Re: Derbyshire Regrets Supporting The War In Iraq

1

He wanted us to just "rubble" the place and then leave? WTF?

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He wanted us to just "rubble" the place and then leave? WTF?

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Hey, sorry about the DP. But what's with the new unfogged happy fun post page, or whatever that was. I thought it told me to press "back" and then "post" again? Or maybe I didn't read carefully enough...

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4

I don't know if I can give even a third of a cheer for someone who wants our nation to be

a nation that knows how to punish our enemies, a nation that can smash one of those ramshackle Mideast despotisms with one blow from our mailed fist

This is disgusting.

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5

Funny, I just got through reading that, and when I returned to Unfogged, you had already posted on it. Derbyshire is, perhaps, even less serious than the architects of the war. "Oh, I thought we should just kill a bunch of people to show that we can and then walk away."

I don't think he even rates a 1/3 cheer.

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6

Really- I saw a picture of a kitten. I'm not making this up. Please don't tell me I'm hallucinating again...


Also, 4 is right. One third of a cheer is way too much.

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7

Back and refresh. It specifically says that the comment has already posted. Jeez, Urple.

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8

Also: The effort to stabilize Iraq, and the reluctance to just leave the Iraqis to fight each other among the rubble

is what he is objecting to. In my mind, this makes him in fact worse than those in the administration, because he has the same sin of supporting the initial attack without any mitigating desire to fix what they purposely broke.

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9

7- Ah! I suspected as much. Oh well - that's what I get for skimming.

Still curious why I saw it that one, strange time, and never before or since?

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10

Still curious why I saw it that one, strange time, and never before or since?

It's the new Internal Server Error page that we put up, specifically so people would stop double-posting. RTFISE, Urple! (stern look)

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11

The third of a cheer is for being, oh, a sincere evil lunatic, rather than an evil lunatic trying to make evil politically palatable. He seems to really be saying what he thinks, rather than toeing the party line (cf. comments on Intelligent Design, this review of Party of Death.) There's something to be said for someone who recognizably operates within the same universe of factual reality that I do, even if their morals are unspeakable.

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12

Do I misremember, or didn't the apparently much more respectable Tom Friedman say something about picking up a country and throwing it against the wall, or something, (which to me amounts to the same thing)?
Impliedly, more-or-less indifferent to whether the particular country had any connection to 9/11.

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13

RTFISE

Read The Fucking Internal Server Error?
Realize That Flagrantly Idiotic Skimming is Egregious?
Remember That Fontana (Labs) Is the Sexiest Ever?
Ride The Fondue Island Seaside Escalator?

Whatever you meant, I'm sorry again for the DP. I'm know what to do next time I see a kitty.

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14

12 quotes Michael Leeden, an appropriate epithet (non-Homeric type) for whom I can not decide on.

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15

I don't know about Ledeen, but I'm pretty sure about Friedman. The self-conscious coarseness of the runup to the war, to distiguish themselves from the scruples of such as us, was wondrous and quite widespread.

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16

Anglo-Saxon??? Does he mean the guys with these helmets?

What has he got against Normans?

(Yes, this is my first time posting here. Couldn't resist. I lurk frequently -- hi!)

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17

I'm sorry again for the DP

Man, this brings back memories.

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18

And the real question is what happened to the Jutes? They get one mention, and then disappear off the face of the British Isles.

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19

Jonah Goldberg, on April 23rd 2002:

Well, I've long been an admirer of, if not a full-fledged subscriber to, what I call the "Ledeen Doctrine." I'm not sure my friend Michael Ledeen will thank me for ascribing authorship to him and he may have only been semi-serious when he crafted it, but here is the bedrock tenet of the Ledeen Doctrine in more or less his own words: "Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business." That's at least how I remember Michael phrasing it at a speech at the American Enterprise Institute about a decade ago (Ledeen is one of the most entertaining public speakers I've ever heard, by the way).

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20

That's clearly the origin of the meme. Does anybody else remember Friedman repeating it? Might have been on Charley Rose, not in a column. I can see his face in my memory.

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21

16.-- The Normans are French, and Walter Scott wasn't very big on Napoléon?

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22

I'm more or less OK with rubbling a country, but only in the face of an actual, eminent existential threat. Which means the Old South and the Axis powers; that's pretty much it. And even then, only if pushed to the wall. My problem with Derb is that he wants to do it on the basis of what amounts to inconvenience--oil prices are too high, it's a pain in the ass to find the Muslims who actually attacked us, etc.

