Does that include the idea — see Ipso Fatso, supra — that I'm surely going to vote for Obama?
I love that I'm so obviously totally for him and against him.
Somebody please explain.
It's really quite weird. My regular right-leaning readers keep seeing me as secretly devoted to Obama, no matter what mockery I indulge in. They think I'm just trying to trick them into thinking I've got what I like to call cruel neutrality. And yet the left-leaning readers assume I loathe Obama.
What's so annoying about this is that I want to write things that are fresh and surprising. And seeming to be both for and against Obama should work for that end, and yet it doesn't, because everyone seems to assume I'm on the side that they are not. They think I'm predictable — but which way?
Oh, maybe I should be the opposite of annoyed. Pleased. Because I'm not giving anybody what they want, and yet people — some people, who are they? — keep reading. To be denied what you want and still want more from that source... I'm going to be happy to be that source.
... indicating the answer is no, they did not put a whole lot of thought into appealing to women. When you make something light, you should think about how important the product will be to women, who are touchy about carrying things. Anyway, for our light days, we have iPhones. For our heavy days, we have the iPad? The iMaxiPad? Come on, guys!
Last night, I'd done another one of my Obama-is-like-Bush posts — re global warming and polar bears — and Zachary Paul Sire commented:
It's just as bad now that Obama is doing it. Worse, even.
Palladian taunted:
But you'll still love to tongue his armpits, won't you Zachy baby?!
Yanking me onto his side, Zachary came back:
You always hysterically try to paint people who voted for Obama as some kind of mob of horny, brainwashed maniacs, so is that what you make of Althouse, who voted for Obama?
And what about you, darling Palladian? Are we to assume that you voted for John McCain, or did you not vote at all? Just because there is no magic candidate that reflects all of your wildest hopes and dreams doesn't mean you have to take it out on everyone else.
Sometimes, people have the fucking balls to go with a candidate and hope for the best. Sorry you couldn't man up.
Palladian says he mainly thinks of Zachary as a horny, brainwashed maniac, and as for Althouse, he sees why I voted the way I did, though he disagrees. As for himself, he says:
I voted for McCain/Palin, but it was a meaningless vote considering my state and district. I voted out of contempt for the other candidates and as a protest against the incredibly distressing mob mentality exhibited by the citizens of my city. I was actually not going to vote for anyone on the Presidential/Vice-Presidential ticket but when I was in line at my polling place, someone laughingly said "we're racking up the votes for our man Barack!" and a few people cheered which irked me enough to pull the lever for the opposition ticket.
"Just because there is no magic candidate that reflects all of your wildest hopes and dreams doesn't mean you have to take it out on everyone else."
Huh? See, this is the difference between lovers of liberty and freedom and people like you. We don't want or need a candidate who reflects all of our "wildest hopes and dreams". We want a candidate who will leave us alone. Neither party generally delivers such candidates. It is liberals (and often also conservatives) who need to be "led", who look for a politician to be their "savior", who vest their "hopes and dreams" in the person of a politician. This is a mistake, a pathetic vestige of our dark days when we dropped on bended knee and surrendered ourselves to worldly kings and potentates.
It was your candidate who based his entire campaign upon the ambiguous and ultimately meaningless word "hope", it was you who looked to him to reflect your wildest hopes and dreams of further enslavement to the State and further erosion of our national character. And, as it always happens, it is you who ended up with the political equivalent of vaporware inhabiting the Oval Office.
"Sometimes, people have the fucking balls to go with a candidate and hope for the best. Sorry you couldn't man up."
It's funny to hear liberals constantly, un-ironically, deploy the rhetoric of masculine power (balls, fucking, "man up") in defense of the weakest of feminine traits. There's nothing manly about "hope". Men don't hope for things, they make them happen. You sold your birthright for a mess of pottage. There's nothing manly in that.
Reap the whirlwind, dear Zachary. It's wonderful to watch you twist in the wind.
