Friday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Friday, August 7, 2020
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80 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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Headline of the day? Beer brand and leather store unwittingly named after Māori word for ‘pubic hair’
Canada’s Hell’s Basement and a shop in Wellington both thought the word ‘huruhuru’ meant ‘feather’ – they were wrong
Maori language aka te reo is fascinating.
Kia ora is the equivalent of hello and means basically “be well”.
Sounds like kyora.
I have not owned a pair of blue jeans since 1980.
Elliott Abrams named as special envoy to Iran.
Yes, that Elliott Abrams. Iran-Contra guy arguably a war criminal.
Thanks, Trump!
@de stijl: Heh. I have one pair of jeans. They are my “dress” pants. Otherwise I wear carpenter whites. After 35 years they just feel normal.
Maybe one of trump’s many evangelical supporters can explain to trump that God is omniscient, omnipotent, and immutable. That it is in fact impossible for a mere puny human to “hurt God.”
@OzarkHillbilly:
I reckon we may have different reasons.
Back then people I liked wore trousers; people who thought I was weird wore jeans. I sided with people who did not dislike me.
Obviously, there is nothing wrong with jeans.
But, back then I went to vintage stores and bought out their stock when I had money.
After a bit it became habit.
Also, no shorts unless it is above 85 and just to the store. No social stuff in shorts.
I am weird about pants.
@OzarkHillbilly:
I do need to ask. While trying to suppress a smirk. These wouldn’t be the bib overhauls version of carpenters whites? 🙂
There was a Maori NZ group who was a one hit – OMC.
How Bizarre
A really interesting song structure. OMC was fooling on Otara Millionaires Club when Otara was the crappiest joint in Aukland where mostly Maori lived.
What was interesting is that the background go-go girls are white and blond. It was an inversion of typical white bands with black back-up singers.
That was a provocative eff you. You objectify us? Back at ya.
It is an odd song, but really oddly catchy. I appreciate it; kinda love it.
There is a lot going on here: the band name, the suave guy, the hype girl, the blond dancers, the non-western song structure.
@de stijl: Well, people like to say there is something wrong with me so you are probably the normal one.
I hardly ever wear shorts. About the only time I do is when I’m on a river on a hot summer day. In fact, I went floating with my son and GD a couple weeks ago and I had to buy new shorts because I couldn’t find my old ones.
I am totally on board with man skirts.
Not as a provocative statement about gender and clothes, just I want to be comfortable when it is 95 and the dew point is 78.
I want comfort and practicality, gender norms be damned!
Berbers and Bedouin wear loose garb.
The Greeks and Romans wore skirts as armor.
I demand man skirt acceptance! 🙂
@Sleeping Dog: No, they are too hot for me.
@de stijl: Men in kilts are stunning.
I think I was right about DeWine. A subsequent test showed he was negative for coronavirus. He was just avoiding a Trump visit.
@de stijl: a long time ago I was in the theater watching the remake of The Island of Dr. Moreau, and Val Kilmer appears in a sarong, and my reaction was “ What is that and how can I wear them for the rest of my life…”
A long read: Rural Missourians Protested for Black Lives — And Were Met By Armed Neighbors
Fredricktown is about an hour away from me, and yeah, it’s all that. The story however ends on a hopeful note:
@OzarkHillbilly: Omniscient, omnipotent, immutable, camera, TV.
@Steven L. Taylor: OK, now I have my laugh for the day. Thank you.
@Jen:
The Scots would be appalled at linen or cotton “summer” kilts, but I am absolutely on board.
#manskirts
@Teve:
Sarongs are cool in both meanings.
That was such a bizarre movie. Kilmer was supposed to be a major star. Thewlis (watch Naked if you have not seen it).
@Jen:
I own a kilt. It is scratchy. Wool is not summer friendly.
I do look pretty fetch if I do sport it.
This is very bizarre, but a billion years ago I won best legs (guy) in the senior class yearbook.
@de stijl:
“Elliott Abrams named as special envoy to Iran.
Yes, that Elliott Abrams. Iran-Contra guy arguably a war criminal.”
Right here is the best argument for why prosecution of members of the Trump Administration will be necessary. If we don’t do so, the same folks will come back to public office again and again, in spite of having performed illegal acts.
