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Tuesday, September 09, 2008

The Shrink Diagnoses It; Case Study

Many people have taken a stab at trying to explain why the media and the intellectualist class have responded with such venom to Palin. Few have dared to try to explain why the women of those two groups have been the most venomous.

The Shrink boldly goes where no man has gone before (since Larry Summers got beaned by the fainting couch of the feminist professoriate):
The nomination of Sarah Palin has driven the cognoscenti over the edge. Their attacks on her have distilled and crystallized all of the venom they feel toward their inferiors who have the temerity to challenge their wisdom.
...
There are a great many extremely bright members of the professoriate who direct their prodigious intellects at problems that fail to rise to the level of trivia. One example comes from the evolution of feminist studies.
...
I suspect much of the rage that has uncovered itself from the left, the fury that a redneck idiot like Sarah Palin could be swinging an election of one of theirs that they thought was a done deal, away from them, is a reaction to once again seeing their deserved power slip away. Professors of post-modernism, feminist and queer studies and other such arcana, are fairly well paid and receive tenure at some of our most prestigious institutions, yet the unwashed hordes rarely accord them the respect and awe they so richly deserve. It is a puzzle that some of our best and brightest have failed to elucidate (despite their high IQs.) Since much of the MSM has studied in the same prestigious institutions and have incorporated the same sense of superiority, it is very difficult for them to recognize their own provincialism and attend to their own limitations. Further, the intellectualization that passes for learning in much of elite academia (and please note that, thus far, such foolishness has not yet infected the hard sciences, though if Harvard is any omen, the future is of concern) specifically impairs judgment. When all situations must be forced to conform to the procrustean bed based on the quasi-Marxist dialectic of oppressors and oppressed, judgemt(sic) must necessarily be suspended lest it fail to adhere to the proper paradigm. I would much sooner trust the judgment of an Alaskan redneck to the judgment of an Ivy league graduate with little experience in the real world whose thinking has been contaminated by what passes for education in the post-modern university.
Well, don't hold back! As far as I can tell he's being precise and accurate; the mediocrity of people like Sally Quinn is grossly offended by Sarah Palin's achievements and Palin's lack of reverence toward her betters who slept their way into a career.

There are many more of the Flyover/What's-The-Matter-With-Kansas/Fuck-The-South/Blasted-Breeders than there are of them, so the end of this culture war was preordained. This is where their contempt of the military and military service really hurts them. They don't grasp that you shouldn't start shooting unless you believe you can win. They are Che Guevera-ing along in a state of trembling indignation.

I think we should give Honorable Mention for the most wrathful explication of the elite's opinion to Gary Kamiya writing in (what else?) Salon: (Men might enjoy this, because Palin is photoshopped with a riding crop and corset to illustrate the author's opinion of her function within the GOP)
Four years after Americans looked at the first term of the worst president in modern history and decided they liked what they saw well enough to sign up for four more years, it's all too plausible that just when victory is in sight, the most crucial election of our time could be tipped by the 11th-hour appearance of a slick, unqualified, right-wing extremist and religious zealot in designer glasses.
Yup, it's all about sex:
And large numbers of Americans think she's hot.
...the presidential race may be decided by the perceived doability of the governor of Alaska.
Given the poll swings on Independents and especially white women, apparently Kamiya believes there are a lot of lesbians in flyover country:
Because Palin's a woman, and even more, a babe, suddenly she and her party have been magically transformed into fresh-faced reformers. Like Kafka's "Metamorphosis" in reverse, the giant, hideous beetle that was the GOP has suddenly been reborn as a vigorous youth -- one that even claims to be a "maverick."
Beetlejuice!!
By choosing Palin, McCain and the GOP have elbowed the Democrats off the dance floor. In a bizarre turnaround, the uptight Republicans are suddenly the party of sex, women, fun. They're all about spontaneity, bucking convention, letting their freak flags fly. If it feels good, do it!
OMG, someone finally found us out!

This is what happens when you let flyover women out of the kitchen and allow them firearms. They immediately turn freaky and sexy on you, slap on corsets, pick up riding crops, start lesbian orgies and call flyover men up in the middle of the night demanding they come over and join in. This is why, in fact, gun control is so disfavored in flyover country, and it is why so many men stay in flyover country. Hordes of crop-wielding lesbian freaky women stalk the streets after midnight, looking for man flesh. Kamiya must have been trapped in flyover country some time or another, because he goes on to explain just how kinky this all is:
For even if this election turns out to be a referendum on the national libido, Palin may scare off more voters than she attracts.

