James Poulos cranked a particularly stinky nugget into Tucker Carlson’s cat box Thursday, a column entitled “What Are Women For?” that was at once so offensive, pretentious, incoherent, clueless and just plain dumb that it attracted hoots of derision from every corner of the internet. Balloon Juice commenter Clark Stooksbury summed it up pithily as follows:
I think that English is his second language, and perhaps Earth is his second planet.
Yup. Stung by the “wave of anger and condemnation” occasioned by his column, Poulos apparently decided to spend Friday afternoon masticating and swallowing an unabridged thesaurus along with a freshman introduction to philosophy textbook and wash it down with a liter of Everclear. The resulting geyser of vomit was pixelated into a dripping rebuttal to his critics that contains half-digested chunks such as this:
It’s not very controversial to point out that sex and gender are foundational to the culture wars. But it is apparently extremely controversial to claim that we can’t make sense of how and why they’re foundational without acknowledging that the root of the battle is over reaching — and enforcing — a consensus about the relationship between what women do and who women are.
And…
The same [Meh, never mind; it doesn’t really matter what is allegedly “the same”—ed.] is true for the meaning of the relationship between women as sovereign individuals and as beings with female bodies.
But its conclusion may contain a kernel of truth that the incredulous and exasperated reader espies with wonder similar to that of a janitor engaged in mopping up a binge drinker’s pool of sick upon finding a single kernel of undigested corn, whole and recognizable, in the barf on the frat lounge floor:
Difference doesn’t presume or ordain inequality. I’m not alone in thinking that women are uniquely able to help humanity avoid becoming enthralled to the more sterile cultural creations of men. But this sort of insight is far more circumspect and modest than the central principles of virtually all social conservatives. If my claim is doomed to be met with an avalanche of contempt, it seems likely that in our lifetimes social conservatism as we know it will be mocked, despised, and shamed right out of existence. You might be deeply uncomfortable with that even if you do hope to see an America without a social conservative movement.
I think he means “Après moi, le déluge” or something. But I’m not sure why I’m supposed to be “deeply uncomfortable” with the extinction of social conservativism that Poulos’ blogular rogering is supposed to portend. Say bye-bye to all-male panels of sanctimonious, god-bothering pricks deciding women’s healthcare issues? Bring it on, I say.
[X-POSTED at Rumproast]
Egg Berry
Well, he’s right about part of that. But no amount of mocking, shaming and despising seems to have gotten rid of it yet. It is immune to such weaponry.
c u n d gulag
This is what happens when an evil assclown like Tucker, who couldn’t get laid with a fistful of pardons in a women’s prison, gives space at his shitty blog to a guy who couldn’t get laid with a fistful of pardons in a men’s prison either.
JPL
What is a James Poulos for?
Some Guy
His greatest sin is burying his point in poorly drafted and crappily thought “philosophy.” His point is no point, his reasoning is pretense.
If you want to argue that women’s relationship to child-bearing has some special value to society, then argue what it is. Saying you simply want to bring up the subject, and suggesting maybe we should just let a lot of different ideas about that relationship hold sway is just not much of a point. You know why? Because that is EXACTLY what the pro-choice position is. You cannot have a choice unless the option to control fertility is on the table but nobody forces anyone to use it.
All the while alluding in metaphysical doggerel to the value of women undoing the harm men have done to the world is just dishonest. If you want to argue women are moralizing, purifying agents in the world, please go back to the 19th century. Or, better yet, re-state the doctrine of True Womanhood in 21st century terms and see if you can have it make any sense.
Dishonest, badly written, poorly thought.
dmsilev
Dunno about the rest of you, but I’d be entirely comfortable with that.
Cermet
Afer one page of his nonsense yesterday, I gave up even trying to understand what the clown was writing – from the shit storm, at least someone did manage to understand this writer’s attempt at thought. Maybe I’m glad I couldn’t.
So this guy thinks that anyone who is intelligent (exculdes all rethug voters) wants right wing racism called the re-thug party and their sick rasist supporters to surieve has to be a nutcase.
The boss
Derrida requires that, stinky or not, we must deconstruct the writer’s text. This is gonna hurt, but let me try…
I CAN HAZ KEYBORD, BITCHEzZ!!