@Jen:
Alyssa Milano says she had a horrible case of Covid-19 (horrible in the sense of highly unpleasant–I don’t think she was hospitalized), yet she twice tested negative on the PCR test and once on the antibody test–until finally coming up positive on the antibody test.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/06/entertainment/alyssa-milano-covid-antibodies/index.html
@Kylopod: Yes–I was being facetious and glib.
I read about Milano’s experience, and have heard several personal anecdotes along the same lines. The antibody test being the least reliable, but definitely the PCR test too. I am also familiar with a person who continued to test positive for 59 days (meaning, continued to test positive every time after recovery up to day 60, when he finally tested negative). The testing is imperfect but it’s all we have right now.
@de stijl: Overheard at a birthday party where one scantily clad OzarkHillbilly jumped out of a cake:
Guy 1: You know, for an ugly mf’er he has some nice legs.
Guy 2: Yeah, but the beard just doesn’t do it for me.
@OzarkHillbilly:
Think about scruff instead of full beard.
I have an electric shaver with all the attachments. I am .5 on face and 0 on neck. 1 on sides. Modified low fade 2 to 4 up top.
Once a year I just get bored, let it grow and do a ‘hawk for a few months.
People respond differently to you when you have a mohawk. It is really fascinating. I am exactly the same person. People see me as provocative.
I meet more interesting people when I have stupid hair because I am bored. Good for dating.
@de stijl:
One thing I have definitely noticed is that my lower legs have become hairless and have bent that way as I have aged.
I have zero problem with people who shave every bit. I ‘scape the crucials, and knock back the chest hair.
Once I totally shaved my chest and stomach. I looked so much like Willem Dafoe in Platoon it was spooky. Never again. I will knock it back, but not to the skin.
I do not want to be Willem Dafoe stapled to a seal’s body.
Surely hope the GA chapter of the ACLU is contacting the two students who were suspended after posting photos from Paulding High School in Dallas, Georgia.
crowed school hall in GA
What part of this don’t the schools understand? Regardless of length of time that students might pass one another, all it takes is ONE sneeze in a situation as depicted for the virus to be spread to dozens of students.
The CDC recommendation of ‘intimate contact for 20 minutes or more’ is unrealistically applied to this situation.
BTW, good on Hannah Watters for having courage and actually caring for her classmates!
my hair is the way it is because I am lazy. I hate sitting for haircuts, so I wait until it bothers me too much and then shave it off. With my beard I do the same except I leave a goatee. In between I keep my mustache of my lips. It drives me nuts. Now in my old age I have to trim my eyebrows too.
Back in my rough and rowdy days I found that the more outlandish my clothes were, the more attention I got from the ladies. No matter how far I took it, it never seemed to be too far.
ETA: The ACLU has it’s hands full these days. I don’t know where the GA schools BS would line up on their scale but I can’t necessarily blame them if they decide to pass on that one.
The Florida headline of the day-
3 South Floridians accused of fraudulently obtaining millions in PPP loans
My small business got a four figure loan from SBA. I paid both my editors but still have most of the money. The pandemic hurt my book business at first but I got a big boost recently so I am not hurting. If that status continues, I’ll re-pay the loan in full.
@Bob@Youngstown: The interesting thing in the CNN clip that went with the link was the district spokesman saying that masking is a personal choice that the district can’t enforce. Living in a place where when the measles outbreak happened last year our school districts were able to enforce a no vaccination record/no attendance policy just fine, I’m having trouble understanding why such a visible thing as masking would be unenforceable.
Then again, as I noted earlier here, I live in a Demonrat-infested socialist hell hole, so I may be more used to my freedoms being trampled upon (and more afraid of being infected by some a$$hat 🙁 ).
The headline of the day-
Georgia school reverses suspension of teen who shared viral photo of hallway packed with students
@Bill: Glad to see that, but my greater point is that the notion to the students are not close to one another for more than a short period of time obviates the need for masks, is just stupid. The written statement from the School Superintendant rationalizes: “Students are in this hallway environment for just a brief period as they move to their next class”.
And a sneeze takes what?, 1 second to create a virus laden bloom that dozens will breath as they move through.
@Bill:
Before someone takes me to the wood shed. I meant I’d pay it in full the first opportunity I get. The SBA won’t be sending me a bill till next year. My business owes no other money and with my health, I prefer to keep it as close to that as possible.
