One lesson of this crisis is that regulation -- no matter how well intended -- cannot be trusted to rein in Wall Street. In fact, the largest financial firms have shown repeatedly an ability to take even the toughest of regulations and turn them into profit centers.
Which explains why they invest so little in resisting new regulation.
Yeah, I still seethe at the early NPR 'money' reports about the beginning of our most recent depression. They talked about it like it was some act of God similar to a meteor hitting the Earth. Like there was absolutely nothing anyone could have ever done differently. Like it was a natural disaster and just the way the world worked.
Bah. I wish people would set me up as God and tell me everything I did was natural and right.
I think one of the strengths of Planet Money as a team effort thingie (3-4 distinct voices reporting on different sides of the economy) is that it allows for a swallower of disciplinary Economics orthodoxy, like Davidson, to basically be called out as such in a segment that he's editting. See this classic podcast, in which Barney Frank points out to Davidson, who likes to imagine that you could get all the Smart People in a room together and have them generate a list of Things to Do that they could all agree upon, that there will never be this kind of grand bi-partisan consensus, because the two sides were fundamentally ideologically divided (I would have said invested in different sets of perceived class interests, but potato, potato).
To Tripp's point, I think they certainly had some people on saying that, but also others pointing out that lots of people knew exactly what was going to happen, and that they were either ignored, did nothing, or made a bunch of money off the impending implosion. Not exactly a guilt-free model.
I suspect (in my usual evidence free manner) that at the least the top guys, like Goldman Sachs, knew it would pop, and furthermore knew the insurance they had bought would be worthless in the absence of bailouts, and so they viewed it as a game of positioning. As long as they weren't at the bottom, they would end up fine when the government inevitably stepped in to contain the disaster. This makes the moral hazard problem a bit trickier.
Oh, and yes, NPR sucks. It seems to primarily function as a vector for the illusion of Republican reasonableness.
Before I stopped listening to NPR every day, I thought I'd really miss it if I stopped listening. But then my car commute went away, I stopped listening, and I really don't miss it at all.
As a non-resident, it's quite easy for me to get just the bits of NPR/public radio that I like and ignore the rest - namely TAL, Science Friday and WWDTM.
I got satellite radio and switched from NPR to the BBC world service for the morning commute. So so so much better. Sometimes I listen to Democracy Now (I like Amy Goodman, but she's kind of a charlatan).
I hadn't realized just how deeply annoying I found the voices in NPR. And I mean the voices, not the content -- that accent of smug liberal centrism is just so grating.
With that said, I kinda like the Madeline Brand show.
9.2: They all sound the same. I find it annoying also.
8: This American life is not actually an NPR program. It airs on NPR stations, but it's distributed by Public Radio International.
I usually listen to sports radio or our news station during my sometimes interminable commute. When sports radio gets too shrill/moronic and I've heard the news already, I listen to NPR and enjoy it in brief snippets. But I almost always switch off when Diane Rehm comes on.
And I mean the voices, not the content -- that accent of smug liberal centrism is just so grating.
This sort of thing comes up over and over again, but it's always going to puzzle me. Hating NPR for being crypto-conservative or however you want to put it, sure. Hating NPR because upper middle class liberals are interpersonally loathsome to you despite the fact that you are one? Ogged felt the same way, kind of, it's something lots of people sympathize with, but boy is it weird to me.
To Tripp's point, I think they certainly had some people on saying that, but also others pointing out that lots of people knew exactly what was going to happen, and that they were either ignored, did nothing, or made a bunch of money off the impending implosion. Not exactly a guilt-free model.
Early on it was only the "This thing happened and God caused it" interpretation, but I commented strongly about that, and after awhile the dissenting voices were allowed in. Heheh.
Actually I think the PR firms jumped in at the start to get ahead of things, and NPR simply drank their koolaid because that is what they do.
I wouldn't want to sound like an NPR host to people who are suspicious of liberal elitism, so it irritates me that they don't have that common sense.
It's like watching your fellow nerd be oblivious to the ways in which they're provoking the bully: you get disproportionately irritated at the nerd, instead of the bully.
I am Opposite Day LB. I totally get the accent thing and can't listen to Scott Simon anymore (and could never watch Keith Olbermann) because of it. What I don't get is hating NPR for being a mainstream news source that isn't leaps and bounds better than the American mainstream itself. It's not enough for folks that they air stories and perspectives that no other mainstream broadcast news system does, they have to actively deconstruct the lie machine that is American official culture?
