Surely it's no employment rather than no sports? (I don't do sports, maybe I'm underestimating them.)
Yeah. I was thinking that it has more to do with people having the time available. I sorta thought that for that horrible primary where Republicans closed a lot of polls and everyone was all "it will kill people to wait to vote" and then they were surprised at the determination, but I could imagine people thinking "Five hour wait?!?! Eh. I got time."
Yeah, seconding lourdes, I think it's mass unemployment possibly combined with the lockdown.
The unrest
That's the word I'd been using to describe it, but it occurred to me tonight that we may have a moderately sized intifada.
And college would have already finished the semester? But college kids home and not being able to get jobs probably adds some to it as well.
I FIND THE THESIS UNCONVINCING.
Our summer sportsball team is deeply committed to sucking. If the Steelers don't go in the fall, there probably will be trouble here.
I ALREADY PUT AWAY MY CHILDISH THINGS
I was all set to get into Korean baseball, but don't have any way to actually watch games. They don't stream them but they play them on something called ESPN, which I guess is some kind of cable TV thing? Who the fuck even knows.
Just tell me which team is the worst so I can recreate the experience of following the Pirates.
Technically, the Orioles are tied for first in their division.
Yeah. I was thinking that it has more to do with people having the time available.
And a lessening of the non-Covid risks/consequences of participating
Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be unemployed for more than a mere fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.
It's the summer of discontent because all of a sudden the Trump chicken bone spurs have come home to roost.
Also because the amazing power of videos to record police brutality - check out the Buffalo PD shoving an old man to the ground, and then dozens of them walking past as he lays motionless on the ground, blood pouring out of his ear and puddling on the concrete.
If you haven't seen it already you soon will. It is going viral as I type.
Since no one cares about this thread anyway, a question: how the fuck does James Bennet keep his job?
I assume it's because he's doing more or less what his bosses want him to do.
17 We'll see what happens. Been seeing things about how the NYT has had record numbers of cancellations because of that fascistic op-ed.
I hope that fucker loses his job.
It's just amazing to me that he said he hadn't read it before publishing it. To not read it, to subsequently earnestly defend publishing it, and then to admit not reading it without simultaneously resigning...these all seem like Lizard People decisions.
To not read it...
Do you believe that because I'm not sure if I do. I mean, maybe...just a part of the wholesale death of competence we're living through.
I assume he read it as closely as he reads everything. So I think he half-assedly skims everything without processing. Then now, his rationalization to himself is something like, "Well, I didn't process it and critically think about how it sounded."
The "I was only giving orders" defense has proven to be pretty resilient.
It's not like the editorial was from some random think-tank asshole. They picked Cotton to get a certain type of editorial.
part of the wholesale death of competence we're living through.
A million times fucking this. This.
I am weirdly ambivalent about all of the Tom Cotton stuff, and oddly sympathetic to Bennet. If Bennet had actually read the op-ed, he would have found a pretty mainstream set of Republican views, and maybe some factual errors that are not at all out of the ordinary for an NYT opinion piece.
Fuck Bennet, of course. The sonofabitch badly needs firing. But my genuine ambivalence stems from the fact that, yeah, Tom Cotton is an elected senator with a national profile expressing important views on matters of significance. By any ordinary standard, this guy's opinions are news.
I thought Michelle Goldberg did the best job of reconciling various values and judgments involved. The whole piece is very good, and here is how she concludes:
It's important to understand what the people around the president are thinking. But if they're honest about what they're thinking, it's usually too disgusting to engage with. This creates a crisis for traditional understandings of how the so-called marketplace of ideas functions. It's a subsidiary of the crisis that has the country on fire.
By any ordinary standard, this guy's opinions are news.
Then let him give a speech or put out a press release and the NYT can cover it. In the news. No need to give a clarion call to fascism from a powerful senator the imprimatur of the NYT's op-ed pages.
Several other Senators (Schatz) or staffers have said they've tried to get opinion pieces in the Times relevant to policies being debated at the time and are routinely rejected. One said if you can get a single piece in during a 2 year Congressional session that's considered a success. So no, not all Senators' opinion pieces are accepted by the Times.
My uncharitable interpretation is they knew it was inflammatory bullshit and did it for the clicks. Pieces from non-fascist Senators that are intended to actually educate readers on important issues aren't nearly as profitable.
31: The guy has the imprimatur of the United States Senate. The Times really isn't adding anything to his stature. In a similar vein, the question is not whether the NYT should cover Trump's pronouncements, it's how the media should do so.
32: I did not mean to imply that the NYT would publish anything from any senator. They don't publish every senator's fascist ravings either. This piece seemed topical and representative of an important strain of American thought.
The blowback that the NYT is getting is all good, and I'm not sure I've seen any that's even unfair (including 31 and 32 here). But I wouldn't care if the NYT were unfairly maligned, either. The Left could learn from the Right on this. The canceled subscriptions are great.
This sort of fuck-up is neither a function of modern fascism nor the Internet age. This has been standard operating procedure for publications like the NYT as long as James Bennet has been alive -- except in the past this would have been written by a staff douchebag like William Safire, or a syndicated columnist like James Kilpatrick. The rules may finally be changing, thank God, and poor ol' Bennet and the Times may need to change with the times.
Ye-es. Now we just need the earth to swallow him up.
He probably wanted the the bonus to unemployment before the stimulus ends.
34 Excellent. Now Weiss and the bedbug have got to go.