Oh, no, Jan Hooks has died! I am sure we will know more when you wake up and read this, but I’m very surprised and sad.
If you enjoyed Alexis Coe interviewing Karen Abbott, you’ll love Karen Abbott interviewing Alexis Coe:
You have a detailed chapter on the use of media, and local papers’ relationship to men who played major roles in the Mitchell-Ward case. Conflict of interest?
The middle to upper class white men in Memphis stuck together! Alice’s attorneys and judge had all worked at or invested in the local newspapers. Articles and letters to the editor were splashed across pages for half of 1892, and definitely influenced the jury. Some reporters were clearly pandering, which seemed to accomplish several goals. When one paper praised the jury, whose “chivalry exceeds their sense of justice,” they considered it a compliment, but it was also a directive. Alice’s father was well liked and respected in Memphis, and the court could not possibly impugn the honor of a well-bred young lady by branding her a criminal.
Breakfasts around the world. Any Turkish readers want to confirm or deny that Turkish people are prone to eating fourteen different things in one meal that early on a weekend morning?
The elaborate Saturday morning spread in front of Doga includes honey and clotted cream, called kaymak, on toasted bread; green and black olives; fried eggs with a spicy sausage called sucuk; butter; hard-boiled eggs; thick grape syrup (pekmez) with tahini on top; an assortment of sheep-, goat- and cow-milk cheeses; quince and blackberry jams; pastries and bread; tomatoes, cucumbers, white radishes and other fresh vegetables; kahvaltilikbiber salcasi, a paste made of grilled red peppers; hazelnut-flavored halvah, the dense dessert; milk and orange juice. While certainly more elaborate than weekday fare, this Gursoy family meal is in keeping with the hodgepodge that is a typical Turkish breakfast.
Shonda WILL call you out.
“I don’t think people are actively protecting the [toxic culture] or holding on to it … or trying to keep [diverse workers] from the power structure that is technology,” Eustace said. “I don’t think that’s it.”
To which women in the audience said very loudly: “Yes it is!”
‘sup, Margaret Atwood! What do you do in your downtime?
Do you know the site called The Toast?
(nicole dies)
this is such a meta day but if you are in NYC on Saturday you should go to this!
Do not rape anyone:
The study suggests that sexual coercion isn’t particularly worrisome to many college students. If that’s a depressing conclusion, it isn’t necessarily a surprising one. Our cultural stereotypes about men, women, and sex lead directly to that view. If men are constantly, ravenously seeking sex, then it seems as if it’s up to women to protect themselves by staying sober and keeping male friends out of their dorm rooms. And, by the same token, if women are uncharacteristically pushing, or even forcing, men into sex, then it seems like the only acceptable response is gratitude.
Looking more carefully at infant mortality rates in the United States:
In other words, American babies are mostly fine while they’re in the hospital and during their first days at home—but over time, that changes.
Or rather, it changes for some of them. The effects of socioeconomic status on health have been well-documented, and infant mortality is no exception: Unsurprisingly, the states with the highest rates are also among the poorest. “If Alabama were a country, its rate of 8.7 infant deaths per 1,000 would place it slightly behind Lebanon in the world rankings,” Christopher Ingraham recentlynoted in The Washington Post, while “Mississippi, with its 9.6 deaths, would be somewhere between Botswana and Bahrain.”
When the researchers took socioeconomic status into account, they found no significant difference in mortality across the three countries among babies born to wealthy, well-educated women. Lower down the socioeconomic ladder, though, the differences became stark; children of poor minority women in the U.S. were much more likely to die within their first year than children born to similar mothers in other countries.
I…………………………… what? pic.twitter.com/uWxDAzICG4
— An Amazon Wishlist (@ShrillCosby) October 8, 2014
margaret atwood reads the toast
I wonder if she comments? I wonder which commenter she is, if she does.
It’s OK, Margaret Atwood, you can tell me.
Not only does a million people read the comments, one of them is Margaret Atwood.
I give up. GOODBYE CRUEL COMMENTING WORLD
(i’ve probably misspelled like every word in here because OH MY GOD)
i am so afraid
Gulp!
Right. There. With you.
Margaret Atwood is one of us…but WHICH ONE?
::looks around suspiciously::
I’m doing the Wayne and Garth supplication in my head right now.
Arent’ we all?
Aren’t we all Margaret Atwood, in a way?
Maybe YOU are Margaret Atwood and you posted this just to throw us off the trail.
We should all go to Margaret Atwood camp together. “She is more than a person. She is an idea. … and if she were there right now, her robotic arm would reach up and punch you in the face,” so says Margaret Atwood #36.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GrvanXJhBnA
OK, *now* I have comment performance anxiety.
It is I, Margerie Apwort, acclaimed author of The Halfwarden’s Tale!! I’ve hidden in your midst this whole time!
Called it.
