Are "handegg" and "sports harder!" still funny though?
Actually, I quite like superb owls.
On the Rubio-Bot moment: this is in no way support for Christie, who I loathe with the heat of a thousand suns. But he really is recognizably an intelligent human being next to most of the rest of those weirdos. (An intelligent human being who hates everything decent, so there's no reason for anyone to vote for him, but he's comprehensibly a functioning person.)
And no one can stop me from talking about sportsball.
"Handegg" makes me want to stab, but variants on "sport harder" are still funny.
Handegg (Handeck) is a village in the municipality of Guttannen, Switzerland,[2] near the lake Gelmersee. The lake may be reached by Gelmerbahn from Handegg.
Handegg jokes are pedantry, sportsball jokes are character-based. Specifically, T. Herman Zweibel-type characters.
Presumably they meant "dispense" rather than "dispell."
The first comic using "sportsball" that I have ever liked.
The Hard Times has your typical "Sports Ball!" jokester pretty much dead to rights.
Still, I always used to worry that if I were fighting at the Battle of the Bulge, I would get shot as a German spy. I don't know who won the World Series and people in Germany kept thinking I was a German.
The rubiobot thing felt exactly like watching a pretrial student go seriously off piste during a mock trial competition, like when that happens I feel like I can see the points melting before my eyes ... could not be a better illustration of a person who has memorized a bunch of shit but hasn't really understood or thought about it enough to engage in the moment.
The only thing I remember from mock trial is that the (retired, very old) judge marked us down because one of girl wore a dress he thought wasn't professional enough for a high school senior.
Or maybe it was she wore pants instead of a dress? I can't remember anymore.
My prosecution pretrialer this year has (wonderful, vibrant) blue hair. She asked me before the first competition whether she should remove her nose ring. Ummmm no, sweetie, I don't think the nose ring is going to be an issue! Was lovely. (and she got a perfect score, yay SF!)
Tangentially related, I am beginning to assume other famous women secretly hate Hillary and are trying to ruin her campaign. "Vote for Hillary or go to hell, you stupid bimbo sluts" is perhaps not a winning tone or message to be associated with Hillary's campaign.
Oops, the first hyperlink didn't work. This was supposed to be the hell part.
I know, right? The day that Steinem mansplained to women voters is a milestone in feminist history. As I said at the other place, sic transit Gloria. Sad.
The Albright thing I'm not really that surprised by, because of course stuff like that is going to happen. The Gloria Steinem one left me completely stunned though. What the hell did she think she was doing!?
I remember this stuff from 2008, and I suspect that it's going to be worse this time than then if only because the youth vote is so severely divided this time that there's no way for Clinton and her team to ignore that. But I honestly can't believe that the storm of "Oh younger women are just frivolous naive things who don't care about reproductive rights" stuff helped her in 2008 so why she'd want to see a repeat of that I have no idea. (And it's consistent enough and from well known public figures supporting her that I don't see how she isn't giving tacit support to it.)
16-18: Do you want stupid bimbo sluts to go to hell? They're just trying to help. The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good feminists to do nothing.
What compounds the horror of the Steinem thing is her flat-out- easily-refuted lie of a non-apology apology. One can easily watch her entire Bill Maher-segment (and god have mercy, but one can) and see what she said. Nothing about the context makes it better; nothing of what she claims she said is true. It would be more mind-boggling if she hadn't in 2008, IIRC, written an op-ed in which she argued it was white ladies' turn not black dudes' turn.
21:
Matt Bruenig has spilled many words over this kind of "richsplaining" that we're all so privileged to hear from so many famous, media-approved feminists.* It really says a lot about the parameters of mainstream discussion that a man mansplaining to a woman (rightly) that any sort of discrimination is all in her head and she just needs to work harder will be met with outrage but that a rich person telling masses of poor people that their priorities are out of order or that their political choices are entirely driven by their sexual desires happens without many eyes getting batted. Fortunately, this does seem to be changing.
*You wouldn't in a million years hear this kind of shit from Barbara Ehrenreich, but she doesn't get the kind of media play Steinem does.
Oh, also to the OP: football sucks.
22: What? The reaction to Steinem's comments has been universally negative.
24: I think that's the "Fortunately, this does seem to be changing." part.
It's not like we haven't see a lot of exactly that kind of stuff from the Clinton camp towards Sanders supporters already, though. It's one of the most common things in those pro-Clinton articles. Steinem just had the bad luck to have put it way way more bluntly (and undeniably) than she'd intended to.
24: Negative enough that she has apologized, if lamely.
Well at least they didn't fumble the opening snap again.
27 was about the Broncos, not the Clinton campaign, which totally fumbled the opening snap again.
28: Maybe Clinton should take some HGH.
Why the hell do they never go for it on fourth and 1?
cbssportsball.com is having quality-of-stream problems
Nobody's prostate is getting younger.
Is anyone else watching this?
Some of my neighbors are.
30: Because most coaches don't have the job security that Belichick does.
I'm watching on Yahoo text
Cam Newton rushed to right for 6 yd gain, tackled by Josh Bush...kinda thing
So constantly, but no way I watch the ads.
Or listen to spoken English.
I can't tell if that halftime show was terrible or if I'm just in a bad mood.
They just showed W to 50 million people endorsing Jeb!? I guess they really do want to lose.
40: Must have been a local ad--I didn't see it.
Helen Mirren drinking Budweiser? Truly this is the ultimate celebration of debasement and vulgarity.
I hate the Puppy Bowl, but Superb Owls really speak to me.
42: They've also got Amy Schumer drinking Bud Light, but she's sort of all about debasement and vulgarity.
"Calling it 'The Superb Owl' wasn't funny the first time, and it's not funny now."
Wrong -- it was hilarious then, and it's still funny now.
50 Superb Owls:
http://www.boredpanda.com/owl-photography/
The Superb Owl joke is clever, according to my cow orkers.
Message NFL: have unprotected sex tonight
It's sort of a lemonade-from-lemons sort of thing.
50: Was the idea that the losing team's fans make babies, or was it the winning team's fans? Or both?
In any case, it reminded me of a depressing stat I've heard tossed around that a given city's football team losing is directly correlated with increases in domestic violence incidents. No idea if anyone's actually studied it or if it's just anecdotal chatter from jail guards and cops.
I think the people in the ads were wearing the winning teams' jerseys.
While committing domestic violence?
2, 4, 6, 8! Let's get out and impregnate!
53: My kids commit domestic violence all the time. Mostly against each other, fortunately.
What if they teamed up to use violence as vigilantes?
Looks like a baby boom in Denver this year, and a domestic violence boom in NC.
SP - I sent you an e-mail
||
I talked to someone at church today who sort of liked Rand Paul. If I had to guess, I would say she was in the top 5% of the wealth/income distribution. She loves Bernie Sanders. It may mean nothing, but she's not a rabble rouser or anything.
|>
If you want an article, I'll send it to you in the morning. Just let me know. I can't do it from home.
57: The thought fills me with awe and terror, but they could probably make even better money as an assassin team than they do busking.
The bigger question is how many people have they killed while busking?
Busking in Portland is a cutthroat business.
Older liberal woman on my Facebook had a post saying that she liked Bernie well enough, but that serious people should vote for Hillary. I hadn't seen "serious" used non-ironically like that for a while.
a depressing stat I've heard tossed around that a given city's football team losing is directly correlated with increases in domestic violence incidents. No idea if anyone's actually studied it or if it's just anecdotal chatter from jail guards and cops
Wouldn't surprise me. You're getting groups of family members together + booze and bad tempers. Lot of family fight calls at Thanksgiving.
