ADDED: Examples of things Wolf has been saying:
Author and former Democratic political consultant Naomi Wolf published a series of Facebook posts on Saturday in which she questioned the veracity of the ISIS videos showing the murders and beheadings of two Americans and two Britons, strongly implying that the videos had been staged by the US government and that the victims and their parents were actors.AND: Naomi defends herself:
Wolf published a separate Facebook post, also on Saturday, suggesting that the US was sending troops to West Africa not to assist with Ebola treatment but to bring Ebola back to the US to justify a military takeover of American society. She also suggested that the Scottish independence referendum, in which Scots voted to remain in the United Kingdom, had been faked....
"I am not asserting that the ISIS videos have been staged," she wrote in a Facebook post. "No one can yet know anything for sure about the ISIS videos as they have simply not been independently analyzed, according to the news outlets which we have contacted for more information about the verification process."Actually, I don't think her demands for better journalism are crazy. How do we know the videos are not staged? Who is verifying it? If we were being played by a government that was trying to manipulate us, would we notice? Do we know how to defend ourselves from disinformation?
PLUS: Operation Mincemeat.
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69 comments:
You know, I have never seen Naomi Wolf and Betamax3000 in the same room ...
Wolf wrote extensively during the Bush administration that America was already a fascist dictatorship, but people hadn't noticed. That the constitution no longer existed because of the Nazi-like Bush, etc.
Vox is only noticing that she is insane now because the president she is flinging her own poo at is a democrat.
She was close to Al Gore, with her advice about "earth tones. Is psychosis contagious ? I always thought not but this could be a warning."
Is this Virginia's daughter??
Her book "The Beauty Myth" should have been our first clue. And that moron Gore let her advise him in his presidential run.
Naomi Wolf fits comfortably into the mainstream of the democrat party.
In the same way Robert Cook fits comfortably into the mainstream of Naomi Wolf thinking because he truly, truly believes that Ronald Reagan and George HW Bush actively conspired with islamist crazies in Iran to purposely hold American citizens hostage longer in order to win an election.
It's all entertainment.
Then there's the question whether today if actors have sex as part of a sex scene, is it still having sex or is it just acted sex, like it used to be with a kiss.
It's probably the same with beheadings. So long as they intend it as acting, it doesn't matter if the beheading is physical or not, it's still acting.
A comment from the site caught my attention:
"But, while I wouldn't ascribe crazy, I do wonder to what extent a DSM-V diagnosis of narcissistic personality disorder might be at play. Conspiracy theorists seem to me to exhibit two defining traits: (1) a desire to claim and be perceived as possessing some superior understanding and intelligence that makes them better than those who don't understand, as if they are the keepers of the one true truth that must bring light to us ignorant people; and (2) no concerns about the destructiveness of their views or how articulating them might effect others. Both of those traits are square in line with the DSM for NPD."
Perhaps a tangent from the earlier 'troll' thread.
So I'm saying that Naomi is just funning us. Maybe. Ironically. Perhaps.
I'll just go with once an idiot, always an idiot. Ignorance can be cured, but stupid is forever.
I know this exact maneuver has made it easier for me to read your blog.
Ayelet Waldman's husband is HOT HOT HOT.
All I know is that when Naomi Wolf was handcuffed to the bed-post she would say some of the damned craziest things; I thought she was just getting into her role as the 'Indignant Palestinian Rebel Girl' in the 'Indignant Palestinian Rebel Girl / Deceptively Handsome MOSSAD Agent' bedroom game. How she liked to be 'interrogated': Oy Vey.
Naomi was always going on about how her name backwards was "I Moan" and wasn't that sexy? "Uhhhhh. Uhhhh, I mooooooooooooan: Uhhhhhhhh."
I mean, maybe that's cute the first time, but after awhile you start to just wish her name was 'Pukcufehttuhs'.
And don't get me going on about how she would say that Al Gore's last name backwards was the first four letters of 'erogenous' ...
Naomi Wolf could serve as an example of what happens when you don't ground the humanities and liberal arts in SOME foundation, worthy of more rigorous study and analysis.
