How tumblr brought us Trump

My 5 years on tumblr was so bad, I can only compare it to a marriage or neighborhood you just keep waiting to get better. And it doesn't. And genuine panic finally sets in.

But, everybody said this was the good neighborhood! Everybody SAID this guy was an okay fella! WTF is going on??? (((panic)))

I'd quote some stuff, but that would mean going back over there and actually reading, and I can no longer bear to do that.

Suffice to say, the tumblr brats have explained the entire election to me. It is no longer a puzzle.

~*~

The man of the hour, Toronto-professor-in-exile Jordan Peterson, would say the SJWs ("social justice warriors") are totally running the joint, and he is indeed correct about that. But as I shall prove, these SJWs are actually anti-social justice elitists, which is why they failed so spectacularly in 2016, and how we ended up with the opposite party in charge.

This is the direct result of their true class agenda at work.

Peterson's error is in taking these people at face value, just like a Protestant would: they say they believe in social justice, so they do.

NOOOOO, professor Peterson, they don't. What you are seeing is affectation, fashion, mere posturing. They would not know "social justice" if it ran over them in a jeep.

Its exactly like Christianity in the American 1950s: good people are Christian--and I am good--so I must be a Christian. Period. So everybody was a Christian and if you said you were not, you must be a criminal or a communist. Not a lot of self-reflection involved.

This is the thought process.

~*~

WHAT IS TO BE DONE

The tumblr ppl are not concerned with the actual vocation of social justice and Lenin's famous question, What is to be done? They aren't in it for that. When I repeatedly tried to asked them brainstorming questions about what we might do, it was seen as picking a fight.

How does asking for opinions = picking a fight? Took me a long time to figure out.

If you are lazy and ineffectual, every question about actual ACTION (root word of activist) sounds like a reproach instead of a question; an entreaty for you to get off your ass. They have no intention of getting off their asses, so any discussion I attempted about that, got me labeled a troublemaker who picks fights. An instigator. Really.

"Social justice" is about their own wonderfulness and their own egos. Social justice is the new, fun theater to act out the drama of their suburban, highly-educated, carefully-curated "identities" (which change on a dime every few months, humorously enough). They are pointedly not about doing anything to actually help anyone else ... since by now its plainly obvious they are hurting and not helping.

~*~

Tumblr Social Justice = berating old hillbilly grannies from the "trailer park", frequently, loudly and often

(After all, who did you think the real enemy WAS?)

The so-called social justice environment on tumblr is the most hostile online environment I have EVER been in; even worse than arguing with white supremacists and nazis. They are far more insulting than MRAs and religious fundamentalists have ever been to me. (they also can't argue as well as any of these people, disturbingly enough)

This is what 46 years of activism and being a feminist pioneer gets you on tumblr: They are filled with utter contempt for all old people and tell us we "shouldn't be on tumblr" (!) as if they own it. I assume I was regularly called trailer trash since I was foolish enough to talk about my impoverished childhood. Big, big mistake.

I would warn others who were raised in poor environments to NEVER EVER discuss that on tumblr. They are fiercely classist--possibly the most fiercely and proudly classist group online anywhere--and openly despise poor people. They will NEVER let you forget this for a minute. If you ever try to discuss books or ideas after admitting you were poor, its "thats pretty good for the trailer park!" or "I didn't know hillbillies read books!" and other such viciousness.

Oddly, this is behavior the Republicans/right-wing have become too sensitive and aware to freely exhibit. They want white working class votes and sympathies. Meanwhile, crossover reality-TV star/pornographer Zinnia Jones (her online insanity even got her a job on the TLC network!) enthusiastically preaches the new social-justice gospel to her thousands of adoring fans: "Fuck the white working class!" and they all swoon collectively like teenyboppers.

You see, because they are "social justice" they can be as elitist as they wanna be, and those comments somehow don't mean the same thing as if they were political policy. They don't think there is any connection between their contempt for poor old working class trailer-trash white women and taking away their/our Social Security... and if there is, they don't care. They proudly believe that old, poor (etc) people are a blight, just like Forbes magazine, National Review and the Republicans have taught them.

But here is the crucial difference between them and Republicans:

They are doing all of this in the name of social justice, so its okay.

Remember that one? Mass genocide for the cause of social justice is acceptable.

And where have we heard that before?

*Yes I suppose I should enter a caution or "trigger warning" (spits for emphasis) about the satirical use of the n-word in the DK song linked above ... I once interviewed East Bay Ray about that whole business a long time ago, but I digress.

~*~

Similarly, because they are "feminists", they can call me "ugly old hag" and it "isn't sexist".

In case you didn't know, nasty sexism in the name of getting rid of sexism is okay too. (Where is our modern equivalent of Clara Zetkin, pictured at left, to argue this case when we need her?)

Interestingly, they don't see overt ageism as "ableist" at all (meaning they are wholly-unfamiliar with disability rights-theory), even though they obsess over "ableism" fairly constantly and a huge number claim to be autistic and have a variety of mental illnesses, far out of proportion to what the numbers could logically be. They talk about disabilities like status symbols, which means they are mostly invented.

I wish I was making all of this up. But I assure you, it is far worse than you can imagine.

I wish this was not "leftist" kids I am talking about--but every single example I am giving you here is from someone who calls themselves social justice and progressive. Every single example I am giving here are behaviors from people who claim to be on the Left, who tell people like me to go back to the trailer park. "Go back to redneck-land, grandma."... and then they are back politically-policing the language of others in 5 minutes or less. Really.

~*~

In summation -- tl; dr

They don't believe a single word they say.

There is no social justice on tumblr, since there are no social justice activists.

Question: Is this deliberate deception and subterfuge (right wing hijinx), or are they also deceiving themselves?

How can one claim to believe in equality, equity, ending oppression and all the rest of it and then gleefully tell people to go back to the trailer park, in the next breath?

It is astounding to me because I have never encountered such a thing before.

Probably because a real-life leftist collective would run such a person out on a rail immediately and/or call them a cop... while this is standard behavior over on lefty-tumblr.

THIS. IS. STANDARD.

~*~

Professor Peterson--one reason they hate you is that you are from Alberta and talk like Gary Cooper. You are a farmer, dude, go back where you came from. Intellectuals do not come from OUR class of people, only THEIR class of people. Of course they will help the government shout you down--they don't even believe people like you and me should be allowed to speak in the first place.

I know this for certain, since "social justice" kids have been telling me this for 5 years. My 46 years of activism means absolutely nothing to them, and they have told me that too.

I believe them.

Go back to your sacred Orwell, professor, specifically one Mr Emmanuel Goldstein, who knew what was up:

THEY intend to be the elites.

And they are telling us exactly what their regime will be like.


