Polite Kid

I've been intending to write something about the Obama candidacy and the cult of personality which has mushroomed around him. But there are already so many good pieces being written that I can do no more than point you to some of the more interesting and perceptive ones I've come across. So for your consideration -- if you haven't already read them:
John S. Bolton at The Open City blog and his brief piece The Obama Followership: Anti-Caucasianism as Holiness and Redemption.
Then, from David Yeagley at BadEagle.com, Jig's Up: The Real Obama
(That's right. The jig's up. Hey, if national news commentators and politicians can freely and repeatedly use the phrase "off the reservation" whenever they present any questionable idea about anything, then I can use an old Southern expression that means some crook's been caught in the act. If the world is blissfully unaware of American Indian feelings, then I am delightfully conscious of their hypocritical reactions to my words--and their inferior polemic. ) UPDATE: Obama tied to William Ayers, anti-American terrorist of the '60s. See Jonah Goldberg, and Politico. More and more news is coming out about Barak Hussein Obama (may his name be changed). He is not the innocent "nobody," coming out of nowhere, that all the naive people and manipulative media have thought. He is a calculated puppet of larger Third World forces. At least, to all appearances.[...]The point is, Barak Hussein Obama (may his name be changed) has the kind of close connections to Third World shadow figures that make him totally suspicious--especially since he is marketing his Third World name Barak Hussein Obama (may his name be changed). His loyalty to the United States of America is utterly untrustworthy--as is that of all socialists, Marxists, Leftists, liberals, and many Democrats. And this point, we even have to question many Republicans about their values as well. Nationhood is up for grabs these days, since most people have no working concept of what a nation is, how it comes about, why it exists, and how to preserve it. With people like George Soros preaching that nationhood is "tribalism," a thing of the past that needs to be eliminated, is there any wonder why so many ignorant, naive Americans 'cathart' their ideological frustrations on a fringe foreigner with an African father, who poses as an American Negro? Obama validates their confusion. Obama focuses their impotence. It's an ancient hunting tactic: confuse the animal, and it is weakened in its own response to your attack. In a way, America is a weakened, crazed animal, confused by competing ideologies, Third World values, one world globalism pawned off as the solution by power hungry men. America is psychologically suffering, and the Third World icon--Barak Hussein Obama (may his name be changed--inshallah) appears as the savior! What a script. What a fateful coincidence. A convergence of sociological inevitabilities. Read the whole thing at the link above.
Steve Sailer also has an amusing bit about James Watson's support for Obama here.
I have not had anything to say about the passing of William F. Buckley Jr. I came to conservatism late, after a long dalliance with the left like many people of my generation, and I knew of Buckley only what I saw on his TV appearances, such as the famous 'debates' which pitted him against Gore Vidal during the hot summer of 1968, and the riots at the Democrat Convention in Chicago. But by the time I came to conservatism, or came back, truly, to the old American ideals I was brought up with, Buckley had, to all appearances, dropped out of political life and remained at the margins.
Reading the comments on his passing by some who did know him leaves the reader with feelings of confusion: are the glowing tributes such as this one by Taki the 'true' picture of Buckley, or is this one, by Peter Brimelow, a more truthful portrayal? Both men knew him and interacted with him. Isn't it interesting how someone can, wittingly or unwittingly, present such a different face to different people? It's one of those mysteries of life and human nature, seemingly. The truth is probably a composite of the various different perspectives, or perhaps we all leave this world essentially unknown to all but a very few who see our truer selves.

Labels: Celebrity Culture, Politicians, Politics

I don't watch the celebrity and glamor-oriented TV programming, but it's impossible not to hear about these things in real life and of course in the blogosphere. So there's no escaping them, even for those who are TV abstainers.
I am not going to mention the names of the principals involved because that will only draw the attention of those people who are googling the names and leaving idiotic and abusive comments on blogs and forums on this subject. The people involved are the current Miss California and some 'celebrity' blogger who practices a certain politically correct sexual perversion. I am sure most of you know who I mean. If not, the story is here.
And Old Atlantic's blog entry on the story is here.
I don't usually have much to say about these celebrity stories, but several issues about which I do blog are wrapped up within this story.
