For the record, the plural of "phenomenon" is "phenomena," but I think Phenomenii has a better ring to it. The other day I talked about how sexual pleasure was a human right. Well good news, today I have learned even more about human rights! TOURISM! Being a man who loves to travel, I was thrilled to hear that it was my human right (I hope it doesn't only apply to members of the EU :(). We have a right to health care, a right to tourism, I really hope that we gain the right to a next generation iPhone (h/t: Hotair) in the near future (ask anybody who has one, they're indispensable). It seems like Europe has a lot better rights than America, especially in regards to immigration and the right to not be murdered when robbing a house. In some places in America, if you are robbing somebody's house and they kill you, they don't even get in trouble with the law! It's so backwards.
A Perfect World
My favorite human right was the right to stupidity (see Jackass, Jackass: The Movie, Jackass 2) which is fun for everybody... but now that healthcare has passed and the taxpayer (me) has to foot the medical bill, I'm not sure I find it funny anymore :(. Don't get me wrong, I think the hummer is a retarded and wasteful car, and as an environmentalist I hate it's existence, but I really do see where Penn Jillette is coming from in that article (his hair being a prime example of our right to stupidity).
I don't like Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh much, but I like to watch the left flip out over the shit they say. Kudos to Byron York for callin' out "leg-tinglin'" Chris Matthews and other idiots on this bit. Anybody who knows me knows that I'm not a fan of W. either, but are they really trying to claim that nobody ever referred to the Bush administration as the Bush "regime?" Cry about protesters putting the hitlerstache on Obama and the degradation of modern political discourse all you want, but don't get pissy when I assume you were in Uganda from 2000-2008 and start filling you in on the last 10 years. And don't forget that Congressman Preston Brooks (D-SC) beat the shit out of Senator Charles Sumner (R-MA) with a cane in congress on May 22nd, 1856. That's coarse political discourse, and a fun bit of history for you.
Some of my readers (hi Mom, Dad!) know that I speak Mandarin Chinese. As a non-native chinese speaker, I personally believe that pronunciation is the most difficult part of chinese (never mind the lack of an alphabet). You could see how I'm jealous of this nice lady, eh? She can't even speak the language and her pronunciation is probably better than mine :(. Some of my readers (don't read this part Mom) also know that I love technology, and can't wait to merge with machines and possibly bone fembots, but some technology is truly creepy (fembots aren't, Reed?). Maybe her husband is Sting (get it, I'll be watching you... Reed, jokes aren't funny when you have to explain them, and that one wasn't funny to begin with). I think I write too much in parentheses and use them too often, I'll try to cut down on that in the future. It's the voice in my head talking to other voices in my head. Piggybacking on the technology tangent, I linked above to the leaked next generation iPhone and I advise you to check it out, but don't drool on and ruin your keyboard (or leak any other fluids on there with your sick techno-boners, pervert).
Exit question: Who ISN'T afraid of Virginia Woolfe?
Charles Sumner was re-elected to the senate several times after his caning despite having been literally beaten retarded. Theres a fun precedent that paved the way for the ubiquitous brain dead incumbents you see today.
Posted by: Fellatio J. McGee | 04/20/2010 at 12:24 AM
I love your Dad's site...just passing this along.
Ordinary people view Rush as a dangerous Svengali
Bookworm on Apr 20 2010
If you’d been around in 1894, you would instantly have recognized the name “Svengali.” He was the chief villain in George du Maurier’s blockbuster novel Trilby. The Svengali plot-line was a simple one: Trilby was an innocent (and tone deaf) laundress and model living in fin de siecle Paris. Svengali hypnotized her into bec0ming a great singer and the toast of the music world. When he suffered a heart attack during one of her performances, his spell over her broke, and she was left standing on stage, bewildered and humiliated. Since then, we use the word “svengali” to describe a person who steals the will of another with evil intent.
It’s become increasingly clear to me that liberals view Rush Limbaugh in precisely that light. And no, I’m not making the obvious point that the Obami and the Democratic party fear Rush’s bully pulpit and consistently demonize him. I’m talking about the rank-and-file’s fear that even listening to Rush for a moment or two causes a person to lose the will to be a liberal. Those liberals to whom I speak shy away from him, not because they disagree with what he has to say, but because they fear he will convince them that he’s right.
