SATURDAY, JUNE 10, 2023
A nation in great distress: As predicted on Wednesday, here we are, once again, at our accustomed post.
More on our recent circumstance will appear below. For now, we offer this:
Our nation is in a state of great distress following this week's indictments. It's the culmination of a cultural schism which has been underway for a very long time.
We listened to phone calls from C-Span viewers on this morning's Washington Journal. It was a painful lesson concerning the challenge of keeping a "nation" together.
(To punish yourselves, just click here.)
As was the case in those phone calls, discussion of this week's indictments is going to reek of The Crazy.
For our own blue tribe, we get to enjoy the chuckling and laughing which suffused yesterday's discussions among the corporate millionaires our own cable network has chosen as our tribal tribunes.
At Fox, it gets even worse.
The discussion already reeks of The Crazy. As an overview, we'll offer two points:
First, you can't sensibly discuss the behavior of Donald J. Trump without involving basic questions of mental illness / mental health / severe personality disorder. As a people, we're a million miles from having the ability to conduct some such discussion.
Simply put, we aren't up to that task. This means that we can have no serious discussion of Donald J. Trump's ongoing behaviors.
Second, a large major nation can't expect to survive "half blue and half red." More specifically, a large major nation can't expect to survive with giant corporate "news organizations" filtering all discussion through those opposing partisan lenses.
Yesterday, we saw sheer insanity being peddled on the Fox News Channel. Also, we saw a gang of unfaithful servants having the time of their lives on MSNBC.
Listening to Washington Journal, we heard comments by many people who have no ability to distinguish between 1) something they've been told by someone they're inclined to believe and 2) something which is known to be true.
We the people have always suffered under that lack of capacity. In the modern context, we see no one trying to come to terms with that disabling state of affairs,
How have we come to be two separate nations, one red and one blue? More precisely, what drives the loathing of us blues among so many reds?
We think back to something we saw when we were a Harvard freshman:
In those days (1965-66 school year), we Harvard men were still required to wear a jacket and tie when we dined in university dining halls.
Within a year or two, that rule was gone. Still, that rule remained in place during that freshman year.
The rule was still in effect! One day, we saw a freshman behave in the following manner as he checked in for lunch at the freshman dining hall:
A working-class Cambridge woman sat behind a metal desk, checking us in as we entered. She had apparently told this young man that he was in violation of the well-known dress code.
We agreed with her assessment. For his "tie," our fellow freshman had a shoestring loosely tied around his neck. The shoestring he was calling a tie adorning a scruffy t-shirt.
His "jacket" was some sort of windbreaker. The Cambridge woman had told this young man that he wasn't wearing a jacket and tie as the terms were understood within the prevailing dress code.
The Cambridge woman had told this young man that he wasn't wearing a jacket and tie. "How do you know that this isn't a tie," our fellow freshman kept asking her, as everyone else waited in line behind him.
We were appalled by his insolence, and by his class condescension. Our own "well-educated" blue tribe has broadcast such attitudes and such values to red tribe adherents right up to the present day.
The cultural schism which has gone red and blue has been part of American culture from the start. Needless to say, this unfortunate type of cultural condescension has always been part of the broader human experience.
That said, we blues tend to have little ability to see the way we behave toward Others, or to understand the ways we often appear. Listening to C-Span callers this morning, we thought of the obnoxious behavior we saw in the freshman dining hall that day.
Also, we thought about the conversation which likely took place in that working-class woman's home that very night.
As a general matter, we blues don't understand why we're widely loathed and disbelieved. Our tribunes, who went to the finest schools, were chuckling, laughing and enjoying themselves on MSNBC last night.
(Rachel went to Stanford; Nicolle went to Berkely. Lawrence and Joy went to Harvard, Alex to Brown. It continues along from there.)
Life can still be very good if you're paid the millions of dollars dished to such cable news stars. Elsewhere, someone probably knows what we need, but our cable stars seem to know what we want.
This is a very dangerous time. There's no way to win a war of the type which is now underway.
We'll postpone news about where we've been to another day. For now, we'll only say this:
When we emerged from general anesthesia on Wednesday, feeling fit as a fiddle, we were surprised to find ourselves thinking about Mississippi's good, decent public school kids. Our own tribe's cable tribunes will never mention those good and decent, and deserving, low-income kids:
Our tribunes don't care about those kids. They may not realize that they don't care, but they plainly don't.
Our tribunes don't care about kids like that. There is exactly zero sign that they ever will.
"Our nation is in a state of great distress following this week's indictments. It's the culmination of a cultural schism which has been underway for a very long time."
ReplyDeleteNo all of the nation is in distress. The majority is relieved that the rule of law applies, even to a president who has styled himself as above the law. Republicans are not "our nation" and they do not speak for everyone, not even the majority of people in our nation.
A "cultural schism" did not cause Trump to steal classified documents, hide them and refuse to give them backing, breaking many laws in the process. He did that on his own. There is not even a cultural schism over whether he did something wrong. The laws are clear and most Americans support them -- no one thinks we should be exposing important national secrets to our enemies.
Kevin Drum describes three defenses being raised by Trump supporters. One is that Hillary (or Biden or Pence) did what Trump did and got away with it, but that is clearly inconsistent with the facts alleged in the indictment. Another is that stealing classified documents is no big deal. That one is not likely to sway anyone but true believes either. The weaponization theory is the one most political Republicans are expressing. But Trump's own disregard for law may undermine it. That won't stop the diehard politicians from trying to advance it. But I doubt they will get away with it -- for one thing, the court and jury will be unaffected by such a claim. For another, it is patently absurd given the many chances Trump was given to return the documents, and his clear evasion of the law.
But here we see where Somerby stands, and it is both predictable and disappointing, No liberal is going to defend Trump, but Somerby appears to be falling in line behind the weaponization theory, claiming that it is our polarization that has led to the left brining charges against Trump, a persecution motivated by partisan politics in our divided nation. And it shouldn't be happening because the right will get upset (as if they aren't perpetually upset already).
Now we are expected to abandon law and stop protecting classified secrets because the red tribe doesn't like it when a criminal president is prosecuted. For Somerb, unity comes before the law, but unity can only be achieved at the cost of our national integrity. Who needs integrity, Somerby says, because Somerby prefers unity at any cost.
Somerby thinks that protecting classified documents against exposure is equivalent to freshmen wearing jackets to dinner. He implies that the law itself is trivial and arbitrary, so it is no big deal if Trump breaks it (due to his mental illness).
ReplyDelete"We were appalled by his insolence, and by his class condescension. Our own "well-educated" blue tribe has broadcast such attitudes and such values to red tribe adherents right up to the present day.
The cultural schism which has gone red and blue has been part of American culture from the start. Needless to say, this unfortunate type of cultural condescension has always been part of the broader human experience."
Somerby goes on to blame our blue tribe for being similarly condescending to red tribe members, even though in his example, it was a wealthy boy condescending to a working class woman (cafeteria staff member). But setting aside this role-switching, can Somerby really mean that it is the liberal tribe's fault that Trump stole classified documents and the right doesn't care that instead of being protected, our enemies may have had access to them?
The indictment quotes the many statements Trump made in 2016 about the importance of safeguarding classified information, which presents a stark contrast to Trump's later actions as he stole, mishandled and refused to return national secrets. These were aimed at Hillary, making hay off the manufactured right wing outrage over her emails, but the right wing has been concerned about national security throughout its long history as a party, only now, when Trump commits a crime, abandoning that concern to protect their political candidate. That is partisanship at its worst, but it isn't doing this because the left was too condescending. It is doing it to retain political power.
It may be time to apply the words "mentally ill" to Somerby. Not even the worst Republicans are saying things as silly as Somerby today.
