Department Of We’d All Understand If They Banned Lutefisk Immigration

“Between 1825 and 1925, over 850,000 Norwegians entered the United States. In those hundred years, around one-third of Norway’s population crossed the Atlantic.
Other than Ireland no other European country lost a larger proportion of its population to out-migration.”
(from “Why bestemor never taught you Norwegian– Norwegian immigrants to the US had it easier than many from other countries, but still faced xenophobic pressure—and legislation—that forced assimilation,” The Norwegian American, January 12, 2018)

It was interesting for moiself to come across that quote this week. The majority of my ancestors were from Ireland and Norway – does this mean I’m the product of double native-population-reducing out-migration?

Anyone of Norse ancestry might enjoy reading the entire article. It contains snippets of history/facts I’ve run across before, from various sources, but, like a bucket of pickled herring, it’s nice to have a lot of it corralled in one source.  [1]

 

 

 

 

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Department Of The Elephant (Still) In The Room

Disclaimer: That Was Not A Thinly (ha ha) Disguised Oprah Weight Joke

 

The Secret is not only drivel—it’s pernicious drivel. The obvious question that arises from its claim that it’s easy to get what you want, is: Why (then) do so many people get what they don’t want?  As (The Secret’s author) writes, “Imperfect thoughts are the cause of all humanity’s ills, including disease, poverty, and unhappiness.” Yes, according to The Secret, people don’t just randomly end up being massacred, for example. They are in the wrong place because of their own lousy thinking. Cancer patients have long been victims of this school of belief. But The Secret takes it to a new and more repulsive level with its advice not just to blame people for their illness, but to shun them, lest you start being infected by their bummer thoughts, too.
(from “I’ve Got The Secret: What happened when I followed the best-selling book’s advice for two months,” Emily Yoffe, slate.com 5-7-2007)

 

Bear with me – the above excerpt will be relevant in a paragraph or two.

 

 

 

 

Seeing as how the average American’s attention span in minutes is inversely proportional to their waist size in inches, perhaps the Oprah For President meme is already a thing of the past. In case it isn’t….

Indeed, Oprah Winfrey’s sermon speech at the Golden Gloves Awards was stirring. Add that to her list of multi-faceted-if-eponym-centric  [2]   professional accomplishments, and I can understand the desire many people have re a draft-Oprah for president movement. Certainly, the wish for someone at the nation’s helm who is articulate and compassionate is a sincere one, and since the bar has been set so low…if one reality TV star masquerading as a successful businessperson can “win” [3] the Presidency, why not another TV star who actually is a successful businessperson?

 

 

Your point, although problematic, is a logical one.

 

 

But.  There is a really big but here.  [4]

On the one hand, Ms. Winfrey has built quite the media empire. She is obviously and exceptionally experienced and talented in the fields of media/broadcasting, TV and movie producing (and acting), and is known for her philanthropy. She has the proven ability to inspire and motivate her audience, and her rags-to-riches, self-made success story is appealing across a wide political and cultural spectrum. From what I know of how she runs her “empire,” should she ascend to a position of politician power I think it likely she would surround herself with a good advisers in the various fields over which she had jurisdiction, and actually and actively seek their input.

On the other hand…you have different fingers.

 

 

 

 

Sorry.  [5]

On the other hand, Oprah’s other fingers have a long history of supporting, or at least giving voice to (and thus, in many minds, credence) what can only be called dangerous batshit crazy bullshit generously be called, junk science.  I am far from the only person who is concerned about this tendency of hers.

During her 25-year reign as host of The Oprah Winfrey Show, Oprah repeatedly showed a weakness for crackpots and quack medical theories. One could even argue that she’s one of the most powerful enablers of cranks on the planet.
(“Oprah’s long history with junk science –
She may be the most powerful crank enabler on the planet.” Vox 1/9/2018)

From The Secret and its odious – and deadly –   “law of Attraction” horseshit, to huckster “medical” “experts” (we have Oprah to thank for doctors Oz’s and Phil’s media careers,) to anti-vaccine mouth foamers  to carnival trickster/faith healers (remember the forceps-up-your-nose-cancer-cure faith healer, “John of God,” ? ).

So you’ll excuse me if I don’t jump on the Oprah Winfrey bandwagon for 2020. Even if there wasn’t all that credulity towards New Age bullshit like The Secret, I’d still say that replacing one celebrity with no government experience with another celebrity with no administrative experience is not the way to get out of the era of Trump. (The same goes for you, too, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson!) That Oprah is not a hateful person compared to Donald Trump is not enough, particularly given that she’s almost as bad on science and critical thinking as he is.
(from the science-promoting,  pseudoscience/misinformation/conspiracy theory-exposing blog, Respectful Insolence, 1-9-2018)

 

 

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Department Of The Other N Word

There is an N-word I can use, because I’m one of them. How delighted I am to be able to tell the rare, Norwegian-Irish joke.

A Norwegian and an Irishman apply for the same job at a firm in Dublin. Both the Irishman and the Norwegian do so well in the interview the boss can’t decide who to hire, so he sets up a small aptitude test. Both men score the same: 19/20 correct. After some consideration the boss calls the Irishman into his office and says, “I’m sorry, although you both scored the same on the test, we’ve decided to hire the Norwegian.”

“Surely, me being Irish would mean you would give the job to me instead of a foreigner!” The Irishman rants on and on about looking after the locals etc.

“It’s like this,” the boss replies. “We didn’t make the decision based on how many answers you got right…’

The Irishman, still angry, interrupts the boss. “But we both got only one wrong answer.”

“It’s not how many wrong answers you got,” the boss calmly continues, “It’s the particular answers you both gave to question #7.  The Norwegian wrote, ‘I don’t know’ as his answer. Your answer was, ‘Neither do I.'”

*   *   *

Of course, the ultimate Norwegian joke is that they are not Swedish.

 

 

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May you always be mindful of the other hand;
May you be judicious in your own use of your own N-word and N-jokes;
May we all dare hope for a non-celebrity 2020 Presidential candidate;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

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[1] So you know whom to blame.

[2] It’s so bizarre, how everything in her world has to have her name: The Oprah show; O magazine (with her O-ness pictured on every cover; OWN (Oprah Winfrey Network)….

[3] Except that, he didn’t actually win…only the shameful relic from our past, the embarrassing, slave-state appeasing Electoral College constitutional provision, allowed the Cheetos Hitler to assume #45-ness.

[4] Not another veiled Oprah weight joke here, and shame of you for even thinking that.

[5] No, I’m not.