I could have spent a little more time in the column on the Archie-dies-for-gay-friend thing, but here's a little lagniappe for your late-night real people from Patheos' Mark Shea:
Good Soviets Will Now Repeat: “Archie Died For Our Sins”Like I said the other day: I didn't know how great an idea this was until I saw how badly it pissed off the Jesus freaks.
UPDATE. Forgot to post the link earlier so here it is.
You want to put up the link to the article, Roy?
ReplyDeleteDo it yourself, Moocher!
ReplyDeleteYep, the Soviet Union sure did love the gays! ...Really, reality and history? That's what you say? Huh.
ReplyDeleteSee, the thing about a united bloc of people all having the same idea is, sometimes it's because you're crazy tribalists, but sometimes it's because it's a good idea. There's also Soviet groupthink on drinking bleach, Mark. FIGHT THE POWER.
Archie died for somebody's sins, but not mine.
ReplyDeletethe weekly standard has a comics reviewer?
ReplyDeleteMost of his articles are just reposting old Mallard Fillmore and Day By Day strips, but yeah.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of Liberty Island, there was a thread a good four months ago on it, and most commenters were amused by the odd copyright assumptions of the site (we get all the rights forever), but they seemed to make no effort to keep the work from being stolen. I observed that the best defense against theft was worthlessness, which the content seemed to have achieved, and two days ago, James (who hasn't been seen in these parts for some time, IIRC), declared that I was "an asshat," presumably for disparaging some of his favorite writers.
ReplyDeleteIt's a good thing that the Culture Wars don't require an enlistment, because the FBI would have been out looking for James three months ago as a deserter.
Archie died for me a long time ago.
ReplyDeleteThey aren't particular about where the wingnut welfare money comes from, so why should they be particular about how it's used?
ReplyDeletewho watches the watchmen? not me, parasite!
ReplyDeleteI don't think we've seen the last of Archie. There's a spin-off series called "Afterlife With Archie." (This is not a joke.) I don't see how Archie Comics can dare keep him out of it.
ReplyDeleteThat was the unreleased B-side.
ReplyDeleteOh, is that one going to give the mouthbreathers over at breitbart.com some bizarre ideas....
ReplyDeleteOh Jonah, what would we do without you? First you gloat over the alleged misfortunes of Obvious Child, a low budget affair made expressly for art houses and comedy geeks. Then it's off to the races as you insist that your buddy Dinesh D'sheartening will blow past the "Michael Moore of the right" pigeonhole and take on Stone and Spielberg. It's hilarious, like watching you try to give a hand job with Peter Pan extra chunky as lube.
ReplyDeleteUmm, I don't think D'inesh D'oes D'anbury is going to be making anything but license plates for a while.
ReplyDeleteAs for the peanut butter, shit, that's making me wonder if Der Pantload has a dog.
Ack! Up now, thanks.
ReplyDelete...the thing about "How It's Made" (which I find interesting to watch nonetheless) is that there is rarely a human being shown to be involved in the making of the dish soap/lawn rake/fortune cookies/wrench set - nothing but machines ... perhaps that's a traditional American value
ReplyDelete"A few years back, Reynolds suggested conservatives invest in women's magazines..."
ReplyDeleteGlenn, Glenn, Glenn... HOW many times do we have to tell you that Juggs is not a "woman's magazine"...
"Invest"? That's an interesting euphemism.
ReplyDeleteThe added value is between the pages. They're kind of stuck together.
ReplyDelete"Lousy world to raise a girl in, the husband thought. Luckily, now that that Supreme Court had legalized abortion on demand anytime during gestation, he wouldn't have to."
ReplyDelete...the right wing perception of "on demand" is an interesting and revealing
thing
I wonder how Fred Clark feels about sharing a website with that guy.
ReplyDeleteOh, the point of Patheos is to be diverse of opinion. The fact that the network encourages opinion from a variety of backgrounds and perspectives is a rare strength, not a detriment.
ReplyDeleteShea is a serious prick, though.
Wait--the husband is pregnant? I know there's a war on women, but jeez...
ReplyDeletei am reminded of the scene in uhf when george newman asks stanley spadowski, "how would you like your own tv show?"
ReplyDeleteYup, I'll bet that ever since The Ol' Perfesser made that suggestion, Ruprecht Murdoch has had his eye on Cosmo.
ReplyDeleteJust the cover, though.
older readers may remember Pat Buchanan at the 1992 Republican National Convention
ReplyDeletePlus ca change! I also remember Buchanan ragging on Bush the Smarter about his failure to control illegal immigrants--Haitians back then.
Yep--plenty evergreen, Roy!
Are you suggesting men should be exempt from glorious Mandatory Abortions ruling, comrade?
ReplyDeleteMy favorite wingnut culture war "victory" is one in which they compare the box office receipts of an arthouse film with a limited release to a mainstream film with a massive release. I just pulled up the details on Obvious Child; this is a film funded by a Kickstarter project and a few meager grants that, on the basis of its quality, attracted the attention of a national distributor. Most people would hold that up as a victory of the independent artist. Jonah, meanwhile, casts it against a fucking Judd Apatow movie and declares it a failure. Fuck you, Jonah.
ReplyDeleteNo, no--men get gay abortions. please, try to keep up!
ReplyDeleteI guess that means "The Scrapbook" still gets to be the janitor over at The Weekly Standard.
ReplyDeleteI can't wait until they get off their ass and finish work on the Gay Marribortion. It will save me a lot of time.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I'm wondering what "values" beyond "gee, industrial engineering can be really interesting and creative" we're supposed to get from the show. Maybe it's the long-term ennui and repetitive-motion injuries so many of the production-line workers will eventually suffer.
ReplyDeleteExcuse me, where did I say that diversity of opinion is a bad thing? This isn't one of those things where we're supposed to pretend that trollery is just bold independent thought and that anyone who would object to it must be a herd animal or whatever, is it? Because that'd be silly. Shea is clearly, as you said, being a prick-- and in a specific way that Fred Clark has frequently written against in pretty strong terms, i.e. manufacturing outrage for culture-war aficionados.
