Friday, February 27, 2015

FRIDAY ROUND-THE-HORN.


This is all I want to hear about fucking llamas anymore, thanks.

•  Dear God -- Ross Douthat reviews Boyhood:
“Boyhood” does a very good job of offering grist for multiple interpretations of its family drama: There are people who watch the movie and come away feeling like Linklater is passing a harsh (maybe too harsh?) judgment on the Patricia Arquette-played mother’s romantic choices, people who feel like the movie is a portrait of her overall parental success in spite of the odds, and people (like me) who read the portrait of the Ethan Hawke-played dad as a case study in how our culture tends lets slacker-ish, slow-to-grow-up men basically Have It All at the expense of their progeny and the women in their lives. But then what you wait for, or at least what I waited for, is to see how Mason interprets things, how the mess around him in his childhood affects his relationships with both parents as he rises toward adulthood, how his desire not to repeat their mistakes or his tendency to fall into the same traps might manifest itself, how the tension and difficulty that he experiences passively as a child will translate into the actions he takes and mistakes he makes as a teenager and young man. 
And that’s what the last hour doesn’t offer. The conflicts ebb, Mason’s family (parents and sister) flatten and diminish, everyone suddenly gets nicer, and the sense of dread and dislocation disappears with nothing dramatically interesting to replace it.
In other words: He wanted a movie about how single-parent families are ungodly and a social drain, preferably one where all the principals realize as much and enter covenant marriages (and maybe all the abortions they ever had go in slow-motion reverse like at the end of The Theory of Everything), and Linklater didn't give it to him, so the movie is a failure. Is there a single conservative left who is not a Child of Zhdanov? (My much better Boyhood review here.)

•  You know I offer this video with all affection -- the now-late Mr. Nimoy singing about Bilbo Baggins:



This is how I will remember him: a serious person who nonetheless was able to give himself over to the ridiculous, and thus made us all a little happier. (Oh yeah -- he was a very good Mustafa Mond.) (Oh yeah, and this -- a story I didn't know before today, but not a shock.) (Oh and yeah also, the story FMguru tells in comments about Nimoy taking a stand on voice-casting for Sulu and Uhuru.)

•  Jonah Goldberg has a post about how liberalism is "exhausted" because MSNBC isn't tearing up the ratings. Samples:
As Josh Kraushaar of National Journal recently observed, Barack Obama has successfully moved his party to the left but has failed utterly to bring the rest of the country with him.
Guess they just voted for him twice because he was black.
If you still think Obama has generous coattails, ask Rahm Emanuel for a second opinion.
Many voters deserted the socialist Emanuel for the arch-conservative Chuy Garcia.
Contrary to myth, Fox (where I am a contributor) is in fact an actual news network, albeit with prime-time opinion shows.
No comment.

204 comments:

  1. Muriel Volestrangler12:20 PM

    Nothing wrong with llamas. Or moose ...
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djKPvXDwXcs

    ReplyDelete
  2. trizzlor12:22 PM

    Anecdote isn't data but my mother was also Patricia Arquette-played and I turned out fine.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Ted the slacker12:28 PM

    So a teenager from a broken home has a better perspective on life, in general, than Douthat does?

    ReplyDelete
  4. Dean Golden12:29 PM

    If you want to see classic plots, you shouldn't be watching Linklater films. Shocker!

    What I don't get is how you get to be a famous writer when your output is a tar pit.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Gromet12:39 PM

    Oh no! Nimoy! I learned it here just now.

    ReplyDelete
  6. tigrismus12:51 PM

    Our culture tends lets slacker-ish, slow-to-grow-up crappy writers basically Have It All at the expense of sense and correctness.

    ReplyDelete
  7. JennOfArk1:06 PM

    RIP, Leonard Nimoy.


    Somehow the haircut he's sporting in that video just doesn't look right without the pointy Spock ears.

    ReplyDelete
  8. FMguru1:16 PM

    Nimoy was the best. Evidence:

    "Initially, [Star Trek: The Animated Series] was only going to use the voices of William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, James Doohan and Majel Barrett.
    Doohan and Barrett would also perform the voices of Sulu and Uhura.
    Leonard Nimoy refused to sign up to lend his voice to the series unless Nichelle Nichols and George Takei were added to the cast — claiming that Sulu and Uhura
    were of importance as they were proof of the ethnic diversity of the
    23rd century and should not be recast. Nimoy also took this stand as a
    matter of principle, as he knew of the financial troubles many of his Star Trek co-stars were facing after cancellation of the series."

    Now, try and imagine William Shatner - especially 1970s Shatner - refusing paying work unless his friends were taken care of. I'll wait here until you finish laughing.

    A good guy, and an even better friend. RIP Len, the world's a little poorer for your passing.

    I'm gonna play Civ4 this weekend as a tribute.

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  9. M. Krebs1:17 PM

    There are people who watch the movie and come away feeling like
    Linklater is passing a harsh (maybe too harsh?) judgment on the Patricia
    Arquette-played mother’s romantic choices...


    Really? Who?

    ReplyDelete
  10. Everett Volk1:26 PM

    Dude. One more llama song. The BEST llama song.
    http://youtu.be/Oo7mN1kxqMk

    ReplyDelete
  11. randomworker1:26 PM

    RIP

    ReplyDelete
  12. DocAmazing1:26 PM

    Truly a Vulcan mensch.

