FRIDAY, MARCH 29, 2024
Termagant calls his shot: Last evening, it seemed that Greg Gutfeld was having an off night.
His hourlong "cable news" program began at 10 p.m., as it does each weekday night. But it wasn't until 10:05 that he issued his nightly joke—the nightly joke about Joy Behar being way too fat.
It seemed that the angriest termagant in the world was possibly out of sorts! Eventually, though, his parody program found its stride, though you'll have to bite the bullet and click a few clicks to see what we mean by that.
After his nightly joke about Behar being too fat, Gutfeld offered a monologue about the way the world is pretty much falling apart. The prime example he offered was the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge.
Eventually, he almost seemed to suggest that things have been falling part because Pete Buttigieg is way too woke.
How dumb does it get on this astonishing "cable news" program? During his monologue, Gutfeld cited a recent study from an international journal which has been the focus of controversy concerning its possibly shaky publishing standards. Title included, the study starts like this:
Is society caught up in a Death Spiral? Modeling societal demise and its reversal
Just like an army of ants caught in an ant mill, individuals, groups and even whole societies are sometimes caught up in a Death Spiral, a vicious cycle of self-reinforcing dysfunctional behavior characterized by continuous flawed decision making, myopic single-minded focus on one (set of) solution(s), denial, distrust, micromanagement, dogmatic thinking and learned helplessness. We propose the term Death Spiral Effect to describe this difficult-to-break downward spiral of societal decline. Specifically, in the current theory-building review we aim to: (a) more clearly define and describe the Death Spiral Effect; (b) model the downward spiral of societal decline as well as an upward spiral; (c) describe how and why individuals, groups and even society at large might be caught up in a Death Spiral; and (d) offer a positive way forward in terms of evidence-based solutions to escape the Death Spiral Effect. Management theory hints on the occurrence of this phenomenon and offers turn-around leadership as solution [sic]...
Is society "caught up in a Death Spiral...just like an army of ants caught in an ant mill?" As always, so too here:
Everything is possible!
That said, Gutfeld and his nightly army of flyweights—on this occasion, two low-grade comedians; one former heavyweight wrestling champion; one other person who shouldn't have been there—proceeded to pretend to stage a heavy discussion of this deep-think, heavyweight topic.
How about it? Is society "caught up in a Death Spiral," just like an army of ants? Is everything falling apart, perhaps because Secretary Buttigieg is just too nuttily woke, just like Behar is too fat?
Ironically, Gutfeld and his merry band went on to prove that point through their own behavior during the course of the evening! At this point, full disclosure:
We aren't going to try to paraphrase the discussions which occurred later in this brain-dead program. You'll have to click a couple of clicks to see what we're talking about.
That opening segment dealt with the heavyweight question about the Death Spiral Effect, as first observed in ants. For his soul-draining second segment, Gutfeld focused on a comical case of tampon use by a college student.
Tampon use by 12-year-old girls and by college students? It's the type of conversation which allows Gutfeld to stay awake and focused. To watch this soul-draining second segment posing as a type of "cable news" discussion, you'll have to start by clicking here.
For his program's fourth segment, Gutfeld chose wisely again. This time, he returned to a topic from last month—to a report about strippers in the state of Washington attempting to unionize (or something like that).
Once again, this is the sort of topic which allows Gutfeld and his hand-picked guests to keep from falling asleep. The conversation which resulted was soul-draining once again. To watch that "girls working the pole" discussion, start by clicking this.
This conversation crackled along in the predictable manner. At one point, a mystery guest—a person who should never have been on that program—offered this possible complaint:
GUTFELD (3/29/24): Sage, I want the stripping career to be a long and comfortable one!
[UPROARIOUS AUDIENCE LAUGHTER]
MYSTERY GUEST: ...You know, we've talked about orifices a lot today, something I wasn't warned about.
We were sorry to see that the mystery guest had agreed to appear on this program. That said, let us add this:
No orifices, no peace! On this parody of "cable news" programming, nothing else can keep the moderator's band of flyweights from drifting off to sleep.
Are things falling apart, the way the program's termagant host had suggested at the start of the program as he pretended to discuss that technical paper from that possibly shaky journal?
Yes, things are wholly falling apart in our clown-car nation. On a nightly basis, gong-shows like this are now presented as "cable news," and no one in the finer, higher-level world seems prepared or willing to comment, complain or notice.
Readers, it's all anthropology now. This is part of what we the humans are like. We told you that long ago!
