The Bluestocking, vol XXXI: Snowflakes, Rebels and The Worst People in America
Evening all, and welcome to the start of silly season. THANK THE LORD the news seems to have abated, finally.
Helen
Welcome to Snowflake
Historically speaking, settlers’ reasons for uprooting typically establish the hierarchy of wherever they resettle. Puritans relocated for religious reasons, so the devout became popular. Forty-niners rushed in search of gold, and those that struck it gained status.
But people came to Snowflake to nurture disease, and so, here, illness acts like a social currency. Being “normies”– a mostly derogative term meaning that chemical fragrances and electricity didn’t (yet) cause us debilitating pain – not only dropped Mae and I into a category of people who had historically hurt, abandoned, and misdiagnosed everyone we were about to meet, it also ranked us as lepers.
One to add to the "it doesn't matter if it's real, it's really affecting people's lives" file along with Morgellons and Munchausen's By Internet.
The Work of A Hospice Nurse
Sometimes the adult children of a patient felt angry or guilty that they couldn’t prevent their parent from dying, and so they denied that the whole thing was happening. Or else they harangued Heather to get every last bit of help that hospice entitled them to, and then more than that—extra hours, extra supplies, more I.V. fluid—maybe as a way of expiating guilt or proving love, or maybe just because they were that kind of aggressive person.
This New Yorker piece about a hospice nurse is very honest and very true, and not as sad as you might expect.
These Rebel MPs are planning a war on Labour austerity
I asked them for a simple yes or no. Is Ed Miliband the right person to be leading the party into the election?
Corbyn sighed, "he is the leader, it's not going to change. Frankly it's not a terribly relevant question" – about the least ringing endorsement I've ever heard.
McDonnell chimed in, "let's be clear, we don't believe in leaders."
I thought that was a weird thing to say for someone who ran to be Labour leader twice. Back in 2007 he failed to get enough support, and did the same again in 2010. Corbyn was considering running as his deputy. Sour grapes?
McDonnell faltered, slightly, for the first time. "We believe that leaders should be following the masses. We only ran in leadership campaigns to get our ideas across, to use it as a platform."
An eye-opening interview with Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell from just before the 2015 election. (Bonus: Steve Richards has done a three-part R4 documentary on the Labour leader.)
Versailles is great and I don't care what anyone else says.
Quote of the week: "Here we have a cultural product whose appeal essentially consists of a broad coalition of the worst people in America: New York Times writers, 15-year-olds who aspire to answer the phone in Chuck Schumer’s office, people who want to get into steampunk but have a copper sensitivity, and “wonks.” (Guilty as charged, m'lud.)
Quick links: A nuanced piece about training someone born male to speak "like a woman". A "ghost singer" - the voice of West Side Story and a bit of Marilyn Monroe - dies. In praise of the economic blogosphere. This story about Facebook and VR has the most hideous animation at the top of a story I've ever seen. (Well done, Bloomberg.) An interview with a Terrorism Correspondent about her beat. Why do people hate Hillary? Here's Slate's answer. And here is Vox's. "At last, the media talks about the media!" - I have no idea what story so prompted the Awl's ire about navel gazing journalists, but they have us bang to rights. Has Howard Stern finally grown up? Glenn Greenwald says that "U.K. elites were uniform, uniform, in their contempt for the Brexit case, other than the right-wing Murdochian tabloids" because Glenn Greenwald doesn't understand UK politics, but his massive ego means he thinks he does. Theresa May's Desert Island Disc choices may surprise you. The FT's Edward Luce on America's "white backlash".
Guest gif: If you stop and think about it, it is MENTAL that we made a sitcom about the Nazi occupation of France.
That's all - see you next time . . . If you like this, forward it to a friend! Or sign up at tinyletter.com/HelenLewis