Hypocrisy in anything whatever may deceive the cleverest and most penetrating man, but the least wide-awake of children recognizes it, and is revolted by it, however ingeniously it may be disguised.
--Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
Over at HuffPo, an academic you've never heard of, who imagines that his eminence in his specialty translates into political perspicacity, pens this self-congratulating sneer.
...Finished? Okay. No one likes a concern troll. In the interest of honesty, let him replace "we" with "you effin' peasants". And all the lines that begin "We care about etc, etc...", change those to "You effin's peasants care about things which don't jibe with my proggy hobbyhorses." There, all fixed.
And that's really all the notice that screed deserves, but honestly, how can someone be this out of touch?
"We don't care about religion unless a mosque is being proposed near Ground Zero." Huh? Tell that to the 40% of Americans who say they attend church regularly. To all those rural storekeepers who put bible verses on their roadside signs. To those Americans who even in the hardest times give twice as much to charity as the next most generous nation.
"We don't care about the homeless and the poor unless they are dying on our doorstep." As above. For proggs, the prescription for society's ills is ever harsher scourgings of ordinary people.
"We care about entertainment not meaningful creation." No doubt his idea of "meaningful creation" is some piece of dadaist installation art which cost a zillion government art grant dollars to produce.
"We care about style not substance." A common plaint of people who are deficient in both.
"We care about shopping malls filled with unnecessary imported junk that advertisers convince us we "need" to have." Tell me: did Auguste Renoir, Camille Pissaro, and Eduard Degas create an "artificial demand" for Impressionism?
"We care about having vast amounts of inexpensive food." Says a man who's doubtless never endured a day without food in his life. And even if he has, let him remember that asceticism is a personal choice, not a public policy to be imposed by proggy wiseheads.
Just as youth is wasted on the young, so America is wasted on Americans like this.
The poorest way to face life is to face it with a sneer.
-- Theodore Roosevelt
Everyone with a gripe against Israel or America has joined the orgy in the guise of "analysis." Analyze this, you bastards.
-- Andrea Peyser, front page editorial, the New York Post, 9-21-01
