The ignorance of ignorants
Over at the National Post, the go-to paper for analysis of all political things dealing with the Ferengi and also known as Canada’s shittiest newspaper, Peter Schweizer explains why Al Gore is a big fat poopy head:
During the 2000 election, George W. Bush was often given the moniker “stupid.” A Boston television reporter tripped him up with a “pop quiz,” asking him the names of foreign leaders. At the same time, his opponent, Vice President Al Gore, was presented as the consummate intellectual. He went out of his way to drop phrases like “Cartesian revolution” and used complex metaphors like “the clockwork universe” in his speeches.
While it’s true that 8 years is a long time, it’s still amazing to see conservatives remember so little. It’s true that Gore was often referred to as smart, but anyone (Bob Somerby to the courtesy phone) who paid any attention knows that even the hated liberal media treated this trait as a problem. Consider this piece by James Atlas published in the NYT in August 2000. It begins by faulting Gore for using a lot of big words:
O.K., so the man’s a pedant. […] Why, then, do Mr. Gore’s showy displays of erudition provoke in me a tremor of alarm?
Atlas followed up by complaining that Gore just isn’t using enough of his favorite concepts:
Why doesn’t Mr. Gore demonstrate familiarity with deconstruction, with the work of Jacques Derrida or the critical legal studies pioneered by Stanley Fish?
We’ll add more: why didn’t Mr. Vice-President Gore demonstrate familiarity with Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity or the development of potentiometric ion-selective electrodes?!? Gore strikes us as a pretty smart fellow, but except for dirty hippies and crazed, profanity-loving bloggers, few people thought this a good thing. There’s not much good to be said about “pop quiz” journalism, but it was Bush who made a very (painful) show of his ignorance of foreign policy matters during the 2000 campaign. Remember this?
MR. LEHRER New subject, new question. Vice President Gore, if President Milosevic of Yugoslavia refuses to accept the election results and leave office, what action, if any, should the United States take to get him out of there?
MR. GORE Well, Milosevic has lost the election. His opponent, Kostunica, has won the election. It’s overwhelming. Milosevic’s government refuses to release the vote count. There’s now a general strike going on. They’re demonstrating. I think we should support the people of Serbia, and the, Yugoslavia, as they call Serbia plus Montenegro, and put pressure in every way possible to recognize the lawful outcome of the election. […]
MR. LEHRER Governor Bush, one minute.
MR. BUSH Well, I’m pleased with the results of the election, as the vice president is. It’s time for the man to go. And it means that the United States must have a strong diplomatic hand with our friends in NATO. That’s why it’s important to make sure our alliances are as strong as they possibly can be to keep the pressure on Mr. Milosevic.
But this would be an interesting moment for the Russians to step up and lead as well. It would be a wonderful time for the president of Russia to step into the Balkans and convince Mr. Milosevic it’s in his best interest and his country’s best interest to leave office. The Russians have got a lot of sway in that part of the world and we’d like to see them use that sway to encourage democracy to take hold. […]
MR. GORE […] Now I understand what the governor has said about asking the Russians to be involved and under some circumstances that might be a good idea. But being as they have not yet been willing to recognize Kostunica as the lawful winner of the election, I’m not sure that it’s right for us to invite the president of Russia to mediate this dispute there because we might not like the result that comes out of that.
They currently favor going forward with a run-off election. I think that’s the wrong thing. I think the governor’s instinct is not necessarily bad because we have worked with the Russians in a constructive way in Kosovo, for example, to end the conflict there. But I think we need to be very careful in the present situation before we invite the Russians to play the lead role in mediating.
MR. BUSH Well, obviously we wouldn’t use the Russians if they didn’t agree with our answer, Mr. Vice President.
MR. GORE Well, they don’t. [Emphasis added.]