But why haven't I posted about the tea party protests? A longstanding issue in blogging is the interpretation of the failure to post. Too many people think the absence of posts indicates an opinion of mine that the topic isn't important, when only it means that I have nothing I want to say on the subject.
You know, despite what might look like massive evidence here on this blog, I'm not too interested in politics. And I've never been attracted to demonstrations and protests. I instinctively avert my eyes — unless I'm there in real life with a camera and I have some hope of catching a view of something quirky or weird. I've participated in exactly one demonstration in my entire life — back in 1970. I went along with chanting a chant — it happened to be "Open it up/Or shut it down" — and I felt rather embarrassed to be doing something completely out of character for me.
I'm aloof and bemused about things political, you see, and I have been for more decades than — in all likelihood — you've been alive.
But it is Tax Day. I'm not steamed about Tax Day. I've done my taxes. I minimized the stress by using Turbo Tax. I noted with a smidge of disgust that the PDF of my returns is 57 pages long, but I moved on.
Nevertheless, I see that Glenn Reynolds has an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal about the tea parties, so here:
Today American taxpayers in more than 300 locations in all 50 states will hold rallies -- dubbed "tea parties" -- to protest higher taxes and out-of-control government spending....
The movement grew so fast that some bloggers at the Playboy Web site -- apparently unaware that we've entered the 21st century -- suggested that some secret organization must be behind all of this. But, in fact, today's technology means you don't need an organization...
There's good news and bad news in this phenomenon for establishment politicians. The good news for Republicans is that, while the Republican Party flounders in its response to the Obama presidency and its programs, millions of Americans are getting organized on their own. The bad news is that those Americans, despite their opposition to President Obama's policies, aren't especially friendly to the GOP....
This influx of new energy and new talent is likely to inject new life into small-government politics around the nation. The mainstream Republican Party still seems limp and disorganized. This grassroots effort may revitalize it. Or the tea-party movement may lead to a new third party that may replace the GOP, just as the GOP replaced the fractured and hapless Whigs.
Off topic, but thought you all should know: I am alive.
Poor Zachary had a ruptured spleen, and in valiant, bloggerly style, blogged it, with photos of himself — in a hospital gown — taken at arm's length. Perhaps the blogosphere is full of photo-essays showing the details of emergency rooms, not to mention accident scenes — wounds and all. (Point to some!)
I once posted "I just wrecked my car!" — and, though I blogged about how, almost immediately, I thought about blogging the accident, I did not get out my camera to get the photos. (Later, at the wrecker's, I got the photos.) So I admire Zachary's presence of mind in taking those photos, especially since he was in pain — though presumably he was also bored and, unlike me at the car crash, not in the presence of victims, police, and EMTs who would have thought ill of me if I'd displayed a hearty bloggerly spirit. (In case you're wondering why my readers didn't seem to give a damn back then, I didn't have commenting turned on.)
Anyway, I love Zachary's intrusion into the late night thread to tell us about his situation. When you go to comment on my blog, you can see that part of the instructions for commenting are: "You can digress, but digress creatively. Amuse us!" So OT was OK. And maybe I should rethink "amuse." Another reason to rethink "amuse" is that people — probably remembering Queen Victoria's most famous quote "We are not amused" — think I'm using the royal "we." I'm not. And actually, neither was Victoria. But speaking of memorable lines... I love "I am alive." It's one of those very short sentences that feel entirely literary.
Is it a famous quote? I Google and see it's at least a video game.
But it has the feeling of something old, something I read long ago. Is it the last line of Daniel DeFoe's "A Journal of the Plague Year"? The e-text is on-line. So:
A dreadful plague in London was
In the year sixty-five,
Which swept an hundred thousand souls
Away; yet I alive!
The drama's done. Why then here does any one step forth?—Because one did survive the wreck.