ReplyDeleteI want to slide my hand up this comment's back and make it say dirty, dirty things.
ReplyDeleteFuck you Goldberg, you goddamn son of a bitch.
ReplyDeleteThat was harsh, but I feel it was merited for two reasons. One, because he's trying to bring adoption into this. I was adopted, and I've had numerous pro-life douchebags in my hellhole of a home state claim that this means I have to be against abortion. It's really only a matter of time before someone tries that shit on me on a night I've been drinking, and it's not going to end well. Adoption is not conservative, you gaping asshole.
Two, the last thing I needed right now was to hear Jonah fucking Goldberg talk about film. I'm currently in the process of trying to secure funding for a documentary. I feel the project is very important, but it's highly unlikely I'm going to see a dime for it as it's not a political film and therefore won't put asses in seats. You know what? I don't care, because that's not the point. There are plenty of people out there who do personal projects for reasons other than money. Even if I manage to get the money I want, I'll probably never see more than a few hundred or thousand dollars in profit, but that doesn't make it a failure, you humanoid piece of shit. Maybe if you'd ever done a single goddamn thing of merit, you'd realize that.
Fucker.
For starters, a lot of people here don't seem to get that Patheos is intended to be a network rather than an individual website. Also, the fact that I likely disagree with Shea on pretty much everything doesn't mean he's "trolling," a term that's been so thoroughly stretched and overused that's it's basically meaningless at this point. He's writing for an audience of culturally conservative Catholics, not trying to tweak you personally. And frankly, I find it silly that someone is trying to insert an obviously partisan political position into Archie - do you feel that I'm "trolling" as well? Should I fuck off?
ReplyDeleteTraditional American values, like readings of the Constitution, are invented on an hourly basis according to the political needs of the moment. So hey, maybe universal automation is up there now. Stranger things...
ReplyDeleteI thought I was above liking things just to piss off conservatives, but this Archie gambit is so fun. I mean once you get towed up the initial roller coaster hill of dealing with the concept that anyone is even aware enough that Archie still exists to have a thought either way, it becomes an amaaazing cyclone of swoops and screams. To think, all you have to do to ruin their day is suggest that a fictional person has a fictional friend he's willing to die for -- amazing! Our team really got their team's goat, and we didn't have to nominate for national office a know-nothing narcissistic animal-murdering reality-show quarter-term governor of a wasteland to do it!
ReplyDeleteArchie don't want me for a sunbeam.
ReplyDelete(He wants me for a rainbow.)
De Blasio/Dead Archie '16!
ReplyDeleteI love my dead gay Archie!
ReplyDeleteJust the image I needed inside my head before I tried to get a few hours of shuteye. I guess I'll just have to move the morose drinking up from next Friday night....
ReplyDelete(This is not a joke.)
ReplyDeleteA pity; it would be a pretty good one.
His biography will be titled "From D'artmouth to D'anbury: The Pathetic Life and Sad Career Trajectory of D'inesh D'Souza."
ReplyDeletenothing but machines
ReplyDeleteWell...is is kind of a traditional American value. If you ever visit the Smithsonian museum, down in the basement of the American History building you'll find a couple of exhibits from the 1860s. One of 'em is a set of pin-making machines from the dawn of the industrial revolution: a spool of wire goes in one end, gets chopped to length, one end is mashed to form a head, the other gets ground into a point: one pin. The other display is the set of guages and tooling from the Harper's Ferry Armory: everything you'd need to set up a production line of muzzle-loading rifles with interchangable parts.
That last one really did change the world. Not the cheap guns part--rather the idea of mass production itself, using the very volume of production to drive the costs down. It's why we can have dishwashers and cars and stainless steel knives and pens so cheap we throw them away instead of refilling them. I'm not gonna argue that it hasn't had its downsides, but think about those pin making machines for a moment: those are three miserable, shitty tasks that nobody's had to do for 150 years.
"Gee, Veronica, how come you knew exactly which pharmacy here in Cabo San Lucas would have those pills in stock and wouldn't ask any questions....oh, geez, Veronica."
ReplyDeleteYou left out the D'icking D'ivorcees middle part.
ReplyDeleteIt's a conundrum: no one wants to go back to the time when 8-year-olds lost fingers working industrial sewing machines, but it seems that the easier technology makes it to do something, the fewer people can make a living doing it. We as a society haven't really figured out what to do with the refugees of downsized/outsourced work in industries like coal and car manufacturing, and it seems there will only be more of them.
ReplyDeleteI don't know if I believe that a 'post-scarcity' society will be possible in my lifetime, but it does seem that we're acquiring the bad parts of that setup much quicker than the good parts.
To really twist the knife, Archie's sacrifice is something lauded in that holy book of theirs.
ReplyDeleteNo better love hath Archie than love of a faggy-fag-fag? *KABOOM*
I thought it was well-established that Glenn's not into icky ol' biotic women. He probably jacks off to Wired.
ReplyDeleteI bet he pals around with Casper.
ReplyDeleteDo whatever you want. Frankly I'm unclear on what you're doing or what point you're trying to make, or who you're even talking to (I don't see "a lot of people here" saying anything about Patheos at all). But saying something is "a bit silly" is much more reasonable than Shea's rant about "Soviets", so if you were attempting to agree with the guy you disagree with about everything, I don't think you did.
ReplyDeleteA man’s value is mainly determined by his resources, intellect, and character. ... Return of Kings
ReplyDeleteSo ugly little misers who could have aced high school but they didn't try very hard.
I've heard Reynolds is into synthetics.
ReplyDeleteWe as a society haven't really figured out what to do with the refugees
ReplyDeleteof downsized/outsourced work in industries like coal and car
manufacturingOh, we have, but there is still some fine-tuning to be done on the Soylent Green packaging. Lesson 1: Don't use Papyrus for the logo.
