Bryan @ 61 & 92--the problem is that she made all those mistakes in one rather short paragraph.
Plus, most people have twelve years of formal education before they get to college, even. Yes, we know what she meant, but people are commenting on what she said.
And if she's working as a nurse practitioner, she ought to have encountered enough doctors to know that advanced medical education doesn't automatically eliminate racism.
As far as "if Hillary Clinton had", you are doing exactly what you are complaining about. She didn't have the accident, so your speculation is no more than sweepingly imputing the worst on the opposition. And anyway, we already have the untruth about LB being spread around. It's not a tit-for-tat; but it is an "everybody does it." The best we can do is try and stand clear of it and not add to it.
We do have the very personal tragedy of Vince Foster's suicide, endlessly, repeatedly investigated due to Republican officials' and activists' refusal to accept that it wasn't a murder committed by the Wicked Hillary. And those "questions" still get repeated in the MSM as if they were legitimate questions that Bill & Hillary need to answer, or that raise legitmate doubts about them.
Meanwhile, Laura's accident, in which she killed, not her boyfriend, but her ex-boyfriend, barely got mentioned, ever, by the MSM, is not in fact pushed by liberal or leftwing blogs as genuinely likely to be a murder.
Vince Foster's suicide is proof that Hillary is a lesbian, who was having an affair with him, and then killed him in collaboration with Bill. That's the wingnut line that still gets treated as worthy of serious discussion by the mainstream media. Meanwhile, even mentioning the simple, incontestable fact that Laura Bush did, in fact, kill her ex-boyfriend in a car crash when she was seventeen, proves that Democrats are both crass and vicious, far more nasty than the people who won't let Vince Foster rest in peace, who thought it was cute to make jokes about Chelsea being "the White House dog" when she was twelve or thirteen, who obsessively and publicly speculate about the sex life of a married couple whose marriage they quite deliberately tried to destroy. Sorry, I'm not buying it.
C. Wingate @245--If Hillary Clinton had had that exact same accident, it would be exploited endlessly by the Republicans as "proof" that she was a murderer. And considering that it was Laura's ex-boyfriend, there's a plausibly coherent story to be built around that--if you're motivated primarily by the need to destroy anyone uppity enough to disagree with you. But since Laura's a Republican, and her husband's opponents are Democrats, the matter is rarely mentioned, and we don't get ominous "some people suggest" stories from the MSM.
The cookies comment--HRC was responding to a hostile question that demeaned her for making the choice to continue her career. And at the time, she was a lawyer, not a politician. She'd probably still be a lawyer, and not a politician, if like Cherie Blair she'd been able to continue her career largely undisturbed while Bill was president, or even if she and he hadn't been subjected to an unrelenting campaign to destroy them both, personally and not just politically. I mean, really, one of the things the wingnuts hold against her is the fact that they weren't able to destroy her marriage, that she chose to stick with her imperfect, unfaithful, but personally supportive husband and the father of her child, rather than turning against him and siding with the people who claimed she was a lesbian who was having an affair with Vince Foster, and collaborated with Bill to kill him...
They hate Hillary as much for the ways in which she is a traditional wife, as for the ways in which she isn't.
As for HRC having been nationally prominent before 1992--not so much. She was frequently listed in Best Lawyers in America, and she was involved with the Children's Defense Fund and the Legal Services Corporation, as well as being on a number of corporate boards of directors. She was a fairly prominent lawyer; she was not someone whose name hit the national news or that the average politically aware person would be familiar with. People in general didn't have an opinion of her prior to 1992, because people in general, including politically aware people, had never heard her name or had at most heard it in passing. When Bill ran for president, the general reaction was, "the governor of Arkansas", not "Hillary Clinton's husband." She came into the general consciousness as his wife, not the other way around.
This is not a tit-for-tat, "everybody does it" situation. The Democrats have simply not attempted to personally destroy their political opponents and their families they way the Republicans have, and no fact-based account of the last fifty years in political history can support a claim that they have. And while the Democrats have often been frighteningly indifferent to civil liberties and personal privacy issues, they have not been actively hostile to them in the way the Republicans have.
The distrust and dislike I feel for any politician who still chooses to be a Republican is hard-earned, and not something I felt when was eighteen and watching Nixon's resignation speech.
Happy Birthday!
I can't, however, bring myself to agree that being 49 means you're old. Or even older. The most I'm willing to concede, from the great height of 50, is that we're not annoying, argumentative kids anymore.
We're annoying, argumentative adults.
