The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Notes on Hip: Hanson as Sontag

Posted on | January 10, 2013 | 25 Comments

Susan Sontag circa 1965

In 1964, Susan Sontag published a 6,000-word essay in Partisan Review called “Notes on ‘Camp,'” which described a hitherto little-noted phenomenon: A sensibility emerging from the gay subculture and just then beginning to diffuse itself through the world of art and theater.

Sontag was a prodigy: She graduated high school at 15, married sociology professor Philip Rieff at 17, and was both a mother and a college graduate before she was 20. She attended graduate school at Harvard and the University of Paris and was acquainted with such notable figures as Herbert Marcuse and Harold Bloom. By age 26, she was divorced and living in New York with her lesbian lover. Sontag’s reputation as an intellectual whose work helped define the 1960s counterculture began with “Notes on ‘Camp,'” published when she was 31.

One need not admire Sontag — and I certainly don’t — to understand Sontag, and how her work as a critic helped shape our culture.

At any rate, all that is but a pretentious literary preamble to Victor Davis Hanson’s 2,400-word essay about “hip”:

Hip is like “cool”, whose power I wrote about not long ago: a general sense of tapping into the popular youth culture of music, fashion, food, electronics, easy left-wing politics, and adolescent habit. Hipness is a tool designed to justify enjoying the riches and leisure produced by the American brand of Western market capitalism by poking fun at it, teasing it some, dressing it up a bit to suggest ambivalence over its benefits without ever seriously either understanding their source or, much less, losing them. We feel hip at Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods, but not so much in the organic section of Safeway.
Hip also plays out as professed caring — worrying in the abstract about all sorts of endangered species, starving peoples, or degraded environments. It is being loudly angry at retrograde forces — white males, the rich, gun owners, Christians, family types, and suburbanites, the sorts who ostensibly crafted the toxicity of Western civilization that you are forced to use and enjoy. Yet embrace hip, and all things become possible. . . .

You can and should read the whole thing, if you want to begin thinking seriously about what’s wrong with American culture. Whether it is possible to rescue the culture — to reverse the half-century slide toward complete decadence — is to some extent moot. A big part of the problem is that most conservatives don’t really understand how we got to where we are, and thus are left sulking helplessly (or ranting in impotent frustration) at their own failures. You can’t solve your problem if you don’t understand you problem, and a lack of cultural understanding is perhaps the biggest obstacle conservatives currently face.

It might be helpful to study Friedrich Hayek’s 1949 essay, “The Intellectuals and Socialism.” How weird to realize that Hayek started teaching at the University of Chicago at just about the same time a young student there, Susan Sontag, was marrying her sociology professor.

 

Category: Culture, History, Intellectuals

Can Fauxcohontas Delete the Internet?

Posted on | January 10, 2013 | 11 Comments

Wikipedia expert Leigh Thelmadatter guest-blogs at Legal Insurrection:

On January 7, 2013, Legal Insurrection noted that the entire section about controversy surrounding Elizabeth Warren’s asserted Native American heritage had been wiped fromher Wikipedia page. That assertion was seen by Wikipedia and responded to, with the section reinstated, albeit in a  different form than before. , , ,

 

Category: Uncategorized

They Told Me If I Voted for Romney …

Posted on | January 10, 2013 | 7 Comments

. . . low-income minorities would have a harder time getting approved for mortgages — and they were right!

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau on Thursday will roll out the first of several far-reaching changes to the nation’s mortgage market, limiting upfront fees and curtailing practices such as interest-only payments that can leave homeowners stuck with unsustainable loans. The agency also will set standards for how much income a consumer must have to obtain a mortgage.
This marks the first time the government has spelled out what constitutes a “qualified mortgage,” an effort to prevent the widespread toxic loans that hurt millions of Americans during the housing crisis.
Banks that offer qualified mortgages will be protected from lawsuits if they adhere to the criteria. The consumer agency hopes that will drive the entire industry to live by the tighter standards that have taken hold since the crisis, ensuring safer loans but potentially limiting the number of people who can qualify to buy a home.
“Credit is going to be restricted, at least a little,” said Cristian deRitis, a senior director at Moody’s Analytics. “The debt-to-income cap, for instance, is going to affect some folks at the lower end of the income scale.”

