Well I am glad to see that I have converted Matthew Yglesias to the drive-slow-in-the-fast-lane movement. Finally the adherent I've been dreaming of, or at least the adhesive. But, unable to escape a reasonable tune without interposing a high note of idiocy, he shrieks up and out of his tessitura like a soprano strapped to a Saturn V:
I don’t normally drive very much, but I’d make an exception to take part in this.Fuck it.
31 comments:
I claim priority, not to mention the right level of generalization:
http://stopmebeforeivoteagain.org/2007/03/stop_traffic.html
Bah.
Anyone that does this deserves the death penalty. Preferably by being skinned alive then burned at the stake.
This isn't new. He's been using a similar method of not wasting any food to battle world hunger for years.
Just what people need, to have their miserable commutes made even more miserable by some blogger's futile crusade against oversized automobiles.
On second thought, though, some good could come from it--Yggie might get run over by an SUV driver with road rage.
FUCK! This is how the revolution is going to start! If this doesn't work, maybe they could ramp up the civil disobedience by having sit ins in the fast lane.
I'm with Matt on this one. In fact we should start a movement to rent cars for people who don't own them, like me, so we can participate too. Hell, make mine a bus. Or at least a V8 dually.
Joe, you should read more carefully. This does not interfere with miserable commutes. The half-hour "drive to rule" demonstration is scheduled for Saturday at noon, local time.
I'd suggest that it might be more effective as a demonstration if everyone was driving to rule SIMULTANEOUSLY, NATIONWIDE!
I propose compromising on noon, Central Time, which is 1 pm Eastern, 11 Mountain, and 10 Pacific time.
mistah charley,
I'd read more carefully if I thought there might be a good reason to. Saturday at noon--even more pointless.
Actually, mistah charley, I was referring to this:
The real gains are almost certainly to be found in more-disruptive less-legal behavior like actually halting rush hour traffic.
It's always great fun to see how folks react when an otherwise appealing political theory looks like it might interfere with driving.
"I don’t normally drive very much, but I’d make an exception to take part in this."
There has to be a name for this kind of writing, in which the writer tries to seem kind of funny but also earnest, with elements of both packed into the discussion.
And he doesn't necessarily care how you respond, because if you say he's not funny or he's too serious he can fall back on claiming he was trying for the other effect and tell you that you're just not sophisticated enough to get him, when in fact he's just trying to fill his column.
There has to be a name for this kind of writing, in which the writer tries to seem kind of funny but also earnest, with elements of both packed into the discussion.
"Blogging."
THANKS FOLKS, YOU'VE BEEN GREAT! GIVE IT UP FOR OUR HOST TODD BARRY! I'VE GOT SOME MERCH AT THE TABLE OUT FRONT, REMEMBER, TWO DRINK MINIMUM.
The real gains are almost certainly to be found in more-disruptive less-legal behavior like actually halting rush hour traffic. But a nice initial attention-getting not-very-demanding activist step is a good idea.
There is this meme about that the only effective form of protest is actions which are not protest.
See also when people say that marches or demonstrations that do not explicitly disavow violence undermine their cause. No, the organized protest and demonstration's strength is its implicit threat of force. The point is to say, we have the will and strength to gather in numbers that you cannot control. Listen now, while we restrain ourselves, or listen later, when we take action into our own hands.
To completely disavow the action part is to render the protest meaningless, a bit of spectacle. The most legitimate form of protest you could have would be to drive your car, but make sure its a hybrid. I guess going down to the speed limit is slightly more radical.
The saddest thing about this is that according to the climate change movement's own calculations, predictions, or observations, nothing short of full scale stoppages could reverse or mitigate the worst of what is to come. They are pissing in the wind and telling themselves that maybe its rain blowing back at them.
Instead of driving, it may behoove humanity and his waistline to run his ass around the block a few times
Ya know, Enron, if this place didn't have such a gay sensibility, there'd be a lot less raggin on fatties.
I mean, just because the Greeks liked flat abs and bunched cheeks don't mean that beauty is truth, ya know ...
At least Ioz had the sense of decency to man up and take responsibility for creating this new affront to humanity----Yglesias going 30 on a Saturday afternoon in a borrowed car to protest french fries.
Yeah, gay dudes and their oppressive gay culture are the reason why m4w Craigslisters don't want no fattiesplz and why 40 year-old dudes feel comfortable writing and illustrating books designed to make 4 year-old girls feel uncomfortable and insecure about their baby fat.
The world's screechiest and most ostentatious violin for fat dudes and their oppression at the hands of gay Jewish bloggers.
Finally, the answer to the musical question, "Who is IOZ?" It turns out: Matt Yglesias. For further confirmation, replace the I in IOZ with the Y of Yglesias, you get YOZ, which brings you better than halfway to "YinZ" right there. Nuff said.
Just what people need, to have their miserable commutes made even more miserable by some blogger's futile crusade against oversized automobiles.
I.e., it would have the added benefit of discouraging crummy cubicled jobs that require commuting.
Speaking of doomed, minimalist protest movements, I swung by the Occupy Wall Street folks on my way back from the barber's. (I've been following this a little bit because I live and "work" in lower Manhattan.)
As of about 3 p.m. on Saturday, there are, I would guess, about 250 people in Zuccotti Park. At a quick glance, the usual lefty types: overwhelmingly white and middle class, probably median age mid-30's, no unity of message. (Free Mumia, Bikes Against Oil, Eat the Rich, etc.)
