Word Salad

Via The Thin Man, a lesson in hippie economics. Brace yourselves.

“We can be rich and cotton and mining metals. And silkworms.” 

Comments

[SG]

"The food is free, you just have to pay for the land and pay the farmers."

[carbon based lifeform]

Vegetable trees?

[David]

“That’s where fruit and vegetable comes from.”

[carbon based lifeform]

That's some powerful stupid.

[Ross]

I kind of envy the ability to keep babbling non stop even whilst having no coherent ideas to express.

[Simen Thoresen]

"...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

[David]

It’s inadvertent performance art.

[Mr Eugenides]

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...

[Anna]

LOL. Stunning.

[James S]

Just watching that made me a little bit more stupid.

[tehag]

Pity, I think, is the proper response; especially since her grandkids will be able to view this file.

[andy]

oh dear, a 'valley girl'.

[JuliaM]

"I really believe it can be a California thing..."

Oh, it is, sweetie. It is...

[Candice]

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."

[jones]

Difficult to be sure at this remove but her self-care seems quite good.Remarkable.

[David]

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.

[wayne fontes]

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

[Horace Dunn]

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.

[David]

“Oh come on. Not fair.”

Ungentlemanly, maybe. But hardly unfair.

“It runs from about 7.08 until about 23.55.”

Er, what does?

[Horace Dunn]

Sorry, I forget the link:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b00lr14q

[Anna]

"I give you Miss South Carolina!"

David, maybe you should make "Word Salad" a regular thing...

[wayne fontes]

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.

[David]

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.

[Horace Dunn]

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.

[David]

I was drawn to its, er, Dadaist aesthetic.

[Nick]

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?

[Anna]

Stoner economics?

[jones]

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.

[David]

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.

[James S]

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.

[David]

“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.

[Rob]

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.

[David]

“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.

[Ryan]

use brauno....its got electrolytes!!

[AntiCitizenOne]

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.

[speener]

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.

[moronhater]

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!

[Marcus]

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.

[Rob]

"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.

[Timo the Squid]

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.

[The Thin Man]

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.....

[Bob]

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.

[Mark Bellaire]

She should be Jay Leno's Battle of the Jaywalk Allstars!

[Mark Bellaire]

She should be ON Jay Leno's Battle of the Jaywalk Allstars!

Sorry, I think the stupid in this video is contagious.

[Horace Dunn]

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.

[Michael]

This is more proof that California needs a major earthquake.

[Chuck]

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