I am worse than Rush Limbaugh. I don't mock people with Parkinson's from some underground lair via ham radio, but I have managed to be worse than Rush Limbaugh nonetheless.Rush's most recent attack on the Obamas (that I'm aware of - a whole day has passed since I heard about this one) involves Michelle's weight and dining preferences. Michelle Obama has made reducing obesity in America her First Lady platform, and Rush finds her activities to that end meddlesome and hypocritical. He claims they are hypocritical because "...our first lady does not project the image of women that you might see on the cover of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, or of a woman Alex Rodriguez might date ever six months or what have you." He's not alone. A conservative cartoonist has produced an uproariously funny and artistically distinguished depiction of Michelle Obama eating a giant plate of hamburgers. By all means look at it, but be warned: you'll have to read a hell of a lot of Doonesbury to feel clean again afterwards.So why am I worse than Rush Limbaugh? Rush is criticizing Michelle Obama not for being fat, but for being a hypocrite. He's wrong, and he's insulting, and he's paranoid, but he's not just making fun of someone's figure for the sake of it. I, however, have made fun of someone's figure just for the sake of it.When Rob Ford was elected mayor of Toronto, my post was graced by the following image:  Someone's Been Eating the Gravy Train Rob Ford is undeniably full-figured, and he does talk a lot about a sinister gravy train, but that doesn't mean I should have made a joke about how he's been eating said train. I knew it was cheap and unfair at the time, but I did it anyway.
So Rush Limbaugh unfairly makes fun of people for being fat hypocrites, while I apparently, make fun of people I don't like simply for being fat. I shouldn't have to resort to making cheap and unfair cracks about Rob Ford's appearance when there are so many substantive and justifiable cracks I could be making about his policies.
This week, Rush Limbaugh acted as my moral compass. Perhaps next week, Glenn Beck will teach me an important lesson about intellectual integrity.
Send the Catastrophizer your requests for advice and/or rationalizations using the form conveniently provided HERE. I will publish my responses on the THE CATASTROPHIZER page.POLITE DISCLAIMER: This site is intended for entertainment purposes only. If you are not entertained, fair enough. Also, I'm not very good at copy-editing, so if something looks wrong, it was put there by accident.
Sarah Palin is a more than a talking hairstyle: she is an unendurably stupid talking hairstyle. However, she and the others on the right who do things like give free guns to babies and deny sweet-tempered grandmothers health insurance should not distract us from the fact that there are also crazy-talking coiffures on the left. I might slightly prefer the cuts of their crazy jibs (a stylish coiffure would never be caught dead without a jib), but that doesn't mean the jibs aren't still crazy.
Last week, Sarah Palin was burbling on about blood libel. This week, Rep. Steve Cohen a Democrat from Tennessee, said the following nutty thing on the House floor about health-care reform: "They [Republicans] say it's a government takeover of health care, a big lie just like Goebbels." He followed that gem up with:
"The Germans said enough about the Jews and the people believed it and you had the Holocaust."
I would like nothing better than to be self-righteous. I feel I could be that exceedingly well, and with conviction. But it's very difficult to work up a real lather of complacent self-congratulation and sorrowful reproachfulness when it's not just the people whose politics you dislike who are rushing about comparing their opponents to Nazis. The Republicans have a simultaneously terrifyingly effective and rudimentary propaganda machine ("This health-care plan will kill old people and take your guns away. Are you in favour of killing old people and having your guns taken away?"), but it doesn't seem necessary to call it Goebbelsian. Or to suggest that if people believe what the Republicans are saying about health-care reform, we're in for some kind of Holocaust.
Are there really people out there who hear such analogies and think: "My God! The Republicans/Democrats are exactly like the Nazis! And the suffering of the Democrats/Republicans is indeed comparable to that of the Jews! In the next election, I'll be voting for Sarah Palin/Alec Baldwin"? And if there are, could they make a point of belonging only to one political party so that I could choose to support the other one and dedicate more time to feeling monstrously smug?
Send the Catastrophizer your requests for advice and/or rationalizations using the form conveniently provided HERE. I will publish my responses on the THE CATASTROPHIZER page.POLITE DISCLAIMER: This site is intended for entertainment purposes only. If you are not entertained, fair enough. Also, I'm not very good at copy-editing, so if something looks wrong, it was put there by accident.