The right has lost their bearings after 30 some years of Rush and Fox promoting fascism and hatred of others; the libs "cultural condescension" has jack shit to do with it. It is more a by-product of watching the stupid.
DeleteThe right has lost their brains.
Delete"Also, we thought about the conversation which likely took place in that working-class woman's home that very night."
ReplyDeleteSomerby is back to using the royal "we" again, his way of avoiding personal responsibility for what he says.
He was not present in that woman's home and can have no idea what was being said. This is his fantasy. At the time he attended Harvard, Somerby was not a member of the same social class as that woman. How could he even imagine what might be "likely" (Somerby doesn't do probabilities)?
The Harvard freshman was engaging in sophistry. Somerby does that a lot himself. The woman at the door had most likely heard something similar by smart-alecky overindulged freshman during each incoming class. He wasn't being particularly original. I'll bet she didn't blink an eye but told him firmly, no proper attire, no dinner. Just like a waitress in a diner would not accept a paper cup as a shoe from a barefoot youth.
Somerby has told this story before. The blue tribe didn't invent the rules. Wanting to have them enforced is not persecution, nor is it condescension. When the red tribe insists that it is beyond its own rules and allowed to be an exception, isn't that condescension? Worse, why isn't what Trump did considered treason, espionage? Why is no one pointing that finger at our criminal in chief?
Our president was not an inexperienced youth, a boy being a boy. He was the former leader of the free world, our commander in chief, head of the armed forces and leader of our nation. Yes, he has always been obviously unfit to serve in that capacity, but he deliberately, knowingly, decided that the rules don't to him and he expects everyone else to go along with that, as if he were king or dictator, not an elected public servant. There is no condescension on our side when we expect him to carry out his responsibilities (by turning over those documents to the next president via the national archives).
If that kid had made a bigger fuss at Harvard, he would have been turned over to his parents for discipline, and failing that, asked to leave Harvard. The kid knows the limits of his impunity. Trump does not.
Somerby's main concern today seems to be the fee fees of the right wingers who are making a lot of noise over Trump's indictment. Does Somerby think it is OK to threaten Jack Smith's wife, as Trump did? Does he think it is OK for right wingers to make the threats of violence that have appeared all over right wing social media? Does Somerby think that "condescension" on the left justifies threats of violence by the right? There is no equivalence to relief that the rule of law still holds and the threats to overthrow our nation's justice system by attacking the FBI, DOJ, presidency, by piling up bodies in the street. And this in the context of a major rise in violence by the right wing, before any indictments were made.
Somerby is speaking to the wrong people about this. When the left engages in threats and violence, he might have a legitimate point, but we have exercised restraint while the right has not. And if Trump's followers continue to be confused about right and wrong and what Trump did wrong, that is because their own media has misled them, not because of liberal condescension.
I suspect Somerby's little trip was to lala land. He is clearly detached from reality himself.
"we were surprised to find ourselves thinking about Mississippi's good, decent public school kids. Our own tribe's cable tribunes will never mention those good and decent, and deserving, low-income kids"
ReplyDeleteAnd yet this whole brouhaha arose because Morning Joe had the nerve to call the reading improvement by those kids a "miracle" while Somerby had to call them cheaters.
Does Somerby ever think about what he is saying before he writes it? Or does the vitriol against the left just flow without reason, facts, or restraint?
Maybe Somerby is still suffering the effects of that anesthesia? He isn't making sense.
"We'll postpone news about where we've been to another day. "
ReplyDeleteOf course he will. First he teases, then he postpones, and of course on another day, he will talk about something different and never return to the teased topic. Stuff like this is why Somerby never made the cut as an op-ed writer or journalist or book author. No follow through.
Devious hinting is not straightforward enough for prime time journalism and papers don't have space for stream-of-conscious rambling, self-indulgent reminiscence, or blaming without facts and evidence.
Anonymouse 10:46am, the only thing I’ve heard is that he’s changed his name to “Bobbi”.
DeleteNow you can change yours to Cecilia.
DeleteHere is yet another example of Cecelia's tasteless and mean-spirited idea of a joke.
DeleteAnonymouse 5:16pm, it was a quip related to the times. I have no ill-will toward Bob. He’s a mensch.
DeleteYou do have ill will toward trans people, who have done nothing to you.
DeleteBigots should probably avoid using yiddish words whose full meanings they don’t appreciate.
Mensch is German. It means human being.
DeleteMensch is also Yiddish:
Delete"A mensch, in Yiddish, is a person of integrity, morality, dignity, with a sense of what is right and responsible. But mensch is more than just an old Yiddish adage. It is relevant now, across the world, more than ever… “To be a mensch is to be supportive. To be a friend, to be calm in troubled times." Being a mensch describes what observant male Jews owe to God in their daily behavior. It means giving to charity and helping others, stepping up and being there for those in need, not simply being manly in the Josh Hawley way.
That definitely does not describe Somerby. When you hear someone use the word mensch in conversation and they are not native German speakers, you can assume they are using the Yiddish meaning, which comes to us in the US via Jewish culture.
I find it questionable when someone who is right wing, such as Cecelia, uses Yiddish to laud an asshole like Somerby. In that context, it is more likely to be something anti-semitic. I resent it as a type of cultural appropriation, especially when applied to someone as unworthy as Somerby.
It’s German.
DeleteBob Somerby ist ein Mensch.
DeleteAnonymouse 11:34pm, when are anonymices not offended?
DeleteAnonymices are always offended, even as they deride and spuriously attack others.
Bob is a mensch and anonymices are amusingly fakakta.
Makes for an entertaining blog.
Fakakta? Now that is Yiddish.
DeleteFarkakte -- at least spell it right.
Delete"The basic grammar and vocabulary of Yiddish, which is written in the Hebrew alphabet, is Germanic. Yiddish, however, is not a dialect of German but a complete language‚ one of a family of Western Germanic languages, that includes English, Dutch, and Afrikaans."
DeleteYIVO Institute for Jewish Research
What kind of white supremacist anti-Semitic cockroach keeps insisting that Yiddish is German? An ignorant one, obviously. Why does Somerby have such people crawling around his comment section? Ask Cecelia.
DeleteThe German spelling would be verkakter (masculine), verkakte (feminine), or verkaktes (neuter).
DeleteKeep honing your craft, Cecelia. One day, you may even be funnier than terminal cancer.
DeleteAnonymouse 9:01am, my guess is that these people are crawling around the comment section of Bob’s blog and hating on him all day because they’re under the influence of a manipulative person who they find intellectually and emotionally compelling.
Delete@9:03 is not hating on Somerby. He/she/they are implying that Jews stole German, that Yiddish does not exist as a distinct language and culture, much as the Holocaust did not happen.
DeleteThe white supremacists and incels and MRAs all come here because Somerby validates their illness. You may be a simple right wing troll but you are travelling in dangerous company, encouraging elements that a sane Republican party would toss out on their asses but which Trump has embraced.
Watch out, Cecelia. You don't want these guys defending you. Good decent Germans were defended right out of their freedom when Hitler did the same thing and they thought "Hey, keen, the trains are running on time."
Your German-speaking friend is not hating on Somerby because Somerby is saying so much that he likes. If you, Cecelia, were an actual woman you might worry a bit about his plan to put you back in the kitchen, where you wouldn't be able to write your nasty comments here any more.
Anonymouse 9:25am, I used some Yiddish and I was accused of “cultural appropriation”.
DeleteWhy? Because it is an accusation that could be pulled out of a box.
All-purpose fake grievance troupes, you’ve got oodles of them.
You fight with your fellow anonymouse about who is an antisemite and therefore must be defending Somerby and so tarnishes everyone else who does as well.
