The latest of these, by Hunter Baker at The Federalist, offers more of the same -- the title, "The Devil And Ayn Rand: Extending Christian Charity To John Galt’s Creator," tells you most of what you need to know. But it also has one of my all-time favorite Randsplaining paragraphs, and it's at least as good out of context:
At this point it makes sense to return to the famous scene from “Dirty Dancing” in which Rand’s accusers put words in her mouth and leave no room for response. “Some people count and some don’t.” The implication, given the class dynamics in the film, is that the rich have worth and the poor do not. But Rand would have been outraged at the thought. In her economy, a shiftless man of wealth would rank well below a blue-collar welder who performs his craft with excellence (and probably also a talented dancer at a resort).I would love to hear Baker's Randian exegesis on the walk-off challenge from Zoolander and how it shows the refinement of craft in the spirit of competition.
In her economy, a shiftless man of wealth would rank well below a blue-collar welder who performs his craft with excellence
ReplyDeleteI suppose I shouldn't look for logic where none was intended, but he says "her economy" and not, for example, "her moral world". How does a man of wealth, however shiftless, get ranked below a blue-collar welder in an economy? Self-abnegation? Redistribution? Suicide?
Rand should be spinning in her grave, but, given present circumstances, I'm sure she's resting peacefully.
I've heard this defense before. Goes a little something like this:
ReplyDeleteRand did not depict all rich men as noble! The people at the top of the government were rich, and they were villains! And many of the heroes became poor over the course of the story!
Fair enough, how about a more nuanced reading? To Rand, rich men were either "heroic private innovators" or "parasitic government thieves." And poor men were either "inferior layabouts" or "pre-wealthy."
That's better. Oh, wait, no - it's still awful.
Umm . . . wouldn't a blue-collar welder be a, uh, union member? And in Rand's world, doesn't that make the welder a moocher, a taker by definition? One of the very people that Galt's Gulch was intended to punish for being a little brain?
ReplyDeleteAnd are shiftless gazillionaires the very essence of the "makers," the people who can afford to actually go Galt?
But, I guess for Randalos like Hunter Baker, it's "Logic: How that fuck does that work?"
At any rate this argument is only to say as much as "Rand wasn't as bad as all that*" but this would still say nothing about her followers who always and forever are exactly that bad and worse. The point of Rand's books was to create a world in which there were plenty of villains (both rich and poor) but only a few heroes--those who stepped on enough people to get what they want which was the right to step on more people. As for her followers they may have misunderstood her to be saying that wealth=righteousness but so what. After a while you have nothing but the exegetes of the epigones to go by.
ReplyDelete*And she was as bad as all that. But arguendo, as they say.
a "shiftless" man only becomes wealthy if he uses the Big Bad Ebil Gubmit to steal from productive people.
ReplyDeleteDick Cheney? Abramoff? Norquist? The head, it swims!
John Galt: Now I've had the time of my life
ReplyDeleteNo I never felt like this before
Yes I swear it's the truth
and I owe it all to you letting me rape you
Daphne Taggart: 'Cause I've had the time of my life
and I owe it all to you raping me
John Galt: I've been waiting for so long
Now I've finally found someone
To let me rape them
Daphne Taggart: We saw the writing on the wall
As we felt this magical fantasy of rape
Both: Now with passion in our eyes
There's no way we could disguise it secretly
So we take each other's hand
'Cause we seem to understand the urgency of rape
John Galt: Just remember!
Daphen Taggart: You're the one thing
John Galt: I can't get enough of raping
Daphne Taggart: So I'll tell you something
Both:This could be love because of rape
(CHORUS)
Both: I've had the time of my life
No I never felt this way before
Yes I swear it's the truth
And I owe it all to you
'Cause I've had the time of my life
And I've searched through every open door
'Til I found the truth
And I owe it all to you
Great.
ReplyDeleteNow I will be giggling in my head about "eugoogoolizer" and "freak gasoline fight accident" for the rest of the day.
