The face that launched a thousand hysterical wingnut rants.
So Jill links this bizarro rant at iMAO about one of the official demons of the right wing mythology, Toni Morrison. (There’s an official-sounding story for why all this rampant opposition to Morrison isn’t racist and sexist, but Michael Bérubé lays waste to it here.) We were all wondering in comments what provoked an attack on Morrison today—I suggested that Frank J. stubbed his toe on a copy of Beloved—but zuzu alerted us in comments to the fact that Morrison endorsed Obama today. Nifty.
Anyway, this rant is an excellent bit of wingnuttery, so I thought I’d do a point-by-point examination of all the wingnut hobgoblins he managed to cram into one post.
I’ve known this since freshman year of college1 when, for a class, I read an interview with her in which she lamented that too many blacks were going to school2, but I’ve never said it here: Toni Morrison is a racist3 dumbass of monumental proportions. If you combined the worst condescending attitudes towards black people of a white liberal4 with an actual black person who thus has no fear of saying whatever she wants about blacks5, you get Toni Morrison.
I remember in that college class I had a choice between getting an A6 or saying exactly what I thought of Toni Morrison in my final paper. It was an easy choice.7
BTW, I learned from that same class by reading Beloved that a novel has to be some pretty atrocious crap to win both the Pulitzer and the Nobel Prize8. Man did I need a Tom Clancy novel as a palate cleanser after that8.
- Don’t call me stupid just because I deliver unintelligible rants blasting people who have the nerve to actually think and study. I went to college, you know.
- A lie, but one that he knows his audience will buy, because they won’t read the interview. They heard on Rush Limbaugh that Bill Cosby told people they spend too much money on their kids’ shoes and assumed those crazy liberals are all about buying black people sneakers and refusing to let them go to school. That’s all they need to know. I’d suggest reading the interview. I suspect the thread of truth his lie is based on is her discussion about the way that high school is infantilizing, but his implication—that she’s encouraging young black people to drop out and avoid college—doesn’t follow. Her point, which I read as high schools are often about miseducation more than education, and that young people often learn more outside the classroom, is absolutely true.
- The wingnut definition of “racist”: Anyone who makes you think about race. A black person is a racist before she even opens her mouth to speak in this view, because the color of her skin makes the wingnut think about race. A handful of black people get special dispensation from the label if they sell themselves over to the right wing.
- It’s inconceivable to a wingnut that a white person might actually consider a black person equal, so when we act like we do, it’s assumed that we’re putting up a front.
- This is known as the “Why can they say ‘nigger’ and we can’t?” argument.
- Bragging about grades is part of a larger attempt to resolve the tension between being anti-intellectual and not wanting to be perceived (correctly perceived) as a dumbass.
- In the wingnut mythology, open dipshittery in defense of the racist, sexist status quo is an act of courageous defiance. Taking the B on the Morrison paper is at least as brave, and probably even braver, than joining the Underground Railroad, fighting with the anti-Nazi resistance, or fighting for civil rights in the South in the 60s. Frank J. is an honorable martyr in the fight against liberal fascism.
- Wielding his anti-establishment attitudes on his sleeve. Nothing says fighting The Man like defending The Man against a progressive onslaught of egalitarianism and general smarty-pants behavior.
- I’m constantly on guard against pussification. After being exposed to writing by a woman, a thinking woman at that, I had to purge myself by reading a hack writer who sells extremely well because he taps into his readers’ constant need for reassurance that they are big, important, gun-loving men, despite the soft-handed white collared exterior.
It’s really a perfect piece of wingnut dementia, with equal parts projection, racism, anti-intellectualism, and anxious masculinity. Had I never read iMAO before, I would have actually guessed that this was a piece of satire mocking conservatives. Unfortunately, we have to face up to the fact that Frank J. is That Guy.
78 Responses to “Wingnuttery distilled in a single anti-Toni Morrison rant”
Leave a comment
Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>
What a bummer. All this time, I thought Toni Morrison was a great writer. Boy, do I feel stupid.
You forgot
1a. Because every smartass thing a college freshman thinks about the required intro lit course he’s taking is absolute gospel truth and never to be re-examined in the light of, say, having learned something in ensuring years. (and no, that is not the generic he) Another wingnut characteristic: being proud of having neither learned anything nor matured since leaving high school or (in the sad case of being tainted by intellectualism) entered college.
wow, just wow, but I’m not surprised. Anything that humanizes the oppressed against the white opressor is bad, and evil - - - however if it is a white being oppressed than yes please humanize them, but only if the opressor is a non-white. Otherwise, move along, there is nothing to see here.
“Beloved” was truly the first book I read totally humanized the slave story for me. Nothing I had read before, not even “Roots” held that power. . . nothing allowed me to feel the despair, desparation and horror that was a slave’s life like “Beloved.”
But that’s the real rub innit? To humanize is to change the equation. When we look at history as more than dead white men, and the few wealthy women, we make history more accessable to everyone. We take history from the realm of the boring class someone MUST take to something enjoyable that you can actually learn from . . . .
Which means you actually take “those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it” to heart, and you dump the idea of “American Exceptionalism” because you cannot take a full inventory when you can’t admit mistakes - so as illustrated by our current president BusHover we are repeating mistakes.
paul - you forgot pride in NOT reading fiction, only trade manuals or “how to get a head” or “thems religious” books
What a gorgeous picture. I wish I took such good looking pictures . . and looked so good too.
