Multi-Billionaire Oprah Whines About Sexism & Income Inequality At DNC

[Toni]

Pretty certain we all agree that we are all a collection of pretty flawed people.

I agree; You all are. But I love you anyway.

I love you more.

 

[pood]

On a minor, inconsequential note, Toni (not Tony) is using “laying” in that little descriptive thingy under his/her/their user name, when “lying” is wanted.

Are you sure? Perhaps she is NOT fornicating while daydreaming of the UK....

The expression refers to not submitting to unpleasant sex, for the sake of England.

Then it should be LYING back.

Meh. "Laying" is perfectly correct in many dialects of English. Even in England. That 'a' is routine amongst speakers in the North.

Prescriptivism in this matter seems more than a little strained, when coming from an American.

Sorry, I’m just an American grammar Nazi because of the profession I was in. But language is always changing and it hardly matters much. I’ve read the Canterbury Tales both in medieval English and modern and they are really different.

The general rule is that “lay” is a transitive verb that takes a direct object, whereas “lie” in the sense of recline, is intransitive. But if you’re talking about “lay” in the slang sense of sex, it’s not quite clear, but even in that sense “lay” would seen to want a direct object: Today I will lay X, or be laid by x. But if one is being laid, the logic suggests, “I am lying back, being laid.”

Lots going on so I wasn’t clear: it was a reference to advice given married ladies with reference to their husbands’ sexual attentions. They were not expected to enjoy sex but to tolerate it without complaint. Thinking of England, I suppose was intended as a more noble direction to turn their minds. After all, England needed healthy babies.

I added it to my profile as something I was not willing to do: lay back and take it without complaint or fighting back. If I remember, during my very sleep deprived days when I averaged something like 5 hours of sleep a night.

But surely discussing any aspect of my profile or my posting style is quite boring? I think so anyway. Pretty certain we all agree that we are all a collection of pretty flawed people.

Sorry, being a grammar Nazi, I just brought it up on a whim. My only trivial point was that it should be, “not LYING back…” as opposed to “not LAYING back.” LAY is a transitive verb (LAYING is the gerund form). That means it must take a direct object: I will LAY the book on the table; I am LAYING the book on the table. “Book” is the direct object.

LIE, in the sense of recline, is an intransitive verb, and therefore takes no object: NOT lying back, thinking of England; lying being the gerund from of the verb.

That in itself isn’t too confusing, except when you start conjugating the respective verbs and discover that the past tense of LIE (to recline) is, well, LAY … Yesterday, I lay in bed all day. The past participle is LAIN (I have lain around a good deal lately). With LAY (to place something somewhere) it’s LAID and LAID, past tense and past participle identical. Good old English.

As for LAY in the sexual sense, that too is a transitive verb and must take a direct object, i.e. the person you are laying.

Anyway, sorry for the interruption. Carry on.

 

[pood]

So then you’d get, “I am LYING on the couch, LAYING so and so …” Although with J.D Vance (J. Divans) it would be, “I am LAYING the couch (not laying ON the couch).”

 

[laughing dog]

About the above, there isn’t much to respond to, because it’s so silly. I’ll just say that anyone who thinks huge numbers of Trump supporters aren’t motivated by racism is living in an imaginary alternative reality.

I think the assumption of racism as the driving factor is errant... and mostly it shows an unwillingness to consider your political opponent as a fully realized human with complex views and competing values. It most demonstrates that you view "the other" as a one-dimensional caricature.

In short, it's the Illusion of Asymmetric Insight

I disagree, because as I say, tons of white people SAY THIS — it is not an assumption, it is an observation. See, for example, here. You think this idiot is some kind of rare outlier? But we have tons of other examples, observations and evidence of racism, so no, I am not failing to consider my political opponents as “fully realized humans.” I am observing what they say and do, and drawing the appropriate conclusions.

Yes, I think that idiot is a rare outlier.