I wore jeans and steel toe pull on boots to jobs till I just got too fat to get them on in the morning without a struggle. Must have been all the beer I used to drink after work while I was traveling to 14 states and living in motels all those years. Dickies makes some nice Flex work pants that I still wear.
I can’t remember what TV western in the ’50s that featured a character that sported a mohawk but I do know that some kid came to school one day with his haircut like that. Fifth grade maybe. Would have been 1957- 58? Everybody was impressed with how cool his mom had to be to let him do that!
My mom said no.
As far as body hair is concerned. All I can say is that no women ever shrieked in horror when she saw me nekkid.
The supreme embarrassment occurred one morning when I woke up in all my threads on not my couch and she was sitting in a chair across from me drinking tea dressed to go to work.
“You fell asleep…”
If you’re just desperately bored I have a long (loooong) interview with some Georgetown kids talking Animorphs. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBE6-YN2Sfc
@Bob@Youngstown:That makes as much sense as “We decided there is no need for a condom because the orgasm takes such a short period of time”
@Michael Reynolds: Just watched the first couple of minutes after you joined, mostly to hear what you sounded like. You might just take this as an insult, but you sounded much more urbane than I expected.
Anyway, good on you for spending that much time with them. I expect you made their day.
Sometimes you just accidentally give someone a Heil Hitler:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2020/08/06/coach-apologizes-racist-horrible-salute-he-says-was-unintentional/
And that is how you apologize for accidentally doing something really offensive. It’s kind of refreshing to see someone not try to dodge and claim to be misunderstood, or be sorry if people (somehow) took offense… Just a simple “Wow, I guess I did that. Holy shit that’s offensive. Sorry.”
@MarkedMan:
Well, I was talking to fans. Those people made my career, so I try to be on my best behavior. Only said ‘fuck’ twice.
@Michael Reynolds: I’ll second @MarkedMan in that you do not sound like I expected.
I think I was expecting more of the booming voice from the heavens laying down commandments and instead you’re just kind of this guy who sounds a lot like my NYC friends — urbane, Jewish-ish, whatever. So weird.
(Next up, someone will find a video of de stilj, and we will discover he does not sound exactly like Gonzo from The Muppets…)
Just seen on Twitter…no real confirmation.
This is after he posted a picture of himself and a much younger woman with their pants undone.
@Daryl and his brother Darryl:
He may have decided he wants to spend more time with his pool-boy.
Have a good weekend, everybody.
@Gustopher:
In my mind I am totally normal.
It’s all y’all who are weird.
Besides Gonzo talks like a normal person. I am kinda a normal person.
@Daryl and his brother Darryl: You know the funny thing about this? There’s absolutely nothing remarkable whatsoever about an evangelical leader getting caught with a young woman or poolboy or whatever. That sort of thing is almost boring by now. What’s amazing is that he didn’t get caught by someone else–he freely posted the picture himself. And didn’t just post it, but commented on the drink he was holding. (It’s what TV Tropes calls “comically missing the point.”) That’s just effing bizarre, and a sign of the postmodern world we live in.
Next thing you know, we’ll have a POTUS sending tweets bragging about engaging in a Nixonian coverup or presiding over the deaths of 200,000 people. Oh, wait….
@Daryl and his brother Darryl:
I really though you might be embellishing for the hyperbole of it, but WA!!! who does that? EEEEEWWWWWW!!!
@Michael Reynolds:
I watched the first half hour.
That is really fascinating. Like others, I expected a different voice. I have always liked to meet folks IRL when I had only been phone or e-mail buddies with beforehand.
I had expected a Mike Ehrmamtrout gravel and world-weariness. You surprised me.
I had a really nice irl long distance relationship with a super cool woman from SF I had chatted with for a year before I met her. She met a dude in her neighborhood so we let go. All the best to her.
Next trip to the library, I will grab a Michael Grant book. Recommendations for a flat newbie?
Library shutting down during lockdown was my biggest bugbear. I need it. I want it. It keeps me sane.
Animorphs seems like a big commitment. Gone, perhaps?
@OzarkHillbilly:
Give a man a fish: he eats for a day.
Give a man electric clippers, he invents new behaviors of personal grooming.
I have not paid for a haircut in decades.
DIY. Works for many little life issues.
Along the lines of #manskirts, I shave my pits.
I hate my underarm hair. I know it is morphologically natural, but it strikes me as gross. The texture is wrong.
So, no. Away it goes.