We don't drink much on Thanksgiving. He's not like Christmas. Everybody has to drive home.
62: They can go out for 20-30 minutes and make maybe 25 bucks each. Better than I can do, and I assume that assassin work involves a little more prep work.
I'm pretty sure that at some point during the sports event that I'm not allowed to identify by name unless I pay a gazillion dollars first, I saw Amy Schumer shilling for Bud Light. Don't celebrities have to first fade into obscurity first before they sell out so spectacularly? Bud. Fucking. Light
Cf. the Anthony Hopkins TurboTax ad.
The BBC informs me that wee Marco Rubio "said three times that President Obama 'knows what he is doing'". Clearly nothing is more damning to a Republican audience than to accuse an opponent of knowing what they're doing. See also the terrible fate that befell anyone in 1960s China accused of being 'white and expert'; or Diego Gambetta's thesis about Mafia members deliberately signalling incompetence in order to credibly promise loyalty.
Clearly nothing is more damning to a Republican audience than to accuse an opponent of knowing what they're doing.
You say this like you don't believe it, but it's totally true.
Not that Rubio himself knows what he's doing, because he totally doesn't.
74: I originally typed it like I didn't believe it, but, on thinking about it, I think it makes sense.
Regarding the superb owl, when I was about fourteen I learned the word "hyperbole" from reading, without ever having heard it said. as a result I thought it was hilarious that "Hyper Bowl" would be a convincing name for an American sporting event, and an example of hyperbole, all in one. I went round saying this to people and wondering why they looked at me strangely.
78: I thought exactly the same thing.
Did anybody make an "In over his head" Cam joke?
OP, last para, i believe the appropriate comic for this is:
I've been unamused by the memes where Dowager Countess (or whatever, Maggie Smith in Downton Abbey, which I haven't ever watched) is asking if the Super Bowl is Wedgewood, because it reminds me of the stupid old joke where an old woman tells her granddaughter, "There are two words you must never say in my house. One is 'swell' and the other is 'lousy.'" and the girl says, "Of course, grandmamama, but what are the words?" The verbal anachronism burns. (Possibly I need professional help.)
I once dropped somebody's super bowl. I felt really bad, but not that bad because it had salad in it.
FWIW, "sportsball" grates on my ears, yet superb owl doesn't at all, mostly because I don't think of the latter as an intended witty statement, just a punny excuse to post pictures of a cute animal, which is basically 25% of what the internet is for*. Whereas the former almost has to evoke that linked in 10.
Meanwhile, I'm annoyed that I made time to watch a chunk of the game, since it was just awful to watch, and I was very much rooting for the Panthers. The only upside is that I have to believe this will end Manning's career. If he gets a job in the NFL next season, it will be proof that there is no God. Or rather, that there is, and he's a horrible, horrible deity.
OTOH, while I was watching "Anatomy of a Murder" was on another channel. I'd heard of it, but knew nothing about it. It's good! Hopefully I'll track it down to watch it properly someday.
*50% porn, 25% trolling
If he gets a job in the NFL next season
I expect to see Manning in a broadcast booth soon.
I expect to see Manning spend the next three years on a lucrative speaking tour to corporate executive retreats, followed by the broadcast booth.
What are you doing at corporate executive retreats?
Speaking of Manning, what was up with the weird post-game Budweiser promos?
90: Yeah, what happened to winning Super Bowl QBs going to Disney World?
Maybe he's going to Busch Gardens.
Results of my preliminary research --
Active football players in the National Football League can't endorse alcohol
After that 2014 comment, it emerged from Beer Business Daily that Manning has a stake in two Louisiana Anheuser-Busch distributors. Manning's marketing agent could not be reached to confirm that report.
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/peyton-manning-handed-budweiser-32-million-in-free-ads-after-the-super-bowl-2016-02-08
So he's retiring and moving on to his next career. Good for him.
Budweiser is still more palatable than PBR.
Manning is such a twat. The Panther's fucked up that game proper and Von Miller and company were amazing to watch. The bright spot on the Panther's was Thomas Davis playing after having his arm repaired like some kind of godamn cyborg.
What can I say, I like Manning, and it was a nice slap in the Patriots' fan's face to get beaten by him when his arm is basically that of a pretty good high school QB, and then watch him "win" (i.e., be an official member of the winning team) a Super Bowl. I was still kinda rooting for the Panthers, though. But this was more of a "can't they both win" than "can't they both lose" or "goddamn I want that team to lose" year for me.
What can I say, I like Manning, and it was a nice slap in the Patriots' fan's face to get beaten by him
The Patriots didn't get beat by Manning any more than Carolina did. Denver's defense beat both teams. Brock Osweiler could have been at quarterback for both games and it wouldn't have made any difference.
Peyton Manning is less bad than Tom Brady, because Manning just supports normal shitty Republicans whereas Brady supports Donald Trump.
Yes, I know, but they still lost, in this case to a (in relative terms) handicapped person. Ha ha ha.
Active football players in the National Football League can't endorse alcohol
Then void the results and give the game to Carolina by default. Because Manning endorsed Budweiser. Not just alcohol. Budweiser.
I was actually rooting against Denver in both games and yet nevertheless really enjoyed watching both games purely because of how awe-inspiringly Denver's defense played. They were really incredible.
E Messily can tell me if 103 was offensive because "handicapped" or not offensive because comparing disabled people to Patriots-beating Peyton Manning. I'm not sure.
Yes, I didn't get the chorus of people who said this was a boring SB. Close most of the game, most amazing defensive performance I can remember seeing in a SB, except I guess in 2000, but IIRC that game was more boring.
Eh, I didn't really care about this Superbowl this year. I'm getting way more enjoyment out of MMA than I am football and the next three months have some fucking great fights on the schedule. I suspect McGregor/Dos Anjos is going to be brutal. Much as I like Silva I'm kind of apprehensive that he's making another attempt at a comeback and that it might take a horrible knockout or two to make him realize his chin isn't there anymore and that he's just too old. That April card with both Jones and Holm fighting is going to be great.
Yeah, so this pretty much fits sportswriter stereotypes using the coded race words gritty vs. athletic vs. leader, right?
109 -- I saw somewhere that Deion Sanders was criticizing Newton for lack of "leadership" or whatever, which is hilarious. The stereotypee has become the stereotyper.
Newton has definitely had some racially charged stuff directed his way this season but I don't think this was one of those times. He's the face of the team and he legitimately acted like a sullen little bitch after the game. Tom Brady would totally have gotten shit for that performance and behavior, especially the bailing out on the fumble recovery.
Much as I like Silva I'm kind of apprehensive that he's making another attempt at a comeback
Lord yes. A heavy reliance on reflexes and chin for defense plus a history Chute Boxe training result in a quick drop in ability. OTOH, it's Bisping, right? He's never had KO power.
The article in 109 is so fucking infuriating. What an asshole.
112: I'm worried he'll pull off the Bisping fight and set himself up for something horrific. From a brain trauma standpoint he's lucky he snapped his leg in the Weidman fight. He was obviously on the verge of getting his melon pounded into a pulp. A win over Bisping could result in getting him something like another fight with Belfort who is still knocking dudes the fuck out. Or what, Rockhold or a third fight with Weidman? I hope he loses to Bisping for his sake because it's hard to imagine the path ahead holding much beyond some murderous knockout losses.
