"One day you'll smell fish where there are no fish." - Capt. Ahab, 1851
Demitri,
What a delight to receive your message. This holiday season finds me double-blest, with both bucolic home life and literary lard for the skillet. Thank you for the latter. Is it possible, is it still possible, I worried, that my last posting was so ambiguous? Of the modest number of those who responded to it, you stand alone in your misunderstanding of my use of what I like to call conversational transference, a literary device used on occasion to present one or more hypothetical suppositions, in a dialectic context, for the purpose of framing the author's (or in the brilliant case of Plato, a protagonist's) often contradictory reply.
How sad when so much effort is lost to an error in the fundamentals. More time spent reading and less time buried in the thesaurus might well improve your game. These sentences of mine, these words are not the adolescent rantings of the knee-jerk, "nattering nabobs of negativity" from whom your rhetorical style has apparently snatched the anemic victories you've relished over the past two or more decades. These rejoinders, I sincerely regret, if for little more than the chill they bring to your comfortable and sedentary meditations, are a call to reason. Your ineffectual protection of some zeit gemutlich renders the drama all the more painful. Would that I could help you take these first steps, I should. But we both know it is wrong for me to mother you too much.
The door is flung wide, you cannot simply close it. Please accept my invitation to raise the level of your game a notch or two, being now in the company of one for whom facts, references and analysis are less subject to a doctrine or emotion; answering quite independently upon, and seldom prior to, the research and digestion of data within its utilitarian context. In the case of a Federal Republic, you'll often observe this context is associated with demographic tabulations within a correlated historic framework. I attempted to help your case by providing tangible data upon which you could have hung me or, for that matter, yourself. You chose instead to shade the debate in a caricature of scholarship, a tactic perhaps popular, (dare I say "effective"?) in Connecticut but puerile by the standards of our New York conventions.
Your reference to my "recently acquired academia-based cynicism" sheds some light on a condition you bear, (if only, Lord permit, with greater subtlety), for which I shall visit upon with the lightest air; the tenderest condolence. If by "recent", you refer to a stint at a university almost thirty years ago, then by all means, continue to assay my character, my raison de vive, as the cry of the emancipated child, ignoring what use I have made of the intervening three decades, (nod to Henry V). I’ll remain twenty and in college for as long as you need me there. Your tactics continue to be my advantage, your condition: "historically challenged", my cross to bear. Suffer the handicapped, make not war upon them. They are the Lords's children. What should I do? All medicine tastes like the ass end of a camel. I shall therefore continue for your own healing.
The Right-wing, conservative media has spent a disproportionate number of hours and dollars reporting that the Left-wing, liberal media is kicking its ass, distorting truth for the ultimate goal of replacing our American way of life with an alien approximation of a socialist Utopia. This has become News itself. Given a finite set or "universe" of time to present the events of the day, it is quite extraordinary to sacrifice valuable rations of it to such a "news worthy" scoop! "Damn the facts!" they appear to whine, "we need Headlines!" (Please note the use of the device I referred to earlier as "conversational transference".) Meta-News has become "News"? I disagree with the calls to alarm on this issue. I began my analysis of the issue with a mind toward the possibility that you and the whining Right were correct: the "Sinister" liberals, (thanks for that one!) were taking over the moral high ground, currently held and water boarded by the Right. That being the case, a frame work of Liberal dominance in media ownership, media listenership and rhetorical prowess should reveal itself in the numbers. I researched these numbers. I provided my sources, i.e.: The Tax Policy Center and The Pew Center for People and the Media. You respond with: "When you have more than an ethereal, unworkable philosophic "solution" to the world's problems, let me know. But, until then I shall certainly be more circumspect regarding any of my further however well intentioned yet painfully and obviously meagre attempts to introduce fact into [sic: my] longstanding orb of socio-fantasy." (note: punctuation reproduced sans edit.)