Toxic and inflammatory right-wing rhetoric may not be directly responsible for mass murder, but that doesn't mean it's not toxic and inflammatory. Or resilient and resourceful. Today, Sarah Palin added to the already impressively offensive conservative lexicon with her use of the phrase "blood libel." "Blood libel", writes The New York Times, is "generally used to mean the false accusation that Jews murder Christian children to use their blood in religious rituals, in particular the baking of matzos for passover. That false claim was circulated for centuries to incite anti-Semitism and justify violent pogroms against Jews." Sarah Palin, courageously aligning herself with the Jews, referred to the claims that she is in some manner responsible for the carnage in Tuscon as "blood libel" in a message posted today on her Facebook page.This is a very exciting idiomatic development, because for too long parties on both side have been relying on the generous and seemingly random use of "Hitler" as a political slur. George W. Bush was Hitler. Obama is Hitler. Now Palin is expanding and improving upon the WWII analogy by throwing the suffering of the Jews into the mix.It was certainly unpleasant and distasteful when pundits on both sides (there are only two sides) responded to the tragedy by excitedly finger-pointing, but responding to some of the more hysterical accusations of some left-wing commentators by claiming kinship with the Jews is also unpleasant and distasteful (it would be even if Representative Gabrielle Giffords didn't happen to be Jewish). But my primary objection to her use of the phrase involves her choice of forum. Facebook? Isn't it possible there's a more symbolic, more creative, more "no matter how reasonable David Brooks and other moderate Republicans might be, don't forget about all those loons" way to get one's point across?Enter the Palmetto State Armory, which is, according to (inevitably) The Huffington Post, releasing a limited edition line of AR-15 assault rifles with the words "you lie" engraved on the lower receivers. "You lie" was what Rep. Joe Wilson (R - S.C.) yelled during an Obama health-care reform speech (when the President claimed the new legislation wouldn't provide illegal immigrants with medical care).If this weapons manufacturer can honour Joe Wilson, could another weapons manufacturer not seize this exciting opportunity to honour Sarah Palin? I think "Especially within hours of a tragedy unfolding, journalists and pundits should not manufacture a blood libel that serves only to incite the very hatred and violence that they purport to condemn. That is reprehensible" would look just dandy on an assault rifle.
Send the Catastrophizer your requests for advice and/or rationalizations using the form conveniently provided HERE. I will publish my responses on the THE CATASTROPHIZER page.POLITE DISCLAIMER: This site is intended for entertainment purposes only. If you are not entertained, fair enough. Also, I'm not very good at copy-editing, so if something looks wrong, it was put there by accident.
The Wikileaks controversy makes me frustrated, then tired, then sad, then disillusioned, then hungry, and finally, sleepy. Oh, and also full of hate. For whom or what do I feel this hate? Here is my hateful list:
1) Conservative loons. O'Reilly's calling for Julian Assange to be executed; Palin wants him to be executed, then dismembered; Beck wants him to be transformed into a tiny puppet for use on his show. According to the booming right-wing patriotic voices of hate, Assange is the worst thing to happen to modern civilization since last week (when probably Obama did something that was really awful).
2) Liberal loons. They love this. They get to go on about democracy and citizen's rights and transparency, all the while positively quivering with self-righteous intensity. They refuse to acknowledge that a state should be permitted, under any circumstances, to not tell its people that it secretly thinks Canada's a sissy or France is badly dressed. And I'm not minimizing the significance of the Wikileaks revelations for the sake of questionable funniness: from what I can tell, these documents either reveal things that have already been revealed or do things like make fun of Angela Merkel's haircuts. It's like hundreds of tween diaries have suddenly been released upon the world.
3) Julian Assange. First of all, he's creepy. He looks kind of like a malignant albino otter. Also, he appears to be a bit of a hypocrite. He demanded news organizations sign confidentiality agreements before giving them access to the documents. Which means he concedes that in some circumstances secrecy is advisable. And in a recent interview, he got up and walked out because the interviewer refused to steer clear of certain subjects (she asked whether he thought the sex assault charges laid against him in Sweden were politically motivated, which would seem to be a not unsympathetic question). Which means that he is willing to champion transparency as long as it doesn't apply to him.
4) Me. I can never seem to be self-assuredly principled. I believe that people should be entitled to know things and that sometimes people should be allowed to conceal things. I hate smug idealists and I hate smug self-professed pragmatists. I'm trying to rustle up the energy to imagine myself an enlightened moderate, but who likes enlightened moderates? Not I.
