Monday, February 18, 2008

Canada's conservatives ...


... explained in depressing detail.
Posted by at

9 comments:

Ti-Guy said...

I caught Susan Jacoby on Bill Moyer's Journal yesterday, and I really felt she was inviting the wrath of the rigthwinger, for precisely the reason she states:

"This is the last subject that any candidate would dare raise on the long and winding road to the White House. It is almost impossible to talk about the manner in which public ignorance contributes to grave national problems without being labeled an "elitist," one of the most powerful pejoratives that can be applied to anyone aspiring to high office."

This is something that's become entrenched among rightwingers...the knee-jerk tendency to lash out violently against people who are simply better informed and who've achieved this, by and large, by just working really hard at it.

This is hickdom on a grand scale; those of us who grew up in hick towns are all too familiar with it (though even then, it was marginalised by sensible people of any political persuasion, and in my case, mitigated by a rather decent public education system). But it seems to have achieved a kind of nobility among a certain demographic, who are now being pandered to by political conservatives.

At this point, I don't see anything changing until it is no longer economically advantageous to be a complete airhead...from the celebrity the media creates out of the completely talent-free to the wingnut welfare apparatus that keeps Jonah Goldberg and Mark Steyn from landing in the gutter where they belong.

Speaking of which...Ezra Levant showed up in my Globe and Mail this morning. I've asked them to reimburse 1/365th of my year's subscription punitively.

11:23 AM
me myself and I said...

If dumbing down of the American Civilization is what it takes to render them useless, then so be it. Why worry? No loss. Democracy will survive. Imagine a world without NASCAR, Idol, Fox, Bush, Christofascists.

I dream.

12:29 PM
Ti-Guy said...

They're dragging us down with them; in fact, I'm getting the impression the Republicans are making a last stand here in Canada...certainly, CanWest seems to have gotten a little desperate in the last while. And we do have all that oil and water...

12:35 PM
Red Tory said...

I posted on this on Saturday, although I didn't view it a necessarily political thing one way or the other except in the regard Jacoby notes. ;)

The interview on Bill Moyers Journal is definitely worth checking out.

12:53 PM
KEvron said...

gawd, not the "kellie-pickler-fiasco-as-proof-of-something" thingy again. yep, she's one of ours. so is the fifth grader who knew the answer....

KEvron

2:14 PM
Ti-Guy said...

But the bright 5th-grader doesn't end up running the country.

In any case, the 5th-grader was suspicious as well. It's not a sign of anything meaningful that someone in grade 5 knows the capital of Hungary. In fact, it might be more a sign of rote learning or "teaching to the test" than anything else.

3:06 PM
KEvron said...

"But the bright 5th-grader doesn't end up running the country."

two-shay!

"In any case, the 5th-grader was suspicious as well."

you're refering, of course, to pickler's schtick. hos gotta eat, too.

"It's not a sign of anything meaningful that someone in grade 5 knows the capital of Hungary."

(quietly sips herbal tea)

KEvron

3:10 PM
KEvron said...

my favorite line from mike judge's idiocracy:

"florida is in georgia, dumbass."

KEvron

3:28 PM
KEvron said...

....or was it the other way around?

KEvron

3:29 PM

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