An Idiocy Sabbatical

Burt Likko

Pseudonymous Portlander. Pursuer of happiness. Bon vivant. Homebrewer. Atheist. Recovering Republican. Recovering Catholic. Recovering divorcé. Editor-in-Chief Emeritus of Ordinary Times. Relapsed Lawyer, admitted to practice law (under his real name) in California and Oregon. There's a Twitter account at @burtlikko, but not used for posting on the general feed anymore. House Likko's Words: Scite Verum. Colite Iusticia. Vivere Con Gaudium.

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53 Responses

  1. Will Truman says:

    I hope you can make an exception for the OT prime minister elections…Report

  2. Michael Cain says:

    Are you a betting man, counselor?Report

    • Are you saying that you don’t think I can be an idiot for sixty days? Thank you. Nevertheless, I shall try.Report

      • Saul Degraw in reply to Burt Likko says:

        FWIW, I think you can be an idiot for much longer than that.

        Boom…walked right into that

        😉Report

      • Well, I was thinking in terms of not responding to idiocy for 60 days. Some time back, I made a somewhat less public oath not to do something here on the site. That lasted about 30 days (a period which changed my perspective on at least one thing for the better). This is a good time to do it, too: football has just started, the SCOTUS hasn’t come back to town yet, etc.

        I should keep a paraphrase of Grandpa Cain in mind more often: think twice, post once.Report

  3. Kolohe says:

    “An Idiocy Sabatical” sounds like you’re going to spend the better part of a year immersed in idiocy, not eschewing it. Just sayin’Report

  4. Glyph says:

    Don’t drag the Iggster into this.Report

  5. Stillwater says:

    Yeah, dude. Right on. Get in touch with your individual, personal, private distinctness. Gonna miss ya posting on the upcoming Trump v Hillary v Cruz v Kim Davis Cagematches, but that seems like a small price to pay to get reacquainted with your inner idiot.Report

  6. greginak says:

    I’m seeing a hazy picture that looks like Don Draper sitting cross legged on a craggy NorCal coast.Report

  7. Griff says:

    Let us know what it’s like spending all of two months the way the vast majority of Americans spend almost all of their time.

    ETA: Only sort of being snarky here.Report

    • Autolukos in reply to Griff says:

      I spent yesterday avoiding being selected for a jury, and it was a nice reality check to hear people without strong opinions about the justice system.Report

  8. aarondavid says:

    Switch to a 5 wood, or better yet, 19 oz. of hardwood with an Irish linen grip used to crack an 8-ball into a carom side pocket!

    Good luck councilor.Report

    • Burt Likko in reply to aarondavid says:

      My five wood is broken. The shot always curves off to the right sharply.Report

      • You’re quitting on it and trying to hit the the ball on the upswing to get it up into the air. Head down, extend your right hand/arm all the way through impact, and the club face will take care of getting the ball up.Report

        • I know this, yet keeping my head down and my arm straight is far, far too difficult.

          So it must be the club. No other explanation is reasonable.Report

          • A golf swing that allows reproducible results is perhaps the most unnatural overall motion in sports. I quit playing because it was too frustrating that my aging joints wouldn’t allow me to do it properly.Report

          • Morat20 in reply to Burt Likko says:

            Hmm. I do something weird with my wrists. I play rarely, so when I do it takes me 7 or 8 holes to remember WHAT I should do with my wrists (or shouldn’t) and then another 4 or 5 holes to fix it, and then by the time I hit the 18th I’m ready to move onto the next problem.

            All i know is that for the first 9, if I hit the ball, it’s gonna end up somewhere in the weeds on the right.Report

      • aarondavid in reply to Burt Likko says:

        I have a friend who plays scratch at the Olympic club in the bay. His advice was always to put your feet together at the driving range, and I mean lock them up. THEN try all the Dave Peltze nonsense, the Chichi story s***. Nothing will force you to actually pay attention like that.

        I would rather shoot 15 and 1 against Minnesota…

        (I never hated golf like I hated billiards and thus never bothered to get good at it.)Report

  9. LeeEsq says:

    The entire state of the world makes me wonder if some sort of gatekeeper function is needed for large and diverse democracies.Report

    • Jaybird in reply to LeeEsq says:

      The term for the guy who worked the gated barrier separating the judges from the public was “Chancellor”.Report

      • LeeEsq in reply to Jaybird says:

        I meant more in terms of a media system that determines what is or what is not acceptable public discourse. There were always fanzines on the liberal and conservative, or left or right, sides for people with really far out opinions but during the height of the Cold War, the media establishment strove to keep opinion within certain acceptable parameters. Now everybody is free to let their ID run wild with few repercussions.Report

        • Jaybird in reply to LeeEsq says:

          Well, how’s this? You tell me (and Maribou) what you plan on watching and/or reading and/or playing this week, and we’ll tell you what you shouldn’t have had access to in the first place and you can then take it off your list.