Send the Catastrophizer your requests for advice and/or rationalizations using the form conveniently provided HERE. I will publish my responses on the THE CATASTROPHIZER page.
POLITE DISCLAIMER: This site is intended for entertainment purposes only. If you are not entertained, fair enough. Also, I'm not very good at copy-editing, so if something looks wrong, it was put there by accident.
Errol Morris, the director of superb documentary films who has on more than one occasion invited deluded, unpleasant, and/or simply odd individuals to reveal themselves as deluded, unpleasant, and/or simply odd in front of a camera, writes a series of articles for The New York Times. I think he's a show-off.
In "The Anosognosic's Dilemma: Something's Wring But You'll Never Know What It Is", Morris writes about the Dunning-Kruger Effect, which describes the effect created when "our incompetence masks our ability to recognize our incompetence." David Dunning, a professor of social psychology at Cornell, explains his theory by way of a man who is undoubtedly an intellectual touchstone for all Cornell professors: Donald Rumsfeld.
"Donald Rumsfeld gave this speech about 'unknown unknowns.' It goes something like this: 'There are things we know we know about terrorism. There are things we know we don't know. And there are things that are unknown unknowns. We don't know that we don't know.' He got a lot of grief for that. And I thought, 'That's the smartest and most modest thing I've heard in a year.'"Stupid people are unaware that there is a very important unknown they don't know, namely, that they are stupid. A hallmark of intelligence, says Dunning, is "knowing that there are things you don't know that you don't know."How should all of this be incorporated into the haunted thoughts of a catastrophizer? If an intelligent person knows there are things he might never realize he doesn't know, then a catastrophizer should be actively obsessed with the fact that there are things, probably really important things, that he will never know he doesn't know and that maybe he'll never know them because, let's be honest, he's actually pretty stupid. Send the Catastrophizer your requests for advice and/or rationalizations using the form conveniently provided HERE. I will publish my responses on the THE CATASTROPHIZER page.
POLITE DISCLAIMER: This site is intended for entertainment purposes only. If you are not entertained, fair enough. Also, I'm not very good at copy-editing, so if something looks wrong, it was put there by accident.
It's been a difficult couple of days for me. Which is not surprising as most groupings of days are trying in some way or another.
This week, though, my disillusionment has come from a totally unexpected source: PBS. I love PBS. PBS makes me feel like an elderly ex-Brit who once studied political science (although it's true that Goldie of 1980s Buffalo PBS fundraising fame once made me feel like a homicidal elderly ex-Brit who once studied political science). I would like Jim Leher to be my uncle.
Now, though, PBS has been unexpectedly a) irresponsible, or b) cravenly fearful. Anderson Cooper's new segment The RidicuList (clearly grounded in the same journalistic integrity that inspired his reporting from war-torn nations and the sites of natural disasters) reveals that PBS "edited" Tina Fey's acceptance speech at the Kennedy Center when she received the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor (or was it the Yahoo Serious Yuk-Yuk Super Prize extravaganza at the Newark IHOP? So hard to keep things straight).
So PBS made it seem like Tina Fey was being quite gracious about Sarah Palin and upstanding Republican ladies, when in fact she was being devastatingly critical of such ladies. Now, I also love Tina Fey, which is not altogether surprising as I am also a bespectacled young lady who looks a bit like a badger and is passionately fond of cheese and Star Wars. I lack only her talent and charm. So it's kind of like my Doris Kearns Goodwin-dating uncle told my better self to shut up for questioning the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy.
Shame on you, PBS! What's next - NPR only letting you think that all things are being considered?
Send the Catastrophizer your requests for advice and/or rationalizations using the form conveniently provided HERE. I will publish my responses on the THE CATASTROPHIZER page.
POLITE DISCLAIMER: This site is intended for entertainment purposes only. If you are not entertained, fair enough. Also, I'm not very good at copy-editing, so if something looks wrong, it was put there by accident.
I've always had a soft spot for Keith Olberman, despite the fact that he's both cantankerous and self-righteous about being cantankerous. Perhaps it's because I've always admired former sportscasters (where have you gone, equally smarmy Craig Kilborn?!). Perhaps because it's nice for left-wingers to have access to a bright blowhard who's not Michael Moore.
