Gore Vidal, who is still alive, is also still giving insane (and entertaining!) interviews. Some funny Democrat-bashing from the latest:
Barack Obama's books seemed to persuade many people to support him. Have you read them?
No. Does one ever read a politician's books? […]
The death of Sen. Edward Kennedy prompted a flood of coverage about him and his career. In 1969, you said in an interview, "By 1972, Kennedy will be just another politician whom we have seen too much of, no doubt useful in the Senate but nothing more. By 1976, Camelot will not only be forgot but unrestorable, if for no other reason than that Arthur's heir will by then be – cruelest fate of all – unmistakably fat."
I should think that's rather well observed.
What is Ted Kennedy's real legacy?
It's nothing. […]
Shouldn't this be a golden age for the Democrats? They finally control both houses of Congress and elected a president.
But they don't have a reason.
Some less ha-ha comments about Roman Polanski's rape victim:
During the time of the original incident, you were working in the industry, and you and Polanski had a common friend in theater critic and producer Kenneth Tynan. So what's your take on Polanski, this many years later?
I really don't give a fuck. Look, am I going to sit and weep every time a young hooker feels as though she's been taken advantage of?
I've certainly never heard that take on the story before.
First, I was in the middle of all that. Back then, we all were. Everybody knew everybody else. There was a totally different story at the time that doesn't resemble anything that we're now being told.
What do you mean?
The media can't get anything straight. Plus, there's usually an anti-Semitic and anti-fag thing going on with the press – lots of crazy things. The idea that this girl was in her communion dress, a little angel all in white, being raped by this awful Jew, Polacko – that's what people were calling him – well, the story is totally different now from what it was then.
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Oh, is that what he said? Because it looks like something that isn't even close to what he said. Oddly, Vidal's point seems addressed to people like you who think they know what happened that day when you don't even know that the story was completely different back in the 1970s.
I hear you, but that other story looks like it may have been spread by the Polanski defense squad. And, of course, it was SOP back then to trash the victim. Did they even have rape shield laws back then?
Pro Libertate: I don't think they had rape shield laws back them, but maybe if it was a minor. I don't know. And really, that's been my point the whole time. Nobody knows what happened, but everybody looks back and thinks they know exactly how things went down. I have no doubt that Polanski is a cock bag. But that doesn't mean I know who did what to whom.
But I think Vidal's assertion is obvious: that the girl felt manipulated and made a story out of it. Vidal didn't say raping hookers is cool. I mean, we pretend that we know for sure what happened in Jack Nicholas's hump room, yet some of us can't even read a quote correctly.
Absolutely not. Saying that she is a liar commits the same fallacy as saying that Polanski forcibly raped her. However, Polanski should go to jail for skipping town.
It was SOP back then? I have friends who have been raped and never would come forward because they didn't want to be trashed by the press. And the idea that Gore Vidal knows a fucking thing about what happens because he was "around back then" is utter bullshit; he wasn't there, he didn't know this girl before the incident, all he knew is what he heard from Polanski and his friends.
We'll never know everything, but I doubt Polanski pleads guilty to the lesser offense if he weren't on the hook for something more serious but more difficult to prove (and there's some evidence that the prosecution was asked to keep the girl off the stand to protect her--which could cut either way, I suppose). And, of course, the kicker is that he admittedly had sex with a 13-year old, which in my mind is heinous enough without the rape. In fact, it's pretty close to rape--where's the consent when it's a child?
Exactly, and this shitfuck thinks that all he needs to know is this the crap he heard back in 1979 from Polanski's friends, and hasn't bothered to inform himself any better than that.
Not sure what you mean by "back then, but "[i]n the 1970s, nearly every state enacted laws to forbid court testimony that exposed the private life of a rape victim." http://articles.latimes.com/19.....reme-court
Hey Lamar, the facts are the facts. And the facts are that Polanski ADMITTED to having given a 13-year-old girl champagne and half a quaalude, and then, while she repeatedly said "no" and tried to push him away, raped her orally, vaginally and anally.
So how is the story "different back in the 1970s"?
Just wondering how any rational person can possibly, remotely, in any way, defend that disgusting pedophile Polanski.
He raped a 13 year-old girl. She was not capable of consenting.