Because to anyone who isn't a true believer, Palin comes across not as a fantasy pinup, but as a dominatrix. And the S/M demographic isn't going to put the Republicans over the top in the swing states.
...
For the die-hard Republicans who lusted over Palin at the convention, her whip-wielding persona was a turn-on. You could practically feel the crowd getting a collective woody as Palin bent Obama and the Democrats over, shoved a leather gag in their mouths and flogged them as un-American wimps, appeasers and losers. "Drill, baby, drill!" the chant ecstatically repeated by the GOP faithful during Rudy Giuliani's speech, acquired a distinctly Freudian subtext after Palin spoke.
That's why we have the Shrink - to explicate the Freudian subtext!

Yeah, it's true, there is something about the corset-wearing lesbian orgies that tends to wake up men's dormant bisexual fantasies. They just long for a little tenderness and a man-cuddle, I guess. But that's why we flyover women need the riding crops - due to our sexual voraciousness, we can't afford to let the men satisfy their deepest, most innate, desires for passive anal sex and the diseases associated, so when they get like that, we whip them a bit and send them out to go bobsledding, hunting, fishing or some such activity. That usually str8ens them right out!

Of course, this is why Andrew Sullivan is so frightened. The dirty truth is out on the internet - in 2001, he was trolling on the internet for bi scenes and orgies, and he realizes he's a goner if we ever get our painted nails in him. Before long he'll be forced into servicing us flyover women just like all the rest of the poor flyover men, and next thing you know he'll be made a father and all. Be afraid - be very afraid. Ve haf our vays and our corsets, not to mention those sexy hipwaders.
The problem for the GOP, however, is that for independents, Palin comes across as someone who's going to drill them.
Nooo, actually the Independents are suckers for sex too. The only demographic that doesn't like it is the metrosexual part of the country that has been subjected to a liberal education at a high-class university with gangs of scissors-wielding feminists roaming the campus. It's a phallic-anxiety thing, I suppose. Ask the Shrink.
But aside from the crude fact of her gender, she has nothing to offer women who don't share her out-of-the-mainstream cultural values.
Oh, yes she does! Sex. Look, this is not very complicated. The women of flyover country like men and sex. Palin is good at getting men, and we admire that. The husband is hunky, and since she has been convicted in the press of marital boinking while governor, they're obviously still getting it on. We women of flyover country admire that, and believe that if we follow her triumphal progress, the gangs of drooling men treading on her heels will be easily picked off. It's sort of like wolves hunting a group of caribou, you know?

There are always stragglers, and you just bring some beer, a collar and a wedding ring. When you find a nice looking one looking thirsty, you sidle up and ask him if he likes beer, clasping a few cold ones to your bosom. His eyes light up and he answers "I do, I do!" It's all over; you give him one, slip on the ring and the collar, and wander away with your prize to the nearest cheap motel. By the next morning you're pregnant, and since he has the choice of paying without sex or paying with sex, plus beer, most of them never wander.

PS: A woman I knew planned her wedding completely without consent of the groom. Her boyfriend was always like "some day", so she asked his father's permission, and arranged a barbecue with both families and a preacher. Innocently, the boy friend showed up, and got a burger and married. You think I'm joking but I'm not.
Joe Voter may think Palin is a babe. And at first glance, she looks like the girl next door. But on closer inspection, that house next door turns out to be the Mansion of Mistress Palin (rhymes with "pain"). This isn't a winning electoral strategy except in some parts of San Francisco and New York, which are not likely to go Republican anyway.

McCain's Palin Pinup Ploy was a masterstroke -- no pun intended. But in the end, I suspect most Americans will be driven by their pocketbooks, not their pocket rockets. That is, unless the voters of this great nation turn out to be a herd of masochistic moose, yearning to be field-dressed.
They are, believe me, they are. When we flyover women dress you, you like to be dressed, if you know what I mean. Wink, wink. Believe me, hon, most American men remain slaves to their pocket rockets right through life. It is our job to make sure that they enjoy their time in service and to lengthen their service life. Pun intended.

