re: b&b analysis:pst. a bit of juicy rw gossip pow
Chuck,
I have been rebuked by the sweetest Lady on HC for not posting my reply to you in the humour pages. The reason I didn't do that is because you may not have found my response to you and assumed that beside my other failings I was also discourteous.
I did not wish to respond to your critique of Sheridan's article because I think you did not understand what Sheridan was saying and failed to grasp the powerful irony he was using. This was really a semi-satirical piece meant, as Domain rightly twigged, to get Lefties hopping mad and you can't deny it worked in your case.
Just to clear one thing up when I responded to your Jibe about intellectual superiority, by saying that you seem to take my opinions more seriously than I did I had in mind this Sheridan article and the worth of my implicitly asked opinion of it.
However I mean it also in a more general but relative sense. It is my view that zealots and fanatics are just that because they take their own opinions and themselves far too seriously. I do not take my views and opinions as seriously as that and don't mind if my opinions are challenged.
Now to the article. DESPISING AMERICA
Although Howard, Crean and Iraq are mentioned the title should have given you a clue that he was going to discuss anti-Americanism . You seem to get lost from there on in.
In para 4 Sheridan tells who he is after. "the chattering classes"..
..."But the politics are tricky partly because of the hysterical anti-Americanism afflicting our chattering classes".
Let's list the groups he is directing the charge of anti-Americanism at.
para 5. commentators. para 7. journalists. para 8. The NY Times,The Washington Post, Local news media who publish the above. para 9. France and Germany. para 10. Arab nations (including anti-semitism). para 12. Some Western baby boomers-a metaphor. para 13. Chattering classes. para 14. Chattering classes ,Aust Church bureacraies. para 16. .."the Phillip Adam's mind"..
Chuck you started prattling on about Australians in general when the focus of Sheridan's article was the select groups shown above. There was no straw man here . They are all alive and well and and some of them are also on HC.
You've completely missed the point with "some baby boomers". He uses that as a metaphor to suggest rebellion against the Americans. This may not have been his strongest satirical thrust but he indentifies one strand of anti-Americanism with which most of us are familiar.
(Your last paragraph seems to indicate that the Left is in control of the country. You must be suffering from delusions of grandeur. I'm pretty sure JH has got the tiller firmly in hand. The average joe blow in the street wouldn't have a bar of the anti- Americanism that Sheridan is talking about and you blokes practice on this forum).
(The separation of church and state has never meant that a President should not practice his religion. What is does mean is that such an entity as a state church should not exist nor should the church interfere in the institutions of the state).
As far as the article goes it was incisive and very much captured the whole spectrum of present day anti-Americanism.