How's the symphony going?
I would like this comment to lift me over its head during an elaborate dance number.
ReplyDeleteYou know if I maximize my fairness to 10,000% this is sorta true. She would say that. However if you look at the one viewpoint character in Atlas Shrugs that actually is this he doesn't end well. And given that Rand was not the sort of writer that ever allows ambiguous outcomes based on the morality of a character (good happens to good people bad to bad people by her horrible definition of the good and bad) it illuminates what she does think of the skilled hard working but not brilliant.
ReplyDeleteTo help point out just how much we should pay attention to the Randians:
ReplyDeleteAtlas Shrugged Part III:
(Why the fuck should I care) Who Is John Galt?
Domestic Total as of Oct. 2, 2014: $846,704
The do celebrate blue collar folks when said BCFs enthusiastically mouth the scripts they've been taught; c.f. Joe The Not-Plumber.
ReplyDeleteThe Oogieloves in The Great Going Galt Adventure
ReplyDeleteThere's a scene with Ayn Rand in Dirty Dancing? I always avoided that movie.
ReplyDeleteAre they really happy with any of their heroes? They've done Jesus over into a slick, besuited televangelist and now Rand is being rebranded as the Friend of the Worker.
ReplyDeleteAnd this person seems to be majorly confused about the plot for Dirty Dancing. Maybe that's how they're going to cover for the massive failure of the Atlas Shrugged trilogy: Claim popular movies were in fact Randian Rants.
At this point it makes sense to return to the famous scene from “Dirty Dancing”
ReplyDeleteNow there's a all-purpose phrase for everyday use!
"So you see, gentlemen, if you press... here, you actually get more power out of the system than you put in. At this point it makes sense to return to the famous scene from “Dirty Dancing”..."
Hunter Baker, Candlestick Maker.
ReplyDeleteGreetings from us
ReplyDelete??????? Behind visit our blog ???????
alat bantu sex
obat perangsang
In amusing coincidences: today at work I saw a bunch of union architectural/ornamental ironworkers unloading a truck belonging to a company called "Rearden Metalworks". Really? thought I to myself.
ReplyDeletehttp://aynrandhatedjesus.blogspot.com/
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsspXHADa4c
Dr. Foster:
ReplyDeleteEvery dead body that is not exterminated becomes one of them. It gets up and kills! The people it kills get up and kill!
Phone 899-RAPE
ReplyDelete"Nobody puts baby in the corner" -Ayn Rand
ReplyDelete"It's better to work hard than to be lazy"-Ayn Rand
So, Dirty Dancing aside, if we take Ayn Rand the way Baker wants us to, what exactly did she say besides "Hard work should be rewarded"?
Because that's a tenet of, you know, every world-view ever.
Comedy gold!
ReplyDeleteThat's what happens when you treat economics as if it's a mix between a morality play and cargo cult.
ReplyDeleteSpeak for your own world view there.
ReplyDeleteI see he is referring to a scene in DD, which does feature a rich asshole brandishing The Fountainhead. I'll take his word for it and I won't even bother noting yet another stunning display of entertainment with-it-ness by the conservatives, I mean, how old is this movie?
ReplyDeleteBut I must note that Mr. Hunters And Bill Collectors really is as moronic as the quote makes him seem. I'm not sure how Roy got past this:
Now, if that’s what Rand says, then line her up with Adolf Hitler for
history’s all-star firing squad.
I must admit that the first thought I had was "What the fuck is an all-star firing squad?"
Ayn Rand doing the lambada.
ReplyDeleteIt's in the extended directors cut version.
(Paul Ryan will forsake Rand until November 5th, of course)
ReplyDeleteShiftless man of wealth = Snoop.
ReplyDeleteewwww
ReplyDeleteewwww
ewwww
Hell, he'll deny her three times before the cock crows.
ReplyDeleteWho Is John Galt?
