Crispin Sartwell fleshes out in a bit more detail a number of the arguments I’ve been hinting at here:
you’ve got to understand that “class” is not income-level. class is a semiotic system. it’s affect, diction, alma mater, what you drink. it’s how your house is decorated, no matter how big it is. it’s hair style, musical preferences. those are the ways that sarah palin is wrong and barack obama is right, even though they both emerged from “humble beginnings.” she just signs wrong, and what the hostility really shows is a very familiar liberal death-knell: we are supposedly in this to help people like you. but we despise people like you, from your head to your toes, coiffure to pedicure. we will help you if you put us where we ought to be: in charge of your life. but the idea that you could have power over us is not only scary and strange, it’s some kind of cosmic misapprehension. it’s on its face absurd and incomprehensible. this, boys and girls, is how you keep losing elections, and it’s the way you’ll chuck this one. if you had killed her with kindness, perhaps with just a hint of condescension, you could have won.
And again:
i’m going to say this one time, and then i’m going to shut up. re: bristol palin. the american liberal is, – seriously, literally – pro-abortion and anti-choice, believes essentially in mandatory abortion. what does the average liberal mom do when her 16-year-old daughter shows up pregnant? drags her immediately to the abortion clinic, whatever the daughter’s (or the babydad’s, of course) misgivings. the american left thinks that bristol palin having her baby is, actually, morally wrong. and more to the point, it shows something terrible about her mom, who had a moral obligation to make her daughter have an abortion. and one reason for this is that if you have a baby when you’re 16, you will likely slip out of our class. you’ll go live with joey, the kid who wants to be a mechanic. you’ll take classes at the community college instead of heading off to a decent school. you’ll end up in a housecoat with a houseful of wailing babies, listening to faith hill. what haunts the imagination of the american liberal: my family, in the next generation, will be white trash. maybe it would be more interesting to look at these sorts of motivations than to try to figure out “when human life begins.”
Evidently, there a few members in good standing left in academia who are willing to call out the progressives and their media cohort on what is already obvious to those of us who once occupied positions inside the realm of the elect: they are patronizing elitists whose worldview has become so toxically rigid and self-referential that they are quite literally unable to contain their rage when all their efforts at controlling the narrative — and the proper places of those in it — are thwarted by an obstinate electorate that just won’t fall in line.
Watching control freaks self-destruct shouldn’t be cause for joy. But in this case, America will be the better for it.
I denounce TNT playing Flight 93
The new patriarchy consists of radical feminists using shame and chauvinism to put white trash like Palin back in her place.
But isn’t Sartwell’s assertions attempts to control the narrative? His analysis assumes to know motivations of many individuals, a whole class as a matter of fact, and they may be correct (and I hope they are, as a matter of fact), but are they?
I’ve been asking the question, how many girls have been bullied into terminating their pregnancies by political parents who don’t want to have to deal with the scandal . . . or the punishment of a baby?
If it is social elitism to call what the cow leaves on the trail “bullshit” then by all means label me of the elitny class which points and shouts “BULLSHIT!” as a warning to other trespassers.
By the way, I especially love “toxically rigid” – it captures the whole enchilada on one platter.
Sartwell’s assertions appear to me to be reactions to a narrative he’s analyzed. I don’t think he’s trying to control anything. He’s describing, not prescribing.
Thor, your relativism is showing. And it’s not a ood look.
“good” look
The Jim Bean and “I, Robot”…
How many girls have been bullied into taking pregnancies to term by religious parents because abortion is a scandalous choice of God-hating heathens?
42
I love babies! I love Mommmies! When a Mommy wants a baby, she has choices. Yeah Free Choice Babies!
“…they are quite literally unable to contain their rage when all their efforts at controlling the narrative  and the proper places of those in it  are thwarted by an obstinate electorate that just won’t fall in line.”
…
“It was only *after* the soviet regime became unmistakably totalitarian that English intellectuals, in large numbers,
began to show interest in it. Burnham, although the English Russophile intelligentsia would repudiate him, is really voicing their secret wish: the wish to destroy the old equalitarian version of Socialism and usher in a hierarchical society where the intellectual can at last get his hands on the whip.”
-George Orwell
Crispin Sartwell is a perceptive SOB, and he just simply gets it.
Hammer. Nail. Head. I volunteer to teach him about the shift key.
Hey moron — you must have a point to your comments.
It’s a rule around here.
Comment by thor on 9/7 @ 7:27 pm #
You do realize, do you not, that you are quite insane?
Thor You’re so Roman PRE-Christian.
thor, when political parents bully a daughter into aborting, is it a media story? If not, why not?
You missed the best line from the previous post, here with context:
“i know this sounds nasty, but bristol is in there big time. our daughters always have abortions. we pressure them to have abortions. again: how are they going to have the full college experience? the baby at home cuts into your beer pong.”
Harsh
For thor.
Resent and cynicism. Mmmmmmm. Interesting, but not witty.
“Come on and stir it up; …, little darlin’.” Rasta Bob
Analysis: You can tie McCain to Bush and his 33% approval rating. Then, you can tie Obama to Congress and its 14% approval rating, and his record of voting with the controlling party at a rate of 97%.
Heh.
Dan
With the possibility that I’m repeating a story I’ve already told … when #3 daughter was 15 her best friend became pregnant. Her parents are babyboomers. They were into “raise my child as if she was a mini adult” … they made sure to tell her all about sex, to make sure there was condoms in her backpack and fresh ones put in the bathroom. Yet she still got pregnant.
And she KNEW if she told her parents they would force her to have an abortion. So she hid the pregnancy until 4 months along…and her parents went immediately into trying to secure a late term abortion for her.
This is an exceptional young woman who exhibited great courage in saying “NO” to her parents. They finally resigned themselves that she would have the baby and then she, SHE was the one who decided to place the girl in a semi-open adoption.
It would be if they advocated against abortion. The hypocrisy is the story.
Thor — you really don’t get this game.
Please stop now.
And that explains why Obama is more of an elitist than McCain ever will be. It’s a matter of how you think about yourself in relation to others, not the amount of wealth you’ve accumulated.
Pablo
As far as radical feminists are concerned (:::cough::: Jill @ Feministe :::cough::::) Sarah Palin ALLOWING her daughter to have the baby is because Sarah is extremely privileged. And Sarah is unqualified to be VP because she doesn’t recognize her privilege and advocate full Nannystate socialism for every single pregnant woman out there.
