Just posting my twitter convo w/ Allison as further info on whether it’s the recipe or the dish.

...other outlets republish the tasteless comments and Limbaugh keeps his name in the headlines.

most of the best ones are in the grays. Y’all with copies of the housekeys should get to approvin’. some good stories down there.

This is your read of the probabilities and it may be correct. It doesn’t, however, sweep away the possibility that other reads could also be correct. The present socio-political circumstance is extraordinary, and voter support for M4A is quite high (averaged across differently worded polls). So it’s logically unsound…

If you’re placing yourself alongside Biden, Obama, Michelle, or any of the others who gave great speeches @ this convention, consider that all of them called for a kinder, more empathetic politics. There’s no reason to call Ashley names here, and no way to read “bratty” as anything but condescending and sour - which…

Give her a break! I’ve made similar complaints but you have to read heavily against the actual words to call this measured op-ed “snide” or “bratty.”

Your post contains its own counter-argument. Obamacare was a seemingly impossible win. It was achieved anyway, demonstrating that “we’d never get it passed” is not an adequate counter-argument to a policy proposal that is both just and smart. Moreover, Obamacare won not by divine intervention but because its creators…

I’m with you that the moment demands unified support for the Democratic nominee. But you can’t call people children who should be feigning enthusiasm AND say all you want is a fairly written article. This is an op-ed that acknowledges positives without crossing into full boosterism. It is definitely fairly written. A…

Exactly, and this was clear and obvious. I’m a sometimes complainer here, but where you were coming from was reasonable and clear.

The people I see clinging to the senile/demented story are young Twitter leftists. That same group isn’t saying anything at all about the convention. Did they watch? I wonder whether this speech, or Bernie’s, Michelle Obama’s etc., have any traction with that demo.

This is a slapfight. If you want to address some serious points, see @ConfederateMonumentMineralRepurposer’s comments above, as a good distillation of a valid argument. Criticism is a valuable part of the process. But Ashley exemplifies a particular slice of the critical pie: a young millennial progressive with a…

lol

No, it isn’t ironic.

Splinter was unbearable.

Well you can do both. In between posts here I called both my Senators’ offices and left messages, called my Governor’s office and talked to a staffer, and tweeted (pointlessly) at some blue checks I think should be helping people find out what to do to support the USPS. Since, actually, time spent arguing online about…

Ok: (a) that’s a fair point - about a valid approach to evaluating politicians. (b) I don’t think it’s the approach most often taken by this site or A. Reese. (c) That said, I’m reading back and I see a lot of variation across articles, so (d) I’ll cop to playing out my own version of the same “focus on the negative”…

I’m not calling AR a narcissist. I’m saying Jez political writing overall (incl. some of Ashley’s) exhibits that dysfunctional pattern of adulation or total rejection. It’s true that this article expresses ambivalence, not hatred. But it’s ambivalence because (if I read right) AR feels some small pride about the VP…

No good reason to think that’s Ashley’s goal tho. She seems to be out here doing her best as she sees it. But the whole framing of political writing on Jez is off - they cover pols like any other celeb: do we love her? Hate her? (in this case neither, but still framed in those terms). Researching and reporting on…

Another thought: Ashley is so smart. But some of her political writing reminds me of all those Psychology Today articles about “how to know you’re a narcissist.” Especially the part about putting people on a pedestal until they reveal any flaw that conflicts with your own ideal, then trashing them as a traitor.…