Today’s featured image is not my dog, it is the windblown face of Mallory Ortberg, my heart’s desire, who has been away for AGES. We usually talk on the phone about three times a day, and now we’re settling for FaceTiming once a day from her hotel room, and I honestly cannot go on?
exhibit a of how mallory is the best (exhibit b has her telling a mom that her son IS a stalker and needs help ASAP, thank you very much):
Q. No laughing matter: I’ve known Bobby since we were kids, and since we’re the only two people from our small town at our college, we hang out a lot. Bobby has a major crush on my roommate. She wants nothing to do with him. Last week while I was out of our room Bobby exposed his penis to her. He claims it was a prank, and to be fair, he’s been doing this for most of our lives. Our friends and I think it’s hilarious, but she’s pissed. She’s making a fuss with our resident adviser, and I think she wants Bobby to get in serious trouble. If she keeps pushing, Bobby could lose his scholarship and be forced to leave college. I sympathize with her situation but worry the punishment will outweigh the crime. What should I do when I speak to university officials?
A: It’s fine that you think it was funny, but because Bobby didn’t show his dick to you, your sense of humor or how long you’ve known him should have no weight on the outcome. “I’ve known Bobby a long time” is not an answer to “should Bobby get in trouble for exposing himself to women?”
I have not been able to stop thinking about those twin protests — “but, good intentions!” and “the benefit of the doubt” — and what they really mean. Who usually gets the benefit of the doubt? Who is expected to grant it?
A few weeks ago I was in a discussion about anti-racist parenting, and at one point a white parent asked how they were supposed to keep their kids from developing a low opinion of people of color if they’d had “bad experiences” with them. They told a longish story about two boys at their child’s school who sometimes flout authority or are mean to the white kids. They don’t listen to the teachers who try and tell them to stop, because they don’t respect women in their culture. I pointed out that there is no culture that universally respects women, and that whatever good intentions they might possess, they were still thinking of literally two children as representative of an entire group of people. They couldn’t even manage to look at two kids and see them as individuals. And their own child was probably picking up on this, and doing the same generalizing and stereotyping.
So much for the benefit of the doubt.
The women of color who rocked 2015!
In case you need to debunk the fake Irish People Were Slaves Too memes that pop up everywhere, Liam Hogan is On It:
Those that promote the meme of Irish perpetual hereditary chattel slavery use a variety of images entirely unrelated to indentured servitude to accompany their anti-history. I examined a selection of them.
(This is part one of my series debunking the meme. See Part Two, Part Three, Part Four and Part Five)
With her loyalty to the stage, and her six Tony Awards, McDonald has, over the 22 years since Carousel opened, been the inescapable face of that change. This is partly because she is Broadway’s greatest star singer, possibly ever — and I say that at a wonderful moment when the likes of Kelli O’Hara, Idina Menzel, and Kristin Chenoweth are also performing at the top of their respective forms. (Each of the four has a completely different kind of voice.) The combination of innate beauty, invisible technique, broad expressiveness, and dogged stamina — McDonald recently completed a 13-month, 63-city concert tour on three continents — means that her voice functions as one with her acting; her singing makes emotion audible in the same way a blush makes it visible.
But her prominence as the face of a changing Broadway is also the result of the way motherhood — her daughter, Zoe, is now 15 — has made her feel responsible to more than just her own artistry. What you use your voice for, other than tweets about gay marriage and homeless kids and moronic politicians, is a new question she worries about. She took on Shuffle Along not only for the chance to work with Wolfe (and a jaw-dropping assortment of other black stars, including Brian Stokes Mitchell and Billy Porter) but to honor her cultural antecedents. Without dislodging Judy Garland and Barbra Streisand from her girlhood pantheon, performers like Billie Holiday and Lena Horne — and now, in Shuffle Along, Lottie Gee — have come to the fore, as much for their talent as their nerve. Accepting her most recent Tony, for playing Holiday in Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill, she saluted a list of black artists who “deserved so much more than you were given when you were on this planet.”
I think we should all read some Barbara Comyns:
Spoons carries a disclaimer on its imprint page: “The only things that are true in this story are the wedding and Chapters 10, 11 and 12 and the poverty.” The three chapters singled out are those that depict the labour and birth of Sophia’s first child, Sandro, a house of horrors-like depiction of a public hospital, Sophia’s experience of which is one of “shame and pain” as she’s shuttled from one “torture chamber” to another by unkind nurses and disinterested doctors. Although the most sustained and explicit example, this isn’t the only occasion Comyns writes about the harsh realities of the more unpleasant – not to mention often ignored – elements of being a woman. In A Touch of Mistletoe (1967) we’re allowed a sneak peak into this hidden world. The young heroine Vicky gets a job as a salesgirl in a London jewellry shop for a period. While she and the other female employees sustain a certain level of decorum and reserve during trading hours, after they’ve kicked their high heels off and are changing the window displays after hours, a more forthright camaraderie is revealed that focuses around a particular sort of female conversation: “a considerable amount of sexy talk used to go on, mostly old wives’ tales about young brides who had had their nightgowns torn to shreds on their wedding night, childbirth and abortions, monster babies and the almost mystic horrors of the change of life.” Like her predecessor Sophia in Spoons – in many ways there are striking similarities between the two novels, both heroines making bad marriages and suffering poverty in bohemian London, though Mistletoe features a much more complex plot, and covers a much longer period in its heroine’s life – Vicky is an unworldly innocent. The other women call her “naïve” and take great glee in shocking her with all manner of “fresh horrors” including gory tales of “hermaphrodites, V.D. and falling wombs.”
Here are some stories of wonderful high school teachers who DIDN’T prey on their students:
After being summarily kicked out of my senior year advanced placement English class after all of two days for refusing to do several thousand grammar exercises as a get-to-know-me assignment by Ms. Fried Blonde Hair From the East Coast, I found myself under the tutelage of the gifted and loving Ms. Zita Prater, a wonderful teacher of twelfth-grade English Composition. And although my memories of high school are one long colorful acid-induced blur complete with hallucinations of dolphins swimming the aqua blue linoleum halls of the godforsaken racist-ass high school I attended in the suburbs of Dallas, Texas, and I am not able to provide a synopsis of the actual curriculum and reading that Ms. Prater taught and assigned, I do remember a lively in-class discussion of The Iliad led with genuine joy and excitement for the source material by Ms. Prater.
Near the end of the school year—my final days in high school—as I tumbled and peaked, continuing my self-education in the Yaqui way of knowledge from my seat in the back row, I remember realizing that Ms. Prater was an unapologetically good person not filled with a hair of judgment.
My daughter splits her time between preschool and therapies and sitters, and my son has a handful of sitters, two of whom just had to quit for unrelated reasons (illness, got a real job), so we’re making our favourite sitter full-time and putting her on the books (which is important, and not as hard as you might fear!) so I guess I have a nanny now? It feels so weird to say that, from a class perspective, because growing up working-class in Canada, only the OLIGARCHS had NANNIES (also, we had better and cheaper daycare, so), but here we are!
Oz clearly agrees with Mallory. 🙂
Isn’t she in New Zealand?
She is, but I think the featured photo was taken in Australia?
Pretty sure that one is Wellington where she found the monastery above the harbour. (I am from there and now live in Sydney so familar w the respective harbourlines)
It looks like the excellent exotic local and cool vacation are treating our warrior poet goddess well. Filled with travel envy, sigh.
Ah, okay.
definitely also immediately recognised this as Welly! <3 (also live in Sydney, and previously lived in beloved Wellington)
I feel like I say this all the time, but what a whirlwind of questions for Mallory Prudence. (“Malpru?”) Douche exposing himself! Teen stalker! Lady not wanting to raise 7 children! The woman who claims to be widowed 4 times! (Which I do not believe either, as demonstrates by the letter at the end!) God, I enjoy peeking into other people’s lives.
The person who re-submitted VERBATIM a question Carolyn Hax had already answered!!!!
Does anyone know what Carolyn Hax’s response was? I couldn’t find it.
It was a polite DTMFA. Link, hopefully.
I seek this info, too!
That link should work. I’m also gonna C&P here:
It says something very important that you need to listen to! Now now now, not after you’re married, by whatever means you get it done.
Look at what you just spelled out: He emotionally blackmailed you into the foofy wedding–“devastating to my family,” seriously?–and now is playing deadline chicken to get you to do all the work.
What are the chances that BS behavior stops here? And won’t instead mutate into a way for him to whine you into buying a bigger house and then blow off packing for the move. Or to take on a business venture and no-show the hard work after the money you earned in those 60-hour weeks is already sunk into it. Or guilt you into spending holidays with his family only to skulk off and watch football while you get pressured by his mom to help cook.
Even if you can’t see any of these happening for one reason or the other, you also can’t, for your own sanity’s sake, ignore a flashing highway sign telling you that he isn’t good to his word. It’s a character issue, not an invitation issue. Call him on it and take on the consequences. They’ll hurt less now than when you’re more deeply invested.
Pretty similar to Mallory’s, gist-wise. Because really, what else could you say to this woman?
Here you go: https://live.washingtonpost.com/carolyn-hax-live-…
It’s kind of DTMFA
I am a faithful CH reader and also very bad at placing things I’ve seen/read before and it was VERY DISORIENTING to see that question again — like, “Why do I remember this one question what is going on with the world I’ve never seen these other questions before *test pattern in brain*”
Once a friend had a complicated wedding situation and she talked to me about it, and then her letter about it appeared in Dear Prudence. It was very disorienting, partly because I was like “this sounds like T… but there’s no way someone from my real life would be in Dear Prudence???”
I actually got a question in Carolyn’s chat once and I WAS SO FREAKED OUT NOT NECESSARILY IN A GOOD WAY.
My best friend wrote in to Captain Awkward (about a very specific situation) and it is REALLY good that she told me that CA had actually posted it before I found the post on my own, or my brain probably would have melted.
I am here for the Malpru love, and this is enough: “Many fathers go their entire lives without announcing how sexy their son’s old girlfriends are. He’s either a garden-variety creep or specifically interested in making you feeling insecure about your relationship (which is also creepy, just beyond the level of gardens).”
Also, he’s clearly living vicariously through his son, to prove that his boy got all of his virility from his ol’ man.
Mallory-as-Prudence is the highlight of my week. I used to read Dear Prudence for the batshit questions. Now I read to see what the advice is, too!
Prullory?
I was thinking Prudory, because spelling reasons.
I have somehow been unable to teach myself when Malpru shows up every week, which means that it’s a happy surprise each time!
I am wildly confused about when and how often Dear Prudence has new posts, sometimes I think at most I might have missed one and then I go and there are like three new ones. Also for a while I was somehow able to read the Slate+ bonus posts but that seems to have stopped. [sad trombone]
Monday noonish is live. Monday and Tuesday afternoons are the live questions, re-ordered. Thursday is the regular not-live appearance.
are there more than one Slate+ bonus answers? because I can always see exactly one when I forget to enable javascript on Slate. (I never enable javascript on Slate. The only thing it helps is to read the comments and why would you do that.)
If you don’t care about being in the live chat, just sign up for the Dear Prudence email alerts! Mine come in around 4:30pm, which is the perfect time to pull them up on my phone before I leave work & lose cell service on the train. They’re great commute reads.
Not to mention the person who has asked their coworker THREE TIMES about her non-existent pregnancy!
Like, look, I totally sympathize, I am completely forgetful too and if someone I worked with told me they were pregnant I would probably forget like a week later and then frantically keep an ear out for clues four months after that when they started to show or something. But luckily there is a major social taboo protecting the absent-minded and that is NEVER EVER EVER ASSUME A WOMAN IS PREGNANT OR ASK IF SHE IS PREGNANT OR SUGGEST ANYTHING ABOUT HER APPEARANCE EVER AT ALL.