That was harsh
ReplyDeleteThe truth often is. And let's face it - Lucianne is definitely a bitch.
Conservatives - Simultaneously winning and losing the Kulture War since fuck knows when.
ReplyDelete"Considering such female protest didn't even exist a couple years ago,"
they wrote, "I see it as a great step forward to educating the public
that feminism is not the answer."
Considering women against feminism is feminism's evil twin (only 2 seconds younger!), I see this statement as more evidence these people never leave their homes or even the sweaty confines of their heads. Stay inside, they mutter to themselves. Stay indoors or the the feral, sperm-stealing vaginas'll get ya if you don't watch out.
Unless it is their limited release film, in which case the smell of rotten eggs wafting out of the box offices is due to liberal shenanigans.
ReplyDeleteI keep expecting them to completely lose it and start demanding that people be required (for their own good of course) consume a certain amount of "Conservative" entertainment.
I can see it now. Every issue would come with a warning
ReplyDeleteWARNING - THIS MAGAZINE AND THE INFORMATION HEREIN IS INTENDED FOR MARRIED, UPPER CLASS WOMEN WHO WILL USE THE INFORMATION HEREIN TO BECOME PHYSICALLY AND SEXUALLY PLEASING TO THEIR HUSBANDS IN ORDER THAT THEY MAY MAKE BABIES AND PREVENT THEIR HUSBANDS FROM STRAYING BECAUSE WOMEN ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR KEEPING DIVORCE RATES DOWN.
IF THIS DESCRIPTION DOES NOT APPLY TO YOU, PUT THIS MAGAZINE DOWN NOW AND GO TO CHURCH, YOU DISGUSTING TROLLOP.
They've already convinced themselves that the Nazi party was a massive Pride parade that got out of hand.
ReplyDeleteIt took Goering in a dress to put the "party" in Nazi party.
ReplyDelete"Michael Moore of the right" pigeonhole
ReplyDeleteTo these people, pigeonhole=gloryhole
(Ernst Roehm would like a word.)
ReplyDeletePardon my ignorance, but....
ReplyDeleteMy understanding is that there's two Archie comics--Archie as an adult, and he's going to be killed. And Archie as a teen and those comics will continue. Is this right? Or will we have NO MORE ARCHIE AT ALL? That would be a drag, but I haven't actually read an Archie comic book in ~45 years, so I guess I'd survive.
And if there still is Archie as a teen comic books, does Midge still have Moose for a possessive, stupid boy friend?
Notice they listed "resources" first, which tells you that they're selfish and greedy all you need to know about them. "Character" comes last, because of course it would.
ReplyDeleteWe're in the post-scarcity society. Anything and everything anyone could ever want--including things we've never dreamed of--is now available.
ReplyDeleteFor a price. The lack of work available to many, and the lack of work that pays anything above subsistence-level wages, is a feature of this society. Goods and services are not scarce. Only the money to pay for them.
I think Fred is probably more annoyed that Shea claims to share the same religion as him. Sharing a website probably doesn't bother him nearly as much.
ReplyDeleteAs usual the comments over there are choice. Or vile, depending on your outlook. Aside from one brave commenter--and which of you guys is him?--you get an astonishing amount of dishonest butt hurt about exactly what the problem is. Its so obvious to them that including gay people in a story, or including gun control in a story, is wrongfully injecting politics while they at the same time argue that Archie used to be such a nice, christian, comic book.
ReplyDeleteMaybe I'm confused because of bouncing around--perhaps this was under a newspaper story about the refugee children--My favorite, in the sense that you feel good after you've vomited, is the guy who becomes enraged at people appropriating Jesus and the NT to argue that we should succor the children. He begins shrieking that we should "read our bible" and that "suffer the little children" refers only to children on their way to literally see and be saved by Jesus. When he is offered Matthew
32 And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats:
33 And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left.
34 Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world:
35 For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in:
36 Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.
37 Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink?
38 When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee?
39 Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?
40 And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.
41 Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels:
42 For I was an hungred, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink:
43 I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not.
44 Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee?
45 Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me.
46 And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal.
He falls silent.
If it hadn't been for wingnut welfare, he'd have had to do something actually worthwhile, like pumping gas on the New Jersey Turnpike.
ReplyDeleteThey are angry because Archie dies for a gay guy--but Archie still remains straight and white. Isn't that enough for them? Because they are already pissed off enough about Thor-ina or Black CAP?
ReplyDeleteAlso, on the subject of the imitation of Christ I'm so old I remember when that was a thing and a component part of it was that Christ, in fact, died right alongside several criminals and died to release everyone from sin. So the idea of Christ dying for/alongside/with/instead of sinners (tax collectors, whores, drunkards, thieves, and adulterers) is pretty Canon. If you see what I mean. I don't even understand how they can pretend not to understand that.
I vaguely remember that "The Conspirator" was all about reading the Constitution, especially the part about fair trials by juries of one's peers regardless of superheated emotions and political posturing that takes advantage of them. Oh, wait... you're right, 9/11 changed everything. Never mind...
ReplyDeleteNow printed in Stepford.
ReplyDelete"He falls silent."
ReplyDeleteThat's funny. Scripture never shut `em up before.
He falls silent.
ReplyDeletePraise Jesus!
"He begins shrieking that we should "read our bible" and that "suffer the
ReplyDeletelittle children" refers only to children on their way to literally see
and be saved by Jesus."
Ah... so THAT'S where Sam Alito got the idea for his "narrowly crafted" opinions.
Oh, I suspect that, deep down, they know that "died for their sins" stuff didn't work as planned.
ReplyDelete"The reason for this, Goldberg declared, is that "good stories must align with reality and a sense of justice."
ReplyDeleteWell, that certainly explains why "Game of Thrones", with its walking dead, sorcery, and good hearted characters getting killed off mercilessly, is nothing but 'Murrica-hating propaganda.