14 -- I don't sound like that. Hope not, anyway. Nor do my friends. Though, like a lot of lawyers, I'm not fond of my voice.
I mean, I think that they do deconstruct it (to a point) sometimes, and other times parrot it back or build it up. I just don't get why folks think NPR should somehow be exempt from the habitus/weltanschauung/thingie.
I hate the way that they market to upper middle class people so that they can raise more money instead of providing stuff that might not be commercially viable.
Also, other than Sylvia Poggioli, I find a lot of the commentary on life and interpersonal relationships intensely irritating. I'm not like that, and I don't think it reflects a lot of UMC liberals. And of course, I'm not UMC anymore, really.
17, 19: Yeah, you have a point. It's like reading the NYT -- they suck, but there's nothing better to replace them with.
I once went to a testimonial dinner a group of alumni from a program held for their dean. The women who talked (from about 30 to above 45) sounded just like the women on NPR. It was as if they'd imbibed an idea of how you are supposed to sound if you want to be taken seriously. The men sounded regular, in the sense that they didn't sound like Pittsburghers or NPR hosts.
We complain about them because they occasionally seem redeemable.
Actually, I rather like NPR voice. I find it soothing.
8: This American life is not actually an NPR program. It airs on NPR stations, but it's distributed by Public Radio International
I know, that's why I said NPR/public radio.
24: Too NPR-style bland. Try adding "Not reading things comprehensively is the kind of thing Hitler did."
I don't follow the media; I prefer media criticism.
Hating NPR because upper middle class liberals are interpersonally loathsome to you despite the fact that you are one?
No, hating the way NPR anchors talk isn't hating that.
Technically true, but the two sorts of distaste seem to me to be related.
Hating NPR because upper middle class liberals are interpersonally loathsome to you despite the fact that you are one?
I think what grates is that in their general tone, NPR hosts tend to sound like a Fox News parody of liberals. So it annoys liberals that this distorted picture gets wide play thanks to NPR.
What are you talking about? I'm an UMC liberal. If people on NPR sounded more like me, I would like it more. But they don't; they sound like people trying to over-annunciate in some bizarre manner.
I mean, I also have self hatred issues, but this is something else. If you are surrounded by people who actually sound like NPR broadcasters, I'd say that's ...odd.
If it wasn't for the NPR voice, the Schweddy Balls thing wouldn't have been funny.
Does no one else get transported back to when they were a kid being driven to soccer practice by their mom when they hear NPR? For similar reasons I have a soft spot for Garrison Keilor's voice.
Wait, maybe you all hated soccer. Is that it?
We didn't have soccer practice because soccer wasn't invented yet. I went to swim practice, but I rode a bike.
Of course, it rusted after a few weeks in the pool.
It's possible that I just talk weird. They don't sound that odd to me -- they sound like well educated people with neutral accents talking clearly for the radio. Maybe I sound like that, which is why I can't spot the loathsomeness.
But seriously, the annoyance is purely about the auditory qualities of what the NPR announcers sound like, not what voices like that signify (some sort of UMC liberalism, I'm not sure exactly what)? I did not understand that.
(And I genuinely do talk weird, that could be the explanation here.)
32: And Garrison Keilor's name comes up. The thing about Keilor is that he is an entertainer, and while on the radio he doesn't pretend to be anything but an entertainer. He has a very defined style, with his slow delivery and his whistling S's and love him or hate him he has created a very well-defined character for himself.
Plus, you know, Minnesota, so nobody harsh on him.
But they don't; they sound like people trying to over-annunciate in some bizarre manner.
Having to bear news of the Savior's birth is the kind of thing that will stress out your voice.
If it wasn't for the NPR voice, the Schweddy Balls thing wouldn't have been funny. The voices and demeanor helped, but I think that sketch would have been hilarious without that. The performers would have created other characters that worked just as well. I mean that thing was comedy GOLD! It was the voice equivalent of a hit to the groin, and you know that is just simple comedy GOLD!
But they don't; they sound like people trying to over-annunciate in some bizarre manner.
I'm TELLING you, you're PREGNANT!
Well, what does anyone expect from NPR? I just listen to the classical music programming.
I spent a lot of time driving from MN to Springfield IL last year, and somewhere north of Springfield it became JESUS JESUS JESUS 24X7 on the radio. I'm pretty much a Christian, but the same thing over and over and over again got real tiresome. And NPR was only classical music. Yuck.
