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that he said this means that quite sincerely i think his is an opinion worth soliciting now on political affairs
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quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: Even if it's granted that GWB was a uniformly terrible President (and my present opinion is that he was below average, let's say), there would still be potential value in asking for his input on some matters. Even if it were only to be seen asking, or just to evaluate what someone he disagreed with thought of a situation. Though that's not usually what's meant by 'advice'.
To clarify, my scenario is set in the first few months of the Obama presidency where his advice would be helpful, if only for continuity purposes. I doubt Obama calls him very much *now*.
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It was little known at the time, but GWB and Bill Clinton apparently talked quite often during the bush years- as in perhaps several times a week at some points.
If you think about it, it makes sense. There are very, very few people the President can talk to as a peer. A former president is on a similar level, is no longer seeking office, has similar experiences, etc.
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Since The Imitation Game was discussed in this thread...did anyone see the screenwriter's acceptance speech last night? Moving stuff. He stood on stage and said that he tried to kill himself when he was a teenager because he was weird and didn't fit in and he dedicated the award to the kid out there that feels weird or different and that they should keep being weird and they will get their chance to pass on encouragement like he is. Kept in line with the message of the movie.
Also, continuing on that theme but irrelevant to this thread, this is a really powerful music video that I just saw. The lyrics, music, and video...worth watching.
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I think the acceptance speech for Imitation Game, as well as the performance of "Glory" by John Legend were the highlights of the ceremony last night. Other than that night went more or less how I expected, though I was pleasantly surprised that Grand Budapest Hotel didn't win Best Picture. Really felt Boyhood got snubbed, as did Gone Girl. (which lost the only category it was even nominated for)
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3 years out of the last 4, best picture has gone to a movie about Hollywood. So, yeah, stay relevant Academy.
I hated The Artist. I thought it was trumped up drivel. Argo was fine, but not a best picture in the same year as Amour, and I haven't yet seen Birdmsn, but I have seen all the other nominees. It would have to be pretty damned good to beat out that competition.
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Best picture went to a movie about Hollywood, Best Actor and Best Actress went to actors who played people suffering from disability (despite Bradley Cooper and Benedict Cumberbatch giving superior performances (and I only exclude Steve Carrell because I didn't see his movie) and Rosamund Pike *completely* blowing the competition away), Gone Girl in general got completely ignored, Boyhood got mostly snubbed, Interstellar got snubbed. (coincidentally, my 3 favorite movies last year) It's more or less what I expected.
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It's becoming pretty obvious that to get them oscars, youmake a movie which plucks at the overweening pride of the types of people allowed to vote in the oscars
I like how brazenly ignorant the whole oscars assembly can be of entire movie categories too and still decide the winner. What percentage of the judges even saw half of the animated works to be voted on?
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3 years out of the last 4, best picture has gone to a movie about Hollywood. So, yeah, stay relevant Academy.
I hated The Artist. I thought it was trumped up drivel. Argo was fine, but not a best picture in the same year as Amour, and I haven't yet seen Birdmsn, but I have seen all the other nominees. It would have to be pretty damned good to beat out that competition.
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There are many many movie awards contests. Why does this one get so much attention? If you think their methodology is garbage, don't watch, don't discuss and don't promote them. And don't be surprised if you disagree with how their choose their winners.
I don't know what you do for a living, but I am going to assume it has absolutely nothing to do with the motion picture industry, and no members of your family or close friends are involved either. I mean, if your first cousin was the best boy grip in Boyhood, and this award would have helped his career, sure, be upset on his behalf.
Otherwise, meh.
Though hate-watching can be fun. But the irrelevant stuff should be irrelevant.
Posts: 1757 | Registered: Oct 2004
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Well I finally saw Birdman. Good grief, what a train wreck.