Eli Noyes has died.
ReplyDeleteBye-bye, Eli.
DeleteC'mon.
DeleteFeel the Noyes.
One could reasonably conclude that Our Host agrees with the premise that our society is in a death spiral. Why else would he close out his post with this:
ReplyDelete"On a nightly basis, gong-shows like this are now presented as 'cable news,'"
If the rest of the world doesn't notice or respond, it's a sign of careless neglect; if the world notices and responds, it lets the lowest of the low set the agenda for debate. It seems Our Host is one of the theory's ardent supporters.
Yes, I think Somerby believes the world is going to hell in a handbasket. Is that because he’s an old guy or because the world really is going to hell in a handbasket?
DeleteMany of us are old too but don’t believe Somerby’s garbage.
DeleteYet you read that “garbage” twice a day.
DeleteYes, but we don’t believe it — unlike you.
DeleteWhich is why I read it. Why do you?
DeleteWhy do you keep asking a question that has been answered so many times?
Deletedementia
DeleteHow would I know I’ve asked it of you?
DeleteTry listening to the answers.
DeleteAmerican society is in a death spiral fiscally. The budget deficit will get larger as the national debt grows so that interest on the national debt grows. This will lead to a collapse at some point, although I don't know when.
ReplyDeleteMake aliyah.
DeleteDiC - Come on, admit it. Six months ago you weren't talking about deficits, you were talking about inflation.
DeleteSome impressive financial experts agree with me:
DeleteFinancial Leaders Sound Alarm on ‘Snowballing’ National Debt: Larry Fink Joins Jamie Dimon and Jerome Powell in Urgent Warning
Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, has issued a stark warning about America’s escalating debt, which currently stands at a staggering $34 trillion and continues to grow. Fink cautioned that the nation’s trajectory could lead to a crisis reminiscent of Japan’s lost decade. He emphasized that Washington should not assume that investors will indefinitely fund the country’s fiscal deficit....
The national debt is currently increasing at a rate of approximately $1 trillion every 100 days, exerting upward pressure on consumer prices. This phenomenon has contributed to assets like physical gold and Bitcoin reaching record highs, as investors seek inflation hedges. https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/financial-leaders-sound-alarm-on-snowballing-national-debt-larry-fink-joins-jamie-dimon-and-jerome-powell-in-urgent-warning/ar-BB1kFlAp
BTW George, Fink points out that deficits contribute to inflation.
This comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteLarry Fink and Jamie Dimon will wring their hands and sound the alarms about this looming catastrophe right up to the point that someone suggests that they contribute to a solution to it. And god forbid another 2008 rolls around again for the American taxpayer to fund the solutions to Jamie Dimon's and his ilk's catastrophes.
DeleteOh good. Our debt isn't a problem that needs to be addressed then.
DeleteIt's a Catch-22. If Dems start running budget surpluses and start paying down the debt, republicans will cut taxes, because as GW once said after President Clinton handed him budget surpluses for 4 years straight, "it means the government is taking too much of your money". LOLl And as Alan Greenspan testified, it would be very bad to have these budget surpluses and pay down the debt too quickly! LOL
DeleteWhat to do? What to do?
If Larry Fink and Jamie Dimon believe the USA is far too broke to purchase any products or services from defense contractors, who are we little people to question them?
DeleteCurious, DIC, what would your favorite economist have to say about all this?
Delete1) cut spending and increase taxes
2) cut spending and decrease taxes
3) increase spending and increase taxes
4) increase spending and decrease taxes
(To assist here, note that answer 4 is boilerplate Republican policy) You are free to scour his 50 some odd books for the correct answer, but we will not hold our breath that it will be the correct one.
Unamused -- I can't recall Sowell addressing your specific question, although he may have done so. I would guess that he'd probably favor less government spending.
DeleteYour final point is all too accurate. Regardless of what they say, Republicans have done little or nothing to reduce spending. Nor have Democrats. That's why I foresee eventual fiscal disaster.
Clinton eliminated - eliminated! - the deficit. This only served to fund W’s tax cuts for the rich and the Iraq War. Fool us once . . .
DeleteDIC , while I agree that spending cuts are necessary they are not enough. Until Republicans acknowledge that, they cannot be considered serious fiscally. And I am not talking about Medicare and Social Security, the latter which can be made long term solvent with a few changes. And yes, DG, you refer to the fact that Republicans wish never happened. I was driving past the debt clock in Manhattan with a relative, Trump supporter, during Bush II, who remarked ruefully, "That thing was stopped during Clinton." They never, ever acknowledge that Republican policy always mismanages the economy, starting with Reaganomics.
