Thursday, December 20, 2012

ANNALS OF THE CULTURE WARS. Culture warriors are having a hard time churning up some actual culture of their own. Take a look at Liberty Island, an arty online pub with Ben Shapiro on the masthead. Back in August Ole Perfesser Instapundit pimped its "call for submissions." Yet four months later the project remains rather thin on content -- among the few contributions is a short story by Shapiro himself, of which we will not speak. This week the Perfesser pimped a new "call for submissions" for the thing. The fundraising ain't going so hot either.

They're probably better off claiming long-dead artists; hell, look how it worked with Orwell. At Pajamas Media, one R.J. Moeller instructs us on the proper way to read Dostoyevsky. I'll give you a hint -- it has something to do with American politics!
In the course of a number of his books – The Devils (aka The Possessed) and The Brothers Karamazov for example – he foretold of the coming socioeconomic and geopolitical nightmares that awaited 20th century societies who would adopt progressivism, nihilism, and socialism as their guiding principles... 
Dostoevsky held that the inherent weakness of the Utopian visions of socialism was a rejection of God and the institution of the family. He saw that for the Left, their politics became their religion. The members of the progressive-Left were demanding standards of Judeo-Christian morality be replaced with new (arbitrary) standards handed down from central councils and planning committees...
But this is my favorite part:
From Walter E. Williams’ August 8th column "Liberals, Progressives, and Socialists":
Well, as long as it keeps them from writing any fiction themselves, I suppose we'll all be happy.

118 comments:

  1. Tybalt10:30 PM

    The title of Moeller's thing sounds like a BuzzFeed slideshow, and the first paragraph reads even worse.

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  2. Dostoevsky was an old school, unrepentant Christian Monarchist. So of course Conservatives love his politics.

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  3. Derelict10:50 PM

    Well, as long as it keeps them from writing any fiction themselves, I suppose we'll all be happy.



    Although given the rather extreme distance from reality of nearly everything they write and say, I think fiction is the only thing that they DO write.

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  4. BigHank5310:51 PM

    From Liberty Island's Facebook page: UPDATE! Yep, we're behind on our official launch. But that's because we are building a website that will literally blow your socks off.

    What the fuck is this, 1996? If you can blow my socks off, why aren't you selling that to Google or Microsoft? And, speaking literally here: if you want to attract writers, why is all your writing hovering around the 9th grade level, eh?


    Fuck. Literally. Go find another language to sodomize for a while, and give English a break. Fucking cretin.

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  5. Mythbusters conclusively proved one's socks cannot be blown off. BUSTED!

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  6. I recently abandoned The Brothers Karamazov somewhere around the OH MY GOD WHY ARE THEY TALKING SO MUCH HOW DOES ANYONE GET ANYTHING DONE

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  7. Fats Durston11:06 PM

    BigHank53 is calling rightwingers sodomites! Quick, flying monkeys to your stations! Find his place of work and try to get him fired for his intemperate language!

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  8. XeckyGilchrist11:06 PM

    The fundraising ain't going so hot either.

    Good gravy, 4 supporters and $600 of $10,000 raised? I guess it really doesn't work to push Randian "selfishness uber alles" and then pass the hat.

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  9. Spaghetti Lee11:34 PM

    Absent of context, I would readily believe that 'update' was written by a teenage girl who knits and sells cat-themed scarves.

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  10. Spaghetti Lee11:37 PM

    I must report that 'Liberty Island' is already taken. Am I to understand that Ben Shapiro and his crew are mocking Lady Liberty?

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  11. Doghouse Riley11:51 PM

    Ben Shapiro: The Oldest 16 Year-Old in America.

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  12. Yeah, some great writers have been on the right. Congratulations, conservatives. Well done.

    Still, Dostoyevsky seems like an odd case to start with since, yes, he did eventually end up on the right, but it was after being sentenced to death for attending the meetings of a leftwing group advocating such atrocities as elections, went through a phony execution, had his sentence commuted to exile in Siberia, and then after that decided he loved the Tsar who had been so good to him. So maybe a bit of Stockholm syndrome at work there.