A Different Bill: Your characterization of what Polanski admitted to isn't accurate. Plus, if she was saying no while he screwed her, that is rape regardless of whether she was capable of consenting. But that's not what he admitted to, now is it? You are guilty of assuming the thing you wish to prove, and even claiming that the target admitted to the thing you believe happened.
Actually, yeah, that is what he admitted to. It's not what he pled guilty to. The law should only punish him for what he pled to, but he did admit to being a racist.
Yes, Lamar, back in the day, it was pretty routine to say that a girl wearing a short skirt was asking for it, there were fewer media outlets not dominated by media elites and their buddies (which Polanski clearly had some influence with), and the girls's grand jury transcripts were not publicly available.
Give it a fucking break. Just because the scum back in 1979 shopped around some bullshit about her mom whoring her out and how she really wanted it doesn't mean we have to keep believing it 30 years later.
And even if she was a prostitute, since when is it okay to have sex with a 13 year old prostitute? Since when do we not hold grown men responsible for drugging young girls and having sex with them, regardless of whether the young girls say yes or not? I have to say, I just can't take anyone seriously as a person with a moral compass who defends Roman Polanski.
I'm not going to pass judgment on what to believe or what not to believe. I'm just pointing out that nobody here has much of a clue as to what actually happened. Yet some people view that truth as "defending" Polanski, which it is not. Seamus, for example, has concluded that Polanski raped her, when it seems clear that Vidal is saying that the girl's claims of no consent are a result of her feelings being hurt. Take it or leave it, you know, Vidal is a tool. But you could at least accurately rebut what he is saying.
Even if Polanski claims that what he did with Gailey was consensual, I would think that when a 44-year-old gets a 13-year-old's "consent" with the help of alcohol and Quaaludes, that's more than just causing the 13-year-old to "feel[] as though she's been taken advantage of"; that's taking advantage of her, even if she is a hooker. (And last time I checked, it was not just a felony, but gross and creepy, to bang even 13-year-old hookers. At least that's what I took away from seeing Jodie Foster's character in "Taxi Driver.")
I view sworn grand jury testimony as a bit more credible than Polanski apologists' 1979 media-circulated slander about what a slut that 13-year-old was and how her mom was pimping her out.
Oh, it wasn't was it? When he said, "Look, am I going to sit and weep every time a young hooker feels as though she's been taken advantage of?", that sounds pretty close to saying (1) that we shouldn't get too worked up over what Polanski did with Samantha Gailey and (2) that Samantha Gailey was a hooker. Given than "what Polanski did with Samantha Gailey" was rape her, that amounts to saying that we shouldn't get too worked up over raping that hooker Gailey. Which in turn is pretty close to saying that raping hookers is OK. QED.
He also said "I don't give a fuck" first. Doesn't sound like he is defending Polanski in any way. He doesn't give a fuck about the girl or what happens to Polanski at this point is what I would take from his brief answer.
No, what he has implied is that he believes a bunch of shit rumors he heard back in 1979 and feels no need to inform himself of the facts any more than that.
What he "heard" 30 years ago, is all he needs to know, as far as he's concerned.
I regret that William Buckley isn't around to kick Gore Vidal's ass. He had it coming the first time Buckley threatened him, and he deserves it far more today.
Oddly, his comments on Polanski seem to veer off into media criticism, never really letting us know what he thinks, or thinks he knows, about the case.
Calling the 14 year old a "young hooker" certainly gives a clue, but he just leaves that hanging.
Vidal has always been a bitter, spiteful, little man. Sometimes his spite falls on them as deserves it, sometimes it falls on them as don't, but always and relentlessly the vituperation rains down.
The kind of charming grandpa that makes a little girl cry when he questions why she's taking "too much" sweet potatoes at Thanksgiving, falls asleep after eating the choicest cuts and then farts all the way through the afternoon football games on TV.
No, my only grandfather was awesome. Liked to tell stories about roasting Nazis alive with a flamethrower during the Battle of the Bulge. Lived totally off the tax radar and hated FDR with a hilarious passion.
My grandparents are all basically Marxists. I'm shocking to them.
I feel your pain. My grandparents are former communists who pretty much still believe in its ideals, but think their people could implement it without the mass murder.