It doesn't have to be this way. We should, for example, be transitioning back to non-industrial farming, due to the costs and pollution and other problems with the industrial model. If we get away from it, we will need more people to produce our food. But even in non-agricultural work, increasing automation could be a boon if we could only wean ourselves from the idea that the whole point of capitalism is to make one guy, or a handful of them, the owners of everything. And we have a long way to go in reversing that trend. Automation wouldn't matter so much if it shortened the workweek or allowed job-sharing or things of that nature rather than being used to impoverish workers. The dirty not-so-secret is that even the guys who still have jobs operating that high-tech equipment that put so many of their fellows out of work are making less than their predecessors on the assembly line were earning 50 years ago, in real dollars. And they're probably, paradoxically, working longer hours. Put that guy back to 40 hours or even 30 hours a week at the same wages, and let another guy work 30 or 40 hours on the same job while he's off. It could be done.
ReplyDeleteBut of course we won't do that, because it might mean the Waltons only pile up $5 billion more next year instead of $6 billion, and as we all know, Jesus invented capitalism to reward rich people because he likes them better.
Self-serve sort of makes that "do something actually worthwhile" moot, doesn't it?
ReplyDeleteI think he was just saying Patheos is like that, so Clark probably knew what he was getting into when signing on? I dunno, I just want everybody to get along. I BROUGHT S'MORES.
ReplyDeleteOnly three words required here: "An American Carol."
ReplyDeleteMaybe things have changed, but the last time I was on the NJT, the service plazas required gas to be pumped and windshields to be cleaned by trained professionals. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing...
ReplyDeleteThats a very shrewd thing to say, Satch. Reading this kook and then reading the actual bible passages is very much like reading the recent Supreme Court decisions--in both cases the "plain meaning" of the text, including Jesus and Matthew's attempts to use metaphor and cartoon pictures to explain what they just said to the dummies, is continually frustrated by the insistence of Alito/christanist nutcase to focus narrowly on one tiny clip.
ReplyDeleteI had forgotten, if I'd ever known, that the widely quoted section of Matthew (Lord, when saw we you an hungered and fed you?) actually follows on a straight up parable about a guy who gives three servants three different amounts of money and then comes back to see what they did with them. The one who faithfully but selfishly squirrled it away and did not share it (through the miracle of usury and investment!) gets punished. The ones who increased what they were given are rewarded. But even then Jesus and Matthew find that the morons in the audience don't get it--once again the Life of Brian remains incredibly brilliant as theology--and they need to break it down for these boobs using elaborate charts and lines drawn between things (when I said money I didn't mean real money! when I said "buried in the ground" I didn't mean he really buried it.)
It's funny when pro-choice people assume they're speaking in your interests when they wish they could have retroactively restricted your mother's rights. I was an accident--my mom had an IUD which a) should have stopped me from existing and b) should have ended my fetal existence when it was removed as it was apparently ineffective. When fetus-me survived the IUD removal, my mom took it as a sign and decided to keep me.
ReplyDeleteThis is no way frightens me, freaks me out, or affects my happiness that my mom had the right to decide what to do about her pregnancy. Because she raised me to be fucking aware of women's rights and the basics of biological development.
Look deeper. From a conservative perspective, it's capital that buys machines. Workers are only necessary when a machine to replace them would cost more, i.e., workers are just cheaper machines.
ReplyDeleteThat's why the geniuses lobbying for the Restaurant Owners Association have put up billboards in SF saying that workers wanting $15/hr can be replaced by an app.
It's capital saying fuck you, we can get cheaper machines than you, nyah, nyah.
I really hope there's video of the guillotines being rolled up onto the front lawn of Hamburger University.
Umm. does anyone think it's coincidental that the practice of interchangeable parts was first developed in the manufacture of guns by Colt?
ReplyDeleteThat's why the geniuses lobbying for the Restaurant Owners Association have put up billboards in SF saying that workers wanting $15/hr can be replaced by an app.
ReplyDeleteI'm trying to figure out just how they think that would work. You place your order through your smart-phone or whatever. And then . . . what?
The options are really a bit limited here. Either the customer's name is announced and the customer then shambles up to the counter to collect their dinner. OR someone (a human) brings the order to the table. Option 1 might work for McDonalds or Burger King, and Applebee's or Chili's might squeak it out without too huge a drop in sales.
But anything even slightly more upscale is going to require Option 2. At which point, what's the point of the app?
No one wants to go back to the time when 8-year-olds lost fingers working industrial machinery?
ReplyDeletePlease. The Repugs have been hammering on child labor laws lately like they were steel drums. They hate minimum wage, they loathe OSHA with a primal passion. The EPA, to them, is full of Nazis. They're trying to undo the 40-hour week. Social Security? Retirement? Blasphemy!
Of course they want to go back to that time (about 1845). Wanna make a modern Republican drool on his shoes? Tell him that indentured servitude can be brought back.
The object of outsourcing is to drive down labor costs here as well as elsewhere (it is actually inconvenient to have to move overseas--even with government subsidies to do so--when all that is required is to destroy the New Deal and return manufacturing to its glory days of the 19th century).
They really do think that way. They do.
He's still out of luck, then. I'm quite sure that D'inesh D'eposed didn't take windshield cleaning and nozzle operation at D'artmouth. He was too busy being snotty in the pages of the campus conservative newspaper.
ReplyDeleteHe's definitely not a trained professional in anything.
Of course it's stupid. It is emblematic of the attitude, though.
ReplyDeleteOk, How about Carol Burnett? She's American.
ReplyDeleteMiddle part indeed.
ReplyDeleteDid I just make up this bumper sticker, or have I read it elsewhere? "Christ Died For Your Sins. Don't Disappoint Him."
ReplyDeleteThis can't be original. It's too good.
Your emotions did not affect your eloquence. My nephew is adopted, and believe me, he and his parents are very pro-choice. Goldberg's not just an asshole, he's a stupid asshole.
