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Answers & Questions Again

Answers & Questions Again

Last updated on: March 16, 2017 at 11:03 pm by Elizabeth Scalia

Answers & Questions Again 2017-03-16T23:03:10+00:00 Elizabeth Scalia

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I started doing this back in April, and for some reason people like this Q&A format and keep asking for more, and more, so…here’s more.

Q: Anchoress, you wrote a frivolous piece about your soul and coffee; does that mean you’re feeling better?

A: Praise God, yes, I am finally emerging from my exhausted fog and my numbers this morning were markedly better. Thanks for your kind notes and prayers (which always leave me touched and humbled.) If this is the worst thing going on in my life, my life ain’t bad at all, and I know it.

Q: Is that why you changed the end of this piece, which originally had a snarky line about how Jenna Bush was not working for a hedge fund?

A: Oh, you caught that, did you? I took the line out because it was a cheap, easy shot at Chelsea Clinton, who seems like a very nice young woman; I try not to do the “cheap, easy” thing here, and I didn’t like myself writing it. That said, I will say the snark was precipitated by reading several obnoxious press accounts of Jenna Bush’s upcoming wedding and thinking about how – were she the daughter of a Democrat – her choice to teach inner-city school children would accompany every sentence written about her, and every article about her would not include the obligatory revelation that while she was in college, she acted like most college students. I just get damn tired of the needlessly spiteful way the press writes about anyone connected to a president with an R after his name, while anyone connected to a president with a D after his name is a paragon of virtue, intelligence and unselfishness. I say that as someone with an I after her name.

I mean, God-forbid a little balance? Can you imagine, fer instance, the press actually noting which party has members saying things like “I have the votes of hard-working white Americans?” and referring to “white n-words?” How come the press will sneer (and cry about “church-and-state”) when Christians gather to pray for peace (and for our troops) but they don’t have the same conniption when Code Pink takes their charms, spells and boas to the street?

Why no balance, that’s all I’m asking. And I ask it even as I admit, I have an affection of sorts for those amusing Code Pink Performance Artists.

Q: Well, but the Republicans are all privileged people; it’s the party of the rich, so the press would naturally be harder on them, than on the middle-class loving, blue-collar-respecting Democrats, right?

A: Hmmm, that’s a good question. Betsy Newmark wonders which is the party of the rich:

It’s funny. The Democratic politicians like to portray the Republican party as the party for the rich. Yet the rich are going with the Democrats this year. The Democrats don’t seem to think it’s as odd that those wealthy donors are voting against their supposed economic interests as they do when Kansans vote for Republican candidates.

As near as I can tell, the Democrats are heavily supported by the rather wealthy folk who own the coastal enclaves you and I can’t afford, but if you google rich republicans and wealthy democrats you see that the press has a one-way narrative. That is possibly because, hanging out at Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard, Malibu, Southampton or Myrtle Beach, with their kids in the same private schools the children of politicians attend, the folks in the press are simply so out of touch they think they are not wealthy democrats…or something.

This is another reason I momentarily succumbed to a temptation to the ignoble snark referenced above, which I quickly regretted. A lot of people like to say “Jenna Bush should be in the army fighting her father’s war,” but they never say Chelsea should be in Bosnia or Rwanda working with the Peace Corp to restore those areas. They don’t suggest that since Hillary enthusiastically supported and voted for the war and Bill Clinton (in 1998) initiated the policy of Regime Change in Iraq, Chelsea should be doing her part over there. It’s just damned tiresome. Chelsea Clinton is not a bad person for choosing to work in hedge funds, but there is an irony there, that shouldn’t be ignored.

Q: Ironies supporting Bushes or GOPers or Conservatives are always ignored; find one people will listen to.

A: Umm, people are all plugged into their iPods or their echo chambers, so they don’t listen to anyone, and certainly not to me, but another important irony might be that those “gun-free cities” that are supposed to be havens of safety? The police want assault rifles to function within them. Not getting much coverage.

Q: You don’t like the press much, do you?