    ReplyDelete
  13. coozledad1:28 PM

    I think it's a goddamn shame Nimoy didn't live to play the lead in the Lifetime network's "Aware: The Vanderleun Story."


    Only Nimoy could have given that stoic veneer to the way Vanderleun interprets things, how the mess around him in his childhood affects his relationships with both parents as he rises toward full internet awareness,

    ReplyDelete
  14. Megalon1:30 PM

    If you want to see Nimoy cast radically against type in something that's really unintentionally ridiculous, check out Baffled! (the exclamation point is part of the title.) It has an ascot and flares clad Nimoy as a groovy, swingin' race car driver/psychic detective who spouts lines like "a great lookin’
    chick!” Sadly, it's not nearly as much fun as it sounds, but it's a must for any fan.

    ReplyDelete
  15. ohsopolite1:32 PM

    www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBaUmx5s6iE

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  16. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3aYTWv2rhDA

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  17. John Wesley Hardin1:40 PM

    No, this is the best Llama song ever.
    http://youtu.be/JntDcqOxMsM

    ReplyDelete
  18. redoubtagain1:43 PM

    People like the imaginary liberals in Douthat's mind; he is after all an eighty-five year old John Bircher disguised as a thirty-five year old bog-standard Republican.

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  19. Very rarely is an actor the moral peer of a protagonist they portray, and Mr Nimoy was every bit the equal of Mr Spock. The fact that he lived long and prospered enriched the planet.

    I'll even throw him a bone for lending his gravitas to that cheesy "In Search Of..." show- everybody needs a little bit of Von Danikenian mental junk food once in a while.

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  20. He's wearing those ears on the inside.

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  21. A Spocksploitation film... who knew?

    ReplyDelete
  22. M. Krebs1:55 PM

    DIg:
    http://youtu.be/Ws2QYa4yBS0

    ReplyDelete
  23. Time for the Trek marathon I've been planning.

    The universe is indeed a lesser place today.

    ReplyDelete
  24. Rand Careaga1:56 PM

    I've yet to see anywhere today any mention of Nimoy's turn as the sinister New Age therapist in Philip Kaufman's inspired 1978 remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

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  25. Shorter Douthat: "Look, the right really isn't all about slut shaming. But how can anyone enjoy a movie that features a possible slut who is not shamed?"

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  26. shorter douthat: "i've never seen a movie before!"

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  27. DocAmazing2:03 PM

    I have a guilty fondness for his acting the role of Paris in the old Mission: Impossible series.

    ReplyDelete
  28. Chunky Reese Witherspoon #neverforget

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  29. M. Krebs2:10 PM

    I've been meaning to watch that again. I guess that's what I'm doing tonight then.

    ReplyDelete
  30. M. Krebs2:15 PM

    Looks like he was on Sea Hunt a number of times. I haven't seen Sea Hunt since I was 5 years old.

    Here he plays "Indio Ramirez."

    http://youtu.be/V1AAfD7oyjU

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  31. PersonaAuGratin2:17 PM

    His best non-speaking role (probably...):

    http://youtu.be/Zj7OJeyhq2Q

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  32. I was an avid watcher of "In Search Of..." Nimoy was great in that!


    I also loved "Chariot Of The Gods," and my dream job used to be that of an illustrator for The Weekly World News. Even today I'm greatly entertained by wacky conspiracy theories, and waste too much time watching crazy YouTube videos about them.

    I can't explain the fascination. I guess it really is "mental junk food," like you say.

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  33. In the evil mirror universe, I have hair.

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  34. DocAmazing2:26 PM

    Are you also short and mild?

    ReplyDelete
  35. Jay B.2:32 PM

    and people (like me) who read the portrait of the Ethan Hawke-played dad as a case study in how our culture tends lets slacker-ish, slow-to-grow-up men basically Have It All at the expense of their progeny and the women in their lives.


    This almost represents a kind of epiphany on privilege -- mainly, that white guys have it easier than women and kids because we, as a society, accept it -- until you then realize that he doesn't want anyone to Have It All, he wants everyone to suffer.

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  36. Fats Durston2:37 PM

    The cosmic ballet ... goes on.

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  37. smut clyde2:39 PM

    a very good job of offering grist for multiple interpretations

    I'm just going to stare at that metaphor until it sobers up.

    ReplyDelete
  38. smut clyde2:40 PM

    He was the best part of 'Fringe'.

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  39. DocAmazing2:45 PM

    I think he means that he needs to mill it over.

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  40. Everett Volk2:46 PM

    I stand corrected, sir! In the pantheon of llama songs, Neil Young is running a distant third.

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  41. I used to wonder if he experienced physical pain when reciting his lines on "In Search Of-" It must have been very hard not to howl with laughter!

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  42. My husband loves that 'ancient aliens' stuff, but its torture to me. Still, it might be fun to produce an episode.... of yeah! I used to dream of being a writer-artist for MAD magazine. Ah, youth!

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  43. I think Art Linkletter need bow to no one in his understanding of kids! They say the darndest things you know!

