Sister Act
Much applause for Our Lady of Perpetual Shrill.
Update: Barbara O’Brien explains the 5 stages of life; #4 is shrill.
And Glenn Greenwald deconstructs the WaPo intention, including the notable fact that the reporter had never been to a blog before! (Yikes! Do they breed these reporters in test tubes in the janitor’s closet?)
Billmon’s take is equally good, though I think he misses a key point about Maryscott, that many folks will like her because she’s honest about her feelings. Those feelings haven’t corrupted anything. Like the Velveteen Rabbit, love makes her real.
Update #2: Look, one thing that’s been clear to me for years is that logic without emotion, spawns earnest, erudite guys like Adlai Stevenson and John Kerry. They may be right but many have difficulty connecting with them. Maryscott wears her emotions on her sleeve. She connects. She won’t convert the 82% of the GOP who still thinks Bush is swell. She won’t connect to the neo-pundits on the left, who still stick their finger in the air before making a move.
But despite the intentions of WaPo to portray the Left as shrill and suspect, despite those on the left worried that the uninitiated will be horrified to know that ladies sweat and fart, Marty Kaplan sums up the most significant point of all: most Americans can relate to Maryscott because they share her feelings.
WaPo’s intentions may have been dishonorable, but they failed in their mission. Because there’s nothing wrong with feeling: anger, loss, powerlessness, confusion, love, pride, maternal protectiveness, harried, overwhelmed, worried….. these do not take science to ‘get’. We appreciate humans who react like humans.
April 15th, 2006 at 7:33 pm
Wow. Cool! Maryscott has finally made it to the big time. A primary-spot main story in one of the oldest and most respectable media outlets;
Billmon’s Whiskey bar.