E Messily can tell me if 103 was offensive
Yes, but it wouldn't have been if you hadn't asked.
http://deadspin.com/peyton-manning-can-eat-shit-1757781250
There were probably other shitty players on the Broncos who still get a Super Bowl ring. Why not pick on them for a while?
81: That Super Bowl sucked.
Pretty much. I had two furriners over and that game did not go very far in convincing them of the superiority of USA's chosen brain damage team sport over their's.
On the other hand I suspect I am being influenced by my mild rooting interest for Carolina, as I thoroughly enjoyed the 2000 Ravens asserting their defensive will* on the Giants, and ti a lesser extent the Bears doing the same to the Patriots in the '80s.
I would've enjoyed the game more without all the goddamn false starts. I get that that's an effect of a scary D, and if I were a passionate Broncos fan, they would have had me clapping my hands and cackling, but for someone who just wanted some entertainment, it was painful, like two washed up boxers playing clutch-and-grab, or a pitcher walking the bases loaded to face the slap-hitting shortstop, and the shortstop rolls the ball weakly for a double play. Blah.
The shitty refereeing didn't help, but that's apparently a bedrock NFL value, so you just have to take it.
117: At least he was not named MVP. Was looking for somewhere one can see the ballots (I believe it is 80% weight to small group of sportswriters and 20% fans) to see if was even close (I would assume several Denver defensive players would have finished in front of him.
I sure hope the NFL manages to figure out during the offseason WTF counts as a catch, because goddamn.
Everyone seems to have mysteriously forgotten about this.
122: That was definitely a catch by any definition. That the ref on the field got it wrong was understandable, but that it was upheld made no sense at all except for my explanation that Manning, Papa John, and Budweiser pooled their money together to buy off the refs.
119*: Forgot to add that I always wished that the Ravens would have said "Fuck you, we're so badass we can win with Trent Dilfer at QB" and not changed one damn thing going into the next season*. But of course like pantywaist corporate fuckwads they chose to try to *improve* the offense.
*Admittedly this would have been an easier stance to take if less people had died in the immediate vicinity of Ray Lewis after the Super Bowl.
I hated that 2000 Ravens team but also I see them as an example of why the 49ers still had a chance to win if they'd stuck with Smith. It's ok to have a caretaker QB.
I had two furriners over and that game did not go very far in convincing them of the superiority of USA's chosen brain damage team sport over their's.
All the USA! militarism and eagle-jizz a the beginning of the game doesn't help. Two patriotic songs to start the game? Really? For a sport that's allegedly trying to expand its international appeal, they're doing it wrong.
They did not show up until right at kickoff.
The game wasn't boring like 2000 because it was close enough to be in doubt. But it wasn't exactly exciting either.
For a sport that's allegedly trying to expand its international appeal, they're doing it wrong.
There was a British band at half-time.
127. They're going to have a regular season game in Mexico City next season: Raiders and Texans. Easier than flying over to London.
I thought Lady Gaga did a good job with the Star Spangled Banner. (There is a sentence I would have thought a few years ago that I would never hear or type.) ((On the other hand, ditto for the concept puppy-monkey-baby, which was less successfully executed.))
I'm starting to think Team Rocket is never going to kill Ash.
This is officially my favorite thing to come out of the debate.
111: turns out it's a bit more complicated than that, Mr. Rush to Judgement.
134: I already knew that! He's still a weiner. Hearing the other teams game plan explained after the fact was so painful he had to physically leave the room? Really?
I don't now, man. He just got his ass handed to him in the biggest game of his life. I mean, he got beat to shit by a ferocious defense. And then he has to go into his presser and listen to a Denver DB talk smack about him? That seems like it would get under just about any competitor's skin. Not to mention, he's what, 24 or something?
I'm not a fan, but the shit he's taken this year, and especially today, seems fucked up.
Also: have you watched the video? Newton's reactions are synched perfectly with the other dude's interview. It just isn't clear to me at all that he would have reacted that way otherwise.
111, 135: See 123 -- Manning walking off the field refusing to shake hands was taken as evidence of his heart and focus; Newton shakes hands, and acts upset in a press conference, and he's obviously a loser and not a leader.
I'm sorry, I really need to stop reading any attempt at political "analysis" from 538 and just stick to their horse race coverage, but this article is just such ostentatious hackery. I was expecting some hackishness, but this is approaching, if not equalling, Jonah Goldberg levels of stupidity.
How is that "hackery"? Because it doesn't paint Sanders supporters as the obviously correct vanguard of a glorious revolution? Because it doesn't say that people support him because his opponent is an obviously repulsive corporealization of capitalism?
It basically says that young people, who are overwhelmingly his base, feel alienated from mainstream politics, and find alternative politics like socialism and libertarianism appealing. Then it says he'll add more thoughts in another article. Did I miss a hackish paragraph that was mouseover-only?
Why Do Millenials Love Bernie Sanders?
2016 February 4
29 Comments
tags: Bernie Sanders, College Tuition, Millenials
by Ian Welsh
This is not difficult. If you are a Millenial who goes or went to college and your parents aren't rich, your life is dominated by debt from student loans.
If you haven't gone to college, well, if it was free, you probably would.
Bernie wants to make college tuition free. Clinton does not.
There are other parts to it, of course. Bernie's policies are just generally better for young people, but this is the core.
This is not hard to understand.
I also find it amusingly hypocritical that the majority of Boomers oppose free college tuition, given that most of them benefited from a system which was so cheap it was almost free.
The cynical interpretation of this is that the appeal of both "socialism" and "libertarianism" to younger Americans is more a matter of the labels than the policy substance. Relatedly, it's hard to find all that much of a disagreement over core issues between Clinton and Sanders, who voted together 93 percent of the time when they were both in the Senate from 2007 to 2009.
Yes. No difference at all between the two.
Indeed, the demographics of Sanders's support now and Ron Paul's support four years ago are not all that different: Both candidates got much more support from younger voters than from older ones, from men than from women, from white voters than from nonwhite ones, and from secular voters than from religious ones.
This is carefully worded to not be technically false, but the Rand Paul voter doesn't actually overlap much with the Sanders voter, despite the "Bernie bro" narrative. More young women than young men support Sanders, his gender gap is almost entirely an age gap. To say they are getting the same demographic (i.e. young white males) is to completely erase that young millennial women make up the backbone of Bernie's millennial support. It's another way of reinforcing the Bernie Bro smear, in academic language.
A young, secular white voter might not have a natural partisan identity, however, while surrounded by relatively successful peers. In part, then, the "revolutions" that both Sanders and Paul speak of are revolutions of rising expectations.
This implies that 1) the Sanders voter is jealous, 2) Sanders is pulling support from apathetic centrists who support parts of both parties, rather than from a vigorous leftist movement, and 3) the Paul and Sanders "revolutions" are the same, which they are not.
This article is basically saying, young people like libertarianism, and young people like socialism, and BERNIE BROS!! so therefore, Sanders supporters are like Paul supporters (or if you read between the lines, the same people). It's approaching Liberal Fascism levels of logic.
I had better sense than to read the 538 article ;) but I suspect he is pretending that young people don't have good reasons for supporting Sanders when they obviously do.
My concern about Bernie creating a movement to elect better people within the Democratic party is... isn't it kind of late in life for him to think of that? A decade ago there were those wonderful Matt Taibbi articles about the appalling crap that goes on in Congress, with Bernie as the last honest man in Congress. But he never really tried to turn himself into a leader of anything until now.