Oh, The Halfwarden’s Tale was delightful! Especially the part about the breakfast toast with sprinkles.
That Turkish breakfast sounds like something Brain Jacques would dream up.
Or rich, yellowy cheeses the colour of the harvest moon, studded with hazelnuts…dang I’m hungry.
THE TURKISH BREAKFAST THING IS TRUE! I stayed in Istanbul with my friend’s family for 5 days, and breakfast was consistently overwhelming. I was like, I could start with a single bite of everything, and I would still be full before trying it all.
I was at an interviewing class with a Turkish-Dutch guy and we got on the topic of breakfast, it seemed like the weekend ones were a big deal and pretty elaborate! (He got annoyed with me when I asked if his daughters helped, because he thought I was implying that he made them work in the kitchen, but did convince me to try sucuk with eggs which is phenomenal.)
I can also confirm that hagelslag is a real thing and a perfectly normal breakfast item.
I was so pumped to see hagelslag on there! That’s my favorite word in Dutch, and such a great concept. Sprinkles all the time.
“a downpour of hail” How poetic can a sandwich topping be….aah…Dutchness 🙂
Yes I can also confirm this! Even the mediocre hostel I stayed at in Istanbul provided like 18 different things for breakfast, including tomatoes, cucumbers, olives, cheese, hardboiled eggs, and (my favorite) rose jam.
Yes, this is one hundred percent true. Also true in many Levantine Arab countries depending on the circumstances (I mean, if you’re on your way to a day of construction work you’re probably just gonna get some fool sandwiches on the street, but when I was in Syria during Ramadan our suhoor always involved like ten different things). Also true in Upper Egypt (i.e. southern Egypt, i.e. Nubia). I was staying with a friend’s family there and the breakfast her aunt made us was OVERWHELMING. SO MUCH FOOD AT LIKE 5 AM. I ALMOST DIED. IT WAS AWESOME.
I’ve only had hotel breakfasts in Turkey, but they were all AMAZING. Huge buffets of deliciousness.
I once got invited to a Turkish friend’s house for breakfast. His wife (of course) cooked us the most amazing feast. I mean, I assume this is a somewhat fancy ‘entertaining’ breakfast, it was sooo good. I’m still trying to duplicate the omelettes.
Individual cheese omelettes folded into squares
Sweet bread-things (not sweetbreads!) Lighter than doughnuts, but similar flavouring
Bread rolls
Hard boiled ggs
Cheeses
Tomatoes
Olives
Jams
Turkish coffee (mmmmmmm)
and Turkish Delights for afters.
> and Turkish Delights for afters.
Holy shit, breakfast had *dessert*?
And the best bit? My partner doesn’t like them! (He’s a weirdo, what can I say)
So I had to have his. Poor me, right?
In a perfect world, “and Turkish Delight for afters” would be the end of every book or story I read.
I’m going to Turkey in six months and now I can hardly stand the wait. Oh my god.
This morning I got up before the roundup was posted, and it was terrifying. I’m sleeping in until noon from now on.
The hour between getting to work and the link roundup being posted is a pretty awful one, I have to admit.
I’m in Europe so the roundup shows up around 3 PM, which means I have to “do work” until then.
Ridiculous, isn’t it!
Move to Alaska! By the time I got to work the open thread already had 83 comments.
I was so excited about Margaret Atwood mentioning The Toast you would think it was my site. Just so happy for everyone involved, this is truly the best hang on the Internet. Love you.
oh god, I already reread my typos in my comments and mediocre grammar with enough horror.
I’ll read most anything about food, but the real draw of that breakfast piece (for me) is CUTE BABIES.
the last, very pouty baby was the best.
Pouty baby was a great note to end on. Nathaniel, the French kid, looked so much like my hypothetical child I could feel my blood pressure go up, re: potential mischief.
The state of Texas would erase a lot of bad karma if they installed a finished basement in the Alamo and named it the Jan Hooks, Pedro, and Inez Memorial Wing.
Can you say “adobe?”
Sad about Jan Hooks. She was my age..mortality creeps closer and closer. (well every damn minute, I’m living in China, riding a bicycle, dodging buses and taxis, my head swiveling around like Regan in The Exorcist, expecting to be whacked flat next second). Great memories of her in the 80’s.
“When a guy has an idea, he gets really pumped up about it, really vocal about it. Back to that notion of speaking up, if you have an idea … tell people your story and then execute it.”
oh ok I’ll stop burying my ideas in the back garden under a waning moon
If my idea is “pay me more,” then do I still have to shut up about it because karma?
Reza Aslan has been so good lately. Both on CNN with those ridiculous anchors, Chris Cuomo I believe? and then with this piece on Bill Maher and the limits of discussions of religion.
“As a form of identity, religion is inextricable from all the other factors that make up a person’s self-understanding, like culture, ethnicity, nationality, gender and sexual orientation. What a member of a suburban megachurch in Texas calls Christianity may be radically different from what an impoverished coffee picker in the hills of Guatemala calls Christianity.”