Wow. Any facts from you would double the scholastic content of our dialogue, immediately. Please don't keep them to yourself. You Right-wing Conservatives seem to forget that you are not the guardian priests of some secret knowledge. A Democracy must trust its people with information; yes professor, even those, how did you put it?, "without circumspective abilities." Informing one's self is the due diligence of each and every citizen, circumspectively endowed or not. Whining about losing, (in curious contradiction to the statistics no less), informs the public about losing and nothing more. O.K., I'll toss you one, just to make it a game again: How about spending less time building walls and more time reaching out to people? Or is this the ethereal part, where you right-wingers get confused? How about spending less time whining about the liberals and more time organizing your facts to fit and improve the real, changing and maturing world. Such a solution includes the astute knowledge of the pros and cons of wagon circling. History has shown the technique only bought enough time for our fore-fathers to ethnically cleanse the country of "undesirable" aboriginals. Diplomacy was still at the mercy of the gun. The guilt is still an American tragedy, pregnant with instruction for the future of our diplomatic progress. (Yes, the progressive kind.)
What will we do with new knowledge? Simply whine that the Liberal media has offered it a place at the table?; taken it to the Prom, so to speak, while you and your boys sit on the sidelines, paralyzed to inaction with fear of the maturation process? Those who do not remember the prom are doomed to repeat it.
Sarah Palin. I'm glad we dodged that one. She walked into more flack two months into her candidacy than Bush did in the previous four years. I will defer to my statistics (until you present a compelling reinterpretation of the data) and ask why the media from both ends of the political spectrum tore into her. A better question than "is she qualified?" would be "is she best qualified?” I believe the media began with an analysis of the latter until she opened her mouth. Let the cards fall where they may. She's gone. Thank God for this great nation of ours!
Caroline Kennedy. My marriage to Jen was not the conclusion of a business deal. I no more own her than I own the sky. They are both there for my eyes to love, for my soul to dream into. Her decision to take the name Thomas changed nothing. After reconciling our most recent differences we have decided to renew our vows at which time the issue of our last name might be revisited. I honor my wife as my equal and my friend. Your decision to wall out those who do not share your beliefs does not blemish those of us with different and no less valid wishes. Caroline's freedom to keep her last name is no metric of her morality, her legitimacy or her capability.
Her Senate prospects? You really must calm yourself and stop letting the press manipulate you. A review of the facts reveals that Governor Paterson offered her a chance to demonstrate her qualifications and nothing more. This is how you guys get all excited. Try reading beyond the headlines and you'll find a magic world of information. Incidentally, the stay at home, ignorant and ill-prepared Caroline Kennedy managed to earn two degrees, one from Radcliff and her second, a Law degree from Columbia. She's also written several books on civil liberties ("sentimental hogwash" I'm sure) and political integrity. I have never read her work, so I don't pretend to offer her literary vocation as an endorsement of her character, but I throw it out there that some record of her philosophy exists. (I don't suppose her Publisher-mother had any opportunity to help her here, do you? See, I can be cynical too.)
Caroline served as Chief Executive for the office of Strategic Partnerships for the New York City Dept. of Education where she proved herself more than capable of raising money for the public benefit: $65 million in private support and an additional $51 million from Microsoft founder and billionaire Bill Gates. She also currently serves as Vice Chairperson of the Fund for Public Schools. Is she the best choice from among the likes of Andrew Cuomo or Tom Suozzi ? I do not believe so. Is she a Liberal threat to the soft underbelly of the country's under- represented, poorly armed reactionary delegation? As much as I wish it to be, I don't believe the facts come close to bearing it out. She's just not that close to her dubious tabloid persona let alone a shoe-in for the senate. Sorry. One less thing to panic about. How about trashing me if she does look closer to getting in. Conserve your venom supply for the stretch; you'll need every drop to stay in the race if you continue to cherry-pick unsubstantiated "facts" from those fundamentalist blogs of yours. But I digress.
While Lewis Lapham, editor of Harper's, is consumed with his left wing punditry, weaving analysis from notated, substantiated, documented data sources; while Paul Krugman is peering out a small window of his Princeton office, toiling over his next op-ed piece under the shadow of his 2008 Nobel prize, you will be proud to know that Rush was equally consumed by his latest project: "We hate the USA": a CD collection of songs featuring the hit "Barack the magic Negro". If you missed it, I’m sure you can still catch it on Chip Staltsman’s Holiday greeting. In case you don’t already have his number on your speed-dial, just contact your local Republican Party headquarters. I’m sure they’ll be glad to help you get in touch with one of the RNC’s candidates for Party Chairman.But lest you despair, and think Rush has gone over to the dark side, I believe you can continue to dust his bust in your study without shame. He merely used a literary device I call "conversational transference" when he named it.