In general, I really thought people who were forgetful like me had mostly learned to manage it. Like in that John Mulaney bit about, “If I had amnesia you’d never know it”. It’s SO EASY to not let on that you don’t know something! I myself am in the habit of forgetting which of my parents’ pets are still alive (don’t judge they have like six cats and three dogs at a time) and if I am not 100% sure a pet is still alive I DON’T ASK ABOUT IT BY NAME I’m just like “Oh, how’s the menagerie?”
Yeah that letter really poked my brain. I’m also not totally terrific at remembering names and faces and specific details, but like………why are you even asking that in the first place? It is beyond rude and intrusive to ask a person who you barely know invasive questions about their bodies and health!!!! Why are they doing this, especially after it came back to bite them the FIRST TWO TIMES? There’s plenty of other ways to make small talk with coworkers you don’t know well and can’t remember whether it’s the one with the dog or the one who does crossfit (don’t ask about the crossfit), without being invasive and inappropriate.
I also do not think, at this point, that there’s much of a way to keep this from being an “HR nightmare,” if the coworker decides to pursue it. The LW is, to all appearances, being cruelly mocking of their coworker’s appearance. To everyone else, it looks like bullying. LW needs to get to a doc and maybe a therapist to get some better coping strategies and learn workplace appropriate interactions before their career is irreparably harmed here.
Also, like, maybe the LW should get tested for early-stage dementia or other neurological causes? If she is THAT absent-minded, that she doesn’t even get a little ping in her brain “have had bad interactions with this coworker in the past! don’t know why, but proceed with caution! think before you speak!” I am a little concerned that there might be an underlying condition instead of just being a bit forgetful.
Yeah absolutely. Something is weird here that the LW should check in with someone about.
that question fascinated me! normally can i muster some sort of empathy or understanding for people’s motivations, even if they’re terrible motivations. that one……how in the actual fuck can you have this problem? and have the presence of mind to write to mallory about it, but not the presence of mind to stop asking the coworker if she’s pregnant?
and have the presence of mind to write to mallory about it, but not the presence of mind to stop asking the coworker if she’s pregnant?
RIGHT? This question is HAUNTING me, not unlike the girl whose boyfriend monopolized the bathroom and wouldn’t let her even use it to the point where she was peeing in the sink. ETA: That pee question was at Captain Awkward, not Prudence, just in case anyone needs to go look it up.
OMG that pee question, I keep hoping there will be a follow up.
don’t we all
It will haunt us all forever.
the lizard people are already here. that’s my only theory.
There’s really no excuse for asking a woman if she’s pregnant or what her due date is. All adult people (especially menz) should know better. Anyone who doesn’t should write on a post-it note and stick it somewhere they see every day: “Don’t ask a woman if she’s pregnant. For real, though.”
I like Dave Barry’s strategy – never ask a woman about a pregnancy, unless you see an actual human baby emerging from between her legs, and even then, you can’t really be totally sure, so just don’t mention it.
Did anyone else get the idea that maybe the LW has purposely been bullying her coworker regarding her appearance, and now is worried that she’ll get in trouble with HR and was trying to get ideas as to how to play it off as forgetfulness?
Ughhhhhhhh well NOW I do. I’ll be in my blanket fort if anyone needs me D:
Now that’s all I believe.
Oh 🙁
Hey guys! That LW with the professor tattoos inspired a Chronicle article on weirdest tributes: http://chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/the-strangest-w…
They even say in that article that they are totes not talking about when students “cross a line” or whatever and then they report about the guy who would follow his professor around and then go home and change his outfit to match, as though that were kooky and cute??? No wonder people’s normal meters get all off-kilter. Rom-coms, parents, and everyone around us tells us stalking is cute and flattering and boys punch you when they like you. Seriously. Blanket fort time. FFS.
I am jealous of the Moby Dick one, though.
I loved her response when a responder called out a letter she’d already answered for being fake. I am delighted at her every turn.
You know, principally I understand somewhat the position of the News Media vis-a-vis our national hobgoblin (D. J. Trump) — he’s a presidential candidate and a frontrunner in the GOP, they can’t just not cover him. It is not the news’ job to ignore candidates that they think are bad in order to prevent them from getting elected, I don’t want them to do that.
BUT ON THE OTHER HAND, I can’t think that any quality of Trump’s presidency that justifies the fact that all three morning news channels have had a telephone interview with Trump every day for the last month.
I mean, it’d be one thing if these guys were serious interviewers, but even the MOST serious one (I guess…Matt Lauer, maybe?) is still a bumbling nincompoop who’s basically just like, “Donald Trump don’t you think that what you’re doing is bad?’ and then Donald Trump just says, “No, it’s good, everything is terrific,” and the interviewers just sputter and shrug in response.
This is not responsible journalism in my opinion!
CNN, Fox, and, most disappointingly, MSNBC played the entirety of Trump’s bloviatingly inane victory speech last night, which was 99% him shitting on Lindsay Graham for no apparent reason. Damn good thing no other candidates whatsoever in any other parties won any other primaries last night. Just, fuck.
I mean, don’t get me wrong, at a certain, elemental level I understand why you’d want to air a speech that was 90% shitting on Lindsay Graham.
But we got a whole country here to worry about guys, this is serious.
That video of Lindsay Graham getting all choked up for Joe Biden after Beau died convinced me that LG is a real human person who is capable of genuine empathy.
Which is more than I can say for DT.
Yeah, I put Lindsey Graham on the same level as his buddy McCain. I strongly disagree with him most of the time, but you can also see a real person peeking out sometimes! (My favorite was when McCain defended Hillary’s aide Huma Abedin from Islamophobic attacks.) And that, frighteningly, is a hell of a lot more than you can say about the leading candidates and party leaders.
Yeah, McCain won my grudging respect when he was campaigning at some rally, and somebody said something about “fearing for his children if a known terrorist was allowed to become president.” Palin spoke just before him and had been encouraging the people shouting things like “terrorist,” but McCain immediately shut that shit down. He stopped the guy mid-sentence and was all “President Obama is a fine, decent human being and no one has any reason to fear his being elected to office.” The fact that he was unwilling to stoop to his party’s level of fear-mongering, even on the campaign trail, says a lot for me. His line is no where near mine, but he still HAS a line he won’t cross, and that’s more than Trump can say.
Oh yes, he did that a few times, including when some lady called Obama an Arab. I’d put that as my favorite McCain moment after all.
I agree with you about Graham, which makes it all the more shameful that he doesn’t extend the empathy to people outside his own color and social background.
It is not the news’ job to ignore candidates that they think are bad in order to prevent them from getting elected, I don’t want them to do that.
Okay though. But from a certain perspective, wouldn’t a principled thing to do to be to say “Fuck it. I am going to use my power, such as it is, to try to keep this dangerous asshole from getting any more help to power than he already is. I find that this is an imperative over and above the imperative to report the news that normally governs my actions. This is my stance and I accept the consequences.” (this last part is really important.) I mean, it’s putting your money where your mouth is, and you as a news organization are allowed to have an informed opinion about your civic duty and act on it. Of course, you are in trouble if people on the whole don’t agree that you did the right thing (that’s why the “I accept the consequences” is a crucial part of dramatic displays of moral probity in the face of prevailing moral failure.)
I don’t know, I think this is a really tricky proposition, because while I agree with the possibility of a moral imperative here, it has to be balanced against compromising the institution itself. If the news media takes an active hand in tanking Trump’s bid this time, maybe that’s fine, but what happens next time? Next time, we can’t be sure that any candidate who seems to be getting positive media coverage isn’t purposefully being foisted on us by a media institution that admittedly takes a purposeful, active hand in controlling the outcome of elections.
Of course, compromising the institution is exactly what the GOP has been trying to do for decades (and what resulted in Trump’s ascendancy in the first place, so there’s irony for you), and there’s no question that the media *does* take an active hand in shaping presidential elections, but at least in a certain respect we can consider that a betrayal of the public trust rather than a direct responsibility of the news.
So, I don’t know. It could be true what you’re suggesting, but if it *is* true, it means we need to burn down all the news organizations and maybe start over from scratch in terms of figuring out what a “free press” means and is for.
Next time, we can’t be sure that any candidate who seems to be getting positive media coverage isn’t purposefully being foisted on us by a media institution that admittedly takes a purposeful, active hand in controlling the outcome of elections.
I agree with your point — honestly, I already wouldn’t really trust any media organization big enough for such a stance to make a difference if they made a claim to a moral stance. I’d argue that the distrust is already there. If, hypothetically speaking, the New York Times published an editorial saying: “We’ve decided that a certain presidential candidate is so dangerous that from now on we will refuse to mention him,” it wouldn’t do much of anything except add more fuel to the Trumpist bonfire.
But I also think that a free press =/= an “objective” press and, in fact, I don’t think there’s any such objectivity ever, really. What you want, though, is a transparent media organization that’s respected for telling the truth and having the public interest in mind such that should they decide to take a drastic step in some particular, outstanding situation, they have the authority for it to carry some weight and the reputation for general probity to weather the consequences.
I think about the Daily Show, for example. By the end of Jon Stewart’s run, he had really built up a persona as a principled voice of truth and reason (never mind whether or not deserved, for the moment). In a hypothetical world where Jon Stewart was still running that show, I can see a Trump-boycott working for him as a dramatic gesture of principle. (It wouldn’t do much, I suspect, but it would be a gesture that would probably have won him a lot of acclaim). And even though Trevor Noah isn’t playing for as much gravitas (yet?) as Stewart was, I wonder a lot about all of these “fake news” shows that have a satirical-moral edge to their reporting: part of their appeal is the implicit claim they aren’t buying into the fiction of objectivity/seeing both sides that “afflicts” the mainstream but are in fact calling it like it is. It would be interesting to see one of them really stick their neck out on Trump.
To be honest, my biggest disappointment with the end of Jon Stewart’s tenure was that there was so much time spent on Donald Trump — I was hoping he would ignore him, not give him the attention he craves, and Drumpf would fade back into another season of reality TV. But no, Jon Stewart had a better sense for important news than I did…sigh.
I agree. And frankly, news anchors having vocal opinions on what they’re reporting is nothing new. Most of the names that come to mind when you think of the top news anchors in history did. AP is supposed to present unbiased facts that other organizations then use, but those organizations themselves have a different purpose, I think. While not every journalist, anchor, editor, executive producer, etc., is an expert on any given subject–and there’s no doubt that their physical appearance plays a role if they work in television, they’re SUPPOSED to have a team of experts working behind them, helping to analyze and interpret facts. Networks and newspapers already have fairly obvious biases, and your average American isn’t oblivious to that. Almost everyone knows that NPR and the New York Times lean left, and the Wall Street Journal tends to lean right, just as we know that NBC is further left and MotherJones further left still, while Fox is so far right they’re practically falling of the spectrum. Nobody seeks out media expecting neutrality. That might have been feasible when your average American only could only choose to watch the nightly news on a couple of different stations, and read whatever newspaper their town produced, but thanks to the internet, people can turn to whatever sources best support their own opinions.
Looking at where we stand now, impartiality is a lot to hope for. I think I’d almost prefer for networks/anchors/publication to say, “Okay, look, these are the basic, irrefutable facts, here’s the supportive evidence that makes these facts rather than opinions, now here’s my educated opinion on what these facts mean for us and our country, and here’s why. Now here’s where you can go to read more about this, this and this, if you want to know more about the situation and how I came to my conclusions.”
Why feign neutrality at this point? Nobody’s buying it. Personally, I LIKE it when networks and newspapers take moral stands. It reminds me that there’s still some humanity behind the race for ad revenue that pretty much all journalism is. Take THE NEW YORK DAILY NEWS’ stance on gun violence: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/ny-daily-ne… No impartiality there because the gun situation in the U.S. is absurd and unnecessary. Sometimes there aren’t grey areas. Racism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, sexism, and hatred of the poor (seriously, how is it possible that the English language lacks a term for something so widespread as hating the poor?) are all just wrong. Period. The things Trump says and does are just wrong.