First of all, the 'culture war', which, like every aspect of the left-right battle, has heated up since November, and this includes the question of free speech and freedom of thought vs. political correctness. Then there is the dishonest newsertainment media which are fomenting all the controversy around this. There is also the issue of the increasingly virulent anti-Christian, anti-traditional morality faction in this country, which sadly includes not only the left-libertines, but the secular/atheist libertines on the 'right'.
To add one more troubling ingredient, there is the glaring picture of a dumbed-down apostate ''Christianity' which is illustrated by the remarks made by several professing Christian celebrities regarding this story:
"Love is love!" Britney Tweeted... "People should be able to do whatever makes them happy!"
Miley Cyrus Tweeted similar thoughts ... "Jesus loves you and your partner and wants you to know how much he cares! That's like a daddy not loving his lil boy cuz he's gay and that is wrong and very sad! Like I said everyone deserves to be happy. I am a Christian and I love you � gay or not. Because you are no different that anyone else! We are all God's children!"
Apparently her comments are right in line with those of "Hills" star Heidi Montag, who is expected to marry the show's Spencer Pratt this weekend.
"God says in the bible that we should love our neighbor and he created us all as equals. I know in my heart that gays and lesbians should have the same government rights that Spencer and I will when we get married. So, yes, this blonde Christian believes in gay marriage and I hope to one day go to your wedding, Perez!!!"
Now, I am proud to say I don't know who Mzz Montag is, nor do I really want to know; I care only that she pretends to represent Christianity and wrongly cites the Bible in support of her libertine and oh-so-hip-and-postmodern views.
Miley Cyrus can be excused somewhat, as she is still a minor child who has evidently not had a good grounding in the Bible nor in Christian morality as set out in the Bible. I suppose having a parent in show-biz is also a definite handicap when it comes to having a good upbringing and sound values and morals. Still, she should know better, and I fear that many gullible and malleable young 'Christians' will follow her example and adopt similarly unsound viewpoints, if they haven't already absorbed them from the corrupt and ugly culture that passes as 'entertainment' in our day.
And I am not sure that the person to whom their comments were addressed will suddenly soften his views towards the Bible or Christians in general; I have encountered many such people in real life and they are perpetually embittered that there is a Bible which condemns their pet vice, and they hate the fact that anyone reminds them of that fact. Ergo they hate Christians.
One more bit of trivia about the 'celebrity blogger' who was the center of all this: he is an example of the much-vaunted ''conservative'' Cuban-'American' community of Florida. Now, does anybody care to tell me again how Cuban-'Americans' who fled Castro are such staunch conservatives and Republican stalwarts? Or how they are poster children for legal immigration?
Over at the Big Hollywood blog, which is incidentally not exactly too staunchly conservative either, a commenter mentions something about the pageant:
On the subject: As a pageant competitor you spend an entire year doing mock interviews, discussing every hot-button or political topic under the sun. There is NO WAY her pageant directors were unaware of her stance on gay marriage prior to the pageant.''
This is the question that occurred to me: was the question a set-up? I suspected that they knew the young woman's Christian background and set a trap for her, asking her a question which they knew she would likely answer 'wrongly' -- after which they could gin up a public brouhaha and make an example of her. The object? To further marginalize and ridicule Christian believers, to remind everybody once again, lest anybody forget, that there is only one correct viewpoint on 'gay marriage' and that deviating from that PC viewpoint carries some penalties.
I give the young woman considerable credit for answering honestly; she was probably savvy enough to know that she was giving the 'wrong' answer and yet she answered honestly. Many people (not just Christians, but people in general) would have dissimulated rather than risk the consequences of giving an 'incorrect' answer. She stuck to her guns. Good for her.
I am also left wondering how and why our popular culture exalts people like the 'celebrity blogger' in this day and age. It was true, once upon a time, that to become a celebrity, one had to be, if not talented or fascinating, at least attractive and presentable and well-groomed. None of these are true of the walking grotesquerie who is at the center of this story. Standards have fallen; I lament this often. We seem to have dropped our standards in every area of life. Nowadays we celebrate the ugly, the sordid, the grotesque, the freakish, and the repellent, not only in popular culture but even in the high arts. What happened to our ideals of beauty and grace? How do we get them back? And how do we banish the ugly and the corrupt, which dominate our public sphere so relentlessly?
