Word Salad
July 26, 2009
Via The Thin Man, a lesson in hippie economics. Brace yourselves.
“We can be rich and cotton and mining metals. And silkworms.”
Via The Thin Man, a lesson in hippie economics. Brace yourselves.
“We can be rich and cotton and mining metals. And silkworms.”
The comments to this entry are closed.
"The food is free, you just have to pay for the land and pay the farmers."
Posted by: SG | July 26, 2009 at 13:17
Vegetable trees?
Posted by: carbon based lifeform | July 26, 2009 at 13:41
“That’s where fruit and vegetable comes from.”
Posted by: David | July 26, 2009 at 13:54
That's some powerful stupid.
Posted by: carbon based lifeform | July 26, 2009 at 13:58
I kind of envy the ability to keep babbling non stop even whilst having no coherent ideas to express.
Posted by: Ross | July 26, 2009 at 14:42
"...on the east coast they have slaves, and believe in slavery, and made in China, but on the west coast, the new west coast, we don't believe in that..."
Wow. Another gem. Thank you, David.
-S
Posted by: Simen Thoresen | July 26, 2009 at 14:54
It’s inadvertent performance art.
Posted by: David | July 26, 2009 at 14:57
I came across this clip yesterday on some American blog. Joyful stuff from start to finish.
It's nice to know there's always someone in the world more stupid than you...
Posted by: Mr Eugenides | July 26, 2009 at 16:11
LOL. Stunning.
Posted by: Anna | July 26, 2009 at 16:20
Just watching that made me a little bit more stupid.
Posted by: James S | July 26, 2009 at 16:28
Pity, I think, is the proper response; especially since her grandkids will be able to view this file.
Posted by: tehag | July 26, 2009 at 17:14
oh dear, a 'valley girl'.
Posted by: andy | July 26, 2009 at 17:52
"I really believe it can be a California thing..."
Oh, it is, sweetie. It is...
Posted by: JuliaM | July 26, 2009 at 18:05
It's like a more stupid version of Po-Mo. I love her conclusion:
"The food's free... so we should just... sell it at the farmer's market."
Posted by: Candice | July 26, 2009 at 19:48
Difficult to be sure at this remove but her self-care seems quite good.Remarkable.
Posted by: jones | July 26, 2009 at 20:09
I’m assuming she doesn’t have a recognised medical condition – mild schizophasia or something. And it doesn’t look like the blathering is being caused by extreme nervousness. It’s the fairly relaxed manner that makes it funny.
Posted by: David | July 26, 2009 at 20:18
Stupid doesn't recognize geographic or political boundries. Eistein had a quote to the effect that while genius was a limited commodity stupidity has no constraints. As true today as it was the day he said it.
Ladies and gentleman ... I give you Miss South Carolina!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WALIARHHLII
Posted by: wayne fontes | July 26, 2009 at 20:58
Oh come one. Not fair. If this woman has any influence over public policy then lay into her, no holds barred. But I would guess from the peremptory, and barely polite dismissal she receives from the chairman ("Thank you ... next speaker") that she doesn't.
David, I’d be interested to hear your response to a feature that appeared on BBC Radio 4 this morning. It runs from about 7.08 until about 23.55. Warning: it features Roy Hattersley.
Posted by: Horace Dunn | July 26, 2009 at 21:01
“Oh come on. Not fair.”
Ungentlemanly, maybe. But hardly unfair.
“It runs from about 7.08 until about 23.55.”
Er, what does?
Posted by: David | July 26, 2009 at 21:12
Sorry, I forget the link:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b00lr14q
Posted by: Horace Dunn | July 26, 2009 at 21:16
"I give you Miss South Carolina!"
David, maybe you should make "Word Salad" a regular thing...
Posted by: Anna | July 26, 2009 at 21:16
I'm not sure I agree with you Horace. Bobby the Brian Heenan once said about big time wrestling fans "the scary thing is that they can vote and they can breed". I feel the same way about this woman. It shakes shakes your faith in Democracy.
Posted by: wayne fontes | July 26, 2009 at 21:21
Horace,
I’m too tired to endure Broadcasting House in its entirety; I usually need two mugs of Hot Lava Java to get through Radio 4. I may have a listen tomorrow.
Anna,
“…maybe you should make ‘Word Salad’ a regular thing...”
Submissions are always welcome. We could offer a prize or something.