I think it would be well within the rights of any news agency to say “we will continue to bring you factual information regarding Trump’s polling numbers, campaign trail, policy suggestions, etc., but we’re going to have to take a moral stand here and stop giving attention to the vitriol he spouts. We’re human beings, too, and recognize that our fellow human beings who are being slandered by this man deserve not to have to hear him. It’s difficult to repeatedly hear something people say about you without internalizing it somewhat eventually, and we will no longer be participating in allowing this man’s bigotry a larger reach and voice. It would be immoral to continue to do so, and we refuse to contribute to the culture his hatred and lies are creating.”
Aaron Sorkin’s show, “The Newsroom,” was problematic in many ways–like a lot of his work, but the man’s not wrong about the American media and what it owes American citizens, so I’m going to conclude here with this clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXrOqjS9ZyA
hatred of the poor (seriously, how is it possible that the English language lacks a term for something so widespread as hating the poor?)
Capitalism?
I kid, I kid. (Mostly.) Really the answer is “classism,” which is problematic only insofar as it can be applied both up and down. Of course, that’s true for racism and sexism, too.
we could call it misopenia, I suppose.
Except racism, sexism, and classism all equal prejudice PLUS INSTITUTIONAL POWER. Because of that, you cannot be racist toward white people, you cannot be sexist toward men, and you cannot be classist toward the rich and wealthy.
The only news org I follow on facebook is NPR, and I keep seeing comments about how they’re “ignoring the Sanders campaign”, which I at first dismissed because I think NPR does try to cover the candidates equally, but when you look at just how much focus the Trump circus has been getting, it does make it seem like all other candidates are getting ignored in comparison! Maybe not by NPR, but in general if you watched any news channel you would think the race is Trump v Nobody at this point. I don’t think this level of coverage for one candidate is normal, and it’s totally a result of how well he’s played the media.
I do wonder about those NPR Sanders comments. Was NPR not treating the Sanders campaign as viable months ago and people are touchy about it? I agree with you that NPR seems to cover all the candidates relatively equally, so I’m confused about where these are coming from.
I’m not sure honestly. I don’t know what level of coverage they consider acceptable, but I know a lot of Sanders supporters on Facebook believe that most major news orgs are biased towards Clinton (whether this actually true I can’t say) so I suspect it’s an offshoot of that.
I really don’t understand it, either. I am an avid listener and I’ve heard more about him on NPR than on any other of the news outlets I occasionally follow.
I mean, NPR certainly has less coverage of him than Reddit, but that’s hardly an appropriate benchmark for comparison and I hope that’s not what they’re referring to.
“NPR talks less about Bernie Sanders than my friends and I do! That’s unfair!”
On a related note, I don’t think NPR spends enough time talking about cheese. Certainly not as much time as I spend thinking about it… (drifts off into cheese reverie)
BRING BACK SANDWICH MONDAY
wasn’t that on Talk of the Nation?
(RIP Talk of the Nation, the show where I learned that other states hold their proms in June wtf there I was several weeks into my summer semester art class and TotN came on to chat about regional prom trends because it was a current topic how?!)
No, that was Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me!. It started as a feature on their blog that then moved over to The Salt (NPR’s food and drink blog), and then it ended last year.
I have no idea what that is, but I’m FOR IT.
http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/162947372/san…
At the very least they could devote more airtime to things like the parts of debates where he says things like that he’ll force the military to violate the Geneva Convention or that he’ll basically destroy the 1st amendment instead of putting all the focus on his dick jokes.
EXACTLY. If only they’d follow up and analyze the really outrageous, criminal things he’s suggesting, and point out how that has no precedent or if there is a precedent, it’s like the Japanese internment camps, or examples overseas of what happened to a country with a leader like Trump. There are SO MANY PLACES they could take this coverage of him and still be responsible and not overtly biased. Just talk about fucking history.
Yes, but dick jokes get good ratings, and now that there are more than three networks all covering the news at a particular hour, what are they going to do to keep Americans from changing the channel if the content’s too informative and/or boring?
That picture of Mallory reminds me that it may have been a mistake to give up my New Zealand life. Ouch.
I hadn’t even heard of the Irish People Were Slaves Too meme, but am happy to debunk it.
That probably means you’ve had the good sense to avoid the type of person who would spout it – well done, you!
I got back from vacation there less than two weeks ago and I am still regretting getting on that plane. :/
Is Sansa the nanny????? Oh god please let it be true
It’s all our Peter Pan dreams come true!
If we get a picture of Sansa in a ruffled apron I shall surely perish, for there will be nothing left on this earth to live for.
If it happened in a book it could happen in real life!
Yes, I am envisioning a more interesting version of Airbud.
“Well, we’ve checked the state laws, and there’s nothing saying that a dog *can’t* be a nanny. Here’s the paperwork for her W2”.
She certainly does a lot of SITTING (on children)(ba-dum-TSH!)
a considerable amount of sexy talk used to go on, mostly old wives’ tales about young brides who had had their nightgowns torn to shreds on their wedding night, childbirth and abortions, monster babies and the almost mystic horrors of the change of life
Pretty sure only the first of those is sexy, tho.
Wait – not every aspect & consequence of sex is sexy? Or gynecology or obstetrics?
But they involve ladybits!
Mind blown.
Mmmmm sexy sexy ovarian cysts. Mmmmm sexy sexy menstrual cramps. Stop me there, it’s all too sexy!
Sexy, sexy fibroids!
I am never not going to love this gif.
Rachel bloom has an awesome video about this. I’m kind of obsessed with her right now. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3sQEb9TSACY
I guess this explains how the last Twilight book happened.
aaahhaglasdkjfaksdjfijfdfjsdaisjdff please don’t make me think that someone thought that was sexy 🙁 🙁 🙁
All female talk is sexy by virtue of it being about female bodies!
Though I’m pretty sure the nightgown thing is NOT sexy if it’s referencing rape. So they’re batting pretty low on sexy materials.
And the extent to which it’s sexy very much depends on the situation. If my partner ripped my nightwear to pieces, I think there are a lot of other factors which would affect whether my reaction was “ooh, sexy”, “what the hell, I paid money for that” or even “this is terrifying and I now feel exposed and vulnerable”.
EDIT: “uncontrollable laughter” is also a possible response, I think.
“Uncontrollable laughter” is a pretty strong contender here, honestly. (On my own wedding night I made An Error in layering sexy undergarments and ended up facing the choice of either undoing my entire complex fucking garter arrangement, taking off my panties, and redoing everything, or ripping/cutting off the panties. I went for the scissors. There were some ribbon-cutting-ceremony jokes. It was not dignified.)
On my wedding night I ate well over my body weight at a fancy Austrian restaurant at the resort hotel and managed to have slow-moving sex and then we just watched Robot Chicken together and fell asleep.
We were tired and dehydrated and had to get up at the asscrack of dawn to hop in the car and make it down to the coast to get on a ship for the honeymoon, so our wedding night consisted of making sure we wrote down which name went with which gift for future thank-you purposes, and depositing any checks online so we wouldn’t forget them and mess up people’s accounting, then falling into bed and sleeping. We figured we had a whole week to ourselves with no interruptions, so didn’t worry about it.
I read “sexy” as “having to do with sex,” which seems like a familiar old-fashioned usage to me although I’m not sure where I’ve seen it before. If you read it as “arousing” then it would suggest the women in question were trying to turn each other on, which doesn’t seem to be the case.
Nicole! Caring for your adorable moppet is a “real job” (although I know what you mean).
And I have been stunned by how much bullshit “history” like “the Irish were slaves too!” is all over Pinterest. I said this on Twitter, but I saw a post there about an “ancient civilization under Antartica” that was illustrated with a promo image from STARGATE: ATLANTIS. Come on, bullshit history people. Try harder.
my personal favorite is the long-enduring myth that there’s a huge pyramid, bigger than the ones in Egypt, underwater in the Bermuda triangle. This has been going since like, the 60s, and just last week I saw a post on tumblr with people believing it.
I’m also a big fan of the “BLUE TIGERS ARE A REAL THING IN NATURE” pics tagged with a poorly photoshopped tiger.
3 new ways to fall down a rabbit hole?!
brb… not getting any work done…
Working five hours a week for me is not a real job for living purposes, I fear!
I don’t know, maybe you pay REALLY well.
Rich in Sansa snuggles!
*adds to the list of currency I accept for any services I offer*
Personally I’d like them to keep phoning it in so I don’t have to try too hard to figure out that it’s just nonsense… Too much real new is unbelievable as it is!
There are lots of things that are ridiculous about these Irish slave memes but the assertion that Irish people never complain makes me think the authors have never spent any time with Irish people.
There’s a complaining Irish person in my bed right now.
Exactly! We complain constantly, it’s our main form of communication. We also love blaming all our problems on other people, particularly the English for the older generations.
If the Irish slave thing was real, ye would know all about it because we would not have shut up about it at any point in the last 200 years.
(If any Americans think I’m kidding; Its still too soon to joke about The Famine in Ireland. That doesn’t stop us like, but its still a raw wound.)
One of my best friends is Irish-American. She makes me mix CDs sometimes. The last one was ENTIRELY about the Troubles. I love her.
Irish rebel songs are the best. Music and songs are really important in Ireland and it’s not a good party until someone is singing a rebel song.
THANK YOU WE COMPLAIN ALL THE TIME
Lifetime member of the CIA (Catholic Irish alcoholics), can verify.
I can’t form a coherent opinion about the Irish slaves thing apart from how much it fucks me off when Americans of Irish descent give Ireland and Irish people a bad name.
Terrible things happened in Ireland and too Irish people, largely at the hands of British Colonialism; but that’s not an excuse for being a racist dick.
ETA: the whole thing seems to be an American construct anyway, since in Ireland we’ve never heard of it.
Yeah, a pretty weird thing about Irish Americans is that, in order to get over the stigma of being Irish in the US, they sort of went overboard trying to join the existing white-supremacist social structure (and not just the Irish — a lot of immigrant groups did this, too [here in Philadelphia, there are a surprising number of people from different kind of European extract who came over in the late 19th century and talk about black people — many of whose families have been in the states for 250 years — as interlopers]).
Irish-Americans are their own people, whose cultural identity is shaped as much by the need to fit in with American anti-Blackness as it is by their connection to the suffering of the Irish under British Colonialism.
In my (very important, very good) opinion.
Irish people can, at times, take a gleeful joy in being the ones who get to do the persecuting.
Its the same in Europe, for hundreds of years Irish people were the working class butt of most jokes; Now its Polish people and the Irish are often leading the charge in Polish stereotype jokes and thinly veiled racism.
oh yeah, I figure this is a pretty common feature of all peoples everywhere — I remember talking to my Folklore teacher about “Polish jokes”, and how the Poles tell all those same jokes about Lithuanians or whoever. I think many Irish-Americans are particularly anti-black, though, in a way that might be unique to America’s particular kind of white supremacy.
There’s a Toni Morrison essay that blew my mind, where she talks about a newly-arrived little immigrant girl sitting next to her in class and being her friend. And at some point, after a few days or a few weeks, she turns and says, “No, I’m not sitting next to you, you’re a [n-word].” Morrison says, in that moment, she became American. And that just opened up the world to me: the idea that anti-Blackness was the trick that the US used to integrate hundreds and thousands of newly arrived people: come here, and no matter how poor you are, or how low-status your work is, these people will always be lower. That’s not a coincidence, that’s a deliberate strategy.
Presumably, the lower you were on the white-people ladder (and I guess that in the nineteenth century, you didn’t get much lower than Irish and Catholic), the more important it was to maintain that supremacy over African-Americans.
Well, Italian and Catholic was also pretty low on the ladder (interestingly — Italians, especially Italian-Americans, also had deeply ingrained prejudices against Sicilians, who were to them only one step removed from…Africans).