    And you know, even after that he had pretty passionate denunciations of the death penalty.

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  13. What are they supposed to be getting done?

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  14. mortimer12:13 AM

    a short story by Shapiro himself, about which we will not speak.

    Oh but please do. It's a gem! Some fave lines:

    The story's moocher narrator describing a high school crush: She was about the cutest thing you’ve ever seen: strawberry blond with a knockout body and a button nose. Blue eyes, too. Like a miniature Britney Spears.
    ...
    She looked up at me with those big eyes, through her eyelashes – I could see she’d combed them special for me – and she asked me to walk her home.
    ...
    Her snot was dripping a little, but she looked as beautiful as ever.


    Diamonds! How on earth did he ever remain the Virgin Ben for so long? Imagine how Jeff Goldstein could incinerate 10,000 words just analyzing the erotic symbolism of "a miniature Britney Spears" who combs her eyelashes!
    How could they possibly have any difficulty fundraising with stuff like this?

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  15. redoubt12:46 AM

    "Liberty Island" will serve as the departure area for charters to the Galtian Sea.

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  16. Spaghetti Lee12:53 AM

    The choice of teen romance as a genre tells me that at least Shapiro knows his limitations. The prose tells me that he's unable to meet even those.

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  17. BigHank5312:56 AM

    Wait, is the crush object a human being or one of My Little Ponies? 'Cause Ben Shapiro as a closet brony clears up a lot of questions.

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  18. Fats Durston1:27 AM

    It's no teen romance: it's truly a chilling crime pulp. That revolves around improving a plow.

    I like how Shapiro reveals to us that the narrator is a simple-minded man by using a cliche in every other sentence. And that the story takes place in a timeless postmodern milieu, what with the narrator working a plow and referencing pop culture from the 60s, 80s, and 00s.

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  19. DocAmazing2:10 AM

    That's why they love Solzhenitsyn. They might like Celine's politics, but they'll never finish one of his books.

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  20. montag22:33 AM

    Oh, dear. Blue eyes, too.


    As if they were an afterthought.

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  21. trizzlor2:55 AM

    It reads like Shapiro decided to do an reworking of Flowers for Algernon with himself as the main character. The fundraising must be for the big operation.

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  22. montag23:11 AM

    I note that one of the founders of Liberty Island is Adam Bellow, among whose other achievements is publisher of Jonah Goldberg and Dinesh D'Souza, whose output he ultimately describes as "serious."

    I suppose it should come as no surprise that the son of Saul Bellow and author of In Praise of Nepotism should find favor in the random gas leaks of the son of Lucianne Goldberg.

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  23. Geo X3:20 AM

    They might like Céline's anti-semitism, and they might be okay with his general misanthropy, but that's about as far as it would go. They wouldn't care for his anti-authoritarianism, and they would recoil in horror upon learning that he was a doctor who treated poor patients FOR FREE! Ack! Time-travelling Obamacare!

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  24. bourbaki6:57 AM

    Give me your well-rested, your smug,

    Your idle Galts yearning to be tax-free,

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  25. Doghouse Riley7:13 AM

    Which of Solzhenitsyn's books did they finish? Hell, which did they start?

    Dear Lord, what a period. Mass adulation for a novelist from people for whom non-Biblical literature was either a Satanic abomination or half-remembered as an unpleasant chore from high school. Reagan and that Thatcher dame as courageous leaders, and John Paul II as a living saint. In retrospect, the series of strokes it engendered is probably the only reason I've been able to sleep nights since.

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  26. bourbaki7:13 AM

    Its also a bit ridiculous to talk about "Judeo-Christian standards of morality" when also talking about Dostoevsky as he was very specifically a believer in Orthodox Christianity and a critic of Catholicism and Protestantism. This is to say nothing of Dostoyevsky's (admittedly complicated) antisemitism.

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  27. sharculese9:10 AM

    But how is the plow gonna help them earn enough money to save the rec center before the socialists turn it into a planned parenthood!?!

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  28. Holy crap I can't stop laughing. Good thing there's no one else at work now.