When I walked by, someone was saying, "Raise your hand if you have any experience facilitating dialogues in a non-egalitarian [sic] manner."
One of the crowd yelled at a tourist, "It's not nice to mock your fellow citizens!"
There are approximately 50 cops on site, and another 30 or so blockading Wall Street itself. I spotted 4 helicopters circling around. They do not appear particularly eager to dialogue.
I will try to check these guys out periodically, since I'm not doing much else.
Is this just a trial run, or do they plan on "occupying" Wall Street only when the markets are closed?
Well first of all they won't get to Wall Street itself, because it's heavily barricaded. Second, nobody does any actual trading from Wall Street anymore; it's all electronic. Third, the only people on Wall Street are European tourists taking pictures. So it'll just be one more thing to show to people back in Dieppe or whatever.
Supposedly the idea is to "occupy" it indefinitely--days, weeks, months. I see zero chance of that happening, since it would involve skipping work, sleeping on the street in chilly weather, and defying about a zillion cops because they don't have permits.
The protesters look like your archetypal lefty protester types--over-educated 30 year old white people, gathered in the name of class solidarity while ignoring a homeless guy 10 yards away. Supposedly the idea is that this will become the nucleus for an American Tarir Square.
I don't want to sound down on these people, since I'm more or less in that group myself and I more-or-less sympathize with a lot of their causes, and instead of fighting for something, I read comic books. But jeez, hapless ain't the half of it.
I predict they'll all be gone by Monday.
Hey did you guys here that president obama sat down and drank a beer with a US Marine? Its true i read it in the washington post. Maybe they can call it a "beer summit". It got me wondering all kinds of things like, would all those Arab terrarrists hate us so much if president obama bought one of them a beer and had his picture taken with him?how can you hate somebody that does that? seriously, how could still be able to actually lower your blood pressure by imagining someone like that, tied to the desert floor in the middle of summer, covered with coal tar pitch, with wet leather straps tied around his neck and the base of his scrotum? and a bunch scorpions closing in on him?
the view from the "left"
http://idealab.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/09/protestors-and-hacktivists-of-all.php?ref=fpblg
and this quote ends the piece;
One New York City cop reportedly characterized some members of the Saturday protestors this way: "Oh you know, a bunch of angry college students showing up because they can't get jobs, so they're blaming Wall Street."
josh marshall is a fuckign asshole.
To anon at 3:59
The subtext of your post appears to deny to gays and Jews their god-given right to be as oppressive as anyone else.
Fortunately, both groups seem to just go on being oppressive, despite your best efforts.
Perhaps a tour of the West Bank and then one of your average stateside MFA program will convince you of this.
All Jews are Israelis, all your gays belong to spurious stereotypes. Am I following you so far?
The subtext was actually that men don't suffer oppressive beauty standards, but ladiez do. So much for whiteman-readin' skillz.
to anon@11:10(1)
Do you really think you can quibble your way out of this with some misapplied set theory?
Your post clearly implied that gays and Jews don't have the right to be oppressors if they should choose to want to be. (Because if they should so choose, the "point" you were making would be vacuous.)
And it is therefore correct to be thankful for those gays and Jewa who are brave enough to show that they don't care about opinions such as yours, whether such gays and Jews comprise subsets, sets, or supersets.
(Although, I will concede the point that the Israeli Jews to whom you refer do, in fact, perceive themselves as elements of an UberSet.)
You mad, bro?
I ended up walking past the Occupy Wall Street guys maybe six times over the weekend. Every time I walked by, the crowd was a little bit smaller, but as of Sunday night still had about 100 people, a few of whom did look like they were planning to sleep over. The cop presence dwindled enormously: on Saturday there were easily 100 cops crammed into a very small area; by Sunday night there might have been 20. I'll probably pass by sometime today. If they're there on a weekday I'll be surprised and impressed.
It was still unclear what any of these people were trying to do, other than show off how disaffected they were.
"Oh you know, a bunch of angry college students showing up because they can't get jobs, so they're blaming Wall Street."
To me the crowd looked like grad students rather than college kids, but that's definitely how they presented themselves.
So my view of this is that for all the Flash Mob blather and Web 2.0 and social media and all that other stuff, traditional top-down structures still offer some valuable features. This was a really tiny crowd by NYC standards, barely a tenth of the size of stuff for UFPJ and ANSWER. Presumably because those groups have better lines of communication and can make more concrete proposals than "What is our one demand?" (which I think is a hilarious slogan.)
It sounds like all those TwitBook tools are helpful at reacting to stuff, but it doesn't appear to offer any advantages at organizing things in the first place. (Most of the anti-war things I've been to seem extremely sloppy, but this seemed even sloppier.)
Furthermore, the people who go to these things are living cliches. It's a lifestyle choice, a hobby with ancillary hobbies (hackey sack, fair-trade coffee, etc.), and organizing over TwitBook did not break out of the traditional Left-ster demo.
TwitBook also didn't help these people come up with anything more creative than standing around with signs and performing street theater.
It's also a lousy communication platform. If your goal is to persuade people who can be persuaded, a Twit isn't any better than standing around with a sign that says, "Eat the State!" Both are lousy ways at engaging people who aren't already committed. Presumably this is where more long-term sustained communication, like books and blogs, come in. But that's an extremely slow process that only works a few people at a time...
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