Monthly Archives: March 2010

Update III: An Idol For The Age (Of The Idiot)

English, Feminism, Gender, Literature, Media, Pop-Culture, The Zeitgeist

It is bad enough having to hear Maureen Dowd touted as a gift from God. Fittingly, Camille Paglia described Dowd as “that catty, third-rate, wannabe sorority queen. She’s such an empty vessel. One pleasure of reading The New York Times online is that I never have to see anything written by Maureen Dowd! I ignore her hypertext like spam for penis extenders.” To hear the same reverence reserved for Tina Brown, whom I’ve always thought of as no more than an editor of glossies—and the author of a gossipy, somewhat obese book about the anorexic dolt, Diana—is startling.

On “Tina’s emergence in England during the 1970s,” a friend writes: “In those days she was regarded as nothing more than a mildly attractive literary moll. The notion that she would one day be considered a serious biographer or an arbiter of cultural standards would’ve struck people back then as insane. I don’t imagine that THE NEW YORKER will ever recover from her despotism.”

Update I (March 14): Before she married a bigwig, she bedded a couple. Auberon Waugh and Martin Amis are examples. “Her relationship with Waugh,” writes Wikipedia, “served as a great boost to her writing career, as he used his influence to get attention drawn to her.”

Update II: From George’s excerpt we learn that Brown fears castrating others. Only males can lose their appendages. She’s outed herself as a castrater. Is this something to be proud of?

Update III: Here’s Fred Reed (via The Other Robert) in praise of Mexican women and against the Anglo-American Woman. The toxicity of the second class explains why younger American men are “Manly No More”:

“It is not easy to explain to an American readership under forty what is meant by being a woman. We are accustomed to androgynous, litigious, Prozac-sucking shrews who would inspire erectile dysfunction in an iron bar. Yes, there are exceptions and degrees, but here is the main current. (If there is anyone with less respect for women than the average squalling dyke feminist, I haven’t met it.)”

“Feminists of course say that femininity cannot be distinguished from subservience. But it ain’t so. The Mexicanas I know are not subservient. They work harder and bitch less than we do. They are not weak. They do not need support groups, Depacote, Paxil, Welbutrin, or classes in self-esteem (which idea they find puzzling or ridiculous). They are self-sufficient adults.”

Updated: In The New Individualist (Get It!)

Ilana Mercer, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, Liberty, Media, Objectivism

Under Sherrie Gossett’s capable editorial and stylistic tutelage (as well as well as the brilliant David Kelley, Roger Donway, and others), The New Individualist, The Objectivist Magazine, is both sleek and substantive, rather than tinny and rigidly ideological. The Winter 2010 issue of TNI features a new, minimalist, elegant design, and two pieces by me: “Life In The Oink Sector,” and “Man With the Reverse Midas Touch.”

Please purchase this issue—and if possible, a subscription to TNI—to show your support for this writer and the publisher. Here is your chance to support worthy writers and publishers. Featuring thinkers such as David Kelley and Roger Donway, you’ll be well-rewarded.

Update (March 14): BAB frequenter Hugo Schmidt writes an interesting review in TNI of Robert Spencer’s Religion of Peace? Why Christianity Is And Islam Isn’t. As I say, there is a lot that’s worth reading in the new issue. Get it! Subscribe or order an issue.

Updated: Beck, Wilders & His Boosters’ Blind Spot

Classical Liberalism, Europe, Glenn Beck, Human Accomplishment, IMMIGRATION, Islam, Jihad, Multiculturalism, Nationhood

The excerpt is from “Beck, Wilders & His Boosters’ Blind Spot,” now on WND.COM”:

“The ‘One-Man Global Content Provider’ [Mark Steyn] is wrong. Demographics need not be destiny. The waning West became what it is not by out-breeding the undeveloped world. We were once great not because of huge numbers, but due to human capital – people of superior ideas and abilities, capable of innovation, exploration, science, philosophy.

Declining birth rates – and their antidote; the mass immigration imperative – are the excuses statists make for persevering with immigration policies that are guaranteed to destroy Western civil society and shore up the State.

If, as Geert Wilders and Mark Steyn contend, “Islam is a problematic religion; every school of Islam is basically at its core jihadist; and the religion is much closer to a conventional imperial project than to a faith” – its religionists must be kept away. State-engineered mass immigration must be halted.

Yes, postmodernism, PC and relativism hobble the West. Post-colonialism, however, affords it the opportunity to redraw the frontiers at the borders. This is the Wilders project. It has yet to be embraced fully by his American boosters. As Steyn has openly confessed, ‘For a notorious blowhard, I can go a bit cryptic or (according to taste) wimpy when invited to confront that particular subject head on.'” …

The complete column is “Beck, Wilders & His Boosters’ Blind Spot.”

And do read my libertarian manifesto, Broad Sides: One Woman’s Clash With A Corrupt Society.

The Second Edition features bonus material. Get your copy (or copies) now!

Update: Declining birth rates – and their antidote; the mass immigration imperative – are the excuses statists make for persevering with immigration policies that are guaranteed to destroy Western civil society and shore up the State.

To add to “Anon’s” dazzling examples of small (First World) populations that produced genius second to none, another erudite gentleman spoke of “quality, not quantity,” and offered the examples of the Scottish Enlightenment and modern Jews.

Grotesque Or Precious?

Aesthetics, Film, Hollywood, Pop-Culture, Psychology & Pop-Psychology, Reason, The Zeitgeist

“There’s the most enormous, fat black chick I’ve ever seen. She is enormous. Everyone’s pretending she’s a part of show business and she’s never going to be in another movie. She should have gotten the Best Actress award because she’s never going to have another shot. What movie is she gonna be in?” That was degenerate DJ Howard Stern on Gabourey Sidibe (yes, she’s American-born), the mountain of human flesh that stars in the film “Precious,” pushed by Oprah.

Stern reminds me of the claims made repeatedly on the O’Reilly Show, that “Shangri-La of Socratic disinterest.”Have you heard them? Not speaking proper English, behaving like a rapper, not studying—these will get you nowhere. That’s so not true. And he says it to rich rappers who’ve followed exactly that path.

This is the age of the idiot first—but also the age of the halt, the lame, the plain dysfunctional, the retrograde, the exhibitionist, and above all, the black person, in all shapes and sizes. Sidibe will do just fine, embraced as she will be by the constellation of flesh-creeping cretins in Hollywood and beyond.

What’s grotesque here is not the actress, so much as the film Precious, the story. From what I’ve gleaned (I’d never go see such a film), it’s designed to schlep every sentimental fiber of a stupid person’s being.

The ugliest, fattest, most abused and tormented girl gets kicked around some more after spending her formative years as the ugliest, fattest, most abused and tormented daughter in the world. Then she hits the big time. Or delves into herself, and with the aid of a lesser version of “To Sir With Love,” finds some reservoir of strength and talent to prevail. She makes everyone involved in unleashing her gifts see the light. They are lucky to bask in her riches. Am I wrong? Is it about something totally different?

If Stern was anything other than a shock jock he’d have zeroed in on the obscene sentimentality pervading this film and the culture at large. If you think I’m heartless for excoriating sentimentality in the strongest of terms, think again. Sappy sentimentality is the opposite of compassion. It causes a person to misplace compassion.