It's a depressing, meaningless little movie about wealthy middle-aged men and the things they find important. The sort of cynical, self-aggrandizing, artsy film full of dramatically-read non sequiturs that I'm sure the writer thought were deep and powerful but are mostly ridiculous. (especially the second "truth or dare" scene, good lord) There's also an attempted rape scene that's played for laughs; to help demonstrate the character of one of the men (the women are merely props), and it's about as horrifying as you might imagine.
The film is oppressively self-aware, and of course in the middle of it someone recites that soliloquy from Act V of Macbeth ("...told by an idiot, full of sound of fury, signifying nothing." blah blah blah) It's the film's way of crossing it's fingers and winking: "see, all of this is ok, because the movie is *really* a parody of itself! Aren't we clever?"
It's like that douchebag smartass you know who always hedges are his words in such a way that you're never sure if he's being glib or serious. So that way if he's ever pressed or called out on an opinion he expresses he can pretend he was "just being ironic." He thinks he's being wonderfully clever, everyone else knows he's just a coward.
This movie is the same way: even as it purportedly mocks the petty ambitions and lifestyle of rich old white men, it's still all about (and made for) them. It's trite, it's meaningless, and 20 years from now nobody will remember it.
There were films last year that actually *were* courageous and noble, or at least made the attempt. Interstellar was utterly brilliant and I think 50 years from now it will still be a beloved film, Boyhood was great, the Lego Movie was hilarious and very well made (and not even nominated), The Imitation Game was powerful and told a very important story that has been more or less swept under the rug for 60 years. The Theory of Everything was pretty pointless and utterly formulaic, but it was still pleasant to watch with beautiful cinematography and left you with a warm feeling at the end.
To answer theamazeeaz's question: I'm not especially angry about the Oscar results, I realize what they are and just like watching the show for the theatrics really. This is more of a desire to express what *I* think the best films of 2015 are, not disparage the Academy. I'll admit there is some frustration with the most prestigious film award going to movies like "Birdman", even though I know it doesn't change anything.
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quote:Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_: Free DVD for the grandkids.
I went to college with someone whose grandfather was in the academy, and that's pretty much the case. Movie night for us! Wooo!
Then again, he was an animator (Snoopy stuff, I think), so I bet he did watch those ones.
Growing up, my friend's mom was a film critic and frequently brought home films for us to watch. There was some danger in this, though: when I was 16 my friend, his cousin and I were all hanging out one night and wanted to watch a movie. Looking through the DVDs "Hey mom, what's this 'Brokeback Mountain' about?" "Oh, I think it's a cowboy film. You boys will like it!"
That night was perhaps one of the most awkward nights of my young adult life.
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quote:It's like that douchebag smartass you know who always hedges are his words in such a way that you're never sure if he's being glib or serious. So that way if he's ever pressed or called out on an opinion he expresses he can pretend he was "just being ironic." He thinks he's being wonderfully clever, everyone else knows he's just a coward.
[humor] Faster to just call me by name![/humor]
Posts: 6683 | Registered: Jun 2005
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quote:The list of Unspeakable Words grows and grows, and we have to deal with all kinds of absurdities lest we give offense to this or that privileged group. It's as if the only group that it's all right to offend with "free" speech is the conservative Christian culture of the 1950s. That's how "Negro" became The Other N-word, and "of color" became preferred while "colored" became anathema.
So Mr. Tweedly definitely won that war.
Yet he also lost it, because the N-word has 100 percent penetration into our culture because of black comedians and rappers. That's because certain groups get a free pass. Rappers can say things about and to women that would get a Republican Congressman impeached. It's all about who can say what to whom, and the rules form such a maze that the only certainty is: If you're a white heterosexual male, or if you're a Republican or Christian of either sex, then whatever it is you said, it was wrong.
