Everything you’re describing requires the effort of choosing though, and all I’m suggesting is that there are a variety of factors that go into whether or not someone makes that choice. Your dad’s life experiences are not the same as this woman’s and his led him to make the right choices about staying informed. Good…

No, it didn’t occur to her, which is why I interpret what she did as more of a mistake than a nefarious attempt to hop aboard the “kick out all immigrants” train.

And all of that is totally fair. I just think that at a certain point, the work of resisting Trump has to mean a transition from shaming her for her vote to trying to help her in spite of it. She seems like she’s learned something, at least.

Well, I don’t want to let her off the hook. But I also don’t want to just turn up my nose to her situation either. I think that if she were to ask for help, she should get it, regardless of who she voted for, and I think that the way people talk about her sometimes makes it sound as though they think the opposite. …

Sure. In my experience it’s mainly cultural factors that are brought to bear. And what I mean by that is, essentially, when people are raised a certain way or stew in a particular environment for long enough it isn’t a simple matter of breaking out of your bubble. A good example of this would be Cuban-Americans,…

Well, all I can say is that, speaking as a librarian and information scientist, it isn’t always as simple as choosing to be informed or not, so I’m going to continue to have sympathy for this lady no matter how reckless and stupid I think her decision was.

I think that you’re operating from a false premise there. The media was out there for months crowing about how we shouldn’t take him literally, and then we’re surprised when people didn’t take him at his word. This is a deeply, deeply underinformed woman, and that’s only partially her fault.

It is possible to disagree with what she did and still feel sympathy for her family being torn apart. This is like saying that someone who accidentally shoots their foot off doesn’t deserve a prosthetic. Yeah, it was stupid and they made a mistake, but does that mean they should go around with one foot the rest of…

Never said they didn’t. In fact I said the opposite. Talk radio sets the agenda. But Fox has the broader reach

I would not disagree with your latter point. I think that, as someone else mentioned, Fox News has made its bones by taking the insanity of right wing talk radio and polishing it up a little bit.

I just recently picked it up based on this recommendation. Haven’t read enough for a complete judgement yet, but in the bit I have read so far there is a not insignificant amount of characters just talking the subtext into supertext.

I picked it up from the library after reading this article and yeah, within the first ten pages or so any kind of subtext was just blown away. I think it was around the time they talked about servants drinking a rich guy’s bath water and it turned out to not be metaphorical.

Large swathes of the country that don’t have access to cable? The number of people who don’t have access to pay TV services in this country is somewhere between 13 and 25% depending on whose estimate you believe, and that includes a growing number of people who are cutting the cord in favor of streaming, but who still…

Nah. AM Radio has nowhere near the reach that Fox News does. I’ll grant you that talk radio bullshit filters down to Fox News and gets disseminated in a SLIGHTLY less ridiculous form, but in terms of sheer numbers of people who consume it, radio can’t possibly be the culprit.

Yeah, I guess I figured that was the case. I think I had the opposite though, which is why this threw me a little. I got into a school that I THOUGHT was way over my head with average grades, average ACT, and nothing too special in my extracurriculars, but they actually quoted my essay in my admissions letter. So I…

This is cool and ballsy as hell, but my first reaction was “boy the essay seems to matter less than it used to.” I dunno maybe the admissions counselor also thought it was cool and ballsy as hell.

I think when you take this in concert with, say, the Great Wall it begins to look more like a pattern. As you say, its all about marketing, but nowadays these companies don’t control their own marketing. Tweets, Gizmodo articles, what have you, all that is marketing too and it was negative, by and large. And it…

From his reactions I don’t think he was in on the fix, but even if some of his defenders were, that’s some of the worst goalkeeper play I’ve seen in a long, long time.

It does, but I mean people do have those fantasies, and the fact that he was honest with you about it suggests that it PROBABLY is just a fantasy. That said, you’re under NO obligation whatsoever to go along with it if it’s not what you’re into.

I’m not saying I fall on the side of “no man and woman can eat together and remain pure” but I do think we sometimes underestimate how shitty the intentions of a man who would set up a one-on-one meeting after work can be.