Comments on: Hatin’ on Palin

By: Susan Lee

Susan Lee — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 16:43:54 +0000

…and after you’ve read Steel Bonnets, and maybe Albion’s Seed, read Tom Sowell’s “Black Rednecks and White Liberals” for an interesting perspective….

;-)))

Susan Lee

By: david foster

david foster — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 04:04:22 +0000

Fellow Fraser Fans: he also wrote “Quartered Safe Out Here,” a memoir of his own service in the WWII British campaign in Burma.

It’s interesting to read this book in combination with “Defeat into Victory,” by William Slim, who was the top commander in Burma…the same campaign viewed from the bottom and the top. (Fraser had a high opinion of Slim)

By: Sgt. Mom

Sgt. Mom — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 03:46:59 +0000

Oh, JVD_l – I am so with you – how DARE G-M Fraser die before he explain, in fiction and at entertaining length, how Flashman fought on both sides, in our very own dear Civil War!
I so wanted him to maybe have an encounter with Elizabeth Van Lew, who was a spy for the Union in Richmond … a maiden lady of certain years,who pretended to be mad, but in the meantime spied very effectively. The drama that he could have made out of that… really, if his estate wants a ghost-writer, I think I could do a damned good job of it, with that turn of plot!

By: david foster

david foster — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 03:38:41 +0000

JVD…I agree that status panic is very much a factor: indeed, this is a point where the Cardigan analogy partly breaks down, since while Fraser portrays him as a snob, he also makes clear that Cardigan is totally secur about his own status:”..the spoiled child of fortune who knows with unshakeable certainty that he is right and that the world is exactly ordered for his satisfaction and pleasure.”

Ironically, a lot of the parents who are in such panic about their kids’ futures are actually doing serious harm to those futures…too often, their focus is so strongly on first, credentials, and secondarily, “skills,” that they ignore the importance of developing meta-skills, or what used to be called “character.”

By: JVDeLong

JVDeLong — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 03:02:48 +0000

I too am a great Fraser fan — I cannot forgive him for being so discourteous as to die before writing his Civil War book.
Those interested in the Border should also read his The Candlemass Road, a fine novelette that covers the ground of Steel Bonnets.

As for Palin, I agree that much of the reaction is snobbery, but I think it is mixed with status panic. Without massive government intervention in the economy to provide jobs and position, many children of the upper middle class are going to slide down the social scale.

I also argued recently that Palin was actually more qualified to be Pres than almost anyone else who has been named to the national ticket over the past decade, and this too makes her an intolerable threat. How could someone plucked from the wilds of Alaska be better qualified than the best our political class has to offer?

See “Sarah Palin & the Dysfunctional Political Class,”
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/sarah-palin-and-the-dysfunctional-political-class.

By: david foster

david foster — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:54:21 +0000

I think there have traditionally been multiple status hierarchies in American society. (When Peter Drucker first came to the U.S. from Austria, he observed that every group–business, labor, academia, etc–felt itself under-appreciated by the larger society…and he thought this was wonderful, because it meant that no one group was completely in the driver’s seat)

What is going on now is basically an attempt to collapse all the multiple status ladders into a single ladder, with access and position tightly controlled. I don’t think there’s any conspiracy to do this, but it’s the underlying principle of a lot of things that are being pushed.

By: Sgt. Mom

Sgt. Mom — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:32:40 +0000

I will so have to get a copy of “Steel Bonnets” . . . because that is where so many Americans came from – from the hard-fought borderlands. One of my other essential references is Grady Mcwhiney’s “Cracker Culture”. http://www.amazon.com/Cracker-Culture-Celtic-Ways-South/dp/0817304584 I used that so much in creating some of the characters that I write about on the old frontier, like the Browns, in the Adelsverein Trilogy.
I don’t think you can truly begin to understand flyover-state America until you grasp things like Cracker Culture, and that wonderful essay by Walter Russell Meade outlining the principles of Jacksonian thought.
Seriously – I didn’t really begin to understand my own political leanings, until I read W.R. Meade’s essay.