You have no idea. Visits with my grandparents go something like this: Enter apartment. Sit down. Grandmother starts telling me about an op-ed she read in the New York Times in which someone said something about how an awful Republican did something bad because of his hatred of a saintly democrat. (Actually, if you take out "saintly," it makes more sense). Years ago, I used to engage her in political debates, but came to realize that she wasn't interested in an exchange of ideas, just smearing any opposition. No one would ever describe me as "laid back," but I've achieved the closest thing I'm going to get to a sort of zen calm regarding my family. I just deflect any political discussion and start talking about my cats.
My great-granddad was a farmer who enjoyed blowing things up with dynamite, and allowed his sons to have pet skunks. He also had a heroic hatred of Roosevelt.
Definitely. One of his best stories ("before the war straighten him out") was the time when Grandpa and his brother got a horse drunk and set it loose in a tent revival. It managed to bring the tent down.
Granddad on one side was a rabid New Dealer who worsipped FDR and Jimmy Hoffa, and on the other a staunch America Firster who hated FDR. The only time the two sets of grandparents were allowed together was for weddings and funerals.
My grandparents and parents were and are shockingly apolitical. Most of my family went to a mild Baptist church, but with no real religious convictions. It was just a social club and to keep up appearances.
Grandpa hated Soviets, but it was really from having to dealing with them during and after the invasion of Berlin.
I just wish I had inherited some of his manual dexterity. He was a master carpenter and could build anything and fix anything. I tried to learn, but got my dad's ability to drink and break anything instead.
That's great, I would think libertarians would be with us opposing "reform" of tort law. Everyone around here is always telling me that tort law is prefrable to regulation.
If I can prove that some dude, via his negligence or recklessness, caused me tremondous pain and suffering, the loss of a loved one, etc., why should his liability be "capped?"
I don't think MNG is an attorney. You never know what any of us do. Having said that, IMO, MNG is quite learned when it comes to legal philosophy. BTW, there are lots of non-lawyers who know far more about legal philosophy, first principles and the like than 99.9% of bar members.
Fun Fact: Page 1255 of the bill makes veterinary students eligible for federal grant funding, including scholarships and loan forgiveness. There is $283 million in spending authorized under these sections ? meaning we could be spending hundreds of millions to pay for veterinarians while we have a deficit of over $1 trillion.
Anybody who knows anyone who shows up in the news knows this to be true. You can't really take anything said in legal proceedings at face value either.
None of that is to defend Roman Polanski or anyone else. Just a reminder to believe none of what you read and only half of what you see.
The guy's fucked in my mind because he knowingly had sex with a 13-year old. No one disputes that. I'd be in favor of throwing the book at him for that alone. This ain't sex between a 18-year old and a 17-year old, after all.
I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that a guy who nostalgizes the Old South and, of all the just insults against Obama, chooses to call him "negro", also thinks rape isn't such a bad thing. Shut the fuck up, libertymike.
There you go again. You have a propensity for falsely attributing another's state of mind.
You claim that I "nostalgize the Old South." I have never, ever "nostalgized the Old South." You conflate criticism of your boy Dishonest Abe and his genocidal co-conspirators, like Sherman, with, in your words, "love of the confederacy."
Guess what? Most folks who can think criticially understand that criticism of Lincoln and his war crimes is not the same thing as "love of the connfederacy."
As for Obama, he is, indeed, a "negro communist." That he is a communist is beyond doubt. He supports an income tax. He supports a progressive income tax. He supports compulsory education managed and conntrolled by the state. He supports collective bargaining. He is a communist just like Mike Dukakis and Joe Biden.
Obama is also a negro. You may think that is an insult. You may think that is a pejorative. It is not. You may think that it is "racist"-if you do, it just shows that you have bought politically correct charged nonsense.
You like to distort, Tulpa. You like to let loose the insults. You also have a propensity to pepper your posts with profanity. You are much more apt than I to employ such gems as, "Shut the fuck up fuckward" or reason that "love of confederacy" is akin to thinking "rape isn't such a bad thing."
Obama is also tall, but for some reason you don't call him a "tall communist" when you're criticizing him. Why is that?
And when you say ill-will toward a guy who admitted to having sex with a child, and from the available evidence probably drugged and anally raped her, is "scarlet letter morality" or some misspelt variant thereof, yes, you are saying rape isn't such a bad thing. AKA, shut the fuck up.
