No Just No
This! Cannot! Be!
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
And they wonder why women are still messed up in the head
Oooh, looky! Another list of crap that some loser thinks I should have completely ticked off by now, or else I’m just not a proper person. Let’s make fun of this list of “30 things every woman should have before she turns 30.”
1. Clothes that fit the size she is now, not the size she was five years ago
Um, duh. Everyone of every age needs that.
2. A weekly income that covers the rent (or mortgage payment)
I wanted a pet dragon and a set of dishes that would magically clean themselves too. Earth to writers of this article: you’ve obviously never had to live on your own in a city where incomes were low and rents were high.
3. An orgasm
Whether or not I had one of those by the time I was thirty falls under “no one’s goddamn business,” but it’s nice to know a woman isn’t a woman unless she’s HAD SEX. This is just the contemporary version of “if you aren’t married by the time you’re twenty you’re a dried-up old maid.”
4. Always enough toilet paper
So far that’s the only one I agree with, but that’s kind of another “duh.”
5. A hair stylist she trusts
To what? Not steal her wallet while she’s under the dryer? I have never liked fussing with my hair and I hate even worse having other people fuss over it, so I don’t go to salons and if I need my hair cut I go to some bargain place like Supercuts where I can have it done and get out. I don’t care who the hairdressers are.
6. A favorite song, porn site, image, movie or fantasy that always gets her in the mood
Again with the sex, not to mention the assumption that it’s okay to tell perfect strangers what sort of sex they should be having.
7. Health insurance
Yeah, god forbid we aren’t totally obsessed with being taken care of by some Nanny Organization by the time we are thirty. I based my past job decisions on “OMG I can’t be without health insurance!” because I live in a country of hypochondriacs. I hardly ever used it, so all that money I had taken from my paychecks was pretty much wasted. But I stayed in jobs that bored me and didn’t pay enough because I bought the propaganda that to be without health insurance for so much as a day would cause disaster to fall on my head. I have now been without health insurance for about two years and my health is the same as ever.
8. A signature drink
Yeah that’s really important—what? How stupid.
9. A healthy relationship with her parents
Gee what if her parents are dead or crazy or evil through no fault of her own? What if her only way of dealing with them is to stay away? I really resent the Therapismatics for making people feel not only that they are doing something bad if they are at all sad or angry about something, but for not fixing everyone around them too. Patronizing stuff like this doesn’t help.
10. Bras in the correct size
Um… yeah. Duh.
11. Enough alcohol in her home to offer drop-by guests a cocktail
So they can drive home drunk? Note to article writer: not all of us live in New York City. (Also—what, people who don’t drink should keep booze around anyway? How about alcoholics—should they keep booze in the house for “guests”? Not everyone belongs to a trendy little clique that spends all their time “dropping in” and drinking cocktails.)
12. An emergency hangover remedy
It’s called “not drinking so much you get hangovers.” By the time you are thirty you should have figured that out.
13. A voter registration card
Okay, there’s one more I agree with that isn’t a “duh.”
14. A wardrobe that includes the perfectly flattering little black dress, a great pair of heels, jeans that make her ass look great, and a cute hat that hides a bad hair day
Oh for Chrissakes.
15. A yearly appointment with her gynecologist
Actually do women really have to go every year when they are still in their twenties? Then again, if they are sleeping around like the writer of this article apparently thinks women that age should be…
16. The name of reliable movers to give her friends when they ask for help relocating
Is that a “nice” (that is, mean) way of saying “tell your friends to stuff it you aren’t going to help them move”?
17. The gumption to ask a man out
Because a women isn’t anything without a man!
18. A group of girlfriends who get it
What, the clap?
19. A set of tools (and the ability to use them ... even if it’s just to hang a piece of art)
Okay, there’s one more thing I agree with.
20. A balanced checkbook
Mine always said “zero.” It was so easy to balance.
21. No interest in men who just aren’t that into her
She’ll find loads of them when she attempts item 17.
22. A vacation to look forward to at least once a year
I always looked forward to my vacations—it was the week I got away from the job I didn’t like and didn’t pay me enough but I kept because I was afraid of losing the health insurance I hardly ever used.*
23. A good bulls**t detector
Okay, one more I agree with, but… things like this list will set off that alarm.
