Overheard: My kid throws such a fit any time his bread gets a little burnt, I’m starting to think he’s black toast intolerant.
Overheard: Sometimes a joke is a great way to break tension during an unpleasant situation, and lately, l’ve also been discovering all the other times when it absolutely is not.
Trash pick up is delayed by a day. Some of our neighbors will put the trash bins out tonight anyway, and we will feel superior.
America peaked more than 50 years ago. Since then, we have been a society in collapse. “Americans are managed like livestock. We’re draft animals for the wealthy.”
Yesterday I accidentally made myself super-strong coffee and liked it. This morning, I attempted to reproduce the coffee strength I made by accident yesterday. I may have overcorrected.
Cory Doctorow reviews “Doppelganger,” Naomi Klein’s memoir about how she’s often confused with Naomi Wolf. From that gimmicky springboard, Klein explores the progressive-to-Qanon pipeline that Wolf traveled—folks who formerly considered themselves staunch liberals becoming Trump supporters and embracing right-wing conspiracy theories.
Doctorow:
Wolf once had a cluster of superficial political and personal similarities to Klein: a feminist author of real literary ability, a Jewish woman, and, of course, a Naomi. Klein grew accustomed to being mistaken for Wolf, but never fully comfortable. Wolf’s politics were always more Sheryl Sandberg than bell hooks (or Emma Goldman). While Klein talked about capitalism and class and solidarity, Wolf wanted to “empower” individual women to thrive in a market system that would always produce millions of losers for every winner.
Fundamentally: Klein is a leftist, Wolf was a liberal. The classic leftist distinction goes: leftists want to abolish a system where 150 white men run the world; liberals want to replace half of those 150 with women, queers and people of color.
By the way, I had not encountered the phrase “bell hooks” before seeing it in Cory’s post. Initially, I thought it might be an error of the sort that comes up when you’re thumb-typing or dictating into a phone. It’s not.
Late lunch with Julie at Shakespeare’s Pub, San Diego. Good food and spirits, comfortable interior, and many delightful posters and postcards on the walls
10 fall TV standouts, including “Changeling” debut and “Frasier” reboot.
I’ll give the “Frasier” reboot a try. I’m glad to see “Gilded Age” is returning. “Murder at the End of the World” has the most cliched possible premise and I am there for it.
Two series feature the wonderful Jon Hamm, but alas neither seems appealing to me.