18 Comments

So this is about regionalism? Hey, <i>everyone</i> from New York thinks that they are interesting. And they're right!

Expand full comment

Speaking of Alfred, if you say "My cocaine," you are also saying Michael Caine's name in his voice.

Expand full comment

The Jerrie Mock obit was great. She seemed like quite a spunky character. And to this...

<i>“You left your husband alone for 29 days,” the actor Orson Bean, a panelist on the quiz show “To Tell the Truth,” said to her when she appeared as a guest. “What did he do? I mean, who cleaned the house and all?”</i>

... although the article doesn't indicate her response, I like to imagine she answered with some snark about housework being men's work because she was far too busy being awesome.

Expand full comment

<i>We think we’re going to go watch Batman now. We hear it’s just chock full of geopolitical nuance.</i>

Exactly: Catwoman disguised herself as "Miss Kitka" -- a Soviet reporter/spy as I recall, probably answering straight to Brezhnev.

Not sure if that qualifies as geopolitical nuance, but the important thing is that Lee Meriwether sure was a hottie!

Expand full comment

I seem to recall that "the pursuit of happiness" was at one time considered (by one or two of the Founders) to be not just a fun idea, but an inalienable right. Nice to see that Douthat is aware of it.

What I don't recall is that they specified conservative/biblical/Xtian limits on the exercise of that right, of the sort that Douthat imagines are there.

Expand full comment

I think the real news here is that Ross Douthat has an HBO subscription.

*mind blown*

Expand full comment

When the hell did that definition happen?

Expand full comment

Yeah...I'm thinking I'm going to need some outside verification for that...

Expand full comment

When going after your poetic license, be sure not to lunge into the car.

Expand full comment

Having met him, that would be the VERY late '50s.

Expand full comment

1960's Michael Caine LIBEL!!!1!

Expand full comment

"played by that guy from the original Italian Job"

The only version worth watching. (my 21 and 24 yr old sons agree)

Expand full comment

I happen to like Lena Dunham very much, even though I have only seen about a half dozen complete episodes of her series. (I have seen portions of several others.) I think that <i>Girls</i> is quite bold, daring and even iconoclastic in a number of ways. The fact that it pisses so many people off is one of the things that I find particularly endearing about it. I also admire her strength in facing the torrent of criticism and controversy that her work receives, and her completely unapologetic stance as an artist.

Expand full comment

See photos from the recent SF Drinky Thing post. They aren't captioned in the text, but most of them are tagged with identities in the filenames (viewable if you right-click on each one and proceed as if you were going to download it).

Expand full comment

Don't equate the person with the character (Hannah) that she plays in her series. They are not the same people. As Rebecca said in the quote above, the characters in <i>Girls</i> are deliberately written to be rather unlikeable (at least as compared to typical TV sitcom/dramedy characters). Their annoying personal flaws, awkward moments, bad judgment and missteps are put very much on display and are highlighted in numerous plotlines. (Their more positive qualities and occasional small successes can also be seen if you watch regularly.) You aren't supposed to see them as (impossibly) perfect people who always resolve their conflicts by the end of each episode and their personal flaws aren't necessarily demonstrated for comedic purposes. These are fictional characters that the actors portray and are not depictions of the real actors themselves.

Expand full comment

I heard "politically correct" used in a snarky or ironic sense (and not just as a phenomenon in political history) for the first time in the immediate aftermath of Watergate. In that instance it referred to the ideological lockstep and stonewalling and "official explanation du jour" exemplified by the people in the Nixon administration. I saw the same phenomenon exhibited to far greater (and truly ludicrous) extremes during the late 70s and early 80s by Reaganite "true believers." I was familiar with the concept's Stalinist origins but I didn't actually start to encounter it in its present sense as a popular epithet directed at the left until sometime in the late 80s or early 90s. Because of this I have never regarded it as being exclusively applicable to critiques of liberalism or the left. Quite the contrary, in fact. More often I associate it with right wing orthodoxy when I hear it.

Expand full comment