Category Archives: The Zeitgeist

Updated: On Bloggerel

Barely A Blog, IlanaMercer.com, Internet, Pop-Culture, The Zeitgeist

I resisted blogging with all my might. In August 2002, I wrote this in “The Importance of Boundaries”:

“Virginia Postrel appears to confer the web-diary with a mystic, cosmic rhythm, calling it ‘one of the most interesting new spontaneous orders in the world of the Web.’ … The fact that millions of people are moved to mouth daily on the web is no more significant than the fact that billions of humans have a bowel movement every day.”

“Chances are that if you are blogging, a part of you believes that your impromptu daily thoughts ought to be public. Chances are you are not terribly concerned that, of the cyberspace ejaculate you emit, stuff will come back to haunt you like a nasty paternity suit.”

Unfortunately, I was in no position to let this expression of spontaneous disorder pass me by. Ann Coulter is in that position; I’m not. Probably never will be. So here I am. (Still, this blogger “speaks” only “when she has something to say,” to comport with my daughter’s description of her mom years back. Which is why this is Barely a Blog.)

Thomas Fleming has had a similar experience. Here are his impressions of the blogosphere and its intellectually disemboweling effects:

“… answering the blog-responders is like arguing with a retarded child who thinks breaking wind is a witty response.”

“I described the blogger mentality as a form of Narcissism, but even that is a compliment. Narcissus was so handsome that he fell in love with his own reflection. The proper parallel would be the writers and political intellectuals who are so brilliant and clever that they have fallen in love with their own voices, but bloggers are like a hideously ugly person who looks in the mirror and says: ‘The rat’s looking good.’ [Note, I have to check the quotation from the recent film of Charlotte’s Web, which I watched on a flight to Rome.]”

“… if we took the trouble to start a conversation, the blogospheroids would jump in, agreeing or disagreeing–it hardly matters–with opinions by the truckload. This might not be so bad, if the truck were not a garbage truck.”

The post is “Silly Chickens and Rotten Eggs.” As with all Dr. Fleming’s writing, it’s well-worth the read.

Update (March 22): This is not to say that there aren’t good blogs; I’d hope BAB is one. Rather, the objection here is to the meta-process the web diary stands for–the loose, let-it-all-hang out, diarrheic process of diarizing in public, as I said in the essay, has broken down boundaries between the private and public:

“The upshot of populism in punditry, at least, is that bad commentary is promiscuously outed. Few and far between are the commentators and conversationalists who have honed their craft.”

Updated: Bomb Them With Bimbos

Feminism, Morality, Sex, The Zeitgeist

The excerpt is from my new WorldNetDaily column. You can read the uncut version of “Bomb Them With Bimbos” on IlanaMercer.com:

“It transpires that Mao Zedong once proposed exporting 10 million Chinese women to the United States. In a long conversation with Henry Kissinger at the Chinese leader’s residence in 1973, Mao moaned about ‘the dismal trade between the two countries,’ saying China was a ‘very poor country’ with an excess of women.

That’s one page America might consider talking out of the Little Red Book.

If we were to export women, politics would begin to move to the right again. Oprah’s empire of imbeciles would shrink. And it would become possible to rehabilitate English as our official language. Distaff America has made a certain style of speech its signature:

“And he was like, ‘Come here’; and I was like, ‘No’; and he was like, ‘You’re amazing’; and I was like, ‘I know.’”

Update (May 11): “SEND MY WIFE.” Stephen G. Smith has entertained us with one of the funniest letters—funny, but a little sad at the same time. I wonder how men of the Right deal with wives who’re left-liberals. (And face it; most women are left-liberals). The garage, the range, this blog. Do share.

Updated: Exporting Soft Porn

Aesthetics, America, China, Family, Morality, Pop-Culture, The Zeitgeist

A great deal of carping goes on about the crap China exports to us (by popular demand). Very little is said about the sh-t we ship over there. Here Glenn Beck reports on the little American Lolitas, courtesy of Disney, who help sell sexy underwear to China’s children.

Beck describes (and later shows on screen) a

“White girl, 12 years old, reclining in a matching bra and panties set with Disney’s signature mouse ear design in a particular creepy detail, the pigtailed child is playing with a pair of Mickey Mouse hand puppets. In the left-hand corner is the familiar script of a Disney logo.”

The child sports cleavage which might have been enhanced digitally.

The Chinese should give Americans a hard time over this.

American children appear to be party to a very sexual vibe cultivated in sexually inappropriate family interactions and nurtured at schools. Watch any Hollywood film and you see girls being overtly sexual with their dads and vise versa.

(Why do so many American parents kiss their kids on the mouth? Absolutely inappropriate. Why do so many parents let their daughters walk around looking like “pint-sized tarts”?)