Anyway, I love how the screed was finished off with:
I’m dying to know which one - the one where he wishes an airline was rammed into Congress during the State of the Union (stay away from your TV tonight, BTW) and Tom Clancy Jack Ryan becomes the President; the one where terrorists blow up a suitcase nuke in a city; or one of the ones where the good guys are all ninjas and can kill anyone who gets in their way, ‘n’ stuff.
Eh. It’s more like he taps into his reader’s need to hate the damn foreigners. Because, God Dammit, its obvious they hate us for our freedoms . .
Drat, I always use the /s/ tag instead of the /strike/ tag . .
“and
Tom ClancyJack Ryan becomes the President . . “Men don’t like to read fiction because it forces you to put yourself in another character’s thoughts, situation, etcetera. They, unlike women, are not forced to do it every damn day. They especially resent the hell out of a text that makes them exist inside the thoughts of a black woman who is a former slave.
Beloved is a powerful, difficult to read, amazing novel, and Jazz is even better. If asshat cannot read well enough to admit sheer virtuosity with language (forget whether or not you like it), he is a fool
clytemnestra —
or Tom Clancy! Except, of course, what Clancy writes is *barely* fiction, because it’s full of detailed description of very high technology that always works the ways it’s supposed to. So it’s practically true!
Instead of, say, soul-searing descriptions of the emotions of a slave woman, which obviously bear no relationship to anything that ever happened in the real world. Completely fictional and made-up and unbelievable, clearly.
I wasn’t a big fan of Beloved when I first read it. Then again, I was in high school, and I was probably a bit of a dumbshite. As I recall, my problem with it was that I read two or her books in a row and found her main characters too similar. They probably deserve a re-read.
His liberal professor gave him a B for saying he didn’t like Beloved?
He got off easy. When Grandpa was a professor, if a student didn’t like a certain book, Grandpa ordered him/her to write an essay detailing what s/he didn’t like, why s/he didn’t like it, as well as citing examples of literature s/he liked better and why. Writing “I didn’t like Beloved because it’s a hard book about a black woman set a hundred and fifty years ago, and Tom Clancy writes easy books about white guys killing each other now.” would have netted you an F, or a D if Grandpa was feeling generous. But this guy’s prof probably just shrugged, said “There’s no accounting for taste.” and gave him a B just to close the issue. Funny how cons never object to loose academic standards and tolerating multiple points of view when it’s they themselves who are benefiting from it.
Actually, Sethe’s (the protagonist of Beloved) actions are loosely based on Margaret Garner, an escaped slave who killed her baby when the Fugitive Slave Act sent slave hunters to take her (and the child) back to slavery. She, like Sethe, thought death was merciful to the baby compared to life as a slave. Of course, what Morrison does with the bones of that story is fictional in the most creative way, but it isn’t pure fiction. Sorry, I just showed my geek slip didn’t I?
er, Nothip, I actually knew that. I gotta get that sarcasm font installed ..
a geek and unable to read - ah well, it’s Monday … right?
You know, I can’t remember having ever taken an English class where whether or not one liked the book assigned was important to, or even could in any relevant way come up in, any paper on the subject.
Punk should consider himself lucky that nobody assigned him “As I Lay Dying” for a grade in college!
Or “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy,” which would probably also melt his poor little brain.
Actually, anything by either Faulkner *or* Le Carre would overload what little in the way of mental circuits he apparently has…
You just didn’t take the right English class, mcc, at least not the ones fifty years ago.
Speaking of conservatives thinking they’re being funny when they’re actually just being jerks, you might want to check out this link about a con guy who thought he was spoofing Barak Obama.
It’s certainly possible to write a critically negative piece, but that’s very different from attacking the author for some perceived personal faults.
Wingnuts are weird like that. It’s funny to read reviews of Christian fiction. To many wingers all fiction is allegory. Everything is a transparent morality play and they read everything as an authorial endorsement.
So Harry Potter is bad because it endorses witchcraft, and Clancy is good because it endorses white people shooting Arabs. The idea that fiction is something other than embellished political essays is incomprehensible to them.
I had to read The Bluest Eye my freshman year of college, and I can’t say I was a fan either.
Of course, a book about racism and child sexual abuse isn’t exactly what most 18 year old boys would consider to be enjoyable reading, either.
But I know that just because I don’t personally like a book doesn’t mean that it isn’t good literature. Our wingnut friend is a bit undereducated and rather insecure about it. He is so threatened by other people’s opinions.
As I have mentioned in feministe, sounds like an embittered college student who did not like having to take courses outside of his field of interest to fulfill humanities and cultural diversity requirements. Though the spectre of grade retaliation is real in a few isolated cases……getting a poor grade for shooting off your mouth on a subject you cannot be bothered to research is appropriate….not a sign of arbitrary action.
I don’t know about that. Speaking for myself, I loved reading fiction from science fiction to historically based novels/stories….the fact I can see another character’s thoughts, situation, etc was a draw for me and other classmates, whether male or female. I knew many other male classmates who were equally enthusiastic about reading fictional works and looked forward to English lit courses or reading outside of class.
One thing I did notice that was troubling among many classmates in high school and in college is that most American adolescents and young adults in my experience do not enjoy reading beyond what’s required for school or work. Even the latter required readings tended to be approached reluctantly. It is a marked difference compared to my parents and grandparents generation where reading is considered one of many pleasurable pastimes to be enjoyed, not a chore to be dreaded. I will grant you that there may be a cultural difference as well as my family and their interpretation of the familial culture placed great premium on intellectual pursuits, including the reading of good fiction.
Would I get an F or a D if my reason for disliking a piece of literature was because I did not agree with its point of view/portrayal of life in the piece and cited historical evidence and other points to support my disagreement?