~*~

"Left-Wing" Communism: An Infantile Disorder

I was run off tumblr by the new elites, college-educated, pampered children still compulsively playing with toys ("electronic devices") into adulthood. Their knowledge of human nature, history and themselves, could fit into a thimble. Working class/minority teens in my neighborhood are light years more savvy than these kids--which is why I was initially confused by them, since their levels of education are staggering. Very smart kids who know everything but... with absolutely no life experience; a languid lifestyle not permitted to poor and working class kids forced to get jobs when still in middle school. Brilliantly-shaped minds with nowhere to land, reminding me of that old expression, all dressed up with no place to go.

Because they are so highly educated, I can't quite believe they don't know what they are doing.

After all, I told them, Peterson tells them, everybody who is sane tells them, but ... the viciousness just intensifies. It is therefore deliberate.

This dizzying-juxtaposition of traditional right wing class-hatred with all the trendy leftist PC-speak, is very disorienting, which I think is the major reason they do it.

They say they are our enemies, and we should believe them.

~*~

Bread and Circuses

It seems that 'personal problems' like fat and depression are sacrosanct to them, but not actual top-down oppression like economic status. This is an excellent way to keep them occupied (along with the omnipresent devices), and I have to give it to the capitalists--they have certainly neutralized any would-be young insurgents. Its like they all have huge electronic pacifiers in their mouths.

If the tumblr leftist language/assertions are actually fashion statements (like where to vacation or what new restaurant the foodies have discovered), it means they have little to do with reality. Ephemeral, they will pass, as fashion does.

This means these kids will eventually move on to the next vacation-destination and the next restaurant as this social justice fad wanes; they will get married and move to a different all-white suburb than the one they were raised in, and live exactly (with the same biases and prejudices) as their parents. In short, there is no there there.

But first, they have wrecked the discourse and elected Trump, and I am not about to let them off the hook for that. And you shouldn't either.

They have made a dangerous fascist cartoon of the Left that nobody in their right mind would elect or vote for... in fact, I find that *I* am also terrified of their new Gulag-Left and I have been around doing this since 1972... but I want nothing to do with their Stalinist viciousness.

Of course, the rest of the electorate feels exactly the same.

~*~

Jordan Peterson has recently become a shepherd for one faction of disgruntled young folks who are tired of this poisonous PC bullshit. Who will herd the others?

Rather, who HAS herded them already?

I originally believed (when I reluctantly climbed onto the tumblr-train in 2013, after the folding of Occupy) the tumblr bloggers were basically just like working class kids (my own, or those I have worked with). This proved not to be the case in "political" tumblr circles, but is probably true in the fandom-circles. I quickly realized who I was dealing with from their casual references to pricey vacation spots, schools, neighborhoods, clothing and the like. They constantly drop insider-lingo like "post-structuralism" (almost everything is, it seems) and other bourgeois pretentious BS. If you don't know this stuff, they will actually say you are not a leftist and could never have been; you can't be a leftist if you don't know Derrida, Foucault, Judith Butler and similar postmodern thinkers who have nothing to do with Marx and Trotsky and class war.

So, here is what I learned from tumblr: You can't be a leftist now if you are too poor to have had a good education and can't quote Foucault.

Since this IS what a leftist is, I can't possibly be one, so all my questions about these things can be ignored since I am a stalker and troll. Etc.

~*~

Left: Jonathan Haidt, who has successfully convinced me that this is a new religion we are dealing with, which accounts for their entire take-no-prisoners/Crusades psychology. If you disagree with their view of themselves, whatever it is, this is not mere disagreement but "invalidating their existence"! (Never mind your existence, yours doesn't count.)


Jonathan Haidt's videos talk about how these kids likely come from older parents, successful educated professionals who waited for the 'right time' to have children, and then only had 1 or 2. They have been fussed at, prodded and poked their whole lives. Their annoying helicopter-parents have overprotected and spoiled them, which is why they are now afraid to leave the basement or bedroom and spend their entire days in an angry, repressed fury, patrolling the web for latent political incorrectness and landing on the unsuspecting in a manner not unlike Al-Qaeda. This is a very twisted version of a stunted-childhood, sitting in borderline-sociopathic fury, easily-controlled by the governments and elites... all while thinking they are revolutionary as all hell.

By contrast, I remember worrying I was never radical enough, never doing enough, something I still worry about, and the activists around me constantly worry about. This is the proletarian sensibility vs the elite sensibility, that theorists like Frantz Fanon and Antonio Gramsci (not Judith Butler) wrote about.

It is as if they are deliberately trying to make the mistakes of the past. Possibly since they don't even know what happened the last time their sorry attempts at human-perfection failed. (go back to the song right above the Pol Pot photo)

~*~

WHAT IS TO BE UNDONE

This state of affairs, a "Left wing" that is actively and unapologetically doing the work of the Right, is the most tragic thing I have ever witnessed.

I have repeatedly tried to stir the would-be leftist mob on tumblr to do something, anything.

Their deposits of viciousness and cruelty are bottomless, and wouldn't it be nice to point it at the opposition instead of each other?

I have asked approximately 1000 times: When is the last time you said ______ (insert vicious, ageist, sexist, anti-poor trailer park insult of the day) to a right winger or Trump-supporter on tumblr? (And there ARE plenty, many are there precisely to aggravate/bait the legendary tumblr-SJWs.) I ask, do you say these things to MRAs and racists? (Aside: I've noticed lots of antisemites on tumblr, far more than simple racists.) Why not? I have never been answered.

The reason of course is that its no fun to shame racists for racism or right wingers for being right wing--they are proud of it. Where's the fun in that?

This phenomenon proves their behaviors and attacks are NOT about politics, but about their own narcissistic nastiness.

~*~

I am reminded that tumblr is a self-selected group, which of course goes without saying. So is Reddit, and the joke is that tumblr is composed of 12-year-old communists, while Reddit is all 20-year-old nazis. I went to tumblr in hope that I could connect my generation of activists to the younger one... then I finally realized that absolutely none of these people are activists.

Actual activists are respectful of older activists and hope to learn from them, as I always was, and as the young activists I know IRL are.

What is especially alarming is the fact that the social justice warriors are now defending patriarchal, racist, imperialist (etc etc etc) governments. You think I jest. Nope. I couldn't believe it myself... and when I fully digested this fact I started hyperventilating.

Opiate of the Masses

Bill C-16 in Canada is a civil-rights law proclaiming that all "pronouns" must be respected and used on demand--even the goofy ones like Xir and Xee, as well as a plethora of confusing and nonsensical words that can easily sew confusion/be taken as insulting in non-English-speaking neighborhoods (once again illustrating that these SJWs don't actually care about non-whites).

Thus, this is the law in Canada, which Peterson said he would not recognize. And the SJWs came after him for daring to dissent.

Thus, when the kids demonstrated against Peterson, in favor of the law... they were (shivers) demonstrating IN FAVOR OF THE GOVERNMENT.

IN FAVOR OF THE GOVERNMENT. Again I repeat: demonstrating IN FAVOR OF THE GOVERNMENT. Silencing a professor who is criticizing government, and demonstrating IN FAVOR OF THE GOVERNMENT.