I remember when I was a kid everyone making such a big deal about learning about your heritage — you know, did you ever do that day when everyone comes in dressed in the traditional garb of wherever your ancestors came from? — but American immigration has been pretty amazingly shitty throughout history, I kind of wish we’d covered that more.
We never had a heritage day, but in fourth grade (my last year in public school), we roleplayed Native Americans for a while. Like, organized by the teacher for some type of lesson, not us being dicks at recess. We all got names and had a big map to talk about where we were and what we were doing each day. I thought it was tremendous fun (so I wish someone had gotten me into non-racist RPGs at an earlier age).
Oh there is just no possible way that ended well. “We all got names,” what the fuck.
Yes yes. There’s a lot written about how various European ethnic groups who were not at all considered white in Europe became white in the U.S. because the hierarchies here were different.
I have had this argument with fellow Jews a fair bit. Yes, we were at the bottom of the hierarchy in Europe. But not here. It’s not the same thing at all.
I’m *incredibly interested* in how people become white in America (white on arrival)–how we get the Bill O’Reilly’s of this world, the struggle to be part of white supremacy. The very precarious nature of getting kicked out of the club (and in a literal sense, the fight to be members of traditionally WASP country clubs). The doubling down on racism to stay in the club. Not in a stupid white-studies event like someone commented on Nikki’s piece yesterday, but I think deconstructing white supremacy as a monolith, by poking holes in what makes whiteness in America, I just see that as a an important part of the work of allies in today’s civil rights movement.
As a wonderfully brilliant Irish-Iranian, New Yorker by way of Belfast said to me: I’m white until the second I’m not.
Yes! European racism and American racism don’t work the same way. The views on “race”, ethnicity, nationality etc seem totally different to me.
We in North America (read: US and Canada) treat race, ethnicity, and nationality as three distinct things (though we sometimes treat the first two as one and the same); in Europe, all three are seen as one and the same. And yet! The construct of whiteness — and even race in general — has its origins in Europe, NOT North America.
That all said, antiblackness is very much a global thing, as is white supremacy (even if it may look different from place to place).
Re: the Jews. It’s especially interesting as at least 10% of American Jews aren’t white by American standards. This past summer when the Black Lives Matter movement was at its height, there were a bunch of articles in the Jewish press about how “Jews aren’t white either” and I’m like really? Right now its our job to be protecting our brothers and sisters who ACTUALLY are suffering from police oppression now, thanks.
Yuck. My thought process was always, yeah, we Jews USED to be considered nonwhite/other, but since we’re lucky enough that no one really calls us out for it anymore, we have an obligation to help people in that position now, not whine about the past.
I can only refer you to Noel Ignatiev’s classic How the Irish Became White.
Isn’t that true of everyone? When your group moves up a step on the social ladder, the first thing you do is stomp down on the hands of those below you.
Sorry, I am having a bitter morning, having unwisely listened to Trump’s victory infomercial last night.
I’m not well read enough to say yes for sure; but yeah probably.
There’s a book on it, How the Irish Became White; some of the negative reviews are… revealing.
hahaha, oh man, they sure are
I took a modern Irish history course in college (aside – it was great/fascinating/would recommend). The professor, of Irish ancestry himself and in the process of writing a book about the famine, explained at the start of the series of lectures about the famine that he recognized that many of us were taking the class because we had Irish cultural backgrounds. He praised us for being interested in our past and history and then pointed out, in one of the single greatest moments of my university education, that, if we were sitting there, listening to him, our ancestors had resources and privilege and a way to get out when things got awful. So, tiny undergraduates, maybe don’t get so wound up about the torment your ancestors suffered at the hands of the English.
IT WAS SO GREAT AND I NEEDED TO HEAR IT SO BAD.
That’s a little weird, honestly. What I’ve read was pretty consistent about saying that at least during the Famine, it was the poorest Irish who tended to leave, largely from the West.
I remember how shocked I was when I first experienced South Philly after living in the Midwest. Not that I hadn’t known that there was a lot of racism where I was from, too, I’d just never heard it OUT LOUD before.
Excuse me while I immediately go watch/listen to “Finian’s Rainbow.”
As evidence, see the 1863 New York draft riots. Where after the Emancipation Proclamation, newspapers/politicians stoked working class (made up mostly of Irish and German immigrants) fears of freed Blacks coming north and taking their jobs. When the draft lottery came up that year and only rich men could buy their way out and no Black men were drafted as they weren’t citizens yet; New York rioted over the course of 5 days. At first they attacked city hall and the police station, but then moved to attacking Black neighborhoods and any Black people they could find; including utterly destroying the Colored Orphan Asylum, an orphanage housing around 230 children at the time (the women running the orphanage managed to get everyone to safety in time). In the end, an estimated 119 people were killed and 2000 wounded; and the Black population in New York dropped by 20% because so many moved out of the city. http://www.history.com/news/four-days-of-fire-the…
The BBC series Copper covered these really well, and addresses the lingering trauma the Black residents of New York have to deal with.
I don’t know, I was trapped on a two hour train ride with the guide of a Ring of Kerry tour I had been in earlier that day and he made a lot of racist comments and then explained that it was ok and not racist to say those things because the Irish understand discrimination better than anybody. So maybe it’s just old Irish people?
There is a generational divide (hatred for the English is a big thing with my parents generation, but my generation see England as a place we can go, get an easier degree, a better job and free healthcare.) and there’s also a class divide; People from the country would be a lot more bigoted that people from Dublin, and the lower income areas of Dublin are the places where hate crimes happen.
Irish people are by no means perfect; it just annoys us when Americans claim to be Irish and then do horrible stuff that gives us a bad reputation. We can do that for ourselves thank you very much.
I hope that I helped make up for my douchier American-with-Irish-ancestry countrymen by explaining to that guy why it’s not ok to assume that all black people in Ireland are from Nigeria and drive cabs.
Definitely racism/bigotry is a serious issue here and I do think Irish people have a tendency to point to “700 years of British oppression” as if that somehow means we can’t be bigoted or discriminatory ourselves… But that said, I don’t think there’s grounds for blanket statements like culchies are much more bigoted and hate crimes happen in low income areas – as if well-off Dubliners are never racist. I think it’s pretty problematic to say there’s a class divide when it comes to whether Irish people are racist, and from my experience it’s really not the case
It was a generalisation, I was trying to simplify it, and things are changing in Ireland rapidly; When I said class divide, I was thinking of specific recent incidents of race related hate crime that have happened in the lower income areas of Dublin. In Dublin I think its less about the people, and more about the areas.
The well off crowds in Donnybrooke and Dundrum can be, and often are, very racist in their world views; but they’re less outwardly, violently racist. Its not really to do with people, more that certain areas of Dublin are more violent anyway, and that’s often where immigrants move in, and there’s a cross over of violent area and racist people that means hate crimes happen.
And among the younger generation there is a class divide, again based on area more than socio-economic status; so the lower income areas suffer from a lot of the poverty traps and lack of education and jobs that can turn people into ignorant racists, whereas the places with better school s and more opportunity, people are less inclined to blame all their problems on the immigrants (although it does happen still.). Its a whole systemic mess that’s hard to explain to people so I end up making blanket statements like ‘if you meet an old guy from the country he’s probably going to say some racist shit’
One of my oh-hell-no-NEXT triggers when cruising dating profiles is “makes a huge deal about being 100% Irish/Italian/Etc.” because, nah, I know where you’re usually going with that.
Yeah I never really understood that with Americans. They bang on about being patriotic and American, but then qualify their American-ness with a long list of heritages.
And then they all roll into Dublin claiming to be Irish and ordering Irish Car Bombs and we have to shut that shit down. (Seriously guys, how would you like it if we had a drink called The 9/11?)
Ah! Thank you for that one-sentence explainer next time the topic of Car Bombs comes up. (Which, granted, is much less often now that I’m out of college…)
I didn’t even know they were a thing until an American friend told me about it.
See also ‘Patty’s’ day and green beer. Please stop.
Heh, I corrected someone on “St. Patty” just this week.
“Please stop” indeed.
OOF, wow, I’ve never actually heard anyone point that out about the Irish Car Bomb (NOT a drink I’ve ever ordered, I hasten to add). Jeez, America. *shakes head at own country*
Yeah I kind of can’t believe it’s a thing.
We can take a laugh in Ireland, we really can, but there’s a line of ‘we can joke about it, you can’t.’
And I would have hoped it would be self-evident that DOMESTIC TERRORISM falls past that line! But I guess it’s a bit much to hope that any thought at all goes into the names of those recklessly alcoholic drinks.
Still, I think it’s entirely appropriate for an Irish bartender, when asked to make an Irish Car Bomb, to respond with “Sure! Only after you down our latest drink, the 9/11.”
And car bombs are still a thing! This happened in Northern Ireland just last week :http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-35724066 It is a very creepy/offensive name for a drink.
I remember when I heard that name and was like, “Uh, that sounds real bad” even without the specific context of Irish domestic terrorism. After, I was *horrified.* The callousness is astonishing.
I’m from Northern Ireland and we had an American lecturer make an Irish car bomb joke the first day of our Irish lit module and that’s when we all should have realised that that module wasn’t going to go well.
I mean like seriously the room just went silent as everyone sort of just looked at each other. It was awful
Can we have a little thread where we’re happy about the fact that the world comprises Wachowski sisters? And the great statement Lilly Wachowski just put out? And about how Sense8 was a bit of a mess but thoroughly fascinating, and I was already excited about season 2 but now I really can’t wait?
(if you feel like elaborating on how the Daily Fail is a garbage fire, this could also be the place for that, because ugh)
I was just thinking about how twisted it is that Sense8, which is mega-fucked-up, is like the only show in-progress now I trust to not crap on its LGBTQ viewers. (Not that I didn’t trust it before, but reading Lilly Wachowski’s statement really drove home that holy shit, this show is being made by actual, aware trans people + J. Michael Straczynski, these queer characters might like SURVIVE or something.)
I loathe the Daily Mail more than I have ever loathed anything right now, but good on Lilly Wachowski for going in on them. I hope she’s doing okay, and that she and her sister can avoid unwanted spotlight as much as possible. You just KNOW people are going to go apeshit over them being trans siblings as some sort of impossibility or something.
I didn’t know this news! And now I have a new Netflix show to watch! All wonderful things!
(Gotta love how the Mail’s response is basically “but our reporter was nice to you, and that lady who killed herself never SAID that it was the media who made her do it so therefore not our fault.”)
Awkward moment where the Daily Mail posts something off Reuters and accidentally indicts themselves: https://twitter.com/indy100/status/70752289174788…
Ha! That is hilarious (and so indicative of their commitment to serious journalism)
Last night I realized that I have know about the Wachowskis since the Matrix, but I literally could not tell you either Lana or Lilly’s dead names. I doubt I ever knew them.
I know of only Lilly’s (which I won’t say); I don’t know Lana’s.
But I’m now loving the fact that icky MRAs’ fave things (Guy Fawkes masks from V for Vendetta, the Red Pill from The Matrix) were in films directed by trans women.
Thank you for this reminder, I am now cackling with glee.
So true. Life is glorious sometimes.
Yesterday I saw a toddler sitting in a stroller with a totally chill longhaired chihuahua riding in his lap. They were clearly BFFs. This just seems like information Toasties would like to have.
Omg, so many different kinds of adorable possibilities are going through my mind right now…
I completely needed to know that.
The other day I saw a cat wait to cross the street at a cross walk. This also news that should be shared,
I love it when I see that. I hope it means the species is becoming more aware. Whenever I see a cat running around on its own, I basically stalk him or her until I’ve been assured that they’ve arrived somewhere they can’t be run over. Like, I’ve seriously been nearly run over myself trying to make sure that a kitty wasn’t, but, you know, PRIORITIES.
intersecting toast interests. pigeons! misandry!
there’s been some kerfuffle amongst the pigeons who hang out in my break-time green space. these last couple of weeks, there’s been a Single Male trying INCESSANTLY to hump all of the already-paired-off females even though they *clearly* want nothing to do with him. yesterday, one of the females had finally HAD IT with his bullshit. she turned on him, pecking and scolding, and chased him clear out of the park.
