Storify by Shrill Cosby on the Ferguson shooting.
The war photo no one would publish:
Yet the AP’s reaction was repeated at TIME and LIFE. Both magazines briefly considered the photo, unofficially referred to as “Crispy,” for publication. The photo departments even drew up layout plans. TIME, which had sent Jarecke to the Gulf in the first place, planned for the image to accompany a story about the Highway of Death.
“We fought like crazy to get our editors to let us publish that picture,” former photo director Michele Stephenson tells me. As she recalls, Henry Muller, the managing editor, told her, “TIME is a family magazine.” And the image was, when it came down to it, just too disturbing for the outlet to publish. It was, to her recollection, the only instance during the Gulf War where the photo department fought but failed to get an image into print.
Applications for our job posting are closing at end-of-business today (CALIFORNIA TIME.)
Malcolm Gladwell is a monster.
LOOK WHAT DARTH MADE FOR ME! (I had just tweeted: “A light-hearted YA comedy in which a young Jewish child uses a time machine she builds herself to convince Roald Dahl that Jews are great.”)
*
I love these little comedy lead-ins to NBC’s Premier League coverage, and that is THE TRUTH. Part One, Part Two.
I watched a 215 minute documentary about The Eagles yesterday, AMA (or just look at the billion tweets I made during that time period)
“Was it great? Do you love The Eagles? Do you have really, really expensive tickets to see them at Salt Lake City’s Energy Solutions Arena on your birthday, which is Sept. 2nd?”
yes
Roxane is doing Outlander recaps for Vulture.
You can watch a lot of the super-old Sesame Street episodes on Netflix, and Bob is frequently rocking this denim-tucked-into-denim situation that I’m now obsessed with, and they are ALWAYS pitted out, bc we have better antiperspirants now:
I saw so many people on Twitter saying “I don’t want to have/raise black children in this country.” That is a reproductive justice issue.
— Imani ABL (@AngryBlackLady) August 10, 2014
Malcolm Gladwell, shut up. Shut up forever. (Also, Barrie is not in “northern Ontario,” you moron, unless you define “northern Ontario” as “anywhere north of Toronto” which I get the sense you do.) You sound awful.
(Also, hello, Toast! I’m back! I had a lovely week where I barely even touched a computer and now I’m unfortunately back to my horrible job, but I missed all the Toast last week and now I have a whole week to read at my leisure! Hooray! And I bought a toaster so I can make actual edible toast as well!)
ALSO, while I’m bitching, Barrie is not “a small town,” according to Wikipedia the area has almost 200,000 people. If you think that is a small town I should be allowed to beat you with shoes.
Well what do you expect from Trinity amirite?
(Cue my rant on U of T and it’s ridiculous wannabe Oxbridge college system)
Malcolm Gladwell, shut up. Shut up forever.
Amen, and amen.
I also had a week where I barely touched a computer and now I’m back at my horrible job as well. But my boss is out this week, so there will be lots of Toast reading.
I hate Malcolm Gladwell mainly because now every MBA-sporting do-nothing at work feels the need to talk about how it takes 10,000 hours to be an expert. Inevitably followed by them offering up their opinion on shit they know nothing about.
So, transitive hate for Gladwell.
Shit, now that I’ve read the article, I also hate him as a person, deeply and forever.
I read that article in public and a rage quietly built and roiled within me. I wanted to shoot lasers capable of bending the laws of time from my eyes through the phone – without damaging the poor phone, of course (don’t shoot the messenger, etc.) – and incinerate Mr. Gladwell Past (who was a douchenozzle), Mr. Gladwell Present (who doesn’t seem to yet fully grasp the extent of his douchenozzlery), and Mr. Gladwell Future (who will probably continue regaling us with tales of his incomparable douchenozzlings).
Nicole, we have the same birthday. I wish I were going to see The Eagles as well, possibly with you (and all the Toasties).
How could Malcolm Gladwell do something stupid? I am SHOCKED.
I love how Gladwell 1. doesn’t even really sound remorseful and 2. thinks fit to include what appear to be everyone’s real names and nicknames, far past the time when they’d presumably want to be left alone.