You know, those meanie imperialist governments? With armies and stuff? The ones who occupied Native lands and arrest people of color and so on and so forth? The Boogeyman?

Demonstrating IN FAVOR of their government against Peterson.

They think they are radical, but they are demonstrating in favor of the status quo, against one who is criticizing it. (!!)

Once I realized this--I was literally terrified and I realized Trump would win.

Keep in mind: the class of kids on tumblr is from the class that will benefit under Trump--and this is why they will not heed warnings or join with older activists to get rid of him: secretly, mommy and daddy like him and are getting capital gains tax cuts. That benefits them--and perhaps their motives are actually that base and transparent.

When I did health care posts (hundreds, at one point, in a blind panic, feverishly trying to save lives), not a single one of the 965 people who were then following me, reblogged those. Health care is boring unless you can talk about how ableism hurts depressed people, and then its all about Rxs. I never saw any posts about the battle for Obamacare, unless from mainstream orgs like Politico or AlterNet, etc.

This tell us the tumblrites already have their insurance, so fuck the poor.

And I started noticing the agenda. The tumblr agenda is basically pro-Trump.

~*~

If the circular firing squad ever breaks up, they could make a difference. But as long as the Left attacks the Left, as tumblr's entire purpose appears to be, it is a pro-Trump social media platform, which is why I will not return.

It is not enough to keep Trump in office; the tumblrites intend to destroy the Left in the process.

The Left, they have decided, is all shit (as are those of us who have kept it going all this time, needless to say) which is why they attack other leftists and deliberately inhibit all conversation about leftist strategies.

After all, they already have excellent health care and education. What they really need is a capital gains tax cut.

Is college worth it?

One of those subjects that interests me a great deal, is whether a college degree is "necessary" or not. Lately, as the price of (even a mediocre) education skyrockets, the question is a getting a new and respectful hearing. Megan McArdle's in-depth Newsweek article on the topic, has prompted extensive discussion.

I am one who has often had my jobs supplanted by college grads. Frequently, these kids couldn't even decently proofread their own ad copy. I have trained college grad after college grad, many as dumb as dirt. It seems they are getting dumber, too... I think this is probably because the actual value of a degree is less than it used to be. I have trained numerous college grads who barely made it through (sometimes taking much longer than four years to do so), but by God, they had that almighty sacred CREDENTIAL that meant they should make more than I do; never mind that they couldn't even answer a customer's simple questions. (One college grad argued with me that there was no such thing as vitamin B-5. Really.) The dimwitted arrogance of "I have a degree and you don't; so I know everything and you know nothing," is worthy of a whole separate post. I collect such stories. Another big problem with college degrees is that the holder of said degree seems to believe that IQ points were magically bestowed when the degree was conferred... which is more proof of stupidity.

I am also one who has lied on occasion (especially in the pre-digital era) and claimed a college degree I don't have. It never seemed to make any real difference in anything an employer expected me to do. Such unnecessary college degrees (say, among video store clerks) are simply about gate-keeping; making sure that People Like Us are the only people in the break-room. The fact that I was easily able to pass as People Like Them, would suggest that it's the (apparent) fact of the degree, nothing tangible that is learned in the actual process of obtaining one.

From McArdle's piece:

Unsurprisingly those 18-year-olds often don’t look quite so hard at the education they’re getting. In Academically Adrift, their recent study of undergraduate learning, Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa find that at least a third of students gain no measurable skills during their four years in college. For the remainder who do, the gains are usually minimal. For many students, college is less about providing an education than a credential—a certificate testifying that they are smart enough to get into college, conformist enough to go, and compliant enough to stay there for four years.

When I was a senior, one of my professors asked wonderingly, “Why is it that you guys spend so much time trying to get as little as possible for your money?” The answer, [writer/economist Bryan] Caplan says, is that they’re mostly there for a credential, not learning. “Why does cheating work?” he points out. If you were really just in college to learn skills, it would be totally counterproductive. “If you don’t learn the material, then you will have less human capital and the market will punish you—there’s no reason for us to do it.” But since they think the credential matters more than the education, they look for ways to get the credential as painlessly as possible.

True. Learning itself often seems to be beside the point.

I have lost count of the number of times I have been reading some 'complicated' (but not really), obscure or arcane book (i.e. Jean Paul Sartre) and have been asked by the resident college grad in my office (accompanied by furrowed brow): "Are you reading that for a class?" The idea that one actually reads something "difficult" for oneself, for pleasure, is utterly foreign to them. Sometimes, when I reply "no"--the puzzlement is evident, and they continue, dumbfounded: "Then why are you reading it?" I hardly know what to say. (Tellingly, it is usually the 'uneducated' redneck in the office who giggles, at this point.) They usually punctuate these questions with, "All of that is behind me now! Whew!" or some other amazing comment, expressing relief that they will never have to READ A REAL BOOK again. (Wow, wasn't that shit HARD?) Some have proudly bragged to me they got through their entire college years without actually finishing a single one. I have never doubted it.

Nonetheless, I was surprised to read on Brad DeLong's blog (check the comments), that questioning the nature of COLLEGE UBER ALLES is now regarded as a conservative viewpoint. As Tim Gunn would say, this worries me. Back in the 60s/70s, liberals and radicals made this argument first, offering the common-sense observation that working and living in the real world--as well as a variety of interesting 'learning experiences' (this era marked the birth of that now-common expression)--also conferred 'an education.' I wasn't aware that questioning authority is now up to the right wing. (And how depressing is that?) Are liberals-on-the-coasts THAT out of touch with the situation on-the-ground? Do they interact with college grads from schools that never expected them to do math without calculators, or spell without spellcheck? I don't think they have.

More proof of the disconnect between elite liberals and the great working-class unwashed... and that makes me uneasy.

~*~

Further, there is the increasing importance of teacher evaluations, and whether they are a good or bad thing for education. What does it mean that students now determine whether a teacher stays employed? Is this an education worth paying big bucks for, one that has been "voted on"?

In the New York Times, former Duke professor Stuart Rojstaczer writes:

Student evaluations are a poor indicator of professor performance. The good news is that college students often reward instructors who teach well. The bad news is that students often conflate good instruction with pleasant ambience and low expectations. As a result they also reward instructors who grade easily, require little work, are glib and chatty, wear nice clothes, and are physically attractive. It’s generally impossible to separate all these factors in an evaluation. Plus, students will penalize demanding professors or professors who have given them a bad grade, regardless of the quality of instruction that a professor provides. In the end, deans and tenure committees are using bad data to evaluate professor performance, while professors feel pressure to grade easier and reduce workloads to receive higher evaluations.