Somewhat related, my brother has become BFFs with our longhaired chihuahua. His name is Mr. Man, he’s 14 years old, and charms everyone he meets my maintaining his surly attitude while being held like a baby.
Let’s talk about your mascara, Mallory, because I need it?
No but I really would like to know about this mascara…..
Right? I need that lipcolor!
What’s infuriating about the Irish slave meme is that many Irish immigrants really did suffer, indentured servitude was real, but white supremacists equating the Irish experience with 400 years of actual chattel slavery, taking it to this level of oppression Olympics and denial of the horrors of the African-American experience, not to mention white privilege, just shits all over that history. One’s own history of oppression should make people more compassionate to others, not less. Humanity: you’re doing it wrong.
Ugh, you stated this so perfectly. “One’s own history of oppression should make people more compassionate to others, not less.” And now I’m sad for humanity again.
I hadn’t really heard the slaves meme, but I have definitely heard a lot of Irish people say things like “my people were considered trash! We were the scum of the earth!” And I don’t doubt that, because there have always been strong anti-immigrant and anti-“white trash” sentiments in this country. But the prejudices against your ancestors didn’t follow you into the present day, whereas they did for black people. That’s just plainly obvious to anyone who isn’t being willfully obtuse and trying to argue that being jokingly called a mick once is the same as being under perpetual suspicion by law enforcement. So maybe these are fundamentally different things? Maybe when someone is talking about things that are currently happening, it is a non sequitur to counter with “but what about a different thing, which used to happen but doesn’t anymore?”
I mean wtf is the point you’re trying to make here, other than “oh yeah, our society can be pretty hateful towards all kinds of people, how sad.”
Very well put.
It’s funny too that they insist that indentured servants shipped to the Americas were all Irish, as though there is an equivalent racial element to their indentured servitude. Most of them were actually English, not that it matters, but that screws up their weird racist tilt at history and their attempts to make it equivalent to slavery.
Where do I apply to be a handmaiden in the Toast Oligarchy?
Please consider me for the position…
Self-employment has allowed me to wreak havoc on my sleep schedule. But the Tournament of Books is back! Which means I went to bed at a reasonable hour two nights in a row, just so I could wake up in time to participate in the commentariat there.
I love Toasties & the community here, but I can partake 24/7/365 as my life permits. For this blissful few weeks of March, the concentrated elixir of the TOB commentariat is a precious gift worth fixing my sleep schedule for.
Can you tell me what time it goes up? i’m not in the US, and am trying to work out whether I’m awake or not at the crucial moment. (I have read all but 1 of the books and am committed. I have the draw on my work whiteboard. Just saying.)
Today’s judgment went up about 8 hours ago – not long after I posted my original comment here. I was at the TOB site at 8 am central (my time) and it wasn’t there, then I hung out at the Link Roundup for a while, and just after 9 central when I went back it was up but barely any comments on it yet.
(Today’s judgment ruined my bracket – alas! I’ll have to redo all my predictions. Poor Mel, forced to play the game of pitting books against each other again.)
Thanks! So that’s about 2am my time – bummer.
Such an upset this morning! I did not see it coming. I thought Bats was a very beautiful object, but a better novel than Fates??? my predictions are also out of alignment and it’s only the first day of the tournament proper. Surely it has to be a zombie though. Surely. Either that or Our Souls at Night for that side of the table is my guess for zombie.
I have problems with Fates, but compared to Bats? Wasn’t expecting that at all. The words in Bats are just hammered to fit into place, and isn’t a very compelling narrative when boiled down to a story level, and I can’t talk about a book without valuing its story above everything else.
I feel sure Fates will zombie, too.
Thank you for this! I was just pondering books to read on a cross country flight, this looks like a good resource for new things!
Ok but please can we get a Sansa picture in the comments since there’s not one in the post?
I second this emotion.
The most annoying thing to me about the Irish People Slaves meme (other than it’s been gleefully appropriated by white supremacists) is that if you’re really so proud of your heritage and blah blah blah you would know that there was more than enough horrible things happening to Irish people in Ireland already, you really don’t need to make up more oppression!! But I guess that doesn’t fit into the “what about the whiteeee peopleeeeee” narrative so it gets totally disregarded. I just want to yell at them to get off the white supremacy forums and read a fucking book and learn a thing.
Also plenty of racial othering of Irish people! One of my friends is very fond of pointing to the Punch cartoons which represented Irish people as chimps well into the 1930s. But no, let’s use it to silence and belittle African-American voices instead.
The most fascinating example of that shift (to me, I like very small examples, don’t judge) is the way the British National Party defines itself. 50 years ago, it was “Anglo-Saxon” interests, English culture vs. Everyone Else, Including the Celts, but now that there’s been more and more Slavic and non-white immigration to Britain, it’s “Anglo-Celtic British culture.” Guys, you know we can read your old stuff, right?
The distinction between nannies and babysitters is so interesting in Ontario. There’s such a class distinction between who calls their childcare providers nannies and who calls them babysitters.
Like, I’ve seen wealthy couples be gently ribbed by less well-off relatives for having a “nanny” as part of their yuppiedom, even though those same relatives had a full-time babysitter for their kids.
I guess with “nanny” there’s the connotation that the wealthy employers are exploiting a woman here on a temporary foreign permit, forcing ungodly hours, low pay & bad conditions (which many of them probably are), and with “babysitter” there’s the implication that you’re just handing your kids over to your SAHM next-door neighbour, who needs the extra money (and no reflection on ethical implications). But fulltime babysitters and nannies are essentially the exact same role?
Anyhow, either way, we need better and more affordable childcare options all round.
In the UK, a full-time babysitter would be referred to as a childminder, and yes, there are the same class distinctions (though the kids would only stay with the childminder for the day and I suppose a nanny is live-in). Is that not a term used elsewhere?
Also UK, and I agree with that distinction. My mother was a nanny for some time and the main distinction between that and childminding was that she was live-in.
They’d also be set up differently in financial terms. A childminder would be self-employed and the parent would be paying them for a service. A nanny is an employee of the parents. So a childminder is responsible for their own NI, pension contributions, annual leave and so on, whereas someone who employed a nanny would have to pay for all those things too.
I’d think of a babysitter as a completely informal arrangement, paying someone hourly once or twice a month.
I would also say, at least where I’m from, a childminder is often someone who looks after children in their own home, usually alongside their own children, and possibly with a few different peoples kids. And a Nanny would be someone coming full time to your house, only minding your children.
I think in the US a childminder would be something like an in-home daycare provider, right?
Childminder is definitely not used around here & it should be. Sounds like a good neutral term.
This awesome essay on housekeeping, domestic work, and paid domestic labor was linked earlier in the week in the comments to the LR and I read it and it is very germane to this discussion! Thanks, Toast-person-whose-identity-I-have-forgotten, for bringing it up!
Ooh, thank you! So many feelings about this!
Written by a college friend of mine, yay!
Maybe call them a governess (or governor … but that would be confusing, right?) and watch their faces? Fun parlor game! (Besides, if they bring up Jane Eyre, you could always promote Texts from.)
Excellent idea!
I was under the impression that governess implies education duties? Like, I thought a governess was basically a teacher and a nanny rolled into one person.
Yes, it’s not quite accurate but I have no kiddums and still wish I had an opportunity to use it. Besides, anyone caring for a 3yo is educating them, yes?
That’s interesting – I think in my experience in the U.S., it’s somewhat the opposite. We’ve got a nanny for our kids, and she is very firm that she is NOT a babysitter. This is her career, not something a teenage girl does for fun money. I can’t say that my personal connotations are universal here, but to me the context of nanny is that it’s a more professional, long-term situation, whereas babysitter is less experienced, more part-time, less structured, etc.
I initially felt something like Nicole’s resistance to saying “we have a nanny,” because I too grew up in a world where nannies did not exist, period. Mom stayed at home or grandma or relatives watched the kids. There were not even many daycares. But that’s my dumb class baggage, and I am working very hard to super-firmly reject it, because I think the resistance to nannies is all tied up in the devaluation of childcare. Calling your full-time childcare provider a “babysitter” is a way of saying, “Oh, they’re not a very important person, I’m not one of those horrible rich people who lets someone else raise my kids.” But it elides the fact that the person who cares for your kids 40 hours a week IS important to that child, and that person deserves the respect of a professional job title. (Wow, I think I have a lot of feelings about this, now that I start writing them out!)
Agree, agree! I was had jury duty once and the judge asked what my job was and I said SAHM and he said (of effin course) “Oh, that’s a real job. That’s a *hard* job!” Which, you know, I knew already. I should’ve just said I was a nanny because essentially that’s what I was, just unpaid. It’s a real job, with real respect tied to it (imho) and there’s no shame in having a professional watch your child for you. Also, imho, for illnesses and such, a nanny is so much better than daycare because they can care for your sick child too. Or take them to various appointments. My kids were sick all the gd time and then my son had tons of speech therapy and OT too.
All in all, a nanny is a wonderful service for a family. Take this all to say, no worries, Nicole! Enjoy and relish in being responsible!
Yeah, I jettisoned all my guilt pretty quickly when I realized how many candidates we were interviewing who were refugees from daycares, where their jobs were way more exploitative than a well-paying above-board nanny gig. I am so 10,000% in favor of more and better daycares because the ridiculously long waiting lists in our area was one reason we went with a nanny, and of course affording a nanny is a privilege available to only a few of us, but I think it’s really irritating how people are quick to jump on the “nannies are for unethical snobs” train and assume that daycare is better from a worker’s-rights standpoint. There are great daycares and great nanny situations, and exploitative daycares and exploitative nanny situations. Really the focus needs to be on treating childcare as the professional and valuable job it is so that we stop exploiting these (mostly) women in either context.
Amen!! I loved the children-watching part of working in daycares, but hated pretty much everything else. After a year of working part-time in a daycare during college, I was by far the most experienced and most senior person on the staff after the lead teachers in each room (who were all women with four year teaching degrees, but mostly for reasons of having taken time of to stay home with their kids, were unable to find full-time teaching jobs). The pay was minimum wage for us, and barely above minimum wage for those with degrees. And this was at a well-respected city-run daycare in a progressive college town – almost all of our kids were the children of faculty.
My dad & cousin had nannies (my mom worked from home until I was 5 so I missed out), and I think it’s a great relationship, and can be taken in terms of the “it takes a village.” Expanding the family circle is so important: my father’s nanny’s son was the best man in his wedding, and now they are part of my family at my wedding 50 years later, after the initial connection–the nanny herself–has passed away. My cousin, now an adult, still celebrates Christmas with his nanny every year, 15 years after they stopped needing her services. My aunt went prom dress shopping for the nanny’s daughter, we all attended her high school graduation. These people once employed, have become our family. I don’t think there can be anything greater in a child’s life than to extend these kind of caring, trusting, long term relationships, especially if they’re people from different cultures. So, even though these women were never my direct childcare provider, they are part of my life too. I wish you all the best with your nanny!
My wife grew up with a nanny, and that lady is basically a surrogate grandmother to her now. She is still employed by the family as a housekeeper (part-time, now that all the kids are adults), and she comes to family events and visits her former charges in their respective cities sometimes. She baked our wedding cake! It’s been an excellent situation for everyone.
Former ECCE (Early Childhood and Care Educater and yes, it’s a Real Title and yes, I completed the full-time one year college program to get it) person here and let me tell ya, that was one of the hardest and best jobs I’ve ever had. I left the profession fairly shortly after starting it because, in a nutshell, I was very nervous as a newbie ECCE and desperately needed to be with an experienced co-worker to help me grow into myself as a quality instructer but alas, the daycares were always short staffed which meant I was left alone at the end of the day with 5 little ones who were always more or less strung out after being there for 8-9 hours. It just got too much and I lost my confidence (trying to manage multiple mini-meltdowns alone was, uh, taxing) and I moved on to another career.
