Eventually it all begins to get to be too much, and good men - if they are men - have to call a spade "a spade" and declare the rest of you are wasting our time, in the most colorful language allowed. By explaining that Chris Matthews is prone to talking about nothing (and getting praised for it) Neil Cavuto reminds us of other "major issues" the know-it-alls have been consumed with - that have cost our now-broke-ass country a lot of time, passion, and gobs and gobs of money - but amounted to absolutely nothing. We could start with recycling and global warming, and remind you that both are being catered to with the full support of a public too ignorant, and gullible, to figure out what's important for themselves and spare us the waste of funds we've always needed desperately elsewhere.
This stupid idea that Americans should be trying to become Hitler's Nazi "Supermen", everyone in shape to some NewAge "wellness" expert's arbitrary specifications - like their hectoring is making the world a place anyone wants to live longer in - would be laughable if it wasn't so fucking cruel and stupid. Instead of focusing on other people's weight, why don't you ask yourself if you're any good? Yea, we know:
Because you'd fail.
It's good to see this - that we're not the only ones who get fed up with this idiotic nonsense - we only wish more people would focus on what's important, and not what language is used or something else equally superficial. But, we know, in this NewAge society that's asking waaay too much.
There are few men who deserve more credit for standing up to the environmentalist cult than Oklahoma's James Inhofe. During the dark days of Global Warming hysteria, when everyone and his brother was buying Al Gore's con job and the mere mention of the phrase "scientific consensus" as enough to shut any debate down with the laughter of idiots, Senator inhofe stood strong, stating clearly and unequivocally that, while he was only a senator, he was from Oklahoma and - knowing the smell of bullshit from even pretty far away - that "consensus" couldn't be around "science" in any true sense of the word. And history will record he was right.
We, too, got in many a battle in this regard, telling our share of scientists their theories weren't adding up - and being made to pay the price such as it was. But what made it so easy to do (when we, also, aren't scientists) was the unwavering conviction of Senator Inhofe that, until someone produced something that made some damn sense somehow, they weren't getting anything by him. His clashes with Barbara Boxer and Nancy Pelosi are now legend. His multiple humiliations at the hands of Al Gore & Co. got tons of media attention. But after all that, of course, we think it is this moment, his triumphant victory speech, that should be imprinted in everyone's memory. When a great defender of mere common sense rose Reagan-like, in good spirits, to announce the defeat of friendly fascism in America and the world, knowing what he'd done was good. Is he gloating? Yes, just a little, but not enough to hide the simple decency of the man or his cause. Frank Zappa said, in a battle between man and the world, bet on the world. Well, as much as we love Frank, the great man got this one wrong:
James Inhofe "saved the planet" by beating it's world-wide cadre of self-appointed defenders at their own game.
Thank you, Senator, thank you. May your service be an example to us all.
"We have invested resources in building the socio-economic status of our state and we will not fold our arms and watch cultists destroy our efforts. I am following due process that is why I administer the oath. If you know that you belong to any cult group, please it is better to leave the oath, because if you take it when you are still a member, your life will be at risk. I will fight cultism in Cross River State. I don‘t care if I lose my life in the course of doing that."
-- Liyel Imoke, Governor of Nigeria's Cross River State - and the first politician (I've heard of) to openly declare war on cultism - letting everyone know he understands the stakes, because he's the one delivering The Punch.
This is exactly what we need here: not a witch hunt, but just a clear acknowledgment it's over, and there will be punishment where appropriate. Prominent gurus, global warmers, Homeopaths, psychics, Scientology, Oprah, Rhonda Byrne, etc., would probably be first eradicated, just for their high profile, but they'd all have to go - and then face the music. Hell, even the music we'd listen to would change. Everything would.
I don't know about you, but I read somewhere people were kinda into that nowadays,....
"Was the education doled out with a good stiff slap? Yes. Did we suffer great emotional trauma? No."
-- Michael O'Leary, chief executive of the excellent European budget airline Ryanair (you can get tickets for as little as 5 euros) and one of the most successful businessmen in Ireland, letting the world know why it's become too soft to be as successful as he is - it lacks The Macho Response - as does The New York Times.
"I think it would be a mistake for us to moderate. This is about fundamental beliefs and values and ideas … when you add all those things up, the idea that we ought to moderate basically means we ought to fundamentally change our philosophy. I for one am not prepared to do that, and I think most of us aren’t. Most Republicans have a pretty good idea of values, and aren’t eager to have someone come along and say, 'Well, the only way you can win is if you start to act more like a Democrat.'"
-- Dick Cheney, not exactly falling under the spell of "Hope and Change", even for Politico.com.
"I always have this suggestion as a new Supreme Court justice and I doubt Obama will listen to me, but I will suggest him again: Mr. T.
Mr. T does not put up with jibba-jabba, which I think is important for a justice. He is very tough, but he is also compassionate (he often pities fools). Now, I don’t know Mr. T’s political stances, but one can only assume he’s not a liberal because he’s definitely not a sissy."
-- Frank J., putting forth a brilliant idea, but that's In My Arrogant Opinion.
"I heard people say things that weren’t very friendly. I knew what they were thinking. I saw people laughing and I knew they were laughing at me. But I thought, well, they’ll soon shut up,....I am happy as I am,...I know what they were thinking but why should it matter as long as I can sing? It’s not a beauty contest."
