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...
Rick goes on to link to a piece by Ms. Grabar in Pajamas Media about the real reasons why so-called “feminists” can’t stand Palin. If her point stands — and I think it does — it is quite an eye-opener. It’s an eye-opener because it indicates a) “tak[ing] care of her family, with a shotgun if necessary” has become a male-female-split issue; and b) the female viewpoint on this issue has somehow become that you’re not supposed to be doin’ that.
That Palin thinks like a man, or logically, is what has made the left livid. As appropriate to their modes, they respond emotionally. The men in their movement, who have become one of the girls in terms of thinking, respond with personal insults, even going so far as to mock the looks of her baby, as Bill Maher recently did.
But if one looks to other arenas, like the humanities departments in universities that have been transformed by feminism, one can see that such personal attacks are entirely consistent with the left’s version of intellectualism. When I entered graduate school in the 1990s I quickly found out that character assassinations had become the staple of literary scholarship.
That’s entirely consistent with why I support Palin. I belong to this strange little world…I call it “Earth”…in which it makes little sense to seriously mock people, because pretty people are wrong fairly often and ugly people are right fairly often. Essentials of the point…characteristics of the guy or gal who made the point. It’s called a non-correlative relationship.
It’s pretty late in the election season. And honestly, I can’t recall, from all-year-long, the last time a left-winger made an intellectually valid point that came to my attention, without simultaneously attacking some desired target over matters unrelated. McCain can’t use e-mail. Palin’s got “porn star glasses.” George Bush is an idiot and Dick Cheney is evil. Ann Coulter’s a skinny bitch, Rush Limbaugh is fat and is hooked on painkillers, the list goes on and on and on. And feminism has been marching at the forefront of this weird, bizarre, “it matters not what they say, it matters what they are” mindset.
Also, Palin is a belated challenge to group-based consensus thinking:
While John T. Molloy may have in 1978 urged women to dress and act for success by imitating their male business colleagues, psychologist Carol Gilligan, in her 1982 bestseller In a Different Voice, promoted women’s ways of thinking, based on emotion and consensus, as superior to the old patriarchal mode of logic and independence.
The result of such modes of thought, in my field of English, has been the attrition of majors, as students flock to more masculine fields, like business administration. Among the humanities, it is English departments that suffer the worst reputations as inconsequential and useless places.
A whole procession of attempts to make Palin look like an intellectual lightweight, someone who figures out what to say only through talking points written by others, has failed much like a long freight train tumbling off the ruins of a defunct bridge one boxcar at a time. On Thursday night, Palin slapped a coffin lid on that whole thing and pounded several nails into it.
She thinks for herself; her words are her own. And those who have been most bumptious in asserting the opposite, are the ones who’ve secretly known all about this from Day One. And those are the ones who’ve hated her the most.
And so to me, based on what I’ve seen, Ms. Grabar’s words make perfect sense.
Update: I’m reminded again how much control people lose when they identify someone who thinks logically and independently this way, after they themselves have not, and make a target out of ’em. Karol points to a Dr. Helen column on Pajamas Media, which in turn links to a Slate advice column. Good…Lord…
My reaction to [Gov. Palin], and the way the Republican Party threw her in our faces, and the pandering and hypocrisy that was behind their decision to do so, was immediate, visceral, and indeed, vicious. I have crossed every line I believed should never be crossed in public discourse — I have criticized not only her policies and her record, but her hair, her personal style, her accent, her abilities as a mother, etc. I’ve also begun to suffer personally and professionally. I bore my friends with my constant tirades against her, and am constantly distracted from my work by my need to continually update myself on the latest criticism, and indeed, ridicule, of her. In my hatred for her, I have begun to hate myself.
I don’t want this woman ruining my life before she even gets a chance to ruin our country. How do I stop? Is there a self-help group for this?
A “Hater”*
*As Sarah Palin calls all those who disagree with her (New York Times, Sunday, Sept. 14, 2008)
Dear “Hater,”
I think what disturbs us about Sarah Palin is that she reminds us of the authoritarian personality. My guess is that she is also an ESFJ, or Extroverted Sensing Feeling Judging type, with a strong preference for sensing. Such a person prefers to acquire her knowledge from concrete objects and places instead of from abstract ideas. This would explain why she thinks being geographically close to Russia is a form of foreign policy expertise.
As an authoritarian type, she strikes us as a person who prefers power to reason. The people running John McCain’s campaign seem to instinctively understand the uses to which such an impression can be put. Perhaps they know better than we do how deeply the American people long to be done with the problem of democracy, to yield to a powerful father-mother pair of authoritarians.
The very thing that appalls us about Sarah Palin — her discomfort in the realm of reason — is her main selling point. This is so mind-boggling that you have to take a minute to let it in. Take a deep breath. Read that sentence again. Face it: Sarah Palin represents what many people want: a retreat from reason; a regression to childhood.
So thinking for yourself means a “regression to childhood.”
That means, to these people, subverting your individual cognitions to the cognitions of a group, is what adulthood is all about.
Why on earth shouldn’t adulthood be all about that? These are people who have everything done for them by other people. Getting food is — walking through a store with a basket, filling it up, presenting a debit card to the cashier, and boom you’re done. Water is delivered. Oil is changed. Coffee is brewed by a barrista in a green apron. Their SUV changes gears for ’em, the cruise control works the throttle.
Quite amazing. Truly, a nation of veal calves. How in the world did we get here?
If this was the first of the ten plagues, the Pharoah would’ve let ’em go right off the bat.
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You’re gonna run out of the shots on that wonder woman compilation soon if this keeps up.
- vanderleun | 10/06/2008 @ 22:33It so happens the new Tomb Raider lady‘s hairstyle is almost exactly the same as the pitbull-w/lipstick. We can replenish the stockpile.
Can’t tell you how happy we are to see it depleted so much more quickly than we anticipated, though. No question about it. She’s satisfying a hunger we’ve had for a long, long time.
- mkfreeberg | 10/06/2008 @ 23:13