Let me add to the that:
"a novel has to be some pretty atrocious crap to win both the Pulitzer and the Nobel Prize" and make Oprah's Reading List.

I wish I had known that Tom Clancy was the antidote to Toni Morrison novels. I had to read two of them.

Holy crap, that lady was like some kind of personification of everything that left offers: income redistribution, zilch morals, blantant pandering racism, a deep fundamental hate of white people, a strain of anti-semticism, a super-president that can fix everything, class warfare, and irresponsible social policies.
A Bush-Lied=Kids-Died comment and I'd swear she was some kind of avatar.

Does a Tom Clancy based movie count? I don't have a lot of time on my hands and *sigh* I have to read a Toni Morrison movie next week. I haven't seen Patriot Games yet.

Oops I meant read a Toni Morrison NOVEL. It'll suck anyway.

Yeah, pallets can get pretty dirty, but I've never tried any Clancy on them.

You need a pallet cleanser? You're reading Toni Morrison while driving a forklift?

[Know what you can do? You can shut up. It's not the most common word. -Ed.]

Where does she say that too many black are going to school?

Man, reading that interview is like having a flash-bang grenade go off in your hands. You're so stunned by the sheer amount of stupidity that you don't even know where to start to unravel it.

I think the most obvious stupidity is when she says that dropping out of school to care for a baby isn't that bad of an idea.

In the context you're using, it's spelled "pallette."

Where does she say that too many black are going to school?

She doesn't say that exactly but she does insinuate that inner city schools aren't being used to educate people. It's about 2/3rd down in the article.

Schools must stop being holding pens to keep energetic young people off the job market and off the streets.

Ed. was right:

palate - the roof of your mouth
palette - painters mixing board
pallet - bed or matress of straw
pallette - armor plates
palet - various meanings

Frank, Frank, Frank... you silly boy. She can't be a racist! She's black, homie! Only you white boys can be racists!!

(and, I TRIED to read the Time article, but my head nearly exploded and I had to stop. I believe she said whatever, cuz you say so.)

Boy, sure are a lot of racist white boys around these here parts, some of you ahve guns too, bravo homies.

"They can be teachers. They can be brain surgeons. We have to help them become brain surgeons. That's my job. I want to take them all in my arms and say, ''Your baby is beautiful and so are you and, honey, you can do it. And when you want to be a brain surgeon, call me -- I will take care of your baby.'' That's the attitude you have to have about human life. But we don't want to pay for it."

I wonder how often Toni Morrison babysits while single black mothers go to college.

...wait, I think I already know the answer.

Wow! I somehow managed to read the whole interview. Stupid is as stupid does.

Un-freaking-believable. I don't know which is worse, her blatant racism, or this:

Q. (Question about single parent homes and unwed teenage pregnancies)

A. Well, neither of those things seems to me a debility. I don't think a female running a house is a problem, a broken family. It's perceived as one because of the notion that a head is a man.

Racist AND sexist! Quite a profile she's building there. It is an absolute fact that broken families in the post-sexual revolution era and the intentional or correlational sidelining of the traditional masculine role have been the most decimating contributors to the breakdown we are experiencing in modern society. It's a problem that we have not even begun to address, and one that will span multiple generations as new boys grow up without any examples of what it is to be a man. But oh, I forgot...they don't have those choices because the rich white men took them away.

You know who else is a lying, vile fountain of racial hatred? Oprah.

This has to be comedy. This is a joke, right? RIGHT?

Um, ed., while you're at slapping folk down for those ghey spelling corrections, please put me on record for having told you there's no such word as "publically."

Thank you.

We wish to inform you that your application has been accepted for review. We look forward to telepathically communicating about super string theory with you.

#3 - Posted by: Ritter on January 28, 2008 10:44 AM

Tom Clancy movies are nothing compared to the books. I can't stand the movies, but the books are always fantastic.

