Twisted Spinster

P.J. O’Rourke, once a great conservative slammer of liberal idiocies, now another half-drunk passenger on the same leaky “inclusive” boat along with the l likes of Peggy Noonan and Christopher Buckley. What can I say except that it looks like sooner or later the effects of being college-age in the Sixties come out, kind of like shingles. And the effects are just as painful and embarrassing — though usually the pain and embarrassment is suffered by onlookers and former fans.

Eh. Anyway, I think P.J. jumped the shark a while back. I haven’t been able to get through his latest couple of books, whatever they were called — they just rambled all over the place and repeated, weakly, things he’d already said in earlier, funnier works. Florence King had the sense to stop writing when she realized she’d run out of things to say. Time to put away the keyboard, Peej.

“Racism” now means “not caring about the color of a person’s skin.” So-called “black conservative” John McWhorter says it right here in his column. And don’t you dare disagree with him, you racist.

The folks calling me up, waiting for the black case for McCain, have supposed none of this would be important to me. But surely the queasy feeling I got was not because they were being presumptuous. It’s something more personal.

The queasiness is because, in my heart of hearts, there is a part of me that thrills to the Obamas because of a red-blooded racial loyalty. There. I admit it.

How dare they imagine that a “conservative” might actually vote for the conservative candidate. It was McCain’s fault that he wasn’t black. You don’t expect a black man to go past “racial loyalty” and vote for some old white dude when a brother’s running, do you? You do? RAAAACIIIIST!

My sister and I noticed that Obama “looks like us” for real – he happens to match us rather well in specific skin tone and darn it, that does feel kind of good.

You know, I’m a fat, five-foot-four, middle-aged whitish woman with graying hair, bad teeth, and bad skin. So far no president of the US of A has looked at all like me. By this criteria I should have felt totally rotten all my life. I should have been supporting Hillary solely because she was a woman. But as I don’t base how I feel about life on whether or not the president of my country looks like the face I see in the mirror, I’m a RAAACIIIST!

From now on when people ask me why I didn’t vote for Obama, I think I’ll just tell them “because he was black.” Why not? It’s what they think anyway. If I told them the truth — I don’t like his ideas (what few concrete ones we’ve been able to pry out of the cone of silence surrounding his true self, that is), his political associations with people like smug, silver-spoon terrorists like William Ayres and his psychotic wife Bernardine Dohrn, the fact that he was nurtured by the corrupt Chicago political community, the fact that he seems to have coasted through life on his good looks and sense of entitlement, and so on and so forth, I’d get “you just don’t like it that he’s a black man.” So okay, fine. Have it your way. God forbid I should disturb the pleasure you take in victimhood. Christmas is coming, the season of giving, and I’m such a giver.

(Via Kathy Shaidle.)

You must read this comment thread where a supposedly rabid McCain supporter calling himself “Hank the Tank” attempts to turn others against Sarah Palin by repeating old slams (such as the “embarrassing Couric interview” one), and is exposed several comments later as being an Obama supporter, one “Nick.” Ace’s site, see, uses a special IP identifier for commenters, so troll sock puppets like this one can be exposed. But that’s not the funny thing — the funny thing is that the sock puppet keeps on commenting, trying to defend himself as just wanting to have a “spirited debate.” Oh — and “Hank the Tank” a.k.a. “Nick” also claimed to be a vet, prompting many of the commenters to initially treat him with some respect before his unmasking. But liberals are our betters, right?

On a related note, another commenter linked to this article in the Times Online by one Tim Shipman, in which the very first paragraph contains long-since disproved slams against Sarah Palin and her rally audiences — for example, the one where someone was supposed to have yelled “kill him!” — an allegation later found to be bullshit. Mr. Shipman also cleverly claims her rallies had a “lynch mob” atmosphere. Yet despite all the racists frothing for Obama’s blood, he somehow got elected! Fancy that. The kicker? The only source Mr. Shipman gives for all of his allegations is “a Newsweek history of the campaign.” So a “reporter” for the mighty UK Times can read an article in an American weekly newsfroth magazine, write an column that’s basically a synopsis of the Newsweek article, send it in, and it gets published. What can I say except congratulations, dude, on getting such a sweet paying gig. Real writers actually have to come up with their own words — but you, Mr. Shipman, can just cut and paste stuff you read on Huffington Post three weeks ago and your bosses will give you money for it! I’d go for a job like that — except for that darn smidgen of integrity I have! I blame my parents — they insisted on teaching me that lies and gossip were bad things.