ReplyDeleteTry alcohol. Likker is quikker.
ReplyDeleteThe reverse is true, too. There are people who wanted their babies who turned out to be lousy parents--even abusive ones. And people who had accidental babies who turned out to be wonderful parents.
ReplyDeleteWe should, for example, be transitioning back to non-industrial
ReplyDeletefarming, due to the costs and pollution and other problems with the
industrial model.
I'm confused. That is, I'm not sure what you mean by non-industrial farming.
Nope! But remember the business model Colt was using. It wasn't MOAR BETTER GUNS. It was "fire your gunsmiths". With handmade rifles, every serious campaign needed highly skilled labor with them to keep their arms functional: making new springs to replace broken ones, making a new screw to replace a broken one, fabricating a new mold so that bullets could actually be cast that would fit. What happens if he gets sick or quits? Standardize parts and all of that gets wiped away and replaced with a box of spare components.
ReplyDeleteGiven that the U.S. was regularly involved in some sort of war at that time, no. Not at all.
ReplyDeleteArchie used to be such a nice, christian, comic book."Remember, boys, do poorly in school. Go to lots of dances. And openly salivate over members of the opposite sex, especially the short-skirted ones. Also, isn't witchcraft neat?"
ReplyDeleteI mean, never mind a one-car funeral procession, these people have managed to fuck up the basic premises of Archie comics.
Which is why, instead wasting his time at Dartmouth, he'd have been much better off going to Manchester Community College and learning something useful.
ReplyDeleteThe mills of Total Liberty Island grind slowly...
ReplyDeleteI mean farming without all the chemical inputs. W/o herbicides, pesticides & chemical fertilizers, it takes more manpower to farm.
ReplyDeleteOr, just take the rifles of dead comrades for spare parts, yeah. But, you're right, it wasn't to produce better guns, but it certainly was about making more of them with less labor. (Although interchangeable parts did require a certain amount of precision in the manufacturing process to achieve that. The analog was in the British system for making ships' block and tackle--which was really the first application of breaking tasks into smaller and smaller increments. The tooling could be made much more uniform and that sort of dragged along the precision required to produce interchangeable parts. This same process was finely tuned by Henry Ford when he realized that breaking the tasks down to the point that even idiots could be trained in them in no time at all had the additional benefit of breaking the power of the skilled craftsmen on the shop floor.)
ReplyDeleteThey were remembering what must have been an early spin off/one off which was more like a Jack Chic tract.
ReplyDeleteActually breaking down a task into smaller and smaller parts had already been done by Sir Isaac Newton when he was master of the Mint and responsible for recoining all of Britain's coins. There is a fasccinating section on this in Tom Levinson's brilliant book Newton and the Counterfeiter.
ReplyDeleteBut to the point about "taking the rifles of dead comerades fors pare parts" the whole point of the old system of gun smithing is that their guns and your guns might not fit together. No spare parts but those that had been machined for you specifically.
I'm sorry to say that I've seen it. But I've never known how to take it--does it mean "sin no more" or "sin harder because you can?"
ReplyDeleteWhat they're remembering are the Spire Christian Comics that were published from 1972-1982, which, due to artist Al Hartley's connection to Archie Comics, were able to use the licensed characters during that time.
ReplyDeleteThose people have probably never read a real Archie comic in their lives.
This is the natural outgrowth of the magical idea behind supply-side economics, which is, if you build it, they will buy. Of course the flaw there is they can't buy if they have no money.
ReplyDelete"The reason for this, Goldberg declared, is that "good stories must align with reality and a sense of justice."
ReplyDeleteI'll bet Gabriel Garcia Marquez is laughing his ass off at that one.
But, what Goldberg is saying has been the precise Hollywood formula ever since there were motion pictures--good stories have to have happy endings. Jaysus, George Orwell is probably spinning at about 6000 rpm right now.
Y'know, I admit it. Der Pantload has this amazing gift for thinking himself profound when he's being utterly conventional. It's making a virtue of delusion.
I vote we all kick in on the price of a good bottle of scotch for D Johnston. I enjoy the measured, thoughtful comments he leaves here but, on the above evidence, who doesn't want to hear him full-throttle with a head fulla booze?
ReplyDeleteA walking, breathing, farting testament to the power of the Dunning-Kruger effect.
ReplyDeleteAnd of course, here are the top 12 craziest moments from Spire's Archie Christian Comics:
ReplyDeletehttp://comicsalliance.com/archie-christian-comics/
Wow. That's really old school. I think people were using pesticides back when the mule was a common farm tool.
ReplyDeleteThere are a couple of downsides that I can see. The first is providing the weeding and to the extent possible, insect control for hundreds of acres would create grueling and temporary jobs.
The second is even without the chemicals, farming is not good for the environment and you'd need to increase the amount of land devoted to farming in order to keep feeding everyone. I suppose you could keep the amount of poop-centric fertilizer down (and out of the water system) by composting, but I'm not sure by how much.
I always assumed it means, "He's already paid the price, so don't let it be in vain. Live it up."
ReplyDeleteI could and have watched that show for hours. I do recall coffin making being a human-intensive process. But your point is taken and provides an excuse for me to plug Vonnegut's Player Piano again.
ReplyDeleteGad, that brings back memories.
ReplyDeleteThe thing is, though, I only ended up with the Spire Christian-ish-ized ones because I was already familiar with Archie comics. So I'm not sure how well this actually worked at co-opting the original's "how-to" list for the Seven Deadly Sins.
(Also also, I vaguely remember a treatment of 1 Corinthians 13:13 that might actually be useful remedial reading for present-day Talibornagain ... if I still thought anything would help.)
Weeding would be the most labor intensive chore. Insect control would probably be accomplished mostly with biologic controls (predator insects) and composted manure doesn't pose runoff issues, because it's already been composted.