JPL
@dmsilev: seconded.
Samara Morgan
Poulos is another nasty little embryo Douthat that i remember from Culture 11 and TAS. Its purely Lovecraftian, like the Colour Out of Space.
Douthat is like the evil soulsucking monstrous being that fed up and got strong and beamed itself up out of the well onto the NYT, and Poulos and Kain and DeBoer and Joe Carter and Frierdersdorf are like the weak half-formed creature that didnt get enough food (pageclicks) and fell feebly back into the well.
Reihan too I guess, because NRO is far as he can ever get.
bemused
What a coward this guy is. He writes a pile of gobbledegook because he’s too scared to say what he really feels.
Villago Delenda Est
@Some Guy:
OK, I’m going to have to object to this.
Not only is his point no point, he doesn’t even bother to try to reason, at all. It’s just a stream of word salad in defense of being a dumbasshole, which winds up being about as much of a defense as say the Germans put up to defend occupied Paris in 1944. Waay too busy fleeing back to the Reich to even grab a croissant for the trip.
amk
@dmsilev: +1.
Samara Morgan
@The boss: bam!
Poulos’ old blog was Post-modern Conservative.
back in the day, they called themselves the PoMoCons.
a fourth leg of the stool?
WereBear
So it all boils down to they are going to take their balls and go home?
I am so down with that.
harlana
i’m sorry, i still can’t get through it; i’d almost rather listen to Sarah Palin’s word salad and voice! maybe if you paid me.
Samara Morgan
the metaphorical ladder out of the well (so to speak) was Culture 11->TAS->Atlantic->NYT for Ross.
Conor seems stuck at the Atlantic, and de Boer and Kain are still wannabe Atlanticons.
Sadly for PoMoCon Poulos, the bottom two rungs have fallen off the ladder.
Rita R.
Is this what passes for writing in the wingnut welfare world? Although slightly less incomprehensible than the first “What are Women For?” post, after slashing and hacking through Poulos’ latest overstuffed screed I’m still not sure exactly what the hell he’s trying to say.
Is it biology is destiny? Is it you should really pay attention to me because I’m less of a dick then a lot of other conservatives out there? Is he just using a lot a words to restate the obvious — that the fight is about whether women will be allowed to control their own bodies or not? And has he ever spoken to an actual woman instead of engaging in offensive theorizing about what they “are for”?
In any case, I liked this from the comments section:
EDIT: That second sentence is supposed to be in the blockquote too. Don’t know why it isn’t.
Samara Morgan
@WereBear: well…..the conservative elite have a problem now. With both TAS and Culture 11 defunct, there is no official incubator for young conservative “intellectuals”.
That is why Poulos is at DC and Erik Ericksson at Redstate, and Kain is still wandering aimlessly in his “Freed” Market Forest.
There is just no market among the ‘slines of the conservative base for intellectualism.
Culture 11 died the same day Big Hollywood sprang to foul nascent life.
all those blogs– Culture 11, TAS, Big Hollywood were about “taking back the culture”.
This is a failmene of conservative ideology like i pointed out on EDK’s McNaughton thread (approvingly linked by Sully).
Culture is a reflection of society, not a steering wheel for it.
Rita R.
@dmsilev:
You’ve been seconded and thirded, so I guess I’m fourthing.
THE
Very true. Lots of heretics burned at the stake, and unbelievers persecuted into conversion, who were liberated from their bodies by Christianist whackjobs, can testify to the deep truth of this.
geg6
The idea that I would be anything less than ecstatic if the social conservative movement in America (hell, the world) died out is laughable at the very least.
I would prefer if they died out in a very hot fire, but I’ll take it any way I can get it.
Villago Delenda Est
It’s painfully obvious that this guy is destined to be a 40 year old virgin, with no hope of changing that when he hits 40.
Samara Morgan
Tbogg’s take that SPT linked.
Airborne Pompous Event.
betty, your link doesnt work for me.
the comments are 100% negative from my sample.
Samara Morgan
@THE: Spock you are such an albigensian.
JGabriel
Hmm. My love for America vs. my love of a good target for mocking.
Decisions, decisions…
.
