The Righteous Rant Of The Day…
…is awarded to Steven Givler for his beautiful evisceration of the twelve people interviewed for an article in The New York Times, entitled If I Were President…. Described by the article’s author Jesse Kornbluth as ‘a range of Americans who don’t labor in politics or the media, these apostles of Illumination include a nun, a poet, a professor, and a painter.
I think you can already guess the type of answers these enlightened mavens gave, but the fun is in reading Steven’s reaction.
A highlight [tip of the fedora to Donald Douglas]:
The next suggestion is from a poetess, and it’s worth quoting in its entirety.
I’d grant the very rich the boon of helping them help others, as a form of gratitude for their good fortune. I’d also connect every creative writing program with a hospital, a school, a library, a prison, a neighborhood center — workshops in the supermarkets! (“Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes!”)
You’d grant the very rich (according to whose definition?) the boon of helping them help others… Is there a reeducation camp somewhere in your plan? So you’d force them to "help others," right? Because they don’t already? Where does Bill Gates $10 billion donation to charity (29 January, 2010) fit into your calculations? And you’d connect every creative writing program with a hospital? Sure, because people in hospitals have nothing better to do than help people learn to write. As for connecting them with schools – that’s a novel idea and I approve wholeheartedly. You might want to rethink that part about connecting them to prisons; I see tragedy just over that horizon. Or were you thinking of just low-security joints, like the ones where you’ll send the very rich who refuse to accept your generous boon? As for the aisles full of husbands, avocados, tomatoes and whatnot. I’ll admit it. I have no idea what you’re talking about.
Neither, ultimately, does this bink.
[One quibble, Steverino: when I was recovering from my cancer surgery,
as I was laying there with Demerol coursing through my veins, my first
thought was, indeed: 'Man!...I'd like to due me some creative writing
about babies rolling around in supermarket tomato bins!'...yeah...perhaps it was the drugs talking.]
As Steven says in his conclusion:
…Despite their obvious educations, not a single one of their contributors seems to have a clue about what the role of president is supposed to be. Not a single person referred to the Constitution, and not a single person mentioned the primary responsibility of the republic’s chief executive, which is, first and foremost to maintain the nation’s security.
You expected these pampered cretins to offer solutions that have a place in the Real World? They’ve never had to grow-up, so safe and secure is life in modern America. Life in The West has become fundamentally unserious for a large swath of the people who inhabit it. They don’t have to struggle, don’t have to concern themselves with survival, don’t have to worry about what tomorrow will bring ― the government is there to take care of it all for little Johnny so he can suck on his thumb as he gazes at his navel and who wants to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony, grow apple trees and honey bees and snow-white turtledoves. Big Mommy government is there to make it all right and keep that bad old monster away: Real Life.
A nation that believes such people as those interviewed for this article are intelligent and their ideas worthy of serious consideration is a nation that has descended into frivolity. A nation that elevates the immaterial, meaningless, and childish to the heights of respectability is a land that has appetite for it’s own destruction.
‘If I were President’??? Pfft…If I had a hammer…
RROTD?!! I’m honored. Thank you Bob!