Mort Sahl: No desire to meet clinton / "With no morality, there's nothing there"

CNN | 1-16-02 | Mia T

[Mia T]

Mort Sahl: No desire to meet clinton

"With no morality, there's nothing there"

Proud to know "the 2 Bushes," the Kennedys, Nixon

by Mia T

ASHINGTON, Jan.16-- Mort Sahl,"Will Rogers with fangs," the 60s satirist and self-professed "radical independent" who cut his political-eyeteeth at the Hungry i, put, if not the final, the intellectual, nail in the clinton legacy coffin on the Aaron Brown Show (CNN) tonight.

Brown asked Sahl what he thought of clinton. "Never met him," the terse Sahl non sequitur. Brown probed further with the polite imprecision that has become his hallmark. "Would you like to meet him?" With no hesitation nor the slightest hint of irony, Sahl explained, "I have no desire to meet clinton; with no morality, there's nothing there."

By way of contrast, the intrepid iconoclast, who never knew a president he didn't skewer, went on to express pride in knowing "the two Bushes," the Kennedys and Nixon.

So much for the clinton legacy. The CLINTON-WAS-AN-UTTER-FAILURE Containment Team Scheme, counterproductive on its face, is now officially dead. If the clintons had any concern for the American aesthetic, they would bury it...and, while they're at it, themselves.

Two hundred years ago, we had Jefferson, Washington, Ben Franklin and Tom Paine, and there were four million people. Today we have 220 million, and look at our leaders...Darwin was wrong."

Mort Sahl, 1998

contingency principle

 

by Mia T

 

 

A trait or strategy that is successful at one time may be unsuccessful at another. Evolution is not progress. Populations are simply adapting to their current surroundings. Populations do not necessarily become better in any absolute sense over time.

 

Take RAPE. It may have been an evolutionary imperative for Homo erectus in the Pleistocene Epoch, but one can hardly argue that it is adaptive behavior for Homo sapiens in the year 2000, Boy Rapist-President notwithstanding.

 

 

 

This contingency principle was demonstrated experimentally (Paquin and Adams) with a yeast culture that was maintained for many generations. Occasionally, a mutant strain would arise that increased reproductive success. These mutant strains would crowd out the formerly dominant strains. Samples of the most successful strains from the culture were taken across time. In later competition experiments, each strain would outcompete the immediately previously dominant type in a culture. However, some earlier isolates could outcompete strains that arose late in the experiment. (Would that we could put clinton in Jefferson's petri dish.) Competitive ability of a strain was always better than its previous type, but competitiveness in a general sense was not increasing.

 

Any organism's success depends on the behavior of its contemporaries. (If you doubt this, just ask David Schippers.) For most traits or behaviors, there is likely no optimal design or strategy, only contingent ones.

 

 

But even as Clinton fails to grasp the scandal's metabolism

he understands all too well its most significant byproduct.

You can see it in his eyes.

 

Once reflecting a Machiavellian confidence,

they now dart back and forth reflexively,

searching futilely for approval,

attempting desperately to dispel his own certain knowledge

that his moral authority is gone. . .

forever

-- Mia T

 

It is natural for man to indulge in the illusions of hope.

We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth,

and listen to the song of that siren

till she transforms us into beasts.

Is this the part of wise men,

engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty?

Are we disposed to be the number of those

who, having eyes, see not,

and having ears, hear not,

the things which so nearly concern their temporal salvation?

For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost,

I am willing to know the whole truth;

to know the worst, and to provide for it.

--Patrick Henry

In a dark time, the eye begins to see.

--Theodore Roethke

 

Mindless rhinestone-studded-and-tented kleptocracy

by Mia T

John Podhoretz recently asked, "Whence comes hillary clinton's reputation for brilliance?" For the answer, he intuitively, rather brilliantly in fact, looked to her anatomy and noted,"This isn't the first time she's shot herself in the foot."

 

 

The above anatomical analysis supports the Podhoretz thesis. Notwithstanding The Pod's erroneous conclusions concerning hillary clinton's heart and nerve, he basically has it right. Anatomy is destiny...

 

Ian Hunter recently observed that our leaders are shrinking. "From a Churchill (or, for that matter, a Margaret Thatcher) to a Tony Blair; from Eisenhower to Clinton; from Diefenbaker to Joe Clark; from Trudeau to Chretien -- we seem destined to be governed by pygmies."