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  44. how his desire not to repeat their mistakes or
    his tendency to fall into the same traps might manifest itself ... And that’s what the last hour doesn’t offer.Why, it's almost as if ordinary people frequently fail to do that.

    I mean, how did it work out for you, Ross? Were your parents mendacious, theocratic, misogynist, hectoring shitbags, elevated miles above their actual merit, too? Or is that all you?

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  45. I have to guess that he owes his lack of talent and empathy to his own resources. Yes, he's a self-made shitbag.

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  46. Yeah, based on the whole "chunky Reese Witherspoon" bit, I had a feeling he had a lot of practice doing things by himself.

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  47. smut clyde3:16 PM

    Here, have some grist. It's on the house.

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  48. Well, you know what they say: To a thirsty person in the desert, circumstances are involved.

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  49. Contrary to myth, Fox... lacks any epic or moral underpinning for all its made-up stories.

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  50. Contrary to myth, Fox (where I am a contributor) is in fact an actual news network, albeit with prime-time opinion shows.

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  51. merl13:31 PM

    Leonard Nimoy played an almost realistic Seminole on Daniel Boone. He was actually pretty good. It was only almost realistic because he's Spock and I know it.

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  52. tigrismus3:32 PM

    So wait, is it only coat tails for re-election? Huh, I woulda thunk the coat tails were for the first election, and the results of the second one would be more related to how he has actually governed. Silly me, so glad I have Jonah to set me straight.

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  53. One of my co-workers just informed me that Leonard Nimoy was on two episodes of The Outer Limits. A quick check on IMdB confirms this: "I, Robot" (Season 2, Ep. 9) and "The Production & Decay of Strange Particles" (Season 1, Ep. 30)


    Since The Outer Limits is on Hulu, that's what I'll be watching tonight.

    ReplyDelete
  54. Megalon3:45 PM

    Any network that pays Jonah for his opinions on anything, beyond possibly which flavor of Cheetos serves best as garnish for a Mountain Dew highball or a list of the top ten most conservative pizza toppings, is not, in fact an actual news network.

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  55. tigrismus3:55 PM

    But we still only have five years.

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  56. I knew Nimoy was Jewish and I knew there were many Jewish elements in his portrayal of Spock but I really never thought about the "alien in a strange land" aspect of his character and its historic connection to the alienation of the immigrant, and the first generation immigrant from both the land of his/her parents and the land in which he/she finds him/herself oh fuck it you know what I mean. But alienation and distance are such constituent parts of my own identity that I never thought about it before except in talking to my christianist sister in law whose entire identity is formed around being "the same as" her imaginary ancestors, neighbors, and friends.

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  57. I think I remember LOVING that movie. Nimoy was so hawt.

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  58. M. Krebs4:01 PM

    I looked for "I, Robot" on YouTube and came up empty, although there are a few full episodes there. Thanks for reminding me that TOL is on Hulu.

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  59. Rahm is a vindictive, greedy, power-hungry asshole who hates unions and public education, and who seeks to enrich himself at the expense of the public good.

    Rahm is all of that, but he has a "D" after his name. So it doesn't matter what he does--it's foul by Jonah's lights.

    Back when I did political consulting, we managed to get a rock-ribbed Democrat on the ballot as a Republican (because the local GOP apparatus got lazy and complacent). It didn't matter what he said, what he did, what policies he pushed for--all that mattered was the "R" after his name. He won by a comfortable margin the first time around, and by huge margins thereafter.

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  60. I loved, loved, loved fringe. My father is a professor of biology at Harvard, named walter, and my sister died when she was six (and I was eight). Fringe is like some weird concatenation fantasy of my childhood issues with death and science and Harvard.

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  61. M. Krebs4:02 PM

    The fact that he feels it necessary to say that Fox is an actual news network means PROGRESS. I guess.

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  62. Shorter shorter "why didn't the bad mother die so the boy could find a good mother/religion."

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  63. willf4:10 PM

    As Josh Kraushaar of National Journal recently observed, Barack Obama has successfully moved his party to the left



    Wtf? When the fuck did that happen?

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  64. mortimer20004:24 PM

    I love Douthat's three possible "interpretations" of the film:
    1. People who feel the director is passing a harsh judgement on Mom's romantic choices
    2. People who feel that Mom was a successful parent
    3. People (e.g., Douthat) who see Dad as emblematic of how our culture rewards the negative effects of slacker culture, or something.

    Douthat then quotes Eve Tushnet at The American Conservative calling the film a "failure of realism," (which is maybe the stupidest thing you could say about it, IMO) because the kid doesn't do anything wrong, i.e., he doesn't exhibit the negative consequences of his clearly terrible parenting.

    I'm a big fan of Michael Apted's Up series, and more than once I flashed back on those films while watching Boyhood, because it seemed not just real, but true. I wonder if conservatives always looking for hackneyed morality plays that fit their blinkered perspective ever feel such a thing.

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  65. DN Nation4:33 PM

    "Guess they just voted for him twice because he was black."


    The Fartmaster has a built-in excuse for this that he's been whipping out Twitter now and then, that Obama was a master of fooling people into voting for him but that and only that, and has left the Democratic Party in ruins in the wake of his presidency. It's not a point really worth debating against other than to say that Loadpants desperately wants Obama to to hit the Bush popularity skids.