... So, floating on the margin of the ensuing scene, and in full sight of it, when the halfspent suction of the sunk ship reached me, I was then, but slowly, drawn towards the closing vortex. When I reached it, it had subsided to a creamy pool. Round and round, then, and ever contracting towards the button-like black bubble at the axis of that slowly wheeling circle, like another Ixion I did revolve. Till, gaining that vital centre, the black bubble upward burst; and now, liberated by reason of its cunning spring, and, owing to its great buoyancy, rising with great force, the coffin life-buoy shot lengthwise from the sea, fell over, and floated by my side. Buoyed up by that coffin, for almost one whole day and night, I floated on a soft and dirgelike main.
Perhaps you can help me find "I am alive" (and things close to it) in literary — or cinematic or video-game-ic — works of art. Don't talk about statements in the third person. The first-person statement is the interesting thing here. If you are not alive, you are in no position to comment. By the same token, to say anything is to say "I'm alive." What prompts the always-true words "I am alive" is the consciousness that you might not have been able to say it (or anything else). While it is always within our mental grasp to be suddenly intensely impressed by the vivid fact of being alive, we don't — we could! — say it out loud or write it down... in the comments section of someone else's blog.
Or, no, there is a second reason to say "I am alive." You might need to cry out to someone who thinks you are dead. DeFoe tells of a piper, who went door to door for food and drink "and he in return would pipe and sing and talk simply." But times were hard, and he'd nearly starved, "and when anybody asked how he did he would answer, the dead cart had not taken him yet, but that they had promised to call for him next week." One night, he'd finally gotten some drink, and he was lying drunk in a doorway where the people inside "hearing a bell which they always rang before the cart came, had laid a body really dead of the plague just by him, thinking, too, that this poor fellow had been a dead body, as the other was, and laid there by some of the neighbours." A man named John Hayward loaded both bodies onto the cart:
From hence they passed along and took in other dead bodies, till... they almost buried him alive in the cart; yet all this while he slept soundly. At length the cart came to the place where the bodies were to be thrown into the ground, which, as I do remember, was at Mount Mill; and as the cart usually stopped some time before they were ready to shoot out the melancholy load they had in it, as soon as the cart stopped the fellow awaked and struggled a little to get his head out from among the dead bodies, when, raising himself up in the cart, he called out, 'Hey! where am I?' This frighted the fellow that attended about the work; but after some pause John Hayward, recovering himself, said, 'Lord, bless us! There's somebody in the cart not quite dead!' So another called to him and said, 'Who are you?' The fellow answered, 'I am the poor piper. Where am I?' 'Where are you?' says Hayward. 'Why, you are in the dead-cart, and we are going to bury you.' 'But I an't dead though, am I?' says the piper, which made them laugh a little though, as John said, they were heartily frighted at first; so they helped the poor fellow down, and he went about his business.
But I an't dead though, am I? It's a terrifying question to have to ask, but, thank God, the answer is always "yes."
I thought I'd do a post with a LOLcat, saying something on this theme, so I went to Flickr to find a picture of a cat, and I got pleasantly distracted by this comment on the photograph that I blogged yesterday. Screen grab:
See? The commenter — jjmadison — has a cat face avatar and his comment — "wow, all that on two packs of Splenda??" — continues the drug theme. Ah! My drug of choice is synchronicity. I'm high on it now. I'm even singing: Oh! Oh! Oh!
Not really, but I do have to shout above the din of my Rice Krispies.
Now, somewhat giddy, I do still want to make that LOLcat, and I search my Flickr photographs for "cat." But I haven't been good about labels over there, and the collection of "cat"-labeled photos seems a bit absurd. There's a latte with a foam cat face. A picture of a poster that says "Don't Shoot the Cat." There's the very young me with a cat and my same-age son with a cat:
But these Rice Krispies were enough, and I don't want an egg at this hour. So I look to you, dear readers, to pick up Kev's khat-blogging theme and make some LOLcats. You can make them here, and you can email them to me at annalthouse (at) gmail (dot) com.
I'd love to pass out some of the Althouse blog drugs: frontpaging and tags.
And I'm hoping TRex will bumble over here and see that something weird is going on. And also that something crawls from the slime at the bottom of a dark Scottish lake.
