Category Archives: Ilana Mercer

UPDATE II: Me On Russian TV (RT) + YouTube Clip

China, Healthcare, Ilana Mercer, Ilana On Radio & TV

I was just on Russian TV (RT) to discuss the healthcare repeal vote and China. I like RT America a lot because, unlike American TV, they seem to value contrarian opinions, and mine certainly don’t fall within the permissible, Demopublican range. The interview was with the lovely Kristine Frazao. Should you locate the clip, please be charitable to me. I was on Skype and am sure I stared in the wrong direction. Besides, I am no circus performer, but, rather, the quintessential writer, always most comfortable at her PC screen typing.

http://rt.com/

http://www.youtube.com/rtamerica

UPDATED I: As promised, here’s the RT YouTube clip.

UPDATE II (Jan. 20): Thanks for the encouragement, however, I would hope that Robert is being unduly negative (and dark) about the prospects of future RT invitations. Just what I need! RT is not really mainstream. Our friend Nebojsa Malic appears on RT often; he is thoughtful and unorthodox.

Besides, unless I am autistic to American reaction (this is indeed possible), I thought the anchor was pleasant to me, even smiling and reacting positively. I liked her a lot. All in all, I found the RT folks professional and pleasant.

UPDATED: The Republican Tart Trust (Mercer Mainstream?)

Feminism, Free Speech, Ilana Mercer, Law, Media, Republicans, Sex

Where do the Republicans find their woman commentators? A fulminating female named Jedediah Bila, who bills herself as a conservative, called Julian Assange of the WikiLeaks notoriety a rapist. (Bobbing head S.E. Cupp, also a “conservative,” backed her up with vigorous … nods.) The two dim bulbs appeared on David Asman’s “America’s Nightly Scorecard.” As I mentioned in “Condomned by Law,” Swedish sexual harassment law is more diabolical than anything the radical American feminist jurist Catharine Mackinnon could dream up in her sweetest dreams—Mackinnon’s baleful influence on American and Canadian jurisprudence cannot be underestimated.

But if Bila and her conservative cohort agree that having consensual sex without a condom is tantamount to rape—Mackinnon’s work is done.

I do not wish to hear these imbeciles’ views on Assange’s free press and due process rights, do you?

UPDATE: What makes a reader of this site imagine that I decide on which TV news programs I will appear (none, so far, except one PBS program)? Guess what? The producers and writers of the cable news programs decide who to ask on their more-or-less conformist shows. That this is so unintuitive to readers implies an optimistic faith in the cognoscenti to whom they look up; they really believe that the chicks whose words they lap up are indeed cutting-edge thinkers, and that by mere chance ilana mercer is not among them.

“WE ARE [indeed] DOOMED.”

The reader should let the producers and anchors of his favorite shows know about his preferences. Telling this marginalized writer to free up her busy schedule and, presumably, stop rejecting invites to join mainstream TV Talkers is worse than ridiculous.

Again: I’m floored to find-out that readers of this space believe an-out-of-the-mainstream writer, who has never echoed the mob, can pick and choose the forums she frequents to showcase her work. That someone holds such a naive, optimistic impression about the mainstream media (and Fox is a bastion of banality, for the most), and the power of the ousted individual in American society knocks my socks off.

If readers entertain the notion that I’ve been shunning all those invitations I get to appear on Fox Business and News—I’ll repeat the gloomy mantra with which I’ve been sealing each post these days:

“WE ARE DOOMED.”

This is, however, a good opportunity to ask you to fully comprehend the degree to which truth-tellers and original thinkers are sidelined in your society and to support this site. My new book, Into The Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons For America From Post-Apartheid South Africa, is currently under consideration, but I fear that promoting it will ultimately fall to me alone (as has been the case for almost a decade). The work is simply too explosive. So kindly spare a thought, first, to the degree to which this writer’s voice is marginalized. And, second, to the need to support her mission.













As for S. E. Cupp: there is no accounting for aesthetic taste. Other than youth, however, I see no aesthetic merit in little Lolita’s vacant visage. As for this Fox-panel staple’s smarts: She is a studiously dumb chick, whose contribution to ideas is to gesture wildly and grimace, while portentously parroting mind-numbing banalities.

