Yeah.
Time ta answer some kwestyuns, bitchez.
In comments to my Anti-Wal-Mart post digamma says:
One post earlier, you were squealing about an exercise of true choice by The People of Virginia. And rightly so.
Then, like, I was going all:
Because limiting what PEOPLE wear as clothing is a first amendment issue, i think. I know that you think business are afforded the same protections (which, de facto, means more protections) but I dont.
So he's all up in my face an' shit:
So if The People passed a law saying Wal-Mart couldn't sell DVD's of Fahrenheit 9/11 anymore, that'd be okay?
'Cause, yeah, that'll teach that damned RETARDO!
Except that it won't, because I'm stupid like a fox.
Corporations, despite the corrupt Supreme Court railroad decisions of the late Gilded Age, were never meant to be treated with the same respect as people. digamma, doctrinaire libertarian that he is, nonetheless has agreed in the past that the Reconstruction Amendments were passed for the benefit of, you know, flesh-and-blood human beings, specifically those with African ancestry and not for the businesses which quickly laid claim to those rights and have held them ever since (all the while, of course, the people those rights were passed for have held them tenuously at best).
But digamma also knows I hold a Hugo Black-esque attitude to the First Amendment. Thus his reply is an attempt at a "gotcha" moment.
Except that it isn't. Obviously, there is an interest for consumers -- who are flesh and blood people -- to have access to information. My belief that Wal-Mart's locality can be more controlled by government (The People) does not mean I think -- or should think -- that once a Wal-Mart is built -- with consent from locals -- it can be told what information it can and cannot sell.
I think that people can choose their residences without so much as a by-your-leave from a community.
I think that businesses cannot claim this same absolute.
I'll add more if I'm asked or attacked; for now I'll quit this line of thought because I'm heavily and pleasurably medicated.
***
I am pleased to announce that my great-great grandmother's rocker was not stolen but was moved by the thieves to a far corner of my shed and covered up with junk so much that I missed it on my first panicked inspection. It is now in a safe place. From what I can tell they stole my boxed-up kitchenware instead. As it had no sentimental value to me, I'm very relieved at their choice.
***
"Captain Redneck", whose name belies the fact that he is one of my progressive Better-Dead-Than-Red comrades here in Mittel Amerika, mentions in comments the excellent Wendell Berry of Kentucky. I have read a bit of Berry in some farm magazines, years ago, and should have mentioned him here somewhere as voice of sanity on questions of agriculture.
Excellent suggestion, Mr Redneck, and I hope that you stick around to become my fourth or even, maybe, third regular reader.
***
I am almost over the flu.
***
In blogroll news, I have fixed the link to Matt Taibbi to make it a simple google search within the New York Press's site. He doesn't have his own page there as far as I can ascertain; I had had to simply link to his latest column at the time. Taibbi is hilarious and his bullshit-detector is fine-tuned; he should be read.
I'm adding The Girl Gets Away, for the excellent reasons that, for one, she shows great taste by linking to me, and for another, she is a perfect smart-ass with sound judgement too: she is on to Kevin Drum's faux-leftism, and thinks Mark Steyn is the biggest asshole in Canadia. Well done. She can now expect at maximum three hits from this site, an elementropylanche!
***
I forgot where I first saw it, but this is amusing. Notice the special look of distaste and embarassment on Karen Hughes's face as she realises that hers is at least six inches longer.
***
digamma also took me to task for a reason aside Wal-Mart. In the comments to this post, he wrote:
I just noticed your endorsement of Ward Churchill on the right. I guess you didn't know any of those "little Eichmanns" who had a "penalty befitting their participation" in "America's global financial empire" visited upon them. I was living in New Jersey in 2001 - we really miss those little Eichmanns.
Feel free to read my hastily-written, sloppy reply, but I'd like to make a better defense here. I linked to Ward Churchill when I began this blog, or very soon after. Unlike most people who've commented on Churchill in the last month, I've actually read some of his work, and I endorse it. I plan on making a long post in defense of him and his infamous essay, which was stupid and sloppy but which Churchill has since corrected to such a point that even it is amenable to me.
But until I do, for the sake of this post let's assume that Churchill had let it stand. In its initial, repugnant form was it enough for me to take the link down? Probably not. I link to Norman Mailer, whose writings on feminism and homosexuality are inventively pigheaded at best. Bertrand Russell took scientific parenting entirely too far. Christopher Hitchens has, for going on four years now, been impersonating a neocon. Brooks Adams was the grossest sort of imperialist and put an intellectual stamp on Rooseveltian conquest; as such, he is connected to genocide not directly but not indirectly, either. Jared Diamond whores anthropology to Microsoft thugs. Mencken was mean to every ethnic group except his own (German-Americans). Huey Long made the odious Gerald L. K. Smith his second-in-command. For years, John Simon wrote for National Review, which means his cootie-factor is probably the most alarming on the list. I disagree with about 75 percent of Pauline Kael's conclusions on film. And so on. I put those people up because they interest me, and I find more good in reading them than bad. I dont claim to know everything about all of them, but then I also put that list up with the idea that they were not typically linked to by blogs; half the allure to me is that I feel many of them are underappreciated or unjustly forgotten, not that I thought they were ideologically "pure" (which I consider a demerit, anyway).
But I will make an alteration of sorts, though I want to make it clear that it's not because I'm changing my appraisal of anyone. Rather, it's because several months ago I erased a list called "columnists", which I had made to imply a distinction with regard to originality or importance and specific vocation. But because of aesthetic reasons having to do with my template, I combined those journalists with "The Good". So, fine: forthwith, I'll label them "The Interesting". Consider that to mean "worth reading" and "more good or useful than not".
posted by RETARDO MONTALBAN @ 12:08 AM
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