36, 37 -- I always imagine LB sounding like my staten island relatives, who in turn sound like TV NYC cops. Totally badass.
Just for fun, I like to imagine Apo sounds like Waylon Jennings.
Well, what does anyone expect from NPR?
Totes bags.
46: Nah. I can go there -- my mother talks like that when she's excited, so it's familiar, but my standard accent is a neutral but vaguely pretentious-sounding mumble.
46: I like to imagine apo sounds like Foghorn Leghorn.
Jammies' mom grew up in Montana, and has lived in only central-west states, yet she has this fantastic figure of speech, where mid-story she starts saying "So I sez, I sez to her, etc. And she sez! She sez,..." I cannot imagine how she adopted this, but it is so utterly unconscious and great.
I mean, I know perfectly well that it's a NY thing, but I think she's only visited the northeast a few times, as an adult. Otherwise she sounds completely midwestern.
You would all be terribly disappointed in my ever-so-slight southern accent.
Turri-, ah say, TURRibly disappointed.
I sound like Dick Cavett probably sounded before he went to get voice lessons and such.
I have no idea what I sound like. A punch-drunk Seinfeld maybe?
You should ask a bunch of people around your office and get back to us.
I talk very fast by Texas standards, which is like being valedictorian of summer school.
I remember thinking LB sounded less New York and more midwestern than I expected.
(commenting general anaesthesia style as had minor/routine op earlier)
56: I'm headed home with some mysterious back pain. I'll have to send out an office-wide email.
I don't know what kind of accent I have, but I do have some odd pronunciations. A combination of A) liking the way Southerns say some words, B) liking the way Pittsburghers say some words, C) having discovered the correct, albeit uncommon, pronunciations of some words at a formative age and therefore being unable to force myself to say them the normal way. e.g, "maraskino cherries". (Watch Some Like It Hot! Marilyn Monroe and everyone else says it that way! Don't tell me I'm being some sort of snob)
Also I think I am the only person who imagines his voice higher than it actually is. Everyone seems to be surprised at how tinny or nasal they sound in a recording. I imagine myself as Ira Glass and I really sound more like Obama.
I remember thinking LB sounded less New York and more midwestern than I expected.
This is a reasonable perception, but I'm still terribly hurt and insulted.
The thing I hate about the sound of NPR is The Smugness. As this smugness has become more and more misplaced as a succession of disasters befall the U.S. and the world it has become ever more irritating.
I was surprised by how Katherine Hepburn LB sounds.
Adjectiving weirds Katherine Hepburn.
62: And that gets back to my 14. They're radio announcers. Would it make you happier if they emoted more, or what do you want from them?
Re 61
Heh. I've been told recently I don't sound as Scottish as I once did. Also worrying. I'll need to ensure I can pass the accent-test at the border come independence.
'Repeat after me: hoo noo broon coo.'
61. You mean you don't pronounce "bird" to rhyme with "droid"? My illusions are shattered...
65: I think they should sound like Univision hosts, but happier.
63: Now I want to get drunk and start calling people "Professor".
The news theme music makes me very nostalgic (my friend reports that his parents listened while cooking dinner, so it makes him hungry), but I don't miss NPR one bit. I can't get good radio reception at my house (maybe because of the cell tower across the street?) and haven't made any effort to replace spoken news. I think fake accent described me pretty well in 26.
65: they aren't radio announcers in the sense of simple newsreaders. They do shows that mix news and opinion. They mix in the perspective/opinion in a way designed to make it seem like the moderate 'voice of reason'. The original linked Wall Street article from the OP is a particularly extreme example... patronizing and couched in this 'I'm explaining reality to you now' tone. Their selection of people to interview and stuff to cover is part of it too.
it is true that we would be a pretty decent country if NPR was somewhere around the middle of our right wing.
The Elizabeth Warren interview pushed many a Planet Money listener off the fence.
I liked the Giant Pool of Money episode of TAL -- it definitely helped me understand what was going on. It's good paired with the David Harvey RSA Animate, which deepens the analysis with a Marxist/world-systems perspective, but doesn't discredit it.
I feel somewhat compelled to defend the NPRchipelago because it's worlds away from any other radio news (Pacifica is far less intolerably smug-centrist, of course, but doesn't have anything like the news apparatus). But then I have to admit that I mostly just listen to Spotify and Marc Maron in the car now.
