House of Eratosthenes

Yet another Obama supporter play-acts like she’s going to say something positive about her idol — positive and substantial. And then…frustratingly…just slips into dormant, don’t-take-me-seriously, weenie-talk just like the rest of ’em. Time index 0:38:

Whether or not you like him or you don’t like him…he…he really is…um…(under breath) he really is an interesting guy.

So was Charles Manson. But whether or not you like Obama…supporting Him because of His policies, has turned out to be the biggest failure in American political history. Assuming anyone anywhere supports Him because of policies, which is doubtful.

But the mind-blowing moment comes further in. Ms. Carter understands, explicitly, that hers was the loyal opposition for the last eight years, and “there’s a loyal opposition now.” But you need to “give the guy a break” or else you’re spreading hate.

Hate is being spread now. And I guess it wasn’t spread before.

Yeah, whatever. I suppose it’s human nature to see something ugly in people who don’t agree with you about things, and to fail to see something ugly on your side of the fence.

But I really don’t see how these people get dressed in the morning and start walking around. There wasn’t any hate before, against Bush and Cheney? Really?

But there’s one nice thing I can say about Lynda Carter: Three decades ago, she looked appealing in a Wonder Woman costume.

That may not seem like saying much. But the curious mind cannot help but wonder: What positive things can the hatred-free Lynda Carter say about a Republican?

Update: I think the time has come for us all to admit that the word “hate” has been re-defined. It doesn’t mean what it used to mean anymore.

Nowadays — when Ms. Carter’s usage of it is actually correct, although a generation or two ago it would not have been — it has come to mean this:

What you are full of when I happen to like something, it’s my perception that a whole lot of other people like it as much as I do, and you don’t.

I think that explains why it doesn’t work for George W. Bush. People can hate him, and not be hateful. They can say they hate him, and not be hateful. They can stand right in front of you and yell that they are bristling with hate for George Bush, and not be hateful.

They can make movies about George Bush’s assassination…fantasize openly about Bush’s murder…and not have any of what we now call “hate.”

Former President Bush just isn’t very popular. Barack Obama is.

So you have to love Obama just all to pieces, or else you’re full of hate.

Now, after a time Obama is bound to stop being popular. His tactic for dealing with His own failures, it’s been proven again and again by now, is to talk about inheriting a crisis. That is likely to be far more effective now, some seventy or eighty days into His presidency, than, say, a thousand days into it…and you’d better believe He and His public relations people are worried about it. It is a countermeasure of diminishing potential.

And so when Obama is unpopular — not if, but when — can you courteously turn in your Obama Fan Club membership card, without being a hateful prick? Those of us who are old enough to have lived through Jimmy Carter’s disasters already know the answer to that one. And I’m not gleeful about it. It is an ugly, ugly process to behold, when the public recaptures its ability to think rationally in the face of disasters it demanded.

It has to do with the interest rates being pushed upward by government borrowing. We haven’t seen it take place, quite like it did back then, since…well, since Lynda Carter was playing Wonder Woman.

A whole bunch of stuff goes to hell, within a tight enough timeframe that it’s impossible to ignore how they’re all related to each other. And it doesn’t work to blame the guy-that-came-before. Believe me, Jimmy Carter had that blame-the-predecessor stuff down cold. And his predecessor was a little bit of a likable-dunce type, or at least, came off that way. It was easy. Carter deployed this time-tested strategy under the very, very best of circumstances.

It didn’t work for long. That one’s a sprint, not a marathon.

But that’s Obama’s problem. Ours is with this word “hate,” and how we use it, today, quite incorrectly in my view. It really is like something out of high school. I like high-top sneakers, we all like high-top sneakers, they’re the “in” thing, they’re all over the place, so if you don’t like them you must “hate” them and that gives everyone else a license to mistreat you in whatever way they see fit because you aren’t wearing the “cool” stuff. Everyone who’s been through high school understands, it really doesn’t have that much to do with attire; it’s a social code about being “into” certain things. And if you’re an outlier, then you become a target of…well…that stuff, that back in the day, had that word “hate” fastened onto it, such a long time ago. The classic definition. Extreme acrimony toward a designated target.

And the people practicing it don’t understand that they’re doing it. They’re too busy calling other things hateful.

Ms. Carter, I’m afraid you’ve become a rather poor ambassador for building goodwill between Paradise Island and Mans’-World. I always got the impression Wonder Woman was an emblem of reason and discretion; a representation of why it just might be a good idea to have women make more decisions about things. Sort of an embodiment of all those elements of real maturity that girls tend to accumulate faster than boys. Like, Wonder Woman could be bound by her own tell-the-truth magic lasso, and her heart is so pure there would be no paradigm shift involved, no coercion, kinda what-you-see-is-what-you-get.

That can’t be the case with you — you don’t even know what real hate is. What a disappointment; kinda like learning there’s no real USS Enterprise. Guess I expected too much.

I’m still in favor of women keeping the right to vote, though.

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Wonder Woman Seriously Lacks PerspectiveSaturday, March 28th, 2009

Wonder Woman Seriously Lacks Perspective
Saturday, March 28th, 2009