When you change the title of a post, you really ought to acknowledge it. I know you altered it to conceal your own ignorance of the language in a post criticizing (in part) someone else's use of the language, but your Pravda-style airbrush is a disgrace. You've gone from amiable "humorist" (who tries way too hard) to incompetent hack. Congratulations.

[You is are retarded. -Ed.]

Why is someone retarded for pointing out your errors? I don't understand.

What would you say if Toni Morrison did the exact same thing you did?

[I would say, "Hey, Toni Morrison, Scott is retarded." Then she'd pontificate until my attention wanned. -Ed.]

Hey-

Youse guys snell sumptin'? Snells like ass...

I snellin' coffee, Alan. And big snow for the NW tonight and tomorrow. But once in a while, my nose is plugged up with socialist snot.

At least you got a link out of it, Frank. Besides, since Althouse took down that pretty picture of herself, I don't go there anymore. "Bedwetting..."

[I was never a bedwetter or a thumbsucker. My childhood foibles were fear of the dark and plagiarism. -Ed.]

Where does she say that too many black are going to school?

"She doesn't say that exactly but she does insinuate that inner city schools aren't being used to educate people. It's about 2/3rd down in the article.

Schools must stop being holding pens to keep energetic young people off the job market and off the streets. "

#10 - Posted by: Sarcasm Man on January 28, 2008 12:01 PM

Wow, you're kidding me, right? Morrison saying that schools have to do a better job of educating black kids is the same thing as saying that too many blacks are going to school?

You people are unbelievably stupid.

Necessary is an adjective and occasionally a noun.
Necessarily is an adverb. If you parse her sentence, she used necessary as an adverb.

The illustrious Althouse shows why being holier than thou about grammar and spelling is a touchy business. You look foolish when you make a simple mistake.

[Maybe she wets the bed! -Ed.]

And, yeah, having read the bluest eye, I don't put much worth into what Morrison has to say. The black characters who seemed to have made good life decisions were ridiculed by her for being too white, while those whose behavior was inexusable were patronized as being victims of circumstance or otherwise given passes on their behavior.

[Maybe she wets the bed! -Ed.]

Quite possibly!

Also, the above unclaimed post is mine, just so y'all know.

Ah, typos and errors happen. I only post when wide awake and ready to rumble, use spell check faithfully and still found two or three errors after the fact in my last post. Meh. So what.

Typos and spelling errors are a sad display in honest debate anyhow, just a crappy attempt to distract from the real topic at hand.

Frank, my childhood fear was of huge vacuum cleaners. I called 'em "squashers." But I was ahead of my time then, though.

I found another typo but when a day starts out bad, it is hard to change that trajectory. Additionally, I was always a real school marm about spelling. After years of hammering my folks about quality and consistency, it finally became clear that some people do not have a comfortable relationship with the written word. They are very well spoken and have good brains, but when transcribing their thoughts to another venue, the actual writing of the words gets in the way. I've since backed off the badgering. There has to be some relationship with accepted grammar, but if they get their point across, let's all move on.

P. S. I detest Morrison as well. When the feminists talk about overthrowing the Western Canon for drivel such as this, one knows the world is indeed going to hell in a hand basket. There was only one Shakespeare, and that was William. Morrison is a fad who will someday end up popular in France.

I've never read Toni Morrison, but good god, reading Tom Clancy is like listening to a verbose and boring 15-year-old obsess over the military--it's wonderful as a sleep aid.

Frank -

You could do a better job of proofreading. That being said, you gonna let that C-U-Next Tuesday talk to you like that?

Personally, I think the althouse lady needs to quite looking down her nose. Typos are common, get over it. Frank's engineer not a bloody English teacher. Now if he posted specs to say, an IMAO-approved-moon-proof-bunker and the thing collapsed that would then be an appropiate call for snootery. Fo the love of Glocks, some bloggers don't even fact check, they just write down whatever the voices in their head tell them.
Oh and #26, holding pen is like a cage, and like a cage her context infers that somehow by just saying to hell with school and letting be free. Free to do what is questionabe, because they are three choices you have when you drop out of high school: prison, an untimely death or low-end dead end job manual-esque labor.

