The Atlantic - Latest Comments in Off-Line

Re: Off-Line

CrankyOtter — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 13:26:26 -0000

Wow. This story on stumps as blight vs triumph of labor reminded me powerfully of a conversation I had, maybe a decade ago. I was visiting my grandma and we were chatting in the kitchen. She was telling me about one of her brothers and casually mentioned "he chose his plot and cleared the land". Her blithe comment was followed by other things that reiterated the notion that 'a man can do what he likes with the land and what he should do is clear off all the nature and start fresh'. My reaction to her pronouncement of "cleared the land" was so visceral I almost threw up.

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After calming my stomach, my first thought was how 2 generations had changed the baseline assumptions of what is and isn't good. I thought about how I'd been raised in the era of Greenpeace, and she'd been raised in the era of farming family land. And yet still today, we clearcut areas for sprawling suburbs. Every time I fly over tracts of big box stores, strip malls, and cookie cutter housing developments, all I can think of are anthills (and termite mounds). No matter where the ants live, they build bumps or stalagmites of sand in which to live. Then they build satellite hills until all you can see is a field or forest interrupted by heaps of sand. I then wonder if it's better for them to build the tall towers that look alarming but allow for the original grasses to grow around them, or if it's better to have infititely more smaller hills that so sand the lot that nothing really grows there much anymore. City vs. Suburb if you will.

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Even ants and humans each have as much of a right to the planet as each other, and predators must kill prey to survive. But why can't we, as humans capapble of reflection, do better than the ants and resolve to leave some places untouched while we concentrate our building in one area so that another can survive less-scathed? Why do we need this sprawl? Granted, a city girl like me who hated being a teen in the suburbs is not the spokesmodel for suburbs. I think they're more barren wasteland than the fallow or factory farmed field they may be replacing. I get that "he cleared the land" cramp to the gut whenever I fly over Phoenix, for instance. Because I just can't see the need.

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csabadoz — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 12:36:11 -0000

Something that makes the movie adaptation so tough is that the natural protagonist, Oher, is basically a cipher almost all the time. You can't build a narrative around him as the driver (unless you want to make an Oscar movie) so it falls to either of the Tuohys for that job.

Bullock's character is the more interesting of the two, despite the fact that really her husband would make more sense from a structural point of view (he is involved in the football, while she isn't..and the movie is apparently all about the high school football team.) If they had to choose between the Tuohys, I think they made the right choice, although it will mean that they have to change parts of the story to give her more presence in the football world.

The big problem is that people who really liked the book will probably want more than another "Remember the Titans." There is a fascinating social commentary running throughout the book, and the Oher character could be dynamite with different producers and a gifted young actor (perhaps the same actor). But they obviously went in a different direction, which is unfortunate in my opinion.

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zinjanthropus — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 10:15:45 -0000

I throw up in the mouth whenever I see that name. I will refrain from writing what I feel about that.... person

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crossdotcurve — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 10:09:06 -0000

Michelle Malkin has a post up about "Muslim soldiers with attitude."

http://michellemalkin.com/2009/11/06/the-massacre-at-fort-hood-and-muslim-soldiers-with-attitude/

Am I reading too much into this by thinking she's riffing on NWA? The implication obviously being...

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dmf — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 09:40:26 -0000

deb, that is an excellent piece, thank you.

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sporcupine — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 09:33:27 -0000

If there were nine movies of the story, one of them should be the one the trailer offers: a middle-aged white woman moves from clueless to less clueless while her luxurious community tries to keep her from making the move.

Being a woman that age, regularly in the company of women who live that privileged country club life, living an equally comfortable privileged coffee-house life myself, I'm looking forward to the rare movie that isn't driven by romance or guns, but by the work of growing up after forty.

The problem, I think, is an industry that tells such stories regularly from the angle of the male coach, only this time from the angle of the sports-mom, and never from the other angles that are part of how life actually happens. Maybe there's not a money-making audience for the other angles--but maybe the industry doesn't even think of making that kind of movie in the first place.

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BreakerBaker — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 09:29:54 -0000

You can't say it's pitching when the two pitching staffs have to deal with drastically different situations. In the Bronx, the Phillies had to pitch to a lineup with 244 homeruns. In Philly, they had to pitch to a lineup with 216. The Yankees had to pitch to a lineup with 224 in both Philly and the Bronx. They're essentially evenly matched teams in Philly (where the Yankees took two of three), and heavily slanted to the Yanks at home (where the Yankees took two of three completely on the back of the DH).

The DH was the determining factor in both the games the Yankees won in the Bronx. Pedro was not even pitching that poorly in Game 6. He was not pitching great, but he was getting outs.

He couldn't get past Matsui. He couldn't get past the DH. And Yankee pitchers had the luxary of not having to deal with a genuine DH. Instead, they got somebody who rarely played. Somebody who's only slightly more reliable at the plate than a pitcher. The Phillies, like most NL teams, were forced to replace a hole in their lineup with another hole. Meanwhile, the Yankees put in a guy who knocked 28 homers in the season. I'm sorry if I am not moved by the argument that the Yankees simply had better pitching. They did shut Howard down. But the Phillies shut Tex down. A-Rod's series was kind of ho-hum (compared with the rest of his postseason). Swisher? Cabrera? Jeter, Damon, and Matsui all had a good series. Utley had a great series. Worth had a good series. Put somebody in the Philly lineup with Matsui's numbers, and the whole lineup changes. Anybody who doesn't think putting another big bat in a lineup doesn't drastically change the entire lineup simply doesn't know what they're talking about.