Seriously. Could he make identifying these people any easier? Not just the protagonists, but also the random targets. I guess you definitely want to know about the mean nicknames people gave you behind your back. Nobody ever was offended by that kind of thing.
The contempt for all the people in that story is APPALLING. All the poor people in college his friend bullied, pointing out that his friend is a bully, the meanness about the wife, the way he talks about the guests at the wedding. Who on earth is this meant for or about?
I went to a wedding last year where all the toasts were humiliating to the bride and groom, and when we got in the car my boyfriend and I turned to each other and were like, “oh my god, did everyone hate them? Her sister brought up her previous boyfriends in that toast, everyone made a point of how the bride had a spreadsheet because you know, she’s just so aggressive with her scheduling (you know, for a wedding, a complicated event that spreadsheets are entirely reasonable for). His friends told a horrible story about him being drunk and a jerk that had NO relation whatsoever to the couple”…it was atrocious. Weddings really bring out people’s issues.
I was a wedding recently where the MC brought up the groom’s DUI. It was… awkward.
I feel like nobody Gladwell didn’t eat lunch with regularly could stand to be around that guy in college. “He came up with the funniest nicknames for everyone!!!” -A Man who has been an adult for literal decades.
“Check out this bullying song we chortled over as our Jester Pal verbally attacked the fat kid! Isn’t that AWESOME?”
Stop being in love with yourself and your college life, grown-ass man. It’s unseemly.
He used Simon and Garfunkel for evil!
“I thought it would be really funny to pay tribute to this hurtful thing he used to do when he was 19, and he, aged probably about 30, didn’t think it was funny at all! LOL.”
God, if I applied this logic to friend’s weddings…
OK, I’ve only been to the wedding of only one friend I knew when we were 18: back then he built trebuchets. I think incorporating a trebuchet into the wedding toast would be MORE APPROPRIATE.
Incorporating a trebuchet (whether literal or merely referenced) would be AMAZING.
Well, so much about Malcolm that hadn’t hit the mainstream daylight. http://shameproject.com/profile/malcolm-gladwell-…
Im not upset with the song so much as I am at learning he’s shilling for the toppling of decent society. Helping support getting teens addicted to tobacco? No remorse over egregious acts is half of Martha Stout’s diagnostic tool for discovering a Sociopath (the other being actively campaigning for people’s sympathy. Source “The Sociopath Next Door.”)
‘Hey let me tell you about this hilarious time when we bullied the shit out of this guy!’ ‘Mmmm hmm, that’s real interesting pal.’ ‘Oh my god, this bitch has no sense of humour.’
Also Jess Z on misandry: https://medium.com/the-archipelago/men-get-on-boa…
Posted this to Facebook and then had to spell out whyyyy it’s not the same as “ironic misogyny” to this kid I used to mentor who is now a grown-up male. Where did I go wrong oy.
This is now my “statement of purpose” for my personal brand of feminism. Thank you, I would have hated to miss it.
Oh man, the exact same dude comment just showed up on my FB posting of it. It’s both awesome and rendering me with indecision on whether to respond. (Unlike you, I barely know this dude, so responding would really only be a form of bloodsport.)
I chose bloodsport. I’ll report back on the ultimate outcome.
I’m so relieved you made the right choice.
I am HERE FOR THIS, can’t wait to hear how it goes
Well, it definitely got bloody. And then down-in-the-dirt-y. After the last post hung unanswered for about an hour, I went ahead and deleted the whole thread, although I do feel vaguely bad about not screencapping it first. There were some real gems in there, including his claiming that I wouldn’t listen to his opinion due to his having a penis, and also the actual phrase “because ‘check your privilege’ yadda yadda yadda”. (I didn’t take that bait, because I mostly stuck to “actually, you have to read the article before I’ll talk to you about it” and him taking offense that I assumed he hadn’t. Because he hadn’t, of course.)