24. The courage to stand up for herself and her beliefs
Even if they are stupid and based on ignorance.
25. A favorite sex position
Again with the sex. How about writers of cute “for the girls” columns stay out of strange womens’ coochies?
26. A set of hand towels so guests don’t have dry their hands on her bath towel (gross!)
The “guests” that dropped by and demanded booze shouldn’t be picky about what they have to wipe their hands on. (Though I actually agree with this; I just had to snark.)
27. Enough self-love to avoid and break off unhealthy friendships and relationships
The ones that self-love got her into the first place. (It’s not “self-love” that helps a person break off an unhealthy relationship, but the realization that you aren’t, in fact, the star of your own movie and that you can’t rewrite other peoples’ characters to suit you.)
28. A commitment to exercise
Exercise your opinion vigorously!
29. A retirement fund
Keep it in a sock under your bed before Obamaco takes it to fund the New York Times bailout.
30. A great vibrator
Can I accuse an internet article of virtual sexual harrassment? I mean seriously.
*Full disclosure: the health insurance plan I did have back in the mid-Nineties came in handy when I had to go to the hospital for a kidney stone. But—they would have had to treat me anyway, and would have worked with me on paying off the bill, which might actually have been less than they charged the insurance company. I can tell you that my attitude towards going to the doctor is unchanged whether I have insurance or not: not until the last minute when I am feeling like I’m about to die. I’ve known people who loved going to the doctor and getting examinated up the yin-yang and having blood drawn and all that. I am not one of those people.
(Via Althouse.)
Update: a lot of people on Althouse’s site have mentioned the absence of a couple of things most women should get before they are thirty, not after: husband and kids. Why before? Well, a younger woman has more husband options and—how can I put this delicately oh why bother—won’t be considered “used up” (especially the sort of women this article writer seems to be fond of), and if you have kids while you’re young you won’t have sullen teenagers in the house when you’re nearing retirement age. I admit I missed this because I’ve never wanted either, but most women aren’t weirdos like me: they want to get married and have kids. It’s interesting that they aren’t even on the list—as if they’re such an optional option for today’s woman that they don’t even warrant a mention.
Monday, October 26, 2009
Podhoretz Person
Oh, my burning, aching derriere, I can’t believe this is coming from the pen (typewriter, keyboard, whatever) of one of the biggies of Neoconservative thought:
Unlike the New Testament, which consistently favors the poor over the rich and sees money as the root of all evil
(As quoted by Steve Sailer.) Aaah! Aaah! Aaaaaaggghhh! The pain! It burns! No, no no nononononooooo… Mr. Podhoretz, it is not money that is the root of all evil, it is the love of money that is the root of all evil. Here’s the complete quote from fricking Timothy 6:10:
For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.
Money is just a thing, like other things, and it’s okay to have riches as long as (according to Christian and Jewish belief) you don’t place your wealth before (in ascending order) your duty to care for your family, then to care for those less fortunate than you who are not in your immediate family, and then to worship and thank God for blessing you with said riches. This kind of destroys his argument that Jews shouldn’t be into social justice because Jews never cared about the poor only the amassing of wealth unlike Christians who were all about giving everything away to the poor or whatever the hell he meant and it’s really funny to see a Jew drag out stereotypes of money-grubbing Jews isn’t it? Is there an editor left in the land that can make sure writers quote accurately, or are they all so afraid of the Bible that if you show them one they react like vampires to the cross, and thus couldn’t tell you what was in one if it wasn’t already quoted in The New York Review of Books or something?
Saturday, October 24, 2009
Straight Eye for the Queer Coupling
I take issue with Brian Micklethwait on the subject of gay marriage being an encourager of straight marriage:
I’m afraid that this just strikes me as incredibly naive. For one thing, I am not at all sure that “gays lead where others follow.” For example, no matter how many women squeal over the team of gay designers on Queer Eye For The Straight Guy I still don’t see a movement towards a lot of heterosexual men going into fashion design, or even cleaning up their apartments. As for marriage, your analogy only works if in fact straight people are currently not getting married at all. But as far as I can tell marriage itself (as opposed to staying married, a completely different animal and something gay couples no doubt have as much trouble with as straight ones) remains a popular activity among hets everywhere. So where exactly is the fashion lead?