Got it? Bush advocated bringing in the Russians, who favored outcome X, to mediate a dispute in which he (as did Gore), favored outcome Y. And when Gore pointed this out (very politely, might we add), Bush dropped the “obviously, moron!” line on him. That was awesome. But wait — we got sidetracked. Let’s go back to what Schweizer wrote:
[Gore] went out of his way to drop phrases like “Cartesian revolution” and used complex metaphors like “the clockwork universe” in his speeches.
Does anyone really believe that Gore went out of his way to drop phrases like “Cartesian revolution” in his motherfucking speeches? He used the expression in a 1995 speech, and in an interview with The New Yorker. So unless Google is broken, Schweizer is a (poopy head) liar. Given that Gore used the “complex metaphor” clockwork universe in the same interview, we’ll guess that is another case of poopy headedness by Schweizer.
Schweizer doesn’t have much of substance to add (and there’s little about “uneducated liberals” except for an obligatory reference to Michael Moore) so there’s little sense in quoting more. As to why some people might think conservatives stupid, what else is there to say?
Yeah, but we can’t forget that knowing too much stuff is gay. And French. With George W. Bush Jr., we finally got a chance to show all them dang self-satisfied little douchebags that knowing stuff isn’t sh*t, that we all got tired of the so-called ‘experts’ and their fancy-pants ‘book learning’ and what not. And we showed ’em. We showed ’em but good.
For four years 2002 – 2006 the country was led by a political party what finally had the guts to be proud about not knowing the slightest sh*t about anything and to know that all they had to be was tough and to make fun of the liberals and f*****s and them f***ing French who wouldn’t go along with our blowing up Iraq.
When some damn homo liberal music b****es made some sort of comment or other in a foreign country about how they were ashamed of Bush, we got a bunch of people riled up and crushed up their albums and of course they was never heard from again.
It ain’t our fault that for some sort of reason or other Americans seem to have got just a little tired of politicians being real loud & proud about how stupid they is and how they don’t know nothing about nothing or how they don’t need to know none of what the good Book didn’t say.
Tomorrow’s post…today!
If I come back tomorrow and read my own post, will I cease to exist?
I like my Nobel Prize winners barefoot and pregnant. Why does they need to be talking all big and stuff?
Dubya is a good man, a Christian man. He’s like me – lives in a trailerpark, shops at Wal-Mart, watches NASCAR and drinks Bud.
Me, the President and the editors of the WSJ are all just regular folk. Why can’t the liberal media understand this?
Well, let’s not forget that there never was much of a defense of Bush’s intellect put forward in the first place. Whenever anyone pointed out that he had served less than 6 years in public office, and at that a public office which in reality was little more than a figurehead position, they were quick to point out that he would “surround himself with good advisors.” And we all know how well that worked out, don’t we?
Seriously, this “who would you rather have a beer with” shit is the most asinine thing ever. If any of the motards who thought that was the basis for making this type of decision had actually sat back and thought of their drinking pals, and which of them they thought would make a good president, that notion would have been widely mocked and ridiculed from the start. Instead, thanks to our crackerjack media, it became the most important criteria.
The ironic thing is that I can say with all confidence that if I was going to have to drink a beer with either of the candidates, it would be Barack Obama. That’s because I’ve met John McCain. He has the personality, warmth, and charisma of a dead fish.
Hey, I have written there in the past for this National Post, and I resemble these comments!!! Pip pip, cheerio, and etc. I’m an important analyst in all things national security, terrorism and freedom.
Oh, and are you hiring?
And… didn’t Mr. “Cartesian revolution” Gore receive more votes than Mr. Bush?
There was a poll recently which asked, “Who would you rather host a BBQ?”, and Obama easily beat McCain. It’s really funny when you consider that McCain was wooing reporters with a BBQ just a few months ago.
Blue Buddha: Well hayell, boy, everbuddy knows them nigras knows their bar-be-que! I mean day-um.