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  29. "Seriously bullshit" counts as "serious", right? :)

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  30. Halloween_Jack10:04 AM

    The concept of a Shapiro stand-in with a mini-Britney is something out of one of the corners of the internet that I generally try to avoid.

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  31. tigrismus10:08 AM

    Huh, I guess now we know why they're so mad about Loomis. Also why they're anti-gun control, as they feel they need to arm themselves for the culture war.

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  32. Halloween_Jack10:08 AM

    Well, I hired them to refinish my bathroom; that was months ago, and some of my improvised personal hygiene solutions are becoming rather impractical now that it's seriously cold.

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  33. Uncle Kvetch10:11 AM

    The members of the progressive-Left were demanding standards of Judeo-Christian morality be replaced with new (arbitrary) standards

    Don't forget, comrades: tomorrow is "Fuck Your Household Pet, Just Because We Said So" Day. And remember to get those pix uploaded to Facebook by noon or face the consequences.

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  34. sharculese10:23 AM

    Your avatar really makes this post.

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  35. It's actually listed under their "thriller" section, believe it or not. If you're willing to plow through all 4,000 words (and I was), you'll understand why. I don't recommend it though - I've spent the last few months reading bad Internet literature, so I have a tolerance for this kind of thing.

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  36. Halloween_Jack10:27 AM

    I love how their last post on the page crows about "crowdfunding success!", and then links to the crowdfunding fail. Maybe they can take some consolation in that it's hard out there for a crowdfunded wingnut.

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  37. beejeez10:41 AM

    I like how Liberty Island can't get its first sentence grammatically correct. Promises great things.

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  38. beejeez10:44 AM

    Um, first sentence after the introductory exclamation, technically. Jeez, so much for brevity is the soul of wit.

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  39. Ellis_Weiner10:54 AM

    Also, "miniature"? I do not think that word means what he thinks it means. Or has Britney Spears morphed into a colossus while I wasn't looking?

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  40. Mrs Tilton10:57 AM

    See? Liberals are the REAL homophobes.

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  41. sharculese10:57 AM

    The sad sad comments section on the bottom of the front page has a link to their facebook page, and between the banner at the top being a still of the Nazgûl and two of the last three posts being about Lord of the Rings... this website is definitely going places.


    https://www.facebook.com/LibertyIslandMagazine

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  42. Is it wrong that I'm kind of hoping Liberty Island lasts for a while? I've become a real connoisseur of bad literature over the past year, and this looks like it could be a great source.

    Let's take a look at Shapiro's entry, for example. At 4k words, it's still heavily padded and therefore dull - you could cut this thing in half without losing anything. On the other hand, the city-slicker version of a rural Southern patois is hilarious. It's like Shapiro read a lot of Faulkner and thought "I can do that! I've been to OKC, I know how these people live!" Add in the weak attempt at foreshadowing (it begins and with a knife! Get it?) and the awkwardly crowbarred in political message, and you've got something that's not quite "so bad it's good," but is an interesting object lesson for budding authors all the same. I give it 6/10.


    Maybe I should send in a submission. I've probably got a short story lying around that I can convince them is a libertarian fable, and it might be enough to convince some real auteurs of crap to come out.

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  43. Ellis_Weiner10:59 AM

    I want to give this comment a stern talking-to, and then tousle its head and tell it to go outside and play, because I can never stay mad at it for long.

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  44. sharculese10:59 AM

    This shit gets boring real quick. A couple of months ago the MRAs tried a similar project "Artistry Against Misandry." It was hilarious for all of a week and then I completely forgot about it and checking again, they've totally closed up shop.

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  45. Mrs Tilton11:03 AM

    Button nose; combed eyelashes; dripping snot. And her breast felt like a bag of sand.

    Also, too, although I pretend to no special expertise in the matter, IIANVMM Ms Spears's eyes are brown. It is of course possible that the miniaturization process embluifies them.