          Or are you more hoping for a list of acceptable media and you can pick and choose for anything off of that list?Report

          • Maribou in reply to Jaybird says:

            I would just like to note that when Jaybird told me about what he said to LeeEsq without even giving me any context, my first reaction was, “Dude, that’s not how I roll.” #librarianlife #not1905anymoreReport

    • Lyle in reply to LeeEsq says:

      Back in the days when newspapers were the primary means of info distribution (and carried further when the 30 min newscast per day was the tv news) there where such persons they were called editors. There was only so many column inches or seconds for news and the editor decided which stories got the resources. Today the newspaper is infinite in size and 24 hour tv news has the inverse problem of more time than stories.
      I sometimes wonder how it would be to have news delivered weekly only how many of the stories we see would remain then?Report

  10. Oscar Gordon says:

    In related news, Survivor is suing Huckabee for unauthorized use of Eye Of The Tiger during Davis release.

    Good luck with your sabbatical, counselor!Report

    • Damn you!

      / shakes fist while scowling /

      I wrote my fishing law review article on exactly that subject! (Sided with the artist.)Report

    • I stand with TNR. (Even though I thought the use of that song was pathetic.)Report

      • nevermoor in reply to Will Truman says:

        What other property rights should liberals not be allowed to enforce against conservatives?

        Good old “Even the liberal New Republic…”Report

        • Will Truman in reply to nevermoor says:

          What’s interesting to me is that the TNR is not really the TNR of old. The whole “New Leaf we’re not those old racist bastards” thing. But they do have a string of slightly more idiosyncratic stuff. So not sure…Report

          • nevermoor in reply to Will Truman says:

            Jury’s still out, but this is exactly in the mold of “Even the liberal New Republic criticizes liberal musicians for complaining when their songs are used by conservative politicians.”

            If the debate gets enough traction, maybe someone like David Brooks will churn out a column with exactly that sentence.Report

      • Oscar Gordon in reply to Will Truman says:

        Thing is, Newt got sued by Survivor a few years back for something similar. Settled out of court, but you’d think Huckabee would know about this.Report

      • greginak in reply to Will Truman says:

        The TNR view is a bit of “rockers shouldn’t politicize music, so let politicians use songs for political purposes.” They are using songs at political rallies to create the energy and mood they want for a good rally. That is political. I don’t blame artists for not wanting their songs used by people they don’t support.Report

      • Oscar Gordon in reply to Will Truman says:

        What I would do is have a standard, published rate for letting my song be used at a political rally. Say $150k.

        Some politicians get to pay the rate, some get an in-kind contribution to their campaign.Report

    • R.E.M. are all over Trump and Cruz for using “It’s the End of the World as We Know It” at their Stop the Iran Deal rally yesterday.Report

      • Glyph in reply to Michael Cain says:

        This is a sidebar, but I saw an article analyzing Spotify data, and talking about how bands that are on the streaming services are staying in the popular youth consciousness (apparently “Smells Like Teen Spirit” continues to get listened to, all the time) while bands that did not license their music to them (like Pearl Jam and R.E.M., who have always been very restrictive in the outside use of their music) are fading from popular view.

        This ties into my bewilderment not too long ago that R.E.M. seems largely-unknown now to younger people, despite being one of the biggest bands on the planet at one time.

        It will be interesting to see which strategy pays off in the long run. For many years Led Zeppelin were similarly adamant that their music not be used for other marketing purposes (IIRC the Doors were similar?) and eventually that exclusivity conferred its own mystique that seemed to bolster the bands’ reps and catalogues.Report

  11. Murali says:

    Burt, do you think it would be better if they had limits on campaign season? In Singapore, campaigning is only over 9 days. Today is cooling off day, so no rallies today and tomorrow is polling day. Of course nothing prevents you from revealing the candidate before nomination or for the candidate to work the ground before then. Only no political rallies.Report

    • dragonfrog in reply to Murali says:

      That’s an interesting question. In Canada, campaigns are shorter but not limited by law. The campaign starts when parliament is dissolved, so they can’t go on too long because someone should be running the country most of the time (and the constitution required parliament to sit once every 12 months).

      One unfortunate effect at least lately is that the party in power starts early by spending public money on transparently partisan ads before calling the election, after which point they can only use their own money.

      The thing that probably helps keep our elections short of spending limits. There’s no advantage to a long election of you can’t spend money on advertising.Report

    • Burt Likko in reply to Murali says:

      Dude. Don’t tempt me like that. I’ve only just begun this thing.Report

  12. Damon says:

    Ah Burt, you are now only just realizing the true beauty of ignoring much of society. Just let it go. I was where you are a while back. Withdraw. Build the walls of the fortress of solitude and don’t come out. Allow only those worthy to enter. Allow what will happen eventually to come about. Continue to hope that if you survive, the world will be a better place, because if it isn’t, well, you won’t live much longer after realizing it, so either way, it’s all good.

    No one cares, why should you?Report

  13. Burt Likko says:

    After 24 hours, I’ve seen and been tempted by many headlines and plenty of bait offered here by y’all. So far, no articles clicked on or read. It’s fortunate that I have football as a distraction.Report

  14. Tod Kelly says:

    Who is this Donald Trump person you speak of?Report

  15. Vikram Bath says:

    “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to ____” book series makes a lot more sense to me now.Report