Saturday, October 12, 2002
Another conservative treatise I thumbed through at Border's is Ann Coulter's Slander. It's very good. I didn't expect to think so, but it is. True, the subject of liberal-bias in the media is absolutely not a unique one, but the book's much denser than your average "the liberal media lies!" hysteria.
In my favorite part, Coulter lets down her guard -- if just for a second:
Attacking a female for being ugly is a hideous thing, always inherently vicious... A blind man in America would think the ugliest women ever to darken the planet are Paula Jones, Linda Tripp, and Katherine Harris ... [interestingly, here she changes tense]... You will hear the words calling you ugly and stupid and you will believe, if only fleeting, that the whole world sees you that way. Tripp ended up getting two face-lifts and liposuction. Paula Jones got braces and a nose job.
That's criticism from experience. One thing I really like and respect about Coulter is she dresses plainly and apparently wears no make-up. This is a woman who's looks are unimportant to her -- unless the world is seeing her in "that way." It's not only stupid but mean, to single her out as "horse-faced" or "anorexic."
Whether or not someone finds her attractive, she is obviously good-looking (better looking, and out of the league of many of her detractors, I might add.)
From that example, Coulter correctly points out conservative analysis is typically very literal. Whether I agree with them or not, I understand the "conservative" case. Many "liberals," however, are literary. They allude to high and low culture, use flowery descriptive language, and all of this results in a nonsubstantive argument. Incoherence is a horrible way to obscure ignorance.
Reason seems to be employing that liberal technique, in addition to its new eyesore graphic design. Note Sara Rimensnyder's hasty critique of the "Bitch Godess." I really doubt she read the book, as this essay amounts to little more than Coulter's greatest hits: the call for Muslims to be converted to Christianity, the Katie Couric cat fight, etc etc
Like it or not, in the kingdom of snark, Ann Coulter is queen. She’s never going to be hurting for loyal fans, particularly among those who have the pleasure of hating her. Not surprisingly, Coulter says she thrives on all the negative attention. Indeed, her eyes fairly dance when she’s challenged -- though somewhat maniacally, as if she were reaching for her machete.
So who does she expect Ann Coulter to be ... Ellen Feiss? Rimensnyder fails to differentiate Coulter from any other talking head out there. But if there is one thing that unites the left, the right, (and everybody off the radar,) it is that our pundits are all desperately starving for attention.
Ironically on that note, I find the more reticent and standoffish I act in public, the more people fawn over me. Even Randy Barnett has complemented me on my austerity. Rember that line in Fight Club about how people don't listen anymore, they just wait for their chance to speak? No one cares to read an open-book, guys. Yes, I'd like Ann Coulter a lot more if she could chill out and smoke a bowl (she did follow the Grateful Dead in college, after all.) But for a chatterbox, she's not so bad.
Saturday, October 12, 2002
Tonight's the premiere of Washington Interns Gone Bad at the Sub-Electric gallery. A follow-up is already in the works, a little murder mystery set at the mock Real World: Washington, DC. Yours truely has signed for the role of the tutleneck-wearing Sartre-quoting housemate.
I've had my own idea for film, going back to something I posted earlier. Now that Dolly's creater is demanding to clone human embryos the future is nearer than we think, so I was thinking some asshole like John Ritter could play a kooky scientist who clones Christ and raises him to adulthood. It would be a coming-of-age story, starting at the age of seven or so where Jesus is the last picked for kickball. Then some other hijinks like, "Just because you're the son of god, doesn't mean you don't have to clean your room!" Later on, they argue because Jesus wants go to film school rather than follow in Ritter's footsteps. Maybe put some ninjas in there and a couple of explosions, but a definatly a money-maker. Anyone got any contacts?
Friday, October 11, 2002
Breaker! Breaker! Buzz is up and running again, premiering tonight at the Warehouse from 10pm -10am
Friday, October 11, 2002 Dinesh D'Souza tips his hat to Hitchens with his new book, Letters to a Young Conserative. It's pretty stupid, but worth thumbing through in Borders for a few laughs. "Yes Lincoln suspended habeas corpus and arrested southern sympathizers, but let us remember that the nation was in a serious desperate war in which its very survival was at stake." He gives some pithy advice to avoid the morally abject libertarians, as our intention is to create a world of promiscuity and pornography (ok, so that may be the case.) Best is his response to gay marriage; "marriage doesn't civilize men, women do."
Friday, October 11, 2002 Instapundit thinks "it's monstrous that some people" find this a fair equivalency: He's also praising Oprah for her hawkishness
Friday, October 11, 2002
How does Peggy Noonan escape the venom that is directed to Maureen Dowd?
Friday, October 11, 2002
The Nikkei is a wreck due to Japanese speculation, bad loans, and deflation. On Monday it hit a nineteen-year low. It plunged again yesterday to a new low.
"Trying to tackle bad loans without first dealing with deflation is simply a crazy feat," said Yasushi Okada, chief economist at Credit Suisse First Boston in Tokyo. "The prime minister is more interested in structural reform and doesn't really care about economic recovery."
Friday, October 11, 2002 The Telegraph reports Moscow will support the US's campaign against Iraq for a "price." Citing their dependency on oil revenues and fear a post-war Iraq might lead to Americans flooding the market with cheap oil, "Moscow said it will also be looking for guarantees that Russian companies would be able to keep valuable oilfields in western Iraq if Saddam is deposed."