I’m not familiar enough with the MRA lines of talking points to be sure, but I’m thinking there was a bit of overlap. Sadly, I didn’t succeed in my ultimate goal: getting him to be the first one to the “defriend” button. I haven’t hit the button myself yet… maybe if I just flood my feed with anti-MRA screeds? (No, I’ll just hit the “defriend” over lunch, because the mud-wallowing is really only fun for a hot second, but it was nice to not soften my blows for once.)
(Comment broken in two due to character length, I think?)
I am so unbelievably thrilled that my bestie is now well-known enough as an internet misandrist to be casually referred to as “Jess Z.” NEXT STOP, WORLD DOMINATION
“We’ve been listening to rape jokes and wife-beating jokes and smiling and gritting our teeth since forever.” BINGO
Malcolm Sadwell, more like.
Hi. I love you.
“It’s like Trillville’s “Some Cut,” 1945 style, in a Scottish inn, without rap lyrics.”
ROXANE
you have slain me dead
Also: There’s a skirmish and she tries to get away but Jamie returns, looking sexier than ever because he is covered in blood like a real man.
GENIUS LOVE BLISS AAHHHH!
/unfiltered reaction
There’s some griping in the comments that she’s ‘hate-recapping’ the series but I totally felt the love.
I love it. It’s a gleeful revel and I’m bringing popcorn for every recap.
I can’t not drop this link any time anyone mentions classic Sesame Street: Gimme Five, in which Bob’s outfit is even better than a Texas tuxedo.
That was beauitful and amazing and thank you for posting.
In Texas we call it a Canadian tuxedo.
Okay, how did I not know what a smooth dancer Gordon is? He’s so much better than the rest of them!
Malcolm Gladwell is a narcissist. That story is pathological. WHAT is he thinking, even now telling that story?
Does he want ALL of his friends to remember why they hated him, and renew their dislike?
Agree. I don’t know, maybe he thinks that the millions of assholes on the internet will think it’s funny, and he can feel better about himself? Also IT IS SO HORRIBLE OF A WOMAN TO HAVE A PHD BEFORE HER HUSBAND geez, lady, you need to shelve your ambition.
I have never read anything by him until this and I am just… Wow. It is really poorly written, for starters, and so lacking in any self-awareness. He’s all, “Oh this was the most painful moment of MY life.” How do you think they felt, dick??
I think “lacking in any self-awareness” is exactly the problem here. Also, can he be any more of a sexist, misogynistic jerk about that poor bride? I admire her restraint .
It totally reminded me of my (very geeky and smart) dad and his (very geeky and smart) friends. (They have a weekly science discussion group.) They are also socially incompetent and often huge assholes. Narcissism.
The poor writing was so bad that I started to suspect the story was originally told off-the-cuff, verbally. And then he had someone write out the transcript and then never bothered to actually read it through. So many sentences constructed with exactly the same verbal tic.
It was — it looks like the book it’s excerpted from is just a collection of stories told on The Moth, so the “oral storytelling” style in the transcriptions is intentional.
Okay, then it makes more sense. It also makes me wonder (but not hard enough to go looking for it) whether he comes off as even slightly less jerk-y in the audio form.
Yep – it was part of the Moth Storytelling Special in that edition of the Guardian. http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2014/aug/09/mo…
I feel like he was trying to go for some kind of David Sedaris esque ‘ha ha look at what an asshole I am’ but is too narcissistic/not funny enough to actually joke about himself?
It was initially a Moth story and I think it came off better in that format– I remember hearing it on the radio and thinking it was harmless.
I’m actually worried for Malcolm Gladwell’s health based on that photo, in which he looks like he’s mainlining heroin on a daily basis.
For a second I read that as “marinating in heroin,” which could also be accurate.
I have lived 25 years on this earth not knowing Roald Dahl was an anti-semite and wow @ his wikipedia article. What the hell. 🙁
Also:
“Dahl was offered the Order of the British Empire (OBE), but turned it down, purportedly because he wanted a knighthood so that his wife would be Lady Dahl.”
Yeah my husband is resolute against allowing our kids to read Dahl when they’re old enough, and I’m very conflicted because the BFG and Matilda made my childhood magical.
If we aren’t going to let our kids read books by people who turned out to be huge jerks that is going to really cut down the available literature.
