse place. $17,000 is a lot, but only the last $X thousand is spent on things I'd carve off the budget if I were given the power to structure the whole thing. And if they tried to hand that power over to me, I wouldn't even take it. That's not my line of work and not my expertise or my joy in life.

A community is a package deal. Some things you like and some things you don't. If it gets too off balance, you might leave, but only if somewhere else is better. You have to live somewhere. We've had a lot great times here. It's a beautiful neighborhood, and I can walk to 3 lakes from here. There are trees and nice architecture and shops and restaurants. I can walk to downtown. There are bike paths all over. Meade loves the mountain bike trails. We could look at the shortcomings, like the fact that the city is taking maybe an extra $500 a month from us to do things we would not do, but when we look at the good, it's close to paradise.

Maybe somewhere else is close to paradise too. Tell us about a place and maybe we will rent an apartment there and spend some time living there and give it a chance (and ultimately uproot ourselves and relocate). But we're not going to go somewhere just to improve our household budget by $500 a month (or even $2,000 a month). It's got to offer great walks, beginning at our doorstep, beautiful scenery, and a real sense of place.

About those Mad Magazine visualizations of clichés,,,

Here's the "Horrifying Cliche's" page from a National Lampoon parody of Mad Magazine:



Click to enlarge and clarify.

We are talking about clichés in another post this morning, and mockturtle said:

The reason I'm unduly fond of cliche metaphors may be linked to my childhood fondness for MAD magazine which featured 'Horrifying Cliches', taken literally. Or maybe because to obviously avoid a cliche is even more banal than using one.

Then Jeff Gee said:

Wow! The whole Nat Lamp MAD parody is online here. Scroll down for the Horrifying Cliches.

Wow, indeed. And I'm another one of those people who — like mockturtle — loved Mad Magazine when I was a kid. I read it mostly in the early 60s. I'd never heard of it, but discovered it on the magazine rack at Tigue's Drug Store when I was about 10 years old. I was amazed that the world had such a thing in it. Really affected my young mind. Tried to get my best friend interested in it too and she informed me the magazine was "for boys," which was another thing about the world that surprised me.