By: Dan from Madison

Dan from Madison — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:07:03 +0000

I will just go ahead and say it. I love Sarah Palin. I may not vote for her if she runs for president in the Republican primary, but I love her. She is great looking, outdoorsy, she is in shape, and most importantly, she is driving the left absolutely insane. So there must be something good (great?) about her.

As an aside, I even love the way she talks. Her accent certainly sounds upper midwestern, very nasal in tone, even though she grew up in Alaska. She speaks with words that a simpleton like me can understand – and I love that too.

By: Matt

Matt — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 23:10:00 +0000

@ Marty:

“Whenever I have doubts about Palin, something soon reminds me of who hates her, why, and how they express it, and I am back on her side. Anyone who those people hate and fear so much must be OK.”

My thoughts exactly.

By: Jim Bennett

Jim Bennett — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 20:45:51 +0000

Fraser also wrote a great nonfiction book on the ancestors of the Scots-Irish: (http://www.amazon.com/Steel-Bonnets-Anglo-Scottish-Border-Reivers/dp/0002727463). It has a wonderful bit in the intro about seeing Richard Nixon, Lyndon Johnson, and Billy Graham together on TV on some occasion, and noting that all three had family names that had been prominent on the Border, and all had very typical Border faces.

By: Marty

Marty — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 19:55:01 +0000

Similar to the way the same types (many, the same people) trshed Reagan, but with Palin they also let their misogynism have free reign.

Whenever I have doubts about Palin, something soon reminds me of who hates her, why, and how they express it, and I am back on her side. Anyone who those people hate and fear so much must be OK.

By: Michael Kennedy

Michael Kennedy — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 19:45:24 +0000

The Palin book on Amazon seems to be the subject of a campaign to trash it in reviews. I pre-ordered it and read it yesterday. Today I see reviews posted two days ago, all negative and many with hundreds of “helpful” votes which moves the review to the top position. Thus, someone going to the site sees all one star reviews with hundreds of “helpful” votes. This is more sophisticated that previous fake reviews of books by controversial right leaning authors. Now they are posting longer reviews with information that seems to show they read it yet some show things that are not in the book. I hope Amazon catches on that they are being played.

The book started slowly with florid prose that I thought would make it heavy going but, after about 40 pages, it picked up and is a good read. Her descriptions of local and state government, about which I know something, are very good. I assume the rest is also pretty accurate. After all, AP assigned 11 reporters to “fact check” it and they came up dry.

She really has had an amazing life.

By: renminbi

renminbi — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 18:59:33 +0000

Maybe,cacastocracy is better.They spent time in the classroom,but did they really learn anything useful?

By: Subotai Bahadur

Subotai Bahadur — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 17:27:23 +0000

I note that the Palin hatred is bipartisan, and that the elites and wanna-be elites of both political parties are close enough in their world-view that they rally together to keep the common folk in their place.

They consider themselves a natural aristocracy. More and more of those who suffer their rule consider them to be either a kleptocracy, or a kakistocracy. This does not bode well for a quiet civic future, as the top of the pyramid is weighing awfully heavy on the middle.

Subotai Bahadur

By: renminbi

renminbi — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 17:09:21 +0000

I think similar was the venom directed at Margaret Thatcher. When someone is hated to that degree, it is usually for a very bad reason-like enabling people who don’t talk right to become millionaires. They’re philistines and have more than cultured people like us.Eewww.
And she’s a grocer’s daughter!What is the world coming to?

By: Sgt. Mom

Sgt. Mom — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 16:20:08 +0000

“Not Our Kind, Darling.”

By: david foster

david foster — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 15:16:47 +0000

NOKD?

By: Sgt. Mom

Sgt. Mom — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 15:03:53 +0000

A Flashman fan – I KNEW there was a reason I liked you all! George Macdonald Fraser wrote riotiously amusing picaresque adventure – but it was all historically accurate, too!
Bravo!
And yes, the current social and media elite do give off that same ‘look down the nose, NOKD’ air when they consider Sarah Palin as Fraser’s Lord Cardigan, don’t they?