True, but there are levels. And “Hitler had some pretty good ideas about the Jews” is up there.
Good point, that’s just unacceptable behavior as a human.
But as a parent, discussing how someone can both a huge evil asshole and also an artist is a valuable teachable moment. My kids loved reading Dahl, but when they were old enough to understand joined me in despising the way he treated his family and his petty evil hatreds. We also discussed other authors’ sexism and racism – Kipling comes to mind, as do many others. We talked about how George Lucas has no clue about women, AT ALL. How Alcott portrayed the immigrants in Little Women. There are tons of examples.
Also, he’s dead. Wagner is dead. Evelyn Waugh is dead. Tolkien is dead. I don’t give aid and comfort to people I think are scum and great art excuses nothing, and I do care about not contributing to tiny royalty payments for bigots. But Dahl is dead. A sense of obligation to shun his books out of decency serves nothing except a strange theory of contamination that I find extraordinarily alarming. And it takes its premises for granted. Why is it bad to read a book by a bad person?
I don’t want to compel anybody to read anything and everybody raises their children as they think best. But as a member of a couple of oppressed groups, I can say what serves me best, what made my childhood better and more, if I can say it, empowered, and that was: reading everything, knowing everything, owning everything. All these awful dead people did their best to shut my kind out of culture, out of history, out of everything that’s not for me. The last thing I needed was an attack from another front, telling me I can’t have some art because its creator hated me. No, it’s all for me. Everything is mine.
I don’t know why I get so exercised about this, it shows such a lack of faith in modern little girls — they, too, can demand that all books are for them, that all terrible knowledge is theirs, no matter what anybody tries to shield them from. they had better. I just have an apocalyptic fear of a generation of children coming up who actually respond to being told not to read things by not reading them. but that’s probably just old-person alarmism.
+10,000
I wouldn’t worry about children not reading books that are forbidden to them. In fact I bet it’s still the most effective way of getting children to read them. I remember when I was about 14 and tried to take Lolita out from my school library and was prevented by a well-meaning librarian. I promptly went out and bought it, read it, loved it.
I wouldn’t worry about them missing out because those books will be even better if they are illicit and forbidden (although, I mean, using your library card on the sly is not the greatest childhood rebellion but a kid has to take what they can get.) All of my most-loved authors would have hated me for one thing or another (even those who were not bigoted in other ways would have noticed that I was a girl) and I think it would have been really scarringly horrible not to have been allowed to not know that until I was of an age to start reading biographies on my own. Roald Dahl is a friend to children inside his children’s books — that’s real, just as much as the grotesque misogyny in some of his adult short stories is real and his bigotry in his regular life was real.
I do think that although it might be advisable to talk to kids about troubling aspects of their reading, one of the greatest gifts of childhood and one that almost everybody loses sooner or later is the ability to enter wholly and generously into sympathy with a book without regard to what things the author may have said or done outside that book, or even with much awareness that the author is a human person who existed at a fixed point in time and has since died. It is a good thing to be able to do for as long as it comes naturally. There is a line — like, I wouldn’t let a kid read The Education of Little Tree without a long boring angry lecture first — but I also wouldn’t let a kid ask me for permission to read a book without a longer, angrier lecture.
Only a handful of comments and I already feel warm and cradled in the Toast’s Gladwell-hate. My people.
I sent a submission to Nicole and Mallory, and am not panicking a little. It kind of freaks me out. :/
Protip: the old school Sesame Street episodes on Netflix are their “season 2” set – to watch the Very First Episode of Sesame Street ever (orange Oscar! Big Bird’s weird pointy head! Not Roscoe Orman Gordon!), as well as the “season 1” episodes – those are on Amazon Instant!
I had a pretty nasty illness earlier this year and marathonned the crap out of them because they are just so genuine and sweet and fun. Also, Buffy Sainte-Marie was one of the human characters on the show for a while and she is wonderful and perfect.