Comment by thor on 9/7 @ 7:32 pm #
The only thing you stir up around here is pity.
Somerwhere there’s a 10 step program for your condition.
Try google.
So, if they advocated life, then the bullying wouldn’t be hypocritical? Explain this, please.
We’re speaking of the society’s attitude toward parent/child discourses concerning abortion, Darleen. Your one-off examples are not relevant.
There is no hypocrisy in choosing life when you advocate for choosing life.
No, thor, we’re speaking of murdering babies.
So by Jill’s lights, Bristol Palin should, per her Mom’s orders, abort the baby so that Sarah can show the country that she feels their pain?
Is that about it?
And at such a point, then she’d be electable?
May as well wear an “I’m sorry my family has worked hard to get where we are” pin and accept 50 lashes from Gloria Alred dressed in a rubber girdle.
I thought we were advocating choice?
>the american left thinks that bristol palin having her baby is, actually, morally wrong.
I think there is more nuance than that, and it gets down to cathartic condescension.
Yeah, morally wrong in the sense that humans, and especially Americans, are guilty of wrecking Muthuh Earth. Thus, every trip to the baby abattoir generates some catharsis.
But there is also a need to perpetuate social services, to breed more slaves, so that their disadvantaged plight can be pitied. Thus, if the first-order catharsis is unobtainable, a second form of catharsis can be obtained through the generation of statistics that the mothers’ lives are wrecked, the children are delinquents, more social workers and programs are needed, etc.
I hope the young buck in question matures rapidly and makes something of himself. College, an ROTC commission (not a mere passing thought at service), and a bit of service to the country would be a good move.
Just sayin’: friggin’ grow up, dude. You just canceled the rest of your adolescence.
Take a look for instance at how Pat Santy reacts to seeing Palin and McCain in person yesterday.
Snagged from Neo-neocon.
Tossing out your plastic bottles is evil. Aborting your baby is responsible.
Right. Except that this notion is 180 degrees out of phase with the vast majority of the electorate, which is largely comprised of backwards rubes. Sucks, that.
First off there is no “they,” theoretically speaking. “They” are all Americans making legal decisions and “they” make decisions based on internalized values and individuaized considerations. Parents can not enforce an abortion nor enforce a pregnancy to term. In the end it’s a personal decision for which the only correct answer comes from the mother and father, tis why they call it choice, as in “their” choice.
Singing me songs of freedom, all I ever have, redemption song
It sounds utterly insane when you put it like that. Thanks, Dan.
Why do some of you ask the maggot that calls itself “thor” to quit?
thor is doing the heavy lifting here. thor is doing a heroic job of showing what the scumbag left is all about. I, for one, find the contrast quite illuminating.
40 for 18
the water has broken, the posts are hitting the floor running
You could not be more wrong if you tried to be amazingly, astoundingly wrong. But what else is new.
This just in:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/uselection2008/johnmccain/2693282/Sarah-Palin-brings-Palin-mania-as-McCain-woos-small-town-USA.html
“That point was reinforced by the presence in the crowd of a 40-strong group of nuns in white habits. Sister Thomas Augustin, 44, of the Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist, said: “I think she really speaks for women in a way that Hillary Clinton does not. She loves her husband and her children and I think that disaffected people who were on the fence are going to support her.””
Good God, she’s bringing out the nuns.
As usual, just when I need it most, my thor
decoder ring has failed.
Nuns want to have Jesus’ babies. That’s why they married him.
So they sign wrong. Plus, no appletinis.
Jill:
Commenter on that thread:
I hope the young buck in question matures rapidly and makes something of himself.
I’d guess that young Levi will be commercial fishing before he’s a year older (assuming he isn’t doing it already).
No, not joy, but does a little schadenfreude make me a bad person?
You misunderestimate the Catholics, my friend.
“Nuns want to have Jesus’ babies. That’s why they married him.
So they sign wrong. Plus, no appletinis.”
There is that, but they do have a strong history of community organizing…
Commercial fishing with his cock for a worm?
Who wants to ask Jill if executive experience accrues in that position of extreme privilege? And if that privilege is tempered by selling the jet and firing the chauffeur and chef?
more Sarah love from Froma Harrop
#53
Brilliant commentary, you fucking zero.
Ah, we return to the Holy Church of Darleen’s Gathered One-Offs.
Thanks, so much.
Ah, the PDS is strong with that one.
Darleen, Froma Harrop is on the editorial board of my local fishwrap. My lifelong democrat/union member mother pointed out her piece in today’s ProJo and remarked on its downright nastiness.
She’s gone from ambivalent to ready to vote for McCain. As Dan said over at the Pub, “You stupid asses won’t even realize, after you’ve managed to lose this election, that the reason is that you are so goddamn ugly.”
Word.
While Sarah Palin was harassing a librarian over the wholesomeness of the books on her shelves, her daughter was out having a full sexual relationship with the town stud.
Bristol’s been pregnant for 12 years?
Neat trick, that.
Pablo, thor has made it clear he doesn’t like
one-offs. Pls get with the program.
Pablo
Froma wrote an article for Real Clear Politics with the headline “Don’t they have birth control in Alaska?”
That one headline succinctly contains all the classism, regional-bigotry, elitism, Vagina Warrior hatred of Female Apostates one could ever find.
Palin is the real hallucinated elephant.
Dan, it’s O! down the stretch. Your thereness man! He’s no intellectual cul de sac!
I just bookmarked this guy’s blog. If these insightful posts are typical it will be my next blog stop every day after PW.
SPB
When you’re trying to save the Womyns of America from an Apostate, what’s a few lies in service of the Greater Good(tm)?
Rhetorical metaphorics, Darleen, that’s what they call that.
I’ve asked this before, but does anyone know what the sex-ed program was at Bristol Palin’s high school? Her mother is for abstinence ed — which of course doesn’t mean contemporary women would have any trouble finding out about birth control — but that aside, I’m curious. Because some of the arguments I’m hearing would be completely undercut in the event Bristol Palin’s school taught sex ed in a more familiar way.
There is one question
I’d really love to ask:
Is there a place for the hopeless sinner,
Who has hurt all mankind just
to save his own beliefs?
