Althouse: "Rants are not all childish tantrums.... Many erupt from those who believe they’ve seen enough, and done enough, and complied enough..."

July 27, 2009

"Rants are not all childish tantrums.... Many erupt from those who believe they’ve seen enough, and done enough, and complied enough..."

"... they’re mad as hell and aren’t going to take it anymore."

(I'm watching Axl's rant.)

(If rants are the thing, let me use this occasion to own mine.)

51 comments:

Bissage said...: Fantastic Fun Facts #41: The art of the rant began precisely here.

You're welcome.; 7/27/09, 4:50 PM
garage mahal said...: Just don't rant on your porch.; 7/27/09, 4:57 PM
Naked Surfer said...: Great Monte Python rant.

And from the same country where earlier political Ranters wore the label, “Satan.”

Unable back then to get away with ranting, unable to flash hard to get Harvard ID’s.; 7/27/09, 5:08 PM
Chennaul said...: You know I can't get your rant to load but I always thought what really made you mad was how she reacted to something that you said just minutes or seconds before that...

It went something like how the hell could anyone vote for George W. Bush after 9/11...

That happened to be her reaction to that idea, never mind that there were plenty of other voters and bloggers who had expressed that very same sentiment.; 7/27/09, 5:12 PM
Chennaul said...: The actual point was just the proverbial straw...; 7/27/09, 5:17 PM
rhhardin said...: Limbaugh could have been defended a little.; 7/27/09, 5:27 PM
Naked Surfer said...: My favorite rant, Siskel and Ebert tearing up each other.

Then ranting on religion, especially WASPS.

Sorry, don't know how to embed the link: full rant can be found here.

http://cribbster.wordpress.com/2009/07/19/siskel-ebert-bickering-making-fun-of-protestants-cursing/; 7/27/09, 5:34 PM
Jana said...: Blast, I can't get it to load either. Somehow I missed this one!; 7/27/09, 5:35 PM
traditionalguy said...: As I was listening to the Professor's rant, the news was playing Sarah Palin in her speech saying to the media, "In honor of the soldiers risking death for you, how about just quit making things up"! Both ladies were really pleading for the same thing: an end to the politics of personal destruction practiced as a disguised inquiry into well known facts that never were true, as the questioner well knows. It is another example of fiction written and spoken as if it is a factual documentary. That is a mind control method brought over from Nazi Germany along with their rocket scientists. You can also see that mind control work being done to us in the Democrats Cap and Trade Tax imposed to fight a totally non-existant CO2 problem.; 7/27/09, 6:04 PM
J. Cricket said...: You can't even spell, traditionalguy-nitwit.

But thanks for the classic example of commenter wisdom from the Althouse minions: associate a reasonable environmental program with Nazi Germany.

Oh Annie, aren't your admirers cool and savvy?!; 7/27/09, 6:23 PM
Pastafarian said...: Reasonable environmental program? Wow, thanks for schooling us drooling nitwits, Professor. When I want well-informed commentary on the economic impact of an enormously complex cap-and-trade scheme, I seek out the advice of some asshole legal academic whose knowledge of economics is limited to the popsicle stand that he ran when he was eight.

Perhaps you should limit your commentary to topics you know something about -- petty insults, snark, and your perverse obsession with and obvious envy of Althouse.; 7/27/09, 6:41 PM
traditionalguy said...: Juris dentist... Do you ever argue a point? Having nothing to offer but ridicule must be easy. What is the environmental program that you need to see rahmed thru even if it destroys what's left of the American economy? What are the environmental impact of CO2 exhaust gasses from coal burning power plants, or from natural gas and petroleum use? So far it has been drastic global cooling.; 7/27/09, 6:42 PM
Big Mike said...: Professor, exactly who was that incredibly supercilious bitch you were talking with? She's being condescending to a university professor?!?!? Say what?

Well, between Joe Biden's gaffe-a-minute and the cluelessness of Barack Obama, maybe Con Law professors have lost some cachet. But still.; 7/27/09, 6:45 PM
Pastafarian said...: Hey, does that qualify as a rant? Perhaps we should have an airing of grievances. Juris Dentist, pray to whatever god you worship that we don't have feats of strength.; 7/27/09, 6:45 PM
Laura(southernxyl) said...: The thing about rants is, you have to make sure that your anger at X doesn't make you unload on Y. If it's just a freefloating rant, like on YouTube, where people can watch it or not, that's one thing, but going off on your spouse or kid b/c you had a bad day at work (or a coworker b/c of trouble at home) isn't fair.

Naked surfer, do you really not know how, or not want to bother?; 7/27/09, 6:52 PM
Jim said...: Pastafarian -

"feats of strength"

Which brings this to mind at 5:18; 7/27/09, 6:54 PM
Pastafarian said...: I remember this Althouse clip, and I'm not sure that it qualifies as a "rant".

