Category Archives: The Zeitgeist

The Twit Is Atwitter

Elections, Feminism, Gender, Human Accomplishment, Intellectualism, Pseudo-intellectualism, Republicans, Technology, The Zeitgeist

Meghan McCain opened up her mouth to say nothing. There is nothing new about that. But media are aflutter—a sad fact that simply enforces what you already know about the state of American public life.

“Well, I speak as a 26-year-old woman and my problem is that, no matter what, Christine O’Donnell is making a mockery of running for public office,” McCain told anchor Christiane Amanpour. “She has no real history, no real success in any kind of business.”
McCain, daughter of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said that the message, “that sends to my generation is: one day you can just wake and run for Senate, no matter how [much of] a lack of experience you have. And it scares for me for a lot of reasons.”

Note Meghan’s constant allusions to her tender age. In another universe youth would be a reason to shut up. In the country in which kids are imbued with mythical qualities (Rousseau’s Noble Savage applied to small savages), the words of the greatest ditz to date to emerge from that big tent that Republicans keep touting carry as much heft as said heifer carries on her person.

Meghan is like a dripping tap. If you’ve read the first few lines of any of her blog posts, you’ve read all two diarrheic pages of it. Buzzwords peppered with clichés, and prefaced with “I feel like,” convey Meghan’s mushy, thinking-averse, pop-politics: “I feel like we need to be reaching out to moderates and young people. I feel like we need to be reaching out to minorities.”

The creature gets away with calling herself a writer because America has facilitated her delusions of grandeur. Meghan has “written” for Newsweek, no less, and now adds to the political bestiality on The Daily Beast. Both publications accept Ms. McCain’s version of a premise and a conclusion. For example: “I, like, disagree with that completely, and think that’s, like, completely crazy.”

As hopeless, Republicans have failed to make the only valid case against Meghan, and that is that she is really really stupid. But how can they, when making the case for the GOP are members of the same, hubristic Millennial generation? If smart adults were in charge, they would refuse to address anything Meghan disgorges from her puffy, painted face.

Idiots have come into their own in a big way, courtesy of depraved consumers, and complicit TV producers and publishers, of pixel and paper alike. The duller you are and the louder you crow in contemporary America, the better you do. Meghan McCain is not working with much—and is eminently qualified to dim debate in the Age of the Idiot.

As for “Christine O’Donnell, the Republican candidate for Senate in Delaware,” I don’t know a lot about her, except that in the snippets I’ve caught from her debates, she has acquitted herself quite well.

Meghan’s cretinism and cringe factor far outweigh those of poor Christine’s, who seems sweet enough.

The American Electorate As Seen By The Left

Celebrity, Democrats, Elections, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Politics, Pseudo-intellectualism, Sarah Palin, The Zeitgeist

“How D.C. Became Hollywood for Semi-Attractive People” is the title of an Esquire blog post by Tom Junod. It is not particularly well-written, or especially thoughtful—this guy is not Christopher Hitchens—but the post got its author on cable today. “Hardball” I think it was. Here is what Junod thinks of you yobbos and your politics:

“The Democrats didn’t think they had to worry about any of this. They weren’t looking for stars because they had the biggest star in the world as their president. He didn’t have a populist bone in his body, but he was a deeply thoughtful man and a galvanic speaker both, and he promised to transcend the bone-grind of American politics. With his promise of one-man racial reconciliation, he was transfixing, but the independents who were transfixed by him needed to keep being transfixed, and on this, he couldn’t deliver. The American public turned against Obama not when it found out he was radical, or wish-washy, or power-mad, or timid, or what have you; it turned against him when he stopped being entertaining. It turned against him when it found out his real secret — that under his professorial mien he was, well, a professor. Outside the enforced electricity of a national electoral referendum, he was dutiful, and he was dull.”

