Author Archives: JaimieEnderby

SantaCon Is the Devil. We Apparently Created It. We Are So Sorry.

by JaimieEnderby Posted on December 12, 2015

Mother Jones

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Every day I wake up and check my iPhone and read hundreds of comments from Twitter eggs calling me a stupid libtard intern who hates America and only got his job (or is it an internship?) at pinko commie rag Mother Jones because of nepotism. As though my dad called up SAG and was like “I am an actor from the 70s. Get my son a job at a magazine …founded in the 70s?” It grows tiring, but I get it: It’s an act! It’s a show stupid people—or who my beloved Welsh call “simple”—engage in to demonstrate to their team or to God or to whoever that they are the type of person who doesn’t like our type of publication.

Team sports is what politics is all about. No one wants to admit it, but it’s a well studied field. No one cares about every issue. It would be a huge waste of time to do that. They care strongly about one or two issues, identify with the team that shares their position and then take on the rest of the team’s platform as a form of solidarity, albeit unconsciously,

(A great example of this is southern Democrats who loved infrastructure spending but hated black people and then became Republicans because Democrats were too nice to black people and suddenly they also hated infrastructure spending.)

Anyway, Mother Jones isn’t perfect. Far from it. A lot of our articles I disagree with. But Mother Jones doesn’t really have institutional opinions. The articles are the vetted and edited opinions of the bylined author. (For instance: Not everyone here loves Love Actually)

However, one of the things we here at Mother Jones totally deserve group collective criticism for is being inadvertently responsible for New York City’s worst event of the year: SantaCon.

Atlas Obscura explains:

The original inspiration for SantaCon actually came from a 1977 article in Mother Jones about a four-day event organized by Solvognen, a socio-politically charged anarchist theater group in Denmark. Solvognen, literally “Chariot of the Sun,” took their name from Norse mythology and the name of a highly prized national artifact that represents a horse pulling the sun across the sky.

I hate SantaCon. I hate their vomit. I hate their attitudes. I hate their irascibility. I hate their piss-soaked costumes. I hate their souls. I hate them on a profound level. If I were the type of person who believed in letting people drown, these are the type of people I would let drown. I wish they would just go back to whatever hell they came from (Long Island? Staten Island? Murray Hill?). Their very existence in New York makes me wish we had never fleeced this land from the Native Americans.

SantaCon is just an excuse for people with severe emotional problems to get together and act extra out of control because they’re in a mob. It’s like if The Ox-Bow Incident were set at Christmas and filled with vomit. Or if the Stanford Prison Experiment were set at Christmas and, well, filled with vomit.

I know what you’re going to say: “Oh, the fun police are here! Policing our fun!” I am not a member of the fun police. I am a member of the social contract, which dictates there are ways to act in public police. If you want to drink half a bottle of Jäger and piss yourself while shouting about some imaginary injustice you suffered playing Madden ’98 on Nintendo Dreamcast, go right ahead. But do it in your own home. Don’t do it in public. Being in public means being in public, and when you are in public dressed like Santa—drunk, covered in piss, shouting about some nonsense—you are ruining the experience of other people who happen to be in public. You are a selfish jerk.

What about Halloween or Saint Patrick’s Day, you say? Well, those days are awful too. They’re all just excuses for stupid people who lack the conviction to do what they want to do—be drunk and piss themselves—on a normal day. They need society to arbitrarily say it’s okay to be a stupid drunk with your stupid drunk friends this one day a year. If you were at least an honest asshole you’d let your sociopathic flag fly and be a stupid drunk with your stupid friends just because it’s a Tuesday! Or a Monday! Or Easter! On any given day you can win or you can lose, but if you do it because of an email blast saying other people are going to make it nominally socially acceptable, then you’re a coward. SantaCon is not legally binding. It’s not like The Purge but for bros to act out. You do you, bros. But just know that the fact that you’re doing your thing on the day when normal society has tried to cordon you off means you’re a sheep.

Society hates you.