That said, everybody subscribe to the Dinner Party Download, which my friend R/co Gagl/ano makes, and has jokes and drinks.
Adjectiving weirds Katherine Hepburn.
How do you pronounce adjectiving? I mean, I know you probably don't in reality, but how do you pronounce it in your head?
I need to know for Science.
I can get a little mid-Atlantic when I'm trying to enunciate or speak loudly. I was hiking in Colorado once when I stopped to talk to a couple of local hikers. "What's that accent?" they asked. "Are you English?" "No," I said. "Pretentious."
70.1 I get that kind of almost-synaesthetic nostalgia with the All Things Considered theme music, which definitely takes me back to waiting for dinner to be ready.
I mostly like my voice, but I think it used to be better. Now I'm in a job where I have to overenunciate a bit to be easy to understand and I think it's made the actual sound of my voice less interesting because I'm always thinking about it or something.
If you want to catch up on your Adam Davidson loathing, go to 7:15 remaining in 72.first.
where TIVE rhymes with five? or sieve?
I pronounce it so that the third syllable rhymes with "give" and emphasis on the first syllable. I guess I just say "adjective". And then I say "ing".
Heebie's is more funny, mine is more based on the existing word adjectival. \ˌa-jik-ˈtī-vəl\
81 is following the pattern of project/projecting, reject/rejecting, etc.
83 is confusing, since both project and reject can be emphasized on either syllable.
"ad-JECT-uh-ving." s/b "ad-JEK-tuh-ving"
84: The noun form is first syllable, the verb is second.
Seriousing weirds a-POST-rof-er.
After I watched all of the Twilight Light Zone episodes I switched my pronunciation of the word robot from "rowbot" to "rowbutt" because they said it that way, and, you know, butt.
I have long been on record as not being able to stand the NPR voice, so LB's contrary opinion makes me doubt the validity of the MB test which puts us into the same pigeonhole.
The MB test is like the Minnesota Multiphasic, in that any reasonably sophisticated person can figure out what most questions are getting at. About half the questions I was unsure about, and I probably let my self-diagnosis answer.
NPR-produced news feels like false true consciousness, that's what annoys me. That and the accents.
Anyway, the thing I can't stand is the smooth, calmly authoritative, bland way they present their ideas, which are normally just a dolled up version of received opinion. And the bland way their round table discussions go, with no one every really disagreeing sharply but just saying "I might go a little bit further than that" and "I'm not completely sure that I would completely agree" and "while that may be true, it's also true that", "agreed, but it still might be possible that".
My solution? Just use words and phrases like "motherfucker" and "moron" and "braindead" and "demented winger" and "zombie centrist" more often.
I'm actually starting to suspect that I embody the smugly loathsome liberal, not just substantively, but in all my personal qualities and mannerisms. I couldn't see what was wrong with John Kerry, because he kind of reminds me of my dad; NPR hosts don't sound all that odd to me and it may be because I sound kind of like that. If someone tells me that the archetypical smugly loathsome liberal is an unkempt middle-aged woman in flat shoes with a moderately obsessive relationship to casual online games, I will begin weeping softly and hiding under my desk.
I can get a little mid-Atlantic when I'm trying to enunciate or speak loudly.
What does a Faroese accent sound like?
I haven't been an NPR listener for years now, but I gotta say that I agree with LB about their accents. They don't just sound like her, they sound like most other unfogged commenter voices that I've heard - i.e. generic educated American. A bit slowed down and more precisely enunciated, and more precise in their grammar and full sentences, but that's normal when speaking for an audience.
Unfogged is not a casual online game.
LB, you worry too much to be smug. Rest your heart.
Unfogged is not a casual online game.
Look, I only tried World of Warcraft for a couple of months, OK? Leave me alone.
I always figured that liberals wear modestly high pumps, excepting cases where they are already tall.
I'd wear opera pumps if I attended more black tie occasions.
I have been on All Things Considered, and my reaction on hearing was, "Ho-lee smokes do I sound like a twat." And I basically have the same vaguely pretentious east-coast vowel thing as everyone else. (I sound like a total fucking asshole for a lot of reasons, in fact.)
99: All men need more grosgrain bows.
101: It's hard to find affordable opera pumps these days.
I'd consider it a terrific favor if no one ever quoted the preceding sentence at me.
74 is awesome. I'm imagining k-sky tromping about the Rockies swilling martinis and sounding like William Powell.
Unfogged is not a casual online game
Who said anything about casual?
