Friday, March 14, 2008
Kraut gets to the bottom line
The pillars of American liberalism -- the Democratic Party, the universities and the mass media -- are obsessed with biological markers, most particularly race and gender. They have gotten their wish. This primary campaign represents the full flowering of identity politics. It's not a pretty picture. Geraldine Ferraro says Obama is only where he is because he's black. Professor Orlando Patterson says the 3 a.m. phone call ad is not about a foreign policy crisis but a subliminal Klan-like appeal to the fear of "black men lurking in the bushes around white society." Good grief. The optimist will say that when this is over, we will look back on the Clinton-Obama contest, and its looming ugly endgame, as the low point of identity politics, and the beginning of a turning away. The pessimist will just vote Republican.
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13 comments:
I hope he's right, but I fear that Americans eat this bullshit up and talk about identity with furrowed brows while popin' Bud Light cans and watching Jerry Springer at 11 a.m. M-F.
Interesting that if that is a correct assessment, we Americans are closer to the asinine Frog intellectuals with Gauloises, berets, and body odor in mind than I would hate to acknowledge.
At least those insufferable Frogs are thin. Our idiots are fat.
JJ, JJ -- why give in to the Pepean caricature of fat, stoopid Americans? OK, as all caricatures, it has some thin basis in reality -- but then it distorts, amplifies, twists and messes up the essence of what it means to be an American. You know I'm not the rah, rah, rah, pfftt kind of guy (nor the don't worry, be happy type). Things are not all peaches and cream, and there are all sorts of dangers lurking and bubbling to the surface. But let's keep a stiff upper lip, and soldier on. I mean, it's not like Churchill in the Summer of 1940, after the Frogs rolled over in front of the Krauts, and he and his fellow Brits were facing the prospect of fighting the Wehrmacht on the beaches and in the hills. Or is it?
I thought it was the U.S. Census that was obsessed with race?
For what is worth, the French take the opposite attitude -- race, religion, etc is not supposed to matter there. They don't even keep statistical data on these things. At least, that's what I read -- maybe Pepe wants to confirm? Of course, in this respect, Pepe is now true-blue American, obsessed with identity politics...
Met a couple engineering students in coffeeshop today. We talked Calc II. Across the salon there was a table of fatasses of sociology type talking this empowerment shit. Sickening. At least in Harvard Square you have some hope that you are in the extreme, not the heart. Moving to Iceland. Kill whales.
JJ, I'll meet you in Reykjavik, by the big viking statue.
Hey, punks, Iceland was MY secret "haven of last resort". I'll damn you all to hell before I let you get there first and turn that frozen paradise against future refugee like me.
Your longships had better be ready for a Caravel flaming hot grapeshot up yer arses and making the swine squeal for bungadeath.
[yes, reading Gargantua and Pantagruel is not without consequence].
Beer is expensive in Iceland. That's not good. Once, or if, we stop warring over who gets what geothermal pool, we should think about what local ingredients we could ferment for cheap.
Who needs beer in a country full of easy pretty girls?
Nearly every country produces beautiful girls, JJ. My hunch is that there's some big foreign exchange program between Texas and Iceland.
Icelandic babes.
JJ said: "Who needs beer..."
Three words when strung together that result in Total Blasphemy.
And here is another story of it, although I don't subscribe to this crazy mag.
what do you think I chose Iceland for? The allthing?
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