The fact is, Brett Favre, Brett Favre, Brett Favre, Brett Favre, Brett Favre, Brett Favre, Brett Favre, Brett Favre, Brett Favre, Brett Favre, Brett Favre, Brett Favre, Brett Favre, Brett Favre, Brett Favre, Brett Favre, Brett Favre, Brett Favre, Brett Favre, Brett Favre, Brett Favre, Brett Favre, Brett Favre, Brett Favre, Brett Favre, Brett Favre, Brett Favre, Brett Favre, Brett Favre, Brett Favre, Brett Favre, Brett Favre, Brett Favre, Brett Favre, Brett Favre, Brett Favre, Brett Favre, Brett Favre, Brett Favre, Brett Favre, Brett Favre, Brett Favre, Brett Favre, Brett Favre, Brett Favre, Brett Favre, Brett Favre, Brett Favre, Brett Favre, Brett Favre, Brett Favre, Brett Favre, Brett Favre.
It’s “Somerby“, jefe. Just one “S” at the beginning.
Quoting Atlas:
the critical legal studies pioneered by Stanley Fish ….
If Atlas had bothered to care wtf he was talking about, he might’ve known that Fish is incorrigibly opposed to CLS. “The fact that a legal question can always be shown to have a source in presupposed cultural values does not mean that it is the business of a legal inquiry to discover or revise those values” (There’s No Such Thing as Free Speeh, p. 173).
But since trying to know what you’re talking about makes you a snob and therefore disqualifies you from the polis, never mind.
I still can’t find any of these right-wing bastards who would want stupid people — but genuine ones, the kind you can have a beer with, except that they can’t because they’re alcoholics — running their businesses. But the country’s business?
In response to Mr. Atlas’s question near the beginning of the article, I think we know why Gore never went on about deconstruction. Okay, it’s not as intellligent as Joe Bourgeois’s rebuttal to the Stanley Fish comment, but I like it. It’s stuff like that that makes me regret being an English major.
Jennifer, so what you’re saying is that eight years ago, it was perfectly fine with the GOP that their guy had little experience in public office but now they’re saying that Obama just doesn’t have enough public office experience.
Well, sure. But it’s pretty obvious that if you keep running idiots, morons, ideologues and crazy old fuckers who yell at clouds, anytime the campaign argument of the moment turns to the relative intelligence of the opposing candidates, you really don’t have any choice.
You have to grit your teeth, swallow hard, lock that frozen republican smile on your face, you know, the one we’ve become so painfully familiar with in recent history, and ask the question “Well, is intelligence REALLY a trait we want in our political leadership?”
You know it’s the stupidest position in the world, but to take any other position would be by implication to support the opposing candidate. So you hope to reach the millions of Americans who harbor deep insecurities about their intelligence or feel that some smartypants college boy beat them out of a good job which is why they polish the museum floor at midnight and clean the bathrooms in that fancy hotel, it’s nothing to do with them, it’s just these goddam arrogant SMART people who are all commie and unamerican and shit…
mikey
Surprised but pleased they allowed my comment over there yesterday:
In this case, it was a meeting set up by the Russian diplomatic mission in Belgrade at which Milosevic was compelled to concede the election. But the credit for this probably does not rest with Bush.
“Well, la-dee-dah, aren’t we grand? Scones on the settee. I’m a courtesan and a cog in the Cartesian revolution of the clockwork universe.”
Thrillhouse: Plus, he’s skinny. As opposed to Al Gore, who is fat.
Why, then, do Mr. Gore’s showy displays of erudition provoke in me a tremor of alarm?
Because big words scare you, ya dumb sonofabitch.
“Well, la-dee-dah, aren’t we grand? Scones on the settee. I’m a courtesan and a cog in the Cartesian revolution of the clockwork universe. Silly git.”
“ya dumb sonofabitch.”
That’s from that Negativland song, isn’t it?
Shorter Atlas guy:
“Mr. Gore’s erudition provokes in me an opprobrium; a galvanic response to his ostentatious sesquipedalianism.”
Why are all the people named ‘Atlas’ so very stupid?