I hate you, SantaCon. I hate you the way Eddie Murphy hated Alan Arkin when Arkin surprisingly won an Oscar for Little Miss Sunshine and Murphy lost for Dreamgirls. I hate you the way I hate people with poor posture, which many of you stupid Santas have, by the way. The religious say, “Love the sinner, hate the sin.” I hate you the way the religious hate the sin.

Why are you the way you are? We could lay you on the couch and play psychology—Daddy wasn’t around! Mommy loved your sister more! You come from a long line of alcoholics with no shame and are just playing the part!—but we don’t have to. Ours is not to wonder why, ours is but to watch in horror as you stumble around drunk, secreting fluids on yourself.

I hope you all make it home alive this Saturday and don’t stumble into the street and drown in your own vomit, but Darwin suggests many of you should probably in fact stumble into the street and drown in your own vomit. I’ve been to the Galapagos. It has a lot of things. It does not have SantaCon.

There’s a line in Richard II where he’s about to be tossed from the throne by Bolingbroke and he says, “Let’s make dust our paper and with rainy eyes write sorrow on the bosom of the world.” Saturday, thousands of drunken bros will make snow their paper and with bleeding kidneys write sorrow on the bosom of our streets.

So anyway, have a great Saturday! (Have a great life!) Stay safe. And for our part in the creation of SantaCon, we’re eternally sorry.

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SantaCon Is the Devil. We Apparently Created It. We Are So Sorry.

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The Great Donald Trump Polling Gap, Not Explained

by JaimieEnderby Posted on December 1, 2015

Mother Jones

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Here’s something pretty interesting: it turns out that Donald Trump does significantly better in robocall and online polls than he does in traditional live-interview polls. Harry Enten shows the difference on the right. As Trump might say, it’s yuuuge: a full ten-point difference in the latest polling.

This is peculiar for several reasons. First, this gap didn’t really open up until September. Second, we never saw a gap of this size in 2012. Third, since Enten doesn’t mention this, I assume other 2016 candidates don’t show gaps anywhere near this big.

So what’s going on? Enten suggests a few reasons why non-live polls might be a bit less accurate, but in the end he doesn’t really know. And whatever the reason, why does it affect only Trump in a substantial way? This is very mysterious. And until people start voting, we don’t even know for sure which type of poll is more predictive. It’s just another way in which this year’s Republican primary is winning awards for all-time weirdness.

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The Great Donald Trump Polling Gap, Not Explained

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The Pentagon Is Holding an Essay Contest to Honor Saudi Arabia’s Brutal King. Here’s Our Entry.

by JaimieEnderby Posted on January 26, 2015

Mother Jones

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Shortly after Abdullah Bin Abdul-Aziz, the 90-year-old king of Saudi Arabia, died last Friday, the Pentagon and Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, paid their respects by inviting college students to participate in a “research and essay competition” in the late monarch’s honor. No prize has been announced, but the Pentagon issued a press release about the contest listing the deceased monarch’s considerable accomplishments: “the modernization of his country’s military,” his “lifetime” support of Saudi Arabia’s alliance with the United States, his support of “scholarly research,” and what Dempsey called the king’s “remarkable character and courage.” Although, as a woman, I wouldn’t be recognized as a full human being by the king, here is my essay contest submission:

On women’s rights:

Amnesty International, December 11, 2014: Saudi Arabia: Two women arrested for driving.

Human Rights Watch, April 20, 2008: Male guardianship laws forbid women from obtaining passports, marrying, studying, or traveling without the permission of a male guardian.

Human Rights Watch, December 2, 2014:

The informal prohibition on female driving in Saudi Arabia became official state policy in 1990. During the 1990-91 Gulf War, female American soldiers were permitted to drive on military bases in Saudi Arabia, and Saudi women organized a protest demanding the right to drive in Saudi Arabia as well. Dozens of Saudi women drove the streets of Riyadh in a convoy to protest the ban, which then was just based on custom. In response, officials arrested them, suspended them from their jobs, and the Grand Mufti, the country’s most senior religious authority, immediately declared a fatwa, or religious edict, against women driving, stating that driving would expose women to “temptation” and lead to “social chaos.” Then-Minister of Interior Prince Nayef legally banned women’s driving by decree on the basis of the fatwa.

