Two speeches, a defining moment in history

Peggy Noonan, whom I gave up on when she went all soft and gooey and swooned over Obama in 2008: 

"It is startling when two speeches within 24 hours, neither much heralded in advance—the second wouldn’t even have been given without the first—leave you knowing you have witnessed a seminal moment in the history of an administration, but it happened this week. The president’s Tuesday speech in Atlanta, on voting rights, was a disaster for him. By the end of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s answering speech on Wednesday you knew some new break point had occurred, that President Biden might have thought he was just crooning to part of his base but the repercussions were greater than that; he was breaking in some new way with others—and didn’t know it. It is poor political practice when you fail to guess the effects of your actions. He meant to mollify an important constituency but instead he filled his opponents with honest indignation and, I suspect, encouraged in that fractured group some new unity.

The speech itself was AGGRESSIVE, INTEMPERATE, not only OFFENSIVE but meant to OFFEND. It seemed prepared by people who think there is only the Democratic Party in America, that’s it, everyone else is an outsider who can be disparaged. It was a mistake on so many levels. Presidents more than others in politics have to maintain an even strain, as astronauts used to say. If a president is rhetorically manipulative and divisive on a voting-rights bill it undercuts what he’s trying to establish the next day on Covid and the economy. The over-the-top language of the speech made him seem more emotional, less competent. The portentousness—“In our lives and . . . the life of our nation, there are moments so stark that they divide all that came before them from everything that followed. They stop time”—made him appear incapable of understanding how the majority of Americans understand our own nation’s history and the vast array of its challenges. (Wall Street Journal pay wall, but you get the idea Biden’s Georgia Speech Is a Break Point - WSJ )

In my opinion, I don't think Biden is able to think or comment like this.  His speech writers are all steeped and stewed in Critical Race Theory, which means they know nothing about American history.

Peggy Noonan opines on the current incivility of the media

“Tuesday I talked with an old friend, a figure in journalism who’s a pretty cool character, about the political anger all around us. He spoke of “horrible polarization.” He said there’s “too much hate in D.C.” He mentioned “the beheading, the play in the park” and described them as “dog whistles to any nut who wants to take action.”

“Someone is going to get killed,” he said.

That was 20 hours before the shootings in Alexandria, Va.” . . .

 “A comic posed with a gruesome bloody facsimile of President Trump’s head. New York’s rightly revered Shakespeare in the Park put on a “Julius Caesar” in which the assassinated leader is made to look like the president. A CNN host—amazingly, of a show on religion—sent out a tweet calling the president a “piece of s—” who is “a stain on the presidency.” An MSNBC anchor wondered, on the air, whether the president wishes to “provoke” a terrorist attack for political gain. Earlier Stephen Colbert, well known as a good man, a gentleman, said of the president, in a rant: “The only thing your mouth is good for is being Vladimir Putin’s c— holster.” Those are but five dots in a larger, darker pointillist painting. You can think of more.”
https://www.wsj.com/articles/rage-is-all-the-rage-and-its-dangerous-1497571401

And I thought.  But the incivility is not spread equally—even though the media has warned us incessantly about dangers from the right wing extremists. The conservatives are not the news anchors and reporters; they are not the entertainers; they can't get tenure at the universities to melt little snowflakes into submission. The left owns the culture and they own this mess. Conservatives haven’t burned buildings or prevented speakers at graduation or political forums on college campuses and they haven’t threatened sponsors of talk radio or conservative shows. It's not the right who insist that boys will be girls, and if you know better we'll destroy you.  The right wasn’t in control of the federal government PR campaign the last 8 years. All they are guilty of is voting. And it has created a call for a violent revolution.
 

Lie, deny, revise, claim not to remember specifics, stall for time. It's her M.O.

PEGGY NOONAN: "They were in shock. So were members of the press, who knew Mr. Dale [Billy Dale who had worked at the White House for 30 years] and his colleagues as honest and professional. A firestorm ensued.

Under criticism the White House changed its story. They said that they were just trying to cut unneeded staff and save money. Then they said they were trying to impose a competitive bidding process. They tried a new explanation—the travel office shake-up was connected to Vice President Al Gore’s National Performance Review. (Alm...ost immediately Mr. Gore said that was not true.) The White House then said it was connected to a campaign pledge to cut the White House staff by 25%. Finally they claimed the workers hadn’t been fired at all but placed on indefinite “administrative leave.”

