That’s a James Thurber cartoon. The history is that he fucked it up and the editor didn’t like it but printed it anyway because he was James Thurber. So saying “They think this is funny” isn’t quite right.

But the Vader “Noooo!” moment might be the worst, most unintentionally comic moment in the whole series.

No, being a Star Wars movie means it isn’t a serious film.

You’re a little hysterical and defensive and overly sensitive here. Might a reason to publicly proclaim, etc., be a disappointed fan wanting to commiserate with fellow disappointed fans occupying a similar space of disappointment?

Hahaha. So defensive? “Crucify” you? You have to admit: it was a particularly infelicitous, egregiously timed mistake. After pleading your expertise on the national anthem, like some expert on American history and culture, you misidentify, not just “one document,” but the singularly most iconic document in American…

I haven’t been arguing with you over whether this is the most effective response imaginable, nor whether everyone engaging in the protest is truly motivated to do whatever it takes, including (possibly) more difficult actions of risk and sacrifice. What we’ve been arguing is whether the protest is coherent. Does the…

You are correct. False equivalencies are not your forte: you can’t recognize your own, and you falsely accuse others of using them.

[spends all day arguing that he alone understands the context and meaning of the national anthem and performances thereof but can’t recognize the difference between the Declaration of Independence and the Preamble to the Constitution]

Furthermore, since you want to play dumb, I’ll explain it to you: the anthem evokes the struggle to preserve and continue the nation, the nation as a literal sovereign state freed from England and the nation as the set of ideals upon which it is purported to have been founded, particularly America’s idea of itself as…

Nobody cares whether you kneel during the anthem. Don’t flatter yourself. You aren’t famous, wealthy, or black.

In what way does recapitulating your previous comments respond coherently to the substance of mine? Repeating they are protesting “the wrong thing, at the wrong time”—another way of saying they are protesting incoherently—after I just offered an argument for how the protest is perfectly coherent, furthers the…

For what, in your argument, did people to whom you are referring risk their health and safety? For the military itself, or for the nation?

Where did you see this different angle, praytell?

Howdy. Also a pedant. I’ll throw in with Shakespeare, who uses “from whence,” and the general notion that a little common parlance can creep into our sentences, even, egads, at the occasional expense of economy. I’d mention the King James Bible too, but, frankly, some of the prose therein is crap.

Hue Jackson:

But vaccines don’t cause autism.

I like to think he meant this: Vaccines cause autism; therefore this is the same as parents suing pharmaceutical companies. Still dumb, but with the virtue of being less expected.

I get all of what you’re saying, but I also think you’re describing a cultural phenomenon—in the media and in the country at large—that is causing us a helluva lot of trouble right now. I care far more about whether someone is right than I do about whether he’s front and center. Maybe you don’t. The extent to which he…

There was his apparent refusal of therapy for his wife because, he said, she’d recover better with him than with a professional. If that’s indeed his approach, that’s, um...not awesome. He made some weird comments about it, too, which were maybe jokes, I hope?

Hey, now, there’s a difference between false modesty and clownish lying; see Donald Trump. Are you suggesting LaVar Ball just tells it like it is, just says what he feels, just speaks from the heart?