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ms_priestypants
06:19 PM

In reply to The Gray Lady and Her Sad, Shared, Empty Bag of "Douche"
You simply cannot go wrong with dick. #newyorktimes
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Uncle_Billy_Slumming
05:35 PM

In reply to The Gray Lady and Her Sad, Shared, Empty Bag of "Douche"
Paul Krugman longs for the freedom to drop douche-bombs. You just know that he uses the word "douche" all the time in his off-blog life. #newyorktimes
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snugbug
05:22 PM

In reply to The Gray Lady and Her Sad, Shared, Empty Bag of "Douche"
Now that D-bag has been so mainstreamed I'm gonna lobby for bringing "f*ckwad" back into circulation. It hasn't been worn out yet and it can be effectively weaponized against D-bag ex-boyfriends. #newyorktimes
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son of spam
04:11 PM

In reply to The Gray Lady and Her Sad, Shared, Empty Bag of "Douche"
This is like when your parents tell you they like your music. #newyorktimes
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Sergio Hernandez
03:36 PM

In reply to The Gray Lady and Her Sad, Shared, Empty Bag of "Douche"
I think the reasons people like "fuck" and "douchebag" and any curse word, really, are, as you said, the way they roll of the tongue, their supposed shock value, and how they communicate this basic sense of frustration or anger or just plain dislike when eloquence fails us.

In that regard, I don't really see what distinguishes "fuck" or "douchebag" or any other curse words from each other. Maybe "douchebag" offends the ladyfolk's delicate sensibilities (<-- this is sarcasm), but — like most swear words — they're pretty much stripped of any literal meaning when we re-appropriate them into curse words anyway.

In other words, if "douchebag" is empty and meaningless and simply, so is "fuck," etc. If that's the logic by which we judge the usefulness of swear words, aren't they pretty much all "Already Over?"

(That said... Really, Times?)
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Edited by Sergio Hernandez at 11/14/09 3:36 PM Sergio Hernandez was starred Sergio Hernandez was unstarred

burbere002
03:40 PM

@Sergio Hernandez: What's required is a cunning linguist.
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Uncle_Billy_Slumming
05:37 PM

@Sergio Hernandez:

I thought I'd become inured to all profanity until I read "axegash" yesterday. #newyorktimes
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Uncle_Billy_Slumming
05:40 PM

@burbere002: And a master debater. #newyorktimes
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Anthony De Rosa
03:19 PM

In reply to The Gray Lady and Her Sad, Shared, Empty Bag of "Douche"
I think the fact that the word is so contentious, and has provoked so much commentary speaks to how great it is.

Sure, as Foster eloquently stated, it's a discount counter brand insult, but tell me it just doesn't feel right when used to describe the subject of your disdain.

Azzwizard is simply trying to hard. An insult isn't so much about showing off as it is an instinctual reaction.

At the end of the day, I'm just glad Foster enjoyed my douchenozzle. #newyorktimes
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Banjo-Sea Kitten
03:08 PM

In reply to The Gray Lady and Her Sad, Shared, Empty Bag of "Douche"
What is this awful world coming to? Last night on CNN, Wolf Blitzer said, "Let's go to asswizard5 on Facebook to see what he thinks about healthcare reform." #newyorktimes
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RandomLunatic
02:51 PM

In reply to The Gray Lady and Her Sad, Shared, Empty Bag of "Douche"
Some possible alternatives to douchebag: bidetbrush, goiterlicker, fungusnugget, smegma pirate, anal cyst (particularly fond of that one), sackwart, fucklord (did not come up with that one), cockblister and pube scab. #newyorktimes
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MyrtleWilloughby
02:58 PM

@RandomLunatic:

How about cob nobbler, lamestain or tom-tom club?

Ahh, the old days, swingin' on the flippity-flop. #newyorktimes
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RandomLunatic
03:05 PM

@MyrtleWilloughby: Oooohhh - lamestain especially has a ring to it. #newyorktimes
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Phyllis Nefler
03:21 PM

I'm totally bound-and-hagged by the rain tonight. #newyorktimes
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MyrtleWilloughby
03:24 PM

@RandomLunatic: Doesn't it? And we have the Gray Lady circa 1992 ( not to mention Megan Jasper and Thomas Frank) to thank for it.

