Category Archives: 11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts

Ignoring The Shy Nerdy Girls

From Male Nerds Think They’re Victims Because They Have No Clue What Female Nerds Go Through:

“Science is a way that shy, nerdy men pull themselves out of the horror of their teenage years. That is true. That is so. But shy, nerdy women have to try to pull themselves out of that same horror into a world that hates, fears and resents them because they are women, and to a certain otherwise very intelligent sub-set of nerdy men, the category “woman” is defined primarily as “person who might or might not deny me sex, love and affection.”

“(And you ask me, where were those girls when you were growing up? And I answer: we were terrified, just like you, and ashamed, just like you, and waiting for someone to take pity on our lonely abject pubescence, hungry to be touched. But you did not see us there. We were told repeatedly, we ugly, shy nerdy girls, that we were not even worthy of the category “woman.” It wasn’t just that we were too shy to approach anyone, although we were; it was that we knew if we did we’d be called crazy. And if we actually got the sex we craved? (because some boys who were too proud to be seen with us in public were happy to fuck us in private and brag about it later) … then we would be sluts, even more pitiable and abject. Aaronson was taught to fear being a creep and an objectifier if he asked; I was taught to fear being a whore or a loser if I answered, never mind asked myself. Sex isn’t an achievement for a young girl. It’s something we’re supposed to embody so other people can consume us, and if we fail at that, what are we even for?)”

Full article http://www.newrepublic.com/article/120653/nerd-entitlement-lets-men-ignore-racism-and-sexism

Quote referenced here.

 

Malignant Revolutionary Entity

“These folks aren’t in the business of doing Wall Street’s bidding. They’re in the business of bringing the system down to create their own new order, no different from a Maoist or Leninist revolutionary on the other side of the aisle. It’s a market fundamentalist cult. They are a sizable and growing minority of the Republican caucus, and the ones who don’t toe their line are terrified their heads will be the next to fall before the Tea Party guillotine. Digby wondered earlier whether the Tea Party were more political construct or real grassroots movement. I guess the best answer is that it doesn’t really matter. The Tea Party has always been fear-based mobilization of the ignorant on whatever issue Rove, DeMint, Limbaugh, the Kochs, etc. wanted it to be about. It doesn’t have to be grassroots movement for rank and file Republicans to fear a primary challenge if they step at all out of line. As much as there has been “good cop, bad cop” bipartisanship played over austerity (and there has been), there can be no doubt that the GOP is transforming from a corporatist entity slowly hollowing out America’s middle class, to a truly malignant revolutionary entity. Meanwhile, the pundit class continues to whistle past the graveyard and act as though this is all partisan politics as usual. One would think that David Brooks and George Will would know enough history to realize that when revolution hits, people like them are usually the first ones to be culled, both politically and physically.”

From Hullabaloo.

The GOP Can’t Control the Tea Party

“the gop made the same mistake that some on the left did in their perception of the tea party – they thought it was a top down, cynical manipulation of people, similar to what the gop has accomplished with the evangelical vote – a demographic that could be farmed for votes without having to deliver all that much of anything, whose elected leaders could be taken in hand when they got to washington and taught the real rules of the game … no, it’s a real grassroots movement with real dedicated leaders who actually MEAN it – and they’ve brought our government to a grinding halt – and the gop can’t control them … the republicans are splitting – if they go for a reasonable compromise, they lose the tea party – if they go for the tea party’s line, they lose wall street and much of main street’s business community … obama may have set them up beautifully – but the problem is that now we have an ungovernable country until 2012 and maybe after”

Commenter on MetaFilter

The American Death Star

“When you laugh at Michele Bachmann for going on MSNBC and blurting out that the moon is made of red communist cheese, these people don’t learn that she is wrong. What they learn is that you’re a dick, that they hate you more than ever, and that they’re even more determined now to support anyone who promises not to laugh at their own visions and fantasies. …  Michele Bachmann has found the flaw in the American Death Star. She is a television camera’s dream, a threat to do or say something insane at any time, the ultimate reality-show protagonist. She has brilliantly piloted a media system that is incapable of averting its eyes from a story, riding that attention to an easy conquest of an overeducated cultural elite from both parties that is far too full of itself to understand the price of its contemptuous laughter. All of those people out there aren’t voting for Michele Bachmann. They’re voting against us. And to them, it turns out, we suck enough to make anyone a contender.”

Matt Taibbi, Michele Bachmann’s Holy War, Rolling Stone

Very Simple Puzzle Pieces

“There’s something a lot more sinister in this trend. It goes something like this:

  • It’s too expensive to hire Americans locally to do grunt work, because they’re all too proud, and want to improve their lot, so they all get college degrees. And, hiring people with college degrees still comes at a premium.
  • We can outsource, or import uneducated immigrants, but those options have downsides.
  • Hey, why don’t we wage a campaign to start convincing Americans that they shouldn’t go to college at all? Then, we can get even closer to our ideal of a permanent underclass, who we can hire cheaply and locally, by taking people who would have been expensive to hire, and making them cheaper in the long run. It’ll take a while to get there, but we’re good at playing the long game.