I remember hearing her speak and thinking she's half a charlatan, a curious mix of feminist and Leftist ideology, confessional writing turned ridiculous bloviation and self-promotion.
Damaged goods.
Think of all the girls with better heads on their shoulders; more emotionally well-balanced but who've still been ladled pretty thin gruel.
The well-bred girls reading Plath and Dickinson into the night.
A few will become good poets and writers, many others will shove off from Brown and Smith to media, publications like the New Yorker to merge good writing with high-end popular neuroscience, psychology, and other popular ideas the whole way down to low end soup kitchen Clinton broth and political gruel.
She claims to have been sexually encroached upon by Harold Bloom. An experience like that leaves scars. She's holding up pretty well under the circumstances.
"consider the possibility that she's having a psychotic break."
Ah, the default position when considering feminists.
Oh no. I was just getting into sync with Wolf's conspiracy theory games, which requires a certain talent. Ask our talented Garage how much dedicated art goes into it.
And Naomi gets herself slandered per se as a raving mental case.
$100.00 says she is a Marijuana smoker.
I'm convinced that Smarter Lena is on the verge of a "break". Her need to take off her clothes is psychotic! Damn Girl, give us a break!
Sorry, she is now going by Lil Lena.
She's only ever had one thing going for her, otherwise we wouldn't know her name.
Its all the fault of Harold Bloom and Yale!
Chesterton:
Every one who has had the misfortune to talk with people in the heart or on the edge of mental disorder, knows that their most sinister quality is a horrible clarity of detail; a connecting of one thing with another in a map more elaborate than a maze. If you argue with a madman, it is extremely probable that you will get the worst of it; for in many ways his mind moves all the quicker for not being delayed by the things that go with good judgment. He is not hampered by a sense of humour or by charity, or by the dumb certainties of experience. He is the more logical for losing certain sane affections. Indeed, the common phrase for insanity is in this respect a misleading one. The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason. The madman's explanation of a thing is always complete, and often in a purely rational sense satisfactory.
"Naomi Wolf could serve as an example of what happens when you don't ground the humanities and liberal arts in SOME foundation, worthy of more rigorous study and analysis."
Given the state of the "liberal arts" today, she's pretty damn rigorous. Hell, even history has become the domain of left-wing fiction writers.
The most likely explanation is that she has become a teabagger and started believing Alex Jones, Michael Savage and Elizabeth Hasselback.
Y'all catch that long comment from the fellow sorta-defending Chomsky? Yikes...
You mean she's having another one?
Alex Jones, Michael Savage and Elizabeth Hasselback.
Hmm. Well. FWIW. I'd posit that anyone who casually groups those three together might also be on the verge. Of something. At least.
WTF?
Can't you think better than that?
Rcocean,
I'm trying to be civil here, and recognize many Leftwing types have filled a hole, not necessarily created the hole (though many tear many holes into what came before them).
There seem to be problems beyond ideology despite recognizing the depth and scope of its attendant problems.
I see Wolf as a huckster and opportunist gone conspiratorial as much as anything else.
She went full Chomsky without the quality of mind.
*As I understand it, Chomsky rejected the lack of intellectual rigor and rot of postmodernism, his universal theory of grammar much more analytical than that.
When the underlying totalitarianism attending Lefty movements around the globe becomes apparent, or when Chomsky's hubris in supporting some of them too apparent, he often retreats into an anarchic position.
Wolf often traffics in just such postmodern gobbledygook, reinforcing the amateurish theoretical nature of a lot of feminist thinking, yet still perhaps highlighting the 'soft' cultural Marxism and radicalism within.
She can't hang, and she's not really known for being a good artist, poet or novelist either, justifying her lack of theoretical understanding with the force of her creative achievements.
I'm guessing Althouse, an interesting and independent feminist, is walking her beat.
