And Start Referencing The Medici More
Posted on June 10th, 2009 by D. Aristophanes
Camille Paglia, Salon.com:
Obama’s hit — and big miss
- Isn’t it about tiME that Obama drafted a reliable cIrcle of erudite, cosMOIpolitan analysts to enrICH his speeches with brIO and allEGOry?
‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™
Yay–The new thread’s here! The new thread’s here!
idgi
I’m gonna read TWO of them!
… and yet you have a strong urge to hire Camille as a speechwriter
imeomoiichioego?
I’m really bad at Magic Eyes too.
If Obama wanted an insane speechwriter, how the hell does she think she could beat out Andy Dick?
gotta find the link to Molly Ivins hilarious takedown of Camille Paglia….
If we’re falling back on Camille Paglia, it can only mean one thing: it’s a very slow day for TEH STOOPID.
The comments to Pagila’s Sowellesque dumps are always win.
If we’re falling back on Camille Paglia, it can only mean one thing: it’s a very slow day for TEH STOOPID.
Don’t worry, I’m sure Doughy Pantload or Mr. Bitefart will save us from ennui.
I find Paglia tiresome, so I didn’t get past the first page. But it sounds like she’s saying that his speech was somewhat lackluster and wan, based on the fact that she only read the prepared text instead of actually watch him deliver it.
I’m sure that the Sadly, No! writers are always looking for the next great wingnut to make fun of. Well have I found one in novelist Dan Simmons!
When I first checked out his site I thought that if there were any political commentary it would be thoughtful and well-written. Nothing like the crap spewed by other fiction writers like Dafydd ab Hugh and Roger L Simon.
Instead what I read, at least for some posts related to politics, were rants that only showcased the man’s well-written ignorance.
Highlights include his tale about a time traveler who came from a future where America is in a century-long war with the Muslims, a story that not only called for the genocide of all Muslims (somehow those of Islamic faith were always working together against their true enemies) but displayed his superior intellect when he said that Robert Kennedy was murdered by a Muslim extremist; a two part Election Day special where he used his Summer of Night characters to make political points (Obama, Ayers together forever, the Chicago gang will rig the election for Obama, and the patriotic Minutemen who also have Hispanic members!); and a rip-roaring series of Proposals to get out of Iraq (Proposal #4: PREVAIL – that was the entire proposal).
And then there are the forums where you can read political thoughts that are largely influenced by the writings of Victor Davis Hanson, Charles Krauthammer (because anyone who writes well and is conservative obviously has something smart to say), William Kristol (he went to Harvard and, ergo, must be smart), and Mark Steyn (I… have no idea how he could be described as an intellectual in any way). Naturally it has all the typical wingnut rhetoric (George Bush had to be a smart man since he went to Yale and Harvard, Obama didn’t do much as president of the Harvard Law Review, liberal media, Obama’s ‘raising taxes’ and such hurting rich people, etc.) but in better prose.
Some gems from here include his continued insistence that Robert Kennedy was murdered by a Muslim; one month saying that Colin Powell becoming McCain’s VP candidate would be a ‘game changer’ and later on saying that Powell’s endorsement of Obama meant he was ‘disingenuous’ (with additional comments on how there were few Muslims in the army); that the nomination of Sotomayor meant that Obama has not transcended race and that she’s one of the weakest nominations in recent history (take a wild guess where he got that from); and that nowadays there are no longer any true liberals like Norman Podhoretz, old man Kristol and himself.
Oh, and it’s a magical place where David Brooks at times is considered ‘left leaning’ and an ‘Obama Apologist’ and anyone to the left of him is considered irrelevant and/or a bad writer.
Now to be fair, some of the other stuff Dan Simmons has written on his website aren’t all that bad. And he still writes some damn good stories… as long as he doesn’t force in his thoughts on the ‘Islamic menace’.
Is that like Jon Voigt’s characterization of Obama as a “soft-spoken Caesar”?
BTW, what kind of unAmerican Euro-gabble name is “Paglia”, anyway? She doesn’t expect us to pronounce it “PagLIA”, does she? That would stick in our linguistic craw, after all. She should just call herself something properly American like “Jones” or “Smith”. Or “God-Will-Punish-Us-For-Our-Sins”.
Yeah, “Camille God-Will-Punish-Us-For-Our-Sins”. I like that.
Watch as his support in the Washington media dwindles and dwindles, and wonder how he won’t become the next Carter. I saw this coming a mile away.
“Pagilla”? Is that like a beauty contest for Japanese movie monsters?
Obama has lost Pagilla
She’s probably in the last place he left her.
(Reposting this because it didn’t appear last time)
I’m sure that those at Sadly, No! are always looking for the next great wingnut to make fun of. Well have I found one in novelist Dan Simmons!
When I first checked out his site I thought that if there were any political commentary it would be thoughtful and well-written. Nothing like the crap spewed by other fiction writers like Dafydd ab Hugh and Roger L Simon.
Instead what I read, at least for some posts related to politics, were rants that only showcased the man’s well-written ignorance.
Highlights include his tale about a time traveler who came from a future where America is in a century-long war with the Muslims, a story that not only called for the genocide of all Muslims (somehow those of Islamic faith were always working together against their true enemies) but displayed his superior intellect when he said that Robert Kennedy was murdered by a Muslim extremist; a two part Election Day special where he used his Summer of Night characters to make political points (Obama, Ayers together forever, the Chicago gang will rig the election for Obama, and the patriotic Minutemen who also have Hispanic members!); and a rip-roaring series of Proposals to get out of Iraq (Proposal #4: PREVAIL – that was the entire proposal).
And then there are the forums where you can read political thoughts that are largely influenced by the writings of Victor Davis Hanson, Charles Krauthammer (because anyone who writes well and is conservative obviously has something smart to say), William Kristol (he went to Harvard and, ergo, must be smart), and Mark Steyn (I… have no idea how he could be described as an intellectual in any way). Naturally it has all the typical wingnut rhetoric (George Bush had to be a smart man since he went to Yale and Harvard, Obama didn’t do much as president of the Harvard Law Review, liberal media, Obama’s ‘raising taxes’ and such hurting rich people, etc.) but in better prose.
Some gems from here include his continued insistence that Robert Kennedy was murdered by a Muslim; one month saying that Colin Powell becoming McCain’s VP candidate would be a ‘game changer’ and later on saying that Powell’s endorsement of Obama meant he was ‘disingenuous’ (with additional comments on how there were few Muslims in the army); that the nomination of Sotomayor meant that Obama has not transcended race and that she’s one of the weakest nominations in recent history (take a wild guess where he got that from); and that nowadays there are no longer any true liberals like Norman Podhoretz, old man Kristol and himself.
Oh, and it’s a magical place where David Brooks at times is considered ‘left leaning’ and an ‘Obama Apologist’ and anyone to the left of him is considered irrelevant and/or a bad writer.
Now to be fair, some of the other stuff Dan Simmons has written on his website aren’t all that bad. And he still writes some damn good stories… as long as he doesn’t force in his thoughts on the ‘Islamic menace’.
“Watch as his support in the Washington media dwindles and dwindles, and wonder how he won’t become the next Carter.”
Well, at least he won’t become the next Bush.
Is there a limit on the size of comments? I tried to post a long comment a while ago that hasn’t yet appeared.
Face it, libs, Barack is now an island of failure in a sea of truth.
MEMOIICHIOEGO = Commie Ego Ho I I
= Ice Ego Ho I I Mom
= Coo Me Me Hog I I I
No matter how you slice it, it’s all about her.
Obama never had Paglia, who was too busy sniffing Palin’s discarded panties during the election and rhapsodizing about the Governor’s eloquent command of the English language to really formulate a position.
Paglia strikes me as being as in touch and cool as Pastor Swank. She boasts better grammar.
