Did you know that Bay St Louis, site of today’s mass murder, is a charming Gulf Coast destination, and the birthplace of noted historian/plagiarist Stephen Ambrose? Voted Best Place to Live in Mississippi, BSL has also got berserk, bullet-spraying, teenagers. They own all kindsa guns, they know how to use ’em, and they like to kill lotsa people. Y’all come down now, y’hear? We got the “friendliest gun laws in the nation.”
MMT, a new way to travel the highways and byways of our amazing country. Stay tuned!
In 1997, the Southern Baptist Convention launched a boycott of Disney, once again for their pro-gay policies.
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Disney just dug its heels. I mean, they basically said to the Southern Baptist Convention, “Fuck you, we don’t need you.” I don’t know whether the Disney guys were just arrogant or confident, but from the very beginning, they gave not an inch… The Baptists quickly learned that there was no real alternative in terms of popular culture for young children other than Disney. So, they were talking about sacrifice. And I think sacrifice is one thing if they’re asking adults to make it. Disney parks had by that time become a cultural imperative. Which is to say, if you wanted to be a good parent or a good grandparent, taking your children or grandchildren to one of the Disney parks became a cultural imperative. That’s one of the things—one of the boxes you had to tick. And they were a little bit queasy with trying to tell a 7-year-old that we’re not going to Disneyland or Disney World because we think they’re not as friendly to evangelicals as Walt was 30 years ago.
… DeSantis, in my view—and I’ve been covering Southern politics since 1972—is a political thug, a bully, and an arrogant person. Since his rise, no one of equal stature, until now, has stood up to him and said no. I think he really didn’t understand the power that a corporation like Disney wields… I don’t think he realized that Disney punches back, and they may punch back better than he punches. He shouldn’t set himself up to stand or fall on whether he can get Disney to capitulate, because he will never get Disney to capitulate. It will not happen. It didn’t happen in the ’90s, and for sure it’s not going to happen now. And if you had to bet, would you bet on an ambitious Florida governor, or would you bet on a multibillion-dollar corporation that knows what its audience wants?
He is rumored to have joined the so-called AR-Gang (the name is a takeoff on Our Gang), a large underground group of people all of whom are on the run from having recently killed at least five people with their AR-15s. The core membership is made up of mass murderers, but membership is open to any AR-15 owner who wants to meet with other AR-15 enthusiasts.
UPDATE #2: 11:29 AM
The NRA has issued a statement:
We are appalled but not surprised at the wokeism that would persistently harass a lawful owner of a firearm as he practices firing his weapon. Any family that would try to take away our guns needs some basic lessons in the Second Amendment.
As for Mr. Oropeza, the NRA Legal Defense Fund will be providing him a highly regarded Second Amendment attorney to represent him at trial.
Failed local Republican candidate Eric Casteel‘s outside the box approach to problem solving focuses primarily on pulling guns on Republicans on the Allegheny PA county council when he doesn’t like the way a vote’s going. But he only threatens Republicans with his gun; let’s see what he does, next council meeting, or whenever they annoy him, to Democrats.
I mean, he’s being held without bond on terroristic whatever plus other shit right now, but when he gets out, locked and loaded and looking like this (scroll down for a portrait of our country’s compleat contemporary statesman), watch out, Libs!!!
A suicide cluster (seven of the deaths were suicides) emerges at North Carolina State, and the dreadful thing is that each suicide risks nudging another student on the edge over the edge. Suicide is contagious.
This is presumably (aside from privacy/family considerations) why the school fails to describe methods – you don’t want to give on-the-precipice students ideas.
“In any community there is always a certain number of people who are on the edge, and something as emotionally charged as a suicide (or multiple suicides) in the community (especially a small community) is frequently enough to tip more of them over.“
What we do know about the school’s suicides is suggestive. Anyone who followed the male/Asian clusters at other engineering schools not that long ago will wonder about the ethnicity of some of the students at NC State/engineering who may have killed themselves.
How many were gun suicides? UD wouldn’t be surprised if it were one hundred percent. It’s North Carolina, where guns are everywhere. Guns would help account for the school’s high number: With a gun you almost never, as it were, miss. Every other method gives you a bit of a fighting chance.
As for the draining, shell-shocked sensation NC students who are watching all of this report feeling: Well yeah. Jesus.
She was a key on-air booster of former President Donald Trump’s 2020 election-fraud lies and, in internal documents made public last month in the Dominion case, she said she was “depressed” by Joe Biden’s election win and texted Trump aides such as Steve Bannon that she simply refused to accept his victory.
“I want to see massive fraud exposed. Will [Trump] be able to turn this around,” she asked Bannon on Nov. 10, three days after Fox projected Biden as the winner. “I told my team we’re not allowed to say pres elect. Not in scripts. Not in banners on air. Until this moves through the courts.”
As the Republican establishment looks on in horror, Gov. Ron DeSantis plays with the idea of designating the theme park’s region of Florida, including adjacent acres, The Leprous Regions.
The family-friendly, fun-for-everyone, intentionally inoffensive brand has been demonized by politicians like DeSantis and others who have played to the Fox News cameras to raise their own profiles. The truth is that characterizing Disney as a creepy company that aims to morally bankrupt kids has become a mainstream position in GOP media circles.
DeSantis knows this — which is why he was happy to pick this battle with the company. But now that he will be forced to defend it in court, where the laws of reality apply, the war of his own choosing could very well cost him.
