Category Archives: Intelligence

UPDATED: Famously Rear-Ended Reality Stars

Celebrity, Intelligence, Journalism, Media, Pop-Culture, Sex, The Zeitgeist

In my journalism-school days one looked up to the brilliant and brave late Oriana Fallaci. Now, it’s mediocrities like colorectal crusader Katie Couric and Barbara Walters who’re considered cutting-edge clever. The last is such an idiot. But being a little compromised himself, conservatives like Bill O’Reilly actually engage Walters over picking the Kardashians for her “Most Fascinating People List.” Past prime picks for this List were Paris Hilton, Victoria and David Beckham, and Justin Timberlake.

So you have Billy arguing with batty Bawbawa that the women have no merit as they don’t act, don’t sing, do nothing but whine. Acting and singing would not necessarily make them fascinating.

The meaning of the word “fascinating” evades Barbara and her interlocutor: “Possessing the power to charm or allure; captivating.”

Go to the next room. Crank up the sound so that you can get an earful of the nasal, narcissistic monosyllables that tumble from each Kardashian’s mouth. How “fascinating” is that without the visuals?

Repulsive, freaky, morally rudderless, inappropriately sexual and depraved, so much so that I can’t stop staring: That is a precise description of the “Kardashians.” And it is not the same as “fascinating.”

The “family” is contemptuous of one another (and in general), licentious, libertine, promiscuous; a really nasty bunch of people that browbeats an effete and ineffectual father and bitches at one another. Each female adores and will do anything at all for … herself. I’ll grant her this: Kim is probably the least offensive as a human being. There is something in her eyes.

Another conservative, Sean Hannity, once touted that all-round vulgarian and one-time porn star Kim Kardashian as a role model for young girls because she does not imbibe. For the sake of good taste I will not post a hyperlink to Kim’s on-camera, bottoms-up gymnastics with a former boyfriend. But I hope Hannity’s daughter, if he has one, does not take her dad’s moral guidelines seriously. (More HERE about other Fox News porn pinups.)

Promoted by errant adults like Hannity and the moron Walters, reality show filth has seduced budding slut Montana Fishburne.

“According to TMZ.com, the 19-year-old daughter of Oscar-nominated actor Laurence Fishburne recently said that she was inspired to get into the porn industry because Kardashian found mainstream success after starting out as a sex tape star.”

Laurence Fishburne told his daughter, “I’m not going to speak with you till you turn your life around.” “You embarrassed me,” he said. “You used your last name. No one uses their real name in porn.”

For every plainspoken Fishburne, there are incoherent, meandering conservatives—this one from Pajama Media—aplenty.

UPDATE (Dec. 18): FB thread: A depraved culture supports a depraved politics and vise versa.

UPDATED: Christopher Hitchens, Great Rhetorician & Writer, Dies At 62

English, Human Accomplishment, Intellectualism, Intelligence, Journalism, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Literature, Neoconservatism, The Zeitgeist

I can’t say that Christopher Hitchens had a philosophical core—he did not. Thus the attempts in this BBC tribute to imbue the stands Hitchens took over the years with nobility fall flat. However, the late Mr. Hitchens possessed a formidable intellect and was both a great rhetorician and writer. One can agree with the somewhat prosaic Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, who once worked as an intern for Hitchens.” Clegg said: “Christopher Hitchens was everything a great essayist should be: infuriating, brilliant, highly provocative and yet intensely serious.”

BBC News doesn’t divulge who dubbed Hitchens “a drink-sodden ex-Trotskyist popinjay.” BUT I can tell you it was MP George Galloway. The quaint “popinjay” coinage gives Galloway (what a character!) away. Besides, back in 2005, I had blogged about the delightful joust between Galloway and Hitchens, RIP. I am nothing if not consistent. Here is what I wrote at the time:

Now hold your horses, will you, because I also admire Christopher Hitchens as a stylist, conversationalist, and an extraordinary flyter. What is flyting, you ask? It’s an ancient Scottish form of invective, a true master of which is the MP George Galloway. I don’t care for his or Hitchens’ ever-shifting views, but I loved the flyting that flew between the two. Galloway called Hitchens a drink-sodden ex-Trotskyist popinjay. Hitchens responded over the pages of an august publication by likening the lickspittle praise Galloway once bestowed on him to spittle flung in place of argument. Later on, the two dueled deliciously on C-Span, where, I’m afraid, Hitchens proved his uncontested superiority in this spontaneous rhetorical art.