Darleen, of course the answer to that idiotic question is “Yes, they do, and they teach kids about it in school.”
And yet, like so many children under the tutelage of proggs, Bristol got pregnant anyway. So, what is the anomoly here? What is the dysfunction here? What is the crime here? Allow me some redundancy:
Two words: Fuck them.
Looks like Wasilla High — Levi’s school, and Palin’s former school — didn’t teach abstinence only sex ed.
Sex, sex, sex and sex-ed sex! It’s all you Repubs be sing’n about.
Don’t worry about a thing, every little thing gonna be all right when you jammin’ in the name of the Lord.
Leaving now but when I get back I’m gonna be tanked with Father Yuengling’s holy water, so there’s your Hurricane warning!
Peace out, party rethuggers.
Seriously, I don’t understand the basis of your argument.
It is like they do not understand that when you act like an asshole people will not like you. When people show them they do not like assholes, their response seems to be “Well fuck you then buddy here is msome more helpings of shit to go with that asshole.” Again these people are their own worst enemies. They have completely thrown out any notion of a civil political discourse in favor of booosh=Hitler/Rethuglicans-Nazi’s.
I’ve asked this before, but does anyone know what the sex-ed program was at Bristol Palin’s high school?
Bristol apparently attends West Anchorage High School.
I have heard, but have not confirmed, that the Anchorage School District has a comprehensive sex education program.
Hey I just had a funny thought. What if BDS is the cause of Bush’s third term via McCain? Hahahahahhahahahahahaha.
Eat Me Pink!
Yikes, it’s a wonder Froma hasn’t been tagged Harridan-op. She well deserves it.
“Comment by Jeff G. on 9/7 @ 7:51 pm #
Nuns want to have Jesus’ babies. That’s why they married him.
So they sign wrong. Plus, no appletinis”
Um, Jeff, you may be working under a misapprehension here.
My 93 year old Sisters of St. Joseph cousin Sister Betty, could drink you under the table.
Manhattans. Straight up.
JeffG
IIRC, Palin’s “abstinence only” stance was more in line of preferring over a “comprehensive sex ed” that also included contraceptives provided to teens on campus.
Akin to what I said in my interview with skewz, it’s not like this is necessarily a BAD idea, but it is NOT the business of the government. We don’t PROVIDE clean needles “just in case” because kids are going to “experiment with drugs anyway”.
I’m tired of government schools being used as wedges to interfere in family life and the decisions of the parents in those families.
Ok, thanks for the clarification.
Is thor drunk tonight? Or is his belligerent gibberish a sign of a more serious problem?
His (and Nishi’s) recent ramblings are certainly proving Sartwell’s point. In spades.
“Comment by Darleen on 9/7 @ 8:02 pm #
Ah, the PDS is strong with that one.”
thor has PMS: Palin Madness Syndrome.
Plus he’s insane.
Spiny
Remember what McCain said about the ground noise?
Looks like West Anchorage High isn’t abstinence only, either. So why is the mother to blame rather than the teen or the school, using the parameters of argument the left is now using?
And why is “blame” necessary? Maybe the girl wanted a child.
Oops, some of you beat me to it.
Yay for that, finally.
So why is the mother to blame
Because of The Privilege!!!1!1!
#83 Darleen
thor = static
Yeah, I can see that.
Thor how can you look at yourself in the mirror?
Has this been an issue? The mother is solely responible for the decisison to carry the child. At least, until this point. Why are you making this an issue now, Jeff?
“Comment by cynn on 9/7 @ 8:37 pm #
Has this been an issue? The mother is solely responible for the decisison to carry the child. At least, until this point. Why are you making this an issue now, Jeff?”
He’s not.
The reactionary left is making it an issue.
#89 Mr. Pink
You’re assuming he has a conscience. The malignant narcissist has no need for such distractions.
I’m making it an issue? You must be joking, right, cynn?
First you have to assume that because Sarah likes the idea of teaching abstinence that Bristol was taught that exclusively. Then, you have to assume that because she got pregnant anyway, her mother is at fault.
Once you’ve fully bought into those defective assumptions, then you can arrive at a conclusion: Bristol’s mother failed her.
Further investigation only exposes the tyranny of facts.
JeffG
As a teen once, and as a mom of daughters, it isn’t about ‘wanting’, it’s about BEING a teen. It’s about having a steady boyfriend and whispered conversations about “when we get married … “, and caught up in the passion and really truly believing that this one time nothing will happen.
oopsy
No teen believes that anything will every happen to them. Which is why so many die in stupid car accidents, too.
Oh, well they’re misbehaving at the least.
cynn, have you read a fucking newspaper recently? Have you watched any TV news? Have you read St. Andrew of Heart-Ache?
Jeff is a bystander like the rest of us.
I’m stunned that cynn believes I’m making this an issue. Will this be the next rhetorical maneuver from the left — take out the eraser and pretend they’ve said not a thing, then ask why we ‘thugs are discussing a pregnancy?
Someone’d better email Howard, stat.
I forgot Sartwell exists. I do that all the time. Thanks for the reminder.
(I did think happyfeet might be him, once. Then I stopped thinking about it.)
I’ll object to this a little:
There’s some of that.
But it’s the knowledge that, with few exceptions, they are “white trash,” by their own standards, and signing wrong themselves, in a way that’s detectable but not by them — like people whose parietal lobes are damaged and they can tell something’s gone wrong with their handwriting but they can’t tell what — that makes them act all crazy.
It looks like a job for Adlerian analysis!
cynn
Oh, well they’re misbehaving at the least.
are you being especially dense tonight?
Jeff, I don’t see why it has to be an issue at all. This is really getting surreal. I don’t know whether to get off the pot or get on the bus.
Who is the antecedent of your “they’re” cynn? The prying press? The bloggers? The teen parents? The elder parents?
The problem the left has is that they simply don’t understand that they are a fringe element. They have no idea that most Americans – including democrats – find their prattle disgusting. They delude themselves into thinking they speak for half the country as if, for instance, the average union member or urban minority is on board with their whole complement of social issues, as if the average flyover state Democrat shares their reflexive anti-Americanism and so on. The left is the glue that binds the party together but when they delude themselves into believing they ARE the Democrat party and reveal what a bunch of freaks they are like in the past few weeks they simply self-destruct. Even the media can’t protect them when they reveal their true selves like this.
