i'm not drinking these days--which, in guttermoralityland, means i'm not writing.but even if i was (and this is the sad reality i live with, my readers), even at my drunken best i can't hold a candle to that select group of social/political commentators whose talents for self-expression i truly respect.
take camille paglia, for instance--even when i don't agree with her words (which is often), i invariably can't help but admire the seemingly-effortless elegance with which she spits forth and arranges 'em.
but this last week? she just about nailed to perfection every topic she tackled, and said many things i've often thought but only wish i could articulate even half as well. for instance:
on obama-care:
It isn't conservative rumors or lies that are stopping healthcare legislation; it's the justifiable alarm of an electorate that has been cut out of the loop and is watching its representatives construct a tangled labyrinth for others but not for themselves. No, the airheads of Congress will keep their own plush healthcare plan -- it's the rest of us guinea pigs who will be thrown to the wolves.
and more to the point:
What was needed for reform was an in-depth analysis, buttressed by documentary evidence, of waste, fraud and profiteering in the healthcare, pharmaceutical and insurance industries. Instead what we've gotten is a series of facile, vulgar innuendos about how doctors conduct their practice, as if their primary motive is money. Quite frankly, the president gives little sense of direct knowledge of medical protocols; it's as if his views are a tissue of hearsay and scattershot worst-case scenarios.
on the present-day democratic-party ethos:
But somehow liberals have drifted into a strange servility toward big government, which they revere as a godlike foster father-mother who can dispense all bounty and magically heal all ills.
on the idiot palin's very-effectively playing to the cheap seats with her "death panel" rhetoric:
I realized that Palin's shrewdly timed metaphor spoke directly to the electorate's unease with the prospect of shadowy, unelected government figures controlling our lives.
on gates-gate:
Both Gates and Obama mistakenly assumed that the original incident at Gates' house was about race, when it was about class. It was the wealthy, lordly Gates who committed the first offense by instantly and evidently hysterically defaming the character of the officer who arrived at his door to investigate the report of a break-in. There was no excuse for Gates' loud and cheap charges of racism, which he should have immediately apologized for the next day, instead of threatening lawsuits and self-aggrandizing television exposés.
and, finally (and maybe most importantly), on our lady of the golden recordings:
Yes, you know who the Big Bad Example is of obsessive gym culture gone to seed -- that increasingly artificial construction of paraffin and chicken wire, our Madonna of the Shallows. Jesus Luz must be blessedly myopic.
what more needs to be said about any of this shit, really? read the whole piece and find out for yourself--agree or disagree, you'll be the better for the effort, i promise.
[and yeah, i had one tonight--you know, just to prime the pump.]
3 comments:
I like Camille Paglia. But she is basically a polemicist. She writes sometimes outrageous things without explanation or justification.
For example, one of the quotes that you latch on to:
Blaming obstructionist Republicans is nonsensical, because Democrats control the White House and both Houses of Congress. It isn't conservative rumors or lies that are stopping healthcare legislation; it's the justifiable alarm of an electorate that has been cut out of the loop and is watching its representatives construct a tangled labyrinth for others but not for themselves.
This is not, exactly, why healthcare has taken a nose dive in public opinion polls. A lot of alarmist tactics and mis-information have destroyed attempts at rational discourse. When Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin speak about "death committees" and forcing the old and inform to commit suicide...How is a sane rational person to respond to such perfidity?
Ms. Paglia never explains why the average person is "alarmed" about not being involved in the legislative process.
I think there is a concern with people who like what they have now. Surely pure selfishness is a strong motivator (what's in it for me, is after all, the basis for capitalism). Yet, no Republican and certainly not the fringe talk radio crowd ever seems to explain that the current system is unsustainable. The future is not the status quo if healthcare reform does not pass.
This calls for the words of wisdom from a gay, slightly neurotic libertarian with a strong streak of Texas.
Perhaps Billy Scott can jump in the fray.
noblesavage: first, thank you for your thick-or-thin loyalty to this often-miserable blog.
second: as much as i know you liberals love to dismiss the resistance of the hoi polloi to your big-government aspirations as nothing more than simple self-interested greed, i'd like to humbly offer an alternative explanation [see next post--which you just totally inspired].
third: omigod, billy scott--first guy i ever rimmed (because i just couldn't help myself). boy deserves a post of his own, and maybe one day he'll get it. what was his last name again?
Field...Scott Field to all his friends. I was not a friend, so that is why I always called him Billy Scott. If that unnerved him, well then, that was the intention.
You always had a much higher opinion of him than I ever did.
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