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  66. coat tails refer only to elections in which the person with the coat tails is also running. Has nothing to do with subsequent elections.

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  67. Gromet4:59 PM

    We keep forgetting that with these guys, a word means whatever they want it to.

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  68. Wait--that wasn't Leonard Nimoy. Mingo was played by some guy named Vic Ames who was also (duh duh duh DUHHHHHH): the son of Ukrainian Jewish emigrees. I just looked it up because I had such an enormous crush on Mingo when I was a little girl.

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  69. Gromet5:01 PM

    Oh, nifty. I have the DVDs at home, but I've only watched about 5 episodes. Looks like I'll be cranking it up to about 7 this weekend.

    ReplyDelete
  70. Is Liberalism Exhausted?"

    Why, yes, yes we are all a little pooped over here on the left, Jonah, and thanks for asking.

    You see, we've been trying to unpack your statement that Fox News "is in fact an actual news network." The answer isn't taxing, of course, but the heavy lifting is in trying to understand how anyone could be so mentally dense to assume that Fox News is legitimate. Cracking that particular question is daunting.

    Exasperating, too, is all the other flatulence you pinch out in that bit of writing you call "thought." Trying to figure out which anorectal line you're pitching, which levator ani muscles you're flexing and how it all hangs on the fascia, well, that's heavy sledding, Jonah.

    So, yeah, I for one am knackered. And I haven't even reflected on the question of how someone so bereft of critical thinking skills can somehow have a bully pulpit. Maybe if Stephen Hawking has time he can have a go at that one, because frankly I'm beat, bushed, spent, kaput.



    So, is liberalism exhausted? Sure, but not for the reasons you guess, and after a couple of drinks, a nice dinner and a good night's sleep it'll be up and kicking you sorry ass all over the block again, Jonah. And please, don't fret, because it's a good tired.

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  71. that richness he brought to the character in act one of 'the way to eden' redeems the whole episode.

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  72. I must've missed it!

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  73. RogerAiles5:14 PM

    I think the actor was Ed Ames (born Edmund Dantes Urick), who was famous for an appearance on the Tonight Show where he threw a tomahawk and hit an outline of a cowboy in the balls.


    According to Wikipedia, Ed is 87 and was a Romney supporter in the last election.

    ReplyDelete
  74. This is yet another off-topic comment, but can I tell you all why I hate conservatives today? There are all these dumb ideas in the conservative movement that I used to find kinda amusing, but now I hate it so much that any of this shit gets traction.

    So as I said yesterday, I'm dealing with this custory/immigration thing. The situation isn't as bad as I thought, and I've even managed to track down a lawyer in that state who not only handles both family and immigration law, but also speaks this woman's language fluently. At the same time, I'm getting weird vibes and I don't really know what's going on down there, so I've been looking into ways I might get there. It's not so easy, as the city in question is fairly isolated - not "tiny village on the slope of an impassible mountain isolated," but it's still a good thirty miles away from anything. That might as well be a million miles if you don't drive.

    Now I'm nowhere near this place - it's certainly farther than I want to go by car - so I'm looking into long-distance travel. There's an Amtrak station just a few blocks from where I live, and as much as I hate Amtrak, I figure that would be convenient. Poor naive me, I'm still used to the PRC rail system, where you can get damn near anywhere from damn near anywhere else, quickly and cheaply. There's a station about 30 miles from my destination, so I figure I can go there, rent a car and take care of business.

    Only it turns out that there's no way to get from my station to that station without doing some transfers, spending a lot of money and probably two days in transit. I never realized how few lines Amtrak has. The closest I can get is still over two hundred miles away.

    So I'm looking at this pitiful route map, and I'm trying to figure out why we don't have a decent high-speed rail system like so many other countries do, even though we've been talking about it my entire life...That's right! It's been conservatives fighting tooth and nail against infrastructure project for as long as I can remember. And all I can think about is all the Koch money that's been spent to stop mass transit, and all those Agenda 21 fighting, "fuck the environment" dipshits who keep screaming about how trains are a Big Gubmit Librul plot to take away their cars. Oh yes, because it would be so much more convenient to DRIVE A THOUSAND FUCKING MILES! HOW DOES THAT HELP ME, ASSHOLE? BRING THAT "SOSHULISM" SHIT UP AGAIN, I WILL SLAP YOUR FACE OFF YOUR FACE!

    ...Sorry, it's been rather a long week. I'm just glad that facial muscle stopped twitching.

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  75. I wanted to be a writer for Weekly World. You got to make up the most ridiculous stuff, but the pay was said to be amazingly good.

    Guess I should have pitched "Batboy Flies Bomber On Moon Home" while I had the chance.

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  76. tigrismus5:23 PM

    If he weren't walking his turtle, I'm sure he'd let us know that classical coat tails differ from what he claimed in many ways, and that he doesn't deny this. Indeed, it is central to his point.

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  77. I think he went by several names. I was reading the IMDB account of him. If his name was Edmund Dantes Urick his parents must have been pretty far to the left for Ukrainian Jews. They must be rolling in their graves if he's a republican now.

