Category Archives: Pop-Culture

Precious Or Grotesque?

Film, Hollywood, Objectivism, Pop-Culture, Reason, The Zeitgeist

The following excerpt is from this week’s WND.COM column, “Precious Or Grotesque?”:

“….What is so grotesque about the film ‘Precious’ is not the actress—who seems pleasant enough—so much as the film; the fiction, the yarn it spins and the emotions it calculatingly elicits. ‘Precious’ is intended to tug at every single sentimental fiber in a person’s being.

Mired in the misery of Harlem, the ugliest, fattest, most abused and tormented young girl is kicked about some more after spending earlier formative years as the ugliest, fattest, most abused and tormented child in the world, born to the cruelest most craven parents ever, who—although they don’t sacrifice her in a ritual murder—make up for this show of restraint by beating, impregnating, and infecting their daughter with HIV. …

“‘Precious’ … is a gratuitous orgy of pornography, pathology, and sentimentality. It is extreme fiction aimed at exaggerated emotion.” …

THE COMPLETE COLUMN IS “Precious Or Grotesque?”

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

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

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.”

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.

Glenn Is Great

Ann Coulter, Gender, Glenn Beck, Intelligence, John McCain, Media, Political Correctness, Pop-Culture, Pseudo-intellectualism, Republicans, The Zeitgeist

The One and Only Glenn Beck, still a scrupulously good fellow despite fame and fortune, would contend that only G-d is great, and that’s what makes Mr. Beck so good.

His humility and love of grace aside, Glenn is one of the most important popular forces for liberty today.

Yes, he often gets it wrong. Yes, he often confuses genuine forces for liberty (Ron & Rand Paul, Peter Schiff) with snake-oil merchants (the neoconservatives Andrew Breitbart and Stephen Moore). Yes, he overestimates the wisdom of the American People, and never touches the topic which accounts for the future dissolution of the people and the election of another. (Embellish, if you will.)

BUT.

No one in mainstream media has done what Glenn has to drive home the reasons and consequences of an irrevocably insolvent America: the twin evils of monetary policy and mind-boggling state profligacy.

And no one, myself excluded, has come out swinging as Glenn has against the Meghan McCain phenomenon and what IT represents. Meghaaan’s delusions of grandeur are those of America’s miseducated, exceedingly arrogant, deeply dopey, utterly outsourceable youth, worshiped, nay deified, by parents and pedagogues (and slowly being displaced by Asia’s pleasant, wickedly hardworking, bright, respectful kids). Glenn hasn’t quite gotten there, but he’s almost there.

Today Glenn galvanized his comedic gifts to roast this fattened goose. Not one Republican has done so satisfactorily. Laura Ingraham practically apologized for lampooning Meghan McCains’s unmistakable moronity; Michelle Malkin also backed down from a less-than adequate evisceration. Coulter opted out as usual, and said nothing much important (as she does on immigration).