Your key phrase there: “Banks . . . will be protected from lawsuits.” The Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) was a government-issued invitation to a lot of class-action litigation and mau-mauing of banks, which led in turn to a deliberate lowering of lending standards, which in turn led to a rising default rate, which in turn eventually triggered the collape of the mortgage bubble.

Liberals have tried to blame the bubble exclusively on Wall Street and the dubious business of trading mortgage-backed securities without adequate regard for the obvious risks of “subprime” loans. In truth, there is plenty enough blame to go around, but (a) the involvement of FHA, Fannie and Freddie in the lending market had the effect of conveying the impression that U.S. mortgages were guaranteed by the feds, and (b) the role of the CRA was crucial to what happened. Easy credit as a civil right was an Idea that had Consequences.

Dodd-Frank and the CFPB are nightmares that ought to be repealed, but Ed Morrissey is slightly encouraged by this move:

In other words, the government is going to force lenders to stick to rules they liked before the government forced them to stop using them.

C’mon, let’s be honest: They’ll probably find a way to screw it up again.

 

 

Category: Barack Obama, Economics

LIVE AT FIVESIX: 01.10.13

Posted on | January 10, 2013 | Comments Off on LIVE AT FIVESIX: 01.10.13

— compiled by Wombat-socho


TOP NEWS
Biden Suggests Executive Action On Guns

VP Biden, AG Holder talk to the press

VP suggests Obama may bypass Congress on parts of gun-control agenda

New Federal Mortgage Rules Aim To Restrict Options
CFPB intends to insure mortgage borrowers can repay loans

Lew Nomination Elevates Budget Battles Over Crisis Management
Administration emphasis shifting from global financial crises to troublesome Federal budget



POLITICS
Solis Resigns As Labor Secretary

Labor Secretary Hilda Solis

Holder, Sebelius and Shinseki will be only holdovers for second term

Colorado: A Preview Of The National Gun Debate?

NY, CT Governors Seek More (Useless) Gun Laws

Will Joe Biden’s Gun Policy Task Force Be Effective?

White House Says No Backup Plan To Debt Ceiling

Gay Marriages To Begin At National Cathedral

Jerry Brown Ready To Spend New California Taxes

Christie: Relationship With NJ Senate Prez “Fine”

Judge Rules Bronx Stop & Frisk Program Unconstitutional



THE ECONOMY, STUPID
Oil Prices Weaken After US Energy Report: NYMEX $93.06, Brent $111.55
Exports Jump 14% As PRC Growth Soars In December
Euro Futures, Asian Stocks Rise On PRC Trade, Yen Weakens
Morgan Stanley To Cut 1600 Jobs
Loeb Explains His Herbalife Bet
Wall Street Bolstered By Earnings
IRS Taxpayer Advocate Calls For Tax Code Overhaul
UAW Pushes Chrysler To Sell Shares On Open Market
AIG Won’t Join Former CEO’s Lawsuit Against The Feds
The Average Apple App Makes Seventeen Cents Per Download
RIM Exec: There Will Be Affordable Blackberry 10 Handsets
Budget iPhone Apple’s Pitch To Boost Asia Sales?
T-Mobile CEO: Porn Could Kill Shared Data Plans
Samsung Shows Of 110″ TV At CES
FCC Report Blames Phone Companies For Loss Of 911 Service After June Derecho Storm
Is The iPhone 5 Really One Of The Worst Smartphones?



