Every year I fantasize about going on the stupid National Review cruise (incognito, of course). This year, it must have been extra delicious. It certainly sounds like it was a blast. I wonder if I would come to feel sympathy for the cruisers or if my anger would just gradually rise to the point that I wanted to torpedo the ship.
As a white Protestant man with three Mayflower ancestors who grew up in an elite Ivy League town as the son of an advertising agency executive, I could have considered this country as somehow belonging more to me than to everyone else. I have known plenty of elitist bastards of the type that people the National Review’s stupid cruise. I do not like them, even if most of them are very polite and well-meaning.
There is nothing more depressing than a 60-something Old Money WASP who watches Fox News and actually believes what they’re seeing. It’s hard to swallow condescension when it comes from someone who is both infinitely more rich and more stupid than you are.
These folks can’t function in a world where a black man runs the country instead of serving them drinks. And they are so ruined over it that they can’t even register the gargantuan improvement in how the country is being run now that a black man is in charge when compared to the Blue-Blooded WASP who preceded him.
Reality isn’t supposed to be this way:
At other times, things got a little too old-fashioned for comfort. I met a man near the railing who was there as a caregiver for a 70-year-old National Review cruiser from Palm Desert, California. He was gay and seemingly liberal and had come on the cruise only to push his boss around in a wheelchair. As he smoked a cigarette, he recounted a conversation the two had about the ship’s largely Indonesian and Filipino staff.
BOSS: You notice none of the workers are white.
CAREGIVER: Except the managers upstairs.
BOSS: Well, that’s the way it should be.
Or, as Jonah Goldberg explains, somewhat more diplomatically:
“This is a more downbeat bunch this year,” he said. “We lost in 2008, but it was almost boisterous and fun. This, a little less so. People were dyspeptic.
“Their conception of what the country is about, they really were sure the country would reject Barack Obama,” he continued. “I do think it hits them hard. The fear I have, why this election stung, I think, Obama has successfully de-ratified some of the Reagan revolution in a way that Clinton never could and didn’t even try to. That’s what freaks people out, that feeling in their gut, either Obama has changed the country, or the country has sufficiently changed that they don’t have a problem with Obama. That’s what eats at people.”
Yeah, the guy saved the economy and the stock market doubled, but he’s black and that eats at these people. Better to lose half your fortune than to double it, cuz he’s black.
I know how to get along with these folks. You talk about sports and the weather. The worst part about them is that their evil is so banal.
Maybe someone will pay me to cruise with them next year.
“Maybe someone will pay me to cruise with them next year.”
Nah ~ better to remain home with CabinGirl & the CBs. Save yourself a lot of gut-churning vitriol.
They’d have to pay me a lot. Not just for the time, but for the mental anguish, and the years of therapy I’d probably need afterwards.
Either that, or the lost income and legal fees while I fought the manslaughter charges. No jury would convict, but it’d still be a hassle.
No, wait for Punditpalooza to make it to your area.
I keep meaning to ask why people even use the term WASP. Do Anglo-Saxon Protestants come in some other color than White?
Well, they do turn red when enraged or exposed to excessive sunlight.
The internets. They are yours today, sir.
It’s meant as a hierarchy:
1. WHITE – excludes all non-whites
1.1 ANGLO-SAXON – excludes all other Europeans and Middle Easterners classified as white by Ethnologists but not by WASP’s.
1.1.1 PROTESTANT – excludes Catholics and non-Christians
Precisely. It expresses a sort of building action.
It’s like, how much more white could this be? and the answer is none. None more white.
If the W were dropped, the acronym remaining would be ASP, and an ASP is “a small southern European viper (Vipera aspis) with an upturned snout.”
These people have had money for so long and are so accustomed to having keepers I lol at the last quote, “So now what do we do with our money?” It wasn’t clear whether she was talking to Ralph Reed’s iguana friend.
They do know that William F Buckley wasn’t a WASP don’t they?
For all intents and purposes he was.
I didn’t. What part of the above hierarchy did he fail?
http://www.boomantribune.com/comments/2012/12/24/145847/43/12#12
Irish Catholic and second generation Texan. But he was white.
You should look into the Progressive Voices cruise. It is run by a travel agency in Atlanta called The Cruise Authority. I took one years ago and attended seminars that included Rachel Maddow, Ron Reagan, Hal Sparks, Liz Winstead, and RFK Jr. It’s usually on Holland America – the most environmentally responsible cruise line I’ve seen, and of course with a very pleasant mostly Filipino and Indonesian crew.
Back then, it was a fundraiser for Air America radio, and they had to cancel their Conservative cruise for insufficient sales. We went to Baja California, and I kept saying “what better vacation for an old lady than being kissed by Robert Kennedy Jr. and a dolphin.”
We had a good time together and visited some lovely places. It is a pleasure to be surrounded by kindred spirits – I doubt that anybody begrudged anybody a thing. Very nice people at the Cruise Authority – maybe they’d give you a gig next year. Forget about that National Review thing, you already spend too much time with those people.
I think The Nation hosts one every year. I remember getting an email about it a few months ago.
Personal b@#$% when you talk about the stock market
One stop being enthralled by it. It is part of the Republican lite process that everyone is so enamoured about. When you change underlying assumptions about the economy the stock market resets to confront those facts. Example look at the price of RJR nabisco over time.
Two the stock market ddi not double unless you entered the stockmarket in Mar of 2009. If you had been in the stockmarket since 2004 you are a loser. You are a loser because of math
yr 1 +10% return on $1 yields $0.1 end of yr bal $1.1
yr 2 +10% return on $1.1 yields $0.11 end of yr bal $1.21
yr 3 -10% return on $1.21 yields -$0.121 end of yr bal $1.06
yr 4 +20% return on $1.06 yields $0.212 end of yr bal $1.272
As you can see you do not always benefit from a rising market. worse depending on your age you do not necessarily have the time to earn enough to become even.
The kind of statement is what the Taliban does all the time. They are taking advantage of innumeracy. Don’t you do it.
You’re a real loser if you look from 2000 where the DOW peaked in Real terms.
Better example, Russian stock market. I wanted to bail when it was down 20%. Adviser kept saying “don’t give up!”. Finally bailed at 50%. Bottom was at 80%. Went up 50% from there. Or did it? 150% of 20% is only 30%. Should have bailed at 20%. It’s my hard and fast rule now. Examine carefully at 10% looking at the 50 day EMA, bail at 20% no matter how good it looks or anyone says.
In my opinion, it isn’t just racism that’s the core of Republican/conservative identity, it’s the hierarchy itself and where one fits into it. That also explains why fear and its close cousins, anger & jealousy seem to be the dominant emotions of so many “tea baggers”. The trouble with hierarchies is you can slip down the ladder or those below might not stay in their “place”. Either way one loses one’s identity. Many Republicans seem to be exhibiting Elizabeth Kubler Ross’s Five Stages of Grieving – Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and finally Acceptance that the world, person, lifestyle you have known is gone.
I was in college when Betty Friedan’s book, The Feminine Mystique was published in 1963 which many credit for launching the second wave of the feminist movement. A year later, in 1964 Barbara Streisand made her debut playing Fanny in the hit musical “Funny Girl” and singing “People”.
“Nick” sings a song to “Fanny” titled, “You are Woman” that starts with:
“You are woman, I am man,
You are smaller, so I can be taller than,
You are softer to the touch,
It’s a feeling I like feeling very much.”
I remember at the time thinking what kind of identity is “taller than”. Why cannot one simply intrinsically see oneself as “tall” & strong without feeling a need to look around for some “smaller”, “softer” people.