I wonder if maybe some of the resentment for Toni is due to her hairstyle, along the lines of stuff Pam’s posted about before. My father, oftentimes a cranky white guy (although not as bad as this guy), seems to take it personally when black women have “rebellious” hairstyles.
Tom Clancy??
Tom Clancy???????
Isn’t that a bit like going on and on about how you hate Curtis Mayfield and then saying you really need to go and listen to a bit of Nickleback?
This is the kind of guy who would have pissed me off sincerely in my classes (as both student and teacher) because he couldn’t “relate” to the book. That was always the supreme excuse–students somehow considered it more intellectually palatable than not liking a book, or struggling with its style, or being uncomfortable with its ideas. It wasn’t limited to men, either, like someone here claimed–plenty of bubbleheaded women couldn’t relate, either. Like the point of literature is writing so that someone from BFE in a baseball cap could look at it and see himself. I always thought it should be exactly the opposite–seeing something OTHER THAN yourself for once.
Clancy is an escape just as hormone-fiction is. Harlequins are vile to me but to many these are the true books of the age.
How much whining can you take before you retreat into the manly world of fictional military success? No blubbering wimps here. Just macho (white) men with the Stoicism to get R done.
Speaking of how different types of literature is perceived, I find it interesting how the comments about Tom Clancy’s works being easy and not as “serious” mirrored the perceptions of vernacular Chinese literature such as “/The Dream of the Red Chamber/The Story of The Stone” by Cao Xueqing among the educated elite in Qing-era China.
Ironically, this work is now considered a classic worthy of being studied by literary and other scholars dealing with Late Imperial Chinese literature in universities all over the world. Who knows….maybe in a few more centuries….Tom Clancy may be viewed in a similar light by literary future scholars.
If you check out Tbogg, you see that Frank J edited the post because he spelled “palate” wrong (”pallet cleanser”). pretty hilarious in a “Toni Morrison is stupid” rant, but then IMAO does always claim they are funny.
Wow. I’m so out of the loop I never realized Morrison was the focus of such nutwingerly wrath . . . here I was sort of proud of myself for understanding at least a little bit of Paradise, and for taking pleasure in (and learning from) reading Playing in the Dark.
Thanks for the Michael Berube link. I laughed myself six ways to Sunday over it.
Wow. I’m so out of the loop I never realized Morrison was the focus of such nutwingerly wrath . . . here I was sort of proud of myself for understanding at least a little bit of Paradise, and for taking pleasure in (and learning from) reading Playing in the Dark.
Thanks for the Michael Berube link. I laughed myself six ways to Sunday over it.
Hey, you know, Blue Jean and mcc, *I* took English classes fifty years ago, and I can assure you that whether or not the student “liked” the assigned book had absolutely no effect on one’s grade. It was all tedious stuff like knowing what was in the book, being able to discuss the thematic material, you know, dumb stuff.
Older (Mrs Nice Guy)
Margalis - they certainly do. One of my blog reads is John Scalzi’s Whatever. Every once in a while I get to see the priceless sight of a wingnut, who has assumed that Scalzi is one of them because his opening novel is a far-future war novel, and then proceeds to have a total meltdown when he discovers that Mr. Scalzi is not only not Republican, but actually liberal. The Horror! How could he have misled them so!
The idea that a good author can get inside the head of someone quite different from themselves, who holds ideas quite different from the ones they hold, seems quite foreign to them.
Isn’t that a bit like going on and on about how you hate Curtis Mayfield and then saying you really need to go and listen to a bit of Nickleback?
Hey, you leave Nickelback alone. They’ve perfected their one song over years of hard work and a dozen albums.
But yeah, it is sad when your choice of literature is less legitimate artistically than most comic books.
Call me a crazy intellectual, but isn’t part of the point of reading different fictionalized points of view (or oh heck just any ol’ different point of view) to, you know, LEARN SOMETHING?
If I read only those things with which I agree 100% and which matches my life experiences exactly, my reading list would be small indeed.
Okay, hands up for those who understood (in high school no less) that the point of writing a paper is NOT to fawn over how swell the author is but rather to, you know, analyze the work? You know, with a critical eye? And stuff? You know?
I totally relate to this guy! I had the choice of getting an A or telling the professor exactly what I thought of calculus! So my bad grade is the result of how big and strong and brave I am and NOT the result of completely being unable to grasp the material! GOD, I am such a MAN!
Regarding his grade, I thought he was implying that he held back on his real opinion of Morrison because he was afraid it would cost him an A, not that he got a B for telling the “truth”. He seems like the type that would kowtow to whatever he imagines authority wants, and then nurse petty resentments about it.
It truly does. It’s like they don’t get that fiction is fiction. Everything has to make some transparent political point.
Like most things wingnut it is probably projection. They are incapable of seeing alternate viewpoints and incapable of producing anything other than political screeds so they assume the rest of the world is similar.
Nope, as long as you were doing the intellectual work necessary to prove your point of view, he’d give you an A. Saying that you don’t like something because it’s hard and it’s different is the lazy way out. It’s like taking a geometry test and saying “The area of triangle A is equal to that of triangle B because it just is.”. It isn’t enough to just have a different opinion, you have to learn how to defend it and learn why you like something different, as well as developing respect for others’ views. Probably why so many fundies are leery of higher education.
I didn’t like Lord of the Flies, but at least I understood that I was expected to find meaning and greatness in it and could write an A essay by focusing on details about the book rather than whinging about how unpleasant it was.
And the comment about LeCarre breaking his brain really did make me laugh out loud. Damn, but I love that man’s style.