Now that Disney has done a Dominion Voting Machines to Ron DeSantis, UD will admit that she doesn’t understand this one at all. A hugely pro-business state’s governor seeks to destroy DISNEY?
[T]he company has earmarked more than $17 billion in spending at the resort over the next decade, growth that would create an estimated 13,000 jobs at the company.
Disney paid and collected a total of $1.2 billion in state and local taxes in 2022, according to company disclosures.
Just because Disney people said they disagree with state Don’t Say Gay policies? WEAWY??
So UD figures her problem is that she’s not a Floridian. If she were a Floridian, the state shutting down an unspeakably massively successful enterprise would be yes of course should have destroyed massive jobs and massive taxes years ago good going, man! UD figures if she’d been reading Carl Hiaasen’s novels all these years (and she didn’t do that, even when she lived on Key West), starting with his (and others’) Naked Came the Manatee, she’d be hip to why a governor eviscerating his state’s most successful enterprise makes gobs of sense and guarantees him the next presidency by acclamation.
But our UD is a status-anxious coastal elite who would never be caught DEAD… DEAD, I tell you! in or around Disneyworld, land, resort, park, Euro, communities, residences, monorail UND SO WEITER. Not her thing, not her world, not her problem. In short, things down there had to get pretty funky for UD to notice, much less blog about them. And now, with Disney’s big ol’ lawsuit today, they’re superfunky.
I think this one ends badly. Flashforward shows an unshaven guv who seems to have lost twenty or so pounds addressing “the nation and the world” in a YouTube of his own making. Weak trills arise in the background – presumably Fla.’s first lady begging him to come out of the bathroom.
“YOU TALKIN’ TO ME? YOU TALKIN’ TO MEEEE?” Bare-chested, trembling. “I told you I wasn’t kidding when I said I’d destroy them and all their mice. I told you if it took my death I’d destroy them. So HERE GOES KIDDIES and you might want to look away.” He takes out this season’s must-have accessory — an AR-15 — and blows off his head.
[Current] legislation weakens the current civil rights safeguards and allows the government to keep public transportation closed on the Sabbath and separate men and women in educational and public institutions. Not to mention that the religious parties are continuing to press for an ultra-nationalist agenda, including the building of new Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank, which they want to annex to Israel…
[The] growing influence of Israel’s ultra-Orthodox and ultra-nationalists could lead at some point to the annexation of the occupied Arab territories, with Arabs constituting at least 50 percent of the population in the area between the Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea. That raises the specter of Israel turning into a third-world Middle Eastern country, that, like Lebanon would be ravaged by ethnic and religious wars.
Dr. Bernard Carroll, known as the "conscience of psychiatry," contributed to various blogs, including Margaret Soltan's University Diaries, for which he sometimes wrote limericks under the name Adam. New York Times
George Washington University English professor Margaret Soltan writes a blog called University Diaries, in which she decries the Twilight Zone-ish state our holy land’s institutes of higher ed find themselves in these days. The Electron Pencil
It’s [UD's] intellectual honesty that makes her blog required reading. Professor Mondo
There's always something delightful and thought intriguing to be found at Margaret Soltan's no-holds-barred, firebrand tinged blog about university life. AcademicPub
You can get your RDA of academic liars, cheats, and greedy frauds at University Diaries. All disciplines, plus athletics. truffula, commenting at Historiann
Margaret Soltan at University Diaries blogs superbly and tirelessly about [university sports] corruption. Dagblog
University Diaries. Hosted by Margaret Soltan, professor of English at George Washington University. Boy is she pissed — mostly about athletics and funding, the usual scandals — but also about distance learning and diploma mills. She likes poems too. And she sings. Dissent: The Blog
[UD belittles] Mrs. Palin's degree in communications from the University of Idaho... The Wall Street Journal
Professor Margaret Soltan, blogging at University Diaries... provide[s] an important voice that challenges the status quo. Lee Skallerup Bessette, Inside Higher Education
[University Diaries offers] the kind of attention to detail in the use of language that makes reading worthwhile. Sean Dorrance Kelly, Harvard University
Margaret Soltan's ire is a national treasure. Roland Greene, Stanford University
The irrepressibly to-the-point Margaret Soltan... Carlat Psychiatry Blog
Margaret Soltan, whose blog lords it over the rest of ours like a benevolent tyrant... Perplexed with Narrow Passages
Margaret Soltan is no fan of college sports and her diatribes on the subject can be condescending and annoying. But she makes a good point here... Outside the Beltway
From Margaret Soltan's excellent coverage of the Bernard Madoff scandal comes this tip... Money Law
University Diaries offers a long-running, focused, and extremely effective critique of the university as we know it. Anthony Grafton, American Historical Association
The inimitable Margaret Soltan is, as usual, worth reading. ... Medical Humanities Blog
I awake this morning to find that the excellent Margaret Soltan has linked here and thereby singlehandedly given [this blog] its heaviest traffic... Ducks and Drakes
As Margaret Soltan, one of the best academic bloggers, points out, pressure is mounting ... The Bitch Girls
Many of us bloggers worry that we don’t post enough to keep people’s interest: Margaret Soltan posts every day, and I more or less thought she was the gold standard. Tenured Radical
University Diaries by Margaret Soltan is one of the best windows onto US university life that I know. Mary Beard, A Don's Life
[University Diaries offers] a broad sense of what's going on in education today, framed by a passionate and knowledgeable reporter. More magazine, Canada
If deity were an elected office, I would quit my job to get her on the ballot. Notes of a Neophyte
