I had a very strange experience today. I was IM-ing about this and that and Clinton's name came up. I wrote that I was surpised how much she had impressed me this campaign season despite my abhorrence for some of her more right-wing views. I wrote that each debate seemed to get to the same ultimate result. Clinton was winning on poise and preparedness and Kucinich was winning on ideas and style.
She wrote "I could never vote for Kucinich. I think's he's a closet Repulican." I wrote back with "ha-ha, very funny," and was smiling myself at a decent sarcastic joke. She had been, howerever, very much not joking. So, I asked by what did she base her that opinion because from where I sit the only Republican with whom he shares too much is John V. Lindsay. Maybe David Souter. Her answer: "I don't know. It's just a gut feeling and I always trust my instincts."
Wow. D-CAP, whatever you wrote, I take back my criticism. Color me naive or actually color me de-flowered. You guys are in one big mess up there if that is how an educated, liberal blogger processes information. Identical to the way Oprah's poor white trash ladies with a National Enquirer and a meth habit view politics, si o no?
That admistration fucker who made the famous "reality-based community" remark was dropping fucking science, o sea! OK, let's put everyone in the game. I don't think I'm terribly judgmental nor moralistic, but, gee whiz, what the fuck is wrong with you Americans? Do you really believe that anybody's opinion is as valid as everybody else's? I suppose that's admirable but given that I don't know anything about -- say -- metallurgy, why should my off-hand remarks about smelting carry equal weight to those of a professional smelter who's been doing it 20 years? Because it's "fair" that way? So no one's feelings get hurt? That's beyond silly. Nobody's knowledge and scholarship is so broad. And certainly a random college graduate's opinions about Kucinich having never studied the man's career or positions aren't worth dick. My opinion, and yours, are ipso facto more reliable and more valid.
Welcome to MondoOprah. Everybody's opinion is equally valid. Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., has no better read on history than a woman reading her horoscope does. I love it. Just re-affirms my decision to split. I'm convinced now that bone-headedness is hardly the province of the right. The right just does it better.
It's as you say, D-CAPny, but worse, much worse. And I know it's redundant but I have to hit the cultural high notes here. When I was first coming up in the gambling world I learned to offer opinions only on stuff I was willing to go down to the felt with because among gamblers in NYC if you say something silly, the money's coming out and you have to go down with the ship on your silliness or risk wide ridicule. I know this is also true of Wall Street and even in publishing as well. It's true of New York. 8 million smart people who are unhappy and frustrated and jammed up against one another. Like they're not looking to break a dumb tourist?
A tenous connection here but given what I know I would strongly advise any wing-nut tourist to be super-respectful in New York City. 9/11 doesn't bind us. You care more about it than we do. It has driven even more distance between us and your desire for vengeance is your trip, not ours. Our extraction of vengeance from YOU is OUR trip. For my part, in 10 years my son gets you with a 40oz, his music, and a box of the Stanley works' finest tools.
Just being a dumb Democrat is punishment enough for the woman who starred in the earlier part of the post.
Kelso's Nuts love you
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11 comments:
I'm baffled as to how anyone could think that kucinich is a repub in democratic clothing!
there is no way i can believe dennis a wolf in sheeps clothing......
hillary yes, dennis no
btw --- i know a lot of it is pundit diarrhea -- but hillary really has problems.............
D-CAP,CUP:
I don't think she's thought about it at all. That was my point. Americans come to all sorts of opinions using all sorts of heuristic devices and then believe that they opinion is as valid as a scholar's is. Total horseshit. I'm going to check for the opinion of someone who KNOWS THE SUBJECT.
D-CAP. What sort of problems does Hillary Clinton have? You don't mean that Obama getting some press this week is the sum total of her problems, do you? Because if you do, then you are a red-boarder of the worst kind. Next week, you'll tell me about Obama's problems.
But if you have some unique insight into Clinton, please unspool it here. If it makes sense, I'll say so. From where I sit, she's the likely winner of the presidency. Or let's say she's a small odds-against favorite for the presidency and an big odds-on favorite to win the nomination.
If you mean that you don't LIKE Hillary Clinton, I can't argue with you. There's a lot to dislike there but neither Obama nor Edwards provide an alternative. Obama even has non-trivial possiblities of going wing-nut. Hard to find too much to distinguish her in terms of platfrm from Dodd, Biden or Richardson. If you said you were going all the way with Kucinich, I'd say "go on, my son!"
anyone who has to release info like (and i paraphrase) "obama wrote an essay in third grade about wanting to be president" -- even though it is tongue and cheek -- has major signs of desperation.....
i know what they are trying to say -- except there are plenty of people who will not see anything tongue and cheek about it....
they are extremely worried she has peaked and it is all downhill -- all the way (and i got this from the political reporters at work...)
No you truly grasp the dilemma We face here in hell Ser Kelso dealing with the flesh of so many who have by their own lack of information failed others or themselves in very critical ways. Once it only seemed to be polarized, then it seemed they enjoyed the adversity now it is just marketing ignorance that drives American "thinkers" to the cliff like so many pop culture lemmings hoping to stand next to a cardboard cutout of Obama and Oprah.
They once held Truths to be self evident, alas only the Holiday circualr at WalMart speakes the truth to them and the only True purveyor of evidence is a woman talk show host from the Deep South that escaped to Second City.
i having been finding that everyone has a conspiracy theory these days, particularly those who are relatively uninformed and mal-educated.
while i like what you said ... "just being a dumb Democrat is punishment enough for the woman who starred in the earlier part of this post" ... i can't quite agree with it because the fact is that she doesn't know (nor does she want to know) how dumb she really is.
ignorance is bliss (for many), n'est pas?