I'm not saying that racism doesn't exist. My dad is black, I grew up in a mixed household, with a mixed sister. The black side of my family outnumbers the white side my orders of magnitude. I grew up as a military brat, surrounded by immense diversity. I attended schools where I, as the melanin deficient child, was the minority. Racism certainly does exist. But the vast majority of humans under about the age of 70 do not hold blatantly racist views. Furthermore, to assign racism as the single driving motivation for half the voting public is poor logic.

As I said, it demonstrates a lack of consideration of "the other" as being fully human. You view "them" as being single-dimensional caricatures whose only motivation is malice that you have imagined onto them. At the very most gracious interpretation, you fail to understand your opponent.

Get thee hence to some Sun Tzu: If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.

I have never attributed racism as the sole motivating factor for those who vote for Trump or people like the idiot cited above. And no, I see plenty of evidence that this guy is NOT a rare outlier. When I grew up in white suburban Detroit I was saturated with racism against blacks, including in most of my own family, and it was exactly of a piece with how the guy cited above talks. Blacks were routinely characterized not just as the N-word, but with all sorts of Trump-style appellations such as “liver lips” and “jungle bunnies.” It was all over the place. This is reality, then and now. At least one of Trump’s own relatives has said he routinely uses the N-word in private and I’ve no doubt, none, that millions of his supporters do as well.

You know that things have changed since the 80s, right?

I think you and I are of similar age, I'm now 50, and IIRC you might be a wee bit older? I'm not sure, I suck at keeping track of random bits of intel about people whose faces I've never seen. Actually, I kind of suck at keeping track of things like that about people I routinely interact with IRL too, so it's clearly a me problem.

Anyway, that was not uncommon when I was a child in the 70s and 80s - but it was adults saying those things at the time. We who were children then didn't carry that forward. Most of my generation, as well as those that have come after me, pretty fully embraced racial equality and the ideals of MLK jr. Thus the bolded red bit in my post above

There's a demographic shift happening right now that a whole, whole, whole lot of people are not taking into consideration: The largest voting block for this election is NOT baby boomers, it's gen x. And Gen X has extremely different motivations, mindsets, and views than Boomers. I keep seeing rhetoric from politicians and media, as well as assumptions from pollsters, that all assume that what has been true in the past about how different blocks vote will continue to be true in the future. I think that's a horrible assumption. The blather that Trump is spewing is the kind of talking points that resonated with conservative boomers. The stuff that Harris mouths are the things that resonated with liberal boomers. Neither of them have much of a fucking clue what's important to Gen X, and both of them are failing to adapt. This is further confounded by the fact that gen x is absolutely the least likely to engage in political polls. Right now, in my opinion, nobody has a clue what the fuck is going to happen in November, and any assumptions anyone makes about why anybody might vote for one part or the other is pretty much guaranteed to be wrong, because those assumptions are based on boomer behavior.

It's a shitshow now, it will continue to be a shitshow through November, it's going to be a bigger shitshow between November and January, and nobody's prognostications hold any water. If anyone manages to be within spitting distance of right, it will be through sheer luck.

All very interesting, but the reality is that Gen X doesn't seem to go to the polls in sufficiently large numbers to make a difference. Whether you realize it or not, real societal change either takes a revolution or a long time. In either case, right now, we are stuck in between those two situations. I agree that Trump and his MAGAtards are pretty close to the last gasp of the "I;m white , I'm scared but I'm right" vote. Jan. 6 was not some random event.

 

[Shadowy Man]

Pretty certain we all agree that we are all a collection of pretty flawed people.

I agree; You all are. But I love you anyway.

I love you more.

See. You are flawed.

 

[Toni]

Pretty certain we all agree that we are all a collection of pretty flawed people.

I agree; You all are. But I love you anyway.

I love you more.

See. You are flawed.

That’s what I wrote????

 

[TomC]

Pretty certain we all agree that we are all a collection of pretty flawed people.

I agree; You all are. But I love you anyway.

I love you more.