I’ve always abided by Dennis Prager’s analysis of what makes teens act like they do … sometime about age 13 or 14, extraterristerial aliens come and take their brains. They substitute an alien brain. If the parent is lucky, in about 6 or 8 years, the aliens return the human brain and take the alien one away, whereupon suddenly the young adult realizes his/her parents have gotten smarter in during those missing years.
Of course, if Sarah Palin had done the right thing and gotten Bristol an abortion on the DL, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. But I’m guessing that she’s going to deliver a damned cute kid that will be loved to pieces by a large, supportive family. The Godbothering bastards.
My girlfriend has the VMA’s on in the backround and the shitty british comic threw in a reference to Bristol Palin being “forced” to have the baby. Real freakin classy, he even got applause for it too.
Shit, at this point, “they’re” could mean anyone. Insert offender here.
BREAKING: TEENS OFTEN DON’T DO WHAT ADULTS TELL THEM THEY SHOULD, ESPECIALLY WHEN THE ADULTS ARE THEIR PARENTS.
Stay tuned.
This just in: Biden believes that life begins at conception.
Countdown to nishi’s head exploding, Scanners-style – 3…2…1…
#103, solid comment, fantastic handle.
“And why is “blame†necessary? Maybe the girl wanted a child.”
Wait a minute there.
If a seventeen year-old girl cannot contain her desire to conceive a child in her teenage years when unmarried, something has gone amiss. I heard someone else mention “maybe she chose it” as if that would expunge failure of morals or instruction from the equation. Such a desire, such a choice (to conceive) acted upon, is a failure indeed.
I had an illuminating conversation with my 17 year old step daughter this week.
We were talking about abortion, in the context of my thoughts and feelings about Obama’s votes on the Born Alive bill in Illinois, and my happiness when McCain announce Palin as his VP. She talked about her concerns if abortion should become illegal, complete with references to “back alley abortions”, (hmm, an interesting and familiar turn of phrase). I explained the implications of Roe v. Wade being overturned, and what it would take to make abortion illegal in each state. I also explained my own frustration at having no voice because of the Supreme Court ruling.
Then I told her that, should ever become pregnant (obviously the unplanned, teen kind of pregnant) I would be very angry at her, as she would be at herself, but I would want her to know that I would do anything I had to to help her to choose to give birth to her baby, making adoption or keeping the child her choice.
There was a (no, don’t go there, don’t please, please…) pregnant pause (whyeee? I begged you), then she said,
“You and my mom are so different.”
I didn’t have the sense that I was the one found lacking by the comparison.
Then she gleefully showed me pictures on her cell phone of the baby her friend had just had, whose parents take care of the baby during the day while the friend attends a special high school that helps young women who have had babies get their diploma.
I was very happy to see the change in attitude since I was a teenage girl.
And a little scared that having babies at 16 might become fashionable. Do we blame the Spears family or Juno? Not the Palins. They seem to have arrived late to the party.
Yo! Pablo and Spies: Yes, it’s true; life begins at condehension, so teens are in control of the species.
If a seventeen year-old girl cannot contain her desire to conceive a child in her teenage years when unmarried, something has gone amiss.
Maybe she wants to be the wife of a commercial fisherman. There’s nothing wrong with that, SarahW — it’s a high-paying job where you know you’re making a difference in the world (can’t get much more relevant than feeding people, after all).
You don’t need to go to college for it, either.
If she and her fiance “jumped the gun” a little bit, well, they wouldn’t be the first couple that had to have the bride’s dress let out a bit.
So the Left vs Right, Progressive vs Conservative thing is another iteration of the old Yankee and Cowboy War.
I must have my old Oglesby around the basement somewhere.
Euro-centric upper class east coast elites vs the wild westerners. McCain/Palin vs Obama/Biden is a perfect fit.
– The Left better hurry up and flog this horse, because Bristol will be an adult in a few months and then they might forget why they lost this election.
I may end up in a house of wailing babies – OK, grandbabies. They will die alone.
– How you coming on that poll analysis for today thor?
SarahW
Of COURSE it is a failure of something. Usually control failing to passion. Reality failing to magical thinking.
But it is in the aftermath of that failure where true moral courage takes place. Will these youngsters look at reality square in the eyes and ACCEPT the responsibilities and obligations of becoming adults?
Being an adult is a decision, not a chronological age.
I don’t have anything against fishermen. I don’t see where that comes from.
– Sarah, you’re such a menche, a great straight woman.
– “Ok, well maybe if you ever had something against a fisherman you might have enjoyed it! *rimshot
By your standards. Maybe Bristol Palin doesn’t much care about your standards.
All speculation of course. No “expunging” going on here. It looks like she received the comprehensive education. Maybe it didn’t take, or maybe she purposely ignored it. The point being, it’s not my business.
This is passage is Money !
Not only does this capture the essential elitism and hypocrisy of the left, but it does so with a lovely connotation of a haughty *sniff* as well as petulant sneer down the nose…
This is O! in a nutshell…
And, explains clearly why the self appointed guardians of women’s rights feel so comfortable and justified in trying to skewer “Cuda.
Their performance, as well as their MSM counterparts, have simply highlighted the inscrutable shrewdness of McMav’s selection of her as the veep…
MAVERICK! you magnificent bastard !!!
In other words, Bristol Palin’s pregnancy is instructive of exactly nothing.
Darleen, agreed.
I might move onto a larger point. Lets assume Palin has failed her daughter in some important aspect of guidance or shaping of her mind or her character. What’s monumentally silly, in my opinon, is to assume this should be a consideration in the way she runs a business, or the effectiveness of her political leadership. One has little to do with the other. It’s sexist to say that Palin’s competency as a political leader, is anymore based on her parenting skills that any man’s.
– Yes Jeff, Thats the point, Nobody’s business but Bristols, her mother, and her family.
– But the Feminists, ah the feminists. They can’t let this go unchallenged. My gawd, impressionable women everywhere might get the idea that they actually, really, undeniably, legally, have a CHOICE!.
Jeff, I’ll agree with you it isnt instructive on Palin’s leadership ability or executive competency running a city or a state or a nation.
I doesn’t follow that out-of-wedlock teenage pregnancy should be generally accepted with a shrug.
