I’m from Idaho and grew up lower-ish middle class...I didn’t know about the multiple forks thing until well into adulthood.

If I recall correctly from reading the book, Vance’s mother was an RN. I believe the grandpa had a union job and gramma was able to provide children with a decent upbringing based on that. The author’s comparison of her experience to Vance’s therefore seems apt to me. I wouldn’t disagree with it. Having read the book,…

“it was just the Ewoks who were partying.”

What you said there is true. In my childhood of the late 60s-early 80s, if your parents weren’t employed in the education or healthcare industries(sorry, janitors, cooks and bus drivers didn’t count), you were basically nothing. It was really heartbreaking to be told by your teacher that you wouldn’t amount to…

You can certainly be smart without having a formal education - my grandfather was like that. Dropped out of high school to lie about his age and education to join the Marine Corps in WWII. Worked his was up from bread salesman to VP of Distribution for big baking company. But I would also say the military, especially…

Healthcare workers and teachers make as much as cops, if not less. Shit construction work often brings in about the same amount of money if not more. Perhaps a cashier at Walmart or factory worker or farm labor makes less.

I don’t think it would take much convincing to arrive at consensus on option 2. 

People are too hard on that book. I think JD Vance is sympathetic to the plight of Appalachia/Rural America, with full acknowledgement that he was lucky to succeed.

Yeah, rural PA born and raised here and this:

I grewup in rural northern lower Michigan and knew many people living these types of circumstances. Now, perhaps my ‘privilege’ was being born to MA degreed librarians descended from industrious German and Polish stock in the economic and cultural center for the approx. 100 mile square micro-region and that’s why I…

To achieve any kind of timelessness, political humor, which is really just a subcategory of reference humor, either has to work without a lot knowledge of the thing being referenced, or at least provide enough context to make sense if you’re seeing it for the first time in 10 years, or ever. Like Celebrity Jeopardy…

And also not to feed them like this:

December 1st would be my thought. A two month ramp up for any holiday seems excessive.

I took the sign as a joke. 

When Werner Herzog takes off the headphones and tells you “You should never listen to this tape, and you should destroy it so you’re never tempted to”, you should destroy it.

The last lines of Roger Ebert’s review are simply superb: “I have a certain admiration for his courage, recklessness, idealism, whatever you want to call it, but here is a man who managed to get himself and his girlfriend eaten, and you know what? He deserves Werner Herzog.”

The part that gets me the most is Herzog listening to the tape of Treadwell’s death, and even without seeing his face, it’s obvious that this guy who’s had more insane filmmaking experiences than any one person should, seriously considering killing his lead actor on multiple occasions, and shrugged off getting shot in…

I haven’t watched this since it came out. I remember being so angry at Treadwell because it was one thing to be an idiot who thought he was friends with wild bears but he also got his girlfriend killed as well.  

Knowing Herzog I just assume it was intentionally released after March of the Penguins. Also to quote Red Letter Media, this documentary should be just called There Bears you Fucking Idiot! Its like the old joke about Seigfried and Roy, it was a matter of when, not if. Oh and speaking of launching a million Herzog…

I half expected him to go full Akira on DC