MzNicky’s comment about who knows a thing or two about BBQ reminded me I hadn’t visited the amazing Southern Foodways Alliance in a while, a great project focusing on the best, as opposed to the worst, of Southern culture — black, white, and other — and they have yet another absolutely amazing audio documentary of oral history, this time it’s “Nola Eats”, about the history of New Orleans and food.
Amazing, not just because of its articles, but the music, archival and recent.
A bit of discussion takes place between an amazing selection of music — and it’s not clips, it’s the entire song, uninterrupted, no commercials. Right now it’s “You Don’t Miss Your Water (‘Til Your Well Runs Dry)”. It wasn’t just the narrator who felt like weeping on hearing that song (about 29’26” in). (Apparently it’s sponsored by Tabasco so if that bothers you, so be it.)
To go to the page, click here, and look up top right. To stream (or download, if you can) the Windows Media Audio directly, click here.
Their stupidity is such a burden to them and to others, that comparisons to the titan doomed to bear the world on his shoulders are necessary.
MzNicky: that was pretty much going to be my next post.
McCain was wooing reporters with a BBQ
More accurately, Crash McCain turned the knobs on his gas grill and dried out a few hamburgers. That ain’t barbecue.
Barbecue is meat, preferably pork, slow cooked in the heat of a wood fire. If the temperature’s too low and the meat’s cooked in the smoke, well, that’s smoking; and if the heat’s too high and the meat’s cooked quickly, and close to the source, that’s grilling.
Crash McCain’s rig could be useful for cremating small, dead pets. Or if he wanted to stick his head inside without lighting the jets, well, I don’t know many people who’d object.
But Crash McCain is a barbecuer in the same way that FratBoy Bush is a cowboy, which is to say they’re both frauds.
The fact is, y’all are re-writing history by failing to mention that instead of being a control-freak know-it-all like Gore, Bush had the bestest team of advisors!!!11!! Deconstruct that, bitches!
“More accurately, Crash McCain turned the knobs on his gas grill and dried out a few hamburgers. That ain’t barbecue.”
You elitist liberals and your insistence on erudite definitions for quotidian activities. For most of Teh Heartland, grilling=bbq=grilling.
Apparently the WordPress gods or the intergalactic Barack Hussein Obama X El-Alamein conspiracy didn’t like my last comment.
Inspired by MzNicky’s comment about who it is what really knows BBQ…
…The Southern Foodways Alliance (an educational foundation which really does great work, focusing on Oral History projects and obviously on the food part of Southern culture, yes, all of it, not just the Republican freak “Southern” part of Southern culture) has another great audio project.
It’s called “Nola Eats” and has to do with the role of food in New Orleans, primarily recent and post-Katrina history, but occasional further reaches, combined with an amazingly well chosen song selection set of full-length, un-interrupted, high bit-rate stereo music, both archival and contemporary. (My favorite is 29 minutes in for “You Don’t Miss Your Water (Til the Well Runs Dry)”.)
Look at the top right of the page for the streaming audio link.
Test
http://www.southernfoodways.com/index.shtml
Testes, testes. One, two.
Okay, WordPress doesn’t like my links. Try this:
http://tinyurl.com/Nola-Eats-Musical-Oral-History
Look at the top right for an awesome combo oral history on New Orleans’ reconstruction and food, with a great selection of songs (both archival and contemporary) in great audio quality (64kbps streaming Windows Media Audio stereo). Sponsored by the U. of Mississippi, the Center for the Study of Southern Culture, and Tabasco.
Curse WordPress.
Since I can’t link anything, those who might be so inspired may Google “Southern Foodways Alliance” and look in the top right corner for a fantastic audio documentary / music show called “Nola Eats”, about the role of food in rebuilding New Orleans. High quality stereo streaming Windows Media, songs are both archival and contemporary, and interspersed with interviews. Songs are really great, played in their entirety, and uninterrupted.
Dropping a urinal in a museum and having it promoted to an art display? Fucking funny.
Building an 80 foot version out at burning man with its own urinal cake fountain? Priceless.
