I didn't get a "Hmph" from that guy.
It's well put overall, and I admit that a lot of my annoyance at it is purely irrational, or at least, I can't articulate most of my problems with it. That being said, I can articulate a few.
why the people on the barricades, some of them at least, might still be excited and pleased by the spectacle of Trump's first days in office despite the crude brutalism of much of it
His read on Trump's supporters differs from mine. Where he has "despite", I would say "because of." The Trump supporters who support Trump despite that stuff are just a little underinformed, maybe have values a tiny bit different from mine but we could probably get along. They aren't the problem. For Trump himself and a big fraction of his supporters, the brutality seems to be the goal.
e) We need to come up with heuristics that let us continue to stay connected online but that help us sort signal from noise in new ways.
If this doesn't mean "we need to do something about fake news?" I can't tell what it means. If it does mean that, then (a) just come right out and say what you mean, please, and WMYBSALB; and (b) well, yeah, no shit, of course we need to do something about it, but the million-dollar question is, what should we do?
I suppose Trump is president for this thread. Hmph.
True, and that's why I didn't say the following in the other thread -- There's an interesting discussion to be had between these two topics.
Something to consider in the discussion between type 1 and type 2 subsidies is what constituencies each of them produce. Burke's post raises the question of whether the local real-estate developer receiving a tax break for mixed-use development sees themselves as part of the "Establishment" in a way that would make them want to defend good government, and other things which are being subsidized by the government.
Do they, in other words, see themselves as belonging to a group with the local theater (which receives an Arts Grant from the city, presuming we're living in Democrat world) or not? If not, is that something that should be encouraged, how would that be encouraged and, if it isn't worth trying to encourage, what does that do to Burke's idea of an Establishment with shared interests?
There is also the question, do the developer (receiving tax breaks) and the theater organization (receiving an annual grant) have the same financial relationship to local government? I think most people would say "no", but it's interesting to define the differences.
. . . the million-dollar question is, what should we do?
Yeah. I don't feel like I have a clear sense of what actions Burke is proposing but, the more I think about it, I suspect that I do not believe that his proposals get to the heart of the issue that he's trying to identify.
But that's okay. One can pose a good question without having a good answer readily available.
As long as I'm serial-commenting, one more idea to toss into this thread. There's a comment that I remember from years ago on Yglesias' blog* by one of the conservative commenters. Part of why it has stuck with me is that, to this day, I'm not sure if it's a good but impractical observation or a bit of trolling designed to get liberals to chase their own tails.
He said that right now the Democratic coalition includes various maginalized groups and also financial and cultural elites from Hollywood and New York. He thought it would be better politics to have a coalition which tried to unite "local elites"against the ultra-rich. His example of a local elite was the family that owns a car dealership. Wealthy, and with a certain amount of local prestige and name recognition, but not part of the ultra-rich in any way. He thought that there should be a way to convince that person that their interests are not aligned with the parts of the Republican platform that favor big business -- deregulation, and generally empowering the financial markets.
I don't see any way to construct that coalition in our current politics, but I do wonder if Burke's vision of the "Establishment" would imply something like that.
* It might be getting close to decades ago, at this point. Probably during Bush's first term.
5: Local elites like that are the bedrock of the Republican base. No way is that idea going to work.
6 gets it exactly right. Identity and taxes are the main reasons, I think.
So, I repeat my question, does that cause difficulties for Burke's vision? I ask, for example, if this juxtaposition implies a commonality of values which may not exist (in the current political climate)?
The Establishment has had its etiquette, its manners, its protocol, its ways of being and doing, that were as known and familiar and accessible to the progressives who fancied themselves to be marginal and excluded from power as those who accepted that they were part of the Establishment.
That reminds of a line that I came across recently, quoted in the wikipedia entry for " Rockefeller Republican"
At a discouraging point in the 1964 primary campaign against Barry Goldwater in California, political operative Stuart Spencer called on Rockefeller to "summon that fabled nexus of money, influence, and condescension known as the Eastern Establishment. 'You are looking at it, buddy,' Rockefeller told Spencer. 'I am all that is left.'"
Geez. Yeah.
I was at a deli the other day. Owner is generally a great guy and is known for being very good to his employees. I overheard him talking with a regular about politics and it became clear that
1) As an immigrant who waited for several years to get to the United States from the Soviet Union, he thinks it's unfair that refugees "are just getting right in". Disagree, but this is a sadly common thought among immigrants, and it seems fair if you're unaware of the specific horrors they're fleeing.
2) Putin is going to completely have his way with Trump because Trump is totally unprepared for "KGB tactics".
3) Islamic terror and Sharia law are serious threats that list me addressed.
4) 9/11 was an inside job.
I have no words.
the question of whether the local real-estate developer receiving a tax break for mixed-use development sees themselves as part of the "Establishment" in a way that would make them want to defend good government, and other things which are being subsidized by the government.
I can say with significant certainty that the answer is "yes". Developers that hoi polloi would recognize as shitty tend to disparage mixed-use tax breaks and to despise government, while developers who do good projects take advantage of tax breaks and buy into the system. That's not to say that they're uniformly pro-government, but they're absolutely supportive of the various rules & regulations that bad developers claim make development impossible.
There's a new development in the park battle that has me so furious I can't even express it. Suffice it to say that today they posted this notice all over the perimeter of their property, like a No Hunting notice. What fun, to be able to deem some things illegal and other things approved!
I can say with significant certainty that the answer is "yes".
I'm glad to hear that. My intuitions about that question weren't strong, so I'm glad both that the answer is yes, and to hear from somebody who's more involved in those discussions.
9 should be more clear that those are his beliefs. Ordinary people just don't pay that much attention and their beliefs are shaped more by what's acceptable to believe in their social group.
5
The region I lived in in China had an objectively-not-that rich local elite and then a national/global hyper rich who actually owned most of the 5 star hotels and/or bought summer homes in the area.* I hung out with locals of all classes, and poor hated the local elites because those were the people in their social cosmology who they still interacted with and were leading lives recognizable to the poor, but much better. For them the super rich Taiwanese/Shanghainese might as well have not existed.