I think his moment was not yet. IOW he couldn't have made it happen before now. A liberal moment wasn't possible before W. People weren't desperate enough/the establishment in the party wasn't discredited enough for this to happen. If we listen to lots of people it still isn't possible and I'm not sure they are wrong.
Regarding movement building, nothing would be more dispiriting than a Sanders presidency, rendered largely ineffective by the Republicans and centrist Democrats. A close primary loss seems like the best bet.
Buttercup- Given that we can't trust Nate to argue in good faith in his analysis does it make sense to trust him on the horse race? Why should I?
But a Sanders presidency would be largely ineffective. So would Clinton's. Largely ineffective is the best case scenario.
143: Compare the 2012 Republican and 2016 Democratic entrance polls for Iowa, and you'll see everything he's saying is true. It's actually rather startling.
And I bet there's more of an overlap between Sanders voters and Ron Paul voters than you think. Ron Paul was the most anti-war candidate on the ballot in 2012.
I didn't find the article all that persuasive, but it falls far short of ostentatious hackery. (For an example of the latter, see Krauthammer's argument that young people support Sanders because they want free stuff.)
In fact, thinking about it, isn't the 538 article literally your argument for the superior electability of Sanders over Clinton? Voters feel alienated, so Sanders is better positioned to pick up alienated voters than Clinton is?
If you look at this infographic for the WSJ/NBC poll, you see a similar pattern for New Hampshire. (I don't know if the poll is any good -- it's just the first one I could find with breakdowns.)
And now I've posted three comments in defence of 538. I have dishonored myself and my family. I know what I have to do now.
At least it wasn't in defense of Vox.
More young women than young men support Sanders, his gender gap is almost entirely an age gap. To say they are getting the same demographic (i.e. young white males) is to completely erase that young millennial women make up the backbone of Bernie's millennial support.
Not true in Iowa:
"In Iowa, Mrs Clinton outperformed Mr Sanders among middle-aged and older women, but was shunned by younger female voters under the age of 30, who favoured Mr Sanders by a ratio of about six to one -- the same ratio as young male voters did."
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/dfa519c6-ce8a-11e5-831d-09f7778e7377.html#axzz3zafa9Ogv
Paul Heideman of Jacobin provides a Marxian history of "realignment" in the Democratic Party in the 20th century. Very long and very good. Bayard Rustin, Max Schachtman, Michael Harrington are players discussed.
Sample excerpt:"The split within the capitalist class was not merely the result of differing approaches to addressing the crisis -- as Thomas Ferguson has argued, it was also rooted in the political economy of American industry. The firms that supported Roosevelt were, by and large, from two groups: capital-intensive industries who were internationally competitive, and internationally-oriented commercial banks. Both groups strongly supported Roosevelt's affinity for free trade. But even more importantly, they were better able than other sections of American capital to bear the costs of reform"
And I agree with the above about Sanders demos. Social issues, and more finely grained economic issues, do not necessarily need to match party or preset ideological affiliations, and even more importantly, are dynamic and subject to change. As is evident in the quoted paragraph, new coalitions are possible, and the "rigid polarization" is too easy a politics.
For all you Vox-haters and Yglesias-bashers, somebody is feeling the Bern, sort of.
[T]he Sanders contention is that if liberals want to change America in fundamental ways, they need to start by creating an ideologically liberal political party. Once you have control of a party, the chance that your Reagan-in-1980 moment may arrive is always lurking out there in the mysterious world of unpredictable events. But if you don't have control of a party, then you are guaranteed to fail.
Exactly.
Yglesias can tell which way the wind is blowing and wants to get out in front of events. Is this because he is an insightful journalist who can peer into the future? Or a shrewd careerist who wants to establish his credibility with the eventual winners? We report, you decide.
Yglesias this morning provides the best demographic breakdown of Sanders supporters I have seen yet. Least support from blacks, especially older blacks, but we will see in South Carolina.
As to whether Sanders can draw enough for instance Paul Republicans for them to be worth alienating tribal haters of Paul, I don't know.
Also, not linked, I read Coates this morning responding specifically to a Jacobin article, in Coates usual style. Available at BdL.
157.last: He practically admits as much:
Any young and ambitious Democrat looking at the demographics of the party and the demographics of Sanders supporters has to conclude that his brand of politics is extremely promising for the future.
T]he Sanders contention is that if liberals want to change America in fundamental ways, they need to start by creating an ideologically liberal political party.
FWIW, the long Heideman article linked above at 156 is in large part about that, the attempt starting in the 1940s and peaking during the early 60s or maybe the 1972 Convention of left/labor to drive Dixiecrats from the Democratic Party. I remember it pretty well, like the opposing delegate slates in 1964.
I think the explanation of why, though the Dixiecrats were expelled, we didn't get a social democratic/labor party as a result was one of the weaker areas of Heideman's analysis.
I would also say, approaching this delicately, that people do not easily change, and a generational change in political party ideological orientation usually involves driving those resistant to new forces out of the party in order to draw new people (along with their new money and new technologies etc) in and form a new coalition.
Then look at the Matt Breunig demographic chart again. And maybe read the Coates.
Yglesias is even less politic than Heideman, who focuses more on the old Business Roundtable counter- revolutionary story to explain the 70s.
Instead, they behave more like a centrist, interest group brokerage party that seeks to mediate between the claims and concerns of left-wing activists groups and those of important members of the business community -- especially industries like finance, Hollywood, and tech that are based in liberal coastal states and whose executives generally espouse a progressive outlook on cultural change.Sanders's core proposition, separate from the details of the political revolution, is that for progressives to win they need to first organize and dominate an ideologically left-wing political party that is counterpoised to the ideological right-wing Republican
After driving Dixiecrats out, which was a thirty year process, Democrats became a coalition of Jesse Jackson and 2nd gen feminists greens etc, identity and interest groups on one side; and the Carter Clinton DLC accommodationist (can't be bothered) wing on the other side.
And looking at Coates/Steinem and Clinton, that is where the conservative forces in the Democratic Party are now.
Oh here is the Coates dated Feb 8, and links to the Jacobin piece
Coates simply isn't open to Sanders or socialism. At all. Passionately hostile in fact. He is also making $100,000 per speech.
If you want to evaluate what Silver is saying, you have to look at data sorted by both age and gender. If you sort by age and gender separately, Sanders support superficially resembles Paul support: more young than old, more male than female, etc. If you look at it cross tabbed by age, you'll see Paul drew little female support relative to male support in any age bracket. Sanders, by contrast, is getting lots of millennial female support, and almost no baby boomer women's support. (Depending on the poll/breakdown, he's either beating or matching male support among young women.) Hence, the gender gap is better thought of as an age & gender gap. It's also revealing interesting splits in feminism, which is why you have Gloria Steinem and Madeline Albright out there insulting young women for being Sanders supporters.
151
I have never made an argument for Sanders's electability over Clinton, in fact I've claimed quite the opposite. You must be confusing me with someone else.