I <3 him and have gotten into at least three lengthy Facebook arguments about him in the last week.
Thanks for linking to this. As always, do not read the comments!
Ok, I’m here for Malala. I just turned on BBC world news and they are giving air time to some moronic Malala truther (I didn’t even know they existed?), who believes the shooting never happened. He just stated “She is just another useless girl, there is absolutely nothing special about her.” OH he is the editor of the Pakistani Observer.
Why, on the very day that this young woman makes history as both the youngest and the first Pakistani Nobel laureate (and yes, I realize the Nobel prize is fraught and basically pointless), but why, BBC, would you invite onto your show some dude who is just spitting hate and conspiracy theories, instead of, ya know, interviewing people for whom Malala actually represents something good and hopeful? Like basically anyone else in the world?
I GIVE UP ON THIS UNIVERSE
“but why, BBC […]?”
Because – BBC. Why ask a question that already contains the answer! 😉
All kidding aside, I’ve finally stopped reading BBC news. I don’t give a rodent’s bottom about their “royal” family or who killed who in what minuscule English village. World news my non-English a**!
They should do this to all Nobel prize winners. “No, you know, Niels is just another stupid Danish man, doesn’t know anything about physics. Actually, he’s a bus driver. Also, he’s the worst goalie ever.”
“Doris who? No, actually, you knows who’s, like, a really good writer? Philip Roth. I don’t know, though, it might be too deep for you.”
We need that Toast Compound asap!
I was also yelling at them about it. And they tried to defend it because he’s a newspaper editor and has a following, but SO WHAT. You can just say “Some people unfortunately disavow this even happened to her, but those people are clearly nutcases, as exist in every country” INSTEAD OF GIVING THEIR VOICE GLOBAL AIRTIME.
I heard the same interview. Owen Bennett-Jones wasn’t having any of that trutherism, though – he was lacerating the guy. “You do realize your views are bizarre?!” he said.Then he had Malala’s co-author on, and they continued to take on the “views”. So it was…while not okay, an interesting conversation bc he KEPT ON GOING with that guy, enabling him to dig himself into a huge, enormous hole of logical fallacy and moral questionability.
Yeah, at least he did flat-out tell the guy he was wrong, a couple times. “Well, that did happen to her.” And I’m glad they had the conversation with the co-author, as you said.
Speaking of “gotta hear both sides” etc., today’s xkcd: http://xkcd.com/1432/
I bookmarked that because I have so many future situations in which I know this will be necessary!
I have been crying on and off all morning since seeing that Malala won. Malala 5eva.
ME TOO. That was the first thing I read this morning and I burst into tears and I have been in a wonderful mood ever since, haters be damned! GO MALALA!
My mother has been posting cross things on Facebook about the lack of recognition. “Sitting in bed listening to Saturday Live on radio 4, I hear Mary Berry’s treacly voice warbling “aged 17, she has achieved so much” & naturally assume she is talking about about Malala Yousafzai. Turns out she is on about a Great British Bake Off contestant. FFS, are iced buns really up there with universal children’s education?”
BUT MALALA YOU GUYS
So that’s two of the prizes for women this year, eh? Could be worse.
I love her and want her always to have good things.
OK, for this breakfast thing, where they seem to think coffee for kids is only a Latin American thing: really? Because my Polish family grew up drinking coffee like, always, at every meal, from childhood. For little kids it would be like, maybe a third coffee and the rest milk, but….coffee, and tea, I had always, from babyhood. It wasn’t until I was much older that people told me coffee wasn’t good for kids because it stunts their growth? I truly did not know this was a thing!
Also, that poor Icelandic girl with the cod liver oil. Also, I don’t want to hear about how American children have no taste and eat sugary cereal, how awful, when Dutch people eat bread with sprinkles to the tune of 750,000 slices per day.
Hagelslaaaag
I have some fancy hagelslag in my cabinet that has a slight koffiesmaak (coffee flavor) in it because I’m fancy. I don’t know enough kids to know if it’s really something people eat every day, but it’s definitely a normal thing. Most adults I know eat something like yogurt and muesli. And milk until age forever and lots of sandwiches.
Also, I was so confused about all the implications that Americans think breakfast has to be bland and sweet. Don’t we all know about eggs, and bacon, and breakfast sausages, and lox with tomatoes and capers?? Those are all breakfast foods to me since childhood and so is the idea of breakfast meats and tomatoes along with fruit. I’m not getting how/why I’m supposed to be so surprised by everyone else’s breakfasts? Am I an outlier?
(Turkish breakfasts look like the absolute best!)