“It is something of an unfair fight now: a party led by a man who clearly thinks too much before he speaks against a party led by a semi-sexy woman who will say anything — hell, whose idea of a debating strategy in 2008 was a table dance. And the Democrats don’t have an answer, because they’ve so deeply misjudged what the American electorate wants and is capable of. They thought that after the trauma of the Bush years, we would want a no-drama president; a regal First Lady; endless pages of necessary legislation, achieved at a political cost that proves the party’s commitment and courage; and a few more women on the Supreme Court who prove the party’s emphasis on excellence and ethnicity over eros. They didn’t realize that what we want is drama and nothing but, and so the Democrats became the CNN to the Repubican [sic] Fox, clueless in their competence, bewildered by their own best intentions.”

Read more: http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/female-candidates-2010#ixzz12Do5TbPi

The John (Eliot Spitzer) & The Mindless Schoolmarm (Kathleen Parker)

Celebrity, Economy, History, Media, The State, The Zeitgeist

We can all agree that Eliot Spitzer did his most ethical work as a John, between the sheets with the hooker with whom he was caught. Before that he was a politician who persecuted the productive class.

“Parker Spitzer,” CNN’s new current-events program, is easily the most repulsive thing on TV. More so than “Keeping Up With The Kardashians.”

I’d never have guessed, though, that I’d prefer Spitzer’s open statism to Kathleen Parker’s coy conformity. The New York Times stated that “Ms. Parker does not bring to CNN Mr. Spitzer’s propensity for controversy.” That’s an understatement.

Parker, we are told, is a Pulitzer prize winner. That tells me as much about that journalistic honor than Obama’s peace prize tells me about the Nobel Prize. Not only does this woman, Parker, not express a thought in opposition to her partner’s; she doesn’t express a thought.

Today the creepy couple entertained the king of Keynesians, economist Paul Krugman. Both offered plaudits to his predictive brilliance. Neither one challenged his warped history and economics. Yesterday it was the gorgeous model and ditz Paulina, and the French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy. Both called the tea partiers savages. Nobody was smart enough to point out the differences between the Revolution in France, as Edmund Burke referred to this barbaric turning point in history, and the American Revolution.

Parker is a wound-up, tight-lipped, prissy schoolmarm—which is not a bad thing at all. I like prim and proper. It’s the dumb statist that I don’t much dig.

“Parker Spitzer” is self-congratulatory, pompous Beltway banter.

It needs to fail.

The John (Eliot Spitzer) & The Mindless Schoolmarm (Kathleen Parker)

Celebrity, History, Media, The State, The Zeitgeist

We can all agree that Eliot Spitzer did his most ethical work as a John, between the sheets with the hooker with whom he was caught. Before that he was a politician who persecuted the productive class.

“Parker Spitzer,” CNN’s new current-events program, is easily the most repulsive thing on TV. More so than “Keeping Up With The Kardashians.”

I’d never have guessed, though, that I’d prefer Spitzer’s open statism to Kathleen Parker’s coy conformity. The New York Times stated that “Ms. Parker does not bring to CNN Mr. Spitzer’s propensity for controversy.” That’s an understatement.

Parker, we are told, is a Pulitzer prize winner. That tells me as much about that journalistic honor than Obama’s peace prize tells me about the Nobel Prize. Not only does this woman, Parker, not express a thought in opposition to her partner’s; she doesn’t express a thought.

Today the creepy couple entertained the king of Keynesians, economist Paul Krugman. Both offered plaudits to his predictive brilliance. Neither one challenged his warped history and economics. Yesterday it was the gorgeous model and ditz Paulina, and the French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy. Both called the tea partiers a savages. Nobody was smart enough to point out the differences between the Revolution in France, as Edmund Burke referred to this barbaric turning point in history, and the American Revolution.

Parker is a wound-up, tight-lipped, prissy schoolmarm—which is not a bad thing at all. I like prim and proper. It’s the dumb statist that I don’t much dig.

“Parker Spitzer” is self-congratulatory, pompous Beltway banter.

It needs to fail.