That’s because their experience is that it IS a chore, because it’s treated like something serious and reverent instead of something thought-provoking and entertaining
Yes, there is a difference.
Just to give you my background, I used to be a voracious reader, I read about 150 books a year or so, all genres and types (although more non-fiction than fiction, to be honest). Then I just stopped. I found that the average book I was reading wasn’t really providing anything more than I could get watching a good documentary or movie, and I replaced almost entirely my non-fiction reading with the blogosphere, who again tend to get as much content in a few paragraphs that your average book gets in a few pages.
I still read certain authors, namely Rushdie and Pratchett, not so much for the stories, but because reading their words are like watching a cinematic masterpiece (in terms of cinematography/art and set design/costumes/editing).
But in the long run. I have to say, that the attitude of most of the commenters here have (taken to further extremes, of course) is actually what created the problem in the first place. It turns reading from a form of entertainment into a test to find and see the right symbols.
Or in the words of 8th grade me…”Sometimes a pearl is just a fucking pearl”
@Blue Jean:
I used to hand in geometry proofs that weren’t far removed from your example, but not from laziness, just from a near-total lack of linear thinking. My teacher would ask me where the rest of the proof was; I found that “It’s implied” was not considered an acceptable response…
As for “Beloved,” I found it gorgeous and powerful: much like its author.
As a man, I think that we may often get defensive when we “feel attacked” - with visions of humanity that make us uncomfortable for various reasons.
SciFi - and similar - rarely “threatens our masculinity” or our “Whiteness”.
Reading an eloquent writing of one who has the audacity to be female, Black, eloquent and speaking up (at us) - simply by writing her truths may be challenging - to “the best” of us. Where we take in the hard things and open up to new ideas we may grow. Where we get defensively angry and try to “show how smart we are” or “how cool we are” - we demonstrate our own insecurities. Thanks!
As a man, I think that we may often get defensive when we “feel attacked” - with visions of humanity that make us uncomfortable for various reasons.
SciFi - and similar - rarely “threatens our masculinity” or our “Whiteness”.
Reading an eloquent writing of one who has the audacity to be female, Black, eloquent and speaking up (at us) - simply by writing her truths may be challenging - to “the best” of us. Where we take in the hard things and open up to new ideas we may grow. Where we get defensively angry and try to “show how smart we are” or “how cool we are” - we demonstrate our own insecurities. Thanks!
Hey, you had the same geometry teacher as I did? LOL!
No, seriously, some people are word minds and some people are number minds, and my geometry teacher quickly found out I was one of the former. She did give me credit for trying to prove theorems, which is how I scraped by.
Every time I think of geometry, I think of the middle aged Peggy Sue going back in time to high school, and walking out of her geometry class.
“Young lady, you need to learn this! You’ll use it in the future.”
“No, I won’t.” she said. “Trust me, I won’t.”
Woah…
I read Morrison’s The Blueest Eye, and pretty much ran straightaway from anything else. I took one look at Beloved and read the description, and I knew I could not emotionally take that book…
Karmakin, it’s not humble of me, but I respectfully submit that there is something wrong with your analysis. Now, there *are* people who can read, say, 100 non-fiction books in a year, but waaaaay too many intelligent people I know (and I knew a few legit genuises) would not be able to read at that pace. Not for fun, along with all the other things one does for fun or work. People do read that much for work, but it’s *work*.
Anyways, I don’t read that many nonfiction books 20-30 a year, because I generally tackle some pretty high level laymen books. However, that, the fact that I gave myself a very liberal education, and the vast amounts of online-reading that I do (which it sounds like you moved to) has made me much more aware of the world than pretty much everyone else (by being more of a generalist, and not so much deep). If I could read more non-fiction, I would…My amazon list is full of nonfiction I’m interested in buying and reading, but it’s quite a bit of work to read high level writing in both ficiton and nonfiction. It’s usually worth it though.
I cannot ever imagine that any movie can make me feel the way through an imagination that Justina Robson does in her sci-fi novel “Living Next Door To The God of Love”. I finished Jonathan Spence’s history of Modern China, and I know quite a bit more on how chinese politicians think. All of those books, fiction and nonfiction alike help improve the take that I get from reading all the blog posts and news that I read. Don’t get me wrong, I *loved* Planet Earth, and I enjoyed a BBC production of Saira Khan’s journey through Pakistan, and I will be watching documentaries on India and Nubia. However, they just cannot give that intimacy with awareness that a good book can. I mean, can anyone really do a documentary based on Levitin’s “This Is Your Brain On Music”?
I genuinely pity those who can’t read for fun. I think the afterlife, if there is any at all, will be all about you, your life, your friends/loves, your thoughts…An active mental life would mean that you would have so much putty to play with after you’re gone.
Hell, I think there is a lot of merit in writing a sociology/literature paper on furry/fang smut! I think Laurell K Hamilton is actually a pretty significant writer in that she expanded the scope of escapist harlequin literature with her construction/deconstruction of heirarchal tropes in various books. Nowadays, you can directly contrast Rachel Vincent’s construction with Charlaine Harris, at least where reclusive werecats are concerned. Or you can measure the change of urgent ideas by the fact that the villian in Patricia Brigg’s latest book is the famous “Nice Guy”. To bring the idea to the conclusion, even when you’re reading wildly facile writing in many types of fiction, you still can get a lift-off into many interesting tangents!
God I love books.
Blue Jean -
My HS geometry teacher began the class saying that she really didn’t know why geometery was required as we were never going to use it. Yeah the inspriation was just amazing . . . .she retired two years later.
