Thursday Night Open Thread: Continuing With the Plight Theme

Posted by Oppo on 6 May 2021, 9:00 pm

Elliot Page (Formerly Ellen): I ‘Collapsed’ After Being Asked To Wear A Dress At ‘Inception’ Premiere
Daily Wire | 4/30/22 | Paul Bous
Elliot Page, the actor formerly known as Ellen Page but who now identifies as a man, “collapsed” after being asked to wear a dress at the 2010 premiere of Christopher Nolan’s hit movie “Inception,” according to an interview Page gave to Oprah Winfrey.
…
“I lost it, it was like a cinematic moment. That night, after the premiere at the after-party, I collapsed. That’s something that’s happened frequently in my life, usually corresponding with a panic attack,” Page said. “Ultimately, of course, it’s every experience you’ve had since you were a toddler, people saying, ‘The way you’re sitting is not ladylike, you’re walking like a boy. The music you’re listening to as a teenager,’ obviously, the way you dress. Every single aspect of who you are constantly being looked at and put in a box in a very binary system. That’s what it leads to.”
…
“So the Oscars, for example, I could not look at a photo from that red carpet,” Page added. “People might watch this and say, ‘Oh my gosh, this person is crying about the night they went to the Oscars.’ And I think again that prevents the ability to allow yourself to not just feel the pain but reflect on the pain, to even begin to sit down and bring it all up and finally confront all of that.”
Page came out as transgender and non-binary in early December 2020, roughly six years after coming out as a lesbian.

Sexual-frontier gibberish: I’m glad these kids were here to hear it.

Do you have something you’d like to share? A link? A joke? Some words of wisdom? A topic to discuss? It’s our nightly Open Thread, and you have the floor.

Not To Make Light of Their Plight, But…

Posted by Oppo on 6 May 2021, 8:00 pm

Houston cops launch ‘human smuggling probe’ after 91 people – some with COVID – are found huddling together in two story home
Daily Mail | 30 April 2021 | Snejana Farberov

Five women and 86 men were found crammed inside home in Southeast Houston Friday.
Police were investigating suspected kidnapping when they executed a search warrant and found the people huddling inside the home.
All the occupants are adults in their 20s and 30s; they told police they had not eaten in a while.
Some of the people had symptoms of COVID, including fever and loss of sense of smell and taste.
The startling discovery was made on Friday on Chessington Drive in Southeast Houston.

Could they not leave the house? I thought walls don’t work.

Had they no way to obtain food?

Were they huddling or crammed? There’s a difference.

I’m trying to picture my house with 5 women and 86 men in it. It’s doable, but not a pleasant thought.

Was there a permanent line for the bathrooms?

I’d like to think I would get my own room.

Weren’t those who lost their sense of smell the lucky ones?

When the cops opened the door, did it look like the Marx Brothers scene on the ocean liner in “A Night at the Opera”?

Are they going to stay in the country?

CornPopular Culture

Posted by Oppo on 6 May 2021, 6:00 pm

Biden’s Amtrak story about hitting 1.5million miles unravels: Conductor he said congratulated him on hitting milestone had RETIRED 20 years earlier, and his mother who he claimed to be visiting was DEAD
UK Daily Mail | May 06 2021 | Keith Griffith
President Joe Biden’s strange anecdote about reaching 1.5 million miles on Amtrak has come under scrutiny after key inconsistencies emerged that make it impossible to have occurred as he told it.
On Friday, delivering a speech in Philadelphia commemorating the 50th anniversary of Amtrak, Biden launched into the tale of a certain conductor congratulating him on reaching the milestone as he traveled to visit his sick mother.
Biden said the incident occurred in his ‘fourth or fifth year as vice president’, or around 2014-2015, at which time the conductor he named had been retired for 20 years and his mother had passed away, inconsistencies first pointed out by Fox News.

‘My mom was sick and I used to try to come home almost every weekend as vice president to see her. I got on the train and Angelo Negri came up and he goes, ‘Joey, baby,’ and he grabbed my cheek like he always did. I thought he was going to get shot. I’m serious. I said, ‘No, no, he’s a friend,’ Biden recalled.
‘He said, ‘Joey, what’s the big deal? 1,300,000 miles on Air Force Two? Do you know how many miles you traveled on Amtrak?’ I said, ‘No, Angie, I don’t know.’ He gave me the calculation and he said you traveled 1,500,000 miles on Amtrak. The fact is, I’d probably take Angie’s word before I’d take the word of what the article said,’ Biden said.

A key issue with the tale is that Angelo Negri retired as an Amtrak conductor in 1993, according to his 2014 obituary. That is long before Biden was elected vice president in 2008.
As well, Biden’s mother, Catherine ‘Jean’ Biden, passed away in 2010 at the age of 92, meaning that she was not alive in Biden’s ‘fourth or fifth year as vice president’.
Further casting doubt on the account, Biden’s own office celebrated his one millionth mile on Air Force Two in 2015.
It is not the first time that Biden’s colorful anecdotes have drawn questions about their accuracy.
On the campaign trail last year, Biden told a tale about being arrested in South Africa while trying to visit Nelson Mandela in prison.
No contemporaneous or other supporting evidence ever emerged to support Biden’s extraordinary claim, and key figures he said were with him denied any knowledge of the events.

What a habitual fraud. And I have a colorful anecdote about the Brooklyn Bridge, if you want to buy it.