Yehudit, in the comments to this post on Michael Totten's blog, offered this hen and capon party as an example of "the arrogance and elitism of the Left in all its glory." I think it shows something even worse: buried in a pomo kaffeeklatch littered with litcrit terms like "framing" is the fact that these people have chosen, as the most apt "metaphor" with which to "frame" the discussion of how to deal with the current president and his administration, a spearchucking cavemale vs. civilizing mother-woman motif straight out of the turn of the century. Last century, that is.
Postscript: for some reason, I don't think the above-linked blogger or her admirers would see themselves in this little web essay I found, even though it displays the very same attitude permeating the formers' discussion. Also, I don't necessarily find everything to do with the idea of "woman the civilizer" wrong; but that is a discussion for another day.
Update: Angie Schultz comments. Actually, I had noticed what Jeanne and her sycophants commenters were revealing about the Left; I just figured everyone knew this already, and I was too disgusted to comment on that aspect of the discussion. I just thought it was hilarious that these people came up with stereotypes about men and women right out of the White Male Conservative Oppressor's handbook. Not to mention all the other fin-de-siècle chestnuts they earnestly presented as Brand New Ideas.
More: oh lord, everything old is new again -- get a load of what commenter "aimai" has to say:
But America is famously a "country without ghosts" as the Chinese described this land without ancestors and ancestral memories. WE have, on the whole, nothing deeper than a brief two generation nuclear family: no long term union loyalties, no clans, no territorial loyalties.
Oh yeah? Who's this "we," white girl? My family has been in this country since the sixteen hundreds. (My grandfather even traced the family through the maternal line, which should please these gynecocrats.) And that was just my father's side of the family; my mother's family is old Tennessee stock; she was part Cherokee. These high-arsed academic wannabes can go pound sand.
Posted by Andrea Harris at November 1, 2003 10:20 PMThe more I watch the current crop of Leftists, the more convinced I become that when they go to the effort to pull their heads out of the sand, they can't help but lodge their heads even more firmly between their buttocks.
Better to have sand in your ears than ... well, you know. But you can't tell it by those knotheads.
My Grandma had a saying: "too heavenly-minded to be any earthly good." Since the Lefties don't appear to believe in heaven, maybe "too Gaia-minded to be any earthly good."
Posted by: tobacco road fogey at November 2, 2003 at 04:57 AMThanks for the link, Andrea. FYI wonderfully a savage group fisking on this LGF comment thread.
Posted by: Yehudit at November 2, 2003 at 03:25 PM"WE have, on the whole, nothing deeper than a brief two generation nuclear family: no long term union loyalties, no clans, no territorial loyalties."
Well, I'm first generation American, but I have a 3500 year old culture which I am very involved with (and people like aimai call us Jews "racist" for taking our clan and territorial loyalties seriously). And there are many other Americans who preserve their ethnic identities while being fully American - that's what's great about America!
Posted by: Yehudit at November 5, 2003 at 03:04 AMGive it up guys, you know they're right, America has no ghosts, end of story. That explains perfectly why nobody listens to Jazz. Why you can't ever find any houses in the colonial or victorian style. Why nobody reads Edgar Alan Poe, or Mark Twain. Why nobody eats barbecue or macaroni and cheese. Why nobody cares about WWII, or the American Civil War. Heck, few people even remember that America used to, so I've heard, have institutionalized slavery. Everyone knows that America has no culture, traditions, or history. It was minted "fresh" 10 minutes ago, made from partially hydrogenated vegetable oil, high fructose corn syrup, guar gum, pressed floor sweepings, sodium benzoate, and yellow no. 5.
(Note: for those readers with fewer than two dozen brain cells, this post contained sarcasm, if you experience an allergic reaction discontinue use immediately and consult a sarcasmotition.)
Posted by: Robin Goodfellow at November 7, 2003 at 10:33 PM