Tuesday, May 31, 2011

More On Memes

George Will.   I agree with him more often than not.  But he's in the Peggy Noonan wing of the Washington GOP Insider Elite.

Which means he can't stand Sarah Palin.  Because she is a threat to the carefully cultured impression that you have to belong to their Culture Club before you're qualified to run the country. 

Well, last I checked, you had to be at least 35 and a natural born US citizen.

But nobody's allowed to double-check any of that.

So we'll make it 35, natural born citizen, or a member of a sanctioned protected minority.   :-)

At any rate, today I saw an article with video on Mediaite where George Will says, referring to Sarah Palin
“The threshold question, not usually asked, but it’s in everyone’s mind in a presidential election. ‘Should we give this person nuclear weapons?’ And the answer is ... answers itself.”
Now George does have a wry and ironic sense of humor, and I suppose he could be slipping one by us here -- because he really doesn't actually come out and say what he thinks that answer is.  So he could mean "yes".  But I doubt it.  George has over time shown himself to be less than a fan.

I don't care if George doesn't like her prospects or disagrees with something she's said or stood for.  But really, what, exactly, about Sarah Palin leads George to believe that she couldn't be trusted with the nation's nuclear arsenal?   I mean, be specific, George.

Because if you're not, then you're engaging in a sad kind of intellectual dishonesty -- the intellectual side-step.  The avoidance of making an argument by asserting it is beneath you to back up your assertions.   "Everyone knows", and "anyone who doesn't is an idiot."

To further go down the road of the Washinton Inside The Beltway tunnel-vision, look at what "expert" Johnathan Karl comes up with next on whether or not Palin will run:
I see absolutely no evidence that Sarah Palin is preparing to run for president.   Doesn't mean that she ... could change her mind, but look, she doesn't even have a scheduler, she has no donor network built up, she doesn't have a press secretaryEvery decision as [far as?] we can tell is being made strictly by Sarah, or Todd Palin...  [emphasis mine]
Wow.  And they wonder what we see in this woman.

11 comments:

mkfreeberg said...

Hipster:

Hipsters are a subculture of men and women typically in their 20's and 30's that value independent thinking, counter-culture, progressive politics, an appreciation of art and indie-rock, creativity, intelligence, and witty banter.
:
The term "hipster" is cross-applied from the 1930s Beatniks. The modern hipster is a composite of individuals with a certain bohemian life situation and lifestyle. He or she rejects "mainstream" culture and embraces and contributes to independent culture, and prides him/herself on this.
:
One who possesses tastes, social attitudes, and opinions deemed cool by the cool.


Tragically, hipster culture has interpreted this "cool" to mean leaving things unsaid, so that other "cool" people can show their "grokkiness" by picking it up, or going through the motions of picking it up.

Equally tragically, the hipster culture has found acceptance among those who are the right age for it, multiplied by about 2½. Like Peggy Noonan and George Will.

(Word verification today: ducedisc)

nightfly said...

Wait a minute. Sarah Palin is a hunter. She knows as much about weaponry than the last six presidents combined. (I suspect GWB makes up 95% of that total, btw.) So what on earth would make one think she couldn't handle the proper deployment of our military arsenal?

Not that it's the same thing, of course... but if there is an effect, it's easier to conceive it as a positive one.

Cylarz said...

"And the answer is ... answers itself.”

Yeah, George...the answer is "yes." Any more stupid questions today?

I had to sit through a viewing of the Colbert Report today at work, because that is what my co-workers like to watch. "Speaking of second-place..." Colbert began, showing a picture of Palin behind him.

He went on to complain about it's ridiculous that her website, SarahPAC, solicits donations, especially since nobody apparently knows what this East Coast "bus tour" is all about. He even called Palin a "cock tease" for refusing to either throw her hat in the ring or bow out. The implication was that she is dishonestly attempting to goad her supporters into "paying for her personal vacation."

This, despite an elections official sitting right there at his desk on TV, assuring the audience that Palin isn't breaking election laws by observation that she has not announced her candidacy.

Finally, just to make sure we know Palin really is a dimbulb, he showed us how the SarahPAC website includes a quote from Palin's daughter, who visited Mt Vernon recently. "It's hard to believe how hard he worked to keep this farm going," Bristol said. (I think it was Bristol.) The suggestion is that the Palin family is too stupid to know that Washington owned slaves to work the farm. Nice long guffaw from the irritating, unfunny fucktard. (All in good fun, of course.)