Posted by: David | July 26, 2009 at 21:25
David
I quite understand. For me "Broadcasting House" is one of those we're-drawn-to-what-we-fear things. Like horror films. And, yes, I probably would be better off watching horror films. But if you can bear it, I'd be interested to hear your response.
And as for the "ungentlemanly" thing. Well, that wasn't my main concern. It did feel a bit like shooting fish in a barrel, though.
Posted by: Horace Dunn | July 26, 2009 at 21:45
I was drawn to its, er, Dadaist aesthetic.
Posted by: David | July 26, 2009 at 21:55
At 1 minute 30
'and the Bush administration, which is really good'
Hippie economics?
Seriously deranged economics yes, but no railing against 'The Man' surely precludes this from the realms of hippiedom?
Posted by: Nick | July 26, 2009 at 22:32
Stoner economics?
Posted by: Anna | July 26, 2009 at 22:38
Schizophasia indeed, if not florid thought disorder, but nothing a mega-bong wouldn't induce (assuming the abscence of schizophrenia which doesn't really seem to be the case here to be honest)in it's own right.
In any event you can still have a damn good chortle at aberrant behaviour without necessarily laughing at the person exhibiting it.
Well that's my conscience sorted anyway.
Posted by: jones | July 27, 2009 at 01:07
Horace,
I listened to the programme. I’m not sure which bit you want me to comment on.
There’s the confused humanities student who’s “proud” of her accent and yet convinced it makes her sound unserious. (I don’t think her accent is the problem on that front, though when people say “fings” instead of “things” it doesn’t exactly conjure gravitas.)
Roy “Lord” Hattersley is still a mean and disingenuous windbag. As usual, he seems a bit confused and is all too willing to distort views that diverge from his own. He claims to be in favour of people with talent escaping from humble origins and fulfilling their potential – an admirable goal. But he vehemently opposes grammar schools and selective education, which were key means of achieving that end until he and his egalitarian colleagues did away with most of them – supposedly in the interests of “fairness”. (Hattersley is of course a beneficiary of precisely the kind of education he wants to deny to others.)
He says he wants people with ability and drive to overcome their backgrounds, but he doesn’t like the word “escape” and he wants a “massive programme of redistribution” – i.e. distribution *away* from people who manage to do exactly as he says. Hattersley doesn’t seem to grasp the contradictions of his own worldview. If you want talent to be expressed and rewarded (wherever it comes from), efforts to impose a “more equal society” will tend to be in conflict with that goal. Those who escape from humble backgrounds will generally be inclined to pass on any advantages to their own children. Such is human nature. But this offends Hattersley and he wants to put a stop to it. It doesn’t seem to occur to Hattersley that bright working class people, about whom he claims to care, might view him as both a fool and an enemy.
Posted by: David | July 27, 2009 at 07:28
Socialist logic: Hattersley wants bright working class kids to do well in life –so long as they don't make too much money or pass on any advantages to their kids.
Posted by: James S | July 27, 2009 at 09:00
“Hattersley wants bright working class kids to do well in life –so long as they don’t make too much money or pass on any advantages to their kids.”
In a nutshell, yes. Hattersley’s conception of “fairness” is directly opposed to the interests of conscientious parents - which is to say, parents who want to do the best for their children. And parents who remember their own humble origins may be *particularly* keen to do that. Yet in Hattersley’s formulation they become some kind of class enemy.
Posted by: David | July 27, 2009 at 09:10
Hattersley's concept of fairness is robbery. He is the enemy of any working-class person who wants to do well or for their children to succeed. His vanity and conceit do not allow him to see this, however.
Regarding the main clip, if you closed your eyes and listened to her you would have thought she was thirteen years old or thereabouts. Such are the results of a 'progressive' education - the egotistical self-belief to think you and your opinions are important, combined with the ignorance and lack of communication skills which such an education excels in providing.
Posted by: Rob | July 27, 2009 at 11:03
“He is the enemy of any working-class person who wants to do well or for their children to succeed.”
It’s slightly disturbing to think that this pompous, dribbling old Stalinist was once in government. He claims to dislike elitism yet he wants to control what others may do with their own money and how they may help their own children. Because, naturally, he knows best. Which suggests he quite likes elitism, provided it’s authoritarian elitism and he’s the elite.
Same old, same old.
Posted by: David | July 27, 2009 at 11:34
use brauno....its got electrolytes!!
Posted by: Ryan | July 27, 2009 at 11:35
Does she suffer from the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning-Kruger_effect ??
Hattersley's not against elitism, he's against meritocracy. Probably because he correctly assumes he'd be nowhere without nepotism.
