For those of you who haven’t experienced Rolling Stone assassin Matt Taibbi’s uncompromising, pointy and funny-as-heck style, first cop this excerpt from his Palin pwnage piece on 27 September …
It even crossed my mind that there was an element of weirdly self-destructive pique in McCain’s decision to cave in to his party’s right-wing base in this fashion, that perhaps he was responding to being ordered by party elders away from a tepid, ideologically promiscuous hack like Joe Lieberman — reportedly his real preference — by picking the most obviously unqualified, doomed-to-fail joke of a Bible-thumping buffoon. As in: You want me to rally the base? Fine, I’ll rally the base. Here, I’ll choose this rifle-toting, serially pregnant moose killer who thinks God lobbies for oil pipelines. Happy now?
… and then go and read the whole thing.
Heh heh, ” … serially pregnant moose-killer … ” That’s gold!
Hank: Matt Tabbi is a hoot! It's a rare day when one comes across a writer who has so much fun with both ideas and words.
How about this gem?:
"It was like watching Gidget address the Reichstag."
lolololol sob
Almost, but not quite, up there with the Gonzo himself, Hunter S. Thompson
I noticed that Bob Cesca is doing a pretty good job keeping up with Tabbi on Palin:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bob-cesca/sarah-six…
The more I see of Palin, the more I am reminded of the film, "Idiocracy." The disturbing premise of that film is that humans no longer face any environmental pressures that "thin the herd" of the weak and stupid, so evolution simply favors those among our species who reproduce the fastest. And who is that? Well, it isn't the intellectuals who stay in school and wait until their later years to have one or two kids; its the drop-outs who start having kids in their teens and continue until they've had a brood. Think of it this way: on average, if drop-outs start a new generation every 20 years and geniuses start a new generation every 25 years, then, after a century, there will be five new generations of drop-outs but only four new generations of geniuses. Even if both groups have the same number of offspring in each generation, the drop-outs will rapidly outnumber the geniuses. And, in a democracy based on majority-rule, that means the drop-outs will be choosing the nation's leaders. In a culture that systematically debases intelligence, candidates like Sarah Palin will likely be the result. Fast forward a few centuries and you end up with an "idiocracy" — a hopelessly dysfunctional nation in which people even dumber than Sarah Palin hold every elected office. Indeed, the problem with Sarah Palin isn't that she could become president; the problem is what her popularity says about the U.S. electorate.
"… the drop-outs will rapidly outnumber the geniuses."
I have long maintained that evolution favors brawn over brains. Perhaps this is just a modernization of that concept.
On the other hand, I once believed that there were no mechanisms for natural selection in a "civilized" society, because the "weak" are accommodated by the "strong". Then I realized that there really are; they are just different: smoking, drinking and driving, driving without seat belts, riding without a helmet, bungee-jumping, text-messaging while operating a locomotive, and so forth. So the expansion of the "drop-out" population will be countered by the increased likelihood that the "drop-outs" will destroy themselves. Their numbers will not grow without bound, but will simply reach a new set-point.
Hmmm; it's been a while since I read Atlas Shrugged.
Absolutely stunning and insightful article!!!