I am slowly reading the book about Jim Henson’s business practices, “Make Art Make Money”–the auther had a lovely essay on the topic over at The Hairpin months ago which whetted my curiousity. The jury is still out on whether the book is a good read, but what is very enjoyable is the number of descriptions of Sesame Street / Muppet skits and of Henson painstakingly dying individual turkey feathers brilliant yellow. Genuine and sweet sounds about right. The shows seem to age pretty well since good-natured humor doesn’t usually rely on making people feel bad (and any era’s “appropriate” butts of jokes go out of style real fast).
One of the things about the new Disney-led Muppet movies is that I feel like they lose a lot of that heart. There’s nothing about the old Muppet movies or even the Muppet Show that is malicious or spiteful, and you’re definitely right about the humor being good-natured.
When the Muppets started getting overshadowed by the human characters, I just wasn’t as into it anymore.
Your reference to Buffy Sainte-Marie, who I’d only known in the context of The Indigo Girls’ cover of her “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee,” led me down a Wiki rabbit-hole. What a fascinating life she’s had!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffy_Sainte-Marie
ALSO, ITT: Hotel California is the best song ever written y/y
I like Hotel California quite a bit, but one time I was forced to listen to the world’s worst jazz trio play a cover of it in this “trendy” bar in my town and it was just horribly ear-bleedingly soul-achingly awful, just so egregiously bad, that my husband and I just stared at each other and ate fried pickles and tried to forget. And as much as I want to enjoy it now, I just can’t, I get flashbacks.
lol get outta here girl it’s not even a third as good as TAKE IT EASY
psssssssh I’ll just keep going down this dark desert highway ok, the cool wind in my hair is quite refreshing
THE LAST RESORT FTW
oh god oh god i’m even sort of serious
My heart is absolutely broken by Ferguson. I just saw Oregon Shakespeare Festival / Seattle Rep’s “The Great Society” by Robert Schenkkan (A follow up to All The Way that just won a Tony for writing) And I just feel like nothing has changed. Not that I was alive in 1965. But here we are in desperate need of an increase in public services while dumping our money into wars that we probably should not be involved in at all. And humans are being shot. And here I am an upper middle class white graduate student from Portland Oregon who is studying the 30 million year old mud at the bottom of the ocean.
To be more clear: I feel like I should be able to do something to help. And that desire highlights the fact that my life choices do not lend themselves to making a difference on the human level in the long run. I feel like my comment above ended up centered on me and that was not my intention. I’m not actually convinced that even if I was a Social Worker or a political activist that I would be the right kind of help.
I think the only thing we (non-black people, as I’m an asian WoC) can do is to not think of black people as criminals. Let’s stop perpetuating and supporting the systems that do that as well. Let’s call out our non-black friends and family whenever they say something fucked up. The studies and research that white people have higher drug usage rates or participation in crime rates but get convicted less is out. The data is there, now we need to deprogram our minds. That’s the biggest thing.
When talking about the fucked up criminal justice system: Let’s use our privilege and political clout to change things, or support those who can.
The scary thing is that research last week suggested that white people are okay with intensifying the criminal justice system if they know that black people are the ones who are incarcerated: http://colorlines.com/archives/2014/08/how_not_to…
I actually feel that sentiment that Imani is referring to a lot because my husband is black and I am 95% sure that any kids we might have would be ID’d as black but feel like I have very little recourse w/r/t places to live. The only other option is change.
OMG ROXANE OUTLANDER RECAPS YAAAASSSSSS
(I have never read the books but thoroughly enjoyed the pilot based primarily on how pretty it was to look at. Both the landscapes and that Jamie dude.)
OUT. LANDER. I have had some serious TV anhedonia going for a long time, and then I watched the first episode and was immediately desperate for more in that old-timey first-couple-seasons-of-True Blood/Downton Abbey-way. Want more. Now. Molly Lambert says about it that “It was so refreshing to watch a show that caters to women’s sexual fantasies, it made me realize how much I take it for granted that most shows will automatically cater to men’s” and I think that’s a large part of it.
“‘It was so refreshing to watch a show that caters to women’s sexual fantasies, it made me realize how much I take it for granted that most shows will automatically cater to men’s’ and I think that’s a large part of it.”