Yesterday, the day I saw "The Curious Life of Benjamin Button" and wrote that post, I conked out early.
Oh, I don't know if it was from the movie or from the pizza and one glass of wine I had afterward or just from being somewhat old. Most of the people in the movie audience were old, so old, that when Cate Blanchett reassured the getting-younger Benjamin by saying that we all wear diapers in the end, and the chuckle from the audience was unnervingly warm, I had to speculate that there was a high Depends-to-butt ratio in the theater at that very moment. And who knows? Perhaps young soda-swillers wear Depends to the movies, especially to 3-hour extravaganzas like "Benjamin Button." Especially with all that water imagery:
[W]ater is often seen as a symbol for birth/re-birth, and [I] thought they used it well. Spoilers: The dad nearly throws Pitt in the water in the beginning, Pitt takes the dad to sit by the water, Tilda Swinton swims the English Channel, all of the work Pitt does on the boat and the sailing, Daisy takes up swimming after her injury, Hurricane Katrina...anything else?)
And Benjamin fighting the Nazis at sea. Or should I say Ben or Ben-yah-meen?
Here's a weird-ass quirk of mine: For years now, anywhere and everywhere I see the name "Benjamin" used in a narrative (especially a grand, old one) I substitute plain old "Ben." Amazing, how well that works and the perspective it brings.
I studied Arabic one summer during college, and there was a white guy in the program named Benjamin who insisted we all call him Ben-yah-meen. That experience, I think, has much the same effect on Benjamin perspective.
The quote in that first block is from Zachary Paul Sire in the comments. The 2 in the second block are from reader_iam and Freeman Hunt.
See? This post is a tribute to all the commenters who kept an interesting conversation going all night on that thread that I conked out after writing. In the morning, it's my habit to reach for my iPhone before so much as sitting up in bed. Supine, I check the news, mostly to assure myself that nothing terrible happened during the hours when I wasn't paying attention. (The Yellowstone caldera has not exploded, despite the recent, strange swarm of earthquakes.) Then, I read blog comments for a while. Last night's post had accumulated 73 comments. The second one was from me, right before I fell asleep. I was responding to the first comment, from Zachary Paul Sire, who wanted to know if I liked the movie, a matter I'd considered beside the point of the post. I answered:
It was okay. It would have been much better if it were tightened up... and livened up. Like many high-budget, high-aspiration movies of today, it was embalmed. Its "I have always loved you" theme was very conventional, and I never felt much real passion between the 2 lead actors. And neither of them ever said anything clever. But there were some excellent special effects in aging and youthening Pitt and Blanchett, and there were some nice moments. Where to cut? You can cut all whole old dying woman and her daughter scenes, as far as I'm concerned. Reminded me of "Titanic," bringing in an old, old woman to tell the story of her big love to her daughter.
71 comments ensued. I can't reprint them all. But I intend to frontpage much more than usual this morning.
Chuck b. said:
I always enjoy the Althousian disdain for sentimentality (or is it a midwesterner's disdain? or maybe it's just very lawyerly), although I myself enjoy many sentimental films.
Actually, I'm not very good at recognizing sentimentality when I see it. I just let myself get played.
... although I don't cry as much during commercials and sentimental television things as much as Althouse does. Actually, that's interesting. A'house report tearage not infrequently. Does that have something to do with her negative reactions toward...ineffective sentimentality?
Am I midwestern? The most midwestern thing about me is that my mother grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Second is: I went to college at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Third: I've taught at the University of Wisconsin Law School in Madison, Wisconsin since 1984 (since I was 33 years old). So: 1. My formative years were not spent in the midwest, and 2. My time in the midwest has entirely been in these 2 university towns that don't really represent the region.