We can speculate that Paul supporters are supporting Sanders, but we have absolutely no data to support that. The Sanders supporters I know supported Obama, Clinton, or Jill Stein in 2008, and Obama or Stein in 2012. Paul was anti war, but he was also a racist libertarian crank running as a Republican. Both Obama and Stein were also anti-war, and more importantly not running as Republican libertarian cranks. The argument that Sanders is picking up Paul supporters relies on fundamentally discounting that there is a Left in the US, and that they finally are becoming significant in the Democratic party again. Silver's argument is that libertarianism and socialism don't actually mean anything, therefore disaffected young males drift between the two to stick it to adults and their more successful peers. It completely discounts the idea that anyone could support Sanders because they agree with his policies or ideas.
TL:DR Sanders is running as the next FDR, young people like it (we want a welfare state!) and it is scaring the piss out of the elites, who are doing everything they can to deny there is popular support for a new New Deal.
Well I'm certainly not comfortable with how much I agreed with a lot of what was in an Yglesias article. I guess.. it's a good one in many ways? It still feels wrong to say that though.
He does hit on what seems to me to be the most annoying feature of some of the pragmatic criticisms of Sanders from Clinton supporters though: that when it comes to getting things accomplished, or building an electoral coalition, or whatever Sanders' plan may be a difficult one to pull off but Clinton literally has no plan (that her campaign will admit to) at all, and needs one just as badly as Sanders does.
We can speculate that Paul supporters are supporting Sanders, but we have absolutely no data to support that.
I have a personal anecdote to support that.* If we had another, we'd have data.
* Paul was his 1st choice, Sanders is 2nd, I think Carson is 3rd, followed by Cruz and then some indetermine ranking of Republicans, with Trump at the bottom of that ranking, followed by Clinton, who comes in dead last.
154: Do you follow links? Coates will give lip service to economic leftism, but from 164:
In America, solidarity among laborers is not the only kind of solidarity. In America, it isn't even the most potent kind.The history of the very ideas Johnson favors evidences this fact. At every step, "universalist" social programs have been hampered by the idea of becoming, and remaining, forever white.>/blockquote>
"Universalist" in quotes is a term of art, part of the old/new argument between Marxians and identitarians that will not be waved away with casual "intersectionality."
You will note I have not jumped on the Sanders bandwagon, even though I am not crazy for Clinton, because I know Sanders problem is very far from being "inadequate outreach." Realignment can get ugly, regrettable, even tragic.
I don't think it happens this year, or with Sanders.
I've said this before, but once you get to the people least engaged in politics, affect matters way, way more than ideology.
Point of html fail in 169 is obvious, I hope
Enough from me, I hope people read the Johnson, Coates, and Yglesias very carefully.
This seems good to me: http://coreyrobin.com/2016/02/08/to-my-friends-who-support-hillary-clinton/
There are other parts to it, of course. Bernie's policies are just generally better for young people, but this is the core.
I was contemplating a post along these lines. I'm just barely a millennial (born: 1982), but going back to school from 2012-2015 was pretty eye-opening compared with my first go-round (2000-2004). The (mostly younger) people I went to school with had been completely fucked by the great recession. Many couldn't find jobs after undergrad, or they worked unpaid internships and/or moved back in with their parents.
If you graduated from a "good" school with $100K in debt and the best job you can find is a part-time barista gig, it's a pretty short leap to "Hm, this system seems rigged." You've probably got health coverage (at least until your 26 and your parents' plan boots you off), but beyond that any of the trappings of a heretofore attainable middle-class lifestyle (owning a house, saving for retirement, taking a nice vacation now and then) are laughably beyond your means.
So all the hand-wringing about "What's up with these millennials (including the womenfolks!) supporting socialism?" to me seems to have a pretty simple answer: the current economic system hasn't given them any buy-in and seems poised to leave them worse off than their parents' generation. Why the hell would they support it?
168
That reminds me, in 2008 I knew someone whose first choice was Clinton, and his second choice was Paul.
173
Precisely. It's not rocket science, so pundits who are otherwise oh so smart acting oh so stupid makes me suspect bad faith. I would like to see Silver write an article, "why do baby boomers support Clinton?" in the same mystified tones as his other article.
173.last: Except that doesn't automatically lead people to toward the left. Plenty of older people aren't very well helped by the current economic system and a significant bunch of them tend toward the "blame the Mexicans" solution.
The article linked in 172 is addressed to me , more or less, although I am not Corey Robin's friend.
If I know anything about American politics, I know an old Jewish socialist can't be elected President.
However, I acknowledge that at this time it is quite possible that I know nothing about American politics.
What about an early-middle age Canadian fascist?
My own guess is that Clinton gets the nomination but loses the general. The Democratic Party will get viciously split between those who think it isn't "socialist" enough and those who are comfortable in blaming racism and sexism for the loss, and praying for demographic changes in places they don't want to live.
In 2020 we will get 1972 again, but different and lose 49 states. After that, ???.
Unless we get the climate spike in the meantime. Or WW III.
And I'll be gone.
178: Unlikely, but more plausible than an old Jewish socialist.
Also, note that the Canadian fascist doesn't go around saying he's a Canadian or a fascist.
I would like the idea of Sanders being the Goldwater-y spark that transforms the Democratic Party for the future, except for the part with huge medium-term losses.
182: If Sanders is Goldwater, what leftist actor is going to be Reagan?
The one from Boston who didn't marry J Lo? I'm blanking on the name.
184: Ben Affleck didn't marry J Lo either.
The Rick Perlstein books (among many others) ate interesting about what the Goldwater spark actually was. It didn't have much to do with the man and his campaign, and a lot to do with alienated but powerful capitalists.
I thought the point of the Nate Silver piece was more or less Stanley's -- there is a large generation of (by origin) middle class and UMC kids in their 20s who have been completely screwed by the job market and have few if any expectations of living up to their parents' success, and that's the core if Sanders' support. These people aren't necessarily ideologically redistributionist, but are extremely receptive to a "fuck the insiders" campaign from left or right, so long as its not socially conservative. Basically a unmet university student expectations thesis. That seems likely to be right to me. I'm much more skeptical that without a lot more this group turns into a legit base for actually effective socialist politics in the US. I don't think that's ever happened anywhere without more traditional working class support. But, for the medium term future, who knows.
The list of people who didn't marry J Lo is a long one. I myself dodged that particular bullet.
188: Yes, we all recall how you broke her heart.
Don't lie, Chris Y. Yes it was only in Vegas and yes it was only for that one wild and unforgettable weekend, but you were technically married to J.Lo.
"You ever been married to Rita Hayworth?"
"No."
"It's all right, men, he's one of us."
If Sanders is Goldwater, what leftist actor is going to be Reagan?
Wrong party, try the Heideman at Jacobin in 156 above
Sanders is more like Gene McCarthy, with Clinton being HHH
Also, check out the work of Jefferson Cowie.
176- So basically Sanders/demsoc is successful with young people because that's where you turn when you're less racist and homophobic than the olds.
Works for me as a campaign slogan.
That was just an example. I mostly wanted to push back against the "economic problems lead automatically to leftism." Because history.
Speaking of the campaign, I have a question about the linguistic history of "pussy" as an insult. Didn't it refer to cats/cowards before it became a vulgarity referring to vaginas/vulvas? And my understanding (which may be totally false) is that the vagina-meaning is derived (somehow) from the cat/pussycat-meaning, not from the "coward" meaning. In other words, calling someone a "pussy" , meaning coward, is (or at least historically initially was) calling them a coward like an easily frightened cat, not (sexistly) calling them a coward like a woman/like a vagina. My sense was that the use of the word as an insult to mean "coward" only retroactively took on a gendered aspect, after the same term began to be commonly used as vulgar slang for vagina. Is this wrong?