Seriously – I found myself kind of shocked at the going-down-on-her scene (nobody was even naked!), but the gratuitous female nudity on GOT doesn’t faze me at all. I’m really excited for the rest of the season.
I’m so excited to watch! And I don’t know if you are still watching True Blood (it is miraculously good again this season!) but one thing I have always loved about that show is how it, too, catered to women’s sexual fantasies. It’s frequently as gratuitous as Game of Thrones, but in a totally different way. It also strikes me that True Blood and Outlander are based on mixed-genre romance-y books written by women, which is the original source for catering to women’s fantasies in a wonderfully gratuitous way. More of these adaptations!
This also makes me realize that catering to the “typical” male or female fantasy is about so much more than just number of naked cis female bodies vs. number of naked cis male bodies. How the writers deal with the power dynamic, if there is an element of humor or a wink in there somewhere, if the bodies are just set pieces/window dressing versus the focus of the scene. Both can still have dominant males and submissive females, and lingering could-be-male-gaze-y camera shots— it’s more than that, too. Ugh, someone write this piece please, I don’t have time/ the right liberal arts degree to do it right now!
My brain is totally stress-fried so when I read “Outlander” I confuse it with “Outlier” and “Highlander” so I’m pretty sure it’s a romance novel about …. sexy data analysis? Hot Scots making scatter plots?
HOT SCOTS MAKING SCATTER PLOTS
Thanks for the spittake!
I was going to be getting a PhD before my Man. But I’ve realised now that if I do, it will be the first step towards the slippery slope of becoming a domineering bitch so I guess I’ll just go and have babies instead. Sigh.
It’s okay. You realized in time, and can stop yourself from taking this egregious & unredeemable step.
Put down the thesis draft & walk away from the library. (If you happen to walk past a market between the library & home, be sure to stop in to buy your Man’s favorite dinner items. Now that you’re freed of all this academic toil, you can spend your time lovingly catering to his needs.)
Thank you. I really appreciate the tip about the dinner too. Somehow a ribbon has spontaneously materialised in my hair so I think I’m on the right track.
Check your neck for pearls and your feet for sensible heels. If they appear, you have done well, my daughter.
I wore sensible heels all day Friday; the ball of my foot is basically all blister.
(It’s not, it’s a reasonable area of blister, but my nerves are not great on that part of my foot, and they report that it is ALL BLISTER.)
I just clicked on the war photo. I could barely look at it.
Pretend like this is the open thread for a sec—I listened to Under the Banner of Heaven on my looooooong-ass drive this weekend and I am bursting with opinions and I need an outlet!
I know I am behind on this. But maybe you haven’t read it yet either? Maybe you have been putting it off literally for years because reading about religious fundamentalism gives you anger hives?
Lo, I say unto you: If you enjoy true crime stories and feeling indignant (and I know you do because we are all Toastrons, and The Toast is the One True Religion), you will find this book pleasing.
And verily, ye has also read Under the Banner of Heaven, and lo, loves nothing more than discussing it.
[Is ye actually “you”? I don’t know. What do you need to discuss???? I am here for it!!!!]
I don’t even know, really, since I spent the whole drive saying No! What…? Seriously? No! Ugh. etc to no one in particular.
I’m not religious, so reading about people hurting others in the name of ANY religion irks me.
I think in this case, Krakauer even points out the part that I just can’t wrap my head around: We are talking about a religion that was founded and has managed to grow in the age of journalism, photography, court records and affidavits. So here there is all this evidence that the founders of the church were well-known to be crooks and con men of one stripe or another, and yet people like the brand of “salvation” they are selling so much that they can overlook the obvious hypocrisy of the various prophecies over the years. I especially can’t understand how any woman or person of color would find comfort in Mormon theology and practice.
I know that the LDS says the various FLDS sects do not share beliefs with them and shouldn’t be equated. And I don’t equate them exactly, but like any other belief system, fundamentalism and mainstream are just different lenses into a religious landscape—they’re still looking at the same landscape.
YES. I totally get what you’re saying – LDS and FLDS both come out of the same Joseph Smith, and the religion as a whole is only a few generations old (relatively speaking, compared to the millennium+ of others); FLDS and LDS are still very closely linked.