My sister decided it would be cool to be a Communist when she was 15 or so, in about 1991 (apparantly communism was still cool in Canada in those days). She used to hang out with her Arabic girlfriend and bitch about how the horrible American Empire was evilly oppressing the third world with it's global capitalism, and the CIA was behind every coup against a "democratic" (read marxist-socialist) government in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. She also used to read these internet conspiracy theories about how AIDS was created by the CIA, and talk about Freeing Mumia.
Then she moved to Vancouver BC, and begand protesting logging by chaining herself to trees, and became a vegetarian. She eats organic and hates genetic engineering, and once was a pamphleteer for Greenpeace. She also hates Walmart and chain restaurants, and loves everything 'indy' and 'fair trade'. In the 90s she set me long email diatribes about how the Zapatistas were going to overthrow the Mexican government and set up a socialist state. She also praises Castro regularly and intended (at some point) to go visit Cuba to shoot some music videos for her indy folk band.
Folk ... and I am not making this shit up. Every word of that description is God's honest truth.
Diagnosis over the intertubes is always a dicey business, but that sounds like some kind of oxygen deprivation to me, either prenatal or during delivery.
She did get heavy metal poisoning once from having her ears pierced when she was 11.
But personally, I think it stems from some sort of acute need to be considered cool and hip.
We moved a couple times during grade school and we both got picked on a lot. I became a science nerd. She decided to "fit in".
It also fits with her desire to learn to play the guitar and buy a leather jacket around the same time.
It's all about a need for social acceptance from the "cool kids".
I dunno. I think she went far-left before I went right. But given that the socially reinforcing factors in Canada tend to push people to the left anyway, I doubt it.
Juvenile anti-Americanism and progressivism is just what Canadian teenagers DO to put on a guise of fake sophistication.
Nice to see Mr. Bigglesworth is holding up well.
A pretty sound argument for Death Panels.
+1
Yo ho! Yo ho!
Go ahead and die!
+2
So Gore Vidal thinks it's OK to rape hookers? Glad he cleared that up. The turd.
I bet that hooker remark is in reference to some payola sought or that he thought was sought after the event.
"So Gore Vidal thinks it's OK to rape hookers?"
Oh, is that what he said? Because it looks like something that isn't even close to what he said. Oddly, Vidal's point seems addressed to people like you who think they know what happened that day when you don't even know that the story was completely different back in the 1970s.
Lamar,
I hear you, but that other story looks like it may have been spread by the Polanski defense squad. And, of course, it was SOP back then to trash the victim. Did they even have rape shield laws back then?
Pro Libertate: I don't think they had rape shield laws back them, but maybe if it was a minor. I don't know. And really, that's been my point the whole time. Nobody knows what happened, but everybody looks back and thinks they know exactly how things went down. I have no doubt that Polanski is a cock bag. But that doesn't mean I know who did what to whom.
But I think Vidal's assertion is obvious: that the girl felt manipulated and made a story out of it. Vidal didn't say raping hookers is cool. I mean, we pretend that we know for sure what happened in Jack Nicholas's hump room, yet some of us can't even read a quote correctly.
Read her transcript, dipshit. The kid knows what happened because she was there.
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/a.....over1.html
Stoopfuck
Of course I've read it. ???
So your position is that she was lying?
Yes. His position is that the girl may have been trying to cover up for having gotten caught having sex with Polanski willingly.
The fact that the girl testified under oath, and Polanski has not denied it under oath kind of suggests otherwise though, IMO.
Caught by whom?
Absolutely not. Saying that she is a liar commits the same fallacy as saying that Polanski forcibly raped her. However, Polanski should go to jail for skipping town.
It was SOP back then? I have friends who have been raped and never would come forward because they didn't want to be trashed by the press. And the idea that Gore Vidal knows a fucking thing about what happens because he was "around back then" is utter bullshit; he wasn't there, he didn't know this girl before the incident, all he knew is what he heard from Polanski and his friends.
I meant more SOP back then.
Lamar,
We'll never know everything, but I doubt Polanski pleads guilty to the lesser offense if he weren't on the hook for something more serious but more difficult to prove (and there's some evidence that the prosecution was asked to keep the girl off the stand to protect her--which could cut either way, I suppose). And, of course, the kicker is that he admittedly had sex with a 13-year old, which in my mind is heinous enough without the rape. In fact, it's pretty close to rape--where's the consent when it's a child?
