In November, Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-Wellesley) she said we needed a different mix of troops in Iraq, with more MPs, civil affairs, and special operations forces, and less heavy infantry and armor. Rush and Hannity and all the rest were all over her, saying she was “anti-military” and was using this to attack Bush, etc.
Thing is, she’s right: tanks require a huge amount of logistical support, and they aren’t great for patrolling. As a civil affairs Marine who served with an infantry battalion in Iraq, I agree with her, and I’m pro-military and anti-Clinton (any Clinton, even George. Sorry, P-Funk.) Why disagree with someone just because their other opinions and actions are repulsive? When someone is right, they’re right. If they’re wrong, don’t resort to sloppy ad hominem attacks. Tell her why we need artillery to fight small groups of insurgents, instead of deploying sniper teams to ambush them.
So now she’s in trouble because she made some comment about Indians running gas stations. The outrage is over the top. (Had she ever shown any inclination to tweak the noses of the P.C. police, she might have gotten away with it — but can you recall any other comment she’s ever made that was the least bit un-P.C.?) It’s part of the strain of liberalism that holds manual labor to be inherently demeaning. I wonder how well that goes down with the unions. Wait — modern unions are all about avoiding labor of any kind. My fault.
Let the record show that I have now defended Hillary Clinton for two different things. I will now go lie down for a while so I can recover.
Author: Eric Johnson
Hodean discovers Jesus, part II
Hodean, the heir apparent to Algore, continues to blather about his religious “views.” The primary mission of Christianity is “to reach out to people who’ve been left behind.” You thought it was to get sinners to repent and go to heaven. Silly you. Don’t point out that this definition is equivalent to secular political liberalism, because that would be hurtful.
Dean’s decision to sign the Vermont civil unions bill was part of this “reaching out” process, he said. Compared to the rest of the population, self-identified gays are better educated, hold professional jobs with substantially more pay, and live in nicer neighborhoods. Exactly how are they “left behind”? Oh, yes: there are still people who think that a marriage needs a man and a woman, the way it’s been since before Abraham. They must be overridden by the courts and browbeaten until they learn to love gay sex. Traditional Christians don’t need to be “reached,” they need to be corrected, with the force of the state if necessary.
I also like his comment about his wife’s medical practice: “There’s not that element of self-sacrifice of her career that there is in some political families.” God forbid! Some think marriage is all about self-sacrifice — like St. Paul and the Holy Father and the One on whose behalf they speak — but what do celebate men know about personal fulfullment?
The tragedy of them all
All of Shakespeare’s tragedies are now available on Open Source Shakespeare, a personal project of mine that will (hopefully) be my grad thesis when it’s all done.
Not idolizing “American Idol”
Time for a new year and a new episode of “American Idol.” I’ve never actually seen the show, but since Fox is the only place one can watch “The Simpsons,” I’ve seen plenty of previews for it. A wife of mine (who shall remain nameless) has actually seen an episode or two.
Does anyone else think the way they treat contestants on “AI” is wrong? I used to do some acting, and the Brothers Schultz and I used to do a little singing way back when, and I remember the kind of nervousness you get when you perform on stage. The way I understand it, in the first few episodes, they drag in kids who can’t sing and humiliate them in front of the cameras, then broadcast it to millions of people.
Ha ha ha. I’ve read that the producers identify the ridiculously bad performers and then tell them they’re going to audition for the main judges instead of the lower-level screeners. So these people think, “Hey, I’ve really got a shot,” but instead they get verbally abused. Maybe some of them think it’s a lark afterwards, but from the looks on their faces, they seem genuinely shocked.
If I were one of the sucky performers, I’d probably want to shoot myself — or that nasty judge, Simon. Where does he get off passing judgment on people’s talents? He’s the guy who inflicted the Spice Girls on the world. He should be on trial at the Hague, right after Milosevic is finished.
Anyway, the whole thing makes me sick. I don’t really care about the whole “Star Search” aspect, but it seems like they could have that without the humiliation. Or is cruelty considered good clean fun these days, and I hadn’t noticed?
UPDATE: I was wrong — Simon Cowell did not create the Spice Girls, contrary to my memory. He is responsible for the Teletubbies and the Mighty Morph’n Power Rangers. Simon Fuller is the guy who created the Spice Girls. I should watch VH-1 more often to keep these things straight, but I don’t have cable, so I can’t.
Killing poor people by keeping them poor
I was going to do a little comparison between the earthquake in my ancestral homeland of California and the one in Bam, Iran. (Please, no comments on the unfortunate onomatopoeia of “Bam.”) But lo, Jonah Goldberg beat me to it.
The California earthquake was somewhat smaller than the Iranian one, but killed two people instead of 30,000+. The anti-globalizers on the Left want to ensure that these disasters happen from now until the end of time. Who cares about mothers wailing for their children, or thousands of homes wiped out in a few minutes of screaming, suffocating chaos? All these things must be offered up to the god of environmental primitivism.
What do I mean by “environmental primitivism”? The anti-globalizers think that poor non-Western people are cute, so they don’t want them to change their charmingly backward ways, which are (they imagine) the way people lived before the nasty Industrial Revolution with its so-called “abundant food,” “long lifespans,” and “housing codes.” They love that poor people don’t consume much energy or natural resources, and they use “organic” methods of agriculture — which aren’t very helpful for crop yields, but they don’t use evil pesticides or fertilizers. And harvesting by hand — so darn cute!
Likewise, the stone-and-mud-brick houses of the Third World are environmentally friendly. They’re also a deathtrap during a natural disaster. But not one tree was bulldozed to make room for them.
Wealth brings medical training, healthy food, and houses that won’t crumple during an earthquake. Poverty kills, and therefore the misguided leftists who want to keep poor people poor are, in an indirect way, conspiring to make sure poor people keep dying in earthquakes, famines, and epidemics. Maybe if our brothers in the Third World promise to keep being cute somehow, the anti-globalizers would let them build their houses out of solid masonry and sheetrock?