Being in charge of the worlds largest nuclear weaponry and not being able to pronounce the word nuclear? Please dear god let this be the onion.
Singing about food, especially food you won’t get to eat, has always been one of the favorite pastimes of the 72nd Flying Fusiliers.
Oh, gimme that old blood pudding and haggis,
well, no, not really, I was just sayin’,
lemme hear an audio file ’bout new awlins,
where they put olives on fried oysters,
seriously, who does that?
This whole fucking thing is depressing me this weekend.
Okay, I guess next time I’ll just wait a couple hours.
Oh, I’m not depressed about your link El Cid. As a matter of fact…I’m off there right now. Traveling in that part of the country in a couple weeks – your timing is great!
But I’m fucking depressed about the campaign news this weekend.
El Cid: Not to blogwhore or anything, but my new post at my new blog home was inspired by a recent barbecue-hunting outing with some non-Southland buds.
Barbecue is meat, preferably pork, slow cooked in the heat of a wood fire. If the temperature’s too low and the meat’s cooked in the smoke, well, that’s smoking; and if the heat’s too high and the meat’s cooked quickly, and close to the source, that’s grilling.
Rightwingsnarkle: You are a man (I assume?) after Teh Spouse’s own heart. A Memphis boy and thus a bbq snob/aficiando, he maintains that only pulled smoked pork butt is worthy of the title “barbecue.”
As a vegetarian, I find the mere description appalling and repulsive. We eat out a lot.
I’m also depressed because the Geriatric Rottweiler’s time is nigh. Same rotten choice I had a year ago with the Geriatric Malamute. Only this time I can’t in good conscience be in denial, and have it end up being someone else’s problem.
Waiting for final assessment of his condition.
Just to make sure the far left on the far left coast with the far left out/left behind crew isn’t far left out, lemme just say I’m making a pan broiled duck breast with herbs, with fresh sweet summer corn, the rusticest goddam bisquits I can figure out how to make, and a melon and vanilla yoghurt salad as cold as I can get it.
That’s just dinner. I’ve got peaches, coconut milk and nuts for desert….
So I’m thinking maybe you eastern lefties need to work a little harder at it…
mikey
g: When it’s time, it’s time. Don’t beat yourself up, just do it.
I’m still feeling guilty that I may have let my 15-year-old mutt-terrier Willy-Boy hang around too long. One of my best friends, who’s associate dean at the university vet school here, clued me in as to how well canines can mask their suffering. It hurt bad, but when I finally agreed to put him down (a couple of months ago) it was almost like he was relieved I’d finally done it. When there’s no good outcome to be had, just do it.
Love and hugs to you. Do what you gotta do.
And I’m listening to Babes in Toyland and the first Veruca Salt. Angry, raw, riotgrrrllll rock n roll. It makes me feel like, while our side may be out numbered and out represented, they can’t out angry us, and they’d be well advised not to try…
mikey
mmmmmm bbq.
I’ve been hearing a lot of good things about a Southern Foodways Alliance of late. If only there were some way for me to find them on the intertoobz…
No, I’m not dithering this time. His kidneys are shot, and he’s got nerve damage in his back end.
he’s got an appointment. They make house calls. I’ll be with him.
He’s getting lots of lovely tidbits and treats this weekend.
It’s just rotten that it’s the same situation as last year.
Just a shout out to the people who love their pets, as the time draws nearer.
g: My bud from the vet school did the in-home thing for me too. I couldn’t bear to take Willy to the vet hospital; he’d freak.
It’s the way to go. I’m thinking of you.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn is dead. In other news, Schiltz is back on the shelves in the Heartland.
All that and your Monday forecast at 10.
Much like homosexuals taking a smear like “fag” and wearing it as a badge of pride, the conservative community has taken the irrefutable fact that they are uneducated douchebags and turned it into something like an identity.
g, I understand and I feel for you.
