Welp, I complain when Prager interrupts a caller, pounces in the call, and takes it away from them. It's especially bad when he only does it to gloat, "Oh! I know! I've been saying this for twenty years!"
Prager, we already know you're God's gift to intellectual life.
This particular caller was about to tell us when a certain situation (I can't even remember what the issue was because you pounced on it before she could finish her sentence) when a certain situation was especially acute. I wanted to hear her thought because it seemed to be some bad kind of thinking or behavior we have control over and which I could work on if I had that problem too.
You kept me from hearing it, thanks a lot.
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Oh, the domestic bliss
I am watching "Footsteps in the Dark" on TCM.
This movie was made in 1941. The hero is a banker, therefore he's rich. He's Errol Flynn, in fact. He's sitting downstairs first thing in the morning, at the breakfast table, which is in the morning room and not in the dining room. The morning room is a nice, cheery, bright room, just perfect for sitting at the cloth-covered table and enjoying your morning paper before the wife and mother(-in-law?) arrive for their breakfast. He's wearing a suit.
Here come the ladies. The wife is beautifully dressed in a day dress with a sweater over it, and the mother is similarly dressed for her day. Flynn jumps up and holds the chair for his mother(-in-law?) and then seats his wife as well.
Life is beautiful.
Do I think this is view of living is unrealistic? No, not for their class (clearly upper middle). I think it's unrealistic for the rest of the country but they would have loved to have been thus blessed.
May it be so for me, some day.
This movie was made in 1941. The hero is a banker, therefore he's rich. He's Errol Flynn, in fact. He's sitting downstairs first thing in the morning, at the breakfast table, which is in the morning room and not in the dining room. The morning room is a nice, cheery, bright room, just perfect for sitting at the cloth-covered table and enjoying your morning paper before the wife and mother(-in-law?) arrive for their breakfast. He's wearing a suit.
Here come the ladies. The wife is beautifully dressed in a day dress with a sweater over it, and the mother is similarly dressed for her day. Flynn jumps up and holds the chair for his mother(-in-law?) and then seats his wife as well.
Life is beautiful.
Do I think this is view of living is unrealistic? No, not for their class (clearly upper middle). I think it's unrealistic for the rest of the country but they would have loved to have been thus blessed.
May it be so for me, some day.
Accidentally rich
Fairness, blessings, luck, birth, who knows what makes people rich? It couldn't be hard work. Or planning for your future. Or saving your money. Or investing in yourself. Or investing in an idea you had. Or doing extensive reading outside school. Or training any skill, especially if it takes study or practice. Those are all evil phrases.
I hate to tell you this, Dennis, but all of this is the watchword of the redneck community. There is very little "invest in yourself" or "get an education" or "save for the future" or ANYthing that would make a future for a family richer and better. The rednecks I know either dropped out of high school and made up for their lack of a degree with a GED, or they just shuffled their feet through high school, reading only Harry Potter or vampire stories to feed their minds. They know they're unemployable and are content to get minimum-wage menial jobs at Burger King of Walmart. They don't like the work and they don't care about the income so they quit (without notice) when they tire of the job, usually in just two to six months. They live in trailers provided by their parents on land owned by their parents, but at least they're not paying mortgages. They buy a six-year-old car from that lady they know from church, and then bitch for the rest of the vehicle's life that that rotten woman sold them a rotten car.
They used to vote in a solid block for Democrats, because of the promise of handouts. Most of them are still getting handouts anyway. But they switched to Republican based on conservative values. They hate the "teach a man to fish" message but underneath all their laziness and lack of worrying about their future, there is the knowledge that the republican life plan (get an education, start a business) has a better future possibility for them than the Democrat life plan (put out your hand and we'll put something very small in it). Even though the majority of them have no idea how to live that plan.
An aside quote: The Left love bumper stickers like "War is not the answer". Actually they like to say, "War is never the answer." This bumper sticker fully demonstrates the shallowness of Leftist thinking. Try asking one of them (as Prager frequently does), "So how should we have dealt with Adolf Hitler?"
They have no answer, but they will soon figure out something flippant and shallow, generally attacking the person who asked them that question. "You're on the oil companies' payroll" if nothing else comes to mind.
I hate to tell you this, Dennis, but all of this is the watchword of the redneck community. There is very little "invest in yourself" or "get an education" or "save for the future" or ANYthing that would make a future for a family richer and better. The rednecks I know either dropped out of high school and made up for their lack of a degree with a GED, or they just shuffled their feet through high school, reading only Harry Potter or vampire stories to feed their minds. They know they're unemployable and are content to get minimum-wage menial jobs at Burger King of Walmart. They don't like the work and they don't care about the income so they quit (without notice) when they tire of the job, usually in just two to six months. They live in trailers provided by their parents on land owned by their parents, but at least they're not paying mortgages. They buy a six-year-old car from that lady they know from church, and then bitch for the rest of the vehicle's life that that rotten woman sold them a rotten car.
