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...
I don’t have the same feelings about my girlfriend as her last boyfriend did. I don’t love her. Sure, I claim to, because I seek to improve her by pointing out her flaws. That schmuck she dumped, he used to say a bunch of nonsense like she was the “greatest, best woman God has ever given man on the face of the earth.” Loser. One of the surest signs of love is it makes you talk stupid.
That language seems pretty harsh when you use it to talk about the love between men and women, doesn’t it? Joel Stein seems to think so; he concedes as much in the very last sentence of this love-without-loving screed of his. Up to that point, however, he’s perfectly clear on the idea that this is exactly the kind of sentiment a “nuanced” individual should have toward his country.
I don’t love America. That’s what conservatives are always telling liberals like me. Their love, they insist, is truer, deeper and more complete. Then liberals, like all people who are accused of not loving something, stammer, get defensive and try to have sex with America even though America will then accuse us of wanting it for its body and not its soul. When America gets like that, there’s no winning.
But I’ve come to believe conservatives are right. They do love America more. Sure, we liberals claim that our love is deeper because we seek to improve the United States by pointing out its flaws. But calling your wife fat isn’t love. True love is the blind belief that your child is the smartest, cutest, most charming person in the world, one you would gladly die for. I’m more in “like” with my country.
Fox News’ Sean Hannity loves this country so much, he did an entire episode of “Hannity’s America” titled “The Greatest Nation on Earth.” In that one hour he said, several times, “the U.S. is the greatest, best country God has ever given man on the face of the Earth.” One of the surest signs of love is it makes you talk stupid.
If Joel Stein doesn’t feel love, there must be another thing or two that can make you talk stupid. That or he comes by it naturally.
I owe Stein a debt of thanks for introducing me, indirectly, to Gerard Van der Leun when the latter saw fit to critique the speaking style of the former, nearly three years ago, in one of the best essays I’ve ever read: The Voice of the Neuter is Heard Throught the Land. What’s it about? It’s about how some thirty-ish adults nowadays talk with this tone of voice that inserts a residue of question, however thin it may be, into phonic pronouncements about everthing, even things that contain no question. With such a dizzying consistency that nothing is ever pronounced.
Audibly.
But as you can see from Stein’s writing, he finds refuge in the pen. In this forum, he can pretend to be more than certain about things — even about the evils of certainty. I hope you click on through to Gerard’s website, and then to Hugh Hewitt’s, and then crank your speakers so you can listen to the vocal Joel Stein. That’s quite a different character, one constantly striving to show a charming paralysis-by-analysis in every little thing he says, or asks…and succeeding only in propping up a nauseating, foppish sort of formlessness, sort of an intellectual variant of structurally vacant, gelatinous goo. He seems to be unaware of his own internal contradiction: If nothing is allowed to stand as an absolute or as a certainty, then there is a problem, for that in itself is an absolute and a certainty.
That’s a conundrum. It produces such a devastating handicap, that all decisions made in its presence, may arrive at a beneficial conclusion only by random chance.
I don’t know what kind of progress Stein has had in resolving it; therefore, I don’t know what his other opinions could be worth. I’m not sure his employers or his readers have figured it out either.
Hat tip: Cassy.
Oh and let the record show that I’m crazy about my girlfriend. I cherish the day I met her, and I feel exactly the same way about my country. But…if I were afflicted with this kwestion-kurse, to such an extent that every sentence that escaped my lips had that annoying tonal quality of dro…ning…ques…tion…? at the end of it, and I’d completely lost my readiness, willingness and ability to state absolutes and fasten my name to them — some kind of gelded senile-dementia for thirty-year-olds — I wouldn’t be blaming it on her.
Update: Oh, dear. The audio of that wonderful interview has fallen into an innerwebs-hole. We shall have to roll up our sleeves, in the hours or days ahead, and see if we can produce it again.
In the meantime, what a glorious relief that must be, however temporary, to Mr. Stein. So long as he stays away from any stray microphones, he can scribble and scribble away, and pretend to be sure of what he’s talking about.
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