Saturday, August 25, 2007
WHY DON'T YOU GO TO THE STARDUST BALLROOM? IT'S LOADED WITH TOMATOES. Speaking of poor, misunderstood right wingers, a gay conservatarian says it's been hard for him to get a date because liberals are prejudiced against conservatives. At the end, though, he reveals he has found a boyfriend ("though more liberal than I"). I wonder if he observed the usual controls for such a study. Did he change his haircut, for example, or lose a few pounds during his dateless period? The data is unclear.
This stimulates discussion from the hetero perspective at Volokh Conspiracy, where Ilya Somin claims that "A great many people believe that it is wrong to date anyone whose political views differ significantly from their own." Again, the data is unclear, and Somin denies experiencing this alleged problem himself.
Plenty of discussion at both boards. My take is, getting laid is more fun than talking about how other people are to blame that you're not getting laid.
5:16 PM by roy edroso
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THE SOFTER SIDE OF RUSH. Our subject found himself at the tender age of 37 accused of being "racist, sexist, bigot, homophobe, mean-spirited, angry." But he overcame:There are certain areas in the business that I am the most successful person in the world where I cannot work because of what I think. Now, I have not run around and bellyached and whined and moaned about it. I have accepted it as a badge of honor because I do not allow myself to believe that those people are better or more important than I am. Just the exact opposite. And I have found a way to work around it and found my niche here. I know what I'm good at. I'm doing what I was born to do...
Everybody has obstacles to overcome. Now, Eric said that he's heard me bellyache and whine and complain about things. Not within the context of being discriminated against! I've found ways to work around it. Everybody has to. The speaker is Rush Limbaugh, and he's tired of people who can't see this is a land of opportunity, because if Rush Limbaugh can make it, despite his disadvantages, then anyone can. The tirade is set off by a mention of racism. And he accuses Democrats of exploiting the feelings of "a country half full of unsatisfied, malcontent, miserable, unhappy people" with bellyaching about racism and poverty, and rock concerts.
I am in general sympathetic to the notion that we should try to rise above our circumstances. Still, I would be shy about citing my own history as a white man with a college education (notwithstanding my humble beginnings) as a counterweight to historic racial discrimination.
Of course I don't know what it's like to be as rich and powerful as Rush Limbaugh. And it may be that when you've attained such heights, you might lose your awareness -- if you ever had it to begin with -- of what it's like to be without money and power. Then the people who do know what it's like, either by experience or observation, might look to you like miserable malcontents.
To give him some credit, I imagine he has noticed that there are more malcontents than there used to be. He may also understand that a healthy chunk of those malcontents in the half-a-country have been peeled away from the large Republican majority that was in effect when he was battling discrimination as a radio celebrity back in the Reagan era.
In politics as in market share, the game is to win such people back. If you're confident, you restate your case more boldly. If you're less confident, you complain -- that people don't understand you, that your enemies lie about you, that you, too, are a victim. It's actually your opponents who are the bigots, while you are "America's Real Civil Rights Leader." In advertising they call it repositioning, and Sears did have some success proclaiming its Softer Side. But it tends to work best when you can justify it with your product line. And it never helps to be so defensive.
2:34 PM by roy edroso
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Thursday, August 23, 2007
STOOPID ACE IZ STOOPID. Lofty social thinking, of the White Guy Trying to Be Helpful variety, from Mr. Ace O. Spades:I guess this might be a reason to discuss the aggressively anti-intellectual -- or more accurately, pro-ignorance -- "Cult of the Authentic" which is more responsible for black failure than all the racism in the world. Thereafter comes discussion of "thug life" and "culture of authenticity" -- as well as helpless laughter, as we discover Mr. Spades is talking about a black guy's entries in a freaking Facebook quiz -- a matter of cultural concern, according to Mr. Spades, because such language from a college man means that, among our dusky brethren, "this idea that intelligence is a sell-out to The Man persists."
I hope Mr. Spades will next bring his analytic skills to LOLcats, which phenomenon features lots of misspellings, and therefore must have been created by African Americans trying to make themselves look dumb for Al Sharpton or something.