For the local elites, the fact they were in contrast poor country bumpkins to the super rich cosmopolitans really stuck in their craw, and they hated those guys. As elites they saw themselves as on some level belonging to an elite class, but they recognized they could and never would be considered "equals" with the actual rich. They used whatever local power they had to fuck with the actual rich. Some Beijing artists decided to start a "back to the land" artist colony in some random village, and the local officials did everything they could to ruin it, mainly out spite for being cast as the rural idiot poor. They canceled the film festival 6 hours before it was to start, and I last read in the guardian they've kicked the artists out and very possibly confiscated their houses.
I guess we could try to get local elites to hate the super elites, but it seems when we do try they just end up hating Jews the rootless cosmopolitans, elite or not.
*Zhang Yimou owned an entire village where he filmed all his movies and hosted parties for famous people.
I have the sense it's intended as advice to left-leaning politicians, pundits, and general leaders, but it doesn't seem to have given a thought to its audience at all. You know what it actually does remind me of? A role-playing game where the game master has completely lost control.
"You have to become a paranoid, sometimes-violent mob, you lost the fight. For your class, that means black masks and outfits with the anarchy symbol on them. Here are the new stats."
"We didn't all change last time we lost, and it's not in the rules!"
"Yeah, but this time, both sides agreed that's what happened, so you have to stick with it."
"OK, but the winning side was a paranoid, sometimes-violent mob themselves. We can't both be those, it would be boring."
"There are a lot more upper-middle-class grandmothers on his side than usual. Wouldn't they have their own stat modifiers for black anarchist garb?"
"Good question, let me look that up. Hmmm... (flips through the book)Wow, OK, you're right, we aren't doing that."
"So I don't have to change?"
(thinks for a minute) "How about this? You're a paranoid mob, but instead of being sometimes-violent, you can continue being officious."
"... Yeah, I can make that work. One second, let me swap out some miniatures."
15: I've played a fair amount of tabletop, but can't follow that conversation at all.
You can get computer versions so you don't need to fuck with dice.
6. Not necessarily. My US Representative is Don Beyer (VA-D). He owns a few car dealerships. I admit for that reason alone I had strong doubts about him. But he is turning out okay, especially recently.
I've only scanned the article, but these bits:
"One of our great weaknesses at times has been how some of us have adopted an insistence that virtue can only derive from marginality, a view that speaking from power is always a fallen and regrettable position. Because we didn't see our ties to the establishment as virtue and we didn't understand that our forms of power were important for defending what we had already achieved, because we had a reflexive and attachment to the idea that we were in no way powerful, that our share of the status quo could only be found in some future progress...
Some thought that you were only the Establishment if you were wealthy, or white, or male, or held a certain set of specific political ideologies and affiliations..."
are at least a bare recognition of reality. Which is, you ask? Well, perhaps the most crucial part identified in the quotation is the centrist-y/liberal-y delusion that "we were in no way powerful." This goes hand in hand with the elevation of "marginality" to a supreme moral good--but save that for another disquisition. The point is, the tired pretension that college professors, Sierra Club executives, and Pussyhatters have been fighting power rather than maintaining and enhancing particular channels of established power is finished.
Time to wake up.
I wasn't aware that was an actual pretension. Maybe the professors I know are assholes?
And the Sierra Club's executives keep keying my car and laughing at my when I threaten to call the cops. "Who'll believe we keyed a Prius?" they shout and walk away.
Meh, I think a lot of liberalish people don't have any power. I know I don't. I'm not on board with all the things that establishment liberal/centrist types are for. I have some sympathy for the barbarian horde. I just don't think their plans are going to work out.
I tried to sell out and get more power, or least more money. It didn't work, but I know a fair few people it turned out really well for.
we had a reflexive and attachment to the idea that we were in no way powerful ... Some thought that you were only the Establishment if you were wealthy
To a very close approximation, power is nothing but wealth/income. The adjunct professor is less powerful than the owner of a car dealership. It's a matter of the control you have over your life, including the ability to fight off your enemies (by hiring lawyers etc). Cultural capital might make powerlessness more bearable, because it makes it possible to retreat inwards to some degree, but that's about the extent of its usefulness. You might be more likely to be aware of your concrete options if you're educated, but it doesn't usually take a degree to know what they are.
It's probably Ohio State's fault. Your degree gets less respect when the awarding institution insists on a definite article.
I'm talking about within a given racial/gender group, obviously. African-Americans do face concrete threats to life and limb from state violence, and women from male violence, that aren't reducible to wealth/income.
There are certainly huge numbers of liberals who are asshats, but it's a big country. I don't think the percentage is higher than in the general population.
That's the nice thing about living in the bubble. If you aren't in the bubble, you can't be picky about your liberals and you need to deal with the asshat liberals more.
I, for one, was not defending the ancien regime.
Burke is making an important point, but shoots himself in the foot by talking about "the establishment", which I think means a minority pretty much by definition. He puts it much better here:
But you can trace the existence and continuation of a great many jobs-and life situations-to a political economy that depended on the civic, governmental and business institutions built up in the United States and around the world after 1945.Those "life situations" include, via regulation and government services, essentially everyone. More simply, progressives are part of the modern* democratic state: you contribute to, benefit from, and constitute, the state. Reactionaries are also part of the state, but don't want to be, through stupidity or malice. What Burke gets at, very obliquely, is that the state is indeed powerful, not marginal. The smarter enemies of the state know that and oppose it just because it is powerful enough to prevent them from being robber barons or Old Testament patriarchs or racist assholes (or, internationally, Great Russian chauvinists or Salafist fundamentalists).
Burke is very right here:
Meaning, we retrain ourselves rhetorically and imaginatively to stop seeing marginality as a state which necessarily confers virtue on those in it, and centrality as a morally depraved state that we should always seek to move away from.This sums up every thinkpiece about the WWC or the heartland or coastal arrogance. Trump voters don't deserve consideration for being a minority. They're just assholes who need to be beaten.
31 I wouldn't be altogether happy about it if I thought you were right, but I'd shut up about it. I don't think the attitude that all your opposite number voters are assholes who need to be beaten serves you well unless you have the preponderance of physical force on your side. You are also more likely to win elections if you can get a few defectors.
How are polite procedural discussions working out for you over there?
They don't work too well over here either.
Most of the people I interact with in person are polite. Even the Trump supporters who found out I was a Bernie volunteer.
