Friday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Friday, February 24, 2023
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49 comments
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor of Political Science and a College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored
A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog).
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Alex Murdaugh is testifying in his own defense, and admits to being a serial liar.
I can’t wait for the cross examination.
GOP Politician Uses Polish Slur In Speech Claiming Party Isn’t Bigoted
Let them keep talking and all will be revealed. Somalian is incorrect, Somali being the proper identifier, but that can be chalked up to ignorance.
It’s really long but I urge everyone to take some time out (about an hour) and read Politico’s oral history of the lead up to the Ukraine invasion. It’s a real good tick tock of the entire response of the US (and other governments) to the Russian building threat and then invasion of Ukraine.
‘Something Was Badly Wrong’: When Washington Realized Russia Was Actually Invading Ukraine. A first-ever oral history of how Washington insiders saw the warning signs of a European land war, their frantic attempts to stop it — and the moment Putin actually crossed the border.
This is from a retired US 4th Circuit Court of Appeals Justice (no subscription needed) who also has served as an advisor to Mike Pence, regarding Pence’s claim that his position as President of the Senate gives him immunity from testifying:
Here’s my prediction. Regardless of how they eventually decide, the Republican Supreme’s will help drag this out as long as possible, hoping to render it moot. And if they are eventually forced to decide, they are as likely to rule in favor of the Republican’s as in favor of the law, content that the case is so narrow that it is very unlikely to create a precedent that may some day benefit a Democrat. And of course, if it did, they would not hesitate to manufacture some reasons why that is not appropriate.
I hope I’m wrong, but this court is so obviously political, I have little hope of anything but blatantly partisan decisions from them.
@OzarkHillbilly: This case is so surrealistic that a theory I’ve seen in the SC press is that the real killers were hired by people Alex Murdaugh had rooked; they forced him to watch the executions of his wife and son. It’s far-fetched, but it seems to make about as much sense as any other explanation.
@Sleeping Dog:
I’m embarrassed to say I didn’t know that “Somalian” was incorrect, though as far as I can recall I’ve always used “Somali.”
But “Polack”? Good God.
Trump’s pal Nick Fuentes has been put on the no-fly list after threatening a flight attendant who asked him to comply with the airline’s mask requirement.
@Sleeping Dog:
The same probably for “Polack,” which is likely the only usage he has ever heard – it shows the nature of the culture he is part of.
@CSK:
It’s about who he is used to talking to.
Analogies are always a bit flawed, but imagine you are Scarlet O’Hara, living on the plantation, going to debutante balls etc. – would Scarlet think anything of it hearing or using the N word?
@CSK: Which airline? As far as I can tell, there are only a few foreign airlines that still have a mask mandate?
@CSK:
Somalian is an easy mistake to make, the prior nationality that he mentioned was Norwegian. But for a state legislator, giving a speech in a debate over driver’s licenses for undocumented immigrants, speaks to his attitude.
Frankly, I only knew that Somali was correct, because I lived in Mpls for 25 years and the Somali community was well established when I left.
@charon:
Not in MN, there is a decent size Polish community in the state and since they were one of the last immigrant groups through the door before the migration from Africa and Latin America began, they were the butt of lots of jokes. I have long litany of Polish jokes that were being told on stage by comedians and other performers well into the 80’s. His using “Polack” qualifies as a Kinsley Gaffe.
@CSK: Awwwwwww, Pobrecito…
@Scott:
I just found out that this happened in 2021; the original story I read wasn’t clear. There’s more here:
http://www.yahoo.com/now/real-reason-nick-fuentes-put-093056709.html
@charon:
In GWTW, Scarlett uses “n*****” once and then reflects on how appalled her mother would have been.
Noted, I stand corrected.
@charon:
GWTW is quite revealing of southern customs, particularly of what “ladies” and “gentlemen” should never, ever do or say.
@CSK:
I’ll confess, it’s been many years since I read it, once, so no detailed familiarity.
@charon:
There are a lot of apparent throwaway lines in that book that have more significance than one would think at first.
When I was a young teenager, I asked a southern schoolmate how accurate GWTW about southern customs, and she said: “Pretty accurate.”
