Category Archives: Aesthetics

UPDATED: Those Gay Berets

Aesthetics, America, Business, Capitalism, Constitution, libertarianism, Outsourcing, Regulation, Sport

There is an alphabet soup of government agencies that ride American business. Business is buried under regulation, having to expend money and time on licenses, permits and forms for almost every transaction. What with the legal obligation to give an employee practically a lifetime of benefits, who can afford to make these gay-looking Olympic berets in the USA?

Capital flows to where it is best utilized.

I expect the PC patrol to come after me for saying that America’s Olympic team’s caps look campy.

But what’s wrong with a cowboy hat made in Texas? The gay berets cost a pretty penny and look … well, both gay and French.

My sartorial suggestion?

This here “Cattleman Wool Felt Cowboy Hat” costs $26.99.

And it looks American.

UPDATE: I FORGOT TO REMIND YOU ALL: Join the thread on Facebook, if you wish to contribute comments.

Here are my replies to the thread on Facebook:

To GJ: A cowboy hat is militarism to you? Where do you get that? Cowboys used to represent the (dying) great American frontier mentality. The equivalent of a “voortrekker” in South Africa.

To MP: MP is, of course, correct; there is no warrant in the Constitution or in libertarian law for state sponsorship of sports. But I always broaden the discussion to include more than libertarian justice/law—or else there would be little to discuss, as most of what the Federal Frankenstein does is unconstitutional/immoral, etc. And how dull, dour and lazy would that repetition be! But you already know that much about this writer, MP.

UPDATED: ‘You Can’t Steal A Rash’ (SENSUALITY VS. VULGARITY)

Aesthetics, Art, Celebrity, Music, Pop-Culture, Sex

So says Joan Rivers about Madonna’s oeuvre.

She, Madonna, keeps saying that Lady Gaga stole all her stuff. How can you steal a rash? Certain things you can’t steal.

AND,

She wasn’t showing off her nipple [in Turkey], she was showing off her ankle bracelet, at her age. I know the doctor who did Madonna’s fine body: Irving Schwartz. He did her and Kathy Bates.

Joan Rivers is brilliant. The Madonna-cum-Gaga claptrap is a rash. The one entertainer has accused the other younger version of herself of stealing her two-chord hump-along ditty. Both have been richly rewarded for the hideous bedroom noises they emit. To be honest, equally unintelligent, I think Gaga is slightly more talented, if that’s saying anything.

But, as a studio musician explained to me, this T & A line-up (Talor Swift, the Britney Spears of country music is included here) would be reduced to embarrassing grunts, out-of-tune yelps, and bedroom whispers, if not for the Auto-Tune, the “holy grail of recording,” that “corrects intonation problems in vocals or solo instruments, in real time, without distortion or artifacts.”

UPDATE (June 15): SENSUALITY VS. VULGARITY. To Nick’s sharp Comment-Section observation: Are men still able to distinguish true sensuality from vulgarity? Back in the day, women knew how to exude the first quality. It invariably involved a hint of something, not a show of all you had. You just know that being in bed with Gaga or Madonna is the most frightening experience for a man. And, you can be sure that they fake IT. Sensuality involves the ability to transcend yourself; these creatures are pathologically narcissistic.

UPDATE II: The TSA’s Trayvon Martin Revenge (Realism Vs. Postmodernism)

Aesthetics, Affirmative Action, Barack Obama, Government, Homeland Security, Objectivism, Pop-Culture, Race, Racism, Regulation, Terrorism

Excerpted from “The TSA’s Trayvon Martin Revenge,” now on RT:

“Had a rare video surfaced in which a black toddler was being brutalized by agents of the Transportation Security Administration, President Barack Obama would have enough solidarity, and some to spare. ‘If he had a son, he’d look like the boy whose breeches were breached by adults who should know better.’

I don’t wish the homegrown terrorists of the TSA to become equal-opportunity offenders; I want Congress to call off these attack dogs, now.