Does Paglia really think that the best, most convincing proof that Sotomayor is qualified for the Supreme Court is her 1976 Princeton degree? Is that truly what she thinks is the winning card in America, with its in-your-face anti-intellectualism?
And still riding those sixties and seventies feminists for their over-the-top feminist pride? Those fools. They certainly didn’t accomplish anything, did they, with their uppity ways? And feminist leaders today aren’t different at all!
She really ought to drop in on earth once in a while. I’d say she hasn’t done much more than listen in on the radio since the seventies. (No Ipod for her! Only the classic “CD.”)
I too wondered why Obama didn’t provide a seminar in the origins and histories of the Abrahamic faiths instead of making one simple speech while he was in Egypt. I concluded that perhaps he didn’t have a month to spare, and neither did his listeners.
Speaking of the Paglia comments, this:
For my part, Camille, I see that you feel that Americans are overly rude, etc, toward Muslims. If you would consider the very small number of physical crimes against Muslims since 9/11, I think that Americans have done amazingly well!
Other than invading two Muslim countries, torturing their citizens and using robot planes to drop bombs on their villages … yes, we have done ‘amazingly well’ on the physical-crimes-against-Muslims front.
Paglia:
Paglia, in contrast, is deliberately condescending all the time because the teacher’s eye never blinks.
I’m glad to see her thing for Daniela Mercury is still going strong. Cluelessness, in this instance about Brazilian popular music and Brazilian culture in general, can often serve as the basis for unintentionally amusing flights of overconfident, hyperbolic analysis. For example:
Until someone sends her another YouTube video.
…that was why I, for one, voted for him, contributed to his campaign, and continue to support him…But…
Concern troll is concerned…
Maybe someone noted this before, but the anniversary of the vanderleun “internet tradition” post is in one short week. How can Sadlynosians commemorate this event?
I wish Paglia would go back to rhapsodizing about date rape and leave politics alone.
Meanwhile, Paglia’s belief that the stimulus could be ‘Obama’s Waterloo’ is hilarious and I hope the ‘tards keep pushing this line. There isn’t a serious company or small business owner in a majority of the major market segments in this country that doesn’t want in on the stimulus. If anything, the stimulus should be three times the original size.
Carnivorousness, abandoned by the vegetarian sandwich-eating class, will continue to be a metabolic issue for most people.
Alcoholism, abandoned by the sober non-vehicle-swerving class, will continue to be a problem for drunken drivers — even more so in the hours after work, which myopic Western professional class has fooled itself into believing are “happy.”
Vertigo, abandoned by upright persons everywhere, will continue to mark the foreheads of falling-over people — even more so in a time of seismic uncertainty. Ouch! Look out!
Lactose, abandoned by the lactose-intolerant everywhere, will continue to be an undeniable component of milk — even more so in a time of calcium deficiency, which brings to mind the Left’s recent salvos against the very rights of women…
As a concerned center left woman I am concerned we are not sufficiently concerned with Paglia’s concerns. Let’s face it, we live in a center-left democracy and Obama is playing chess while his opponents are playing connect-four and what’s more, if we can only take Paglia’s concerns as the concerning concerns concerning our concerned Republic that they are then we can move Obama even farther to the center or even the right which would ameliorate my concerns greatly. I, for one, am concerned that we might move too fast on any kind of social reform that does not directly impact upon me, a concerned center left woman. Basically I am ten degrees to the left of center on anything that directly concerns my best interest and twenty degrees to the right of center concerning concerns not directly concerning to a concerned center left upper middle class college educated concerned woman.
If his speech had been longer, she would have complained he was too”long-winded”;
If it were shorter, he would be “terse”;
if it were more eloquent, it would have been “bombastic”;
If it were more direct, it would have been “too blunt”;
If it were more laden with facts and historical referents, it would have been “pedantic”;
If it were more heartfelt and emotional, it would have been “naive and overwrought”.
No winning this game–why play?
All through the day
MEMOIICHIOEGO
All through the night
MEMOIICHIOEGO
Further suggestions:
… cosMOIpolitan ANAlysts to ENrICH his speechES …
Obama supporter Camille Paglia in 2008:
Earlier:
and here it is:
Molly Ivins on Camille Paglia
Djur I can’t even believe she wrote that. That is mind-blowing stupid even here, at the House of Stupid, where I order three stupid meals of Stupid Waffles with Strawberry Stupid and Whip Stupid Cream and stupid sausage on the side. Please tell me there aren’t people who took that seriously.
She uses language with the jumps, breaks and rippling momentum of a be-bop saxophonist
That is awesome. Palin—one half Cesare Borgia, one half Charlie Parker.
Going to try again by breaking up the post.
I’m sure that the Sadly, No! writers are always looking for the next great wingnut to make fun of. Well have I found one in novelist Dan Simmons!
When I first checked out his site I thought that if there were any political commentary it would be thoughtful and well-written. Nothing like the crap spewed by other fiction writers like Dafydd ab Hugh and Roger L Simon.
Instead what I read, at least for some posts related to politics, were rants that only showcased the man’s well-written ignorance.
Highlights include his tale about a time traveler who came from a future where America is in a century-long war with the Muslims, a story that not only called for the genocide of all Muslims (somehow those of Islamic faith were always working together against their true enemies) but displayed his superior intellect when he said that Robert Kennedy was murdered by a Muslim extremist; a two part Election Day special where he used his Summer of Night characters to make political points (Obama, Ayers together forever, the Chicago gang will rig the election for Obama, and the patriotic Minutemen who also have Hispanic members!); and a rip-roaring series of Proposals to get out of Iraq (Proposal #4: PREVAIL – that was the entire proposal).
Wow. That Ivins piece sure was some downhome homespun bullshit. The appeal of phony populist pabulum has always eluded me. Isn’t the ” New York intellectua!” schtick the reason people (justifiably) shat all over Palin? I know the joke is that Ivins is secretly even more smarter and more intellectual and better versed than the alleged intellectual she’s mocking–I can think offhand of maybe three writers who could pull that technique off and Ivins wasn’t one of them. Ivins was right to say of Paglia “What an asshole.” Now let me say of Ivins “What an asshole.”
Molly Ivins had enough good sense for ten people. She died too soon. Thanks for posting that article, Bill.
A choice quote:
“What we have here, fellow citizens, is a crassly egocentric, raving twit. The Norman Podhoretz of our gender.”
It’s supported by some good evidence.
Putin rears his head a-doobop a-pabama.
I’m sure that the Sadly, No! writers are always looking for the next great wingnut to make fun of. Well have I found one in novelist Dan Simmons!
When I first checked out his site I thought that if there were any political commentary it would be thoughtful and well-written. Nothing like the crap spewed by other fiction writers like Dafydd ab Hugh and Roger L Simon.
Instead what I read, at least for some posts related to politics, were rants that only showcased the man’s well-written ignorance.
Highlights include his tale about a time traveler who came from a future where America is in a century-long war with the Muslims, a story that not only called for the genocide of all Muslims (somehow those of Islamic faith were always working together) but displayed his superior intellect when he said that Robert Kennedy was murdered by a Muslim extremist; a two part Election Day special where he used his Summer of Night characters to make political points (Obama, Ayers together forever, the Chicago gang will rig the election for Obama, and the patriotic Minutemen who also have Hispanic members!); and a rip-roaring series of Proposals to get out of Iraq (Proposal #4: PREVAIL – that was the entire proposal).
(continued from above)
And then there are the forums where you can read political thoughts that are largely influenced by the writings of Victor Davis Hanson, Charles Krauthammer (because anyone who writes well and is conservative obviously has something smart to say), William Kristol (he went to Harvard and, ergo, must be smart), and Mark Steyn (I… have no idea how he could be described as an intellectual in any way). Naturally it has all the typical wingnut rhetoric (George Bush had to be a smart man since he went to Yale and Harvard, Obama didn’t do much as president of the Harvard Law Review, liberal media, Obama’s ‘raising taxes’ and such hurting rich people, etc.) but in better prose.