And what do we do about weakening this politically correct tyranny which exercises enormous power via our corrupt 'entertainment' media? I personally think that the so-called entertainment media wield far more power than academia, the school system, and the so-called 'news' media. More people get their PC ideas from watching trashy entertainment programming than from any other source -- other than peer pressure, which also is more powerful, even among adults, than many people acknowledge.
I know of a good number of people of mature years who have reversed themselves on social and political issues based on what they pick up from the media; they learn to like 'gay' celebrities, for example, and decide that not allowing 'gay marriage' is hateful and mean as well as 'behind the times.' Many people in my area learn virtually everything they ''know'' about blacks from the flattering media; they then begin to fawn over certain black celebrities, and slowly adopt the PC, pro-black attitudes they learn from the media, becoming de facto anti-Whites.
As I've said before, those who find TV and movies offensive or objectionable always get the facile advice ''just don't watch.'' But there is no isolating oneself; even if we don't watch the propaganda, we are exposed to it second-hand, or third-hand. And if we shield our children or grandchildren from it by throwing the TV out and boycotting movies, they still absorb it from their classmates or neighbors. Unless we take up dwelling in caves in the most remote areas we can find, there's no avoiding it. Ultimately it finds you. You can run, but you can't hide.
And here, James Edwards writes about how it's becoming 'uncool' to have traditional beliefs about homosexuality. Even the supposed 'conservatives' like Dr. Laura Schlessinger and Rick Warren have fallen in line with the PC viewpoint. I remember well when Dr. Laura was detested and denounced by gays because of her supposed 'homophobic' beliefs, and now she has recanted and joined in the PC chorus.
It may be that we are just seeing the wheat divided from the chaff; I never believed Warren was 'conservative,' especially in a Biblical sense, and Dr. Laura has been rather inconsistent on her religious beliefs, but it seems as though we are swiftly moving towards a time when it will not only be 'uncool' to refuse to toe the line on homosexuality, but it may soon be costly in terms of consequences, if not downright illegal.

Labels: Bigotry, Celebrity Culture, Cultural Marxism, Freedom Of Speech, Hate Speech, Mass Media, Political Correctness, Propaganda

In my recent piece called 'In the Country of the Blind...', I wrote about the tendency of Americans to be followers: followers of fads, trends, and above all, followers of dubious individuals. This need to follow all too often seems to center on some individual who is apparently 'charismatic' in the eyes of his fans or disciples.
As I was writing that piece, Glenn Beck was foremost in my mind, although there are certainly many other figures who have gained wide popularity in this country based on perceived charisma with a little snake-oil in the recipe.
On an article at American Thinker, which tends to be favorable to the brand of 'conservatism' endorsed by Beck and Fox News, there were two comments by the same individual expressing a lonely skepticism toward Beck and the rally. The comments tied in very much with my message here. I will quote from those comments.
''But there are not a few people who become histrionic if Beck's motives are questioned. Why? Isn't he just a man like the rest of us? Or am I wrong, and he has become a god? The point at issue is (or should be) this: When it is considered an outrage to apply reasoned criticism to an American public figure (even one so revered, so adulated, so "funny," so "adorably pudgy," and so adamant that he is "on the side of the little guy--even though he wouldn't waste a micro-second of his off-air time on the average Joe Shmoe American, then we've got a problem. And the problem is this: we've put peronalities before principles.''
Personalities before principles. That parallels something I said in my earlier post on this subject. And the tendency to reject any criticism of the personalities we admire is not a good thing.
This is the stuff of which cults are made of. It is not worthy of thinking people.
And in a later comment on the same thread, the reader says
''We've become a nation of televidiots. We sit down on our sofas and watch the TV talking heads, like the dolts on MSNBC, an assortment of unspeakably rotten attention whores, BTW. We listen to "talk radio" maestros who daily inform us of their luxurious lifestyles--their golfing, their jets, the famous and "important" people they mixed with over the preceding weekend. In other words, we get our info--ALL our info--second hand. That's not good. Our nation was founded on the premise that there would be an informed citizenry that would inform ITSELF. It's about doing our own heavy lifting in the intellectual realm--our own reading, our own internet research, our own townhall discussion groups. Once we make a commitment to sojourn in that realm we'll have a different view of these Pied Pipers who are reaping exhorbitant wealth by opportunistically using the current onslaught of the Left (a very real onslaught against the very foundations of our Republic) to make gazillions of dollars from selling books, and from astronomical speaking-engagement fees (and don't forget the revenue from show advertisers). This sort of thing sullies the unsung efforts of those who are genuinely and selflessly working hard to stem the tide of the leftist assault--it makes the conservative movement look like a raft of suckers being led by huckster carnival barkers. I have an uncanny feeling that the Left is actually not really that worried about Mr. Beck's impact on their agenda.''