As for crying and sentimentality... 1. I might cry about something sentimental the way I might sneeze in the presence of dusty black pepper. It doesn't mean I admire the cause of the reflex. Quite the opposite. 2. I am cold to some emotional manipulations and susceptible to others. I might get judgmental and resist everything, but I might indulge and enjoy the easily won emotions of sentimentality. There is some good sentimentality. "The Bill Cosby Show" always made me cry. (And I do mean "The Bill Cosby Show," not "The Cosby Show," which I never watched.) 3. There are some things I regard as real art. I keep these separate, whether they provoke crying or not. The Kubrick movie "Lolita" caused me to cry profusely, but only after it was over, when I was trying to talk about it. That meant something.
Palladian said:
["Ben Button" s]ounds like a miserable Oscar-bait remake of "Big".
"Big" was much more fun, but like "Big," it gave us a chance to see an adult woman in love with a little boy — without all that nasty guilt that comes from awareness that we are witnessing pedophilia. Unlike "Big," it gave us a chance to see an old man in love with a little girl. Ah, but he's only 7! He's her age. And when an old woman tells him he should be ashamed of himself, we sympathize with the old man. I mean the little boy. And I bet pedophiliac old men believe that at heart they too are little boys.
And Brad Pit and Cate Blanchett? Can there be two more overexposed, boring actors on the planet?
Zachary Paul Sire said:
I love Cate Blanchett (anyone seen "Notes On A Scandal"? Now that's a good movie)...but Brad Pitt has never, ever been interesting to me. I can't think of one movie he's been in that I've enjoyed. Maybe "12 Monkeys," but that's because he was a supporting character. He and Cate, like Althouse said, had absolutely no passion or believability. Lifeless. Boring.
I love Brad in "12 Monkeys." Also in "Fight Club." In fact, I have a lot of respect for Brad Pitt. He picks some artistic projects, and he doesn't just rely on his pretty face — though perhaps he uglifies himself in part for the purpose of sending the message that he is so gorgeous that even uglified he's divine. In "Ben Button," he puts on that old age makeup, but then he emerges from it, so that Brad Pittifulness seems astoundingly new again. He then gets to progress to his "Thelma and Louise" level of insane male beauty. There's a scene in "Button" where he returns to the (old) Cate Blanchett in this form and she exclaims "You're perfect!" and I wanted her to say "Oh my God! You're Brad Pitt!"
Titus said:
For the most part I hate almost every movie that comes out because I find them too boring and too much made for "normal America". I also hate sitting in a movie theater for two hours with other people....
On a seperate [sic] note I have a fear of the dentist. I am only able to go once a year because I literally freak out 24 hours before I go. I have to be sedated, gased and anything else to go. I go every year in January but I now have a toothache so I have to go tomorrow and I am freaking out....
The only good news about going to the dentist tomorrow is he gives me good drugs.
He is a big liberal. His wife works at the front desk and his dog runs around the office.
My dentist is a straight queen. Every time I go in there he shows me one of his new Yoga poses that he has just conquered.
Chuck b. said...
"My dentist is a straight queen."
I loathe heterosexual gay men. What's the phobicity for that?
My dentist is a feisty latina and I am devoted to her. As a regular flosser and non-drinker of sugary beverages, my teeth are always clean and my gums are "tight". I love it when she tells me my gums are tight. Noone else tells me that.
Beth — who lives in New Orleans, the city featured in the movie but not the Fitzgerald story — said:
The more days I am from having seen ["Ben Button"], the more little "hey, that didn't add up" moments I think of. I too could have done without the entire mother/daughter hospital plot. I kept dreading possible outcomes, and that was a distraction.
And no, there's no real chemistry between the leads. There were much more appealing relationships -- b/w Benjamin and the folks in the home, mainly. And the tugboat captain was a favorite of mine.
But I am a partisan for it still; there are lots of movies shot in New Orleans, and this one made such wonderful use of places I love. The bandstand where Daisy does her nighttime dance is one where my friends and I would perform late at night, running wild in the park as teens. Lanaux House, the setting for the Button household, was also the setting for the nasty Gallier sibling household in the 1982 version of Cat People. Overall, I just loved our streets and houses and streetcars and greenery. It all looked so good.