I mean what else could it be? Humor? Maybe Ace can't see it because no one made fun of faggots.
2:51 PM by roy edroso
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Wednesday, August 22, 2007
CENSORSHIT. Iraq bitter-ender Armed Liberal says that "we don't do purges, and that's a good thing," and has invented a derogatory "Moon Unit" award which he will give " to people who think that gagging someone -- with or without a spoon -- is an appropriate political response."
His first honoree is Atrios, who wrote:Is Tom Friedman a Bad Person?
All signs point to "pretty hideous human being, one which all good people should shun." Even Armed Liberal's commenters cannot achieve consensus as to whether Duncan Black's gag constitutes an attempt to silence Tom Friedman. Nonetheless, Armed Liberal predicts that "the progblogs are going to be racking up a huge number of these 'Moon Units.'"
I should think "gagging" would look more like this:Life in an FBI muzzle is no fun. Two Connecticut librarians on Sunday described what it was like to be slapped with an FBI national security letter and accompanying gag order. It sounded like a spy movie or, gulp, something that happens under a repressive foreign government. Peter Chase and Barbara Bailey, librarians in Plainville, Connecticut, received an NSL to turn over computer records in their library on July 13, 2005. Unlike a suspected thousands of other people around the country, Chase, Bailey and two of their colleagues stood up to the Man and refused to comply, convinced that the feds had no right to intrude on anyone's privacy without a court order (NSLs don't require a judge's approval). That's when things turned ugly.
The four librarians under the gag order weren't allowed to talk to each other by phone. So they e-mailed. Later, they weren't allowed to e-mail.
After the ACLU took on the case and it went to court in Bridgeport, the librarians were not allowed to attend their own hearing. Instead, they had to watch it on closed circuit TV from a locked courtroom in Hartford, 60 miles away. "Our presence in the courtroom was declared a threat to national security," Chase said. Or it might look more like this bullshit libel suit against PZ Myers.
Or it might look more like what the Army does to milbloggers. They're largely rightwing, of course, and censored by their own superiors, but I'm sure there's some angle by which liberals of the unArmed kind can be blamed.
But what do I know? I say mean things about conservatives all the time. Obviously I'm a one-man Legion of Indecency, trampling the free speech of wingnuts 'round with the world with the legally-non-binding force of my invective.
UPDATE. Gulagmaster Norbizness says of Christopher Walken's latest poor choice of vehicle, "I think it's official... nobody should remember anything good that Christopher Walken has ever done in his acting career." Not even Hollywood is safe from liberal terror! And I'm pretty sure I heard some hippie say, "Christ, what an asshole" about Bush. Developing...
8:50 PM by roy edroso
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AND NO, RED DAWN DOESN'T COUNT. Perfesser Glenn Reynolds on the War on Whatchamacallit:In a decade or two we'll get a new revisionist history in which America was united against the threat, much like we're hearing today about the Cold War. My memory's not what it used to be, but I think there were several Democratic Congresses during the Cold War, and even a few Democratic Presidents. How is it that the Sovet Union never invaded? America was obviously ripe for the plucking.
Yet not even the traitors' victory in Vietnam brought us even close to Soviet domination. A less convinced soul than the Perfesser might get the impression that the United States sometimes engages its forces in error.
3:05 AM by roy edroso
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Monday, August 20, 2007
ANNALS OF LIBERTARIANISM. Talking about the Giuliani health care plan, Megan McArdle argues that "As a class, the old and sick are already luckier than the young and healthy":Moreover, as a class, the old and sick have some culpability in their ill health. They didn't eat right or excercise; they smoked; they didn't go to the doctor as often as they ought; they drank to much, or took drugs, or sped, or engaged in dangerous sports. Again, in individual cases this will not be true; but as a class, the old and sick bear some of the responsibility for their own ill health, while younger, healthier people have almost no causal role in the ill-health of others.
Perhaps they deserve it by virtue of suffering? But again, most of them are suffering because they have gotten old, often in high style... Try to imagine this woman on a lifeboat.
6:01 PM by roy edroso
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