It's one of my favorite Althouse clips, and it's an impassioned defense on her part, but it's not unhinged enough to be a rant, is it?

(I think that one reason it's one of my favorites is the hysterically funny snide valley-girl voice of the person she's talking to. If you were going to parody a snotty liberal young woman, you should study this person).; 7/27/09, 6:58 PM
srfwotb said...: No, it's not because you supported Bush in 2004. My bud, vehement lefty progressive since birth, switched midstream during the primaries from Obama to Hillary after she saw Hills disemboweled, and she was subsequently shredded by her long time online buddies. (Her forum was populated mostly by lefty 20-something guys. I pitied the one lefty who knew Sarah Palin personally and so tried to defend her out of basic human decency.); 7/27/09, 7:06 PM
srfwotb said...: To clarify: my friend being attacked and the Palin guy being attacked were separate incidents, but both reflecting the same basic theme.; 7/27/09, 7:08 PM
Ritmo Re-Animated said...: That was an awesome rant by Axl! What a way for your typical repressed, abused Midwesterner to get some things off his chest!; 7/27/09, 7:14 PM
Big Mike said...: @traditionalguy, the correlation is not to Nazi Germany but to Stalinist Russia. George Orwell wrote 1984 and Animal Farm and invented the word "Doublethink" because of his experiences fighting alongside the Communists during the Spanish Civil War. Units that had fought hard and well were derided as a pack of cowards while honor was heaped on units that had never been near the battle.

Orwell left behind some pithy quotes about liberalism that are worth remembering, starting with "So much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot."

And for you, especially, Juris Dentist, he wrote "There are some ideas so wrong that only a very intelligent person could believe in them."; 7/27/09, 7:15 PM
Big Mike said...: Professor, I think you need to reconsider your paradigm. Ann Coulter referred to liberalism as a form of religion, and suddenly a great many things clicked into place for me. Too many of your liberal commenters don't seem to care what reality is; they've received the word from on high (TPM? Daily Kos? JournoList?) and this is the way it is. A single warmer-than-usual summer in Alaska is proof positive of Global Warming. Unusually cold summer in New York? Just weather.

And if you dissent from orthodoxy? Well it's sort of like hard core fundamentalist Christians or Muslim Jihadists. Only with more nastiness.; 7/27/09, 7:22 PM
Freeman Hunt said...: Talk radio is more vitriolic than the liberal blogosphere?

Ha ha ha. Maybe if the only thing you've ever heard on talk radio is Michael Savage. (A guy who is not at all a conservative standard bearer.); 7/27/09, 7:33 PM
Lem Vibe Bandit said...: When Reagan said "I'm paying for this microphone Mr Green" my guess is it had to carry on longer to be considered a rant?; 7/27/09, 8:11 PM
Penny said...: Rants are much more about what we don't understand emotionally than what we understand empirically.

Or at least about what we THINK we understand empirically.

Now there's the rub...; 7/27/09, 8:19 PM
Freeman Hunt said...: Fun to watch a rant in response to passive aggression.; 7/27/09, 8:33 PM
Penny said...: This Bloggingheads was interesting in that Althouse was finally breaking down about not understanding "empirically" why she was so misunderstood. By another "empirical" thinker..., who when faced with this meltdown, acknowledged she really didn't know so much about this topic after all...and was emotionally upset by how distraught Althouse became about something so empirical.

* empirical head bobbing and hair stroking ensued*; 7/27/09, 8:41 PM
Freeman Hunt said...: Some rants (not Althouse's) may be better left unsaid. Or even un-thought.; 7/27/09, 8:42 PM
Penny said...: That depends, Freeman.

That depends on exactly how empirical you think you are, as a young hispanic woman trying to use the full force of your life experiences.

What? You say you are not young OR hispanic?

Thank goodness you are at least a "Freeman".

This Hunt business...it is most distasteful.; 7/27/09, 9:05 PM
Chip Ahoy said...: Boy, I never realized Axl was so articulate.; 7/27/09, 9:07 PM
Chip Ahoy said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 7/27/09, 9:12 PM
Chip Ahoy said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 7/27/09, 9:12 PM
traditionalguy said...: Some thoughts on rants: Anger arises from a loss of something. The thing we lose when others cast us as a made up character in their drama is our own identity within a known context. A culture is a set of common known context. Examples would be a family, or a church, or a community. The intentional destruction of another's accepted context results in their confusion and feelings of loss, thus provoking anger. Ann's Blogginghead duo kept saying, "I didn't know that it was such a touchy issue". What she meant was she had scored. She had removed Ann's life from its true context to demonstrate her skill in verbal allusions resetting the context, like a play's scenery re-sets context between scenes/acts on the stage. Palin has had the same experiences since last year, and she wants to beat them at their own game. In regard to Nazi mind control scientists, they started doing this work in Newsreels in the 1930s, reporting on events that never did happen and evils that never were there. The Soviet scientists also worked in this field extensively, but they stayed in Russia until the 1990s while we brought the Nazis here in the early 1950s to learn all we could from them.; 7/27/09, 9:24 PM
The Crack Emcee said...: First, Bravo!, Ann, on as beautiful a bout of passion as I've seen out of you yet! That was great! I'm with Big Mike in asking, "exactly who was that incredibly supercilious bitch you were talking with?" She definitely deserved it - Pow! Right in the kisser! - and that look of satisfaction, creeping across your face towards the end, says you know you delivered.