ReplyDeleteWell-managed organic operations can produce yields competitive with factory farming but a lot more labor goes into obtaining those yields.
I know it sounds unpleasant, but we're going to reach a point where we have to go back to growing food this way anyway, thanks to the multitude of issues we've created using the industrial model for just 50 years.
I don't follow. Farming isn't intrinsically harmful to the environment, or at least it wouldn't have to be. It would be just as logical to claim that prairie dogs aren't good for the environment because of all the digging they do, or that bison are bad for the environment because of all the paths they trample across the plains.
ReplyDelete(I know I'm nitpicking — and maybe going all reductio ad absurdum — and I apologize, but I just didn't agree with that statement.)
Liberty Island: "writers and creators you've never heard of, and won't find anywhere else, because their views have been excluded from the mainstream popular culture"
ReplyDeleteWhat they read between the lines:
Dear Mr. Shapiro,
Your short fiction, Kill the Moochers! has an interesting premise which many in our office found quite intriguing.
[You are an amazing literary talent!]
A story wherein all poor people are anti-Semites by dint of accepting government assistance is a characterization that only a few of us had ever entertained.
[You are boldly original, a brilliant writer!]
However, here at Redbook, we tend to shy away from genocide as a plot denouement.
[We don't publish conservatives!]
"suffer the little children" refers only to children on their way to literally see and be saved by Jesus.
ReplyDeleteAnother fave bit of New Fundie selective interpretation: when Jesus said “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God” he didn't mean all rich people, just the one guy he was talking to.
It's an alternate universe fantasy in which the woman having the abortion is Hillary Clinton's mother. Seriously.
ReplyDeleteYou can practically hear the semen pattering on the monitor.
I think the Dust Bowl sort of answered this question?
ReplyDeleteBut even if you aren't completely stupid about it, changing an ecosystem over to farmland is to the detriment of whatever was there beforehand.
And then there's the issue of water. What's happening out west is answering another question about why farming is bad for the environment.
Suprise ending: "To Serve Man" wasn't a cookbook, it was a MRA tract.
ReplyDeleteI'm confused... did you mean pro-life?
ReplyDeleteDerp, yes.
ReplyDeleteYou're forgetting disease. So unless someone has been stockpiling a LOT disease resistant seed somewhere, there's going to be a not-inconsiderable supply and demand gap.
ReplyDeleteAnd yes, I admit it always does sound unpleasant when the thing we have to do to make up for past fuck ups means more people will have to take more physically grueling jobs for which they will not paid a wage that reflects the importance of their work because we are after all talking about a greedy critter called homo sapiens.
"good stories must align with reality and a sense of justice."
ReplyDeleteSays the guy who wrote "People Who Disagree With Me Are Nazis." Maybe non-fiction doesn't need to align with reality quite so much?
A tangential point: This is why the Second Amendment argument that colonial militias were made up of patriots who could, at a moment's notice, grab their fowling pieces from over the mantle and go fight Injuns, or Redcoats, or BATF thugs doesn't quite hold water. Even in colonial times, the arms of the militias were standardized as much as they could be given the limits of 18th century gunsmithing so that spare parts and ammunition could be easier to obtain, and were stored in armories when they weren't in use. After all, the Brits that Paul Revere was warning about were on their way to seize the Concord armory, where the militia's guns were stored.
ReplyDeleteI think Liberal Fascism had more than its share of fiction. I'm guessing that its reason for being was that Doughy thought, "if Newt Gingrich can write counterfactual history, so can I."
ReplyDeleteIt's no surprise that neither of them are any good at it.
On a related note, PBS recently ran a show on Henry Ford, and informed viewers that, even though Ford offered his assembly line workers unprecedented salaries for the day, the turnover rate was quite high due to the noise, dirt, and mind-numbing and body-destroying nature of the work.
ReplyDelete...Okay.
ReplyDelete(The delivery of that line is the highest achievement of Michael Richards' career.)
I'm a little surprised at that, if only because even progressives give Ford props for the $5 day, saying he understood that his workers needed money to buy his products.
ReplyDeleteThe truth behind the $5 day was a good deal more complex and nefarious. In 1910, Ford spent much of his time in slaughterhouses, adapting their methods to his assembly line, methods he implemented in 1911. As a result, he made hard, unpleasant work absolutely brutal, and it showed in his workforce. In the year preceding the $5 day, turnover in Ford plants was 380%. So, rather than modify his plans, Ford just offered more money and said it was because he wanted his workers to be prosperous enough to buy his products and the press bought it--it became legend, even though the truth was that nobody would work for him without that money. And, when he introduced the $5 day, he further divided tasks and sped up the line even more, so the work was even more brutal and repetitive. He also implemented a system of goons in his plants to enforce his autocratic and paternalistic work rules. If someone was seen drinking in a saloon after work, the goons would come to his house and beat him up.
By 1932, this supposed friend of the worker was having his private army shoot and kill peaceful demonstrators, and by 1933, he declared that, "you couldn't find a single man in this country willing to do an honest day's work."
Henry Ford was a tyrant and a sadist and a crackpot. I highly recommend Greg Grandin's Fordlandia, which more than adequately illustrates all those qualities of his.
That is, I'm not sure what you mean by non-industrial farming.
ReplyDeleteJennOfArk obviously has her own take, but I think specifically of alternatives to so-called "factory farming" for livestock. The living conditions encourage abuse of antibiotics, and the environmental impact is absolutely horrible, especially in our laissez faire "states' rights" arrangement.
More generally, the megacorporatizing of agriculture has also increased crop monoculture with its accompanying soil depletion and subsequent effects from fertilization practices. So it would be possible to make farming somewhat more non-industrial without recreating the Dust Bowl.
Well sure. Obviously I agree with you there. Overfarming, over-irrigating, plowing up marginal land that's much better suited for grazing/rangeland than for crops — none of that is good farming practice. Then again, neither is building cities in deserts and semideserts, or along flood plains, but nobody's arguing that we should stop building cities anywhere.