***theory of universal grammar...it's late.
"In the same way Robert Cook fits comfortably into the mainstream of Naomi Wolf thinking because he truly, truly believes that Ronald Reagan and George HW Bush actively conspired with islamist crazies in Iran to purposely hold American citizens hostage longer in order to win an election."
In the same way Nixon purposely undermined LBJ's peace talks with Viet Nam in 1968 in order to better insure his election, leading to another 4 plus years of war and death (of Vietnamese and Americans).
Is it that you don't believe any American presidents could be guilty of treason and other high crimes, or you just don't believe your saintly Republican Presidents could ever commit such appalling acts?
BTW: the Iranians holding Americans hostage were not "crazies." They were enraged at America for providing safe haven to the Shah, who had been Iran's Saddam Hussein for nearly 30 years, and for our refusing to return him to Iran. This doesn't excuse their act of mass kidnap and incarceration, but it was a reason that makes sense.
"In the same way Nixon purposely undermined LBJ's peace talks with Viet Nam in 1968 in order to better insure his election, leading to another 4 plus years of war and death (of Vietnamese and Americans)."
There has been no proof of this. That doesn't mean it definitely didn't happen, but as yet there has been no evidence that Nixon did anything to purposely scuttle the Paris Peace talks in '68. And considering that doing so could easily have been found out and would have been a serious crime, it's hard to imagine he would have been that reckless, particularly as he was a private citizen at the time.
More likely the South Vietnamese were unhappy with what they felt was a deal that would have left them at the mercy of Hanoi, and believed that they could have gotten a better deal when Nixon was president.
"There has been no proof of this. That doesn't mean it definitely didn't happen, but as yet there has been no evidence that Nixon did anything to purposely scuttle the Paris Peace talks in '68. And considering that doing so could easily have been found out and would have been a serious crime, it's hard to imagine he would have been that reckless, particularly as he was a private citizen at the time."
George Will confirms Nixon's treason.
It's been supposed this was the real basis for Watergate: Nixon knew LBJ had discovered his perfidy, but couldn't locate the file he was sure held the information. He established the "plumber's unit" when in office to find the incriminating file.
Naomi is correct that we are being played but has misidentified the player. We are being played by ISIS.
Educated women steeped in the culture of The Vagina as Fascist State often exhibit the characteristics that -- in another time -- would be identified as Hysteria. The chasm of being liberated to say anything you wish, and have society take it seriously by default, and the actual possession of anything worthwhile to say results in a mania driven to fill that space: the vagina as replacement for comprehension.
Lacking the mental structures necessary to analyze the world around them, the hysterical educated female views the very act as analyzation as a violation of their capacity to think: thus, the overwhelming need to connect dots -- any dots -- in a cargo cult approximation of reason.
The connecting of the random through a filter of soft education leads to observations not unlike those made by the truly unhinged mind. This can be best seen in The Vagina as Fascist State's obsession with all details of abortion except the comprehension of killing what would become an infant without their intervention. That a woman can kill a man's offspring without shame leads the educated woman invariably to a bukkake ring composed of anonymous men dressed as English Professors attired in tweed jackets, not always in the abstract: despite the embarrassments of inchoate thought that is not egg on their faces.
"On November 2, 1968, LBJ received an FBI report saying Chernnault told the South Vietnamese ambassador that "she had received a message from her boss: saying the Vietnamese should "hold on, we are gonna win.""
That's the proof? Even if an FBI report showed that Anna Chernnault said this, it doesn't prove that Nixon ordered her to tell the South Vietnamese ambassador this. Many of Nixon's subordinates did a lot of unauthorized crap on his watch (as do Obama's, if you believe his own denials of responsibility).
None of this makes Nixon look good, of course, and as I'd mentioned it's very possible that Nixon did something as reckless and underhanded as this (George Will certainly is convinced). But unofficial underlings going rogue is pretty common in presidential campaigns.
George Will does not not "confirm" Nixon's treason, he reports on "Ken Hughes' theory" about treason. If you are going to lie, it shouldn't be so easy to check.
Actually, I don't think her demands for better journalism are crazy. How do we know the videos are not staged? Who is verifying it?