Biden Administration Announces Additional Security Assistance for Ukraine
Should be noted that this assistance is under the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (USAI). Means it is not drawn out of existing stocks but has to be contracted for. I hope DoD is using expedited contracting techniques but regardless, delivery is in the sometime future.
@Sleeping Dog: “Doesn’t matter what your race, your color, your creed, Norwegian, Polack, Somalian, you name it.”
This was a constantly repeated joke on All in the Family, when Archie would try to make a statement about how everyone is equal and then use slurs for just about everybody. How far we have come in fifty years!
@Scott: Lufthansa did, as of when we flew them in October.
@wr:
Sample dialogue from AITF:
Mike: “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”
Archie: “And stupid is in the head of the Polack.”
@wr: @CSK: Archie even calls his Irish-American neighbor Irene a “mick,” which is interesting given Carroll O’Connor’s ethnic background. (On the British show All in the Family was based on, the character was played by a Jewish actor, Warren Mitchell.)
It’s also interesting that he idolizes Richard E. Nixon, given that the Nixon Tapes later revealed that Nixon talked just like this—he made disparaging remarks about Irish and Italians, among others.
It’s odd how quaint this type of bigotry has become over the past 50 years.
@Kylopod: The groups have changed, but the bigotry has not. Bigotry is built into animals and humans are animals.
Only in Texas?
Texas superintendent resigns after 3rd grader finds gun
@Scott: That happened once at my university, although with an undergraduate finding the weapon and not a 3rd grader. Some dipshit (I never found out for sure who it was, but I have a pretty good idea) left it on the top of the toilerpaper dispenser in the stall of the men’s room.
The cavalierness of it all just angers me, to be honest.
@Kylopod: Not sure why Carroll O’Connor playing a person bigoted against the Irish is, in any way, odd. “Acting” and all. Give what little I know I would pretty surprised if Mr. O’Connor personally had any affinity with Nixon. Norman Lear produced the show and yet there was plenty of antisemitism. At the end of the day, they weren’t glorifying any of it – quite the opposite.
When I was kid, probably up until college-age in the late ‘70s, “Polack” was a pretty common word and Polack jokes were the coin of the realm. It made us giggle when Hamlet refers to the Polish army as “the Polack is in the field.” Now that word just looks odd to me and sounds odder. Hopefully, that’s what growing up will get you.
@Joe:
AFAIK, O’Connor himself was quite liberal.
Lear made Bunker a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant so no viewers would be offended.
Fiction writers were once told by their editors to make sure their villains were WASPs. Still true, I’m sure.
@Scott: @Steven L. Taylor: But they are the responsible gun owners the NRA is defending the rights of.
@Joe: I had 3 uncles of Polish heritage. I think it was not until after I graduated HS (’76) before I learned that Polack was a slur.
@Joe:
It isn’t odd, but it is an example of ironic casting. And there are many examples of Jewish actors playing anti-Semitic characters; I suspect it’s something they enjoy doing. Hell, the guy who played Hitler in War and Remembrance was Jewish.
Another example of ironic casting: Giancarlo Esposito (who’s half-black, half-Italian) playing the guy in Do the Right Thing who complains about there being only Italians and no black people on the wall of a restaurant in a black neighborhood.
I encountered it in the ’80s, and I was called a Polack a few times by other kids. Of course, this was in a yeshiva where a substantial number of the kids were of Polish extraction.
@CSK:
He said the following in an interview: “I think probably the most stupid of all conservatives and right-wingers are the poor. No conservative government ever did anything for them, in England or in the United States. The Republicans — it’s not the poor man’s party! So Archie…was a dumbbell. He didn’t know why he was conservative…. He thought that they would keep the country racially pure.”
Every now and then events remind me that after 55 years I’m still living in southern Illinois.
Be There or Be Square
(it’s a good thing playoffs end in August before deer season and rabbit season starts)
The Prospect League is a collegiate summer baseball league comprising teams of college players from North America and beyond. All players in the league must have NCAA eligibility remaining in order to participate. So as to maintain their college eligibility, players are not paid.