It's not that you had a typo or minor spelling/grammar error. It's that you made two EGREGIOUS mistakes--one in the title--in a post that attacked someone's writing (and I agree 100% that Morrison is feckless blowhard).

Attacking major errors in grammar/spelling, i.e. elements of writing, in a post attacking the elements of an author's writing is not a distraction.

I'm not sure how slamming you makes me a socialist or a retard (jerk or obnoxious I could've lived with, retard is obviously projection on your part). I am sure that your rumbswabs making fun of my name doesn't speak well for your readship (or you).

Hey! Maybe the spelling mistakes were on oprpose.

I hate to do this, but I do agree with #26 (not the part about Frank being stupid) that TM was not necessarily saying that too many blacks go to school; rather, that the schools need to educate those they are charged with educating, rather than simply babysitting them. I'm not defending her remarks (see #16 above), but I think this one in particular was misread.

BTW, Oprah is still an ego-driven, racist Auntie Tom.

[To be honest (just this once!), I didn't care if I was accurately summarizing the article because:

1. My summary was more shocking than reality.
2. For the sake of the post, I felt it more authentic to go with my ten year old memory of what was in the interview.

I am an artiste, not a reporter. -Ed.]

#36:

There's a difference between us teasing Frank about his trouble with the spelling of homophones and you just being a dick.

Elloway outyay, Ankfray - it's alright. We'll fire up the Betamax and watch Raiders of the Lost Ark, I'll make some fondue, everything'll work itself out. I wasn't going after you directly for having a different interpretation, I was just flappin' my gums to stimulate the conversation (and to point out once again that Oprah is a big fat racist)...no love lost, don't tase me bro.

When you change the title of a post, you really ought to acknowledge it. I know you altered it to conceal your own ignorance of the language in a post criticizing (in part) someone else's use of the language, but your Pravda-style airbrush is a disgrace. You've gone from amiable "humorist" (who tries way too hard) to incompetent hack. Congratulations.

Stephen, given your post on the Althouse thread it's pretty disingenuous to say that you considered Frank an amiable humorist. If I were him, I wouldn't worry too much about pissing you off.

As far as Althouse and your comment, being a grammar/spelling Nazi isn't a direct violation of Godwin's law, but it's about as substantive and about as useful.

Frank didn't attack her for being a bad speller. He didn't attack her for bad grammar. He attacked her for writing boring books and being a bigot. And, so, in defense of this women being attacked, you point out typos.

Whoopee.

I be thinkin' all y'all needs ta lighten up on dat spellin' thang. Eitha ya gets it or ya don'. As fo' Toni, she a'ight, but I tink she be hittin' da koolaid too much, fo' shizzle. As fo' her writin' style, I'd haf to tell her straight-up dat she don' know wha th' f*ck she talkin 'bout & dat if she was all up in my bidness, I'd say "Bitch, please; you don' know me, so why you gonna tell a nizzle hiz place when it come to me an' my baby-momma's hizzay, huh? You needz to check yoself b4 you wreck yoself!"

And then, I'd smack da bitch up, yo.

Ah, Mr. Snell. Coming over here to bang your little drum and pound your little chest for a while, are you?

Couple of points: first, just because you capitalize EGREGIOUS doesn't mean that the mistakes were that big a deal. They weren't, and the fact that you kept harping on it after the corrections were made puts me in mind of a preening little snot who points out day after day that the teacher once wrote the wrong answer on the blackboard.

Second, Althouse was frankly pretty prissy about FrankJ's post--one might go so far as to say "snippy". That's why the "necessary" mistake is so beautiful, especially since Frank notes it with far more grace than did Ann (for whom I thought the outburst was uncharacteristic, myself.) This forum's a little too wide open to be too snooty.

Oh, and a quick helpful hint, Stephen: it's poor form to inflict yourself on a community that doesn't want you. Shoo. Go play somewhere more amenable to pretentious blowhards.

