The harridan* Maureen Dowd, who for some unfathomable reason has been unable to find a man to marry her, ---I mean, who wouldn't want to cuddle up with that mug in the middle of a cold night?
...but I digress.
Ms. Dowd has distilled the choice that Amerikkka now has to make in calling either Barack Hussein or Ms. Rodham to stand against Tired Old White Male John McCain in a millennial battle for the Presidency. The choice? Which does Amerikkka want more: to be redeemed from its sinful history of racism by choosing the half-black Barack or from its sinful history of sexism by choosing the half-female Hillzilla?
God, Maureen, thanks for clearing that up. I feel so much better now.
One of the ways that I interpret progressive politics is as a secularized form of humorlessly pious Christianity. But without God and Christ to make the whole mythology work...well, it's not pretty. And Dowd is a classic example.
This post-Catholic girl --she still calls her 53-year-old avatar a girl-- sounds like nothing so much as a frustrated and crankily aging nun, moralizing on the state of the evil fallen world of sin as a way of projecting her own internal barrenness and rage.
Or perhaps just a bitter Irish spinster with a similar psyche, who didn't even have the status of a religious vocation to mask her publicly disappointed dreams from the contemptuous and pitying gaze of her married neighbors in the village of BallyNewYork.
What kind of redemption do you want? Redemption? What the hell has politics got to do with redemption? Survival, improvement, maybe...but redemption? I forget which wag pronounced that America was a strange place because all the preachers sound like politicians and all the politicians sound like preachers, but he was right.
Well, that's where many conservatives (not coterminous with Republicans, btw) part company with the caringcompassionatecommunitybuilding liberals . As Jonah Goldberg put it so well: "Conservatism... is opposition to all forms of political religion. It is a rejection of the idea that politics can be redemptive. It is the conviction that a properly ordered republic has a government of limited ambition.”
Note the structure of Dowd's question: Which Amerikkkan sin takes precedence? Here we get a glimpse of the progressive heart, its dank submersion in its pathetic narrative of oppressors and victims, seeking a redemption no one is qualified to give, from people who very unlikely ever to give it anyway, since its withholding is their prime source of power in the narrative. It is a Lent that never ends.
One of the ironies of this reactive attachment disorder is that the two iconic victims of the crimes which call for this potential redemption are both terrifically successful and terrifically wealthy. They are running for effing President! Take that, Amerikkka, and slice of Oprah to boot.
Maureen Dowd, like Scarlett O'Hara, needs something badly and often, although in her case I suspect that kissing may not be a strong enough remedy .
But who among the straight male gender has the cast iron gonads and ironclad phallus (and stomach) to take on this mission and redeem dour Sister Dowd from her miserable self?
At least Ann Coulter can make you laugh.
*Even the relentlessly fair and rationally undramatic Jonathan Rauch finds her to be one of the "villains" of journalism.
...but I digress.Ms. Dowd has distilled the choice that Amerikkka now has to make in calling either Barack Hussein or Ms. Rodham to stand against Tired Old White Male John McCain in a millennial battle for the Presidency. The choice? Which does Amerikkka want more: to be redeemed from its sinful history of racism by choosing the half-black Barack or from its sinful history of sexism by choosing the half-female Hillzilla?
God, Maureen, thanks for clearing that up. I feel so much better now.
One of the ways that I interpret progressive politics is as a secularized form of humorlessly pious Christianity. But without God and Christ to make the whole mythology work...well, it's not pretty. And Dowd is a classic example.
This post-Catholic girl --she still calls her 53-year-old avatar a girl-- sounds like nothing so much as a frustrated and crankily aging nun, moralizing on the state of the evil fallen world of sin as a way of projecting her own internal barrenness and rage.
Sister Mary MoDo of the Sorrowful Spinster
Or perhaps just a bitter Irish spinster with a similar psyche, who didn't even have the status of a religious vocation to mask her publicly disappointed dreams from the contemptuous and pitying gaze of her married neighbors in the village of BallyNewYork.
What kind of redemption do you want? Redemption? What the hell has politics got to do with redemption? Survival, improvement, maybe...but redemption? I forget which wag pronounced that America was a strange place because all the preachers sound like politicians and all the politicians sound like preachers, but he was right.
Well, that's where many conservatives (not coterminous with Republicans, btw) part company with the caringcompassionatecommunitybuilding liberals . As Jonah Goldberg put it so well: "Conservatism... is opposition to all forms of political religion. It is a rejection of the idea that politics can be redemptive. It is the conviction that a properly ordered republic has a government of limited ambition.”
Note the structure of Dowd's question: Which Amerikkkan sin takes precedence? Here we get a glimpse of the progressive heart, its dank submersion in its pathetic narrative of oppressors and victims, seeking a redemption no one is qualified to give, from people who very unlikely ever to give it anyway, since its withholding is their prime source of power in the narrative. It is a Lent that never ends.
One of the ironies of this reactive attachment disorder is that the two iconic victims of the crimes which call for this potential redemption are both terrifically successful and terrifically wealthy. They are running for effing President! Take that, Amerikkka, and slice of Oprah to boot.
Maureen Dowd, like Scarlett O'Hara, needs something badly and often, although in her case I suspect that kissing may not be a strong enough remedy .
But who among the straight male gender has the cast iron gonads and ironclad phallus (and stomach) to take on this mission and redeem dour Sister Dowd from her miserable self?
At least Ann Coulter can make you laugh.
*Even the relentlessly fair and rationally undramatic Jonathan Rauch finds her to be one of the "villains" of journalism.
1 comment:
"the progressive heart, its dank submersion in its pathetic narrative of oppressors and victims, seeking a redemption no one is qualified to give, from people who [are] very unlikely ever to give it anyway, since its withholding is their prime source of power in the narrative."
Bingo. Every time anyone proposes, for instance, reparations, my preliminary question is, OK, lets say it's agreed. Will that settle the issue? If not, if there's just more whining, what's the point?
And today being the first day of Great Lent 2008 for Eastern Orthodox, your metaphor is particularly poignant. The hostage-taking narrative you describe is "a Lent that never ends." Who would willingly submit to that? It translates as Hell.
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