Tu Quoque Alert: Fervid, Febrile Foley Edition; Subsections D. Brooks, A. Althouse
It's interesting to see what it takes to ignite outright partisan craziness in people. Alicublog has this brief round-up of some of the Mark II attempts to make the Foley scandal all about the Democrats.
Incidentally, several species of this strategy are being deployed right now, the most nauseating being the efforts to convince people that the important question here is whether the Dems released the story for political gain. Ah, the moronic ad hominem--staple of American politics in general, and Rove-publican politics in particular... But never mind that one for a sec.
Those tactics are the most nauseating...but for sheer desperate hilarity they can't compare to Brooks and Althouse on The Vagina Monologues. Go, go, go ye to Alicublog and look upon the face of cosmic stupidity...but beware...it is not for the faint of heart...
If I ever, ever, EVER write anything that stupid, I sincerely hope that somebody will whack me upside the head.
Remember: the just ordinarily stupid things I write don't count.
It's interesting to see what it takes to ignite outright partisan craziness in people. Alicublog has this brief round-up of some of the Mark II attempts to make the Foley scandal all about the Democrats.
Incidentally, several species of this strategy are being deployed right now, the most nauseating being the efforts to convince people that the important question here is whether the Dems released the story for political gain. Ah, the moronic ad hominem--staple of American politics in general, and Rove-publican politics in particular... But never mind that one for a sec.
Those tactics are the most nauseating...but for sheer desperate hilarity they can't compare to Brooks and Althouse on The Vagina Monologues. Go, go, go ye to Alicublog and look upon the face of cosmic stupidity...but beware...it is not for the faint of heart...
If I ever, ever, EVER write anything that stupid, I sincerely hope that somebody will whack me upside the head.
Remember: the just ordinarily stupid things I write don't count.
posted by Winston Smith at
11:26 AM
20 Comments:
... and from the Department of Black is White and Night is Day:
Foley=Democrat
WS, I think you ended up in a re-re-blogging here. I meself am not impressed with Ms. Althouse's echo of David Brooks' column.
Since none of us seem to be NYT-premium members, I suppose we may never know what David Brooks hisself actually wrote.
If we may get to what seems to be his point, is The Vagina Monologues' account of the seduction of a 13-year-old objectionable? Are we OK with that in the name of art? And since the play's foundation seems to be more of content than form, are we OK with what Brooks perceived as audience approval?
>cricket break<
Since an attempt to smack me down is usually made within the hour regardless of subject, I guess this exquisite silence means we're OK with all that.
Or else y'all are more afraid of each other than you are of li'l old pussycat me. Which you should be.
Thanks for the sophistry and misdirection, Jim. My compliments.
So, are you OK with all that?
Like Jim, I'm rather confused here.
I've never seen The Vagina Monologues, so I can't, in good consciouness, comment on them. However, I'm a big fan of Macbeth, and, according to what I'm reading, this would imply that I approve of murder, correct?
Well, that's certainly silly. Just because I love the play doesn't mean I approve of the characters' actions.
A lot of art (Whether it be books, music, plays, movies, paintings, etc.) portrays material that could be considered objectionable. People enjoy it anyway, and just because they enjoy it does not mean that they approve of those actions/situations/whatever in real life.
That is part of the power and beauty of art. Being able to experince fantasy situations vicariously by watching a play was a major point to ancient Greek plays. (It's also where we get the term "catharsis" from. One experienced katharsis, or a cleansing/purification, by watching a play performed.)
Trying to compare the Foley scandal with The Vagina Monologues seems to be nothing more than a Red Herring.
Like Jim, I'm rather confused here.
I've never seen The Vagina Monologues, so I can't, in good consciouness, comment on them. However, I'm a big fan of Macbeth, and, according to what I'm reading, this would imply that I approve of murder, correct?
Well, that's certainly silly. Just because I love the play doesn't mean I approve of the characters' actions.