Some gems from here include his continued insistence that Robert Kennedy was murdered by a Muslim; one month saying that Colin Powell becoming McCain’s VP candidate would be a ‘game changer’ and later on saying that Powell’s endorsement of Obama meant he was ‘disingenuous’ (with additional comments on how there were few Muslims in the army); that the nomination of Sotomayor meant that Obama has not transcended race and that she’s one of the weakest nominations in recent history (take a wild guess where he got that from); and that nowadays there are no longer any true liberals like Norman Podhoretz, old man Kristol and himself.
Then two weeks ago, “Magnificent,” a song from U2’s latest album, “No Line on the Horizon,” came blasting out of my car radio. I was soon in Best Buy at record speed to snag the CD.
See, that’s value-added. Most writers would just tell you what they thought of the new U2 album. Paglia makes it a first-person narrative, giving you the exciting details about how she acquired the record.
Isn’t the ” New York intellectua!” schtick the reason people (justifiably) shat all over Palin?
No, it was the fact that Palin didn’t know that Africa was a continent and not a nation. Basic geography is important in elected officials. And by basic, I mean 5th grade.
(cont.)
Oh, and it’s a magical place where David Brooks at times is considered ‘left leaning’ and an ‘Obama Apologist’ and anyone to the left of him is considered irrelevant and/or a bad writer.
Now to be fair, some of the other stuff Dan Simmons has written on his website aren’t all that bad. And he still writes some damn good stories… as long as he doesn’t force in his thoughts on the ‘Islamic menace’.
And this post was much longer than I thought. Sorry about that! Hopefully someone else will enjoy reading this stuff.
Ash Wing – relax, you’re unintentionally spamming the thread. Your long comment posted (twice). Just post a quick FYWP and get on with life.
See, that’s value-added. Most writers would just tell you what they thought of the new U2 album. Paglia makes it a first-person narrative, giving you the exciting details about how she acquired the record.
More likely is that she got a product placement fee from Best Buy.
thanks for the ivins link, bill!
No no, you have to tell them what you were eating, where you were traveling to, and who you were golfing with whenever you came up with each banal little imagined insight.
at 17:10 Bitter Scribe said,
“I wish Paglia would go back to rhapsodizing about date rape and leave politics alone.”
Wow. That speech you linked to sounds even crazier than the Salon piece. She contradicts herself about every other paragraph. Her “train of thought” is more like a “tilt-a-whirl” of thought. And the overwhelming self-promotion! It reminds me of conversations with a manic-depressive I know, during a manic phase. But the person I know is much more humble.
If Obama delivered a speech she wrote there would be instant panic that the president had become insane.
Sometimes creamed spinach is just creamed spinach, kid.
Camille thinks that she’s tuned into the zeitgeist because she saw this bumper sticker on this dude’s vehicle and changed one of the words to fit her thesis. Seriously, I’m thinking of sending Glenn Greenwald a check made out to him personally in the amount of whatever Salon’s charging for an annual subscription, tucked into a condolence card.
Beat me to it, I thought as I ate my Cinnabon before being herded into the airplane like a wild animal.
For wrongheaded statements on bebop, I’ll take Nice & Smooth over Camille Paglia. At least I can dance to Nice & Smooth.
and name the brand of every single thing you come in contact with like you’re Patrick Bateman
To please the swedes, you should alter the shorter version to
…”enrICH his JAGged speeches with…” or something to that extent.
Awesome.
Ash Wing–that’s really disappointing to hear. I’ve been a Dan Simmons fan for a long time. Loved the Hyperion/Endymion series, as well as his mainstream thriller/detective/horror stuff, and have been looking forward to reading “Drood” as soon as it comes out in paperback. I still might, but it’s like trying to enjoy a Charleton Heston movie. The author’s persona keeps intruding on the story, much as you try to separate them. Sad.
Other than invading two Muslim countries, torturing their citizens and using robot planes to drop bombs on their villages … yes, we have done ‘amazingly well’ on the physical-crimes-against-Muslims front.
Oh, well, the commenter’s just referring to retail violence as opposed to wholesale.
She uses language with the jumps, breaks and rippling momentum of a be-bop saxophonist…
AY. YAI. YAI. So I can speak like a totally uninformed blithering meathead without the madh English skhillz god gave a fruit-eating microbat, and as long as I repeat GOP talking points I’m some sort of beat-poet jazz wordsmith. OKAY THEN.
Dan Simmons going right-wing crazy doesn’t surprise me, unfortunately. He’s written some wonderful work, but his issues with women couldn’t be more obvious if he published a magazine called Vagina Dentata, which could probably run for a year on examples of castration anxiety from his fiction.
“Watch as his support in the Washington media dwindles and dwindles”
Somehow I can’t really see this as a bad thing. I figure the more the village media wails and gnashes their molars the better Obama is doing.
The U2 Album has been out since March.
I will not read anybody who gets their music from friggin Best Buy.
IMS standing to uphold, you know. Pitchfork, call me!
I feel like I’ve made this observation before, so apologies if it was here, but the thing that all aspiring jazz soloists are taught is “You have to learn to play in, before you can try to play out” meaning you have to have a strong basis in chord and melodic theory before you can try any avant-garde noodling lest it sounds like an unskilled jackass wanking on a horn.
Hence, Palin.
Or Picasso didn’t always draw cubes.
“And the overwhelming self-promotion! It reminds me of conversations with a manic-depressive I know, during a manic phase. But the person I know is much more humble.”
I know. An accurate Rich Little-esque impersonation of Paglia would have to involve repeated screeching variations of: “Me! Me! Me! Lookit me! Lookit me! Lookit me!”…and so on. (Probably by a butch-but-stick-thin, razor-mawed trannie dressed in cheap hooker wear.) The sheer, staggering levels of self-aggrandizement is probably the worst of Paglia’s many, many obnoxious qualities.
It amuses me that her ‘star’ has faded considerably, and I’m sure she must grind her razor sharp fangs in frustrated hate every morning when she crawls outta bed at the thought that her “celebrity” has long since been eclipsed by the even more batshit insane likes of Malkkkin, Coulter, etc.
A lesson in self-refutation:
The whole notion of who gets called “a brilliant writer” in this country is so bizzare and unpredictable that it makes me think that aliens came and scrambled everyone’s ganglia so that some people had the synapse links for “brilliant” and “almost unbelievably horrific and incomprehensible to anyone except a complete lunatic or a five-month-old asparagus left in the back of the refrigerator that became so modly it grew ganglia and began to think” crossed, and now they can’t tell the difference.
It’s like when people actually say about Thomas Friedman “well, I don’t always agree with him but he writes brilliantly” and you can feel your ganglia going cross-eyed right then and there trying to imagine why anyone would say that.
Matt Taibbi does the best job of making fun of him that I’ve seen, but I mean, that’s one hanging curve ball of a target let’s face it.
Paglia’s “brilliant” column this week includes the insight that the Harvard-educated law review Barack editor Obama and his team of top economic thinkers are no match for A) Paglia and B) ….wait for it…..
….Mitt Romney.
I mean, these guys may not be handling things right but one of the few ways to find yourself thanking your lucky stars that they are at all is to imagine if either of those lunatics were in charge.
Behold the brilliance.
I wonder if Paglia and John Derbyshire ever go to the mall together to hang out and try and pick up chicks.
Camille who?
You’ve heard of the Costco Coulter; meet the Funyuns Friedman.
you have to have a strong basis in chord and melodic theory before you can try any avant-garde noodling lest it sounds like an unskilled jackass wanking on a horn.
Quite. If you’re going to sound like crap, at least have the common decency to not play, instead of forcing everyone to pretend your banging on piano keys like a epileptic is edgy and underground.
“record speed”?
What, 45 RPM?
