Open Thread (Feb. 28th 2012) Ron Swanson is the man edition

Erik Kain

Erik writes about video games at Forbes and politics at Mother Jones. He's the contributor of The League though he hasn't written much here lately. He can be found occasionally composing 140 character cultural analysis on Twitter.

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95 Responses

  1. BSK says:

    That quote immediately became my new Facebook status. Great moment. He also nailed the line, “That sounds just like me.” In that particular episode, though, I thought Tom was on his game with the “Oh No No’s” and his visceral reaction to Anne’s violation of them.Report

  2. Max says:

    Deep thought for the day: contemporary culture encourages and rewards half-assery in most aspects of ‘professional’ life. Blogging is not only not a remedy to this phenomenon but may in fact be the vanguard of it.Report

  3. Kolohe says:

    Your new widget on the side blocks a bit of the gift of gab sidebar in IE7. (part of that statement would seem to be my fault, yet it is not).Report

  4. BlaiseP says:

    Vote for Swanson!

    I’m the Bobby Knight of government efficiency.

    Forget for a second the oxymoron that is “government efficiency.” As a devoted fan of The General, I’ve taken many of his life lessons and applied them in my current position as Director of the Pawnee City Department of Parks and Recreation. My track record speaks for itself. In the last six years in this job, I’ve successfully helped close down Portola Skate Park, the Grice Dog Run, the Morris-Easton Observatory, the Mohanga Native American Heritage Center and most public drinking fountains. That’s the same sort of can-do attitude I intend to bring to the State House.Report

  5. Chris says:

    I wish to complain about this parrot what I purchased not half an hour ago from this very boutique.Report

  6. Dan Miller says:

    Has anyone else lost the rich text formatting options that used to be here?Report

  7. Snarky McSnarksnark says:

    Well, there’s the answer. You can have rich formatting without the Javascript editor, but you’ve got to do the HTML tags yourself.Report

  8. Michael Cain says:

    Why does the top level page now load, then take me away to seemingly arbitrary locations where the browser hangs. It has hung trying to pull things from linkedin.com, google.com, and currently ordinary-gentlemen.com. Firefox 3.6.27, Mac OS 10.7.3. Restarting Firefox did not help. Safari on the same machine seems to be okay.Report

  9. North says:

    I miss the formatting options in the comment box and I loathe the little Share widget in the bottom left corner with a cold burning hatred.Report

  10. Will H. says:

    The theme of this open thread appears to be appearances.Report

  11. DensityDuck says:

    Which is better, a whole ass or an asshole?

    PS “You guys have got it wrong! If you don’t like your job, don’t strike! Just go in every day and do it really half-assed. That’s the American way!”Report

  12. Erik Kain says:

    Okay:

    1. The rich-text editor was buggy and annoying. Too many mangled comments. Too many problems. I will try to find a better one. Until then, it’s pretty easy to do some html if you need to.

    2. I’ve changed the share widget to auto-hide. Let me know if you’re still getting page load errors. I haven’t gotten any at all so far for whatever reason. Thoughts and feedback are very much appreciated, but I do want to make social-sharing easier. We have a crappy social network presence right now and I want to change that.

    3. I have some other redesign thoughts and ideas percolating. Feedback is always good. But please be detailed and constructive.Report

  13. Dan Miller says:

    New thread: those who engaged in the campaign finance conversation from last week (James, Elias) might be interested in this book review of Larry Lessig’s latest in the Washington Monthly. I definitely don’t endorse all of it, but it’s got a fresh approach to the issue, coming at it through the lens of limiting campaign spending by making it more effective without using the law. It’s worth reading.Report

    • BlaiseP in reply to Dan Miller says:

      Anyone interested in a scholarly approach to the problem with a full backgrounder on the history of money in American politics ought to take a look at Golden Rule by Thomas Ferguson. It’s a bit old but it’s a good text on the subject.Report

    • BlaiseP in reply to Dan Miller says:

      Dan: I have a theory on how we might eliminate the worst parts of campaign financing from gnawing away at what little remains of the democratic process.

      We need to close the revolving door between Regulator and Regulated. I’m convinced many of the worst abuses of the tax code, and it always seems to be located in the tax code, subsidies particularly, are nothing more than grubstakes for politicians who hope to end up on the payrolls of those who benefit thereby.Report

  14. Jeff says:

    Of NBC’s Thursday night block, I watch The Office (purely for sentimental reasons). I never got into 30 Rock or P&R (largely due to Ron Swanson, and the fact the Amy Poehler is extremely unfunny). I didn’t even test Community, since I detest Chevy Chase (see Amy Poehler).Report

    • E.D.Kain in reply to Jeff says:

      Oh man, P&R is the best and Swanson is comic gold. Also, Leslie Knope is one of the best characters on television. The Office has been better than it has in years also.Report

  15. Jeff says:

    OK, when it comes to TV (if naught else), you are the anti-me.Report

  16. Plinko says:

    I wish to complain that the volume of good posts this week is too high. I can’t even keep up with the posts much less the comments, please store some in a rainy-day fund.Report