I am also flabbergasted at how LDS has been able to grow. I guess there is something to be said for the comfort of being with your family forever in heaven, for a religion that makes a lot of choices for you – from how to run your household (dude’s in charge!) to how to dress, etc – and also for a religion that’s made it a HUGE point to convert. I don’t get it, personally.
I live in the west and have known a number of Mormons over the years. Here are these nice, polite, basically normal-seeming teenage boys (in a wholesome, small-town kind of way) who get out of high school, go to training and a mission, and come back as empty husks.
They turn away from their youthful ideals and go toward the twin goals of Mormonism: financial gain and procreation. I have watched it happen again and again.
Obviously, financial gain and procreation are American ideals as much as they are Mormon ideals. But I feel like Mormonism, at least as I understand it, has no qualms about making personal wealth a beatitude.
Well, more Mormons with money = more tithing = more rich dudes at the top getting richer? The American way!
I have, thus far in my life, had the pleasure of never encountering Malcolm Gladwell. After reading that article, I feel like a general blackout policy on anything he has ever written would be a good plan going forward. WHAT. A. DOUCHE.
Also, his dig at Leigh for “not having a sense of humour” seems to amount to “she doesn’t enjoy giving people cruel nicknames like my friends and I did.” Team Leigh, sorry not sorry.
I want to hear from Leigh. Leigh sounds impressive. I don’t know if I’d like her, but I’ll bet she has interesting things to say.
Also maybe she has dissertation tips.
I got the sense that it was more “doesn’t appreciate being the target of our oh-so-witty bon mots, myself.
I was living in the UK during the first half of 1991 / the Gulf War. I don’t recall specifically the images I saw (just the shudders of horror that they gave me), but my memory is of a lot of very visceral photos that made the war a lot more personal than the aerial views I saw when I went home for spring break.
But I never realized how deliberately sanitized the photos published in the US were.
Somehow I am not surprised that Gladwell went to Trinity, which (even by U of T standards) is stuffy and pretty ignorant.
Ouuuuuch.
Yeah, it’s stuffy, but I feel like “ignorant” is a bit… unfair. I would have accepted entitled.
“Wait, they can’t write a whole article about a horrifying photo and then not include the photo, can they? Maybe it’s posted further dow–AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH”
Okay, so Nancy Reagan + actual political power= David Tredinnick. It’s good to know the US isn’t alone in electing crazy folk to public office.
1970’s rock bands still trying to be cool in 2014 is my favorite thing in the world. Like you go little old dudes with your paunches. I have the soft softest soft spot for it. Soft enough to spend a comical amount of money on tickets to see Fleetwood Mac for the bajillionth time. I think when I die my epitaph will be “For someone born in the 80s, she spent a lot of money on Fleetwood Mac. A lot of money, guys. A lot.”
I have not watched The Eagles documentary, but now I will. FYI Life in the Fast Lane > Take it Easy > Desperado > every other Eagles song > Hotel California.
Did you see Fleetwood Mac on their current tour? How were they? I am considering spending comical amounts of money on tickets.
I have tickets to see them in December! It was SO MUCH MONEY. I rationalized that this may be the last time they all tour together. (Also I’m assuming the increase in ticket price is to fund Christine McVie’s wine consumption, and I’m okay with that.)
I heartily disagree with your classification of Eagles songs, but I too have shelled out an exorbitant amount of money for Fleetwood Mac tickets. I’m sad that I was unable to get tickets now that Christine McVie is back and touring with them!
Thank you for listening to my rambles and taking the time to amplify my voice.
<3 u, shrill
Thank YOU for your really thoughtful observations. And also for Doing Twitter Right!
Your tweets are so powerful. Thank you for sharing them.
W O W Malcolm Gladwell is trash.
I read the Malcolm Gladwell thing in the Guardian just today and was completely horrified by it. WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?
I like the way you sorted these into P and NP, and these links all seem compelling.
http://shameproject.com/profile/malcolm-gladwell-…
Did you see this? It's changed my mind on him. I used to like him. This much press, spread over time, paints a deliberate picture, I think.