“Other than invading two Muslim countries, torturing their citizens and using robot planes to drop bombs on their villages … yes, we have done ‘amazingly well’ on the physical-crimes-against-Muslims front.”
D. Aristophanes, you leftwing hack, those oh so evil actions you describe would have been completely unneccesary if only for one small problem. If the mohammedan terrorists hadn’t murdered 3000 innocent Americans on 9/11.
It’s interesting how you liberals insist that you are Patriotic and that you love America, and yet your so quick to forget the mass murder committed against your fellow Countrymen on American soil. Those actions which you site above, good sir, are what happens in war. The mohammedan fanatics committed an act of war against the United States when they bombed the World Trade Center. President Bush in return ordered the American Military to take retalitory action, which is exactly what you sited above. America’s retaliation.
Maybe you, good sir, should sit down and meet with one of the family members of a 9/11 victim, then you’ll see how far your leftwing pacifist crap goes.
Also, forgive me for being young, but what exactly did Camille Paglia do? She just seems to have appeared as some media concern troll, and I’m not totally clear on why I should even bother to pretend to give a shit what she thinks.
Sorry to hear what happened to Dan Simmons. The “Hyperion” series of books was one of the best sci-fi series I’ve read. Even tho the last novel in the series faltered a bit.
Why must so many good sci-fi authors succumb to wingnuttery?
Is it the fantasy of libertarianism – a future where tech makes it possible for everyone to have anything they need -and the unexamined thought process that assumes work would *not* still occur as a way to control the classes?
Or maybe it’s simple technophilia, and the delusions that a techie future automatically equals a meritocracy?
Or is it too many travels to Northern California and meeting particularly blissed-out unthinking hippies?
Or perhaps it really is that it’s so hard to make a dollar as a writer, that when they do make a dollar they want to keep every last penny of it – and they get pulled into libertarianism via the “Don’t tax me! I didn’t ask for all these roads or this educated workforce!”
Camille who?
Camille God-Says-To-Keep-It-In-Your-Pants-Mister-Until-Marriage-Unless-You-Just-Can’t-Help-It.
Ahh, the monthly Paglia column on Salon. Let’s run the checklist, shall we?
Train-wreck metaphors? Check:
the monstrous stimulus package with which this administration stumbled out of the gate will prove to be Obama’s Waterloo.
Got that? Stumbling out of the gate will prove a Waterloo!
Shameless plug of her own previous work? Check:
This is the kind of mushy balderdash I doggedly had to plow through for five years in trying to find a good feminist poem for my collection, “Break, Blow, Burn.” (complete with Amazon referall link!)
Obligatory name-dropping? Whoops! That seems to be missing
Inexplicable praise for the right wing media?
Also AWOL, though I’ll accept Mitt Romney’s political fortunes are steadily being resurrected from the grave as a substitute of inexplicable praise for the right-wing in general.
The good news is that her column is both shorter (yay!) and seems to be morphing from “bad Paglia formula” to just plain bad writing.
St. Trotsky, me no do HTML linky right, but here’s the Wiki on Camille:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camille_Paglia
You can sum her up pretty well with one word — schizophrenic.
Why must so many good sci-fi authors succumb to wingnuttery?
Personally, I’ve always seen it as a condition of the sort of underlying misanthropy in a lot of sci-fi tropes, whereby humanity as it is now is horrifying and ugly and can only be improved by technological advancement.
The Ol’ Professor and his whole transhumanist kick is a pretty good character study in this.
Paglia writes about the Apollonian/Dionysian dichotomy as if I didn’t learn about it IN HIGH SCHOOL, which I did. Jeez, what next? “A German writer named Karl Marx adapted a little-known theory from the little-known German philosopher GWF Hegel called ‘the dialectic…'”
The thing–well, one of them–with Paglia is, not only is she impressed with the fact that she likes the Rolling Stones and U2, she thinks we, are, too.
Why must so many good sci-fi authors succumb to wingnuttery?
I covered this on a S,N! thread awhile back. My theory is that they can’t be Lefties, since all us left-wingers are anti-technology granola-eating Socialist treehuggers, and they can’t be bog-standard Republican ’cause of the Luddite creationist Fundies. And the gummint can’t be trusted to make starships and robots and suchlike, even if they have the money, ’cause free thought free markets Soviet Union shut up that’s why.
Ergo, the only way to preserve their access to cool toys and a uninterrupted source of such in The Future is to howl about private rights of corporations, ie. Libertarianism.
Camille God-Says-To-Keep-It-In-Your-Pants-Mister-Until-Marriage-Unless-You-Just-Can’t-Help-It.
Or is it “Camille Postmoderism-Lets-Me-Sound-Like-Phillis-Schlafly-And-Still-Get-Poontang” ? Hard to tell sometimes.
will prove to be Obama’s Waterloo
Well, what if Obama’s the Duke of Wellington instead? Then it could be his Waterloo and it’d be a good thing.
(true story – Abba came on the store radio just was I was typing this and guess what the song was?)
Thanks for posting, I’ll definitely be subscribing to your blog.
Trotsky:
I think she’s a professor, professional shit-slinger, probably got tired of the easy targets for her respect-my-contrarianism bullshit in the academy, so went on to write gossip columns. Into porn, known early as being primarily into porn. Newspapers: “look, this professor is into porn.” You should’ve seen her hairstyle and clothing before she learned to exploit that angle and understood she didn’t have to compete with Wolf and Butler: dork city.
Personally, I’ve always seen it as a condition of the sort of underlying misanthropy in a lot of sci-fi tropes, whereby humanity as it is now is horrifying and ugly and can only be improved by technological advancement.
Interesting point… the fear and hatred of the Left would be the fear and hatred of the “unthinking masses”, c.f. anything written by Ayn Rand. Which is also why there’s such lip service given to democracy and Federations and Confederations but SF gummints usually end up being some kind of autocracy or pesudo-democracy with very limited sufferage.
I’m not a big believer in this. Jimi Hendrix was not the only guy who made it to modes before knowing what they were. Some people are just good.
Apart from that, noodle. Sure it’s likely to sound like shit, but so does everything else and it’s fun. Y’think John Cage was a master of every instrument he performed on or of whatever notation he’d devised a week before?
If you would consider the very small number of physical crimes against Muslims since 9/11,
Yes, certainly. Ordinary Americans were busy committing physical crimes against Sikhs instead, because they couldn’t tell the difference.
Oh, and don’t forget all the SF oligarchies of Enlightened Leaders, c.f. pretty much half of everything Heinlein wrote.
Also, forgive me for being young, but what exactly did Camille Paglia do? She just seems to have appeared as some media concern troll, and I’m not totally clear on why I should even bother to pretend to give a shit what she thinks.
What Paglia did was write a book back in the late 80s/early 90s that made the wingers happy. One of the basic premises of the book was that women, excluding Paglia, were essentially flighty, bird-brained, weaklings and should simply accept their second-class status. She joined a pantheon of other right-wing women who made careers out of securing a spot on the conservative gravy train by agreeing that other women should not expect a voice or seat at the table.
Oh, and don’t forget all the SF oligarchies of Enlightened Leaders…
Or Wells. I guess the Martians had achieved the highest stage of Capitalism.
That Molly Ivins takedown was sweet.
The agile but limited Ginger Rogers, a spunky, smart-mouthed comedian, is only a footnote.
Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, but she did it backwards while wearing high heels.
“One of the basic premises of the book was that women, excluding Paglia, were essentially flighty, bird-brained, weaklings and should simply accept their second-class status.”
Really? I would think the conservatards would reject Sexual Personae based on her assertion that all of Western culture sprung from male fear of the vagina.
Or Wells. I guess the Martians had achieved the highest stage of Capitalism.
To be fair, Wells was writing from a Utopian Socialist view where government would inevitably be the enlightened, since everyone would realize how much sense it made to have People Who Know Best run things.