I immediately had two reactions:

1) The Bristol quote isn't problematic or stupid at all. First off, Washington DID work hard. He may have worked alongside the slaves, he may have simply been doing the hard work of overseeing a farming operation - it's a lot of work to coordinate the labor, bring the crops to market, etc, etc. I'd dare Colbert to give it a try instead of making wisecracks on TV for a living.

2) It never seems to occur to any members of the leftwing media, Colbert included, that this sort of coverage plays right into Palin's hands. Sarah's supposed to be stupid and irrelvant and a right wing extremist and a quitter, right? So why does the media spend so much time talking about someone who supposedly is not and will never be a threat to Mister Wonderful's job in the Oval Office? Have these people never heard the expression, "There's no such thing as bad publicity?"

The bus tour is aimed at getting media attention. They're giving it to her, complete with wild speculation on all the MSM network outlets on whether she'll run for president. (Presumably so they can once again try to destroy her.) In the meantime, she's getting plenty of attention from supporters and detractors alike.

Did I mention I can't stand Stephen Colbert? I can't tell you how delighted I was to hear he was brought in to entertain Congressional Democrats last year at a cost of hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars...

Cylarz said...

Cross posting my comment at Morgan's place...hope nobody minds.

philmon said...

Did I mention I can't stand Stephen Colbert? I can't tell you how delighted I was to hear he was brought in to entertain Congressional Democrats last year at a cost of hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars...

Yeah that was about my reaction, too. Good observations, all.

And no, nobody minds. I've been known to do such things myself :-)

nightfly said...

You know what Colbert DIDN'T observe there, Cylarz? He didn't observe that Bristol Palin may have read Ron Chernow's recent biography of Washington, which goes into repeated detail about his constant letters back home to his administrators - even during the Revolution and his Presidency, and when home his daily rides (up until practically the week of his death) all around the farms.

In other words, Bristol actually reads some challenging material, and isn't just a "snowbilly" single mom from reality tv-land.

Wonder if Colbert read the book... or even had an intern read it for him.

Cylarz said...

"He who warned, uh, the … the British that they weren't gonna be takin' away our arms, uh, by ringin' those bells and, um, by makin' sure that as he's ridin' his horse through town to send those warnin' shots and bells that, uh, we were gonna be secure and we were gonna be free … and we were gonna be armed."

The foregoing is being attributed to Sarah Palin in Boston during the recent East Coast bus tour. I did a Google search to try and get more information...

As every source doing such attribution is known to be EXTREMELY liberal (Demon-crat Underground, Daily Kossacks, etc) I'm not willing to trust the veracity of this quote.

Quite frankly, it sounds to me like something Teleprompter Messiah would say, not Palin. *He* is the one who stumbles over himself and has to say "uh" every third word.

Even if Palin really said every word as quoted, I don't care. I still like her. She has her governing priorities in order. The damn progressives chuckling over this like a bunch of trained monkeys...don't.

Thoughts?

Cylarz said...

Course, for Holy Man, we've got THESE:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5R6kVry4_c

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ap2Cg_FDRy4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqcnjxYiG7M&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6kooz9eBgQ

Yeah, I won't hold my breath waiting for an apology for their hypocrisy and double-standards. That wouldn't fit the "Palin is an idiot!" narrative too well, would it?

Found these in two minutes by searching YouTube for "Obama stupid."

Cylarz said...

Almost forgot!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHIUdMVN_V0&feature=related

The worst part? Obama is PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES. A sitting president!

Palin, meanwhile, is a private citizen who neither holds nor is currently seeking any federal office. She's a former governor riding up and down the East Coast is a bus.

I'm sure the two are EXACTLY the same.

Cylarz said...

Two VERY interesting links over on this at Morgan's place.

It seems Palin might have been right after all about ol' Paul Revere:

http://patterico.com/2011/06/03/does-it-ever-cross-their-mind-that-sarah-palin-might-actually-know-something/

and

http://legalinsurrection.blogspot.com/2011/06/so-now-all-these-people-will-apologize.html

philmon said...

Yeah, I left a couple of comments on his facebook posts on it that I was going to use for a post on ye olde blog.