Sunday, October 19, 2008

Here is a liberal exemplified. You remember Arthur Miller, the leftie playwright who wrote about the cruelties of the American way of life. Oh, how everyone loved him for his sensitivity.

Now I read this: "A few months ago Vanity Fair ran an article about the discovery that the playwright Arthur Miller, with his third wife, the photographer Inge Morath, 40 or so years ago had a Down syndrome son. Miller promptly clapped the boy into an institution--according to the article, not a first class one either--and never saw the child again."

Typical. All the sensitivity amounts to status manuevering.

Actually, it's pretty smart. He got into Marilyn's bed.

13 comments:

  1. ron, some things area changin' around here :-) N = 1??? (yes, i know this is an illustration of a possible underlying dynamic....)

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  2. Anonymous2:26 PM

    Miller didn't publicize his retarded son's existence, but he didn't keep it a secret either. If I'm not greatly mistaken, it was known all along.

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  3. razib: No worries. The election's got me temporarily in a dramatizing mood. I'm the first to admit that it's all talk without data.

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  4. Anonymous3:01 PM

    Peter, as usual, you are missing the point.

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  5. Anonymous3:01 PM

    Peter, as usual, you are missing the point.

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  6. I don't think that is an isolated incident, either. There are plenty of other data points, blogger "the Rawness" talks about how the Mo Rocca worshipping media hipsters conflate sarcasm with argument, and act in general like a pain in the passive aggressive ass.

    Barbara Streisand, that populist, demands people back away from her presence and never look her in the eye. Madonna, and JLO demand the same. Various "caring" celebs constantly stiff their employees for thousands of dollars of back pay, and act in diva-like, demeaning fashion to those they deem lesser class/status.

    Concerned environmentalist David Geffen sought, illegally, to close access to the beach in front of his house. Employing goons to chase people out of public property.

    Environmental activist Sheryl Crow, who advises only two squares of toilet paper per bathroom visit, tours with a massive convoy of some 10 tour buses and big rigs.

    It is ALL for social standing, the and commonality with Jane Austen's world of old, hypocritical manners (Mr. Darcy's rich, hypocritical aunt and the clergymen she sponsors) is striking.

    In each case you have a static, change-averse gentry, one dependent on landed estates, the other on celebrity and social connections, to wield power.

    Read almost any Jane Austen novel and substitute the politics of manners/appearances to create status, with that of modern liberals, and you get an almost one-to-one correspondence.

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  7. Anonymous8:33 PM

    Ron Gunhame,

    You can argue that Marilyn Monroe marrying Authur Miller was one-big-whiterpeople-status-mongering-move in itself.

    I mean hell, he was as plain-looking as your average nerdy-archetype-guy.

    She, a woman who had something like a dozen or more abortions, had slept with a ton of men and probably had fufilled her "lustiness" for a while, likely thought that marrying Miller would give her intellectual 'street cred' or something. I really rather doubt it was romantic love.


    Whiskey's points are well-taken. Steve Sailer once pointed out that wealthy liberals like to show status by showing how fabulously unconcerned about things that should worry any thinking person (the example in question was rampant illegal immigration). By doing so they demonstrate how "above it all" they all are, and how professionally unaffected they are by such.


    White liberals in particular, as has been pointed out, use third-worlders, Marxist lunatics, radicals, labratory animals, obscure causes, and the like as a means to "one-up" each other and parading preening affected moral vanity over others.

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  8. Anonymous7:50 AM

    "Moved by data, not doctrine."

    Right!

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  9. Anonymous12:01 PM

    The Miller anecdote is obviously an example of the ego defense mechanism of projection. According to the Wikipedia entry on ego defenses " Projection is ... shifting one's unacceptable thoughts, feelings and impulses within oneself onto someone else, such that those same thoughts, feelings, beliefs and motivations as perceived as being possessed by the other."

    I'm quite sure that this is an aberration. No other examples of projection can be found among liberals. And on an unrelated topic I'd just like to say that anyone who doesn't vote for Obama is a racist.

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  10. Yeah, Ron. Ease up on the the Complaining Portnoys. Where would we be without them?

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  11. Hey, Jim Bowery! I remember you from kuro5hin.

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  12. Anonymous4:07 PM

    Actually, it's pretty smart. He got into Marilyn's bed.

    Ron, you are at your best at your most cynical. You got what he was after. And, hey...bedding Marilyn Monroe is not a bad display of gamesmanship. If she ain't a 10, I don't know what is.

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