I couldn't see what was wrong with John Kerry, because he kind of reminds me of my dad....
John Kerry is, and was at the relevant time, a fucking superman compared to George W. Bush. I am sorry he lost but not sorry I contributed to his campaign. People who started backstabbing after the election can fucking bite me.
93: Oh yeah, me too. I would definitely rather drink a beer with Al Gore than GWB. I even think Hillary is likeable.
On the other hand, my favored adult beverage is, in fact, beer. I gather the real limousine liberals drink chablis.
107.1: Whoa, Thunder. Easy.
107.2: Didn't George W. Bush famously deride his press pack for preferring "brie and cheese" to watching him clear brush?
I don't find the NPR voice itself, and here I'm talking about just the voice, something specific to liberals. Indeed it fits perfectly with a conservative of the "twat" school a la George Will or Tucker Carlson.
GWB was obviously an unlikeable arsehole. People's likeability ratings are odd, though. Cameron remains inexplicably popular despite being a shiny faced embodiment of the genus callous posh hateful twat.
Anyhow, you should all be aware that I look and sound exactly like a Dirty-Dozen-era Lee Marvin.
I think the first seven words of 100 make oudemia certifiably cool, but I like NPR voices, too.
John Kerry is, and was at the relevant time, a fucking superman compared to George W. Bush.
Yes.
People who started backstabbing after the election can fucking bite me.
I recently read Politics Lost by Joe Klein, which had just enough entertaining anecdotes to keep reading, but interspersed with enough utter stupidity to surprise me.*
Near the end of the book he has chapters on the 2004 Bush and Kerry campaigns. He describes, in convincing detail, all of the ways in which Bush was failing as president and all of the ways in which the Kerry campaign made bad decisions and had organizational problems. Somehow, in the course of that he makes an offhand remark that the Democratic party should be ashamed that it couldn't nominate anybody better than John Kerry. Wait, what? How in the world does somebody draw that conclusion from 2004?
* I keep tempting to excerpt some of the more blatantly stupid bits and send them in as a guest post. They are worth mocking.
Can any other longtime Rick Santorum constituents back up my belief that he's changed his voice since he left office and focused on being a nationwide celebrity? I swear he didn't always sound like he's impersonating a high school football coach. He had a more aggrieved and nasal tone.
110: I don't think that the Freudian / critical theory understanding of "love of the oppressor" is quite right, but it does happen. Reagan too -- he was a horrible old guy.
113: [Choking sound.] I can get a little irritable about this subject, but I think (i) John Kerry had to, and was trying to, negotiate a minefield of sinister "war president" bullshit, even the supposedly objective or favorable media, and (ii) Kerry's eventual loss reflects worse on the American voter than on him.
Also, if I recall my Sunday-morning twits correctly, Joe Klein is a grinning jackass in need of a punching.
113: * I keep tempting to excerpt some of the more blatantly stupid bits
Tempting who, the cat's mother?
Tempting who, the cat's mother?
Yeah, that was quite the typo. I thought about writing a correction but decided it was probably clear from context.
I meant to write, "being tempted" but got distracted while I was typing and apparently my fingers decided it was sufficient to randomly mash that together into a single word.
Is "tempting the cat's mother" some flyover state expression we East Coast procedural liberals don't understand?
You recall correctly.
I've never listened to him talk but the wikipedia section on his political views describes a rather unusual collection of controversies.
John Kerry is, and was at the relevant time, a fucking superman compared to George W. Bush.
Yeah, but so's Obama, and we've seen how that turned out.
People who started backstabbing after the election can fucking bite me.
I don't think I've ever backstabbed John Kerry. But I've always been critical of his recuperation into mainstream politics. I think that's part of what hurt him in 2004 -- Vietnam Vets were (rightly) skeptical of his elision of his past radicalism, and lefties were (rightly) skeptical that the dog-whistle stuff his campaign used to try to convince us that he was really far left and was just making nice for the cameras was accurate. Of course, then many of us fell for the same thing in '08, but it was any port in a storm at that point.
120: Yes, it's what we say when we're confronted with ephemeral, shallow commercial art. Then we drink some PBR tallboys and shoot at a road sign or two.
112: Nope! It was a super-lame* trend piece, for which they interviewed a whole bunch of people and then only used me and CA. Ah yes, that trend that is sweeping the nation that seems to reside in an apartment on Chicago's north side.
*Lame in the sense that it isn't a trend. Obviously anything I'm into is super cool max.
