Arianna Huffington displays the stunning lack of self-awareness that defines the post-modern Left

Arianna Huffington displays the stunning lack of self-awareness that defines the post-modern Left March 3, 2011

In this piece for her own Huffpost, she pens a gushing love note about Bill Maher.  Yeah, Bill Maher.  Now don’t get me wrong.  Bill Maher may be a brilliant physicist, genetic engineer, economist, biologist, or brain surgeon.  I don’t know.  I’m not schooled in any of those subjects.  But in the two subjects I’ve spent most of my life studying – history and theology – Maher is about as dumb as a hay rake.  The man is about on par with Glen Beck.  Yet he is treated like a serious commentator and brilliant analyst across the MSM, and obviously among folks who frequent places like Huffington Post, precisely in the areas of history and religion.

Why?  Well, I blogged about my thoughts on that already.  Beyond that, however, was Huffington’s post.  Sure, there was some sentimentality, and she is obviously friends with Maher.  Birds of a feather after all.  But some of the things in the post caught my attention.  One I posted on at the Huffpost.  For instance, this sentence caught my eye:

“He’s hilarious, he’s fearless, and he never, ever takes potshots at easy targets, like former witches running for the Senate on an anti-masturbation platform.”

He is fearless?  How?  Will someone please tell me how Maher, who is the living, breathing, biological incarnation of the dictionary definition of Political Correctness is fearless?  That’s like saying it took courage in the 1950s to oppose Martin Luther King, Jr.  Like saying in the 50s that it was fearless for people to take a public stand against Communism.

Are those on the Left that blind to the self-congratulatory domain of same-think that they have established across popular culture?  Across the media culture?  Across the academic world?  Do they really think it takes courage to stand up and promote homosexuality, abortion rights, and socialism?  Do they actually believe that it’s fearless to trash conservatives, Republicans, religion, and traditional values in an HBO comedy show?  I would like to think they know full well that they have the upper hand in our information outlets.  I would like to think they are just putting us on, keeping the entire front as they move to seize more and more control over our culture and society.  But maybe not.  Maybe because they are so incestuous in their desire to be surrounded only by same-think, they really believe that we live in a country dominated by right wing, radical, religious zealotry and they are the brave crusaders for a freedom they otherwise seem to abhor. 

Who knows.  I do know this.  This line:

“Everyone seems to be talking so slow. I know Kirk [Douglas]’s excuse, what’s everybody else’s? This smells like the trainwreck Oscars to me.”

Seemed to make Arianna laugh.  It didn’t me.  Somehow I remember the liberals of the 70s who used to say that making fun, no matter how innocently, of the elderly, the crippled, the mentally handicapped, was all just a sad reminder of the deplorable moral trash heap upon which traditional values needed to be thrown.  I can’t believe how the post-modern Left is looking more and more like the very thing Liberalism once sought to eliminate.  But that the Left is fast becoming the Napoleon of pigs is for another post.


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