I got the vibe from Scream Queens too. It was, "We've snuck the racist/homophobic joke in by putting it in the mouth of an ostensibly 'bad' person, but secretly, we think the joke itself is funny. Teehee!"

Your assumption seems to be that companies always make the financially sound choice. Companies are run by people and hiring choices are made by humans. People do stupid, financially short-sighted things because of unconscious or inaccurate beliefs all the time. If you consciously or unconsciously believe that women…

Fair enough. I just thinking that exociating internet media when these congressmen are deliberately making themselves unavailable in other ways (not appearing in townhalls, not taking calls) isn't fair.

Nonsense. Phone calls and emails are the only way to speak. This idiot is one of those townhall avoiders.

Well if some of them are in his district, than yelling at him on Twitter is part of accountability. Especially since he's refusing to hold townhalls.

Dickens wrote some amazing women but he wasn't immune from the sentimentality of the era. His most popular character worldwide at the time was Little Nell after all, a character so sacharine that few people nowadays can stomach her.

That's not the way most countries worked because we weren't in the modern world though. It's not like America was uniquely this way. It wouldn't be more "French" to bring back feudalism, for example, even though it operated that way for centuries. Longer than we existed.

I think it straddles the line. But a hint is the title which sort of references Canterbury Tales. She's certainly touching on political and social truths, but I don't think perfect realism/plausibility was the goal.

Fair enough - I've been a victim of autocorrect myself.

I've gone through that feeling too. Sometimes multiple times a day. But I think perspective is important. Do you realize that Congressmen have been hiding rather than face their constituents? It's working, it's just not easy. What really won't work, though, is deciding the battle is lost because "America was…

The constitution put them in the house to repeal the ACA? I guess, I'll have to reread it.

Again, that doesn't make any sense. Echo chambers can make you lose perspective or trick you certainly, but there's nothing inherently truthful or untruthful about them. It doesn't "prove" that your original silly comment was some sort of harsh "truth" we are all too afraid to face.

Why would something being said in an "echo chamber" be relevant to whether it was true? And we're both "complaining about the possible repeal" and putting our heads in the sand that it's not "falling apart"? Did you just string some interesting words together at random?

Yeah I needed COBRA when I was between jobs. Not fun.

I mean that shouldn't be a problem though right? No one ever loses their job in their 40s right? Right?

Yeah. Woe betide anyone who has a lapse in coverage at 38 or so.

I'm wondering how they expect anyone over the age of, say, 40 to get insurance. Wouldn't you almost be guaranteed to have a preexisting by then? And by at least 50 the insurance companies would probably be slavering to find an excuse to kick you off the rolls.

I suspect Pence would actually staff the state department so "worse" is kind of hard to pin down.

The republican president? Yeah. Who did you think it was? Lincoln?

The wives and handmaidens are a reference to the Old Testament stories of Abraham and Jacob (the wife is barren so the husband uses her "handmaiden" to have a son). The story is partially symbolic. Like a less extremely metaphoric Animal Farm.