As an example, consider the Vanity Fair Miley Cyrus photo, where the girl, in various states of undress, nestles in the arms of father Billy Ray Cyrus, and looks up at him seductively. Major creep-out.

When I was growing up the instinct was to try and stay a little girl a little longer—especially around dads.

To be honest, a country exporting cheap electronics has a leg up on a country that peddles porn, don’t you think?

In case libertarians get confused, as they are wont to do, between cultural commentary and libertarian legal theory—of course peddling porn, soft and hard, ought to remain legal. The law should stay out of all voluntary exchanges between consenting adults.

Update (May 6): I must admit that, although I’ve never watched the program “Hanna Montana,” the girl Miley strikes me as anything but sweet and innocent. Perhaps my idea of nice is different. The Cyrus girl is loud, overbearing and extremely precocious. For such a twit, she’s also full of herself. The little I’ve seen of the “family” doing its wholesome-values shtick, the more they’ve struck me as shallow and showy, not wholesome. Then again, I’ve not had the chance to plumb the depths of “Hanna Montana” and her handlers.

Whenever the Fox-News folks have oozed over the wholesomeness of this girl is and then cut to actual footage of Cyrus carrying forth—my impression has been the opposite. When I think of wholesome (and as pretty as a picture), I think Martina McBride.

As to the whole blame Dad and Disney thing, I’ve expressed my views before: “The paternalistic depiction of women as passive agents, demeaned by male-driven appetites, is a humbug shared by conservatives and liberals alike.”

Cyrus may be 15, but she’s a single-minded exhibitionist, propelled and driven by the fame thing. In all likelihood, she originated the idea of posing for Vanity Fair and would not stop pestering her pappy until he relented. Anyone who has a teenager and handles her as does the typical American parent—like a demigoddess—knows I’m right.

Those who persist in the poor-teen-is-a-victim routine don’t have children. Or are oblivious to the reversal in parent-child roles that has come to typify the dynamics in the American family.

Reverend Wright Revolts Once Again

Barack Obama, Democrats, Race, Racism, The Zeitgeist

CNN televised Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s address to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). This lunatic’s delivery left the limited Rick Sanchez, front man for CNN, gasping. But then, his colleagues, chiefly Soledad O’Brian, whom Wright endorsed during his rant, put him at ease. Wright’s sermon was light, fun, humorous, designed to show the totality of this much-maligned preacher. She and colleague Roland Martin were dressed in Homer Simpson-type mumus or caftans for the solemn occasion. Fix News’ retards—Geraldo Rivera and his “analytical entourage”—echoed Soledad’s solidarity with Wright.

Having listened to Wright’s insane sermon, I can only marvel at mainstream media’s ability to shed darkness on whatever topic they tackle—an ability that comes with a great deal of God-given stupidity.

Other than stark raving mad, Wright’s delivery was dripping with bile. He is a cynical, smug, sardonic so-and-so. Love? Compassion? His is the strident voice of racial grievance. And envy. The man is green with envy. His sheer envy of “European” achievements is palpable. Why else would he devote an entire hour to listing “European” achievements, deriding them, and then defining an inability to emulate these achievements as nothing but difference? Wright also latched on to fashionable brain bifurcation balderdash—he puts great stock in right brain/left brain discredited pop pedagogy—to explain black dereliction and drop-out rates. (So does Mike Huckabee)

The entire sermon was dominated by collectivist racial theorizing:

Black children learn a certain way, speak a special way and think in ways different to whites, said Wright. African music is different from European music, and here the holy man emitted a caterwauling which was supposed to come off as a cantata. The emulation was derisive, mocking. To contrast the so-called pomposity of the cantata, the MF launched into Brother musical mode, jovial and jolly. Black music was different, not deficient, to white music, said he. The one, he implied, was filled with Joie de vivre, the other just jejune.

Wright even attempted to distinguish typical white from black chords or timing. What a moron. Classical music— certainly Bach—showcases time signature fluctuations—the kind that require a high level of musicianship.

Again, undergirding this disturbing diatribe was the man’s contention that different is not deficient. And when it comes to evaluating cultural products, there is no such thing as objective standards. Naturally, it is in the interest of Wright to declare BB King as good as, only different from, Bach, because, well, Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Mozart, Mahler—they’re sublime. BB King is very small compared to these giants. For obvious reasons, Wright would like to encourage the Zeitgeist on the path it has embarked on in abolishing all objective standards by which learning, accomplishments, and cultural products are judged.

This Afrocentric racial “theorist” aims to instill racial pride in Africans by conjuring contempt for “European” culture. This has been his mission for decades—at least for the duration Barack Obama spent in the pews of Trinity United Church of Christ. Obama’s mind must be full of this empty incitement.