It’s sexist to say that Palin’s competency as a political leader, is anymore based on her parenting skills that any man’s. You know that, I know that. Obamabots and Vagina Warriors don’t.
I do say Bristol has made the moral choice. And in today’s culture of freedom divorced from responsibility, a couregeous choice.
What I’m more interested in is how she (and all those male politicians who also have kids  remember them?) is going to make the kinds of resources she’s had access to available to all of us.
Us? US? Does anybody remember back when that was Lauren’s blog, and Jill was new on the scene, all the pictures she put up of her big ass home and rich ass family back in Washington state and her little debutante ass out partying in the Big Apple every night? She has got a lot of damn nerve talking that way about the daughter of a couple of school teachers. These fucking people are insane.
…by all means label me of the elitny class…
Hang on to that dream, thor. If the Dumbing Down of America continues apace you might someday make it.
– So, on the Left we have feminists challenging Palin’s ability to be VP because of a private family matter, while at the same time, the experts in the Obama campaign gaggle have him running on the basis that running is the experience he needs, and also have him running against Palin.
– Is Mel Brooks writing the Obama campaign plan?
SarahW, I wrote this a couple of days ago but didn’t post it. It seems to me relevant to this discussion now so here goes.
[After holding in another post that no-one knows what Bristol and her beau’s intentions were…but everyone seems content to assume they do.]
The reason I bring this up is that my mother eloped with my father at 16. (My guess is she was pregnant and had a miscarriage, but I don’t know that with certainty.) I was born two years later when she was eighteen. I don’t believe my grandparents (either side) were all that happy about her choices, but I know for a fact that mom’s testimony was that she was quite happy with her choices and screw whatever they thought about it. It was her life, was her point, and she dealt with it on her own with my father.
— nor that Sarah Palin could’ve done a damned thing to stop it short of having Bristol locked away in the attic, or fitted with a bear trap, for that steely vagina dentata effect.
– But he isn’t going to mess with your guns…..your vagina may be a different matter.
Jeff, get real for two seconds. I don’t need to drag any particular teen’s standards into this. Can it possibly be a general controversy that getting pregnant when unmarried and seventeen is a bad choice ? Don’t mistake this for argument about choosing to carry a pregnancy to term vs. inducing an abortion.
Can it possibly be a general controversy that getting pregnant when unmarried and seventeen is a bad choice ?
How do you suppose Bristol Palin’s life would’ve been different if she’d gotten pregnant at age 18 instead?
An unmarried, pregnant 17-year old daughter in the family. Oh! No! There goes the fundamentalist Muslim vote.
Actually, there’s a lot a mother and father can do. Things that don’t involve snap traps – but that’s neither here nor there, when it comes to Palin’s ability to be a government leader.
I’ve no doubt it can be turned in to one. But other than that, I’d say it’s her choice, and maybe she has a better idea of how she’d like her life to go than you do. Could be she later regrets the choice. I really can’t say. But it looks like she’ll be married when the baby arrives. Which I’m sure is actually quite common.
– I’ve never had much of a tendency to judge other peoples life choices. Its very tricky, and they almost never thank you for your advice.
Okay, have it your way, then. The parents are to blame.
Bad parents. Bad. Should have called Nanny 911. But I’m sure that bad judgment won’t carry over to governing. Just so long as she stays selfish and puts her career before her family. For me.
I’ve asked this before, but does anyone know what the sex-ed program was at Bristol Palin’s high school?
Because teenagers get all of their ideas about the whens and whys of sex from their ultra-kewl, ultra-hip high-school teachers. Seriously, didn’t you? Because at that age, teenagers believe that all of the adults that surround them — parents, teachers, coaches — are the wisest, most interesting people on the face of the earth.
It looks like I’m going to have to link this again:
How things like this happen.
It’s not the failure either of the schools or the parents when a teen gets pregnant. It’s the teen’s failure.
Maybe she’d be older and wiser, and wouldn’t have gotten pregnant at all.
JeffG, don’t put words in my mouth. Is it your argument that if Palin made mistakes raising her daughter, that it necessarily reflects on her leadership ability? Is it not clear I’m saying just the opposite of that?
I grew up in, and still live in, a predominantly hispanic community. My friends and neighbors cannot understand the hand-wringing and angst that rich white people go through when a pretty 17 year old girl gets pregnant by a decent young guy.
Or the angst over having children generally….
If demographics is destiny, and it is, why do we have a cultural death wish?
– “…[and] if I ever thought that anybody in my campaign had anything to do with this, they’d be fired immediately.” – (Obama statement to the press)
– So does his campaign own like a big wharehouse somewhere where they store all the people hes thrown under the MagicBus so far?
Newsflash: I never said it was the school’s fault. I said that the people making a certain type of argument would find that argument undercut by it coming to light that Bristol Palin did not receive some kind of ultra-Christiany abstinence-only teaching.
And I disagree with you that this is necessarily some sort of failure of the teen. Could be she conceives of it as an enormous success, for all I know.
But you all have at it. I’m too tired to argue this any further. Plus, I forgot to take out the trash yesterday and my wife is pissed.
I blame my mother. And the trash. And my wife. And me.
You are saying it; but your argument isn’t.
Maybe she’d be older and wiser, and wouldn’t have gotten pregnant at all.
Or maybe, you know, she doesn’t see a baby as a punishment. Stranger things have happened.
ELVIS HAS LEFT THE BUILDING!
I wasn’t arguing directly against you, Jeff. I was arguing against the general tendency to think that sex-ed in the schools has some overwhelming effect that can override both bad parenting and peer pressure and our generally over-sexed culture.
And it’s a failure of the teen if the teen believes that it’s wrong to have sex until after marriage.
Ever notice that thor’s overly dramatic offerings are inversely proportionate to the significance and relevance of his argument.
Not much to offer, ratchet up the hysterics!
Who’s thor?
Never heard of him.
I didn’t say Palin screwed up, or failed, or was a “bad” mother, btw… I said assume</I. she did – it doesn’t signify anything more about her than it would about a male political candidate. And the ragingly controversial idea that unmarried seventeen year olds should defer parenthood even if they desire it.
“And it’s a failure of the teen if the teen believes that it’s wrong to have sex until after marriage.”
– Maybe she doesn’t hold that view. She is, after all, only a few months short of being a legal adult.
