Dude, I just opened a can of coke and now I can't drink it.
I'm not sure why it raises my eyebrow. But it does.
Probably because I saw the telephone call story repeated all over the place, but have only the vaguest memory of hearing about the NY Times piece.
Virginia Hill's call apparently prompted a retired former colleague of Thomas's who could have supported much of Hill's testimony to come forward.
Eh, it ate my link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/21/AR2010102106645_4.html
Well. That and the memoir she has coming out soon.
That sort of pisses me off. Had she come forward earlier, we might not be stuck with this fucking embarrassment on the High Court.
Thomas' former girlfriend, who wasn't asked to testify at his confirmation hearings, has written a memoir in which she supports Hill's allegations. (Not that there's a connection, but I would be surprised if the Thomases didn't know she was writing it.)
I know I'm being Captain Obvious here, I'm just really annoyed by it. I would buy her book only if I had a reasonable shot at throwing it at her head during an otherwise poignant moment.
What's the secret of come.... oh, darn it.
Wow. I'd seen a couple of references to Liberty Central, and I was surprised that Virginia Thomas would suddenly appear in the news in a different story; I also wondered why someone who is a career ideologue would take such a perilous action so close to the election. After all, the "poor suffering wife" outpouring was pretty likely to be counterbalanced by Angela Wright, etc.
For all my years as a cynical news-reader, I'm a bit ashamed that I didn't see the phone message as a feint. Now I have trouble believing there's any other possible reason why she'd do it.
Curse you, snarkout. I keel you.
9: Yeah, especially since she called her office at 7:30 am on a Saturday? I don't...I don't fully understand that. Gawker seemed to think that was clear evidence of fight + drinking. Or maybe she's actually just a hideous coward? I dunno.
OH GOD, SUCKED IN AGAIN! SO QUICKLY!
This has to stop, I have things to do today!
How is "let me do something weird to distract people from the fact that I might be doing something wrong" a winning strategy in the long term?
10: Oh fucking hell. Now we have to read every goddamn comment before we comment?
Let me be the first to note that Juan Williams got fired by NPR.
15: Hey! It took fucking forever to get that WaPo page to load. Is it just me, or has everyone's Internet access reverted to near-dialup speed?
14: Ask Georgia's next governor, Nathan Deal, who dropped out of Congress to deactivate the influence-peddling investigation the Ethics Committee was running.
9, 14: It's not without risks, but I can still see the thinking, sort of, like so: Look, honey, some shit's gonna come down from the NYT today, and we really can't afford a big stink about it, so here's the thing: you'll need to throw yourself under the bus, so to speak, and do something completely weird and crazy in order to generate an even bigger hullabaloo, okay? This way everyone will just think you're a nutjob and a sorry case, and whatever you're doing with Liberty Central can't be a serious thing, obviously. Plus all the handwringing that'll ensue over sexual harassment in the workplace.
Either that, or the pressure of the upcoming Liberty Central + Lillian McEwen revelations got to her, and she lost it.
16: I've upped my donation to NPR because of it. You should too. If the quality of the product goes up, it is only fair to pay more for it.
How is "let me do something weird to distract people from the fact that I might be doing something wrong" a winning strategy in the long term?
There's no long term in American electoral politics anymore. And the strategy seems to be working quite nicely for them.
(What I've realized lately is that it's not the craziness that truly bothers me, it's the utter shamelessness).
(I just made chocolate brownies, which I will soon ice and then decorate with Halloween sprinkles).
One theory: Since her unusual request, Virginia Thomas has been the toast of the town, appearing on talk and radio shows across the country.
but the fact that she placed the phone call the very same day the article appeared strikes me as extra-special odd.
(After much searching) Aha: here's Jezebel's roundup of possible reasons for the call:
Perhaps, although it's difficult to imagine Ms. Thomas delivering a blistering Tea Party speech on a Friday night, opening her New York Times the next morning, and thinking, "Hey, maybe I'll call Anita Hill right this instant." Moreover, as Goldstein notes, if this was intended to distract from the conflicts around Liberty Central, it didn't work, since Hill sat on the message for several days.Jezebel thinks she just might be stupid.
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['<bettywhite>Maybe she's just a crazy bitch.</bettywhite>']
Maybe she's just a crazy bitch.