Chuck b. said:
I was in N'awlins once for a week, drunk the whole time. I ate every meal at Paul Prudhomme's place (spelling?!) and marvelled at the cockroaches on the sidewalk that came out when the sun went down. I walked all the way back to my hotel stepping on one cockroach after another, like stepping stones. God, what a great town.
Palladian said:
I cry at the end of "It's A Wonderful Life"....
"It's A Wonderful Life" is a perfect movie. I know that some people think it's commie propaganda and that some douchebag at the New York Times (natch) trashed it this year, but still. Brilliantly detailed, perfect performances. Sob, sob.
Zachary Paul Sire said:
I've actually never watched the entire "It's A Wonderful Life" from beginning to end. I've also never watched an entire episode of "The Simpsons" from beginning to end. Some things just don't appeal to me.
Chuck b. said...
I've never seen It's a Wonderful Life, even a little bit of it.
LoafingOaf said:
I'm also sorry I don't find life so wonderful. Will the movie change my mind? I still smile through most days, though. Life is depressing but you may as well life at it.
Sometimes I come to Althouse blog and the prof's life seems so perfect, and I've never been able to detect any terrible, or even messy, things going on beneath the surface. She's even chummy with her ex, and her sons seem way too well-adjusted. Does she keep it hidden, or is she for real? She seems so "together" I feel if I browse her blog enough it will rub off on me a little. But I do wanna determine whether she just keeps it hidden or if her having her shit so "together" is for real.
You should read what they say about me on those other blogs — where I'm a decrepit, crazy drunk. Obviously, I control the message here. But, in fact, I don't lie about myself. Even though some of my antagonists think I'm outrageously self-absorbed, I rarely reveal anything about my real-world life. Haven't you noticed? My topic selection and various opinions and attitudes may seem idiosyncratic and distinctive enough to give the impression of a window into my life. And my photographs, by physical necessity, show my point of view. But I'm not telling you about any sorrows and struggles that may afflict me. Yes, I have a job that immensely benefits me, but it is exceedingly rare for me to write about my colleagues or students. If they were giving me trouble, you wouldn't know. I'm very lucky to have 2 sons — but I'm not going to say anything bad about them, and I mostly don't write about them. And you see my occasional chumminess with my ex-husband, but we separated more than 20 years ago. You have no evidence at all of any post-1987 love affairs that I may have had and how I may have suffered.
LoafingOaf said:
Oh, well, at least Sarah Palin's life and family turned out to be a mess.
Beth said:
LoafingOaf, I'm just making a guess here, so cut me some slack if I'm offbase.
You might find life a little less depressing if you cut back on the hating, just a bit. Take Palin, for example. She's not running for anything right now. She lost. Why bother looking for a Palin thread anywhere? I know, I know; there are scores of conservatives who can't get through a day without hating on Algore or blaming Bill Clinton for today's crappy economy or holding out for Obama's super-secret African birth certificate -- but they're not good examples for you to follow.
I'm not saying you should be Mary Sunshine, but a small adjustments might be in order. If you just keep your targets of anger current, you'll cut back on a lot of unnecessary bile. And that will increase the room for a bit of wonder in your life.
See how we help each other here?
Chickenlittle said:
She's even chummy with her ex, and her sons seem way too well-adjusted. Does she keep it hidden, or is she for real?
My ex-girlfriend is chummy with my wife. She's coming to visit next weekend--with her husband. We all laugh and joke about the past.
My point is that you can choose to get past horrible hurts in the past--or not. It all depends on the parties involved (and their will to party)
Palladian said:
"Oh, well, at least Sarah Palin's life and family turned out to be a mess."
A mess? She was nominee for vice-president. She has a beautiful family. If you want a mess you should look to yourself and figure out why this woman drove you crazy, why this woman turned you from an interesting commenter to a bitter, twisted loser. Take Beth's advice, Mr Sullivan, and chill out.