What could make an actor think that his portrayal of a happy gay married couple would suddenly make Jim-Bob propose marriage to Rhonda Sue after five common-law years and two kids in the trailer park (or Connor and Bree decide to get a second mortgage on their childless uptown Manhattan “we’re life partners!” loft so they can get that designer wedding album and the honeymoon in Cannes) I have no idea; perhaps it is, as I snarkily continued, that the entertainment industry is “populated by aliens from Beta Carinii VII.” But the entire argument that we should accept gay marriage because of its supposed good effects on straights is a fail all around anyway. Whether you are for or against the whole idea, let’s at least be honest here. I doubt the number of gays who really care about the state of heterosexual marriage can be counted on more than one hand; gay marriage is all about gays.
And now that I’ve made friends all around, don’t forget the bleg! Fascist homophobic rightwingers need money too.
Sunday, October 18, 2009
News of My World
Sorry for the lack of posting! Except for hanging about Twitter I haven’t felt like saying much, for a variety of reasons. One of them is I’m down in the dumps because it’s the most! wonderful time! of the month again, when my brain, such as it is, becomes a gray lump. Another reason is I’ve gotten more and more exasperated with the limitations of this install of Expression Engine that I’m using to run my blog. It’s the Core version, which is free, but there are things the complete version does that I am beginning to want and need! And there is so much free software out there (cough Wordpress cough) that does a lot of things right out of the box that I would need to build from scratch on EE. And most of all, EE costs a lot of money for someone who is unemployed and flat broke, whereas Wordpress is free free free. So if the site goes down for a moment (hours, days) it’s because I’ve decided to switch over, the Wordpress or something else but it will probably be Wordpress. I’m still doing some research into other blogging/CMS platforms though, so that won’t happen for a while yet. Don’t worry, the main blog will still be at this url, so you won’t have to change anything in your blogrolls.
That being said… on the other hand, I find Wordpress still has some quirks that irritate me. Most of them have to do with the admin screen, the “Dashboard.” They used to have a nice, clean interface with a nice big post entry area. But now you start out with an interface crowded with what I call “junk,” most of which you can fortunately remove, but still. And the posting textbox is rather small, unless you change the interface from two columns to one—but then it just sort of spreads out, and everything else is a long scroll to the bottom. It would also be nice if the rich text buttons would load faster. In the widget area it can be a bit of a struggle to drag buttons hither and yon, especially if you have a small monitor so that you’re scrolling a lot. On the other hand, the Dashboard looks nice.
I am even thinking of importing all my blog posts from all my blogs into this blog. It could be done. Of course, all the links would probably be dead—but most of them are dead now. Which reminds me of an article I read recently about the problem with the internet being the way links eventually get cacked. They just degrade, because people don’t pay for their domain names (hi there), or servers die (yeah, that’s happened to me too), files get deleted, articles get put behind subscription walls… stuff happens. I just thought now that the solution might be some sort of individual label that was attached to each item people upload to the internet that was permanently part of that article or image or whatever, and that some sort of universal tracking system could therefore be able to find that item no matter where it moves to. But I don’t have the programming knowledge to know how to do this or even if it could be done. And how to make it safe from hackers.
Speaking of hackers and other annoying web things… I already need to update my “Guide For Being Allowed To Follow Me On Twitter.” I blocked, though I did not report as spam, the following:
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Generation Empty
Okay, today’s Slap ‘Em Silly treatment is this article from way back in January that I came upon. It’s—Well, let’s just say I haven’t come on this much smug self-regard since the last time I unwisely clicked on a link that led me to something with “manifesto” in the title. I don’t know why I do things like this. Things with “manifesto” in the title rarely fail to cause me irritation. Anyway, I haven’t given anyone a real good fisking in a while. It is time.
No Just No • Trapped In The Mirror Universe • Permalink
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
This strikes me as misconceived
The GOP recently redesigned their website. So many things are wrong with the new design, but what I noticed most was how much it looks like the flag of Communist China. I’m not crazy—here is a comparison of the two:
Their header graphic, which I nicked (click for a larger image):
And this is a photo of Red China’s flag (click for full size):
I almost thought the site was a parody, but it’s apparently authentic.