A lot of art (Whether it be books, music, plays, movies, paintings, etc.) portrays material that could be considered objectionable. People enjoy it anyway, and just because they enjoy it does not mean that they approve of those actions/situations/whatever in real life.
That is part of the power and beauty of art. Being able to experince fantasy situations vicariously by watching a play was a major point to ancient Greek plays. (It's also where we get the term "catharsis" from. One experienced katharsis, or a cleansing/purification, by watching a play performed.)
Trying to compare the Foley scandal with The Vagina Monologues seems to be nothing more than a Red Herring.
Well, thanks for that, Jim. I also thought I came on too strong. I do think Brooks' point as political argument is a stretch. As a moral/social one, not so much.
What I did want to tease out is if there's genuine moral outrage at the Foley affair, or just more partisanship, which I can do without---it is what it is.
If Hastert sat on his hands when he shouldn't have, he must pay.
But so too if the Demos had morally outrageous info and sat on it until the election.
Brooks' point was not the content of a piece as art per se, but the audience's apparent approval of it, sort of like cheering for Humbert Humbert.
That is disturbing to me. Just wanted to see if anyone else might find it disturbing as well.
Eh, I dunno, I find I have a fairly easy time pulling for fictional characters doing reprehensible things. Reading Crime and Punishment, part of me totally wants Raskolnikov to get away with it; perhaps more to the point, in Demons, even knowing Stovrogin has committed an atrocious crime, I find him very sympathetic. This is a different matter, perhaps, from "cheering on" fictional malefactors in their evil deeds, but it seems to me that even there, most audiences get a sadistic thrill out of e.g. watching Darth Vader choke that dude in Star Wars.
Or take the various great mob and crime films -- when Michael Corleone orchestrates the purge that's cross-cut with the baptism at the end of the Godfather, my response is... not exactly approving, but I appreciate the aesthetics of the thing quite a lot. Revenge fantasies (Count of Monte Christo, Titus Andronicus) count similarly -- we root for the hero/antihero, even when the tortures he's inflicting on the initial malefactors are by any sane measure disproportionate.
I'm not sure this completely addresses the point, though, for two reasons. First, child-rape might just be different from most other forms of dramatized wrongdoing, such that empathizing with or approving of such child-rapists is intrinsically more disturbing or worse than similar feelings directed at e.g. murderers. Second, I seem to recall that parts of the Vagina Monologues were based on real stories, and if this bit is derived from a real-world event, and audiences are aware of this fact, this definitely complicates matters -- though in terms of the human response, I'm not sure the factual status of a story matters as much as the format of its presentation (that is, it's not clear to me how exactly we'd respond differently to, say, a first-person novel about a Nazi camp guard and the first-person journal of an actual Nazi camp guard).
We'll see.
(As with all MSM material, one must read between the lines.)
My personal inclination is toward that nobody, left or right, wanted to be seen as persecuting a a gay man.
'fraid you got whupped pretty good on this one, Tom...
I posted the WaPo article as an indication there's maybe more to this, no more, no less. Anyone who makes up his mind on an issue based on the 24/7 MSM newscycle is not trying hard enough.
Mebbe Jim is 100% right, but after going around for months with you on Plamegate, WS, I'll just wait and see if there's another shoe left to drop.
Richard Armitage, huh? Who knew?
(So, are you OK with that Vagina Monologues/Humbert Humbert thing?)
"Brooks' point was not the content of a piece as art per se, but the audience's apparent approval of it, sort of like cheering for Humbert Humbert."
What, precisicely, was the audience cheering - the adult woman coming on to an underage girl, or the girl empowering herself? There's a difference. As I stated before, I've never seen the play, so I can't be sure what exactly was going on.
"My personal inclination is toward that nobody, left or right, wanted to be seen as persecuting a a gay man."
Oh, please. The right has never had a problem with persecuting gays. I know that from personal experience.
I disagree. I know a lot of people on the right. Some of them are gay.
The right has (more than) its share of cementheads, but this is far too broad a brush. Even if they're the monsters you make them out to be, political prudence would prohibit them persecuting gays.
