Archive | September, 2008

Something About Mary

Eye of the Beholder The following began life as a comment on Charles’s blog, but I thought it was worth reproducing here:

That reminds me – I’ve been reading Novalyne Price Ellis’s memoir One Who Walked Alone, and just came across the following incident (p. 183) from her days as a high school speech coach:

I bawled out one of Mary’s judges because she caused Mary to get third. The dumb woman! I told her Mary should have had first place because she was by far the best in the senior girls finals! The woman opened her mouth and said, “Well, I guess you can blame me for that. The other two judges wanted to give her first place, and I talked them out of it.”

I controlled an impulse to slap her, for she was bigger than I was. With icicles hanging on every syllable, I asked her why she’d done it.

“Your girl was too perfect, and that’s what I objected to,” she said haughtily, moving her big black purse on her fat stomach. “I want to know that they’re just high school students saying a memorized oration that somebody else wrote. Your girl sounded as if the words were her very own! I want them to make mistakes and be just exactly what they are – high school students. I think, young lady, you trained your girl too well. You wouldn’t let her make mistakes ….”

(The Randians used to have a “Horror File” for stuff like this.)


Death Wish

[cross-posted at Liberty & Power]

Death Wish So Barr disses Paul, and Paul responds by endorsing Baldwin. (Conical hat tip to Jesse Walker.)

On the one hand, this is more evidence of the strategically suicidal nature of the Barr campaign. (Which of course is fine by me: “It falls, it decays; who would preserve it? But I – I even want to push it!”) Surely Ron Paul’s support, or at least non-opposition, would have been an asset to Barr (he’s aware that Ron Paul has a bit of a following, yes?), and he could easily have avoided pissing off Paul and the Paulistas the way he did.

But on the other hand, Paul’s support for someone who says stuff like this doesn’t exactly do much to allay my concerns about Paul.


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