I think there CAN be a lot of sweetness involved (especially when you consider the Maple Syrup Factor), but like….savory breakfast meats and eggs are so constantly associated with American breakfast that it’s almost a parody of itself. Yes, there are sweet breakfast foods (sweet cereal, sweet oatmeal, sweet doughnuts) but there’s a fuckton of savory as well (see: eggs, breakfast sandwiches, meats, savoury bagels, etc).
Of course, what do I know, I had a pumpkin muffin for breakfast this morning, but it wasn’t sweet. What does that fall under? I DON’T KNOW. And I had many, many 85-cent cookies for breakfast in high school, because my cafeteria made chocolate-chip cookies that were like…fried on a hot plate instead of baked, and they were half raw and AMAZING. I’d go back there tomorrow to get one of those again.
I am an adopted New Englander so maple syrup I think of as pretty much healthy! (The good relatively unrefined grade B stuff). And useful at dinner as well as breakfast, in so many ways!
So there is a lot of breakfast variety in America. Thanks for validating that — I was starting to feel like a freak! Long live lox!
Did you go to my high school? Our cafeteria ALSO made amazing chocolate chip cookies like that. But I think they were 50 cents except on “big cookie day” when you could get a cookie the size of your head for 75 cents if you were willing to brave the line of every student in the school.
FRIED chocolate chip cookies??!? That sounds like heaven in food form.
Right?
If you want to know what “American breakfast” looks like, go to the airport. Any airport, anywhere in America. Before 11am even the fast food joints that specialize in pizza and Chinese food have pans of scrambled eggs, sausage, and toast or biscuits. Not saying this isn’t bland, but it ain’t sweet.
I love that part about how terrribbllle Americans are, with our sugary breakfasts, it’s such classic NYT pearl-clutching. And then yeah, Danish kids are eating chocolate sprinkle bread and the little French kid is having pastries all the time, but that’s classy because they’re foreign!
I don’t think I’ve ever in my life said this about a NYT Parenting blog post, but I really enjoyed their sidebar, asking what people’s kids really have for breakfast (when a photographer isn’t coming by). A lot of frozen waffles being consumed out there, which made me feel better about my toddler’s frozen waffle habit.
Frozen waffles are boss. So there.
More than anything I would wish for a “fly on the wall” blog where you could see what people actually do for breakfast. Occasionally on the weekends we’ll have a real brunch, so I’ll cook bacon and french toast and eggs and have coffee and orange juice and all that, but I’m for damn sure not doing that on a work morning and I’m not dressing up the table all fancy. Shit, this morning for breakfast I had the aforementioned pumpkin muffin at my desk and my husband had leftover buffalo chicken nuggets like the fancy people we are.
I’ve been doing a lot of work for food companies lately, and recent research indicates that breakfast during the week is, on the whole, on the decline. Cereal sales are stagnant. People don’t eat at home, but might grab a breakfast sandwich or muffin with their Dunkins or Starbucks.
Leftover buffalo chicken nuggets actually sounds like a boss breakfast.
My favorite weekday breakfast item is leftover chicken pot pie.
Dutch kids are eating the chocolate sprinkle bread. Danish kids are probably eating bacon or something, judging by what my Danish friend was most excited to show me.
Haha, OOPS. I beg forgiveness from the Danish, Dutch and any other nationality starting with D that I might confuse in the near future.
Eh, they’re pretty similar. Little countries with weird languages, tall blond people, and bicycles. Copenhagen even looks like Amsterdam in parts (on purpose).
Savory American breakfasts are definitely a thing. My go-to breakfast right now is bagels with butter and shredded cheese. (Because who has time for slicing?)
Any other Cincinnati folks out there who grew up with goetta? My dad makes it half ground venison, half ground pork, and I miss it dearly.
The first thing my partner learned to cook for me was goetta. I have lived in Cincinnati my entire life and there are a few things I cannot live with missing. Goetta being one of them. Graeter’s ice cream being another, but that’s in another realm entirely.
And your dad’s version sounds amazing.
Graeter’s! It is totally my first stop when I get into town, I don’t care if it is the middle of winter or what.
Many of my coworkers when I lived and worked in Philly ate grits with butter and cheese for breakfast! I totally own the “Americans love fatty foods and meats way too much” stereotype, but sugar is for drinking, not for eating!
Chocolate sprinkle bread is great! At some point we learned about it and successfully wheedled my mom, who would never buy sugar cereal, into letting us have it for breakfast. Until the chocolate sprinkles ran out and we couldn’t buy them for cheap enough and only got them on special occasions when she went to that one grocery store that had Everything.
My current grocery store actually has the milk chocolate kind, because it likes to be fancy, but I stopped eating dairy in the meantime. On the plus side, I am an adult now and can actually eat anything I want for breakfast. Sometimes I eat regular food and then a handful of chocolate chips, because I can.
Yeah, I’m Italian and coffee is totally a thing Italian parents give their kids – it’s more like a tiny, tiny cappuccino, but still
Hi Margaret Atwood! Love you/your work!