D-CAPnyc:
Don't go simple on me now, son. I don't need a rehash of the last week in politics. I'm interested in the NEXT week. Any campaign is a marathon. Their are all sorts of tactical moves that we NEVER hear about. I had something of an inside look at Dean's 2004 campaign. A multi-way campaign's an incredibly intricate game. You have to take into consideration your candidates and those of all of your opponents, how much cash on hand you have, what your implied cash coming is in, i.e., how might a win here affect your cash in three months, plus all of the polls on everybody every day.
This dovetails very nicely with the post that followed on Monday. The last people I would ask for any insight are reporters. They are careerists. They can't fail if they figure out what the conventional wisdom is and parrot versions of that, but they are scared to death of failing with a contrary opinion, because they'll really look foolish.
I like to bet large amounts on politics so I'm looking at everything. I've been touting Huckabee as a live long-shot since the first debate. I even BET Huckabee small for the Republican Nomination back in January. The key thing to ask yourself before you make any bet is always: "What do I know that the public doesn't know?" If you have a good answer, you have a bet. If you don't have a good answer you don't have a bet. So, with regard to Clinton and Obama you might be RIGHT but you still don't have a bet because you are just parroting what you read and hear from reporters. That's already impounded in the price. So, even if you're right you are not getting paid off for your risk.
Another tool for testing your knowledge against the press and public is to look at coverage of something you know very well. (For me, that's sports and financial engineering.) You'll see how idiotic it is. So, why do they have to get something we don't know all that well -- politics, foreign affairs -- perfect? Obviously, the answer is they don't. We are just too busy to keep track of politics and foreign affairs at the same level we keep track of our bread-and-butter stuff.
PAIN: Having left, I gave myself a lot of power in the conversation. I'm about the last person they should have wanted to leave. I was a great citizen, responsible, honest, etc., but I don't worry about their needs anymore. I worry about my own. I ofter ask when I'd consider going back and I keep coming up with "when they show me something". The MondoOprah vibe is showing me something very pathological. Her faux-populism always ends in tears, although given the two wars and the low-grade reaction via the criminal justice system and the prison industrial complex, I don't know how much more pain in their real lives her audience can suffer.+
Yes, seeing and reading that faux-populism is worse than being shown nothing. I really don't mind certain forms of elitism. If someone has earned his or her station in life by knowing more about something or interpreting something better than the fellow next door, MAZEL fucking TOV. I want to learn from that person. I have no ego about that at all. Christ, in gambling we all learn from each other all the time. Sometimes we compete but we aren't ever each others' enemies. We all know who the enemy is. So, if someone has knowledge to share which can make you money you become a student all over again. You don't try to show that person that you know better.
AXN:
I don't mind if someone wants to check out because he or she is sad or disgusted or just wants a little peace and quiet. I can get very lazy myself. I don't mind if a person has an uninformed point of view on something. What I mind, however, is someone who's point of view is based upon nothing more than "intuition" AGGRESSING with that opinion. And then getting upset at having to face a debate. I gave her a zillion ways out on this. She needed to "win" the argument but couldn't. Who could possibly defend such a position with no facts? I've had plenty of arguments about Kucinich before, mostly with right-wingers and it usually comes down to which philosophy you support -- the fulcrum is at his desire for a cabinet-level Peace Secretary (with that you have the money to pay for the other stuff and CUT taxes; but a lot of people like war; I don't, but it's cool if you do)-- but I've never had an argument about him with a completely informed person before.
I remember teaching in that environment where we were supposed to treat every students questions and answers with equal respect. Well, that was pretty hard for me teaching Mathematics and Computer Science. I was dealing with questions that had right answers and instead of making people with the wrong answers feel good about themselves, I tried to teach them how to get the answers correct next time. I sometimes got some pretty flaky student evaluations about my lack of respect for wrong answers, but I also didn't treat all evaluatons equally.
horrible copy-editing, my apologies to all...take my meaning, please!
HM:
I face this all the time with my own son. I'm more of the Phil Jackson type parent and his mother is more of the John Caligari type. Nevertheless, at his age in math, grammar and spelling, there are right answers. If he gets something wrong, I don't go batshit. I tell him that he got it wrong and to try again and maybe I'll drop a clue. If he gets it wrong again, I'll drop another clue but I'll stay with him until he gets it right, so that when he finally does, he's proud of his work and I've taken the sting and pressure out of "having gotten it WRONG".
He's very competitive so I've had him with the baseball cards, pokemon cards, and all sorts of board games, video games and poker online when it was still legal as a teaching tool. I'd put him in 30+3 NLHE tournaments and let him make all the decisions.
And I always play to win against him. If he gets discouraged, I'll ask him if he wants to learn a few tricks to winning. If he's into it, great. If not, that's cool also.
There is plenty of opportunity for students of all levels to work on open-ended questions which show a mastery of process. A student's opinions there matter. But that doesn't help with learning a multiplication table to 30-squared.
Harvard Business School, sadly, is part of this with their silly "case-method" of teaching. How does any educator fade Harvard??? The bitter truth is that the case-method is terrible for teaching subjects like accounting, tax and finance which don't lend themselves to being treated like Humanities subjects because they aren't! If I see anyone with a Harvard MBA I know he or she sucks at math.
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