THE
@Samara Morgan: They’re a good example.
JPL
The entire article was written solely to get links in order to improve the quality of ads. We have been taken and it’s not even April fools day.
MariedeGournay
Crows have a more profound metaphysics.
Samara Morgan
@JPL: no, this is a valid sample of what passes for PoMoCon “intellectual philosophy”.
I remember this guy from Culture 11 and TAS.
Groucho48
@Samara Morgan:
Well, “The Colour Out Of Space” Is chilling, and, Poulas is chilling, but they are chilling in very different ways. I read Coluor for the first time when I was maybe 10 or 11. It was one of the very few things I’ve ever read that sent shivers down my spine. But, the shivers were kind of good shivers…
Many right wing writers can also send shivers down my spine, but they are bad shivers. Hopefully, the twain shall never meet.
WereBear
@Samara Morgan: In other words, they fake it, all the way down.
Oh yeah, I got a lot of you should treasure your baby-making abilities because they are soooooooooo much better than bestriding the world like a colossus you lucky second class citizen you CRAP while I was growing up.
He sounds like just the kinda guy that makes conservatives think men who are gay are that way because they hate and fear women; and since they are straight and hate and fear women, the sex must be so much better and that’s why there is gayness which we manly men must resist 24/7 because it’s a sin.
When I think of the Conservative Mind, I think of an infinite screw turning in an eternity of Möbius bottles. And never getting anywhere.
Omnes Omnibus
If? How about when? I think when works better.
Samara Morgan
@Groucho48: haha, one of my favorite lovecrafts.
but i think i think “shapeless horror” that sucks the life and sanity out of everything is a very good analogy for douthat.
Poulos is a PoMoCon. that is simply never going to catch on.
post modernism.
its deeply oxymoronic.
Narcissus
“Beings with female bodies.”
Linda Featheringill
In addition to the idea that men are for donating sperm, NYT has an interesting article on the frequency of out-of-wedlock births in the US:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/18/us/for-women-under-30-most-births-occur-outside-marriage.html?_r=1&hp
Over 50% of births to women younger than 30 happen without marriage. And over 40% of all births in the US occur outside of marriage.
Groucho48
@Samara Morgan:
I was rambling a bit, but, my point is, the world would be a better place if there were a bunch more stories of comparable quality to Colour. We can’t say that about right wing pundits.
Samara Morgan
@WereBear: they arent faking it….well…maybe Jonah Golbberg is. But for the most part they truly believe this crapology.
Conservatives are always trying to “Take Back teh Culture” but they have a profound misunderstanding of what culture is.
Culture is a multidimensional reflective surface, not a steering wheel you can grab and wrench back onto your chosen path.
JPL
OT..MSNBC has an article on Santorum’s foreign police speech. I think he wants to bomb France.
The article does point out that Sarkozy isn’t the prime minister but does not mention France’s involvement in Arab Spring or Afghanistan. link
Samara Morgan
@Groucho48: lol. of course not. right wing pundits are more like Lovecraftian monsters than Lovecraftian writers.
Tyro
I am genuinely shocked how someone other than a pretentious 19 year old could have written this crap. It has all the markings of a juvenile who thinks, “this is how you sound profound” before he’s actually read anything significant.
Hs own Christian background has an extensive theology rejecting the whole “women as strange alien creatures and/or man’s total opposite” ideas in the classical era. It is as though he has no idea how dumb everything he just wrote is, though I’m sure this is what passes for profound in wingnut welfare circles.
Samara Morgan
@Tyro: im just in awe of the epic cognitive dissonance involved in being a post modernist and a conservative at the same time.
well….i guess postmodernists and conservatives both reject science…but the rest must be brainsplitting.
perhaps Poulos is now schizophrenic?
Omnes Omnibus
@JPL: You have to understand that the man is, at bottom, a vicious idiot.
Garbo
I salute those who waded into the muck. The title alone, What Are Women For, was enough to send my head into a low earth orbit of rage. For? For?!!!
Here’s my deep thinking. Since males have more musculature, they should be confined to only those professions or activities that call for strength or heavy lifting, m-Kay? I mean, it’s clearly their destiny to be pack animals, what’s the argument?