Second, Axel's rant is about note-perfect as well. I think of him (appropriately) as a little snot but - hey - even little snots have their day and that one was his. Well done.

Finally, as a sort of professional ranter, I can't agree more with the premise there's a place for them - especially today - when so much is so wrong and so few seem motivated to act against it. I'll take passion over "cool" any day, and, whether we're talking about music or politics, I think - as a statement of our humanity - "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!" stands as the ultimate.

And, of course, that's the outlook called The Macho Response; 7/27/09, 9:34 PM
Penny said...: TG, I love you, man, but I am thinking you are being a bit too "empirical" here, given how empathetic you are by nature.

No empathy for Ann's Blogginghead mate?; 7/27/09, 9:42 PM
Nasty, Brutish & Short said...: You know, I always thought you were faking that rant. Watched it again. And I still kind of do.; 7/27/09, 9:46 PM
Penny said...: And Emcee? I spent a good number of years of my life being seen as the "FACHO Response".

Clearly, I was ahead of my time.;)

Just not ahead of that curve. :); 7/27/09, 9:52 PM
kentuckyliz said...: My temple should be a house or prayer
But you have made it a den of thieves
Get out
Get out!!!
(Turns over the moneychangers and merchants tables)

--Ted Neeley as Jesus in Jesus Christ Superstar.; 7/27/09, 9:58 PM
traditionalguy said...: Penny...Thanks for the feedback.My analysis was harsh. My usual nature is to see the good in people, and that is usually rewarded. But in a "fight" I take a side and will not fraternize with the enemy. That may come from my early training in one on one, and only one wins, sports. Each Blogginghead lady was doing their best to express themselves, and that was beautiful.; 7/27/09, 10:07 PM
kentuckyliz said...: Ann pwned the lefty freak chick. I saw the smirk--my video player paused on it during a download catchup moment--it was after Ann vehemently referred to freakchick's side of the blogosphere as being vicious and ugly--of course, that's a personal attack on the vicious and ugly lefty freakchick herself.

Freakchick squirms mentally, emotionally, verbally, and physically. Mute the sound and just watch her nonverbals. She can't even make eye contact with the webcam.

Ann however positively slinks for the cam. You sexy minx.

Warning to freakchicks: do not pick arguments with lawyers, even if they are under cover as cute hot blondies who slink. Unafraid of conflict, know how to dominate, intellectchyall. You will lose.

Ann, you sure are cute on vid. I'm str8 but I'd do you just as soon as I got done with Sarah Palin. LOL; 7/27/09, 10:20 PM
The Crack Emcee said...: Speaking of brilliant rants and Sarah Palin - this one's a classic .

It's a refined version of where I'm coming from - without the cultism.; 7/27/09, 10:34 PM
KCFleming said...: Dico, ergo sum.; 7/27/09, 10:36 PM
srfwotb said...: BTW, I went to a show on this tour - they were so comparatively mellow, I thought they should have wheeled a salad bar onstage as a prop.; 7/27/09, 10:41 PM
Penny said...: It is interesting to me how the most gentle people I know are more than willing to go out and FIGHT in defense of "Althouse".

YES, we like her!

But come on! lol; 7/27/09, 10:52 PM
Penny said...: Althouse ranted once. YES, she did!; 7/27/09, 11:02 PM
Penny said...: You know what the beauty of Althouse is?; 7/27/09, 11:13 PM
Penny said...: I guess not?; 7/28/09, 12:17 AM
Unknown said...: What is it Penny?; 7/28/09, 12:33 AM
Penny said...: Not sure exactly, Sy? What is it?; 7/28/09, 1:37 AM
The Dude said...: Garance Franke-Ruta is her name. I was about to type something ugly and mean spirited about her, and her name, but hey, there's no reason to act like a progressive liberal facist commie nazi, right?; 7/28/09, 7:38 AM
Scott M said...: One of the best rants in my experience is the candidly recorded speech John Wayne gave to an ROTC graduating class.

I don't remember what year it was, but he was older and very, very snookered. There was the Duke, laid bare, and, if I remember right, it became obvious that his "character" wasn't a character after all...it was pure John Wayne.; 7/28/09, 9:59 AM