DeleteAnd no, the Democrats are not faultless. Only better than the Republicans.
DeleteWhen Repubs hand the economy over to Dems, it is a smoking ruin. Dems fix it and hand a smooth-running economy over to Repubs.
DeleteRepublicans have done little or nothing to reduce spending.
DeleteThat's right, but the crazy thing is they have done a hell of lot of tax cutting while simultaneously whining about the deficit. You, David, are supporting Donald Trump who is promising another huge tax cut, bigger than the last one he passed. So cut the bullshit.
9:16 - You’re 99.9% right. Cut out “simultaneously.” Repubs cut taxes when they’re in power; they whine about deficits when Dems are in power. It’s sequential rather than simultaneous.
Delete"Donald Trump who is promising another huge tax cut..."
DeleteNo chance. Economically anxious Republican voters, who, believe me, aren't just a shit pile of bigots (Hat tip, mainstream media), already burnt most of his real estate investments to the ground when he gave that HUGE tax break to the rich and corporations in 2017. He certainly isn't going to let them finish the job.
LOL.
DiC - Core PCE 2.8% YoY. Remember when people actually cared about inflation?
ReplyDeleteYou've got to admit - We're looking at many months now of robust growth, full employment, and stable prices.
DeleteAnd, DiC, if you're serious about cutting deficits, does that mean you're in favor of raising taxes?
DeleteAnd, just so you know, Total Public Debt/GDP rose about 21% under Trump and has fallen about 3% under Biden.
DeleteRepublicans do this all the time. When Bush exploded it, Cheney famously said “meh, deficits don’t matter.” But as soon as a Democrat is in office, it’s back to the fainting couch.
DeleteDavid is so serious about the debt that he wants the US to stop aiding Israel.
DeleteDiC - 7:04 is absolutely right. And here's the problem: Now Dems say - "What's the point of fiscal responsibility? It's a sucker's game for us. As soon as we do the hard and courageous political work (tax hikes, spending cuts) necessary to bring down the deficit, the Repubs will turn around and waste it all on tax cuts for rich people, and we'll be back to exploding deficits."
DeleteLet's pray Democrats don't run on this message: "We're looking at many months now of robust growth, full employment, and stable prices."
DeleteLet's pray Democrats don't run on this message either: "What's the point of fiscal responsibility?"
DeleteKevin Drum said that inflation is being driven by increases in gas prices, not food prices.
DeleteThen nationalize the fossil fuel companies.
DeleteI have another 45 seconds of free time, if you have any other existential problems you need me to solve.
8:08 - Why is there something rather than nothing?
DeleteBecause, if there were nothing, you wouldn’t be reading the Daily Howler.
DeleteGeorge - Inflation of 2.8% is a big improvement, but it is not low enough for the Fed to cut interest rates. You are 2/3 correct when you write, "many months now of robust growth, full employment, and stable prices." I normally do the food shopping. With my own eyes, every week I see food prices higher than they used to.
DeleteMy concern with inflation is personal -- how can I invest my savings so I won't run out of money? For this purpose I have some TIPS bonds. They're terrible investments, but they do go up with inflation. Of course my Social Security goes up with inflation. I also bought some Swiss government bonds, hoping the Swiss currency will hold its value better than the US $. I don't have any cryptocurrency, although many experts recommend having some.
David, buy more crypto. Much more.
DeleteDavid,
Delete6:26 is correct. The U.S. Dollar is only backed up by the Biden (boo!) government--and the biggest military in the history of mankind-- but Crypto is backed-up by someone anonymous on the internet. Which is awesome, unless it's one of the people who post here as Anonymous.
Somerby called Gutfeld a termagant twice, including here:
ReplyDelete"It seemed that the angriest termagant in the world was possibly out of sorts!"
Unfortunately, termagant is a gendered term, referring to women:
Termagant definition: "a harsh-tempered or overbearing woman"
It is hard to believe that Somerby doesn't know this. It is more consistent with his largely sexist/misogynist (and not adjacent) behavior. Use of female attributes to put down men by calling them pussies or little girls or on their period or any number of ugly demeaning things, including fish wife or termagant is prime sexism, displays negative attitudes toward women (or why else would calling men women be derogatory) and Somerby knows this perfectly well. This is another way of showing disrespect toward women, not Gutfeld, who I doubt qualifies as any kind of woman. It is worse, if Somerby thinks his own name-calling is funny.