24: you slightly overstate the degree to which wealth is correlated with power, if you consider the offspring of those under consideration. Compare the children or grandchildren of the average professor and the average dealer. I would probably go with the car dealer too, but it's pretty close run.
Reading the excerpt in the OP, I just kept thinking 'what do you mean "we"?' Now that I look at the article, I see that I'm carved out right at the start.
Having now read the Burke post, it feels like a contribution to a conversation that I'm not really part of. Government employees know full well that we're part of the establishment and are seeking to preserve it while addressing its flaws. Like a lot of other discourse around these sorts of issues lately, from both left and right, the post seems myopically focused on the context of academia (and related sectors like the arts, but given Burke's own position I think he's really thinking of inter-academic conversations here). Academia is important, sure, but there's a whole world outside it where the issues and discourse are different.
That a much more articulate way of putting it, yes.
Although "intra-academic" might have been a better phrasing.
I probably should have read the OP before commenting. 37 gives close to my feeling about it. I too had assumed that the 'we' who have all this power were meant to be 'progressives', when it turns out to be closer to 'government employees'. I may be being too literal-minded about it, but there's a distinction between having your progressive policy preferences implemented by the US government, benefiting from that fact, and having some disproportionate ability to cause those preferences to be implement implemented. Only the last is really government-based power. The second (which some artists and many academics have) is something like privilege. And the first, which is all that most progressives ever had, is neither - a guy outside the US could equally have his hope fulfilled that the US government implement progressive policy, while obviously wielding no power and deriving no privilege thereby. I want to say that having your preferences affirmed by third parties is in itself neither power, nor privilege - it's just nice. But that's a bit too crude. Your being one of a large mass of people affirming certain values probably does play some role in causing it to be implemented, if it is implemented; still, it's only an infinitesimal role.
Yesterday I heard someone of Portuguese descent say "We just need to give him a chance." Within the past couple of weeks he's already failed to do a good job.
Don't let Mystic Pizza fool you. Not everyone of Portuguese descent is heartwarming and Julia Roberts shaped.
43 OMG, I cringe every time I go into my dentist's office (which has been all too frequent the past 3-6 months because of the teeth grinding) because they are Trump supporters there. All the support staff is Portuguese-American (we're in SE Mass), and I want to scream at them that people like Trump would have come after their parents/grandparents, most of whom came to the US in the last 50 years. But I can't exactly scream at the people fixing my teeth, you know?
When they say "now spit", spit directly on them.
What attracts Portuguese Americans to Trump? Seems weird.
47 and 48: She worked as a front desk person in a medical practice. My husband has a co-worker whose parents are immigrants and don't speak English and who doesn't make a ton of money who said the same thing: "Give him a chance."
For what it's worth, the Portuguese people in Massachusetts are all from the Azores.
re: 47
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estado_Novo_(Portugal)
Yeah, but the Caetano regime was overthrown 42 years ago. Admittedly, the Azores are traditionally the most conservative region of Portugal, but still.
I was just wondering re: the general pattern of people with sympathies to overthrown right-wing regimes emigrating around the time they get overthrown.
Fair enough. I don't know how old all these people are. Or they might have caught it from their parents.
53: The woman I know from work is in her 50's and has a daughter whose old enough to be having a baby. My husband's co-worker is probably in her 30's or 40's but very involved in taking care of her parents. She has to take her parents to a lot of doctors' appointments, because the Portuguese language interpreters at the hospitals are all Brazilians and her parents don't understand them. She's someone who would have benefited a lot from Clinton-like family leave policies. She had surgery and then her kid was sick and then with all of the time she spent taking care of her parents, she had to take unpaid time off.
At first, it was Azoreans who'd been whaling. Then there was enough of a community to keep drawing folks even after whaling ended.
44 -- More like The Accused, then?
Assuming that it is true that benign but not very productive jobs in the liberal bureaucracy have proliferated, then this:
"We don't need to get rid of people, we just need to get rid of the myriad ways we acquiese to the collection of more and more tolls on the roads we traverse in our lives and work."
looks hard to do. Diversity officers still have to be paid, and still need to interact with you (time-sucking forms) in order that it can be said that they are doing work.
Even if carried out, I doubt it would endear anyone to the coal rollers. They're not going to be impressed by 'streamlining of the liberal establishment'.
In other news, I see the so-called president has starting randomly shouting 'MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN' on Twitter.
But yes, to the main point: no one needs to apologise for their liberalism, and for liberalism being the prevailing political philosophy of the last half century. It's obvious now that liberalism has been taken for granted by liberals themselves: no one much argues for it, not the thing itself. Plenty of effort - good effort - has been spent on arguing specific liberal cases; i.e. this group is unjustly disadvantaged. Very little effort has been spent openly arguing, in the political arena, for the rightness of the liberal view. This is going to have to change. It's hard to get your head around. Six months plus following the Brexit vote I still can't comprehend why anyone would _want_ to shout liberalism down.
Hmmm. Didn't liberalism bring us the Vietnam War?
55: How far back does that community go?
There's a weird tendency among liberals to assume that liberalism is the default state for anyone who isn't evil. This makes liberalism something you have to learn without anyone ever telling you what it's about, and it means that no one publicly advocates for it. Liberals should start pumping out the liberal equivalent of Chick tracts.
58: No, that was France. And 'containing communism'.
the liberal equivalent of Chick tracts
What, the Ta-Nehisi Coates-penned Black Panther comic books weren't good enough for you?
59: Here's a link to an article about the Portuguese community in New England.
I have a Portuguese-American friend in NJ who is dismissive of the Massachusetts Portuguese-Americans because of their Azorean origins. He's also very active in local Democratic politics. So, data point.
I've never been to New England in my life (except for one brunch in Connecticut) or met anybody who I knew had ancestors in Portugal.
The only Portuguese I knew came from Madeira. I neglected to ask their opinions of Azoreans or New Englanders.
Is "came from Madeira" slang for "I exist because mom and dad didn't realize the wine was fortified"?
Possibly. But they also, literally, came from Madeira.
67: Apparently, there were also New England Portuguese from Madeira.
I don't think so. But we have their immigrants from their former empire - lots of Brazilians and Cape Verdeans.
73 was on a Bonanza episode, I think.
You wants Basques, go to Idaho. Or potatoes.
Although it may have been a Big Valley episode, in which case 74 is more related.
