Garofalo Spouts Hate Again

Too much poodle guilt

Failed "D" level actress and neuroscience expert Janeane Garofalo is at it again, offering up her opinions in another unfortunate attempt to gain the kind of attention and popularity that she was unable to achieve back in high school. In this article from NewsBusters, Lynn Davidson reports on the petite one's brittle self righteousness in a recent interview with an environmentalist blog, Ecorazzi.

In this interview we are treated to Garofalo's opinion on the manner in which conservatives come into being. She screeches in an hysterical way that one is born defective and the evil politics of free markets and liberty come later. From her point of view, the evil conservative is born, not made. One has to wonder how long it will be until she is calling for camps to help solve "The Conservative Problem."

The reason a person is a conservative republican is because something is wrong with them. Again, that’s science – that’s neuroscience. You cannot be well adjusted, open-minded, pluralistic, enlightened and be a republican. It’s counter-intuitive. And they revel in their anti-intellectualism. They revel in their cruelty.

I don’t know if you heard me talking to Jenny a while ago, but I was saying that first you have to be an a**hole and then comes the conservatism. You gotta be a d*** to cleave onto their ideology...

Ironically, there is a grain of truth in her ranting, although it does not work in her favor. One of my favorite bloggers is a fellow by the name of John Ray, an Australian Psychologist and Psychometrician who has, as his field of expertise, the study of intelligence and the heredity of personality characteristics. It is his opinion that our outlook, intelligence, general philosophy and personality is due in large part to our genetic inheritance. He takes this view because, as he says, that is where the academic literature on the subject points. And he offers several online essays that deal with the subject, in addition to his many blogs on various topics. Of course, John Ray is a conservative, so Miss Condescending may not have bothered to read his work. For the academic papers that John Ray writes about do not paint leftists in a favorable light. And in his own writings, a few of which are linked below, he is quite skeptical of leftist claims of moral superiority.

Here he offers a short essay with footnotes that makes the argument that leftists are mostly likely born that way:

The behaviour genetics work is mainly published in obscure and highly technical academic journals (that even I find a bit challenging to follow in detail) rather than being available online but one early summary by Eaves, Martin, Heath, Schieken, Silberg & Corey that IS available online is particularly fascinating. The authors found that your politics in your youth are mainly the product of the social influences around you (school and college indoctrination, for instance) but as you get older your genetically inherited political tendencies come to the fore.

In this essay he examines the usefulness of the current definitions of liberal vs conservative and looks deeper into the underlying philosophical first principles to see whether, and how much, they may have changed over time.

Whatever Rightists might want, however, wanting to change the existing system is the umbrella under which all "Western" Leftists at all times meet. Even at the long-gone heights of British socialism in pre-Thatcher days, for instance, British Leftists still wanted MORE socialism. That permanent and corrosive dissatisfaction with the world they live in is the main thing that defines people as Leftists. That is the main thing that they have in common. They are extremely fractious and even murderous towards one-another otherwise (e.g. Stalin versus Trotsky). It is in describing his fellow revolutionaries (Kautsky and others) that Lenin himself spoke swingeingly of "the full depth of their stupidity, pedantry, baseness and betrayal of working-class interests" (Lenin, 1952). He could hardly have spoken more contemptuously of the Tsar.

The Rightist, by contrast, generally has no need either for change or its converse. If anything, Rightists favour progress -- both material and social. So most Rightists are conservatives (cautious) not because of their attitude to change per se. On some occasions they may even agree with the particular policy outcomes that the Leftist claims to desire. They resist change, then, mainly when it appears incautious -- and they are cautious (skeptical of the net benefits of particular policies) generally because of their realism about the limitations (selfishness, folly, shortsightedness, aggressiveness etc.) of many of their fellow humans (Ray, 1972, 1974 & 1981). So it is only vis a vis Leftists that the Right can on some occasions and in some eras appear conservative (cautious about proposals for social change).

And in this lengthy essay John Ray looks at the motivations that drive leftists and the leftist philosophy in general.

In absolute numbers, Leftist activists and politicians are very few but their impact is large -- so understanding them is the big challenge. They are mostly motivated by ego needs. The Leftist activist craves attention and praise. He needs to be perceived as wise and righteous -- and he tries to achieve that by pretending to be all heart and condemning the world for its many faults and imperfections. And some Leftist leaders -- intellectuals in particular -- are out-and-out rage-filled haters who want to smash everything in a world that does not fit in with their theories and accord them the prominence and praise that they need and feel is their due.

But anger is a very bad frame of mind in which to make decisions and craft policies so the policies advocated by Leftist leaders are usually simplistic and very poorly thought-out. The Leftist leader is so keen to smash the status quo that detailed thought about the alternatives and their consequences is rare. And the basically good people who are the Leftist voters are angry too, for different reasons, so they don't think things through or pay much attention to detail either, and as a result, they will often be lured into voting for some unscrupulous Leftist politician who promises to fix everything -- but who is sufficiently involved in politics to know deep down that the cure will be worse than the disease. But if offering false hope gets the leader/activist into a position of power and glory, too bad! And the poor old conservative who knows how things work and says that there is no easy fix will be ignored -- and called "heartless".

And last, but not least, I have to mention one of my new favorite blogs, BigHollywood, which is created by the same people who brought you Breibart.com. In this post, Morgan Warstler argues for a Celebrity Windfall Profits Tax in honor of the Alternative Ingenue's white liberal guilt.

But for now, it is categorically, undeniably true, that the A, B, C, and D list is 80% comprised of people who feel deep in their soul that they haven’t really earned all they have.

And deep in their soul, that does something to people. When you look in the mirror and feel you haven’t earned what you have, you feel guilty, more than that, you feel like a poodle. You feel like a kept poodle, coiffed and coddled and carried, without any satisfaction of having truly earned your success.

That’s a problem.

It is a problem when you know there are MANY others who have worked day and night to build a string of dry cleaners, there are many others not born as pretty as you who have trucking franchises, and golf supply warehouses… When you know there are millions of people who really sweat it out to get what they have.

Celebrities, like kids born to wealth, almost HAVE to be liberal. TOO. MUCH. POODLE. GUILT.