Libertarian SF oligarchies, on the other hand, seem to grow out of a sense of “we nerds are the best ones to run things without fucking everything up, and the stupid masses should just shut up and let us take over” kind of mindset – basically the poltical viewpoint of someone who was slagged constantly in high school and vowed that someday the bullies would be the ones getting shit on.
Paglia has also (basically) stated that date rape is the wimmenz fault, cuz, you know teh menz just can’t control themselves so we need to be in purdah, and if we aren’t then we deserve what we get.
it is so cosmically unfair that molly ivins is dead and so many other worthless wankers aren’t.
OT, but there’s a lot of wingnuttin’ going on over at Alicublog. Roy has riled up the rubes at Protien Jisdom and Pablo and Serr8ed and other Godlstein sycophants are stinking up the comments section (Me too).
for some damn reason, I can’t see the comments over at roy’s. he really strikes a sore spot with the wingers, doesn’t he?? (I loves roy).
Major Kong: That’s exactly the line that Paglia was sneering at.
Didja see our old pal John Ziegler, he of the whiny temper tantrum at USC’s Katie Couric Award ceremony, getting into it with Contessa Brewer?
Video at HuffPo
I can’t watch the vid from my undisclosed location, but I would imagine he’s predictably the same jerk as always. Why brings up the question – why would they invite him on for an interview to begin with?
There are some good, progressive-mided SF writers out there. Off hand, I can think of Samuel Delaney, Frank Herbert, David Brin, Carl Sagan and William Gibson
““we nerds are the best ones to run things without fucking everything up, and the stupid masses should just shut up and let us take over” ”
AKA ‘Technocracy.’
Looks like Oblablah’s “popularity” dropping off at a rapid pace:
http://www.gallup.com/poll/113980/Gallup-Daily-Obama-Job-Approval.aspx
It is at record low for his Presidency now, and dropping everyday.
Could it be because of the record unemployment numbers, that now outpace the projections of his own budget? The huge deficits? Backlash over the unlawful socialization of GM and Chrysler? Or the anti-American speech in Cairo?
Meanwhile, Rev. Wright returns (from politico):
And to think he sat in this Church for 20 years and listened to this hateful, anti-semitic drivel. And let his daughters hear it, too. DISGUSTING!
If you want it to sound like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hr2NB_I3d8U&feature=channel
you better know your stuff, yep. Not that many will sound like this but it’s a good example of one of the best going outside from knowing what’s inside.
Noodling without knowing how to play legit and inside is fine, but it’s worth almost nothing compared to someone who knows what he’s playing outside OF.
OT, but I just love Lord Harry’s repeated use of “mohammedan”. You might as well bitch about the Siamese or the Prussians or Basutolanders.
Really? I would think the conservatards would reject Sexual Personae based on her assertion that all of Western culture sprung from male fear of the vagina.
Well, one would also think they would reject the bible thanks to all that happy-crappy about turning the other cheek, helping the less fortunate, and working out your own issues so you’re not a dick to everyone else in the world. Sadly, No!
“There are some good, progressive-mided SF writers out there. Off hand, I can think of Samuel Delaney, Frank Herbert, David Brin, Carl Sagan and William Gibson.”
Sixty percent dead, and Brin leans libertarian (not that there’s anything wrong with that).
There’re also Scottish socialist Ian M. Banks whose Culture novels are good stuff. I’m sure I could think of others, but uhm, what were we talking about?
“Well, one would also think they would reject the bible thanks to all that happy-crappy about turning the other cheek, helping the less fortunate, and working out your own issues so you’re not a dick to everyone else in the world.”
Excellent point, which is why it is central to mine.
Oh no, Obama’s approval rating is lower than it’s ever been before?
Is it below 30% yet?
Y’know, like the president for the past seven years was? For several years? While contributing to all that shit you’re putting in Obama’s lap?
While you’re still focusing on a preacher nobody but the right-wing dorkwads give a shit about?
No? Oh, well then, doesn’t look like we’re at Carter yet.
“So she doesn’t speak the King’s English — big whoop! There is a powerful clarity of consciousness in her eyes.”
This just made me laugh out loud. Yes, if you look closely at her eyes, you can clearly see she’s conscious. What more do you people want in a world leader for chrissakes!?!??!
Camille:
Yes, Obama’s principal targeted audience was moderate Muslims, whom he attempted to woo away from extremism
Camille, next paragraph:
I wish that the Cairo speech had been more specific and instructional about Muslim beliefs and culture
But that’s just ego getting in the way of reasoned analysis. For the real win, try this:
Palin and Hannity two minutes later:
Deviousness by Hannity, stupidity by Palin.
The whinger phenotype of schizophrenia, I would say, has more than one associated genotype.
There are some good, progressive-mided SF writers out there. Off hand, I can think of Samuel Delaney, Frank Herbert, David Brin, Carl Sagan and William Gibson
Brin “progressive”? I thought he’d caught the Post-9/11 Clash of Civilizations The Left Are Hate-America-Firsters bug.
Add to the list: Charles Stross, Ken MacLeod, Ursula K. LeGuin, Norman Spinrad, Michael Moorcock, (possibly) John C. Wright, Alstair Reynolds, and (at his best) Asimov.
Carter started a downward trend the summer after his inauguration, too.
Welcome back, Carter! Welcome back!
This from Roy’s thread deserves wider currency:
That VIOLA sure knows how to end an argument.
Repress my ghost, Truth!
Is there any evidence right now that the disapproval rating for Obama is anything other than the quarter of the American population already proven to be clinically insane for being the only support for President Bush for the last seven years?
Because if it’s not, you’re going to have to be concerned that you already had your ‘Carter’ of the 21st century, and he was your boy, not ours.
Bush wasn’t a Carter, he was a Nixon.
Obama is Carter.
That VIOLA sure knows how to end an argument.
I prefer the CONCERTINA to end my arguments.
Paglia loved Palin because, like every other palin-lover, she was thinking with her dick.
There’re also Scottish socialist Ian M. Banks whose Culture novels are good stuff.
Crap, and Player of Games, Consider Phlebas and Against A Dark Background are three of my favorite books and I didn’t think of him. D’OH!
Ursula Leguin, my (not very close)neighbor. William Tenn (Phil Klass) my former next door neighbor. James Morrow, also a former neighbor(ish). Fred Pohl who I’ve never been anywahere near, AFAIK.
Wish I could take credit for something there, I’ve just been wildly lucky.
What about the great Ted Sturgeon?
OTOH, there’s dicks like Jerry Pournelle though his writing is pretty awful, not really in the same class.
Also, once Ahmadenijad wins re-election, it will prove Obama’s “soft power” is just that. Soft and ineffective.
Bush wasn’t a Carter, he was a Nixon.
Obama is Carter.
And Tuesday is Sunday at Carvel, truth is beauty, time is money, butterflies are free, and if you stew cranberries like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does.
Bush wasn’t a Carter, he was a Nixon.
Obama is Carter.
…and who’s Dwight Eisenhauer?
Third Base!
…
Seriously, though, will you shut up already? Nobody cares what you have to say.
There’s also Ursula K. LeGuin. If anybody knows of other sci-fi or fantasy authors that are not gLibertarians, please let me know. It’s lonely being a far left geek.
Soft and ineffective.
More evidence that the right-wing has nothing but penis envy. If it isn’t rock hard and somewhat worrisome four hours later, it’s worthless!
And guess who Americans now trust on economic issues?
Republicans!
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/mood_of_america/trust_on_issues/trust_on_issues
Guess who trusts Rasmussen polls!
REPUBLICANS!
“..If we’re falling back on Camille Paglia, it can only mean one thing: it’s a very slow day for TEH STOOPID..”
No, but Roy Edroso has sucked all the funniest ones to his site. Doghouse was able to shut them up for a while (a superhuman feat!) but they come skittering back after 15 minutes or so.
