CSotD: Boxers, Briefs and Bull****
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I don’t know which is worse, that Ann Telnaes (WashPost) has so well critiqued yesterday’s press conference, or that her colleagues Margaret Sullivan and Jen Ruben called it before it happened.
I quoted Sullivan in yesterday’s CSotD as saying that, first of all, the White House press corps know more about political jousting than about the topics they need to ask about, and that they were more interested in getting important sound bites than in getting important answers.
I didn’t quote Jen Ruben’s Twitter thread on the topic because I didn’t want it to look like a WashPo love fest, but she also warned against expecting the president to have a solid exchange with the fifth estate.
So, in case you missed it, here’s where Telnaes got the quote, and where she got the impression of airheads and where CNN’s Kaitlin Collins made an ass of herself:
It reminds me of that MTV election year townhall, in which a young woman wasted her chance to ask the President something interesting, instead asking “Boxers or briefs?”
Humiliated by the national derision, she later explained that she had a substantive question but, instead, had been told by MTV producers to ask the “funny” one.
We’ll see if Collins comes up with a similar explanation, but first we have to see if she knows she humiliated herself; which might depend on whether she follows comedian Christopher Titus on Twitter:
But she’ll certainly read — they’ll all certainly read — what the aforementioned Jen Ruben wrote about it:
I’m surprised they didn’t ask about the pandemic, because I’m sure the biggest issue on their mind is when they will be able to play dress-up and rub elbows with celebrities at the annual White House Concubines Association Dinner, also known as “Nerd Prom.”
Also on the topic of horrible things I can let other people answer, here’s a call-and-response style
Juxtaposition of the Day
Crowe answers Kelley by simply pointing out that transgender kids get bullied enough without the grownups stepping in to add another layer of hateful derision.
Though I guess if you get bored with making Asians a target, you have to pick a new target, and little kids don’t have much of a platform to fight back with, which is how bullies make their choices.
Thanks, JD. I would not have been as measured in my response.
I’m not sure who reposted this 2013 Jeff Stahler (AMS) piece — since I’ve already seen it, Facebook has now of course hidden it from me — but, yes, things have sure changed and I’ll take its noncommittal tone as confirming rather than condemning.
Pope Francis notwithstanding, there’s nothing wrong with gay men or lesbians marrying. Same-sex couples are fairly common and yet the sky has not fallen.
Stahler combines the issue of same-sex couples adopting with the growth of multi-racial families, and it’s interesting, first of all, that there is both opposition to same-sex adoptions and to white couples adopting minority kids but they come from different ends of the spectrum.
The topic brings up one of my only regrets, which is that I wasn’t in more diverse settings in my youth.
As for dating and marriage, there was a sense that biracial kids would have a really hard time in life, and, while I realize it’s not all rosy, we were wrong, because once you build numbers, things like that fall away.
As for the dating/marriage itself, I was more concerned, in the abstract, with how Thanksgiving dinner would go and whose family might be a problem.
But it remained pretty abstract, though I did go out with both the black girls at my university and the Asian girl, too. We just didn’t happen to hit it off.
What I regret is the lack of genuine diversity in our lives then, and what I envy is the growth of diversity now, not just for dating but for life.
The more the merrier, or, at least, the richer.
And I don’t think it conflicts at all with Norman Rockwell.
He did deal lightly with the changes in society.
But also with the more serious aspects.
Rockwell grew along with the rest of us — slower than some, faster than others. That’s how it works.
Assuming you don’t intentionally drag your heels.
Which also applies to our attitude towards guns and mass murder, and John Deering (Creators) once more spares me having to lose my temper, because, yes, there were Weeping Uncle Sam cartoons yesterday, including a pair from the right side of the aisle, which seems not only useless but hypocritical.
Deering covers it: Either you’re on the bus or you’re off the bus, and, as he says, your tears are useless if you don’t get up and do something.
And Christopher Weyant offers a rebuke of those who discuss technology instead of principles.
People continue to argue that the Founders only allowed the 2nd Amendment because muskets took so long to reload.
But they also wrote the 1st Amendment in a time when “media” consisted of handset type on presses that turned out one sheet at a time.
The argument is nonsense. The Bill of Rights is based on principles, and principles don’t change with the weather or the seasons or time itself.
There are all sorts of specific ways in which we differ from the Founders’ views on suffrage, for example, though the original Constitution imposes few limits.
We’ve altered those specifics several times since 1789, but always towards our shared belief in the basic principle.*
The 2nd Amendment was barely about guns. It was about national defense, and when the War of 1812 proved militias inadequate, it became as obsolete as the 3rd, until the ammosexuals dug it back up in 1974.
As for technology, however, we already strongly restrict private ownership of machine guns, flamethrowers and other military weapons.
As Weyant so well points out, the threat is not technology but a cowardly, compliant Congress. They can restrict military weapons any time they want to.
*And as for our continuing commitment to suffrage, here’s a video of what the President said when the press wasn’t asking about boxers and briefs.
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