– Does that make her a “bad” person?
How the hell did having a baby get to be such a shitty thing in the white middle class?
I’d like to see more kids and more young families.
Screw the weird extended american adolescence. I don’t want to live in a society anymore where men in their late 20s are called “kids”.
I have failed to close that tag. I blame my mother.
You are saying it; but your argument isn’t.
JeffG, what? That makes no sense. How do you see anything internally contradictory in what I am saying?
I think there is some serious research which purports to show that teens develop many of their attitudes about sex and morality with their peers rather than (entirely) from their parents. See Pinker, S. “Blank Slate” pps.390-399, who relies on the work of Judith Rich Harris “The Nurture Assumption: Why Children turn out the way they do”.
Maybe it didn’t take, or maybe she purposely ignored it.
Or maybe the rubber had a hole in it. Nobody seems to be considering that there is no 100% effective method of birth control.
I think the idea is that there’s not a lick of space between Baracky and the media vis-a-vis Sartwell’s characterization of liberal peoples. I mean aside from how just being named Crispin Sartwell gives him like way large credibility.
Does that make her a “bad†person?
No. It just puts the term “failure” into context.
Nobody seems to be considering that there is no 100% effective method of birth control.
Abstinence works every time, yo. It’s just not very fun.
And not very birthy either.
Abstinence works every time, yo.
It may have failed once, according to what I have been told.
Maybe if she had a mother who wasn’t a stupid freaking hick.
– thor. I’ve changed my mind about you. You’re not a daisy, you’re just a gutter snipe.
– Now shut up, and get busy with that polls analysis.
I just realized we have a little paradox here. Most of the people who are teaching abstinence is the only 100% effective method also believe it didn’t work once. While the people who are opposed to teaching abstinence are the ones who really believe it is 100% effective.
Maybe if she had a mother who wasn’t a stupid freaking hick.
But if her mother wasn’t a ‘stupid freaking hick’, then she wouldn’t have been born at all. Sarah would have been shopping for Bruno Magli shoes and writing feminist screeds instead of having kids.
It seems the only people having kids anymore are ‘stupid freaking hicks’. The future belongs to them. You? Not so much.
You and your kind are an evolutionary dead end, much like the neanderthal. In a few generations, we’ll research to see if Modern Lefty Guy is even a part of our genome.
We’ll research to see if Modern Lefty Guy’s goatee and weak chin were adaptations passed along. Then we will discover, in the future, that more humans are related to hockey players that Lefty Guys….
Is the point also though kind of that maybe Baracky’s media has somehow internalized some idea that these people they write about are always de facto literal role models? That’s kind of interesting cause Baracky’s media gets to paint the role models’ portraits a lot, to a really big degree actually. That’s a lot of power if you frame it that way. Nigh absolute really.
Is the point also though kind of that maybe Baracky’s media has somehow internalized some idea that these people they write about are always de facto literal role models?
They wouldn’t write about them if they weren’t lefty role models.
– Grey. ixnay on the foinsay. One of the only things I like about Progressives is that they’re working their way toward extinction.
– Grey. ixnay on the foinsay. One of the only things I like about Progressives is that they’re working their way toward extinction.
They knew that since the Beatles: “If you go carrying pictures of chairman Mao, you ain’t gonna make it with anyone anyhow.”
I like the fact that if McCain/Palin are elected in November, it will certainly be due to the fact that the leftists who are aborting all their potential offspring have reduced their number by their actions. Kinda like the Shakers.
Demographics is Destiny.
– j pickins. It’s customary around here that when we make a slur against any “identity group” we automatically do a self denunciation. If you can work three slurs, plus a racist or sexist word into the post, you get to Uber-selfdenounce,
it will certainly be due to the fact that the leftists who are aborting all their potential offspring have reduced their number by their actions. Kinda like the Shakers.
Demographics is Destiny.
But they are busy importing illegal aliens to make up for the shortage of cheap labor kids used to provide.
You can’t be both anti-amnesty and pro-abstinence, who’s gonna change your bedpan and roll you over when you get old?
that comment, right there, got me banned from Free Republic discussing teen pregnancy.)
– Not to mention the illegal alien vote.
Furthermore, more old mothers ‘waiting until the right time’ means more Downs Syndrome babies. Or, just no babies, rich fertility specialists and lots of ‘medical waste’.
Should I denounce myself now?
– I don’t know. Was your heart really in it?
you’ve got to understand that “class†is not income-level. class is a semiotic system. it’s affect, diction, alma mater, what you drink. it’s how your house is decorated, no matter how big it is
I think class is one of those things that you know when you see it, but you can’t really define it.
The classiest woman I know never made it past the 8th grade. Her grammar is atrocious, like nails on a blackboard to my ear, I’m not sure she has ever read a book unless it was on crochet instructions or maybe a cook book, yet she has more common sense than anyone I know. She knows exactly who she is, she knows where she fits in in her world, she knows what her talents are and what she can add to the whole to be productive. Her core values are based on common sense, a heavy dose of pragmatism, and a fully formed view of right and wrong. She has raised six children and three step children, all who have done well. When her husband died young and left her with five children, ages 10 years to 9 mo., and a large dry wheat farm to run in rural Colorado, she took over and managed to run the farm, support her children, and even save for her own retirement future. She learned how to do simple math necessary for her bookkeeping by reading her kids’ math text books after they went to bed at night.
This is a woman who would be looked down on by all of those elitists. Yet she is content in who she is, proud of what she has accomplished, and proud of the legacy she’ll leave behind.
She is in her 80s now, but she still votes in every election. I haven’t asked her, but my own common sense tells me that Sarah Palin is her kind of gal.
Oh and I should mention that this classy woman had 3 sons and 3 sons-in-law all in the military and one of those sons-in-law is listed as MIA on the Wall.
Sara:
I think you’re using a different definition of “class” than the dude you quote is. You’re using “class” to mean “dignity,” and he’s using “class” the way a Marxist or 19th-century European would, as a marker of social status.
At the university, the neo-Marxists like to yammer on about building a classless society, in which nobody is considered better than anyone else, and definitely no one is wealthier than anyone else.
But they themselves constitute a type of aristocratic “class” that is not derived from wealth, family lines, or any of the traditional categories. Instead, they see themselves as morally, intellectually, politically, and culturally superior to those who have not gone to the “right” universities, who don’t subscribe to the “right” ideas, and who don’t “look” the part.