ReplyDeleteI'm guessing "Master Thrall of Triskelion".
Paul Ryan never knew who sent him thirty dimes, wrapped in a page torn from Galt's speech, nor why. But he found the speech useful for formulating policy, and the thirty dimes he spent for a styrofoam cup of coffee.
ReplyDeleteWhat the fuck is an all-star firing squad?
ReplyDeleteHelmuth Wirnsburger, Vassili Zatsiev, Lyudmila Pavilchenko, Jack Hinson, and Ben Powell.
It ain't called The Forbidden Dance for nothing.
ReplyDeleteSo, I dragged my sorry ass over there to look at Hunter Baker's maunderings, and I encounter this gem of a sentence:
ReplyDeleteChambers wasn’t impressed with her prose style, either.
Which brings up the question of who th' fuck is impressed with her prose style. It sure isn't you, Hunter, because you concede Whittaker Chambers' point two goddamned sentences later. That's what's called an own goal, Hunter, and as a general rule it's a good idea to leave those out of your essays, which might be a tip-off as to why those checks from The Federalist haven't appeared in your mailbox yet.
Ayn Rand was a terrible prose stylist. What's the most commonly quoted line of hers? "A=A"? Well, that's a fucking gem for the ages.
Proceeding onward (gack) we come to this gobstopper:
The critical tension between Rand and Christian theology is on human worth.
No, dimbulb, the critical tension between Rand and Christian theology is that she thought every word of it was a lie, its followers fools, and the ministry composed of charlatans and thieves.The critical tension you're feeling is the last shreds of your conscience resisting your attempt to reconcile Rand's disgusting philosophy with the tenets of Christianity. That's a hopeless task, Hunter, but you might want to try reading up on Calvinism: I've a feeling he's right up your alley.
"What the fuck is an all-star firing squad?"
ReplyDeleteEasily one of the worst comic books published in the the 1940s.
I would love to hear Baker's Randian exegesis on the walk-off challenge from Zoolander and how it shows the refinement of craft in the spirit of competition.
ReplyDeleteBlue Steel is actually Rearden metal.
It's more of an 'upvote' situation than a 'like', HM. That last paragraph was news to me. Dear god...
ReplyDeleteBut Rand would have been outraged at the thought.
ReplyDeleteArtist's impression of Baker using his life-size Ayn Rand sex doll to ventriloquise her opinions from beyond the grave:
http://uploads5.wikiart.org/images/oskar-kokoschka/not_detected_235836.jpg
a blue-collar welder who performs his craft with excellence
ReplyDeleteI remain blissfully unfamiliar with Ayn Rand's oeuvre, so for all I know, she may well have found a role in her books for blue-collar workers who embrace their vocation, and written about them positively. It is just a pity that Baker did not see fit to cite an example.
I regret I have only one upvote, etc.
ReplyDeleteWith herself. BECAUSE NO ONE ELSE IS GOOD ENOUGH.
ReplyDeleteI want to cross class lines with this comment.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I had to wonder at the attempt to reconcile Rand with Christianity. It seemed a fool's errand, especially since we have actual audio-video recordings of Rand her very own self saying that Christianity is a fraud and can never be reconciled with her philosophy.
ReplyDeleteBut reading comprehension has never been strong with those who push Atlas Shrugged on everyone else.
I seem to recall reading that Alan Greenspan was one of those chosen to do the horizontal bop with her.
ReplyDeleteI want to use this comment as part of my sermon before the local Chamber of Commerce this Sunday.
ReplyDelete"Rand? I said SAND! George Sand! Can't you hear??"
ReplyDeleteBut he came by his fame in a way that perhaps should have given pause to
ReplyDeleteAyn Rand before she decided that he was a "real man" worthy of
enshrinement in her pantheon of fictional heroes.With all due respect to Mr. Prescott, I don't see why it would have given her pause.
I would like to shower this comment with quatloos.