"economic problems lead automatically to leftism."
Nobody is saying that
Economic problems and an available strong socialist movement leads to leftism
Economic problems and identity politics (Banzai!) generates fascism, if only in reaction.
2nd Int'l (Only war is class war!) died at Verdun and Somme, Auschwitz and Nanjing as the folk said "but my people! And those Others who are oppressing us!".
176: Wow. It's useless.
195: I always assumed it was the other way around.
166: You're right, it must have been somebody else. (Trivers? Asteele?) You did say that NRO commenters hated Sanders less than Clinton, but that obviously doesn't dictate they'll vote for him.
I think Silver doesn't write the "Why do Boomers support Clinton" because he supports Clinton. It's never a mystery to a pundit why people agree with them.
195: pussy, short for pussyfoot, was an early 20th century slang term for an abstinence campaigner, and therefore more broadly for an interfering, self-righteous prig who never got any fun out of life.
194
That's not the argument I was making either. I'm saying, if there is a large scale interest in (democratic) socialism, then it is probably due to demonstrated economic hardship among supporters. A --> B =/= B --> A
In other words, if A can be explained by B, then if A occurs, we ought to explain it using B. It says nothing about whether B always leads to A.
I mentioned the Eighteenth Bromaire (sorry!) as an accurate analysis of this election precisely because populism often leads in less savory direction.
Because cats won't drink much beer?
I just think it's worth pointing out that large numbers of disaffected people are as much, if not more, of a problem as they are an opportunity from a Democratic and a democratic perspective.
OED, pussy as slang for vagina:
1699 T. D'Urfey Choice Coll. New Songs 7 As Fleet as my Feet Could convey me I sped; To Johnny who many Times Pussey had fed.
1790 A. Tait Poems & Songs 144 Thro' Susan's Holland smock or spare Or on her pussie for to stare.
1865 'Philocomus' Love Feast i. 9 My poor pussy , rent and sore, Dreaded yet longed for one fuck more.
As slang for a coward or effeminate man, seems to be only in modern usage:
1934 M. H. Weseen Dict. Amer. Slang 193 Pussy, an effeminate boy.
1958 L. Durrell Mountolive viii. 157 'I first met Henry James in a brothel in Algiers. He had a naked houri on each knee.' 'Henry James was a pussy, I think.'
203 is very interesting (I had no idea the slang usage was so old!), but doesn't really answer the question in 195. What was the non-slang meaning of the word in 1699?
Something I've been meaning to post about: I've heard that Sanders gets a substantial amount of support from Republicans in Vermont. I feel like a significant number of republican voters might be open to supporting a Democrat they feel is trustworthy. I personally haven't ever had the opportunity to vote for a Democrat I thought was trustworthy, but I think Sanders might break that streak.
Also, I knew it as a modern slang for "coward", but I never realized it was also used with connotation of "an effininate man/boy".
204: Its oldest occurrences are from the mid-late 16th century, where it is used to refer to a woman displaying the nicer characteristics of a cat. Funnily enough, actual reference to cats is not attested until the early 18th century.
209: They didn't have the technology to properly caption a cat.
206: Which, oddly enough, means gosling.
211: They had glue, didn't they?
Not glue capable of withstanding cat saliva.
I feel like a significant number of republican voters might be open to supporting a Democrat they feel is trustworthy.
This seems possibly true in theory, but probably does not apply to someone they think is a trustworthy socialist.
(And that is going to be a noose around Bernie's neck, because while he can explain at length why he's not really a socialist, every gesture he makes in that direction is going to sound like doublespeak and eat into the general perception that he's "trustworthy".)
His best approach is to drop the game of "it's democratic socialist", and just stick firmly to "I don't really care about labels, let's talk about policies. Here is what I support--call it whatever you want."
Aren't Republicans in Vermont like Democrats in Arkansas? Left overs from before the 1980 realignment?
a woman displaying the nicer characteristics of a cat
Such as...? (I feel like I may be missing a joke...)
I feel like a significant number of republican voters might be open to supporting a Democrat they feel is trustworthy.
But what quality in a Democrat would make them trustworthy in the eyes of Republican voters? It seems that the very fact of being a Democrat is what makes them untrustworthy.
218: She was an excellent ratter.
215: His strategy seems to be something more like "What I am is someone who thinks [insert fairly popular and often anti-establishment thing] and wants to [insert popular policy proposal]." Actually forcing him to explain, repeatedly, what he means by it is probably the last thing Republicans want to do. They definitely want to use it against him as a smear - just like they did with Obama and just like they'd do with Clinton - but they don't want him publicly responding to that a lot.
219: the fact that they were opposed by the democratic establishment.
219: Ironically his past as an independent might actually help him (a little) here. He's less likely to trigger I'm-not-a-filthy-democrat tribal instincts among voters who mainly vote for Republicans as a result of them, and with the right horrifying candidate from the other side that could net him some votes rather than lose him some.
See, to me 221 feels like dodging the question. I've seen Sanders do it, and that was my reaction. It gives off a strong smell of "yes, I'm a socialist, but I'm not going to admit it."
207 is maybe the most delusional of the delusional ideas from Sanders supporters. Well, no, he most delusional is "don't worry about reality, because if he wins Political Revolution! But only second on the list of delusion-itude are people who think that Bernie's magic charisma will sway Republicans in any significant number. Lots of people particularly in small states still are happy to vote for good retail politicians who provide comstituent services, which, as a non-leader in the Senate, was Bernie's strength. The idea that the magic of his authenticity (and here I will say -- no possible sexism at play at all) will sway Republicans so that we can for real build the workers' paradise is nuts.
I'm sorry, there are plenty of fine reasons to vote for the guy, but there is so much magical thinking going on.
It would be pretty funny if the Repubs had completely destroyed the effectiveness of the "socialist" charge by insisting Obama was a socialist all these years.
224: Oddly, I've heard exactly this argument from my father: that "Socialist" means someone who plans to nationalize all the major industries, and Sanders has a real political problem because if he does have a plan like that, no one would vote for him, but if he denies having a plan like that, he looks shifty, and if he doesn't know what "Socialist" means.
There is also a stray use apparently meaning "cowardly" (adjective, not noun) from 1842, US.
I walked up very carelessly among the soldiers..and concluded they could never fight with us. They appeared to me to be too pussy. (1842 Amer. Pioneer 1 182.)
227: It would be more odd if urple heard the argument from your father.
The LM Montgomery novel Emily of New Moon (1923) includes an adult (Cousin Jimmy) who calls a little girl (Emily) "Pussy" as a term of endearment, as one might say "Kitten."
227 I have the same concern, and if he's the nominee I expect this issue will suck up a vastly disproportionate amount of attention.
It would be pretty funny if the Repubs had completely destroyed the effectiveness of the "socialist" charge by insisting Obama was a socialist all these years.
Sanders can't be a socialist—he's obviously not a Kenyan muslim.
This seems good to me: http://coreyrobin.com/2016/02/08/to-my-friends-who-support-hillary-clinton/
I followed the link expecting to be put off by it (because I do find Corey Robin abrasive sometimes) and was pleased to see that what he was asking for has been my position all the time -- My baseline position is that I think Hillary Clinton will and should be the nominee, but I'm also not interested in telling anybody else who to vote for, and am happy to watch with curiosity to see what Bernie Sanders will do.
226 - At least in 2008 they seem to have done this among younger voters. I still find that bit of the campaign absolutely hilarious.
