Heather Mallick's Column

quote:Originally posted by jester:

Why not just have your husband delete it unread rather than revel in it?

You make a good living with your schtick, much like Anne Coulter and Mark Steyn so,the level of vituperative emails is a measure of your success.

Where do you get the sense of reveling?

Honestly, I think this is uncalled for and just plain nasty -- I've been reading Heather M's columns for years and I've never seen anything even approaching the provocateur poses that Coulter and Steyn use. I think the comparison is way out of line.

As is to say, that such a malicious response represents success. That's just creepy.

quote:Originally posted by N.R.KISSED:
There are those that know Palin as she is and adore her for it and there are those who are buying into the soft pedalled image. I think it makes sense to make the latter group more aware of the reality.

It does make sense but not by calling people stupid useless, ignorant schmucks in the process. For one it doesn't work. I means I know that whenever someone tries to explain my wrongness of thinking by referring to me as a elitist, commie pinko, over-educated asswipe doesn't exactly make me to open to what they're saying.
Plus it totally CONFIRMS the narrative thats been cleverly set up between the 'elites and everyone else'.

quote:Originally posted by Michelle:

I'm sorry, but words matter. Excluding language matters. Maybe not to people who aren't being excluded by it. They have the luxury of rolling their eyes and calling it "political correctness" when they are called on using excluding language. Because it doesn't affect them. It doesn't dehumanize them.

...that doesn't give me a free pass to call working class or poverty-class and undereducated people "white trash".

Does this make me the reason the left never goes anywhere? Well, sorry, but "left" to me doesn't mean dehumanizing the already marginalized.

[ 10 September 2008: Message edited by: Michelle ]

[img]biggrin.gif" border="0[/img]

I normally enjoy Heather's work, please just take it as constructive criticism HM.

[ 10 September 2008: Message edited by: RevolutionPlease ]

[ 10 September 2008: Message edited by: RevolutionPlease ]

Jester:

quote:

By doing what. Telling them about a world with which you are familiar?

George thank you. I've been struggling trying to put something to words which is still a bit airy in my mind but this makes it a bit more clear.
This is part of the problem in communicating.

I found this when I was searching around for USian reactions to this article. I found parts of it relevant.

Why are Repubicans so better at Being Nasty

quote:Why are Republicans so much better at this game? (Maybe the Dems need to hire Michael Reynolds? They have, but not on a national scale.) Especially when Democrats pride themselves on being the party of smart people?

1) Wrong kind of smarts. Democrats don't have anything like the Republicans' grasp of people's basic emotions and the symbolism that connects to them. That feels insincere to people who have the luxury of dispassionate reasoning, and it is. But it works. Humans are symbolic animals. We don't perceive our own closest interests objectively. We perceive them through symbols that provoke strong, survival-level emotions. It takes a lot of education to deceive yourself that you've risen above that.

2) The Republicans always adopt the perspective of the underdog -- and not a long-suffering, help-needing underdog, but a proud and defiant one. Opposing that is a no-win proposition. Obama, too, knows the prejudices of his audience ("bitter . . . clinging to gus and religion"), but his audience is above looking down, not below looking up. So if he were to take a half-truth about Palin (her own biographical family dysfunction, e.g.) and combine it with the prejudices of his audience, he would come out basically calling Palin trailer trash, like Heather Mallick does. And boy, would that backfire.

[ 10 September 2008: Message edited by: ElizaQ ]

quote:Originally posted by HeatherM:
Ever wonder why the left never succeeds in Canada?
While you are all debating small delicate things about whether I am a nasty piece of work and should I receive your guarded approval or limited hatred, here's what I'm up against, out of hundreds of racist, women-hating, sick emails I received today on my website, admittedly almost entirely from Americans. . .

You must forgive them, Heather. Remind yourself that these people, and they are people, have been bred and led to think in the narrowest of terms possible. Republican policies have dumbed-down those living in the deep south and old Republican strongholds(at one time, ultra-conservative Democrat strongholds). Former William F. Buckley protege, Michael Lind(Texas), said that intellectual conservatives realized that the right in the U.S. were only united as long as there existed a common foe, namely the New Deal socialism in their country since the collapse of laissez-failure capitalism, and the red menace. Other than surrounding the wagons for those two causes, the right is basically a group of disunited and fractious religious extremists and rich people who don't want to pay their taxes while actually enjoying the protections, private property laws, and freedoms provided them by the state.

For lack of a proper instruction manual on political conservatism, right-rightist intellectuals like Buckley wrote odes to political conservatism essentially resembling Marx's manifesto in concept and rough outline except aiming in the other direction. Lind said U.S. conservatism was born of the deep south, and it was originally based on religious revivalism and racism. And it still is.

I think "white trash" was a low blow, but it certainly would have been taken within context by those people you've been squabbling with, imo. [img]wink.gif" border="0[/img]

quote:It does make sense but not by calling people stupid useless, ignorant schmucks in the process. For one it doesn't work. I means I know that whenever someone tries to explain my wrongness of thinking by referring to me as a elitist, commie pinko, over-educated asswipe doesn't exactly make me to open to what they're saying.
Plus it totally CONFIRMS the narrative thats been cleverly set up between the 'elites and everyone else'.

Heather did not call people "stupid, useless..."

She did say that Palin and her base are

quote:is rural, loud, proudly unlettered (like Bush himself), suspicious of the urban, frankly disbelieving of the foreign, and a fan of the American clichй of authenticity.

Frankly I think she's being gracious in her description. The point I'm making is your unlikely to win over her base but by exposing them for who they are you would encourage others not to be associated with them. Of course the true corporate elite probably have even more contempt for this group but will always depend on their support.

Heather actually had the courage to expose Palin and her ilk for what they are and she is now suffering the consequences in the form of death threats. You might think she would deserve some credit and support for that.

Suspicion about 'getting it': Could it be that we of the intellectual, educated, relatively well-off Left are starting to "lose it" at seeing the Republicans and the Conservatives with good chances of being relelected despite some of the most reactionary, destructive politics ever? Are we turning against the people that our narative says we are supposed to be helping because it doesn't seem to work, i.e. the moderate Right not regularly replacing the not so moderate one? Do we merely see the problem as their resisting our perspective, enlightened as it is supposed to be? What else could we understand about the situation and are *we* resisting?

[ 10 September 2008: Message edited by: martin dufresne ]

quote:Originally posted by martin dufresne:
Suspicion about 'getting it': Could it be that we of the intellectual, educated, relatively well-off Left are starting to "lose it" at seeing the Republicans and the Conservatives with good chances of being relelected despite some of the most reactionary, destructive politics ever? Are we turning against the people that our narative says we are supposed to be helping because it doesn't seem to work, i.e. the moderate Right not regularly replacing the not so moderate one? Do we merely see the problem as their resisting our perspective, enlightened as it is supposed to be? What else could we understand about the situation and are *we* resisting?

[ 10 September 2008: Message edited by: martin dufresne ]

For cryin' out loud, man. Read this post over again a few times, then smack yourself in the head. 'Round these parts, you are "Exhibit A" in the problem you have identified..

Long thread.