© Jeff Thomas 2009
Demitri,
What a delight to receive your message. This holiday season finds me double-blest, with both bucolic home life and literary lard for the skillet. Thank you for the latter. Is it possible, is it still possible, I worried, that my last posting was so ambiguous? Of the modest number of those who responded to it, you stand alone in your misunderstanding of my use of what I like to call conversational transference, a literary device used on occasion to present one or more hypothetical suppositions, in a dialectic context, for the purpose of framing the author's (or in the brilliant case of Plato, a protagonist's) often contradictory reply.
How sad when so much effort is lost to an error in the fundamentals. More time spent reading and less time buried in the thesaurus might well improve your game. These sentences of mine, these words are not the adolescent rantings of the knee-jerk, "nattering nabobs of negativity" from whom your rhetorical style has apparently snatched the anemic victories you've relished over the past two or more decades. These rejoinders, I sincerely regret, if for little more than the chill they bring to your comfortable and sedentary meditations, are a call to reason. Your ineffectual protection of some zeit gemutlich renders the drama all the more painful. Would that I could help you take these first steps, I should. But we both know it is wrong for me to mother you too much.
The door is flung wide, you cannot simply close it. Please accept my invitation to raise the level of your game a notch or two, being now in the company of one for whom facts, references and analysis are less subject to a doctrine or emotion; answering quite independently upon, and seldom prior to, the research and digestion of data within its utilitarian context. In the case of a Federal Republic, you'll often observe this context is associated with demographic tabulations within a correlated historic framework. I attempted to help your case by providing tangible data upon which you could have hung me or, for that matter, yourself. You chose instead to shade the debate in a caricature of scholarship, a tactic perhaps popular, (dare I say "effective"?) in Connecticut but puerile by the standards of our New York conventions.
Your reference to my "recently acquired academia-based cynicism" sheds some light on a condition you bear, (if only, Lord permit, with greater subtlety), for which I shall visit upon with the lightest air; the tenderest condolence. If by "recent", you refer to a stint at a university almost thirty years ago, then by all means, continue to assay my character, my raison de vive, as the cry of the emancipated child, ignoring what use I have made of the intervening three decades, (nod to Henry V). I’ll remain twenty and in college for as long as you need me there. Your tactics continue to be my advantage, your condition: "historically challenged", my cross to bear. Suffer the handicapped, make not war upon them. They are the Lords's children. What should I do? All medicine tastes like the ass end of a camel. I shall therefore continue for your own healing.
The Right-wing, conservative media has spent a disproportionate number of hours and dollars reporting that the Left-wing, liberal media is kicking its ass, distorting truth for the ultimate goal of replacing our American way of life with an alien approximation of a socialist Utopia. This has become News itself. Given a finite set or "universe" of time to present the events of the day, it is quite extraordinary to sacrifice valuable rations of it to such a "news worthy" scoop! "Damn the facts!" they appear to whine, "we need Headlines!" (Please note the use of the device I referred to earlier as "conversational transference".) Meta-News has become "News"? I disagree with the calls to alarm on this issue. I began my analysis of the issue with a mind toward the possibility that you and the whining Right were correct: the "Sinister" liberals, (thanks for that one!) were taking over the moral high ground, currently held and water boarded by the Right. That being the case, a frame work of Liberal dominance in media ownership, media listenership and rhetorical prowess should reveal itself in the numbers. I researched these numbers. I provided my sources, i.e.: The Tax Policy Center and The Pew Center for People and the Media. You respond with: "When you have more than an ethereal, unworkable philosophic "solution" to the world's problems, let me know. But, until then I shall certainly be more circumspect regarding any of my further however well intentioned yet painfully and obviously meagre attempts to introduce fact into [sic: my] longstanding orb of socio-fantasy." (note: punctuation reproduced sans edit.)
