In Agreement with Scary People

[browngirl]

It's always terrifying when scary people say things that one agrees with, such as Ann Coulter saying that Harriet Miers is "so unqualified for a spot on the Supreme Court that Bush may as well have appointed his chauffeur as the next head of NASA. " or Orson Scott Card praising Serenity thoroughly, intelligently and for the right reasons.

Comments

[petronelle.livejournal.com]

I found Orson Scott Card perturbing enough, but Ms. Coulter criticizing Bush --

The end is nigh! Everybody get laid, quick.

[bikergeek.livejournal.com]

An idea is not responsible for the people who believe in it.

[sdelmonte]

I'm beginning to wonder if maybe Miers isn't so bad, given the opposition that the right are showing towards her. Which is to say, their ideal candidate is far more scary than someone who's merely unqualified. (Not that I want Miers, of course. But I worry that this is all a feint, that she will be withdrawn and repalced with someone who has a great resume and untenable politics.)

I am glad, though, that OSC still knows a good story when he sees one, and that his brain still works.

[bikergeek.livejournal.com]

OSC is the kind of homophobe who really scares me. He's not reactionary--he's thoughtful and reasoned and unfortunately horribly WRONG. The reactionaries scare me a lot less, because their reaction is strictly hind-brained. But when someone can rationalized discrimination as brilliantly as he does, you get disastrous results, because then it starts to have appeal to the maybe two-thirds of the populace that actually does listen to reasoned arguments and think about them a little bit before pulling a lever in a voting booth.

[cheshyre]

It used to be that whenever I found myself agreeing with Jeff Jacoby, I'd have to pause and check my assumptions.

Still, even a stopped clock is right twice a day. Just think of it as them agreeing with you, rather than you agreeing with them, and it becomes much more palatable.

[arib.livejournal.com]

It used to be that whenever I found myself agreeing with Jeff Jacoby, I'd have to pause and check my assumptions.

Whenever I find myself disagreeing with Jeff Jacoby, I walk up to him in shul, shake his hand and say "Good Shabbos, Jeff. By the way, WTF?!" :-)

(He's a friend of my dad's, and helped me earn the journalism merit badge when I was in the boy scouts.)

[cheshyre]

Whenever I find myself disagreeing with Jeff Jacoby, I walk up to him in shul, shake his hand and say "Good Shabbos, Jeff. By the way, WTF?!" :-)

Didn't he get tired of hearing that every time he wrote a column? :D

[Honestly, aside from his columns on Israel and his open letters to his son, I regularly found factual or logical errors in his writings. A friend who worked at GE Aircraft engines once posted one of his columns on fuel efficiency (don't remember whether this was about hybrids or what) and engineers just started circling all the misteaks.

May be a nice guy personally, but I can't help wondering why he's at the Globe.

[arib.livejournal.com]

Because he got tired of working at the Herald, and the Globe wants to pretend that they're balanced by having a lone dissenting voice.

[ckd]

I have similar feelings about Jacoby, which helped me appreciate Sunday's letter to the editor; said letter basically pointed out that following Jacoby's "logic" that antigay measures voted in by initiative "are okay because they're the will of the people" leaves no argument against antisemitic measures voted in by initiative....

[quietann.livejournal.com]

I saw that letter... it was a very good point to make about and to Mr. Jacoby.

[qwrrty.livejournal.com]

The world is a complex and multifaceted place, an intricate puzzle. It's not at all surprising to agree with frightening people from time to time. Witness Pat Buchanan agreeing in the 2000 election that the spike of votes for him in Palm Beach should rightly have gone to Al Gore.

In this case the motives aren't even hard to uncover. Ann Coulter's got her burkha in a twist because Miers hasn't proven herself sufficiently reactionary -- it's got nothing to do with her actual knowledge of Constitutional law or lack thereof.

Orson Scott Card may be a crazy Mormon but few people doubt that he knows what makes a good story.