This is what inevitably happens when elitists get control of the culture. The culture of the previous in-group that is now the out-group must be suppressed and scorned, if not banned outright.
so basically white heterosexual males and or christians and republicans are the true suppressed and persecuted people because they get in trouble for saying nigger — thanks, elitists.Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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Its like sure, sometimes some people get in trouble for saying something in arguably the correct context; the professor who got in trouble for saying "niggardly" comes to mind; but, really, if you think what the black rapper said was bad; then a public servant and elected official saying it is almost certainly worse why shouldn't he or she get impeached? A rapper is an entertainer, they have no responsibility to the public good, politicians are tasked with good governance!
In the correct context, when its clear you're not being a racist shill, then yeah, even as a white dude you're not going to get in trouble with the 'pc police'. George Carlin could say it just fine! Because he was making a point of how America was founded by a bunch of racist old privileged land owning undemocratic white men.
quote:"political correctness gone MAD" people ****ing love the word niggardly, because it's a word no one uses that sounds almost exactly like YOU KNOW WHAT, so of course when someone drops it in a conversation (which NEVER happens because who the **** says niggardly) heads are going to turn. then they can say AHA it's not racist at all you're so sensitive what next are you going to have to call white people pigmentally challenged this is all nonsense aheh
i read this in, like, 2010
astounded it would end up relevant here
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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I first learned what 'niggardly' meant after someone created some contrived moral outrage over it in high school. Since then I've literally never heard it used conversationally except for purposes of, or discussions about, said moral outrage.
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quote:Originally posted by Dogbreath: I first learned what 'niggardly' meant after someone created some contrived moral outrage over it in high school. Since then I've literally never heard it used conversationally except for purposes of, or discussions about, said moral outrage.
As someone who likes big words. Pretty much this.
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I still read old stuff at work, so occasionally it shows up. Also Japanese light novels tend to use old words.
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quote:"Talent" does not make a writer special; a writer who's a selfish jerk is a selfish jerk -- not one iota of that is taken away by the fact that he is also a writer.
quote:Now we have Harris Teeter's solution: wheels that lock when you take a cart beyond the parking lot.
If you only take the cart from the store to a parking place in the lot directly in front of the store, you might not even realize that the wheels lock up. (It's only the right-rear wheel that has the locking device.)
But since I also stop at the dry cleaner in the same shopping center, I often park in that lot. My habit was to pick up a cart that someone had left in that area and bring it into the store; that way if I didn't bring my cart all the way back to the store, at least I left them no worse off than I found them.
However, Harris Teeter has decided that people who park anywhere west of the store rather than north of it can go hang themselves, for all they care. Twenty steps from the door of the store, when you're still in front of Harris Teeter's own building, your cart wheel jams up.
Apparently they hate the customers who dare to park in the perfectly legitimate parking spaces to the west of the store. There are no signs that say, "You can't bring carts out to this parking lot." You just find it out when your cart stops moving.
That's not nice. It's also not necessary. They could have established their perimeter to include that parking lot. Yes, there is no shopping cart corral in that area, but so what? A lot of people in the lot that has corrals still leave the carts stranded on medians or blocking parking places. They have to send employees out to pick up the dogies -- er, I mean, strays -- from the north lot. Why not a trip to the west that is no farther?
Oh, well. They never check with me when they make these decisions. Somebody in management decided to cause gross inconvenience to customers who don't park in the "true" parking places -- even though there is no sign to indicate that Harris Teeter customers are not allowed to park anywhere but due north of the store.
Not that it matters when I'm just running a quick errand and have only a couple of lightweight shopping bags with me. It's easy enough to leave the cart and carry the bags the rest of the way to my car.
But a parent with a child in the shopping cart, who has been given no warning, may find herself with a week's worth of groceries and a non-ambulatory child in a cart that now acts as if somebody had tossed an anchor overboard.
So ... what does she do? Obviously, she must abandon her groceries long enough to take her child to the car, strap him into the car seat, and then ...
Oh, wait. Isn't it illegal and, legal or not, foolish to leave a child in a closed car? So what do you do, leave the car doors open while you hike back to where you left the groceries?
And do you start the car so the air conditioning or heat will run? How safe is it to leave your keys and your baby in the car while you make the hike?