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  46. Ellis_Weiner11:13 AM

    I have, for my sins, just read the "political satire" by Curtis Edmonds, who is "an attorney and writer living in New Jersey." It's an Obama/Romney debate in which all the q's and a's are about Harry Potter and Game of Thrones. So: Liberty Island--Adults Writing Like Teenagers for the Fast-Expanding YA Market. Stupid and illiterate? Like a fox!

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  47. sharculese11:53 AM

    Related: Rod Dreher, who I cannot quit, has a post up to bemoaning the fact that not enough modern literature (which he doesn't read, fyi) is explicit Christian propaganda.


    http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/reading-about-believers-today/

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  48. KatWillow11:55 AM

    Fantasy! Try to imagine Lord Of The Rings as written by a conservative bobble head.

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  49. JennOfArk11:55 AM

    Bromance!

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  50. sharculese11:57 AM

    Whenever I read Evelyn Waugh I'm puzzled that the kampfers don't push his exasperated sighs about just how much happier we'd be if modernity had never happened more vigorously.

    It's not like that shit is hard to read either. Way less effort than pretending to slog through Dostoevsky.

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  51. JennOfArk11:58 AM

    It's truly Something Awful.

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  52. KatWillow11:59 AM

    But are you immunized against "My Little Pony" fanfic?

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  53. RogerAiles12:11 PM

    Ben: "De plane, boss, de plane!"

    Glenn: "Wellllllllcome to Liberty Island."

    Ben: "My specs! Give me my specs!"

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  54. I've seen erotic Presidential slash-fic. There's not much the bronies can do that's gonna shock me at this point.

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  55. Jay B.12:33 PM

    The members of the progressive-Left were demanding standards of Judeo-Christian morality be replaced with new (arbitrary) standards handed down from central councils and planning committees...

    EXACTLY. Which just goes to show Tsarist Russia was known for its enthusiastic embrace of Judeo everything, which made it imperative for the Utopian Left to overthrow it. Like Moeller implies, Philo-Semitism was practically a mania back then. From the serfs to the political exiles in Siberia to the tiny sliver of the aristocracy, everyone loved Jews and Jewry in Russia and deeply respected the Judeo code. The enlightened era of the Tsar, with its tough-but-fair "top-down" approach, was clearly a threat to the arbitrary standards of the central councils -- which included blasphemous things like "anti-starvation" and "that Tsar guy is not divine" -- which, while influenced by the many Jews among them (in later generations, of course), was plainly anti-semitic on its face. Again, unlike Tsarist Russia, whose pogroms were simply outreach efforts on behalf of the Cossacks.

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  56. sharculese12:34 PM

    Don't google clopfic.

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  57. sharculese12:36 PM

    I want to commission a painting of this comment's noble proletarian spirit.

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  58. Actually, the narrator doesn't get the girl. Mini-Britney is won over off-screen by the narrator's overachieving brother. Because if there's one thing readers love, it's being told what happened to the main characters.

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  59. In theory, "crowdsourcing" (a marketing term I utterly despise, BTW) is perfectly suited to libertarianism, since people pay exactly what they're willing to spend and no more. In practice, I find that libertarian wallets tend to lock shut when it comes time to pay for the projects that interest them. It's almost as though Objectivism is just an excuse for cheapness.

    Of course, it could also be that no one has any faith in Ben Shapiro. Go figure, huh?

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  60. I think wingnuts in general are stuck in 1996. How else to explain the frequent refrains of "Liberalism will be doomed once I start MY WEBSITE!!!" over the last few years?

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  61. Interesting that he would pick Dostoevsky, since Crime and Punishment refuted Ayn Rand's ideology before she even wrote Atlas Shrugged. (It's no surprise she hated Dostoevsky.) Likewise, Moeller may like Dostoevsky's scoldings, but I but doubt he likes his endorsements of kindness toward one's fellow human beings. He certainly doesn't appreciate him as an artist. (DBake and others have covered some of the other complicating factors in Dostoevsky's life.)

    (Apropos of our arts and politics discussions here: In my slightly hazy recall of C.P. Snow's account, Stalin wasn't keen on Dostoevsky being taught/read because of thoughtcrime, but still recognized that he was an exceptional writer.)