It is worth noting that during the Iowa caucuses a surprising number of people also identified as socialists or preferring socialism, and mostly among the younger voters. So the effect might have stuck somewhat among that generation. Or at least it the panic red-baiting response to the word does seem to be disappearing fairly rapidly. I kind of wish they had crosstabs on that for young democrats/young republicans, but apparently not. One of the important things to remember about polls showing a large number of voters would never vote for a socialist is that in those lists it's the only one that involves a political affiliation - that is, there's nothing impossible about a conservative Republican African American or whatever, but you're not going to see any conservative Republican socialists. So the effect gets exaggerated compared to the other ones.
Yeah, the history in 209 strikes me as really odd. So, for 200 years the word was used to refer primarily to a woman displaying the nicer aspects of a cat (whatever that means), and also as slang for vagina.... And then it started being used to mean "cat" in the 1700s, which developed into a common-enough and inoffensive-enough usage that the word made its way into children's books, etc., with the seemingly innocent meaning "cat"? (All while presumably maintaining slang usage for "vagina"?) Not impossible, but not at all what I would have guessed. (And if that's the correct history, it still eaves open the question--from which usage of the word did it subsequently derive the meaning "coward"? From cats or from vaginas?)
Regardless of the "true" definition involving state or collective ownership, isn't there a de facto US definition of "socialism" that extends to the muscular European social market economy system?
My related question is when will LB get locked out of this thread?
237: I think sexism can pretty easily account for how something got from "vagina" to "coward".
And can probably go a long way to explaining why the nicer aspects of a cat were seen as feminine.
Oddly, I'm still allowed to read this. I wonder if pussy for cat is older than the OED reports it as (given that it's slang). I can't see pussy as feline woman predating pussy as actual cat.
I do kind of wish pussy as cat were still more viable. I like "The Owl And The Pussycat" as nonsense poetry, but there's really no way to read it without snickering.
There's a 1698 reference for the cat meaning under "pussycat" and a 1529 for "puss-cat."
Wait, I thought "pussy" was just short for pussycat, or a female cat. Tomcat being the male version. I didn't think it was gender neutral. Unlike say dog:bitch::man:woman where the masculine does function as the neutral also.
I've said this before, but once you get to the people least engaged in politics, affect matters way, way more than ideology.
Another vox article today (which is irritating in that it rehashes some of the same political cliches that we're complaining about but from a fairly pro-Bernie position).
[W]hen I talked to [Sanders] supporters at several New Hampshire events last week, there was one other topic that came up again and again: They trust him. And they don't trust Hillary Clinton.
"This guy believes in what he says. And he speaks from his heart, and you can believe in what he says," said David Lancaster of Hopkinton. "All you can think of with Hillary is, she's going, 'What are the polls and what are my political advisers telling me I should be saying?'"
...
This time around, Sanders has frequently taken pains to say that he likes and respects Clinton, and that she'd be a far better president than any Republican. But he's criticized her for taking hefty speaking fees from Goldman Sachs, and argued that she isn't truly a progressive.
And those attacks naturally have implications for how his supporters perceive her integrity and character. For instance, Politico's Gabriel Debenedetti reported that when Clinton appeared on a TV screen during Sanders's Des Moines caucus night rally, his supporters began chanting, "She's a liar," which "appeared to prompt the nervous Sanders staff into turning off the televisions."
Most of the Clinton supporters I interviewed at various events last week had no similar doubts about Sanders's character or sincerity -- indeed, many emphasized how much they liked him. Their doubts were instead about his qualifications and his ability to successfully win fights with the GOP and deliver on what he promised.
...
One big question hanging over these character exchanges, of course, is whether Sanders's enthusiastic supporters will back Clinton if he ends up losing (as most political observers still expect will happen eventually).
Sanders will certainly try to convince them to do so. He's said he'd never do anything, like running third party, that could end up leading to the election of a Republican president. And after some heated exchanges at last week's debate, Sanders tried to lower the temperature near the end. "Sometimes in these campaigns, things get a little bit out of hand," he said. "I happen to respect the secretary very much, I hope it's mutual. And on our worst days, I think it is fair to say we are 100 times better than any Republican candidate."
Yet the Sanders supporters I interviewed were split on whether they could see themselves voting for Clinton. Those who called themselves Democrats were more likely to say they'd do so. "Yes, I would," said Ewing. "Without a doubt," said Lancaster. "If he doesn't win, I'll vote for the platform and the party," said Anthony Parolis of Haverhill, Massachusetts.
The Sanders fans who called themselves independents, however, were less likely to say they'd back Clinton in the fall. "I won't commit to that right now. It depends on who she's running against," said Moore. "I'm not exactly the biggest fan [of Clinton]. I would have to think long and hard about that," said Joe Connor of Newbury, Massachusetts.
1533 for "puss". Not a female cat, just a cat, sometimes specifically a young one. "Queen" is I believe the counterpart to "tom".
No, the feminine of tom is queen, I think. I'm pretty sure pussycat is originally gender neutral, although probably less likely to be used of a tomcat in a context that makes it sound butch.
I actually knew that, because first graders have shit taste in literature.
A more accurate headline for this would be "This is how the political press are worthless instead of something having to do particularly with Clinton (though I would be willing to believe she has more ability as far as this sort of thing goes. But good god, they really are completely worthless.
Is Canada still up for burning DC to the ground? I know they did it once before...
One of the unexpected worst things to come out of this election year is how many fucking Vox articles I find myself reading. Yuck!
I think sexism can pretty easily account for how something got from "vagina" to "coward".
No doubt at all that's true, but the question is whether that is in fact the linguistic route of evolution, or was it instead an evolution from "frightened cat" to "coward"?
re: 253
The OED has the genital sense dating back to the late 17th c. The American 'pussy', for a weak, cowardly man is mid 20c. But there is a sense for lazy, fat, like an over-fed cat, which is also 17th c.
252
Yes, and 538 articles. It's a cycle of hope and loathing that I can't seem to break.
251
Yikes! What a huge problem with the MSM. (And I agree it's probably an all or most politician thing, not a Hillary thing).
It's about ethics in gaming journalists!
The John Ayto Dictionary of Word Origins tells me that pussy "cat" and pussy "cunt" (sorry, there goes LB's ability to read this thread) have two different origins, and are two distinct words. Huh! No comment on which is the source of the term of denigration, but I strongly suspect the latter.
Slate did a podcast about the word pussy (http://www.slate.com/articles/podcasts/lexicon_valley/2015/11/pussy_the_etymology_and_history_of_a_cat_a_coward_and_female_genitalia.html) which basically recreates all the above comments but no one has mentioned it yet.
Pussy as coward came via feminine-acting men but (IMO) it's sexist regardless.
Oh how I resent un-transcribed podcasts.
258: Amazingly, I'm still here. The net-nanny makes no sense at all.
I've now seen the claim made that "pussy" in the sense of "coward" is actually just a shortened form of the word "pussillanimous", and is linguistically unrelated to either the "cat" or the "cunt" meanings of the word.
It's baffling that there's not a clearer history of this.
The history is unclear because no university is willing to appoint a Professor of Pussy.
How does "pussyfooting" fit into the etymology? It implies caution and care more than exactly cowardice, but still seems as if it might be connected.