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23

Does it say something bad about me that the shrillblog's gimmick of quoting people, saying they've become shrill critics of Bush or driven mad by his mendacity, and adding some lovecraftian gibberish can still make me laugh?

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24

Miskatonic U!

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn.

(In dark R'lyeh great Cthulhu sleeps with a head cold. Ph'nglui! Gesundheit.)

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25

I think this, a series of emails between a Nigerian sc/pam artist and a disembodied head in the labs at Miskatonic U., may be my favorite thing ever on the Internet.

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26

Do we have to shout "hip" at him? Can we shout "ass" instead?

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27

IDP,
Not "throw it against the wall", but this is close:

"This bubble had to be burst, and the only way to do it was to go right into the heart of the Arab world and smash something—to let everyone know that we, too, are ready to fight and die to preserve our open society. Yes, I know, it's not very diplomatic—it's not in the rule book—but everyone in the neighborhood got the message: Henceforth, you will be held accountable. Why Iraq, not Saudi Arabia or Pakistan? Because we could—period."

That's what it took for me to stop reading Friedman.

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28

Thanks, that'll do. I appear to have conflated Ledeen's graceful imagery with Friedman's platform. I remember, or think I do, him saying something red-eyed like this, and I was sure at least of my revulsion of hearing it. That was probably it.

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29

I appear to have conflated Ledeen's graceful imagery with Friedman's platform.

Probably a giveaway -- Ledeen went thirty whole words without mixing a metaphor ("go right to the heart of the Arab world and smash something").

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30

Drat -- Pandagon linked this but linked to LGM instead of here. Rats.

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31

Why rats? I mean, besides general Manhattan reasons. A marginal commenter at LGF rates more utils than a marginal commenter here. We have a surplus of marginal commenters.

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32

Friedman was surprisingly not bad on the Daily Show last night. Of course, the word Iraq was not spoken during the interview, and it was mostly about raising gas taxes with a rebate for everyone with an income under 50K.

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31: Additional traffic to Unfogged, if any of it sticks, is ours -- if a Pandagonian clicks through for that post and likes the place, we get more readers.

If they click through to LGM and like the place, on the other hand, they have become an LGM reader, not an Unfogged reader. Good for the LGM posters, less so for us.

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34

Good for you, I'd say. Why do you want more readers? Especially Pandagon readers.

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35

We went to the Colbert Report yesterday! Woo! If given the choice between attending a taping of Colbert or TDS, go with Colbert. Way more fun than the taping of TDS I went to. Cobert really hammed it up and joked around with the audience between bits (and played air drums and danced to the music) while Stewart just looks at his papers and ignores the audience.

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36

Why do you want more readers?

Massive inflamed ego.

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37

OK, so I'm going to continue a parlor game of mine.

Do you think a man or woman wrote this is a man or woman?

I think we can all agree that FDL made quite a splash at YKOS, can’t we? I was watching from afar, as most of you probably were, and people came over to my blog drooling over Jane and Christy. (I’m sure they would have drooled over Pach too, if they’d seen him.) The blogosphere was proud as a peacock to have such smart hot women representing them. Not that physical attractiveness is the most important thing, by far, but it certainly doesn’t hurt.

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38

I never tire of that kitten.

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39

Do you think a man or woman wrote this is a man or woman?

Is this some kind of zen koan?

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37: I say: woman.

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41

You wrote "this is a man or woman," and you give the impression of being a man, so I would say a man wrote this is a man or woman.

But seriously. What's this game?

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42

Yeah, let's go with that.

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43

Oh, c'mon, that goofy last paragraph.

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44

I'd read that already, so my opinion is colored by my pre-existing opinion as to the gender of the writer, but it comes off like a woman writing to me. 'Hot' as a compliment from a man generally has a tone of 'I'd like to get me some of that' that was absent here.

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45

42 to 39, and 43, which should end w a question mark, to 40.

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46

Oh, and paragraph in 43 sholuld be sentence. Christ!

The clumsiness of the last sentence seems male to me.

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47

Who actually did write it, Digby? I just thought a man would have been uncomfortable going on about their hot babeness at all in that context.

Frankly, I'm not that crazy about the sentiment. It's fine to note their hotness as a separate issue apart from their wok, but I don't really like the notion that it's just so fabulous to be represented by attractive women, as if unattractive women would have done them any less proud.