A: Hush you, I love the free press – it is the hardy spine of liberty:

“…Liberty lives only when the press is free and unencumbered – when it is detached from events instead of entwined in them. That Liberty lives when people refuse to be intimidated into silence or acquiescence, whether in the workplace or within the community.

Journalists were my first heroes. I simply deplore the fact that our free press seems to be no longer free, and that they have not been overtaken…they’ve simply handed their freedom over to their own agendas. For heaven’s sake, this worries me so much, that I even fret about it when I am over-medicated:

I personally think every American should be concerned with her press – the great and remarkable treasure of her free press – which is being subsumed by advocates and partisans who do not seriously question anyone whom they do not hate, and who therefore betray the public trust (and themselves) and leave the whole nation wide open for something which by the prickling of my thumbs something wicked this way comes.

Some days, now, I’d rather read the Onion.

Q: Well, thank God, you’re at least off the Bush/Clinton rant. What WILL you write about in 2009? It does feel, though, like we’re never going to get out from under these two families, doesn’t it?

A: No, they’re never going to go away. Eventually you’ll see Chelsea running against George Prescott Bush. I have officially declared that we should have no more Bushes or Clintons in the White House because it renders the country mad-beyond-saving, but no one will listen because I am not an influential conservative – which makes sense, since I’m a classical liberal, and we have no home. I do think Ed Morrissey should have been on that list, though. :-)

Also, apropos of nothing, except that someone sent me the video clip – I have always admired the class, intelligence and dignified mien of Dem operative Donna Brazile, even though I hardly ever agree with her! She’s a bright, cool customer, and if I were anyone important, I’d want her on my side. Don’t you watch that clip and wish she could just reach through her screen smack that watery smile off of Paul Begala’s face?

Q: Hmm, you don’t like Paul Begala, and you sound like you have a girl-crush on Donna Brazile.

A: Well…Brazile is gorgeous. And I love her hair. But I love her manner, more – I wish I could be that collected. I completely believe that she’s had more beers with those “working class whites” than any of her white counterparts. And I must say, as a little aside, I winced to hear Begala call the GOP “monochromatic” but that is still largely true, and if you notice, he just casually subsumed the Latino vote into the Democrat side, which is probably wrong…but the GOP has not done anything to ingratiate itself with the largest-growing voting bloc in the nation.

Q: But which ones are smarter? Republicans or Democrats?

A: I won’t say Democrats are smart; they do too many oddball things like scrapping trade with our allies in Colombia while helping the thug Chavez. But…having said that, the GOP really is stupid-beyond-saving. Gateway Pundit here spells out an enormously winning tactic for them for ’08, and they are either too stupid, too spineless or too beholden to lobbyists to follow the lead. And count on it, they won’t have the testicular fortitude to call Al Gore on his opportunistic attempt to hijack a human tragedy for his own agenda. Like there were never tornados, typhoons, tsunamis or catastrophic floods before manbearpig made its appearance. Going green may kill people but it sure is profitable, so it is credible, right? Hoo-hah.

Q: Okay, so, who are worse, far-left folks who want to stomp on free speech and silence any opposition to their beliefs, or far-right folks who freak out when a teacher performs a magic trick and have him fired for wizardry?

A: They deserve each other, and our nation can and should do better than either of them. They both embody and re-inforce the worst stereotypes on both sides. But perhaps we need them, if only to shine a light on the fact that zealots always – ultimately – weaken their “own side.”

Q: So, this miserable ranter of a post…this is what you’re like when you’re feeling better?

A: I’m not wholly well, yet. A little grouchy. Sorry. I’ll be better soon. As Queen Victoria said when she was an eleven-year old Princess confronted with her future: “I will be good.” Here, I’ll even end on a generous happy note and tell you that Laura Ingraham has adopted a baby girl! Congrats to Ms. Ingraham.

Q: I thought she called you a termagant, once?

A: Well, that’s what I was told, but I don’t know it, and anyway, she wouldn’t have been the first. I wish her all good things and many blessings on her daughter, Maria Caroline. Lovely name.

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