Why so many stories? Because the real one wasn’t pretty." All along Mrs. Clinton publicly insisted she had no knowledge of the firings. Then it became barely any knowledge, then barely any involvement. When the story blew up she said under oath that she had “no role in the decision to terminate the employees.” She did not “direct that any action be taken by anyone.” In a deposition she denied having had a role in the firings, and said she was unable to remember conversations with various staffers with any specificity. So—that was the Clintons’ first big Washington scandal. It showed what has now become the Clinton Scandal Ritual: lie, deny, revise, claim not to remember specifics, stall for time. When it passes, call the story “old news” full of questions that have already been answered. “As I’ve repeatedly said . . .” More scandals would follow. 

They all showed poor judgment on the part of the president, and usually Mrs. Clinton. They all included a startling willingness—and ability—to dissemble.

People watched and got a poor impression.The point is it didn’t start the past few years, it started almost a quarter-century ago. You have to wonder, what are the chances it will change?"

He’s drowning us in watered down values

“No commander in chief of the U.S. armed forces can be wholly irrelevant, but to the extent one can be, Mr. Obama is,” writes Peggy Noonan. “After the attacks Mr. Obama went on TV, apparently to comfort us and remind us it’s OK, he’s in charge. He prattled on about violence being at odds with ‘universal values.’ He proceeded as if unaware that there are no actually universal values, that right now the values of the West and radical Islam are clashing, violently, and we have to face it.” “ Quoted in Wall Street Journal, Nov. 20, 2015

To quote George W. Bush, “a thumpin’”

"Democrats this year—what a rhetorical, emotional and policy disaster. In ’08 they were on fire with hope, in ’12 they were keep the faith, stay the course. This year they are surly. They are unloving and unlovable. It’s race and gender politics, it’s wheelchairs, it’s endless defensiveness about voting for or with the president. Republicans may have failed to unite, but the Democrats divide."  Peggy Noonan http://online.wsj.com/articles/can-obama-find-thumpin-to-say-1414106272

Shocked and awful

"The president, as usual, acts as if all of this is totally unconnected to him. He's shocked, it's unacceptable, he'll get to the bottom of it. He read about it in the papers, just like you. But he is not unconnected, he is not a bystander. ... It is not even remotely possible that all this was an accident, a mistake. Again, only conservative groups were targeted, not liberal. It is not even remotely possible that only one IRS office was involved. ... What happened at the IRS is the government's essential business. ... Everyone involved in this abuse of power should pay a price, because if they don't, the politicization of the IRS will continue -- forever. If it is not stopped now, it will never stop. And if it isn't stopped, no one will ever respect or have even minimal faith in the revenue-gathering arm of the U.S. government again. ... This is not about the usual partisan slugfest. This is about the integrity of our system of government and our ability to trust, which is to say our ability to function." --columnist Peggy Noonan

She’s not a slut, thank you, just a ninny and a fool

About Sandra Fluke, Peggy Noonan wrote:  “What a fabulously confident and ingenuous-seeming political narcissist Ms. Fluke is. She really does think—and her party apparently thinks—that in a spending crisis with trillions in debt and many in need, in a nation in existential doubt as to its standing and purpose, in a time when parents struggle to buy the good sneakers for the kids so they're not embarrassed at school . . . that in that nation the great issue of the day, and the appropriate focus of our concern, is making other people pay for her birth-control pills. That's not a stand, it's a non sequitur. She is not, as Rush Limbaugh oafishly, bullyingly said, a slut. She is a ninny, a narcissist and a fool.”

Wall St. Journal,  September 8, 2012, on page A15 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: The Democrats' Soft Extremism.

Noonan on Good ol Joe

“As for Joe Biden, I love him and will hear nothing against him. He's like Democrats the way they used to be, and by that I do not mean idiotic, I mean normal—manipulative only to a normal degree, roughly aware of the facts of normal life, alert to and even respecting of such normal things as religious faith. I wish he did not insist on referring to his wife as "Dr. Jill Biden." I'm sure she has many doctorates, but so do half the unemployed in Manhattan.” WSJ 9/7/12

If the President had a Special Assistant for Reality

Great "what if" story by Peggy Noonan in the Wall Street Journal, wishful thinking about getting the President out of the Washington bubble with just one more staff member.

