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From the daily archives: Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Lotta people seem to be puzzling over the weird moment in tonight’s debate when McCain referred to Obama as “that one.”
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ed-k1xOCsMs[/youtube]
I worked for several years in NYC with a white woman in her 50s, named Marion, from Queens. Marion was intensely racist but never expressed it in any of the usual epithets and slurs. Instead she spoke of Black people in general as “Them” (you could hear the capitalization in her voice) and, if the specific object of her detestation was present in the vicinity, as “That One.” It was a kind of nudge-nudge wink-wink code, but it was unmistakable what sentiments lay behind the usage. When we lived in Windsor Terrace in Brooklyn, a heavily Irish-Catholic neighborhood, I heard the same verbal code from many of our neighbors.
“That one” coming from McCain is his seething resentment pushing his racism out into public view. Considering that he still calls Asians “gooks,” it’s not all that surprising.
Lifehacker sums up a recent survey:
Hint.
Last week we asked you to tell us about the best keyboard you’ve ever used, and the testimonials came pouring in. Today we’ve compiled the most popular keyboards into a handy list for your perusal. Consider yourself warned: reading the list may lead to you staring balefully at your generic OEM keyboard and wishing you had a keyboard worth waxing poetic about. Read on to see which keyboards took home the trophies.
Keyboards: The Best Keyboard You’ve Ever Typed On
[note: That picture actually shows a Model M "Space Saver" version, which omits the standard number pad on the right side of the keyboard.]
Is this where I’m supposed to say violence accomplishes nothing? Screw that. This made my morning.
Richard Fuld, the disgraced head of Lehman Brothers, was punched in the face in the office gym amid the bank’s collapse.
Mr Fuld, who has been testifying on the financial crisis before the US House Oversight Committee, was attacked on a Sunday shortly after it was announced that the banking giant was bankrupt.
Following rumours that the incident had occurred, Vicki Ward, a US journalist, said “two very senior sources – one incredibly senior source” had confirmed it to her. “He went to the gym after … Lehman was announced as going under,” she told CNBC. “He was on a treadmill with a heart monitor on. Someone was in the corner, pumping iron and he walked over and he knocked him out cold.
“And frankly after having watched [Mr Fuld's testimony to the committee], I’d have done the same too.”
Richard Fuld punched in face in Lehman Brothers gym – Telegraph.
Does Tina Fey have a bodyguard? Because pretty soon she may need one. I have the feeling this month is going to be known in the future as Ugly October.
… McCain had said that racially explosive attacks related to Obama’s former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, are off limits. But Palin told New York Times columnist Bill Kristol in an interview published Monday: “I don’t know why that association isn’t discussed more.”
My brown shirt is in the wash
Worse, Palin’s routine attacks on the media have begun to spill into ugliness. In Clearwater, arriving reporters were greeted with shouts and taunts by the crowd of about 3,000. Palin then went on to blame Katie Couric’s questions for her “less-than-successful interview with kinda mainstream media.” At that, Palin supporters turned on reporters in the press area, waving thunder sticks and shouting abuse. Others hurled obscenities at a camera crew. One Palin supporter shouted a racial epithet at an African American sound man for a network and told him, “Sit down, boy.”
McCain’s swoon is largely out of his control, the result of an economic collapse that ignited new fears Monday when the Dow Jones industrial average closed below 10,000 for the first time in four years. That’s why his lead in Florida polls, which once reached as high as 15 points, has turned into a three-point deficit.
But the campaign has reacted with recriminations (the St. Petersburg Times reported that the Florida Republican Party chairman, after questioning Palin’s aptitude, was told that he couldn’t fly on her plane) and now Palin’s rage.
The angry GOP vice presidential nominee even found a way to blame the market decline on the yet-to-be-enacted tax policies of the yet-to-be-elected Obama.
“If you turn on the news tonight when you get home, you’re gonna see that, yah, this is another woeful day in the market, and the other side just doesn’t understand — no!” she said at an afternoon fundraiser at the home of mutual fund giant Jack Donahue. “Especially in a time like this, you don’t propose to increase taxes. The phoniest claim in a campaign that’s full of them is that Barack Obama is going to cut your taxes.”
Of course, Obama never promised to cut taxes for people at $10,000-a-plate lunches in air-conditioned tents on waterfront compounds. And the crowd — among them New York Jets owner Woody Johnson — reacted without applause to Palin’s Joe Six-Pack lines. After they didn’t strike up the usual “Drill, baby, drill” or “USA” chants, Palin, rattled, read hurriedly through the rest of her speech.
The reception had been better in Clearwater, where Palin, speaking to a sea of “Palin Power” and “Sarahcuda” T-shirts, tried to link Obama to the 1960s Weather Underground. “One of his earliest supporters is a man named Bill Ayers,” she said. (“Boooo!” said the crowd.) “And, according to the New York Times, he was a domestic terrorist and part of a group that, quote, ‘launched a campaign of bombings that would target the Pentagon and our U.S. Capitol,’ ” she continued. (“Boooo!” the crowd repeated.)
“Kill him!” proposed one man in the audience.
Palin also told those gathered that Obama doesn’t like American soldiers. “He said that our troops in Afghanistan are just, quote, ‘air-raiding villages and killing civilians,’ ” she said, drawing boos from a crowd that had not been told Obama was actually appealing for more troops in Afghanistan.
today’s moodcat
