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In reply to the discussion: Obama taps "cognitive infiltrator" Cass Sunstein for Committee to create "trust" in NSA [View all]Divernan
(15,480 posts)191. I log on to DU w/the Dorothy Parker question: "What fresh hell is this?"
Every morning, with a feeling of dread, I log on - braced for some news of/ latest development from the Obama administration, or some federal agency reporting to Obama, that further destroys our Constitutional rights and/or pushes the limits of disappointment for progressive Democrats. This post about Obama's selection of Sunstein certainly qualifies as the "fresh hell" of the day.
For younger readers, Dorothy Parker was member of the Algonquin Round Table.
http://algonquinroundtable.org/
[div class="excerpt"
]The Algonquin Round Table was a group of journalists, editors, actors and press agents that met on a regular basis at the Algonquin Hotel in New York. The group began lunching together in June 1919 and continued on a regular basis for about eight years. There has never been another group quite like them in American popular culture or entertainment.
The group contributed to hit plays, bestselling books and popular newspaper columns. Their impact is still felt today. This site is a testament to that. Many know of the core group -- Dorothy Parker, Alexander Woollcott, Robert Benchley, and Edna Ferber -- however, there were about 24 members of the Round Table.
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/episodes/the-algonquin-round-table/about-the-algonquin/527/
November 8th, 1998
The Algonquin Round Table
About the Algonquin
The period that followed the end of World War I was one of gaiety and optimism, and it sparked a new era of creativity in American culture. Surely one of the most profound and outrageous influences on the times was the group of a dozen or so tastemakers who lunched together at New York Citys Algonquin Hotel. For more than a decade they met daily and came to be known as the Algonquin Round Table. With members such as writers Dorothy Parker, Harold Ross (founder of THE NEW YORKER) and Robert Benchley; columnists Franklin Pierce Adams and Heywood Broun, and Brouns wife Ruth Hale; critic Alexander Woollcott; comedian Harpo Marx; and playwrights George S. Kaufman, Marc Connelly, Edna Ferber, and Robert Sherwood, the Round Table embodied an era and changed forever the face of American humor.
It all began with an afternoon roast of the NEW YORK TIMES drama critic, Alexander Wollcott. A number of writers met up at the Algonquin Hotel on 44th street and had such a good time that the event was repeated the next day, and the day after that, until the lunch table at the Algonquin was established as a ritual. The core group of friends was sometimes joined by others who attended for short periods or drifted about the periphery of the group, including such notables as actress Tallulah Bankhead and playwright Noel Coward. The Round Table was made up of people with a shared admiration for each others work. Outspoken and outrageous, they would often quote each other freely in their daily columns.
Round Tabler Edna Ferber, who called them The Poison Squad, wrote, They were actually merciless if they disapproved. I have never encountered a more hard-bitten crew. But if they liked what you had done, they did say so publicly and whole-heartedly. Their standards were high, their vocabulary fluent, fresh, astringent, and very, very tough. Both casual and incisive, they had a certain terrible integrity about their work and boundless ambition. Some of the most notable members of the Round Table came together to work on significant collaborative projects. George Kaufman teamed up with Edna Ferber and Marc Connelly on some of his best stage comedies, including DULCY and THE ROYAL FAMILY. Harold Ross of THE NEW YORKER hired both Dorothy Parker as a book reviewer and Robert Benchley as a drama critic.
By 1925, the Round Table was famous. What had started as a private clique became a public amusement. The country-at-large was now attentive to their every wordpeople often coming to stare at them during lunch. Some began to tire of the constant publicity. The time they spent entertaining and being entertained took its toll on several of the Algonquin members. Robert Sherwood and Robert Benchley moved out of the hotel in order to concentrate on and accomplish their work. In 1927, the controversial execution of Sacco and Vanzetti, whose case had divided the country and the Round Table for six years, seemed to cast a pall over the groups unchecked antics. Dorothy Parker believed strongly in the pairs innocence, and upon their deaths she remarked I had heard someone say and so I said too, that ridicule is the most effective weapon. Well, now I know that there are things that never have been funny and never will be. And I know that ridicule may be a shield but it is not a weapon.
As America entered the Depression and the more somber decade of the 1930s, the bonds that had held the group together loosened; many members moved to Hollywood or on to other interests. It didnt end, it just sort of faded, recalled Marc Connelly. A decade after it began, the Algonquin Round Table was over. Not forgotten, the Round Table remains one of the great examples of an American artists community and the effects it can have on its time.