How to you get a whole person inside the potato?
78 could probably have been from Opinionated Danny Quayle.
Do the Idahoan Basques also waylay one in the mountains? Or is that only if one is French?
Before 81, I was just thinking about how a neighboring canyon is named for the Native Hawaiian who was killed when the Hudsons Bay Company group he was working with was ambushed by Blackfeet. In the 1840s.
Out west, the French people named mountain ranges on the basis of "Titties, hooray!" So, that might have been irritating.
It would be very likely -- pretty much a sure thing -- that a number of the other men in the group were at least part French.
In the late 1680's Secretary John Randolph reported that "New Plimouth colony have great profit by whale killing. I believe it will be one of our best returns, now that beaver and peltry fayle us."Nice to see that Protestant prudence and long term planning embedded so early in the American political economy.
They stopped shooting French people well before that supply was exhausted.
The increase in Protestant munitions was linear, whereas the increase in Catholics was geometrical.
the first American vessel to reach the Brazilian grounds was the brig Leviathan, a ship belonging to Aaron Lopez, merchant prince of Newport, Rhode Island. Aaron, Duarte, or Aires Lopez (for he was known by all three first names) was one of three Portuguese Jewish brothers who settled in Newport during the middle decades of the eighteenth centuryBut it's fun to speculate!
[...]
Precisely what prompted Lopez to send the Leviathan to explore whaling possibilities off Brazil at this time is not known. It is possible that he did so in response to a suggestion from relatives he may have had in Brazil or in Portugal's Atlantic isles. We do not know.
Thanks to Trump, you can now speculate with other people's money after lying to them about it.
You've always been able to do that. Trump's just ensuring that you can continue to.
"This investment meets my fiduciary duty to serve your interests because in many ethical systems the accumulation of too many material goods is seen as problematic."
It's really refreshing to watch an aggressively stupid movie with somebody young enough to not get that the cliches are cliches.
There are, or were Basques in SF.
||
OK, the thread seems to be far enough along for a distract, and I'm stuck in a boring hotel room, so here's a story for the blog.
If you figure out who I am, that's fine with me, but please don't say so. While this story is a happy one, it involves people other than me who are known IRL to some folks on this blog, so I'd just as soon protect their privacy.
...
The story starts with my little brother, who asked me to officiate his wedding.
To prepare, I did a number of long-distance planning sessions with him and his fianceé. We went over details ranging from the deeply personal (content of vows, how to refer to beloved deceased family members) to the mundane (order of the bridal procession) to the endearing (how to tell the ring bearers what to do).
We also talked about the logistics. My brother had researched things in advance and learned that his state (California) made it pretty easy for officiants, even ones who were just getting ordained in order to do a single wedding.
I followed up my brother's research with my own. It all seemed pretty straightforward. I found a church I was comfortable with online, got ordained in 90 seconds, and e-mailed my certificate to my brother and his bride for their approval. We were a month out from the wedding. It all seemed fine.
At our next planning call, we talked about the marriage license. We were all a little nervous about how to make sure the license got filed properly before they left on their honeymoon abroad, especially given recent political events.
I confirmed that while the bride and groom had to apply in person for the license, there were no blood tests needed and no waiting period. A license obtained in one county of CA can be used in any county in the state, so there was no concern on that front.
And anyone -- bride, groom, officiant, whoever -- could file the license afterward, as long as it had the proper signatures and was submitted to the county within 10 days of the wedding ceremony.
So again, it all seemed pretty straightforward. We discussed the timing for signing the marriage license (just after the ceremony, we decided), who the witnesses would be, and that we could mail it back to the county office. I said I would be happy to send it registered mail when I got home to the East Coast after the wedding, or they could drop it in the mail before they left on their honeymoon.
For context: The wedding was on a Saturday night. They were leaving on an international flight on Monday for the honeymoon.
Are you married to your sister-in-law?
Both the bride and the groom were somewhat stressed in the week leading up to the wedding, the bride because this wedding was a Big Deal in her family with lots of guests traveling in internationally, and both the bride and groom because they have significant work responsibilities that they had to hand off in preparation for several weeks out of the office.
I was also extremely busy, and preoccupied with making sure the script for the ceremony was precisely as we had discussed. I drafted multiple versions, e-mailing back and forth with the couple, and incorporating their edits and suggestions.
I am afraid I think I see where this is going.
The week of the wedding, I flew out to CA midweek, having some business to take care of before the wedding. I had hoped to get it all wrapped up on Thursday so I could see my brother, but that didn't happen.
Friday morning, we gather at the bride's parents' house for a series of ceremonial events in preparation for the wedding. Everyone is slightly on edge, as the families really don't know each other very well, and both are quite large.
But the first ceremonial event goes smoothly, and we all relax. There is a blizzard of picture-taking, and my sisters (let's call them HyperOrganized and HyperEmpathetic) are tickled pink that our baby bro is getting married.
All SIX children who are part of the bridal party are bursting with excitement, though for different reasons.
We take approximately 1,204 pictures. We also learn that the bride's parents have set up several hard-to-spot video cameras in their living rooms to capture the pre-ceremony from all angles. WHEW. Good thing nobody said anything tacky when they were out of the room.
We progress to the second pre-wedding event of the day -- Friday lunch. It is a multi-course banquet at a local restaurant. I am seated between two immigrant relatives, probably because the bride's family knows I am comfortable making small talk with total strangers. Which HyperOrganized and HyperEmpathetic are too, but they each have umpteen children to look after.
I still have not had the opportunity to talk with my brother besides hugging him hello.
Lunch takes FOREVER. We barely have enough time to get back to the hotel and get the children down for mini-naps so they don't all melt down during the rehearsal.
(Remember, ALL of the kids are in the ceremony.)
Five o'clock. We arrive at the wedding venue for the rehearsal.
It is a large wedding party -- two maids of honor, six groomsmen, six bridesmaids/junior bridesmaids, two ring bearers and two flower girls.
We run through the blocking. Everything is straightforward. I figure out the microphone situation.
We practice the processional. The bride and groom have picked an amusing song for the processional, so it lightens the mood when everyone finds out what we are going to be "processing" to. All good.
Everyone is in position. The wedding coordinator, though slightly fussy, certainly knows her stuff, so we allow her to arrange bodies how she will.