ReplyDeleteHell, he'll deny her three times before the cock crows.That would require Ryan to stop crowing first.
ReplyDeleteWell, the jury in The Fountainhead contains "a truck driver, a bricklayer, an electrician, a gardener and three factory workers," who sympathize with an architect who commited an act of terrorism because he believed he was the true owner of a building that someone else was paying for. Because they and the two executives on the jury create things with the work of their hands, too. Or something.
ReplyDeleteExtending Christian Charity To John Galt’s CreatorBy ... referring to Dirty Dancing? In Baker's defense, he only watched it for the Rand smears.
ReplyDeleteI would never put this comment in a corner.
ReplyDelete..
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure how far I'd want to take that image, although the vision of Rand sweating blood in Gethsemane is not terribly displeasing, nor that of her being crucified on a cross made of giant cigarettes.
ReplyDeleteBrett SCREAMS, breaking into a SHAKING/TREMBLING SPASM in
ReplyDeletethe chair.
JULES
Does-he-look-like-a-bitch?!
BRETT
(in agony)
No.
JULES
Then why did you try to fuck 'im
like a bitch?!
BRETT
(in spasm)
I didn't.
Now in a lower voice.
JULES
Yes ya did Brett. Ya tried ta fuck
'im. You ever watch Dirty Dancing, Brett?
BRETT
(in spasm)
Yes.
JULES
There's a scene I got memorized,
seems appropriate for this situation:
Yeah, but the 'rising from the dead' part is pretty scary.
ReplyDeleteThank God you included the imdb cite. I thought you mean this guy and my head literally exploded:
ReplyDeletehttp://tinyurl.com/mev4bfp
Oh, don't you worry your PLH about mere contradictions. Bear in mind that the essential plot point of Atlas Shrugged is a collective action (by the rich), and that the original title of the book was The Strike.
ReplyDeleteThe latest of these, by Hunter Baker at The Federalist, offers more of the same -- the title, "The Devil And Ayn Rand: Extending Christian Charity To John Galt’s Creator," tells you most of what you need to know.
ReplyDeleteAyn Rand never needed Christian charity because she took government benefits before she croaked.
YES!
ReplyDeleteI was so afraid I was being too obscure in using one of my favorite literary quotes. Shouldn't have underestimated you guys.
the essential plot point of Atlas Shrugged is a collective action
ReplyDeleteI regret to say I never noticed that before. *SNERK*!
I'm having a hard time parsing your reply. Do you mean that you don't see why it should give anyone, including Ayn Rand pause, or do you mean that you don't see why it would give Ayn Rand, in particular, pause?
ReplyDeleteI'm sure you're all familiar with the company's jingle as well:
ReplyDelete"Rearden Metal, for business or home!
We deliver, just pick up your phone
You're not a moocher or dirty old ape
So dial one-eight hundred 899-RAPE!"
I didn't realize it came out- mango from comments T WaPo's (gag) Volokh (barf) review:
ReplyDeletePersonally, I think these were a "HIT JOB" on Ayn Rand's work in order for Hollywood to discredit one of the most popular books of all time.
Good to see the paranoid style is alive and well.
her rules for hollywood screenwriters make her intentions plain.
ReplyDeleteUh, the latter. I mean, look at her own fictional heroes.
ReplyDeleteBut Rand would have been outraged at the thought. In her economy, a shiftless man of wealth would rank well below a blue-collar welder who performs his craft with excellence (and probably also a talented dancer at a resort).
ReplyDeleteRand, as I understand it, adopted the Calvinist outlook on wealth. If someone possesses wealth, that's proof that he deserves wealth. Although some rich men may act as class traitors, of sorts, generally speaking, a man of wealth can't be "shiftless"; it's a contradiction in terms. By contrast, a blue-collar welder, no matter how skilled and consciencious, is a "moocher", because had he truly possessed talent and worked hard, he wouldn't be a blue-collar worker; he'd be a millionaire CEO industrialist.