[I have left the spelling in the quotes as it appeared on the original post.]
I can only agree with what this commenter says. I think his words get to the heart of this servile and gullible streak in Americans.
In the last paragraph of the second comment, he says that the conservative movement looks ''like a raft of suckers being led by huckster carnival barkers.'' That is the gullibility that I mentioned. In a way, though, perhaps this says something good about the basic character of many of these conservatives, in that honest, decent people are usually somewhat gullible, and trusting to a fault. I suspect it's easier to dupe heartland Americans than it would be to gull cynical city-dwellers. That's always been the stereotype of the heartland American: the 'country cousin' who is taken in by some sharp city-slicker.
But in today's more dangerous world, we can't afford that kind of gullibility and blind trust of anyone. Perhaps I've absorbed more cynicism than I would like to, but that's what life experience does to you, unless you live in some kind of Pollyanna bubble into which bad people and bad experiences never intrude.
The comments quoted above stated that Glenn Beck is not perceived as any kind of threat by the Left. Surely they must have enough sense -- mustn't they? -- to see that he venerates the same idols and bows down to their altars. Sometimes I wonder if their outrage towards him is feigned, as if to further cement his popularity with the naifs on the right. If the left attacks someone, surely they must be the real thing, right? Beck must be the conservative savior if the left hates him so much.
I do believe there is such a thing as controlled opposition, and that much of what is acted out on cable 'news' networks is so much pro wrestling drama. The two sides trash-talk and threaten and intimidate each other but behind the scenes they are all probably great friends. Rush Limbaugh's recent wedding is an example of this kind of thing, and yet Rush has his zealous defenders if anyone criticizes him, just as Beck. Or Ann Coulter, or any other such 'entertainer' on the political scene.
One more factor enters into this, in addition to the too-trusting nature of many Americans: the dearth of leadership. Where are our leaders? I can't think of any of the major political figures who inspire me; as Yeats said in The Second Coming:
The best lack all conviction
While the worst are full of passionate intensity.
Where are our 'best' people? Not on the political scene. There are a few who seem to have integrity, but they are lacking in the 'passionate intensity' that real leadership would demand in this time of trouble.
We've discussed leadership on this blog before, and the lack of leadership is more glaringly obvious now than it was a few years ago when I lamented it. Ron Paul has come and gone, having been a disappointment to many who put too much faith in him, and each betrayal or disappointment disillusions a few more people.
But as long as there is a void of leadership, the snake-oil peddlers and hucksters and charlatans and false messiahs -- and the 'one-eyed men,' the blind leaders of the blind, will step in to fill that vacuum.
And maybe the leaders that we need will not be in the political realm at all. It isn't all about 'Democrats vs. Republicans' or left vs. right, or Islam vs. Christianity or whatever Fox News says it is.
The best thing that could happen to the American populace would be to stop watching television and stop partaking of the 'mainstream' media, including Hollywood movies. That is the source of the ignorance or false information that has become so rife in this country. It should be obvious to even the most slow-witted that the media are not informing or entertaining us, but shaping our minds, thoughts, attitudes, and emotions, and shaping them in a way that may be the end of us, ultimately.
Every day I hear of somebody else dropping their cable or satellite TV service -- yet too many still devour the propaganda willingly. However even turning the TV off will not help if people do not care to inform themselves and cultivate some independence of mind, and a habit of examining what people in 'authority' tell us. That is also part of the message of the comments I posted above.
Long ago, the left liked to spout the phrase 'Question Authority.' Of course, that was in a time in which authority tended to be conservative. I wonder if the left at that time would have anticipated how quickly their kind would come to BE the authority in our society, to be the establishment and the entrenched orthodoxy. They still like to think of themselves as the brave dissenters and principled rebels. That's no longer true; it's the right, especially the politically incorrect right, that are the true dissidents and the upholders of truth.
