9/11 Open Thread

I suppose I should write something profound but I don't have anything to say, honestly.

At Mediaite, a writer complains that the public talking about Jimmy Kimmel's Twerk Prank instead of important stuff like Syria, in an article which itself entirely about Jimmy Kimmel's Twerk Prank and not about Syria.

But last night, Avalon, enjoying her well-earned success (keeping up the gag as friends and ex-boyfriends called her about her embarrassing twerk fail couldn’t have been fun), appeared on Entertainment Tonight. Number of twerking references: 7. Number of Miley Cyrus references: 2. Number of Syria references: 0.

Number of Syria references in an article making the point that we're not talking about Syria: 1, right there, you just saw it.

By the way, why would Entertainment Tonight be discussing Syria? Have they changed format secretly? Is the show's format now "The latest from Hollywood... and Foggy Bottom"?

Eh. Writers gotta write, I guess.

And sneerers gotta sneer. Via Hot Air, Kaus notes that Paul Krugman presents himself as a hardworking, deepthinking wonk... in a shamefully lazy and erroneous column in which the greatest effort went into a simple partisan sneer.

Cornell West isn't sure if 9/11 was an Inside Job, but he sure likes "Raising Questions." He likes to keep an Open Mind, you see.

Meanwhile, Ron Paul, who's Raising Some questions of his own tonight at an organization which Questions the Math on the Holocaust (or... Holoclaim), says 9/11 was nothing but blowback for our imperial adventurism.

Um, no, that's the pretext. Islamofascist psychopathy is fundamentally psychological in nature. It is an ideology of the deranged which uses a Hero Fantasy to give succor and meaning to a Soul in Shame. It's not quite true that they hate our freedoms primarily-- they hate those, but not primarily. They hate, in ascending order, our Wealth, our Success, and our Might.

The weak man always secretly hates the strong man, and the deranged weak man sets about doing something about it. And I don't mean "useful steps towards self-improvement."

Crediting Al Qaeda's stated reasons for attacking us is like crediting the stated reasons of a Stalker who shows up at your door with a knife and says "You shouldn't have gone to my supermarket." Yes, that's the stated reason, the pretext, but the real reason is an unreasoning hate and an obsessive thirst for vengeance for slights both real and mostly imagined.

Imagine if the police told you at this point: "He's quite right, you know. You shouldn't have gone to his supermarket. What were you thinking, provoking him like that?"

You'd call that cop an idiot, wouldn't you?

When a murderous organization is citing The Mighty Snubbings of the 11th Century as part of its case in chief against you, you may safely assume that they simply hate you for irrational reasons quite apart from the ones they're offering. Those reasons are only offered to make their lunacy seem a bit more lucid. And perhaps to hide their real reasons from hatred even from themselves. Their egos could not accept the truth.

Anyone still citing the Shame of Vienna as a justification for murder isn't an example of blowback. It's an example of lunacy. And yes, we need to diagnose lunatics... but we don't permit them to self-diagnose and then take their diagnosis as accurate.

Meanwhile, our State and Federal governments are continuing to perform their duties with all the professionalism and intelligence that you've come to expect.

And now, Mishka, who is apparently the most famous dog on the internet. Her owner makes a lot of videos of her, and then they get 500,000 or 6 million or 12 million views each.

Apparently the owner thinks the dog talks. Which I sort of get, as sometimes dogs do seem to talk.

posted by Ace at 07:37 PM

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