@de stijl:
and it’ll make you stink less in the hot months
re: pants v shorts
I’m the opposite, shorts only unless I must cover my calves for some reason.
@Grewgills:
Good on ya. Be you.
I have no prob with folks who choose shorts. Just not my thing.
I do object to jorts though. C’mon man! Were you raised by wolves? Jorts scratch my judgey place.
@Michael Reynolds:..Only said ‘fuck’ twice.
Not to worry. I’m sure they never heard the word before and have no idea what it means.
I don’t understand the confusion.
Michael Grant sounds just like I thought Michael Reynolds would sound.
I can’t count the times that younger than me citizens (at 72 that’s a lot of people) have apologised for saying “fuck” within my earshot like they have done something wrong.
“No problem.” I say to them. “I invented that word. Starts with f and ends in uck and it’s not “fire truck”.
@OzarkHillbilly:
WTF is up with eyebrows?
Thing that was so constant you ignore it for your whole life suddenly goes bonkers.
Now, once a month I have to knock back the wild ones. I suspect they object to aging and are having a midlife crisis. Doing the eyebrow equivalent of buying a Corvette.
@de stijl: I have been enjoying my bushy eyebrows, but it might just be that I haven’t gotten old enough to have really bushy eyebrows.
Everytime I would go for a haircut, back when people did things like that, the barber would always ask if I wanted my eyebrows trimmed. Good lord no, they are the most expressive things on my face, constantly showing what I am thinking.
Now, those random little hairs that start growing on the ear where there really wasn’t hair before… those can go away.
@Gustopher:
There is obscure video of me on youtube.
Goddamn, we were so average. So adequate. Looking back, surprised anyone showed up at all. Basement parties are a blast, though.
And I had fun.
Cannot disavow it, but I was pursuing a path I could not compete in. Totally outclassed. I’m glad I tried though.
@de stijl:
I only watched a few minutes, because it apparently will spoil the ending of Animorphs, and I might want to read that series at some point. On the other hand, I’ve read books about the fall of Srebrenica, despite knowing how that turns out (it falls, lots of people die), so it might be fine.
So if you are a female who is raped in Arkansas, you now have to notify your rapist before you can have an abortion…and if you are a minor female who gets pregnant by a male adult, he gets to decide if you can have an abortion…that kooky John Roberts, apparently he knows exactly what he’s doing…
If I were a republican, and Trump was a democrat, I would SO Willie Horton him on this:
1) You horrendously mismanaged Covid
2) Your “liberal” policies resulted in early prison releases due to Covid
3) Now, Karla Elizabeth Dominguez Gonzalez is dead.
(Insert darkened picture of Ibrahim E. Bouaichi here.)
https://wjla.com/news/local/police-rape-suspect-freed-due-to-virus-kills-his-accuser-in-alexandria
@Gustopher:
Do not even get me started on effing wild ass ear hair!
Bane of my existence. And nose hairs can fuck right the fuck off too.
I pluck you root and branch! Doesn’t that usually mean you cannot regrow?
Plus the nose itself is too squishy to give it a proper scrub. It always wiggles away.
I like my huge pores with detritus snuggled in. No! Not the Biore strip! Gahh! Run for your lives.
The aftereffects of the Biore strip are really gross but fascinating.
At 44 I’ve been doing my eyebrows for a couple years now. Every three weeks, clipper guard number two and Just For Men medium brown.
@Bill:
Missed that earlier. Good news!
I imagine the school board and the administration folks saw the amount of shit on them now and the potential for future shit and decided that jk was the appropriate choice.
Obvs they screwed up the initial action, but responded. Many initially will not.
We will be throwing kids, teachers, staff, and admin into the Covid grinder this next month because we are too stupid to withdraw when the enemy has our number.
Like Russian conscripts in Stalingrad we advance. We are trying to bullrush a virus.
I like being an American. We have a lot of cool traits. Sometimes we are idiots and assholes. A crisis embiggens both our good and bad behaviors.
@Teve:
littlegreenfootballs used to be Bush43 central in the early to mid aughts. Not as noxious as Flipping Aces or Gates of Vienna, but up there.
The owner had a change of heart / politics. Akin to Balloon Juice John Cole.
It’s very cool those guys stepped into the scales falling from their eyes. I applaud it. But they needed blatant inadequacy shoved in their face daily to make the turn. An observant person would not have needed the obvious unfit screw up like Dubya to see where this going and how it got there.