Anyone notice how it’s all rich captains of industry who are poo-pooing higher education? You know, the same ones who imploded the economy and are blocking all manner of job recovery by insisting that the deficit is the biggest problem, rather than unemployment? It all fits together like very simple puzzle pieces.”

Commenter on MetaFilter

Autism’s False Prophets

“McCarthy trumped science with personal anecdote. (“My science is Evan, and he’s at home. That’s my science.”) Had any of these tele vision hosts chosen to have autism experts on their show, these experts would have had to argue against a mother’s personal, emotional story with statistics showing she was wrong—a nearly impossible task. The closest any of these shows came to including an expert was when Oprah Winfrey read a statement provided by the CDC. Unfortunately, the CDC—represented as a faceless, distant organization, not a caring person—didn’t stand a chance. ”

Autism’s False Prophets, found via a comment on the Oprah finally

 

Chris Hedges: It’s the Educated vs the Idiots

Chris Heges on Alternet:

The most essential skill in political theater and the consumer culture is artifice. Those who are best at artifice succeed. Those who have not mastered the art of artifice fail. In an age of images and entertainment, in an age of instant emotional gratification, we do not seek or want honesty. We ask to be indulged and entertained by cliches, stereotypes and mythic narratives that tell us we can be whomever we want to be, that we live in the greatest country on Earth, that we are endowed with superior moral and physical qualities and that our glorious future is preordained, either because of our attributes as Americans or because we are blessed by God or both. As we descend into a devastating economic crisis, one that Barack Obama cannot halt, there will be tens of millions of Americans who will be ruthlessly thrust aside. As their houses are foreclosed, as their jobs are lost, as they are forced to declare bankruptcy and watch their communities collapse, they will retreat even further into irrational fantasy. They will be led toward glittering and self-destructive illusions by our modern Pied Pipers–our corporate advertisers, our charlatan preachers, our television news celebrities, our self-help gurus, our entertainment industry and our political demagogues — who will offer increasingly absurd forms of escapism.

Forget Red vs. Blue — It’s the Educated vs. People Easily Fooled by Propaganda

Rand Paul Won’t Say How Old the Earth Is

Paul, a Presbyterian layman, campaigned at a Christian Home Educators of Kentucky convention where he was peppered with questions about his religious beliefs, brushing aside one about the age of the earth that he later described as ridiculous. “I’m not running for minister,” Paul said later. “I’m more than willing to stand up and say I’m a Christian, but I don’t think I have to go into every detail of what my religious beliefs are. If I were going to be the minister of their church, they’d have a right to ask me that.”

And if you were going to be making legislative decisions based on your beliefs that might also be important.

Jackass.

Andrew Willis of Elizabethtown, who teaches his four children at home, said he hoped Paul’s answer would jibe with his own belief that the earth is about 6,000 years old. “I’m not at all surprised that he didn’t want to answer that question,” Willis said shortly after posing it. “I know that is hugely controversial.”

It’s only controversial to the people that are wrong.

via Paul courts Christian home schoolers in Kentucky – U.S. Senate Election – Kentucky.com.

Cynthia Dunbar Wants Your Kids to Be Stupid

More textbook revision from the assholes in Texas:

Cynthia Dunbar does not have a high regard for her local schools. She has called them unconstitutional, tyrannical and tools of perversion. The board is to vote on a sweeping purge of alleged liberal bias in Texas school textbooks in favour of what Dunbar says really matters: a belief in America as a nation chosen by God as a beacon to the world, and free enterprise as the cornerstone of liberty and democracy. “In Texas we have certain statutory obligations to promote patriotism and to promote the free enterprise system. There seems to have been a move away from a patriotic ideology. There seems to be a denial that this was a nation founded under God. We had to go back and make some corrections.” Several changes include sidelining Thomas Jefferson, who favoured separation of church and state, while introducing a new focus on the “significant contributions” of pro-slavery Confederate leaders during the civil war… Study of Sir Isaac Newton is dropped in favour of examining scientific advances through military technology.

via Texas schools board rewrites US history with lessons promoting God and guns | World news | The Guardian.

Maine GOP Forced To Apologize After Convention-Goers Vandalize An Eighth-Grade Classroom

So friggging stupid:

For seven years, Clifford has had “a collage-type poster depicting the history of the U.S. labor movement” on his classroom door. He uses it “to teach his students how to incorporate collages into their annual project on Norman Rockwell’s historic ‘Four Freedoms’ illustrations.” When Clifford returned to his classroom on Monday, after the GOP caucuses, the poster was gone; in its place was a sticker reading, “Working People Vote Republican.” … Republicans opened a “closed cardboard box they found near Clifford’s desk” and later objected to the fact that it contained copies of the U.S. Constitution donated to the school by the American Civil Liberties Union. … After the caucuses, “rank-and-file Republicans who were upset by what they said they had seen in Clifford’s classroom” began calling the school, objecting to student art they had seen and a sticker on a filing cabinet reading “People for the American Way — Fight the Right.”

via Think Progress