I walk through the major elements of the ceremony. All is smooth.
We practice the recessional.
It is six p.m. on Friday.
We are standing in the cocktail-hour area of the wedding venue, where we will all be exactly 24 hours from now, when the wedding ceremony is over.
The wedding coordinator says brightly "And then you'll step into this side room and sign the license. You're not doing that before the ceremony?"
And I say, "[Brother], do you have the license?"
And he turns white as a sheet.
He shakes his head.
I think he's pulling my leg. He's known for his exceptionally dry, deadpan sense of humor.
But I notice how pale he is. And he's dead serious. He didn't forget the license at the hotel, he didn't leave it at her parents' house. They didn't get the license at all. Totally forgot to apply for it.
All is abuzz around us. Almost nobody else has heard the conversation, because everyone is getting ready to walk a few blocks away for the rehearsal dinner, which starts at 7.
I'm not even sure the bride has heard.
Adrenaline pumps through me. I say briskly, "OK. We'll deal with this. You go ahead to rehearsal dinner."
He still looks stricken, but he gathers himself and starts to corral his wedding party.
HyperOrganized comes over to me. "What are we going to DO?"
HyperEmpathetic is in tears. "Poor [brother]. This is awful. [Nombre temporal], what are we going to DO?"
Most of the wedding party is still oblivious, and they are laughing and chattering as they start to head off on the short walk to dinner.
One of the groomsmen, who has known our family since he was a little boy, comes over to me. He has evidently grasped what is happening, because he looks frantic.
"[Nombre's nickname], I don't know her family, but if you're worried that [groom] is going to lose face in front of them, we can print out some papers that look official for them to sign. Just so they have SOMETHING."
"That's very kind of you," I say. "Let's keep that idea on the back burner for now."
HO and HE start asking me again what we're going to do, and offering ideas.
"I can't do this on my phone," I say calmly. "I'm going back to the hotel so I can work on this from my laptop. You go to rehearsal dinner. I'll come join you later."
At first I don't think they are going to accept this, but fortunately their concern for the guests and their need to parent their children win out over their desire to breathe down my neck.
I get back to the hotel in about three minutes flat. Adrenaline is still raging through my system.
I pull up my laptop and start searching. Where to start? OK, I'm not from California. I don't know the geography. Let's start with a county map.
County map. OK. We are in Orange County. Closest other counties are Los Angeles, Riverside, San Bernardino.
I start searching their respective websites. Somebody has to have a marriage license office that has Saturday hours.
Somebody does. They are open the 3rd Saturday of the month. Whew.
Tomorrow is the 4th Saturday. Oops.
Somebody else does! They are open Saturdays...starting February 25.
A third county has special hours for Valentine's Day! Fabulous, I think.
No, won't work. The special hours don't include any Saturdays in January.
I find a county that has Saturday hours and is open the next day. Yay. But it is 2+ hours away and they don't take appointments. Also, the parking situation around the office is apparently terrible, as the website is full of warnings.
This does not seem like a potential solution.
OK, I think, worst comes to worse I will stay over an extra night in CA and go with the couple to the marriage license bureau on Monday morning before they leave for their honeymoon.
I look at marriages in Los Angeles, since they are flying out of LAX. They will be open on Monday, of course, but the courthouse doesn't offer same-day marriage licenses.
Re-booking their complicated honeymoon itinerary would be really expensive. This is not a solution.
More googling. How can there be this many scammy websites trying to trick you into thinking they are legit government sites?
Thank God I have good research skills. My hands are shaking from the adrenaline.
HyperEmpathetic texts: Have you found a solution yet?!?!?!
Me: No.
Back to the Orange County website. They DO offer same-day licenses. They have several offices. They open at 9am Monday.
OK, I think. This is not ideal, but I can stay over, go with them on Monday, do the marriage, file the license right there and then, and then we can all drive to LAX together to catch our respective flights. My brother has to leave at noon, I recall.
I text my brother: Found a solution. Don't worry. Heart emoji.
HyperEmpathetic texts me: Where ARE you? We have to start the rehearsal dinner and Dad is going to give the toast and we're all waiting for you?
Me: I'm on my way.
I race to the rehearsal dinner, five blocks away. The entire wedding party is assembled on the second floor of what is surely a beautiful outdoor veranda 355 days a year.
Unfortunately this is one of the 10 days where it is 45 degrees outside.
The restaurant has put down transparent tent curtains around the veranda, and set up heaters. Everyone is in good spirits. Only HE and HO look faintly panicked.
My dad gives the toast. I go over to talk to HyperEmpathetic. i explaint he solution.
She looks at me. "That won't work. His FLIGHT leaves at noon Monday. He has to be at the airport at nine."
My stomach drops.
Back to my seat at the table. I'm directly across from the bride and groom. Next to my father, who has no idea what is going on. On my other side are friends of the bride's, who don't know me at all.
"Want some salad?" says my father cheerfully.
I can never eat when I'm stressed.
No thanks, I say.
I know it's horribly rude to be on your phone in the middle of a social event, but I have to. This is an emergency.
I'm waiting for the waitstaff to come by and take orders, and I start Googling again on my phone.
"Want some bread?" asks my father obliviously.
NO, I say, gritting my teeth.
OK. I'm running across a longer explanation of something I saw before. California has two kinds of marriage licenses: Public licenses, and confidential licenses.
The thing about confidential licenses is that the county can effectively deputize somebody other than a government official to issue one.
The wait staff come. I order the vegetarian entree. I can't imagine I will be able to choke down anything.
I excuse myself and go out into the concrete walkway. It is 45 degrees. I am in a cocktail dress.
I find the website of a woman who can issue the confidential license. Her name is Bella. I text her.
Instant response. Yes, she can issue a license. No problem.
After a few texts back and forth I ask if I can call her. Much more efficient. She says yes.
I call her. I explain where we are.
There is a long silence.
"We are two hours from you," she explains finally, in a thick Russian accent. "I am fully booked with appointments tomorrow from 10 to 3, but you can come and wait."
Wow. Drive two hours, wait around for up to five hours, and still no guarantee? If she can take them at 3pm, no way we will be back here for a 5:30 wedding with 150 guests.