I almost have to alternate between high level fiction/nonfiction and “brain candy,” in my for fun reading. Otherwise I get too exhuasted with all the emotions very good writing can bring to me.
Blue Jean…
That’s another thing I hate about many people…I believe that each and every one of us should be familiar with math, up to calculus and statistics.
And no, it’s not because anything is of *use*, in particular (and there are so many times where I feel like I need to have a textbook sized version of “The Useless Tree” parable so I can whack people with them), but that the *exposure* to them helps people percieve all many of things better. Engineers do not often use calculus, but calculus is not taught for the purposes of engineers using it. We have computers and old toolboxes–physical and mental–that do most or all of that stuff for us. We are taught calculus because it expands our imagination, and gives us a “rule by thumb” ability to judge proportions, tools, whathaveyou.
Math is not divided by talents, not at least by normal people! There isn’t a division between word people and number people! Math is an *extension* of language, not some alter-ego! The major problem is that math is poorly taught as a rule, and bad teaching can fuck up the jobs of every other math teacher down the line.
Read “Beloved”. It’s not as depressing as it seems. That or I’m not easily depressed, which might be more likely. I walked away from that book feeling good in a weird way, but again, I’m weird. The ghost of the dead child seemed more humbling than saddening to me. The ghost symbolizes an ugly reality that’s hard to admit about the nature of oppression—the oppressed often make survival choices that are morally impossible. Killing the child made me think of more mundane moral transgressions that happen under more mundane oppressions than slavery. Women, for instance, are often talented at the arts of passive aggression and lying. These are immoral acts, and yet they’re not because women are talented at these things because you have to be in order to preserve autonomy under male rule.
But if you want to read something a little less emotionally wrenching and more entertaining, I recommend “Song of Solomon”. It reads like a mystery novel, no joke. Super entertaining, but it loses some of the authenticity that Morrison captures in “Beloved”. But she probably captures the odd linkage between modern black culture and the slave heritage better than most—it’s hard to see the links, honestly, because black culture is so much more than slavery heritage that it overshadows these unbecoming beginnings, which is a testament to the human spirit. There’s also some question about whether she’s too hard on her protagonist Milkman in the book, but I ‘, agnostic on this issue. His link with white culture is far more complex than his name allows.
I get very tense and claustrophobic with physical or psychic bondage and control, and I don’t feel good or feel like I’m having fun during parts of novels where that happen. A whole book about slavery would just be traumatic for me.
I don’t know if I’ll ever read Song of Solomon though. Read list is way too long right now. Tho’ if you liked Toni Morrison, then you’d really dig Octavia Butler and Nalo Hopkinson, if you’re ever into the sci-fi. ?:~)
I read almost no fiction outside of science fiction/fantasy these days, and when I do, I’m mostly interested in reading contemporary fiction about east asians or asian americans.
The characters don’t actually live under bondage long in “Beloved”. It’s understood mostly in flashback. Slavery memoirs don’t interest Morrison especially, I don’t think. What’s more interesting is how slavery has an impact long after the fact, which is what the book covers.
Since I just read it, and work in film in video, the answer to that would be YES. Because, y’know a documentary can contain actual MUSIC, unlike a book. ::eyeroll:: In fact, the film/video medium would be superior.
+++++++
All this Clancy hating, I suspect not that many here actual have read much Clancy. He has the usual ratio of crap:goodness, but: Things go wrong a LOT in his books, and many are cautionary tales about the use of power. But whatev…
Geometry itself is not particularly useful in life I suppose, but the ability to prove things from axioms is a good skill to cultivate, and geometry is very good for those purposes. Math itself is of limited value to most people but mathematical thinking is not.
There is something to be said for a discipline that stresses the rigorous application of logic, even if it doesn’t have vocational value.
Now had someone complained about numerical analysis I would be more inclined to agree.
Sorry Eric, but Tom Clancy writes novels for disenfranchised white males. Things may go wrong, but force wins through. Particularly if it at the sharp end of a BLU-109B forged-steel penetrator bomb capable of drilling its way through fifteen feet of concrete and exploding with the force of 550 lbs of tritonal high explosive before…
(continues for fifteen pages of prolix warporn)
The wingnut definition of “racist”: Anyone who makes you think about race. A black person is a racist before she even opens her mouth to speak in this view, because the color of her skin makes the wingnut think about race.
I first remember noticing this definition in High School. Some of the other students would use that definition.
“Sexist” is defined the same way by some, by the way- to some it means something that makes you think about sex and gender.
shah8:That’s my point though, at least for me, I found that that sort of intellectual stimulus that I had reading a really good book, I was ALSO having watching a really good movie. And I’m not talking documentary here. I’m talking about high art and low art. And what would take me 6 hours or so to achieve (I can read a fairly lengthy book in about that time), I could get in about 2-3 by watching a movie.
I’ll give an example. The last movie I went to see in the theater is Cloverfield. (To be honest I’ve been waiting on that movie for quite a while). While I was watching it, I was imagining things happening off screen (very easy to do with that movie), but also things happening elsewhere in that world. How would the leaders react? The population? What was the plans for taking down the monster? How would I do it? So I was thinking and imagining the whole time I was watching the movie.
To be honest, with me that happens more often than not. Video and other non-book media are not “intellectual killers” in my mind. They can be just as much of a launching pad as a good book. Ironically enough, this attitude would probably encourage more, and not less people to read. As it wouldn’t be seen as something out of reach, or as I said, something that you have to do the right way.