Dang. The Turks know how to start their days off, my goodness.
Ahh Margaret Atwood! I’m sorry for trashing MaddAddam a while back in the comments!!
I was just thinking of the “Books you hated” thread and how many Toasties confessed to hating Atwood’s writing with the vitriolic passion we normally reserve for men. And Margaret Atwood was reading the whole time and still likes us!
One of those was me, and now I’m wilting with mortification. Sorry, Margaret Atwood! I was way too young to be discovering your books!
Perhaps she approves of our independence and moxie.
I’M NOT
Ha! I know! I <3 Margaret Atwood with a passion, but also I have criticized her books sometimes (like sorry, her future is a pretty darn white one) and I am sorry not sorry because love doesn’t have to be blind, ok? That said, she is AMAZING in a way that a lot of her guy contemporaries are venerated for and totally don’t deserve. She’s deep and thoughtful and knows how to work the language and the Blind Assassin took me a whole summer to read because I treasured every word and I love herrrr.
Margaret Atwood’s favorite feature is obviously Dad Magazine.
I heard she loves Femslash Friday in a rumor I started.
I heard she’s going to be running the next vertical.
I hear she does car commercials. In Japan.
Oooh yeah, and Bend it Like Beckham is totally her favorite movie and she ships it.
Hey Ladies! is a tribute to Cat’s Eye.
And she tweeted one of the art history commentaries, so she clearly loves the good stuff.
I’ve never had a burning desire to go to Turkey (nor any particular desire not to go), but such a fantastic breakfast might draw me in. I do love breakfast.
I really like the idea that the sprinkles are like a separate dish. We have bread, butter, and sprinkles! Makes me want to serve bowls of sprinkles at parties. My parties would be so popular!
I refuse to live in a world where sprinkles are food! COME AT ME, BRO.
This seems as good a time as any to tell you all that my brother once won a local Donkey Kong Country tournament. Later, when he was working with kind of a douchecanoe who had three degrees on the wall in his office, my brother brought in his framed certificate from the DKC tournament and put it up with pride.
My brother is kind of the best.
I love the story about your brother, but I do have to say that my mother hung up her three degrees in her second-grade classroom. That way when (the kind of douchecanoe) parents come in yelling at her and telling her how to do her job, she can just point up at the degrees…like a boss.
Oh yeah, I meant no offense to people who put up their degrees–if I had a problem with that, I wouldn’t be able to go to the doctor EVER, because it feels like every medical practitioner I’ve seen had theirs hanging up. He was more of a general douchecanoe, and it was just one subtle way to poke at him.
Also, I’m pretty sure my brother was a better saxophonist. He’s a better saxophonist than most people, from my limited understanding.
Oh, totally! I just thought that was a good story about my mom. I work with people who are, I suspect, a lot like your brother’s colleagues. I purposefully didn’t hang up my degrees because I felt like it would be a jerk move here. I’m probably never going to work in the field I got my degrees in, either, so they just stay over my desk at home. (I am thinking, though, of getting a really off-putting painting for my office wherever I work next, just so people come in and ask, “Ummmm why is that there?” and then I can be like, Art history. Let me tell you about it.)
Congrats to your brother on his saxophone skills!
I have four university degrees.
In my office, I have my “Perfect Pint of Guinness Certification” that I earned from the Guinness Museum in Dublin framed on the wall.
I have no idea where my printed diplomas are, or even if they made it with me the last couple of moves. Your brother sounds like my kind of person. 🙂
My husband and I both have PhDs. I’m pretty sure the diplomas are shoved in the back of a closet somewhere, but we’d have to move the laundry hampers to check, and I just can’t be bothered.
My degrees are under a bed in my parents’ house, I think. Hanging up in my office is the blue ribbon I won at this summer’s state fair for knitted shawl!
When I finished my Ph.D., my mother framed my kindergarten diploma and gave it to me as a graduation gift. It’s hanging up in my home office, and is the only degree I have displayed.
Truth be told, I don’t even know where my masters’ diploma is.
That gaming piece makes me wonder wistfully if there’s some sort of professional lazy-snack-eaters league in which I could become rich competing. I think I would do really well there.
I am so sad about Jan Hooks. She was on SNL when I was in my late teens/early 20’s, which is like the sweet spot age wise for liking SNL.
Me too (I think I’m a little younger, but I have always loved her). I gasped aloud in my empty house and now I am very sad.
(I have been meaning to tell you how much I love your username; it is also the name of my weird, panicky spaniel).
I didn’t even realize that I loved her and then I watched a bunch of clips and realized she was the best part of pretty much everything she was ever in. You will be missed, Jan Hooks!
Jan as Tammy Faye, Jan as half of the Sweeney Sisters, her voice-over work, her total willingness to throw Nora Dunne under the bus in Live From New York (I thought it was harsh but also showed dedication to the job in a way I’d be too flibberty to pull off), and playing Jenna’s mom on 30 Rock. It’s too much to be missing all at once.
