Are these hostile liberals?

Great Debates
1

A reporter went to the Upper West Side of Manhattan to campaign for McCain. After he concluded the report here were some of the reactions:

Then I watched the video.

What the fuck? First off, these fart monkeys are abusing the fact that a lot of their viewers don’t know a lot about the Upper West Side. No one talks to anyone giving out any crap on the street, much less a McCain t-shirt. They probably would not have stopped for an Obama supporter.

How were these people hostile? Have I been living in New York too long to think these people weren’t doing anything wrong? What reason was there for anyone to stop and talk to this guy? All he was doing was asking for McCain support. No argument or anything, just “lets support McCain.” What the hell were people supposed to say? It looked more like he was just trying to aggravate liberals. Am I crazy or biased for thinking this?

I think the reporters just really wanted to believe that there is a left wing equivalent of the racism and xenophobiaof the right.

2

I thought the same thing. I was waiting for the invective and, as Jon Stewart says, not so much.

3

Compared to the footage of the folks outside the McCain rally insulting the Obama supporters with virulent, hostile, hateful invective, like these very polite and open-minded folks, no, this was mild. Most of it was, “You’ve gotta be kidding-- you’re in the wrong neighborhood.” If you say that find that troubling, in a notably liberal area this close to the election, I say you’re being disingenuous and maybe a little bit of a wuss to boot.

4

Well, then, of course they’re “hostile liberals,” as they (and you) should be.

5

You don’t make it clear who you are actually quoting. What was your source?

I watched the actual experiment on MSNBC. The reporter was very casual in his suggestion that maybe the people there should be wearing a McCain - Palin t-shirt like his. Some of the comments were humorous. One woman asked him if that was his Halloween costume and told him that it was scarey. In no way was she “hostile.” She wasn’t in his face or shaking a fist or showing signs of anger. She made a joke of it.

He wasn’t actually campaigning for McCain. He wanted to see people’s reactions in this very liberal section of NYC. He was a reporter with a camera man gaging people’s reactions.

6

Nitpick: AFAIK, he stole this from Buffy.

7

I understand now where your quotes were coming from. Very strange disconnect from reality for the Huffington Post.

I didn’t see anyone who was hostile at all. I do think that Morning Joe wanted them to be hostile. Just like he would like to think that Nashville is going to support John McCain, but he’s will be wrong there too.

People have these set ideas about the South and even fellow Southerners are guilty. Tennessee will vote for McCain, but Nashville will support Obama.

Will this get me a morning talk show? I can be loud and arrogant and interrupt everyone else.

8

Stand somewhere long enough and you’ll get people to say what you want, we don’t know how many people he talked to get those “hostile” people.

9

Joss Whedon did not invent “not so much” any more than Larry David invented “yadda yadda yadda.”

10

Then . . . it’s a good thing I never said he did. I just tracked it back one degree; I’m sure there are earlier ones. But it sure didn’t come from Jon Stewart, was my single point.

11

You said Jon Stewart “stole” it from Buffy.

Back to the OP, I just watched the video. Most of those people were downright polite. There was a serious disconnect between what was shown and the spin the pundits put on it.

12

Which doesn’t preclude Whedon appropriating it from someone else.

13

Hey, let’s give Aaron Sorkin his due: first place I ever heard that idiom was on The West Wing, our of almost every character’s mouth, ca. 2000.

This is a vitally important subject, and one we shold debate to death. Much better than
“If Willie Geist acts like a provocative jerk, why will he get treated as one?” That’s just trolling IRL.

14

To continue the hijack, I think the earlier and more mainstream use of “…Not so much” was by Paul Reiser on Mad About You – though it certainly didn’t originate there. This sort of sentence inversion was very typical of Yiddish/English-speaking Jews and their families: see also “By me, it’s all right” or “Him, you should ask?” As with actual Yiddish words like mensch and tsuris and putz, this tangled phrasing became standard New Yorkese and has long been used by goyishes everywhere.

This Yiddishe minute has been brought to you by Mother’s Brand Gefilte Fish. “Remember, if you see an indecipherable lump of jiggling flesh on your Sabbath table, it’s got to be your Mother’s!”

15

It’s what the reporters say at the end of the video.

16

So how are so certain Stewart didn’t steal it from the same source as Whedon?

17

I saw that bit, and my thought was that you’d get a helluva lot more open hostility setting up an Obama booth in, say, Signal Mountain, Tennessee (a suburb of Chattanooga).

18

I think Yoda used the expression first. Not sure about the date, but it was a long time ago.

19

When asked if she wanted a McCain t-shirt, the one woman said, “No, I don’t. Thank you for offering, though.”

Monster!

20

First of all, Willie Geist is not a reporter in any reasonable sense of the word. He is Joe Scarborough’s sidekick and water fetcher. Second, Bob Shrum was on the show at a later point and — over Scarborough’s yelling and flailing — challenged Widdle Willie to go to a McCain-Palin rally wearing an Obama shirt. That whole Morning Joe show is packed with McCain whores and wannabes.