You go with your usual creepily opportunistic illogic and with the pretend stand that finds grievance in someone using a couple of Yiddish words because you don’t like the person who said them.
Take that bullshite down the road. Who do you think you’re fooling?
You called Somerby a mensch, which is an insult to actual mensch’s and Jews who consider being an actual mensch integral to their religion and culture. The word means something to others, if not to you.
DeleteI have stated my objection directly and am not trying to fool anyone. Misappropriate whatever you want — Somerby taught you how. Just don’t object when people call you on it. Do you think Jews consider being an actual mensch “bullshite”?
Cecelia, you were attacked for not knowing what a word you used meant. Again.
DeleteThe plural of Mensch is Menschen.
DeleteCecelia said troupe when she meant trope.
DeleteGerman is the Central European dialect of English.
DeleteAnonymouse 11:16am, Somerby is a mensch and the term is not a designation solely reserved for Jews.
DeleteYou stated an opinion contrived, as usual, to impugn anyone who disagrees with you. You claim that Somerby and his fans are consciously (AND unconsciously…) supportive of racists. You ran that crap up the flagpole and then insisted that I salute it.
Your usual carnival act.
Who do you think you’re fooling?
She strikes me as someone who doesn't read but consumes info from video or by listening -- so she doesn't know how the words she hears are spelled. She also doesn't seem to look words up much, so she doesn't know their actual meaning except from the context in which she first heard them, which is likely as undereducated as she is and misusing the words in right wing ways. Just like the right redefines words in order to attack the left with them. She clearly thought that mensch meant "good ole boy".
DeleteCecelia, what part of mensch is a yiddish word did you not understand?
DeleteWhile you're at it, feel free to use: hairycarey, shatzenFreud, and brew ha ha. You've already messed up shalaylee (shillelagh in Irish).
Try being less of a joke around here.
Hint: a person cannot be both an asshole and a mensch. You may think you are praising Somerby, but the use of such a word makes it obvious how far short he falls from the meaning of the word. He isn't even honest in his own blog, never says anything directly, breaks his own promises -- how can you say he has integrity or moral righteousness? He hasn't taken a stand on any of Trump's wrongdoing and keeps giving him a bye for being mentally ill. He gives us a stupid story which others here turned into a worker taking a stand, without himself taking any stand on anything except he doesn't like Morning Joe. Your attempt to compliment Somerby using such a word would be hilarious if it weren't a desecration of the concept to use it to describe Somerby.
Borrowing a Yiddish word is one thing, but desecrating it by using it to describe filth, is another.
Anonymouse 12:09pm, the other day, I struck an anonymouse as being someone who might run my car over her.
DeleteYour depreciations of me are closer to the truth than hers.
My understanding of anonymouses is utterly on the money. You’re a hoot.
Anonymouse 12;23, you’re a putz and a schmuck, and probably a klutz.
DeleteEven a male chimpanzee would know the difference between depreciation and deprecation.
DeleteCecelia is name-calling again. That means she has lost the argument, even in Yiddish.
DeleteAnonymouse 12:58pm, you know it, baby.
DeleteThere is no comment @12:58. Who are you talking to?
DeleteCecelia is lost. Don’t ridicule her. Help her.
DeleteSome comments may have disappeared.
DeleteAnonymouse 1:05pm, I illustrated that Yiddish words are commonly used and accepted.
DeleteAnonymouse opinions of Bob are not written in the Torah.
One definition of the word “depreciations” is “to represent as of little value or merit; belittle”
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/depreciate.
Kvetch on.
Cecelia,
DeleteYeah. Why can't these Anonymouses whine and cry about a rainbow on their beer can, like real Americans.
LO Fucking L.
Depreciation refers to amortizing the cost of a car. You meant deprecation but you can’t spell. So you are pulling a peewee herman, pretending you meant depreciation. We don’t have to try to make you look foolish — you do it to yourself.
DeleteDo you even know what the Torah is, besides being a holy book?
Anonymouse 5:09pm, because anonymices like the symbol of God’s promise thru Noah?
DeleteAnonymouse 5:18pm, evidently it’s a Bob Dylan lyric.
Delete12:58 was my comment, a friendly joke with Cecelia. I humorously called her a male chimpanzee. Apparently the system administrator thought it was a serious insult and deleted it.
DeleteGibberish
DeleteIf the administrator deleted gibberish, this whole blog would disappear.
DeleteCecelia is a minor part of this blog, contributing no ideas.
DeleteAnonymouse 7:26pm, we all know that “a” is the major contributor to this blog.
DeleteWhen she is away, there are two or three posts from anonymices.
So you agree then.
DeleteAnonymous 11:13pm, I agree that there are three people who type the same creed daily, “a” being the major contributor.
DeleteIt’s a political operation.
"When we emerged from general anesthesia on Wednesday, feeling fit as a fiddle..."
ReplyDeleteMost people come out of general anesthesia either laughing or crying. The emotions are not real but the lingering effects of the drugs. Somerby is no exception. It is why they make you wait around in the recovery room until you are back to normal.
Whatever thoughts Somerby had at that point are not worth sharing, especially given that he has clearly lied about them, using this as a device to make a closing statement about how no one cares about kids in MS, not even their parents and teachers. Talk about condescension!
Morning Joe is more honest than Somerby.
How fit is a fiddle? And how do you know how fit a fiddle is?
DeleteAsk Somerby -- he's the one who said it.
Delete"This is a very dangerous time. There's no way to win a war of the type which is now underway."
ReplyDeleteThis is a dangerous time, because Rachel was paid nearly as much as Tucker (before he lost his job). And then we get the threat -- stop gloating over Trump's indictment or else there will be war. Somerby uses the word war, but the right wing folks on social media are talking about piling up bodies in the street. WE know what that means -- random (stochastic) violence aimed at unarmed people in Target stores or children in schools. Red warriors are nothing if not brave!
We have national holidays that celebrate our nation's victories and honor those who sacrificed their lives to defend our nation. One just passed -- Memorial Day. Another is coming up -- Freedom Day. What were Rachel and the others celebrating that resulted in laughter? The public demonstration that no one is above the law, that our system still works, even when crimes are committed by the wealthy and powerful, that even a flagrant scofflaw such as Trump can and will be brought to justice for his crimes against the people of this country. Why shouldn't Rachel laugh and be happy about this. We all are -- except Trump's accomplices on the right, and the troops he raised to storm the Capitol on 1/6, who he is now aiming against society to pressure our justice system to back off and let him do whatever he wants, no matter who it places in jeopardy.
We are lucky (and owe gratitude to our military leaders) that Trump never attacked Iran while in office. But now we hear a recorded conversation that showed he wanted to do exactly that. We already know about Trump's private conversations with Putin, absent his staff minders, and we see from the indictment how he showed classified documents to the wrong people. These are not the only instances of that happening -- just the ones we know about due to chance recordings.
Now it is going to stop, along with the ability of Trump to sneak back into office, where he can do more favors for Putin and our enemies while failing to serve and protect the citizenry. We on the left know what happened and why Trump needs to be tried for his alleged crimes. If the right does not recognize what has happened, then they deserve our condescension. And they too need to be prosecuted for their crimes, as those who participated in 1/6 insurrection are. Threats must be met with the certainty that punishment for cimes will follow. That is the only deterrent we have against the craziness on the right, a situation Somerby is encouraging by urging pacifism and appeasement of the right.
I am offended by Somerby's willingness to sell out our government to the bullies on the right. But maybe he had unfortunate experiences on the playground and believes bullies must be given whatever they demand, right or wrong. But if he had, surely we would have heard that story by now -- the one about the kid who always took his lunch money and how that shows that Republicans should get whatever they want whenever they whine and pretend to be victims while trying to destroy our democracy.