So this is our platform, if it must be about sex:
Join us in the great sexual debauchery of Flyoverland. We, the women of flyover country, ask NYC and Boston and DC and even perhaps SF to send us your hordes of tired, huddled, feminist-taunted and feminist-daunted men. Because we like men, and we like sex, and that, my little puzzled denizens of Metrosexualdom, is and always has been a winning cultural and political platform.

Let's not kid ourselves - the only people who won't vote for lots of enjoyable sex are proctologists, due to the impaired profits.

Comments:
Looking past the election fireworks:

Palin is putting a case on US energy policy, drilling and renewables.

Do the figures add up?
 
Shtove - I haven't seen anyone's numbers, but I think it depends on the type of renewables and the strategy. If you are trying for just wind and solar, you are up the creek without a paddle. Algae hasn't been proved out. We'll know a lot more about potential in 5 years.

We don't really know what we have offshore because the surveys haven't been done.

The bottom line is that if you don't include a lot of nuclear and coal, you won't be able to generate the electricity needed. Coal technology has improved, though.
 
If you start doing a bit of everything, you'll find out what elements work and what elements don't. This is more sensible than playing "you bet your economy" on one or two sources in the hopes that the output matches the hype.
 
John - my biggest worry with respect to energy is that the environmental legislation gives scope to special interest groups to block any and all forms of it. Hydropower, new lines, windfarms, solar. Absolutely nothing is exempt except private projects and recently one of the committees tried to sneak through proposed legislation to block private windpower.

I think Congress will have to revisit this issue before we will make any real progress aside from drilling.

Truthfully, the vast solar farms probably do have more of an environmental impact than drilling, but what can you do? There is no form of energy generation that doesn't have some impact on the environment. Also, mitigating environmental impact of high populations - sewage treatment, garbage, etc, takes energy! So it is not a zero-sum game. Without a lot of energy, we will end up hurting the environment far more than we do today just by living.

Two coal plants have recently been blocked in the courts. The CO2 ruling is proving fatal as I knew it would. There are many wind farms that run into legislation, apps for solar generation in public lands have been temporarily denied, and almost no hydro power project can be built today. Nukes, snicker, why even go there. You can't build a refinery.

That's a real problem.
 
And here I go sneaking into the comments, anticipating some literary canoodling, and what do I find?

A sensible (and thoroughly chaste) discussion of energy policy.

MoM, you're a fraud!

Linked!
 
It may be partly about sex, but it's mainly about status. An awful lot of "progressives" are people whose lives are devoted largely to collecting status points, according to whatever metric is most in vogue at a particular moment. Comes now Sarah Pailin--already a success and on the verge of being a major success--*without* the benefit of the Ivy League degree, the socially appropriate husband, the approved forms of recreation, etc. A Pailin victory would devalue these things and hence the status of those who have defined themselves around them.

Sex probably comes into it especially in the case of "progressives" who have not been very successful in their careers but comfort themselves both with a feeling of moral/intellectual superiority and with the belief that their sex lives are much more exciting than those of Middle America. The idea that Middle Americans are enjoying sex, too...maybe even sometimes with partners more attractive than any within *their* reach...devalues this belief as well.
 
"Hordes of lesbian freaky women stalk the streets after midnight, looking for man flesh."


Why would they do that when they can run naked through a corn field? It has a similar affect plus corn cobs can't stalk you.
 
YT - hordes of farmer's daughter/travelling salesmen jokes come to mind.

Old Grouch - yes, but once one has the boinking side of life satisfactorily arranged, sex ceases to be an obsession. Thus the flyover denizens are really thinking about energy while the dark brooding emanating from the bastions of liberalism over other matters suggests a degree of deeply-rooted frustration.

David - you are probably accurate, but let's face it - anyone who could associate the GOP convention with sex either has some serious old farts kink or just isn't getting any.
 
Mmmm, a BBQ burger.

Looking back on it, that sounds it would have been a deal-maker for me. I was apparently too naive, and got married without even that!

And I definitely missed out on my share of the action in flyover country. What was I thinking!
 