SPORTS
Roid Rage: Baseball Writers Elect Nobody To Cooperstown

Barry Bonds: not elected to Hall of Fame

First time since 1996 writers have failed to elect anyone to baseball’s Hall of Fame

Eagles Interview Notre Dame Coach Brian Kelly

Lakers Show Fight In Fifth Straight Loss

Postgame Confrontation Earns Carmelo Anthony A One-Game Suspension

Unlikely Trio Leads Celtics To 87-79 Win Over Suns

Don Cherry Sympathetic To Leafs, Fired GM Burke

Kings’ Move To Seattle Will Get Push From Stern

Hornets On Season-Best Three-Game Streak After Downing Rockets 88-79



FAMOUS FOR BEING FAMOUS
GQ Leaks February Cover

Your February GQ Cover Girl

Beyonce clearly still smokin’.

Hunger Games, Katy Perry Clean Up At 2013 People’s Choice Awards

Bieber & Gomez: Over For Good

Scientology’s Seduction Of Tom Cruise, Role In Kidman Divorce Detailed

Lindsay Lohan Accused Of Stealing Liz Taylor Bracelet

Taylor Swift Resurfaces After Split In Style

Karrueche Trans Speaks Out On Chris Brown/Rihanna Love Triangle

Britney To “X Factor”: I Quit, Y’All!



FOREIGNERS
Iranians Held By Syrian Rebels Released
Lawyer Claims Delhi Gang Rape Suspects Tortured By Police
In Syria, Chemical Weapons And Talks Are Off The Table
PRC Paper At Center Of Censorship Storm Back On Sale Today
Hamas, Fatah Leaders Meet Separately With Morsi To End Dispute, No Progress Made
Not Beyond Hope: Japan And TPP
India, Pakistan Trade Accusations Over Kashmir Violence
Saudi Arabia Beheads Teenage Sri Lankan Maid For Baby’s Death
UN Says Millions Of Domestic Workers Suffer Abuse
UK’s Cameron Entitled To Use Veto Threat To Win Back Powers From EU



BLOGS & STUFF
NRO Corner: “If It Saves One Life…”
Protein Wisdom:“Biden: Obama Considering ‘Executive Order’ to Deal With Guns”
Gateway Pundit: Reminder – Stalin’s Firearms Confiscation Tremendous Success For Socialist State
Michelle Malkin: Port Strike Alert – Longshoremen Walk Out On NY/NJ Negotiations
Power Line: Time To Dial Up Some Diversity
JustOneMinute: He’s Ready For The Clown Suit
Joanne Jacobs: SC Teacher Suspended For Stomping On Flag
James Pethokoukis: No, Actually They’re Booing
Shot In The Dark: Berg’s Seventh Law Has No Exceptions
Rush Limbaugh: There Goes My New Year’s Resolution
Jammie Wearing Fools: Another Day, Another Grossly Offensive Comment From The Tub Of Goo
Atlas Shrugs: Hamas-CAIR’s #myjihad Chicago Campaign Inspires Wannabee To Threaten Bombing On CTA Bus
Maggie’s Notebook: Liberal Groups Meet To End Voter ID, The Filibuster, And Big Money In Politics

Category: Live at Five

A Soldier and Two Marines: Sworn to ‘Support and Defend the Constitution’

Posted on | January 9, 2013 | 31 Comments

My son is now in training, but we got a lecture about “operational security” during our visit to the MEPS (Military Entrance Processing Station) and after discussion with my wife, I decided against posting video or photos of the swearing-in ceremony, where our soldier took an oath to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

The 18X program isn’t something I’d been familiar with before, and I had no idea what an honor it was for my son to be enlisted under that program. Yeah, I knew he’d scored at the top on the ASVAB (Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery). My son’s recruiter said he’d only had one other applicant score that high — and that kid ended up going to Harvard instead of enlisting. Sure, my son told me that he had some kind of special deal, but . . .