Posted by: AntiCitizenOne | July 27, 2009 at 15:43
I live here in the east - are you telling me I could have slaves? I didn't know. Damn it and all my hard work.
Posted by: speener | July 27, 2009 at 16:10
It's not the economy, stupid.
It's the stupid, stupid.
Wow. California has a $26 billion budget deficit and we wonder why? It's clearly because they've not invented the perfect pesticide for their vegetable trees.
And the silkworms. THE SILKWORMS!
Posted by: moronhater | July 27, 2009 at 17:43
All these thinktanks and high-paid consultants and experts ... and the answer was so simple to California's woes, and indeed those of the US. We on the East Coast have GOT to get over this whole slavery and "Made in China" kick that we're on.
Posted by: Marcus | July 28, 2009 at 15:24
"he quite likes elitism"
He dines (or at least used to) regularly at the Gay Hussar in Soho. I have seen their prices, and it is hardly the haunt of the working man.
Posted by: Rob | July 28, 2009 at 15:42
David,
Just FYI, on the off chance you made it to Washington, DC, and in a brief spasm of masochism decided you needed to see the "Paint Made Flesh" exhibit at the Philips Collection. Don't.
All the usual suspects are there on the walls. No, not the paintings, but the sloppy, lazy commentary, with the standard references to evil commercialism, the Vietnam War and lack of human rights in the West. Its' almost as if the exhibit writers felt compelled to add some reference to alienation to the informational panel, like it was required by law.
Annoying mostly, especially because the show did not have a lot of flesh, aside from the Jenny Saville work and two pieces by Lucien Freud. Interestingly, those two artists' panels did *not* make the perfunctory reference to "the isolation of the self, etc.", which made them quite refreshing in that they did not tell you what to think. The other works were actually pretty boring -- they may have been cutting edge in 1963, but nowadays... (yawn) -- but their accompanying wording, that's what really puts your teeth on edge.
Posted by: Timo the Squid | July 28, 2009 at 17:16
In another example of "teh stupid" - Ace posted this a couple of days ago.
Apparently we only used to see rainbows created by the Sun and Moon, but now a combination of garden sprinklers and "metal oxide salts oozing out of the ground" are creating new forms of super-rainbow that we have never seen before....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Sq-VmBMHkw
I'm wondering what the heck is in our water supply and our oxygen supply too.....
Posted by: The Thin Man | July 28, 2009 at 22:01
I live in Santa Cruz County. The city of Santa Cruz is the center of the universe for alternative forms of social maladjustment.
If you think the woman testifying in this video is "off", you ought to see some of the local politicians. They are so left of center that Marx and Lenin are rolling over in their graves.
Posted by: Bob | July 29, 2009 at 15:12
She should be Jay Leno's Battle of the Jaywalk Allstars!
Posted by: Mark Bellaire | July 29, 2009 at 15:18
She should be ON Jay Leno's Battle of the Jaywalk Allstars!
Sorry, I think the stupid in this video is contagious.
Posted by: Mark Bellaire | July 29, 2009 at 15:20
David
Thank you. I introduced the Broadcasting House clip because it struck me that it covered territory that interests you (reference your posts on Annabelle Weir etc). And because I felt it might be more deserving of your analytical wit than the "hippie" clip shown here. Not that it is for me to choose the editorial direction for your blog, but I am grateful that instead of damning me for my impertinence you described Roy Hattersley as a "dribbling old Stalinist". That's why I come here, I suppose. In truth, though, I was bewildered by Hattersley's contribution to the programme, which made little sense. And I was vexed by the interviewer who seemed content to allow his blithering. Hattersley to me came across as being reactionary and misanthropic. Some of your regular contributors here would probably say "well, that's socialism for you", and probably they'd be right.
But to get back ON topic, I understand why Wayne Fontes disagreed with me. But I'm not sure that the hippie lady makes me despair of democracy. Perhaps she highlights one of democracy's weak points, but we know that those weak points exist, so in that sense she shows that democracy is at least in action.
Posted by: Horace Dunn | July 30, 2009 at 01:26
This is more proof that California needs a major earthquake.
Posted by: Michael | July 30, 2009 at 21:12
guys, seriously, this intelligent young woman is allowed to speak her mind dont be an asshole.
she makes some pretty good points
but seriously, wtf is wrong with her? i want to find out who she is so i could kill her, right after i buy some more slaves
Posted by: Chuck | September 12, 2009 at 07:34