Thanks. I need the pass. I have a long list of destinations, domestic and foreign, that I need to see before I die, but they’ll have to wait until I’ve (a) moved out and (b) earned some large amount of disposable income. I’m trying to do A this month (and getting nowhere), but who knows which decade B is going to happen in?
What’s ever been embarrassing about owning a BMW or Cadillac? Is it really embarrassing to use the money you’ve earned for nice things? Would you be embarrassed to own a nice house? Of course you wouldn’t, because by the time you had that money you’d have conveniently stopped being bitter about it.
Sure, it looks all open-minded and tolerant to say that, but there really is no vaguely mainstream liberal equivalent of Fox News; the closest might be Air America Radio, but I’m willing to bet Fox News’s ratings dwarf Air America’s multiple times over. But if you hypothetically only watch TV news, you cannot find a liberal channel that acts anything at all like Fox News. It’s just not going to happen.
But, if you were taking a class (as my boyfriend in high school was) where religious symbolism was being discussed in the context of literary symbolism, would you complain about how you shouldn’t have to learn this stuff, because you’re not Christian? Or if you were taking a class about usury laws in various places (one connection I know of between religion and banking), would you whine about having to learn about the religious motivations behind laws against usury (and the various ways around them that religious people have devised)?
Maybe it’s the whining about having to learn something that bothered me more than the attitude toward religion, come to think of it. Or maybe it was the hypocrisy- he wanted non-pagans to know about paganism, but didn’t want to learn about their religions.
(He did get better later on. He was an immature teenager, and we’ve all been that at one time or another.)
No problem. It’s the people who have no interest in seeing any country other than their own that I’m prejudiced against. I don’t have anything against people who want to travel but can’t. I hope you do get to travel soon.
UCLA disagrees. If you’re truly centrist, then it’s easy to find TV news programs to your left and to your right. Dan Rather’s CBS News was farther left than Fox News is right, for example. Note that I’m NOT talking about the commentary shows on Fox News, which I know are quite far right. I’m talking about the news itself, which isn’t nearly as biased as the commentary. Key quote from the linked article:
I wasn’t limiting my comments to television. It’s easy to find liberal newspapers, blogs, magazines, and so forth. If it’s one-sided news you want, you can easily find it, no matter which way you lean.
The Cadillac, and now the BMW, are faux-luxury cars marketed to underachieving status whores. They’re not performance vehicles, nor are they particularly well-built for the price.
If it makes you feel any better, I’ve already put my first prayer in the Wailing Wall. (That was a free trip for Jewish college students.) And I have traveled over the US already (with the rents) much more than most people I know.
It really does make me sad when I meet people who live in a little box like that; an inordinately large number of people I go to school with have hardly ever been outside of El Cajon (largeish suburb of San Diego a couple of miles outside of the eastern city limits) and think it’s an awful trek to go into San Diego, nevermind that I do it round-trip every weekday during the semester.
That’s not relevant to what I actually said, which is that there’s no liberal equivalent to Fox News on television, and only barely one equivalent that comes close in mainstream media, which doesn’t have a lot of listeners.
I am talking about the commentary shows on Fox News. People watch those too, ya know, and they drag the scales FAR down to the other side, especially with the extra weight of their star power. It’s pretty hard to balance that out unless you know where to look, and if you knew where to look you wouldn’t want to watch the Fox News channel because it would just piss you off. I’m not talking about actual news programs because IMO it doesn’t make that big of a political difference (relatively speaking) which news program you watch/listen to. It’s hard to weigh those down to favor one side or the other except in subtle ways (for example, how CNN calls the ETA “Basque seperatists” instead of “Basque terrorists” when they blow stuff up). But the news programs aren’t what’s important, and if you watch Fox News you’ll see raging, flaming, vitriol-laden editorials all day long, along with the actual news program.
That was one of the things I was thinking about- I remember coming to UC Santa Cruz and being shocked that some of my students had never been outside California. California’s nice and everything, but there are lots of things of interest outside of California, too.
People who are too neat and tidy are anal-retentive, obsessed, and don’t have enough going on to occupy their minds or interesting enough hobbies.
People who think that their tidiness makes them superior to those of us who are less obsessed with neatness are jerks. And anyone who would criticize someone else for being messy if the mess doesn’t directly affect the tidy person is an asshole.
People are really into reality shows because they’re too dumb to watch anything else or read a book.
People drink mass-market American beers because they’re too unadventurous to try anything new.
Almost all computer professionals are totally out of touch with what the average person knows about computers. This is especially true of computer professionals who work on Unix or Linux. Most don’t care and think their mad skillz make them superior to other people (who are actually sometimes just as skilled, just in different things).
Computer people who use Unix or Linux are smarter than ones who just use Windows or Macs.
People who come up with “unique” spellings for their kids’ names are ignorant and selfish- they’re too ignorant to think of an unusual name, so they spell a common one in a weird way, and they’re too selfish to care that their kid is going to have to go through life spelling his/her name for everybody, never mind the problems it will cause the kid’s future teachers, bosses, etc. Oh, and the kids are probably going to be hellions and, later, unpleasant adults- the parents are also probably the sort of people who think rules shouldn’t apply to them or their kids.
Science/engineering majors work harder in college than business or liberal arts majors.
People who spend a lot of time looking for a close parking space, unless they have a problem that makes it hard for them to walk a long distance or the weather is really bad, are stupid. They’re not just lazy- a regular, non-stupid, lazy person would just take the first spot they find and save the effort of looking for a closer one. They’re doubly stupid if they’re doing this in a gym parking lot.
People who view reading as the ultimate intellectual endeavor, and look down their noses at people who don’t do much reading (and yes, I know this applies to some posters on this thread). Sorry, you’re just pretentious. (And by the way, I do read, although not as much as I used to; I’m just not a pretentious snob about it.)
Woman with any kind of tattoo anywhere, or any piercing anywhere but the earlobes. Tattoos and piercings on women are gross, and I just can’t help but think less of women who have them. Especially since, in the overwhelming majority of cases, they’re doing it only because it’s the current fad.
People who are obsessed with eating only “natural” foods are flaky and dumb. This goes double for those who think that drinking sugared sodas is better than diet sodas- you’re getting several hundred extra calories per day, but at least it’s “natural”? :dubious:
For me, it’s that anybody who likes country music is an ignorant redneck or hillbilly. Of course, a high proportion of country music fans do fit that description.
Just this morning, a BMW popped from behind me in a turning lane, roared past my mini-van, and pulled back in front just to turn right in front of me into a parking lot.
I thought then and there about a bumper sticker I want on my car.
“You don’t need a BMW to drive like an asshole… but it helps.”
It does seem to me that a BMW driver thinks that the German-ness of his car entitles him to drive like he’s on the autobahn.
I also pretty my much assume that big SUV’s and full-sized pickups will not alter speed to allow merging traffic to enter. Owning an heavy, imposing vehicle seems to promote asshole behavior. BMW’s also seem to promote the same.
What’s ever been embarrassing about owning a BMW or Cadillac? Is it really embarrassing to use the money you’ve earned for nice things? Would you be embarrassed to own a nice house? Of course you wouldn’t, because by the time you had that money you’d have conveniently stopped being bitter about it.