The only people raving and shoving nonsense down right wing throats are not those on TV. There is also Somerby doing his part for the fascist cause.
That freshman was right. The woman should have admitted him.
ReplyDeleteThat wouldn’t do him any favor.
DeleteShe could have said, “You’re right. This rule is stupid, and I won’t enforce it.”
DeleteYes, working class women do that all the time, jeopardizing their jobs in the process, because they think college kids should be able to do what they want.
DeleteNote that this particular kid was wearing a shoestring and a t-shirt, not even slacks and a sweater. It is not just inappropriate clothing but disrespectful of the college and the others dining.
A kid who cannot follow a dress code is not being prepared well to take his place in corporate life or future social functions he may be invited to. Parents send their kids to university to learn how to behave properly in middle class surroundings, not just to learn about Wittgenstein. He doesn't have to be there and won't remain long if he feels the need to challenge everything he is asked to do. How far would Somerby have gotten if his teacher had said "You're right. Wittgenstein is stupid, and I won't teach it."?
When you get to the point where everything is stupid, you become a bona fide nihilist. Or maybe you're already there, hence the appeal of Somerby's blog.
This was her chance to speak truth to power. Instead, she complied.
DeleteWho was the power? Her or the kid? Her more than the kid, but perhaps neither had much power, except over their own behavior. What is true about a shoelace? It is false to call it a tie because it isn't one. I think you are a bit confused.
DeleteThe power was the elite who made the rule.
DeleteAnd what if it is a tradition? What if no one made a rule, but just continued the family habit of dressing for dinner? Is it evil to tell those who are new how to fit in at a new school? Some there may have worn uniforms previously at a prep school. Some may come from families with a different tradition. Communicating the expectation helps everyone adjust, except those who think other people’s traditions are oppressive.
DeleteThis name-calling using the term elite is juvenile too. If Somerby didn’t want to be at an elite school, he could have quit, like Pete Seeger and Bill Gates. Remaining but being rude at dinnertime to show you disapprove is childish, not revolutionary.
The working woman was on the wrong side of history. The rule would be rescinded within two years.
DeleteAnd would she then be speaking truth to power and other nonsence when it was no longer her job to teach freshmen what to wear to dinner?
DeleteMaybe she started speaking truth to power, or maybe she served patriarchy in some other menial role. The choice was hers.
DeleteIt makes no sense to talk about "choices" when people are wage slaves.
DeleteThat freshman gave her a choice.
DeleteAs I said, you cannot afford to stand up to an employer when you depend on your job.
DeleteWhy should a worker help a student break a rule when that rule is itself meaningless and breaking it serves no useful purpose to anyone, including the student asking to have the rule broken? Expecting working class people to "stand up" for empty causes shows a complete lack of understanding of what employment means to people without much money.
Sisterhood is powerful.
DeleteSisterhood Is Powerful: An Anthology of Writings from the Womens Liberation Movement by Robin Morgan, 1970.
DeleteAlso:
Sisterhood Is Forever: The Women's Anthology for a New Millennium by Robin Morgan, 2003
I doubt the woman recognized that anyone was condescending because I doubt she thought of any of those boys as superior to her by virtue of wealth or education. They are still kids and she held a position of adult authority.
ReplyDeleteBut it is telling that Somerby projects condescension on various situations and assumes liberals feel that way when most of us don’t.
Rule of law applies to the mentally ill too.
ReplyDeleteSomerby keeps saying that we cannot survive as a divided nation. That is historical untrue.
ReplyDeleteWe have always been a divided nation. Because of that, after our separation from Britain, we devised a system of govening a diverse collection of disparate colonies. The colonies were founded by different countries, had different religions, different economics, some were slave and some not, some were wealthier than others, and so on. Our system of government was devised to enable compromise based on voting with respect for minority views and with the consent of the governed. But it also depends on good will, concern for the needs of both others and the whole, and the desire to remain a union.
Somerby objects to the rough-and-tumble politics but this has always existed because free expression is how we resolve our differences. He doesn't seem to understand that what has eroded in the current situation is the good faith, respect for differences, and the desire to remain a union. Instead, the right wants to use political power to force its will on others. The Christian right wants to become a nation with only one religious view -- it's own. The wealthy right wants to ignore its responsibility to others in our nation and stop paying taxes and obeying government regulations. The elements on the right have coalesced around a desire to force the nation to serve their interests, ignoring the tenets of democracy and attempting to use brute power to gain dominion over all the other diverse people in our nation. That is as unacceptable now as it was the last time it was attempted, the civil war. The muscle and the encouragement have come from Russia, which is an enemy of the US but also of democratic government and individual freedoms. The arming of the right has also encouraged them to believe that terrorism can help them succeed in overthrowing a nation that cannot be overrun by political means because the majority of the people do not want the right wing vision of America.
When Somerby urges the Democrats to capitulate to the right wing, he is working for anti-democratic forces. But he is also trying to confuse matters by telling the left that we can preserve our union by appeasing the right wing, when the right has no desire to remain a union if it cannot be the boss of everyone and impose its religous and economic regime on everyone who isn't rich, white, and willing to ignore the needs of others.
This boils down to a fight over multiculturalism in a nation that has ALWAYS BEEN multicultural. On the left, we want to maintain our union, maintain respect for all, including minorities, and work to ensure the common good. The right does not want any of those things. That is a clear difference between our parties and one that needs to be recognized so that morons like Somerby cannot foist their agenda of surrender on the majority in this country. Notice how Somerby seeks to use our own values against us by arguing that a would-be dictator like Trump deserves compassion. Don't be fooled.
Freshmen have been doing stuff like that forever. It is part of being a student -- playing pranks. I have been reading the bio of Samuel Adams and they played pranks at Harvard in his day too.
ReplyDeleteTeens with a sense of entitlement can be truly obnoxious. Teachers and staff at universities understand that and deal with it. Somerby presents this kid as uniquely "condescending" but I'm sure they were all like that.
Somerby is doing some virtue signaling by pretending to be concerned about that staff woman's working class reaction. But he doesn't seem to know enough about the working class to understand what she most likely felt. The working class has a sense of superiority of its own and tends to look down upon, if not pity, the upper classes they serve. Their deference is part of their job, but not genuinely felt as inferiority of any kind. Working class people feel a genuine pride in what they can do, in earning their own living and not depending on others (as the wealthy do). That woman at Harvard may have briefly felt sorry for that kid's parents, her own form of condescension.
Somerby, oddly, never describes what she said to the freshman with the shoelace. Most likely, she briskly said something like, "I don't care what you have around your neck, go dress properly or you don't get to eat. And you'd better hurry and change before they close the meal hall doors and you'll go hungry." She would have immediately turned to the next properly dressed freshman in line and let him in, ignoring the other kid. I imagine that is what she did because that is what works with college kids. She would not have stood and tried to argue philosophy (when is a tie realy a tie) and she would not have laughed or jollied him along, trying to be one of the kids with him. That doesn't work either. She would have asserted her authority, and left him to go hungry if he persisted. If he bullied his way in, he would have been reported and had a chat with someone higher up, with the power to contact his parents or suspend him or kick him out.
At public universities, there is a statement of common values that all students read and sign upon admission. It says that students agree not to engage in disruptive behavior, agree to respect the rights of others, won't drink on campus etc. So there is buy-in as a condition of admission and a student can be kicked out for violating that statement which they previously signed.
I suspect that kid was Somerby himself.
DeleteI guess we're supposed to think that the freshman is Trump, but the people who catered to Trump helped make him the monster he became. Harvard in the 1960s dealt with a lot of spoiled rich kids. I doubt they would have appeased someone like Trump.