In the mid-90s, I had a short-term temp-job processing teacher evaluations for a technical college. I fed the evaluations with the penciled-in answer-dots into a "reader" (which often spit them right back out at me... just like when you stick your dollar in the vending machine and it spits it back for having a crease in it) ... and then made pie charts on a Model-T-Ford-like-Mac, breaking down the teacher-ratings from the students: Excellent, Good, Fair, Below Average, Sucks. Then I deciphered the written gibberish from the students ("I like Mrs X, she is hot!", "Mrs X needs to stop talking about her cat all the time, some of us HATE CATS!" etc etc) and typed it up separately. Then I stapled the pie charts to the comments. (Yes, it was Model-T level stuff, indeed, but I remember thinking how high-tech the pie charts were!)

And do I need to tell you, how many times the teachers came sneaking in, asking WHO I was working on? ("Have you reached the computer/engineering/CAD department yet?") If I answered that I was working on their department, their eyes would go boinnnngggg (like a Tex Avery cartoon) and they would frenetically rifle through the papers (that I had carefully separated into piles, of course, causing me hours of extra work) looking for their own students' names and replies. My skinny, ADHD-supervisor would attempt to circumvent this extracurricular activity, keeping the door open from her adjacent office (where she liked to listen to Aerosmith) and bust them when they did this... scurrying in and shooing them away like kindergartners, reminding them of rules, rules, rules: YOU ARE BREAKING THEM. They didn't care. They did it virtually every day I had the job. (Some departments, I could see, were far more nervous than others; the nursing department was impervious and never showed up a single time.) The rifling of my careful piles of papers continued, and since my supervisor could SEE that this was not MY fault, I often got paid overtime.

I finally got the message, loud and clear, that their jobs were at stake. One teacher started groaning as he looked at his pie chart, his mortgage payment obviously hanging in the balance. One of them asked me if there was any way to fudge the replies, which I pretended I hadn't heard, just as skinny-supervisor bounded through the door and banished him from the room.

I remember a short, stolen conversation with one such crestfallen teacher, as I whispered (Aerosmith momentarily drowning us out) that his pie chart looked okay to me. He whispered back, shaking his head, that OKAY/FAIR was not good enough, you had to have blah-de-blah percent of GOODS... FAIR does not cut it. (I remember being surprised, since I am the product of a lifetime of FAIR public school teachers, and I still know every single one of my state capitals.)

What does this mean, that the opinions of students now dictate whether college instructors get to keep their jobs? (Even in a field like AUTOMOBILE ENGINE MECHANICS?!?)

Might this lead to getting softer and softer on the students?

And take note, this was at the dawn of the online era. "Rate My Professors" and other such sites that rate instructors publicly (and anonymously) had not even been invented yet.

~*~

In today's economy, we now have the sordid spectacle of employers demanding that bartenders and appliance-salesman have college degrees. As a result, we have a class of people who used to self-select out of college and go to work in factories, choosing to trudge through the torture of college, simply to avoid becoming unemployable. Since there are no longer any factory jobs in the USA, such a person is now at loose ends, and preyed upon by all the fake colleges promising a college credential during TV commercials. (Since these particular working-class folks haven't already been hanging out with the college-set, as I have, they are not quite aware that all college degrees are not equal, and some are barely regarded as real degrees at all.)

College is a racket, straight up. The costs are rising, and increasingly staggering. People graduate and can't find work. Worse, due to the magical degree in their hands, they think a job is promised to them. Thus, when they do get work, they expect it to be a certain KIND of work--the exalted occupations promised on the glowing TV commercials. When expected to mop floors with the rest of us, they are unexpectedly indignant: I didn't spend four years in college for this! they fume. As a matter of fact, you did. You did it to get hired, and now you are hired... now, mop.

I know, you didn't read Twelfth Night and go into six-figure debt to push a mop, and do you now see how ridiculous that was?

Mitt Romney's class contempt exposed

Romney's speech to private donors hits the airwaves and gives us all a fit of the giggles.

Others are simply slack-jawed at the Republican presidential candidate's total and unbridled contempt for ordinary Americans. Here is the video of the speech, leaked by Mother Jones magazine. (Full transcript here.)

The money quote:

There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe that government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it. That that's an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what. And I mean, the president starts off with 48, 49, 48—he starts off with a huge number. These are people who pay no income tax. Forty-seven percent of Americans pay no income tax. So our message of low taxes doesn't connect. And he'll be out there talking about tax cuts for the rich. I mean that's what they sell every four years. And so my job is not to worry about those people—I'll never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.

But rest assured, the entire speech is well worth reading. His astounding class-based contempt and overall Richie-Rich comic-book cluelessness is evident throughout.

For instance, I consider this quote almost as incredible as the predictable "forget the 47%" jibber-jabber currently crashing the airwaves and nightly news shows:

[There is] the percent that's, "Oh, you were born with a silver spoon," you know, "You never had to earn anything," and so forth. And, and frankly, I was born with a silver spoon, which is the greatest gift you could have, which is to get born in America. I'll tell ya, there is—95 percent of life is set up for you if you're born in this country. And I remember going to—sorry just to bore you with stories—but I was, when I was back in my private equity days, we went to China to buy a factory there, employed about 20,000 people, and they were almost all young women between the ages of about 18 and 22 or 23. They were saving for potentially becoming married, and they worked in these huge factories, they made various small appliances, and as we were walking through this facility, seeing them work, the number of hours they worked per day, the pittance they earned, living in dormitories with little bathrooms at the end with maybe ten rooms. And the rooms, they had 12 girls per room, three bunk beds on top of each other. You've seen them.
...

And around this factory was a fence, a huge fence with barbed wire, and guard towers. And we said, "Gosh, I can't believe that you, you know, you keep these girls in." They said, "No, no, no—this is to keep other people from coming in. Because people want so badly to come work in this factory that we have to keep them out, or they'll just come in here and start working and try and get compensated. So, we—this is to keep people out."

Well, gosh... sure it was.

Is this man for real?

~*~

The media reactions have been as explosive and amazing as Romney's idiocy.

AlterNet's 10 Desperate and Depressed Conservative Reactions to Romney's 47 Percent Moment (Fun subtitle: Some are standing by Romney; the semi-smart ones are running away like he's carrying Ebola) includes some quotable goodies:

The reality, of course, is that Romney cherry-picked one tax – federal income taxes – which happens to be one of our more progressive taxes. It accounts for 42 percent of federal revenues. A more regressive tax, paid by almost every working person -- but not the super-rich who live off of their investments -- is the payroll tax, which accounts for 40 percent of the government's take. And, of course, the idea that the 47 percent of households that don't pay federal income taxes are Democrats is just silly – they're heavily concentrated in red states and a fifth of that group are elderly, a demographic that tends to skew Republican.

Great talking points; highly recommended for those of us who insist on foolishly arguing with Romneyoids on various blogs and forums.

Romney's '47%' presents challenge for Republican candidates (Los Angeles Times)

Mitt Romney’s ‘47 Percent’ Remarks Have Everything To Do With Race (Colorlines)

By way of Boing Boing, here's the 'story of the story'... how the speech-video eventually surfaced online: The Long Strange Leak Of Mitt Romney's 47% Video (BuzzFeed)

And E.J. Dionne asks the pertinent question, Does Mitt Romney's '47 percent' comment show he hates America?:

What kind of nation are we if nearly half of us are lazy, self-indulgent moochers who will never be persuaded to mend our ways? "I'll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives," Romney said, thus writing off a huge share of our citizenry.