[en.wikipedia.org]

[books.google.com] #newyorktimes
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MyrtleWilloughby
03:29 PM

@Phyllis Nefler: Harsh realm, dude. I didn't even notice the rain as I'm currently a big bag of bloatation. #newyorktimes
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Lorem Ipsum
03:33 PM

@RandomLunatic: assface, twatwaffle, mingebiscuits! #newyorktimes
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RandomLunatic
03:39 PM

@Lorem Ipsum: Assface - classic; twatwaffle is eternal; mingebiscuits is AWESOME, but would it really catch on in the US? Marketing these things is important, you know. #newyorktimes
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TheBusinessGuy
02:39 PM

In reply to The Gray Lady and Her Sad, Shared, Empty Bag of "Douche"
How about using c--t instead? In the British sense, of course. It has such a charming Etonian sheen on it. (I use the hyphens because so many ladies of my acquaintance think the use of the word in the American sense is as awful as puppy killing, and I suppose it is. So I censored myself, admittedly in a silly way.) #newyorktimes
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princesslala
05:07 PM

@TheBusinessGuy: I warned a British colleague here on business to maybe shelve this word in meetings as it is considered so offensive here and she said "Really? At home even babies say it."
I laughed and do not find it offensive. I also am still currently staying with douche and all my derrivatives because it perfectly describes what I need to say.Often, actually. #newyorktimes
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NewsBunny
02:36 PM

In reply to The Gray Lady and Her Sad, Shared, Empty Bag of "Douche"
It's somewhat offensive to women because it suggests what is part of us is inherently dirty and disgusting.

That said, I'm a lover of filthy language, and cuss like a sailor on shore leave. Perhaps we could come up with a intergender substitute? Enema bag, perchance?

Say it. Let it roll off your tongue, you disgusting motherfucking enema bags.

It has a certain something, no? #newyorktimes
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MyrtleWilloughby
02:48 PM

@NewsBunny: I always thought the zing was in calling the offender a floppy bag of water. (And with a low pH even!)

A common Romanian phrase mocks the aimless soul who meanders "like a fart in a bucket of water". So I suppose one could use fart-bucket with continental finesse. #newyorktimes
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Maryscary
03:35 PM

@NewsBunny: Douche works better, because not only is it easier to say, but it's funnier because it sounds pretty, like a fancy French wine or a lipstick color, rather than a term you reserve for people like Rush Limbaugh.

I don't find it offensive -- but only because there are a lot of male anatomy curses. Like Rush Limbaugh is a Dick, Rush Limbaugh is a Wanker, Rush Limbaugh is a Motherfucker (that one could arguably be used for both sexes but it's most often applied to a guy), and any type of variation of cock+adjective (my fav is cocksmoker...Rush Limbaugh is a cocksmoker). Rush Limbaugh is an enema bag? Hmmmm, let me try it out for a week. #newyorktimes
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NewsBunny
03:54 PM

@Maryscary: Cocksmoker? I LIKE that!

I'm going to heart you. #newyorktimes
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snugbug
05:08 PM

@MyrtleWilloughby: "Like a fart in a bucket of water"?! Ce mama dracu’ "frazã comunã" este asta? N-am auzit niciodatã.. #newyorktimes
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Uncle_Billy_Slumming
05:45 PM

@MyrtleWilloughby:

Let us not forget: "farting into silk" #newyorktimes
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hortense
02:34 PM

In reply to The Gray Lady and Her Sad, Shared, Empty Bag of "Douche"
I'm telling you, "dipshit" is where it's at. #newyorktimes
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Foster Kamer
02:58 PM

@hortense: Hell yeah, I love "dipshit." That's very T2: Judgement Day of you.

It speaks to me as someone who is out of their depth, who the general consensus from those housed at said depth have decided is continuing to make a tremendous embarrassment of themselves. Dipshit! It works. #newyorktimes
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Phyllis Nefler
02:20 PM

In reply to The Gray Lady and Her Sad, Shared, Empty Bag of "Douche"
Yeah but I think the simple "dbag" still has legs. #newyorktimes
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Maura Johnston
02:27 PM

@Phyllis Nefler: Yeah, it has a nice long-short vowel combination.