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Obama taps "cognitive infiltrator" Cass Sunstein for Committee to create "trust" in NSA [View all]
nashville_brook
Aug 2013
OP
and who knew it would be so easy to dismantle the social network post-election!
nashville_brook
Aug 2013
#144
was Sunstein was tapped in order to implement his "infiltration" strategy?
nashville_brook
Aug 2013
#12
My Theory? The Koolaid Brigade© is feeling slighted and underappreciated right now.
Dragonfli
Aug 2013
#177
Sunstein defines CT as "reference to the machinations of powerful people"
nashville_brook
Aug 2013
#24
Yes, that is the irony of his proposals. And if someone in one of the threads notices something
sabrina 1
Aug 2013
#105
Yes, and now we have someone who is going to watch out for our privacy, actually
sabrina 1
Aug 2013
#116
I'm pretty sure Sunstein isn't a Republican. I just have a hard time believing that anyone
SlimJimmy
Aug 2013
#134
It's not a possibility. It's a reality that "Obama is just as good at his job as he seems,"...
truth2power
Aug 2013
#197
Couldn't get much more blatant, could it? "Hey, we hiring professional liars
DirkGently
Aug 2013
#27
That they'd hire PROfessionals to infiltrate forums makes a lot of SENSE. n/t
backscatter712
Aug 2013
#22
"That poster has been here since at least 2005 and has been very consistent in her positions."
friendly_iconoclast
Aug 2013
#103
and the conceit that they can make people believe that POWER doesn't affect change
nashville_brook
Aug 2013
#30
Trust them? .....................................................LMFAO ....pathetic. n/t
L0oniX
Aug 2013
#33
well you know...journalists are terrorists, so if you knew what's good fer ya...
nashville_brook
Aug 2013
#35
Hey - That's not a reform committee, It's a propaganda panel like the Creel Committee !
limpyhobbler
Aug 2013
#36
"on-shoring" of previously exported programs: Naomi Klein on China's All-Seeing Eye
nashville_brook
Aug 2013
#41
it's really eye-opening...the problem with spying is as bad or worse when it's
nashville_brook
Aug 2013
#146
I think so too. I just don't know what to say about this latest development...nt
Mojorabbit
Aug 2013
#96
I eagerly await the palace guard's rhetorical gymnastics on this, should be amusing.
KG
Aug 2013
#60
The left wing Robert Bork is someone we can all trust to protect our privacy!
Dawson Leery
Aug 2013
#79
there's been outrage about domestic spying since Cointelpro become known
nashville_brook
Aug 2013
#85
He unwittingly trusts the wrong people, he's threatened by the wrong people, or...
polichick
Aug 2013
#115
Because from a slightly different point of view the're not "wrong" at all.
GliderGuider
Aug 2013
#199
I guess I am one they would target b/c I KNOW OUR GOVERNMENT IS TOTALLY BOUGHT AND
Dustlawyer
Aug 2013
#98
to add on to what you're saying...a particular Rep/Sen doesn't even have to be "bought"
nashville_brook
Aug 2013
#100
I agree. As to Alan Grayson, I love him. Everyone loves to bash us Plaintiff lawyers as ambulance
Dustlawyer
Aug 2013
#135
i don't think anyone is dashing his smarts -- it's on the subject of NSA that he's questionable
nashville_brook
Aug 2013
#145
or psyops, even. these are dark waters for someone so close to the president.
nashville_brook
Aug 2013
#141
Thank you for posting this. Am so looking forward to barrage of Linkosaurus-Blue links
idwiyo
Aug 2013
#151
Interesting that he never lifted a finger to market the benefits of Obamacare
BlueStreak
Aug 2013
#127
Sounds like a tacit admission that the NSA is inherently untrustworthy. n/t
winter is coming
Aug 2013
#128
add this link: CASS SUNSTEIN: Meet the new Obama elite, or "all the president's middlebrows"
nashville_brook
Aug 2013
#150
Obama's "close confident" is also the husband of Obama's Ambassador to the United Nations.
Zen Democrat
Aug 2013
#205
Kind of like how Priebus says Repuke policies are fine; they just need better messaging
bullwinkle428
Aug 2013
#168
The crowning insult to this affair is that Sunstein and the other apparatchiks
HardTimes99
Aug 2013
#175
I respect Clarke. He has always done his job honestly and to the best of his ability.
Egalitarian Thug
Aug 2013
#180