And what happens to your frozen foods during the six trips you have to take?
Oh, yes. You certainly learn never to park in the lot to the west of Harris Teeter.
But you may also learn that you would rather not shop at Harris Teeter at all, after they forced you, without warning, to go through all these extra trips and put your baby in danger in order to get everything you paid for out to your car.
The evil parking lots that you're punished for using are part of the same shopping center. But Harris Teeter has excommunicated the customers who park there -- without warning them.
There's a warning on the cart that tells you not to take the carts out of the parking lot. But since the lot to the west of the store is obviously part of the same shopping center, the sign is not helpful at all.
And it would have been so simple for them to establish a larger perimeter. They could have allowed their customers to shop at the other stores in the center, and take their carts with them to their cars. But they decided that they didn't care how much inconvenience they caused.
I can't help but wonder whether this was a chain-wide decision. Does every Harris Teeter now have carts that lock their wheels when you're still well within the parking lots associated with the shopping center? Does the Harris Teeter at Friendly Center, for instance, arbitrarily lock your cart's wheels if you parked near Red Mango rather than near REI?
Or was it just the store we shop at that received this special attention?
Bad management either way. The money they save by not having so many cart pickup runs a hundred yards to the west (while still having lots of them the same distance to the north) is not likely to repay the ill will created for all the customers who found themselves with an immobile cart full of groceries they now had to shuttle to their car by hand. How many of them will not come back?
posted
Personally, it's a lot more efficient to talk to store management than to hope someone reads a particular column.
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I have a habit of getting pissed off at something and swearing never to give a business my money ever again, and my friends all tell me the same thing. Talk to management, they'll never notice or change anything just because one dude stopped going there. And they're right, but I just don't care. The store has already wasted my time and I'm never going back, so what good does it do me to take another ten minutes to hunt down and talk to a manager?
Now, if somebody would actually pay me to complain about all these things on the internet, I'd be set for life...
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All OSC's spoiled consumer nitpicking and ramblings about high end grocery stores really help put his opinions on the literary elite in proper perspective. I appreciate it for this.
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He's more than free to write about whatever he chooses - and I almost always just skip the sections where he talks about food, restaurants, specialty boutiques, etc. - but yeah, it is somewhat amusing to watch a guy who demonizes "the literary elite" for appreciating, teaching, or producing literature that the average American doesn't read turn around and spend a large chunk of his time reviewing extravagantly expensive snacks and tchotchkes (including maybe a small novels worth of writing on various chocolates and chocolate shops) that only a small percentage of Americans could afford to buy, and an smaller percentage who would appreciate. Maybe there's a lesson here about how writing things that only a small fraction of our society can really understand or appreciate isn't necessarily a sign of arrogance or contempt?
I suppose a similar concept for me is wine. I buy wine from Costco and usually spend $8-$10 a bottle, sometimes $15 a bottle if I'm drinking Pinot Noir. (which seems to be more expensive here) I know enough to differentiate between a Cabernet, a Merlot, a Pinot, and a Zinfandel. I know I think white wine tastes nasty and generally avoid it. My wife and I have a favorite wine we have only been able to find at one restaurant (and realize it's probably our favorite for that exact reason) and we had a really fun time getting lectured by the world's snobbiest Frenchman in this beautiful little winery in Bordeaux... but if I'm honest with myself one brand tastes as good as any other and I don't think I'll ever have the time or interest to build a wine collection or become an expert, so I'm more than happy to stick to buying $10 bottles of wine from Costco.
But that doesn't somehow translate into spite or open contempt on my part for wine experts, even if they might appreciate the flavor and subtlety of wines I frankly find unappealing, or even nasty tasting. Nor do I think it's a travesty that a Wine Expert certification course (apparently a real thing) teaches people to identify subtle hints and flavors most wine drinkers are ignorant of, or don't even care about. As a consumer I might find it a little silly (just as I find most of OSC's quest to find the perfect gourmet snack food silly), but why should I care?