Also I co-sign the call to action in this post, although the ever-despondent side of me thinks that there are probably preliminary battles that need to be won first. #newyorktimes
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MyNameIsChris
02:16 PM

In reply to The Gray Lady and Her Sad, Shared, Empty Bag of "Douche"
And they act like the problem with print is that it can't keep up with live news on television and the interwebs. When in fact it's just that their stories are from two years ago.

I would like to say that banning douche is too extreme. It's become an effective shorthand phrase that really pinpoints a certain type of people. The problem is people who thing just using the word "douche" is a hilarious witty joke in of itself. #newyorktimes
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Bos'un's Mate
11/13/09

In reply to David Pogue Gets Modest Title of 'Visionary'
Pogue is a very good technology critic and observer, but a visionary? No. #davidpogue
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TheSometimesWhy
11/13/09

In reply to David Rohde: There Are More Kidnapped Journalists Still in Pakistan
Mr. Rohde's situation in this video is a lot like the one he faced when held captive. The picture he painted of that experience was a dark and undecipherable as you can imagine. His insight that our view of the Taliban as some static organization is wholly inaccurate was chilling. It seems to be an ever-changing mass, coming together almost transactionally, and then spinning itself into its next iteration. This kind of inherent confusion was buttressed by the realization that the man who kidnapped Rohde was the man he was supposed to interview, a fact he didn't come into possession of until well into his captivity.

I don't know what a shit storm looks like, but the more I read about Afghanistan/Pakistan and the marauding hordes that rule its nether regions, I am definitely getting an image.

And it is not pretty. #davidrohde
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Adah
11/13/09

@TheSometimesWhy: It frustrates me when Rohde gives the impression that everyone thinks of the Taliban as a strict hierarchy. I know that when I was in Afghanistan, none of the people I worked with thought of it that way, and we all worked to get a better understanding of the various networks and the differing operational methods between each. For Rohde to come back and say how foolish we all are, and please, let him tell us how it really is, is incredibly irritating. #davidrohde
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TheSometimesWhy
11/13/09

@Adah: I appreciate your frustration, but what if what he is reporting is accurate in the sense that our perceptions are inherently flawed because the thing we are trying to perceive defies static perception? That it is morphing every day into something that defies categorization, let alone a coherent policy for engaging militarily.

I, for one, wouldn't want Mr. Rohde's job, not so much for the obvious danger posed but because the act of communicating what he is learning as the result of being embedded as he is has to be beyond comprehension to most people. #davidrohde
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Adah
11/13/09

@TheSometimesWhy: Well, of course the insurgency is constantly changing. But from reading Mr. Rohde's five part series from a few weeks ago, I'm not sure his understanding of it is as great as he thinks it is. He was kept in various rooms for seven months, and his main source of information appears to come from the low level men guarding him. The appearances of high level leaders in Rohde's narrative were remarkable because, by his own admission, they were fairly rare. Now, who knows, maybe when his book inevitably comes out, I'll be proven wrong and Rohde will reveal some remarkable details from these conversations with high level leaders. But he certainly didn't have anything terribly revealing in his Times piece that hasn't been said better and with a greater understanding in many other books. #davidrohde
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TheSometimesWhy
11/13/09

@Adah: I don't see how you can take issue with Mr. Rohde for the lack of high-level leaders being conspicuously absent from his narrative. I dare say he was playing the cards he was dealt, so to speak. I think you're losing sight of the fact that his core mission was to interview the man who ultimately kidnapped him as part of an on-going series of reports. A reporter in the field functioning as Mr. Rohde did is per force sending back a mosaic of what he sees. Over-arching analysis isn't the immediate by-product of the kind of reportage he was responsible for. He is essentially a scout, hopefully a very insightful, well-informed one, but given the environmental obstacles to performing that task, i.e., staying alive, I think he did yeoman's work. What his pieces as they appeared in the NYTs revealed was the insanity of our presence there as currently constituted.