114: I never listen to politics on the TV or radio, so I have no idea what he sounds like.
122: One could argue that for their respective parties the Dubster and Obama are harsh lessons in the discontents of electing somebody who seems cool.
During the Kerry campaign I was actually trying to be an active Democrat. I spent July and August watching the totally bogus Swiftboat accusations nibble away at his support and suck up the oxygen so that no serious issues could get any attention.
My perception was that the Kerry campaign had chosen the above the battle, "I won't dignify those accusations with a response" strategy, That was an enormous error. (As I remember, they also took a sort of break in August, party for budget reasons, which was also a big mistake.) And they refused to go negative on Bush, or to go negative enough anyway. As I remember, the now-disgraced John Edwards agreed with me on this.
The 2004 campaign made everyone involved look bad: Republicans, Democrats, Bush, Kerry, pros, rank and file, voters, non-voters, and above all, the media. The only way you can find anything good in it is to say "I think that the nihilistic Republican operatives masterfully obscured the issues and smeared Kerry.
50: where mid-story she starts saying "So I sez, I sez to her, etc. And she sez! She sez,..."
The Great Gatsby. Didn't we cover this in TFA?
Also, polling of whether you're "likeable" or "presidential" or whatever reliably spikes 2 standard deviations when you become prime minister. Gordon Brown and David Cameron both got a 10 percentage point, 2 rho uplift over the summers in which they became PM. Tony Blair's ratings showed no significant change over the 2005 campaign and the months that followed - he was already prime minister and couldn't get more so.
We project these attributes onto the people who achieve the peaks of status in our societies. The face changes to fit the mask. Or the mask changes the eye.
The 2004 campaign was a really horrible experience even at this distance. 2000 was bad enough, but re-electing the guy. And all the wank about the genius of John Hinderaker and Glenn Reynolds.
Oh, and Alexander Cockburn can go get fucked for putting "Kerry-Fonda" in a mainstream media outlet. Heighten those contradictions, baby.
122:What natilo said
OMG, Ezra linked fucking adoringly to a Andy Sullivan blowjob puff-piece encomium of Obama today.
This year is gonna kill me, I swear.
When New Obama Chief of Staff Was NYU Exec, School Ceased Recognizing Union
Rahm Caught Red Handed By State Officials
Obama warns left: You won't like budget
We're really back to zero. Obama feels confident enough to dare us not to vote for him.
I want to hear more Unfoggeders' voices. You can hear more of mine than you ever wanted to here [yay for link anonymizers].
[yay for link anonymizers]
I'm not sure it's actually anonymizing the link there.
It's doing what I want it to, I think -- preventing anyone checking server logs there from tracing incoming hits back to Unfogged.
Ah, that makes sense.
I wasn't sure if the link contained information which was a potential violation of pseudonymity.
Eh. Enough people here already know who I am.
Everyone's already heard me singing and narrating cooking misadventures and teaching the cats to sit.
And we've all heard ttaM's mellifluous accent.
I want to hear more Unfoggeders' voices.
I find this intriguing, but again, there are technical difficulties.
I haven't followed this thread, but for 132: can we dial back the hand-wringing? "dare us not to vote for him"? The circumstances are such these days that doing anything but is an egregious mistake.
140: The icon at left and the word "Listen" don't appear to be links -- should they be? The "Real Media" link at right opens RealPlayer which then produces an incomprehensible error message.
Ooh, I do like hearing people's voices. (Although I can't make the NPR link work for some reason. )
Uh, never mind. Apparently the audio has disappeared. It was there a few years ago. I can't believe that NPR doesn't consider a two minute quiz from 1999 to be of widespread interest.
||
Lines delivered fast
Crowder:Well, when I heard Raylan Givens was calling me up to Lexington, I wasn't sure I wouldn't be up in front of a judge before the day was out."
Raylan:"Why, have you done somethin' you shouldn't have?"
Crowder:"Well, that is a pretty low bar, Raylan."
I missed this show.
|?
47: Well, what does anyone expect from NPR?
Totes bags.
Earlier this week there was an office-wide email with the subject line, "Found: Totes Umbrella", and my brief first thought (thanks to this place) was, "Why does that need to be clarified? What could it possibly be mistaken for?"
I recently read Politics Lost by Joe Klein, which had just enough entertaining anecdotes to keep reading, but interspersed with enough utter stupidity to surprise me.*
here's some Klein stupidity that needs more attention...