But when it was good (multiple staff, GOOD mentors) it was glorious. Three to five year olds are absolutely charming, even the “spirited ones” (I was often assigned to personally assist those children with emotional issues because NEWB but I like to think I was especially good with them…I currently have two horses that fell into my lap with confidence issues concerning their own kind, so perhaps I’m drawn to it, you knows).
Sorry, I digress…tl;dr. A good empathetic ECCE professional is worth their weight in fucking gold but because it’s “women’s work” their profession is chronically undervalued leading to staff shortages, higher parental costs, and ECCE recruitment issues.
Hear, hear! I’ve heard this from multiple former daycare workers – they loved the kids but were consistently short-staffed, or left dealing with shady shuffling of kids from room to room to meet standards of caregiver-to-kid ratios, resulting in too-young or too-old kids in a room.
Before I switched jobs, I used to work as a special ed aide in a school for kids with autism with 1:1 staff to student ratios and it was heaven, so I totally get what you mean. That kind of work can be so amazing with proper support but so demoralizing when you’re left high and dry (my mom’s experience as a special ed teacher in a poor rural school district).
Oh my goodness, this makes me so happy with my daughter’s nursery.
Gah! No matter how you slice it, child care is just not taken seriously.
I grew up in a blue collar area where there were zero nannies. It just wasn’t a thing. But everyone who had a working mothere had a basically had a close to fulltime babysitter (because daycare spots for kids before three were just not available). But the full-time babysitters would tend to be next door neighbours, or friends of friends. Everyone I know who had these types of fulltime babysitters still stays in touch & invites them to their graduations and weddings. But it still isn’t taken seriously as a real job.
THIS. Younger teens/tweens who help out a parent while the parent’s at home is a “mother’s helper,” (although the gendered aspect of the term there needs to go) a teenager who’s responsible for the kids for a few hours is a ‘babysitter.’ An adult whose full-time job is helping raise someone’s children is NOT a babysitter.
I never know what to call my daughter’s child care provider for this reason. She runs to a dayhome (which is what we call it here when somebody is running a small daycare centre out of their own home). I don’t call her a nanny, because here a nanny is someone who comes to your house and watches just your kids. But I don’t like to call her a babysitter, for the reasons you outline above. I wish the term childminder was in use here!
It’s basically the same in NYC, though maybe there are more people here who are fine with being labelled “rich” and having all the accoutrements.
Good for you Nicole, for making the babysitter/nanny on-the-books. With the taxes in New York, it is hard for families to want to pay on-the-books, especially because some nannies prefer off-the-books so they can qualify for public assistance/have more cash/have other jobs that do not push them to a higher tax bracket. But it is also illegal obviously, and part of what pushes up taxes so high, as well as depriving employees of any rights and social security benefits.
I could not agree more that we need more affordable childcare options. People without many financial resources or family are forced to put their kids into very shady illegal daycares or to stop working to care for the kids. Caring for kids is very valuable work, and a valid choice, but I think it needs to be a CHOICE. There are a lot of women who struggle with wanting to set an example of working (esp single parents) but not earning enough to make ends meet if they have to pay for childcare. Working is good for our economy on multiple levels, and good for mental health (overall), and good for children to understand. Something as fundamental and normal as having a child should not remove people from the workforce against their will.
Sorry if this is choppy or has a weird tone. I’m trying to write it at work between tasks.
In my experience in the US, a “full-time babysitter” is an oxymoron. Maybe I don’t hang out with enough people who have kids but I’ve never heard someone say that. Also it’s not very common here, at least among people I’ve met, to have regular, in-home child care. Much more likely that you’re going to a day care center (which may just be your neighbor’s house, where she watches 4 or 5 other kids) or to after-school programs.
I grew up being cared for by babysitters, which meant we went to their house, and they watched us and their kids and maybe a couple others. We also had babysitters who came over for a few hours once in a while when my parents went out. Daycare only meant the big center with lots of rooms and many people watching many many children. Nannies (which may have existed, but I didn’t know of any) are people who come to your house and watch only you (and your siblings).
Ah yeah that’s probably a blurry distinction. The neighbor whose house I went to had some kind of permit and a sign in her yard that said “day care,” which was fairly common in neighborhoods in the city where I grew up.
In Missouri, at least 30 years ago, there was a certain number of kids (seven maybe??) you could watch at home without any permits or anything. Those were the homes of baby sitters.
Yeah, where I grew up (or in the era I grew up, maybe? 80s/90s) in-home daycares were generally less-regulated (if at all) and possibly cheaper, but also potentially pretty sketchy. Of course, that was when there was an increase in programs like Dateline, 20/20, Unsolved Mysteries, etc., and there were a fair number of horror stories about children dying in home daycares, so that could have been a paranoia thing that wasn’t based in any sort of reality.
If I heard that someone was a “full-time babysitter,” I would assume that while they were pulling FT hours, they were still bopping between families. To me, the difference between “nanny” and “babysitter” is exclusivity contract–a nanny is a one-family child-carer, but a babysitter goes to many people.
That makes sense, but I think it’s more a description of the job than the person. I’ve been a nanny and a babysitter simultaneously before. A nanny position basically makes you a member of the extended family. The kids’ teachers know you, you pick them up from school, you take them to extracurricular activities, and you do all of those things a regular number of hours per week. You have keys to their home and are invited to (but usually not required to attend) your charges’ school performances, birthday parties, etc., and the parents discuss any behavioral or learning issues at school, and the content of parent-teacher conferences with you. You’re basically a third parent.
But you can totally be a nanny to more than one family. For instance, here in France, a lot of kids don’t have school on Wednesdays. Kids often end up with grandparents or in special programs on those days, but if that’s the case, the nanny might be a nanny for one family on school days and the nanny for another on Wednesdays and weekends. They could also potentially be a nanny to another family during vacations (three, two-week-long school breaks per year, not including the holiday break) and/or the summer.
I’ve been a nanny to two little girls while also serving as their cousin’s occasional babysitter.
That’s really interesting and thank you for explaining!
I think a nanny is more status-y than “babysitter” but I can never decide how to refer to our afterschool person.
Also I learned that “daycare” is low-status when my boyfriend’s ex accused him of having his emails ghost-written by me because “we don’t use that term”. (I am very pro-daycare and always think of it as a perpetual episode of Zoom! with rainbow shirts and fingerpainting, but apparently for some people it’s what people who don’t love their kids do with them. As opposed to afterschool care, playschool, or preschool, or “camp”, which are all enriching and not warehousing.)
Ahah that’s a great picture. Think Slate would let her use it for her Dear Prudence pic?
That is a face I would definitely seek out advice from on how best to live my life.
Off topic, but –
HARRY POTTER FANS. THE YULE BALL IS COMING (maybe). http://www.seventeen.com/celebrity/news/a38682/ha…
Who wants to make out with Victor Krum?
Book Victor or Movie Victor? I personally did not find Movie Victor attractive. Your Mileage May Vary.
The Harry Potter fans in my city have been holding an annual Yule Ball for several years, and I’d be surprised if the same wasn’t true in other cities, so I’m kind of amused by the article being all “OMG a Yule Ball in REAL LIFE!!!” as though no one has ever held a real-life Yule Ball before.
I’m jealous, I wish my city did that.
There was a club that threw one locally this year and I almost went but cover was $20, not including drinks. :/
Audra is the greatest. There is never enough love and admiration to lay at her feet.
She’s pretty awesome 🙂
My friend got a flyer for Shuffle Along and we already bought discount tickets for about a month from now, and I’m very excited about it.
Still kicking myself for not going to see her when she was in town on tour.
That DP letter is giving me flashbacks to the year I graduated college and moved in to a party house and there was this guy everybody was friends with who was notorious for taking his dick out at parties which for some reason everybody found hilarious. I was lucky enough to not be present on any of these occasions but he had a crush on me and it was a running joke that he would stand behind me and pretend he was whipping it out and I was supposed to laugh and think it was really funny. It wasn’t! And later my roommates wanted him to move in with us and I had to put my foot down HARD.
You know, I have literally never known any dude that whipped his dick out as a joke except that one dude that did some penis puppetry before Puppetry of The Penis was A Thing, but it was never, like, “ahahaha, check it, WIENERS”, it was more “did you even KNOW penises could do this?” and consent was always involved. Always.
But. Your story makes me think that whipping it out is much more common than i thought? And the reactions described here and also in the DP question make me think: is THIS why dudes think dick pics are ok?
Yeah I don’t get it at all. But the vibe was very penisy at that house in general. People were constantly drawing dicks on everything! The only time this was acceptable was when my female roommate drew a series of artful portraits of penii in various landscapes wearing different kinds of outfits. It was called the Schlongallery.
I knew a number of people in college, male and female alike, who just sort of … got naked when there was a lot of drinking going on? Like “well, looks like it’s gonna be one of those nights, so-and-so is pantsless.” But that was just my weirdo friends being extra weird when shitfaced, not an attempt to get somebody’s goat.
Yeah, i ran with this crowd as well. I agree that “one of those nekkid nights” is not on the same level as remaining clothed and whipping your member out while everyone else also is clothed and the person that you are directing your member at is oblivious.
I know these people also. They are mostly in the burlesque community. So half the time they START the night naked!
I have heard a number of more-than-vaguely homoerotic stories about “dick-slapping” at all-male boarding high schools, but that’s about it.
This is not relevant to the link round-up but what if your job is running training for doctors, and one of the doctors signed up for next week’s course is your gynaecologist. What then.
Be glad your gynecologist is serious about continuing education and confident in the quality of education they will be receiving?
brb, stealing your username to use as my real name on Monday.
Give the training in a V mask?
Wow. Do you think you will be uncomfortable doing the training? If so, then ask them to go to another session, if possible? If you don’t feel uncomfortable, say good morning and treat them like any other participant? Weird, dilemma. Has anyone else in your field had a similar situation?
So it’s actually not the “omg he’s seen my cunt” part that bothers me. I am much more bothered by the relative power relations. He’s been my doctor for a long time in situations where I’ve been kind of emotionally vulnerable. He’s been absolutely great, but I don’t want to cross the streams! On the other side, I don’t think I want to hear the inside details and concerns of someone who might be treating me!
I nearly had a similar situation where I thought that one of the doctors who attended me in labour was going to be in one of my training sessions. But that actually didn’t bother me: it had been a fleeting doctor/patient relationship, and the chances of him recognising me or seeing me again were v slim.
Unfortunately, we are kind of between managers at the moment, so there isn’t anyone at work I’d feel confident about discussing it with! I am basically just going to have to put up with it, but aaaaargh!
I’m sorry. aaaaaargh for sure.
The last two gynecologists I’ve seen have been women I would 100% want to be friends with in real life, so … I guess it depends on the doctor?
Me too! I love my OBGYN and wish we could be real life friends, but…um, no. Alas. She is an excellent doc, tho.
Maybe have a chat with your supervisor and see if there’s an official policy? The power structure of the doctor-patient relationship is such an odd beast you’d hope they’d have some kind of guidance.
We are currently between supervisors, so unfortunately there’s no-one to discuss it with!
I ran into my gyn at a community event and we were chit-chatting like normal people because apparently I have NO SHAME, and someone asked us, “So how do you two know each other?” and I said “uhh….” and my gyn very smoothly said, “mutual friends!”* because it violates your right to privacy if your doctor reveals that you are their patient without your consent. ALL THIS TO SAY, if you go to the training, your doctor should already know they have to play it cool.
* “mutual friends” = my lady parts
Haha, this is actually the most comforting thing anyone has said!