Exactly, and this shitfuck thinks that all he needs to know is this the crap he heard back in 1979 from Polanski's friends, and hasn't bothered to inform himself any better than that.
The man's a moral cretin.
Not sure what you mean by "back then, but "[i]n the 1970s, nearly every state enacted laws to forbid court testimony that exposed the private life of a rape victim."
http://articles.latimes.com/19.....reme-court
I thought that was the late 70s/early 80s.
Hey Lamar, the facts are the facts. And the facts are that Polanski ADMITTED to having given a 13-year-old girl champagne and half a quaalude, and then, while she repeatedly said "no" and tried to push him away, raped her orally, vaginally and anally.
So how is the story "different back in the 1970s"?
Just wondering how any rational person can possibly, remotely, in any way, defend that disgusting pedophile Polanski.
He raped a 13 year-old girl. She was not capable of consenting.
A Different Bill: Your characterization of what Polanski admitted to isn't accurate. Plus, if she was saying no while he screwed her, that is rape regardless of whether she was capable of consenting. But that's not what he admitted to, now is it? You are guilty of assuming the thing you wish to prove, and even claiming that the target admitted to the thing you believe happened.
If he wanted to go on record and under oath denying that he raped her, he has had plenty of opportunity, but chose not to.
Instead, he prefered to smear the girl as a cheap whore and her mom as apimp through his media allies.
Actually, yeah, that is what he admitted to. It's not what he pled guilty to. The law should only punish him for what he pled to, but he did admit to being a racist.
Yes, Lamar, back in the day, it was pretty routine to say that a girl wearing a short skirt was asking for it, there were fewer media outlets not dominated by media elites and their buddies (which Polanski clearly had some influence with), and the girls's grand jury transcripts were not publicly available.
Give it a fucking break. Just because the scum back in 1979 shopped around some bullshit about her mom whoring her out and how she really wanted it doesn't mean we have to keep believing it 30 years later.
And even if she was a prostitute, since when is it okay to have sex with a 13 year old prostitute? Since when do we not hold grown men responsible for drugging young girls and having sex with them, regardless of whether the young girls say yes or not? I have to say, I just can't take anyone seriously as a person with a moral compass who defends Roman Polanski.
We're okay with it.
I'm not going to pass judgment on what to believe or what not to believe. I'm just pointing out that nobody here has much of a clue as to what actually happened. Yet some people view that truth as "defending" Polanski, which it is not. Seamus, for example, has concluded that Polanski raped her, when it seems clear that Vidal is saying that the girl's claims of no consent are a result of her feelings being hurt. Take it or leave it, you know, Vidal is a tool. But you could at least accurately rebut what he is saying.
Even if Polanski claims that what he did with Gailey was consensual, I would think that when a 44-year-old gets a 13-year-old's "consent" with the help of alcohol and Quaaludes, that's more than just causing the 13-year-old to "feel[] as though she's been taken advantage of"; that's taking advantage of her, even if she is a hooker. (And last time I checked, it was not just a felony, but gross and creepy, to bang even 13-year-old hookers. At least that's what I took away from seeing Jodie Foster's character in "Taxi Driver.")
I view sworn grand jury testimony as a bit more credible than Polanski apologists' 1979 media-circulated slander about what a slut that 13-year-old was and how her mom was pimping her out.
what a cop-out Lamar. "not much of a clue". No, there are some facts that aren't controversial. The girl was 13 you, douche, just for starters.
Oh, it wasn't was it? When he said, "Look, am I going to sit and weep every time a young hooker feels as though she's been taken advantage of?", that sounds pretty close to saying (1) that we shouldn't get too worked up over what Polanski did with Samantha Gailey and (2) that Samantha Gailey was a hooker. Given than "what Polanski did with Samantha Gailey" was rape her, that amounts to saying that we shouldn't get too worked up over raping that hooker Gailey. Which in turn is pretty close to saying that raping hookers is OK. QED.
He also said "I don't give a fuck" first. Doesn't sound like he is defending Polanski in any way. He doesn't give a fuck about the girl or what happens to Polanski at this point is what I would take from his brief answer.
