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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
I wouldn't give what's her name the time of day, but the letters are always great.
I've been dumbstruck by the negative Media when commenting on President-Elect Obama. I would think that after eight years of a psychotic moron's trying to run this country and putting us $1.5 trillion in debt, millions unemployed,failed bailout, inflation, depression,ad infinitum, that we would not only hail our new President, but support him as well. The man is not even sitting in the Oval Office yet, but the Media choose to crucify him without giving him a chance to start pulling our country up out of the sewer where Bush led us.
Has the Media become so used to dealing with dishonesty, lies, stupidity, egomania, and Bush as God that they have forgotten how to behave responsibly?
Give Obama a chance, for crying out loud!
Social critics are people who entered college thinking they could change the world, only to graduate and discover that none of the employers visiting campus listed a bachelor's degree in philosophy or English as a job requirement, thus leaving them with one of the following options: Serenade gas station customers with Immanuel Kant and D.H. Lawrence quotes; or obtain an advanced degree to pontificate on matters far beyond their limited body of expertise.
Camille Paglia graces us with this pseudo-intellectual sciolism as she explains the origins of homosexuality using long-discredited Freudian theories. She writes, "[T]he intricate family dynamic of every single gay person I've ever known seems to have played some kind of role in his or her developing sexual orientation," but this is a presumption and judgment she is making on the basis of anecdotal evidence, not a scientific hypothesis.
She then claims, "When a gay adult claims to have been gay since early childhood, what he or she is actually remembering is the sense of being different for some reason, which in boys often registers as shyness or super-sensitivity, leading to a failure to bond with bumptious peers." This is a wrong and insulting generalization. When I claim to have been gay since early childhood, it's because I had a noticeable attraction to other boys and no interest in girls, though I didn't start feeling "different" until puberty, when classmates noticed my tendency to flirt with boys without even thinking about it and my effeminate behavior.
Her claim that the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from its list of psychological disorders due to political pressure is either ignorant or dishonest. Yes, political pressure played a part, but so did years of scientific research by people like Alfred Kinsey and Evelyn Hooker, the latter of whom used standard psychiatric tests to show that gay men were no more pathological than straight men, and whose results were independently repeated by other researchers. Not to mention that the very idea of homosexuality as a disorder originated in the 1800s, not from scientific research but from cultural stigmatization of homosexuality stemming ultimately from Christianity.
Perhaps Paglia would be better off sticking to literary criticism rather than offering ignorant and simplistic challenges to the consensus of credible experts.
Jesus christ... Four web pages devoted to what? Can no one news and opinion outlet be free from this kind of garbage? My subscription just expired and it is because of junk like this column that I am not re-upping.
No one was stupider than Couric? I am grateful that between Couric and Tina Fey, America was most probably saved from total and utter destruction. Thank god they were there to dispel any attempt by the right-wing to paint Palin as a qualified "woman-of-the-people."
We've had eight years of people making decisions from their "gut instinct" and look where it has brought us. Thank god Couric and Fey were there to help convince the "unwashed masses" (who otherwise would've believed the right-wing garbage) how unfit for office this woman really was.
People like her are dangerous for America. Let her keep guarding the Alaskan border from the Ruskies. That's a good job for her.
So RWOLFTX plays the "I'm a wingnut and I'm oppressed" game:
"Global warming...or now rephrased as climate change...is the new religion of the left. And if one even suggests there maybe things to debate regarding the subject...you are shouted down and impugned. So much for the tolerant, educated, wise, sophisticated and enlightened left."
Maybe if wingnuts didn't say stupid things like:
"Alaska Rising
'Palin's Revenge' = the current frigid front from the North. Palin to the lower 48...."freeze, baby, freeze!" By the way, how DOES that logic work when people claim the cold wave is a symptom of global warming??? Liberals have gotten unhinged from their own inborn intuition (i.e. common sense.)"
-- NewHavenette
No NewHavenette, this means that the sun has been eaten by the war god and you need to sacrifice another goat.
Or the "Hey Man, it's natural" argument:
"For informed skepticism about the Warmist faith, talk to any geologist. They tell us that the climate has been continually changing, and massively, for the entire four billion years of Earth's history. Comparatively little of this period has been affected by human industry of any sort."
-- agore
I, for one, don't care that it was warmer and colder in the days of the dinosaurs as the continents moved around and the chemistry of the earth and atmosphere changed over thousands and millions of years. There weren't any people then. I care that massive change is happening to my world over a few decades. This change has a cost. Human civilizations and food supplies are tuned to the water, soil, vegetation and weather patterns we have now. If the American West sees a 20% drop in rainfall as expected, we will pay the price. The dust bowl came from an 8% drop for 3 years, 20% is huge. Similarly flooding and drought mean privation, death and war for millions of people around the world. We can reduce those costs by acting rationally now.
I think your comments on the failure of liberal talk radio overlook one key factor.
Talk Radio is driven by an endless discussion of issues. There are about 50 issues that the right tend to (more or less) agree on -- guns, taxes, gay marriage, prayer in school, affirmative action, military, and down the line. So, a relatively large base can tune in at any time and hear something that jibes with their core beliefs.
The left is much more factionalized. Do the greens really care about inner-city issues? Do pro-union democrats want to hear about gun control and gay marriage? Do pro-abortion feminists all have the same take on NAFTA? How do Democrat farmers feel about "drill here, drill now?"
I contend that voters on the right tend to embrace the party line on 80% of the issues, while any given democrat probably doesn't care about 60% of their party's issues. And they won't tune in to a rant about which they do not care or disagree.
Simply compare the number of bills that Gingrich was able to pass with a slim majority in Congress to the impotence of Pelosi with a similar majority. The right is unified in their views; the left is all over the board. And that, in my view, is why Liberal Radio can't hold an audience.
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"
219 Democrats and one Republican join in favor of the legislation, which passed by a narrow margin
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Salon headlines in your mailbox