DeleteTrump got through school by hiring others to take his exams for him. He didn't read or do any school work in college, any more than he did in earlier grades. His business training is a lie.
Perhaps Somerby identifies with Trump because, as a spoiled Harvard freshman, he didn't do any work either and was snotty to the staff and the teachers. We know by his own admission that he had to repeat several classes during summer school, in his chosen major philosophy. I have little doubt he did just enough to slide through and avoid the draft, until graduation when he took a teaching job to continue to stay out of the military. Then he did just enough to stay employed, with no understanding of his students, no training as a teacher, and a piss poor work ethic, perhaps doing stand up on the side. Then he left teaching to be a comedian and manage a comedy club. When Al Gore ran for office in 2000, Somerby began blogging. It isn't clear he did anything besides that from then to the present. Now he is phoning it in as a blogger and perhaps receiving a supplement to his trust fund from the RNC, Russia or some PAC with dark money right wing funding.
As those of us who were in our 20s during the 60s reach our old age, we look back contemplate our lives, summing up both our accomplishments and our regrets. Some of us try to make amends. Some of us grasp a second-change to do what they always wanted (fulfilling a bucket list). I hope Somerby is proud of his life and not full of regrets about what he has done with what he was given.
It seems kind of obvious that Somerby now regrets having shown that film Forgotten Village to 5th graders and is trying to make up for it by joining the DeSantis culture war against teachers showing Disney films in class.
DeleteHow badly did he get reamed for doing that? It has stuck with him all this time and now he is attempting a do-over but going way overboard in the other direction. Is he grandiose enough to think he scarred any of those kids for life, because parents complained about it? The incident seems to have scarred him for life instead.
But, what is the connection between adherence to superstition in a Mexican village and the lives of those black kids in 1970s Baltimore? Is folk medicine a big problem for them? What condescending Harvard perspective was he trying to impose on those beautiful black kids, who most urgently needed to learn to read at grade level?
http://dailyhowler.blogspot.com/2021/06/navel-gazing-and-town-holidays-and.html
It wasn't just Trump who was mishandling classified documents. Yastreblansky at Rectification of Names describes the testimony during the 1/6 hearing in which Cassidy Hutchinson describes burning, photocopying and providing copies to people from the private sector (with no security clearance) and removing classified documents and not returning them, by Mark Meadows and Devin Nunes.
ReplyDeletehttps://yastreblyansky.substack.com/p/all-the-presidents-minions?sd=pf
The substack article describes recent reporting about the cooperation of Mark Meadows with the Special Prosecutor.
This indictment of Trump may be the tip of an iceberg.
Yastreblansky: "I’ll get to the indictment presently, but there was another big story about document theft that I want to start with; in a wild new development in the theft of classified presidential records, the great Murray Waas has discovered, and posted the discovery right here on Substack, that it wasn't just Donald Trump who stole them; so, it seems, did his chief of staff Mark Meadows, who's been getting a lot of attention this week as we learn that he may have flipped on his old boss for a plea deal (the UK Independent says he did, using the code, “The Independent has learned that”, and “it is understood that”, that the Justice Department asks reporters to use when passing on information obtained from them on “deep background”) and this is one of the crimes he may or may not be pleading guilty to:
Former president Donald Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, removed more than a thousand pages of classified documents from the White House late at night on the final evening of Trump’s presidency. according to government records and interviews with several individuals, with first-hand knowledge of the matter.
Chief among the sources being the testimony of Meadows’s aide Cassidy Hutchinson before the January 6 Committee, who was not only the witness of a bunch of document burnings in Meadows’s office fireplace, as you might remember, but also of the bulk photocopying and distribution of these documents, which has remained virtually unknown."
According to Jared Gans at The Hill, Maddow and her guests were laughing at the segment of the indictment where Trump acknowledges that he is handling classified material improperly, saying to a writer who taped the conversation, that he could have declassified he document while president but now it was too late, while at the same time showing the document to the writer and telling him what it said (about a plan for attacking Iran).
ReplyDeleteAccording to Gans, the laughter is at the fact that Donald Trump incriminated himself during that taped interview by showing that he knew he was doing something improper. There is video evidence of the conversation, but that was not included in the indictment -- just the transcript. Maddow's dramatic reading of the transcript was to convey what Trump said and did during that interview, which is part of the evidence against Trump.
I wouldn't characterize that as glee at Trump's downfall, as Somerby does.
https://thehill.com/homenews/media/4043453-maddow-dramatic-reading-trump-indictment-msnbc/
"A Rebuttal to the Whataboutism
ReplyDeleteJune 10, 2023 at 7:07 am EDT By Taegan Goddard at Political Wire
Aaron Blake: “Without saying so directly, the indictment offers a counterpoint to Trump defenders’ efforts to whatabout his behavior by comparing it to others like President Biden also having classified documents where they shouldn’t have.”
“All of the indicted conduct pertains to events that occurred after the subpoena for the documents was issued in May 2022. It is not about merely having the documents in the first place.”
This is important to note because the right is trying to dismiss the seriousness of Trump's alleged crimes by saying that Hillary and Biden and Pence did the same thing. But that is not true. The obstruction in order to keep subpoenaed documents did not happen with Hillary or Biden or Pence. No charges were alleged against any of the others because they did not engage in criminal behavior in any way equivalent to Trump's.
This makes Somerby's attempt to minimize Trump's crimes inappropriate. Because most liberals understand this important distinction where as most conservatives are trying to gloss it, that makes Somerby's motives more consistent with the right than the left. He is working hard to suggest Trump is being mistreated by the DOJ, in the same ways as right wingers are, but Trump did not do the same things as these others. He committed serious crimes while the others did not.
The Wall Street Journal says:
ReplyDelete“The charges against Trump for mishandling classified documents come as members of each political party already view the others as a threat to the nation, polling shows."
When these sorts of poll results are reported, I find myself wondering whether the attitudes polled reflect what people are actually saying to each other in their daily lives. There is a phenomenon called push polling in which an idea is implanted by the poll's question that might not have occurred to a person otherwise, causing them to change their attitudes. For example, if a poll asks "What would you think about a candidate's out-of-wedlock black child?" the information has been implanted by a semi-authoritative source and may become part of a person's attitude toward that candidate, even when it is false information.
Similarly, repeatedly asking people "Are Republicans a threat to our nation?" implants the idea that they may be a threat and causes more people to believe the very thing they are asking about.
Somerby spends a lot of time here saying that liberal beliefs about conservatives are causing the nation to slide into the sea, creating a deep rift between us that cannot be breached, starting a war. Reading that over and over, as if it is a real phenomenon -- the left is pushing the right into a gulf that cannot be crossed, etc. -- may create a self-fulfilling prophecy by causing people on the left to believe that we cannot compromise and get along with the right, because we are in a war. But the term war itself comes mainly from the right, in the form of culture war, war-on-woke, and the coming civil war hoped for by the Boogaloo Bois, Proud Boys and secession-oriented militias. This stuff doesn't come from the left, but when a poll asks whether the right (comprised of Young Republicans who ask at Turning Point conferences "when do we get to use the guns?") and the source of nearly all politically motivated terrorism in our country (based on stats), why wouldn't the left say yes? Meanwhile, the right is being told by Fox that the left is satanic and coming for their children.
But Somerby says it is the left's fault that the right is being perceived as a threat to our nation,
And then we have Trump who is now indicted for doing God-knows-what with classified documents whose sharing with an enemy would cause serious harm to the security of our nation and the individuals who serve it. The crimes for which Trump has been indicted are by definition a threat to our nation. Of course anyone who is keeping up with the news is going to answer that question about whether the right is a threat in the affirmative -- because they objectively are a threat. And that is obvious by their closing ranks to defend Trump, and by their participation in his crimes.
