September 21, 2007

A QUESTION FOR LEE BOLLINGER

AM I MY BROTHER'S KEEPER?
--Genesis 4:9
Apparently not, if you're the President of Wahabbi (Columbia) University
        Suppose you knew that someone wanted to kill you, your spouse, your children and all of your relatives, and that he was stockpiling weapons to do so. Suppose he had gunned down two of your children and was developing weapons that would eliminate you and your descendants forever. Would you invite him to your house to debate his views? Would you ask your surviving children to listen attentively and respectfully. Lee Bollinger would. He is an example of the cowardice of wordsmith intellectuals who would rather talk than fight. Meanwhile, the young men and women who are fighting Ahmadinejad on his behalf are unwelcome at the Madrassa on Morningside Heights.

September 13, 2007

HILLARY CLINTON SPEAKS: IT DEPENDS ON THE MEANING OF THE WORDS "WILLING SUSPENSION OF DISBELIEF"

        Modern day Liberalism has become nothing more than a stance, a pose, a set of attitudes designed to flatter and comfort frightened children and immature adults. The latest illustration was the behavior of the infantile Democratic Congressmen and Senators during the questioning of General Petraeus. It's difficult for children to acknowledge that an adult may be smarter, stronger, or simply know more about a subject than they, and so too the Democrats. They whined, they stamped their feet, they demanded, they had tantrums, they condescended, they lectured, they provoked, but none of it could change reality. These specimens of arrested development, are immature children who can never learn. It's just too wounding to accept that there are things they don't know. Some children grow up physically, though not emotionally, and become wordsmiths, creating fictional narratives that soothe their hurt feelings. The love object of the New York Times and its metrosexual liberal readers, Hillary Clinton, made use of her wordsmith skills in an effort to discredit General Petraeus. She behaved like an arrogant,snot-nosed, glib 10 year old, showing off her superior mind. In so doing, she accused him of the very thing she was doing--inventing an alternate reality. Of course, she is a veteran at the liar's trade, for whom such concepts as honor, truthfulness, courage and integrity are weird and archaic notions. Ms. Clinton indicated that General Petraeus was such a dispenser of untruths that it would require the "willing suspension of disbelief" to accept his assertions as fact. When she uttered the phrase she seemed to puff up with pride in her own command of literary English.
        The use of the phrase, "willing suspension of disbelief" caught my attention because I'd never heard it used outside of a literary salon, English lit course, or a theater review. In literary circles it's usually a term of praise, as in "the author was able to create a fictional world and the reader willingly suspends disbelief in its existence."
        "Suspension of disbelief is an aesthetic theory intended to characterize people's relationships to art. It was coined by the poet and aesthetic philosopher Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1817 to refer to what he called "dramatic truth". It refers to the alleged willingness of a reader or viewer to accept as true the premises of a work of fiction, even if they are fantastic, impossible, or otherwise contradictory to "reality". It also refers to the willingness of the audience to overlook the limitations of a medium, so that these do not interfere with the acceptance of those premises. According to the theory, suspension of disbelief is a quid pro quo: the audience tacitly agrees to provisionally suspend their judgment in exchange for the promise of entertainment..."
(see the full definition here.)
        How clever of Senator Clinton to display her skill in finding a way to call someone a liar without actually using that word. It is a fortunate thing for America, that the Children's hour allowed us to see the difference between frightened, fearful children like Hillary Clinton and adults like David Petraeus. For Hillary, with a bit of gender bending, I have my own literary description: "The bookful blockhead, ignorantly read/ With loads of learned lumber in his head.
--Alexander Pope