Wow. Any facts from you would double the scholastic content of our dialogue, immediately. Please don't keep them to yourself. You Right-wing Conservatives seem to forget that you are not the guardian priests of some secret knowledge. A Democracy must trust its people with information; yes professor, even those, how did you put it?, "without circumspective abilities." Informing one's self is the due diligence of each and every citizen, circumspectively endowed or not. Whining about losing, (in curious contradiction to the statistics no less), informs the public about losing and nothing more. O.K., I'll toss you one, just to make it a game again: How about spending less time building walls and more time reaching out to people? Or is this the ethereal part, where you right-wingers get confused? How about spending less time whining about the liberals and more time organizing your facts to fit and improve the real, changing and maturing world. Such a solution includes the astute knowledge of the pros and cons of wagon circling. History has shown the technique only bought enough time for our fore-fathers to ethnically cleanse the country of "undesirable" aboriginals. Diplomacy was still at the mercy of the gun. The guilt is still an American tragedy, pregnant with instruction for the future of our diplomatic progress. (Yes, the progressive kind.)
What will we do with new knowledge? Simply whine that the Liberal media has offered it a place at the table?; taken it to the Prom, so to speak, while you and your boys sit on the sidelines, paralyzed to inaction with fear of the maturation process? Those who do not remember the prom are doomed to repeat it.
Sarah Palin. I'm glad we dodged that one. She walked into more flack two months into her candidacy than Bush did in the previous four years. I will defer to my statistics (until you present a compelling reinterpretation of the data) and ask why the media from both ends of the political spectrum tore into her. A better question than "is she qualified?" would be "is she best qualified?” I believe the media began with an analysis of the latter until she opened her mouth. Let the cards fall where they may. She's gone. Thank God for this great nation of ours!
Caroline Kennedy. My marriage to Jen was not the conclusion of a business deal. I no more own her than I own the sky. They are both there for my eyes to love, for my soul to dream into. Her decision to take the name Thomas changed nothing. After reconciling our most recent differences we have decided to renew our vows at which time the issue of our last name might be revisited. I honor my wife as my equal and my friend. Your decision to wall out those who do not share your beliefs does not blemish those of us with different and no less valid wishes. Caroline's freedom to keep her last name is no metric of her morality, her legitimacy or her capability.
Her Senate prospects? You really must calm yourself and stop letting the press manipulate you. A review of the facts reveals that Governor Paterson offered her a chance to demonstrate her qualifications and nothing more. This is how you guys get all excited. Try reading beyond the headlines and you'll find a magic world of information. Incidentally, the stay at home, ignorant and ill-prepared Caroline Kennedy managed to earn two degrees, one from Radcliff and her second, a Law degree from Columbia. She's also written several books on civil liberties ("sentimental hogwash" I'm sure) and political integrity. I have never read her work, so I don't pretend to offer her literary vocation as an endorsement of her character, but I throw it out there that some record of her philosophy exists. (I don't suppose her Publisher-mother had any opportunity to help her here, do you? See, I can be cynical too.)
Caroline served as Chief Executive for the office of Strategic Partnerships for the New York City Dept. of Education where she proved herself more than capable of raising money for the public benefit: $65 million in private support and an additional $51 million from Microsoft founder and billionaire Bill Gates. She also currently serves as Vice Chairperson of the Fund for Public Schools. Is she the best choice from among the likes of Andrew Cuomo or Tom Suozzi ? I do not believe so. Is she a Liberal threat to the soft underbelly of the country's under- represented, poorly armed reactionary delegation? As much as I wish it to be, I don't believe the facts come close to bearing it out. She's just not that close to her dubious tabloid persona let alone a shoe-in for the senate. Sorry. One less thing to panic about. How about trashing me if she does look closer to getting in. Conserve your venom supply for the stretch; you'll need every drop to stay in the race if you continue to cherry-pick unsubstantiated "facts" from those fundamentalist blogs of yours. But I digress.
While Lewis Lapham, editor of Harper's, is consumed with his left wing punditry, weaving analysis from notated, substantiated, documented data sources; while Paul Krugman is peering out a small window of his Princeton office, toiling over his next op-ed piece under the shadow of his 2008 Nobel prize, you will be proud to know that Rush was equally consumed by his latest project: "We hate the USA": a CD collection of songs featuring the hit "Barack the magic Negro". If you missed it, I’m sure you can still catch it on Chip Staltsman’s Holiday greeting. In case you don’t already have his number on your speed-dial, just contact your local Republican Party headquarters. I’m sure they’ll be glad to help you get in touch with one of the RNC’s candidates for Party Chairman.But lest you despair, and think Rush has gone over to the dark side, I believe you can continue to dust his bust in your study without shame. He merely used a literary device I call "conversational transference" when he named it.
© Jeff Thomas 2009
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