Painfully stupid. Yet somehow fascinating.

As part of that enjoyment I mentioned...

The Wife just forwarded this amazing video on to me of former Saturday Night Live comedienne Victoria Jackson explaining how Barack Obama is a Communist and how liberals actually control the country:

'I've done a lot of research. And I read the book 1984 by George Orwell twice.'

Astonishing.


But not quite as astonishing, somehow, as the comments by 'Joe the Plumber' on Fox News, defending the agreement he expressed with comments made by an audience member at a campaign event:

A McCain supporter asked if "a vote for Obama is a vote for the death of Israel." JTP hardly batted an eye.

"I'll go ahead and agree with you on that," Wurzelbacher said.

On Fox News, Shepard Smith questions him on that. And, surprise, surprise, Joe talks nonsense. But it's nonsense of such sublime perfection that it's worth hearing in full.



Now, JT Plumber's views on these things might be meaningless and inconsequential.

However: it was the McCain-Palin campaign that made Joe one of their key figureheads.

It was also the campaign that -- as noted in the video -- issued a statement praising Joe's 'penetrating and clear analysis' after his thoughtful contribution to Middle East politics.

Last but far from least, during a radio interview on Friday, Sarah Palin added to the fun by making some entirely bizarre comments about the criticism she has received during the campaign.

As Glenn Greenwald notes, this is 'so dumb it hurts':

"If [the media] convince enough voters that that is negative campaigning, for me to call Barack Obama out on his associations," Palin told host Chris Plante, "then I don't know what the future of our country would be in terms of First Amendment rights and our ability to ask questions without fear of attacks by the mainstream media."

Greenwald responds:

The First Amendment is actually not that complicated. It can be read from start to finish in about 10 seconds. It bars the Government from abridging free speech rights. It doesn't have anything to do with whether you're free to say things without being criticized, or whether you can comment on blogs without being edited, or whether people can bar you from their private planes because they don't like what you've said.

If anything, Palin has this exactly backwards, since one thing that the First Amendment does actually guarantee is a free press. Thus, when the press criticizes a political candidate and a Governor such as Palin, that is a classic example of First Amendment rights being exercised, not abridged.

This isn't only about profound ignorance regarding our basic liberties, though it is obviously that. Palin here is also giving voice to the standard right-wing grievance instinct: that it's inherently unfair when they're criticized. And now, apparently, it's even unconstitutional.

[...]

Is it even possible to imagine more breathtaking ignorance from someone holding high office and running for even higher office?

I'd have to admit that it is indeed difficult to imagine anything more ignorant.

But stay tuned, there are still a couple of days to go.

I'm sure the Republicans will come up with something.

Sarah Palin is an ignorant fool. I kid you not.

On any given day, the odds Sarah Palin will say something outrageously stupid approach those that the sun will rise in the east.

So I have to admit that I wasn't exactly surprised to see her make the following comments about scientific research:

"Where does a lot of that earmark money end up anyway? […] You’ve heard about some of these pet projects they really don’t make a whole lot of sense and sometimes these dollars go to projects that have little or nothing to do with the public good. Things like fruit fly research in Paris, France. I kid you not."

Just parenthetically, keep in mind that this was her first major policy address of the campaign, so you think that she might have thought a bit about what she was going to say. (Which is more unsettling: that she did or that she didn't?)

And spare some space in your mind for the fact that this speech was about a topic area she has proclaimed to be one that she is knowledgeable about and has a personal investment in: the treatment of 'special needs' children.

First off, I'm not sure how to understand the jibe about Paris. Is Palin simply unaware that scientific research is often done across international boundaries? Or is this just anti-European bias (not all that uncommon on the right, after all)?

Is she suggesting that the French are inept at science?

Or -- given her lack of personal experience of the wider world -- does she just happen to hold a rather stereotyped notion of what life in France is like:



All those frilly knickers, admittedly, might just get in the way in the lab.

Might she feel better about such research if we re-named fruit flies, say, 'freedom flies'?

Anyway, I'm not a scientist, nor does my work involve Drosophila. Indeed, my only experiences with the little bastards have generally been negative. Rather like Dale's.

However, reactions from people who do know a thing or two about scientific research have not been kind.

Take it away PZ:

This idiot woman, this blind, shortsighted ignoramus, this pretentious clod, mocks basic research and the international research community. You damn well better believe that there is research going on in animal models — what does she expect, that scientists should mutagenize human mothers and chop up baby brains for this work? — and countries like France and Germany and England and Canada and China and India and others are all respected participants in these efforts.

Via Think Progress, a report last year highlighted just one of the practical results of fruit fly research:

Now scientists at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine have shown that a protein called neurexin is required for these nerve cell connections to form and function correctly.

The discovery, made in Drosophila fruit flies may lead to advances in understanding autism spectrum disorders, as recently, human neurexins have been identified as a genetic risk factor for autism.

jforman at Daily Kos gives some examples of the usefulness of such basic research, and he then observes:

Why do we use model organisms to study human biology? Well, it's kind of hard to tinker with live humans. Ethics and what not.

And why is it even possible to study human biology using model organisms? That answer is simple - evolution. Yeast, worms, fruit flies, slime molds, corn, humans - we all have the same common ancestor. Our basic components are the same. It's shocking to think about, but it's true. Our basic components are the same as those in single-celled yeast at the molecular level. That's why studying the yeast cell cycle means studying the human cell cycle. There are differences, of course. But they're not nearly as big as you would think.

I'm not really all that shocked that Sarah Palin didn't know this. She doesn't even believe in evolution, after all. But that she has advisers and speechwriters who don't really, really scares me.

It is, of course, only really 'scary' should McCain-Palin win. Otherwise, it's merely shameful. But, then, it's mainly a problem for the good people of Alaska.