Karmakin, I suspect you’re going to enjoy _World War Z_
I don’t know about everyone else, Eric, but I have read Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan series - right up through, I think, the blow up the super bowl one. I think I started the next one after that - but the Jack Ryan character had shifted too far from out of shape, out of his element tech geek into the self insert/gary stu territory of master of the universe, savior of the world bullshit. Also, the warporn and technobable got sillier and sillier. In my opinion. And the man should never ever ever write another sex scene again in life and that will still not erase the horrors he has already inflicted on the reading public.
I think The Hunt for Red October is a really fantastic chase story, and I’ve even read it more than once, and probably one of the best in the genre. (Aside from the error about flight times over the Atlantic that my husband whinges on about even now). I’m having a lot of trouble finding books for my 10 yo son to read as he is very particular about avoiding certain kinds of tension in his stories, and I finally handed him this one, and it seems to have really caught his attention.
So I feel fully qualified to say that the writer of the OP is still a jack ass. Not because as a matter of personal taste he prefers Clancy to Morrison (whom I have also read) - but because he appears to believe they are some how similar enough that he can evaluate them on the same scale, and further, that because he doesn’t care for Morrison personally - the book is therefor crap and didn’t/doesn’t deserve all the awards and praise it has garnered over the years.
That is what makes him an ass.
Let me speak up a bit for Clancy who is a hack, but perhaps not so bad, as hacks go. I have a soft spot in my heart for this Debt of Honor, which (a) gives the lie to Condi Rice’s famous claim that “I don’t think anyone could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center,” by having a terrorist do just that to the Capitol, and (b) contains an excellent rant by his Jack Ryan character on the stupidity of starting wars of choice. Wingnuts are trying to forget that their favorite author was an early critic of the Iraq war . . .
Phoenician:I have that book on order actually, and yes, I’m REALLY looking forward to it.
The other series of books I’ve really enjoyed recently is the Turtledove America at War series. The writing is bleh, but the ideas in the book are really well done. It’s about the Civil War coming to a draw, and the relations between the North and an independent south, through WWI and WWII. (Hint:They’re at war) It’s a PoV switch book, where the PoV switches between a large number of characters on all sides of the conflict. The writing is clumsy, but the setting is infectious.
Clancy wrote the forward for Anthony Zinni’s, “The Battle for Peace: A Frontline Vision of America’s Power and Purpose” - a book heavily promoted by progessives a few years back
His statement about the “cleansing palette Tom Clancy novel” shows the level of his intelligence…not since the novels of Louis L’Amour has the American novel decended to such a mind-numbing mediocrity…
You’re not reading enough Sheri Tepper if your masculinity has never been threatened by SciFi.
shah8: “The major problem is that math is poorly taught as a rule, and bad teaching can fuck up the jobs of every other math teacher down the line. ”
Truer words were never spoken. Math was always a terror for me - it was mostly an exercise in public humiliation because I just couldn’t seem to “get” that addition is commutative! (What the hell does that mean, anyway?)
Until Mr. Kienlien (prounounced “kinlin”) when I was a sophomore in high school. I had to retake the 2nd semester of algebra 1 and 2 because I damn near failed it, and Mr. Kienlien taught Intro to Algebra 3 and 4, which was 2nd semester taught over a full year. As far as I am concerned, Mr. Kienlien (a tall, skinny guy with the biggest, deepest, booming voice you ever heard) should be the patron saint of math teachers. His method?
He assigned homework every night. He collected it at the beginning of class the next day (you got only 1 point for it - I don’t think he actually graded it), and *then he worked all the problems on the blackboard.* He explained each and every step of every problem. THen he would introduce the new concept, and assign homework. Repeat.
When it came time for the final exam in May - I had pretty much resigned myself to barely passing with a “C” (my standard achievement). We were given 3 hours to complete the test. 45 minutes later, I’m done with the test and utterly convinced that I’ve done the problems all wrong, because it was TOO EASY! So I go back and recheck every problem. This takes 20 minutes. I don’t find anything I would change, so I give him the test and go home, hoping to pass the class.
For the one and only time in my life, I got 100% on that test! I passed that class with an A!
If only more math teachers were like Mr. Kienlien, I wouldn’t have passed geometry with a C- (1 point shy of a D). Damn, I hated that class, because I just didn’t get it! The theorems made no sense, I hated doing “proofs”, and I knew that the chances of me using geometry in my regular life were exactly zero. Yeah, motivated I was not.
Now, I’m grateful that I can balance my checkbook, run a budget, and have never run into a situation requiring me to know calculus, because I would be dead.
Like shah8, I have to take some serious exception to the boxes of “Word People” and “Number People” as well. I have never in my life been able to understand how they are not identical; I’ve learned mathematics like water my whole life, literally without effort, and some shit-scary math to boot. And I’m one of those weird freaks who can become functionally literate in a language in three months. Numbers and words are the exact same thing, sorry.
False polarizations drive me nuts, because I have never in my life fit into any of them, even neurologically. For me, it can be pinned down on one thing — a bruise on my hippocampus that puts several applications not normally connected in deep communication with one another. (Google synaesthesia — words and numbers have scents, flavors, and sometimes colors.) As a result, since I was born, I have been utterly unable to fit into these BS educational classifications made by lazy teachers who can’t handle a kid who can learn native accents in minutes and also learn how to do long division in kindergarten, equally quickly.
For me, like I said, it can be traced down to an involuntary neurological firmware upgrade that leaves me running a noticeably different OS than most other members of my species. But if I can do it, then how many other people are walking around with less profound miswirings, in brains as human as anyone’s, who are just as hazy on their borders between “Amo amat aman” and “diagonalize the Hamiltonian?” Where do we draw the line between the “normal” brain and the “odd” one?
