It’s the stupidity, stupid
Michael Seitzman knows what’s wrong with with McCain/Palin/Bush voters: they’re knuckledragging IQ-challenged morons (perhaps they’re even moronic enough to think that Bush isn’t running for re-election this year. But how would I know? After all, I’m just one of them.)
How can he tell? Well, the first sign is that some of them are so stupid they say “nucular” for “nuclear,” and the rest don’t even care all that much. Sheesh. Don’t we know that the pronunciation of this particular word is the true litmus test for the sort of intelligence we need in our leaders?
Oh, and he also would like to have sex with Palin on his Obama sheets while his wife reads the Constitution.
This is what passes for political discourse these days, and I suppose for wit as well. The comments section there at the Huffington Post is jam-packed with a bunch of really smart people agreeing with Seitzman.
Intellectually-challenged nonliberal (but isn’t that redundant?) Rachel Lucas manages to string together a few choice words in response.
I keep asking myself how it is that these guys see themselves as our moral and intellectual superiors.
How? In which way?
As Henry Higgins sang in “My Fair Lady,” a lot of it seems to focus on looking down at others for their accents (just change “Englishman” to “American” in the following).
An Englishman’s way of speaking absolutely classifies him,
The moment he talks he makes some other
Englishman despise him.
Although “this verbal class distinction by now should be antique,” apparently it’s alive and well and living in liberal land. I kid you not. Just read the comments there if you don’t believe me.
Of course, it’s more than that. But accent and speech patterns seem to press a huge button for a large segment of liberals.
Yes, I was reading Rachel yesterday and was so grateful for a comic relief.
Tired of debating totally “parallel reality” comments like this one, by self-described “in the middle”:
It’s seems the Republican candidates are untouchable this time. Can’t pick on poor Sarah because she’s a woman and we can’t pick on poor John because he’s a war hero. [sigh] The politics of victimhood really does work.
So much boils down to “Shut up and obey your betters” with these people.
BTW, whatever happened to the notion that the evil Bu$hitler was going to declare martial law and suspend the Constitution indefinitely to prolong the reign of the Halliburton Imperium? I haven’t heard much talk of that lately, but at least that theory would justify their continuing obsession with acting like Bush is on the ticket….
I don’t know why I am continually amazed (though it could have something to do with my being Polish – which might bolster the liberal argument) how the liberals can say they are the tolerant, inclusive, and understanding ones yet seem to be the ones who spew the lion’s share of vitriol (hey vitriol is a pretty good word for a Polack, huh?) ?
Dane: It’s simple. They see themselves as tolerant, but they see Republicans and Conservatives as intolerant. Ergo, by being intolerant of Republicans and Conservatives, liberals are striking a blow for tolerance.
Still waiting for Jimmy Carter to get the syllables out properly in “nuclear,” or for anyone in any position of prominence to call attention to it.
That’s a pretty long wait. Much longer than any silly ol’ eight years.
Some PhD scientists at Oak Ridge, who they happen to be from the south, say “nuklear.”
I’m going to start refusing to vote for someone if they say “ant” or “aynt” instead of “aunt.” It makes as much sense.
“ant” is incorrect?
Sincerely,
Clueless in Texas
Wolf Blitzer cannot hide his bias. Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild Takes on CNN’s Campbell Brown and Wolf Blitzer – you’ll love this.
And here’s Campbell Brown…
AVI is right. I live in Los Alamos, and likewise “nucular” versus “nuclear” is purely a matter of regional background. Telling some Texan physicist that could probably build a doomsday device in his spare time that he’s pronouncing it wrong will either get you a belly laugh or the sort of lecture that will leave you feeling dumber than moss by the end.
People who snark about it are revealing their ignorance as well as their bigotry.
My libertairan/conservative positions derive primarily from my study and teaching of economics for the past forty years. And the one thing which keeps recurring is excess monetary growth, often followed by the Fed stepping on the brakes to make a correction. Milton Friedman has documented this behavior very well in his Monetary History of the United States (with Anna Schwartz). From the “great depression” right up through the stagflation of the Carter years and the Volker actions when he was Fed chairman, excess monetary growth always leads to inflation and declines in the value of the dollar and stepping on the brakes always leads to recession. Along the way, bubbles often appear, as in the dot.com bubble and the housing bubble. The “creative derivative designs” that emerged from Wall Street would never have done so without excess monetary growth. That is the necessary condition.
neo:
“Dane: It’s simple. They see themselves as tolerant, but they see Republicans and Conservatives as intolerant. Ergo, by being intolerant of Republicans and Conservatives, liberals are striking a blow for tolerance.”
But wait…hold on here…Isnt that a form of dehumanizing propaganda? Isnt that unfaily judgemental an attitude? There seems to be a slight inconsistency here in the message. Maybe I’m not nuanced enough to understand the difference between who they say we are and the way they act.