Anyway, it’s not that I haven’t had the urge to post, it’s that I can’t seem to get myself worked up to post anything here. I had set up this site on Posterous, just because it’s free and I wanted to see what they offered. Then I got a couple of emails saying people were following me, and I hate letting anyone down, so I wrote something. Here it is. I guess I’ll have to keep on updating the site from time to time. But a Posterous blog is easy to set up and use, any of you people who want a blog without having to go to a lot of trouble.
Update, October 18: I’m going to close comments on this one. It’s getting spam.
Just Bizarre • No Just No • Trapped In The Mirror Universe • Permalink
Thursday, October 08, 2009
At Least Our Children Is Learning!
I’m so glad we voted in an intelligent, eloquent president after eight years of that dummy Bush!
As the world celebrates International Day of non-violence, US President Barack Obama on Thursday said America has its “roots in the India of Mahatma Gandhi.”
He goes on to qualify it as “the America of today” but that still doesn’t wash. No, Mr. Obama, as much as you’d like to give credit for everything on Earth to someone, anyone else, I’m afraid that the roots of “the America of today,” and the philosophies of Martin Luther King and Gandhi, all stem from that northern European phenomenon known as Western Culture, which was in turn spawned by the Middle-Eastern religion known as Christianity, not Islam. What did they teach Obama in that fancy Hawaiian private school—Surfing 101? Advanced Hula Dancing?
We have three more years of this? My head hurts.
(Via Hot Air and Kathy Shaidle.)
No Just No • Trapped In The Mirror Universe • Permalink
Sunday, September 27, 2009
These are not the Goths we knew
More proof that I was smart to get out of the goth scene when I did: just look at these two. No, not the Romulan and the Klingon on the left, nor the two betazoid males in the back—I’m talking about the blond and the brunette gothettes in the long black dresses. What the hell, heroines?
Goth girl on the right at least has most of the Fat Goth Girl look down pat, though a completist would complain about the missing lipstick in the obligatory shade of vampire red, necrotic purple, or black. But Blondie really needs help—no makeup (that I can see, anyway), and that hair… style? She didn’t even try. I’ll bet she normally doesn’t go about all in black like sis (blond goth chicks usually dye their hair black or flaming red or something fluorescent from the Manic Panic line), but she decided to dress up like her for the photo shoot as a lark; it’s the embarrassed smirk that gives her away.
I don’t know—when I was a regular at the Kitchen Club I got used to a higher standard of goth. Some of the girls there had made their elaborate, Bride of Dracula Victorian dresses themselves. Then Hot Topic moved into town, and suddenly there was an inundation of wannabes in matching Marilyn Manson t-shirts and Nightmare Before Christmas striped stockings and I stopped going to clubs and moved out of Miami.
The goth scene is still around (undead is its trademark, after all), but it’s clearly past even its rigor mortis stage and the skeleton is starting to crumble into dust. One more thing bothers me: could they at least have stood up straight? Yes, I’ve turned into my grandmother, all of a sudden, though the goth “I’m with my mundane relatives” slump is de rigueur for family photo ops. Still, I now find it irritating. Years later they’ll look at this old photo and cringe in a different sort of embarrassment.
(Via Instapundit.)
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Hellish Ichor Spewed Forth Rubriciously
Somewhat apropos to my previous post: I didn’t think it was possible, but apparently someone has self-published a worse fantasy novel than the legendary Eye of Argon. (Note: that second link leads to a MST3K-ized version of Eye, as the unadulterated text is too painful to read.)
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
The Love of Money is the Root of All Evil
American culture isn’t perfect. Here is one of the ways:
The saddest thing about some of these comments, to a post on Da Vinci Code typist Dan Brown’s 20 worst sentences, are the commenters who say things like “you’re criticizing this guy but where’s your million bucks and popular novels?” I paraphrase, of course, but that’s the gist of the sentiment—somehow the fact that millions of easily-pleased people bought his (to me and many others) unreadable doorstoppers means no one can criticize his really bad writing. Let me tell you now, people:
JUST BECAUSE SOMETHING COSTS A LOT OF MONEY DOESN’T MEAN IT’S ACTUALLY GOOD.