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48

OK, LB, I have another argument that I meant to bring up the last time. Wouldn't a female Digby react to the occasional creepy misogyny of his commenters? When he brings up Coulter, or even Ana Marie Cox.

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49

Yep, Digby.

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47: Which makes it something a male would be more likely to say. He could bring it up because he's discussing what his commenters said.

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51

Digby gives off a female vibe to me.

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48: Well be more likely too. I could see Hamsher not reacting to it, Digby-as-female seems like the person who would.

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53

Not necessarily. Hell, FDL is written by women, and they spout some nasty misogynistic stuff in the same context -- I get the creeps reading there sometimes. I don't disagree with much of the substance, but the rhetoric gets outside my comfort zone.

I'm not strongly committed to my guess about Digby's gender, but I'd still say more likely than not female.

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54

Does this count as pwning LB? I sorta anticipated her argument, rather than arguing the same thing.

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55

I'm not crazy about the sentiment, or this game, although for the latter I can't put my finger on why.

and
Wouldn't a female Digby react to the occasional creepy misogyny of his commenters?

Nope. I have female friends who say misogynist things all the time, or don't react to misogynist statements.

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56

55: Oh. Maybe I should stop then. Discuussing misogyny takes out the fun of it, a bit. Maybe that's why I never brought it up the lasat time.

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57

For the game (I'm playing it too, of course) what's unsavory is (a) presumably Digby wants to remain ungendered, so we're disregarding her/his wishes by trying to figure it out, and (b) we're implicitly endorsing the 'you can just tell, men and women are just so different' thing which is generally, IMO, pernicious bullshit.

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58

Anyway, I kinda read this

The blogosphere was proud as a peacock to have such smart hot women representing them as sarcastic, but maybe it wasn't in context.

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57: Yeah, that's it.

Maybe when I grow up I'll be smart like LB.

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60

Regarding (a), we've no chance of finding out. As long as it's just a parlor game, we're hardly disregarding his/her wishes. (b) is interesting. You could argue the discussion questions one's assumptions rather, maybe demonstates that it's bullshit.

I guess I think men and women have somewhat different writing styles, but I also know that the same para will read differently to me depending on the gender of the writer. It's interesting to have be reminded of that.

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61

I'm with Weman on (b). You don't have to think that men and women are "so different" to think that you can guess gender properly at a greater than 50% rate, and I think that's all that's really being said.

You know, 'cause the crazy ones are women.

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62

There's a lot of research on the different writing styles of men and women, which was the basis for the gender genie project (which is currently down). That said, the gender genie never worked correctly on a single piece of my writing.

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63

I'm with Weman and SCMT on (b).

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64

62: Possible explanation.

(It was the key to some trashy mystery I read recently. And I'm making a joke. JIC.)

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65

which is generally, IMO, pernicious bullshit.

Women usually think that. Y'all are so cute when you have opinions.

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66

The misogynist stuff at FDL has creeped me out so utterly that I don't read it any more. I simply do not understand how women can convince themselves into thinking that that sort of thing is okay to disseminate.

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67

I think the thinking is that 'you have to play rough if you're going to play with the big boys' -- that the opposition uses horrible rhetoric and that horribleness must be matched. While this isn't complete nonsense -- there are some kinds of polite that are going to hold you back in an argument -- it's silly as FDL applies it.

Or maybe they're just jerks. No one said I ever had to like everyone I mostly agree with.

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68

60, 61, 63.

It's a damn fine line between norm-identifying and norm-shaping.

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69

I simply do not understand how women can convince themselves into thinking that that sort of thing is okay to disseminate.

That is totally something a chyck would say.

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70

It's a damn fine line between norm-identifying and norm-shaping.

I'm comfortable with that risk.

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71

That is NOT funny.


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Pardon my ignorance; what/where is FDL?

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Firedoglake. I may be being unfair to them -- I don't read them much because I found them off-putting, but that means that I don't have a mental list of unpleasant quotes to link to. They may not be as bad as I've implied. But the bloggers are the women Digby was praising above.

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74

Thanks.

p.s. 64, 69? funny obnoxious

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75

God, blogads are teh ugly. So glad they're not on this site.

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76

'Thanks to contributions from viewers like you...'

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77

Digby him/herself's never crossed the line to misogyny. I'm overrall a big fan of his/her writing.

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Digby him/herself's never crossed the line to misogyny. I'm overrall a big fan of his/her writing.