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Mr. Card has written about the deliciousness of orange juice and Diet Coke, as well as why the hamburger is a fantastic food invented by people working with whatever they had. But more importantly, he would probably be the first to poke fun at how he can only enjoy certain kinds of higher-end foods as opposed to their cheaper versions. He admits to being a food snob.
But he certainly wouldn't write a column that in all seriousness talks about how people who like mild cheddar cheese are ignoramuses, or that the existence of cheaper foods somehow lessens the food industry or speaks poorly of us as a society.
edit: And as somebody who has taken a meal with Mr. Card, he reminds me very much of my fiance. They both love variety and staples in food. It's not the price or accessibility that matters. They just love what tastes good, no matter where it's found.
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I think you completely misread me: I don't think it's a bad thing at all that Mr. Card is a food snob. Quite the opposite, actually. I just think his hostility for "elitists" in other fields (including frequent attacks on university English departments) is uncalled for.
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And you also bring up another good point that I was kind of getting at: being an "elitist" by no means implies scorn for more pedestrian things.
Quite frankly, I think University English departments *should* take a somewhat elitist approach to teaching literature. Because why else would you spend 4 years and $100k getting an English degree unless it was to learn all the subtleties and nuances and literary devices you need to appreciate literature? This is coming from a dopey jarhead who has avoided the liberal arts like a plague; but if I were to spend my hard earned money on a college literature class, I should certainly hope I would be taught all of that and more.
Likewise, I would feel gypped if I got into a prestigious culinary school and all I learned was how to cook hamburgers. Hamburgers are my favorite food on the planet and they're awesome and everybody likes them - and you get even make incredibly gourmet, fancy $50 hamburgers - but there's something to be said for the finer things in life. An appreciation for - indeed even something of a snobbery towards - complex and difficult literature, or fine wine, or great food is not a *bad* thing. And Mr. Card seems to have realized and even embraced this when it comes to food, and yet is pretty indiscriminately hostile towards "elitism" in almost any other field.
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I think you are missing my point as well. Getting an expensive degree in say culinary school shouldn't remove your ability to enjoy a candy bar any more than my MBA makes me see a dollar on the ground and smirk because it's all about the Benjamins.
If either of those things were true, then we'd be on the track for Mr. Card's contempt. His contempt seems confined to literary critics who see inaccessibility and apathy/hatred for the common man as things to be embraced.
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He certainly portrays the "elitists" he denigrates as being that way for sure, but it's my experience that he paints with far too broad a brush here. There are a lot of articles where he straight up denounces English professors (not just literary critics) and writers who appreciate, teach, or propagate "inaccessible" works because he *thinks* focusing on such things implies contempt for the common man, even when evidence of that hatred seems to be nonexistent. Experience has taught me this is categorically untrue: I have a friend who's an English professor and loves Harry Potter and Dan Brown novels (of all things)... enjoying - or even dedicating your career towards - something obscure or mostly inaccessible doesn't necessarily mean you disdain the "common man" for not enjoying what you do. (Unless you want to start calling anime nerds elitists)
Put another way: there are arrogant elitist pricks in every occupation and hobby. I've had the misfortune of meeting people who openly mock "poor people food", seen wine aficionados who openly mock people who drink cheap wine, met *plenty* of computer nerds utterly despise "casual gamers" and their ilk (and I think this is the cause of a lot of the misogyny in "#gamergate"), and yes, I've seen (but never met) literary critics who denounce "pedestrian" work as drivel and bemoan the plight of the uneducated masses, because they're soulless pompous blowhards.
Mr. Card is a writer, and a writer in a field that has been subjected to mockery by said blowhards, so he's probably a lot more than his fair share of that sort of nonsense and more sensitive to it than either of us. I don't think his response - conflating the entire literary establishment with some of the assholes in it, or especially going after English programs just for *teaching* the literary fiction tropes and devices he dislikes - is really justified or productive. I'm not convinced the academia is any more festooned with "elitists" (as he describes the term) than any other profession.