The polls lie when they say Commander Codpiece iss hated by 75% of America, but tell the truth when they say Obama is loved by 75% of America.
Also, once Ahmadenijad wins re-election, it will prove Obama’s “soft power” is just that. Soft and ineffective.
Didn’t Ahmadenijad get elected the first time when that other feller was in office. You know, that flight-suit guy?
The approval number is 59%, asswipe, not 75%.
Viola is such a pansy.
There was a corrupt tax system up there and we had a couple of lawmakers end up in jail because of the tax system that was adopted so we cleaned it up and said we wanted a fair and equitable share of the resources that we own, and the people will share in those resource revenues that are derived.
Can someone diagram this sentence so that I can figure out what it means?
Deviousness by Hannity, stupidity by Palin.
If the unlikely event of Alaska electing a Democratic governor ever happens, about 4 seconds later the deranged (AKA, all of them) wingnuts will start whining about the socialism that Alaska has.
Dear troll: please be funnier. It is not too hard. There is a regular troll at another site I visit – let’s call him BOB – he mixes wacky conspiracy theories with personal anecdotes about midgets and lesbians and layers on a borderline unhealthy obsession with oil shale and electric trains.
BOB is very amusing. BOB would TKO you in about 30 seconds.
The approval number is 59%, asswipe, not 75%.
Ah, Twoofie, classy and literate as ever. Very witty, Wilde, how very very witty.
Hey, remember when The Truth was using Rasmussen polls to show Obama would lose the election? Ahh good times, good times.
Here’s another set of good times; if you do a Google for “Sadly No The Truth Carter” you find this fun, fun thread from November the 6th;
http://www.sadlyno.com/archives/13994.html
Remember that one? Where he spent the entire day claiming he was working on a surprise which would put us all in our places… and it turned out to be… a mad lib of the Wiki for Jimmy Carter with “Carter” replaced with “Obama”? Not that he’s a genuinely insane obsessional hate filled misogynistic sad sack of a forty year old failure at all…
Good times…! 🙂 Go on Truthie, deny it’s you again, then ramble on about Jimmy Carter, a man more respected now than George W. Bush will ever be… ahhh joy!
So let me see if I’ve got this right…
If Ahmadinejad is re-elected, it will prove Obama’s overtures to Muslims have FAILED and the extremist factions cannot be won over.
On the other hand, if Ahmedinejad is defeated, it will mean that Obama is “soft and innefective”, and he has FAILED to earn any respect for the US is that part of the world.
That about the size of your argument?
he mixes wacky conspiracy theories with personal anecdotes about midgets and lesbians and layers on a borderline unhealthy obsession with oil shale and electric trains
Wow. you could do a lot with a combination like that.
Ahmadenijad WILL be re-elected. Iranians can smell our weakness.
Ash Wing League: Sometimes long comments are held and checked for spam or, infinitely worse! copy-and-past-screeds.
I am sorry to read Dan Simmons is a wingnut; I really enjoyed the Hyperion series. I’ll check the site – but I wont enjoy it!
I am Troofus hear me roar
in posts repeated so they bore.
But for each one the GOP pays me more.
I am brainless, I am a tool
but don’t think I’m not also a fool.
Because I love to fap in a crowded pool.
@Pere Ubu – Sometimes BOB bores us, but when he is on, he is among the best.
Y’know, it’s weird. Given all the sexual repression and frustration these wingnut trolls put on themselves, they always end up with these fascinatingly complex fetishes about oil shale covered midget lesbians playing with electric trains.
Almost makes me regret my humdrum sexual habits.
Gosh, the wingnuts are having a banner month:
WASHINGTON (CNN) — The suspect in Wednesday’s shooting at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum is James von Brunn, an 88-year-old white supremacist from Maryland, two law enforcement officials told CNN.
It’s getting to be like “wingnut terrorist of the week” in this country.
Iranians can smell our weakness
So what did they smell when they elected him the first time? Are you finally admitting that Bush was a weak pathetic man-child that no nation actually feared no matter how many of our boys he sent to die?
C’mon, Truthie, obsess my roast!
Not that it matters, but a west-friendly government beat hezbollah in lebanon. And many credit Obama’s new approach in the Middle East. Which is obviously central to gomer’s point.
But didn’t all you libs say Obama was going to fix everything?
Losers.
The suspect in Wednesday’s shooting at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum is James von Brunn, an 88-year-old white supremacist
Wow. With a set-up like that, I’m almost disappointed he wasn’t a real Nazi. These poseur Nazis just make me sad.
What we need is regime change in Iran.
Aren’t you libs a little pissed off that Obama hasn’t gotten the troops out of Iraq like he promised you?
Or repealed the PATRIOT Act?
Or repealed Don’t ask, don’t tell?
He took you libs for a ride. Morons.
Actually, I just voted for him so there wouldn’t be a Republican halfwit in office for another four years.
So, really, mission accomplished so far.
It took 8 years for Shrub to screw it all up. Warrants mentioning…
Let me call up my army of robotized hot strippers and CIA agents, and I’ll show von Brunner how to be a really good domestic terrorist!
I am Troofie and I approve this message.
Wait, I’ve got it:
Ahmedinejad’s defeat of the moderates in 2005 proved that they feared and respected our might president; whereas if he had been defeated, it would have proved that Bush was helping influence more moderate elements in the Muslim world.
This is a fun game!
Is Obama Being Carterized? said,
June 10, 2009 at 20:56
But didn’t all you libs say Obama was going to fix everything?
Losers.
I doubt fixing you was very high in the priorities. But he will get to you, sooner or later. Perhaps you’d better use a different anonymizer now, cover your tracks, y’know? He’s coming to take your toy guns away, he’s coming to take your freedom away. He’d take your money away if you had any.
Elections have consequences.
We voted in overwhelming numbers for the first blackity-black President because we finally got sick of the numerous attempts by the republicans to destroy America.
He took you libs for a ride. Morons.
Geez, the first quarter isn’t over and Toofy thinks his team won the ball game.
Let me call up my army of robotized hot strippers and CIA agents
An electric train full of oil-soaked lesbian midgets!
Iranians can smell our weakness.
Oh, THAT. Sorry, I had refried beans last night. Don’t mind me.
This is a fun game!
No! This is what it is.
When Ahmedinejad won in 2005 it was because we had a strong, virile, codpiece-wearing dreamboat as president.
When Ahmedinejad wins in 2009 it will be because we have a weak, impotent, non-displaying negro as president.
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/06/james_von_brunn_a_profile.php
Mr. Von Brunn.
Several people have admirably covered this already (particularly Jennifer and Mingo), but allow me to stick my oar in…
“Also, forgive me for being young, but what exactly did Camille Paglia do? She just seems to have appeared as some media concern troll, and I’m not totally clear on why I should even bother to pretend to give a shit what she thinks.”
Well, even though nobody actually gives a shit what Paglia “thinks”, this rather naive notion that our numerous concern troll media whores outiftted with powerful megaphones are just harmlessly offering up opinions without doing any real damage to the general public discourse is, of course, the purest bullshit. You don’t get rid of cancer by ignoring it.
And you might say – and accurately enough, I would agree – that Paglia’s “celebrity” has definitely faded (a delightful fact that no doubt drives her up the wall), so that she’s not in much of a position to do any real damage these days. Which is true as far as it goes.
