Comments on: On poets, celebrities, and politics

By: sdferr

sdferr — Thu, 16 Apr 2015 14:31:50 +0000

Plato had a few worthwhile thoughts about the relationship of the poets to politics. Of course the world, we’re told, has changed since Plato’s times. We’re warranted some doubt on that score, if only in order to test the coherence of that arc of history, “right side” “wrong side” nonsense.

By: Richard Aubrey

Richard Aubrey — Thu, 16 Apr 2015 11:33:59 +0000

Celebrities opine on many things besides politics and a certain cohort of the population believes them.
A lot of things bother me, but for some reason a particular coincidence is particularly depressing.
Kurt Cobain and Lew Puller, Jr. killed themselves the same month of the same year. The rock star got the ink.
Makes me crazy to think about it.

By: Mac

Mac — Thu, 16 Apr 2015 03:09:40 +0000

Looking back now, it occurs to me that my early dislike of Shelley presaged my conservative cultural and political turn.

For me, Shelley’s most telling legacy was a remark made by Mary Shelley years after the tumult and the shouting had died. The person who claimed to have heard it relayed it to Matthew Arnold, who preserved it. Mrs. Shelley was looking for a suitable school for her son and asked the advice of a friend, who said “Oh, send him somewhere where they will teach him to think for himself.” Mrs. Shelley answered, “Teach him to think for himself? Oh, my God, teach him rather to think like other people!”

It also strikes me as the legacy of many revolutionary movements, such as the one of the 1960s.

By: Ymarsakar

Ymarsakar — Thu, 16 Apr 2015 00:17:46 +0000

Correction: wasn’t decadent to me.

By: Ymarsakar

Ymarsakar — Thu, 16 Apr 2015 00:17:26 +0000

It is true that song and dance are the supporting foundation of a culture. One can easily look at the state of the health of an entire people via their songs, dances, and word play.

That’s why American Idol, ever a production of the usual sorts, was decadent to me. Not compared to rap, Hollywood, MPAA, and the usual sorts.

By: snopercod

snopercod — Wed, 15 Apr 2015 23:10:24 +0000

WORD! Barbra Streisand would be a good singer if she would just shut up about politics.

By: David Foster

David Foster — Wed, 15 Apr 2015 21:57:02 +0000

Writing lyrics for popular songs is a form of poetry…if you look at it that way, the social influence of poets may not have declined at all.

By: Artfldgr

Artfldgr — Wed, 15 Apr 2015 20:29:14 +0000

Shelly was to Byron as Ringo was to John, Paul and George…

By: Ymarsakar

Ymarsakar — Wed, 15 Apr 2015 19:35:34 +0000

So did Shelley produce an inheritance for his own children, so that they lived the same initial life as his own? Or did he squander his inheritance, and thus broke spiritually with his entire paternal line?

It seems like many Leftists, including the more hypocritical sort, their beliefs are only powered by the blood, pain, and sacrifice of others. Long time dead in the case of Vietnam, Cuba, and their ancestors.

By: Ymarsakar

Ymarsakar — Wed, 15 Apr 2015 19:29:36 +0000

I think in that way lies madness. No; all he’s got is his own sensibility and his own opinions as a private citizen. But he has no privilege. Insight, yes.

Tell that to the doctors waving their awards and degrees around.

They are so besotten with their social status and degree to which other ignoramuses pay attention to their judgment, that they think they know what’s going on in the human body. Enough to issue government and public decrees of health, diet, and proclamations of near divine preclusion.

I remember one doctor talking here, along with others, concerning artificial sugar, how it and various other proclamations of diet from the Stooge Crowd of Authoritarian Belief, knows more than I do, which means they are more correct in the general purview. This was some years or months before the “New Authoritarian” word came out on the subject.

Fats are corrected. It’s the saturated, right? Artificial sugars have nothing to do with obesity, they said. It’s chemically the same as natural sugar. The idea being that scientists and chemists know how to reproduce sugar so that the body can’t tell the difference. They can’t vote in enough public welfare to the Hussein stooge so that he makes a public insurance program that’s indistinguishable to the human body from a private insurance, but people think doctors and scientists are omnipotent demo gods capable of over riding human nature by exceeding the limit of human mortal comprehension.