Via Althouse, picture worth a thousand words about a topic that has exactly zilch-point-jack worth of originality to offer:
Cecilia, of course, was the little old lady who did a special makeover of Jesus. Say what you will of Jimenez’s work. Having been to the Basilica of the Annunciation, which has a full spectrum of Madonnas holding the Christ from around the world, I’ll cop to a shockingly liberal view of such efforts.
Now that “trashing” famous works in this fashion is a meme, one is reminded of #OccupyResoluteDesk. Obama’s chief trick is to take something recognizable, e.g. the Mona Lisa, turn it into crap, and sell it as Hope & Change. He’s been a smashing success smashing the pillars of Western Civilization.
Barack’s triumph of style over substance should not have been so hard to detect. Hence the fact that John McCain called Obama ‘eloquent but empty‘. And the re-election campaign has been a study in intellectual vacuum, a happy face on a George Washington portrait.
Update:Soopermexican comes at the point from a slightly different vantage. Lacking the raw sack of Neil Armstrong, Obama instinctively attempts to co-opt him. But the the attempt to attach BHO to N.A. is N/A. This is just a variation on the theme of Seal Team 6; find courage, insert self.
Victor Davis Hanson has another excellent essay on the situation in Europe. Read the whole thing. But let us focus on the Germany/Greece dichotomy.
In other words, it is as illogical as it is common for the wayward debtor to blame the thrifty creditor for his dilemma. The Germans now are in the impossible situation of being told they did something wrong by doing things mostly right. They retire too late and caused others to retire too early; they saved too much money so others had to borrow too much; they built too many things that others wanted; they acted too much like parents and so made others too much like children.
Right now the continent’s psychological problem is not that southern Europeans cannot pay the northerners back, but that they are often arguing that they should not have to pay them, as if those who lent are more to blame than those who borrowed. The Germans rightly know that if they were just to write off the debt, such magnanimity would only lead to the same disaster in another five years, as the southern Mediterraneans cited such largess as proof that the Germans were guilty all along of mercantilism and therefore finally evened up with their moral betters. For Germans, this serial blackmail is of course an impossible situation. Would you wish to be lectured by your poorer brother-in-law on why he should not have to pay your $1,000 loan back, as he critiqued your oh-so-conventional workaholic habits?
There may be other work to be done today — work for which I might actually get paid — but even if nobody hits my tip jar, this verbose bimbo is gonna get smacked around so bad, she’ll wish she’d never even thought about writing that witless screed. Just give me a few minutes to skim through and find the proper angle of attack. While you’re repeatedly hitting the “refresh” button in eager anticipation of the forthcoming viciously misogynistic updates, however . . .
C’mon: $5 or $10 to make it worth my while? Because nothing would so infuriate Rebecca Traister as to know that a shameless capitalist blogger is getting paid to heap more ridicule on her.
UPDATE II: While you’re waiting for me to unleash the hounds of patriarchal hell on Rebecca Traister, let’s point out that embittered humorless feminists are not a stereotype. They’re the unspeakably grim reality that is Michelle Goldberg on MSNBC:
Donald Douglas at American Power: “I’ve written about Michelle Goldberg many times. I was literally sickened when I read her book a few years back, which is a global manifesto for infanticide.”
In their spare time, Goldberg and Traister probably volunteer at the local abortion clinic, taking turns plunging knives through the hearts of any infants who manage to survive the procedure.
UPDATE IV: OK, now working feverishly on the main response, and thanks to Shelly in New Mexico for hitting the tip jar. The rest of y’all, c’mon: $5 or $10, and I’ll try to earn it.
There isn’t really an argument, except between Traister and her selected strawmen, or perhaps among the screeching voices inside Rebecca’s demon-filled head. (“My name is Legion” – somewhere, a herd of swine awaits.) Her intent is to celebrate the humor of various other liberals, to whom she attributes an aptitude she conspicuously lacks herself. No one has ever accused Rebecca Traister of being intentionally funny and, if “the personal is political,” her politics is either intensely secretive or utterly empty. Careful observers of Traister’s work cannot help but notice how guarded she is about herself, seeking always to have us focus on whatever idols she reveres or scapegoats she demonizes.
There is something about Rebecca that Rebecca doesn’t like (a self-loathing she externalizes by attacks on others), and her “feminism” is less a philosophy than an attempt to distract herself and others from her own emotional desperation.
One suspects she has a history of suicidal thoughts. What sort of anti-depressants has Traister been prescribed, and in what dosage?
It doesn’t matter: She is not funny, because there is nothing funny about her own lonely and joyless existence. For this plight, she somehow irrationally blames conservative Republicans she’s never actually met and who wouldn’t even know she existed — admit it, you had never heard of her before now — if she hadn’t committed that stupid miscomprehension of “succubus.” (Can the Washington Post no longer afford to employ college graduates as editors?) At any rate, here is the conclusion of Traister’s column:
The hairy harridan of yore isn’t totally vanquished. She’s too useful for the right. Without her, it becomes clear that Republicans are fighting not some made-up monster but women themselves. Contemporary activists who have recently replaced the yellowing cartoon of feminism with a living, breathing, nuanced version of what women’s liberation means in 2012 must keep fighting with humor and zeal if they ever want to finish off the old bat.
Perhaps someday they’ll even avenge her by hoisting a banner of their foes as fogeyish, woman-hating, humorless prudes and carrying it into future battles.
Unfortunately for Traister, she can never escape her own worst enemy, whose unforgiving gaze penetrates her every time she looks in a mirror.
Torie Bosch has deliberately, diabolically misconstrued Chris Christie, and Ann Althouse, unexpectedly, seems to want to take Bosch seriously, leading to much cognitive dissonance:
But it’s not enough here to say Bosch is an idiot or that Bosch’s idiocy exemplifies the pathetic present-day feminist web-writers and impugns the entire enterprise of feminism — which has been and should be noble.