Inge @ #186--
International Falls, MN (on our northern border) to Brownsville, TX (on our southern border) 2544km.
Oslo, Norway, to Geneva, Switzerland, 1556km.
Boston, MA to Los Angeles, CA, 4178km.
London, UK to Tehran, Iran, 4408km.
Distances that inevitably take a European across an international border, or several, take an American to various places inside the country, without coming crossing or even approaching an international border. A significant part of the US does not have an international border within 1000km, and even for those parts that do, if you're that close to one border, you're nowhere near that close to the other border.
Yes, we really do have only two international borders. You can't get the total count of countries in North America above three without counting the Central American countries, which is possible but dubious. And on the other side of one of our international borders, they speak the same language, the currency is familiar, customs and behavior for the most part aren't much more different than the regional variation within the US. And for both of those borders, the requirement of a passport to cross them is new.
It's not that Americans don't travel because we're insular; it's that we're insular because it really is relatively difficult to reach anyplace foreign. Especially, as others have pointed out, with only two weeks vacation.
How many of those fourteen countries you've visited are outside of Europe? Because, no matter how many times you count off the countries within Europe, you're still talking about distances that won't take an American outside the US, or at most might taken an American to Canada or Mexico or the Caribbean islands--all of which until recently didn't require a passport.
Lee @ #148--you're overlooking the fact that the airlines often do have Really Good Special Deals, Boston-to-Miami, lots of young people are willing to make the drive in groups, sharing driving, with at most one night on the road, and it's a travel experience that pretty much everyone I know in this area has had. Had had, usually several times, before graduating college. Florida's an immensely popular Spring Break destination, just for instance.
Miami-to-Boston--for some reason that's not quite as popular. Can't think why. [contemplates lovely expanse of snow, just outside the window]
Abi @ #129--Perhaps I will worry about comparing American behavior to Australian or New Zealander behavior when I'm not talking to Europeans citing their extensive international travel covering distances that wouldn't take most Americans halfway to the nearest border. Or in some cases, out of their home state.
And yes, Texans will drive distances to go out for dinner that New Englanders would consider more practical for an overnight trip. In either case, though, it usually won't involve crossing an international border. In New England, it's likely to involve crossing a state border, but not even that, in Texas.
Bill @ #136--yes, a passport is harder to argue with. But it wasn't required, and most people never had problem. I never heard of anyone who wasn't doing something seriously stupid (intentionally be cute and annoying to the border guard, for instance)*, having a problem before the last few years. No, I'm not saying in never happened; I'm saying that it was an unusual enough occurence that it didn't prompt the average American who was only traveling to Canada occasionally on vacation--or routinely to buy milk and bread, for that matter--to think they needed to have a passport.
People in the intermediate range, crossing the border often but not even every week on business--way more likely to have a passport, just in case.
*One exception. A woman I worked with told me the unsettling tale of her very pleasant visit to Canada ending in the US border guard, on her return, asking her, when she couldn't produce her driver's license, "Where were you born?"
She was born to American parents in the UK--and her parents dropped the ball and didn't get her birth registered when they should have. So she was legally a naturalized citizen, and should have had her naturalization papers, or a passport, or at least her driver's license which would have avoided the situation of the guard asking where she was born... After that, she got a passport and carried it with her, just in case.
Juliet @ #123, I'm not sure you're getting the point about distances. When talking about how many Europeans have traveled the distances, that, if an American traveled that same distance from home, the American would need a passport, talking about those Europeans traveling in Europe is meaningless--no matter how many countries are involved. Most Americans traveling those distances would not reach an international border. For those who would, it would be Canada, where they speak the same language and do not have a startlingly different culture, or Mexico, which for millions of Americans, and very sizable percentages of those within that kind of short distance of the US-Mexioan border, is either the place where they or their parents came from, or a place where they at least speak the same language as the place where they or their parents come from.
When I was a young teen, over thirty years ago, a sizable minority of my classmates had been to Europe. But that's from Massachusetts; Europe was just one, albeit 6+ hours, plane flight away. When I was just a little older, in high school and college, going to the Caribbean or to Mexico on vacation was pretty normal--but of course did not require a passport.
Until the last couple of years, Americans simply did not need passports in order to visit anyplace as close to home as France is to even the most distant parts of Britain. Or as close to home as any part of Europe is to any part of Europe. Or even some places that are significantly further away, such as Hawaii for any American who doesn't live there.