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  78. I know two people whose parents really sucked at parenting. In everything from discipline to basic instruction on how the world works to even providing encouragement to attend school or brush their teeth. Both of these kids (kids--they're in their 20s now) ended up being great people, despite (or maybe because of) having raised themselves. They're smart, and have great work ethics.

    I guess it's possible for people to succeed and not turn into Public Enemy No. 1 without having Ward and June Cleaver as parents.

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  79. It's so sad they went out of print.

    There's a WWN website, but it's just not the same. It's even in color, for crying out loud! As Ed Anger would say, that makes me "pig-biting mad."

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  80. See how cunningly Foxberg avoids the trap, where a normal person would say "contrary to popular opinion" but that would mean that the cat would be out of the bag and running for the hills

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  81. coozledad5:45 PM

    He had a #1 adult contemporary hit in 1967. About blue balls, no less!

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvaQisHV8jw

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  82. JennOfArk5:46 PM

    It was Fox whut killed WWN. How could they compete for the same audience with those broadcasting this 24/7? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buoVwM1pQEs

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  83. Hey, if you ever get around to writing "Batboy Flies Bomber On Moon Home" and need an illustrator, let me know!

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  84. M. Krebs5:48 PM

    An old friend of mine was teaching intro to programming once and gave his students an assignment to write a program to generate random WWN headlines. All you need is about half a dozen each of subjects, verbs, and direct objects, and hilarity ensues.

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  85. In the evil mirror universe, I DON'T look like my avatar...

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  86. M. Krebs5:51 PM

    I see what you did there.

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  87. If 'walking his turtle' is a euphemism I don't want to know.

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  88. coozledad5:54 PM

    He's got to wake it first.

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  89. M. Krebs5:54 PM

    Who knew?

    http://youtu.be/2_HMHVQOjNc

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  90. Isn't that how Rudy Giuliani writes his speeches, only with the nouns limited to "me" and "I" and the direct object limited to "9-11"?

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  91. That's a mock turtle he walking.

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  92. Singlehandly fighting the good fight.

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  93. Obligatory:


    http://youtu.be/BEnKLhi83J8

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  94. Similarly, before it went criminally insane the News of the World just used to be insane. They had a Headline once of "Cessna Found on the Moon" with a super-imposed picture. This was refuted by eminent astronomers who showed the empty-of-plane picture. To which NOTW replied in a headline "Cessna Gone!!!"

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  95. M. Krebs6:03 PM

    Jonah is the mock turtle. He's obviously studied reeling and writhing, and the different branches of arithmetic — ambition, distraction, uglification, and derision.

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  96. Jesus, "Sea Hunt". Ole AK's gonna be behind the couch for a bit, that's a scary programme.

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  97. Exceptional people drive, by themselves, in cars.

    Dirty filthy socialists all ride together on loser cruisers.

    (Jesus, there's a whole new bit there in the vein of George Carlin's classic baseball v. football piece. A weekend project!

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  98. M. Krebs6:05 PM

    Blue balls will do.

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  99. ohsopolite6:05 PM

    Along with the rest of us...

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  100. hellslittlestangel6:07 PM

    I'm a Star Trek hater, but seeing Nimoy and Peter Falk in the movie adaptation of Genet's The Balcony has been one of the most enjoyably weird experiences of my life.

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  101. coozledad6:08 PM

    Check out Blowfly sometime. His name comes from his grandma, who heard him singing on the front porch one day. She told him "Son, you're as nasty as a damn blowfly."

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  102. M. Krebs6:08 PM

    Kraushaar's confusing "his party" with the country as a whole. (Though it's not clear how much credit Obama deserves.)

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  103. ColBatGuano6:19 PM

    When your entire shtick is "The failure of the nuclear family structure is responsible for everything bad in the world!" then children who manage to thrive without this are a threat.

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  104. I have to admit, that's a pretty creative way to get out of it.

    "Cessna Gone." .... I love it.

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  105. I like how the soundtrack almost lines up with the tortoise's steps.

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  106. I didn't even know that Spocksploitation was a genre...

    "Baffled!" ? I'm definitely gonna have to look this film up.

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  107. Seriously, I am sad about Leonard Nimoy passing. May flights of angels sing him to his rest.



    Really science fiction kind of angels, though.

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  108. Is this the hominy grist I'm always hearing about or the Iranian thing Khomeini grist.

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  109. John E Williams6:57 PM

    This is one of the best performances Nimoy ever did: This is a clip from a 1988 made-for-TV movie called "Never Forget", in which Nimoy portrayed a man named Mel Mermelstein, who was a Holocaust survivor and museum curator. Mermelstein was challenged by a white supremacist hate group to prove his family had been killed in death camps, and Mermelstein turned the tables on the neo-Nazis by taking them to court. Here we see Nimoy as Mermelstein explaining why he keeps the memory of the Holocaust alive

    http://youtu.be/ExyV2tqawXg?t=5m13s

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  110. Aliens, in other words... I miss him too, he was a guest in our home every Saturday night for years.

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  111. Smarter than Your Average Bear7:10 PM

    Dif-tor heh smusma

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  112. "I thought that they were angels
    But to my surprise,
    They climbed into their starships
    And headed for the skies!"