I waited too long with our elderly kitty; we cancelled the vet’s visit once because we were grasping at straws. Once the day came for the vet to be there, it was obvious to me that it was time. I feel like the sweet old kitty gave me permission and our last few hours on the couch together were what they needed to be for both of us. Its been almost 2 years and I still miss her terribly, though now I can remember the fun times we had with a smile instead of a tear (usually, but not always).
We can give them the gift of a calm, painless passing, something we aren’t allowed to give ourselves; we owe them that for all the love they gave us.
Dear god in heaven. The following is not parody. It is, but, it isn’t. From MSNBC’s transcript of Sunday’s Meet the Press, pointed out by TBogg:
Lieberman really is just that into McCain.
And… didn’t Mr. “Cartesian revolution” Gore receive more votes than Mr. Bush?
NO DAH. In my experience, it’s not the actual “Joe Sixpak” working-class sons-of-the-soil who resent voting for people with more education and/or a higher IQ. Mock the smart folk, suure, because mockery is human. But people who actually have to earn their livings from knowing stuff, even when that stuff involves running a drill press, growing crops, or keeping the family business afloat, usually appreciate that governance requires its own skill set and hard labor, and are just as glad someone else is willing to take money for it. The angry, small, soul-corroding, fear-tainted “first thing we do, let’s kill all the smrt people” meanness comes from the Media Village Idiots, the political Middle Managment, all those neither-fish-nor-flesh “new class knowledge workers”. People, in other words, who had enough opportunities and natural talents that, if things had worked out differently, they might actually be rocket scientists or presidential candidates themselves.
There’s no shame in ending up as a mechanic or a teacher when you’re the first person in your family to be able to go to college, or even graduate from high school. But if you were born in a family where the question was *where* you’d go to college, not *if*, and you’ve always been given “every opportunity” at the “best” schools, and done extremely well on your SATs, and even your GREs… well, if you’re still nothing better than Rupert Murdoch’s b*tch, or the deputy assistant managing editor to RM’s B, then you’ve gotta wonder if maybe you personally do not have what it takes, or did not make a sufficient effort to use the advantages with which you were showered. That’s why a certain kind of journalist will always prefer an underachieving arsehole like Bush or McCain — a guy whose only qualifications are having been born to the right parents, and whose only labors have been not to actually die in a crash or a substance-abuse binge. Men like Gore or Kerry, who actually do the sort of things (serving in Vietnam, or the Peace Corps) that Richard Cohen or David Brooks just talks about wishing he’d done, just make them feel bad about their precious, precious selves. And people like Bill Clinton or Barack Obama, who’ve actually had to overcome genuine obstacles for their Ivy-League educations and hot-shot professional careers — those people are the Media Village Idiot’s worst masculinity-shrivelling nightmares.
he’s as smart, curious and intellectually alert as possible.
And very spry for his age.
OT, but this is too . . . too . . . too much Swankery not to mention:
Pastor Swank called Obama – I swear I am not making this up – a deceiver Boy. Yes, he really did.
On that note, it’s midnight here and still 84 humid degrees. It was around 98 today. Got the a/c cranked and just took a freezing cold shower. I’m going to go lie in bed and read with a glass of ice water and the fan about two inches away.
What Candy says is true. My opportunism machine working overtime was stroked and stroked again.
How say thus?
It warms my cold black heart to see sesquipedalianism used in blog comments; that said everyone else can hang it up since Anne Laurie’s comments ‘win the internets’.
Oh well, back to destroying all of reality for the greater glory of the Dalek Race.
Anne Laurie: Wow. Thanks for that analysis. Nail head totally hit.
Oh, Candy,thanks for bringing the Swank.
I did not serve in Vietnam, although I wanted to, because I’m Canadian. Wait – let me clarify: it’s not that I didn’t want to because I’m Canadian, it’s that I wasn’t allowed to because I’m Canadian – or rather, our stupid gay government didn’t want to stand up in the fight against the commies, because they were also commie fascists.
Oh, and my book is banned in Canada. Says so on the cover. Just saw a pile of them up here in the Great White Whatnot.