This is one of the reasons I despise Somerby. I have no doubt he thinks this is sly.
Anonymouse 8:29pm, it would seem that at some point that you’d get tired of despising people while concurrently hyping your own virtue.
DeleteGutfeld insults the women on The View as being perpetually angry and complaining bitches. Bob makes the suggestion that Gutfeld, aside from being puerile, isn’t any different from what he accuses these women of being.
Bob has often been likened to an old man yelling for people to get off his lawn. In your eternal anonymouse mode of feeling offended, has that imagery ever bothered you? Are jokes about women and tampons and “girls working the pole” so fine with you that other people are repressed squeamish prudes for not being so entertained? Is this level you have to crawl to in order to tar and feather a blogger?
We’ve all gotten use to the petty pretenses of pushback based upon semantics and objections to song lyrics, and goodness knows I’d be the last person on earth to find it surprising that you’re willing to over look sophomoric and crude sexist Gutfeld jokes in order to call Bob a misogynistic prude.
If you are at the level of hating the guy, get away from him. If you dislike him, but mostly gin this stuff up as a political operative, get some freaking help before it carries off your equanimity and your soul.
I liked it better when we called virtue-signaling "Praying to God".
DeleteThe word “temagant” has a pretty complicated history:
Deletehttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Termagant
Fuck spellcheck.
DeleteThe word “termagant” has a pretty complicated history:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Termagant
Words matter. Maybe not to you though.
DeleteIt is idiotic to propose that the way to deal with a misogynist like Gutfeld is to call him an insulting term reserved for women. I've already explained why that is offensive, but you don't get it. That is just more evidence you are unlikely to be female, although you pretend to be here.
The way to combat bigotry is not to ignore it and let the bigots have their way, as you suggest. It is to show them for what they are -- that includes you.
You thought that joke about women smelling like fish was hilarious. There is something majorly wrong with you.
Anonymouse 9:50am, how is it degrading to women to hang Greg Gutfeld with a sexist stereotype that he assigns to the women at The View but its ok for you to call a woman a man due to the same sort of stereotypes you harbor toward both genders.
DeleteIt doesn’t bother me a wit and I’m sure Greg Gutfeld would roll his eyes at Bob too. The only people who seem to have an emotional stake in this fainting couch are anonymices and you hypocritically pretend offense in order to point the finger at Bob.
Anonymouse 11:37am, I didn’t think the fish joke was hilarious, I turned it back on the anonymouse who said it.
DeleteTry that sometime instead of your endless crybaby routine.
“Termagant” isn’t reserved for women. Read the Wikipedia article linked by anonymouse 8:39.
DeleteCecelia, your riposte to the fish joke wasn’t funny at all.
DeleteTwo fat women are walking across a bridge. One says to the other she really needs to take a piss. She says I'm going to scoot up on the railing and go right into the river. She drops her pants, gets up on the railing and lets it fly. Then she looks down and starts laughing. What's so funny asks the other. She says "Look down there, I'm peeing on a canoe."
DeleteThe other says, you idiot, that's your reflection.
A Right-winger goes on a rant about how we have to build a border wall to keep out immigrants, and that we should deport illegals. They then go on a rant about how inflationary food prices are hurting the American citizen.
DeleteThe media reports both rants without connecting the dots (that reducing a huge chunk of our agricultural labor is driving inflation).
Now THAT'S a joke.
ironically the original commenter sounds a lot like a termagant
Delete"An ant mill is an observed phenomenon in which a group of army ants, separated from the main foraging party, lose the pheromone track and begin to follow one another, forming a continuously rotating circle. This circle is commonly known as a "death spiral" because the ants might eventually die of exhaustion."
ReplyDeleteIt is hard to call this any kind of decision making by ants, since they are following pheromones and lose that track, following others who may know which way to go (or not). None of the other described (a vicious cycle of self-reinforcing dysfunctional behavior characterized by continuous flawed decision making, myopic single-minded focus on one (set of) solution(s), denial, distrust, micromanagement, dogmatic thinking and learned helplessness) has anything to do with ants or why they lose their way, or why they may die of exhaustion if they continue indefinitely. Ants do not engage in denial, distrust, micromanagement, dogmatic thinking or learned helplessness. It is unlikely they do any sort of thinking beyond instinctive reaction to perceived stimuli.
