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  1. NJ has much wackier town names. Netcong? Watchung? You could dub a full-length bad kung-fu film by annunciating NJ town names.

    Agree on fascist and socialist. Both terms grossly misapplied due to ignorance.

    I would not call Paladino a fascist or even contend he has tendencies. I still think he’s an effin’ nutcase, although I might downgrade that to crackpot uncle since he seems to shut up when told to by his own team. If he were truly nuts, he would just keep spouting, like William Shatner or something.

  2. No, no, it’s definitely Ya-pank. But why is that funny? A woman at OFA with me CANNOT pronounce Ronkonkoma (she’s from upstate somewhere), but to me it seems totally obvious (and I know it’s not Ronkon Coma, but that’s funnier) – funny how when you grow up with something you just never question it. Like knowing when something is masculine or feminine in French. My French friends never even thought about it, it just was. Me, I had to rack my brains for a long time, but it finally sank in – you can’t intellectualize it, you just have to know.

  3. I read the NY Mag one about being ‘popular in high school’.
    Was thinking of our liberal ladies sitting round the ‘cool kids’ lunch table a la Mean Girls!

    (seriously, who pays academics to think of this shite?? Gives social science a bad name).

  4. Yeah you’re right MM, socialist is very overused. I think statist probably better fits what people mean when they say that these days. Pretty much everyone is a statist these days though. There’s a disconnect between perception and reality. These things usually correct suddenly, like a rubber band snapping to relieve tension. We’re living under a new reality but using old terms to try to define it. Cognitive dissonance. Everyone kind of knows they’re full of shit when they argue about politics but they haven’t figured out how yet.

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