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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
If you want to understand the Palin pick, read The "Terror Dream" by Susan Faludi.
http://www.susanfaludi.com/terror-dream.html
Why did our media react as if the hijackers had targeted not a commercial and military edifice but the family home and nursery? Why did an attack fueled by hatred of Western emancipation lead to a regressive fixation on Doris Day womanhood and John Wayne masculinity, with trembling-lipped "security moms," swaggering presidential gunslingers, and the "rescue" of a female soldier compulsively recast as a "helpless little girl"?
The answer, Faludi finds, lies in a historical anomaly unique to the American experience: the nation that in recent memory has been least vulnerable to domestic attack is also a nation haunted by a centuries-long trauma of assault on its home soil. For nearly two hundred years, our central drama was not the invincibility of our frontiersmen but their inability to repel invasions of non-Christian, nonwhite "barbarians" from the homestead door. To conceal the insecurity bred by those attacks, American culture would generate an ironclad countermyth of cowboy swagger and feminine frailty, which has been reanimated whenever the nation feels threatened. On September 11, Americans were once again returned to an experience of homeland terror and humiliation. And, once again, they fled from self-knowledge and retreated into myth.
What do you think of that?
I mean, a $500 million subsidy for a pipeline for Transcanada - a pipeline that will connect the North Slope Alaska gas fields to the Alberta tar sands project? The most polluting fossil fuel project on the face of the planet?
I guess that's not news.
Could it be "not news" because so many U.S. billionaires (Warren Buffet and Bill Gates among them) are slobbering over the profits to be made from shipping Alberta syncrude to the U.S.?
Why do you think ABC didn't cover that particular story?
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/8/21/105714/538
Substance free
Sarah Palin lied many times in her speech last night. The repubs do not really have much choice. -- Mike Sulzer
Excuse me, what lies are those? Too lazy to list them out?
To quote someone a bit more famous: "Every word including 'and' and 'the'..."
So tell me, Sh**ter: Why are you supporting some eedjit who thinks we ought to teach the tykes "creationism", and whose knowledge of basic civics consist of this:
11. Are you offended by the phrase “Under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance? Why or why not?Palin: "Not on your life. If it was good enough for the founding fathers, its good enough for me and I’ll fight in defense of our Pledge of Allegiance."
(for link to cite, click sig)
We've had enough of stoopid and incompetent ideologues running the gummint these last seven years (and it's wrecked the country). Time for a change: put some professionals back in charge.
Cheers,
Sarah Palin is a kind of Shiva the Destroyer, but one with a minivan, hailing from the West (frontier, rugged individualism), and an evangelical.
Her quip about the difference between a hockey mom and a pitbull (the lipstick) as well as Romney's and Guiliani's speeches mean that this will be a long, bloody battle. A bruising battle.The Democrats don't need body armor. They need a counter-offensive.
Like the ultra-feminine conservative commentator who demonized John Edwards as a 'fag' (remember that, in 2004?), Palin has sharp teeth and will attack, viciously, because she can. It's a re-working of identity politics: one symbol (woman) going after another (an African American).
There's a quality of her attacks -- like the culture wars of 2000 and then the drum beat of terrorism in 2004 -- that you are correct about her appeal. She taps into a deep nerve of the collective unconscious, of fear and threat and panic.
I'm curious about the Obama O'Reilly thing tonight too. You would think that Obama would wipe up the floor with him, but O'Reilly tends to bend so low below the stupid curve, that he comes out the other side looking much better than he should.
This?
11. Are you offended by the phrase “Under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance? Why or why not?Palin: "Not on your life. If it was good enough for the founding fathers, its good enough for me and I’ll fight in defense of our Pledge of Allegiance."
The stuff of which dreams are made.
Seriously, though, that is unbelievable on so many levels. On the other hand, I'm not sure your average American would catch on.
I think it is time to point out that the guy is basically a plagiarist. Well perhaps not a plagiarist exactly but he likes to take a statement of truth concerning him - one that has stung him badly - and then try and use it on his foes. Again, classic Rovian style tactics. It's pathetic really. I think he figures since it was true about him he can make others believe something similar is true of others. It wasn't two or three days ago that I said the following to him. Notice anything similar to his response to you?
Me the other day...
Do not interfere with, or obstruct the police -- you can be arrested for it.You get the idea...
A little further down there must be an exception for protestors, anarchists and communists and typical asshats
-- L.W.M
And who decides what "interference" and/or "obstruction" are? You see the problem numb-nuts?
I am really glad you are showing your true colors here these past few days LWM. I truly am. It is such a relief to know that your credibility is completely shot with all the true liberals and libertarians that might read these pages. It is a small victory but a victory none-the-less. -- adnoto
LWM today....
ChrisWhat I like about you - what I can count on you and people like you to do eventually - is let the mask drop. It allows people to see you for what you truly are, what I have said you are all along. A fascist. -- Ron Pauliac
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