Why don't you go on over and find out.
I think the prudent position to take is that the videos are real.
Why? You ask.
Beheading seems to be the default position radical islam takes to make their point.
Always assume the gun is loaded.
"I am not asserting that the ISIS videos have been staged," she wrote in a Facebook post. "No one can yet know anything for sure about the ISIS videos as they have simply not been independently analyzed, according to the news outlets which we have contacted for more information about the verification process." Actually, I don't think her demands for better journalism are crazy. How do we know the videos are not staged? Who is verifying it?
I think she's got a point. Perhaps she should contact ISIS and ask to be present at the next beheading. She should be sure to have on good makeup and not to wear a scarf.
A lot of conspiracies turn out to be true. Look at the evidence or lack thereof. Attacking the messenger is a suspect strategy (perhaps part of a conspiracy designed to paint all persons who believe in any conspiracy as a nut job, holding them up to ridicule, so that the actual conspiracies perpetrated by powerful interests can continue unabated)
$100.00 says she is a Marijuana smoker.
$100.00 says she is a long-term Marijuana smoker.
Do we know how to defend ourselves from disinformation?
Short answer, NO! You got Obama.
C'mon man!
Swaggy said "not a smidgen", "Clapper fucked-up", "you can keep your doctor", and "Ebola is highly unlikely."
I believe Swaggy.
He said a bunch of other things that I believe. "Stop hatin, stop being mad all the time."
I doubt the beheadings were staged because of the following:
1) For the U.S. government to stage them, it hardly makes sense--what incentive would we have to go back to war in that area to such an extent that we are going to fake video?
2) ISIS itself has incentive to stage them--projects a sort of power over us, and can goad us into attacking them and if they survive that they can inspire others to their cause and look strong. Nothing an up and comer likes more than to stand up to the biggest kid in school--ISIS wants this war and beheadings help goad us into action. So they at least have reason to fake them.
3) But the problem is, to fake the beheadings they have to use the name real victims--killing a made-up person can look suspicious when there's no record of that person anywhere. And pretending to kill a person who actually exists means either that person cooperates, or they come back and say "I'm not really dead!" Too easy to unravel.
Beyond that, what more should the media do to verify that the beheadings were real? I can see why no journalist wants to meet ISIS to check on it--journalists seem to be the targets of the beheadings.
"George Will does not not 'confirm' Nixon's treason, he reports on 'Ken Hughes' theory' about treason. If you are going to lie, it shouldn't be so easy to check."
Um...look again. I merely used the title of the article I linked to.
In his reporting on Hughes' allegations, Will certainly makes no effort to cast any doubt on any bit of it, which suggests he is convinced of its veracity. More to the point, the proof is said to be in recently released Nixon papers, and in recordings made by FBI wiretaps.
I had read of Nixon's treason elsewhere, earlier. That Will is now bringing the light of mainstream journalistic attention to it suggests (to me) that a long enough time has passed for even defenders of the imperium to acknowledge unpleasant truths of the relatively recent past.
" ISIS itself has incentive to stage them--projects a sort of power over us, and can goad us into attacking them and if they survive that they can inspire others to their cause and look strong."
The simplest explanation: ISIS produces the beheading videos because they're a great recruiting tool.
And, yes, Naomi Wolf has been saying and writing some pretty nutty things for a long time. So what's new?
The Robert Cook red radiation meter is showing 'glowing socialist hot' on this thread, so maybe it's best to just write it off.
Althouse wrote: "Actually, I don't think her demands for better journalism are crazy. How do we know the videos are not staged? Who is verifying it? If we were being played by a government that was trying to manipulate us, would we notice? Do we know how to defend ourselves from disinformation?
PLUS: Operation Mincemeat."
Pardon me if I don't see the connection between a government lying to its citizens for some nefarious purpose and a government lying to another government during a state of declared war between the two.
Both have uniformed armies on the battlefield with the goal of wiping the enemy off the map.
It would be treason against its own citizens if my government didn't use subterfuge in that case.