I once ran into someone at a rock and roll concert, and I knew her because she had been my abortion patient. She recognized me but clearly couldn’t PLACE me. So I was just trying to play it cool, like, “Oh, I think I met you at some work thing once” and suddenly she leaned in real close and said “Do you work on XYZ Street?” and I said “I do!” and she said “Oh I remember you!” loudly and brightly and later found me and said quietly and privately “thanks for everything” and it was NOT WEIRD at all. In fact this is one of my favorite stories about myself.
That is AWESOME and inspirational.
This is very cool and I want to give you a fist bump for being a goddamn hero.
Awwwww, thanks!
There is a scared cat hiding under my porch. I’m going to give myself a half day and go cotch him. I thought it was important to tell you all this.
keep us updated!
Please report back on how the cotching goes!
Good luck! Use tuna.
Luck!
Please update us with pictures if possible! Best of luck on the cotching.
Poor kitty! I hope it’s alright.
Happy cotching! Pics plz if you can manage.
It has been a while since we last had a good cat-cotching story! Wishing you the very best in your quest.
The cat is gone. I was hoping the pouring rain plus the warm cozy box/towel combo I put out for him would keep him around but alas. Will continue to keep my eyes peeled.
You are a good person for trying!
I can’t listen to Audra at work, because that is a ticket to crying at your desk.
“Over dinner one evening, she tears up talking about it, as if she had gotten them (her Tony’s) fraudulently.”
AUDRAAAA I want to hug you so bad! Also goddamn Impostor Syndrome comes for us all, huh?
Thank you for linking to Nicole’s piece about the degree to which white people are already given the benefit of the doubt. I’m currently working with a group of self-identified progressives who are majority white (about 80%), and we’re running into a lot of this: I’m not intentionally doing anything racist therefore nothing I do is racist therefore I don’t have to think about or change my behavior and, hey, why don’t people of color want to join our organization, after all, we invited them that one time. There are a handful of us trying to figure out how to confront this productively, but I’m already exhausted.
That attitude is so exhausting. I’ve had some (limited) success showing people that Jay Smooth video about calling out racism, but it’s still a hard row to hoe.
After posting about my cat’s imminent death on yesterday’s Link Roundup, I posted an update; as it’s a bit buried, here it is copied and pasted:
Thank you to everyone for your condolences and kind words. I got to my parents’ house (about two hours away from my workplace) at 4.50; she died at about 5.55, right before we were due to take her to the vet’s. (Clever girl, saving my parents the money and heartache of having her put to sleep.) She was 18 and fine up until today (going a bit deaf and demented, but still energetic and happy) when she appeared to have some sort of major neurological problem; by the time I got home she was blind and fitting intermittently. I’m glad I was there, though, and I’m glad it was quick. I will miss her very much.
Oh sweetie, I’m sorry.
O, thank you for the update. I am glad that things went ok?
I still miss my previous kittehs. Like ancient lovers, they will be part of us forever. GIANT HEARTS, and remember to indulge in some self-care when you need it.
I am glad too; it went as well as could be expected, really. None of us cried, and my dad said how much better it was than the deaths of the last three cats (all put down when they got very ill). I still miss her, though.
I’m so sorry! I’m glad you got to see her and that she got to pass at home.
Your cat sounds very much like my dog (who has always been a cat in a dogs body anyway), he’s at least 19 this year, completely deaf, very sore and stiff and very very smelly. But he’s also happy and content with his life and doesn’t want to go anywhere yet.
Up until yesterday, she was basically fine; she went deaf over the last year or so (which meant Bonfire Night was much less stressful for her than usual!) and had been a bit more needy and yowly (although that’s hard to tell, as she was always demanding). But she was still enthusiastically killing her catnip-stuffed toy mouse and leaping from the kitchen table to her sleeping windowsill, and full of energy. It was very sudden.
I’m glad your dog is still happy! I hope he stays that way for ages.
Jedi hugs to you.
*Toast hugs*
So sorry for your loss! What a valiant kitty, waiting for you to come to her before she went. So, so sorry. Ah, cats are the best, aren’t they?
She was such a good girl.
Ah, I did miss that update. I’m glad you were there at the end. My heart is with you right now.
You had 18 years together, and that is a wonderful thing. She was lucky to have you.
Not quite 18 – she was a rescue cat, and we got her when she was 3 – but many happy years. I loved her very much (we all did), and I hope she could tell.
I’m so sorry. <3 <3 <3
Sending you lots of hugs and condolences. May the coming days be filled with lots of good memories about your cat.
I’m so glad you got there in time to say goodbye. <3
I’m so very sorry for your loss.
Massive hugs to you.
So very sorry for you and your family. I’m glad you could be with her at the end.
Sorry for your loss, but I’m glad she had a “good” death. Pets, man. They’ll break your heart.
If you all can, look at the Code4Libraries conference feeds, specifically Becky Yoose’s presentation on Burnout in Library Technology. Talks about emotional labor and burnout as a contagion in service professions (libraries, specifically).
Serious question. How much is it reasonable to pay a nanny who is just like a normal person, and not Mary Poppins with a degree in child psychology who will also teach your kid Mandarin?
When we were exploring getting a nanny, I felt very strongly about hiring her on the books. That turned away a LOT of people, and the only one we liked wanted $18/ hr if we paid her above board. I’m all for paying people well, but that seemed … high? We were offering $15/ hr AND paid time off (I can’t remember how much), which I thought seemed pretty okay. Was I way off base?
Anyway, we did not hire a nanny.
I think the answer to that question depends a lot on where you live and what a living wage is in your area.
Good point! Our cost of living is just slightly above the national average. Living wage for one adult is $10.94/ hr.
Depends, but I live in a high cost of childcare area and started my nanny (10 years experience but no extreme Mandarin stuff) at $15/hr, aboveboard, with 2 weeks PTO plus standard holidays, for one baby. Gave her a raise to $16/hr after a year, and then when we had a second kid, I think she asked $17 or $18 at that point (I can’t remember because we ended up cutting her hours so I could have more time with the kids but raising her hourly rate to $20 so she didn’t get a pay cut — long story.)
In summary, I don’t think you were off-base at all unless you were looking for a nanny for like, a lot of kids.
Just one baby with some occasional care for the older one!
It’s good to hear about your experience. In the end we probably would have paid it–especially given that the baby has been sick I swear to God since January, thanks daycare–but we decided we didn’t really have room in our apartment, since I work from home. Maybe for #3. HAHAHA no.
Hi there, I live in a suburb of NYC, our sitter works about ~35 hours a week taking care of our two kids (12 and 8) and we pay her $17 an hour, gas money, plus a two week bonus at year end. She takes off when we take off and has been very flexible. She is in college and goes to school during the day while our kids are in school. We also round up when paying her weekly. We do not pay for vacation time or sick days. She tells us that she is happy with her compensation and it is competitive based on what her other friends make in the area.
$15/hr is standard-to-generous here, from what I can tell. (Living wage $10.04 according to the google.) But daycare works out to something like $3.80 an hour, so we just went with the germ-infested wasteland. I think even if you count the ~$2k loss to my income from too many sick days, we still come out ahead financially.
I don’t have a nanny, but we live in an expensive area and I have paid high school and college students anywhere from $15-18/hour for babysitting. It’s what they ask for. For two kids, one with higher than typical needs, it seems reasonable.
If by normal person you mean a college student/part-time type person, $15 plus paid time off sounds amazing. But if by normal person you mean somebody working 40 hours a week, potentially on call, which she does as a career, who might have kids of her own, I can see why she would want a higher rate, particularly the fact that she’d have to pay taxes on the income, which babysitters don’t.
I’m technically an au pair, although all the work that I do is childcare, and I get 80 euros for 30 hours a week plus calming the kids down if they start to cry and mum’s cooking and dad’s on the loo – and that comes wit 2 weeks paid time off p/a, and all bills paid for (being an au pair, i’m live in)
The conditions vary from country to country (most places do have laws about what to pay and what amenities to provide) but that can be a good way to get childcare that might be cheaper than taking your kids to day-care? And if you get the right person, it’s great <3
Is there not a government baseline to go off of if you pay someone on the books? Granted, France has a lot more in the way of socialism in the U.S., but the reason people declare nannies here is because they get government assistance for childcare if they do. There’s a standard rate and they aren’t allowed to pay less than that. The rest depends on the ages and number of children, and what the nanny’s actual duties are. Also, I think some of it depends on how many hours you’re offering and whether or not it will be consistent. If you look at 9-5 (I know most people work more now) as basic work hours, the equivalent for nannies is after school until bedtime. If, say, you’re wanting someone only a couple of days a week, you have to take into consideration the fact that blocking those days off for you decreases their likelihood of being able to find other (probably needed) work on the days they aren’t with you. Their commute and the time it take them to get there should be factored in, too. It isn’t worth it at $15 if they’re spending money on gas and/or a metro pass if it’s only for an hour or two during the day, but if you’re providing enough hours to offset the time and expense of getting there and home, it seems reasonable, I guess.
It also depends on what you’re looking for, though. There’s a completely justified call to bring the minimum wage to $15/hour. Are you comfortable with the person who’s watching your children being paid the bare minimum for a decent lifestyle? Because honestly, as someone who’s nannied off and on for nearly a decade now, let me tell you, the quality of the care you receive will likely be proportional to what you’re willing to pay. Few people are willing to go the extra mile for people who don’t go the extra mile in return.
Personally, when I have kids of my own, I’ll be paying anyone who looks after them extremely well because I think that it should be the standard for someone in charge of children. Most people I’ve worked for paid their house cleaners a better hourly rate than they did me. Again, some attention has to be paid to how fitting you in their schedule affects the additional work they can find, so I understand why the overall rate is higher for someone who works less. However, I’ve never understood the mentality of employers who balked at paying me (someone they entrust with their children) less than half what they’d pay a housekeeper (someone they entrust with their home) per hour.
But yeah, I’d ask around locally (perhaps there are local parent boards/discussion groups/private schools that are more likely to have a larger percentage of nannied children) and try to find out what the going rate is in your area. If you want the best care, you’ll have to go a little beyond whatever that is. Good luck!
I would also add that you’d have to ASK me to leave before I’d part with a family that’s paying me sick days. Within reason, obviously, but your average daycare worker/teacher/nanny gets sick a LOT more than most people because they’re coming into contact with little germ magnets all day long. 🙂 At the very least, I’d definitely be paying a childminder if it was clear (s)he was coming down with something they’d obviously caught from my kids. Just on principal.
Oh, and if you decide to start looking again, I suggest checking to see if there are classifieds at local universities. The wage issue might be because you’re looking at actual nannies when what you require is more of a babysitter. Less experience=less pay.
You should look up rates in your area and find out. We are in a major metropolitan area, 2 kids, one of whom is at school half-days every day. Nanny does not drive, does “only” light housekeeping that is kid-related. Not NYC. $875/week for 42.5hr (which looks like $20/hour, but is not quite because we have to pay time-and-a-half for the amount over 40hr, etc). On the books. 2 paid vacation weeks per year, plus reasonable accommodation for sick days as needed.
It’s her job. It’s her only source of income. We are on the generous end of the scale, but not off in fancy-la-la-land for our area.
It’s expensive AF, but we just need her to make less than I make in order for it to work. My staying in the workforce is important for my ego and future job prospects and sanity (ditto my husband, but he’s the high earner and never considered staying home).
Anyway. I think it completely depends on where you live, but what she wants seems completely reasonable
(at one point we tried to subsidize her buying health care on the exchanges instead of an annual raise, but she still thinks health care through the ACA is too expensive, even with gov’t subsidy and our subsidy, and thus chooses to run the risk of being fined for not having health care)
WELLINGTONNNNNN!!!
Are there other Welly or Nz toasties??
There is meeee. I’ve got tickets to Mallory’s Writers Week talk tomorrow morning. Anyone else?
Ooh lucky! Enjoy it 🙂 i saw Mallory in the DomPost and it was very exciting!
Meeeee!