You could even point to the many, many examples of her clownish and utterly transparent acts of self-promoting hypocrisy that really do nothing more than make her look like a preening diva with all the instincts of a high school Heather desperate for attention (which is what she is, obviously), and conclude that she does herself more harm than good with such blatantly petty and childish displays. There are many such episodes to choose from here, but my favorite was probably her relentless public ass-licking of Madonna – which actually lasted for some years, if memory serves – during which Paglia repeatedly compared herself to Madonna in interviews, equating herself with the singer as if they were both entertainment-based celebrities working out of Hollywood (i.e. screeched variations of “Madonna is the only one who understands me and what I’m trying to do!!!” ad naseum), very obviously hoping to become bestest media buddies with a genuine celebrity and pop megastar…only to be turned down flat. Say what you will against Madonna, she recognizes obvious social climbers when she sees them, and she evidently wanted nothing to do with Paglia…and our Camille apparently didn’t much like being spurned: At some point, she abruptly (and very obviously) turned on the singer and began snarling nasty little criticisms against the woman with the same level of ferocity she’d previously used in sucking up to her. Heh, heh, heh.
But, yeah, Paglia is not harmless: I’ll never forget the disgust I felt when leafing through her interview with Playboy magazine to find her openly gloating about the murder of Nicole Brown Simpson. Or when she wrote about Matthew Sheppard’s murder, lying about it in the process while basically saying that Sheppard pretty much deserved what happened to him for being stupid enough to come on to his assailants…which is a filthy fucking lie. As one of the subhumans who murdered him confessed at the trial, they approached him, it wasn’t the other way around. So why lie? Well, it was a convenient way of attacking gays, just as her leering in amusement about O.J. killing his wife was a handy method of needling feminists. And while I can understand the impulse in wanting to taunt one’s enemies, why drag perfectly innocent people into it, particularly innocents who suffered such horrific ends? What the hell had either Nicole Brown or Sheppard ever done to anyone? The latter was just a kid, for fuck’s sakes.
These are the routine violations of common human decency we’ve come to expect from the modern day right, and Paglia doesn’t even have the guts to at least come out and declare herself as part of that crowd, perferring to claim herself as an “independent”, an unsurprisingly chickenshit stance from Little Miss Contrarian…but what I really find objectionable about the two examples I quote above is that she’s exploiting actual tragedies of other human beings, people who didn’t deserve the violent ends they met, purely as a hook to promote herself. That’s pretty fucking despicable, IMO.
My apologies for the long-winded post, but I don’t much like Paglia…as some of you may have noticed.
Disemvowel! For the love of god, disemvowel!
Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, but she did it backwards while wearing high heels.
Kong, every movie critic and knowledgeable movie lover I have ever known understands what a bullshit line that is. Ginger got by because she was a competent dancer and had a great onscreen personality. Fred’s best dance partner? Not by a long shot. Hell, Rita Hayworth was a better dancer, not to mention Cyd Charisse and Eleanor Powell. Notice when Ginger quit being teamed with Fred, she all but quit dancing.
Ah, geez, I see the troll successfully highjacked the thread while I was composing my little anti-Paglia screed. Oh, well…
Troofus was originally banned for 1) The sheer quantity of trolling he was doing and 2) Making personal threats to regular posters.
(usually bringing this up makes him go away)
Uh, I didn’t mean that for you, by the way, John D. I was howling for Twoofie’s blood.
but papa! It’s a great line, a classic. Why you hafta go and bring ugly facts into things?
Also, Troofus’ output was so insulting and rancid that the mods have quietly deleted many of his older posts. A hint, Troofy: When you cross the line into IRL threats, you should probably just leave.
Apart from that, noodle. Sure it’s likely to sound like shit, but so does everything else and it’s fun.
But it still sounds like shit. Noodle aimlessly all you want, but don’t expect anyone else to listen to it. Or, learn your friggin’ instrument and what you can do with it. As for Hendrix, he cut his teeth playing on the chitlin’ circuit where noodling around nothing would get him swiftly ejected. Poor example.
Heh, heh. No fears, Tommmcatt, I figured as much.
Ahmadenijad WILL be re-elected. Iranians can smell our troll droppings.
China Mievelle. Not so much SF as Steampunk but definitely not a wingnut, far from it.
An electric train full of oil-soaked lesbian midgets!
Sweet Invisible Pink Unicorn, I’ve missed this place!
PENIS.
“There was a corrupt tax system up there and we had a couple of lawmakers end up in jail…”
Isn’t the DOJ looking into that? They won’t touch Singleman, though. wonder why?
flatulent canards
I’ll tell you what, that’s not a dish you order twice.
Well, even though nobody actually gives a shit what Paglia “thinks”, this rather naive notion that our numerous concern troll media whores outiftted with powerful megaphones are just harmlessly offering up opinions without doing any real damage to the general public discourse is, of course, the purest bullshit. You don’t get rid of cancer by ignoring it.
Sure, I get that.
It’s just that she, like several other individuals that tend to pop up here and there, particularly from Salon, are people I really don’t comprehend the significance of. Why their concern trolling should be considered worthwhile or even noteworthy, rather than the meaningless dribble it so often comes out as.
I don’t understand *why* she’s famous enough to warrant “here’s what Camille Paglia says!”.
Which I suppose is a weird hang-up considering I look at Sadly, No, which is mostly focused on characters such as Pam Geller or Pastor Swank or other assorted know-nothing boobs only famous for the wingnut patronage system being put into action.
I understand why their babble is poisonous, I just don’t get why they’re any more noteworthy than my poor homophobic racist grandmother’s comments on how the Mexican homosexuals are recruiting pre-schoolers for the Castroist slumber parties.
LOVE Mieville! Yes!
King Rat!
Perdido Street Station!
The IRon Council!
The Scar!
GREAT stuff!
“..he mixes wacky conspiracy theories with personal anecdotes about midgets and lesbians and layers on a borderline unhealthy obsession with oil shale and electric trains…”
So- which site is this? Link, please please pleasepleaseplease
I think I’ll book a trip to Palau. I’ve always wanted to go because the diving is said to be fantastic. Now I’ll go because Ed Morrissey won’t be there. Poor, poor tough guy Mr. Ed.
I second that! Loved Perdito Street Station.
It depends on your perspective. I’m a fan of a lot of screeching noise that most reasonable people run from. Some of it’s by people who are accomplished, some of it’s not.
That Chick Corea piece above, though interesting in parts, is nowhere near as interesting to me to listen to as Einstürzende Neubauten turning their electronics on and off.
Isn’t that the island that’s slowly sinking back into the Pacific though?
Oh, and here the point was that you didn’t need a bunch of theory to go interesting places when noodling.
Is Obama Being Carterized?: Why don’t you hurry scurry on over to alicublog and have some fun there? Its like the Carnival from Hades, I can tell you.
As for comparing Obama to Carter: I’d consider that a compliment.
But didn’t all you libs say Obama was going to fix everything?
No. Next?
St. T, she’s famous; she’s written books! Now your question becomes how she got famous, why Sexual Personae became a bestseller. My take is she basically flung feces at feminism and most post postmodernists and people like that shit. Silly, small people who fear pretty much everything in their lives.
Dammit, I’m late to the party again.
Oh, and here the point was that you didn’t need a bunch of theory to go interesting places when noodling.
Yeah, but you do need to know what the hell you’re doing and what you’re able to do the next four or five measures. You need to know what fingerings actually sound like something you can work with to get the sound out of your head. You don’t have to go to school for it, true, but the more you know, the more you can do. Maybe I spent too many years covering college town music scenes that seem to heavily feature incompetent players who nevertheless make “interesting noises” and I’m just cynical.
My point is Hendrix didn’t jump fully formed out of Chas Chandler’s head in 1967. He did the road with Little Richard, and you know the Upsettah’s not gonna let anyone just squawk around. One way or another, you have to get good.
Why must so many good sci-fi authors succumb to wingnuttery?
In space, there are no public works.
Oh, and here the point was that you didn’t need a bunch of theory to go interesting places when noodling.
My favorite noodling albums are Metal Machine Music, anything by Controlled Bleeding, and the sound that’s made when I facepalm.
Citing Hendrix also sort of points out how anomalous it is for someone to be simply good “right out of the gate.” It helps if you know what’s come before you, if only to give you some context on what the hell it is you’re doing now.
