OT: More broadcast journalism

Sat May 1 21:42:43 UTC 2010

Jon writes:

"The populist neo-faux-conservative idea is, the more laws the better, *as
long as they don't inhibit you personally*."

Reminds me of a remark by Bender, of Superama fame:

"This is the *worst* kind of discrimination! The kind against *me*!"

"I heard *that*!", to coin a phrase. In my unaware (note! not
*unhip*!) youth, I used to wonder why Jews were always whining about a
triviality like anti-Semitism, when a *real* problem, the spectre of
segregation, stalked the land. Fortunately, Jews didn't reciprocate
that it's-not-*my*-problem! attitude - e.g. the NAACP Legal Defense
Fund was essentially a Jewish organization and may still be. (Things
are so much better than they used to be that I don't keep up with that
kind of stuff, anymore.) And I've long since come to understand that
anti-Semitism is for-real *no* kind of "triviality."

[They've just finished singing of the Anthem in honor of the Kentucky
Derby. It really should really be made against the law for a white
person to sing with imiation-black melisma, unless (s)he's in
blackface. As John Redcorn once said, "This ritual is very important
to my people! *Don't* half-ass it!" To paraphrase the reply by The
Beach Boys to a reporter's request that they quantify the influence of
Negro musical styles on theirs: You're white. Why don't you sing
white? (The Beach Boys actually said, "We're white and we *sing*
white!" This was right after "Surfin', U.S.A.," merely Chuck Berry's
"Sweet Little Sixteen" with a different lyric, had gone national.]

-Wilson

Well, "no good deed goes unpunished," to coin a proverb.

On Sat, May 1, 2010 at 10:53 AM, Jonathan Lighter
<wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: OT: More broadcast journalism
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> I think you mean Joe Arapaio.  This was Clarence Dupnik. He opposes the new
> law on the truly conservative basis that you shouldn't pass unnecessary
> laws.
>
> (The populist neo-faux-conservative idea is, the more laws the better as
> long as they don't inhibit you personally.)
>
> It's one thing to believe in angels, another to expect the Antichrist in
> your own lifetime. And it's something else again for an American to suspect
> that the President of the United States, duly elected by tens of millions of
> fellow citizens and vetted by an established national party is really him.
>
> The only hope is that the nuts can't be 100% sure he isn't, so their
> low-confidence belief level leads them to say "maybe."
>
> But 24% is a hell of a lot of Republicans to say even "maybe."
>
> I'm more concerned by the 25% of *all adults* reported to believe Obama is
> "a domestic enemy" as spoken of in the Constitution (not that they have much
> of a grap of that), and the 29% who believe he's getting ready to turn the
> U.S. over to a shadowy "one-world government," and the 23% who expect him to
> make his move for dictatorship under cover of a national crisis (possibly
> engineered, one imagines, by himself).
>
> Proportionally these seem to be extraordinary numbers. I don't know, though,
> whether similar polls were taken during previous administrations.  Possibly
> not: the quetions would have seemed too weird.
>
> I do know that a Gullup survey in September, 1945, found that 20% of
> American adults would not accept the Japanese surrender and demanded
> continued atom bombing until there were no Japanese.
>
> Jon
>
>
> On Sat, May 1, 2010 at 10:18 AM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:
>
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>> -----------------------
>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
>> Subject:      Re: OT:  More broadcast journalism
>>
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> At 5/1/2010 09:53 AM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>> >I agree, but it might be noteworthy if Arizona achieved that rate suddenly
>> >in just the past couple of years.
>> >
>> >The bigger point, though, is that Dobbs et al. provide no evidence (never
>> >mind proof) that the increase is mostly due to illegal aliens.
>> >
>> >Maybe it is, but if so there should be specific evidence.
>> >
>> >This gives me the chance to bring the following possibly related
>> >nonlinguistic story to your attention.  WARNING: Do not read if you are
>> >offended by non-linguistic posts:
>> >
>> >http://www.livescience.com/culture/obama-anti-christ-100325.html
>>
>> I can believe that a quarter of Republicans believe that Obama is the
>> Antichrist.  The majority (a large majority?) of Americans believe
>> that angels exist (presumably to save them from Obama, after personal
>> appeal for the intervention of Providence).
>>
>>
>> >Non-linguistic PS: According to at least one Arizona sheriff interviewed
>> on
>> >CNN, the new law effectively grants him *no* power that he doesn't already
>> >have under federal law. None. The biggest difference is that now
>> Immigration
>> >authorities will not be called on to file Federal charges. And officers
>> can
>> >be sued for lack of enforcement.
>> >
>> >He explained that the current Federal law is under-enforced in
>> >Arizona because there are not enough jail cells to hold the suspects.
>>
>> Is this the same sheriff who has been in the news previously for his
>> "initiative" against illegal-alien-looking persons?
>>
>> Joel
>>
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>>
>
>
>
> --
> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
>
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>

--
-Wilson
–––
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"––a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
–Mark Twain

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