 

The pols understand their anatomical limitations well; they attempt to mitigate them with veneer. And so we suffer mindless alpha-beta-beelzebubba grotesquerie. . .

 

 

and rhinestone-studded-and-tented kleptocracy.

 

 

With all the media genuflecting before the press-conference podium of bill clinton, it bears remarking yet again that the clinton intellect (an oxymoron even more jarring than AlGoreRhythm and meant to encompass the cognitive ability of both clintons) is remarkable only for its utter ordinariness, its lack of creative spark, its lack of analytic precision, its lack of depth.

 

The clintons' fundamental error: They are too arrogant and dim-witted to understand that the demagogic process in this fiberoptic age isn't about counting spun heads; it's about not discounting circumambient brains.

 

Politicos and reporters are not rocket scientists . . .

Professions tend to be self-selected, intellectually homogeneous subgroups of Homo sapiens. Great intellects (especially these days) do not generally gravitate towards careers in the media or politics. Mediocre, power-obsessed types with poor self-images do.

 

Thus, clinton mediocrity goes undetected primarily because of media mediocrity. ("Mediocrity" and "media" don't come from the same Latin root (medius) for no reason.) Insofar as the clintons are concerned, the media confuse form with substance, smoothness with coherence, data-spewing with ratiocination, pre-programmed recitation with real-time analysis, an idiosyncratic degeneracy with creativity.

Jimmy Breslin agrees. In Hillary Is the 'Me-First' Lady, Breslin laments:

"At the end of all these years and years that are being celebrated this week, the national press of America consists of people with dried minds and weak backbones and the pack of them can't utter a new phrase for the language or show the least bit of anger at a business or profession or trade or whatever this business is that is dying of mediocrity."

 

Listen carefully to the clintons. You will hear a shallow parody of the class president. Not only do they say nothing; they say nothing with superfluous ineloquence. Their speeches are sophomoric, shopworn, shallow, specious. Platitudinous pandering piled atop p.c. cliché

In seven years, they have, collectively, uttered not one memorable word save, "It was a vast right-wing conspiracy," "I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky,"and, "It all depends on what the meaning of 'is' is."

 

Even the clintons' attempts at alliteration fall flat. Compare Agnew's (Safire's) "nattering nabobs of negativism" with clinton's "preachers of pessimism," an impotent, one-dimensional, plagiaristic echo (its apt self-descriptiveness notwithstanding).

 

Before they destroy their backs along with their reputations, media gentry genuflecting at the altar of the clinton brain should consider Edith Efron's, Can the President Think?

A wasted brain is a terrible thing.

 

[GraniteStateConservative]

Am I the only one that finds it funny that you create mega-posts with images and html code, but your profile is completely blank?

[Mia T]

Mort-Sahl: "I've arranged with my executor to be buried in Chicago. Because when I die, I want to still remain active politically." Q ERTY1 ping!

[JohnHuang2]

Bump!

[ChaseR]

You are so darn cool!!!...Great post again Mia...bttt

[FryingPan101]

Thanks, Mia....great as usual, of course.

[RLK]

Good commentary, but the pictures don't come up.

[Phaedrus]

Bump for another MiaT home run!

[MeekOneGOP]

Bump!

[mlmr]

Grateful thanks!!

[backhoe]

I'll link this Mia T, it's definitely DUBOB material...

[Hildy]

Mia is FR's resident Performance Artist!

[JohnHuang2]

Mia is FR's resident Performance Artist!

Hear, hear!

[ratzoe]

Goodness, I love your posts..thank you

[MizSterious]

Oh, I do love it! Thank you for the ping--Mia, you do such good work!

[Freedom'sWorthIt]

Mort Sahl has no desire to meet Clinton? Wonders never cease. Thanks for the post - would never have known about this otherwise. But the graphics don't come up for some reason.

MiaT adds another nail into the Clinton legacy column.

[StarFan]

"I've arranged with my executor to be buried in Chicago. Because when I die, I want to still remain active politically" Great!

I caught part of the re-run when Aaron asked him if he was a liberal. Did he say he was a radical or an independent?

[aculeus]

Bump!

[Mia T]

(Would that we could put clinton in Jefferson's petri dish.)