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  113. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person7:34 PM

    I feel a Trek Marathon coming on....

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  114. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person7:41 PM

    I'm with you on the CTs. They can be very entertaining. And who knows, one of 'em might actually turn out to be true. I mean, they can't *all* be BS, right? Well....yeah...

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  115. mgmonklewis7:44 PM

    It sounds depressingly like my state. Over half the electorate would vote for Satan if he had an R by his name.

    "Mr. B. Elzebub, eh? Well, I don't know his policies, but he's a Republican, so he must be better than the other guy. And he'll piss off the libs. Haw, haw, haw."

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  116. mgmonklewis7:46 PM

    "Fiction, how does it work?"

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  117. mgmonklewis7:48 PM

    Apparently the mills of metaphor grind slowly, but they grind exceeding fine. Right before they slip a cog, break an axle, and the whole thing comes crashing down.

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  118. mgmonklewis7:50 PM

    In the evil mirror universe, my avatar wrote "Chicken Soup for the Regency Soul."

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  119. mgmonklewis7:51 PM

    "Look out! There are llamas!"

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  120. Dean Golden8:31 PM

    Mike Nelson est Muo Macho.

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  121. M. Krebs8:39 PM

    Well, he did sire The Dude.

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  122. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person8:59 PM

    Seems a shame you got out of the bidness...

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  123. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person9:03 PM

    He's secretly always wanted to slap the Bishop...

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  124. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person9:21 PM

    R Money congratulated Obama in his election night phone call for getting out the minority vote, which put him in the WH. This is basically the Republican line now. Obama as Chicago style vote-buyer and gangster/thug/tyrant, and not much else. If there was to be a 3rd term, it'd just get worse, because the longer the Right and Proper party is out of power, the more evil their opposition has to be, to explain it.

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  125. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person9:22 PM

    I bet that itches.

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  126. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person9:26 PM

    Dreck Trek...

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  127. I had to. This was back in the early to mid 00s, and by the end of it all, nearly all of my clients were Republicans. I knew the damage these people were doing, and I couldn't stand the idea that I was helping them do it. So, I just drifted out of it over the course of a year or two.

    Sadly, I still see the names of some of these people appearing in the newspaper, and it's rarely for anything I would consider good.

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  128. Big mills grind slowly, but exceedingly dumb.

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  129. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person9:52 PM

    I'm a Star Trek hater,

    This one's for you, then...

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  130. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person10:02 PM

    Unlike some people, I always liked Shatner, in spite of his scenery-chewing ways, but I've also always felt Nimoy/Spock was the best thing about the whole Trek experience. As far as the Abrams reboot goes...guess what? Quinto and Urban as Spock and McCoy command the bulk of my attention. Chris Pine I could pretty much ignore if he wasn't, you know, the star of the whole thing.

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  131. Dancing Skull, talks and sings! One of my favorite headlines.

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  132. Nimoy could chew the scenery with the best of them, though he could bring a certain gravitas to even the most ridiculous looking scenes

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  133. Who else could pull off such a scene acting opposite a giant pile of fake puke?

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  134. I think one of the things that was so important about Spock as a character was his challenge to the conventional notions of masculine style exemplified by Kirk, McCoy, Scotty and other older men in the show (and to a lesser extent Sulu and Chekov). All the normal males do a certain amount of showboating, bragging, chest thumping, posturing but never Spock. Spock's cool rationality was always a rebuke to military solutions and shoot from the hip style non diplomacy. And that was so refreshing. There were other anti-hero heros on TV at the same time (Columbo, Rockford) but Spock really offered something new: the cool intellectual with nothing to be ashamed of.

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  135. Lord, give me the confidence of a mediocre white conservative dude.

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  136. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person11:13 PM

    The cool intellectual who could put you on the floor with one hand literally tied behind his back...

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  137. Yes. But never out of passion or posturing. I was going to say "look at the plot of Edith Keeler must die" but then I thought of course Spock's passion was his thwarted lust for kirk. He doesn't let Keeler die out of cold rational calculation but because he wants to keep kirk for himself. Uh...or so I've heard.

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  138. I like big mills and I can not lie.

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  139. billcinsd12:01 AM

    your mother was Grace from Inside Monkey Zetterland?

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  140. Aimai... you writing slashfic? Not that there's anything wrong with that...

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  141. I mean, look at that Barack Obama. Interracial parents, broken home, dragged all over the world by his hippie mother.

    Last I heard, he ws living in a van down by the river.

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  142. billcinsd1:11 AM

    I am partial to Alanis Morissette and I whipped Spiderman's Ass

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  143. cleter1:17 AM

    II see.

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  144. cleter1:18 AM

    So, kind of like Reagan, then.

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  145. The meal ground in the windmills of my mind.

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  146. AGoodQuestion2:05 AM

    I remember that friendly voice holding forth about bigfoot and whatnot. Good times. RIP indeed.

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  147. AGoodQuestion2:06 AM

    Crow and Servo would snicker if they heard you say that.


    Oh, different Mike Nelson.

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  148. AGoodQuestion2:10 AM

    I toast this comment with my first root beer float in seventeen years.

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  149. AGoodQuestion2:12 AM

    What part of speech is "ooga booga" again?