See. You are flawed.

Get a room.
Tom

 

[Bomb#20]

“Politically correct” became a kind of in-joke among American leftists – something you called a fellow leftist when you thought he or she was being self-righteous.

That was long after it became a thing amongst the right. I assume you read the article. Or did you just skim until you found something to support your explanation of the term's usage?

Where the heck are you getting that? According to the article it became a thing amongst the right in 1990, and an in-joke among American leftists around 1970.

The thing to keep in mind about in-jokes is that they're funny. If there hadn't been any of the hard-left claiming their own position was the politically correct one in the first place, then it wouldn't have been funny when the moderate-left mocked them.

You're going to have to point me to examples of the bolded because I can't think of any and it was not mentioned in the article.

I'm not clear on how I'm supposed to give you a link to a pre-internet oral conversation between two leftists that nobody felt the need to publish on a dead tree. I lived on a left-wing college campus in the early 80s and personally witnessed "politically correct" being an in-joke among American leftists. It sure sounded like they were mocking people who'd used it non-ironically; it did not come off as an obscure reference to Mao's Little Red Book.

But hey, if your standard of evidence is "If it isn't in the Guardian it must not be true", feel free to discount inference to best explanation. If you feel "politically correct" is a bad analogy for "reverse discrimination", please yourself -- goodness of analogies is in the eyes of the beholder. My point remains. You wrote:

This subject is being discussed here and in other threads because people with slightly lower scores (minorities) are being chosen over people with slightly higher scores (whites and Asians) and they say that is reverse discrimination. How you haven't seen that baffles me.​

The reason I haven't seen that is because it didn't happen. Nobody in this thread or any other recent IIDB thread said it was reverse discrimination. Regardless of how it was used fifty years ago, "reverse discrimination" appears to currently be a term leftists impute to non-leftists because they heard other leftists impute it to non-leftists.

 

[Bomb#20]

The expression refers to not submitting to unpleasant sex, for the sake of England.

Then it should be LYING back.

Meh. "Laying" is perfectly correct in many dialects of English. Even in England. That 'a' is routine amongst speakers in the North.

Prescriptivism in this matter seems more than a little strained, when coming from an American.

What would you know? You guys don't speak English; you speak a bunch of weird-ass dialects like Posh*.

It's said if you wake up an Englishman out of a deep sleep, for a few seconds he'll talk just like a normal person, before he remembers...

(* Aren't you supposed to be speaking Strine by now?)

 

[Bomb#20]

All this blathering is irrelevant because No. 1, in which you needlessly coin a new term, is false.

There’s no need for me to present an argument against obvious blather.

About the above, there isn’t much to respond to, because it’s so silly.

You seem to be under the impression that insulting an argument is sufficient to refute it.

I’ll just say that anyone who thinks huge numbers of Trump supporters aren’t motivated by racism is living in an imaginary alternative reality.

That doesn't conflict with what I said. Huge numbers of Bush and Obama and Clinton and Biden voters were motivated by racism too -- there are so many voters that it doesn't take huge percentages to add up to huge numbers. Doesn't change the fact that when Democrats nominate somebody popular and charismatic like Obama they win and when they nominate somebody unpopular and uncharismatic like Clinton they lose. Clinton had hardly anything to recommend her as presidential material but it didn't matter because half of America would vote for a dead fish as long as she wasn't Trump. Trump had hardly anything to recommend him as presidential material but it didn't matter because half of America would vote for a dead fish as long as he wasn't Clinton. People aren't as different from their opponents as partisans like to think they are.

 

[bilby]

What would you know? You guys don't speak English; you speak a bunch of weird-ass dialects like Posh*.

It's said if you wake up an Englishman out of a deep sleep, for a few seconds he'll talk just like a normal person, before he remembers...

(* Aren't you supposed to be speaking Strine by now?)

I am tri-lingual; I am fluent in Yorkshire, English, and Strine.