Randolph @ #89--in addition to the points made by Summer & Debra (no passport needed until recently, "close" for residents of only four states), for millions of American citizens, the Mexicans don't even talk funny. They speak a language those Americans learned at home, from their parents. Sometimes even in Mexico. Yes, there area lot of illegal immigrants, but there area lot of legal ones, too--and legal or illegal, their children born here are citizens.
For the people who live close enough to the border to cross it easily, visiting Mexico is just not all that alien an experience. For the people for whom it might be, Mexico is a lot further away.
Debbie @ #47--Up until the last few years, Americans starting from their homes in the US, traveling similar distances to those intra-European travels you're describing, would have had real difficulty reaching someplace that an American would need a passport to enter or to return to the US from.
And that's what my question was: What percentage of Europeans have traveled distances that, if an American starting from home traveled those distances, would require the American to have a passport? The number of countries in Europe doesn't change the fact that the distances involved, mapped onto North America, don't take you out of the zone Americans used to be able to travel passport-free. Sure, you have acquaintances who've traveled to the Caribbean and Central and South America, Africa, Australia, Southeast Asia--so do I. (And I think we may fairly consider travel from Europe to North America as equivalent to Europe from North America.)
So the question remains, what percentage of Europeans have traveled those longer distances?
Travel within Europe is undoubtedly more broadening than travel within North America, but the failure of Americans to travel internationally as much as Europeans do is not a product of American insularity; it's a product of it being relatively hard to reach an international border--and even harder to reach an international border where they need a passport, and the languages and customs on the other side are not the ones that either they or their parents or their neighbors grew up with. And American insularity, to the extent that it's greater than European insularity, is I think in large part a product of that.
It's not just that, if you don't live close to the Mexican or Canadian borders, you can travel huge distances without reaching an international border. It's also that, until very recently, you didn't need a passport to visit Canada, much of the Caribbean, or the tourist areas of Mexico.
It took real effort to get someplace where there would be some point in having a passport.
What percentage of the European population has traveled the distances that, until the last few years, would have been necessary for Americans to reach a border that required them to produce a passport?
What contributes just as much to insularity, I think, is that North America consists of exactly three countries, and in all that territory, if English won't get the job done, Spanish will--and an awful lot of Americans do speak Spanish. (The Francophone Canadians all speak English, and will speak it to Americans who make any attempt to speak anything that could possibly be mistaken for French.) (This includes "Bonjour; do you speak English please?") How many different languages (and dialects different enough to impede understanding) in the same square miles as North America? I think that has a big impact.
Department of Picky Details:
He says, "...gave it to the computer-forensics division of our Homeland Security-type people,â€
Canadian DHS-equivalent, it sounds like, not US DHS. Not that that subtracts much from the weirdness of the story.
Posting from the hopelessly uncool, loserville, hick town of Boston:
1. Each of these things was in turn quickly identified as harmless. Before noon, it was obvious that the likelihood of any real danger was remote. The police were saying "hoax, not real terrorism" fairly early in the day. However, they were all found attached to major pieces of infrastructure, in non-obvious places for advertising.
2. The demographic of people who'd recognize the figure doesn't overlap well with maintenance and sanitation workers (the people finding them) OR with bomb squad personnel (the people investigating them.)
3. Turner and its advertising company could have taken the wild'n'crazy step of getting permits for these things. Note: Turner's weaselly apology does not claim, makes no suggestion, that they did.
4. Someday, we're going to going to encounter another well-planned terrorist attack. (In fact, we already have. The Shampoo Plot was Security Theater, but the Madrid and London commuter bombings were quite real.) They're not all idiots, and disguising bombs as children's toys is not a new idea.
The main criticism I have of the police and the local media is that, if they'd let pictures unpixilated, this would have been identified and explained sooner. The main criticism I have of our politicians is that, in the embarrassment of finding out it was an ad campaign, they're clinging to the "hoax" language, in an attempt to prosecute the perps under that law, rather than just suing them for terminal idiocy.
But Turner and Interference do seriously deserve to be sued for terminal idiocy.
Right now, what I want to know is, what sort of person is it who, offended by something Teresa said in a Making Light post, decides the right thing to do is…email me, and not her, to complain about it? What is this, Patriarchy Pretend Hour? Take it up with Teresa. Let us know how that works out for you.
Oh, really, Patrick, isn't it obvious? They're afraid of Teresa. That cheerful confidence strikes fear in their souls.
Carrie #24:
Considering how carefully crafted Bush's image is, and that he still comes off as a buffoon who's a little shaky on the concept of 2+2=4, I'm kind of scared to think of what he must be like in private.