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  150. AGoodQuestion2:18 AM

    In the evil mirror universe, I look like your avatar but with the patch on the other eye. Keeps the rubes on their toes.

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  151. AGoodQuestion2:25 AM

    It's hard to beat a good Joe Friday/Frank Gannon slash, but Spock/Kirk comes pretty close.

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  152. Alas, in Wingnuttia, this isn't the counterexample it is for sane people:



    The failure of the nuclear family structure is responsible for everything bad in the world.


    Barack Obama is the product of a failed nuclear family structure.


    Therefore, Barack Obama is responsible for everything bad in the world. Q something something.

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  153. Donalbain6:37 AM

    I hate to be That Guy, but that was the Daily Sport

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  154. Suttree7:41 AM

    Neil Young libelz!!!!!!!1111 https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=1LTiKJlB62g

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  155. The most important part, naturally.

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  156. You know, I've often wished for that. If you can't get it naturally you can always order a rock or a plaque from Levenger with their motto inscribed on it. "What Would You Do If You Knew You Couldn't Fail?" Makes me think of Mitt Romney's agreement with Bane that he would take the new company and run it but that they would have to guarantee him that if the company failed they would reimburse him lavishly and hide the failure from the press. No deal so sweet as the deal offered some of these white dudes.

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  157. No, but I'm super proud of myself for knowing the concept.

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  158. Nepenthe. Please...please...give me some Nepenthe. Or just shoot me in the head.

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  159. If that were really the case, government would have hundreds, thousands, of "minorities" running things, now wouldn't we?

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  160. This reminds me of something the actor who played Mulder said in whatever that show was. That in the first few shows they were told to act total shock and horror at some image that would later be CGI'd into the scene. Only to discover that the CGI effect was so minimal and unfrightening that the audience thought the acting was an absurd overreaction. They learned then to underact and stay cool in preference to looking like a total idiot when the special effects couldn't stand up to the scene the audience was trying to relate to.

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  161. Snot here! How fearful and wonderful that clilp is.

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  162. StringOnAStick11:14 AM

    I like that they had to add some techno music in order to pump it up a little bit.
    Looks like a tortoise to me.

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  163. StringOnAStick11:21 AM

    Up-voted for levator ani mention.

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  164. StringOnAStick11:29 AM

    My new job has me using the relatively new light rail, a 5 minute trip from our home, and using the free downtown circulator bus to get me right to the office. Pluses: I get a nice bit of reading done each day, no traffic stress, and I feel so sophisticatedly Euro. Minuses: um, what? A few neighbors who claim the new light rail line has brought more reports of theft and burglary to our 'hood, though I have yet to see someone hauling an ill-gotten big screen TV on the train. All the local burglaries have been accomplished via car, but that wingnut trope refuses to die.

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  165. StringOnAStick11:34 AM

    Their consternation over MSNBC is instructive; they just don't get that (1) it isn't liberal enough for a flamer like me and my kind, and (2) we thinking types don't need a daily propaganda dose to remind us of what the Controllers want/need us to believe. We're quirky that way.

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  166. JennOfArk11:35 AM

    Submitted for your consideration: tortoises hate cats.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrfXefr35PA

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  167. JennOfArk11:40 AM

    Before the 2008 election, I heard someone who I formerly had not known was racist talking about how she thought Obama would appoint blacks to everything. I said, "really you think that? You don't think he's going to appoint people based on who he thinks will do a good job?" She did, really.

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  168. JennOfArk11:45 AM

    Their problem is that it exists at all, thereby trying to restrict their freedom of speech (for all values of freedom = "I can say whatever I want; you can shut the fuck up.")

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  169. JennOfArk12:00 PM

    You might also like Wally Pleasant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u00ekQx4YO0

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  170. I need a daily propaganda dose--that's actually why I stopped watching regular tv and reading newspapers years ago. I just didn't feel like I could go through the Bush years alone. Reading and watching things that purported to be "evenhanded" or "objective" or "non partisan" pissed me off. I wanted to read stuff that had institutional memory and a real sense of history and politics. I wanted to read and watch within a community of like minded leftists and liberals. So I totally get why Fox News is so addictive--because it tells a narrative and sings the song the viewers want to hear sung. Most of all: it doesn't leave them feeling lonely and abandoned.


    I only wish there were an entire tv channel devoted to explicating my world in a way that jumped with my political interests and beliefs. I'd probably even watch it.

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  171. Actually, as a young girl, I had a huge crush on Shatner. The beauty of being a fan was you didn't have to choose between Spock and Kirk, you could lust after them both.

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  172. Magatha12:52 PM

    And, in reference to the other comments, thus was K/S slash fic born. I was always partial to the less horrific versions of the hurt/comfort theme. You know, one of them slugs the other one, then says, "Oh, let me be with you in your hour of pain", and on and on. Yes, it was depraved, yet somehow not too far from innocence.

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  173. No worries. Accuracy in reporting is important :)

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  174. JennOfArk1:12 PM

    Yeah, I totally get that desire to be part of a group with likeminded people. But I think if you had that tv channel you think you wish for, it would bore you. MSNBC is the closest thing we have to a liberal media outlet (on tv) and that's why I don't watch - because I already know what's going to be said. Boring.