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  62. Narnia isn't good enough for the likes of him?

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  63. Speaking of terrible literature, someone's been spamming a link to his "satire" in the comments over there. Not surprisingly, it's terrible. Somewhat surprisingly, it's by Edward P. Moser, who wrote some of those "Politically Incorrect" guides that were all the rage in wingnut circles ten years ago. Times must be tough if he's trying to ride Ben Shapiro's coattails.

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  64. "the fucking black president of america" is my favorite dostoyevsky story.

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  65. Alyusha1:19 PM

    Well, there was a death in the family, you see…

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  66. i want to burst into the winter palace and wave tiny bits of paper at this comment.

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  67. Pretty sure it WAS written by a conservative bobble head. Or was there some double-secret Straussian liberal message lurking somewhere in The Adventures of Bingleberry Dingleberry: How a Self-Satisfied Agrarian Conservative Defeated Industrial Modernity and Didn't Need Any Womenfolk to Do It that I missed?

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  68. Mrs Tilton2:15 PM

    There is a minor sub-species of American conservative that dotes on Waugh, you know; the sort that likes to imagine it is English and aristocratic, and that Romanism is somehow tonier than Anglicanism. But for most of the brethren? No way; too subtle, too witty, too tolerant of (indeed, suspiciously affectionate towards) sodomites like Miles Malpractice, Anthony Blanche and Sebastian Flyte. No, give the brethren a yarn in which Hank Rearden achieves the Singularity and mows down Moochers, Faggots and Browns WITH HIS MIND. Top THAT, Ms Waugh!

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  69. Mrs Tilton2:23 PM

    Not explicit enough. It's possible to enjoy the Narnia stories without caring about (some even claim, without noticing) their Christian subtext. Actually, I could have stopped at "It's possible to enjoy the Narnia stories".

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  70. sharculese2:33 PM

    Yeah, he says specifically what he wants is stories about lost, feckless people who find a new lease on life in the warm embrace of the church.


    Because if there's one thing you can say about Brother Rod, it's that his faith has been an aegis against a life wracked by frivolous indignities.

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  71. I'm going to produce a frenetically-edited b&w movie about a battleship and invite this comment to the premiere and the after-party.

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  72. Leeds man3:22 PM

    Like a CT thread?

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  73. aimai3:34 PM

    Oh, give libertarians a leeeetle credit. Maybe these projects don't, actually, interest them?

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  74. aimai3:39 PM

    I want to await the rapine and slaughter of the Teutonic Knights, advancing across an icy plain, with this comment. And then perhaps we can repair to a perfect little dacha in a fake village for some snacks?


    aimai

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  75. aimai3:40 PM

    I didn't care much for her later pop career, either.

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  76. But that's because we are building a website that will literally blow your socks off.

    Literally, eh? Someone obviously needs to be hounded, and ideally fired, for such a violent threat.

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  77. Ms Waugh!


    Oh, well played.

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  78. Leeds man3:46 PM

    I just assumed that they had adopted Saki as their go-to Brit.

    Constance shuddered. "Do you think the poor little thing suffered much?" came another of her futile questions.""The indications were all that way,' I said; 'on the other hand, of course, it may have been crying from sheer temper. Children sometimes do."

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  79. So, an Amish simpleton, a fan of My Little Pony and drinking pulpy orange juice, finds himself caught up in a lurid world of crime and double-crosses, forcing him to pick up his laser-sighted blunderbuss and embark on a blood-drenched crusade against violent video games. Later he achieves some degree of professional success by graduating from Harvard on the Ben Shapiro Breathtakingly Unqualified Dumbfuck Track.

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  80. Leeds man3:59 PM

    So, a fairly run-of-the-mill Tale of Rumspringa.

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  81. Uh, I don't believe I mentioned anything about spinning straw into gold.

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  82. Atticus Dogsbody4:21 PM

    "Think McSweeney’s meets 1950s pulp magazines meets Thomas Paine."


    Think! Goddam you! Think!

