Posts by Danielle
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They are welcome to their ridiculous country and war.
Maybe it's because I'm reading this amazing Peter Guralnick biography of Sam Cooke right now, but these kinds of sentiments really do make me sad. That whole century of incredible popular culture, amongst other cool things, is now just... pfffft!... because that damn country won't get its head out of its ass.
I couldn't agree more with Schama via Mr Ranapia. I have spent a fair amount of my life laughing hysterically at The Jerry Springer Show, so I'm not exactly immune to the concept of 'American grotesques'... but still. Isn't it a bit too easy, that sort of thing? (Full disclosure: I have several lovely blood relatives who say 'y'all', and wear overalls with their names embroidered on them unironically, and go hunting, and fish in bayous, and own pickup trucks.)
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Sigh. Not everyone lives in the US, or even gives a shit about the place.
Fair cop. Although since the thread is partially about the US public's response to Sicko, it's not like it's totally out of left field or anything.
(Tangentially, I've always found the 'not giving a shit' attitude perplexing. The whole country is such an awesome, crazy, inspiring, fucked-up, ridiculous mess - how could anyone *not* be interested in it? To say nothing of its general effects on the rest of us...)
Anyway, I suppose my initial post was badly worded. I think that the left in general, in most western societies (and this is most prevalent in the US), seems to have divorced itself more and more thoroughly from ordinary working-class people. So when someone says something about not wanting to 'dumb myself down to their level', referring to ordinary people - the same kinds of ordinary people who fifty years ago could have created a civil rights movement, or one hundred years ago could have created a women's suffrage movement, or a labour movement... it kind of makes me irritated. I think it's counterproductive. That's all. (However, I think this may be more about my issues than yours, Ben. :))
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Can somebody hook a brother up with habanero peppers in Auckland?
I am married to someone from Texas, who requires unholy amounts of chiles in everything. I buy hot stuff by mail-order from Mexifoods in Christchurch. You can get habanero peppers in a jar from their horribly unintuitive shopping site.
I'm not about to dumb myself down just so I can hope to speak to them at their level.
Sigh. Which is why the left will keep on losing in the US - they keep trying to patronise people into submission. 'You should listen to me, dumbass!' doesn't really work that well, oddly enough.
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Heh. I presume she knows that you're stalking her, Graeme? The tubes tell me that the Family Television awards are shown on the CW, GG's network. You'd think she'd have managed more than one award from them, dammit!
By the way, I forgot to say earlier: Stephen Colbert is so funny that he hurts me. I laughed out loud about five times reading those two pages in EW. And his book is called I Am America (And So Can You!)? Snort! I don't understand why we have The Daily Show now, but no one's managed to convince anyone at C4 to screen The Colbert Report too - particularly as we get teasers for it in the final Daily Show segments...
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Lauren Graham has never been nominated for anything for that role, has she? It's really a travesty. She deserves a special award just for carrying off speeches that long - let alone making them funny or moving or both. (I also cried right through that karaoke scene.)
I'm getting pretty sad about the end of Gilmore Girls, actually. I got so annoyed way back in season three, by the whole 'let me break up with the boyfriend who MADE ME A CAR and date that sub-James-Dean dickhead' storyline, that I don't think I truly appreciated how incredibly strange it was to hear Elvis Costello and XTC featured prominently on a show soundtrack. 'Then She Appeared'? They really played that, or was I hallucinating?
And on another topic, my favourite Hustle & Flow review. The animated booty-clap gif alone is worth the click.
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I'm not trying to get this thread Godwined, but while it would be nice to think putting your kids though medical school would act as a vaccine against being a religious fanatic or a murderous ideological bigot, it doesn't work like that.
I'm wondering if the high percentage of doctors joining the Nazi party might have had something to do with the widespread acceptance of eugenics in western societies during the early twentieth century. Was there some kind of warped healthy-sciencey rationalising at play?
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A commentator on ESPN's Sportscenter just quoted a FotC song during a baseball highlight.
World domination is clearly imminent.
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I am now qute bitter with TV3, who only showed the second half of the Project Runway premiere episode, and completely avoided the preamble 'Road to the Runway' hour with Tim Gunn. Now I've got to contact my Friends in America again... bah. Note to TV3: *I know when there's an episode missing*. Teh interwebs tells me so!
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Mores the pity that the Yanks pulled the plug on South Vietnam in 1974.
Ba? Wha? Huh?
Translation: if only the US hadn't stopped after they killed two million Vietnamese and completely destroyed the entire country, things would have been totally rad over there!
Heh. That argument is so fundamentally and thoroughly crackers that it's actually almost awesome. I salute you, sir! You are truly the stuff from which neocon dreams are woven.
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James, 'other people suck too' is not an adequate defence in court, and it's not an adequate defence of the US administration in interweb arguments, either. If the rhetoric of the entire country is based entirely on its being a 'beacon of freedom', it's just a tad galling to read this constant, disingenuous reframing of the argument by administration apologists. Besides, comparing the US favourably with dictatorships? Damned with faint praise there, homes.