ReplyDeleteWe're basically in agreement here. I didn't happen to agree with (what I perceived as) the absolutist stance in your argument, but I'm not trying to pick an argument. I do think we're more in agreement than not.
Yeah, that adoption argument is arrant bullshit. There are literally a billion different things my parents could have done that would have resulted in me not being here. If they had gone out for breakfast instead of eating at home the Monday three months and one week before I was conceived, I would not have been born. The odds of any one person being born are infinitesimal, and abortion is a tiny, tiny part of that. If the thought of a universe where you never existed freaks you out that much, tough shit.
ReplyDeleteAll true. That show also pointed out that, in addition to goons and snitches, Ford also had pet journalists and hagiographers who were engaged in the manufacture of favorable stories about him.
ReplyDeleteI read the regular Archie comics back then, and occasionally a Spire version would come into my possession and it was like entering a bizarro alternate universe where the characters I'd loved had been replaced by sanctimonious creeps.
ReplyDeletePlant diseases are best controlled (in most cases) by controlling insects. In a well-managed organic operation disease is usually no more of a problem than it is in "conventional" (industrial) farming. For one thing, good organic practice is to stay away from monoculture, which is the primary cause of systemic disease resulting in widespread crop failure. What caused the Potato Famine, aside from the British, was the fact that Ireland relied on one cultivar of potato, the Lumper. Other cultivars are resistant to the blight. It's the same thing that's happening with bananas now - the entire commercial crop is one species, the Cavendish, which is being wiped out by a disease spreading around the world to all the banana-cultivation areas.
ReplyDeleteAs for the sounding unpleasant, we'll end up going back to a system that had been around for thousands of years up until 50 years ago, which is, yes, physical work, because there won't be any better options. Water is already becoming a big issue in a lot of places, and we will not be able to continue to saturate it with agricultural chemicals and fertilizers, although we will no doubt continue to do it for as long as we think we can get away with it. But if someone's going to do grueling work, it seems to me to make more sense that it be done in order to feed people than just about anything else. And there's no reason why the work would have to be sub-poverty wage; the system of farm subsidies and supports in place in this country means we pay less for food - about half as much as Europeans - in return for...not very good food produced by about 5 different multinational conglomerates. The industrial farming model primarily exists to serve their profit interest; cutting out subsidies and supports would undermine their dominance which can only be seen as a good thing.
It's a complex issue but the one thing that stands out crystal clear to me is that we aren't going to be able to keep doing farming the way we have recently. No harm in trying to imagine what the implications of that might be.
Yet they grind exceedingly small-mindedly.
ReplyDeleteOK, I meant no one worth listening to.
ReplyDeleteThe assembly line was copied from how the meat packing industry processed pig and cattle carcasses quicker by assigning specific tasks to one person who doesn't need to have a butchers' training in order to be efficient at their specific task.
ReplyDeleteAs for the sounding unpleasant, we'll end up going back to a system that
ReplyDeletehad been around for thousands of years up until 50 years ago, which is,
yes, physical work, because there won't be any better options.
Sorry to belabor this dead free-range horse but I could talk about food all day.
I have to admit I'm unmoved by the fact that chem-free farming was around for thousands of years because that kind of farming went hand-in-hand with an excessively rigid society and often non-voluntary labor.
So yes, it would be great if we, as humans, treated the humans who do important things like make harvest our food really well. But the reality is those people are treated like shit because they do harvest our food. They will continue to be treated like shit and paid poorly because they are doing field work and increasing number of people doing it will increase the number of people treated like shit.
There's also the issue of seasonal work. What do these people (who were doing something else and are now doing field work), do when there are no fields to be tended? And really, I have to say the attitude that people may as well work on the farm because we need food and people have to do something just seems like a massive step backwards for a society. "Son, I know you wanted to go to college and maybe become a doctor. But you should have been born 20 years ago. Now here's your hoe."
And also, an Organic label increases the price by a not insignificant amount. I'm not the poorest person I know but I couldn't afford to go 100% organic. I assume that increase in cost stems from the increased costs of growing food without chemicals. That's not going to change, so you'll have higher food costs.
I don't know. It seems like the unspoken assumption is there will be a lot fewer mouths to feed.
I think piehole may also be substituted
ReplyDeleteCan you discuss what the documentary is about?
ReplyDeleteYeah, Jesus was actually making a joke about how fat this dude, "A. Rich Mann", was.
ReplyDeleteBah! That's the old liberal translation of the Bible. The new Conservative Edition deletes all of that (it's apocrypha, anyway. Right?) and points out that Jesus would most definitely have stoned Mary Magdalene, kicked all the beggars off the Temple steps so that the money changers could operate unimpeded, and charged 12 shekels a head for that loaves-and-fishes dinner bash.
ReplyDeleteYou can tell the A Cast went on strike and they had to bring in a bunch of poorly-trained B-5s afflicted with winsome baby eyes and woolly bear eyebrows.
ReplyDeleteNo really. That was awful and making them look more childlike is kind of creepy.
They don't even think it got out of hand--they think that was the whole plan in the first place.
ReplyDeleteI'll just jump in for a moment: Back in the early 1980s, I worked for a telemarketing firm for a month. My job was to call farmers and ask about their use of pesticides and herbicides (being the only person in the NYC 'burbs who knew what wire worms are, I got to do then entire survey--about 3,000 calls).
ReplyDeleteI was surprised by the number of farmers I spoke with who used no pesticides or herbicides (although most did use fertilizers). These farmers were using more traditional methods such as crop rotation, intermix planting and so forth. And their reported yield-per-acre on crops such as corn and soybeans was often equal to or just a bit below the yields of farmers who were heavily dependent on chemicals.
So there might be a way we can do this and not drive food prices sky high. We just need to think about it carefully, and then implement it incrementally.