Sure, there are rare geniuses who stumble upon their genius quite by accident—and for every one of them there’s ten thousand hacks who have no idea they’re just repeating clichés because they can’t be bothered to understand what the hell it is they’re doing.
Citing Hendrix also sort of points out how anomalous it is for someone to be simply good “right out of the gate.” It helps if you know what’s come before you,
Hendrix is a unique case, if for no other reason than he did all those metacarpal gymnastics with his guitar upside down.
If you would consider the very small number of physical crimes against Muslims since 9/11, I think that Americans have done amazingly well!
Y’know, I think this is actually kind of enlightening. The poster only considers acts of actual physical violence as “overly rude”.
Now, maybe Miss Manners taught me wrong on this, but I thought “overly rude” was my telling people off to their faces. Initiating actual acts of assault and/or battery on a person would be pretty well beyond ‘rude’ as far as I can tell.
Christ, how much lower are standards of etiquette going to get?
“I don’t see what all the hub-bub is about! I only beat the guy with a lead pipe around the rib cage, it’s not like I stove his skull in! You people and your molly-coddling sicken me, making me out to be the bad guy here!”
Y’know, I think this is actually kind of enlightening. The poster only considers acts of actual physical violence as “overly rude”.
Then there are the numberless slights that all kinds of brown-skinned Americans took after 911.
A Pakistani friend of mine was pulled over in late 2001 for no reason. The cop started making threatening motions when my friend asked what was up. Then he said “Let me ask my wife about this [she was with him]. She’s a lawyer” (which she is). The cop just got back in his car and drove off.
So she thinks that Obama’s speech should have:
1) Included a detailed history of Moorish Spain
2) Gloated about all of the reasons that the Muzzies owe US
3) Lectured on the American political and legal systems, say… how circuit court judges get appointed!
4) Sounded more like it came from a Christian zealot – maybe with a call to repent or two – because yeah, as religious fanatics, Muslims totally would have related to that.
Give that woman and ambassadorship!
I don’t dispute that experience is a good thing – although I think it’s hard to credit Hendrix’s working gigs being adequate preparation for the fireworks to come – but I also don’t think it’s of any value at all to be the schoolmarm and say “don’t do that”.
My argument is not “noodling is always great!”- I acknowledged that it was mostly gonna be shit – but “try it out.”
While I was thinking about this and the godlike – and technically fantastically accomplished – George Lewis I bumped into this documentary about improv and electronic music:
http://vodpod.com/watch/1413647-kagablog-%C2%BB-unyazi-of-the-bushveld
I prefer the CONCERTINA to end my arguments.
Have I mentioned the comprehensive collection of concertinas at the Horniman Museum in London?
Unfortunately the museum website does not seem to include images or sound files for the instruments [unlike the rest of their musical-instrument collection]. Instead they have invested their time and energy in digitising the production ledgers from the Wheatstone Concertina factory, so now you too can download this fascinating social information.
“I don’t understand *why* she’s famous enough to warrant “here’s what Camille Paglia says!”.
Well, of course, I get what you’re saying, and in Paglia’s case, you’re very probably right: She’s not even all that “famous” anymore…even to the very limited extent that she ever was to begin with. She’s currently wallowing in an eminently well deserved obscurity, a fate I’m sure she considers worse than death.
I suppose it’s a matter of personal taste: I agree that most of the haplass schnooks targetted for ridicule by Sadly, No are easily dismissable gnats when you get right down to it. Why bother bashing any of them except for laughs? But even with her star significantly faded in more recent years, Paglia is at least slightly higher on the media ladder’s food chain (however undeservedly). She has some tattered reputation as an academic and an “intellectual” (again, however undeserved), and this makes her a bit more of a legitimate threat than the usual media buffoons…who are often quite bad enough just on their own meager terms.
She deserves whatever abuse is flung her way, IMO; goodness knows, she’s received very little criticism in Real Life terms. She’s not just a recklessly out-of-control Ego (though she was certainly that back in the day, and probably still is), vindictive and thin-skinned (though she’s defintiely that) and is as mean as a snake (though God knows, she’s that); the woman is a fucking ghoul, an “intellectual” version of the human filth that are currently unashamedly publicly celebrating the assassination of George Tiller. Her dancing in the blood of Nicole Brown Simpson and Matthew Sheppard – and all done for nothing more noble than the utterly petty, shallow and ego-centric goal of self-promotion – marks her in that same catagory of out-and-out scum as the drooling cretins gloating about Tiller’s murder. Such ‘people’ are not harmless, and ignoring them is the last thing we should do.
See also under “Paglia & Susan Sontag”.
I got a “You’re posting too fast” mod notice when I was arguing with Fool a while back. I hope nobody thinks I’m that troll. And I regret the tone of the posts, also.
It’s getting to be like “wingnut terrorist of the week” in this country.
what do you think all those gun sales last year were all about?
. Iranians can smell our weakness.
Shut up and go and change your armor!!
Noodle aimlessly all you want, but don’t expect anyone else to listen to it.
Unless you’re in the Grateful Dead. In which case, wank away!
GGWB, I often regret the tone, pitch, modulation, and even the amount of vibrato in my rare posts. It’s nothing. You’re posts are relevant to the discussion and that is what the trolls hate.
I’m posting too fast.
“You are posts”? Jeez. Your posts, I mean. More bourbon, please.
Go zombie go!
Tot dis was amuzin
http://lileks.com/bleat/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/21.jpg
“It’s getting to be like “wingnut terrorist of the week” in this country.”
“what do you think all those gun sales last year were all about?”
It’s only a matter of time before one of the wackos takes a shot at some prominent figure from the television’s pundit class – as they’re all “liberals”, don’cha know – and our pantheon of oligarchic media whores, who’ve been sniggeringly dismissive of the threat of homegrown right wing terrorism all along, will all suddenly start screaming, “Why didn’t anyone WARN us about these guys?!?!?”
“Why didn’t anyone WARN us about these guys?!?!?”
No one could have forseen &c.
…our pantheon of oligarchic media whores, who’ve been sniggeringly dismissive of the threat of homegrown right wing terrorism all along, will all suddenly start screaming, “Why didn’t anyone WARN us about these guys?!?!?”
No, they won’t – they’ll just bring on some punditoid who insists the shooter was a liberal and all will be right with the world.
Camille Paglia = Archie Bunker eats a Thesaurus laced with crystal meth & gets a sex-change.
You just gotta love it when academic dingdongs bloviate about shit they know absolutely nothing about:
Which is why the more ethically steadfast progressives have dominated the politics & culture globally for the past 30 years, as opposed to the weak-willed opportunistic neocons (who repeatedly throw their time-honored principles aside at their corporate masters’ bidding, thus assuring their permanent obscurity), amirite?
Let’s face it: if she hadn’t caught the fancy of a pack of coked-up Villagers back in the day, Paglia would now be running an S&M dungeon, frenetically pegging closeted marketing-consultants in order to make the rent on a two-room apartment in Poughkeepsie. She’s the intellectual equivalent of Turducken.
Hey, Camille, Nietzsche called: he wants his tertiary syphilis back.
John D: thanks. Your posts on Camille Thuglia deserve to be as widely distributed as the late great Molly Ivins’ great takedown.
F&SF writers who aren’t wingnuts: Lois McMaster Bujold, Barbara Hambly, C.J. Cherryh, Elizabeth Moon. Somebody above mentioned Charles Stross to which I add, YEAH!
You guys are awesome. Keep it up forever.
Now let me say of Ivins “What an asshole.”
????? If “Post-partisan” lived 100 years he/she still wouldn’t be one-hundredth the writer Molly Ivins was. Must be from the Paglia school of contrarian concern trolls.
Has she been right about much of anything since 2000? Seriously, she’s getting within spitting distance of Kristol-levels of foresight and general accuracy.