DESPITE MY CRITICISM OF Andrew Sullivan a few days ago (Nov. 8), I probably couldn’t stop reading him even if I wanted to. Which I don’t. For Sullivan has done again what he does so often – linked us to another of those vital bits of journalistic evidence without which our understanding of the world would be sorely diminished. This time he shows us an essay that tells us all we need to know about the bigotry of blue. Indeed it is a veritable mini-Mein Kampf of big-city provincialism and intolerance, proclaiming urbanites the new ubermenschen and all the rest of us hardly fit to lick the rat-dung and roach-gooshy from the cement-scarred soles of their Birkenstocks. Here is a representative sample:
...We'll fight to keep guns off the streets of our cities, but the more guns lying around out there in the heartland, the better. Most cities have strong gun-control laws--laws that are, of course, undermined by the fact that our cities aren't walled. Yet. But why should liberals in cities fund organizations that attempt, to take one example, to get trigger locks onto the handguns of NRA members out there in red states? If red-state dads aren't concerned enough about their own children to put trigger locks on their own guns, it's not our problem. If a kid in a red state finds his daddy's handgun and blows his head off, we'll feel terrible (we're like that), but we'll try to look on the bright side: At least he won't grow up to vote like his dad.
There is such a harpy’s-brew of hate-mongering here I will not even attempt to deconstruct its separate components, much less set right its myriad misunderestimations – besides which, with my last November freelance assignment still demanding completion, I genuinely do not yet have the time. But just so you can see a true portrait of the “progressive” mindset (the better to understand its nasty penchant for vandalizing war memorials and trashing Republican office space), I will link to the entire hateful diatribe, available here. It appears in a Seattle publication appropriately called The Stranger – a sort of pierced-genitals/dirty-fingered-dominatrix derivative of the old East Village Other, but without even one of EVO’s many redeeming strengths, which included good writing, political sophistication, cutting-edge comics and the love-fantasy highlight of every edition: the un-PlayHouse, un-PetMate, never Barbie-dollish, always outrageously lovely Slum Goddess. (For more on EVO, Google “East Village Other”; for an example of a Slum Goddess, click here.) But EVO was produced when the apex of urban bohemian thinking was the Back-to-the-Land Movement. These arrogant simpletons who publish The Stranger don’t even understand the need for farmers and farmlands. In fact they seem to believe their parasitic super-ghetto (for that is precisely what they propose) can live on invective alone.
I wonder if Stalin’s “agriculture experts” held similar attitudes toward the mujikii their collectivist policies starved to death.
Once again, Mr. Sullivan, thank you for ratting out the opposition.
Posted by Loren at November 15, 2004 02:01 AM