No, what he has implied is that he believes a bunch of shit rumors he heard back in 1979 and feels no need to inform himself of the facts any more than that.
What he "heard" 30 years ago, is all he needs to know, as far as he's concerned.
I regret that William Buckley isn't around to kick Gore Vidal's ass. He had it coming the first time Buckley threatened him, and he deserves it far more today.
-jcr
Isn't this the guy that W.F. Buckley wanted to punch out?
Indeed. Vidal kept calling him a "crypto-fascist." He's overdue for a beating.
And Buckley calld Vidal a queer in that exchange too.
"Godammned Queer!" if I recall properly. And in Mr. Buckley's theology, that is technically correct.
Best WFB quote ever: "Anyone who lies about Gore Vidal is doing him a favor."
Oddly, his comments on Polanski seem to veer off into media criticism, never really letting us know what he thinks, or thinks he knows, about the case.
Calling the 14 year old a "young hooker" certainly gives a clue, but he just leaves that hanging.
Calling the 14 13-year-old
FTFY
Calling the 14 13 year old
FTF us.
Seems like he missed the media fawning too.
I like some of his novels (e.g., Julian, Creation); otherwise, I think he's a total nutcase.
Creation is good, but he's still overdue for a beating.
Julian is very good, too. Go read it. Yeah, right now, dammit.
Polanski: honorary fag? For being shitty to a hooker?
That's...a refreshing take.
I find it disturbing that Matt's alt tag on the little girl picture is "I'd tap that shit"
You are an evil null.
"She was in junior high" appears to be the actual alt-text.
Get off mah lawn!
Vidal has always been a bitter, spiteful, little man. Sometimes his spite falls on them as deserves it, sometimes it falls on them as don't, but always and relentlessly the vituperation rains down.
Vidal is a whopper of a misogynist, so he is statements about the girl and hookers don't surprise me at all. Still entertaining, though.
He's a bit of a throwback to the days when a lot of gay men were implacably hostile to women.
-jcr
Xeones, you are correct. In the succinct words of Salt n Pepa, don't want no short dick man. And they know it.
Gore Vidal is the asshole grandfather America deserves.
Yup. A pleasure to treasure.
The kind of charming grandpa that makes a little girl cry when he questions why she's taking "too much" sweet potatoes at Thanksgiving, falls asleep after eating the choicest cuts and then farts all the way through the afternoon football games on TV.
He peaked with Caligula. And it shows.
You "peaked" with Caligula too, didn't you, JW?
Dagny, you are an evil genius.
Oh no. I found much better quality porn since then. Malcolm McDowell-less porn.
Malcom McDowell-less porn exists!?
You've got to look outside the felching section, Art.
Dagny, that's not quite what i meant by "little." It may very well be an accurate take, though; we'd have to ask Warty to be sure.
You've had some rough Thanksgivings, huh, Sweet'n'Low?
No, my only grandfather was awesome. Liked to tell stories about roasting Nazis alive with a flamethrower during the Battle of the Bulge. Lived totally off the tax radar and hated FDR with a hilarious passion.
Holy crap, he does sound awesome.
He Goodwined Thanksgiving? WTF???
"my only grandfather was awesome"
Does that mean your parents were brother and sister?
So, how could he tell which Germans were Nazis?
Xeones doesn't understand how to translate Salt -n- Pepa. How droll.
He peaked with Caligula. And it shows.
He peaked with
WTF? I tried to say Myra Breckenridge.
You just like anything with teh buttsex. Or, as the French call it, la buttsex. Classy bastards.
What? You mean all that stuff about her being below the legal age of consent was wrong?
Lived totally off the tax radar and hated FDR with a hilarious passion.
That is awesome. My grandparents are all basically Marxists. I'm shocking to them.
Xeones doesn't understand how to translate Salt -n- Pepa.
Come on, like you'd ever pass up any opportunity to mock Warty.
I'm not sure how I'm being mocked, but, regardless, it looks like all of you are going to be infibulated very soon.
My grandparents are all basically Marxists. I'm shocking to them.
I feel your pain. My grandparents are former communists who pretty much still believe in its ideals, but think their people could implement it without the mass murder.
So they should be thrilled with Our New Masters in DC.