The lgf guy is unfortunately named Charles Johnson so gets confused with the other Charles Johnson who is a human colostomy bag.
I have no beef with where those guys got to, but why did it take that long?
Was the Southern Strategy not a great big neon bedazzled indicator you were a baddie?
I am encouraged by my tiny community. Everybody who is sane is enrolling in virtual academies and setting up “safe socialization pods”, it’s mostly the parents of athletes and “hoaxers” who are encouraging school to open regularly.
I wonder about those parents. Those athletes could be facing a draft to Vietnam, would they still be so excited about going back to school if that’s what the end entailed?
@Teve:
Once in college my gf went too far on her eyebrows and decided to just say fuck it and she shaved ’em off entirely.
It was really cool. It brought out her eyes and hers’ were stunners, but it was oddly distracting. I didn’t focus the same on her when we were talking.
It was not my place to comment – her body, her choice. But I did notice it.
You never notice eyebrows unless they are weird or absent.
@de stijl: John Cole regularly beats himself up over that. I don’t know if Charles Johnson does because I only follow him on Twitter, I find something about his site just unpleasant and don’t go there very often.
I quit going to the Washington Monthly Political Animal blog because it some point years ago some writers started writing there who just wrote these interminable boring posts, but I’ve been going back there for the last two weeks and it actually had some pretty good stuff.
@Teve: Which Charles Johnson? The red headed Furby guy, or the one who runs LGF?
@Jax: LGF.
By the way, Trump is apparently claiming he’s going to sign an executive order that requires insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions. Will it surprise you when I tell you that I’ve already seen at least three Trumpers praise him to the heavens, one of which said the best president ever!
@Jax: @Teve:
The photo I saw accompanying one article was of the redheaded Furby, who’s quite young.
@CSK: Furby Johnson is a real piece of work. Slimier than the Project Veritas fools.
@Teve….same on LGF. Kinda like the Palmer Report. Something just doesn’t sit right with me about either. Too obviously biased in my direction, I guess? Probably also why I hang out here, where I at least know the hosts are gonna give me something to think about. 😉
Does anybody else get sad on Twitter when they see Doug’s robo-posts, new blog updates here at OTB, but no Doug himself?
@Teve:
WaMo was a big deal. I read that daily.
Then the lead guy skedaddled.
Was that Steve Benen? Went to Maddowblog?
[Googles]
Yep. Twas.
@Teve:
I was trying subtly to backhand one of our hosts.
Perhaps too subtly; no one picked up on it.
@Jax: it’s not so much the political content at little green footballs it’s everything else that annoys me. The site design is overbusy, I don’t care about any of the music, the Bob Cesca podcast he plugs is jarring to my ears and after 10 minutes I couldn’t listen to another second, the Seth Meyers and John Oliver clips I would already have seen on YouTube, and that’s 95% of the posts. So there’s just no reason for me to go there. He’s good on Twitter though.
@Teve:
I have read LeTourneau in the past and Longman, but crikey that UI is god awful at WaMo. Maybe only on mobile.
@Teve:
LGF when it was pro Bush and anti Muslim was a cesspool commentariate. They had LGF MC patches and creepy meet-ups.
Then those folks buggered off when Johnson turned his coat. No one else really shuffled in to fill the gap because it was a site that routinely called us traitors and idiots.
I would dip my toes occasionally and it was just xenophobic and anti-Muslim garbage.
Why would I trust a guy who trafficked in hateful shit for years before coming around?
Cole and Balloon Juice was weird. Cole was a righty but 80%+ of the commenters were lefty and continually gave him crap about logical errors and willful ignorance a la early Doug M.
@Teve:
Just wait until you get gray hairs “down there”.
It makes you re-evaluate.
@Gustopher:
Well, IRL it happens I actually am an elderly semi-Jewish man able to fake urbanity. Though that is my ‘nice guy’ talking-to-fans voice.
@de stijl:
GONE would be the thing. Or FRONT LINES if you like WW2. Thank you! Cha Ching! Another three dollars.
@Mister Bluster:
The problem is never with the kids, as you say, they’ve heard ‘fuck’ once or twice before. It’s always the teachers and parents. I had this one Texas librarian terrified she’d lose her job because I was honest with an audience of middle school kids about my past.
@Michael Reynolds:
Gone it is, then.
Earmark my $3 for booze or weed.