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  83. whetstone4:32 PM

    I wanted to understand Liberty Island as a reader, as the "utopian nowhere" it promises to be, but unfortunately I was forced to understand it as a longtime digital editor.

    1. I went to the homepage and couldn't click on the Phase 2 fundraising link, because something's wrong with the coding (tried it in Chrome and Safari). That link (typed into the browser) takes me to a poorly-lit video of a guy sitting on his couch. I can't see his eyes, but the white wall behind him is nice and bright.

    2. I clicked on "Magazine" and got one Facebook like bar, the phrase "Coming Soon," another Facebook like bar, a Facebook comment widget, then a horizontal rule, then the stories at the bottom, none of which are mentioned in "Welcome to Liberty Island."

    Maybe the Virgin Ben's story is a thinly veiled confession to having killed the designer.

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  84. Leeds man5:28 PM

    Well, Éowyn played a fairly significant, if minor, role.

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  85. wileywitch5:43 PM

    There are combs for eyelashes, but that description suggests that her eyelashes were normally a mess of hairs going out in all directions, and that she combed her lashes for the same reason he combs his hair and did it for him, no less.

    He might be pretending to want a girl. What kind of an adolescent heterosexual male looks at a girl's eyelashes and thinks they've been combed? For him? Is weird.

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  86. AGoodQuestion6:21 PM

    Isn't abuse of the word "literally" a fireable offense in itself?

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  87. AGoodQuestion6:23 PM

    I read far enough to see that the first event of the story was the narrator being outsmarted by a rabbit, and I assumed it was an autobiography.

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  88. AGoodQuestion6:26 PM

    I like how Shapiro reveals to us that the narrator is a simple-minded man by using a cliche in every other sentence.


    Um, yeah! That's the reason all right!

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  89. TomParmenter6:27 PM

    You can not only can enjoy Narnia without being converted, but
    you can enjoy the Golden Compass books without worrying overmuch about the meaning of the soul-snatching religionists.


    Somewhere on the World Wide Web there's a review of Jack Chick Comix as a superhero series. Good stories, we want good stories, that they stem from some tradition or other is immaterial once the story gets going.


    That said, one of his commenters unironically points the illiterate Dreher to Christian bookstores right there in your own town that will provide you Jesused up romance, history, horror, science-fiction, fantasy (a little tricky, that one), rural, urban, all guaranteed free of homosexuals and Roman Catholics.

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  90. TomParmenter6:33 PM

    On the other hand, the 'Flying' Karamazov Brothers are still doing fine. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVG8FBIW_iA

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  91. TomParmenter6:45 PM

    I didn't LOL this, but I SQ (smiled quietly). Not un-amusing, as we say in the common room. Mitt is clueless and Obama is hip. What's not to SQ?http://www.libertyislandmag.com/2012/08/07/debating-the-real-issues/

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  92. I don't know who that is, but I'll take your word for it.

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  93. XeckyGilchrist6:50 PM

    That reminds me of one of my favorites.

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  94. Leeds man6:59 PM

    OK, so tl;dr but worth making up a witty alternate title for.

    That said, yes, conservative bobblehead, but I cut a lot of slack for those who served in WWI. We need more conservative bobbleheads like him.

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  95. I never noticed the Christian subtext until it was pointed out to me (as a teenager). In my defense, I grew up in an areligious household and read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe many years before I so much as heard about the resurrection of Jesus.

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  96. montag27:34 PM

    I recall a film clip of Solzhenitsyn in the early `80s, looking more than a little wild and Rasputin-like, lecturing the neocon faithful on the capitulations of the U.S. to the Soviet Union, dramatically pointing to a chart showing the USSR with 70,000 nuclear warheads and the U.S. with, well, maybe dozens (the point on the graph was too close to zero to measure with any accuracy). I suspect that it was one of those little warmongering exercises put on by the then-latest incarnation of The Committee for the Present Danger or some such band of chickenhawks to point out the futility of arms control, or to plump for Ronnie Raygun's MX "Peacekeeper" missile program, or some similar boondoggle.


