Tom Friedman’s Conscience Speaks

What a wonderful world it would be.

I’m waiting for Bill Kristof’s.

@rptrcub: Truly.

@ManchuCandidate: I thought I’d awoken to a new world. Bummer.

Long ago I worked with a man who was unfailingly irritating in an upbeat way. I’m inclined to be melancholic, especially in the mornings, so I assumed my reaction to him was “just me.” However, in the course of researching something totally unrelated to him, I found a description in the Merck Manual of a variety of bipolar disorder characterized by mood and behavior almost always manic and seldom or never depressive. It went on to say that “normal” people found such persons hard to deal with. Maybe that’s what ails T. Friedman.

@rptrcub: I searched in vain, but they didn’t do one. I could do it …

@blogenfreude: DO IT! Please?

@JNOV: Wait until I get home – have to see how much vodka I have. To do it, I’d have to read a few real columns, and the stupid. It burns.

@lynnlightfoot: I despise perky and cheerful. I find my invariably perky, friendly, and cheerful coworkers infuriating.

My life is some combination of The Office and Office Space (in fact, when meeting and making social chat with people I do not know, if they ask me what I do, I tell them I work at Dunder-Mifflin; if they don’t get it, I know that I never will know them). In “Office Space,” there was a woman who was perky, she went up to to someone who was having a bad day at one point and said, in a cutesey-widdle-baby voice, “looks like someone’s got a case of the Mondays.” Thats what my coworkers are like. Most days I wish I could just melt away and dissolve through the floor and into the earth, leaving no sign I was ever here.

I absolutely love the NYT: Special Edition spoof. I wish the groups that created this masterpiece would put one out every day, since it sure as hell beats the right-wing reality. Bush turns himself in for High Treason? Free university education and national healthcare? A S.A.N.E economy? That’s the world I wanna live in.

Did y’all see the video going around the tubes where a guy from the real Times states that they were out in front on their Iraq coverage and someone off-screen yells “what about Judith Miller?” then the guy storms off.

This should create some serious soul-searching and ethical questioning over at the real Times. Probably not, though.

I especially loved the NYT spoof editorial where they issued a blanket apology for all their unconscionable idiocy past and present, then announced that Kristol Meth has been terminated (my add: in a Sarah Connor Chronicles way).

http://www.nytimes-se.com/2009/07/04/we-apologize/

@Original Andrew: It really needed a picture of Bush strapped to a gurney.

@Prommie:
Those perpetually happy folks piss me off, too. It wouldn’t bother me so much if they were genuinely happy and not hopped up on goof balls.

That “Case of the Mondays” woman made me laugh hard. I knew a couple of coworkers like that till I found out why they were so perky.

Lots of people hated Office Space, but it’s usually those folks who don’t get the jokes. Most of my friends still laugh at “PC Load letter, what the fuck is that?!?!?!?”

@Prommie: “Office Space” helped me make the decision to leave my last job. Unfortunately I didn’t realize what my next job would be.

@Original Andrew: Well, maybe it went over my head, but I could not figure out if the NY Times spoof was spoofing conservatives, mocking their perception of what liberals would do with free rein, or mocking libtards and what they would do, given free rein. But I found the prospect of many of the things it reports horrifying, so I assumed it was doing one or the other. It couldn’t possibly have been intended as a Vision of a Perfect World, could it?

@nabisco: Bye, pot, hello, fire?

Can someone tell me what this Camille Paglia creature is? It scares me. I need a pigeonhole, a stereotype, is she a moron or a loon? Here is some of what she said in Salon about Palin:

“I like Sarah Palin, and I’ve heartily enjoyed her arrival on the national stage. As a career classroom teacher, I can see how smart she is — and quite frankly, I think the people who don’t see it are the stupid ones, wrapped in the fuzzy mummy-gauze of their own worn-out partisan dogma. So she doesn’t speak the King’s English — big whoop! There is a powerful clarity of consciousness in her eyes. She uses language with the jumps, breaks and rippling momentum of a be-bop saxophonist. I stand on what I said (as a staunch pro-choice advocate) in my last two columns — that Palin as a pro-life wife, mother and ambitious professional represents the next big shift in feminism. Pro-life women will save feminism by expanding it, particularly into the more traditional Third World.”

But Camille, you mean you can’t see the venality? The empty, stupid narcissism? The dishonesty? Teh stupid?

And by the way, her comparison of Palin’s use of the language to be-bop jazz, well, she just encapsulated why I hate most jazz.

@blogenfreude: Where did you find this spoof? How did you find it? Where can I get more?

@blogenfreude: Your efforts are always appreciated. I’ve got some Ketel One for you…

@Prommie: My take on Paglia is that she’s a loon. Maybe not as far gone as Jeffrey Scott Shapiro, he who wrote that nutty WSJ editorial about how badly we’ve all treated poor ole W, but approaching it.

@Original Andrew: Love The Sarah Connor Chronicles!

@nabisco: Speaking of next jobs, today I contacted the PhD program I almost joined. I can haz admisshun?

@FlyingChainSaw: One day. One day. One day, my darling, you will have your wish.

@JNOV: Decided not to put in for the law professor position down in Albuquerque.

@redmanlaw: Why not? You would kick some serious ass! Personally, I couldn’t deal with law students, but you’d keep em in line.

@Prommie:

Which specific story-headline did you find disturbing? It all sounds good to me. Closing the Harvard business school, ending the Iraq War, telling the truth in its opinion and editorial pages instead of providing a platform for serial liars and psychopaths, etc.