They used to vote in a solid block for Democrats, because of the promise of handouts. Most of them are still getting handouts anyway. But they switched to Republican based on conservative values. They hate the "teach a man to fish" message but underneath all their laziness and lack of worrying about their future, there is the knowledge that the republican life plan (get an education, start a business) has a better future possibility for them than the Democrat life plan (put out your hand and we'll put something very small in it). Even though the majority of them have no idea how to live that plan.
An aside quote: The Left love bumper stickers like "War is not the answer". Actually they like to say, "War is never the answer." This bumper sticker fully demonstrates the shallowness of Leftist thinking. Try asking one of them (as Prager frequently does), "So how should we have dealt with Adolf Hitler?"
They have no answer, but they will soon figure out something flippant and shallow, generally attacking the person who asked them that question. "You're on the oil companies' payroll" if nothing else comes to mind.
"[Obama] wrote two autobiographies that earned him millions of dollars..."
I'm pretty sure Obama didn't write these. Wasn't there a statement from one of his friends, Chillsomething, Billsomething? that said Ayers had written the books. In fact, I was reading "Dreams" when I heard someone from somebody's radio audience assert that the style of "Dreams" was so radically different that Obama could not possibly have written both books.
Frankly, I don't see Obama as a writer. Or as an anything. His writing style is illiterate, and his handlers would never trust him with such a task.
Frankly, I don't see Obama as a writer. Or as an anything. His writing style is illiterate, and his handlers would never trust him with such a task.
"The Left honors graffiti-ers"
It was the Left who saw the graffitists as poor, oppressed, underprivileged KIDS just trying to express themselves in a way that "society" ("the Man", the oppressors) won't "allow" them to do. Then we romanticized their collective "free spirits" for breaking out of the bondage of "societal rules" * and demanded no punishment for their vandalism and soon we were demanding that our cities set aside legitimate places for the eyesores they liked to put on public places.
Never mind that most of what they spraypainted in plain sight on public walls was full of obscenities and was meant to set apart gang territories, thus giving a new rationale for even more crime. What mattered most was simply that the leftist had given the criminal what he wanted, and more societal chaos had resulted, which made the Leftist feel very good about himself as an "original thinker" and "free spirit".
*(I believe their apologists found high validation in thinking they had "recognized" nobility in their souls whereas society had only seen crime, vandalism, and evil before)
Never mind that most of what they spraypainted in plain sight on public walls was full of obscenities and was meant to set apart gang territories, thus giving a new rationale for even more crime. What mattered most was simply that the leftist had given the criminal what he wanted, and more societal chaos had resulted, which made the Leftist feel very good about himself as an "original thinker" and "free spirit".
*(I believe their apologists found high validation in thinking they had "recognized" nobility in their souls whereas society had only seen crime, vandalism, and evil before)
"Uh, how am I going to make money?"--It's a pretty damn noble thing, how am i going to make money.
"Manliness was, when I was growing up, supporting a family."
How can I argue with this? He's right. When we were growing up, manliness was supporting a family. By the time I got to college, at the great advanced age of 21, and found my way into the Computer Club at the great advanced age of 25, manliness had become focusing on yourself, not worrying about anyone but yourself, if it feels good do it, why should these two people who can't make each other happy any more stay in an unhappy marriage. A man who put other people before himself was a wuss, a giver, a weakling. The bible of righteous human rights included only one commandment: take care of Number One, because if you don't love yourself first, you can't love anyone else.
That's why capitalism is so horrible in post-modern America. Capitalism is all about human needs and wants (in that order) driving supply and demand. Horrible! And I don't understand how our hippies, who were ALL leftists, could make the demand to love yourself first, and on the other hand make the claim that loving one's own needs and wants was an evil thing. I suspect the only difference, that the former is an ideal and the latter is physical, material, based in the real world.
How can I argue with this? He's right. When we were growing up, manliness was supporting a family. By the time I got to college, at the great advanced age of 21, and found my way into the Computer Club at the great advanced age of 25, manliness had become focusing on yourself, not worrying about anyone but yourself, if it feels good do it, why should these two people who can't make each other happy any more stay in an unhappy marriage. A man who put other people before himself was a wuss, a giver, a weakling. The bible of righteous human rights included only one commandment: take care of Number One, because if you don't love yourself first, you can't love anyone else.
That's why capitalism is so horrible in post-modern America. Capitalism is all about human needs and wants (in that order) driving supply and demand. Horrible! And I don't understand how our hippies, who were ALL leftists, could make the demand to love yourself first, and on the other hand make the claim that loving one's own needs and wants was an evil thing. I suspect the only difference, that the former is an ideal and the latter is physical, material, based in the real world.