    The `80s under Raygun and Bush the Elder were like one long--exceedingly long--Team B exercise composed of four parts hysteria, three parts gross exaggeration and more than few parts outright lies and thievery.

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  97. montag27:54 PM

    Oh, I think Crunchy is bemoaning the fact that the Times best seller list isn't flooded with them. Having such tomes relegated to Christian bookstores, in his mind, defeats their purpose of uplifting the sad and sagging moral fiber of the nation. What good are they if they're only read by the already saved?



    One sometimes gets the feeling that Rod persists in the belief that The Handmaid's Tale should have been non-fiction.

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  98. Well, I read the whole thing about 25 years ago (though I obviously don't remember it very well) and reread the first book around the time the movie came out. I... did not like it very much. That said, I'm a big Lovecraft fan, so in the interest of comity and fellow-feeling, I will be happy to hear any jokes along the lines of The Racist New Englander Who Read a Book and Went Insane you'd care to make.

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  99. montag28:03 PM

    I'm a bit scared to contemplate that mash-up, but the addition of Tom Paine's writings to the mix certainly illustrates a point--these guys, like so many neoconservatives, co-opted Paine's name on the basis of a couple of quotes about freedom and liberty, and then ignored about 95% of what Paine actually wrote. Their inclination to tendentious revisionism is remarkable, if only for its consistency.

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  100. "Think McSweeney’s meets 1950s pulp magazines meets Thomas Paine."
    1950s pulp magazines? Then more stories from authors who were inspired by the voices heard when operating an arc welder - please!
    A WARNING TO FUTURE MAN!

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  101. Leeds man8:20 PM

    Sorry mate, I'm all out of jokes, but all for comity and fellow-feeling, in spite of my obvious prickliness.

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  102. XeckyGilchrist8:20 PM

    Entirely possible. On looking closer, that $600 take includes a contributor who gave $500 or more, and I'll bet that was the handful of coins set out with the hat.

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  103. Spaghetti Lee8:57 PM

    Well, the official word from Tolkien is that there was no intended political message, at least not one that had anything to with contemporary politics. Of course, people are going to read into things whether they're supposed to or not, but my personal opinion is that any message about modern politics gleaned from a book about destroying a golden ring that has an evil demigod's soul bound to it is unlikely to be a very useful message.

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  104. Tehanu9:54 PM

    Charlie Pierce called it just yesterday: "There is the summation of modern conservative thought — [they] won't even pay for the implementation of [their] own terrible ideas."

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  105. As I recall, in the Devils one of the characters compares the nihilistic would-be revolutionary leader to a Jesuit. The comparison is not supposed to be flattering.

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  106. BigHank5311:40 PM

    I like to imagine wandering through the bookstore at Miskatonic, and finding the discounted rack, where unsuccessful self-help books go to die:


    I'm OK, You're OK, But Mom's a Shoggoth
    Old Ones, Ichor, and You: A Special Talk With Your Child
    The Lonely Planet Guide to Innsmouth and Environs, Vol. 14

    ReplyDelete
  107. The Dark Avenger12:10 AM

    I want to gay-marry this comment on the steps of the Capitol in Washington, DC, with the ceremony performed by Dan Choi.

    ReplyDelete
  108. The Dark Avenger12:24 AM

    I want to take this comment to Mars where it can fall in love with the Martian queen and lead a revolution of the proletarian masses.

    ReplyDelete
  109. Mrs Tilton3:55 AM

    I would like to beat this comment with the Red Wedge.

    ReplyDelete
  110. Sgaile-beairt2:34 PM

    ....trail of the loathesome swine???!!!


    aaiiiiieeeee...........

    ReplyDelete
  111. Sgaile-beairt2:36 PM

    ....also....someone shld send this, to james Nicolls....'is sf getting more conservative' by pjmedia.....

    ReplyDelete
  112. danno2:16 PM

    those are all good but my favorite line was,

    I squatted, and I saw the whole new-fangled blade system underneath the plow. It was jumping and shaking in a queer way.


    i can just imagine VB taking great pride in reclaiming the word "queer" for the conservative masses.

    ReplyDelete
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