You're comparing apples to a 1976 Ford Pinto here Althouse.
Oh, and Naomi Wolf is a batshit crazy loon.
Nixon used a buffer to negotiate with the Soutth Vietnamese. LBJ knew this because he was spying on the Nixon campaign.....The South Vietnamese wanted Nixon to win. The North Vietnamese favored Humphrey. Both countries tailored their negotiating stances to achieve the desired outcome..........The Shah used despotic force to govern, but he had many pro western values. The faction of Iranian society that he represented was in some ways the most forward thinking and liberal within that country. The Ayatollah and his successors also use despotic force to govern. They kept Iran in a costly war with Iraq, have spent billions to develop unneeded nuclear weapons, and, in general, have been far worse caretakers of the Iranian people than the Shah........In the fullness of time Chiang, Franco and Pinochet bequeathed prosperous democracies to their followers. Compare and contrast with the inheritors of Mao, Tito, and Castro.
@Althouse, the point of a disinformation campaign such as Operation Mincemeat is disseminating wrong information to enemies. If the beheadings really are an Obama disinformation campaign, then who does Naomi Wolf view as his enemies?
The beheadings are considered presumed, alleged, etc be headings until verified by the govt, or really govts. We were in a weird place with the second Brit beheading, where the US had apparently confirmed it internally, but we were waiting for them to do so themselves and announce it.
How do you verify this sort of thing? No sure, except that they can look at the video in much more detail to see if it is truly a real video, or it was somehow digitally manipulated. And this is something I would expect our intelligence agencies to be expert at - if Abbie and McGee could do it on NCIS years ago, surely the NSA can do it today.
Still, there is a question whether the govt would lie, even knowing the truth. And, as Peggy Noonan pointed out in that article last week, govt employees under Obama have become quite brazen in their lying to the reporters and the American public. They lie with straight faces to us. We know they are lying, they know that we know, but do it any way. It is not as bad when they lie about little stuff, but have already been caught lying about Ebola (and, by now, are expected to lie to us about ISIL, al Quaeda, etc). And the Ebola lies may end up costing a lot of American lives.
Would they lie here? I don't think so, because the beheadings have put the Administration in a bad light, pointing out that Obama cut and run, over the advice of his entire national security team, in Iraq. The war was won, and by pulling out (for no good national security reason), ISIL and the beheadings were enabled. Which is why I think that this Administration would more likely try to debunk them, than fake them.
"Pardon me if I don't see the connection between a government lying to its citizens for some nefarious purpose and a government lying to another government during a state of declared war between the two."
Okay, then, the Reichstag fire.
Okay, then, the Reichstag fire.
What end does it serve Obama (unless he is just finding out about these beheadings in today's newspaper) to justify such action? This is a man who would like nothing less than to ease the pressure on the office he currently resides in. Adding ISIS faux-beheadings to his news mix seems wildly counterproductive.
It's lame ducks all the way down.
Unless one would posit that rogue military men are behind the beheadings to goad? Obama to action to destroy a much-more-benign-than-thought ISIS? Again, too many moving parts.
Naomi might want to get more comfortable with Mr. Occam and his cutting tools.
Disclaimer -- I don't think the beheadings were staged (if they were, presumably ISIS would point that out so Obama would lose any remaining credibility), but:
1. Even if not in our govern interest to stage it, it may well be in the interest of one of our "friends" or enemies in the middle east.
2. why don't the videos show the actual beheadings instead of just the before and after. Don't they want us to see the depth of their brutality? Are they trying to protect our sensibilities?
Robert Cook: "Is it that you don't believe any American presidents could be guilty of treason and other high crimes, or you just don't believe your saintly Republican Presidents could ever commit such appalling acts?"
I'm saying only bizarre and moronic conspiracy theorists like yourself could belief something so patently false as the "October Surprise" conspiracy.
That you keep doubling down on it only reveals that you and your psyche are perfectly described by Terry's 10:04pm comment.
Your certitude in the face of zero evidence confirms it.