JPL
@Omnes Omnibus: Surprisingly most of those commenting understand that. Ten years ago many were ready to think France our enemy.
Omnes Omnibus
@Samara Morgan:
I know I will regret this, but quoi?
Linda Featheringill
@Samara Morgan: #37
Very nice. :-)
JD Rhoades
If my claim is doomed to be met with an avalanche of contempt, it seems likely that in our lifetimes social conservatism as we know it will be mocked, despised, and shamed right out of existence.
YAAAAAY!
Garbo
Now THAT is some fine thinking and writing.
Omnes Omnibus
@JPL: At the time, I thought of France as the good friend who said, “Bro, I’m, like, not totes sure that this is cool. Maybe you should, like, chill and shit.” Also too, given France’s real history of martial fervor, if they didn’t want to be involved in a war, it was a bad idea.
PeakVT
@Linda Featheringill: Marriage is declining, but at the same time the cost of a typical wedding is exploding. Effect, or another cause of the decline?
Samara Morgan
@Groucho48: Lovecraft was peerless at conveying horror…..i feel that horror now for what the conservative movement has become….
a classic Lovecraftian monster like the soggoth in The Dunwich Horror.
General Stuck
He dunt make sense, but that Poulos feller sure do talk purdy.
scav
What part of “shut up bitchz and stand still on that pedestal and inspire me, don’t you worry your pretty little head about the empty nothings of the actual world.” does he think is a compliment? Forget mere combat, some women are entirely mean, souless and real enough to be successful hedge fund managers. Welcome to true equality, you’ll find women coming at you from all sides. Cage match between Iron Man and The Iron Lady? Place your bets.
rikyrah
these assholes never apologize.
that’s for mere mortals. we just are too stupid to see his brilliance.
in actuality?
fuck this asshole.
Samara Morgan
@Omnes Omnibus: this was a BEEG topic of discussion at Culture 11….Poulos argued that since science was modern rejecting science was post-modern.
sadly, the archives are all gone, but it was Epic.
General Stuck
@scav:
I’d prefer to duck.
Omnes Omnibus
@Samara Morgan: That is simply further evidence that Poulos is, individually, an idiot. Don’t take it as evidence that post-modernism rejects science.
pluege
since “social conservatism” is the manifestation of all the vile, repugnant, insecure, violent, irrational, loathsome attributes of being human, why wouldn’t we rejoice at the extinction of social conservatism? It is in fact the goal.
Enlightenment, the triumph of empathy and decency is the exact opposite of social conservatism. Humanity can not achieve enlightenment as long as social conservatism exists.
dmsilev
I will say though that anyone who believes that their best byline is “Host of Something Nobody Has Ever Heard Of on PJTV” deserves at least a little nanosecond or so of pity.
boomshanka
wow, i’m glad i read this. yet another reminder that a “reasonable” conservative is a total fucking fraud. his article and response discredits everything he’s ever written.
DanielX
Attempting to find the point of Poulos’ original gibberish, my reaction was “what the fuck does this even mean?”. Couldn’t figure it out, except Poulos thinks women ought to…something. Then I thought about how I’ve had this precise reaction before. But where and when? It came to me quickly – this word salad is like one of David Brook’s more putrid efforts, except Poulos had to put more work and more words into it. Keep practicing, James – eventually you’ll reach the point where you too can effortlessly crank out complete horseshit with a conservative twist and to do it in 800 words or less.
General Stuck
It’s hard to be reasonable, when the GOP tent is surrounded by portable guillotines.
Chris
No. No I’m not. I’ve been waiting my entire admittedly short life to see social conservatism mocked, despised and shamed right out of existence.
And this being a democracy and us being liberals, “mocking, despising and shaming” is as far as we’ll go. We will not pass laws denying social conservatives the right to marry. We will not pass laws denying social conservatives access to health care. We will not fight for some “constitutional right” to segregate social conservatives out of our restaurants, offices, apartment buildings and other parts of society. We will not impose poll taxes designed to prevent social conservatives from voting. Because even though you deserve nothing more than all these things, we’re not like you.
So shut up and be happy that the “mocking, despising and shaming” is the closest thing you’ll ever know to the oppression you’ve visited on millions of people.
