Melissa Harris-Perry, an MSNBC talk-show host who also teaches politics at Wake Forest University, is, among other things, enamored of the asinine.
She’s also a racist who doesn’t know it. As such she often lectures others about racism, and so-called social justice, and her latest dithyrambic is one you have to see to believe:
This leads me to ask a very serious question:
Is “dumbfuck” racist as well?
MNSBC host and self-described “Democratic political strategist” Krystal Ball was recently discussing Thomas Piketty’s latest book — the subject of which is income inequality — when she foolishly introduced into her dithyrabmic George Orwell’s famous book Animal Farm.
“Even the august and ostensibly economically literate Wall Street Journal tells [Piketty] to read Animal Farm,” Krystal Ball said. “Animal Farm, hmm. Isn’t that Orwell’s political parable of farm animals where a bunch of pigs hog up all the economic resources, tell the animals they need the food because they’re the makers and then scare up a prospect of a phony boogie man every time their greed is challenged?”
No, it is not.
George Orwell was a soft socialist all his adult life and did not believe in laissez-faire, but that hardly means Animal Farm is an anti-capitalist novel. Even the most liberal reading of Animal Farm could not possibly conclude that it’s anything other than an indictment — an utter indictment — of Soviet Russia and totalitarianism in general, which, incidentally, was what George Orwell himself said:
“Of course I intended it primarily as a satire on the Russian revolution” (source).
For those of you who haven’t read Animal Farm, every significant scene apes an actual event from Soviet history — including the Bolshevik Revolution, Trotsky fleeing the country, and Joseph Stalin’s Obama–like cult of personality.
As CJ Ciaramella recently put it:
“At the end of the book the once-egalitarian farm has devolved into a dictatorship where the animals toil harder, longer, and for less food than they did under the yoke of human masters before the revolution.
“So Animal Farm might be the worst analogy for the problems of late capitalism. A better example might be that our system has produced someone with the critical reading skills of a potato, and then allowed her to rise to the position of a national TV news host, mostly by virtue of her membership in the entrenched political class.”
(Link)
Back to the books, Krystal Ball.
This is hilarious.
Contessa Brewer, who does not have a degree in economics or common sense, beclowned herself horribly when she was grilling Alabama Representative Mo Brooks on the debt issue and tried feebly to discredit his qualifications for by asking:
“Do you have a degree in economics?”
Can you guess the answer? Watch:
Quoting Ed Morrissey
Brooks actually has three degrees: political science, economics, and law. As a lawyer, Brooks would have been experienced enough not to make Brewer’s mistake in a cross-examination, which is to ask a question without first knowing the answer. Not only that, but Brewer was being flat-out rude as well as foolish; MSNBC invited Brooks to appear to get his perspective on the issues. If their hosts respond by belittling them (whether it backfires or not), what does that say about MSNBC, its management, and the kind of invitations they make?
Since Brewer made an issue out of having an economics degree before engaging in economics debates, she must have a doctorate in the subject herself, right? Not exactly. According to her Wikipedia entry, Brewer has a baccalaureate in broadcast journalism (magna cum laude). Apparently they didn’t teach interviewing skills at Syracuse, or logic either, as a requisite for the degree.
That’s the price you pay for partisan politics, I guess.
“I don’t,” said Barack Obama, when asked this morning if he regrets labeling the past three months of economic catastrophe a Recovery Summer.
Bill Clinton’s Labor Secretary Robert Reich does not, however, agree:
Doug Powers speculates that the following photos help explain Barack Obama’s inexplicable label:
(Hat tip HotAirPundit)