If Mr. Obama had a special assistant for reality this week, this is how their dialogue might have gone over the anti-TSA uprising.

President: This thing is all ginned up, isn't it? Right-wing websites fanned it. Then the mainstream media jumped in to display their phony populist street cred. Right?

Special Assistant for Reality: No, Mr. President, it was more spontaneous. Websites can't fan fires that aren't there. This is like the town hall uprisings of summer 2009. In the past month, citizens took videos at airports the same way town hall protesters made videos there, and put them on YouTube. The more pictures of pat-downs people saw, the more they opposed them.

President: What's the essence of the opposition?

SAR: Sir, Americans don't like it when strangers touch their private parts. Especially when the strangers are in government uniforms and say they're here to help.

President: Is it that we didn't roll it out right? We made a mistake in not telling people in advance we were changing the procedure.

SAR: Um, no, Mr. President. If you'd told them in advance, they would have rebelled sooner.

President: We should have pointed out not everyone goes through the new machines, and only a minority get patted down.

SAR: Mr. President, if you'd told people, "Hello, there's only 1 chance in 3 you'll be molested at the airport today" most people wouldn't think, "Oh good, I like those odds."

President: But the polls are with me. People support the screenings.

SAR: At the moment, according to some. But most Americans don't fly frequently, and the protocols are new. As time passes, support will go steadily down.

President: I've noted with sensitivity that I'm aware all this is a real inconvenience.

SAR: It's not an inconvenience, it's a humiliation. In the new machine, and in the pat-downs, citizens are told to spread their feet and put their hands in the air. It's an attitude of submission—the same one the cops make the perps assume on "America's Most Wanted." Then, while you stand there in public in the attitude of submission, strangers touch intimate areas of your body. It's a violation of privacy. It leaves people feeling reduced. It's like society has decided you're a meat sack and not a soul. Humans have a natural, untaught understanding of the apartness of their bodies, and they don't like it when their space is violated. They recoil, and protest.

President: But you can have the pat-downs done in private.

SAR: Mr. President, you don't know this, but when you ask for that, a lot of TSA people get pretty passive-aggressive. They get Bureaucratic Dead Face and start barking, "I need a supervisor! Private pat-down!" And everyone looks, and the line slows down, and you start to feel like you're putting everyone out. You wait and wait, and finally they get another TSA person, and they take you into the little room and it's embarrassing, and you start to realize you're going to miss your plane. It's then that you realize: all this is how they discourage private pat-downs.

President: I've wondered if this general feeling of discomfort might be related to a certain Puritan strain within American thinking—a kind of horror at the body that, melded with, say, old Catholic teaching, not to be pejorative, might make for a pretty combustible cultural cocktail. This heightened consciousness of the body might suggest an element of physical shame we hadn't taken into account.

SAR: Mr. President, the rebellion isn't shame-based, it's John Wayne-based.

President: I don't follow.

Follow the rest of the story, obviously a fantasy, but telling, none the less, with a great ending.

Ms. Noonan you may remember was one of George H.W. Bush's speech writers, but fell from grace during the G.W. Bush era, and lost her credibility with me when she when all gushy over candidate Obama's phony speech pattern and good looks. The lefties didn't like her for what they saw as her lame excuses for Bush (really weak, no matter which side you took), so I guess she just can't win. She's slowly, slowly been crawling her way back from her Obama-gusher mistakes of the campaign.

Velma and Peggy

The source of the previous political verse was Peggy Noonan reflecting on Velma Hart's comments to the President at the townhall last week, saying she was exhausted from defending him. I still believe she was a plant intended to make sure Obama looked more human in his president struggles, because really, have you ever known a politician who created a more scolding, cold image? Well, she failed, or he failed, but way too many people including Noonan and Rush Limbaugh were taken in by this exchange. I just don't buy it. He's let a lot of things slip, like the exchange with Joe the Plumber, and announcing proudly after the election that he was just a few days away from fundamentally transforming our country (to what?), but usually he's very carefully scripted by like-minded speech writers and it all scrolls across the teleprompter.

Besides, for the life of me, I can't see what Velma is complaining about, even if she's for real and not a plant. She has a cushy government job (no unemployment, only growth at the federal level); she's married and her husband has a job; she's got great perks plus veterans benefits; she's rich enough to send her kids to private school which must be about $20,000 a year per child; so what exactly was she expecting from a president who promised to transfer some wealth. She's wealthy! He was planning to take it away from her and give it to you! If she didn't crunch the numbers before voting for him in 2008, I don't feel sorry for her.

