The New Yorker

[Sneakeater]

Oh!  It's part of an upcoming book.

That'll be something.

[Wilfrid]

Just started it and paragraph two suggests he has no idea why the boro’s name is preceded by a definite article. It certainly has nothing to do with being a continuous land mass.

Oh well, carry on.

[Wilfrid]

The name does not come from the Bronx River. 😳

Still on page one. Bumpy ride ahead. 

[Wilfrid]

Okay he gets to the right answer on page two, how odd.

[voyager]

Do writers fact check their statements?    Even Google for a consensus?

[small h]

All the ones I know do.

[Wilfrid]

This was more an editing thing. Clearly he knew who the Broncks were, so why ramble on about the boro getting its name from the Bronx River or its definite article from the fact that it’s a continuous land mass like The Antarctic? 
 

If I had edited that piece I would have been like, Ian did you really mean to do this?

The book might be good. For me personally, a lot of stuff in the article was over-familiar.

[Wilfrid]

It did make me reminisce about my first anxious encounter with The Bronx back in, I think, 1989.

[Sneakeater]

I was going to post that it was more of an editing error than a fact error.

And remember, the topic wasn't why the borough is called the "Bronx", but why it's called "the" Bronx, when no other borough gets a definite (or indeed any) article.

I think Frazier was trying to use this, rather artificially, as a hook for describing some of the major differences between the Bronx and the other boroughs.  Because none of the facts he raised could account for the article.

I don't think it's knowable why the Bronx gets a definite article.  ("Bronx County" of course receives no article.)

[Sneakeater]

Maybe the area was originally called "the Bronx estate" or "the Bronx lands" and the final nouns eventually were dropped, but the article remained.

[Sneakeater]

It would make more sense for Brooklyn, whose name derives from the Dutch phrase for "broken land", to have a definite article.

[Wilfrid]

I think it’s established that it was called the Bronck’s, like going to the Brown’s or the Smith’s. Didn’t need a noun.

[Sneakeater]

YOU should write a book about this.

[Wilfrid]

But ten points for the new issue's Jacques Tati cover.

I recently bought a Jacques Tati notebook from Albertine. I can’t see using it; pure desk decoration.

 

[Wilfrid]

I am not a true crime fan and I do not recall the White House Farm murders, although they must have been huge news in 1985, but Heidi Blake's loooooong piece about them in last week's issue is very compelling.

 

[Wilfrid]

I hope this isn’t taken as political because it could be about so many people and things, but just about how print journalism is left gasping by the news cycle. The last Vanity Fair had a big piece about Joe Biden, which was dead on arrival. The new New Yorker, a weekly for gods sake, has a big piece on RFK, but it could hardly know about him dropping the dead bear in the park.

Print journalism just can’t do this stuff any more.

[Sneakeater]

Wait I'm confused. Are you talking about the New Yorker piece that broke the bear story?

Quote

One day, in the fall of 2014, Kennedy was driving to a falconry outing in upstate New York when he passed a furry brown mound on the side of the road. He pulled over and discovered that it was the carcass of a black-bear cub. Kennedy was tickled by the find. He loaded the dead bear into the rear hatch of his car and later showed it off to his friends. In a picture from that day, Kennedy is putting his fingers inside the bear’s bloody mouth, a comical grimace across his face. (When I asked Kennedy about the incident, he said, “Maybe that’s where I got my brain worm.”)

Kennedy with the carcass of a black-bear cub, in 2014. “Maybe that’s where I got my brain worm,” he said.

After the outing, Kennedy, who was then sixty and recently married to Hines, got an idea. He drove to Manhattan and, as darkness fell, entered Central Park with the bear and a bicycle. A person with knowledge of the event said that Kennedy thought it would be funny to make it look as if the animal had been killed by an errant cyclist. The next day, the bear was discovered by two women walking their dogs, setting off an investigation by the N.Y.P.D. “This is a highly unusual situation,” a spokeswoman for the Central Park Conservancy told the Times. “It’s awful.” In a follow-up piece for the Times, which was coincidentally written by Tatiana Schlossberg, one of J.F.K.’s granddaughters, a retired Bronx homicide commander commented, “People are crazy.”

 

Edited August 6 by Sneakeater

[bloviatrix]

11 hours ago, Wilfrid said:

I hope this isn’t taken as political because it could be about so many people and things, but just about how print journalism is left gasping by the news cycle. The last Vanity Fair had a big piece about Joe Biden, which was dead on arrival. The new New Yorker, a weekly for gods sake, has a big piece on RFK, but it could hardly know about him dropping the dead bear in the park.

Print journalism just can’t do this stuff any more.

Similarly, Vogue had Jill Biden on the cover and feature on her. I happened to be in the middle of the VF piece when Biden announced he was stepping aside so the way I experienced it before and after the news broke was an interesting experience.

[Wilfrid]

13 hours ago, Sneakeater said:

Wait I'm confused. Are you talking about the New Yorker piece that broke the bear story?

 

You mean I should have read the story before posting?  (My bad.)

[backyardchef]

1 hour ago, Wilfrid said:

You mean I should have read the story before posting?  (My bad.)

What fun would that be? 

[Sneakeater]

Nah just the first NY Times article about the bear incident, which said the story was first reported by the New Yorker. 

[relbbaddoof]

To straighten the record on this issue of vital importance, the New Yorker did break the story, but Kennedy pre-broke it with an attached, triumphant boast: "Looking forward to seeing how you spin this one, @NewYorker".

Can't think when I've disliked a two-legged creature more (apart from a certain (1 + 0.5) pair; to which you extend your full digit, and to which only half is up to your hands).

I stress that none of these are political statements. I know nothing of whether or not Kennedy is running to be our prime minister (or is it "no-more-elections" king? -- you must forgive my ignorance: I was born in a foreign land). I just hate his guts. As I understand the rules here, politics, no; passionate hatred, ok-ish.

 

Edited August 7 by relbbaddoof
(1) Deciding between an M-dash and a semicolon, (2) Adjusting my commas, as I might adjust my collar.

[relbbaddoof]

And, purely as a point of etiquette, is that the approved way of sticking your fingers into the bloodied mouth of a dead bear? Not since I mistook the fish-knife for the butter- has such a faux pas 'appened.

[Wilfrid]

Okay, I have read Tad Friend’s piece on the funniest joke ever. It’s amusing enough, but a weird hybrid of pointless scientific research to find the best joke ever and basic rules every stand-up learns. Like two short pieces crammed together to make a longer one.

(The best joke ever features, in the punchline, the name of a forgotten boxer and the ‘c’ word, so can’t be repeated.)

[bloviatrix]

I thought the funniest joke ever was The Aristocrats.