It would be irrational for anyone on the left to deny the evidence of this indictment and not consider Trump as a threat to our nation. Because Trump is the nominal head of the Republican party, that makes his accomplices threats too, and it makes it reasonable to say that the right wing is a threat to our nation.
I do not understand how the right could say the same thing about the left, except that it is part of the hyperbolic hysterical defamation of the left carried out by Fox and others on the right forever, but especially since the rise of Limbaugh, Gingrich, Fox and other outlets. That is as unpatriotic as anything done deliberately in the name of winning, and the right should be held accountable for the damage done to the unity of our country, But somehow I doubt that will happen. It is hard enough to get a traitor indicted for the blatant things he has done in public, much less something abstract like destroying democracy.
"12 million Americans think violence is justified to put Trump back in the White House"
DeleteDo you suppose those 12 million are from the red tribe or the blue tribe?
There he goes again. Somerby listening to irrelevant cspan callers, a tiny slice of a subset of a subset of a subset…
ReplyDeleteLast time he did this, he got conned by a caller from TN who jumped to the wrong conclusion about Citi Bike Karen - the woman who had in fact lied and was indeed the party at fault.
Some days Somerby whines about the democratization of media (a phrase he seems to misunderstand), today he whines about corporate media.
Right wingers like Somerby have no consistency with their arguments because every issue is merely a tool to weaponize as a means to achieve their sad and empty goal.
One year the right are deciding on Roe v Wade to legalize abortion, a few years later they are weaponizing abortion to win elections. It would laughable if it weren’t so deadly serious, and if they weren’t so dangerously effective at it.
Today Somerby again trots out his misleading parable, flipping right wing elitism on its head. The Harvard dress code was designed to enforce a hierarchy, the kid was right to point out the arbitrary nature of its basis. The kid was expressing the same sentiment that had later Harvard students protesting for a living wage for cafeteria workers.
Today, only the right is in distress, the nation in general is relieved. The left/right divide had been the fundamental struggle in society for thousands of years, since our ill-fated shift towards a society based on surplus, privatization of natural resources, and over commodification, from which emerged the unnatural traits of hierarchy and dominance.
Hierarchy and dominance exist in monkey and primate colonies. People are primates. You do the math.
DeleteMonkeys are primates, too. You do the bio.
DeleteKaren is a primate. So is young man.
DeleteThere are 27 kinds of macaques (including baboons). Some of them live in dominance hierarchies and some are pair bonded. Titi monkeys and squirrel monkeys are the same size and live in the same locations in central America. Titi monkeys are pair-bonded while squirrel monkeys live in colonies that have dominance hierarchies. There is the same situation with different kinds of chimpanzees. That makes it hard to generalize from monkeys or apes to humans.
DeleteSome humans seem to be more pair-bonded (monogamous) than others. There may be variation in formation of dominance hierarchies vs pair-bonding among humans with both patterns found in our species. So I don't think you can call dominance and hierarchy unnatural traits.
Since immediate return societies were not hierarchical and dominance-oriented, and account for about 95% of modern human existence, it is fair and reasonable to call hierarchy and dominance unnatural traits for modern humans.
DeleteIf dominance and hierarchy were unimportant to human survival over such a long time, there would be no pressure to evolve such traits.
DeleteArithmetic is unnatural, too.
DeleteThe pressure came from a shift to surplus based societies that included aspects such as privatization and commodification of natural resources; furthermore, human hierarchy and dominance are not universal traits, nor evolved genetic traits, they’re emergent traits from societal conditions. Finally, evolution is not linear.
DeleteSo, your contention that dominance and hierarchy are human traits is unfalsifiable.
DeleteI am a dominant hierarch.
DeleteThe limitations of falsifiability aside, either side of the issue is possible to falsify, and the evidence indicates that modern human hierarchy and dominance are emergent traits.
DeleteHierarchy is of course emergent. Dominance, not so much.
DeleteWhat a Freshman Once Did in a Dining Hall has nothing to do with anything Trump has done, so why are we even talking about it?
ReplyDeleteBecause it’s important. That freshman’s refusal to conform, and the working woman’s support for obedience, was a turning point of history.
DeleteIn what way? You are framing her position as "support for obedience" but it can also be viewed as respect for custom and tradition, respect for community. In Asian cultures, conformity is not the same as obedience because the values are shared and a person views themselves as an integral member of family with obligations to others, duty, and expectations of mutual support. In the 60s, young people rejected a lot of superficial social behavior (barefoot feet, long hair) that they later embraced because there wasn't much depth to their rebellion. But the 60s led to important civil rights movements (Chicanos, women's lib, gay rights) that used civil disobedience as a tool, not just an adolescent assertion of independence or avoidance of responsibility.
DeleteHippies didn't contribute much to any change, despite their colorful clothes, drug use and often self-destructive behavior. When they grew up, they changed. The same cannot be said for true counter-cultural movements such as the beats, political splinter movements such as socialists, anarcho-syndicalists and SDS/Weather underground, and the emergent environmental movement.
Refusing to "conform" is childish and stupid and self-indulgent. Hippies were the children of the upper middle class and they left their childish ways behind when they decided to grow up, get jobs and form two-parent famlies. Idealizing that time period without understanding its diversity is a big mistake.
Somerby's freshman gag is the equivalent of the corny scenes in Dead Poet Society where the kids are liberated by standing on their desks or tearing pages out of their textbooks. Stupid, like using Wittgenstein to show that Einstein was an idiot. It is the same thing -- confounding a dining hall staff member by calling a showstring a tie is no different than pretending not to speak English in a bar (Good Will Hunting) and thinking that is clever. It isn't. It is juvenile, which is what college freshmen tend to be. The insecurity of being in a new place led that kid to assert control over a "working woman" at the door in order to feel less scared and worried about his place. It was mean-spirited, inconvenienced others and probably didn't make him feel any better, depending on how others reacted. Most people deal with such insecurities by conforming, blending in in order to feel comfortable in a group, but perhaps not incipient narcissists like our Somerby. So he made an ass of himself. (Or his "friend" did.)
Anonymouse 5:12pm, would your dismissal of the feelings aroused in Bob by the treatment of the working class woman be different if Bob informed us that she was black?
DeleteOr Latina.
DeleteHe has no idea what she thought or felt. He doesn’t even tell us what she said or did. No, stereotyping her as a minority doesn’t help. He didn’t do her the courtesy of giving her lines in his attempted morality play. He didn’t care enough to notice her actual reaction.
DeleteAnonymouse 6:48pm, Bob specifically said that she contradicted the student’s repeated challenge that neckties are somehow relative.
DeleteIt’s you who refuses to notice her.
You disparage the reaction of indignation that Bob felt on behalf of a person simply doing her job.
On blogboard loaded with posters’ complaints of shocking insensitivity by anyone who fails to embrace their every utterance, that says it all.
Somerby has no standing to feel indignant on her behalf without knowing whether she felt that way herself. She said a shoestring was not a tie, then what?
DeleteSomerby is being performative in his concern for working class people. That woman didn’t need his pity and his little story makes him sound like a privileged little asshole. The way entitled youth idealized workers without getting their own hands dirty was mocked by the working class back in the day. Somerby didn’t bother to learn how to teach — that’s how much he cared about those black kids in Baltimore. But he has never forgotten the woman plagued by a shoestring as a necktie? Give me a break! He remembers the joke because it was him, not because his heart bleeds for the woman, for whom that was probably a frequent event, Harvard freshman pukes being what they are.
DeleteThank you, anonymices.