Because we humans do not think or behave like ants, it seems unlikely we would be engaged in an ant-like death spiral. You would expect that high-level angst to disrupt such mindlessness. Even a small amount of micromanagement might nudge people out of it. That's why this is a really stupid metaphor for anything happening in society. It sounds more like Gutfeld grabbed the word Death Spiral because Death is a cool word for right wingers and Spiral sounds cool too, and everyone love marching and armies, even army ants, amirite.
And Somerby, following ant-like in Gutfeld's wake, says this:
"Is society "caught up in a Death Spiral...just like an army of ants caught in an ant mill?" As always, so too here:
Everything is possible! "
Next he will be claiming we are all lemmings, or a locust swarm, or maybe a mindless flock of whales beaching itself!
No, everything is not possible. Why not? Because we are thinking human beings who occasionally embrace skepticism about Somerby's favorite "truth" and point out that there are many impossible things in our world, which provides disconfirmatory evidence to refute Somerby's nihilism ultimately stupid falsehood. And we can know that Somerby is lying when he claims anything is possible because (1) he didn't fail every philosophy course, and (2) he himself knows it is impossible to get red and blue to lie together in the same bed, and (3) none of the ancient civilizations studied by anthropologists and historians have exhibited anything like an ant mill, and (4) as Newton said, the laws of physics exist everywhere, the Catholics have given up encouraging belief in miracles, time does not run backward, and Trump lost in 2020 instead of winning as Somerby predicted, so anything then was not possible either.
This is tiresome. Is Somerby taking stupid lessons?
"That opening segment dealt with the heavyweight question about the Death Spiral Effect, as first observed in ants. For his soul-draining second segment, Gutfeld focused on a comical case of tampon use by a college student.
ReplyDeleteTampon use by 12-year-old girls and by college students? It's the type of conversation which allows Gutfeld to stay awake and focused."
Somerby's squeamishness about normal female bodily functions is noted. It is part of the sexism of "girls are yucky" and "men can't be exposed to what women are like physically" so that they can maintain erroneous ideas about women's bodies while in Congress, such as abortions aren't needed because the female body "shuts down" pregnancy if it results from rape.
Somerby avoids describing the segment content, which describes the dilemma of a protestor who was not allowed to get up from a sit-in without being arrested, but who needed to change her tampon. He calls this "comical." In contrast, Gutfeld's discussion was empathetic.
The complaint about installing tampon dispensers in a male bathroom strikes me as short-sighted. If the girl's room dispenser were empty, wouldn't a backup be welcome? What about teachers? Boys carry condoms without embarrassment.
I recently spent several weeks in two major cities in Mexico. In both, shared male/female restrooms were common in many places. The sinks and associated dispensers were all shared by men and women both using them concurrently, without incident and with courtesy. Men and women both could use small separate rooms with toilets and floor to ceiling walls with lockable doors. There were no public urinals. Privacy was afforded to both sexes and men were not treated like barnyard animals, as in the USA (especially in our bars and bowling alleys).
Americans are used to thinking of people from Mexico as socially inferior. In this case, I found them much more humane. I doubt Mexican people, in general, would deprive anyone of tampons or consider that discussion funny, the way Somerby does when he calls it comical. They are more civilized than we are in many respects. How are we to evolve socially, if teen boys cannot tolerate anything reminding them of women in their "room" that they use for bullying others and smoking cigs?
Somerby's prudishness when it comes to women's bodies and sexual behavior is another aspect of his sexism. We are not "dirty" because we have periods, not "whores" because we have enjoyable sex lives, not to be treated as fictional virgins or madonnas by any asshole whose religion worships Mary while making sure she and her sisters have no actual power within the church.
Bitch, shut the fuck up and fix me my dinner.
DeleteFrustrating to be totally dependent on someone else like that. So hungry but too stupid even to make your own sandwich.
DeleteThis is the kind of humor found on Bill Maher. Hilarious, right? But at least women know how to cook.
DeleteWhat did the blind man say when he passed the fish market?
DeleteGood morning ladies!!!
Anonymouse 1:24am, what a zinger. The old guy got you good, mister.
DeleteWhat old guy?
DeleteHerobrine.
DeleteCecelia, how do you piss off an archeologist?
DeleteGive him a tampon and ask him what period it is from.
Anonymouse 2:44pm, I like that one.
DeleteHow many cops does it take to change a lightbulb?
DeleteNone. Cops don't change the lightbulbs, instead they beat the shit out of the room for being black.
Clarence Perdomo has died.
ReplyDelete