 

[Bomb#20]

1. I'll coin a new term. For decades white people have been Approved Racial Discrimination Targets Of Government. (See, for example, Fullilove v. Klutznick

... So, to sum up - a policy that directed 10% of spending to be spent on 11.5% of the population makes the other 88.5% of the population who is receiving 90% of the spending into “Approved Racial Discrimination Targets”

Your math is not mathing, ...

Let's math accurately. ...

For funsies, let's flip this around, and see how it sits with you guys.

Let's say that group A comprises 90% of the population. Let's assume then that the government earmarks 90% of the funds to go exclusively to members of group A. The remaining 10% is available to everyone, irrespective of their group affiliation. That would mean that A has access to 90% of the funds exclusively, and also has equal access to the remaining 10% of funds. That would give group A access to 99% of the funds, leaving only 1% for the remaining 10% of the population.

I'm not a fan of exclusive funding without EXTREMELY good justification, and even then I want clear boundaries, and defined expiration criteria for those exclusive arrangements. That said, it would be far more reasonable to earmark that each group gets a proportional amount of funding than to specify a subset as exclusively available while also allowing the remainder to be accessible as well.

As much I find the entire approach unpalatable, I'd be more open to saying minorities comprise 11.5% of the population, and so they get exclusive access to 11.5% of the funding. The remaining 88.5% of the population has exclusive access to the other 88.5% of the funding. While I find that sort of approach to be divisive in nature, it's at least fair in application.

Fairness doesn't work that way, IMNSHO. Adding a second unfairness to a first doesn't make things fairer. As you say, exclusive funding requires extremely good justification; I don't see "Well, we already have this other exclusive funding policy." as an extremely good justification. Telling some white woman her bid couldn't be considered because 92% of the contracts went to other white people last year was unfair to her; also telling a black guy his bid can't be considered because 12% of the contracts are going to other black people this year is unfair to him; that's two unfair exclusions instead of one. Unfairness doesn't annihilate like matter and antimatter just because we choose to conceptualize it by lumping people into arbitrary groups any way we please and then imagining the unfairness happens to our grammatical fictions rather than to flesh-and-blood people.

With race this point is academic -- nobody is going to actually impose a "Black people may not get more than 11.5% of public spending." rule. Sex is where the rubber meets the road. All the time we see sex-exclusionary policies imposed for the sake of the imaginary fairness of equalizing the amount of sex-discrimination. Girls who want to compete in boys' sports leagues are barred, even though having less testosterone during puberty than the other players isn't an unfair advantage, merely because it's perceived as unfair for boys to compete in girls' sports leagues because having more testosterone during puberty than the other players really is an unfair advantage. Transmen are pointlessly excluded from men's rooms because the legislators had reasons to exclude transwomen from women's rooms and felt "Everyone must use the room of his or her biological sex" was magically less unfair than "Biological males must use the men's room." Women's rooms are an affirmative action program: a special service society does for women because ameliorating the harm male monkeys have been doing to female monkeys for the last thirty million years has been widely considered an extremely good justification. Requiring there to also be male-only spaces women are excluded from in the name of being fair to both sexes amounts to saying "It's fair to discriminate against women in a new way because women have always been discriminated against in old ways." That doesn't seem to me an extremely good justification.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The problem is that you see things only through the lens of those like yourself: a certain kind of white make who believes that parity is best achieved only if it does not disturb the comfortable spot you feel entitled to because ‘ you’ve done nothing wrong.’

Neither have the people who have histicakky been discriminated against and who are still waiting for their shot at all the good things that fall into the Laos of certain white males.

It is easy to conclude that change in societal order is fine with you so long as it doesn’t disturb the comfortable position you occupy abd preferably takes place sometime after you die and are not inconvenienced.

Be careful what you wish for.

You're not actually addressing anything I said. Faith, not logic.

What you refuse to understand is that other than family most people aren't getting things from the past. For it to be unfair taking in the past you have to show a possible mechanism of action--and you're not. What people get from the past is their upbringing. But you can't blame that on discrimination so it can't be the answer.