I'm sure in the coffee houses where you hold court your fellow crazies accept assertions like the "October Surprise" nonsense as gospel.
But outside of Democratic Underground-dom, you have taken leave of what senses you may have once had.
Robert Cook at 7:03am: "George Will confirms Nixon's treason."
Robert Cook at 8:23am: "In his reporting on Hughes' allegations, Will certainly makes no effort to cast any doubt on any bit of it, which suggests he is convinced of its veracity."
Well, the walkback begins.
Cookie at 8:23am again: "More to the point, the proof is said to be in recently released Nixon papers, and in recordings made by FBI wiretaps."
Well, as long as the "proof is said to be in" there, that's enough for all of us!!
Robert Cook: official batshit crazy conspiracy theorist....and potential Chairman of the Naomi Wolf Appreciation Committee.
Thinking about the govt routinely lying to us is a bit scary. Should we be buying a lot of bleach, gloves, masks, etc in case they are lying big time with Ebola? I am hearing from some that they expect it to be exploding in this country in the next 4-6 weeks. I have my lists and procedures, but am delaying a bit, though I do have a 7 mil glove in my pocket from a friend who is a much more serious prepper. Are they serious? Or just over reacting? The problem is that right now, after six years of officially sanctioned lying by the govt and govt officials, we just don't know. And sometimes we are almost to the point of believing the opposite of what govt officials say,just because we distrust them so much these days.
So, I saw today that some conservatives and conservative groups were being audited by the IRS, and were questioning whether their being audited was political. The IRS would, of course, say no. But, they have lied so routinely and egregiously in their targeting of tea party groups, that it is hard to believe them here. Our tax system is built on voluntary compliance, but how much voluntary compliance are we going to see if a lot of Americans start seeing the IRS as an arm of the DNC?
Maybe what I am saying here is that losing trusting the veracity and good intentions of the government is not a good thing. If it doesn't work for us, but rather only for the bureaucrats, politicians, and their cronies, why do we have it? So it can take more of our hard earned money and spend it on buying more votes? Not good for the country.
Why don't they show the actual beheading?
I don't think that the western world is ready yet for such. Pretty barbaric. We shall see.
"Cookie at 8:23am again: "More to the point, the proof is said to be in recently released Nixon papers, and in recordings made by FBI wiretaps.""
I do also like the fact that while Nixon's critics are gushing over the possibility that Nixon used one of his campaign middlemen to scuttle peace talks, they seem to be okay with a sitting president using the FBI to spy on an opposing party's presidential campaign.
Was she the consultant who told Gore to dress in earth tones?
We did dodge the Gore-bullet, and got hit in the face by the Obama double barreled shotgun.
As the lady said: What difference, at this point, does it make?
"I'm saying only bizarre and moronic conspiracy theorists like yourself could belief something so patently false as the "October Surprise" conspiracy."
Calling it "patently false" does not make it so, any more than my saying it is so makes it so.
"The Shah used despotic force to govern, but he had many pro western values."
Does this make him any less intolerable to the people who suffered under his rule?
That the Shah's ouster was followed by a religious government that may be as or more onerous than the Shah's is only too typical of revolutions; it does not invalidate the anger of the people toward the tyrant under whom they had suffered for three decades, especially at the beginning of the revolution, when what would come was still unknown.
Robert Cook: "Calling it "patently false" does not make it so, any more than my saying it is so makes it so."
Sorry, that dog won't hunt.
You have no evidence for this hilariously bizarre assertion.
But only zero.
Our positions are not equivalent so your standard "moral/circumstances equivalence" schtick falls quite flat here.
But you'll stick with it. Such are faith-based beliefs.
"Was she the consultant who told Gore to dress in earth tones?"
She was! Do you not remember how much more you wanted to vote for him when he was wearing tan and brown?
She also told him he needs to be an alpha male. Which, if you need to be told you're an alpha male, you're no alpha male.
Trust me, right now the military doesn't have the time, the money, or the inclination to try and take over the United States.
Although it would be fun to force all congressmen through SHARP briefings twice a month.
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