Naww, we are the tiniest of toasty groups.
Ex-Wgtn toastie, currently living in Sydney, does this count?
I am, alas, not a Wellingtoastie. Lived there for a few months and loooved it and was just excited to spot it in the background.
HERE FOR AUDRA LOVE. The woman is amazing and I own all of her solo albums and listen to them regularly.
I’d like to bring attention to the eight Democrats in the Missouri state senate who filibustered for 39+ hours to try to block a bill that would introduce anti-gay discrimination to the Missouri constitution. Republicans just stopped the filibuster early this morning.
http://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/davidbad…
I am here all day to talk about the Missouri state legislature. It is the wackiest, most fucked-up place. Did you know we have a toastie who is running for a seat in the MO House?
Really? Who is running?
Here ya go, from a link roundup a few days ago: https://secure.actblue.com/contribute/page/goeppi…
Oh, groovy. Thanks for the link. She’s not too far from my hometown.
I freaking hate our legislature, with the exception of the Democrats who constantly amaze me with their awesome. Remember a couple years ago when someone put gunsight stickers on Dem offices and the Republicans just laughed it off? Or how Kurt Schafer is a disgusting weasel who will do anything to fuck over women and other minorities, while advancing his own career at every turn?
The GOP as a whole is terrible but I don’t even know with Missouri any more. It’s like a race to see who can be the literal worst.
Kurt Schaefer is a scary motherfucker. He flat out lies, everyone knows he is lying, but he’s totally shameless and somehow gets away with it. I once sat facing right towards him in a hearing and I accidentally looked into his eyes and I think part of my soul is dead now.
“put gunsight stickers on Dem offices” wait what? This actually happened? And adults thought it was ok?
I listened to about 3 or so hours of the filibuster yesterday. Senator Nasheed and Senator Chapelle Nadal are my heroes.
Yes! I didn’t get to hear much from Senator Nasheed, but I heard a few hours of Maria Chapelle Nadal using her time to draw attention to racial inequality in St. Louis and radioactive waste at West Lake Landfill and Coldwater Creek.
Yeah, she was brilliant with that. Senator Nasheed used much of her time to go through upcoming legislation and essentially put it in “good” “bad” and “need to learn more” piles.
I actually picked up the phone and voiced my extreme displeasure over the bill to the young republican manning the phones at my state senator’s office yesterday. Of course my senator went on sign for the procedural move that silenced Scott Sifton and brought the measure to a vote. Thanks, Eric Schmitt, I’m glad your term limits are up because fuuuuuuuuck you, but sad that I won’t get the pleasure of not voting for you again.
Today, I am working from home! And I get to throw open the window and listen to the birds sing! Because it is weirdly warm! But the fresh air is delicious and I love it, and I just can’t care right now that it’s at least partly because of global warming. My office these days doesn’t have a window, and right now I get to see the outside and feel it too! Ahhhhhhhhh, yes.
Hell yeah, Tournament of Books! Bats of the Republic is a book I’ve been meaning to read.
I have read 0 of the featured books this year. Still glad it’s back so I can lurk in the comments and figure out which ones I want to read eventually.
This is also how I use the ToB! Usually I’ve read maybe one or two (and this year I’ve read none, though I just bought Fates and Furies this morning), but I always end up reading a few based on what’s written about them. Last year I’d only read The Bone Blocks beforehand, but I ended up reading Station Eleven (<3), A Brief History of Seven Killings & The Paying Guests.
Glad I’m not the only one. The first round was always distressing for me in the years when the books I loved the most were knocked out immediately and never brought back as the Zombie.
*pours one out for Skippy Dies and The Luminaries*
Station Eleven is the best! Such a worthy winner.
yep, that’s how I use it too! though I’n gonna try and see if I can fit in a couple during the actual tournament, since it’s fun to feel invested in it/outraged over judging. Right now I’ve only read The Tsar of Love and Techno, which I loved (please don’t get eliminated in the opening round!)
I’ve seen a ton of love for Tsar, which is one I haven’t read yet.
Of the ones I’ve read, the favorite seems to be The Sellout (SO GOOD). I’d put it at the top of your reading list, no matter what happens to it on judgement day.
thanks for the rec! honestly The Sellout wasn’t on my radar at all (I am not a huge fan of satires or comic novels, sad to say) but I will give it a try. 🙂
I feel increasingly out of touch with the TOB every year. This year I’ve barely even heard of any of the nominated books, let alone read them–how did I drift so far away from knowing what was going on in contemporary fiction?? Still, I always love the commentary, and it always inspires me to read more.
Yes! I’ve only read two this year but am always excited to read the judges.
I’ve read all but one! Because where I live it hasn’t been released yet and I didn’t order it in time, but my intentions were good. I have never been this organised for anything in my life, my own wedding included.
Nicole already knows this, but I feel it’s important now for the rest of you to know: the lady who thought I looked like “everyone” on Fresh off the Boat spent the latter half of that dinner talking very loudly about IRISH SLAVES because OF COURSE SHE DID
Blergghhhhhhhhh
Christ.
But I bet she had such good intentions you guys…
(just to be sure: /sarcasm)
YIKES
And you were able to consume your food? You have fortitude!
dude my MIL is the best cook I know, NOTHING keeps me from eating enough food for five at her dinner table. But I did excuse myself pretty quickly to go do the dishes and have some Alone Time after that meal.
Ah, the balm of a good meal. (And Alone Time.)
Seriously, WTF?
“Omg you look exactly like all of the Irish slaves, I can’t believe no one’s told you that before.”
NO.
Oh please, did she really? How did you keep your food down?
This story just gets better (worse) and better (so much worse).
So glad that Audra profile opens with a voice lesson and talks seriously about her instrument. I feel like a lot of the time singers are treated like they have a magic bird sitting in their throat and it just sings when they open their mouth! But it doesn’t work like that, it’s HARD and PHYSICAL and requires constant training and careful attention and as much practice as any other instrument except you don’t put it in a case when you’re done. (Also, a high D flat? What the HELL, that is ABSURD.)
Don’t feel bad, Nicole! I recently learned that if you live in downtown Toronto and have two or more kids below school age, it’s actually cheaper to hire a full-time nanny or for one partner to stay at home than it is to put them in daycare. Toronto!
That is definitely true in Boston as well.
This is definitely more OT material (and I will probably post again there), but is anyone in the Bay Area looking for a place to live? Currently living in a 2BR duplex in Oakland, and my roommate is heading to Colorado! I made a Craigslist post but don’t know if that’s appropriate to link to here… You would share the place with me and a small cat.
Not trying to turn this into a housing board, but I can’t think of any better group of people on the internet, and would probably love to live with one of you.
I hope you find someone lovely on here!
thank you, me too!
I saw that in my FB feed and had I not just moved north I’d be totally into it. I hope you find someone fab.
thank you! feel free to share with any friends who might be interested 🙂 Hope to meet you in person at the next Bay Area meet-up!
Oh, Toasties, I just found out that Bookslut is closing up shop in May. I’m sad.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/w…
Any advice on collective action methods for the students here? This is a group of people who care very deeply about social justice and are totally horrified, but many of whom are book nerds, not necessarily organizers.
I work there and the students organize protests all the time (maybe more undergrads than the law students, though), but really the way to get anything done on that campus is for tenure-track faculty to want it. If you look at what happened with Geoff Marcy, there wasn’t a lot of student organization going on (other than the grad student petition, but on the scale of protests that regularly happen on campus, it wasn’t huge), but high-profile faculty members publicly called for his resignation, and I think that was what did the real work of getting him out of there. Because, really, why would upper-level administrators care what students do in protest? As long as they’re still paying tuition…money speaks louder than words. Tell people the students are protesting and they’re just like, “okay, the students are doing their thing again, it’s a normal Tuesday.” But get some heavyweight faculty to come out against him and, well, nobody wants to deal with angry faculty. If Robert Reich (who isn’t in the school of law, but who does have a law degree) wrote an op-ed or blog post or whatever decrying the situation, Choudhry would be gone So. Fast.
And Claude Steele is killing me — “I intend to listen carefully to what members of our campus community and others have to suggest when it comes to how we prevent and respond to incidents like these,” well, gosh, what a tough question! I don’t know, maybe respond by FIRING HARASSERS? Oh I see, you can’t fire him because that would “ruin his career.” And you have to look out for harassers and nurture their careers, obviously!
This Irish slaves conspiracy is madness! Although I remember living in Cork, Ire. in 2009 and seeing the Confederate Flag emblem on cars, bars, residences, etc. as a support for southern Irish independence from the English, seeing themselves as the oppressed South in a North/South American Civil War dichotomy. I don’t think anyone REALLY understood what that flag meant.
After yesterday’s lovely weeper of a Google doodle, today features a delightful palate-cleanser which I highly recommend. I always wanted a theremin, so especially cool to me. *wwwwooooooooooEEEEEEEoooooooooooo*
Thank you for pointing that doodle out – I had missed it! In return, may I offer my favorite rock & roll theremin? Here is Dorit Chrysler taking Trentemoller over the top (if you don’t want to watch the whole thing, the theremin comes in about 2:15 and then boy howdy): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0gTZ6A0waE
I’ve often though to myself, “What if Dick Dale fell into a grain thresher with the PowerPuff Girls?” Now I feel like I have an answer! Amazing, thank you.
There’s so much in theremin history that’s weird and fascinating: Leon Theremin inventing it by accident when he was but a lad of 23! The fact that he was a KGB spy who used his musical tours to the US as cover! The fact that he was later imprisoned in a gulag and forced to help create eavesdropping devices!
His follow-up was a dancing instrument called the terpsitone, which no one will ever convince me is not just an early version of Dance Dance Revolution:
Oh, that’s amazing. Even though my upstairs neighbors are very quiet, I somehow want to own this and torture them with it for my own fitness gains.
So since yesterday’s LR had me remembering the creepy teacher at my high school, it’s so nice to have a reminder today about all the teachers I loved who got it right.
Thanks to my beloved English teacher who believed we were better and smarter than the syllabus wanted us to be and encouraged us to go find authors more worthy of us (and who made John Donne come alive).
Thanks to the chemistry teacher who practically bounced on his feet with excitement every lesson and performed experiments we weren’t supposed to let the other teachers know about (“now guys, don’t look DIRECTLY at this reaction, you might get a bit of blindness”).
Thanks to the other science teacher who straddled the strange divide between conservative Christian and committed scientist, who believed strongly in the importance of educating girls accurately about their lady parts at every opportunity (I went to an all-girls school, so these opportunities arose pretty much every lesson).
Thanks to the chaplain (our beloved Rev) who got us involved in social justice work, but also made sure we had spaces in the school to sit quietly and reflect and de-stress.
Thanks to the PE teacher who understood that my PE class was, for scheduling reasons, also the music class, and would never be anything remotely like athletic, and let us take things at our own pace.
Thanks to my maths teacher, (slightly) smarter than your average jock, whose speech to my class at the end of year 12 in which he compared us to Muppet babies who had grown up into full Muppets was so weirdly (and NOT creepily) sweet and proud that it made my friend cry. (He also married one of the lady PE teachers in the cutest romance any of us had ever seen.)
There were others, but those ones stand out. Good teachers are so important to who we become.
This also made me think of the teachers who were really so important in my life, in a way that teenage-me didn’t realise. I wonder who I’d be today if I didn’t have them around during such a weird transitional period of my life to gently encourage and support me. I wish I’d expressed how much I valued that when I had the chance?
It’s never too late to send them thank yous. Any teacher I have reconnected with is positively thrilled to hear it.
Mallory looks like an ANGEL
Personally I'd like them to keep phoning it in so I don't have to try too hard to figure out that it's just nonsense… Too much real new is unbelievable as it is!
Oh 🙁
That's a little weird, honestly. What I've read was pretty consistent about saying that at least during the Famine, it was the poorest Irish who tended to leave, largely from the West.