 

[Rhea]

Man who has never been a parent claims that generational trauma has no impact on childrearing across generations. That the conditions you were raised in will never manifest in your parenting.

In other news, chimpanzee fails to learn the “right on red” rule.

Also, can you be done with the demeaning “faith not logic” slur? FFS, you know full well on an atheist board that people will take that a certain way, and you also know full well your use of it does nothing LOGICAL to refute their point. Every accusation is a confession, much?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

About the above, there isn’t much to respond to, because it’s so silly. I’ll just say that anyone who thinks huge numbers of Trump supporters aren’t motivated by racism is living in an imaginary alternative reality.

I'm sure the racists are voting Felon but I don't think we have a good count as to how many there are as the DEI crowd keeps trying to count us colorblind approach people as racists.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I grew up in white suburban Detroit, where everyone’s greatest fear was that black people would move in because, “there go the property values!”

I don’t know what everyone, including most members of my own family, were worried about. Didn’t they know about redlining?

Then there was the deal where whites began leaving Detroit proper because, you know, black people lived there. A lot of them moved in during the Great Depression and World War II to seek factory work. White flight began after the war and took most of the auto industry and the tax base with it, and because of, you know, REDLINING, black people were omitted form the suburbs. So inner city Detroit went economically downhill swiftly but blacks could not escape. The cherry on the top of this big fat white vanilla ice cream sundae of super duper racism was that blacks were then blamed for their own poor economic condition.

That’s how it works in the real world, but not Loren’s world I guess.

It's commonly called "white flight" but you see the same effect whenever inferior students show up in large numbers. Parents who care get out when the schools start to go downhill. And they will generally get out at the first sign because they know things are going to downhill and it's better to get out early before property values are depressed too much.

How do parents ‘know’ other students are inferior? How do they define ‘inferior?’ How do you define ‘inferior?’

Inferior = does not perform as well in school as the average for the school. This often means inner city kids but you observe the same thing with a flock of immigrants whose English is lacking. While it is strongly correlated with race it is not race.

 

[Toni]

The problem is that you see things only through the lens of those like yourself: a certain kind of white make who believes that parity is best achieved only if it does not disturb the comfortable spot you feel entitled to because ‘ you’ve done nothing wrong.’

Neither have the people who have histicakky been discriminated against and who are still waiting for their shot at all the good things that fall into the Laos of certain white males.

It is easy to conclude that change in societal order is fine with you so long as it doesn’t disturb the comfortable position you occupy abd preferably takes place sometime after you die and are not inconvenienced.

Be careful what you wish for.

You're not actually addressing anything I said. Faith, not logic.

What you refuse to understand is that other than family most people aren't getting things from the past. For it to be unfair taking in the past you have to show a possible mechanism of action--and you're not. What people get from the past is their upbringing. But you can't blame that on discrimination so it can't be the answer.

Wut?

 

[Toni]

Man who has never been a parent claims that generational trauma has no impact on childrearing across generations. That the conditions you were raised in will never manifest in your parenting.

In other news, chimpanzee fails to learn the “right on red” rule.

Also, can you be done with the demeaning “faith not logic” slur? FFS, you know full well on an atheist board that people will take that a certain way, and you also know full well your use of it does nothing LOGICAL to refute their point. Every accusation is a confession, much?

He uses the word faith as an insult when he has no cogent arguments to make. I’ve been calling him out on that for years.

 

[Toni]

I grew up in white suburban Detroit, where everyone’s greatest fear was that black people would move in because, “there go the property values!”

I don’t know what everyone, including most members of my own family, were worried about. Didn’t they know about redlining?