Seems to me that our moral and intellectual superiors have some explaining to do.
harry McHitlerburtonstein the Conservative Extremist Says:
“There seems to be a slight inconsistency here in the message. ”
Then we’ll just stay here until you realise 2+2=5 when we say so.
You know conflict theory and the race, class, gender narrative are not on IQ tests (it is also part of the reason a lot of university grads know nothing). I think we ought to have a throw down sometime. Just challenge them to professionally administered IQ tests! Or to compare numbers for those of us who had them in the past.
Ah yes, the culture war. Sorry, both sides guilty. Just tune in your AM radio if you don’t believe your side is just as guilty. I’m watching from the sideline.
“Some PhD scientists at Oak Ridge, who they happen to be from the south, say “nuklear.” ”
Having worked for a number of years at ORNL (in their High Performance Computing team) I can assure you that this is true.
Last time I pointed that out and even linked to one saying that in some video the leftist declared that person to also be suspect as to their knowledge on the matter. Never mind that persons name was one of the ones that is considered a “God” in that field.
But then I suppose someone who has that level of a superiority complex doesn’t feel any shame saying they know more than the guy who received a PhD in Nuclear Physics from a top end school and then went on to a 30+ year career at several top end R&D sites simply because of their accent.
*shrug* I had people talk over me to the others in my group when they asked questions because I had a southern accent. Their reaction was always amusing when they were informed that I was the one who designed and wrote the piece of software and the questions should be directed at me. I was also rather politely informed that I might as well not apply to several graduate schools for the same reason (no one like me could do the work even though some of the algorithms I developed were the ones being taught and the source material was publications I had written).
There were other reasons but these also factored into my eventual turning away from academia. It wasn’t worth the fight to get to where my accent would be viewed as “quaint” instead of “stupid”. Neither was good and it would have taken years of outperforming everyone else to even get to quaint and amusing.
As a side issue, I am beginning to wonder how much of the really emotional anti-Palin stuff stems from the fact that she is a very attractive woman. There’s nothing in Seitzman’s screed that rebuts this.
I recall some years ago hearing Ted Kennedy, trying to prove he’s an ordinary guy, refer to two baseball players as Mark McGarrett and Sammy Soosha. Somehow that doesn’t seem to dog him.
Someone please tell me from whence hope comes? I have been seeing this kind of nonsense my whole life. Even as a child I noticed one liberal mantra is, “If you do not agree with me you are either stupid or evil – probably both.” Yet I foolishly keep being shocked when someone comes out and says so. Somehow I keep thinking that we are all better than that. Thus my disappointment when some loathsome creature spews the kind of filth the left has been frolicking in since Sarah Palin was announced as McCain’s pick for the VP. Picture agitated monkeys throwing feces on the wall and you are not far off, if at all. Sandra Bernhard’s rant about blacks gang-raping Palin comes to mind.
I don’t know this Michael Seitzman, have never even heard of him until now. That someone would actually say the things he has, believe he is making a serious point, and therefore any “verbal excesses” are OK ’cause he is just trying to be funny, is mind blowing. I have always been a touch cynical and paranoid so I am rarely shocked so much as I am now. But the amount and diversity of absolutely vile things said about Palin and the rabid hatred behind it all is stunning to me. Why do I continue to think there must actually be some honorable people on the left when they have run all such people out of the Democratic party? The loonies have taken over the asylum.
Personally, as a plain-speaking Midwesterner who recognizes similarities between Palin’s accent and those of my neighbors in Wisconsin, I really don’t worry much about Texans who pronounce nuclear “nuke-u-ler”. I know exactly what they mean.
A Jersey accent can grate but it still gets the point across in its own charming way. New Yorkers? Well, it’s not nice to discriminate against those that suffer from terminally-constricted wind-pipes. A North Carolina or Virginia accent – pure poetry!
Now, New Englanders that pronounce Denver as “Den-vah” and Atlanta as “Atlan-ter” do worry me. When people get confused by something as simple as the difference between an “r” and an “a”, I start worrying about malfunctioning wiring upstairs.
And then there is this “scientific” study that reveals that conservatives tend to startle easily and be afraid of loud noises. No doubt we also hide under the bed when we hear thunder, but only after we fire our guns into it to make sure there aren’t any terrorists hiding there already.
The fact that they couldn;t find anyone in the study who supported both foreign aid and the Iraq War shows that the study is more indicative of the researchers’ biases than their test subjects.
What PapaMAS said. And to add a little more — what struck me most about Michael Seitzman’s piece is that he clearly believed that he was demonstrating his superior intellect, compassion and awareness when, in fact, with every word he exposed more and more of his ignorance, bigotry, meanness and inability to reason.
I mean, the poor guy thinks he married well because his wife uses the word “tranny”!
If you are intelligent you do not have to tell people you are. Liberals and Leftists spend far too much time trying to convince themselves of mental prowess. It seems more like people who are insecure and try to hide that insecurity in attempting to put others down.