You have no idea. Visits with my grandparents go something like this: Enter apartment. Sit down. Grandmother starts telling me about an op-ed she read in the New York Times in which someone said something about how an awful Republican did something bad because of his hatred of a saintly democrat. (Actually, if you take out "saintly," it makes more sense). Years ago, I used to engage her in political debates, but came to realize that she wasn't interested in an exchange of ideas, just smearing any opposition. No one would ever describe me as "laid back," but I've achieved the closest thing I'm going to get to a sort of zen calm regarding my family. I just deflect any political discussion and start talking about my cats.
http://www.amazon.com/Forsaken.....1594201684
Get that for them to annoy the old palsied commies.
My grandparents are all basically Marxists. I'm shocking to them.
My grandmother is a tiny, Canadian Catholic who is shocked when anyone dares to mock the Pope. Or the Royal Family. Sug's grandfather wins.
That's an interesting combination of sacred cows given the historical relationship betwen the Royal Family and the Papacy.
My great-granddad was a farmer who enjoyed blowing things up with dynamite, and allowed his sons to have pet skunks. He also had a heroic hatred of Roosevelt.
He and GrampyFree might have gotten along.
Definitely. One of his best stories ("before the war straighten him out") was the time when Grandpa and his brother got a horse drunk and set it loose in a tent revival. It managed to bring the tent down.
My great-grandfather was one of the founders of Anheuser Busch, but I've never held that against him.
Granddad on one side was a rabid New Dealer who worsipped FDR and Jimmy Hoffa, and on the other a staunch America Firster who hated FDR. The only time the two sets of grandparents were allowed together was for weddings and funerals.
My grandparents and parents were and are shockingly apolitical. Most of my family went to a mild Baptist church, but with no real religious convictions. It was just a social club and to keep up appearances.
Grandpa hated Soviets, but it was really from having to dealing with them during and after the invasion of Berlin.
I just wish I had inherited some of his manual dexterity. He was a master carpenter and could build anything and fix anything. I tried to learn, but got my dad's ability to drink and break anything instead.
Good rule of thumb: "Never listen to someone named 'Gore'".
SEXIST!!!
Boondock Saints II hits the theaters tomorrow!!!
Off Topic:
Nancy Pelosi's bill, p. 1600-something, forces states to repeal malpractice damage caps or lose health funding. trial lawyer bailout.
Can you cite that, Gobbler? There's plenty of blue dog Dems from tort reform states that should be a deal-killer for.
At the moment, this is the best I can do (it's in the tweets section). I suspect it is accurate and will be followed up at some point.
http://www.nationalreview.com/
That's great, I would think libertarians would be with us opposing "reform" of tort law. Everyone around here is always telling me that tort law is prefrable to regulation.
If I can prove that some dude, via his negligence or recklessness, caused me tremondous pain and suffering, the loss of a loved one, etc., why should his liability be "capped?"
Explain "prove".
I'm guessing here: are you an attorney by trade?
I don't think MNG is an attorney. You never know what any of us do. Having said that, IMO, MNG is quite learned when it comes to legal philosophy. BTW, there are lots of non-lawyers who know far more about legal philosophy, first principles and the like than 99.9% of bar members.
No, just a run-of-the-Mill asshole.
Fun Fact: Page 1255 of the bill makes veterinary students eligible for federal grant funding, including scholarships and loan forgiveness. There is $283 million in spending authorized under these sections ? meaning we could be spending hundreds of millions to pay for veterinarians while we have a deficit of over $1 trillion.
Why should pet health care be left to the greedy insurance companies and their hideous profit-motive?
Anybody who knows anyone who shows up in the news knows this to be true. You can't really take anything said in legal proceedings at face value either.
None of that is to defend Roman Polanski or anyone else. Just a reminder to believe none of what you read and only half of what you see.
highnumber,
The guy's fucked in my mind because he knowingly had sex with a 13-year old. No one disputes that. I'd be in favor of throwing the book at him for that alone. This ain't sex between a 18-year old and a 17-year old, after all.
I agree with this because it is based on what we know and what has been admitted. Plus he skipped town like a tool bag.
Lamar, he gave the middle finger to the state. That is a good thing. That trumps Scarlett letter morality.