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Its because those Elitist Liberals are working against the interests of the moral silent majority.
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Dogbreath: It not being as wide-spread a problem to you seems to be at the heart of the disagreement then. It seems Mr. Card perceives it to *be* a huge problem.
You both probably have very different life experiences and run with far different social circles. I can't really judge whether you are right or he is, but I think we both agree that people who *only* like inaccessibility are kind of obnoxious.
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quote:Originally posted by tertiaryadjunct: I have a habit of getting pissed off at something and swearing never to give a business my money ever again, and my friends all tell me the same thing. Talk to management, they'll never notice or change anything just because one dude stopped going there. And they're right, but I just don't care. The store has already wasted my time and I'm never going back, so what good does it do me to take another ten minutes to hunt down and talk to a manager?
Now, if somebody would actually pay me to complain about all these things on the internet, I'd be set for life...
I *think* OSC does the column for free.
I also feel that since the shopping cart protection is new (though this has been around for years in much less nice places, along with the ones that make you pay a quarter) nobody has told the management the perimeter is in the wrong spot and the odds are pretty good some manager isn't cackling in an office somewhere
Posts: 1757 | Registered: Oct 2004
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I get where Card is coming from on the English Department thing. There's some English teachers who flat out refuse to acknowledge that SF has anything of merit whatsoever (the pulp heritage doesn't help).
Like, when Kazuo Ishiguro writes a book about the coming of age of three kids who don't care to tell the reader that they are clones who were raised to be organ donors (in a very fatal sense) and everyone flips out (sorry I just ruined that book for y'all)), but yeah, modern SF has been there, done that and bought the t-shirt. And the stuff Margaret Atwood says is not very nice either.
But apparently, there are people doing their degrees on fanfic, comics and SF these days, so I think you people get that you have to analyze what people read (Twilight and Harry Potter).
As for food, I take comments on my culinary preferences a lot differently than I do my personal politics, my ethics/religion and my job.
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quote:Originally posted by JanitorBlade: Dogbreath: It not being as wide-spread a problem to you seems to be at the heart of the disagreement then. It seems Mr. Card perceives it to *be* a huge problem.
You both probably have very different life experiences and run with far different social circles. I can't really judge whether you are right or he is, but I think we both agree that people who *only* like inaccessibility are kind of obnoxious.
But elite education isn't about only liking inaccessible things; it is about making quality things accessible.
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*nods* Yes, most of the educators I know are rather passionate about sharing the knowledge necessary to understand their area of expertise, as well as their love for it, as much as possible. In layman's terms, "geeking out." I honestly think the imagery of liberal elitists sitting in their ivory towers, sipping wine and eating fine cheeses, scorning the common man and hating America while reading each other passages from Ulysses, is patently absurd. I also realize Mr. Card often employs hyperbole as a rhetorical device (as do I), but even so it seems mis-aimed. I do think he and I have vastly different life experiences - if I were in his shoes, I would probably be far more cynical of the literary establishment too.
The whole Sci-Fi issue *is* a legitimate complaint, though I think that comes more from ignorance or a rather infantile understanding of literature than hatred of the common man:
I remember several years ago I loaned a few of my Vonnegut novels to a friend of mine, and he absolutely loved them, so I gave him my copy of The Last Defender of Camelot and he told me "oh... well I don't know if I would like Sci-Fi stories."
"But all of the Vonnegut books I gave you were Sci-Fi"
"Well, yeah, but they weren't *real* Sci-Fi, right? He just used Sci-Fi trappings to tell stories about the human psyche, or maybe about culture and society or, I dunno, life that he would have trouble telling in a more conventional novel."
"...what exactly do you think Sci-Fi is, man?"