If we fall prey to the con men and the false pied-pipers of the ''right'', who will be left?

Labels: Celebrity Culture, Conservatism, Media Figures, Party Politics, Populism, Propaganda, Republicans

Our cotton-candy-fluffy-bunny news
...To confirm the permanence of our society's deterioration, news of Lindsay Lohan, as well as the meltdown of Britney Spears, spread across TV screens Thursday and Friday like a bad virus on your computer. Yet these are these stories Americans want. We clamor for news about our favorite celebrities. Does she trim her nails herself? Did he have a weekend fling on the beach? Will they get married, or just continue living together for the next 12 years?
Why are we so shallow?''
Are we so shallow?
I've blogged about the issue addressed in this article before: our junk-food news, or as Jonathan Krive calls it, our cotton candy news.
I question whether we are fed this stuff because of public demand, or because for whatever reason, our media elites want to feed us this non-nourishing, empty-calories substitute for real news of importance.
There are elements of both aspects: if people are demanding this non-nutritive filler as their 'news'-- and I suspect a certain segment of the public does prefer it -- it is because of decades of dumbing-down, in our media and in our school system and our popular culture generally.
Still, I encounter plenty of people, not overly educated or highbrow people, high-school educated, not hard news junkies, who express disgust at the surfeit of the 'bimbo' stories. Outside of Lohan's fanboys and fangirlies, I think many people wonder why the news channels waste so much airtime on Lohan's misbehavior. It is not just overeducated, ultra-serious people who are disgusted with the cotton-candy, bimbo-oriented 'news' on Fox, MSNBC, and CNN. It is average people too who are sick of the fluff and nonsense that fills our news channels and those supermarket magazines.
However it is probably true that the younger generations in particular, having grown up in a trivia-driven, celebrity-fawning culture, are more accepting of it. And these younger generations have, not coincidentally, grown up with an educational system that neglects the basics and focuses on making kids 'feel good about themselves'. There is also an overemphasis on Politically Correct ideology at the expense of teaching young people about their own heritage and culture. I've heard from some of them that they spent more time in school learning about (probably apocryphal) African kingdoms than about the founding of our country, or about the English traditions from which our unique American system derives.
How can young people take an interest in the actual news of what is going on around the world, and hope to decipher it, without a grounding in history and political science and geography?
Krive, in the linked article, quotes from Joseph Farah's piece on 'The dumbing down of America.'
In that piece, Farah quotes questions from an eighth grade exam from the year 1895.
For example, these questions on American History:
1. Give the epochs into which U.S. History is divided.
2. Give an account of the discovery of America by Columbus.
3. Relate the causes and results of the Revolutionary War.
4. Show the territorial growth of the United States.
5. Tell what you can of the history of Kansas.
6. Describe three of the most prominent battles of the Rebellion.
7. Who were the following: Morse, Whitney, Fulton, Bell, Lincoln, Penn, and Howe?
8. Name events connected with the following dates: 1607, 1620, 1800, 1849, and 1865?''
Now I, despite having had a good solid education back in the olden days, might have to struggle a little on some of those questions, but I wonder how many could answer more than one or two nowadays?
Back in the era in which that test was written, an eighth-grade education was all that many Americans would have; they had a graduation ceremony at the end of the eighth grade school year, and received certificates, following which many of them would proceed to some kind of apprenticeship in a trade or livelihood of some sort; only the more academically talented would go on to high school, and even fewer of those on to college. That was perhaps a better system. It's often been said that an eighth-grade education then was better than today's high school education. Nowadays, even the high school education has been woefully dumbed down, so as to allow as many as possible to 'graduate', and then go on to college, where they are really out of their depth -- despite the fact that college, too, is watered down and geared to the lowest common denominator.
Even when I attended college in the 70s, my counselor, in helping me put together my class schedule, commented that few students were choosing a classical education, with basic courses like World History, English literature, and so on; most seemed to be choosing psychology and sociology and 'relevant' courses like Minority History and Women's History. Once the old core requirements were dropped and dumbed down and the politically correct pabulum offered, most students opted out of the basics and chose the fluff. Nowadays we read of classes having to do with the 'gay experience' and pornography, as well as the frivolous courses on popular culture, which is, after all, ephemeral.
