Got pre-election angst? Want some hope for the future? Something to counter the idea that each generation is less likely to use critical thinking than the one before it, that the search for truth has been replaced by relativism, and that we face an unstoppable progression of the The Closing of the American Mind? Continue reading →
Palin and Pygmalion: who said class is dead in America?
Today’s hatred of Palin is driven at least partly by a host of elements connected to class, despite our protestations that we’re a relatively classless society. This particular class consciousness, which disregards Palin’s formidable accomplishments as governor as though they had not occurred, isn’t necessarily about money or family origins. The source of this special contempt seems related to what is known as style, and to a lesser extent to education.
Palin has a college degree, but to her detractors it’s significant that it’s from a non-elite school (of course, attending an elite school didn’t save the hated Bush, who was hated partly because he came from a patrician family but didn’t act like it). Continue reading →
Stalin knew a few things…
As if…
…the news weren’t bad enough already, now New England must contend with this.
Oh, for the days when a “beetle invasion” meant this:
Now ‘”Socialist” is just a code word for Black, even if the Black person happens to be a Socialist
The mind reels.
I’m beginning to wonder if there is any effort to find truth any more. I’m beginning to wonder if there are any standards involved in being on the editorial board of a major newspaper any more. I’m beginning to wonder if we are seeing the triumph of Orwell’s dystopia, where language has lost all meaning except for the goal of obfuscation in the service of political talking points. I’m beginning to wonder if we have passed Through the Looking Glass into a land where newspapers and politics have been taken over by a host of Humpty Dumptys who are determined that a word will “mean just what [they] choose it to mean””neither more nor less.”
What am I talking about? Continue reading →
The Obama campaign takes a cue from Orwell: history as palimpsest
Orwell knew full well how important this sort of erasure of history by the Obama campaign is, although he didn’t envision the help of the internet’s wayback machine in reconstructing the vanished past. Do Obama’s scrubbers realize that such a tool exists, and that their work is transparent to those who know how to find the “disappeared” evidence despite their intense efforts to hide it?
It’s likely that they do. Continue reading →
Even pronouncing it…
…Pahkeestan wasn’t enough to win their hearts.
Kipling bears repeating: the Gods of the Copybook Headings
Rudyard Kipling is one of those poets known by people who don’t ordinarily read poetry. But what he’s known for differs from person to person.
Some are only familiar with his tribute to cool heads under fire, “If.” Others see him as an old-fashioned versifier of non-PC poems full of dialect, defender and promoter of the now-defunct British empire. Others know him primarily as the author of children’s books set in exotic places.
But the real Kipling was more complex, even in his attitude towards empire. Continue reading →
Obama’s campaign and the press: a long history of working hand in hand
Some Obama defenders have pointed out that Joe the Plumber made himself fair game for the exposure of his personal information by insinuating himself into an election when he asked a question of candidate Obama. Others have said that Obama himself can’t be faulted for what happened to Joe; after all, it was the press digging into Joe’s past, not Obama. Some have even blamed McCain for using Joe’s exchange with Obama to make some points in his final debate against Obama.
The press is most definitely at fault here, first and foremost. In this election the MSM has almost entirely abdicated its responsibility to objectively inform the American people. Continue reading →
What recession?
I don’t know about you, but when I went to a mall the other day the parking lot was absolutely jammed with cars and the stores were full of shoppers. Are people preparing for Christmas already? Are they merely window-shopping and amusing themselves? Or are they just so happy that the price of gas is down that they’re out for a jaunt, and the mall has become the go-to place?
As for me, I was there to return something.
Gallup Poll declares defeat…
Sarah Palin’s SNL stint
I didn’t see it live; I chose instead to watch the last few innings of the Red Sox game and see them win it and force the series to a seventh.
I watched the videos here, however (thanks Ace!), and I think Palin did well enough considering what she had to listen to and what they gave her to work with. And by the way, I did watch some of the last twenty minutes or so of the show, the non-Palin parts, and what an unfunny business it has become.
They should have consulted me. This is what I was hoping for when I heard Palin was going to appear—some sort of clever reprise of the Marx Brothers mirror act, only this time with Palin and Fey. Even their eyeglasses would have worked with this (and note especially the brilliant twirling bit at 1:37):