I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that a guy who nostalgizes the Old South and, of all the just insults against Obama, chooses to call him "negro", also thinks rape isn't such a bad thing. Shut the fuck up, libertymike.
Tulpa-
There you go again. You have a propensity for falsely attributing another's state of mind.
You claim that I "nostalgize the Old South." I have never, ever "nostalgized the Old South." You conflate criticism of your boy Dishonest Abe and his genocidal co-conspirators, like Sherman, with, in your words, "love of the confederacy."
Guess what? Most folks who can think criticially understand that criticism of Lincoln and his war crimes is not the same thing as "love of the connfederacy."
As for Obama, he is, indeed, a "negro communist." That he is a communist is beyond doubt. He supports an income tax. He supports a progressive income tax. He supports compulsory education managed and conntrolled by the state. He supports collective bargaining. He is a communist just like Mike Dukakis and Joe Biden.
Obama is also a negro. You may think that is an insult. You may think that is a pejorative. It is not. You may think that it is "racist"-if you do, it just shows that you have bought politically correct charged nonsense.
You like to distort, Tulpa. You like to let loose the insults. You also have a propensity to pepper your posts with profanity. You are much more apt than I to employ such gems as, "Shut the fuck up fuckward" or reason that "love of confederacy" is akin to thinking "rape isn't such a bad thing."
Obama is also tall, but for some reason you don't call him a "tall communist" when you're criticizing him. Why is that?
And when you say ill-will toward a guy who admitted to having sex with a child, and from the available evidence probably drugged and anally raped her, is "scarlet letter morality" or some misspelt variant thereof, yes, you are saying rape isn't such a bad thing. AKA, shut the fuck up.
This ain't sex between a 18-year old and a 17-year old, after all.
Well, Polanski certainly strikes me as an infantile little hedonist. Does it count if his mental age is less than hers?
-jcr
My sister decided it would be cool to be a Communist when she was 15 or so, in about 1991 (apparantly communism was still cool in Canada in those days). She used to hang out with her Arabic girlfriend and bitch about how the horrible American Empire was evilly oppressing the third world with it's global capitalism, and the CIA was behind every coup against a "democratic" (read marxist-socialist) government in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. She also used to read these internet conspiracy theories about how AIDS was created by the CIA, and talk about Freeing Mumia.
Then she moved to Vancouver BC, and begand protesting logging by chaining herself to trees, and became a vegetarian. She eats organic and hates genetic engineering, and once was a pamphleteer for Greenpeace. She also hates Walmart and chain restaurants, and loves everything 'indy' and 'fair trade'. In the 90s she set me long email diatribes about how the Zapatistas were going to overthrow the Mexican government and set up a socialist state. She also praises Castro regularly and intended (at some point) to go visit Cuba to shoot some music videos for her indy folk band.
Folk ... and I am not making this shit up. Every word of that description is God's honest truth.
Diagnosis over the intertubes is always a dicey business, but that sounds like some kind of oxygen deprivation to me, either prenatal or during delivery.
She did get heavy metal poisoning once from having her ears pierced when she was 11.
But personally, I think it stems from some sort of acute need to be considered cool and hip.
We moved a couple times during grade school and we both got picked on a lot. I became a science nerd. She decided to "fit in".
It also fits with her desire to learn to play the guitar and buy a leather jacket around the same time.
It's all about a need for social acceptance from the "cool kids".
Sounds like she'd be fun at parties.
-jcr
Perhaps she wants to be the Anti-Hazel?
I dunno. I think she went far-left before I went right. But given that the socially reinforcing factors in Canada tend to push people to the left anyway, I doubt it.
Juvenile anti-Americanism and progressivism is just what Canadian teenagers DO to put on a guise of fake sophistication.
Juvenile anti-Americanism and progressivism is just what Canadian teenagers DO to put on a guise of fake sophistication.
Fake sophistication when yound and an excuse for all your own failings when older.
I'm secure in my typos.
Are you sure? It could be your keyboard is conspiring against you. Mine does that to me all the time.
Juvenile anti-Americanism and progressivism is just what Canadian teenagers DO to put on a guise of fake sophistication.
One more way they copy American kids, eh?
-jcr
"I really don't give a fuck. Look, am I going to sit and weep every time a young hooker feels as though she's been taken advantage of? "
Vidal has a big future with ACORN if nothing else.