The End of Nothing.
Wednesday, September 27, 2006
Stage Management - American Style
The criticism of my petition for fringe reform is buggin' me a little. A lot of people are surprising me with their ceremonious offer of backpedalling. "Well, I don't agree with every single point, so I can't sign it" [erm, there's a comments feature] "Some of your suggestions are so unrealistic" [erm, the day after the story ran in the press some millionaire announced plans on sending a cruise ship to Leith Harbor to house artists next year]. And then two self-assigned morons of edfringe.com proceeded to start a ridiculous diatribe on implementing business plans...What is it? Stage management. We have it at every level - no real debate in politics, or on the smaller stages of life.
The deal: "mess with the clique and we attack the messenger, regardless of the message..." cue George Bush.
Funny how a Member of Scottish Parliament is supposed to have put fringe reform on the floor for debate.
How do you get criminals like George Bush in the driver seat? Become ambivalent in everyday life.
Ah Dear Mr. Blair...you said it better the first time:
"This is particularly the attitude of intelligent, cultivated people; one can read the substance of it in a hundred essays. Very few cultivated people have less than (say) [20,000UK 40,000US income per year], and naturally they side with the rich, because they imagine that any liberty conceded to the poor is a threat to their own liberty. Foreseeing some dismal Marxian Utopia as the alternative, the educated man prefers to keep things as they are. Possibly he does not like his fellow-rich very much, but he supposes that even the vulgarest of them are less inimical to his pleasures, more his kind of people, than the poor, and that he had better stand by them. It is this fear of a supposedly dangerous mob that makes nearly all intelligent people conservative in their opinions."
--George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London
Dear Mr. Clinton: Please lose your cool more often. It was refreshing.
The deal: "mess with the clique and we attack the messenger, regardless of the message..." cue George Bush.
Funny how a Member of Scottish Parliament is supposed to have put fringe reform on the floor for debate.
How do you get criminals like George Bush in the driver seat? Become ambivalent in everyday life.
Ah Dear Mr. Blair...you said it better the first time:
"This is particularly the attitude of intelligent, cultivated people; one can read the substance of it in a hundred essays. Very few cultivated people have less than (say) [20,000UK 40,000US income per year], and naturally they side with the rich, because they imagine that any liberty conceded to the poor is a threat to their own liberty. Foreseeing some dismal Marxian Utopia as the alternative, the educated man prefers to keep things as they are. Possibly he does not like his fellow-rich very much, but he supposes that even the vulgarest of them are less inimical to his pleasures, more his kind of people, than the poor, and that he had better stand by them. It is this fear of a supposedly dangerous mob that makes nearly all intelligent people conservative in their opinions."
--George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London
Dear Mr. Clinton: Please lose your cool more often. It was refreshing.
:: posted by Martin B, 9/27/2006 04:32:00 PM