If you still don’t want to believe me, here’s some shit you can believe in. Now there’s something I wish I had thought of: painting with animal dung and selling it to stupid Americans. Because I’ve tried and even I can’t write badly enough to be the next Dan Brown. You know, my cat just left a big pile in her litter box. I was going to throw it out, but…
Next day update: well, if the comments to the main article on the Telegraph (as of this writing, 593 of them) are any indication, England is in trouble. There are even more “he made money and I liked his books so shut up!” responses, many of them badly spelled and punctuated (so perhaps it’s no wonder that they think Dan Brown is a good writer). Commenter number 593, Alkamal Rahman (there’s no way to link directly to individual comments) has had it with these people, and echoes what I said here:
I still do not understand why so many people are asking if Tom Chivers has sold 80 million books. Clearly he hasn’t, neither has anyone else who’s alive today, save a small handful of people. Does this mean Brown is immediately immune from criticism as a matter of course?
I assume they also think no one ought to criticise a director for making a bad film, or an artist for making a bad album, until they’ve made (a similarly successful) one too? Please, ask yourself this question before you mention yet again the tedious fact that he has sold so many books.
I know just how you feel. I think my favorite comment is this: “Brown ain’t Shakespeare - but then - Shakespeare’s not had that many multi-million dollar movie hits lately, has he? Nor are his books sitting at number one for weeks on end…” Apparently this person does not know that Shakespeare didn’t write 500-page blockbuster novels; he wrote plays. Plays which are still being taught in universities, which are considered among the finest products of Western culture, which gave the English language about 1,500 words, and whose author is considered one of the greatest of all time. Actors still consider leading roles in Shakespeare plays, like Hamlet, Macbeth, and King Lear, to be the height of attainment. I rather doubt any of this will come to pass for Mr. Brown and his works—and in any case once he’s as in his grave as Shakespeare none of his money will be of any use to him.
I think the reason why so many people get so upset when their favorite trashy novels are slammed like this is because deep down inside they know they have been fooled, but to acknowledge their own participation in their foolishness is humiliating. I don’t actually believe that most people want inferior products; but the way we teach art and literature these days is off-putting for most people. Shakespeare wasn’t a high-brow playwright in his own day; he was more like the Steven Spielberg of his time. He was meant to be understood by the masses, not “caviar to the general” as a lot of people seem to think him now. True, his language is a bit archaic… but his plays were meant to be spoken and seen, not read in a classroom. But nowadays we have so dumbed down our expectations of what the bulk of the people want for entertainment that they have grown used to being told “this over here is over your head; this garbage here is good enough for you.” They have come to expect that a good story has lots of “action” (which means lots of people running around hither and yon, shooting at each other, car crashes, explosion, sex scenes), that good characterization means people talk to each other with lots of exclamation points and say things like “My God!” all the time, that a normal plot is convoluted and involves a ridiculous amount of ancient conspiracy, and so on. Heroes have to be handsome and able to shoot and heroines have to be beautiful and able to run a mile in spike heels. And so on. Throw all of this in a book with lots of description and “exotic” cities (which means, cities most people have heard of, like Paris and Rome), and brand names for no reason, and they think they are reading something good.
The thing is, if Dan Brown had been a good writer, I doubt his books would have sold as well. Because think what a depressing world his Da Vinci Code paints: a church that murdered people to protect its reputation, a “savior” that is just some married guy whose descendants had no more interesting fate than to become kings of France for a while, a university system that produces professors of “symbology”—it’s a good thing he filled his story up with bad writing and cool albino assassin monks, or else I suspect it would have been too depressing for most of its readers to finish.
Curse of the Everlasting Emo Creeps
Oh well, enough about my job woes—and the parking ticket I found on my car because I forgot to put my parking permit back on my rear view mirror yesterday (I drove with my windows open yesterday and I take the thing, which is just a little flap of paper, and put it in a folder on the passenger seat of the car so it won’t get blown out the window)—it’s time to think about redesigning the website! Let’s go see if there’s anything out there…
Oh for ^%#&^% sakes!