My older brother ended up on a mortar crew in the 101st Airborne after being enlisted with promises that he’d be trained as a mechanic, so I took all this “special program” recruiter talk with a grain of salt. But then I heard the story about my son’s roommate, on the night before they shipped out, who took a look at my son’s processing papers and said, “Wow. You really are 18 X-ray.” Apparently, it’s kind of a big deal.

While we were in the Ceremony Room where the swearing-in took place, I read a plaque on the wall. The plaque explained that the room was dedicated to the memory of Marine Corporal Jennifer M. Parcell, who had sworn in there two days after her 18th birthday in 2004.

In October 2006, Corporal Parcell was deployed to Iraq and assigned to the 1st Combat Logistics Group. She volunteered to search female Iraqi citizens at a checkpoint in Al Anbar Province, and was killed in an attack by a female suicide bomber on Feb. 7, 2007.

Corporal Parcell was 20 years old when she died — the same age as my son on the day he enlisted in the Army. Think about that.

So then I look at the top of Memeorandum and here’s this story by Daniel Halper of the Weekly Standard:

Vice President Joe Biden revealed that President Barack Obama might use an executive order to deal with guns.
“The president is going to act,” said Biden, giving some comments to the press before a meeting with victims of gun violence.

“Executive order.” Yeah. Never let a crisis go to waste, eh? But there are lots of people who have taken that oath to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States,” and one of them is Marine Corps veteran Joshua Boston, who had a few words for Sen. Dianne Feinstein regarding her plan to disarm American citizens:

I am not your subject. I am the man who keeps you free. I am not your servant. I am the person whom you serve. I am not your peasant. I am the flesh and blood of America. I am the man who fought for my country. . . .
I will not be disarmed to suit the fear that has been established by the media and your misinformation campaign against the American public.

It’s kind of a tricky business, this question of who is serving whom, and some people seem rather confused about this. Many of the most confused people are, alas, a disgrace to my own profession. One of them, a CNN news anchor, got schooled by the former Marine corporal:

“Unconstitutional laws aren’t laws.”

Indeed. What part of “shall not be infringed” is so hard to understand? And since when is it the job of a CNN anchor to take sides in a policy dispute, as a partisan defender of Sen. Feinstein and a volunteer advocate of this legislation? Who does she think she is, Piers Morgan?

And yeah, Joshua Boston owned Piers Morgan, too:

The American people aren’t as gun-happy and trigger-happy as they’re being  painted out to be by the media. They are smarter than that. They know when to  hold their fire. They know when to fire. . . . We can’t give up our rights because we’re afraid. . . .
No matter what laws we pass, Lord knows we have laws, and during the last  assault weapons ban, it didn’t stop Columbine from happening. It didn’t stop the  West Hollywood shoot-out from happening. These things happen. There are criminals in our world that we have to contend with. And disarming people and  taking the AR-15s out of their homes isn’t going to help.

What is it with these media idiots — including a damned foreigner like Piers Morgan — who think they are entitled to lecture a Marine veteran about his rights as an American? Don’t they understand that the First Amendment, which every journalist rightly reveres, is worthless without the protections of the Second Amendment? And don’t they understand that people have died to defend our rights as Americans?

Excuse me for gettng kind of torqued up about this. But an oath to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States” is a pretty serious thing and, having seen my wife cry as she hugged our boy on his way to training, I wish more people would take their oaths seriously.





 

 

PREVIOUSLY:

 


Category: CNN, Constitution, Military

If ‘Crazy’ Were a Political Philosophy, Its Spokesman Would Be Alex Jones

Posted on | January 9, 2013 | 42 Comments

Remember when Alex Jones sicced a mob of kooks on Michelle Malkin during the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver?

“She wants to put us in camps!”