From his perch high atop the class structure, Romney offered an analysis of political motivations that even Marxists would regard as excessively materialistic. He speaks as if hardworking parents who seek government help to provide health care for their kids are irresponsible, that students who get government aid to attend community colleges are not trying to "care for their lives." Has he never spoken with busboys and waitresses, hospital workers and janitors who make too little to pay income taxes but work their hearts out to "take personal responsibility"?

Of course he hasn't. I think that is fairly obvious.

Stay tuned, sports fans.

Greetings from Redneck Nation

Finding politically-correct targets for the trendinistas to hate, is getting more and more difficult.

How can they prove they are the cool trendies unless somebody is the inferior rube? And the usual suspects (the darker peoples, the disabled, the foreigners who dress funny)... well, all of that prejudice is starting to look really BACKWARD and ignorant, even to the trendies. Who'd a thunk it? This seems to have touched off a crisis in confidence. They can't even use a well-seasonsed, drive-by insult like "mouth-breathers" anymore, without somebody getting irate. It's getting harder and harder for them to find people beneath them to safely ridicule. WHERE ARE MY INFERIORS?--howl the trendies, starved to recognize their innate superiority.

Ah, yes. Of course. Their inferiors, as always, are south of the Mason-Dixon line. What Robin Williams once amusingly called the Manson-Nixon line, even though one of those men was born in OHIO (which is ABOVE the Mason-Dixon line, last time I checked) and one was born in California. But that's quibbling... let's not let the facts interfere with good anti-southern insults!

On my show tomorrow (which I taped yesterday in scenic Simpsonville, SC), we have a first-rate, top-notch, Daisy-rant in store! This was occasioned by the newest affront perpetrated against Redneck Nation, an unbelievable Reality TV show on The Learning Channel (!) titled, HERE COMES HONEY BOO-BOO. I didn't watch too much of it. Needed drugs after only five minutes.

This mocking, derisive show manages to combine hatred of southern rednecks (the only form of overt classism now openly celebrated in the USA) with hatred of fat people, exploitation of children and early-sexualization of girls, all in one happy little package. You can almost see the TV-executives, triumphantly tallying up all of these factors on their nasty fingers: heyyyyy, we got KIDS, we got a BABY BEAUTY-QUEEN, we got a FAT FAMILY of DUMB REDNECKS! (high fives all-round) Whoever thought up this show, got himself a raise and probably a promotion.

Already, the trendies are stampeding forth to "defend" the show against... well, against who? Do they understand that they like it because it was MADE FOR THEM? Apparently not. (The irony, it burns.)

I started thinking about the cultural geneaology of Ms Boo Boo and where she came from. Brainstorming with my ever-astute radio co-hosts (Consiglieri Gregg Jocoy and Occupy Greenville Mentor Double A Battery), we came up with a noxious stew of the murdered JonBenét Ramsey, the rise of awful Toddlers and Tiaras (where Ms Boo Boo was "discovered"), Dance Moms and other such shows, as well as Little Miss Sunshine. We then segued into Larry the Cable Guy and Jeff Foxworthy. Nobody is safe, once we start naming names!

To make matters worse, there is also a constantly-replayed show titled World's Dumbest Hillbillies. After thinking really hard, we could not come up with single other group of people that would rate such a TV show named after them, try as we might. (Any takers?)

I invite you to listen. Saturday at 9am, WFIS-AM, 1600 AM/94.9 FM on your local upstate radio dial... or on our radio blog.

~*~

Taking a short break for the neighboring Peach State.

Trivia time: there was once a minor-league baseball team actually known as The Atlanta Crackers. This came from the pejorative term, Georgia Cracker. (staying on topic!) My father-in-law saw the Atlanta Crackers play several times, and the first time I ever heard him comment about that, I was momentarily confused. (You say what?)

There was also a Negro-league team called the Atlanta Black Crackers, which is an even weirder team name.

See you when I get back. Keep the faith, redneck brothers and sisters.

Random Dead Air Photo Gallery--Spring 2012

During my unofficial blog break, I pondered these Puzzling Questions of the week:

Why did Jeff Goldblum decide to sleepwalk through his season on LAW AND ORDER: CRIMINAL INTENT?

Is Ron Paul going belly-up for Mitt? (his followers certainly are not)

Is Charles Murray for real?

That last one is a result of reading his latest sordid volume: Coming Apart: The State of White America. At first, you think, huh? WHITE America? And then he explains that he has taken everyone else out of the equation so as not to be (insert whine) ACCUSED of anything, as he (correctly) was when he (co)wrote the racist book THE BELL CURVE. Thus, suitably chastened, he petulantly refuses to discuss anything but white people from now on.

Throughout the book, Murray periodically reminds us that he went to Harvard, just after he asserts something resoundingly clueless. Just so you know: he makes big money saying these stupid things. Is this what a Harvard education is worth? Save your pennies, kids.

What he doesn't understand is that white people's position is a result of having several buffer classes of people to take the heat; classes that CUSHION whites from economic and social upheaval (and thoroughly unpleasant jobs such as picking grapes in the fields), rather as having military bases all over the world cushions the USA from much unpleasant international fallout.

Murray thinks the elite (whites) have become the elite because of their superior morals and values... an argument so flimsy (regardless of all his graphs and pie charts) that Jonathan Chait (who admits he has not even read the book) successfully countered it in ONE FUNNY GRAPHIC on his blog. We know Wall Street is filled with paragons of virtue, yes?

Tellingly, Murray also includes a quiz about "living in a bubble"--which I found the most incredible section of the book. (Needless to say, I don't, and I doubt you do either.) One question, for instance, is "Have you ever been on a factory floor?"--and Murray has, exactly ONE TIME. (!) One. Time.

Non-Harvard aside: Why is someone so sheltered he has only been on a factory floor ONCE, trusted to write an opus about CLASS? That's hilarious, all by itself.

DEAD AIR studied this book in abject amazement, and consequently wondered if the Right and Left can ever agree on ANYthing at all. (shakes head) Also, my dislike and mistrust of the elites populating the Left, has been greatly enhanced... if that's possible.

~*~

I got photos... I have not posted random photos for a good while. (I blame Facebook!) Also, I have noticed that these random-photo threads tend to become spam magnets, for some odd reason. I guess the word "random" brings in the bots?

Anyway... below (as always, you can click to enlarge):

1) Efia Nwangaza addresses the Malcolm X festival; the local Malcolm X Center meet-and-greet photos are here.

2) Doggie cooling off in Falls Park fountain.

3) Big Girls Rock banner, also present at Malcolm X festival.