I cannot let my baby brother leave the country without being legally married. The political situation is so unsettled, and he's traveling to a part of the world where tensions are rising. What would happen if there was an incident and he or his wife got injured or worse? How could we handle all of the logistics from half a world away, without having that vital paperwork to connect the two families?
131 makes sense. Because otherwise you could have just told him love is bullshit and the paperwork even less important.
I go back and sit down. I still can't eat.
I make small talk with the bride's friends.
Fortunately, my brother is relaxed and happy. He's still relying on my earlier, sunny text.
The bride seems happy too. I'm pretty sure no one has told her what's going on.
Both sisters keep shooting me Meaningful Looks. As in: "Have you solved this yet?!" It's impressive that they can do this while also keeping a weather eye on their small children and the fire pit the restaurant has now set up.
More Googling. I'm staring at my phone in my lap. The bride's friends are going to think I'm the rudest, most abrupt person ever. If I knew them even slightly I would explain, but it's too complicated to get into.
I find another website. This one advertises one-hour marriages. And green-card applications too!
It seems very sketchy. I know a bit about fake immigration lawyers and this raises all my alerts.
Then I start reading the testimonials. They are all very endearing and earnest. Maybe this is not totally scammy after all.
I decide to text the site. It does say they travel to Orange County.
I text.
And wait.
And wait.
My text said: "Can you come to Orange County TOMORROW to issue a license and so I can officiate a quickie ceremony in front of you?"
It is the longest seven minutes of my life before I get a text back.
I text back and forth a bit, but I want to get this person on the phone so I can assess if s/he is legit.
I ask if I can call this number.
The person says: "I left my phone in the car. I'll call you in a few minutes."
Uh-oh, I think. What is he texting me on, if not his phone?
I looked down at my phone a few minutes later. Missed call from an unfamiliar number.
How did I miss a call?! I am literally holding the phone in my hand.
I step out to the concrete walkway again. I'm past caring what the dinner guests think. I'm not past shivering, though. Good Lord is it cold.
The phone rings again. This time I answer it.
He sounds like middle-aged Asian-American man. Very businesslike and organized. He asks sensible questions, about government ID and previous marriages.
Slowly, I start to relax.
I quiz him, making sure he is giving me answers to questions that match what I found in my web research. Everything checks out. He does not sound like a scammer.
Who knows, of course, but at this point I've heard enough to be satisfied.
I confirm hsi fee. I confirm the hotel location. I confirm that he's coming at 9am Saturday and will meet us at the hotel.
He'll bring the license, I'll perform a quick ceremony, and then he'll go home and file the license, and I'll marry the couple again that night in front of everybody.
Fantastic, I say. My voice is shaking with relief. I confirm the hotel address. I ask him for his name. I tell him my name.
I go back into the tented veranda. I sit down at my place. If anybody wonders why I have been popping up and down like a jack-in-the-box, they are to polite to say so.
I text my sisters the one-sentence condensed version.
Our entrees arrive.
"Would you like a roll?" my father asks again.
My stomach unclenches. "Yes," I say. "I would."
I make conversation with the bride's friends. I am so relieved I am a little giddy. I eat heartily.
HyperEmpathetic comes by my seat. "Why didn't you order the filet?" she wants to know.
"I couldn't think about eating," I whisper between gritted teeth. "I was a little busy."
Ten-thirty p.m. The rehearsal dinner is over.
I go back to the hotel and go up to my brother's room. The bride is there too.
I explain the solution.
I do not explain any of the wild-goose chases I went on in the way to finding the solution. Neither of them needs any more stress.
The bride is a tiny bit sad to have to say her vows before the "real" ceremony, so I reassure her that I can make the hotel ceremony very quick and businesslike, so her evening ceremony can still feel momentous and special.
We realize that the previously-chosen witnesses will not be able to be present at 9am, since they are not staying at this hotel.
We text HyperEmpathetic and HyperOrganized to ask them to be witnesses. Both text back in a matter of seconds. They'll be there. What's the dress code?
Casual, says the groom.
I leave the groom's room. I realize I should go get cash to pay the marriage license guy (let's call him Will). I have a personal check but I'm not sure he'll take an out-of-state check.
I go to the hotel front desk. No ATM in the hotel, he says. Go to the gas station down the street.
I put on a winter coat. I am still in my cocktail dress.
I walk down to the gas station. The ATM has a low dollar limit. I take out everything I can.
I realize I need to hit another ATM. Luckily there is another gas station and mini-mart across the street.
I am crossing the street when my brother texts. "Do you have contact lens solution?" he asks.
I haven't worn contacts in 10 years, I think. But I do not text that. He can be forgiven for not tracking those details at a time like this.
"No, but I'm going into the mini-mart now," I text. "Hang on."
I go inside. I ask if they have contact solution.
The Pakistani immigrant clerk points at the wall six inches from me. Oops. Well, at least they have it.
I hit the second ATM. I realize as I am in the midst of the transaction that my bank might have a limit in how much I can take out in a day. Hopefully I'm not hitting it.
I get the money.
Back to the hotel. Drop off the contact solution. Realize I don't have anything to put Will's payment in.
Back to the front desk. They give me an envelope. I put the cash in it.
Back to my room. Change. Review the ceremony one last time. E-mail the very final script to the bride and groom.
Set several alarms.
I awaken every hour all night long. What if Will doesn't show? What if he DOES show and I think he's scammy?
What if my baby brother can't get married? What if he does lose face in front of his bride's family, including all of the relatives who traveled from 6,000 miles away for this event?
What if they have to spend thousands of dollars rebooking their honeymoon flights? What kind of officiant am I, anyway, that I didn't send them an e-mail or a text anytime this week just making sure they got the license? I am a terrible older sister.
Revised: I thought they were just going to forget to mail the signed license between the ceremony and departing the country. This is much more dramatic.
I get up at 8am. I do yoga in my room. It actually works. I feel peaceful and energetic afterward.
I can't officiate a wedding in yoga clothes, even if this is California. I decide to wear my dress from the pre-ceremony yesterday. I don't have much else as an option.
At 8:45 I am waiting in the lobby.
At 8:57 Will texts. 11 minutes away! he says
I text HyperEmpathetic and HyperOrganized about the revised ETA. They are already waiting with the bride and groom.
Will arrives. He is a middle-aged Asian American man in a trim navy blazer. He looks exactly like how he sounds on the phone. I feel relieved.