Thursday, October 10, 2002
In H. L. Mencken's autobiography, a female friend of his confindes the way she made it to the top was by never sleeping with anyone -- and therefore existing as untouchable and intriguing to the Smart Set coterie. Call it the Leonard Peikoff Effect. In any case it works. It also works for a women in a monogomous relationship -- claimed for -- but nevertheless A is A, beguiling is beguiling. The breakdown of monogomy could be attributed to this, what I will later identify, new subjugation of women -- but there is a larger, more often overlooked cause.
Women = Irrational. This is apparently so. To purchase your fourtieth pair of shoes (and even while in debt) is not silly, but the unbearable lightness of being woman. Rather than call a spade a spade, we allow for idiotic adolecent 30-somethings to do stupid things beyond reproach. Spending on an eyeshadow compact is absurb no matter what your wealth, and yet there is a Sephora in every major city in the country. Look in any women's magazine and what do you find: celebrity gossip, outrageously expensive clothing, horoscopes, and drivel. To be fair, Maxim's stupid too but at least they've got a sense of humor about it.
I think it's mostly the liberal-minded who can be blamed for this decline. They see women as a whole are equal to men as a whole and not that individuals are individuals. Alina and I were discussing how conservative men are much more respectful to women as there is no sanctimony. They respect an intelligent, rational females as exceptional individuals. By identifying women as a whole as irrational, expections to this idiocy go down with the stereotype.
So what's my solution? Tell girls when they are stupid! If you're girlfriend complains about being fat, tell her no she isn't and that her brain is especially thin. Next time she asks for flowers, tell her they're not useful. And not another goddam pair of shoes! It must not be socially acceptable by rational choice theory and such, to allow for females to accept this recently allocated position as the intellectually weaker sex
Thursday, October 10, 2002
Don't let my surname and hometown mistake you -- I'm not Irish. And I really have little idea what goes on in Belfast besides what I've seen in some Daniel day Lewis movies.
So correct me if I'm wrong, but is the Sinn Fein just dillusional?
I'm sympathetic to their cause -- from my understanding Britain forced itself upon Northern Ireland negleting their landslide victory vote for independence -- still, almost a hundred years have past so maybe it's time to throw in the towel? This essay in Spiked is pretty straight-forward explaining, no, the peace process is not "'closer to collapse' or to 'the edge of the abyss' or 'beyond hope.'"
Calling on Blair to chuck Sinn Fein out of the Assembly rather than suspend the whole thing, Trimble said: 'If you have a problem with a bully in a school, you don't close the whole school down. You exclude the bully from the class. Nobody else should be punished.'
That just about sums it up - where the once-great movements of Unionism and nationalism have been reduced to the status of stubborn schoolchildren playing up to get as much attention as they can, with Blair as the headmaster who dishes out the punishment. No wonder Sesame Street is planning a Belfast-based version of its patronising kids' show, to 'promote understanding and tolerance between Northern Ireland's rival communities'
Thursday, October 10, 2002
More Events: Visions is playing Das Experiment (a German film on the 1971 Standford Prison Experiment... goodness) and The Trials of Henry Kissinger, a documentary based on the book by Christoper Hitchens. Hitchens, btw, is reading at Olsen's Metro Center next Thursday evening.
Thursday, October 10, 2002
Index has this story on German "publishing giant" Bertelsmann AG's confrontation with its past.
In a 794-page report by the IHC [Independent Historical Commission]investigating the company's link to the Nazis, is forcing Bertelsmann to come clean about the part its collaboration during the Nazi era played in its growth from small provincial religious book publisher to the wartime German army's principal supplier of book and a leading producer of anti-Semitic material and Nazi propaganda.
Yet as it continued its growth after the war, eventually turning into one of the world's largest publishing corporations, it has managed to sustain the myth that far from being a collaborator, Bertelsmann actually resisted Nazi rule.
Thursday, October 10, 2002
Andrew Harring for the BBC, has posted his third essay on life in Nairobi in a four-part series. Africa's largest slum, Kibera, is described as "800,000 people living in a ditch."
This place is like an island - it's not really part of Kenya at all. The state does nothing here. It provides no water, no schools, no sanitation, no roads, no hospitals.
Yet, Kenya's considered one of the more "developed" African states. Also in the BBC is this story on a border conflict between Nigeria and Cameroon, over an penninsula rich in oil. The ICJ ruled in favor of Cameroon, but that's unlikely to stop future conflict.
Thursday, October 10, 2002
One of the funniest things I've seen lately is a Mr Show skit about Americans coming together after NASA announces its plan to blow up the moon. It goes off into many wild;y accurate tangents including Bob Odenkirk channeling Hank Williams Jr in a pro-Moon Blow Up country video with an American flag as the background. But rather than give away the rest of the plot, why don't you hunt around on Kazaa or check out the Mr Show DVD of Season 1 (it's on the best-of special.) In the meantime you can read David Cross's essay on cigars
I was at Houlihans in the Georgetown area having some "Vertical Onion Rings" for lunch when all of the sudden there was this hullabaloo (sp?) going on outside. I got the day manager from Staples who was blocking my view, to move to the side, thus revealing one of the most glorious sights a CS (Cigar Smoker) could ever hope to see…it was…ready for this? Jim Belushi!!