Peggy reads the Toast! Hiiiiii Peggy!
The mind reels re: Margaret Atwood reading the Toast, but…please. Can we talk about HER BEAUTIFUL CHEEKBONES AND THAT KNOWING, WITCHY SMILE? If I look half that gorgeous at her age I’ll die a happy woman.
Haha! We’ve found you now Margaret!
Full Turkish Breakfast > Full English Breakfast.
The Handsome Sidekick will be most offended at this, but I wholeheartedly agree. And would add that Turkish breakfasts are tastier.
First of all, Claudia Rankine is wonderful and that open letter was wonderful and then I clicked on the “response” from Tony Hoagland, and now I am so upset. How dare he. Ugh.
Second, that piece on the white male “allies” in tech… just reinforced everything I’ve been feeling since I entered the tech field after graduating in May. About every other day I get home from work in an unliftable funk, and I’d trade an appendage for even one other lady to join my group. Any more experienced Toasties have wisdom on how to survive? Because I am inches away from going back to school, switching fields, and never looking back. Even though I love my field (in a vacuum)
Tony Hoagland. What the fuck. I love some of his work, but what the fuck is that response letter.
“To start off, let me say that I thought, back when we were colleagues, and I still think, that, to me, you are naive when it comes to the subject of American racism, naive not to believe that it permeates the psychic collective consciousness and unconsciousness of most Americans in ways that are mostly ugly.”
DID HE REALLY JUST SAY A BLACK WOMAN IS NAIVE ABOUT HOW WIDESPREAD RACISM IS IN THE AMERICAN CONSCIOUSNESS?
“I am not trying to sidestep—of course I am racist; and sexist, a homophobe, a classist, a liberal, a middle-class American, a college graduate, a drop-out, an egotist, Diet Pepsi drinker, a Unitarian, a fool, a Triple A member, a citizen of Texas, a lover of women, a teacher, a terrible driver, and a single mother.” (emphasis mine)
I AM PRETTY SURE YOU ARE NOT A MOTHER, TONY HOAGLAND. PRETTY. DAMN. SURE.
Nobody gives a shit if you drink Diet Pepsi or where you live. Living in Texas doesn’t hurt anybody but your own damn self. You do not get to pat yourself on the back for being a liberal in the middle of this awful, condescending “I understand racism better than you” letter. Being racist, sexist, and homophobic are not just facts of life or simple preferences. You don’t get to turn them into inextricable and immovable facts of your existence, and then get pissed off when someone else calls you out.
“Finally let me say that I think my poem “The Change” is not ‘racist’ but ‘racially complex.'”
Claudia Rankine is writing about her responses to a racist fucking poem as one of the people that your poem was racist towards If you are going to write “racially complex” pieces, from the point of view of a racist narrator, then you have to be willing to deal with the fallout. You can’t just drop that shit and run, and never expect to hear anything about it again.
Yeah I got up to “naive” and had to x-out right quick because
NAIVE. Are you fucking kidding me.
Okay no I went back and read more and The elements of that confusion are, as we all know, guilt, fear, resentment, and wariness. Its sources are historical and economic and institutionalized. We drank racism with our mother’s milk, and we re-learn it every day, as we weave our way through our landscapes of endless inequality.
GEE THAT MUST BE SO HARD FOR YOU, WHITE GUY, LEARNING TO BE RACIST. And then writing poems, perpetuating that.
That is one reason why it seems foolish and costly to think that the topic of race belongs only to brown-skinned Americans and not white-skinned Americans. But many poets and readers think that.
I’m just going to leave this here:
I want to get that tattooed on my forehead, for everyone I speak to. And tattooed on me where I can see it, for myself.
Holy fuck, yes. I was trucking along, ready to be curious about the potential for rich dialogue etc., hit that word, and felt a literally physical wave of rage and revulsion. Like stand up in the coffee shop and rip the table in half rage.
Claudia Rankine is a force for good. Don’t Let Me Be Lonely is devastating and so wise about the heart.
Margaret Atwood reads The Toast. This is like sitting at a restaurant table with your friends telling your dumbest jokes and suddenly realizing that your favorite movie star is (a) at the next table over and (b) listening with evident interest.
I guess what I’m saying is if I suddenly start making a lot of fart jokes and laughing with barely-contained hysteria, it’s the nerves talking. (also hi, oh my god, I’m sorry, I’m such a fan, can I buy you a drink, oh my god why can’t I stop talking)
I told my husband about that first thing when I got home yesterday, and he silently hugged me.
That kind of happened to me once–PartnerChouffe and I were eating a ridiculous lunch in London and looked over, and the table next to us had people at it, and the people were Steven Moffatt and Martin Freeman and then I died because they’d been watching us take stealthy photos of each course of lunch.