Samara Morgan
@Omnes Omnibus: oh no….its how conservative cognitive dissonance and factblocking accomodate the impossible task of reconciling conservativism and post-modernism.
Poulos’ old blog was Post-modern Conservatism.
He is a PoMoCon.
this is evident in his writing style.
handsmile
@Samara Morgan:
Not to quibble, but since Poulos is being rightfully slagged for his word salad rhetoric, among other things, I must ask respectfully, what does this mean:
“Culture is a multidimensional reflective surface, not a steering wheel you can grab and wrench back onto your chosen path.”
Whenever I hear the word “culture,” I reach for my copy of Raymond Williams’ Keywords. This is the first paragraph of his definition:
Samara Morgan
truly my favorite line.
scav
@handsmile: I thought it meant you can’t drive a petri dish, no matter how much it looks like a steering wheel (although the possibility of driving youghurt flashed through my mind briefly, I did reject that one). mmmm, must read more carefully in future.
ETA: Yes, some of you did see the potability of driving youghurt briefly, but I fixed it. FYSC.
Samara Morgan
@handsmile: the point im trying to make is that culture reflects society. i thought that EDK post was truly awful, partly because he still trying to pimp his argument that failed 3 years ago at TAS.
cw says it better than i. he was my Dark Sith Master at TAS in the old days.
In evo theory of culture 101 we learned that culture doesnt shape society as much society shapes culture.
;)
Samara Morgan
@handsmile: take EDK’s LOTR example.
there is no sucha thing as “inherently conservative” about LOTR.
it reflects the cultural values of that slice of spacetime, both liberal and conservative, as well as motifs that transcend time and space like friendship, loyalty, and sacrifice.
that is why i said multidimensional.
;)
harlana
@DanielX: the only thing i got out of it that was marginally comprehensible was that women are “privileged” because they can get pregnant and bear children (no mention of the circumstances of how they conceived or whether or not they wanted to get pregnant or whether that pregnancy might threaten their lives), and that we should be really concerned that men have no say in what happens to their sperm after it leaves their body, i guess that’s supposed to be comparable to women practicing birth control or getting abortions.
Samara Morgan
@handsmile: see this?
that is what Poulos is attempting….to claim postmodernism for conservatism.
..or claim you can be a postmodernist AND a conservative….something like that.
Or when EDK or Peter Suderman call themselves neo-liberals or liberaltarians they are trying to claim liberal values for conservatism.
they are trying to drive culture.
it can’t be driven.
Comrade Nimrod Humperdink
I dunno, all this Po Mo Con stuff is giving this doofus more credit than he warrants. That might be how he packages it, but it sounds more to me like a drunken undergrad frat guy hanging out with a few people in the pre-dawn hours and trying to explain his objections to the Women’s Studies 101 class he took to fulfill a GenEd requirement and hopefully hook up with somebody.
I don’t care how old he is biologically, as noted above, he’s still 19, doesn’t actually know what he thinks because he lacks the balls and focus to chase it down, and then cries about being misunderstood when the actual adults around him point and laugh.
Roger Moore
@Samara Morgan:
Gems like this are why we’re happy to have you around here.
Samara Morgan
@handsmile: and Williams definition of culture is very multidimensional, isnt it?
scav
@Comrade Nimrod Humperdink: Basically, yeah, he can dress up in PoMo pajamas all he wants but that doesn’t mean he can wield the best of it effectively. Needs more batteries in his light saber. If he’s confusing getting yelled at for being proved correct, I’d say it’s odds on he thinks his string of F’s is graduating Summa Cum Laude. He’s blatherng on about women’s natural bodies and unique or particular purposes, while his body and natural purpose, examined at bottom, might be stored cryogenically and used when convenient, with far less bother, fuss and possibly, cost. Stepstools don’t cost that much.
gocart mozart
Here is Roy Edroso’s take on the original article. As usual, vey funny and so are the comments.
http://alicublog.blogspot.com/
handsmile
@Samara Morgan:
I appreciate your taking the time to write several comments explicating your original remark. Thank you.