We could feed a lot more people on intensive, organic, crops than we could have before thanks to decades of research on irrigation, plant rotation, and etc...l Hell, we could even eliminate stoop labor if we were careful and constructed our planting system in such a way that most plants were at waist height on carefully countoured or hydroponic plots. But we can't feed everybody in this overpopulated planet and the kind of agriculture that I think Jenn is advocating is extremely brutal and physically demanding. If we were paying people enough for it to produce a middle class lifestyle the actual cost of the food would skyrocket, as well. I'm not advocating one way or another but I think its not realistic to think that we can support the population we now have, in cities and towns with little open space, on the kind of labor intensive small farms Jenn is talking about.
ReplyDelete"What do these people (who were doing something else and are now doing field work), do when there are no fields to be tended?"
ReplyDeleteKansas COULD use some pyramids...
"All Americans are hereby sentenced to one viewing of 'Coupon: The Movie'. And may God have mercy on our souls..."
ReplyDeleteStuck-up Riverdale punks!
ReplyDeleteOh, we could support our population. Probably wouldn't have much left over to support anyone else's population though. But we're going to get to the point where we have to change the way we're growing our food.
ReplyDeleteYou're actually on to something, there. Last night's comments were aided by an ounce of Wild Turkey and a pint of Pabst.
ReplyDeleteThanks. That is the next step, as soon as I build up the nerve to go public with this thing.
ReplyDeleteIt's about overseas education, my old profession. I've planned the whole thing out, and I can do it on the cheap, so raising the money is at least plausible. However, my shaky background in film production is going to make it tough. I know that the local arts center has sponsored the occasional documentary, and there's an open house on Friday - I'm hoping I can track down an experienced videographer who can give me some pointers.
ReplyDeleteNow all I can think-of is this old "Mr. Show" production, "No Adults Allowed!": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BY8YIn5okX8
ReplyDelete...which I once characterised to someone as being about as good as old East Bloc propaganda used to get.
Oh shit, I've seen them pretzel-twist themselves into all kinds of knots trying to hand-wave that one away. The funniest was the TV preacher (don't remember which) who claimed, with a straight face, that Jesus was referring to a gate in the Jerusalem city walls known as "the Needle Gate" because it was so narrow and how it was difficult but not impossible to get a camel through the Needle Gate if you unloaded it first. A very creative bullshit story which raises the question of why you wouldn't just go to one of the other gates if you arrived on a laden camel.
ReplyDeleteNow we're back to the scotch.
ReplyDeleteRebekah Brooks needs something to do.
ReplyDeleteThe Mill on the Dross
ReplyDeleteI think it's the other way around, Shea is annoyed that Clark is Christian. Fred's often writing about what he calls the gatekeepers, the evangelicals who enforce a rigid orthodoxy on the politics and theology that Canberra properly called "evangelical" by evicting any dissenter from the tribe. Pathos itself feeds this by classifying Fred and others as "Progressive Christian" rather than as "Evangelical Christian" which is how they think of themselves. Thus, Patheos has accepted as truth that to be a true evangelical Christian, one must be politically and socially conservative, anti-gay, anti-feminist, anti-choice, anti-socialism, anti-union, anti-civil rights, pro-capitalism, pro-Republican, even Randian. Evangelical Christian now means all of these and no dissent is permitted lest one be banished from the tribe. That's what's got Fred annoyed.
ReplyDeleteCanberra? Should be "can be". Funk autocomplete.
ReplyDeleteWait, you're asking a bunch of effete coastal elitists? Hah! We're too busy sipping our artisanal arugula milks to waste time on Archie comics. Now, if you had any questions about Persepolis, or the Sandman series, or Keighlii Fortenthal's 64 Pages of Solid International Klein Blue ...
ReplyDeleteThe funniest was the TV preacher (don't remember which)All of them, Katie. The shtick about the literal gate was a popular dodge for most of the "prosperity Gospel" crowd for a while.
ReplyDeletedoes it mean "sin no more" or "sin harder because you can?"
ReplyDeleteThat depends on which parking lot it's in.
I'm adopted and hardline pro-choice too. Abortion wasn't legal where and when I was born, and my reaction to that is always "You did what to my mother?!"
ReplyDeleteTurns out from my papers she really, really wanted to keep me, but the beneficent state that made sure I came to be wouldn't lift a finger to help do that.
Bite me, forced-birthers.
It's kind of like "drinks are on me."
ReplyDeleteWelcome to a typical weekend in an artsy hipster college town.
ReplyDeleteThats a common lie that they tell themselves. They also claim that it is the 2000 year old version of a typo, and the real word should be "rope", and the needle actually means a big fat needle thing, that you could get a rope into, but you had to be a bit careful.
ReplyDeleteThe whole notion that it just means a camel, and a needle and is a common phrase meaning "Naaaah... you can't fucking do it", is too scary.
I was also an accident, and am also very pro-choice.
ReplyDeleteAnti-choicers attempt to appeal to my fears and, and, I suppose, my vanity: "If your mom had aborted you, you would never have existed!"
My response: "If my Mom had aborted me, then I wouldn't be bothered by the fact in the least, now would I?"
I wonder if the anti-choice argument seems more compelling if you believe that a human soul descends from heaven and is incarnated in a fetus, but if the fetus is killed then the human soul goes to Limbo?
Oh great.
ReplyDeleteAfter reading this thread, I've got The Archies singing "Sugar Sugar" stuck in my head again. Man, what an earworm!
Here to help: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkuuZEey_bs
ReplyDeletePraise Betty, and God bless Veronica! Those girls should be saints.
ReplyDeleteI love them both.
The terror of the pink swastika. You know, there might be something in trying to argue that the hammer in the hammer and sickle is actually supposed to be a buttplug, and therefore GAYS.
ReplyDelete"The ideal Nazi," I heard from a contemporary joke, "is as blond as Hitler, as tall as Goebbels, as slim as Goering, and as chaste as Rohm."
ReplyDeleteummmm okay..
ReplyDelete