Pardon me while I engage in a tangent that will in the next paragraph (or so) prove to be brilliantly, commendably relevant. It was an established fact of my youth that on a regular basis, three-foot tall, spotty boys would give reasonably attractive girls a complex about not being hot enough. It's just how things were done. In today's world (after using that phrase, it will come as no surprise that I'm busily planning a sixteen-part series about how Facebook may be bringing us closer together virtually, but is in "reality" driving us farther apart), young girls, having seen boys with abdominal muscles in unfairly fanciful films, are beginning to subject their grade nine beaux to a similar kind of scrutiny.
Part of me thinks that's wonderful and hilarious. And part of me, the better and less likable part, thinks that all this means is that more men will learn to be more insecure at a younger age and then grow up to be worse husbands to their tragically insecure wives.
And now for the brilliant tie-in, the moment I relate Keith Olberman to teen dating without leaving myself open to charges of libel. Olberman, although he has spoken out against conflicts of interest and other people being biased and stuff, was recently suspended for contravening NBC rules by donating money to three Democratic candidates for Congress. Liberals everywhere rallied to his defense. "FOX is worse!" they cried. "But it's different when someone I agree with!" they exclaimed. I absolutely agree that Olberman is an individual and not a news organization and that he doesn't in any way or at any time claim to be fair and balanced. I agree that Fox is worse, and that's not just because I suspect all the women on the network are Christian hooker robots. But just because Fox news is REALLY bad doesn't mean that a liberal should get to be kind of bad without being criticized for it by other liberals.
Just to make sure my analogy has been understood: teenage boys (the mean and judgmental ones) = Bill O'Reilly; insecure teenage girls from twenty years ago = painfully upstanding and morally correct liberals; mean and judgmental girls of today = Keith Olberman. There. Analogies can be convoluted things. Mine might have been convoluted, but at least it also had the virtue of being protracted. You're welcome.
Send the Catastrophizer your requests for advice and/or rationalizations using the form conveniently provided HERE. I will publish my responses on the THE CATASTROPHIZER page.
POLITE DISCLAIMER: This site is intended for entertainment purposes only. If you are not entertained, fair enough. Also, I'm not very good at copy-editing, so if something looks wrong, it was put there by accident.
Yes, it's true. There's blood in the water. Democratic dolphin blood. That's irresistibly drawing Republican sharks. While minnows (young people) and stingrays (independents) leave the dolphins undefended because they're too busy being disillusioned and unemployed. Or something.Although I feel my analogy was apt, consistent, and unforced, I am going to set it aside for now. As most Americans have set aside the dreams of the Democratic party.I am thrilled that Americans have rediscovered Republicans and embraced diversity by electing an orange man to the House, but my joy is muted. Many of my favourite candidates were unaccountably passed over. Christine O'Donnell (anti-masturbation, "I was a witch"). Sharron Angle ("Don't I look Asian?"). Carl Paladino ("My eyes only fully open when I see a woman having sex with a horse"). Most distressingly, Rich Iott of Ohio failed to win election to Congress. This despite the fact that for years, he proved how much he loves politics, history, and costumes by participating in a Nazi re-enactment group. He very plausibly claimed to belong to this group because of his love for politics, history, and costumes, and because he was looking for a way to bond with his teenage son. Makes sense. My father and I used to regularly reenact Ukraine's Holodomor in an attempt to appreciate one another more. Rich Iott's courageous example, though, has not been in vain. An exciting news story out of Campbellford, Ontario proves that the Iott approach to historical re-enactment has caught fire north of the border. At the Campbellford Royal Canadian Legion's recent Halloween party, two unidentified men won the prize for best costume for a delightfully cheeky - and educational - joint get-up: one man appeared in full KKK regalia leading his friend, in black-face (inevitably) around by a noose. I don't know whether to laugh knowingly or be informed!I can only conclude that they identified Halloween as a teachable moment par excellence. That they, like Rich Iott, believe history must continue to live in order to bequeath its lessons. You never know - maybe those two men were also father and son and they found the perfect way to turn bonding into bondage.
Send the Catastrophizer your requests for advice and/or rationalizations using the form conveniently provided HERE. I will publish my responses on the THE CATASTROPHIZER page.
POLITE DISCLAIMER: This site is intended for entertainment purposes only. If you are not entertained, fair enough. Also, I'm not very good at copy-editing, so if something looks wrong, it was put there by accident.
Christine O'Donnell (Repubican candidate for Senate in Delaware) is an inspiration. To me, and, if you are right-minded and/or a Satan-worshipper, perhaps to you too.
