Posted on 04/20/2013 7:55:55 PM PDT by MNDude
Originality/authenticity is vastly over-rated.
If we were to consider originality a necessary component of greatness, Bill Shakespeare would be frequently mentioned on this thread, and I haven't seen him yet. :)
As is well known, few of Shakespeare's plots were original. What made him great was what he did with these plots, not that he borrowed from a common stock.
Similarly, IMO the most destructive meme to infect music in the last few decades is the idolization of the singer/songwriter. Writing well and being a good performer of a song are too entirely different skills and as with any two such skills they are seldom found in the same person.
As an analogy, I routinely listed to books on CD while driving. Once in a while a book is "read by the author." Most are a disaster. I assume a great many other authors don't read their own books because they realize they aren't any good at it. How many good books would be missed if we insisted authors also had to be good performers of the spoken word?
Hemingway. Both as a person and an author.
I’m not a fan of B. Young or the movement he led.
But I don’t think he’s over-rated. He was much more competent as a leader than Joseph Smith. Anybody who could lead the Mormon settlement of the intermountain west for several decades was somebody effective.
It's like Memorial Day around here. Very few seem to be aware that we always have a Memorial Day service held every year in one of our local parks. Sad to see the numbers in attendance seem to be dwindling.
Keep your chin up and fight the good fight!
Regards!
This was in 1995. As I recall, it was the 50 year anniversary of the end of the war, and my dad made headlines on the local paper, I don't remember exactly what he said, but it was something like: "NAVAL VETERAN DEFENDS USE OF A-BOMB, SAYS WE SHOULD HAVE DROPPED MORE"
No joke. Heh, he said he meant every word of it, too. Sigh. He only had a few more years left after that, but they were good ones. How I miss him.
My father was in the Navy in WW2 as well, and I miss him, too. He died in November of 1995.
It may be considered heresy to post this on freerepublic but I’ll say it anyway: Barry Goldwater.
Underrated in 1964 perhaps but highly overrated from the post-Reagan period onwards. The news that he helped his own daughter abort his own grandchild does not sound very conservative to me.
He wasn’t one of my 3.
That was merely a QUOTE from him.
I supported Goldwater then saw him appear on a Norman Lear program for “People For The American Way”.
It was a radical leftist organization and there was Goldwater appearing on it to support those jackasses. He was conservative on financial matters but very liberal on social issues.
Darwin.
Best book on MacArthur is “Old Solidiers Never Die” by Geoffrey Perret. This book is fantastiic.
We all have dads who served with distinction during WW2. My father flew B-29s out of Guam, and participated in the last mission of the war. Jim Smith wrote a book about it. (The Last Mission)
We are blessed to have had such fathers to teach us the value of history and freedom. We will never forget!
Blessings to you both!
I’ve got it.
And to you guys too.
I just finished reading “Lemay”...you would probably be interested in it. I think it is a pretty fair book about him, as far as I can tell.
“He was conservative on financial matters but very liberal on social issues.”
I find that liberalism on social issues always ends up in liberalism/statism/socialism on economic issues. After all, someone has to pay for the consequences of the social liberalism and it usually ends up being the taxpayers.
Goldwater helping the Norman Lears of this world (who probably were rabidly anti-Goldwater and pro-LBJ during the 1964 presidential election) seemed like a real slap in the face to folks who loyally supported him for years. I lost a lot of respect for him when I learned about that. I’m happy to say I wasn’t born yet when he ran for President and was never old enough to vote for him in any of his subsequent senatorial elections he ran in and I never lived in his state so I never made the mistake of voting for him or sending his campaigns any money.
handshake then
With those chompers, I’d worry she’d have bit something off.
You bet wd...
My brother currently is reading it. I thought it was a very good assessment.
Interesting to read about the young B 29 crew that came in and did a reconnaissance over Japan, even when LeMay encouraged them to get sleep. They ended up with the best photographs of the war, which were used repeatedly through the end of the war.
Funny, that stuck out in my head, too. Can you imagine how dog tired they must have been after their last flight, then to insist they wanted to turn around and go back out?
Just amazing...
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.