Then there was the deal where whites began leaving Detroit proper because, you know, black people lived there. A lot of them moved in during the Great Depression and World War II to seek factory work. White flight began after the war and took most of the auto industry and the tax base with it, and because of, you know, REDLINING, black people were omitted form the suburbs. So inner city Detroit went economically downhill swiftly but blacks could not escape. The cherry on the top of this big fat white vanilla ice cream sundae of super duper racism was that blacks were then blamed for their own poor economic condition.

That’s how it works in the real world, but not Loren’s world I guess.

It's commonly called "white flight" but you see the same effect whenever inferior students show up in large numbers. Parents who care get out when the schools start to go downhill. And they will generally get out at the first sign because they know things are going to downhill and it's better to get out early before property values are depressed too much.

How do parents ‘know’ other students are inferior? How do they define ‘inferior?’ How do you define ‘inferior?’

Inferior = does not perform as well in school as the average for the school. This often means inner city kids but you observe the same thing with a flock of immigrants whose English is lacking. While it is strongly correlated with race it is not race.

To normal human beings, inferior is not the same thing as inferior. How is it that you think a student from an inner city, now attending a superior ( I’m just going with your logic here) suburban school, harm the education of all of those nice white superior students?

Do those immigrants dragging down nice white American students’ education include Asian students?

 

[Bomb#20]

1. I'll coin a new term. For decades white people have been Approved Racial Discrimination Targets Of Government. ... Tony is smearing white men who don't want to be ardtogs as wanting everyone else to be an ardtog. ...

And that's racist because she would not smear black men who who don't want to be ardtogs as wanting everyone else to be an ardtog. She would not interpret uppity refusal to accept ardtog status as evidence of having that negative trait, in an uppity person who's black, or some other race she favors. She talks as though white men have no right to be uppity, no right to be non-ardtogs, even though black men do. Assigning rights based on race is racist. She is treating whiteness as if it were a a form of guilt, an Original Sin that can only be expiated by embracing the One True Faith and voluntarily accepting the artogship it assigns. That implies white men are racially inferior. Treating a race as inferior is racist.

I’m not smearing anybody. <mischaracterization of prior arguments snipped>

The problem is you feel that anyone who doesn't support your position is supporting the white-superior position. You do not accept the existence of a middle that takes a race-neutral position and rejects discrimination in either direction.

That said, I have long had some concerns that as girls and young women are being encouraged to explore math and science, boys and young men feel they are being pushed aside. As girls and persons of color and members of the LGBTQ community have gained acceptance, (some) white boys anbd young men are feeling pushed to the side. That’s not good—I know this as someone who was told often—by male teachers, no less, that it wasn’t good for girls to be smarter than boys, that boys were ‘naturally’ better at math and science—while I easily had the highest grades—and was told I got lucky. Not good job but that 100% is because you’re lucky.
Abd I was lucky to have parents who mostly did not have those attitudes and encouraged me to excel in those areas.

We need to do better in not discouraging ( white boys) anyone as we encourage those who had traditionally been excluded.

Yes, they feel they are being pushed aside because they are being pushed aside. When you bend over backwards to help anyone but white males the white males quite correctly perceive they are being punished for the sins of other white males.

They are being ‘ pushed aside’ because after centuries or even millennium, they crowded out everyone who was not a member of the ‘in’ group.

No, they did not. The white boys and young men who you grant are being "pushed aside" did not crowd anyone out of anything. They are not old enough to have been doing any crowding back in the centuries or even millenniums when girls and persons of color were being denied acceptance and crowded out. You said "they" committed a wrong that was actually committed by a completely non-overlapping set of people. And it's not as though you were unaware of how young "they" are. You blamed them and held them responsible for other people's deeds, and defended penalizing them for those deeds, purely on account of them being the same race and sex as the true perpetrators.

What you wrote was blatantly racist and sexist. If somebody held young black people responsible for what some old black people had done you would have no trouble recognizing it as racist. If somebody held young women responsible for what some old women had done you would have no trouble recognizing it as sexist. You keep using rhetoric that relies on assuming people are interchangeable parts. Learn to recognize that kind of rhetoric, and then stop using it.