It’s not enough, because Bosch has infected the internet with a meme, and it’s powerfully viral. There will be many, many people now who will get the idea that Chris Christie is a sexist. They just know — they feel — he’s an immense misogynist. He’s got misogyny on him — and like a blue dress kept in the back of the closet, that stain isn’t going to get washed out any time soon.
Bosch has propagated the lie, and her liberal allies — who would love to destroy a rising conservative star — are hard at work spreading it. And I do mean hard at work. These slimy little dweebs who write at places I won’t link to, but whom you can find by clicking on that last link, get obscenely excited at the prospect of wrecking a righty.
Whatever nobility feminism may have once enjoyed or may yet again, Bosch is playing to Gustave le Bon, whose main points are that shaping the mob is about being loud and being first. Pull the facts out of any orifice of convenience.
Once Postmodernism gave up on the Truth as such, or any fear of judgement for this sort of hellish distortion, the only thing remaining was raw hunger for power. Someone like a Bosch need only land a bit of stench on Christie to be effective. Even a discounted story is still a lodestone about the neck, or my name isn’t Herman Cain. Funny how these sexual abuse allegations vanished in a puff of pure pettifoggery once he departed the Presidential race. As though the allegations, and our court system in general, was merely a device for control.
May the Almighty have mercy on Bosch, and communicate her evil to her in a way that triggers repentance. The rest of us must reject this sort of behavior and strive mightily not to become like Bosch. I, for one, go after some riffs against my Congresscritter, ‘Gentleman’ Jim Moran. I put the ‘Gentleman’ in there as a frequent note to self to give Moran a jolly flogging in the blog, but not lose the twinkle in the eye while doing it.
I disagree with those who said the Occupy movement was doomed at the first sign of winter. This is because I have never seen it as a grass-roots movement, but one cooked up by Obama’s OFA organization, in collusion with Anonymous and Lulzec members, and funded by all the usual suspects, including Soros. The reasons for the cooking had little to do with today’s politics, but the 2012 election, and scaring the bejesus out of soccer moms inclined to vote Republican.
Now an unlikely enemy has arrived to lay waste to these plans, the super-tuberculosis bug. Lie down with dogs, get fleas; lie down with Occupiers, and get both fleas and a disease that can’t be cured and may well kill you.
Via Althouse, there is also Zuccotti Lung, as this blog raises awareness of recent advances in our respiratory tract sickness choices.
These public health concerns may be mitigated somewhat by what seems to be a rash of shootings at ObamaVilles around the country. I was just wondering out loud on Twitter if the gun violence might not be a backup plan for the collapse of Fast & Furious. The American people must somehow be made to accept that the 2nd Amendment is as moot as the 10th Amendment if we are to reach the next stage of Holy Progress. Is it possible that the shooting victim in Oakland was a poet named Horst Wessel?
Is this all part of some grand scheme masterminded by #OccupyResoluteDesk? If so, then liberty-loving Americans must ponder, harden their resolve, and let their peaceful, patriotic actions answer the mail on this sad, creepy #Occupy movement.
Over at Althouse, a poll choosing between a third round of Bubba or W. For 2K votes, W has 80%. I don’t know that Ann’s readership is all that right of center, either. While retaining some personal regard for Bush, I don’t think his policies did too much to help attack the generational Ponzi scheme.
That noise has got to be stopped. For the World’s Youngest Blogger’s sake, and the rest of WYB’s generation. After the Baby Boomers finish going ‘boom’, maybe we can get on with economically sustainable improvements.
President Obama’s attorney sent a letter to Congressional investigators on Friday, saying the White House would not cooperate with a subpoena requesting documents related to its doling out a $535 million loan guarantee to now bankrupt solar panel manufacturer Solyndra.
“I can only conclude that your decision to issue a subpoena, authorized by a party-line vote, was driven more by partisan politics than a legitimate effort to conduct a responsible investigation,” Obama’s counsel, Kathryn Ruemmler, wrote in a letter to the top Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce committee.
One is tempted to make some remark about an ass and cheek, but people might not understand that I mean them in the sense of ‘donkey’ and ‘impudence’, and accuse me of sexual harassment, so we’ll steer clear.
This administration, in joke terms, is moving from ‘unfunny’ to ‘tedious’. #OccupyResoluteDesk seems almost guilty until proven innocent of everything imaginable on this and every other scandal. The way to remedy that is to put some teeth in the campaign promises of transparency. The sooner the better. Credibility is dwindling, Mr. President. That is truly a shame. The ‘Chicago on the Potomac’ japes would have been better as cheap political riffs, not sad reality.
An example of a purely political subpoena would be if Congress demanded #OccupyResoluteDesk’s college transcripts. That task would be better left to the media. Politico has recently set a new low benchmark, with its homeroom-note-passing-level story against Herman Cain. Moving up to the level of inquiring about college transcripts would be a step up for Politico.
Last week, senior White House adviser David Plouffe said that “the protests you’re seeing are the same conversations people are having in living rooms and kitchens all across America. . . . People are frustrated by an economy that does not reward hard work and responsibility, where Wall Street and Main Street don’t seem to play by the same set of rules.” Nancy Pelosi and others have echoed the message.
While falling short of any clinical diagnosis of insanity, I’m moving closer to believing these senior Democrat leaders are fairly close to religious fanatics. Or maybe jilted lovers, who are willing to burn down the house around that which they formerly loved, rather than let him/her enjoy liberty. After having stashed enough money overseas where the results won’t matter, of course.
Keep your powder dry and your eyes peeled, Americans.