To the other matter, even with your most "innocent" interpretation, if you think a 13-year-old "empowers" herself by responding to the sexual predations of an adult, then we have a fundamental disagreement about what is what. Out of respect for your honesty, Pia, I'll skip the moralizing speech part, but I think you're on the wrong track with that.
Tom writes:
"So, are you OK with that Vagina Monologues/Humbert Humbert thing?"
Hey Tom -- when did you stop beating your wife?
-mac
I do not think that people on the right are monsters, and I'm sorry if I implied that in my previous comment. I certainly didn't mean for it to come off that way.
No, they're not rounding us up and burning us at the stake, but the right (in general) certainly don't want to be our friends either.
I've seen numerous prominent people on the right equate homosexuality with pedophilia and bestiality. The right frequently blocks legislature designed to protect GLBT people. They portray us and our Homosexual Agenda (Which I have not seen yet. My copy must have gotten lost in the mail after I signed up for my toaster oven...) as a threat to children, families, and society. In fact, protecting families and traditional values (i.e. promoting a constitutional ammendment that would make same-sex marriage illegal and other anti-GLBT legislation) seems to be a major theme in right wing political platforms.
The claim that Republicans didn't do anything about Foley because they were afraid of being seen as gay-bashing, as Newt Gingrich and others have stated, is preposterous.
I think that Jon Stewart said it best when he pointed out that equating a 50-something-year-old man who preys on 16 year-olds with gays is probably why the Republican party gets accused of gay-bashing in the first place.
As I have stated twice (three times if you count my inadvertant double-post), I have never seen The Vagina Monologues, and, hence, cannot make an accurate assessment as to what that segment of the play contained or what exactly the audience was reacting to. I was hypothesizing another interpretation. That's all. I wasn't trying to imply that I think a 13 year-old having sex with an adult is a good thing (because I certainly don't).
Well, according to Brooks and Althouse, many in the audience did. That was the point, along with suspecting the sincerity of the moral outrage over the Foley affair.
This is a really bizarre debate.
I adore _Romeo and Juliet_...and I can't help but root, every time I read it, for them to get together.
Juliet's 13 as I recall... So, do I lose my standing to condemn Foley?
Just wonderin'
I meself followed the link from Alicublog to the original source. I haven't seen an indication anyone else did. I wasn't satisfied with his representation of the original argumnents, and as it turns out, for good reason.
I apologize for taking this discussion seriously. Someday I'll learn it's not about that. It's a Charlie Brown and the football thing, but I hope my detractor the psuedonymous Dark Avenger sees why I don't post much in the way of links anymore. If someone is seeking truth, they'll follow the roadsigns on their own. If they're not sincere, then no amount of linkage will make any damn difference.
They don't follow your roadsigns, WS, so why should I bother with all that a href=" crap? It's a waste of time.
No, it's not Romeo and Juliet, it's Lolita, if your moral outrage is genuine. Which I have come to doubt.
The point is, Tom, that it's *fiction*...something that we in the reality-based community like to distinguish from *fact*.
Besides, Romeo is represented as being notably older...he'd have to be at least 17 to put that kind of hurtin' on that sonofabitch Tybalt.
So we're still talking statutory rape here.
Thanks for the drive-by, TVD, picking me out of a host of others who post under a pseudonym and have the gall to disagree with your wisdom here.
As for your posting links here, that's up to you. I've posting links to falsify statements you've made, and will do so in the future whenever you provide the chance, as with your absurd statement about Coulter a few months ago which I blew to smithereens with a quote from her post-9/11 essay that got her kicked out of the NRO site.
I am glad you didn't link to Powerlineblog in this thread, as my welders' goggles are still in the dishwasher ):>
As for Lolita, I've never read the whole thing through, but Mother Avenger did, and what she said about it was interesting.
She said that reading it, she realized how much HH was in love with Lolita to the point where it was heart-breaking, but she stood firm that what HH did was wrong.
Question:
If I applaude a performance of Tamerlane, does that mean I support Mongol tyranny?
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