Thers’ Fifth Iron Law of the Internets: Twice as many people have gone
on the Internet to claim they stopped being liberals because of things
said at coastal liberal cocktail parties than, statistically speaking, could have ever attended coastal liberal cocktail parties to begin with.
Also, there’s a certain common sense matter to consider here; to wit,
does anyone believe that, say, anyone associated with Pajamas Media
would ever have been invited to too many parties to start with?Thinkabout it.[snip]
There is, sweet tits O’ Christ, no “type” who “can’t converse without referencingThe New Yorker.”
Nobody knows anyone of the fucking sort. This is a gag so prehistoric,
even George Will might hold back on it as slightly not-current. But if
you then decide to get on your high horse about how nobody in the North
“gets” Truman Capote… I mean… “you know too much aboutThe New Yorker,
elitist swine, but haven’t read enough Truman Capote…” that’s, uh…
oh for fuck’s sake, is what I mean. Please don’t make me explain this
because I am in a bad enough mood as it is and have no patience left I
swear.
These aren’t real people. This is something that has never happened. I spend time with many, many liberals and if anybody referencesThe New Yorker they promptly get the piss taken out of them for being a pretentious asshole. Maybe I need to befriend some more snobs. Will my lack of knowledge of Faulkner get in the way?
And yeah, do liberals say shitty things about the South? Sure. We also bag on Canada, Alaska, Finland, New Jersey, France, Chicago, New York, The Heartland, Oklahoma, big cities, small towns, apartment buildings, bunkers, farms, and everyplace else anyone can live. And that’s just on this blog in the past six months.
(I’m sorry if my Finnish readers were offended during the Olympics, but GODDAMN, that hockey game was like watching a bunny rabbit get hit by a Mack truck, it wasn’t even a contest, so until you get a defense, eat your reindeer like men and shut the fuck up.)
People are always going to intimate that the place they live gives them some inherent superiority or dictates character. I could put my finger down on a map, post the name of the place, and it would be filled with “it’s awesome and here’s why you suck if you don’t realize that” and “it sucks because I had a shitty experience there and here’s how” comments by the end of the day. Always, because it’s easy and it’s funny and trust me, I know some
Minnesota jokes, okay. It only becomes a problem when we take it
seriously enough to, you know, base actual policy decisions on this
bullshit.
Mr. A observed once, during a conversation about a meatspace person who gets seriously upset about what brand of cola you prefer, that we have in large part exchanged values for brand loyalties, and I think that’s part of it, but I also think we ascribe values to certain consumer behaviors. That’s where all the “what kind of cheese did Kerry put on his cheesesteak” bullshit comes from. When in truth there’s no corollary whatsoever, as there are assholes and insects in every place, and they eat all kinds of things.
We look at somebody’s car, somebody’s fridge, somebody’s choice of house and say, Ah, I recognize you, you fit in this box! It’s crap to do it about the South, but it’s crap to do it about EVERYWHERE, coastal elitist cocktail parties included. It makes no fucking sense. Especially when you’re talking in a piece about how people are people and not caricatures.
A.