UPDATED: Decoding The Plan to Make Detroit Work (Blame Honky)

Africa, Debt, Economy, Federalism, Government, Intelligence, Race, Racism, Socialism, Taxation

If these minority penalizing budgetary cuts were inflicted in New Hampshire, Desiree Cooper of Detroit Public TV would have probably cried foul. But they aren’t, so Cooper keeps her cool in an excellent factual account about Detroit’s black-dominated city council, and its efforts to save the city’s finances by consolidating services. (Read: directing these to those who PAY.)

This invariably means directing services to the dwindling tax base (You Know Who), so that this productive, paying minority gets the best bang for its huge outlays and goodwill and… STAYS IN TOWN. These good people want to remain in the city they helped build.

Have their overlords realized, perhaps a little late in the day, that keeping the taxpayers who pay their salaries happy might just be the key to their own statist status? As Cooper puts it in this remarkably impartial report: It is these “dedicated Detroiters, the more affluent Detroiters who are part of the tax base [that] the city desperately wants to hold on to.”

Barbara and Spencer Barefield are an example. The couple has “what they consider a small house amongst Palmer Woods’ mansions.” They (and their ilk; nudge-nudge) will be accorded “preferential treatment in this community’s upkeep, maintaining roads, sidewalks and streetlights. That could mean the difference between residents staying or leaving.”

Of course, it is a travesty to frame as “preferential” the provision of basic services in return for enormous outlays. It shows you how far we have gone in assimilating Karl Marx’s maxim, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”

The Barefield are Detroiters of quite a deep dye, as they are prepared to put up with a $900-a-month utility bill!

READ MORE about the “Detroit Works” project, undertaken by Mayor Dave Bing and his crew—architect Rainy Hamilton, Karla Henderson who heads Detroit Works, City Council President Charles Pugh, and others—in an attempt to save the city (and their sinecures?):

With a sprawling city, 139 square miles, and few resources for city services, Mayor Bing took the Detroit Works project as an opportunity to redefine the city’s physical, economic and social landscape. He began by taking inventory, taking a close look at what Detroit really has.
Demographers have identified at least 100 distinct neighborhoods within the city limits. With that in mind, Detroit Works unveiled its short-term plan, classifying the city’s neighborhoods by their quality of housing and stability of population.
The degree of city services and investment would depend on whether the neighborhood is deemed steady, transitional, or distressed.

UPDATE (Dec. 13): Erik in the comment below blames honky in what sounds like vintage Yankee propaganda. You’ll get better historical facts about the South from reading or watching the brilliant timeless “Gone with the Wind.” So too did Mencken write about the civilization destroyed by the “dirty Yankees.” The South was the seat of the country’s aristocracy—and some of the finest families in America.

Although my book, Into the Cannibal’s Pot, advances the cultural argument in explaining underdevelopment, it is also highly critical of it. As follows:

In “Into the Cannibal’s Pot,” I concur to an extent with thinkers such as Etounga-Manguelle. Indubitably, in Africa “magic wins out over reason; community over individual; communal ownership over private property; force and coercion over rights and responsibilities; wealth distribution over its accumulation.”Indeed, human behavior is mediated by values. However, I criticize the cultural argument for “affording a circular, rather than a causal, elegance: people do the things they do because they are who they are and have a history of being that way.”
But “why have some people produced Confucian and Anglo-Protestant ethics—with their mutual emphasis on graft and delayed gratification—while others have midwived Islamic and animistic values, emphasizing conformity, consensus, and control? Why have certain patterns of thought and action come to typify certain people in the first place?” Such an investigation, I conclude, political correctness prohibits.
In any event, bad leaders or bad weather patterns are not what shackle backward peoples. Not exclusively. As cities across England burn because of the “unequal civilizing potential” of certain peoples—James Burnham’s coinage—it has become clear that the values and cultural influences which people (and peoples) bring to the polity cannot be tweaked out of existence like some unsightly nose-hair.

Read it, Erik. Mimicking whitey, if that is indeed your and Sowell’s explanation for black dysfunction, falls flat when it comes to Africa.

UPDATE II: Newt Pokes the Palestinians (Paul Brings It on ABC)

Elections, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, Intelligence, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Journalism, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, libertarianism, Objectivism, Palestinian Authority, Pop-Culture, Republicans

Newt poked at the Palestinians yesterday, and the matter was rehashed during another debate between the GOP candidates. That’s the only interesting thing there is to report about the ABC moderated debate in Des Moines. I mean, there might have been more, but since transcripts are unavailable, I can’t tell.