All I want is something elegant and a little goth-y and Edgar Allan Poe-y—like the Follow Me On Twitter graphic in my side menu—but looking for gothic web template designs is bringing up nothing but the cheesiest, most overblown, graphic-heavy, twatty emo-crap. What happened to the goth world I knew? It’s apparently been eaten by a combination of Death-Metal-Lite-heads, Twilight pervs, and anime freaks, and most of it is geared towards Myspace, whose websites crash my computer. No, I don’t want a goddamn black-and-white daisy, a creepy-looking anime S&M zombie-grrrl, another creepy-looking anime S&M zombie-grrrl (and all these anime chicks look to be about twelve, you sick fucks), a giant eyeball (it just makes me think I have bits of dried mascara in my eyes to look at it), bizarre pink and purple emo shit, since when the hell is Lindsey Lohan goth?, fucking butterflies (no, not literally, but here again is a tiny-chinned, giant-eyed girl, the perfect paedo-lure; gross!), goddamn fairies, really sicko “sexy suicide” imagery, yaoi vampire shit, pink with hearts and skulls and crossbones and stab stab stab...
So the goth kids have let me down, like they always have. Never mind, I’ll make my own design.
Saturday, September 19, 2009
The Baby and the Bathwater
There’s something people are missing when it comes to the tale of the Obama daughter’s meningitis scare. A commenter on Hot Air rightly asks:
What is the point of the story anyway? That other people couldn’t take their baby to the ER if they thought she had meningitis? Of course they could . . . and it wouldn’t matter if they had health insurance, or if they could pay the bill or not. The ER would have been required by federal law to examine and treat the baby.
If this is supposed to be an example of why we need universal coverage, it’s a spectacularly bad one.
But see, that is the point: it’s all part and parcel of the scheme of the universal healthcareites to paint the current system of American health care as being one where people without coverage of some sort will not be taken care of at all. This is why foreigners refuse to believe Americans when we point out that no one gets turned away from an emergency room because they can’t pay. Go ahead, world travelers—ask someone in the country you’re currently in what they think will happen to someone in the US who falls ill or has an accident and doesn’t have any insurance or government plan available: nine times out of ten you’ll get back “they’ll be turned away to die!” Thanks to people like the Obamas, the Clintons before them, and everyone who is behind this push to get the US under some sort of national health care plan, everyone else in the world thinks that there are millions of poor people and their children dying like flies in American streets because they can’t pay. It’s all part of the plan to get more Americans to support universal health care out of guilt and the desire to look good in the eyes of the rest of the world—which will work on many because of the decades of propaganda from our educational system on how all other countries but the United States are older and wiser and in all ways superior to our little upstart, money-grubbing colonies.
Implementing universal health care like all those cool European countries have has nothing to do with helping the poor pay their hospital bills or anything like that; it’s actually all about impressing “our betters” and getting accepted into the inner circle of cool, hip countries. Until we stop trying to impress the “big kids” across the pond, we are doomed—but don’t expect any help from anyone in our own government; they are the most status-seeking, popularity-contest-obsessed among us. They are part of the problem.
(Via Jim Treacher.)
Update, via Instapundit: women crushed! The First Lady says so. Underneath the carin’ ‘n’ compassion, however, the same old “he won’t help with the housework” resentment can be detected. Maybe passing it into law will get the men to do the dishes!
No Just No • Trapped In The Mirror Universe • Permalink
Friday, September 18, 2009
I’m sorry Spider Robinson’s wife is sick
... but I just want to point out that when John Varley writes “[t]hey are lucky enough to be Canadian citizens so most of her treatment is covered” what that means is all the taxpayers in Canada are paying for her cancer treatments. The problem with the way people talk about health care is the way they talk about it.
(Via Instapundit. PS: I’ve read some of Spider Robinson’s books a long time ago—the Stainless Steel Rat and one or two of the sequels, I think—but they were one-time reads for me and I can’t remember much at all about them except I think one had a bad Russian commie type in space, and the Stainless Steel Rat character is some sort of charming space rogue. (Update: no I haven’t! Harry Harrison wrote those. You know, I’ve heard there is this thing called the “internet” where you can look stuff up...) I haven’t read any of John Varley’s books; I think he’s hard s/f, and thus not my cup of tea.)
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Waiting for the Charisma
(I’m having a fundraiser. F.Y.I.)
