fer-tehlulz

No. He is a national treasure.

“When her father was governor of New York, he and his wife proposed that Alice attend a conservative school for girls in New York City. Pulling out all the stops, Alice wrote, ‘If you send me I will humiliate you. I will do something that will shame you. I tell you I will.’”

“Her father took office in 1901 following the assassination of President William McKinley, Jr. in Buffalo (an event that she greeted with “sheer rapture.”)“

“During the cruise to Japan, Alice jumped into the ship’s pool fully clothed, and coaxed a congressman to join her in the water. (Years later Bobby Kennedy would chide her about the incident, saying it was outrageous for the time, to which the by-then-octogenarian Alice replied that it would only have been outrageous had she removed her clothes.”

“She was dressed in a blue wedding dress and dramatically cut the wedding cake with a sword (borrowed from a military aide attending the reception)”

“When it came time for the Roosevelt family to move out of the White House, Alice buried a Voodoo doll of the new First Lady, Nellie Taft, in the front yard.”

“Later, the Taft White House banned her from her former residence—the first but not the last administration to do so. During Woodrow Wilson’s administration (from which she was banned in 1916 for a bawdy joke at Wilson’s expense)…”

“As an example of her attitudes on race, in 1965 her African-American chauffeur and one of her best friends, Turner, was driving Alice to an appointment. During the trip, he pulled out in front of a taxi, and the driver got out and demanded to know of him, “What do you think you’re doing, you black bastard?” Turner took the insult calmly, but Alice did not and told the taxi driver, “He’s taking me to my destination, you white son of a bitch!”

This is Alice as an older lady. The pillow says “If you can’t say something good about someone, sit right here by me.” 

do NOT say “i’d like a lifetime supply of raspberry crowns”

so a racist got utterly demolished in less than 30 seconds on the New Zealand morning news on Monday and it’s one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen

(clears throat deliberately) “’Janice’ says: Good morning. I’m sick of hearing that Māori need different treatment. If they don’t want to live in our society, then maybe we should put them all on an island and leave them to it.”

Male co-host: “Janice. That is LITERALLY what happened! That is the history of our country. Last I checked, Māori WERE on an island, they were left to it, and then Pākehā (Māori term for white New Zealanders) turned up and look how that worked out. But thank you very much for that brilliant insight. Goodness me. Unbelievable. Unbelievable, they actually-“

Female co-host: “Actually, you can’t even get angry, you just actually need to laugh and then screw it up and put it under the desk. Just when you thought-“

a door slamming

someone exclaim “oh, you sneaky bastard”

the sound of a bell jingling down the hallway

- Our future tense requires only one word (looking at you, Spanish)

- Words don’t change meanings depending on tone (Cantonese)

- We don’t live in some bizarre Beauty And The Beast world where we give inanimate objects genders (romance languages, German)

- Likewise, we don’t have have two different words for “they” because we don’t care whether “they” were male or female (Spanish, French)

- There’s no formal “you” because we don’t play mind games about whether or not we respect you (Spanish, German)

- We don’t alter the whole fucking language based on how much we respect you (Japanese)

- The letters and sounds might not be consistent, but at least we have letters, not just pictures (Mandarin)

- We don’t have a fucking stupid tense specifically for talking to two people because some idiot decided that a two-person tense was necessary (Arabic)