238 -- indeed, in Europe most people who use the term socialists - like, say, the Socialist Party of France or the Socialist Worker Party of Spain - believe in a kind of muscular social democracy. Hell, even Tony Blair referred to himself as a democratic socialist and put language about democratic socialism in his new Clause IV.
263 - A single teaching position is not enough--we need a Pussy Studies department.
267: Which becomes a problem when we can't figure out whether it belongs in women's studies or the vet school.
Where I'm trying to go with all this, outside of idle curiosity of the history, is that I genuinely didn't think "pussy"-->coward is a gendered/sexist insult, at least in historical origin. (Although I acknowledge it has acquired gendered/sexist implications and now seems to be mostly or nearly exclusively used by people with gendered/sexist intent.)
I would have used the word "etymology" in one or more of my comments, if I'd member end it before seeing 265. I always get that mixed up with "entomology."
268: Either way, on the first day of the semester half the students who signed up for Intro to Pussy Studies will discover that the class is not at all what they were expecting.
266: Thank you, that's what I thought.
According to Wikipedia, which of course represents the pedants, even "democratic socialism" implies social ownership of means of production, and the difference is in how power is exercised.
Maybe there's been some shifting in ultimate ideals on the left over the years? I'm not sure why, in a post-scarcity socialist utopia, who owns the means of production is all that big a deal, as long as there's enough bread, roses, and gold-plated sexbots to go around. But I still think of myself as socialist.
There was this collectively owned and managed cafe by my house growing up, but they called themselves anarchists. We used to hold YPSL meetings there, and complain about how they were actually socialist. Their food wasn't great, but I blame that on it being poorly made hippie vegan crap, not on the workers owning the means of production.
During a college internship I once ended up on a work lunch meeting there with a city commissioner, which seemed kind of ironic. A few years after that, gentrification forced them to move, and google tells me they closed in 2015.
This article is really kind of hilarious to me, especially since I've been thinking about the 2008 primaries recently. Apparently the lesson they learned from the utter fiasco of making Mark Penn their strategic director was to make... no one direct the strategy?
I still think Clinton is going to get the nomination (though I wouldn't mind at all if Sanders did). But this kind of Campaign-in-Disarray! story so early is definitely giving me a strong sense of deja vu. At the very least there are some people in the Clinton campaign who need to get fired for leaking stuff very, very quickly.
MHPH- Actually when I think about 276-2 now it makes me think of 251 and whether some of the pieces of bad press are necessitated by good press the Clintonites thought was essential enough to 'pay' for.
Maybe?
If so they're really doing a bad job of picking what negative press to have show up, though, because reminding everyone of how they screwed up in 2008 and making it look like they're doing it again isn't a great choice. There almost certainly are "negative" stories they could be "leaking" out there under the table that wouldn't undercut the campaign effectively. Talk about internal conflict following older feminists going off message and attacking young people and how Clinton got really mad at them or something.
||
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/supreme-court-halts-obama-s-sweeping-climate-change-plan
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There was this collectively owned and managed cafe by my house growing up, but they called themselves anarchists. We used to hold YPSL meetings there, and complain about how they were actually socialist.
Sounds like they were anarchists. The socialist cafe is state-owned and managed. Think the cafeteria in the statehouse, assuming they don't contract that out, which they probably do.
280
I guess it depends if socialist means worker-owned or state-owned.
279
If there was a god, Alito and/or Scalia would be hit by lightning strikes.
Maybe God thinks we deserve a chance to earn our rewards or punishments as fits the individual case.
Adding to 276 because I hadn't noticed it the first time:
So far, Clinton '16, which is supposed to be modeled on the Obama efforts, has functioned sloppily, with the Clintons absorbing off-the-books advice -- even strategy memos -- from family friends and advisers like Sidney Blumenthal, branding expert Roy Spence, current Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe and even Penn, who speaks exclusively to the former president, according to multiple sources.
Oh come on...
So if Penn wants a coffee, he either writes his order down or just waits until Bill Clinton is with him so he can tell the barista the order?
Language Log weighs in on the pussy question.
Oh, that actually illuminates some things for me. I was having trouble coming up with 'pussy' as 'effeminate or weak man' before really quite recently, but the examples given clarify: they look like people using it like "lapdog". There's a passage from The Franchise Affair that doesn't actually use the word 'pussy', but close enough:
'Oh, Rob, I love you,' he said delightedly. 'You are the very essence of England. Everything we admire and envy in you. You sit there so mild, so polite, and let people bait you, until they conclude that you are an old tabby and they can do what they like with you, and then just when they are beginning to preen themselves they go that short step too far and wham! out comes that businesslike paw with the glove off!'
Thanks. That's interesting (and supports my thesis!)
The idea that the "weakling" sense of pussy should be treated as a taboo word because of a connection to the slang term for female genitals seems to be almost as historically incorrect as the pusillanimous → pussy theory.
Enh, the fact that it sounds the same as a taboo word, and is intended negatively, is sufficient for making it taboo, I think. It derives some its power from that homophony. But regardless, it should be taboo for bashing effeminateness. Him calling Cruz a nancy or a nancy-boy wouldn't have been acceptable, either.
Actually, and I don't have support for this, I think the insult really distinctly changed connotation sometime between the early 20th century and now.
That is, the LL cites looked like familiar usages to me, but I'd never have remembered them in this context because they have a completely different feel than modern 'pussy'. The LL cites are descriptions of a man as a pussycat, in a not necessarily insulting way, but meaning some combination of kind, or soft, or submissive ("tame pussy"), but not specifically frightened or cowardly. Like this:
You ought to hear some of the docs that are the sweetest old pussies with their patients--the way they bawl out the nurses.
'Pussies' there isn't an insult, the only negative implication is that they're not sincere about their apparent kindness.
So, the transition to "pussy", the modern epithet meaning "coward", is a real change in meaning, and I wouldn't be surprised if that change happened through association with the female genitalia.
"Don't be a soft, gentle, friendly kitten! Come out and fight!"
I think 293 is right.
and even Penn, who speaks exclusively to the former president
What a snob!
293, but note the last parenthetical:
But the only real difference in meaning between pussy and pussycat as descriptions of (let's say) male non-torturers is that pussy has negative connotations (and a widely-accepted current association with a taboo word), while pussycat is positively evaluated. And the etymologies, as far as I can tell, are identical except for this (relatively recent) connotational separation.
So, I just saw Monday's Daily Show. How the hell did Marcobot, which as far as I can tell was basically talking points on steroids, become this amazing campaign ending gaffe, and Trump going absolutely nuts on the audience get totally ignored? He literally accused the entire audience directly of being stuffed with Jeb! special interests, whatever the fuck that was supposed to mean. Are we really supposed to believe that K Street decamps to these stupid debates just so they can clap and boo? WTF?
After the first debate where Trump first really made waves the rest of the debates seem to have been filled with audiences that don't respond as well to him (but then he gains support among Republican voters afterwards, and is viewed as having done well). The idea that the audience was made up of rich donors is silly, but the idea that the audiences at those things are non-representative isn't that unreasonable.
I don't know how much of the Rubio thing they played but it really was devastatingly horrible looking for him at the time. Comparing it to repeating talking points (even on steroids) is minimizing how astonishing the whole thing looked in practice: he literally repeated - verbatim - a monologue that didn't relate to the question twice, and then started to repeat it a third time in response to being accused of repeating an unrelated monologue. And probably more importantly as the exchange went on he got more and more visibly scared and sweaty, which made him look even more weak. It really was kind of surreal in a way that edited down clips don't really capture.