You must have noticed how these presidential candidates are tripping over themselves to make nice with Israel and distance themselves from the “plight (or is it the blight) that never shuts up.” (You already know my position on foreign aid to Israel and to all the rest: NADA.)

Gingrich defended the controversial comments he made Friday, when he said the Palestinian people were “invented.” He said tonight that his statements were “factually correct.”
“Is it historically correct? Yes. Are we in a situation where every day rockets are fired into Israel while the United States — the current administration, tries to pressure the Israelis into a peace process. Hamas does not admit the right of Israel to exist and says publicly not a single Jew will remain,” Gingrich said.
“It’s fundamentally time for somebody to stand up and say enough lying about the Middle East,” he said.

I will say that I am amazed at the love caucus goers are showing Newt and the disdain they’ve heaped on Romney. Leave aside politics and my own political philosophy; Mitt Romney is the better character (as in human being). But Americans hate success when it is combined with good looks, fidelity to family and faith—and when these traits belong to a man who is mild-mannered and contained and not given to Oprah-like abreaction.

A slimy statist slob like Newt; now that’s a candidate Americans can relate to. I’m sorry; I don’t get it.

Idiot alert: From the fact that I have mentioned Mitt’s character and carriage favorably, please do not deduce that I support his polices. The last does not follow from the first. If you are a newcomer to this space, do read my commentary before you implode at my impartiality.

I’m a paleolibertarian, not a Republican. I apologize in advance for offering a dispassionate opinion about Mitt’s character while not being a supporter of his policies. I know how confusing an impartial comment could be to many who’ve come of age in the “Age of the Idiot.”

UPDATE I (Dec. 11): “WHY COME YOU DON’T HAVE A TATTOO?” My apologies to all those who were offended by my comments above. However, I am sick of being forced into tribalism. Because I’m libertarian—with certain political allegiances and loyalties—I’m expected to refrain from offering an impartial analysis of the political and cultural landscape, if that assessment fails to favor “my side.”

This tribal logic (or rhythm rather) works as follows: If she supports Paul she must not say a good thing about Romney’s private persona.

Forget about it. Get used to being exposed to more that cheerleading for “our” side. You come here for analysis; get used to it. My assessment of the political and cultural landscape will be forthcoming irrespective of my political allegiances and loyalties.

People who can’t tolerate this remind me of the “tarded” doctor character in the film “Idiocracy,” when he discovers that his patient doesn’t have the tribe’s stamp of approval: a special tattoo.

Doctor: “And if you could just go ahead and, like, put your tattoo in that shit.”
Joe: “That’s weird. This thing has the same misprint as that magazine. What are the odds of–”
Doctor: “Where’s your tattoo? Tattoo? Why don’t you have this?”
Joe: “Oh, god!”
Doctor: “Where’s your tattoo?”
Joe: “Oh, my god.”
Doctor: “Why come you don’t have a tattoo?”

Next: Myron, are you on a liberal (of the leftist kind) binge today? With respect to your comments below: If the singular reason for political organization is pelf—the destruction, murder, robbery, and delegitimization of the relatively civilized entity adjacent to it—then, I would argue, a “people” does not have a right to organize. Or, at least, such “organization” should be disrupted by its victims.

Reality tells us that this is the reason for the Palestinian push for self-determination—the gains to themselves must always coincide with losses to their Israeli neighbors; loss of life, land, political legitimacy. By reality I mean their ACTIONS, political and other.

Second: The fact that Jews fought in the WW II, or on the South’s side during the War Between the States, for that matter—does nothing to invalidate or vaporize their biblical ties to Israel. Those ties are validated in reality, by the fact that certain Jews have revived Israel for the better, and at huge costs to individuals pioneers. The place was a no-man’s land before modern Jewish settlement commenced.

UPDATE II: PAUL BRINGS IT. Paul, who by the way agrees with me and called Romney “more diplomatic than Gingrich,” was presidential during the debate. I glean this from snippets the moron media screens. Here’s some script at last via The Liberty Tree:

It was Texas congressman Ron Paul who delivered the most substantive responses and drew the loudest applause.
Early in the debate Congressman Paul was asked to comment on Gingrich’s flip-flopping. “He’s been on so many positions on so many issues,” Paul responded, but drew attention to his own record, stating, “you might have a little bit of trouble competing with me on consistency.”
On the subject of Gingrich’s earnings from Freddie Mac, Paul said, “He was earning a lot of money from Freddie Mac while I was fighting over a decade to try to explain to people where the housing bubble was coming from,” In a rebuke of the former Speaker, Paul added, “I think you probably got some of our taxpayers’ money.”