The channels of interaction and influence, reflection and absorption, between culture and society are profoundly intertwined. (Trying to navigate them has been the broad subject of my professional work for many years.)
Ideological conservatives’ notions of the interrelationship between art, culture and society, as baldly exposed by your citation of Kain’s example of LOTR, are simply too shallow to offer guidance.
ETA: Just now saw your comment #74. Raymond Williams was and remains my own Sith Master. “Multi-dimensional” is inadequate to describe his genius.
RalfW
Commenter SteveM at TBogg’s place dug up this fantastic gem from 2009 (via wayback machine) in which Poulos rails against new type fonts as contributing to the decline of civilization. Seriously. He’s that pretentious and simultaneously unhinged.
Poulos can use a lot of fancy words, but no matter the cleanliness of the Arial font on my Mac, they just don’t make a damn bit of sense.
GregB
Oh, you mean the tools that shout amen at chief ditto-head Rush Limbaugh as he talks dreamily about the wonderful day in the future when there is a zoo with one liberal in it behind bars, just so the rubes can see what one looks like?
These people.
RalfW
@Chris:
+1, Chris. You’ve captured a good chunk of why I’m a liberal. Thanks.
Benjamin Franklin
@handsmile:
I don’t think the def of culture is more complex than when I took Anthropology;
Culture; The way of life for a People
Just sayin…
scav
@RalfW: “. . . the eradication of ennobling, culturally demanding, fonts from public print”? ! Oh Thank you! Thank you! Yet another reason to not be able to sleep at night from all the hysterical laughter.
Comrade Nimrod Humperdink
@scav: Well, getting yelled at is bracing evidence that he’s touched some nerve central to the ideological identity of the evil Left and complacent Middle, don’t you see?
Samara Morgan
@handsmile:
beauty.
i totally agree with this.
that is very good actually.
have any published works i can read?
for example, consider blacks in entertainment and sports in pop culture.
this represents reflection, in that it reflects the increasing share of minorities in the population, but also absorption, and fulfills a societal need to reshape non-black perceptions post civil rights.
Culture doesn’t shape society AS MUCH AS society shapes culture according to its needs.
that might be Dan Sperber, i forget.
thank YOU for the learning.
;)
Egg Berry
Social conservatives can’t be post-modern, since their worldview is decidedly pre-modern.
Brachiator
Started reading it, stopped after a few paragraphs. Typical lame shit stuck in an old philosophical framework. Looking for essences and purpose. Sullivan also likes this kind of thing.
But in the end, who gives a shit what he thinks women are for?
And you know, that when that odd little document, The Declaration of Indepdendence, talks about “the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” there is the clear implication that each individual is the author of his or her own story, without respect to tradition, culture, society, or even psuedo genetic notions of essence, purpose or destiny.
Why don’t conservatives believe in America?
General Stuck
Wingnuts can be counted on to be reactionary, if nothing else, and doubly so when they think they are losing. But I have an odd feeling about what is going on now with these usually cautious political creatures now throwing caution to the wind and letting their freek flags fly. It is almost getting to be like a long drawn out confessional to let us all know the dark ideals harbored in their hard tiny hearts. A sort of cathartic grunt toward shedding skin as a molt toward some kind of half assed idea of salvation. Right now it concerns their attitudes towards women. That is coming out sideways, and just screams political suicide from alienating more than half the electorate. I am likely being too hopeful as to a positive underside to the nature of the current bullshit they are disgusting us all with. But I can’t think of a better explanation for it. They used to do all this on the sly, but not anymore.
scav
@Comrade Nimrod Humperdink: Ahh, yes, but then he’ll have to find out what the purpose of the Left and Middle are tomorrow and attempt to counter that as well. We just need to keep intellectually flexible and his 1000-year Right can be toppled with a Zapf Wingding . . .
Villago Delenda Est
@handsmile:
I see what you did there.
FlipYrWhig
@RalfW: So if a women’s fashion boutique used girly fonts, would that be a good thing, reflecting feminine special femininity, or a bad thing, conveying decadent manners and sloth?
gocart mozart
“In a simpler time Sigmund Freud struggled to understand what women want. Today the significant battle is over what women are for.”