Precious Oscar-Wood Pacifies Himself

Environmentalism & Animal Rights, Ethics, Family, Ilana Mercer, Morality, Parrots, Relatives

Does it get more adorable than this little parrot? Like a baby would, Oscar-Wood, my Un-Cape parrot (Poicephalus fuscicollis), pacifies himself. An infant will suck on a finger or a pacifier (dummy in British English). Oscar-Wood sucks on a bit of wood he breaks off, and tickles his head and neck with pink, dexterous, hand-like claws, at the same time. He will fold one magical toe over the other three to create an ideal tickling implement. (Click on images to enlarge.)

I’ve tried to Google about the remarkable claw-eye-beak (“fine motor”?) coordination displayed by the parrot (watch this genius macaw), but can’t find much. (Help? Here is The Smart Bird Page, more anecdotal and amusing than scientific.) When I first became a parront, I was unaware of the remarkable claw- structure and dexterity the parrot possesses. Unlike most ordinary birds who have one back- and three front claws , the parrot has two in front and two at the back. These he cups when he eats, as the parrot will delicately hold a piece of food in his claw and pick at it with his beak. The parrot will also use these delicate appendages to manipulate objects. For example, Oscar-Wood stabilizes this barrel-of-fun with his pink claws, and then uses his mother-of-pearl beak to twist the thing in the right direction and then pull the barrel to pry a nut from within.

The human being’s fantastic facility with his digits is one indication of his great intelligence. In addition to their hand-like structure, the parrot’s claws, similarly, are huge in proportion to his little body—approximately a fifth of the size of his body when stretched out. This relationship is surely mirrored in the area given over in the parrot’s brain to the claws.

As I’ve reported here before, there has been good, if not sufficient, research into the great intelligence of the parrot, especially of the African Grey (who easily trumps the primates). But I have not seen specifics about the adroit claws that so fascinate me.

So too are the language-acquisition skills of the parrot remarkable. Human beings have often, conveniently, explained the parrot’s speech as pure mimicry. Just as a child would, however, the parrot absorbs the language he is capable of acquiring through imitation, behavioral conditioning, reinforcement, all in context. As is the case with toddlers, the orphaned parrot (who has been in a shop or shelter for too long) will have often missed the crucial, optimal period during which language is learned. I find that Oscar-Wood, who spent the first 4 years of life in a shop, caged, mostly, has fewer language skills than little T. Cup, who arrived in our home as a 7 month old baby. T. Cup uses words in context. If I’m out of the room, he’ll call, “Mommy, mommy.” He has just learned the great benefits that come with demands for “Daddy, daddy.”

As I type, he is muttering to himself (after causing a racket by bashing his water bowel): “Stop it, stop it.” Around food time, it’s “Yummy-yummy.” When caged, he’ll emit cries of “Outside, outside.” Should T. Cup become very noisy, Oscar-Wood will scold him in his cute little voice: “Step-up, step-up,” which is the command parronts give their parrots to step-up onto them.

Humans love to watch Disneyfied, talking dogs, pigs, spiders—all animals that DON’T TALK, and have very few human attributes. Indeed, the parrot is the most proper object of Anthropomorphism.

However—and I know I’ll anger the wonderful woman bird-breeder who sold us these two characters—I don’t think parrots are suitable pets for most people. They are far too labor-intense, needy, sensitive and sentient. A constantly caged, lonely, unattended parrot will immediately become a “problem bird” (the owner being the real problem), who will soon be the object of abuse.

I am oh-so-very fortunate to work from home. Thus, my parrots are seldom caged; talk to me constantly, and have a flock-like arrangement with us. Cage these social creatures and deny them the one-on-one bond formation their biological blue-print dictates—and you have a tragic, depressed, feather-denuded little bird.

Think about it: Many parrots pair for life, create creches in which they raise their young; and when a Hyacinth Macaw, for example, loses a partner, the widow/widower is then adopted by an intact pair. This rather advanced social life precludes adaptation to a lonely, caged existence.