Conservatives’ reaction to Bush’s victory by a slim margin (I don’t remember what it was exactly but I believe he won over Kerry by a little bit more than half): “Thank God he squeaked through.” Liberal reaction to Obama’s win over McCain by a slim margin — a little more than half: “Almost half the country didn’t vote for him! Life sucks. Waaah!”

(Via Jim Treacher.)

Hm. I thought only white rednecks who lived in trailer parks and were devoted NASCAR worshippers shot guns into the air to celebrate things. Another stereotype goes down the drain. And in other news, various minority groups share viewpoints in a multicultural exchange of ideals. Looks like Obama’s election has already improved things!

(Via.)

Well, guess what I probably won’t be doing? Going back to college to finish getting that bachelor’s degree. At least, I won’t if this cute little plan goes into effect. You know what? The word “volunteer” implies the term voluntary. As in, it’s not something I’m being coerced into doing in order to get something I need. The first person that comes to me telling me I “have to volunteer” is going to be told to shove their orders where the sun don’t shine.

And here we go; the Anchoress is called a “mean fake nun,” Mark Hemingway’s measured response to the From 52 to 48 website is called “howling for blood,” and so on. Go ahead and check all the links alicublog uses as examples of the right’s intransigence, and tell yourself this is the way gracious winners behave. I can see the future, and it’s headlined “48% of Americans still racist.”

There’s been some talk back and forth on how to properly respond to being in the opposition once more. Some want us to be “dignified” — as in, don’t fight dirty like the Bush-haters, it will only make us look as bad as them, etc. Others are saying hells no, after the way we’ve been treated for eight years they deserve to get it back in spades. What I say is: no matter what you do, remember that we don’t need to use the other side’s rhetorical sticks and stones — we’re the ones who have the intelligence to know how to use stilettos and rapiers. And we have this in our favor as well: we have the truth. All the left has is lies.

You know, I’m not sure what I feel about this. My natural tendency is to say “Ew, get away!” My more civilized tendencies (I haven’t removed all the implants yet) want me to say “Aww, that’s sweet.” I suppose it would all depend on just how many of these people didn’t spend the past eight years calling people like me racist fascist babykilling warmongers. And as that’s something I’ll probably never know…

(Via Jim Treacher’s comments.)

Okay, one more political post for the night, and then I have to do things like eat and, uh… write, that’s it. Anyway, I’ve been reading some conservative Canadian and British blogs and columnists on the election, and they all seem to share one attitude in common — shock at the way the American voting public seemed to turn 180 degrees to the left. But I’m here to tell everyone now that the problem isn’t some sort of sudden brainwashing syndrome. The fact is that the problem with my country isn’t that it’s suddenly fallen to some sort of delusion, it’s that for at least the past twenty-five years if not longer, around half of the population has been delusional to a greater or lesser degree. Yes, some elections had a bigger majority than others on one side or the other, but in this one at least the division was almost even between the two candidates. Unfortunately the wobbly center is what splits the halves, and this time it wobbled towards Obama — probably because the wobbly center consists of people whose primary desire is to be “nice.” Obama’s campaign could be boiled down to “if you don’t vote for me you’re not nice” even more so than “you’re racist.” I’ll bet a significant number of Obama voters just wanted the whiners to shut up, and also thought McCain was a cranky old man even though his crankiness seemed quite absent this campaign. In fact, he’s been and is still being accused of being too… nice.

So the problem is long-standing (half a population of enablers and victims is half too much) and right now insurmountable, because the only way to break people of life-long bad habits is to force them to face the truth, and that’s not very nice. (By the way, the older usage of “nice” included meanings such as overly-fussy and delicate, as well as discerning. Now we mean it to mean “amiable,” “bland,” “non-trouble-causing.”)

I forgot to add — the problem is also the other side of the coin; people who aren’t “nice” enough. What I mean by that is not only are they needlessly rude and angry, they lack discernment. Many of these people either didn’t vote or voted for one of the third-party candidates out of some misplaced sense of pique — the most common reason I came across was that neither candidate was perfect. Third-party voters are probably worse than the stay-at-homes, because they know that their choice won’t mean anything except that they’ve taken a vote away from the Imperfect Ones, stuck it to the Man, whatever. I think in a situation like this past election such an action is irresponsible. There hasn’t been a third-party candidate with any sort of pull since Ross Perot, and we know how that turned out.

And yes, someday when I have extra cash I’m going to buy this book. Of course, right now I have several sacks of books I’m trying to get rid of, not to mention several e-books and two library books to read.

Update: Iowahawk sticks the knife in so nicely that you don’t even feel it until everything starts to go dark and fuzzy.