Her life, her complaints, confirm to me she's a plant. Obama's not one of us--and I'm not talking about his birth certificate. Especially he's not an American black--even Jesse Jackson complained about that before 2008. Velma's just the type of woman Obama would select for the job of poor mouthing, and trust me, she'll be blamed if this backfires.

Reflections on a phrase from Peggy Noonan's The Enraged vs. The Exhausted

"This "will be remembered as the year the American people said no" to the status quo. The people "do not trust" those who make the decisions far away. They want to restore balance." Peggy Noonan

Let this be remembered
As the year
Americans said, NO
To the status quo.

Let this be remembered
As the year
Americans with tea,
Said Don’t tax me.

Let this be remembered
As the year
Americans tossed RINOs
And Pelosi DINOs.

Let this be remembered
As the year
To media mainstream
“Stop stealing our dream.”

This will be the year
Americans will vote
And remember
This coming November.

People understand the Tea Party candidates

Dan Green writes in response to Peggy Noonan: "When you see tea Party folks on the tube, or see them interviewed, I see a next door neighbor. I see someone who pays their share of taxes, struggles but pays their mortgage, I see folks who helped their kids through college. When I see or listen to numerous economists, and elected legislators, I sense babble."

Now maybe that's not a political philosphy to satisfy 8 term congressmen of both parties or rich union leaders, or Karl Rove, or mainline Protestant misleaders and passive pastors, but it works for a lot of us.

Peggy whined her way through most of George W. Bush's 2nd term, and she's not quite on board with most conservatives. . . yet. But she's moving. She's moving.

He Was Supposed to Be Competent

No Peggy. That's not why he was elected. Everyone, even his strongest supporters, knew his resume, and competence in anything wasn't on it. Even you were swooning during the campaign because he wasn't George Bush.

Noonan names three political disasters and then ponders whether he can possibly survive. His sycophant supporters and his props in the media won't bat an eyelash.

"There was the tearing and unnecessary war over his health-care proposal and its cost.

There was his day-to-day indifference to the views and hopes of the majority of voters regarding illegal immigration.

And now the past almost 40 days of dodging and dithering in the face of an environmental calamity. I don't see how you politically survive this."

You just watch, Peggy. It will all be George Bush's fault. Obama wanted a failed, weakened United States, and by gum, he's going to get one!

Peggy Noonan: He Was Supposed to Be Competent - WSJ.com

Noonan used to think he talked so purty

I never could understand why Peggy Noonan ignored his words and was enamored by his style instead. She was a speech writer--words were her trade--although one with hurt feelings. But she's apparently catching on. She never looked into the Marxist beliefs that gave birth to his fuzzy words. And now that she can't understand any of it, it's like a light bulb has gone off on.

"Every big idea that works is marked by simplicity, by clarity. You can understand it when you hear it, and you can explain it to people. Social Security: Retired workers receive a public pension to help them through old age. Medicare: People over 65 can receive taxpayer-funded health care. Welfare: If you have no money and cannot support yourself, we will help as you get back on your feet.

These things are clear. I understand them. You understand them. The president's health-care plan is not clear, and I mean that not only in the sense of "he hasn't told us his plan." I mean it in terms of the voodoo phrases, this gobbledygook, this secret language of government that no one understands—"single payer," "public option," "insurance marketplace exchange." No one understands what this stuff means, nobody normal.

And when normal people don't know what the words mean, they don't say to themselves, "I may not understand, but my trusty government surely does, and will treat me and mine with respect." They think, "I can't get what these people are talking about. They must be trying to get one past me. So I'll vote no." " Pull the plug on Obamacare

You know Peggy, you can be called a racist if you disagree with his plans, policies and politics. But words are your business, and you know that isn't the definition.

What did Peggy expect?

Peggy Noonan didn't like George W. Bush--I think because he didn't use her writing skills to promote his administration. As the years rolled on and the phone didn't ring, she went from wistfully subtle to wonkishly snark. Then during the 3 year long 2008 campaign she snuggled up with the Obama loving journalist crowd, lusting for his smooth talk and sexy ways. Party's over:

"These are the two great issues, the economic crisis and our safety. In the face of them, what strikes one is the weightlessness of the Obama administration, the jumping from issue to issue and venue to venue from day to day."

