Gas Bandit's Political Thread V: The Vampire Likes Bats

What's uneccessary is White Knighting. It's sexist and offensive to treat women like they are not adult humans with flaws and bad behavior who sometimes deserve vitriol thrown their way. You know, equal to men.

It's also sexist and offensive to speak for women when we are perfectly capable of doing it ourselves. If a woman is offended by the usage of 'bitch' here, then she will say something.

BTW, I'm not offended, because Wasserman-Schulz really is a bitch.
"Loved It" because I read this to my wife and she said, "Agreed."
 
As mentioned early while we were talking about the Daily Show, this is a problem in comedy and theater as well. Conservative comedy embodies this blue collar, low intelligence spectrum in America entirely because intellectual conservative comedy is rarely done because it's hard to book it. It's one thing to revel in the old folksy hill people persona, people can laugh WITH that... but you get a guy on staging making jokes about how atheists are making his holidays boring as hell and PEOPLE WILL BURN THE THEATER DOWN. You can't book it, except to rooms full of boring white people at country clubs or events and that is no way to build a rep or make a living as a comedian. As such, the ones who CAN do it tend to be outsiders in the industry (your Colin Quinns and Christopher Titus types) or are struggling, undeveloped comedians who will never really get the chances they need to hone their craft.

People used to make fun of Jerry Seinfield's boring, liberal humor for being so bland, but the real joke was that it was the only thing people would book.[DOUBLEPOST=1462685625,1462685146][/DOUBLEPOST]
I would think that professions requiring a more open mind would naturally self-select against conservatism?

--Patrick
Open mind and a willingness to accept a low paying job that really only gets you perks 10-20 years in. Conservative economics majors aren't becoming professors, they are becoming economists and businessmen. Conservative English majors are writing formulaic pulp novels or political speeches and making thousands of dollars doing it. Conservative social scientists and psychologists are working with companies in marketing and making millions. To be frank, most of the reason you don't see a lot of Conservatives in the ivory tower is because the ivory tower pays in respect, not dollars.

And yes, a lot of it is that liberal staff just don't want to deal with conservative fellows. They became academics to get away from them.

EDIT: And this passage.

This bias on campuses creates liberal privilege. A friend is studying for the Law School Admission Test, and the test preparation company she is using offers test-takers a tip: Reading comprehension questions will typically have a liberal slant and a liberal answer.
This is one hundred percent true and a good college student will ALWAYS tailor their papers and answers to their professor's political slant and interests. You have a female professor for your American History class? Write that open paper on early women pioneers and that B- paper WILL become an A. Have an Indian-American teaching your Introduction to World Religions class? Same thing for any paper on something that isn't from the Abrahamic Tradition.

No one likes to talk about it, but it's the clear path to success.
 
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Conservative comedy embodies this blue collar, low intelligence spectrum in America entirely because intellectual conservative comedy is rarely done because it's hard to book it. It's one thing to revel in the old folksy hill people persona, people can laugh WITH that... but you get a guy on staging making jokes about how atheists are making his holidays boring as hell and PEOPLE WILL BURN THE THEATER DOWN. You can't book it, except to rooms full of boring white people at country clubs or events and that is no way to build a rep or make a living as a comedian. As such, the ones who CAN do it tend to be outsiders in the industry (your Colin Quinns and Christopher Titus types) or are struggling, undeveloped comedians who will never really get the chances they need to hone their craft.
Dennis Miller is always my poster child for this sort of thing. He's brilliant but often under-appreciated for just this exact reason--people often just don't get the joke.

--Patrick
 
This is one hundred percent true and a good college student will ALWAYS tailor their papers and answers to their professor's political slant and interests. You have a female professor for your American History class? Write that open paper on early women pioneers and that B- paper WILL become an A. Have an Indian-American teaching your Introduction to World Religions class? Same thing for any paper on something that isn't from the Abrahamic Tradition.

No one likes to talk about it, but it's the clear path to success.
True story: I had a class that was basically on 20th century American History, taught by a German woman. I did a paper on how America's industrial production capacity was the key to the Allies' World War II victory. She made me rewrite it 5 times until it was more of a paper about the difference between the pre- and post-war economies of the US. Got an A, though.
 