DeleteThe freshman was wearing a shoelace necktie.
DeleteThe working woman was supporting unaccountable power. She was a traitor to her class.
DeleteDominating a young male, she hid her own subordination to patriarchy.
It’s a dumb story that doesn’t achieve the impact that Somerby wants it to.
DeleteIf the world didn’t have right wing condescension, largely manifested via oppression, it wouldn’t have condescension at all.
Think about what Papadopoulos said on Dr. Jordan Peterson's podcast.
DeleteScottish are leaving the Democratic party.
ReplyDeleteThat's what happens when you take the high road, I guess.
DeleteName one.
DeleteLook at it from their perspective.
DeleteScottish men wear skirts.
DeleteSomerby keeps posting this story about the Harvard freshman because he's proud of his joke and wants us to know he was funny even right out of high school. It is kind of pathetic though, like Trump waving around classified documents in front of book writers or PAC staff, so they will know that he got to handle really sensitive info when he was an important man, the president.
ReplyDeleteAt heart, it is all ego. Somerby's harrassment of a low-paid cafeteria worker made him feel important, big, not a scared newbie at a place where he didn't feel at home. Using other people that way is not very nice. That woman had a job to do and he didn't care whether he made it easier or harder for her to do. And there are commenters here posturing over labor and class issues who think he was doing something bold and brave. As if.
The world will change if kids everywhere throw off their ties and jackets and refuse to read their Wittgenstein pages. If only social change were that easy!
Not Somerby. The freshman who wore a shoelace as a necktie.
DeleteIf you had been a bystander to this incident, would you still remember it nearly 60 years later? This was Somerby, not some other freshman who thought it would be fun to use newly learned philosophical sophistry on a cafeteria worker. Or do you think Somerby then changed his major to philosophy/humor because it is so practical in daily life?
DeleteHow will you feel if ex-President Biden is sent to prison because he had classified documents in his garage?
ReplyDeleteI'm not in favor of jailing Biden. But, I am appalled at the prosecution of Trump for the very common situation of leaving office with some classified documents. The country has taken another step toward becoming a banana republic.
You need to read the indictment so you will know the things Trump is being charged with. It isn’t the possession of documents like Biden or Pence but a whole lot more.
DeleteBiden cooperated and sent the documents back where they belonged. Trump resisted, obstructed, deceived.
DeleteDavid should stop relying on conservative media.
As a member of the blue tribe, if Biden did what Trump has done, I would fully support prosecution.
DeleteAs usual DIC suggests that the actions of Trump are equivalent to Pence, Biden and Clinton when he either knows otherwise or does not understand the difference.
DeleteIn net worth per capita, the US is pulling away from the pack.
ReplyDeletehttps://jabberwocking.com/raw-data-wealth-around-the-world/
Unfortunately, that is based on average (mean, not median) wealth, which is skewed by the extraordinary wealth inequality in America. As Drum has to point out, the fact is:
Delete“In the US, the richest 10% own 70% of all wealth. This is the third highest inequality among the 43 countries in the database, behind only Russia and South Africa.”
Biden is a game changer.
ReplyDeleteGod sent Biden to govern America.
Delete“you can't sensibly discuss the behavior of Donald J. Trump without involving basic questions of mental illness / mental health / severe personality disorder.”
ReplyDeleteWho is supposed to be having this conversation? Jack Smith? Trump’s lawyers?
Because those are the only people for whom it matters at this point.
And everyone knows Trump’s lawyers aren’t going to be arguing this in court.
“We were appalled by his insolence, and by his class condescension.”
ReplyDeleteThis was the 1960’s. The youth were becoming radicalized by the Vietnam War. The incident Somerby relates likely reflects a student rebelling against authority, not expressing “class condescension.”
Students were also required to wear jackets and ties to class, but began refusing that too. Were they expressing “class condescension” towards their often liberal professors?
No, they were rebelling against the “rules”. They were also burning their draft cards, which didn’t sit too well with working class America.
Somerby himself rushed to accept a teaching job in Baltimore to avoid the draft. This left the fighting up to, shall we say, less privileged young men, probably in the “working class.” But surely you wouldn’t call what he did “condescension.”
Kevin Drum says:
ReplyDelete"The Trumpies literally lifted a Matt Damon monologue from the movie Air and used it as narration for a campaign video.
I guess they figure that if you can steal top secret documents and claim it's legal, then stealing someone's voiceover is small potatoes. The chutzpah here is otherworldly. Republicans are going nuts with campaign video shams these days."
Needless to say, Ben Affleck and Matt Damon have explicitly refused permission to the Trump campaign to use anything from their movie Air. Both are Democrats. This is intellectual theft, along he same lines as Somerby regularly commits here with his cutsie lifting from songs and poems. Hey, if you like it, just take it.
Quoting a line is fair use.
DeleteNot without attribution.
DeleteTrump's ad used an actual clip from the movie without permission. That is not fair use. There is an implied endorsement that both Affleck and Damon are disavowing.
DeleteBob did fair use. Trump didn’t.
DeleteSomerby doesn't do fair use when he inserts someone else's work, without attribution to that source, and then continues without criticizing or commenting upon that other person's work.
DeleteHe is only doing fair use when he (1) tells us who did the work, and (2) comments upon the quoted material.
Fair use includes: "certain uses of copyrighted material for, but not limited to, criticism, commentary, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, or research"
Somerby could qualify under the commentary or criticism part of the rule, but he is not a news reporter, teacher or scholar, so his use doesn't fit those allowed uses.
Simply saying "The woods are lovely, dark and deep" is not fair use without stating that this is from a Robert Frost poem, and then engaging in some commentary or criticism about that line, which he doesn't do. He has no reason for using the line that is allowed under copyright law.
Except that the line itself is famous, Somerby's use of it would be called plagiarism. He was taught to avoid plagiarism at Harvard and he himself was a teacher, presumably telling his students not to do it either.
Fair use does not mean "I want to use this so I will and who cares about identifying where it came from."
Trump is being charged under the Espionage Act. He not only retained classified documents but he deliberately hid them and obstructed attempts by the DOJ and FBI to recover them. His storage methods violated the law and placed our national security at risk. That has nothing to do with fair use or quoting other people's intellectual property.
I agree that Trump's behavior is different from Somerby's, except that both display flagrant disregard for others -- and neither is a mensch.
Fair use means President Trump can use it wherever he wants. Period.
DeleteTrump is not president. He is an ex-president. Period.
DeleteFair use doesn't apply to classified documents. Those are governed by the Espionage Act, not Copyright law.
DeletePresident Trump was merely repositioning the data for upload.
DeleteRobert Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" might not be in the public domain, but it should be -- he wrote it a hundred years ago. As a matter of common sense, but not of law, quoting it without attribution is, in my opinion, fair use.
DeleteLike Shakespeare's line "All the world's a stage." You don't have to attribute it, and you don't have to pay his heirs.
Quoting eithout attribution is plagiarism not copyright infringement. Stop defending this. If you do this in grad school you’ll be kicked out. If you do it as an author your offer of publication will be withdran. It is a serious offense to writers, publishers and scholars.
DeleteI did this in grade school, and I got high marks.
DeleteIt’s funny how Somerby ridiculously attributed some recent Trump non sequitur to an attempt to sound erudite, when you consider how often Somerby uses quotes from Frost, Dylan, etc. out of context and likely to the horror of the original creator.
DeleteWorse, most of Somerby’s claims to fame he’s actually cribbed from others - from Gene Lyons to Al Franken’s work to many others.
Here is another touching story that appeared on Politicus via Tucker Carlson:
ReplyDelete"The story that Trump showed maps of North Korea to Kid Rock in the Oval Office looks a lot more criminal after the Jack Smith indictment.
