The show's website explains that the dialog is written in "a combination of English, Street, and Patois."
(And lest you think that one *can't* study Jamaican Patois in school, either linguistically or through its literature, let me assure you that you are mistaken [link] )
All of these comments about Gone With the Wind and no one has yet explicitly mentioned that a crucial incident in the third act involves Scarlett being attacked by a black man, and then a white mob being assembled to avenge this attempted rape and "clean up Shanty-Town." And even though it's not explicitly CALLED the Ku Klux Klan, it TOTALLY OBVIOUSLY IS the Ku Klux Klan, and we're supposed to be rooting FOR the lynch mob? And we're supposed to feel BAD when occupying Union troops try to stop the lynch mob and the Klansmen get attacked? Because that shit is SHOCKING AND UNCOMFORTABLE.
Gabe, please write about this movie.
As someone wrote on twitter and too lazy to look up who exactly it was: if "each individual is accountable for his actions” then I think Sarah Palin just endorsed a Mosque at Ground Zero. As someoen else wrote on twitter "Republicans are mad that they are being criticized for the actions of a few crazy people. Maybe they should ask Muslims how to deal with that."
Well, maybe. But Giffords, Teller, and the Knoxville Unitarians were tageted BECAUSE of their political positions. That's not exactly true of any of the incidents you list, except maybe Panama City, but even there the specific targets were chosen more because of a personal grudge. Right?
Okay not to get Belabortheobviousgum, but what I meant was that imagining that the homeless and destitute are *just as unlikely* to be mentally ill knife murderers as they are to be "secret radio superstars" or whatever. Both the fantasy that the homeless are insane criminals AND the fantasy that they are secret undiscovered geniuses, just waiting for their big break, are stories we tell ourselves to mask the much, much more terrifying reality: that they are human beings exactly like me and you, born with the same right to human dignity and the same human dreams and desires -- and furthermore, that we are all a few bad decions and a few adverse events away from sleeping in the bathroom stall of the public library ourselves.
And when she wants an extra-special treat:
http://consumerist.com/cashmerepaper.jpg
(THIS IS A REAL THING THAT EXISTS PEOPLE: link, google image search)
Okay so I'm late to the party, but there was not a lot of discussion of Gay Tony Blair in these comments -- and I *really* wanted Gay Tony Blair to be awesome, so I could come out of the movie and say, "Gay Tony Blair was the best part." BUT! Gay Tony Blair was nowhere near as good as Gay Tony Blair should and could have been. Alas.
I think the same thing about Marky Mark. Don't try to pretend you're not Marky Mark anymore, Marky Mark. You will always be an underwear model whose ads, ripped out of Details magazine, I masturbated to on an almost daily basis when I was 13. (Also too much? Also too much.)
Here is a picture of my friend Dominic pointing at the Grand Rapids Arch by Andy Goldsworthy, in the Meijer Sculpture Park, that I took when we visited!
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3059/2636959134_c05e99fa95_m.jpg
There is also a really big horse there! Yay!
Not defend a guy who tells Playboy magazine that he's just not attracted to black women, but what John Mayer said once and what Mel Gibson said, did, and threatened to do on multiple occasions really isn't comparing like to like. A better comparison would be with, say, Andrew Dice Clay, whose career was completely and irrevocably destroyed.
Alas, the Anti-Defamation League has other priorities these days.
Hey nikker, thanks for this, seriously. Very helpful!
However, we do know SOMETHING, right? We collectively know at least a little bit more than NOTHING? Just sayin'...
Very briefly, since this is neither the time nor the place, but there are two main reasons the Magnolia is The Worst:
1) Magnolia is THE EXACT SAME MOVIE as Robert Altman's Short Cuts, except Short Cuts is better and wittier and less mawkish and more genuinely moving and with better soundtrack.
2) William H. Macy's character. Particularly in the light of Philip Seymore Hoffman's character in Boogie Nights. I mean, I'm not saying that PTA insists on portraying gay men as subhuman caricatures, I'm just saying he's never NOT portrayed a gay man as a subhuman caricature.
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