I stopped reading this article on the Tea Party rally this past weekend when I came to the sentence “I wouldn’t want the Tea Party-ers at the faculty picnic, either.” Well okay, I skimmed it, but… ah Jesus, can we get off the “Ew, NASCAR-watching, barbecue-eating hicks!” kick? From what reports I saw the majority of the Tea Partiers were not low-class mo-rons with Confederate-flag-plastered pickups and pictures of their favorite coon-hounds in the pockets of their overalls, but normal, middle-class people—the sort of people who are the bulk of this country. Most of them probably live in the suburbs of large cities and towns. Most of them probably go to church, but most of those churches are the ones without snake-handling as a regular feature.
And so on. I should have known when the guy started off by talking about how he’d been to Vietnam War protests, and went on to say how Saturday’s event didn’t hold a candle to those wonderful things, because of all the “charismatic speakers” who were at the Vietnam War protests. Well that may have been—but it may also be the fact that forty years ago, Mister, you were young, and everything is more wonderful, more important, and more interesting when you are young—especially activities that you have graced with your own interest. I was only a child during the Sixties so all I remember is how boring it was when the grownups would get together and talk about war and body counts and so on. Also as I had an early bedtime (parents back then didn’t believe in the formative powers of letting children stay up at all hours) the evening news was usually the last thing I was allowed to watch. Anyway, I basically accepted the whole “things were better, sparklier, shinier during the Summer of Love” when I was young, because the alternatives for my generation (born just too late to enjoy the Sixties) were things like Love Boat, disco, and sleazy guys with gold chains trying to get you in the back of their fake-zebra-skin-upholstered party vans. But now when I see footage of all the supposedly “charismatic” Sixties spokespersons for the various movements and so on, they seem ordinary and small. Maybe it’s just because I’m older and wiser, but I really think that the last thing we need are “charismatic leaders” to lead us around like sheep. One was voted into office recently, remember that? And he’s making a right hash of things.
But the Sixties baggage lingers on, even in the conservative movement. The idea seems to be that if it isn’t as much “fun” as stuff was back in the rollicking Sixties, then it just isn’t authentic. Underneath that is the elitist notion that white college grads from neat places like Yale and Hah-vahd are the ones who should lead the pack; that letting people who went to community college—or worse, no college at all!—will drag the conservative movement into the mud. That’s liberal talk, and I’ll none of it. The “old money” rich white people of the ilk that have infested the Republican Party are part of the problem, because due to their obsession over their status they are the weakest of reeds who will bend to anyone who promises to keep them from being cast out of the In Crowd. That’s why they hate people like Sarah Palin—they know someone who has hunted moose from a helicopter isn’t afraid of being snubbed at a faculty shindig.
(Via the Fourth Checkraise.)
Update: oh, how could I forget? It’s not just the rich “old money” people—as a matter of fact they are a dying breed, though their influence is still too strong in both parties of government. But another group that needs to be shown the door are the self-proclaimed “intellectuals,” most of whom have the common sense of a chimpanzee in heat. Less, actually—a chimpanzee knows what he wants and knows how to get it, and if he doesn’t the only one that suffers is the chimpanzee; the liberal “smart person” of today refuses to acknowledge that what he really wants is status and the approval of “important” people, and they have no idea what the things they are doing to get it are doing to the country.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Poor peoplin’
Has anyone been reading the “Pinched” series on Salon? It’s supposedly “tales from an economic downturn,” but the two I’ve read so far might better be categorized as “your sense of entitlement won’t protect you from the consequences of your actions.” Let’s start with the first, entitled “Excuse me while I stick my head in the toilet.” This is the sad saga of a well-educated young woman who is forced to—oh the humiliation!—work as a free-lance maid to make rent, etc. We are supposed to feel that it’s a tragedy that her two college degrees and a book she sold to a UK publisher haven’t brought her much of a living, and she has to “clean strangers’ toilets for money.” She makes it sound as degrading as having sex with strangers for money, and therefore, unintentionally I am sure, trashes every other maid, cleaning person, and janitor that exists. It’s amusing—well, no, interesting maybe—to see how supposedly smart, educated people who no doubt consider themselves to be members of the most compassionate generation the human race has yet produced fall into the same prejudices of their classist ancestors.
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