Still, I am unconvinced that when they travel, black women, tots, and geriatrics are subjected to the same invasive searches as are whites.

My own experience this month was uneventful. I was spared the rogering I’ve endured in the past, thanks, I believe, to the advice of WND’s Commentary Editor: wear loose clothing. A young TSA agent waved me by.

I did see a tall and handsome TSA worker working-over a little old man (aged 80, perhaps). The agent was black; his victim Caucasian. It looked as though the former was examining the hunched old man’s colostomy bag. It took the agent forever. He appeared to be enjoying himself.

I lingered as long as I could, to bear witness. The cruel ordeal was still underway when I left the scene, some 15 minutes later.

Dare I say it? The girl who—no doubt by fluke—did not violate my constitutional, fourth-amendment rights to be free of “unreasonable searches and seizures” was Caucasian.

A previous flying experience saw me subjected to—what are the odds?—the ministrations of a large African-American woman, who summoned me with a crooked finger for a pat down. In no time at all, her giant digits were on my chest and between my legs.

Amassed online is a critical mass of images in which TSA workers, often minorities, are feeling up and humiliating the most vulnerable members of white America—kids, old men and women, often infirm and incapacitated.

Twenty one and a half percent of TSA employees are black, and 13.1 percent Latino. At 10.5 percent and 10 percent respectively, the equivalent representation of aggrieved groups in the private sector merely mirrors their numbers in the larger population (serving, no doubt, to keep litigation at bay).

Moreover, like most federal agencies, the TSA is known to provide sheltered employment to a segment of the population which Sibel Edmonds, a courageous whistle blower, has described as “low-level, incompetent, scandalous, molesting, abusive, and in some cases criminal people who have been creating one scandal after another.”

TSA action is immortalized in countless YouTube clips. …”

Read the rest of “The TSA’s Trayvon Martin Revenge.”

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UPDATE I: The serious Japanese are Laughing (and it takes a lot to make them chuckle):

UPDATE II (June 2): To the repulsive David B, in Comments:

My rational, sane readers know my writing as the kind that cleaves to reality, is objective, and objectivist. Aesthetics, art, music: These are aspects of the culture that I comment on at length. This is nothing new. I’ve commented on my idea of female beauty and manliness. These, like my concept of what constitutes good music, are absolute. These assessments exist irrespective of what I find sexually attractive or politically desirable. I thought Jackie Kennedy was spectacular as a woman. Does that mean I am attracted to her? Does that imply I’m a Democrat? What nonsense. The Don Draper character in “Mad Men” is good looking, objectively speaking. Does that mean I want to jump his bones? Iman the model in lovely. And black.

Crass, stupid racialists see the world through their narrow prism of politics and race. They are postmodernists, in this sense, reducing objective reality to subjective likes and dislikes that serve their personal ego-related and political needs.

I’ll repeat the reality I observed at the Newark airport recently: The black gentleman I observed assaulting the helpless, ancient white man was tall, fit, well-groomed and good-looking (in the sense that he could have obtained employment with a modeling agency). Do these objective observations mean I was attracted to him? How stupid can you be?

Did I despise him for his actions? You bet.

His actions, more than anything else about him, condemned him as a man and human being.

Heroism Stripped

Aesthetics, Britain, Feminism, Gender, Human Accomplishment, Pop-Culture, Sex

An anonymous sage said that “expectations tend to be self-fulfilling”: Expect nothing and you’ll get nothing. In the West, if kids so much as dial 911 in an emergency, they are decorated for bravery. So, it’s hardly surprising that evincing narcissism, self-adoration and bad taste has been elevated and recast as heroic, honest and gritty.

Going by the MailOnline’s sensibility, the au naturel uglies below are really “brave mothers and daughters [who] bare all – and reveal their hopes and fears about ageing” [sic]. I give you your new heroines. Scroll down for an eyeful.