    The real difference between conservatives and liberals, and the reason the twain shall never meet, is that conservatives already know it all, so there's no reason to consider alternate opinions or ever learn anything new, whereas liberals KNOW they don't know it all and are all about wanting to know more and so will look at all aspects or dimensions. The primary difference between the two "sides" is flexibility of mind. They don't have it; we do.

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  175. I agree that it would be boring to just keep hearing stuff that you already believe to be true. But I try to imagine seeing what Fox News people think hey are seeing and that is slightly different. They see a bunch of what they think of as regular newscasters and tv personalities who seem to actively care about what they care about, who seem concerned with the direction the country is taking, who monitor what they agree are real threats.


    So if I were to envision a liberal fox it would have Jon Stewart and stephen Colbert and Elizabeth Warren and a lot of other people who as yet don't have names and they would sit on those comfy "good morning in america" style couches and chat about the importance of raising teacher pay, ending abusive school testing and charter schools, working with immigrant populations, getting everyone out to the polls, reversing global warming, latest dinosaur news, they'd review art shows I'd like to see and they'd talk about movies I like (approvingly). Michelle Obama would come and invite me for a visit to the White House, Barney Frank would have a spot explaining the current republican skullduggery. It would be GREAT!

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  176. JennOfArk1:53 PM

    I'll probably take flak for saying it, but NPR has at least some programming that's similar to what you're describing. I do enjoy my Diane Rehm and Takeaway.

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  177. Magatha2:03 PM

    I'm really liking John Oliver's "Last Week Tonight". A half hour show, and he can still learn me somethin about pharmaceutical reps, American tobacco companies suing countries like Togo, and how the one supposedly saving grace of The Miss America Pageant - the scholarships - is actually 99% bullshit. He keeps reminding me to look closer, because the game is rigged in ways that I didn't realize before.

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  178. My favorite line from this episode comes from Spock when he is asked why he seems so sympathetic to those space hippies.

    He says "They regard themselves as aliens in their own world, a condition with which I am somewhat familiar."

    I reach, brother.

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  179. Absolutely, John Oliver and some NPR shows are basically what I'm describing. But I'm trying to imagine if there were an entire network, backed by an evil billionaire of course, which satisfied all these desires. I think my point is that I wouldn't turn my nose up at them because, qua liberal, I'm above that sort of thing. I think being in a community is satisfying to many people, right wing and left wing alike. The pity of it is that the left/liberal point of view is so seldom represented on national tv as totally normal that its the odd show that we can pick out as reflecting it.

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  180. I just had to share this, because it amuses me so.

    https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B-yR4ZsXIAI7RqN.jpg:large

    Found more of the dude on the right which you can catch here.
    ...

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  181. Surely the election of Obama, twice, was what they call a "lagging indicator."

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  182. Relevant.

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  183. Jesus christ I can't unsee that.

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  184. merl16:39 PM

    No really I saw it the other day, Mingo the Cherokee and Spock or Nimoy as some Seminole. I always had a feeling that Vic Ames might not be a genuine Cherokee.Or half English.

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  185. Tom Parmenter6:40 PM

    Ed Ames was a member of the *Ames* Brothers.

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  186. You have to BE the evil billionaire Aimai.

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  187. M. Krebs11:43 PM

    Ah, that right!

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  188. M. Krebs11:49 PM

    NSFE (not safe for epileptics)

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  189. realinterrobang5:44 AM

    I don't even know what to say about someone who hates Star Trek. *makes warding gestures at the screen*

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  190. realinterrobang5:47 AM

    The reboot is diet, caffeine-free Star Trek. Gross. :(

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  191. I think you are right. As you say it i have a dim memory of it.

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  192. Magatha2:21 PM

    "Going through the Bush years alone". Ugh. That reminds me that I lost a really good friend around 2002. She was smart and generous, and we had the whole Buffyverse to bond over. I swear, we tried to keep politics and the war and the Bush regime in some kind of pocket universe. But she thought Dick Cheney was the best and smartest man ever and that Dubya was the leader we needed, and that anyone with a different opinion was just deluded and soft-headed. She was way too smart and sophisticated to toss around the word "sheeple", but that's what it boiled down to.

    Ultimately the interdimensional walls began to disintegrate and the friendship imploded. There was no big argument; it was just that world events were too harrowing and the distance between us was too great. I lost a good part of the online community we shared, and I still miss her.

    This doesn't exactly fall into the shock and awe category, but it still hurt and it was still lonely.

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  193. Yes, I had a friend who nearly went over to the dark side. It was right after 9/11 and he's a New Yorker and living outside of New York and I think he just felt so destroyed by what happened to the city that for quite a while he went from being very rational and skeptical and progressive to being very gung ho for violence and revenge. But he eventually came back to his senses.

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  194. If I'd known that the glory that was WWN was going to come to an end I would have been collecting the. I have a National Enquirer or WWN clipping about my father and some other scientists purporting to interview them about the imminent liklihood of the creation of plant soldiers and philosophers. Its hysterical.

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  195. billcinsd10:25 PM

    I can't believe you didn't go with "The Day Ted Nugent Killed All Animals"

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QLWhrACWUU

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