Reader_iam, quoting me in the original "Ben Button" post, said:
the old story is crisp and unsentimental
Indeed.
Finally, some love for Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald.
And that's the end of the line in this paean to commenters.
Happy New Year, everybody. Let's sing "Auld Lang Syne":
They heard Obama say: "I believe marriage is a union between a man and a woman. Now, for me as a Christian, it is also a sacred union. God is in the mix."
So Obama was instrumental in getting Prop 8 passed. What do you think of that? Some Obama supporters say it wasn't fair to use Obama like that. After all, Obama also said Prop 8 was "divisive and discriminatory." But that's absurd. Obama had to know that his words would be used by opponents of same-sex marriage. He himself is an opponent of same-sex marriage... except to the extent that he isn't, and I certainly think in his heart he's not, but that in his head he knew he had to say he was to get elected.
I don't blame him for this dishonesty. I think it's like the dishonesty of professing a belief in God if you don't have it. You're not going to get elected without that dishonesty, so we can just forget about all the good people who don't lie about such things. They're not going to make it to the presidency. Not in the near future anyway. But you can't have it both ways. You're responsible for the position you avow, and the Prop 8 proponents did nothing wrong using his voice like that.
Another thing we have to face up to is that black Californians voted overwhelmingly for Prop 8. Some gay rights advocates think that black people should identify with gay people:
Many black voters didn't see it that way.
"I was born black. I can't change that," said Culver City resident Bilson Davis, 57, who voted for Proposition 8. "They weren't born gay; they chose it," he added, reflecting a commonly held belief that many researchers dispute.
Although many of the state's black political leaders spoke out against Proposition 8, an exit poll of California voters showed that black voters favored the measure by a ratio of more than 2 to 1. Not only was the black vote weighted heavily in favor of Proposition 8, but black turnout -- spurred by Barack Obama's historic campaign for president -- was unusually large, with African Americans making up roughly 10% of the state electorate.
The exit poll didn't ask voters why they voted the way they did. But Madison Shockley, pastor of Pilgrim United Church of Christ in Carlsbad and among the roughly one-third of blacks who opposed Proposition 8, said the vote was understandable. "Black folks go to church, probably more than the Caucasian population, and the churches they go to tend to be very traditional."
Los Angeles resident Christopher Hill, 50, said he was motivated by religion in supporting Proposition 8. Civil rights, he said, "are about getting a job, employment."
Gay marriage, he said, is not: "It's an abomination against God."...
[Pasadena resident Doris Tucker] Tucker, who is African American, said she voted for "all the good things," especially Obama and Proposition 8. "I don't think it's right," Tucker said of gay marriage. "They shouldn't let it go on."
It's harsh to have to read that. But there it is.
IN THE COMMENTS: Chip Ahoy said:
Marriage is a state of mind.
Couples look to the Church to sanctify their union and the Church is more than happy to presumably drag God into the arrangement. But that is patently false. A thing that God unites cannot be undone by humans.
The State's interest is purely as arbiter and protector of legal contracts.
I'm tired of having this discussion. Therefore, I'll stop. Do whatever you wish. I don't care.
I responded:
"I'm tired of having this discussion."
Well, let's try to focus on the issues raised in the post:
1. The use of Obama's voice: fair or unfair?
2. Things a politician must lie about, and the responsibility they must take for these lies.
3. Obama's dishonesty.
4. The overwhelming black support for Prop 8.
5. The unpersuasiveness of the argument that black people should identify with gay people.
6. (Implicit) Why are gay rights activists targeting Mormons when so much of the quarrel is with black people? Selective choice of targets as political cowardice.
Zachary Paul Sire said:
I love when Prof. Althouse gets all professorial on our ass.
Chip came back into the classroom:
OK. Very well.
1) The use of Obama's voice. Fair. He used his voice, and only his voice, to get what he wanted politically. Fair game to use those words and that voice to support one's point. Go on then, use them yourself. Use his YouTubes to make whatever point you want. He's the one who put them out there, precisely to be used. Yesterday we were treated to a video making a point around words the sitting president didn't say.
