Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
This is not necessarily a Republican/democrat thing, or even a mainstream-media-versus-blog thing.
It’s more of a Madison Avenue prevailing sentiment thing.
If said prevailing sentiment is that someone is dense and stupid…that someone is
white, straight, male, Christian, conservative Republican, born on or after 1943.
If said prevailing sentiment is that someone is smart and brilliant…that someone is
white, straight, male, Christian, liberal democrat, born on or after 1943.
Got it? These do not apply to you if you were already alive before Pearl Harbor. Dick Cheney is not stupid, even to hardcore spittle-flinging liberals who have long ago built their own pronunciation keys for the word “impeachment.” He’s just plain evil. Bob Dole and Ronald Reagan weren’t really stupid — they were presented as thick, short-tempered, dozing and senile; that’s a different thing. Jesse Helms was no dummy, he knew exactly what he was doing. Evil bastard. Contrasted with those, George W. Bush is stupid, dense, incurious, poorly-read…as is Sean Hannity…and Dan Quayle…but Condoleezza Rice is not stupid. Clarence Thomas is not stupid. Clarence and Condoleezza are just “Uncle Toms.” They don’t call Ann Coulter or Michelle Malkin stupid. They’re just evil, bitchy women.
Barack Obama, who is half-white, is supposed to be brilliant. Oprah said so, and there seems to be some kind of super-majority of Google hits on “he is brilliant” that are directly concerned with the Obamessiah. Al Gore and John Kerry were supposed to be brilliant. They both failed to sell us on their brilliance, and supposedly that was because they were so smart we couldn’t understand ’em. Ted Kennedy is too old, though. That Madison Avenue prevailing sensibility pronounced Ted Kennedy to be chock full o’compassion for the “little guy,” but he was rarely if ever pronounced to be a genius. If Ted Kennedy didn’t get his way, it was rarely or never spoken of as a consequence of his being too smart to communicate with the American people. Homosexual liberals, Jewish liberals, Muslim liberals — they aren’t referred to as “brilliant” or “smart.” Ditto for women…they are “strong willed,” but when other liberals engage the mouth without putting the brain in gear, they usually don’t speak of those women as being smart. They’ll jump all over you if you call those women stupid, of course! But that isn’t the same as showering compliments on them for being super-smart, as they so regularly have done with Al Gore and Barack Obama.
Hillary was a remarkable exception though. She got to be a genius. I guess she got to be a virtual straight white male. Interestingly, when Bill Clinton made history by putting lots of women in his cabinet, I didn’t see it come into vogue to refer to this as a “brain trust” and I don’t recall even any faithful liberals showering accolades on the intellectual acumen of Clinton’s women. Albright, Shalala, Wood, Ginsburg, Guinier…once in awhile a mouthpiece might call one of ’em “courageous.” Another good buzz phrase for liberal democrat women is “fiercely loyal.” Dianne Feinstein is fiercely loyal. Susan McDougal was fiercely loyal. To be smart, by & large you have to be a dude. And straight. Nobody says openly-gay Congressman Barney Frank is stupid, or brilliant either.
I think our lower-Manhattan ivory-tower types are having a little bit of an Inigo Montoya problem with those words “smart,” and “brilliant,” “dumb,” “dense” and “stupid”: I do not think those words mean what they think they mean. To really get a bandwagon message going that has to do with any of those words, the designated target has to be straight, white, male, Christian and a baby-boomer.
There are exceptions to this. But very few. So if I’m to take this seriously, I guess intelligence is on some kind of bell curve, and we straight white male gentiles are clustered around the wingtips. With, or across from, Hillary Clinton the World’s Smartest Woman. The “big middle” of the bell curve is just an Affirmative Action dream, chock full of all the skin colors, religious creeds and sexual preferences left over. If anyone within those minorities possesses high authority, and a pronounced abundance or dearth of intellectual wherewithal, it simply isn’t worth mentioning.
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