WikiP
@CSK:
One interesting facet of LGBT+ culture is how common “queer coding” in movie and television villains is and the effect that has been having on LGBT+ people growing up.
@Mister Bluster: Sounds like fun, wish Marion was a little further north.
@CSK: At least he didn’t call anybody a “dago” or a “wop.” Of course, it might be that dagos and wops aren’t white enough yet to be able to be white nationalist racists. (But I wouldn’t think that Somalians would be either.)
@OzarkHillbilly:..Sounds like fun,..
I took my friend Joe to a Southern Illinois Miners game (Frontier League) at Rent One Park when he was alive. The ball park was new in 2007 when we went. It was a good time.
The Miners folded after the 2021 season. Apparently the owners of the team didn’t want to have a baseball team any more.
I hope the Thrillbillys make a go of it.
@Stormy Dragon:
It would be very painful and alienating, I’m sure.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Some people think only those of northern Europeans are white, excluding the Irish. The funny thing is, Hitler designated the Irish as Aryans. Second-class Aryans, to be sure, but Aryans
nonetheless.
@CSK:
In some ways it is, but it can also be empowering to see yourself in someone portrayed as powerful and dangerous and a lot end up identifying with those villains and even leaning into it. It’s one of threads running through the whole “be gay, do crimes” mantra.
@Stormy Dragon:
I can understand that perfectly: “If they think I’m so bad because I’m gay/trans, then I’ll show them what bad really is.”
Rod Dreher’s blog is ending at TAC. Not sad.
@DAllenABQ:
Still plenty to be sad about, though. 🙁
@Sleeping Dog:
Yes, progress is always incremental and one can only expect just so much…
@CSK:
I think I may have mentioned before, back in the 70’s read a book at a friends house.
Can’t recall the title, it was about early & pre-history, archaeology etc, published in the 1930’s.
Maybe by Childe? Memory fails.
There was a bit on the Indo-European language group, which used the term Aryan, which hadn’t gotten the same baggage it has these days.
And insisted that it was primarily a linguistic and secondly a cultural classification, and actually made some swipes in the footnotes about the stupidity of German National Socialist usages of “Aryan”.
Pointing out that by any reasonable definition, the category included Persians (a.k.a. Iranians, Iran being a direct derivative of “arya”), Sanskrit and descendant Indian language/culture groups, Slavic, Celtic, Balt, Hellenic, Illyrian, Latin and Italic, Alan, Tocharian (everyone forgets the poor old Tocharians!), Anatolian, Armenian etc.
Insisted that using “Aryan” to mean “Teutonic-Scandinavian” was daft. The author said something like “If one means German, one might as well say German.”
NHPR has a short article and radio story about LGBT+ gun enthusiasts.
https://www.nhpr.org/nh-news/2023-02-23/you-have-to-be-dangerous-back-why-some-lgbtq-people-in-new-hampshire-are-taking-up-arms
Interestingly the text is not a transcript of the radio story you can listen to on the page. They are many, many relatively minor differences. It’s a weird equivalent text.
@Stormy Dragon:
I’m pretty sure “be gay, do crimes” is more of a joke, rather than advice. It gets sold on t-shirts. It pops up in video games (and is basically a subplot of the very excellent Night In The Woods)
(Now I want to photoshop a “be gay ‘ do crimes” t-shirt on a picture of Jeffrey Dahmer, but that’s probably wrong)
@Sleeping Dog:
These guys always claim that they’re being called white national racists, as if it’s a badge of victimhood honor. You know what, I’ll take “This Never Happened” for $800, Alex.
@Gustopher:
It’s a joke, but also not? Most aren’t going out and committing actual crime sprees, but the idea that there’s no point in being good little “boys, girls, and others” in a society that hates you and instead LGBT+ should be in your face and out of control is very much not a joke.
Assimilationism is getting less popular in light of the right wing backlash.
@Gustopher:
I was in a Pink Pistols chapter for a while and ended up leaving because they were very much a “Log Cabin Republicans” vibe. Don’t know if that was typical of all Pink Pistols chapter, but it was very clear they were Republicans first and LGBT+ a distant second.