2) There is no class of things that politicians must lie about. The very idea is cynical and ridiculous. There's a lot of things Obama felt at the moment, depending on whom he was speaking to, that it was a good idea or advantageous to lie but there was never a true "must" about it. These things too are well documented and fully discussed. Some people dismiss them, others don't. I don't. That's why he's not my president. He's your president, he's the country's president. He's the world's choice for our president, and I'm alright with all of that, but he's not my president. Precisely because he's a fabulous dissimulator. <--- See what I did there? Used fabulous for an adjective,which itself implies extravagant tales.
3. Dishonesty. That's why I couldn't vote for the man. I'm bothered by that. And it goes beyond what the man says. It's what he fails to say. It's how he spins the facts. It's the whole ACORN thing, and the straight-up illegal contributions, the credit card verification disabling, it's Florida and Michigan in the primaries cutting Hillary off at the knees, it's agreeing to campaign financing then switching when he realized he could do much better leaving his opponent bound to the agreement. One candidate has class, the other one doesn't. But again, all this is well documented and thoroughly discussed. We've got a myth to get on with, there'll be no looking backward.
5. Black people should identify with gay people. If they're gay. If they're not gay why should they? The black struggle has nothing whatever to do with the so-called or imagined gay struggle for civil liberties. To compare the experiences is an insult.
6.... And why aren't they targeting Muslims then? Were there no Muslim contributors on those contributor lists? They chose soft targets. Plus they already have a bone to pick with Christians especially Mormons who are well know for their re-programing. With Mormons, they're escalating a dispute they already have.
Do I get an A? Please, please, please, gimme an A.
I better get an A, because if I don't, I'm sooooo dropping this course.
Palin will be Palin, and various cast members will be dressed up like her, trying to impersonate her, auditioning so to speak. She'll be judging them in some fashion. None of them will be good. But then Tina Fey will come out and there will be some sort of split screen, face to face moment between the two of then, standing in awe of each other.
Then again, I don't know.
They aren't going to do anything political because a) they don't want to make her look bad, and b) they don't want to make her look good, either. It will be politically neutral and more about the surreal imitation that Fey does it. A sort of cinema verite moment.
But maybe by the time you get here, the show will have already aired, in which case, what did you think of it?
UPDATE: That was mildly amusing. Alec Baldwin got to stand next to Palin and insult her -- by accident, thinking she was Tina -- and then got to say something that's true: Sarah Palin is more attractive than Tina Fey. Did Fey deserve that? No. Palin seemed like a seasoned actor, which is nice... but disturbing. If our politicians are great actors, we have a big problem. [ADDED ON REWATCH: Did Baldwin say Palin is more attractive than Fey? He mistook Palin for Fey, then, corrected, told Palin she was more attractive in person. I think that means he believed Palin was less attractive than Fey, but now, seeing Palin in person, he acknowledges Palin's equivalent attractiveness. Or something. The disrespect to Fey that I thought was there is, technically, not.]
MORNING UPDATE: Palin reappeared in the "Weekend Update" section of the show, which I can see in the comments, many of you watched in real time. I had to turn the show off after a minute of the opening monologue. Really, I was interested in seeing Palin again, but I can't sit through that stuff. TiVo in the morning worked just fine. Palin was a good sport, sit-down dancing and smiling, while Amy Poehler did a hilarious rap routine. Poehler is heavily pregnant, but she doesn't let that slow her down at all, which is rather Palinesque. I laughed out loud when the Todd character came out and at the line "All the plumbers in the house, pull your pants up."
(By chance, I'd just turned on live TV to see Joe the Plumber on "Fox and Friends" and they razzed him in person about the one thing everyone thinks is funny about plumbers. As they put it: "Why don't plumbers wear belts?" Joe went on at some length on the topic -- defensive! The life of a plumber is tough. It's not easy, as some people seem to think.)
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