When Wolf Blitzer framed one of his upcoming news teases as “Watergate,” this morning, I thought he was being a Smart Alec about Carnival Triumph, the cruise liner whose “propulsion system” was “paralyzed” by a fire in the engine room.
As to the delicate bouquet that is wafting from the Waste Liner:
“…the sanitary situation had already begun to deteriorate on board the Triumph. …the conditions have gotten so bad that they’re asking them to use the restroom in bags, and they were eating onion sandwiches …
Much of the ship’s electrical power went down in the fire, causing widespread malfunctions, including taking out sanitary systems.
Passengers have reported sewage sloshing around in hallways, flooded rooms and trouble getting enough to eat.
“It’s disgusting. It’s the worst thing ever,” passenger Ann Barlow told CNN.
The saving grace of Big Media’s excruciating blow-by-blow coverage of the stand-off with LAPD officer and Navy veteran Christopher Jordan Dorner is that it made the network nits forget about their date with Barack Obama.
A “Stalinesque extravaganza” that ought to offend “anyone of a republican (small ‘r’) sensibility” is how National Review’s John Derbyshire has described the annual State of the Union address. “American politics frequently throws up disgusting spectacles. It throws up one most years in January: the State of the Union speech,” writes Derbyshire in “We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism,” in which John (he’s a friend) goes on to detail how “the great man” is announced, how he makes an entrance; the way “the legislators jostle to catch his eye” and receive his favor. (This year, the most repulsive among the representatives staked out aisle seats for themselves, starting early in the morning.)
“On the podium at last, the president offers up preposterously grandiose assurances of protection, provision, and moral guidance from his government, these declarations of benevolent omnipotence punctuated by standing ovations and cheers from legislators” (p. 45). The president of the USA is now “pontiff, in touch with Divinity, to be addressed like the Almighty.”
The razzmatazz includes a display of “Lenny Skutniks” in the royal box. These are “model citizens chosen in order to represent some quality the president will call on us to admire and emulate.” Last year it was the family of the girl who was murdered by the Tucson shooter. This year’s “Lenny Skutnik” was Debbie Bosanek, Warren Buffett’s secretary. Bosanek is supposed to embody the Barf(fett) Rule, described by the Divine One thus: “If you make more than a million dollars a year, you should not pay less than 30 percent in taxes.”
Bring back the vomitorium says I (I am well aware that the concept is misrepresented, but the misrepresentation is worth retaining. It’s a good one).
I have been able to avoid some of the solipsistic orgy over Obama—to say nothing of the obscene platitudes and paradoxes: The Ass With Ears spoke of “Preserving our individual freedoms” through “require[d] collective action.” Moron.
This morning, I gave a prerecorded interview to RT (Russia Today TV, where my Paleolibertarian Column features). It was a pleasant, polite, intellectually stimulating, and professionally conducted exchange.
Ideas were the focus, not personalities. It always is this way with RT.
My RT experience has been vastly different from my experience with American hosts. How? Well, the RT producer’s starting point is a familiarity with and interest in some of the work written by the interviewed individual. She’ll point out which aspects piqued her curiosity, what she’d like to explore on air, etc.
Wow. Intellectual curiosity and courtesy: What old-fashioned concepts!
On the other hand, inquiries stateside invariably begin with the host’s persona and perspective. As follows:
US host: “Like, hey, We want to interview you.” Ilana: “Sure, what about?” US host: “Check us out on YouTube. We don’t read.”
You are expected to come on a show and rap, move your mouth. If you’re as chatty and as self-absorbed as your hosts invariably are, then all’s copacetic. But if you’re a person who tends to use words sparingly and with attempted precision, you’re out of luck.
When my daughter was seven-years old, her school assigned her the task of describing her parents. On her father, daddy’s darling heaped unrealistic praise. For her devoted mother, this perceptive chatterbox of a child reserved a matter-of-fact appraisal. “My mother,” she wrote in her girly cursive, “is a quiet woman who speaks mainly when she has something to say.”
To that my friend, writer Rob Stove, responded: “If everyone rationed speech thus, the entire mainstream punditocracy would cease to exist.”
Amen.
If he’s having a good day, your host may just exhibit a limited interest in you, not in your output, by sending you some obscure link or file that has caught his attention. The idea is that his inner world and current preoccupations should become your own.
UPDATE (Jan. 21, 2013): The interview was on RT’s “The Truthseeker.” The process was fun and professional. The end result not ideal, as the sound conked-out on me and only a short snippet was harvested from the lengthy interview. There’s always a next time.
In response, there has been a great deal of special pleading from conservative quarters. A lot of the gun owners whose names and addresses were mapped are “first responders,” conservatives have been lamenting. “We can’t expose our [sainted] first responders to any dangers.”
The Bill or Rights was meant to protect individuals against the state. It defends the people from the government; not the obverse. But trust conservatives to elevate the “oink sector,” in the debate over the right of gun owners to privacy.
If anything, “first responders,” and other members of the oink sector—having sold their souls to the state—need to accept the risks that go with exercising ultimate decision-making powers in society, to use Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s term.
Government workers–the special interests—are expected to live with the risk of the job. They accept the perks and the pensions, don’t they?
On Mr. Hannity’s Great American Panel, Noel Nikpour, a tedious Republican strategists who talks up a storm on that forum, extended her exquisite understanding of individual rights to … people like herself and her co-panelists. You know, important sorts who fly a lot; they ought to be able to acquire a permit that’ll exempt them from being screened afresh [by TSA goons] as they scurry to their important appointments.
This evening, Sean Hannity provided a forum for some very impressive gun owners, all of whom had been “outed” by the The Journal News. These were highly intelligent people, more than capable of articulating the essence of the freedoms they were exercising.
Still, sympathy is all “conservatives” like Mr. Hannity are able to offer to these exposed individuals. Sympathy and an appeal to the decency of the media (laughable, I know).
Republicans have no leg to stand on in objecting to the publication of gun-owner addresses, as they argue from the positive law. And the positive law, defended by all so-called “reasonable” conservatives, compels all law-abiding individuals to register with the state when purchasing a fire arm. (To this registration, libertarians like myself would object.)
Information thus collated and centralized is accessible to all.
An appeal to the sympathy and decency of the liberal establishment: That’s all statist “conservatives” have to offer in the case of The Journal News Vs. the gun owners of Westchester and Putnam counties.
