Wednesday, April 19, 2006

Politics: Same planet, different worlds...

Kevin at The Smallest Minority delivers a brutal and well-deserved fisking to a Salon.com whine article by a Ms. Nina Burleigh.

I must admit that while her piece triggered the Red Curtain Of Blood in Kevin, it just left me staring, agog in slack-jawed amazement, at my monitor. Folks, I'm a bloody-minded anarchist compared to your average Lee Greenwood-humming Limbaugh listener, but what floored me was the fact that Ms. Burleigh wrote this piece and published it for all to see, and it didn't seem to contain the slightest hint of self-consciousness, as though she fully expected anyone literate enough to mouth out her syllables to just nod along in knowing agreement.

Granted, I spent last Friday night with my hand over my heart in respectful silence as the national anthem was sung at a minor league ballpark here in the buckle of the bible belt, so I'm probably not Nina's target audience, but there are some things we do because that's how we all live in the same monkey cage together, okay, Nina? Of course, I have a nasty habit of standing when they play Dixie, too, so my reflexive respect for forms & observances probably carries no weight with Ms. Burleigh. (On the flag-burning issue, I fall squarely with Miss Florence King, who wrote "'Shoot if you must this old gray head, but spare this yankee rag!' she said.") There are some things that are Just Not Done, but the emotion of shame is apparently no longer issued to a certain class of NYC resident.

This is America. If you think your country is screwing up, you do something about it, honey. You don't wring your hands and whine, or write about how you wish you were in France, or make snide asides to your peers about how you said the Pledge but didn't really mean it, for fear you won't get invited to the next gallery opening. You roll up your sleeves and get to work fixing what you think is busted.

Or just punk out and move to France.

Frankly, honey, I'd prefer you took the latter course, 'cause you're dirtying the air breathed by those veterans you mocked.

8 comments:

  1. She seems happy that her son is attending an inferior school - he is reading much better after being up state than his new peers. So happy that there are no flags, that the inferior education he is sure to get is not an issue.

    That's parental love in action.

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  2. I had a simialr reaction. My brain couldn't register all the idiocy in one take.

    Thinking back, the France reference should have been warning enough.

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  3. I'm at a loss for words.

    I am just dumbfounded that people (apparently educated people) can really think that way.

    She was actually ashamed that here son knew the pledge and the word to God bless the USA. WTF?!?!

    I just had to shake my head.

    Unbelievable!

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  4. Madame Halfwit should flee to France, and park her car out on the (Live to) Rue de Day, handy for the rioters.

    But the kid stays in the picture.

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  5. Hear! Hear! Where do I send my PayPal contribution to the Burleigh export fund (operation liberal trebuchet)??? Well, at least a good seed has been sown in her child, and I'll bet he'll be back one day. The truth will out.

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  6. What an amazing jackass of a person; it is always a wonder to me how someone can go through life in a brainfog like that. Why doesn't she just go back to Europe where they would appreciate someone like her?

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  7. ...what floored me was the fact that Ms. Burleigh wrote this piece and published it for all to see, and it didn't seem to contain the slightest hint of self-consciousness, as though she fully expected anyone literate enough to mouth out her syllables to just nod along in knowing agreement.

    I wasn't so much floored as disgusted. After years of reading the likes of Bob Herbert, Marianne Means, Maureen Dowd and other folks like that on the editorial pages of various broadsheets in this great land, I've pretty much learned to accept that these people think their warped opinions are pretty much self-evident. Of course, that certainly doesn't mean I don't still think they're full of shite, because, well, I do. They live in an alternate universe, just as the gun-grabbers do, and from where I sit there's not really much we can do except ignore them...at least until they come for our guns. But that's just one Texan's opinion...

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  8. "...I'm probably not Nina's target audience, but there are some things we do because that's how we all live in the same monkey cage together, okay, Nina?"

    The problem with that analogy, Tam, is that Nina Burleigh truly does see America as a monkey cage. For you the comparison is simply a humorous bit of hyperbole; Nina actually feels trapped in a cage called AmeriKKKa.

    A really dirty, nasty cage.

    With a bunch of flag-waving primates flinging poo.

    Most of it at her.

    No, you (and those of us who read your blog) probably aren't Nina's "target audience." We're just collectively the targets of Nina's own pathetic handful of crap.

    The scary thing: This isn't the silliest thing Burleigh has said publicly. Isn't this the same woman who famously remarked, during the Clinton impeachment, that she herself would cheerfully give Clinton a full Lewinsky for keeping abortion legal?

    And I thought the liberal "kool-aid drinkers" were nauseating...

    --Wes S.

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