On migrant worker’s rights:

Human Rights Watch, December 1, 2013: Hundreds of thousands of workers were arrested and deported, some reporting prison abuses during their detentions. No standard contract for domestic workers was ever drafted. Human Rights Watch interviewed migrant workers about the arrests:

One of the Ethiopians, a 30-year-old supervisor at a private company, said he heard shouts and screams from the street, and left his home near Manfouha to see what was happening. When he arrived near Bank Rajahi on the road to the Yamama neighborhood, west of Manfouha, he saw a large group of Ethiopians crying and shouting around the dead bodies of three Ethiopians, one of whom he said had been shot, and two others who had been beaten to death. He said six others appeared to be badly injured.

He said he saw Saudis whom he called shabab (“young men” in Arabic), and uniformed security forces attack the Ethiopians who had gathered. The shabab were using swords and machetes, while some of the uniformed officers were beating the migrants with metal police truncheons, and other officers were firing bullets into the air to disperse the crowd. He said that he narrowly escaped serious injury when a Saudi man swung a sword at his head. It missed, but hit his arm, requiring stitches to close the wound.

On peaceful protest:

Human Rights Watch, December 18, 2013: Authorities arrested and charged many peaceful protestors for “sowing discord” and challenging the government.

Amnesty International, December 4, 2014:

On 6 November, the authorities sentenced Mikhlif al-Shammari , a prominent human rights activist and an advocate of the rights of Saudi Arabia’s Shi’a Muslim community, to two years in prison and 200 lashes on charges related to his peaceful activism. In a separate case, on 17 June 2013 Mikhlif al-Shammari had already been sentenced by the Specialized Criminal Court (SCC) to five years in prison, followed by a 10-year travel ban, on charges related to his peaceful activism. The court also banned him from writing in the press and on social media networks, and from appearing on television or radio.

Human Rights Watch, January 10, 2015:

King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia should overturn the lashing and prison term for a blogger imprisoned for his views and immediately grant him a pardon. Saudi authorities lashed Raif Badawi 50 times on January 9, 2015, in front of a crowded mosque in Jeddah, part of a judicial sentence of 1,000 lashes and 10 years in prison for setting up a liberal website and allegedly insulting religious authorities.

On torture:

The Washington Post, November 19, 2004:

A federal prosecutor in Alexandria made a comment last year suggesting that a Falls Church man held in a Saudi Arabian prison had been tortured, according to a sworn affidavit from a defense lawyer that was recently filed in federal court in Washington.

The alleged remark by Assistant U.S. Attorney Gordon D. Kromberg occurred during a conversation with the lawyer, Salim Ali, in the federal courthouse in Alexandria, according to Ali’s affidavit.

The document was filed Oct. 12 in connection with a petition by the parents of the detained man, Ahmed Abu Ali, who are seeking his release from Saudi custody.The lawyer stated in the affidavit that he asked Kromberg about bringing Abu Ali back to the United States to face charges so as “to avoid the torture that goes on in Saudi Arabia.”

Kromberg “smirked and stated that ‘He’s no good for us here, he has no fingernails left,’ ” Salim Ali wrote in his affidavit, adding: “I did not know how to respond to the appalling statement he made, and we subsequently ceased our discussion about Ahmed Abu Ali.”

In conclusion, from Human Rights Watch:

For Abdullah bin Abdul-Aziz’s half-brother and successor, Salman bin Abdulaziz to improve on Abdullah’s legacy, he needs to reverse course and permit Saudi citizens to peacefully express themselves, reform the justice system, and speed up reforms on women’s rights and treatment of migrant workers.

Source:

The Pentagon Is Holding an Essay Contest to Honor Saudi Arabia’s Brutal King. Here’s Our Entry.

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