Guest: Allison Armstrong
I caught the last half of this show when it was live. I regretted missing it. Today I should have known she would be among his "best of" shows, and yet I still managed to miss the first half. She's a magnificent speaker. Both sexes should listen to what she says because she speaks truth to ignorance.
Among the ignorant I count every American woman who has ever listened to her feminist foremothers, and every American male who doesn't know that his wife has been heavily influenced by these harpies posing as women posing as men-without-penises. Man haters. Their battle cry: "We want to be like you but only after we destroy you and everything you are." That is why we have the war on masculinity.
Okay, I caught the repeat broadcast on KHNR.
Just the notes:
Issue one: The eighteen minutes. That's "a quickie" to the rest of us.
Men do this all the time, and women do not understand it at all.
(Well, I do.) I love having a quickie with the man I love, if there's a man to love. I was married 23 years to a piece of garbage who didn't want to get divorced but he still wanted to treat me like crap. He'd ignore me for months at a time, and then out of the blue want a quickie. That was horrible. Had he been affectionate and or attentive during those intervening weeks and months, I'd have been delighted to rush to the bedroom for some fun and some man-pleasing, but since his primary mode was humiliation and hatred and distancing himself from both me and the children, it felt far more abusive than anything else. Yes, I showed him often that I was "on his side". Unfortunately that merely served as a malicious opportunity to kick me and crap on me emotionally.
Problem: the man who is out for days at a time. Her tearful delivery: You don't call, you don't ask, you never want to know how I'm doing, you're not interested, you think I'm nothing, cry cry cry.
Prager's solution: Pick up the damn phone and call, once a day and ask how she is.
Armstrong's advice: Learn ahead of time what she wants to be asked about, even if that means asking her directly. Prager's cautionary: Isn't that like the "what do you want for your birthday" question, that is so often rebuffed with, "you should know without my telling you."
Armstrong: Women have diffuse awareness. We have this enormous data base of preferences. This is how we know what you put in your coffee. This is how we know whether it's a yogurt day or a banana day. Men don't do this. So when YOU don't know whether I like cream in my coffee, we begin with, "you don't love me." Meanwhile, you're focused on catching that deer for the dinner table.
Caller: How do you strengthen your marriage if you're resentful of your husband because he's too busy?
I missed the answer. Something about pride. I would also ask if it's about the power struggle. That's what everything was attributed to by my husband's counselor.
After I got to sit down and talk to that counselor, though, the counselor found herself again and again looking at my husband and asking him, "did you really do that???" After the usual pause, he would give a very unexpected, "she deserved it." Counselor's response, "But Steve, that's abusive!"
Nuff said.
Among the ignorant I count every American woman who has ever listened to her feminist foremothers, and every American male who doesn't know that his wife has been heavily influenced by these harpies posing as women posing as men-without-penises. Man haters. Their battle cry: "We want to be like you but only after we destroy you and everything you are." That is why we have the war on masculinity.
Okay, I caught the repeat broadcast on KHNR.
Just the notes:
Issue one: The eighteen minutes. That's "a quickie" to the rest of us.
Men do this all the time, and women do not understand it at all.
(Well, I do.) I love having a quickie with the man I love, if there's a man to love. I was married 23 years to a piece of garbage who didn't want to get divorced but he still wanted to treat me like crap. He'd ignore me for months at a time, and then out of the blue want a quickie. That was horrible. Had he been affectionate and or attentive during those intervening weeks and months, I'd have been delighted to rush to the bedroom for some fun and some man-pleasing, but since his primary mode was humiliation and hatred and distancing himself from both me and the children, it felt far more abusive than anything else. Yes, I showed him often that I was "on his side". Unfortunately that merely served as a malicious opportunity to kick me and crap on me emotionally.
Problem: the man who is out for days at a time. Her tearful delivery: You don't call, you don't ask, you never want to know how I'm doing, you're not interested, you think I'm nothing, cry cry cry.
Prager's solution: Pick up the damn phone and call, once a day and ask how she is.
Armstrong's advice: Learn ahead of time what she wants to be asked about, even if that means asking her directly. Prager's cautionary: Isn't that like the "what do you want for your birthday" question, that is so often rebuffed with, "you should know without my telling you."
Armstrong: Women have diffuse awareness. We have this enormous data base of preferences. This is how we know what you put in your coffee. This is how we know whether it's a yogurt day or a banana day. Men don't do this. So when YOU don't know whether I like cream in my coffee, we begin with, "you don't love me." Meanwhile, you're focused on catching that deer for the dinner table.
Caller: How do you strengthen your marriage if you're resentful of your husband because he's too busy?
I missed the answer. Something about pride. I would also ask if it's about the power struggle. That's what everything was attributed to by my husband's counselor.
After I got to sit down and talk to that counselor, though, the counselor found herself again and again looking at my husband and asking him, "did you really do that???" After the usual pause, he would give a very unexpected, "she deserved it." Counselor's response, "But Steve, that's abusive!"
Nuff said.
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