4) Cyril decides to relax in my clean laundry. It was suggested to me on Facebook, that a warm basket of laundry IN THE DIRECT LINE OF A SUNBEAM amounts to me setting an irresistible cat-trap.

5) Your yearly azalea fix! I almost let Spring go by without posting any! (McPherson Park)

6) Country band, The Buchanan Boys, who did an excellent country version of "Kashmir"! They have a Facebook page, but not a regular web page. (May 4th)

7) Purty roses and 8) Irises! That new Facebook "timeline" gives me an excuse to post flowers! Both from Falls Park.

9) Reedy River Falls, Greenville, SC. And have I written before (a few hundred times) about how cool it is to have a waterfall in the middle of town?

10) Yes, your ever-humble narrator continues to Occupy in downtown Greenville, SC.

11) and 12) My beloved Cyril has turned three years old!

I wished him a Happy Birthday, but he seemed singularly uninterested in celebrating.

~*~

News flash: People on TV live better than we do

At left: Audrey Meadows and Jackie Gleason as Alice and Ralph in THE HONEYMOONERS.




I was looking at Ralph and Alice Kramden's tiny, dingy apartment last night, flipping channels and feeling some 50s nostalgia. And then, jarringly, I landed on some shiny new sitcom, and the same supposedly middle-class people are living in $350,000 homes.

Wait, what? How could they afford THAT? Alice and Ralph barely scraped by, and they didn't even have a car. They talked about not having a car, too. They talked about money. They talked about affording things and not affording things. I suddenly realized that modern TV characters do not talk about whether they can afford things now, unless it is something obviously expensive, like tuition to particularly-pricey colleges or spiffy sports cars or extended vacations to Paris. I also realized something else: Ralph and Alice didn't have credit cards. After all, they still bought ice for their actual ice box.

They didn't have much. No nice clothes, no nice furniture. People loved them because they identified with them.

When did that change? When did regular, just-folks TV characters turn into imitation-rich-people? Even though the characters are given simple occupations, they are clearly living way beyond their means and above their pay-grade.

I first became aware of this back in the 90s, when some wit (possibly in the Village Voice) wrote an article about the then-wildly-popular show "Friends"--suggesting that their respective apartments would cost ____ (something outlandish) that unemployed actors and waitresses (the "Friends" occupations) could never possibly afford.

This TV Trope became known as Friends Rent Control, which was the official excuse for this luxurious apartment-dwelling:

Besides appealing to audience fantasy, this is usually done because large sets are easier to film in. If Monica or Chandler's apartment on Friends had been realistic, the entire apartment would be the size of an average living room, rather than the entire first floor of a house. Doing a scene with all six main characters would have been a total nightmare for the cast and crew. It's for this very reason that Angel changed its primary set from a cramped basement office in Season 1 to a spacious hotel in Season 2. In some cases, though, the reason is that the writers and producers have either forgotten or never known how normal people live; born into prosperity with parents able to afford the best universities and pampered by the entertainment industry, they actually have no clue of how the majority of people live.

Ah, we get to the heart of it.

Jackie Gleason came from Brooklyn, and actually grew up at 328 Chauncey Street, the address he used in THE HONEYMOONERS. His parents were both from Ireland. He WAS Ralph Kramden, except he didn't drive a bus (but you could certainly imagine him driving one). Jackie Gleason was poor and never even graduated from high school. He hadn't forgotten how it was to live with an ice box that used real ice.

There is a similar TV trope called Living in a Furniture Store, the title of which sums up how these TV-homes are designed and arranged.

Speaking of furniture stores, does all of this STUFF in TV shows (which we are to believe is owned by regular people like you and me), cause viewers to crave more STUFF? I think it does. I was just admiring some of the bed linens and coverings in an EVERYBODY LOVES RAYMOND rerun, and thinking idly of my tacky, ancient quilts and how I fall short. I see no reason to have new quilts when I love my old ones, but... well... they ARE old, and I am suddenly conscious of it.

In fact, these thoughts started me thinking about this post, and got me wondering how other people feel about this phenomenon.

What do you think when you see dental-hygienists and waiters and other low-income people living like kings on TV? Do you laugh at it, or does it annoy you?

Have you ever craved something you saw on a TV show? And let me clarify: I do NOT refer to commercials and advertising; it is the JOB of a TV commercial to make you crave something, but it is simply a symptom of viewing that makes you crave something you saw on EVERYBODY LOVES RAYMOND. (It is also a by-product of wanting to be like the characters, as when millions of women cut their hair like Jennifer Aniston back in the 90s.)

Your thoughts?

Date a geek today

Can I say it? I feel really sorry for people who are dating now.

A whole generation has gone by since I last shopped for males. (In November, we will celebrate our 24th anniversary.) And from the looks of things, it's gotten kinda ugly out there.

I think it must be terrible for people to look you up and down, talk to you for five minutes, then press the buzzer: NEXT. Back in the day, before the internet, things were slower. You usually didn't press the NEXT buzzer until you knew the person fairly well and were CERTAIN it was time to press the NEXT buzzer. And even then, you might keep that person around as a good friend, the way Chris Rock says women keep a man in the wings: "In Case of Emergency, Break Glass." (Yes, she admitted, head hung low, I did that for years. Because as Chris Rock says, you never know.)

This post was inspired by a geek-hating tirade, and I just had to say something.

As an old lady married to a geek, let me say, geeks are the greatest. AND the smartest. (I admit, being married to a genius is important to my self-image.) But I understand that not everyone feels that way. Big Blogdonia hoopla over this intended-humorous post over at Gizmodo. (I thought Gizmodo was a geeky-site, so I was surprised that they would run an anti-geek piece.) Trendy young woman dates a geek, and suffers extended apoplexy:

The next day I Googled my date and a wealth of information flowed into my browser. A Wikipedia page! Competition videos! Fanboy forums! This guy isn’t just some professional who dabbled in card games at a tender age. He’s widely revered in the game of Magic that he’s been immortalised in his own playing card.

Just like you’re obligated to mention you’re divorced or have a kid in your online profile, shouldn’t someone also be required to disclose any indisputably geeky world championship titles? But maybe it was a long time ago? We met for round two later that week.

At dinner I got straight down to it. Did he still play? “Yes.” Strike one. How often? “I’m preparing for a tournament this weekend.” Strike two. Who did he hang out with? “I’ve met all my best friends through Magic.” Strike three. I smiled and nodded and listened. Eventually I even felt a little bit bad that I didn’t know shit about the game. Here was a guy who had dedicated a good chunk of his life to mastering Magic, on a date with a girl who can barely play Solitaire. This is what happens, I thought, when you lie in your online profile. I was lured on a date thinking I’d met a normal finance guy, only to realise he was a champion dweeb in hedge funder’s clothing.