Hahahaha! Best story!
Thank you!
Just to top things off, we’d been traveling since about 4am that day and had walked across London (from our B&B by St Pancras to the restaurant, which was in Knightsbridge) in weather that was significantly warmer than we’d planned for, so we were sweaty and disheveled by the time we even got there. We looked truly terrible and not at all like this place’s typical clientele, and then… pictures. And food allergies. But the maitre’d was absolutely fucking lovely and invited us down into the kitchen to meet the head chef, who was also absolutely fucking lovely and turned out to have grown up about 10 minutes from PC.
In any event it was still more than a little mortifying. Hello, Stars of Stage and Screen, just your typical sweaty tourists taking pictures of food, nothing to see here.
Me — a year ago: “oh, look at the awesome site with a close knit group of intelligent commenters that seem to be mainly librarians. It’s totally a safe space to just be yourself and no one will notice because librarians are easy to talk to and there’s not *that* many of them in the world”
Fast forward to now: everyone I’ve every respected reads The Toast.
I know this isn’t a Dad thread, but my parents are moving and last night my dad texted me a picture of a little drawing on notebook paper that I made for him when I was like 8 and he’s kept it taped up in his medicine cabinet since then.
I loved the kid breakfast thing, the photos were so great. Would definitely go for the Turkish breakfast, and I love the description about the slimy fermented beans that Japanese kids gradually get used to eating. Dutch kids have it made. Aaaand I really need breakfast now!
Yes, the sprinkles on the bread! You’ve got it good, Dutch kids, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
That breakfast thing – I wonder if I can get someone to make me Japanese breakfasts every morning, and wake me up so that I have time to eat them. I would love some grilled salmon for breakfast, man. Maybe if I offer to make breakfasts on weekends, that would help? Hope they like eggs, mushrooms, tomatoes, and bread all fried in bacon grease! (the tomatoes make it healthy)
Also, the patronizing tone about giving kids coffee in the morning… I think I’ve been drinking tea in the morning since I was 10 or so, and my sister probably started drinking the occasional coffee around the same age. Kids drink soda with caffeine, doesn’t chocolate have caffeine too? Whatever, moderation is what matters, that and some protein. Of course, I’m one to talk – this article was as close to breakfast as I am getting today. Sigh.
oh god, a full English, yes please.
/hangover
Oh, Jan Hooks. Her SNL stint was before my time but I will always love her as Jenna Maroney’s mom. “I GOT THE MEAT, JACK.”
Toast Learned Leaguers! It’s Referral Season! I know there were a bunch of Toast people who were interested in joining Learned League the last time Nicole posted about it here. I have one referral I’ve happy to give to one of the people who wants to join – anyone else?
I reeeeeeeeally want in on this, but I know there were people who asked before I did. But if additional people have referrals, I am all over it!
I would love to get into this, but like Catoclock I know there were other people who expressed interest earlier. But if anyone has a spare referral running around…!
Me! Me! Pick me!
But, like, only if the other people who asked first have gotten their right of first refusal.
oh me! haha I posted about this earlier in the open thread because I hadn’t been to the link roundup yet!
everyone should go read this bros tweets to mallory https://twitter.com/agfitzp/with_replies about the european art thing. he takes it so seriously it made me laugh and laugh
LOLOLOLOL what a moron.
I am imagining his tweets all read in the “Comic Book Store Guy’s” voice from The Simpsons. Try it! “Today I learned that global culture is considered a zero-sum game.”
In my world, all meals have dessert. Many snacks also have dessert. (No, I do not feel that this is related to my need for new pants, nor the dollar signs that settle into my dentist’s eye when she sees me, why do you ask?)
MARGARET ATWOOD I LOVE YOU EVEN THOUGH I HATED THE MADADDAM TRILOGY
Doubling down! Niiice! I loved the Madaddam trilogy so put ’em up, though.
I liked parts of Oryx and Crake, I liked less parts in After the Flood, and I liked exactly zero of the parts in Madaddam, which is super disappointing since I was looking forward to that one the most!
The Robber Bride is pretty much my favourite book of all time though, so I’ll forgive her forever and always. I really like when her books take place in Toronto because I’m so used to reading books that take place in America. Plus then I get to play a fun scavenger hunt in my head when I read them!
Well, ok, you are forgiven. Saint Margaret (May She Prosper Always) may never forgive either one of us, of course.
On a side note, how did you feel about Blind Assassin?
The infant mortality article reminded me of something I read recently which showed that we’ve assumed that babies born to different races of women will be different sizes (eg smaller women, smaller babies) but it seems to be that nutrition and education is the key. If women receive adequate nutrition and quality antenatal care, the babies end up being roughly the same size.
http://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2014-07-07-born-equal-ba…
That article about white male allies is like, I don’t even know. Depressing because of how clueless they all are but at the same time hilarious because the writer is taking NO SHIT.