Heh.
http://alicublog.blogspot.com/
Comrade Nimrod Humperdink
@Egg Berry: It seems strange to see somebody that claims to be PoMo making all kinds of weird allusions to stuff that’s “Natural” while speaking in largely cultural terms. It’s all the more reason for me to think of Inigo Montoya and Vizzini.
Villago Delenda Est
@Brachiator:
It takes more operative neurons than they have.
Collectively.
Samara Morgan
also too, you should all brace yourselves for Disney’s John Carter and EDK arguing that Tal Hajus and the Green Horde were socialists (and possibly muslim “jihaadis”), and that Princess of Mars is “inherently conservative”.
;)
Samara Morgan
oh darn.
moderation.
i said the s-word, didnt i?
;)
Samara Morgan
also too, you should all brace yourselves for Disney’s John Carter and EDK arguing that since Tal Hajus and the Green Horde are soc1al1sts (and possibly muslim “jihadis”, because, like, Green), that means ERB and Princess of Mars are “inherently conservative”.
;)
Omnes Omnibus
@Samara Morgan: FWIW this is a much better way of carrying on your kanly against EDK. It is rather witty, it makes your point, and it doesn’t completely torque up the thread for everyone else.
Brachiator
@Samara Morgan:
I can’t decide whether this is nonsense or gibberish.
Upon further reflection: gibberish.
Narcissus
Everything James Poulos knows about women he learned from Tarnsman of Gor.
ExurbanMom
The comments, seriously, are 100% against him. 100%. And the commentariat, taken collectively, makes more sense and is much funnier and smarter than him. Quite an achievement, that, to have sparked such unanimous opposition and quality snarkage.
Samara Morgan
@Narcissus: AMG! Gor the counter-earth.
that is where all conservatives actually belong.
where women are slaves and totally dig it.
Narcissus, PLEASE go post that comment on Poulos’ thread!
Persia
@dmsilev: Yeah, I keep thinking that ‘bodily autonomy’ thing is important to me, I guess I won’t shed any tears when social conservatism goes down.
Samara Morgan
Narcissus, i can do it for you, if you like….. that is too awesome not to share.
done.
could this spawn a new internet meme?
James Poulos, Tarnsman of Gor.
JR in WVa
@Chris: Chris, is it OK to hope that the mocking and shaming we’re allowed to do will make them go way away to anywhere else so we don’t have to look at them or hear them anymore?
I sure hope so!
Thanks,
JR
Samara Morgan
here is a simply awesome example of what i meant by using religion to try to grab the (imaginary) steering wheel of culture.
religion is PART of contemporary culture, but not neccessarily the steering part..
watch out America, Satan is gunna get yah.
JR in WVa
Tarnsman of Gor:
I read that article about fonts. He used Ariel mostly, and in the code referred to ‘Helvetica’,’Lucida Grande’, and ‘Arial’. Though I’m sure he didn’t ever look at the HTML he was generating, and probably didn’t know how to control what font his precious words would appear in.
What a bowl of chowder! His more recent work is far more unintelligible than the older one about fonts, but how does one become convinced that fonts can doom (or save) a society or culture.
Some excellent observations about culture in fiction can be seen in Ian M Banks’ work, if anyone is interested about real discussion of culture and society.
RalfW
@FlipYrWhig:
I suspect that any font less serious than a 19-th century serif implies decadence, homosexual tendencies and sloth. At least for the nutter Poulos.
Now, personally, I hate a variety of Microsoft fonts, but that’s because they’re just ugly or lame. Which I suppose indicts capitalism for it’s flim-flammery. Ha-HA! I see how this works! Cool!!
THE
Ummm. Gaia’s secret strategy for conquering the Galaxy? ;)
DanielX
@Samara Morgan:
Yup. Where is the Church Lady when you need her?
Samara Morgan
i thot about this in the wee hours when i was gaming.
there is a reason that the Culture 11 archives were purged. does anyone remember Young Conors screed against Palin, Snowmobile Wreck?
I also thought about James Poulos, noted PomoCon and Tarnsman of Gor.
Now there is a literary work with True Conservative Values.
paging EDK
can someone that speaks glibertarian explain what libertinism is?
;)
THE
I presume libertinism means you want to be a libertine