Why are you assuming that this is not the intended image? For most of the past six years the "aw shucks" image has served him well, helping to disarm people, both politicians and voters, who had niggling doubts about his policies. And it has caused those who couldn't be disarmed to underestimate him.
Now, things are obviously coming apart, and the "aw shucks" image isn't playing quite so well, but it's still somewhat effective in conning people into putting the real blame somewhere other than on W.
dan #29--But they're not balancing bodily humors anymore! They had to find new medical uses for their leeches! I ask you, was that fair?
Martyn #88: I suspect you are right. Most Americans have no more idea what has happened and is happening in the Six Counties than they have anywhere else.
Did you read what I wrote right above that? Or did you not quite absorb what it meant?
Couple of things to remember. At the time the Provos were coming very close to blowing up 2 British Prime Ministers (imagine the outrage if Mr Bush had got put in a box on 9/11) Americans themselves were putting millions of dollars into the Noraid and other fake charity buckets (said dollars going straight back to America to buy American weapons - at a time when the weapon of choice of freedom fighters worldwide was the AK47, the IRA used Armalites - hence the slogan, the Armalite and the ballot box) Irish American politicians from Ted Kennedy downwards (or upwards, depending on your viewpoint) were wetting themselves for a photo opportunity with Gerry Adams (while he was still commandant of the Belfast Brigade rather than the skilled and imaginative elected politician he has become - like so many other 'terrorists') American courts were refusing to extradite convicted murderers on the grounds that their crimes were 'political' (ie, they were terrorists)
And this is what I meant about the British not having clue. Ted Kennedy and Tip O'Neil, most prominently, and other Irish American politicians that Britons loved to hate, labored mightily for years to make Americans understand what Noraid was really all about, and to stop the money flowing to the bomb-throwers through Noraid--and right when they had achieved near-total succes, Maggie Thatcher decided to become the most effect fund-raiser Noraid ever had, undoing the good effect of all that quiet, hard labor, and Kennedy and O'Neil and others had to start all over again.
And they did it again, and they succeeded again. And what thanks did they get from Britain? Crap like this, being regarded nearly as terrorists themselves.
(An important detail to remember: what was going to succeed in getting the message through to people that Noraid were lying about their purpose and about what was really going on was not looking like dupes and stooges for the British government.)
(Another point: Gerry Adams didn't just wake up one morning and decide on a sudden change of career from "terrorist" to "skilled and imaginative elected politician." This is exactly the point Bush & Co. so often miss: you don't make peace with your enemies by talking only to the people who are already your friends and allies.)
Niall #86--What you're saying matches my impressions; it's good(?) to have someone over there confirming that my reading of the situation isn't insane.
The question, or at least one question, is why are Blair & Co. so much more frightened by Muslim terrorists than by Irish terrorists? One possible explanation which seems to fit the timing is that he's far too heavily influenced by whoever is US President. I find that idea scary, the more so because I can see no reason why it needs to be so.
Gag, in the stories I'm aware of (Note: this is not a scientifically valid sample!), they mostly had English accents--their families had presumably been in England for at least a generation or two, and perhaps since the Famine, and most likely did self-identify as English.
As for assuming the Irish-Americans were Catholic, yes, I'm sure they did. And after all, 49% of all Americans of Irish descent are Catholic; a mere 51%, barely more than half, are Protestant. Which was one of the funniest things about British politicians, the BBC, and British visitors to the US, during the years of the troubles, ranting on about the 40 million "Irish Americans", presumed to vote as a block and to be solely responsible for the fact that American politicians did not uncritically accept British policy in Northern Ireland as wholly good and correct: the British assumed that they knew what "Irish American" meant, and they clearly had no clue whatsoever.
It's of course equally true that most Americans had only the haziest idea of what was really happening in Northern Ireland.
I have just snipped a large chunk of text which was deeply interesting to me while I was writing it, but would have taken this even further off course. My only real point, that's relevant to this discussion, is that when a country is confronted with a real and somewhat scary problem, the temptation to simplify it in satisfying but unproductive ways is very strong. It's the US that's going through this now; we need our friends, especially our friends who've been through it relatively recently themselves, to forcefully and effectively point out, not just why these solutions are wrong, but why they're mistakes. It's maddening to have Blair, who surely knows better, aiding and abetting most of Bush's worst ideas.
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2008 | 6 |
| 2007 | 9 |
| 2006 | 8 |
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