So there's this thing American media does.

[theweaselking]

I'm not going to argue about whether or not this crowd were all the racist supporters of racist shithead Donald Trump or not.

I'm not going to claim the neo-nazi rally didn't have that number of people, or that a lot of Trump's neo-nazi supporters didn't come out to support him.

No, y'see, I believe The Trumpenfuhrer has supporters all over the US, and I believe he got a bunch of them out in rural Massachusetts.

The issue I take is the Washington Post's suggestion that since it was SO COLD, all of those people must really have been Real True Brownshirts in order to stand in line. Because it was 29 degrees Fahrenheit.

Seriously? 29 Shitty System That No First World Country Uses Degrees is your benchmark for cold? That's *negative one*. One degree below freezing. That's fucking t-shirt weather. If I was there to watch the train wreck of bigoted assholes cheering Hitler's Second-Alternate Substitute Waterboy, I wouldn't *blink* at -1 temperatures, and neither, I suspect, would the inhabitants of Northern Massachusetts.

So no, WaPo, you can't conclude anything about the nature of the crowd, on that BALMY, UNUSUALLY WARM day in January. If anything, you should expect that the mild temperatures got more rubberneckers out than usual.

Comments

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

MA resident here, can confirm 29F is not considered cold by the locals. Especially this time of year. Guessing the reporter is from, like, south of the Mason-Dixon?

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

He's from Connecticut! He should know better.

[falconwarrior.livejournal.com]

to be fair us connecticutians have terrible cold resistance

[cyprinella]

To be vaguely fair to the Post, below freezing even by that measly bit is pretty cold to Washingtonians. We don't get below freezing much and not for extended periods outside of about a week right around this time of year. It's one of the reasons the region get crippled by snow. But for New Englanders? Yeah, you're completely right.

[rimrunner.livejournal.com]

True, however as TWK points out above, the reporter is a New Englander and should know better. (I'm a D.C. native myself but went to college in western Mass.)

[cyprinella]

I missed the bit about the reporter. No excuse then.

[peristaltor.livejournal.com]

Your points on temperature noted and accepted, Lowell is definitely not rural, not with over a 100K.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

a hundred thousand means "not rural"?

But that's *so small*.

Wait, is this one of those American things like "we insist Texas is large, really, despite being at best a medium-sized province like Alberta"?

[peristaltor.livejournal.com]

It is small-ish for a city, true that.

But Lowell is an old town, with an old town center and walkable areas and small town-like characteristics. Sure, it has a bit of sprawl surrounding, but it's dense, with blocks and sidewalks. It definitely isn't like the rural where I spent my childhood, complete with a mile-long driveway (no exaggeration, that) and another 5 miles to school, along the way to which I passed houses only occasionally.

And only Texas insists it is large.

[catlin.livejournal.com]

To the locals that might not be to bad. It isn't to bad to me here in Kansas. To people further south, that is miserable. People in the US have a wide range of comfort zones for temp. By comparison, people in the north would decide that the summers we get here in Kansas are hellish, but their cold is not so bad. (Kansas gets both extremes)

[jerril]

And the locals are the ones who turned out. It doesn't matter what people in Florida or Alaska think of standing around in 29F weather in January, it's the folks in Massachusetts we're talking about.

And you can't say that 29F in January would prevent all but the most extreme supporters from turning out in Massachusetts. It's just wrong.

[argonel.livejournal.com]

I will defend our outmoded temperature scale, solely because it means subzero temperatures are cold. Although I would have been happier if it hadn't been -18/-30 this morning. If the weather doesn't bring tears to your eyes and then freeze them it is merely chilly. This weather may get my coworkers to stop wearing shorts for a while though so it is not all bad.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Below zero temperatures *are* cold: There's when WATER FREEZES. This is super-important information, far more so than "this is when an unknown poorly-measured underdocumented mix of ice and other things freezes".

Similarly, 100 is when water boils. Very useful information to have at a milestone, far more useful than "100 degrees is the body temperature of a secretary with a mild fever".

[dionysus1999.livejournal.com]

Just had a rant over at James N's blog about this same subject. We had RAIN last week. Michigan, even southeast Michigan is typically frozen for the month. We're back to normal temps now, -12 C this morning. People in northern climates know how to dress for the weather. Or they learn how much fun frostbite is.