Crazy is not a political philosophy, and neither is anger. So, naturally, when anti-gun fanatic Piers Morgan wants a “typical” spokesman for Second Amendment rights, he brings on the permanently angry Alex Jones, who begins his rant with some signifying jive:

“[W]e did it to point out that this is globalism, and the mega banks that control the planet and brag they have taken over — in Bloomberg, AP, Reuters, you name it — brag that they’re going to get our guns as well. They’ve taken everybody’s guns, but the Swiss and the American people and when they get our guns, they can have their world tyranny while the government buys 1.6 billion bullets, armored vehicles, tanks, helicopters, predator drones, armed now in U.S. skies, being used to arrest people in North Dakota.”

Your key phrase there is “mega banks that control the planet.” This is classic kook-talk, the kind of paranoid stuff like Zeitgeist that inspired Jared Loughner. Recall that Zeitgeist not only demonized bankers, but also suggested that 9/11 was a hoax.

These are the ideas that circulate on the kook fringe, and Alex Jones first became notorious as a promoter of 9/11 Truther craziness.

His appetite for kook-fringe conspiracy theories discredits Alex Jones, as does his implacable raging anger. The only reason Piers Morgan had Jones on CNN was in order to discredit the Second Amendment by saying, “See how dangerously crazy these gun nuts are?”

Ranting about the “New World Order” doesn’t win arguments.

UPDATE: Allahpundit:

Last night’s cable-news car crash reminded me of how reporters used to go to tea-party rallies and seek out the nuttiest people they could find for self-discrediting quotes and photos. A cheap tactic to smear the whole group, but an effective one. Took Morgan awhile but somehow he figured out that insulting soft-spoken gun-rights advocates to their faces is less persuasive than letting a guy famous for 9/11 conspiracy theories shriek about guns and 1776 and the New World Order on camera for 15 minutes.

Hey, if Glenn Beck thinks you’re a paranoid kook . . .

—

Category: CNN, Conspiracy Theories

Leave Brent Musberger Alone!

Posted on | January 9, 2013 | 34 Comments

Katherine Webb: Not bad to look at, despite attending Auburn.

If he needs a Chris Crocker, I’ll step up to defend the ESPN announcer who — while Alabama was dismantling Notre Dame in the BCS game — felt obliged to report the Neutral Objective Facts:

“You see that lovely lady there, she does go to Auburn, but she’s also Miss Alabama and that’s AJ McCarron’s girlfriend. You quarterbacks, you get all the good looking women. What a beautiful woman. Wow.”

Why all the outrage? She is indeed Miss Alabama and, the last time I checked, that was what is known as a “beauty pageant.”

While Musberger’s comments may have been a bit gushy, it wasn’t as if he said anything salacious, rude or inappropriate. This involves something I’ve discussed before: Beauty is an objective fact.

Beauty exists independent of our recognition of it. However, in our sexualized “hook-up” culture, male acknowledgement of beauty is presumed to convey sexual interest, a de facto proposition. So when Brett Musberger says Katherine Webb is a “lovely lady” — which she most certainly is — many people hear that as, “I’d hit it.”

Or, as Darnell Dockett might say: “Wing Stop.” (Dockett says that when he publicly Tweeted his phone number to Webb, he actually meant to send it via DM, the kind of social-media accident Neal Rauhauser and his paranoid crew of “Weiner Truthers” claim can only be explained by a Breitbart-coordinated right-wing conspiracy. But I digress . . .)

Feminism and the concern about workplace discrimination have imposed a new sort of puritanism, a kind of neo-Victorian repression in which even an entirely innocent comment can be portrayed as harassment, as an attempt to “hit on” someone. If all acknowledgements of beauty are viewed as expressions of sexual interest (“drooling,” as some have characterized Musberger’s comments), then a sort of taboo becomes embeded in our customs and habits, and thus has radical feminism triumphed by shaming people into silence. The question is, why?

Rush Limbaugh’s Undeniable Truth #24: “Feminism was established so as to permit unattractive women easier access to the mainstream.”

ESPN actually apologized for Brent Musberger’s comments, as if he were the one sending his digits to A.J. McCarron’s girlfriend. We don’t even know if Webb or McCarron were offended.