Seriously, a normal individual would have running screaming away from this guy once his crimes were revealed, and yet Rand continued to celebrate him as the perfect "real man".
ReplyDeleteI guess her fans are lucky that she limited her celebration of a "real man" to "just" rape. After all, a 200 page monologue about the glorious freedom to chop up little girls would probably be too much for most of her fans.
As long as the cigarettes are all burning, I'm in.
ReplyDeleteNobody names their kids "Dagny" anymore...
ReplyDeleteThe market has spoken, and provided example 14.73 to the infinity that Rand's fantasy economic system has zero in common with any actual functioning economic system.
ReplyDeleteGiven its production values, it *made* money!
ReplyDeleteYup. Medicare moocher extraordinaire, stealing from her productive betters.
ReplyDeleteReally - when has it ever NOT been on the Right?
ReplyDeleteThat which is dead can never die!
ReplyDeleteIn her economy, a shiftless man of wealth would rank well below a blue-collar welder who performs his craft with excellence
ReplyDeleteWait --- in her economy, how could somebody who is shiftless also be wealthy? And who is doing the ranking? If that's a real job, I would like to have it.
Too funny--Grandpa is quoted at the link as saying that America, during the "Summer of Flying Saucers" reminded him of an underemployed upper class woman so bored that she prefers to be frightened out of her wits than to confront her useless existence. (Paraphrasing.) Minus the sexism which, alas, was one of grandpa's flaws, I see the same thing happening today over and over again. The less we have to worry about as a country the more the right wing casts about for a new bogeyman to frighten their voters into line.
ReplyDeleteBut it would have been a much more interesting book. More American Psycho meets John Wayne Gacy and Jeffrey Dahmer at the Wall Street Journal lunchroom.
ReplyDeletePlus her poor, dweeby, married assistant.
ReplyDelete--who was 25 years younger, and was slapped by her and banished from the Collective when he ended their affair (for a younger woman). BTW, the movie The Passion of Ayn Rand is pretty good--but then, it stars Helen Mirren, so go be surprised. I know the writer of it. When I asked him what he thought of Atlas Shrugged, he said he never read it--just Galt's 60-page speech. Smart guy.
ReplyDeleteThe three "Shrugged" films "are set in a near future that runs according to the rules of the distant past."
ReplyDeleteLibertarianism in a mini tweet.
Libertarianism: The philosophy that explains why I deserve more and you don't
ReplyDeleteNeatly explains the far right's strong following among the not-much-going-on-lately-and-nothing-happening-soon crowd.
ReplyDeleteI've added one in your name.
ReplyDeleteRobbie's a kangaroo if he can haul toasted bagels with Fountainhead in his pocket.
ReplyDeleteFor passing readers, I should note that by "do Ayn Rand," Mark_B4Zeds means "impersonate." Explaining your computer's cache to visiting feds will not be as complicated as you might have thought.
ReplyDeleteThere's an episode of the old Dragnet radio show that was based on the Hickman case (confession, I'm a huge fan of old time radio). They clean up the details a bit, obviously, but it's clearly him. I'd always taken that "only the names have been changed" stuff with a grain of salt, just like with Law and Order's "ripped from the headlines shtick, so it gave me quite a turn listening to it and realizing, "Wait, is this ... ?"
ReplyDeleteI honestly can't say if Ayn Rand would have respected a famous-for-being-famous political attention whore like Joe the P, I can say for damn sure that she wouldn't have hired him to fix her sink.
ReplyDeleteThe shit, it floats!
ReplyDelete"But Rand would have been outraged at the thought."
ReplyDelete"Not many people know it, but the Fuhrer was a terrific dancer."
Wouldn't the shiftless rich man still rank above the technically proficient welder in Rand's world? The mooching welder works for some job creator and expects to be paid in something other than company scrip. The shiftless rich man is only looking out for himself and that seems to be the god Rand worships.
ReplyDelete