First she admitted on Bill Maher some time in the 90s that she dabbled in black magic when she was in high school. Her defenders defended this revelation in the following manner: "Who DIDN'T do something wacky in high school?" I know I regularly attempted to induce malign forces to manifest themselves in my friend's wood-paneled basement.
Then she made the claim that a married masturbator is adulterous because he or she can't do it without lusting after someone to whom he or she is not married. Or something. She didn't believe this when she was worshipping the Evil One on altars and such, which means that while she was maybe a bit sketchy then, she was at least more fun. I suppose that's what's often said about Satan. Which is why I totally revile her early fun-ness and embrace her self-abnegating grown-up self.
But I don't just like her because she's a once-devil-loving masturbator-hater. She's also living proof that it's way easier to be an expert than you might have thought.
In a recent debate with her Democratic opponent, Chris Coons, O'Donnell indicated she couldn't remember what the Fourteenth and Sixteenth Amendments to the Constitution were all about and MAY have revealed she wasn't all the sure what's in the First.
Ignorance is never worrisome, but it's especially un-worrisome in this context because O'Donnell has already proved she's a constitutional scholar. She's mentioned on a number of occasions that she received a "graduate fellowship" in Constitutional Government from the Claremont Institute.
Would you like one also? Not as difficult as you might think! Turns out the Claremont Institute is a right-wing think-tank, the graduate fellowship is not, strictly speaking, a graduate fellowship, and the whole thing lasted exactly one week.
This has filled me with hope. I've always wanted to be a cardiac surgeon. Now, thanks to the folks at the Cavy Institute, I have a fellowship in Cardiac Surgery Preparedness. The fact that the Cavy Institute was founded by Benson and Stabler, my guinea pigs, does not in any way call this honour into question, as they are completely dedicated to the Life of the Mind. Send the Catastrophizer your requests for advice and/or rationalizations using the form conveniently provided HERE. I will publish my responses on the THE CATASTROPHIZER page.
POLITE DISCLAIMER: This site is intended for entertainment purposes only. If you are not entertained, fair enough. Also, I'm not very good at copy-editing, so if something looks wrong, it was put there by accident.
Hurray for Jim DeMint! The courageously outspoken senator from South Carolina has enriched the national discourse yet again by reminding us of his courageous outspokenness of six years ago.
What kind of statement does not grow stale with age? Why, the one that expresses the sentiment that gays should not be allowed to be teachers, of course.A number of years ago, DeMint said just that, and he was viciously criticized by homemade-seitan-loving, Islamic-extremist-supporting Democrats (we all know that Republicans hate gays, Democrats love them, and libertarians don't mind them as long as they're not taking up room in their underground bunkers). Now he's revealed that while most people, cowed by the prospect of retaliation from vicious hippie types, remained silent after he was taken to task for his unabashed truth-telling, hordes of the secretly brave-minded came to him privately to let him know that he was not alone. As a result, his marvelous axioms are once again before the public eye.Only one thing interferes with my enjoyment of the first of DeMint's unassailable claims: it's become a bit...old. Passe. Familiar. What conservative radio host DOESN'T think that all homosexuals should be kept away from all children?Jim DeMint, though, is not one to rest on the homophobic laurels of other boosters of straight male Boy Scout leaders. No, he's far more daring. Free-thinking. He hunts moral conclusions to the murky swamps in which they tend to hide. He doesn't just think gays should be kept out of America's flourishing educational system; he believes children should also be protected from the damaging math and English lessons of "single", straight, pregnant women who are living with common-law spouses. Bravo, Mr. DeMint! The morality of the young is under attack not simply from teaching-obsessed homosexuals; it's also besieged by the free-loving lifestyles of teaching-fixated women who fail to use contraception.My only quibble with DeMint is that his argument doesn't go far enough. What about the men who've impregnated the pregnant women and insist on living with them without making them honest? What about the people who are ill-advisedly friends with either gay teachers or pregnant, unmarried teachers? The more I think about it, the more I think no one is sinless enough to teach our children. And this has a bright side: with no teachers and no schools, there'll be far less of a chance that kids will be forced to learn about evolution. Send the Catastrophizer your requests for advice and/or rationalizations using the form conveniently provided HERE. I will publish my responses on the THE CATASTROPHIZER page.
POLITE DISCLAIMER: This site is intended for entertainment purposes only. If you are not entertained, fair enough. Also, I'm not very good at copy-editing, so if something looks wrong, it was put there by accident.
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