He isn’t smoking, he is doing the BTS sign in front of this mouth (as you can see others doing the same sign with their hands.)

From left to right:

Certainly in Europe there’s been a cultural change even within the past two years. Many coffee shops give a discount if you bring your own coffee cup, and many of us carry around a compostible coffee cup for this reason. Many people also carry reusable water bottles (e.g. Nalgene) rather than buying disposable. I…

Very early in his campaign, she was on one of the Sunday morning shows (I believe Stephanopoulos) and Keith Ellison said words to the effect of “Trump needs to be taken seriously.” She laughed in his face on national TV.

I understand your point. There’s been so much hand wringing over the coarsening of politics, but I feel like we’re in this quagmire partly for taking the high road. The many descriptions used for Trump are creative, but I’d love for us to focus the narrative to help move those on the fence or even the base and…

Whether Trump knows it or not, he’s able to speak to people and bend the narrative to his will by his ability to concisely pick his words. He doesn’t say “untruthful” Comey, it’s lying Comey. Crooked Hillary, witch hunt, etc. It’s repeated ad nauseum by his surrogates and then repeated again by those reporting his…

This. A million times this. This is the equivalent of Trump driving down the road, closing his eyes whenever he sees a speed limit sign and deciding that the speed limit must be infinity since he hasn’t seen any information to contradict what he’s made up.

What’s the impact of a 3-year old lying? We’re not talking about lying in the abstract - we’re talking about the President lying. Because of his lies, people have died. I don’t care why he lies.

Call him a damn liar.

The reason people are going hard at Maggie is because she is a pretty near constant enabler of Trump’s behavior (and the destruction of this country’s soul). She tows the line, as does the NYT, in order to ensure Trump remains president and NYT readership stays up. I do get the distinction between lies and falsehoods,…

Also intent doesn’t matter, impact does. Everybody, especially the President, needs to strive for truth because lies are destructive.

This is what I can’t stand about the way Haberman has been trying to parse this distinction. It’s meaningless because she’s ignoring important context. It’s not actually the case that he thinks whatever he says is real. It’s that he is completely indifferent to, and uncurious about, whether what he says is real. But…

“...what he does can be hard to label because...he often thinks whatever he says is what’s real.”

It’s pretty crazy, nothing says “please stop visiting our site(s)“ like autoplay videos

i have to say, as a man born and grew in Italy, and only one year younger than Bateman, i grew up witnessing enough toxic masculinity for 3 lifetimes. And that shit was already wrong for me when i was a teenager, so it means the fucking 80's.

I guess I want there to be room in this conversation for a man who’s dedicated to women’s rights and equality to also be able to say, “I don’t think Bateman is the devil.” But maybe there’s not.

I’m with you. I like Bobby, but when I read this:

Aww, thanks for the nice response.

You make a lot of good points here. At times, I get frustrated that people are directing their ire at small fish like Bateman instead of the shitheels like Trump. But then, I’m sort of doing the same thing — quibbling over how mad people should be at whom, which I have to admit isn’t any more productive than the…