She's married to Clarence Thomas and aspires to be a Tea Party leader. What are the odds she isn't a crazy bitch?
9 seconded, other than that "crazy bitch" also seems like a plausible explanation. Synthesis theory: the phone call was serendipitous. She's a crazy bitch but conservatives in the media have deliberately, successfully made hay out of the trivial personal thing to drown out the substantive criminal thing. The world may never know.
She should go on TV: "I'm not a crazy bitch. I'm you."
She does have a history of interesting associations--she was apparently big into Lifespring in the '80s, but then broke away and became a member of the Cult Awareness Network. In a 1991 interview, Thomas commented on Lifespring, stating "they are pretty scary people." She also stated: "I was once in a group that used mind control techniques."
Her bio on the Liberty Central website is priceless.
Virginia (Ginni) Thomas, President and CEO. Ginni is a new social entrepreneur and the Founder of Liberty Central, Inc. Ginni is excited about launching LibertyCentral.org and finds the new citizen activists inspirational! She brings passion, enthusiasm and principled participation to the public square. With 30 years of experience within the Washington beltway working alongside esteemed politicians like Dick Armey and for institutions like Hillsdale College, the Heritage Foundation and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Ginni is committed to serving as a clearinghouse for new and more effective online activism. Ginni, the 'proud' Nebraskan, is a fan of Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin and Laura Ingraham and other talk radio hosts. She is intrigued by Glenn Beck and listening carefully. She also enjoys motor homing and watching "24″.
Ginni, the 'proud' Nebraskan,
I'm not sure I 'understand,' iykwim.
Erm, guys, could we not use sexist language to insult our political enemies? Surely there's plenty of avenues for insult that don't reinforce ugly stereotypes.
/earnestness
Surely there's plenty of avenues for insult that don't reinforce ugly stereotypes.
Yeah, not all motorhomers are wingnuts from Nebraska.
30: Erm, guys, could we not use sexist language to insult our political enemies?
Betty White on Sarah Palin (youtube)
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['Oh, no, not again.']
I am sad that "motor homing" is a verb now.
Everyone's getting lazy. Even birds. Nowadays it's all motor-homing pigeons.
We once had a pop-up camper trailer, but that's as close as we got to motor homing.
Also "scrapbooking." We get a top-100-wanted email list from Amazon every few days: books people have been trying -- in vain -- to buy on Amazon, but which are sadly unavailable. There's almost always a book on scrapbooking there.
37: You could buy all the most popular scrapbooking books. Then, cut out clippings of your favorite parts of each and paste them into The Scrapbooking Book to End All Scrapbooking Books.
38: Ha! Today's entry on the Amazon list was called something like "100 Things You Can Do with Your Scrapbook."
I swear to god.
Scrapbooking is so common it is an iPod auto complete word. It is also the most common hobby of women who have been charged with glueing their husband's penis to his thigh.
I really don't see any reason to interject sexist remarks into the discussion, Moby. Surely there are other insults available.
[N.B. The point in 30 was entirely well-taken.]
Yeah, not all motorhomers are wingnuts from Nebraska.
Indeed, many of them are from Alaska.
Most of the ones I met were from Minnesota and Michigan, for some reason.
Men who accidentally glue their penis to their hands always say they are scrapbooking. Men who glue their penis to their shoulder are bragging.
HELP PENIS GLUED TO CEILING FAN
You must not have heard--No More Masturbating to Juan Williams on NPR.
I guess now that the Juan Williams thing has raised a kerfuffle over the objectivity of the media, we're in for an onslaught of attempts by various outlets to prove how even-handed they are. At least judging by the number of stories in the last day or so examining the extent to which the Democratic Party is or is not in the pocket of Big Union.
I blame everybody David Brooks.
I can't stand the word "kerfuffle". Sounds too much like balls wedged in a chair.
Believe it or not, I searched briefly for an alternative, then just kind of shrugged.
Brouhaha. That's better suited, anyway. Ballyhoo. Not quite balderdash.
we're in for an onslaught of attempts by various outlets to prove how even-handed they are.
Probably. I saw that post on Obsidian Wings comparing the WSJ story about campaign money to the NYT story. Big difference there.
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['The Yankees are one out away from being eliminated.']
50: Sounds too much like balls wedged in a chair.
You have to admit, that would be a right kerfuffle.
Wow. That was quick. Rangers win 6-1.
