Oh noooo. There is no way this can turn out well when it's in an issue of Cosmopolitan from 1906
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@jalefkowit "slight semitic strain" that's when i drive up to skokie to get the good bagels
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Jason Lefkowitzreplied to Jason Lefkowitz last edited by
That article is followed immediately by this one. Never change, Cosmo
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@hannah This article is the Galaxy Brain meme of antique racism
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Jason Lefkowitzreplied to Jason Lefkowitz last edited by [email protected]
I went looking through these almost 120-year-old issues of Cosmopolitan because one of them contains a famous interview with Upton Sinclair, in which he confesses that the sensational effect his classic novel "The Jungle" had on society was not actually the one he had intended it to have
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Jason Lefkowitzreplied to Jason Lefkowitz last edited by
Sometimes an article has such a staggering opening line that you can only imagine its editor sitting there, dumbstruck, slack-jawed in awe.
“Cleopatra,” this one begins, “was the first yachtswoman of note.”
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Jason Lefkowitzreplied to Jason Lefkowitz last edited by
Wondering if this 1906 edition is the most recent issue of Cosmo to contain the phrase “promise me you’ll quit being a matador”
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Jason Lefkowitzreplied to Jason Lefkowitz last edited by
Ambrose Bierce had a column in Cosmo! I legitimately had no idea.
(If you don’t know who Ambrose Bierce was, he was an interesting guy. Go look him up.)
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Jason Lefkowitzreplied to Jason Lefkowitz last edited by
Oh god. Now Broughton Brandenburg is at it again. He seems to have been Cosmo’s official Racism Correspondent
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Jason Lefkowitzreplied to Jason Lefkowitz last edited by
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Shannon Clarkreplied to Jason Lefkowitz last edited by
@jalefkowit for anyone curious his most famous book is available for free (public domain) at https://www.gutenberg.org/files/972/972-h/972-h.htm
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Jason Lefkowitzreplied to Jason Lefkowitz last edited by
I mentioned above that Ambrose Bierce turns up in the pages of 1906 Cosmopolitan.
I have always been an admirer of Bierce’s writing. His “Devil’s Dictionary” is one of the great American works of satire. He blazed a trail as a muckraking journalist. Schoolchildren are still taught his short story “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” and for good reason.
But Cosmo put him in a roundtable discussion with two writers of books on poverty and socialism, and man did he have some 1906-ass opinions on those subjects
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Steve's Placereplied to Jason Lefkowitz last edited by
@jalefkowit He also played devil's advocate a lot. I can't tell when he's serious and when he's trying to mock.
His "As to Cartooning" column is great advice the Harris campaign seems to echo. Ridicule works.
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Jason Lefkowitzreplied to Steve's Place last edited by
@steter It would be fun to imagine him sitting down with two stuffy academics and thinking “I am gonna wind up these guys but good”
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@jalefkowit I don’t know if it’s fair to blame this on 1906; it’s just conservatism. the only difference between these horrifying lines and the average tim pool stream is the higher level of erudition in the word choices and grammar
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@glyph Sure, but Bierce wasn’t Tim Pool, who is (let’s be real here) an idiot. Erudite conservatives in 2024 don’t talk like this. They may believe the same things deep down, but they know they have to dress those beliefs up in prettier clothes when they trot them out in public view.
In 1906 erudite conservatives absolutely did talk like this. It was the tail end of the great age of Ivy League skull-measuring. You could be both a “race scientist” and a member of the elite establishment back then in a way that’s harder to imagine today.