I remember taking a variety of tests in the process of a diagnosis, and taking others elsewhere that purport to measure neurological gender identity. I scored 96% female — and 98% male. It answered more than a few questions for me as to why the hell I not only felt politically held back by gender polarity but HATED IT on a personal level.
Polarizations suck ass. I have ONE brain, not half of one and half of another. And I’ve fought for all of my life, educationally and politically, to avoid being put into a box by some lazy educator or politician because I evinced a certain talent around them. I’ve been blocked from taking certain classes by people who refuse to admit that Number People can not only do Words, but can leave supposedly Word People in the dust.
Yes, my head is different — noticeably so, and I have the MRIs and EEGs to show it. But how many other people have a little funky wiring in their heads that’s below the threshold of what an MRI can pick up? And at that point, what’s “funky” and what’s “a normal human variation,” like green eyes?
You can get an A for slamming Toni Morrison. My sister did it, albeit probably with more aid from our mother than is strictly ethical. And the story of how she did it makes this man look a little pathetic. Or at least he would seem so in my mom’s opinion.
My sister, you see, was assigned Beloved in high school. From what I can tell, she was pretty much not able to stomach it, and 50 pages in declared that she should not be *forced* to read this book and threw it down. I don’t think she originally expected to get my sympathy from our English professor of of a mother, but as it happened, my mom agreed with her. I have memories of their looking for cliffnotes. In the end, when it came time to write the paper, my mom and my sister talked, and what resulted was a scathing thesis on how some white people found Toni Morrison and gave her all these prizes to feel better about themselves, because they can deal with her better than they can superior African American authors writing on the same subjects as her(I admit, that last part sounds a little strange reading these other comments, but since I’ve never read Beloved myself I can’t really assess it)
The teacher gave my sister an A on the paper, exempted her from the class final, and advised her to burn the paper so it could never be used against her in the future. I think she ended up giving it to a friend of hers instead; he may still have it in a drawer or a closet somewhere.
Interesting. Personally, I love reading blogs and watching movies to gain an initial understanding of a given topic/situation/story and to experience the difference such presentation methods could provide.
To gain understanding in depth, however, reading books on the subject is needed and being an extremely curious person…is a pleasurable pastime.
As for reading being treated like a chore among adolescents and young adults, a part of that may be due to the proliferation of pastimes that do not require as much active thinking and engagement such as watching mindless television or playing mindless videogames (Especially many first person shooters).
Though I may sound like an old fart, this was what I gathered from observing myself and classmates and co-workers from junior high to the present. Moreover, while I myself have enjoyed those pastimes, the pleasure gained is much more temporary and fleeting than reading a good book or doing anything which requires much more active intellectual engagement.
A standard text in many “Modern China” survey courses taught at many universities and colleges.
As for reading being treated like a chore among adolescents and young adults, a part of that may be due to the proliferation of pastimes that do not require as much active thinking …
There’s a yes-but in there, though. I’ve also always been a voracious reader, but the joy and fun came from the reading I did on my own time. Out of all the junk I was made to read in school, I enjoyed TWO items.
The rest were literally AWFUL. They were stale, dull, and consisted of anything you can cram a Catholic moral into. This was part of why I laughed when I heard someone complaining about why “those people” can’t see fiction as anything other than political allegory. Let’s face it — it usually is. That’s a big part of why I like nonfiction and history — you can read several different takes, assemble your ideas from many people’s sources, and arrive at something more trustworthy and with at least a bit of the author’s bisaes averaged out. Fiction? Not a chance in hell — EVERY author writes to Make A Point about something. This nonsense about how “the characters just come to me!” is just that — nonsense. DO you think Clancy AND Morrison aren’t trying to Make A Point?
And from what I recall in school, it was that disingenuousness that turned a lot of kids off of reading, period. It was hamhanded morality any way you sliced it — “literature” consisted of reading (not listening to or seeing but READING) “The Merchant of Venice” and not even mentioning the ways in which the character of Shylock might introduce a wee bit of complexity and a few shades of grey here and there. It meant being bored out of your mind by Charles Dickens because even the fun stuff he wrote about became dry, turgid, and insufferable when you had an 80-year old nun looking over your shoulder droning about the Sick Society of late 1800s England and how Your Society Is Just As Sick, Young Lady.
It was the KIND of thinking required that turned most kids off, not thinking in general. They were left entirely unengaged; engagement was BAD. It meant that you had dusted off something and brought it into the present instead of leaving it stale and musty in the past, where things were safe and could be examined with a proper dispassionate dullness.
Catholic schools can teach mathematics and grammar quite well; arbitrary and value-free rule systems are their specialty. They also benefit from the complete lack of a grade curve. 69 is an F, period.
But when it comes to anything requiring thinking about the present, they kill it dead. Even our history lessons never got up to the Korean War. Those kids were dying to be engaged, and the school insisted on holding the present days in which we lived at arm’s length. And then people wonder why kids don’t like anything that reminds them of that.
A bit off-topic there, sorry …
The other series of books I’ve really enjoyed recently is the Turtledove America at War series. The writing is bleh, but the ideas in the book are really well done. I
Turtledove - ehh.
Give John Birmingham’s World War 2.0 trilogy a go.
Which is why men never read fiction. Right-o.Besides, it doesn’t always make you a better person to get into someone’s head. Read The Iron Dream and see how humanized you feel at the end of it. (The whole thing is written as a didactic experiment in proving the above point, as well as making some critical points about SF culture which are also explained in the same author’s essay “The Emperor of Everything”. It’s also darkly hilarious.)