Re: Paglia

Please ignore her. A college prof made us read her ravings, and I remember thinking that you’d have to be retarded or crazy to actually believe any of the crap she writes. She’s all about shock value, kinda like Marilyn Manson except not interesting.

@lynnlightfoot: last link in post takes you to the whole thing.
@JNOV: a great martini vodka – I mix w/ Stoly, but a martini w/ that is plenty good.

@blogenfreude: Ketel One gimlets, yum! Back when I used to drink. I can’t seem to pour my liquor down the drain…yet. But that day is coming soon.

Geez. Taking Camille Paglia seriously is like hiring Laurie Anderson be your wedding band. It makes you look weird and affected and not at all like a normal human being that anybody would want to spend time with.

(Wait a minute: anybody ever see Paglia and Anderson in the same room together?)

@Original Andrew:

HA! That’s it, yes. Camillia Palliglia is the Marilyn Manson of critical theory!

@chicago bureau: I would go to that wedding.

Did anyone catch Sarah Palin’s press conference this morning? Her responses were the normal mix of run-on sentences and flustered platitudes, no suprises there, but the staging was, well, sort of bizarre. And not just on account of the gallery of stony-faced governors behind her, but because one of them, Rick Perry, interceded to cut it short after a few questions, and could be seen guiding her back to the podium to answer the final question. One doesn’t get the sense that she was in control of the situation. It’s sad, really.

@mellbell: WTF is she wearing? Is that a (p)leather jacket? Big square pockets over the boobies are a fashion don’t no matter the fabric.

Governor Good Hair having to rescue her after those two hard questions (what role are you going to take post-election using your celebrity? and something about reaching out to the Latino community) is the best part.

@Tommmcatt Yet Again: Maybe she’ll have to face this problem some time soon. We should be so lucky.

@SanFranLefty: When Perry became Ag Commish by winning the urban vote, I knew it was time to clear out of Texas.

@JNOV: Dr. JNOV, I presume?

@Prommie:
re: “As a career classroom teacher, I can see how smart she is —”

I nearly peed myself laughing over the irony of this statement. From my experience if there ever was a person who is the worst judge of character or intelligence it would be a classroom teacher.

@chicago bureau: I disagree — I would hire her in a heartbeat to perform “O Superman” at my civil union/whatever ceremony as the anthem. Because I’m weird like that.

rptrcub: Or your dance with your mom, perhaps.

@nabisco: This is so ridiculous and snotty, but technically JDs are Drs. I know. I know. But this time I’d maybe earn it with more than three years of schoolin’.

@IanJ:

That’s one of their best, no question. Ha! I can’t believe you remembered that one—I *heart* you, IanJ.

Here’s my all-time fave:

Hidden Valley Ranch Bombed By Balsamic Extremists

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/31635

/TJ/ More of the gales of Blowvember, from Mommy 1.0 at the Jez. Democratic staffers gone wild!

@Prommie: Camille Paglia is one of the “Third Wave” feminists — her only well-known work, Sexual Personae, praised the powerful feminism of ’80s boy-toy-era Madonna. She is worse than a joke: she is harmful. Loons like her convinced young women that promiscuity somehow “empowers” them. 14-year-olds are NOT “empowered” by giving blowjobs, Camille. If you haven’t noticed, I loathe her.

@Mistress Cynica: Madonna as a “feminist?” Jeeze, thats retarded. Madonna’s schtick consists of exploiting exploitation, she plays into the sexist gender and sex roles, and just uses them to forward herself, like a succesful whore. This might “empower” the one in a billion Madonna, and the rare succesful prostitute, but in the end just perpetuates the system that forces women to use their sexuality to get ahead in a male-dominated society.

Not to mention that by holding up an impossible role model, it encourages young women into trying to emulate her idea of empowering sexuality, when, in the case of most women who attempt to emulate her, this fantasy just tricks them into being degraded while they think they are being empowered.

If you haven’t noticed, I loathe Madonna.

@Original Andrew: It’s not archived, so no link, but my favorite little tidbit of theirs is probably the picture they ran of some blueprints with a hoagie on top and the caption “Foot-Long Sandwich Used as Ruler.”

@mellbell:

Mr. OA carries around a picture of a kitten from their site with a caption that reads “Independent Minded Cat Shits Outside the Box,” so he’ll quickly have something when he needs a few laughs.

@rptrcub: I tried to interest our Stinquey editors hours ago with that Blowvember story, but it appears that they all have day jobs that they have to work….damn.

@Original Andrew: I don’t know which part of your story re Mr. OA is the funniest. My neighbor has a new kitty that Mr. SFL and I have been privileged on occasion to cat-sit/entertain with the laser pointer. There is nothing cuter than a 7 week old kitty full of energy (and exhaustion). Except maybe a 7 week old puppy.

The way normal women get all ovulaty about the human baybees – that’s how I am around the furry pupsters and kitsters. To me, human babies look like old wrinkly boring men. But baby doggies and kitties – yom yom yom.

@SanFranLefty: SFL did her best, but:

a) We were all busy.

b) Everyone was creeped out.

c) Do staffers count?

A dollar is six inches long, btw. Impress a kid and measure something with one.

A Lefty – just post it as a threadjack> Good stinque rises to the top.

why do i have to wake up to camille gagmealia?
i don’t have enough to disgust me? i’m still drinking coffee for christs sake.
how, why she gets press is the mystery we should be addressing.
what does shemp have to say about femnism in the third world?
i know he’s dead, doesn’t mean his thoughts aren’t more intelligent.

@nojo: Staffers count.

@redmanlaw: I feel like I threadjack so much, I decided to hold back. Sorry.