I would hope that people like yourself would wait for Mr. Rohde to have the luxury of some time to distill the sheer viscerality of that experience, and then see what analysis he puts forth. Given what he has been through, it not only seems fair but necessary if we are going to learn anything beyond what he has already imparted. #davidrohde
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Adah
11/13/09

@TheSometimesWhy: I think it's unlikely that he got the larger picture of how the insurgency functions from talking to some guards. I understand he goes in for a mosaic piece, but you seem to think this will contribute to ground-breaking changes in how we view the Taliban and the Haqqani Network. I disagree. Rohde went in with an outdated and inaccurate impression of Afghan culture and local Taliban politics. That's what got him kidnapped - that and his threat assessment appeared to be limited to asking the advice of one French reporter who'd interviewed the same Taliban leader a few years ago. Rohde failed to update his own understanding of how the Taliban works. I'm not sure that reflects on the U.S. government's or even better informed citizens and reporters' impression of the Taliban.

I would recommend Seth Jones's book In the Graveyard of Empires for a much better understanding of our situation in Afghanistan right now, and how our actions along with local Pashtun culture and history have contributed to the rise of the insurgency in the last few years.

[www.amazon.com] #davidrohde
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gawkimo
11/13/09

@Adah: Bollocks. Most Afghanis aren't kosher with the Taliban's world view. The Taliban are a foreign influence on Afghanistan from the tribal regions. In the 1970s Afghanistan was a place where hippies used to go to listen to live music and smoke hash. Afghans don't burn down girls schools, the influence of outside Islamist forces (and first-world foreign occupiers) have led to that.
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Edited by gawkimo at 11/13/09 7:08 PM gawkimo was starred gawkimo was unstarred

Adah
11/13/09

@gawkimo: In the cities, sure. But the country has always been more traditional and rural, even predating the Soviet invasion. The Afghan monarchy basically controlled the large cities and left huge areas of the population for the local tribes to control. When the Soviets invaded, and during the war that followed, those middle and creative classes left the country en masse, most never to return. Those cities are all a lot less hippie-ish today. About one million fled to Iran, about three million to Pakistan. The Taliban emerged out of those Pakistani refugee camps along the border, from Peshawer down to Balochistan. In that instance, I suppose you're right, but the Taliban was always a Pashtun power, and in some ways that's more important than what side of the border it originated on. Most Pashtuns consider the Pashtun area of Pakistan to practically be part of Afghanistan anyway. In addition, many of these insurgents were already radicalized in the 1970s. It's not al Al Qaeda coming in and changing the poor defenseless Pashtun people. See Gulbuddin Hekmatyr in the 1970s and 1980s.

I didn't mean to imply that all Afghans are Taliban sympathizers. In this you are correct. But they're a lot more scared of the Taliban than they are of us. If the Taliban (and I'm using Taliban as shorthand for the various insurgent networks active in Afghanistan) tells them to never breathe a word when Americans are around or they'll kill their family, you can bet they're not going to be overly helpful. On top of this, the rural areas are still much more conservative and more likely to be sympathetic to the Taliban than they are to us. Our COIN strategy, if we choose to keep following it, has us supposedly withdrawing from these areas as they are so hard to control. These are the areas where you get your battles of Wanat or battle at COP Keating. #davidrohde
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Edited by Adah at 11/13/09 7:34 PM Adah was starred Adah was unstarred

gawkimo
11/13/09

@Adah: Even in the traditional, rural countryside: they don't like the Taliban any more than the foreign occupiers. These are tribal folks who will side with anyone (Muslim or otherwise) who a.) Leave them alone and b.) pay them more. These folks don't sympathize with the Taliban for being "more conservative" -- they sympathize with anyone who adheres to a.) and b.). #davidrohde
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gawkimo
11/13/09

@Adah: I would also point out that the Mughal Empire basically began in Afghanistan (well, Samarkand, but mostly in what we call Afghanistan today) and those Muslims drank alcohol and depicted Muhammad in paintings. Afghanistan is not the Whahabbist Kingdom we portray it to be. They are moderates when it come to religion -- they are radicals when it come to foreign intervention -- we can thank the Russians for that. #davidrohde
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