Or James Tiptree.Which is why men never read fiction. Right-o.
They certainly can’t often be arsed to read fiction (or watch movies or TV unless dragged to them by a GF or wife) with a nonwhite or gawd forbid female protagonist. I’m sick and effing tired of the increasingly threadbare excuse that putting a woman on a book cover turns off male readers (Why do you think Rowling wrote under a JK instead of her real name?) or putting a nonwhite face on the cover turns off white readers. If you aren’t familiar with the all-encompassing nature of THAT little postulate,we’re living on a different planet.
White men are rarely asked to imagine how they would see the world if they were women or black or Asian or disabled or gay. We are however, routinely expected to identify with THEM and the zillions of their avatars that show up all over the place, from Marcus Welby to Luke Skywalker.
They can get into another person’s skin, all right. As long as it looks just like theirs.
Not to mention that Clancy isn’t really writing SF–he’s writing technothrillers, like Crichton. At the risk of overgeneralization, it’s a genre that’s *much* less interested in challenging preconceptions than SF is.
The rest were literally AWFUL.
Wow. LITERALLY “awful”?
They filled you with awe?
And I don’t think you can generalise from your own experience to an assumption that “Word People” and “Math People” are bogus. Intelligence is faceted, and it sounds like you’ve got a good strong dose of both.
I know several people who would serve as counter-examples. Me, I was white hot at math and completely mediocre at languages back at school. Then I ran smack bang into my mathematical limitations and realised that my real strength was just patterns and analogous thinking. When the maths got abstract, I was completely lost.
Intelligence is faceted, and it sounds like you’ve got a good strong dose of both.
Thus, the polarization is suspect, eh? There certainly doesn’t seem to be a rule that says you can only have one and not the other. Which is what I’m saying. Some have one, some have the other, some have neither, some have both.
BTW, “awful” and “artificial” haven’t meant what they originally meant for a long, long time.
Thus, the polarization is suspect, eh?
Mea culpa - the polarization is certainly suspect. The categories are useful, however, and there may be a division between the two (in my experience, there hasn’t really been one).
BTW, “awful” and “artificial” haven’t meant what they originally meant for a long, long time.
Shouldn’t throw around the word “literally” too casually then
Oh yes, the blowsy heroine of trite movie never uses geometry again. What was she, a SAHM with home-skooled sprats? Or just depending greatly on looks?
I teach at the elementary and high school levels and I am amazed at how much we use the “useless” courses.
English Lit provides a window into the worlds of others that we may never meet. Math is supposed to keep our government and banks honest.
These are designed to be basic and foundational (sic). I must admit an aversion to anyone bragging about their lack of skill or education. I find all modes useful and I am really tired of EngLit Majors that can’t turn a wrench or NASCAR fans that eschew reading as sissified.
Was a history major with a decent vocabulary and a hard time picking up foreign languages other than English and Mandarin.
Though I was a poor math student in high school and college, I was able to pick up enough knowledge about computer hardware and operating systems to support myself as a freelancer from college to the present.
A lot of people regard anyone who majored in an art/humanities/social science fields and have enough computing knowledge to be conversant with computer science/IT majors to be complete freaks. Have had plenty of firsthand experience with this phenomenon. :p
6. Bragging about grades is part of a larger attempt to resolve the tension between being anti-intellectual and not wanting to be perceived (correctly perceived) as a dumbass.
Even better than bragging about grades: bragging about the grade you totally could’ve gotten if your professor hadn’t been such a dick, seriously, man, he just couldn’t admit I was right when I told him those boring old books he made us read were hell of lame shit, but if I had written the paper he assigned instead of courageously blowing it off, I so would’ve gotten an A. Swear to God.
Yeah, what Janis said. Some people have both (like my grandmother, who was both an algebra teacher and a published author), some have neither, and some have one or the other.
Say, Janis, can I borrow your brain? Since I’ve got NVD, I’m about as much of a Word Mind as you can get.
Shah8,
you’re right that a bad teacher can mess it up for any other teacher that comes after him or her. The problem is, most of my math teachers were Number Minds who looked at my A’s and B’s in History, English, Art, etc. and thought I was just being perverse when I said I couldn’t understand their stuff. I remember one PreAlgebra teacher who reduced me to tears in the middle of a class, and when one student said “Leave her alone.”, she snapped “I’m trying to teach!” Yikes!
That’s why the slogan “Those who can, do, those who can’t, teach.” isn’t a slam on teachers; it’s a truth that people who understand the difficulty of learning make better teachers than “naturals” who think that because it’s easy for them, it’s easy for everybody. My sister is LD too, and she’s a great teacher because she understands how hard it can be. I myself decided NOT to be a teacher because the stuff I’m good at (like art) comes too easily to me, while math stuff often doesn’t come at all, and I certainly don’t want to traumatize some poor kid the way that teacher scarred me.
BTW, my bad on Peggy Sue Got Married. It was an algebra class she walked out of, not geometry. And she was a SAHM, (or WAHM as I prefer to think of it) but then, most of the women in her generation were. I myself am a librarian nowadays, but when I saw that moment I felt quite comforted to learn that you could live a full, happy life WITHOUT doing quadratic equations.
Shah8, if you really want to go to the far side, try Suzie McKee Charnas A Walk To The Edge Of The World trilogy, Native Tongue or Sheri S. Tepper’s The Gate To Women’s Country.
Noted, interested in Charnas, thanks, had my read through of Tepper, and now find her not so great these days.
Have you read any Kelly Link? She seems up your line, and I’ve been recommending her stuff with some success.