I later found out that he infiltrated his way into OKCupid dates with at least two other people I sort of know, including one of my co-workers. Mothers, warn your daughters! This could happen to you. You’ll think you’ve found a normal bearded guy with a job, only to end up sharing goat cheese with a world champion of nerds. Maybe I’m an OKCupid arsehole for calling it that way. Maybe I’m shallow for not being able to see past his world title. But if everyone stopped lying in their profiles, maybe there also wouldn’t be quite as many OKCupid horror stories to tell.

This post exploded onto several blogs, as the geeks and geek-defenders came out in force. Gizmodo even replied semi-officially and took the guy's name out of the piece. (But with the multitude of information the author has provided, it would be really easy to locate him and his name.) Sady Doyle takes up the charge and defends the initial poster and her account of the shitty date. (NOTE: Sady is far funnier.) Eventually THAT thread has to be closed down too. The whole thing has caused a near-riot in Blogdonia.

Meanwhile, I am rendered mute and remain utterly clueless about the whole thing. Really? A game? Really?

And what's wrong with goat cheese?

See there, I am already hopelessly uncool. I don't even understand the underlying premises of why this man is bad. As far as I can see, he didn't insult her or women in general, did not grab her tit or pinch her ass, was reasonably literate and dressed inoffensively. (She offhandedly says they discussed "normal stuff" and includes "college" as one of those "normal" things... obviously, a man who had not been to college at all would not have been regarded as "normal" or good enough, regardless of his interests or intelligence. In virtually all angry replies to the post, this casual elitism was unremarked upon.) Is it supposed to be bad or good to dress like a hedge fund guy? And why? Is capitalism considered an unbridled good by this person? If the guy had oodles of money (if his card-game-of-choice was the World Series of Poker rather than Magic: The Gathering), would she have been impressed?

Feminism is not just about women. Feminism is also about men. We cannot expect men to transcend their base desires and like us as people, if we are not willing to do the same to them. If we judge men solely by their wallets or their hobbies, we can hardly be angry when they judge us by our boobs or our weight.

Does it shock you when I tell you I married AN UNEMPLOYED PERSON? Of course, now, he has had his job longer than everybody, but when I met him, this was certainly not the case. Sady says there is no such thing as the Frog turning into the Prince and sees this as propaganda for girls to accept Frogs and to be happy with them:

We get a lot of sexist narratives about love, but none of them are more pernicious and subtle than this: The Frog Prince story. You could call it “Beauty and the Beast,” too. Or you could call it “Twilight,” or “Knocked Up,” or “Rory Williams Won’t Stop Whining;” it’s always the same story, anyway. Girl meets guy. On the surface, this guy is unappealing! Because he’s a frog! Or he’s not sexually attractive to her, or he treats her badly, or he’s immature, or he’s Rory Williams and he won’t stop whining; all of these are frog-like states, generally considered unkissable. But only a bitch would think that frogs don’t deserve our sweet, sweet kisses, so the woman doesn’t leave. Instead, she looks for the guy’s good qualities. She lowers her standards; she changes her expectations. She gives up on her silly little “ideas” about “attractiveness” or “compatible lifestyles” or “having fun with her partner.” Finally, she loses touch with her own desires to the point that she winds up making out with a fucking frog. At which point he becomes a prince. Or a loving husband, or a responsible person, or a whiny little Roman Centurion; the point is, in these stories, once you give up on wanting things from men, men magically become what you want.

Here’s the secret, though, if you are the girl in this particular story: That guy never became a prince. At all. He’s still the same guy; he still possesses all those qualities you initially found unappealing, for all sorts of valid reasons. People don’t go from frog to mammal overnight, and they particularly don’t do so because you ask less of them; you are still making out with a frog, in the long run. The only reason he looks like a prince nowadays is that you lowered your standards to the point that you literally could not tell the difference between frog and mammal.

First of all, I was an alcoholic very active in AA when he met me, a single welfare mother with a three-year-old child, so I was not free of my own amphibian tendencies. And maybe those flaws are pretty glaring, but you know, everyone has them. Everyone. But because mine WERE so glaring, I could not lie about them or hide them, and had to face them up front. I was not a terrific bargain, and I did not present myself that way. Perhaps everyone should consider that? (Aside: Working-class and poor kids are frequently asked by their peers, Who do you think you are?, and I often wonder if the middle-and-upper-class kids are ever asked that question, because they sure don't act like it. But I digress.)

And second, I find it interesting Sady thinks the Frog tale is a propaganda story for women... when I think women wrote the story, out of personal experience.

In short, we SAW the prince emerge, so we know. For sure.

As one who has been married three times, let me share something crucial: you do not know who men are until the shit hits the fan. (Yes, I'm afraid the military is right about that one.) Our characters are forged in crisis. Will this man stand by you when you go to court with the ex? When you are sick? Been fired? Lost your mother? How will he respond? What kind of father will he be? You don't know any of this ahead of time, even if you think you do. One of the worst things that can ever happen, is finding out that you married someone who can't deal with emotions or reality, who subsumes himself in work or TV or porn. When you are young and carefree and everything is fun, you can easily handle things. But the first time something HAPPENS (i.e. somebody becomes an alcoholic, okay: ME) and this person can't deal? They will cut you loose and move on. It turns out they are not someone cut out for the long haul, and you had no clue. (How could you have had a clue? Nothing BAD had ever happened before.) You could go years and never know this about a man. And it happened to me.

What you want is a man who understands what true partnership means. These men are rare, so rare in fact, that you shouldn't turn them away just because they play the wrong game. Really, that is the least of it. (Some hints I can offer in retrospect: during the dating period, does he keep his distance when you are upset or yowling? Does he say, "call back when you have calmed down"? Move on. When you have children together, he will treat them like shit and refuse to deal. Because as you probably know, kids yowl all the time.)

The secret to being married a long time is: Your souls merge. Your MINDS merge. You may not like his games, but you will learn about them nonetheless. Even more than that: you will learn what traits he displays while playing said game, and why it makes him so happy. Similarly, he may not like your stuff either, but he will learn the lyrics of Who songs anyway. Eventually, you hear him tell someone else that the Who was great, and you privately preen. Just to yourself.

At this point, we finish each other sentences, or don't even bother with whole sentences.

Example: TV commercial comes on.

Him: "That reminds me of..."

Me: "Yeah, but that was a different actor."

Him: "No, same guy."

Me: "You sure?"

Friends: stare at us dumbfounded, and we don't even know why, until they tell us.

And I like it that way. :)

So here I am, defending the geeks. Because I am happily married to one, and have been for a long time. And girls, if you overlook them as a category, you are cheating yourselves. You really are.

But then, I occasionally eat goat cheese too. You might want to disregard my opinion.

"Why the mainstream media are clueless about the religious right"

At left: Street preacher sign from Bele Chere. (Any questions?)





Suzan links AlterNet's interesting Why the Mainstream Media Are Clueless About the Religious Right by Adele M. Stan, which not surprisingly, offers some cluelessness of its own.

As I have said (so many times) before, as long as the language of religion is generally dissed by the mainstream media and the elite Left, you have allowed it to remain the language of the religious right, by default. And this highly-moral language is then used to talk to the masses, right over your heads.