The goal these days seems to be to grind out as many 'graduates' as possible, rather than to truly educate and enlighten the majority of students, or to fully develop the talents of the more able. And the goal is also to make students 'feel good about themselves' by forcing some kind of pretended 'equality' among people, with the mediocre student and the laggard not made to feel inferior by some inconsiderate prodigy.
So whose interest does it serve to make people more shallow and ignorant, or to focus their attention on the antics of drug-addled 'celebrities'? Are we fed this stuff because the media elites truly think it is newsworthy? Is it simply eye-candy, because people want to look at 'beautiful people' like Paris Hilton or Lindsay Lohan? Or is it meant to distract us from the real, behind-the-scenes, world-changing events? Is it just a sideshow to keep us occupied and to further dumb us down?
Or is it merely another side-effect of the feminizing of our society? It does seem that many women are more focused on the doings of other women, the clothes they wear, the hairstyles, the plastic surgery, their private lives, who they sleep with and/or marry, and so on? I'm a female and I know that not all women are into this gossip as news thing, but a good percentage of them are.
Just look at the TV channels which are 'women's channels': the Lifetime Movie channel, which specializes in soap-operaesque movies about domestic abuse, troubled romances, and so on, and the Oxygen network, which takes a relentlessly PC, 'you-go-girl' look at the world, with focus on 'women's problems': relationships, fashion, sex, body image.
Back in the 1970s, in the era in which feminism was commanding so much attention, Irish writer Desmond Fennell
wrote a piece which asked an interesting question. I cannot locate anything of the piece online, and I no longer have it, but his question was essentially 'why do feminists act as if woman has no soul?' The question was in response to the new 'feminist' talk shows which were all the rage then: there were many such talk shows, hosted by some earnest feminist, interviewing other women of course, on subjects of interest to women. Fennell, if I am recalling correctly, pointed out that the women never discussed deep spiritual or philosophical questions, but only things like women's health, relationships, body image, and feminist politics and letters. They seldom seemed to deal with the wider, more inclusive world. The same gynocentric concerns are served up by Oprah and her ilk today. Fennell pointed out that the feminists criticized the 'misogynistic' prejudices of early theologians who questioned whether 'women had no souls' -- and yet the feminists themselves seemed to corroborate that opinion by dwelling only on parochial female concerns, mostly of a fleshly nature. That same observation can be made today.
But I stop short of blaming only my fellow females for this phenomenon of junk news. Maybe the reasons for this trend include a little of all of the above.
So what, if anything, can we do about it, if we don't like it? The usual answer is 'just turn the TV off', which may not be bad advice, but even those of us who turn off, tune out, and drop into the real world instead of the TV world, still have to deal with the reality which is fed and fostered by the trashy content of the media. And if we have children, those children are affected by the unfortunate trends, unless we truly do drop out and homeschool them and isolate them from the worst excesses of junk culture.
But my concern is the dire state of our country, and of the West in general, and the fact that the cotton candy news is acting to dull people's awareness, to merely keep them entertained and distracted. The junk news is empty calories, taking the place of necessary mental nourishment.
Ultimately this junk news diet will be deadly to our Republic, producing, as it does, dulled and disconnected citizens who lack information or critical thinking skills to make responsible decisions about our future.
Does it help to write to the networks or other news media and make your concerns known? Or will they respond once they lose sufficent viewers and readers? We read every day about how the dead-tree media, the old print newspapers, are losing readers at an alarming rate. Has this changed how they do business? I see no evidence of that yet. And with cable TV, news channels are not subject to the same pressures as newspapers, considering that cable channels are carried as part of a package, so that the channels with a tiny viewership are not eliminated from the lineup.
The only hopeful sign I can point to is that people are slowly getting disenchanted and downright fed up with their TV news and newspapers, and many are looking elsewhere, as on the internet. And now the blogosphere is an alternate source for news and especially opinion and analysis not allowed by the narrow standards of the controlled media.
I can only hope that the TV news media and the dead tree media will become increasingly irrelevant and obsolete, and that people will turn to sources which treat them as sentient, thinking human beings and not as dull-witted units of consumption.

Labels: Celebrity Culture, Education, Feminism, Junk News, Media, News, Trivia