Dennis Miller is always my poster child for this sort of thing. He's brilliant but often under-appreciated for just this exact reason--people often just don't get the joke.

--Patrick
Hasn't he become a complete sad sack pundit on Fox News in recent years? Like, it's clear he'd rather be doing a COMEDY show on Fox News but no one will budget it so he's stuck doing segments on O'Reily or something? Or am I thinking of another comedian?
 
Hasn't he become a complete sad sack pundit on Fox News in recent years? Like, it's clear he'd rather be doing a COMEDY show on Fox News but no one will budget it so he's stuck doing segments on O'Reily or something? Or am I thinking of another comedian?
No. That's him, all right.
I really miss the NFL color commentary. His stuff there was really inspired.

--Patrick
 
No surprise a candidate got attacked. No surprise it happened in WV. No surprise it happened in Logan County. :(

(ETA: The alleged assailant is the brother of a candidate for Logan County assessor, who is also a supporter of the victim's opponent in the primary.)
 
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Facebook found to be deliberately injecting news it wants to see popular, and blacklisting that it doesn't: http://gizmodo.com/former-facebook-...uppressed-conser-1775461006?rev=1462799465508

News flash: conservative bad, liberal good with regards to what went in, despite the algorithm saying it should/shouldn't depending on how popular it actually was according to users.

Good reporting. Something tells me this story will NOT be trending on Facebook, due to exactly the topic covered.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
Good reporting. Something tells me this story will NOT be trending on Facebook, due to exactly the topic covered.
Yeah, but as our parents' generation get hold of it, I bet it starts showing up on walls intermittently for the next 5 years. Or maybe just e-mails.
 
Even though I'm liberal, that pisses me off. I understand the value of having both sides being able to express their viewpoints. Not just because it's fair, not just because you can't truly endorse freedom while suppressing your opposition, but because you can learn things even from something you disagree with.
 
The problem isn't so much that they insert their bias - they have the right to do so, though it's deplorable. The problem is they do so and claim to be 100% impartial.
 
I think the real tragedy here is that this suggests there are people who rely on Facebook for news.

--Patrick
While, sadly, there are a lot of people who rely on it solely, I have to admit I also rely on it partially - see what friends have read or deemed important and such. I can't single-handedly check every news source in the world, through friends I do get interesting articles pointed my way from South Korea, or extreme leftist sites, or Mexican news sites, or Brazilian sources, or what have you. As a tool, it can help broaden your horizon....or close them off.
 
I'm surprised that this surprises or angers anyone. Facebook has always had a bias, and there are a variety of ways they exhibit it these days. I suspect it goes a lot deeper than this person claims, though.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
So, in wake of his impending nomination, Trump has said he is a conservative, but he doesn't want or need conservatives to vote for him, because it's the republican party not the conservative party, and he's got to stay true to his principles if people are going to vote for him, and he says he's more like Bernie Sanders than Ted Cruz (so really he's not a conservative), and you gotta have party unity but he doesn't need party unity, but you're not a conservative if you don't support Donald Trump.

 
On one hand, the election/primary process needs fixing. But I don't think the nomination of Donald Trump is what highlights that.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
On one hand, the election/primary process needs fixing. But I don't think the nomination of Donald Trump is what highlights that.
If anything, the Democrat primary process is even more fucksticky than the Republican one. This is definitely a systemic/cultural/national thing.
 
The homework must've been about estimation, so giving the exact answer as your reasoning is missing the point of the lesson--I'm surprised partial credit was given.

This is like assigning a Fermi problem to someone and getting a demographics study back.
A proper test question would require you to use the expected tool by a well designed question, rather than marking you wrong if you used a different tool to come to the correct answer because the question wasn't designed to preclude the other more common tools.

It would be like designing a calculus test and having a problem with basic addition, and the teacher marking you wrong because you didn't use calculus. Lazy test design shouldn't be used to punish the students.
 
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