Post a controversial opinion

J B Morton's put-downs of A A Milne were better, of which this is my fave:

Hush, hush,
Nobody cares!
Christopher Robin
Has
Fallen
Down-
Stairs.

That is a good one.

the parker review wasn't of the books it was of a broadway adaptation

oh nevermind i misremembered. she mostly reviewed theater and i thought it was an adaptation she was reviewing but looking up the review i see it was of the book oops

fp

I am a huge Dorothy stan but, she didn't have children. Her review of a children's book was then, and is now, an amusing footnote.

HOWEVER

when she (in her role as a theater reviewer) absolutely savaged an obviously treacly and stupid A.A. Milne play I was totally cool with it

i also remembered it being a theater adaptation she was reviewing (as i said above) but can only find a book review now. mandela effect :/

oh i see now she did review Milne's Give Me Yesterday

https://ochsnerblog.files.wordpress.com/2020/03/screen-shot-2020-03-23-at-10.10.54-am.png

https://ochsnerblog.files.wordpress.com/2020/03/screen-shot-2020-03-23-at-10.11.00-am.png

Yeah there's a bit where somebody is tapping out like rudimentary code for "I love you" and it's pretty cringey.

That said, the book review was out of line so I agree with J.D.

Does the New Yorker still review popular childrens' books?

nah

oh btw i like dorothy parker! her short stories were cool. she just probably wasn't the target audience for the gently paced adventures of a group of neurotic stuffed animals.

I think the time has probably come for everyone to quit it with the (((twitter names))) - the point has been made now.

the time was immediately after people tried to start doing it as some sort of own on the Nazis, especially non-Jewish people who did it in solidarity, for fuck's sake

nauseated

Non-Jewish people do it?

yes

any chance of a link to what this refers to

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_parentheses

thanks i found one

Twitter, gotta love it.

Whenever I see a "Mother's Day is painful for me because I don't have a healthy relationship with my mom / my mom is absent / my mom is dead" post I want to scream. For fuck's sake. Today does not need to be about you and your relationship with your mom. Do you have friends who are moms? wish them a happy mother's day. Do you have family members who are moms? wish them a happy mother's day. There are 364 other days of the year that we can make about you and your maternal trauma. "Me and my mother aren't close; Mother's Day is a holiday for privileged people" is such straight pride bullshit and it makes me really angry

The same opinion does not apply to Father's Day obv

Agree with the above and also Mother's Day / Fathers' Day / etc. Are mostly just Hallmark profit generators; we could do away with all of them and instead just try to be good to everyone, all year

Thxbye

The same opinion does not apply to Father's Day obv

it's been annoying for two days that i haven't been able to figure out why this is "obv"

would you mind explaining ?

annoying me*

it's a tenet of the religion of leftism to say 'men are bad' at any given opportunity, kind of how red sox fans are obligated to chant 'yankees suck' if there are more than one of them gathered in a particular location

While we're at it, I'm not sure I understood the 'straight pride' bit either. I agree with the general sentiment, however.

xp assuming “leftism” is even a real thing, and not just conservatives trying to prosecute a desperate point about empathy being poisonous,

“men are bad” seems to be a made-up excuse for the sorts of people who use the word “leftist” unironically to yell at a cohort of people who don’t even think that.

(That was an xp to budo jeru btw.)

Sure, I'll explain

First I don't ascribe to any "men are bad" bullshit, I'm of the opinion that people of all genders are bad

Second I think that having a day (at the very least) devoted to acknowledging not only the physical stress and exertion of carrying a baby to term and/or bearing said baby and/or (especially) rearing that child is pretty necessary? And that appreciating these acts for a day (at the very least) is necessary, and should supersede the concerns of an individual that such a holiday might feel exclusionary to those of us who have poor/bad relationships with one's own mothers, and/or have lost their mother.

Thirdly, putting the focus on A Day That Celebrates Mothers (as opposed to fathers) would hopefully be interpreted (as being obvious) that it's an inversion of the historical dynamic that tends to give single moms the short stick, societally-- not to mention that 80% of single parents are moms, citation needed? ok here's a google https://www.verywellfamily.com/single-parent-census-data-2997668

I don't disagree that it's a Hallmark Card Holiday but ultimately there is something necessary and political about it imo! that's all

I don't give a shit whether or not it's a Hallmark holiday really, all holidays are contrivances.

Being a father is also stressful and requires exertion if you're doing it right. I love my dad and on Father's day I'll let him know that or give him a gift. That doesn't mean I can't do that any other day but still it's nice. For people who come from more emotionally repressed families it's a functional excuse to do that.

Not sure what mother's day has nothing to do with "inverting a historical dynamic"

Hm, never thought about it much. Apparently the founder of the holiday really hated that it became a commercialized Hallmark holiday and crusaded against this; it was apparently political (for both suffragette and anti-suffragette activists) from the outset too.
https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-52589173

slightly different origins in the UK: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mothering_Sunday, although it's basically the same thing

id imagine a lot of single fathers might rather themselves that they werent in the 80% that dont officially count as parents in some instances/contexts tbh

there's even some single mothers, well they're gonna tell you that everything is just dirt

My mom still tells me I’m dirt and she’s been remarried for 30 years

For people who come from more emotionally repressed families it's a functional excuse to do that.

it is kinda awkward and annoying for women that have chosen not to be moms, because a lot of the message of mother's day is "in order for you to be celebrated as a woman, you have to be a mom" ... which, coupled with the traditional patriarchal thing of "women are not inherently valued. A woman is only valuable in relation to caring/supporting others" ... it can feel super shitty. It definitely is something that made me feel alienated from the gender I was born into, for sure.

At least Mother's Day and International Women's Day are distinct in most Western countries. In Russia, for instance, they're one and the same, for the very reason you mention.

i don't really see mother's day as a legitimate corrective measure to the "historical dynamic that tends to give single moms the short stick," primarily because the issue here isn't that fatherhood is valued "more" than motherhood. that's sort of missing the point, i think. it's not a matter of disproportional representation but rather of alienation and misrepresentation. it's not that motherhood isn't sufficiently visible, but rather that the lens through which dominant culture would have us view motherhood tends to obscure its fundamentally economic function. if anything, the marketing and commodification of motherhood that are central to how mother's day works as a national holiday are indicative of, and tend to reinforce, a patriarchal understanding of gender roles that — far from empowering (single) mothers — normalize (or justify) the emotional labor of motherhood as something a woman owes to society and for which she ought not be entitled to compensation or even basic goods and services that might facilitate the task of rearing a human child from womb to 18. from here it's not hard to make the connection to specific conservative legislation.

you might even go so far as to say that it's worth wondering why we find it so important to distinguish between fatherhood and motherhood at all !

Looting and vandalism are good not bad

sounds reasonable

Looting and vandalism done by white people is bad not good

nah

Looting done by Logan Paul is bad

almost no one is interesting enough for the mere fact of their disapproval to be worth sharing

Logan Paul is a butthole

some people look better in a mask