{"id":1202,"date":"2003-06-06T14:05:56","date_gmt":"2003-06-06T18:05:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/vardibidian\/2003\/06\/06\/1202.html"},"modified":"2003-06-06T14:05:56","modified_gmt":"2003-06-06T18:05:56","slug":"should-i-take-dennis-prager-se","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/2003\/06\/06\/should-i-take-dennis-prager-se\/","title":{"rendered":"Should I take Dennis Prager seriously?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

OK, first of all, Your Humble Blogger really should have better things to do than read bizarre columns by radio talk-show hosts. As it happens, Dennis Prager<\/a> is on the list of right-leaning columns I have Eleana Benador<\/a> send to me so that I can keep up with the Richard Perles and the Frank Gaffneys of the world. I expected them to provide blog-fodder, and to some extent they have, but in addition, it's a frequent reminder that there do in fact exist powerful people who disagree with me, not just on emphasis and implementation issues, but on basic and fundamental aspects of our country. It's good to keep an eye on them.\n

But Dennis Prager appears to be living in some sort of world I don't see or understand (insert El Lay jokes here, if you must). A few days ago, in \"The legal system is now our enemy<\/a>\", he said \"Everything related to law has been corrupted,\" and said that \"a trial lawyer [Senator John Edwards<\/a>] is seeking the Democratic Party's nomination for president ... And if [the thought of him winning] doesn't frighten enough Americans, we will cease being a free country.\" Now when I was 20, I said that if Poppy Bush were elected in 1988, we might not have elections in 1992. Fine, I was 20, and it was in private conversation, and furthermore I deny ever having said it. But Dennis Prager is \"one of America's most respected thinkers,\" according to his website. Are we supposed to seriously believe that if John Edwards is elected, America will be enslaved? By whom? How? Or is he just kidding?\n\n

Of course, a couple of weeks ago, he wrote<\/a> that \"if you want to acquire wisdom or to become a mature adult, the university is usually an impediment.\" Shortly after that he wrote<\/a>, \"The objectification of the female body that is natural to the heterosexual male (as is the objectification of the male body to the homosexual male) is so devoid of emotional or intellectual meaning as to be unfathomable to women.\" And I can't even face pulling the quotes where he shows not only that he thinks entirely in moral black-and-white, but thinks that it is important to think in moral black-and-white, and that any doubt or humility whatsoever is the step off the cliff of righteousness into the abyss of immorality.\n\n

I know he is not the only one who writes like this; I know he is probably not the worst. My question, and I seriously don't know the answer, is who finds this sort of crap persuasive? Don't tell me morons; there aren't that many people in the world who are actually incapable of understanding that this is crap, due to some sort of physical or chemical handicap, and I suspect few of those are capable of reading (or listening to) and being persuaded by this crap. If there are people persuaded by it (and I can't help thinking that in fact he is just a clown, and it's like listening to the Car Talk Boys<\/a>, lots of people do it, but hardly anybody takes their advice), I want to know why. Is the universe they perceive that different from mine, and if so, why is that? Are the basic assumptions I think we share not actually shared? What's going on?\n\n

Redintegro Iraq,
-Vardibidian.\n<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

OK, first of all, Your Humble Blogger really should have better things to do than read bizarre columns by radio talk-show hosts. As it happens, Dennis Prager is on the list of right-leaning columns I have Eleana Benador send to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[201],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1202","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-navel-gazing"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1202","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1202"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1202\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}