The following is a talk I had just the other day while driving in the car with a liberal friend who, having voted for Obama, is now deeply regretting that decision:
Me: How would you like to do something completely different? Let me put Rush on the radio.
Her: No, no. I don’t want to do that.
Me: Come on, you’ll like him. He’s not at all the way you’ve heard him described in the other media. He’s very well-informed, quite funny, and amazingly prescient.
Her: No, no. He’s too arrogant.
Me: Nah. That’s just an act. Give it a try, for just a few minutes.
Her: No. I can’t listen to him. [Then, as a sop:] I watch Fox sometimes.
So here we have a woman who realizes that she made a mistake voting Democrat this election, who is open to conservative news (I believe her when she says she watches Fox), yet who assiduously avoids any contact with Rush. Incidentally, this was not a one time-0nly conversation. I had virtually the same conversation with two other regret-filled liberals.
The belligerently liberal ones are equally averse to exposing themselves to Rush.
Me: I challenge you to listen to Rush for a half hour.
Him: No. He’s an idiot.
Me: Have you ever listened to him?
Him: No.
Me: Then how do you know he’s an idiot?
Him: He is. He’s a wacko. He doesn’t know anything.
Me: How do you know that?
Him: Are you trying to make me mad?
Me: No. But I do think that you should listen to him. At least then you’d have first hand knowledge of what he says and whether you agree or disagree with it.
Him: I’m not going to waste my time.
And so on, ad infinitum and definitely ad nauseum.
During the 1990s, when I was an unthinking liberal, I knew Rush was out there, but he existed on the periphery of my existence. I read Al Franken’s Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot, and laughed at how “stupid” Rush was, but I actually didn’t care about any of the core issues at stake. I had no interest whatsoever in finding out what Rush was like, because nothing he said really mattered. I was working hard at my career, getting married, starting a family, and was therefore disinterested in things political. The world seemed to be rolling along just right, with a Democratic president and a booming economy.
To give myself some retroactive credit, though, if a conservative had challenged me back then to listen to Rush, I would have done so — because I would have been certain that Rush was a big joke, and that I could have laughed at him just as Franken did. I might have expected to be bored or offended, but I wouldn’t have been worried about being mesmerized and brainwashed.
And then came September 11, 2001 and I started paying attention. I began to be concerned about what was going on around me. This concern led me to start reading anything I could get my hands on about all sorts of subjects. I read blogs, both liberal and conservative. I opened my mind to the possibility that my attachment to the Democratic party was wrong — a possibility helped by the fact that I found myself agreeing with the major political decisions George Bush was making, both regarding national security and the economy. In other words, once I realized that my old political staples were failing, I started looking for new information. I wasn’t scared of the new information but, rather, was curious.
Both my old attitude (”Sure, bring silly Rush on, ’cause he’ll be good for a laugh”) and my new attitude (”There’s something out there I need to learn about”) make it impossible for me to understand the resistance, shading into fear, that my friends and family show when confronted with the possibility that they might hear a minute or two of Rush’s mellifluous tones over the airways. They don’t seem to recognize either the possibility that they might laugh at a fool or learn from a wise man. Instead, they seem genuinely afraid that any exposure to Rush will corrupt them irreparably. Like poor Trilby, they’ll be seduced into an unsustainable way of being, only to find themselves suddenly abandoned and exposed. To them, Rush is no mere conservative; he is Satan incarnate, a tempter who will destroy their liberal souls and leave them in an endless conservative Hell.
It’s quite a high compliment to Rush that ordinary liberals believe he has extraordinary powers. It isn’t every conservative radio or talk show host who is perceived as so compelling and seductive that he can destroy people’s world view in an instant.
It’s also very frustrating to me because, in a funny way, I agree with my liberal friends that Rush can rejigger their world view very quickly. The only thing is that I don’t believe Rush works his magic through hypnotism and trickery. Instead, I think Rush’s real magic lies in his ability to view the political world as a vast chess board, one on which he can see multiple future moves; his prodigious memory; his well-informed mind; his logical analyses; and his funny persona. He convinces by appealing to our rational mind, our sense of humor, and our knowledge of the world as it is, and not as some Ivory Tower liberal tells us it should be.
So, whether by cajolery or challenge, I’m still trying to get my liberals to listen to Rush. For all the wrong reasons, they’re right about one thing: he will change their minds.
Posted by: Patricia McCarthy | 04/21/2010 at 12:07 AM