If an exotic dialect is used only by one group, even if others understand it, it eventually becomes theirs.

And yes, religion is regarded by the media as some weird, exotic dialect from flyover country, which means the copious dog-whistles and covert winks offered by the Religious Right sail right past the well-paid hotshot media analysts and pundits, as in the famous "Obama is the antichrist" TV ad. They just MISSED it. (Antichrist? Who?)

In comments in this thread, I gave an example, and rather than type it all again, I am hereby quoting myself:

[Years ago], I watched Mother Theresa's funeral on late-night TV (India time), and several of the "official" commentators seemed totally ignorant of the derivation of the banner over her casket, which read "You did it to me"...and they all just seemed to go blank. They didn't seem to be able to look it up, either, since the KJV says something like "Ye have done it to me" if I'm not mistaken. (The quote would be from the RSV, which was favored by the Missionaries of Charity.)

They mumbled, they ummmed and they ahhhed, but you know, they just didn't seem to know. All of these hotshot commentators and none seemed to know. Finally, someone triumphantly announced it was from the New Testament (well duh) but they didn't seem to understand the reference or why it was the phrase hanging over her casket, and not some other phrase.

I listened to the entire commentary, as they didn't seem to have any idea why people STAND for the Gospel reading (really? Is it that hard to figure out?) or anything else about the Mass. That day, I realized how ignorant the media elites are of religion and religious traditions... even something as simple as standing for the Gospel reading. (I suddenly realized they didn't know the difference between that part of the Bible called "Gospel" and the rest of it.)

Then they trotted out that huge fan of Mother Theresa, Christopher Hitchens, author of a famous hit-piece on her. For her funeral. (I ask you, when was the last time the author of a hit-piece was invited to comment at their subject's funeral? A bit rude, maybe?)

This is what passes for knowledge of religion among the elites. Then they try to psychoanalyze people for whom religion is EVERYTHING. And they, um, invariably get it wrong, of course. How could they not? They don't know the dialect.

And Stan knows some of the dialect, but like an anthropologist studying the oddly-dressed natives (she compares some of the reporters to Margaret Mead, which IS funny), she isn't actually going to get down in the dirt with em either. Instead, she translates the dialect for the elites, or tries to.

For example, she attempts to analyze Ron Paul's fan base:

While mainstream media dismiss Paul as a quirky, secular libertarian, progressive reporters sometimes express a certain affection for Paul because of his anti-war stance. But Paul's anti-war position stems from his far-right isolationist views...

First of all, isolationism per se is not strictly left or right, and that explains the far-reaching appeal. In the Midwest, where I grew up, isolationism is its OWN thang, and often transcends traditional left/right definitions and categories. This is frequently my stance on this blog, likely because (as I have said many times), I was greatly influenced by my grandfather, a Christian Scientist and Taft Republican ("isolationism" barely describes it). To these folks, isolationism WAS the progressive position, since it kept the rest of the world from hating us so much. Isolationism insured peace, was the idea. Now, of course, the opposite view (which can be totally summed up in Orwell's phrase, 'War is Peace') is politically dominant.

In short, just as military-interventionism is now an equal-opportunity left/right ideology, so is isolationism.

Does Adele Stan know that Ron Paul ran for President as a Libertarian in the 70s, before he was ever in Congress? His views have changed little since Vietnam, and THIS is why progressives have respect for him: Ron Paul does not stick his finger in the air to test the political winds, and never has. (see CORRECTION, below)

At left: Fundamentalists invade Bele Chere festival in Asheville, NC. Most people considered them just another part of the show, but a number of intrepid festival-goers engaged them in some intense debates and heated conversations.



Adele Stan's commentary in AlterNet advances the opinion that the overall media-dilemma is denial, rather than elitist ignorance, even though she mentions the elitism a few times:

The mainstream media -- and to an extent, the progressive media, as well -- are made up of elites, people who went to good schools, most of them raised on either the east or west coasts. To these elites, the thought of someone espousing the sort of frightening beliefs that Paul embodies having a serious impact on American politics is just too much to bear, so denial becomes the default position. It's not conscious -- not a deliberate attempt to cover something up, just something too weird and awful to be true, so the notion is simply dismissed. Yet if you look at Paul's positions and look at how successive GOP fields have moved closer to them (with the exception of the anti-war stance) over the last three election cycles, his impact is clear.

"With the exception of the anti-war stance"? Earth to Adele! Somebody does not keep up with the drug war, which is BANKRUPTING THE COUNTRY and decimating poor and minority communities. Maybe Adele doesn't know any teenagers whose lives have been ruined over a tiny and inconsequential puff on a joint, but poor people have plenty of examples to share with her. Ron Paul proposes to legalize and tax marijuana and end the super-expensive drug war altogether... and that is a damned radical position that no other Republican AND no other Democrat has dared take.

The unbridled destruction of poor communities and the mass-imprisonment of young minority men is a fucking SCANDAL; the drug charges that the privileged kids from good schools can safely giggle about years later ("Oh man, my dad was sure pissed!") are the very same drug charges that will get you locked up for life if you are too poor to afford a lawyer or your daddy doesn't know the right people.

Ending this VICIOUS ATTACK on the poor is a PROGRESSIVE POSITION and only Ron Paul will take it.

You know this, right Adele? That one out of four black men is in prison for some BULLSHIT? Aaaarghhh, don't even get me started.

The fact that you have ignored this point in your piece, Adele Stan, is rather clueless as well. The fact that you don't seem to know what is happening in minority communities? Marks you as one of the elite media that doesn't know what's going on out here in the fabled Heartland.

It's going to get ugly, as the traditional left/right categories topple to the ground. I made a prediction that Obama was a one-termer, but that was before I knew he had stashed away a billion dollars for his second coronation. I now believe he will win, but it will infuriate a lot of people and might lead to insurrection; the British riots light the way. Democracy has been supplanted by the wholesale purchase of political office. (This huge money-stash now marks Barack Obama as a member of the elite that he successfully challenged upon first entering politics; Ron Paul's plucky little "money bombs" are very small potatoes by comparison.)

Adele winds up:

As a nation, we've been headed down this path for more than 40 years. As the economic fortunes of the U.S. turn downward, we should expect the attraction of right-wing religion, especially its more charismatic and viscerally-felt forms, to expand. Anyone who doesn't just hasn't been paying attention.

Ya think? And how about you talk to some of US, the progressives who can speak the weird Biblical Ron Paul language? How about you even consider FUNDING SOME OF US out here, who might be able to help, since we are already wearing the clothes and speaking the dialect?

Ha, am I funny or what? As we already know, that ain't never gonna happen. After all, they know everything, don't they?

~*~

EDIT, CORRECTION: Ron Paul was repeatedly interviewed as a Libertarian before he entered congress, but when he eventually ran for Congress in the 70s, ran as a Republican. He first ran for president (on the Libertarian ticket) in 1988.