Btw, I sent you my resume last night, and haven’t heard back. Did you get it?
I suppose it would be pedantic of me to point out that Stanley Fish has (and had) nothing to do with the Critical Legal Studies Movement. Roberto Unger, Duncan Kennedy, Karl Klare, yes. Fish, no.
“Clockwork universe” is a complex metaphor? Maybe he meant it’s a metaphor for complexity…
Shorter Don Surber:
Harking back to the late great Douglas Adams, I don’t recall pundits and politicians on the B Ark, with the hairdressers and telephone sanitizers, but if he were writing it today, I think he would make room for them.
Is the vapidity of news/reporting the byproduct of television as a primary source of information, with the emphasis on brevity (rather than concision), facts be damned? When you hear a catchphrase like “more americans get their news from [some network or other]” maybe we should shed a tear for what once was and could have been a fair, equitable, and informed society.
Reducing complex issues or even clarifying/debunking a fiction like “Al Gore invented the internet” takes more than 30 seconds, just like a nutritious meal isn’t likely to be found on the dollar menu. Maybe the internetz, since they don’t have the same limitations, can help restore some of the promise. Can you see today’s voter following the equivalent of the Lincoln/Douglas debates?
>Why are all the people named ‘Atlas’ so very stupid?
Randian==retardo
Please. ‘Clockwork Universe’ is sooooooo 19th century.
There’s a pretty obvious precedent for the “Affable-Dipshit-Standard” for US Presidents – Sir Ronnie Of Reagan.
You couldn’t get within hearing distance of the man before the sheer unmitigated reek of his intellectual deficit (you know, little shit, like earnestly believing he’d been a REAL Air Force bomber-pilot, or surreal non sequiturs like “I, too, am a Contra”) smacked you full in the face, & the media willingly repackaged it as “Old-Fashioned” or “Charming” … & a few trillion simoleons, a crypto-fascist operative Secret Team, & hundreds of thousands of proxy-war victims later, that repackaging still held up.
If his oposite number at the end of his reign of error had been someone less noble (& less mentally nimble) than Gorbachev, the 90s probably would’ve wound up being Teh Shortest Decade EVAR!
Only elitist snobs grill baby backs. Those fuckers are what, $4 a pound?
Davros, I ripped the Daleks out of space and time twice before.
You really want to mess with this?
Unlike these Yank “conservative” bastards, I like ’em clever. With really. Great. Hair.
Jim: It was Reagan’s genius to unite what still stand as the two main pillars of modern conservatism: the greedheads and the bigots. He did this by concentrating on their resent of government, especially the federal government, which the bigots resented because it interfered with their God-given right to abuse black people, and greedheads resented because it interfered with their God-given right to abuse their employees, their customers, the environment, and anything and anyone else standing between them and a dollar.
That’s why the abuse and scorn that Reagan and his acolytes heaped on the government, years after they became “the government,” worked so well.
But now that those years have become decades, fulminations against “government” have lost a lot of their strength (or toxicity). These assholes have been running things for a long time, and they’ve managed to fuck things up in spectacular manner. They’re frantically clinging to the fragments of the Reagan Revolution, which includes damning as elitist anyone with any ideas about how government can actually help its citizens.
They’re frantically clinging to the fragments of the Reagan Revolution, which includes damning as elitist anyone with any ideas about how government can actually help its citizens.
That’s about how I see it. It’s going to be a huge pain in the ass to disabuse the public of these notions, though, since more than a generation’s worth have been raised learning this bullshit. Not insurmountable, but it’s going to take some time and skill.
Regarding the McCain baby-back rib barbeque – But the real trick, he says, is the fresh lemon juice that he squeezes onto the ribs repeatedly.
Lemon juice? On ribs? this amounts to blasphemy far greater than Michelle Obama’s gherkins on tuna salad. Where is the Freeper cohort to decry the unorthodox and elitist treatment of our sacred barbecue?
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