One thinks the SALON references to kinky sex and Palin are somehow more a product of the writers thoughts than those of the republicans. I saw the last two nights of the republican convention and it did not detect any vieled sexual stuff at all. The reason that Palin was popular in flyover land was becasue she was so normal, the entire s-m comparison in Salon shows a lot more about the mental state of the two coasts than the middle of the country. That article was very weird.
 
That article was very weird

I agree, but it's more than very weird. I just don't know how to characterize it.
 
Yeah, I was thinking about this issue last night. Somehow, kinky sex never crossed my mind. Must be getting old ;)

Anyway, it's clear the issue is that the elites expect to rule the country and get upset when reminded that "we, the people" are the rulers here. That's why they have been ticked off at Bush for 8 years and why the thought of losing this one has driven them into a frenzy. I guess it was a mistake to get rid of civics classes in school. Might be a good idea to start teaching kids exactly how our government is supposed to work.
 
Interesting posts you have here,MoM. I am like Teri, sex never really crossed my mind either...I must be getting old as well.

I think a lot has been projected unto Palin...good and bad, and we really need to see how she is going to hold up between now and the election. This is a tough job and it will take someone that can really handle it. Period.
 
Back when Hilary was Palin's age, there was similar talk about Hilary's attractiveness etc. (circa 1992) being beside the point. Of course the sides have changed, which only proves the meaninglessness of the point at both instances.

Hilary soon "lost" whatever attractiveness she had partly as a matter of time but mostly as a matter of public engagement. Hilary has a gift, which she shares with Barack Obama, and that gift is a knack for constantly talking and never listening.

Part of Bill Clinton's appeal was his appearance of actually listening to people. Like every other politician he'd forget whatever the other person said two seconds after he was done listening, but he at least made the effort of an appearance of listening. When it became clear that Hilary does not listen, the Democratic support swung toward Obama. Now that the general public sees Obama bloviating endlessly but not listening, and people have a chance to see Palin talk and then shut the hell up for a while, people tend to like her for it.

And yeah, men DO like when women shut up once in a while. We already know women run our lives, the last thing we want is another woman nagging us on a daily basis. So good riddance Hilary. And men will take nagging from a woman longer than they'll take nagging from a man. So Obama better learn to shut the hell up once in a while or his support will dwindle, too.
 
anyone who could associate the GOP convention with sex either has some serious old farts kink or just isn't getting any.

For whetever it's worth, prostitutes generally prefer GOP conventions over Democratic conventions because they pay better. If there's less sex at a GOP convention there's also more appreciation for it.
 
All the commenters: the funniest part of the press implosion over Palin is that the trained journalists are focusing on trivialities, while the electorate is interested in the basics.

This is very odd.
 
Anon And yeah, men DO like when women shut up once in a while. We already know women run our lives, the last thing we want is another woman nagging us on a daily basis. So good riddance Hilary. And men will take nagging from a woman longer than they'll take nagging from a man. So Obama better learn to shut the hell up once in a while or his support will dwindle, too.

I'd have to say that this is absolutely true based on my experience!

I think you have also captured something, which is that Obama frequently seems, consciously or unconsciously, to be skewing his remarks toward a female audience. I don't think that's wise.
 
I didn't find anything sexual about the convention, but I definitely copped wood when I saw video of Sarah with an AR-15. Go, baby!

Teri said:

Might be a good idea to start teaching kids exactly how our government is supposed to work.

Don't you think the contrast with reality might be too great? :(
 
Republicans: The party of sex, bibles, babies, guns, energy, did I mention sex?

Democrats: The party of anxiety, Gaia, cats in tu-tus, talking, impotence, did I mention anxiety?
 
Dr M, exactly what I was trying to get at when I wrote this. I don't see this tactic as a successful framing, if you know what I mean. It would be well for the Dem political spinners to remember that sex sells.

Look at this Salon rant featured over at NOFP. Certain types of liberal women (tight-a$$ed) are just buggy over Palin, but this one is so far over the top it is shocking. To compare mass murderers to a candidate who believes that abortion is the taking of life is sickening, not to mention anti-Semitic.

Bob - but was it the AR-15 or the woman, or the combination?
 
Dr. Clouthier: "cats in tu-tus"? I'm lost.

MoM, I guess it's the thought of a woman who would enjoy emptying clips through an AR-15 - I wouldn't actually want the gun in the sack with us.
 
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