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['I hope this is the token for the Bush family that swings the midterms the other way.']
49: Combine an "even-handed" media with the deranged partisan moles in the Justice Dept. and you get misleading crap like this piece in the WaPo, "Dispute over New Black Panthers case causes deep divisions". Timing, too.
Scrapbooking is my red state hobby, and also my secret shame. Though, actually, I think I'm over the shame, so much so that I've even published a few pages (called "layouts" in scrapbooking lingo, but please don't imagine anything racy or interesting by the use of that term) in various scrapbooking magazines. The centre of the universe for this hobby is Utah; and adherents of the LDS are statistically over-represented by any measure (of usership, readership, consumption of relevant goods available at one's local Michael's, and so on) that I can think of.
The term "scrapbooking" no longer bothers me at all, I'm that jaded. But the related gerund of "journaling" (writing text to enhance/explain a photo) does still make me want to run my fingers down a chalkboard in protest, or something like that. It's a strangely addictive hobby, though, once you get into it, and you can sort of get over (or learn to ignore) the weirdness of being offered "a blessed day" when someone's telling you about a cool new font, or the latest upgrade from Adobe.
Witt's 30 is absolutely right, of course, and it's no use hiding behind Betty White. But it gets tedious...
50 is also right. "Kerfuffle" is an awful word, and not humorous enough to compensate for its ugliness.
52: Yes. And Brooks's recent column on the relative unimportance of outside party spending was a piece of obfuscation. But -- I'd gone back to read the NYT piece on Ginni Thomas and Liberty Central, and saw that they've now got two new pieces up on the Dems' funding by unions, and on Democratic Party efforts to field third-party candidates to split the Republican vote in certain districts*. Fair enough, though one would now like to see a piece on Republican Party efforts to do the same with Green Party candidates in the past. And so on, never ending.
* At least the pieces were new to me; maybe they're days old. They're highlighting them now.
No More Masturbating to Juan Williams on NPR.
Speaking of which, I'm listening to a concert by the guitarist John Williams just up the street from Wanker's Corner. True fact.
we're in for an onslaught of attempts by various outlets to prove how even-handed they are.
49: cf.
I'm not sure whether it's worse that they're running this piece of crap or that they're clearly running it to redirect the conservative hugh and cry over Williams's firing.
59.1: Wow -- worse than I expected when I clicked through (the line about women who 'gender-carded their way to the Senate' is kinda priceless).
Since when is the NRO a "content partner" of NPR, by the way? I didn't know that. Strange.
56: and it's no use hiding behind Betty White
I wasn't hiding behind her, I was stealing from her.
57: I'd gone back to read the NYT piece on Ginni Thomas and Liberty Central, and saw that they've now got two new pieces up on the Dems' funding by unions, and on Democratic Party efforts to field third-party candidates to split the Republican vote in certain districts*.
That's part of the usual tit-for-tat pox-on-both-their-houses coverage that appears in every election season I think. Whereas the Kathyrn Jean Lopez piece is 'balance'.
They had a story up yesterday entirely taking Sarkozy's side over the need for the French to cut their budget. Didn't even bother to make the case for the necessity of budget cuts. But then the NYT has story up warning about loaning money to your kids to start their own business, citing the Georgian politician who loaned his kid 2 million dollars.
Fair enough, though one would now like to see a piece on Republican Party efforts to do the same with Green Party candidates in the past.
I'd think I'd like to see a piece on Republicans using Green Party (or whatever party) candidates now, since I bet they are still doing that.
At least the pieces were new to me; maybe they're days old. They're highlighting them now.
They were new yesterday morning. This morning we have a Rand Paul hissy. He's a true son of the Cross, he says.
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['Ayn Rand went Galt for your sins.']
51.2:
Elephant talk?
Elephant talk?
Elephant talk!
64: You betcha. Totally obvious to my ear (the second I said -- typed -- "brouhaha" anyway). I was vaguely musing about what kind of list you could generate if you were to go beyond "E" and try to get at least all the way to "K", for kerfuffle, of course.
Re. original post, see my friend Nancy's commentary in the WaPo from last week.
Oh, and come Thursday, go vote for her to win the "next pundit" contest they're running. Because wouldn't it be nice to have someone in the WaPo one actually wanted to read? (You can read and compare back columns under "the contests" in the title bar.)