This is my first in what will hopefully become a semi-regular diary project.
I make it a point to inoculate myself against echo-chamber arguments hurled at partisan media consumers by regularly checking out the other side. I find its helpful for a number of reasons:
1) It's needed gutcheck for my idealistic impulses
2) It's good for tracking the proliferation of talking points
3) Every once in a while there's a salient point (usually mixed in with more dubious ones)
4) It's good to document their vitriol, lest we be the lone targets of all those "cheapening the discourse" accusations
That final point is the motivation of this project which will look at the inanity set forth one of my more frequent online stops is
National Review's "The Corner" blog.
With this in mind. I now present to you some of the more idiotic things to be posted on that blog (which isn't really much of a blog, as it is a circlejerk of a dozen or so NRO contributors/editors).
---Item 1---
From the Served Up On A Silver Platter Dept. courtesy of Alston Ramsay
While trolling our fearless majority leader's website, I came across a page titled "Legislative Achievements." For May 2006, it reads only, "There are no Legislative Achievements to be displayed for this month." You can say that again--in fact, it does say that again . . . and again . . . and again. There are no noted "legislative achievements" since Katrina emergency tax relief in mid-September of last year. Eight months and counting.
When published this was not only correct, but Frist's office last "Legislative Achievment" was in September (having to do with Katrina tax-relief). It's been filled in since, however several months are blank or sparse, even with the NRO heads up.
Even if the page has been changed, it's still funny to me that NRO and not Kos jumped on this fact.
---Item 2---
Pity poor John Derbyshire. It seems that (gasp!) some FE-male has the audacity to confront boys-will-be-boys BS in her role as a school administrator. Witness:
Now I shall get even further behind. I have to go to my son's school to talk to the Dean about an "incident." Apparently Danny's been fighting. My immediate thought on that was: "Great! Has he been WINNING?" But of course that is "inappropriate" in the girlified public-school systems of today. The kiddies are supposed to "work out" their "issues."
I'd like to "work out" my "issues" with the school Dean the old-fashioned way. Unfortunately, it's a woman, so I have to sit there like a good, cowed, law-abiding, middle-class American doofus and listen to how unnacceptably boyish my boy is. I hate the modern world.
God, it really is unfortunate that this no doubt queer, pagan, communist is further cursed with a set of ovaries. Otherwise, Mr. Derbyshire could teach his son how to really act like a bully and beat the secular humanism out of her.
These are the same people who bemoan the fact that higher education admissions are tipping more and more female. Jesus, do you think there's a correlation on insisting that boyishness is won through fighting and not some pansy ass sitting still and listensing bullshit?!*
*I'm a little sensitive about this, because as an ostensibly black guy (mixed race, actually) in graduate schools I cannot help but draw a connection between the ueber-masculine black male idenity and their noteworthy absence in higher education. I truly believe that black males are the hyperbolization of the definition of male as anti-intellectual, or certainly anti-listening.
If only we could go back to the good ol' days when a little bit of fighting was allowed; back when it was almost written into the school system that it was alright for little boys to ostracize, harrass, and beat up those who are different. It worked wonders for me when I went to school in a little slice of Aryan Nation heaven. The people who killed Matthew Shepard obviously learned those lessons well. Hell, a good decade of boys being boys, when combined with other factors, is what gets us some of our school shooters (I'm thinking Columbine here particularly). If only it were still possible in America for C average students, who "don't do nuance", who are mean-spirited frat boys, and who like to play make-believe soldiers to believe that their entitled, goddamnit, to be president. If only schools weren't so girlified. If only boys could just be boys. If only, if only...
Ok, I'm done with this installment of Documenting "The Corner". Stay tuned for more!