-- Susan Boyle, who (also) knew the self-appointed "smart set" ain't really so friggin' smart - just as we've always said - in The Times Online.
"It’s not a beauty contest." Ha! Tell that to the idiotic assholes who run the music business now. Hell - before Susan Boyle showed up - Britain's Got Talent and American Idol weren't even talent contests,...
"I will not let anyone tell me that we must spend more money."
-- Angela Merkel, the German chancellor - using unfortunate language - but, thankfully, shutting down the $2 trillion-plus worldwide fiscal stimulus, in The Times Online.
"We all just discussed language. It was glorious. We’d talked about the French expression for going to the ‘toilettes.’ I’d say: ‘To me, it should be restroom. Bathroom seems vulgar.’ And James is like: ‘Give me a break. It’s bathroom. You go to the bathroom.’"
-- Marcia Gay Harden, discussing the "glorious" artistic sensibilities of James Gandolfini (AKA Tony Soprano) while rehearsing a new comedy, "Gods Of Carnage," on Broadway, in The New York Times.
"The moral center of Watchmen, both the original graphic novel by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons and the new, much-discussed movie based on it premiering today, is a curious and prickly masked vigilante who goes by the name Rorschach.
The surface meaning of the name is visually obvious—his mask contains swirling black blots on white that remind one of the psychological testing mechanism. But applied to his character, the name is both appropriate and ironic.
It’s appropriate in that the character is obsessed with stark duality—black and white—and ironic in that the mushy “it’s whatever you see” vagueness opposes his very definite vision of what’s what in the world:
There are good guys and bad guys, and the bad guys deserve to get it, good and hard. Rorschach’s mission, from which he will not diverge, is to give it to them, no matter what the demands of law, government, or social mores. He lives by his objective understanding of right and wrong.
...Rorschach’s sense of justice may make him hate most of humanity—he brags to himself at the beginning that if mankind begged him to save them, he’d justly say “no.” But by the end he sacrifices himself in the name of avenging the deaths of millions who he doesn’t know. He does it for another reason as well, one of particular holiness to the Objectivist: the truth, the facts of reality. Whether or not the villain’s scheme might result in some “higher good,” it did so at the cost of Faking Reality—a cost no Objectivist will bear. We don’t know if Rorschach’s attempts to set the record straight will do any good—but he’s willing to bear any burden, let the very heavens fall, to stay square with reality.
To be the kind of man whose highest value is to “have lived life free from compromise,” as Rorschach says, makes that man “unreasonable” in the colloquial sense—that is, you aren’t going to be able to talk them in or out of much. You are going to find them abrasive, aggravating, and in circumstances like those the characters in Watchmen find themselves in, mad, bad, and dangerous to know.
Rorschach seems driven to madness by his ideology; a radical Objectivism forges a character that seems obviously damaged in unpleasant ways.
Yet he’s also the only man around who stands up for everyone’s right to be judged individually on the basis of their character and actions, their right not to be a means to someone else’s higher end—no matter what one might think of that end. He knows what it means to be human—that’s why he has to condemn those he kills as having betrayed the essence of man qua man, relegating them to the status of dogs to be put down."
-- Brian Doherty, describing the crime fighting hero of these NewAge times, in Reason Magazine.
We may not agree on much else (Bad Brains are a bunch of Rastas: go figure) but this inspired, and extremely energetic, caterwauling can still speak as this blog's anthem. (A better, clearer, version - but without lyrics - can be found here.) Slap on some headphones and prepare to be transported back into real music's very-real world.
NewAge cultists (and cautious Republicans) be warned - whether you're slithering through celebrity culture, spirituality, medicine, science, or politics: you won't hold us back, or keep us down, out, or quiet - The Macho Response represents:
"As my ancestors are free from slavery, I am free from the slavery of religion."
-- Butterfly McQueen, the black actress from "Gone With The Wind," in a series of Madison, Wisconsin bus posters advocating for atheism, in The Badger Herald.
"Many people will be under extreme pressure and many companies mortally wounded,...our competitors will be sorely tempted to take the easy beat, to reduce quality in the search for immediate dividends.
Let me be very clear about our company: where others might step back from their commitment to their viewers, their users, readers and customers – we will renew ours."
-- Rupert Murdoch, expecting more of the same from the "intuitive," short-sighted, and idiotic NewAgers that got us into this mess - and declaring he won't join them - in The Drudge Report.
"You're too susceptible to the psychics and the dream messages and dirty fucking toilet seats."
-- Tony Soprano, HBO's extremely flawed-but-trying mob boss, speaking to his superstitious enforcer, Pauly Walnuts (right) about some of the common themes of this blog, during "The Ride" (Episode 9, Season 6) of The Sopranos.
"Shocking,..does not expend the energy on being charming, or even comprehensible,...the ferocious will, the conscious and almost unnatural assembly of a persona that rises above and beyond that of ordinary people,...unremitting in her efforts,...to imagine a different way of existing,...mesmerizing, brilliant, abrasive, not quite likeable."
"I never look at the Internet for just that reason."
-- Clint Eastwood, looking "slightly aghast" when A) told his wikipedia page claims he's a vegan, and B) it was explained to him exactly what a vegan is, in The New York Times.
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