I saw plenty of that myself at Cornell, where I suspected that most of the stuff people were into had little to do with what they really liked but rather was an effort to fit in with the right crowd. It was all about appearances, not actual tastes or predilections. Drove me nuts, but I guess that’s how some people are. “Authenticity” indeed.
The reason most university types deny that they are elitist is that they don’t come from old wealth, or if they do, they’ve renounced it in favor of revolutionary chic posturing. They also deny that they’re elitist because they do not perceive themselves as being in power.
What Sartwell elucidates is the fact that academic aristocrats are elitist not because of where they come from or because of societal pressures, but rather because of their own attitudes and self-defined behaviors and beliefs.
The first being that they despise “the little people” with their whole souls, and the second being that academic aristocrats should be in power. This is why they rip on America so often: to persuade the others that the country has a fever, and the only cure for it is more power for them.
dicentra: You are correct, of course. I’m reminded of my Mother, who was someone I always described as the last of the great ladies, in her last days begged me, “just don’t let them take my dignity away, please.”
I grew up with what you describe at Cornell. My family to a large extent is like that to this day. But I broke out when I married a career military man. When I was upset one time over some marital misunderstanding, my Aunt said to me, “well, that’s what you get for marrying beneath you.” I was furious. My husband was an honorable Naval officer who took his oath serious and did his duty to the best of his ability. But, truth be told, that attitude gnawed at me and caused me to have a bit of snobbishness toward him too. Then my Mom sat me down and read me the riot act. She pointed out that there is more than one kind of intelligence and that I should be damn glad that I had a man who was a genius at mechanical things, could build anything from scratch including our home, could repair my car, and was willing to take out the garbage and scrub the bathroom. I had my first awakening to the true value of the skilled trades that none of us could live without. Eventually he found out he liked live theater and fine restaurants once in awhile and I found out that I like NASCAR.
#148 Spies – I can’t get on board with the idea that unmarried teenagers deliberately conceiving is a good idea, despite all the boons and blessings of children.
And I don’t mean to imply that motive applies to Sarah Palin’s daughter, that’s just what some others have suggested.
And for the last time, Palin’s children’s choices or mistakes may be result of imperfect parenting or not.
Palins track record in government, her ideas, and her ability to lead, should matter more than her career as mother.
“Comment by cynn on 9/7 @ 8:55 pm #
Yo! Pablo and Spies: Yes, it’s true; life begins at condehension, so teens are in control of the species.”
They have been through most of the history of the human species.
See “Families, Royal, European”
“It seems the only people having kids anymore are ’stupid freaking hicks’. The future belongs to them. You? Not so much.”
Think of it as evolution in action.
Sara, at 182, put into practical terms what Jeff was saying in the post. But, I do see aspects of this elitism on the right- from people that I actually know. I can’t put my finger on the difference- I thinking though it has something to do with the fact that one group is called snobs. Of course, it’s early. First cup of coffee and all.
Well, of course, Carin.
What you’re looking at is the last of the “Rockefeller Republicans”.
Hoorah for the city of Boston
Home of the bean and the cod,
Where the Lodges speak only to Cabots
And the Cabots speak only to God.
Or maybe I have the Cabots and Lodges reversed — it doesn’t matter. Eurocentric, elitist, the children and grandchildren of the Robber Barons and their sycophants, they thought of themselves as the equivalent of the European noble class. Many, perhaps most, of them truly believed in an ideal of public service and put their money and their bodies down on it, but even then they were characterized by condescension toward the “little people”. It was one of them who uttered the phrase, “If you have to ask [what it costs] you can’t afford one.”
They were never much of a political force outside New England and New York, but where they did manage to insert themselves into the process they were largely classical-liberal except as regards public morality — “banned in Boston” was around for a long time before Evangelical Christians hit the limelight. Their last, dying gasp was George H. W. Bush, and he was (by their standards) tainted. His son abandoned his heritage and went off with those awful Texanish hicks, thus BDS as described by Sartwell, above: what haunts the imagination of the american liberal: my family, in the next generation, will be white trash.
Leftoids are fond of accusing the Nixonian “southern strategy” of shifting all the racist reactionary Democrats over to the Republican side, and there’s something to be said for that. What they don’t mention is that the Old Money elitists went over wholesale to the Democrats at the same time, and are the source of most of the genuinely elitist sneers from that side of the aisle.
Regards,
Ric
So the election is now between Bristol Palin and Sen. Obama? His allies think that this sounds like a good thing, taking on a pregnant seventeen year old? The political left and the left media thinks they are going to come out of this fight in better shape than they went in?
John McCain, you magnificent bastidge!
#42 ccoffer:
I agree. I want thor to find the widest possible audience he can and I think he should try and get himself one of those NPR gigs as fast as he can.
Time to update the newest Plain smear: Sarahcuda cheated to win the Miss Wasilla title. Details are forthcoming, as the manufacturing process winds down. Fox News might actually beat St. Andrew to this scandalous bit of dirt. Though I suspect they’ll be giggling when they get there.
You know what I want to see? M’chelle vs. Piper.
#193 Pablo:
Monica Conyers didn’t do too well against an eighth grader.
Late to this party, but as to the immorality of Bristol and Levi’s premarital sex – according to the authority on that subject since they are getting married and keeping the baby, it would seem there is no foul.
Now if we are talking about the made up morality of western, or American culture, then the question becomes is that a true morality, or is more of a guideline towards the greatest chance of being “successful”.
I would gladly hear arguments against this POV.
Mikey NTH, It was and is a supremely stupid line of attack, and the outlandishness of the accusations I suppose fostered by the stongly held, long-cherished notion that Repthuglicans are at the very core of their political beings, hypocritical sneaks and liars; best conquered by “outing” or even a false smear, rationalized away as necessary. (Because even if you have to lie about a lying rethuglican, they are actually a lying Rethuglican on some deep level and deserve it.)
It was pure folly of course, and has had the opposite effect… pointing up hypocrisy and dishonesty and bankruptcy of principle on the side of Palin’s opponents…and leads the middle to wonder, what’s so wrong with your own ideas and leadership, that you would sink to this, instead of rising to your own ideals, and pointing out the solidity of your own candidate?