Here is Rock on Tucker Carlson in 2022 telling the North Korea story:
Kid Rock described Trump being [in] the Oval Office and whipping out maps. Rock responded, “And I’m like – I’m like, ‘Am I supposed to be like in on this s**t?’
Trump asked the ‘musician,’ “What do you think we should do about North Korea?’ Kid Rock told Carlson, “I’m like, what? I don’t think I’m qualified to answer this. I make dirty records sometimes. What the f**k am I doing here?’
Funny enough, ‘what the f–k am I doing here’ is the same response many people have had at a Kid Rock concert.
A story that the right found charming, and it alarmed everyone else because the guy who managed to screw up combining Werewolf of London and Sweet Home Alabama into the same song was solicited for advice on how to deal with North Korea.
Now that Trump has been indicted for violations of the Espionage Act, his behavior with Kid Rock can be identified as part of a pattern. Trump was always trying to impress others by showing them things they weren’t supposed to see.
As president, Trump leaked and mishandled classified info regularly, but when he no longer had the protections of the presidency to hide behind, his behavior became criminal, and when the government asked for the documents back, he is alleged to have committed a whole new set of crimes, and that is why we are where we are today.
Donald Trump was jeopardizing the country for a long time until he finally got caught."
To be so low in life as to desire to impress Kid Rock, that’s sad.
DeleteLynyrd Skynyrd were a bunch of coked out redneck and racist right wingers, ended by what appeared to be a tragic plane crash, but others have suggested it was a divine act of mercy.
To paraphrase P.T. Barnum, "Trump will make a boatload of money off this indictment."
ReplyDelete"The federal indictment of former President Donald J. Trump has unleashed a wave of calls by his supporters for violence and an uprising to defend him, disturbing observers and raising concerns of a warlike atmosphere ahead of his court appearance in Miami on Tuesday," according to the article. "In social media posts and public remarks, close allies of Mr. Trump — including a member of Congress — have portrayed the indictment as an act of war, called for retribution and highlighted the fact that much of his base carries weapons."
ReplyDeleteThe analysis further shows that this type of rhetoric could actually make real-life violence more likely.
"The calls to action and threats have been amplified on right-wing media sites and have been met by supportive responses from social media users and cheers from crowds, who have become conditioned over several years by Mr. Trump and his allies to see any efforts to hold him accountable as assaults against him," the New York Times writers wrote Saturday. "Experts on political violence warn that attacks against people or institutions become more likely when elected officials or prominent media figures are able to issue threats or calls for violence with impunity."
The article specifically points to the behavior of failed Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake."
From Digby's blog, concern about the violent language being used by Trump supporters, including members of Congress:
ReplyDelete"The problem ahead is that Trump’s “fool me twice” Republican base is lining up once again to take seriously that only the man who stored nuclear secrets in a ballroom and a bathroom can save them. The subtext, of course, is Trump’s plea for them to save him.
The New York Times reports that experts fret that the inhabitants of MAGAstan will once again take to the streets and commit violence in Trump’s name:
'Experts on political violence warn that attacks against people or institutions become more likely when elected officials or prominent media figures are able to issue threats or calls for violence with impunity. The pro-Trump mob that attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, was drawn to Washington in part by a post on Twitter from Mr. Trump weeks earlier, promising that it would be “wild.”
The former president alerted the public to the indictment on Thursday evening in posts on his social media platform, attacking the Justice Department and calling the case “THE GREATEST WITCH HUNT OF ALL TIME.”
“Eye for an eye,” wrote Representative Andy Biggs, Republican of Arizona, in a post on Twitter on Friday. His warning came shortly before the special counsel in the case, Jack Smith, spoke to the public for the first time since he took over the investigation of Mr. Trump’s retention of classified documents.'
On Instagram, Mr. Trump’s eldest son’s fiancée, Kimberly Guilfoyle, posted a photo of the former president with the words, “Retribution Is Coming,” in all capital letters.
Arizona’s imaginary governor, Kari Lake, spoke to the Georgia convention. She issued a threat against “Merrick Garland and Jack Smith and Joe Biden — and the guys back there in the fake news media.”
Lake told the cheering crowd, “If you want to get to President Trump, you are going to have go through me, and you are going to have to go through 75 million Americans just like me. And I’m going to tell you, most of us are card-carrying members of the N.R.A.”
She added: “That’s not a threat, that’s a public service announcement.”
This could again go beyond fiery boasts. It did on Jan. 6. It did in Oklahoma City."
Somerby has been accusing the media of widening the gulf between left and right with its hype. When these calls to violence are coming directly from GOP elected officials and Trump's own family members, how can the media be blamed?
DeletePeople died in the 1/6 insurrection. The right wing acts like it doesn't know that, or doesn't care what happens to its followers.
Manafort gave polling data to the Kremlin.
DeleteManafort also received $16 million from Russian assets.
DeleteGranted, that pales in comparison to the $2 billion Trump’s family received from the Saudis.
He was granted "access to assets", granted it was an accident in comparison to the asset's access.
DeleteThe Russian axis is granite. Granted the assets accessed a granite axis.
DeleteIf I wear a shoelace as a tie, and especially if I tell you it’s a tie, it is a tie.
ReplyDeleteIf you act like a dog, and especially if you tell us you're a dog, you are not actually a dog. You are a person pretending to be a dog.
DeleteA shoelace is not a necktie just because a foolish freshman too lazy to go get dressed properly says it is a tie.
The person who has the authority to let people in or keep them out of the dining hall gets to decide what is a tie and what is not, not the kid with the string around his neck.
She wasn’t an authority. She was a flunky.
DeleteLook up the word flunky. She was in charge of who went in and who didn't.
DeleteLook up the word authority. She was a servant of the patriarchy.
DeleteThen everyone is.
DeleteThe freshman resisted, and she refused to extend solidarity to him.
DeleteHe resisted going back to his room and changing his clothes. A heroic moment!
DeleteHe started small. She could have helped him to grow.
DeleteShe wasn’t paid a living wage. Not until students like the “no tie” kid protested on her behalf.
DeleteThis is important:
ReplyDelete"Trump took those documents for a reason and it wasn’t just casual sloppiness. There were just too many very important national security documents in there for that. He had a reason and the most likely is that he anticipated doing something with them. "
See: https://digbysblog.net/2023/06/11/finally-someone-says-it/
Treason is serious. The GOP is whipping Trump supporters into a frenzy to support a man who was capable of selling out our country to foreign enemies.
Children need to eat though.
DeleteBiden oversaw the largest single year drop in child poverty with the expanded child tax credit.
DeleteThat's astrological.
DeleteBob’s performance here is bad, but considering what he has accustomed us to, it’s not that bad. He almost seems to tired and bested to bring the Somerby crazy. Some random notes:
ReplyDeleteHis story of the long ago kid in line just doesn’t
seem to have anything to do with the current crisis. It relates only to Bob’s own confused resentments.
Everything bad Bob says about MSNBC has been true at times, but they have been pretty good on the indictment. That’s why Bob provides no examples of what he’s talking about here.
The degeneracy of the Political right is a big subject, an honest appraisal of it would include criticism of the Press and the political left. But people who vote Republican and champion Trump cannot be excused of personal responsibility, period. To Bob’s credit, he flirts with acknowledging this. This is at least better than when the documents issue first emerged, and Bob tried to slough it off with his usual bullshit.
On the relevant subject of Trump’s mental illness: Bob has often opined inaccurately and illogically on said. He will no doubt continue to do so. All a liberal can really say at this point is that I will accept that Trump, after being found guilty, serve his time in a facility for non violent, mentally defective criminals.