[Signal boosts are awesome! --L.]
- On the “Restore Sanity/Fear” Rally
- [Shakesville - Melissa McEwan]
…both sides are not equally responsible for the antagonism that has led to the extreme political polarization which currently prevents cooperation.
It’s evident in a Democratic president who’s alienating his own base in order to work with the opposition–and an opposition who overly promise gridlock and talk about blood oaths to shut down the government if they don’t get their way.
[McEwan discusses this as if it were about conservatives vs. progressives, which I find too reductive. I suspect that Stewart and many of those who found his speech meaningful are focusing on Repubs vs. Dems, which of course is not the same thing.
There are many criticisms one can truthfully level at the Dem leadership which make them sound about as bad as the Repub leadership.
However, there is a significant difference between them. The Dems are a muddled but mostly reasonable/moderate bunch of folks with various left- or rightward inclinations. The Repubs used to be the party of conservatism, which adheres to existing heirarchy; they pandered to xenophobia for so long that the conservatives are being crowded out by the extremists, but inherent in conservative philosophy is a reluctance to break ranks--which makes the extremists all the more dangerous.
I'm pretty angry at the Dems, but they aren't the party of torture, of endless war, of religious/racial/etc hate--they aren't the party of "second-amendment remedies" and "widespread voter fraud" that currently undermines American democracy.
So I found some good in Stewart's speech, but it seriously troubles me that he continues to popularize the supposed equivalence of the two parties.
-L]
- On Language – Creeper! Rando! Sketchball! – NYTimes.com
- Rando is one of a surprisingly large number of words that U.N.C. students use to refer to unfamiliar, suspicious or anxiety-producing outsiders. Skimming the lists that Eble has collected from recent classes, I kept spotting a familiar pattern: along with rando, there are nouns like creeper, sketcher and sketchball and adjectives like dubious, grimy, sketchy, sketch and skeazy. Sketchy and sketch have, in fact, been among the most frequently attested words culled from Eble’s students for the past several semesters….
[Hey, we used all of these words back in my day. Except "rando", and of course "Facebook stalker". We said "randoms" back then, while walking barefoot in the snow uphill both ways. You kids get off my lawn! -L]
[In case it needs to be said: I don't agree with every word of everything I link to. --L.]
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