[Wow, you're kidding me, right? Morrison saying that schools have to do a better job of educating black kids is the same thing as saying that too many blacks are going to school?

You people are unbelievably stupid.]

It's pretty close though. For example, if I say school sucks that means I do not want to go to school. I think the problem here is not Frank's words but a total failure of imagination on your part.

Well, it's too bad Toni Morrison turned out to be such a biased flop. I really liked that "Hey Mickey, You're Fine" song she did back in the 80's...

;}

I gave it a go, but my stupidity allergy kicked in and by about halfway through the article I was sneezing too hard to read.

One of you interprets

amiable "humorist" (who tries way too hard)

as something other than derogatory? It's no compliment. Does this blog's "Editor" teach you comprehension?

And the rest of you lob hackneyed insults in your efforts to serve as the rumpswabs for a guy who puts forth a writing critique containing two horrible instances of poor writing, then calls someone a retard for criticizing him (in large part for airbrushing the post title and not acknowledging the change until after I mentioned it). And yet another of you has to plagiarize my own words (your ignorance of the context there is stunning, by the way) from a comment on another blog.

This blog's "Editor" could have avoided me entirely had he simply been honest at the time of his original changing of the title instead of going for the memory hole. I know I would have preferred that to wading into this cesspool of the trite.

This blog is like the driving through the crappy apartment complex just across the train tracks from the public high school.

Continue with your boring invective, it's all you have...

This blog is like the driving through the crappy apartment complex just across the train tracks from the public high school.

And yet, he won't go home...

Althouse isn't usually so stupidly ad hominem. At least she didn't criticize you for being ugly, which is just about at the same level as criticizing you for your spelling, when spelling has dick to do with the issue.

Maybe you touched a nerve there, with your suggestion that college perfessers sometimes grade according to their personal tastes instead of the quality of the writing.

This blog's "Editor" could have avoided me entirely had he simply been honest at the time of his original changing of the title instead of going for the memory hole. I know I would have preferred that to wading into this cesspool of the trite.

Really? But apparently, the "trite" is what kept you coming around...?

IMAO: Come for Teh Funny, Stay for the "Cesspool of Trite"

This blog is like the driving through the crappy apartment complex just across the train tracks from the public high school.

I find this rumbswab's sentence above to be awkwardly worded. I do not like "the driving through the" part. I do not like it all. Writing awkward sentences in a comment about grammatical errors is a heinous act indeed. It's like taking a drive in the projects near the Dairy Queen just across from the bus station.

Sarcasm Man: Finally living up to his name.

[Sarc] Yeah, Duque, what's up w/Sarc? [/Sarc.]

Stephen, in the history of crushing derogatory insults, amiable humorist is not very far up the list.

Your comments here are being met with the depth and the substance with which they were posted - I'd prefer not to call someone retarded, but it's all that any comments you've left deserve.

You have a stick up your ass about a guy and yet the best you can do to counter this guy you despise is to point out typos - in the end that says more about you than it does Frank.

Frank and the rest of us will point out Toni Morrison's a bigot, and you'll point out typos. Cool.

Hey mr.smell, is it rumpswab or rumbswab. Just wanted to know so the next time I use it to attempt to be a pissy little nebbish, I will get it right.

And, Frank, we all know that he is so wrong when he accuses you of "trying way too hard". Not even making the effort of pants under your poncho is barely trying at all. ;)

Oh, but he's doing more than that WAL. He's looking down is socialist-snot-encrusted nose at us!

I be snellin' a do-better slip.

Hi "warlord." Were you aware that Althouse is not a leftist? Just wondering--she's quite the public intellectual and has made her political views clear. Maybe you could try reading before you bloviate.

BTW, that comma after "now" is so completely unnecessarily.

Ummm... How 'bout that Tom Clancy?

I think I missed something. Seriously, anyone who takes anything Frank J. says serious needs serious help, Ann Althouse is, evidently, a jerk.

Hi "warlord." Were you aware that Althouse is not a leftist?