I ask him to sit down in the lobby with me. I ask him to take out the papers.
He does so, very professionally, but with a faint expression on his face as if he is humoring the ditzy white woman who didn't make sure her brother got his marriage license.
I tell him I am a librarian and I just want to make sure all of the paperwork is set before we go upstairs. He looks slightly more impressed.
We review the papers. He is very organized. He explains the customer copy of the license that my brother can take with him on the honeymoon, and the actual, official copy that he will file with CA. I ask if he is an attorney or a notary. He says he is a notary.
We head upstairs. In the elevator, he asks me the bride and groom's names.
I tell him.
He perks up when he hears the bride's name. "Is she Chinese?" he asks.
"Yes -- well, Taiwanese," I say.
He still looks serious, but his entire face has been transformed. "I am Taiwanese!" he says delightedly.
My sister opens the door to the groom's suite. She smiles at Will. "You are here to save the day!" she says.
Will nods, professionally.
He sits down on the couch. He explains everything to the bride and groom. I can see everyone relaxing as they see how calm and professional he is.
The sun is pouring into the room from the balcony, which overlooks the beach. My sisters and the bride's best friend buzz around, taking photos.
I realize I am going to be in the same clothes as yesterday's photos. Oh well. This is not a big deal, although my sisters will probably tsk about it later.
We fill out all the paperwork. Will explains that a confidential marriage license does not actually need witnesses. In addition, the ONLY people who will ever be able to get an official copy of the license are the bride or the groom. No one else.
I realize the reason for this. This is California. Celebrities must use this kind of license all the time, so that enterprising reporters can't run down to the courthouse and look up their names and see who they married.
Will pulls out a beautiful, leather-bound book, Journal of a Notary Public. He records the details methodically in his journal.
My brother and his fianceé look delightedly over his shoulder, realizing that they are part of a long series of last-minute brides and grooms who have been saved by Will.
Everyone is relaxed and giddy now that the paperwork is taken care of. I am ready to conduct an ultra-brief ceremony.
Will looks at me. "You are the officiant," he says. "If you want to wait to marry them until tonight, that is OK with me."
The bride's face lights up. I can tell she is overjoyed. My brother looks relieved too.
"As long as you are comfortable with it!" I say.
We all laugh.
We decide to take a picture, out on the sunny balcony. My sisters take several.
"Can you text it to me?" asks Will.
We go back inside the hotel room. The bride is thanking Will in Taiwanese. He is responding in kind.
I walk Will down to the lobby. I pay him. I add a generous tip.
If your it turned out your brother forgot the license because he killed a hooker at the bachelor party, you should be really mad.
YOU SAVED THE DAY, I say.
I don't think it's just the wave of relief that makes me feel like Will has unbent a great deal. We exchange pleasantries about the rest of the day -- he has another wedding in an hour -- and he asks me how I found him. "Was it the result of a frantic Google search?"
"I am a librarian, so I hope it was a well-designed frantic Google search," I say.
Will leaves.
I am exultant. Everything is downhill from here -- easy going.
I suffer through hair and makeup. HyperEmpathetic decides she doesn't like my hairdo. As soon as the hairdresser leaves, she takes it down and redoes it. I couldn't care less. The important part of this wedding is taken care of, and now all that is left is public speaking. And I can do that.
The wedding goes off without a hitch.
At the reception, the bride's parents come up to me. Between the combination of emotion and limited second-language vocabulary, they aren't fully clear, but it's obvious they are thanking me for "helping with paperwork." I suspect they heard a sanitized version.
Luckily, I can say honestly that I am thrilled my brother is marrying their daughter. We beam at each other. We bow. We sort of hug.
At the reception, the groomsman who offered to draft pretend paperwork comes up to me. [Nombre's nickname], tell me the story," he says.
And I do.
Just like I told it to you.
||>
That's one hell of a story, and very well told.
I forgot to say that while I was waking up every hour, I also got an early-morning phone call from my East Coast bank, wanting to know why I was hitting up multiple gas-station ATMs in California and taking out much more money than usual.
"I have a ... special situation" was all I could come up with at whateveroclock they called me.
So I don't get stuck with stuff like that is another good reason for my policy of always getting drunk at weddings.
It's been a while since the wedding, and I'm still relieved that I can tell this story with a happy ending. That makes it just a good story, not a mortifying one.
Glad you all enjoyed it.
I was on the edge of my seat and constantly refreshing the page for the updates.
jesus I'm hyperventilating with second-hand terror and my only problem is that I need to change a plane flight to narnia sometime tonight because tomorrow morning at 9 it'll be 24 hours away from the current flight time. I should do that instead of reading unfogged. god changing plane flights is boring though.
That's why the Bible just says that He rested on the seventh day.
Wow. Right down to a classic ending.
And I do.
Just like I told it to you
I had briefly doubted that I'm right to refuse to cross half the planet for my sister's wedding. Those doubts are now laid permanently to rest. For which my thanks, valiant NT.
I'm planning to cross about 1/8 of the planet for my own sister's wedding (in a few months), but half is a whole other level.
The accent smoothing thing is kind of inevitable for anyone who i) has a fairly strong accent and ii) lives among people who don't share it, I think. I saw a video from Christmas '92 recently -- I really don't sound the same.
The accent smoothing thing is kind of inevitable for anyone who i) has a fairly strong accent and ii) lives among people who don't share it, I think. I saw a video from Christmas '92 recently -- I really don't sound the same.
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How much would this thread have sucked with bob around? There was a real boiling frog thing going on there.
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I just watched the two political clips from last night's SNL. So well done.
Also, it's funny - the pacing of the story was very twitter-esque, yet it's so much more pleasant to read without the little boxes and things having to load, etc. This effect was more conversational than a normal written narrative, but it worked fine.
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Anyone still live in DC? I suddenly have about four hours free since I got bumped up to an earlier flight.
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Or, you know, I could do something actually useful like go to a museum, do they stull have any of those in DC?
I'm sure the DC 'tariat is not at all offended by their implied redundancy.
The First-Holocaust Museum is supposed to be good.
187 there's probably a protest in front of the White House you could go to.
184: yes, both great. McCarthy as Spicer was just brilliant.
