The Anchoress
A quick round up before I head out for yet another medical appointment.
Did you know you can go to this site and enter your symptoms and it will suggest diagnoses? I did it the other night and was surprised to see it actually narrowing things down to the same stuff my doc was zeroing in on, just before he said, “if it’s not this or this or this we’ll have to look at your bone marrow…” (Screw that…I refuse to have anything more serious than the stuff he’s already thinking about).
Anyway, it’s kind of fun, although I would imagine such a site is a hypochondriac’s worst nightmare – (“Oh my Gawd, I’ve got that! And I’m having panic attacks, let me add that to the symptoms! Oh my Gawd, now I’ve got that? I’m gonna die!”) Have fun, if you dare.
Ed Morrissey is calling some media folk “Yentas”:
All kidding aside, this points up two problems with the media: they cannot keep from fixating on [Condoleeza] Rice’s marital status and they cannot be relied upon to remain serious. If Rice looked like Helen Thomas, the first problem may not even arise, but her appealing physical appearance and lack of a wedding ring seem to have become an obsession with the media. During the 2004 election, some speculated that she considered George Bush her “husband”, so close was their professional relationship. Apparently the media is convinced that a woman cannot remain single and still refrain from sexual entanglements in the workplace — a rather chauvinistic attitude for such a supposedly enlightened profession.
That’s a very keen observation from Ed. We’re supposed to be “beyond” all of this and yet the very progressive folks in the media perpetuate such focus. I suspect, however, that the obsession with Dr. Rice’s lovelife and the increased focus upon it is just the press laying the groundwork for future speculation on whether or not the Secretary of State is a lesbian, should she decide to run for office.
Oh, don’t look at me like that – it’s not like they’ve never done that before! You know damn well that if Dr. Rice were to appear on the WH ticket in the veep slot the first thing many on the left will do is start whispering that because she has never married and does not publicly date, she is a lesbian. They did it to Chief Justice John Roberts when he was nominated to the SCOTUS (he married late and wore plaid pants in the ’70’s! He’s gay!) As I wrote here at that time:
“…they have nothing on John Roberts, they cannot really attack him on his qualifications or his record. So they are going to go after his religion and his wife, and while they’re at it, they’re going to start “gay” rumors, because…well…because they still think we care. As usual, they project their identity politics onto their opponents, because it is what obsesses most of them, and they can’t believe it does not obsess most of us.”
There is something pretty hypocritical about whispering “gay” about someone as though it’s a bad thing, while mouthing the usual “not that there’s anything wrong with that” platitudes. There’s an insane sort of, “we don’t think it’s bad to be gay, but we think you do, and so we’re going to suggest and smirk and giggle that someone you like is gay, and then you’ll hate them, because you’re all homophobes, but that doesn’t mean we don’t like gays, and we’d never promote intolerance or make things more difficult for them, we’re just playing a political game…no harm done, you stupid moronic bigots!”
I always am left wondering…who are the stupid moronic homophobe bigots? The ones who really don’t care what adults do in the bedroom as long as it’s consensual, or the ones who need to constantly talk about it, speculate on it and use that speculation as a “negative?”
It’s sort of like driving behind a vegan who has six “I’m a compassionate Vegan” bumperstickers on her car. You want to ask, “who are you trying to convince, me or yourself?”
Anyhow, keep a watch out and see if that’s not the stuff you start hearing/reading about Condi Rice.
The federal deficit is down 14.1%. As you can guess no one is blaming Bush for it, on the left.
Pajamas Media is looking to coin a much-needed new word and you can help: When Pajamas Media was just forming, a fair number of bloggers were uncomfortable with the conventional left-right, liberal-conservative dichotomized pigeonholes of the mainstream media…we also found these people aren’t actually centrists in the conventional sense of that word. They have passionate feelings from all sides of the spectrum, not just the middle ground. Someone could be a complete social liberal while being an adamant war hawk. Or the reverse…We’ve been calling these blended people “X21s” in honor of the poll question. But it’s not exactly catchy, so we are now running a contest. Find a new name for X21 – those political hybrids or blends – and win the first pair of official Pajamas Media logo-emblazoned PAJAMAS. Your new name will also replace X21 on our site.
By all means, let’s find a new word for us un-pigeonhole types. There are lots and lots of us. Pajamas Media, btw, has snared Victor Davis Hanson – quite a good “get.”
Mad Dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun. Also they hate Americans, but Tony Blair says they shouldn’t because the world needs us to fight global terrorism. The truth is the world knows they can count on us to do the right thing about terrorism whether they love us or not, so they feel no especial need to love us. That’s just the way it is with eternal adolescents.
AJ is wondering when Val is going to get investigated and he wonders about the whole Wilson/Plame set up, the plant with Novak, and Plame’s never-questioned role in the whole sorry saga. Yeah, good luck getting the press to look at that.
The American Thinker has an unusually rich menu of good reads if you’re looking for something to snack on.
The Sanity Squad has a new podcast up and they’re talking about the psychological sides of 9/11. Worth a listen.
The word of the day is Perspicacity. One of my favorites!
There’s lots I want to link to but must head out – check back for more later, if you’re inclined.
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