Rather — and this is what tells you that a powerful taboo is involved — critical thought is immediately suspended and everyone simply reacts according to a culturally normative script, with people saying things they know they’re supposed to say, and everyone is intimidated by fear of being attacked if they ask, “Why all this anger? What exactly did Brent Musberger say that deserves such a firestorm? Why does this ‘controversy’ require an article in the New York Times?”

“It’s extraordinarily inappropriate to focus on an individual’s looks,” said Sue Carter, a professor of journalism at Michigan State. “In this instance, the appearance of the quarterback’s girlfriend had no bearing on the outcome of the game. It’s a major personal violation, and it’s so retrograde that it’s embarrassing. I think there’s a generational issue, but it’s incumbent on people practicing in these eras to keep up and this is not a norm.”

Yeah? Well, it may rather “retrograde,” but let me quote an acknowledged expert on what is “extraordinarily inappropriate” — Ace of Spades:

“I would hit that so hard I’d split atoms in her privates.”

Did Brett Musberger say that about Katherine Webb? No. He just said she was a “lovely lady.” Does anyone deny that she is? No.

But the praise of beauty implies a negative judgment against the less-beautiful, and this is an inequality that feminists regard as intolerable.

UPDATE: House of Eratosthenes:

If I live to be a hundred and fifty, I’ll never figure out why people allow complete strangers like Sue Carter professor of journalism, all this traffic-cop-go-and-stop authority over whether they’re allowed to notice a woman is beautiful. Why would you do that? Why would you surrender that kind of power? It almost suggests a fear of making personal decisions, even for matters of style and taste.

Some people just crave approval so desperately that they are afraid of saying or doing anything that might risk disapproval. The Left is very good at intimidating people like that, and is also good at ginning up the kind of lynch-mob fury needed to “make an example” of anyone who refuses to cooperate with the Left’s agenda.

UPDATE II: You know who’s not offended by Brent Musberger’s remarks? Attractive women, including those on Fox News:

Kirsten Powers: “He called her lovely and beautiful. People act like he was drooling and saying inappropriate things. To me, this is just Feminism gone awry.”
Monica Crowley: “When I’m watching the NFL and Tom Brady comes on screen, I have some choice words about him. He’s such a hunk!”
Megyn Kelly: “It’s crazy to me that ESPN felt that he went too far in doing what all the judges at the [Miss Alabama] competition did and millions of Americans did as well. I don’t know a woman who doesn’t like to be told she’s beautiful.”

ELSEWHERE:

 

 


Category: Alabama, Celebrities, Feminism, Football, Rule 5

Everybody Hates Gawker’s @JohnJCook and It’s About Damned Time, Too

Posted on | January 9, 2013 | 17 Comments

John J. Cook of Gawker is whining that he’s gotten death threats because he published a two-year-old list of registered gun owners in New York City. (Don’t worry: Links here don’t go to Gawker.)

As Twitchy points out, what Gawker has accidentally done is to provide an excellent argument against registering your guns.

John J. Cook is also complaining that people are Tweeting his home address. He should buy a gun to blow his brains out protect himself.

UPDATE: Emily Bazelon at Slate:

In a confessional piece on Gawker last week, John Cook wrote about himself as a craven junior high bully. He was part of a trio of boys who got their hands on an early Mac and used it to produce a scandal sheet with messages like “Jenni Greenwald, please commit suicide,” rumors about a girl named Holly W. losing her virginity, and racist rants against black students and teachers. At the time, Cook and the two boys he was trailing — they were popular and he wasn’t, he says — thought of themselves as rebels anonymously publishing an underground newspaper. They sold 80 copies at school in one day before they got caught.

Some trends persist: John Cook is still an unpopular bully.

Category: Media Bias
« go back — keep looking »

    About

    This is an area on your website where you can add text. This will serve as an informative location on your website, where you can talk about your site.

    Subscribe to our feed

    Search

    Admin