And they elected her, so, as momma used to say, that's their fucking problem.

This is hardly a one-off: McCain also expressed his disdain for science education by dismissively referring to an 'overhead projector' that Barack Obama had sought funding for: it turns out this was a major item of long-overdue machinery that is the centrepiece of science education at the oldest planetarium in the western hemisphere. (Which I feel quite strongly about, seeing as some of my fondest childhood memories involve that place. To quote Jon Stewart: Fuck all y'all.)

Given that her popularity is melting faster than the ice on Alaska's North Slope and that even the McCain campaign itself might even have grown tired of her, might we be able to hope that she will totter off back up north on her Naughty Monkeys and let the grown-ups get on with the serious business of governing?

Given that there is a section of the right-wing 'base' that continues to adore her not despite but rather seemingly because of her ludicrous viewpoints, I suspect that things will turn out rather differently.

Tina Fey has a long career before her, methinks.

The Shakespearean cadences of Sarah Palin

Sorry for the brief silence.

We were in Tübingen for a couple of days, where The Wife was attending an English literature conference. I wandered around town, drank too much coffee, and did manage to get a fair amount of reading done for one of the various projects I'm working on.

It was a brief visit, but Tübingen is a lovely city: I had intended a charming and amusing photo essay based on the images I managed to shoot with the camera in my phone, but they didn't turn out as well as I expected, so you'll have to miss out on that.

Although I suppose this one, taken at a store specialising in colourful hosiery, is relevant:

Which means something like: 'Choose colour: the USA is choosing it too.' (This plays on the fact that the verb 'wählen' can mean not only 'choose' but also 'elect' or 'vote'.)

In any case, my absentee ballot just arrived, and this has not only made me happy but also sent me scurrying off to catch up on some of the election news I missed while we were no longer able to mainline our broadband connection as and when we desired.

The most...um...entertaining?...comments I've found so far are probably those from literature professor (and apparent Obama voter) Camille Paglia about vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin.

Paglia seems to have dropped off the public intellectual radar recently, at least compared to all the attention she got back in the 90s, and but for a post at LG&M highlighting her, uh, incisive wit, I wouldn't have known she writes a regular column for Salon.

I'm glad to see, though, that she can still pile up words like she used to! Indeed, her tendency to rambling incoherence and posing solipsism doesn't seem to have suffered one bit over the years.

Take it away, Camille!

When I watch Sarah Palin, I don't think sex -- I think Amazon warrior!

(You know, I have to admit that I don't 'think sex' either when I watch Palin... Oh, sorry for the interruption, you were pontificating...)

I admire her competitive spirit and her exuberant vitality, which borders on the supernormal. The question that keeps popping up for me is whether Palin, who was born in Idaho, could possibly be part Native American (as we know her husband is), which sometimes seems suggested by her strong facial contours. I have felt that same extraordinary energy and hyper-alertness billowing out from other women with Native American ancestry -- including two overpowering celebrity icons with whom I have worked.

I find the subtle mixture of non-sequitur and narcissism in the following to be especially tasty:

People who can't see how smart Palin is are trapped in their own narrow parochialism -- the tedious, hackneyed forms of their upper-middle-class syntax and vocabulary.

As someone whose first seven years were spent among Italian-American immigrants (I never met an elderly person who spoke English until we moved from Endicott to rural Oxford, New York, when I was in first grade), I am very used to understanding meaning through what might seem to others to be outlandish or fractured variations on standard English. Furthermore, I have spent virtually my entire teaching career (nearly four decades) in arts colleges, where the expressiveness of highly talented students in dance, music and the visual arts takes a hundred different forms. Finally, as a lover of poetry (my last book was about that), I savor every kind of experimentation with standard English -- beginning with Shakespeare, who was the greatest improviser of them all at a time when there were no grammar rules.

Yes, keep that in mind the next time you hear Palin speak off the cuff: note her flair for...Shakespearean linguistic improvisation.

Forsooth.

There's more of that sort of thing if you can stand it (including something about feminism's need to 'circle back and reappropriate the ancient persona of the mother'...here, Paglia finds herself making common cause with Obscene Desserts favourite Luce Irigaray) and if, perhaps, you take a particular joy in laughing at literature scholars.

'The value of Ivy League degrees, like sub-prime mortgages, has certainly been plummeting', Paglia (Yale, '72) observes.

And, doggone it, she certainly helps us all to understand why!

(Via LG&M and The G Spot, who -- like yours truly -- also seem to be trapped in narrow parochialism and the tedious, hackneyed forms of their upper-middle-class syntax and vocabulary.)

Would you eat this mushroom?

Er - people? Ahm - can I, maybe, briefly take your minds off the whole "Palin/Palin offspring (or not?)/Palin soon to be son-in-law is a foul-mouthed redneck" brouhaha and tell you about what else happened in the world? Like: really important things? Such as the accidental mushroom poisoning of famous Horse Whisperer author Nicholas Evans, who is is currently in hospital in Scotland after ingesting several specimens of potentially fatal Fool's Webcap.

Fool's Webcap - sounds nice, doesn't it? Sounds like a seventies' band with a habit of getting high on Fool's Webcap.

Looks really vicious:


Cortinarius rubellus. Now there's a good name for a kid. "Cortinarius - cum 'ere or ah'll smack yer!"

In German, this dangerous fungus is called Spitzgebuckelter Raukopf. Which would make a somewhat less attractive name for your offspring. Or a band, for that matter.

But maybe Sarah Palin might consider to use it for her redneck sprog ... oooh, will you shut up?

Why on earth anybody in their right mind would wish to eat those, I don't know. They have "kill, kill" written all over them. And while I do feel sorry for Mr Evans and wish him well, I'm afraid I also have to say that he is not a very clever man.