Sarahcuda cheated to win the Miss Wasilla title.
By unfairly being the most attractive, and handiest with duct tape?
This article at TNR (via Hot Air) seems to support this post and the one Jeff G. is quoting.
The wrong type of feminist is on a party’s national ticket.
http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=c1fd53cd-51a8-4078-9269-674b24fdabea
Here is a quote:
Of course, these days, the feminist mantle is claimed by pro-life conservatives and pro-choice progressives alike. Palin herself is a proud member of Feminists for Life. Feminism seems no longer to denote a particular set of values or ideological agenda; it is merely a label appropriated to proclaim that one is committed to the best interests of women–whatever one believes those to be. Thus far, there’s no reason to doubt that Palin devoutly believes her hard-core conservatism is right for women. A McCain-Palin White House, however, would spell only trouble for women’s rights.
RTWT
Please o please, keep it coming, koskids.
Thor @ 68:
Confession is good for the soul.
So is Bob Marley.
Open your eyes and look within:
Are you satisfied with the life youre living?
We know where were going;
We know where were from.
Were leaving babylon, yall!
Were going to our fathers land.
Are you sure you want to get involved with someone quite so Bible thumping?
Rastafarians are absolutely opposed to abortion, thor. Did you know that?
Ok SarahW, you got me. How is that ducktape used? For what?
You guys – and the blogging feminists – are missing the argument as its taking place on the [popular democratic base] ground.
Not many folks I run into are talking much now about Bristol, per se. Oh, the ‘white trash’ thing is being thrown around pretty ..liberally but mostly now the ‘real’ concern is over Levi.
See, a lot of them have made ‘mistakes’ and such, so they can identify with her to an extent, but Levi, they say, is getting forced to marry her.
Maybe there’s something to that, to be entirely fair. But what it points to among that base is that they think nobody should be held responsible for their actions, really. Get a girl preggers and she wants to keep it? “Her fault, man. Don’t be destroying my life…”
Sdferr – In a world before Spanx.
Scroll down to “Victoria’s secret”, Sdferr. If I looked harder I could probably find pictures.
If by ‘forced’ they are referring to the pressure of social norms and mores, well yeah, i can see that being a bone of contention among the lefties. Among middle America – the actual ‘swing voters?’ Not so much.
Seeing how you don’t know me from your dick, are you sure you want to talk about religion, or freedom of it and from it, with someone like me?
Smoke up, Rasta man.
That’s between them and Haile Selassie. I couldn’t give two dread lock holidays.
Spanx? (I am so sheltered.) So I googled. Now I (sort of) know. The wart thing is also entirely a new one to me, though I wonder about the non causa pro causa. E’en so, fighting HPV’s unsightly effects one roll at a time is kinda sweet and probably cuts down on p-to-p transmission to boot. It is a great product for jus’ about anything but ducts in my book.
Why she got pregnant is irrelevant. I had the most anti-sex parents you could possibly think of, went to a private Christian school and was still knocking boots at 17. Bristol made a mistake – it wasn’t a choice necessarily (to have sex yes, to have a baby, no). The left is trying to frame the issue from a standpoint of the failure of Christian parents to use their magical Christian influence to keep a bored teenager from having sex. THis is a specious argument when it comes to Palin’s credentials to lead (as Jeff has pointed out). The problem for the left is, their challenge when it comes to morals and values (hyprocrisy) is not valid here, because the Palins acted completely consistetly with their beliefs, in encouraging Bristol to have the child and marry the father. The left hates this, BECAUSE its consistent and they know it. If Palin had Bristol have an abortion, well then maybe the criticism would be valid. Compare and contrast if a teenage Chelsea had gotten pregnant during the Clinton’s campaign – I think we all know what the outcome would have been under those circumstances (and hint, the outcome does not involve Slick Willy becoming a grandpa).
It was a straightforward question thor, so in answer to your question, yes I’d like to hear your reason why you think Bob Marley is good for the soul. But if you really don’t want to answer the question, you could just skip it.
ThomasD –
I could think of much worse things to happen in my life that to be “forced” into marriage to the most politically powerful family in my State.
Yeah Urthshu, that’s the aspect that I’m least certain of. The older concept of marriage is certainly about a business/social arrangement and marrying for social advantage is seen as perfectly acceptable method of class advancement (so long as the formalities are properly observed.) The modern notions of marriage tends towards idealized romantic love and serving as a mode personal expression and overall it is a decidedly middle class concept.
No, as a matter of fact, yours wasn’t a straight forward question at all. Ask a straight forward question and I’ll answer it.
Here’s a couple of questions for you: do you know who Bob Marley is? What was the literacy rate in Jamaica 25-years ago?
Like i said, if you don’t want to answer the question, just skip it.
I’m well aware of Bob Marley, I’m well aware of reggae, I’m well aware of Rastafarianism, Ethiopia, and Hallie Sellasie(sp?), the Lion of Judah. I’m not particularly fluent on literacy rates in Jamaica, nor Trenchtown in particular. I am well aware of the cesspool that is Jamaica and that Marley, nor his sons, nor any of the Wailers, have ever changed that.
And, in case you missed your own foolishness, just how the hell could I not be aware of who Bob Marley is when I was the one who dug up the quote from Exodus?
Genius.
Well, first of all, Homer, Jamaica is no more a cesspool than you are a turd.
http://tinyurl.com/4mz8k8
Bob changed a few things, quite a few things, and not only in Jamaica.
They talk about Bristol’s pregnancy as this “time of turmoil and strife,” but we don’t have one iota of proof that Bristol or Levi are in turmoil or feel strife, nor any proof that it is a tumultuous time for either family. For all we know, Bristol and Levi are ecstatic about their upcoming marriage and a new life about to join their family. The projection going on on both sides is mind-boggling.
Huzzahs, Sara! Can’t be said enough.
[t]hor, if you have some of those literacy rates, possibly broken down by year, I’d be interested in seeing them.
Maybe you haven’t caught this fact, I grew up in south Florida, which maybe gave me the opportunity to travel a fair bit in the Caribbean, which maybe brought me to Jamaica more than once, although not to the spiffy all inclusive tourist resort enclaves. Perhaps your definition of cesspit does not include astronomical rates of violent crime, nor proto-marxist kleptocracy (yeah, I should have known…)