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79

Digby him/herself's never crossed the line to misogyny. I'm overrall a big fan of his/her writing.

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80

Digby him/herself's never crossed the line to misogyny. I'm overrall a big fan of his/her writing.

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81

But tell us how you really feel, David.

You're right, of course -- Digby's superb, regardless of gender.

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82

Why does hitting refresh produce a comment when the comments box is empty? I did the last ones on purpose to see if I was right.

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83

OK, now it stopped.

To expand on 60, the mind reels everytime I think of Digby's writing as a woman, then as a man. I read some pop science writing about how gender is always the first thing you think of when you see a person. I'm fascinated by the idea that fairly little of contemporary gender roles is genetic, but to always thinking in terms of gender, and to create gender roles, is.

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84

74: p.s. 64, 69? funny obnoxious

I've been told that there's a fine line there, too, and I'm sorry if I crossed it.

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85

Wimp.

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86

85: Don't otherize me for embracing my feminine characteristics, LB.

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87

I took a short story writing class in my last semester of high school and at the end of the semester we each contributed a story to collection we had bound as a souvenir of the class. A little after graduation I decided to read through all the stories. After a few stories I started to notice some patterns that seemed to break down by gender. I don't think I have the notebook I used to write this up, but here's what I remember doing:

I took the first 10 stories by boys and the first 10 by girls, wrote up summaries, noted some words and phrases I thought were key and found that:

1. All or nearly all of the girls' stories had male characters, and most were pretty nearly gender-balanced.

2. Boys' stories had very few female characters in them; a lot - maybe more than half, but I'm not sure about this - had none (mine didn't). The one story with a significant female character involved a girl purposely losing a musical talent contest out of sympathy for a boy who had always been mean to her, but who would have been sent off to some disciplinarian school by his parents had he lost.

3. The girls' stories tended to involve friendships/relationships/family.

4. The boys' stories were full of violence.

I'm sure there were problems with my method (hey, I was 16 or so when I did this): only 10 stories for each gender isn't much of a sample, and since we were each supposed to write 2 stories, but submit only 1 to the collection, these stories weren't all the stories we wrote for the class. My other story, for example, was entirely a relationship kind of story. But it was still striking to see just how stark the contrasts were.

I hope this will be seen as norm-identifying rather than shaping, since I'm not saying anything about how these norms were produced. Actually, in retropect, given what I know about norms now, these results aren't so surprising. My guess is this is the kind of information that goes into those "analyze the writing and determine the gender" programs.

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88

The first paragraph of that comment makes me think I'm still in junior high. Short sentences, repetition of terms. Bleh.

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89

A friend of mine who went to and taught at a fancy schmancy art school claimed that, at some early point, all female art student paint themselves in the bathtub.

I was going to object, but then realized that one of my earliest paintings is of an ex-boyfriend in a bathtub.

He said that counted.

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90

You were your ex-boyfriend?

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91

UHFP on my last two comments.

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92

Man, this place is screwy. Remember I had that stupid blowup with a secretary a couple of months ago? Another associate I work with is having significantly worse problems -- she told her secretary to print out a bunch of documents (a monotonous job that would have taken hours, but thems the breaks). The secretary complained to a partner she also works for, and the partner chewed the associate out. As did another secretary, who couldn't see the reason for the printing: "You're just killing trees. And anyway, the reason people don't like to work for you is that you're not very nice."

WTF? The associate is, admittedly, tense and easily flustered -- I wouldn't want to be her secretary when she's on deadline, because she gets all wrecked and doesn't communicate as well as she might. (My secretary, who I pumped for info on whether anything else was going on, confirmed that the associate is irritating but not abusive). But that doesn't make refusing a perfectly sane assignment okay, nor does it explain what's going on in the partner's head. There's something deeply wrong about this place, management-of-the-staff-wise.

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93

Maybe the partner is shtupping the secretary?

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94

The secretary is brand new (three weeks?) and the partner doesn't seem like that sort. And the other secretary joining in to pile on? How could she think that's okay?

Nothing sucks like having to supervise people when you have no power and no backup.

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95

A friend of mine who went to and taught at a fancy schmancy art school claimed that, at some early point, all female art student paint themselves in the bathtub.

I guess this theory explains Tubgirl , if what she is doing counts as "painting."

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96

95 -- a big "if".

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97

It could be that the partners (possibly rightly) think the associate is much more fungible than the secretary. (I wonder if relative turnover rates would be evidence of anything.)