She's by no means a hardcore leftist and she's sympathetic to the right on a lot of foreign policy issues, but she's said in the past she's still a Democrat. (I haven't been to her site in a while, so feel free to point out if that's no longer the case.)

You know, it's possible that Althouse is an avid (livid?) IMAO reader. Her diatribe could have been a great leg pull. I say we cut her - and Frank - some slack. Besides, she might put that pretty picture back up and I'll have a reason to read her blog again!

I was forced to read Song of Soloman in high school. It was disgusting. The main character has an affair with his cousin (ewwwwwww), then when he dumps her, she tries to kill him once a month. The book was so lame I didn't even bother finishing it.

Her poltically orientation doesn't really matter, I found her comments to be a touch shitty and condscending.

This blog is like the driving through the crappy apartment complex just across the train tracks from the public high school.

See, the thing about this blog is that, in order to 'get it', one must possess something called 'a sense of humour'. You have successfully demonstrated that you are not currently in possession of one.

But you're in luck! For the low, low price of $49.99, a team of technicians could be at your door in five minutes or less to install a state-of-the-art Sense of Humour! No longer will you draw those questioning looks when you laugh at Al Franken and Bill Maher! With your new Sense of Humour, you will laugh along with your friends and family at things that are actually funny!

Call Now! Operators are standing by.

Hey SS: Forget the grammer. The point is, we like Frank. We don't like you. Frank is fun; you are peevish. (Did I spell that correctly?)

Give Mr Snell a break:
"snell", n., a short piece of nylon, gut, or the like, by which a fishhook is attached to a line.

Cheers

"I remember in that college class I had a choice between getting an A or saying exactly what I thought of Toni Morrison in my final paper."

Gosh, just imagine. If you had had writing skills AND the ability to formulate a cogent argument for your position, you could have expressed your feelings with respect to Ms. Morrison and also gotten that A into the bargain.

Of course, such shortcomings are never the fault of the student involved, are they? It's always a question of the mean, evil libbie professor victimizing the poor, innocent conserva-student.

(eyes roll)

Actually #68, that's pretty much how English classes work these days. It doesn't matter how retarded and untenable the premise is, if you can find a nice flake of evidence, then fill in the rest with slick BS that fits with the typical deranged worldview of the average English prof., you can go a long way. (As evidenced by the A on my "Marxist" interpretation of "The Invisible Man"; an obviously anticommunist text.) To my knowledge (and my last check of JSTOR), I am still the only person to ever attempt this.

I think the only reason I survived that class was by feeding my mutant sense of irony.

you could have expressed your feelings with respect to Ms. Morrison and also gotten that A into the bargain.

Yes, Timmy, and there really is a Santa Claus. College professors love it when their students disagree with them (especially their conservative students) and are never petty, vindictive, and dogmatic. Afterall, they treat their colleagues with such civility . . .

Thanks for demonstrating one of only two possibilities for you, Timmy:

1) You're still in high school and/or never actually attended university, or

2) You've never attempted to question this kind of professor (even respectfully) before. These are the kind who really wanted to be propagandists for the Red Army but had the 'misfortune' to be born in a free country. They punish students who think independently (even as other professors are working to train their students to do so) because they aren't concerned about education so much as brainwashing future followers in their cult of narcissism.

And in your case, kiddo, it seems to be working. Congratulations for living up to your aspirations of becoming a minion.

(golf clap)

I think the only reason I survived that class was by feeding my mutant sense of irony.

You too, eh? I survived by thinking of my 'essays' as parody.

Admittedly, you can have a lot of fun with the stuffy pinkos. A friend told me about this one prof who basically used her 'class' as a soapbox to rant about capitalism/evangelise impressionable young minds to the joys of Communism. After turning in a paper that he'd taken pains to research thoroughly and write well but only earned a 'C', he decided to conduct an experiment.

His next paper had no research at all, and was nothing but a screed against capitalism. The mark from that one?

An 'A', and glowing praise on what an excellent and well-researched paper it was.

He stayed in the class for an easy grade. Tools were meant to be used, after all.