I haven't seen Sean Spicer on TV yet so I'm afraid it would be wasted on me.
I tried to get same day tickets to AfAm museum but of course they're all gone so 192 was my next thought.
190: The Non-Denominational Incident Showcase, please. Get with the program.
195: The Air and Space museum by Dulles is neat. (I assume you're going through Dulles). I miss DC.
DCA. I am morally opposed to IAD. Maybe I'll go stalk my favorite DC bloggers.
During the period of the Holocaust, about six million Germans died because of the war, but there's no monument to their dead in Washington, D.C.
I bought a case of Budweiser because counter-boycott and I may as well save money in case Trump kills the NIH. We'll see how it goes.
It doesn't taste as strongly of depression as Yuengling, but the malt note is weaker.
OT: I'm throwing a pizza and movie party for one of my fall semester classes tomorrow, and I'm trying to decide what to show. I usually try to go for a sci-fi comedy that I don't think most of the students have already seen--I've screened Young Frankenstein, the Star Trek movie with whales, and Galaxy Quest in years past.
This year, I'm really tempted to show Dr. Strangelove, but I'm worried that it's too dark for an event that's meant to be fun. As far as other choices go, I don't think Space Balls is funny enough, and I haven't seen (the poorly reviewed) Muppets in Space. What do you all think?
Evolution is surprisingly good considering nobody ever heard of it.
Julianne Moore, David Duchouvny, Orlando Jones, and that guy from Dude Where's My Car.
Does everybody but me know who Luke Bryan is?
Evolution was pretty good, though I don't if it's good enough for a class pizza party.
The old Republican establishment can't even get a coin into the air.
The announcer called their touchdown while the runner was still on the one yard line.
Super Bowl Li. Because China is winning everything.
I'm not sure they trying for a comedy.
It would be interesting to see if they decided the Fifth Element is great, or stupid (it's both).
Actually, how about Flash Gordon? That's another movie where the reaction could go either way.
Snowpiercer is actually very funny when it isn't horrifying.
I don't know why but somehow that feels appropriate.
215: I'm assuming lighthearted SF qualifies, given ST4.
Let me be the first to suggest "Tremors".
Anything with Denise Richards in a shower.
[I know you don't mean it in a bad way, but had to note ...]
One thing I've been struck by over the past two weeks is that our laundry list of horrors are mostly abstractions for the average joe.
Well, "for the average white guy joe", not so much. In Ark. the women are probably freaking out. Everywhere hispanics (at least the undocumented and the can't-pass-for-white) are freaking out. If I hadn't already remembered Niemoller ("first they came for the .. and I said nothing"), Bannon's explicitly invoking "South Asian and Asian" tech folks in Sili Valley would have had me checking my passport twice. And the list goes on and on. [And of course, there are those who figure "oh, it doesn't include me, only -those- dusky-hued hordes over there".]
I claim it's not about being super-uninformed. It's about lacking empathy for people who don't look like you. These uninformed joes know that their champion is kickin' the Muslims, that he's gonna kick all the immigrants, and teh ghey, etc, etc, etc, and that is why they love him. It's inability to empathize. By contrast, I recall reading once about some soldiers who rotated to Iraq and then back. And they were being interviewed, and talked about how from their point-of-view, the Iraqis were just doing what they (the soldiers) would do, if somebody invaded the US -- basically, "Red Dawn" in Iraq (they used that specific metaphor to explain it). They were remarkably empathetic, for young guys who'd just spent a tour killing and being killed by Iraqis.
("Why can't the President just kick the bad guys out? He's the freakin' president! Just order it!" The reasons why not end up sounding procedural and arcane, often times, to an uninformed ear.)
You're right, that it -seems- really procedural and arcane. But then, we all learned why it was important in high school, right? Mad King George, the Rule of Law, etc, right? And when it happens to one of theirs (e.g. a cop beats the living daylights out of a "white kid from a good family"), why, the shit hits the fan. Really hits the fan. That they see nothing wrong with with (e.g.) the murder of Philando Castile, tells us everything we need to know about them.
Watching the Falcons' win expectancy is like watching Hillary's.
Have you tried Budweiser while watching?
I went to Costco during the game. (Good idea, btw; it was practically deserted.) They had 36-packs of Budweiser cans, and I considered getting one in Moby's honor, but I ended up going with Alaskan Amber instead.
Actually, I quite enjoy football, and enjoin the civilized world outside of New England to suck it.
I married into a New England family, so I have accepted that rooting for the Patriots is my fate, and I was genuinely glad they won.
My son still had the decency to pick Atlanta, though. I respect that.
My mom didn't watch the game but she hates Tom Brady because she considers him a cheater, so she's furious the Patriots won. She was just ranting about it to me on the phone.
Patriots backing is the last refuge of scoundrels.
Howie Long is older than Bill Belichick.
You have to look at the tens' place, too.
I moved from Oakland to Boston literally 14 hours before the Snow Bowl/Tuck Rule Game. Although, to be honest, I wasn't a Raiders fan because they were in LA when I was growing up. So, I just segued from Joe Montana and Steve Young right to Brady/Belichick. It's disgusting and I deserve punishment.
203. Go with Strangelove. It is dark, but it's a. classic (it will look as though it's from another age, because it is); b. brilliant- acting, direction, script, everything; c. screamingly funny.
243: agreed. Also don't tell them anything about it, and wait and see how long it takes them to realise it's a comedy.
242.last- Based on the several T-Mobile commercials, you should sign up for Verizon.
I'm kind of glad they won, because I wasn't looking forward to dealing with upset people at work.
I bet Tom Brady doesn't need to go back to his off-season job that soon after the season ends for him.
foolishmortal is a monster who should be shunned.
246: Now that they're all calm, it's the best time to season their drink. With poison.
I predict one of the questions will be, "How did they get Michael Flynn to play himself so well? I didn't even know he acted."
Ok, I'm down to Dr. Strangelove or Wall-E (yes, I know, but I need some comfort these days, too). I might just let them pick.
Thanks to Nombre temporal for the story -- very dramatic.
251: Yes, I really thought NT's story was well told too.
Aw, thanks, guys! I'm glad you enjoyed it. I figured we needed a little respite from the parade of horribles.
To make it even better, I pictured you performing the ceremony in the voice of the guy who did the wedding in "The Princess Bride."