Colin Liddell, Matt Forney, Dennis Dale, Brundlefly, Claire Khaw Livestream (8-5-18)

MP3: https://soundcloud.com/luke-ford-666431593/colin-liddell-matt-forney-dennis-dale-brundlefly-claire-khaw-livestream

Colin’s Twitter. His blog posts. His book. Shortpod. 90s rock review.

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‘Loitering With Intent’ by Muriel Spark

MP3: https://soundcloud.com/luke-ford-666431593/loitering-with-intent-by-muriel-spark-ii

From the New York Times in 1981:

”Words should convey ideas of truth and wonder,” says Fleur (whom we can be forgiven for thinking is Miss Spark’s alter ego); ”I see no reason to keep silent about my enjoyment of the sound of my own voice as I work.” Folly and weakness, guilt and sin, sadism and treachery, should be treated ”with a light and heartless hand. It seems to me a sort of hypocrisy for a writer to pretend to be undergoing tragic experiences when obviously one is sitting in relative comfort with a pen and paper.”

”Loitering with Intent” is Fleur’s memoir, written in the fullness of her days, ”of that small part of my life and all that happened in the middle of the twentieth century, those months of 1949-50.” Like her beloved Benvenuto Cellini, ”comically contradictory in his actions… boastful … about his work,” Fleur, drinking in bizarre events and terrible people, committing all to memory, ”by the grace of God, goes on her way rejoicing.”

When the novel opens, Fleur has no apparent reason for rejoicing: She has no job and no prospects and little money. She rents a dreary bed-sitting room from a swinish landlord and has appropriated unto herself a handsome, self-centered lover, Leslie, who is married to her friend Dottie – ”a Catholic, greatly addicted to the cult of the Virgin Mary about whose favors she fooled herself quite a bit, constantly betraying her quite good mind by simpering about Our Lady.” Fleur too is a Catholic, ”but not that sort at all. … If it was true, as Dottie always said, that I was taking terrible risks with my immortal soul, I would have been incapable of caution on those grounds. I had an art to practice and a life to live, and faith abounding … I’ve never held it right to create more difficulties in matters of religion than already exist.”

Dottie constantly confronts Fleur with the irregularity of their situation – ”tiresome of her. … I love (Leslie) off and on, when he doesn’t interfere with my poetry and so forth. In fact I’ve started a novel which requires a lot of poetic concentration, … So perhaps it will be more off than on with Leslie.”

What gives Fleur reason to rejoice is the working of her own imagination, her natural inclination to ”conceive everything poetically,” her ”need to know the utmost,” and her juicy conviction that she is an artist: ”When people say that nothing happens in their lives, I believe them. But you must understand that everything happens to an artist; time is always redeemed, nothing is lost and wonders never cease.”

While Fleur’s first novel is ”in larva,” she fortuitously gets a job as secretary to the Autobiographical Association, the cranky members of which meet under the roof and the supervision of Baronet Sir Quentin Oliver to compose their memoirs. The immense snobbery of Sir Quentin delights Fleur, who is ”always on the listen-in” for a turn of phrase that she can pick out of the wreckage of the moment. She is also aware of something sinister in Sir Quentin’s character, aware of the possibilities for blackmail inherent in an association of memoirists: Sir Quentin has in his keeping 10 unfinished autobiographical manuscripts, which he proposes to hold for 70 years, ”until all the living people mentioned therein shall be living no longer.”

Fleur suspects that Sir Quentin is up to no good. His motley crew alternates more and more between depression and hysteria. But the strangeness of the situation holds Fleur to it. What novelist could bear to leave the scene of a crime? As Fleur herself says, ”I have never known an artist who at some time in his life has not come into conflict with pure evil. … No artist has lived who has not experienced and then recognized something at first too incredibly evil to seem real, then so undoubtedly real as to be undoubtedly true.”

Although Fleur would not dream of reproducing people and situations photographically and literally, she is a ”magnet” for experiences she needs: ”Extraordinary how … characters and situations, images and phrases that I absolutely need for (my novel) appeared as if from nowhere into my range of perception.” This mysterious process, which Fleur calls ”artistic apprehension,” keeps her chugging along at the Autobiographical Association.

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NYT’S SARAH JEONG ALSO SENT ANTI-COP, ANTI-MEN TWEETS

MP3: https://soundcloud.com/luke-ford-666431593/the-anti-white-bigotry-of-the-new-york-times

From Daily Caller:

Sarah Jeong, the newest editorial board member of The New York Times, is also responsible for extensive anti-cop and anti-men tweets.

The New York Times stood by Jeong on Thursday after the internet surfaced her old racist tweets, however her full Twitter history reveals her ire was not only directed toward white people. (RELATED: NYTimes’ Newest Hire Sent Tons Of Anti-White Racist Tweets)

The NYT claimed that Jeong was “imitating” the behavior of people who harassed her online, but this does not explain why she was tweeting “fuck the police” and encouraging people to “kill all men.”