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tgas — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 09:15:39 -0000

Don't forget Bladerunner vs. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (or some such awful title).

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Deborah — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 09:07:43 -0000

Fallows has a good short piece.

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zinjanthropus — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 08:58:06 -0000

That didn't make me cry. nope not at all. sniff. If I did cry then it was "manly tears" sniff. Hell yeah, Manly Tears of masculinity. But i didn't cry. naw, that was dust.

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dmf — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 07:52:44 -0000

b.y., I appreciate that you don't have a taste for getting into this moral morass. Respecting the families, and the depth of the the tragedy, is part of creating the understanding that will weaken the xenophobia. I think that we should just keep doing what we do here, trying to create a civil discourse that is willing to reflect on the uglier parts of life without reflecting them, which has a sense of humor, and also a deep respect for suffering. Which is more concerned with getting things right, making things right, than being self-righteous. People will say ugly things that will make us feel angry/crazy but we can support each other to channel all of this into action, take part in community building, visit a VA, and such. This kind of change takes a long time and we will need encouragment and care for the long haul.

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black yank — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 03:33:26 -0000

dmf, I have no desire to get into an ugly debate over this. It's already begun elsewhere, though, so what I'd be interested in is a discussion of how we, who consider ourselves to be progressives, should proceed when something like this happens in post-9/11 America. I don't mean as far as respecting the families involved, I mean as far as understanding and combating xenophobia.

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Lemmy Caution — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 01:33:58 -0000

Isn't it about audiences, really? Audiences relate to stories through the characters in them that most resemble themselves. (See "suture theory" for a micro-temporal version of it.) Good marketing is to foreground the right character for the right market, and great marketing (if you can afford it) is to split it up for multiple markets: Sandra Bullock in white markets, Quintin Aaron for black audiences, etc. Ultimately, narratives for the mass market tend to become demographic Mary Sues. Which is, of course, a shame - but I also blame the death of art-genres and the capitulation of thinking people to popular dreck for this.

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dmf — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 21:17:04 -0000

sure deborah, but we don't have to sink to their level. i'm begging folks not to trade on this nightmare to make various points or counterpoints, there will be all too many other times and events for all of that.

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Deborah — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 20:57:57 -0000

There is no possible race or religious affiliation the shooter could have that would not be spun into an ugly "just like those people" rant by some group.

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Justin — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 20:08:10 -0000

Here in madtown there's already one radio station that is 24-7 x-mas songs. Weeks before Turkey day- what are Thanksgiving retailers to do?

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dmf — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 20:03:00 -0000

yeah, maybe we here can rise above all of the coming ugliness and speculations and just leave it at saying RIP and our hearts go out to all involved.

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Hugo Pottisch — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 20:00:19 -0000

Maybe they are giving it only to employees who do not eat swine. That would be somehow fair?

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black yank — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 19:07:46 -0000

From a report on the Fort Hood shootings:

"A law enforcement official identified the shooting suspect as Army Maj. Malik Nadal Hasan. The official said Hasan, believed to be in his late 30s, was killed after opening fire at the base. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the case publicly.

The official says investigators are trying to determine if Hasan was his birth name, or if he changed his name and converted to Islam at some point in his life."

Here comes the ugliness.

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amygdala — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 18:26:11 -0000

Wow. Definitely worth the repost. Thank you. And if you'll excuse me, I need to go find some tissues.

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amygdala — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 18:20:57 -0000

From the article (italics mine):

"Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, and other large city employers have started receiving small quantities of swine flu vaccine for high-risk employees"

If they were receiving disproportionate amounts of the vaccine or administering it to people who weren't at high risk, yes, they would be cutting in front of the line. But they're not. They're giving it to high-risk people who also happen to be their employees.

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black yank — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 18:16:27 -0000

I think it was all about the pitching. The phillies had only 1 reliable starter in this series (plus 1 1/2 if you count Pedro "6-inning match" Martinez). Hamels was awful and blanton was never any good. Add to that, the bullpen was a mess.

Pitching depth won this series for the Yankees. The DH helps the AL team a bit but it was not the determining factor in this series.

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kellyinaustin — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 17:55:44 -0000

The majority of people that are determined to be at risk and should be at the front of the line cannot get the H1N1 vaccine. There is an extreme shortage.

The idea that very very wealthy people working for elite corporations are basically cutting in front of medical practitioners and hospitals in determining who gets it first is all kinds of wrong. These people are at the front of the line because they work at powerful corporations.

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Deborah — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 17:52:29 -0000

I went to check Andrew and there was a post about everyone in the coffee shop watching the girl surprised by her dad and crying, and I scrolled down and clicked and now I'm crying. And I'm not a cryer. Crying in the good way.

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Jennifer D. — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 17:49:07 -0000

The Godfather - you got me there! Very true. Your other examples aren't bad either - I especially agree with No Country for Old Men. Not sure about The Big Sleep or Into the Wild. Okay, I was being an elitist snob. Not uncommon for me!