BUT those women in the audience sound like my kind of people – heckling the speakers when they say something super dumb AND playing “Ally Bingo”?? Glorious.
Definitely LOLd at the bingo. That was just stunning.
Hmmmm if only there was some way to get paid for playing Dragon Age: Inquisition for the 700 hours I will probably end up playing it.
Dear Ms. Atwood,
Could you please do whatever you can to make sure that Darren Aronofsky’s adaptation of ‘MaddAddam’ is really good? I feel hopeful that it totally could be, and I do think Aronofsky has it in him, but these things often go so wrong, so I am a little worried.
Sincerely,
R
I love the concept (start your day with sprinkles!) and I love the word origin, but I’m confused by the logistics. Don’t sprinkles on dry bread just fall off all over the place and require precision to keep the bread absolutely level on the way to your mouth (precision I don’t have in the morning)?
This is why I’ll stick to nice spreadable Nutella, which is friggin delicious and doesn’t require a great amount of coordination above and beyond “try not to drop it on the ground facedown.”
I think they use butter… but yes, I was wondering that too.
I want to say my Dutch teacher said you spread butter on the bread first so the sprinkles don’t fall off?? I may be making that up, or she may be, since she didn’t eat them because she didn’t like chocolate. And I must admit that the last time I was in the Netherlands I didn’t eat hagelslag myself because I thought it was weird, and I’m a savory breakfast person, and now I regret that. You can buy them online though or at some specialty international stores.
It is with butter! Unsalted is normal I guess. Bread, then butter, then sprinkles.
Aargh! Nick, can you please beg those server people to fix the reply function? What will Margaret Atwood think??
I come from a family of savory breakfast eaters, and the amount of sugar and starch in nearly all of these makes my stomach turn. We don’t even make our oatmeal sweet, I like mine a little salty with a pat of butter. I am here for Turkish breakfast though, with that many options you could keep anyone happy.
Shout out to kippers (or what I like to call “the bacon of fish”), my favorite breakfast food.
The bacon of fish! You are so right, calling them that forever.
The Dutch sprinkles thing is so great. So great. It’s bread, butter, chocolate. Add coffee. Best way to start the morning EVER.
Best breakfast of my life was probably in a hotel buffet in Norway. Forget your sad rubbery scrambled eggs and cold tater tots–this shit was bonkers: beans, hardboiled eggs, softboiled eggs, lox, herring, bacon, ham, many other meats, pickles, vegetables, a thousand kinds of rye bread and crispbread, fruit in bowls, miniature pastries, an unending assortment of tea, coffee, and juice…sigh. I’m all about the “nibble a bit of everything” breakfast when I don’t have to make it.
This just reminded me of my all-time favorite hotel breakfast – a buffet in Finland. They had amazing brown bread rolls the size of, like, both my fists together, and a million things to put on them. This was about 15 years ago and I still remember how great it was
Everyone needs to eat pickled things for breakfast! Why don’t we do this?
margaret atwood!!!
dear ms atwood,
there is almost nothing better in life than your short story “hairball.”
love,
yeah_elle
League of Legends/professional gaming on the Toast! My husband has logged SO many hours just watching other people play LoL on Youtube. I, too, was all “hmm, rich tapestry…” but then I played and it iissss pretty exciting.
A friend of mine is a serious LoL player who makes tutorial videos, which apparently are pretty well-regarded as a resource for newer players. I watch his stuff sometimes, to indicate that I love and support him, but boy do I have no idea what’s going on. Rich tapestry indeed.
My boss is currently at the GHC. I will have to ask her about this male allies thing when she gets back.
I agree, it is 1:40pm where I am right now and I cannot stop thiking about that bread with chocolate and butter on it.
So late on this, but, you know, work.
Are you there Margaret? It’s me, a fan.
Your poems changed my life. Thank you so very much. I am happy.
Yesterday , I saw the news about Jan Hooks on Twitter and gasped “OH NO” so loudly that I could hear the neighbors fall silent. Sorry, neighbors who probably thought I’d lost a loved one… but I had.
There’s a girl I know from women’s and gender studies classes who paid her way through college playing some sort of online video game. She said she would have made more money if she showed her cleavage but she refused to (but does not judge girls who do this). She’s pretty rad.
Dear Ms. Atwood,
I am currently drunk on sushi and please forgive the fan girl crush: loved The Handmaid’s Tale & Cat’s Eye.
My favorite weekday breakfast item is leftover chicken pot pie.
“The best thing you can do is excel, and to push through whatever boundaries you see in front of you. Just continue to push and be great.”
This reminds me a bit of my tutor’s advice to me when I was in the throes of depression and struggling to get my university work done. “Maybe you would feel better if you wrote your essays.” It’s not wrong, it’s just not hugely helpful to the situation at hand.
You spread a nice thick layer of butter on the bread first, and the sprinkles stick to that!