A search for “cops” and “police” on Jeong’s Twitter reveals an extensive history of anti-cop sentiment and a lack of sympathy for police who are injured on the job.

In one tweet from 2014 she wrote, “let me know when a cop gets killed by a rock or molotov cocktail or a stray shard of glass from a precious precious window.”

“Cops are assholes,” she said in 2015.

“If we’re talking big sweeping bans on shit that kills people, why don’t we ever ever ever ever talk about banning the police?” a tweet from 2016 asserts.

She also tweeted “fuck the police” on several occasions, including one with a gif of anime characters actually physically attacking a police officer.

In addition, Jeong repeatedly tweeted about killing men, and joked that, even if only “bad men” were killed, that would still include all men.

She tweeted in 2014, “kill more men,” and seemed to sadly state at one point, “I’m likely to actually kill zero men in my lifetime.”

White women were not spared from Jeong’s rage — during the 2016 election she eloquently tweeted “fuck white women lol.”

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Oriental Vs American Thinking

From Wikipedia’s entry on Frank Capra:

In January 1952, the U.S. Ambassador to India asked Capra to represent the U.S. film industry at an International Film Festival to be held in India. A State Department friend of Capra asked him and explained why his trip would be important:

“[Ambassador] Bowles thinks the Festival is a Communist shenanigan of some kind, but he doesn’t know what … Bowles has asked for you. “I want a free-wheeling guy to take care of our interest on his own. I want Capra. His name is big here, and I’ve heard he’s quick on his feet in an alley fight.”[42]

After two weeks in India, Capra discovered that Bowles’ fears were warranted, as many film sessions were used by Russian and Chinese representatives to give long political speeches. At a lunch with 15 Indian directors and producers, he stressed that “they must preserve freedom as artists, and that any government control would hinder that freedom. A totalitarian system – and they would become nothing but publicity men for the party in power.” Capra had a difficult time communicating this, however, as he noted in his diary:

“They all think some super-government or super-collection of individuals dictates all American pictures. Free enterprise is mystery to them. Somebody must control, either visible or invisible … Even intellectuals have no great understanding of liberty and freedom … Democracy is only a theory to them. They have no idea of service to others, of service to the poor. The poor are despised, in a sense.”

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When Racism Is Fit to Print

Andrew Sullivan writes:

Is the newest member of the New York Times editorial board, Sarah Jeong, a racist?

From one perspective — that commonly held by people outside the confines of the political left — she obviously is. A series of tweets from 2013 to 2015 reveal a vicious hatred of an entire group of people based only on their skin color. If that sounds harsh, let’s review a few, shall we? “White men are bullshit,” is one. A succinct vent, at least. But notice she’s not in any way attacking specific white men for some particular failing, just all white men for, well, existing. Or this series of ruminations: “have you ever tried to figure out all the things that white people are allowed to do that aren’t cultural appropriation. there’s literally nothing. like skiing, maybe, and also golf. white people aren’t even allowed to have polo. did you know that. like don’t you just feel bad? why can’t we give white people a break. lacrosse isn’t for white people either. it must be so boring to be white.” Or this: “basically i’m just imagining waking up white every morning with a terrible existential dread that i have no culture.” I can’t say I’m offended by this — it’s even mildly amusing, if a little bonkers. (Has she read, say, any Shakespeare or Emily Dickinson?) But it does reveal a worldview in which white people — all of them — are cultural parasites and contemptibly dull.

A little more disturbing is what you might call “eliminationist” rhetoric — language that wishes an entire race could be wiped off the face of the earth: “#cancelwhitepeople.” Or: “White people have stopped breeding. you’ll all go extinct soon. that was my plan all along.” One simple rule I have about describing groups of human beings is that I try not to use a term that equates them with animals. Jeong apparently has no problem doing so. Speaking of animals, here’s another gem: “Dumbass fucking white people marking up the internet with their opinions like dogs pissing on fire hydrants.” Or you could describe an entire race as subhuman: “Are white people genetically disposed to burn faster in the sun, thus logically being only fit to live underground like groveling goblins.” And then there’s this simple expression of the pleasure that comes with hatred: “oh man it’s kind of sick how much joy I get out of being cruel to old white men.” I love that completely meretricious “old” to demean them still further. And that actual feeling: joy at cruelty!

Another indicator that these statements might be racist comes from replacing the word “white” with any other racial group. #cancelblackpeople probably wouldn’t fly at the New York Times, would it? Or imagine someone tweeting that Jews were only “fit to live underground like groveling goblins” or that she enjoyed “being cruel to old Latina women,” and then being welcomed and celebrated by a liberal newsroom. Not exactly in the cards.

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