Sorry, Ms. Noonan, you lost me some years back. Maybe it just struck you, but most conservatives knew he was a wimp on security and profligate spender, way back. Don't come looking for safety and sound economics now. That's not what he signed on for.

High noon for Noonan

It's too bad that print readers won't see the comments conservatives have sent to the WSJ about Peggy Noonan, who has been suffering from Bush Derangement Syndrome for years, ever since she was left at the altar--wasn't even invited to be a bridesmaid after being a big wheel in the party. Now she's really shaming herself with tantrums about Palin. Readers aren't buying it. I sent a comment, but I'm no match for the pros. They're all pretty good, but this was one of my favorites.

Ms. Noonan writes, "In the end the Palin candidacy is a symptom and expression of a new vulgarization in American politics."

And here's what the press had to say about the Gettysburg Address, back in 1863: "The cheek of every American must tingle with shame as he reads the silly, flat and dishwatery utterances of the man who has to be pointed out to intelligent foreigners as the President of the United States."

Peggy Noonan's palpable hatred

toward President Bush is never more evident than her huge, fully illustrated article "Hope for America" (no bias here, folks--Obama owns "hope" like Palin owns "lipstick") in the week-end WSJ. After a boring and depressing trip through airport lines (Bush's fault) with the Statue of Liberty's sandals in a plastic bin, she mentions finally McCain's temper. But she never alludes to or outlines Obama's seething anger so obvious in his face in the debate Friday, anger building that McCain had shamed him into returning to Washington to do his job--be a Senator from that great state of Illinois where Chicago is king and goon. She gently fondles and caresses Obama like he was a pre-mature baby on life support, and maybe unconsciously that's what she sees. After all, she was a speech writer for Presidents Reagan and Bush the Father. Give her respect! She coined "kinder and gentler" and "thousand points of light," for Pete's Sake.

A few years ago, after she was no longer included among the favored, she began sounding like the girlfriend not selected to be the bridesmaid, then she graduated to the ex-wife who didn't get her settlement in the divorce, and now she sounds like the former mother-in-law of the guy who deserted his wife. But oh so careful, charming and oozy with her words.

What is anger, after all, if it isn't hanging out the Bernadine and Bill former 60s radicals who wanted to bring down the government; if it isn't listening to years of Rev. Wright smearing white folk while choosing to schmooze and live with them; playing footsie with Israel's enemies who want them bombed out of existence; if it isn't stepping on the necks of those black mentors who elevated him; if it isn't throwing old pals, including Tony Rezko, the mayor of Detroit and your own grandmother who raised you, under the bus. Peggy, wake up. That's hatred. Not flashes of temper or getting testy. Anger from the guy who gets impatient with idiocy and naivete is anger understood.

But you, Peggy? You're just the gal sitting back waiting to be asked to dance. Or maybe even invited to the dance. Good luck with the new book.

Peggy Noonan worries

What if neither one is up to the latest crisis?

"A fearless prediction: My beautiful election enters its dark phase.

Lots of signs of the new darkness. Mr. Obama's army is swarming, blocking lines when Obama critics show up for radio interviews. A study out Thursday said the Obama campaign has become more negative than the McCain campaign. There is the hacking—no one at this point knows by whom—of Sarah Palin's personal email account. From Mr. Obama himself, a new edge. He tells an audience in Elko, Nev., to "argue" with McCain supporters and "get in their face." Bambi is playing Chicago style. No doubt everyone around him has been saying, and for some weeks now, "Get tough." But this is not how to get tough, and it does not reflect a shrewd reading of what the moment demands. People want depth, not ferocity. We've got nerves that jingle-jangle-jingle.

And it gives Mr. McCain a beautiful opening. He can now play Oldest and Wisest, damning the new meanness more in sorrow than in anger.

There's another reason things will get more mean than meaningful. Here is the tough, sad, rather deadly assumption I see rising among our media people, our thinkers, observers and chatterers, the highly sophisticated who've seen'em come and seen'em go: It is, again: What if neither of them is the right man? What if neither of them is equal to the moment? What if neither party is equal to the moment? Article here.