I think he, like many others, have conflated science fiction with mindless, juvenile Star Wars Episode 1 esque adventure and with lasers and explosions without seeing past the surface. That attitude mostly evaporated before my lifetime, though - Star Trek (a show Mr. Card ironically disliked) and the Twilight Zone and others introduced the mainstream to the idea of serious science fiction, and I grew up in the culture they helped create and permeate.
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quote:Originally posted by Dogbreath: *nods* Yes, most of the educators I know are rather passionate about sharing the knowledge necessary to understand their area of expertise, as well as their love for it, as much as possible. In layman's terms, "geeking out." I honestly think the imagery of liberal elitists sitting in their ivory towers, sipping wine and eating fine cheeses, scorning the common man and hating America while reading each other passages from Ulysses, is patently absurd. I also realize Mr. Card often employs hyperbole as a rhetorical device (as do I), but even so it seems mis-aimed. I do think he and I have vastly different life experiences - if I were in his shoes, I would probably be far more cynical of the literary establishment too.
The whole Sci-Fi issue *is* a legitimate complaint, though I think that comes more from ignorance or a rather infantile understanding of literature than hatred of the common man:
I remember several years ago I loaned a few of my Vonnegut novels to a friend of mine, and he absolutely loved them, so I gave him my copy of The Last Defender of Camelot and he told me "oh... well I don't know if I would like Sci-Fi stories."
"But all of the Vonnegut books I gave you were Sci-Fi"
"Well, yeah, but they weren't *real* Sci-Fi, right? He just used Sci-Fi trappings to tell stories about the human psyche, or maybe about culture and society or, I dunno, life that he would have trouble telling in a more conventional novel."
"...what exactly do you think Sci-Fi is, man?"
I think he, like many others, have conflated science fiction with mindless, juvenile Star Wars Episode 1 esque adventure and with lasers and explosions without seeing past the surface.
It's not necessarily that extreme.
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quote:Originally posted by JanitorBlade: Dogbreath: It not being as wide-spread a problem to you seems to be at the heart of the disagreement then. It seems Mr. Card perceives it to *be* a huge problem.
You both probably have very different life experiences and run with far different social circles. I can't really judge whether you are right or he is, but I think we both agree that people who *only* like inaccessibility are kind of obnoxious.
But elite education isn't about only liking inaccessible things; it is about making quality things accessible.
That isn't the kind of elite Mr. Card is talking about, I suspect.
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The problem here is it becomes a little difficult to pin down exactly what elitists Mr. Card is talking about. (see my take on his article on American Sniper earlier in this thread) Of course he's going to ascribe to them all the qualities we've discussed - the sneering, the contempt for the common man, etc. - but the title itself seems to get applied to more or less anyone who disagrees with him politically or philosophically, and their disagreement is taken as sure proof that they meet the definition. Reasons for disagreeing with him that don't involve being a sneering liberal elitist are either dismissed as being a minority position, or ignored entirely. This means that even when he and I share the same views on things (which we actually do more often than not) like American Sniper, the way he castigates those who disagree with him makes me deeply uncomfortable.
Posts: 2222 | Registered: Dec 2008
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If one were to ctrl+f "elit*" in card's infamous contemporary batch of articles, in all his columns from "world watch" to "orson scott card gets his jimmy-jams in a caterwauly jump-a-skitter bout all sort-a things, i reckon" and really do an in depth analysis of how he uses 'elitist' and why and in what manner these things are predictably used to ascribe associated manner and agenda, it would really I think show that what dogbreath is saying is correct.
i don't know if i am necessarily intent on actually doing the research to back this up or anything, i just really needed a chance to type "orson scott card gets his jimmy-jams in a caterwauly jump-a-skitter bout all sort-a things, i reckon"
/edit also this is post 14444 of mine so i'm just going to leave that right where it is for tonight, go to sleep, realize i've typed over ten thousand posts on this forum, and SERIOUSLY THINK ABOUT MY CHOICES IN LIFE
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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