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98

There's something deeply wrong about this place, management-of-the-staff-wise.

Clearly true. The secretaries referred to in your comment should be shot; the partner severely beaten (unless he does not generate any business, in which case he can be shot too). You have to impose some order on that place!

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99

97: See, that kind of explanation makes sense when you're talking about a partner's long-term, treasured secretary who knows where the bodies are buried. This woman has been here for three weeks. At that point, they're saying that any secretary outranks any associate -- who's supposed to do the typing?

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100

Kobe!

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101

re: 99. This is a gross generalization, but except for a partner's long-term, treasured secretary who knows where the bodies are buried, in my experience, secretaries at big law firms are not particularly valuable staff members. The associates and paralegals (whose work generates most of the revenue) mostly do their own typing, and many important administrative things--like filing papers in court or otherwise communicating with the courts--are often done by staff members other than the secretaries. The partner is not acting rationally (and even if he were acting (in some sense) rationally, he still was being a dick).

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102

Wait, secretaries still do typing?

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103

Wha's it mean when commenters shout out "Kobe!"? Is it a reference to the Kobe Bryant (is that his name?) rape trial? Or what?

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104

Ah, yes, thanks in advance, Idealist.

eb, I guess the proposition should have been that women make "portraits in a bathtub, which are usually self-portraits"--or, perhaps, to fit the facts to the original proposition, that I over-identified with my ex-boyfriend, which [cough] may indeed have been true.

I like that Tubgirl can be explained with the thesis, btw.

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105

102: Some people still dictate stuff -- I have, on occasion. And it's a lot faster to say "Write a letter to Joe Blow saying 'Enclosed please find', all this stuff in the stack of papers I'm handing you, and make a FedEx label for the package" than to do the cover letter yourself.

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106

The associates and paralegals (whose work generates most of the revenue) mostly do their own typing, and many important administrative things--like filing papers in court or otherwise communicating with the courts--are often done by staff members other than the secretaries.

There's a difference between "important and revenue generating" and "fungible." I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm just saying I wasn't making quite the same claim.

Wha's it mean when commenters shout out "Kobe!"?

Bryant's the only player who really has a shot of breaking the 100 point barrier these days.

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107

Thanks, SCMTime.

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108

I'm really wondering about the gender dynamics here. I'm building up a bunch of incidents of the following form: Female associate comes into conflict with secretary. Male partner cuts female associate off at the knees (well, that's an overstatement in my case, but the talk I got was 'Yes she's a problem. That's why you should stay out of her way'. Not hostile, but certainly not supportive or affirming my status.) Please, someone tell me that partners pull this stuff on male associates as well?

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109

See here, SCMTim!

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110

SCMTim does not need to see there, I do (or did). Thanx though.

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111

partners pull this stuff on male associates as well

Partners (in general, I do not know about your firm, just my experience in big law) pull this stuff on male associates as well. One the other hand, I would not say that this means that there are not gender dynamics at play here as well. You may have female secretaries who resent strong women associates and you may have male partners who either (a) coddle subservient female secretaries when they would tell a male staff member to shut up and get back to work or (b) find conduct, which if engaged in by a male associate would be OK, to be excessively bitchy in a female associate. Or, of course, the partner may just be a clueless manager and/or a dick and the secretaries may be just as unpleasant and uncooperative to the male associates.

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112

Partners (in general, I do not know about your firm, just my experience in big law) pull this stuff on male associates as well.

I'm not trying to be a jerk here, but we've talked about this stuff (in relation to the incident at the firm where we worked together) and I don't remember you coming up with any comparable stories. Am I forgetting something?

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113

I'm not trying to be a jerk here, but we've talked about this stuff (in relation to the incident at the firm where we worked together) and I don't remember you coming up with any comparable stories. Am I forgetting something?

Yes, I think you are forgetting things I have told you, both about my experiences here and at my former firm and about the facts of the incident at the firm where we worked together.

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114

Huh. I've emailed for details, given that you seem concerned about anonymity.

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115

99-100 is a wonderful pair of comments.

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116

Well... here's an "interesting" alternative take on this:

http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/005858.html


[Full disclosure, I stopped reading after this line: "Assuming that Iraq had expanding WMD capacities (which everyone assumed was true, which no one had any solid basis for rejecting, and which there is still much reason to believe was true, even though the Bush administration, being liberals, itself has given up the issue)..."]

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