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A good rule of thumb

If it sounds too good to be true, someone's going to print it anyway. Peggy Noonan commented on The New Republic getting snookered by Scott Thomas Beauchamp (pseud. Scott Thomas, author of "Shock Troops" his diaries) in the week-end edition of WSJ. She says she smelled a rat early on, as she did when TNR published the Young Republicans piece by Stephen Glass in 1997. OK. Hindsight. But apparently there was an actual investigation and nothing he wrote--places, people, events--checked out. TNR begged him to confirm, but he's abandoned them, just as he did his fellow servicemen. Now TNR is getting all rathered. According to the Washington Post's Howard Kurtz

"The soldier whose New Republic article about military cruelty in Iraq was labeled false by Army investigators refused to defend his accusations when questioned by the magazine, even after being told that the editors could no longer support him unless he cooperated.

In a recorded Sept. 6 conversation, the writer, Pvt. Scott Thomas Beauchamp, said from Iraq that the controversy had "spun out of control" and had become "insane" and "ridiculous" and concluded: "I'm not going to talk to anyone about anything."

TNR has pulled his comments from the web, so I couldn't check it. Even Wikipedia, which I don't usually check because it is written by biased users, is blocking any further editing of the story, waiting for some confirmation.

Michael Yon, one of the best known journalist/photographers of the Iraq War wrote on Oct. 25

I was in Iraq when it first hit the stands and someone asked me about the plausibility of the events described in the article. I skimmed the story but it did not even pass a simple sniff-test. With a shooting war going on, there is no time for trivial pursuits, so my only comment was something like, “It sounds like a bunch of garbage.” Turned out it was.

Someone at TNR needs the journalist's version of gaydar. But it's just more sad evidence of how desperately the left wants the U.S. to lose this war. They say they just want the truth; no, this story will never go away. If the Dems won't cut the funding or set a deadline, the media will just lie. Fellas, war is hell; people die and those who don't do awful things. Young people have their lives changed forever, if they survive. Let's not make it worse than it is.

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Noonan knows

the press, and she really laid it out in Week-end edition of WSJ in "Cold Standard." In describing how common sense has broken down in many areas of our lives, particulary the mental health gurus uprooting the walls that used to protect us and then blaming someone else,

"The literally white-bearded academic who was head of the campus counseling center was on Paula Zahn Wednesday night suggesting the utter incompetence of officials to stop a man who had stalked two women, set a fire in his room, written morbid and violent plays and poems, been expelled from one class, and been declared by a judge to be "mentally ill" was due to the lack of a government "safety net." In a news conference, he decried inadequate "funding for mental health services in the United States." Way to take responsibility. Way to show the kids how to dodge."

the politicizing of every tragedy and event, and the Bush derangement syndrome,

"The anxiety of our politicians that there may be an issue that goes unexploited was almost--almost--comic. They mean to seem sensitive, and yet wind up only stroking their supporters. I believe Rep. Jim Moran was first out of the gate with the charge that what Cho did was President Bush's fault. I believe Sen. Barack Obama was second, equating the literal killing of humans with verbal coarseness. Wednesday there was Sen. Barbara Boxer equating the violence of the shootings with the "global warming challenge" and "today's Supreme Court decision" upholding a ban on partial-birth abortion."

culminating with the inexcusable actions that NBC took (and other networks followed) to allow Cho to glorify his insanity,

"Brian Williams introduced the Cho collection as "what can only be described as a multi-media manifesto." But it can be described in other ways. "The self-serving meanderings of a crazy, self-indulgent narcissist" is one. But if you called it that, you couldn't lead with it. You couldn't rationalize the decision. Such pictures are inspiring to the unstable. The minute you saw them, you probably thought what I did: We'll be seeing more of that."

For some reason Noonan chose not to list among the demise of common sense Cho's course work in literature (and I'm guessing other humanities and social sciences), might have included the bizarre twisting of every thing that might be positive in western literature and history (it did when I was on campus in the 90s). This is one area of his ramblings which pretty much reflected what he was being taught in college.* For that, one only needs to open a syllabus of a freshman lit or history course to find the poison that will rot a young, unstable mind, and turn off a health one.

*You can fulfill an English requirement by studying movie Westerns, or gangsterism in hip hop music, or sexuality in disabled women or probably even the fantasy life of your professor if you make a good case. It's ideology before thinking and politics before craft.