This Just In: Excessive Masturbation Leads to Insanity and Keynesian Economics!

posted at 8:10 pm on September 16, 2010 by The Other McCain
[ Elections ]   

But I repeat myself, insofar as Keynesian economics is a synonym for insanity. The headline was inspired by Matt Welch’s reflection that perhaps Mike Castle’s vote for the TARP bailout mattered more to Delaware GOP primary voters than Christine O’Donnell’s opposition to sins of the flesh:

O’Donnell (in rhetoric, anyway) is more staunchly anti-earmark, anti-TARP, anti-Obamacare, and anti-cap-and-trade, all of which she stresses more than her Norman Maileresque views on self-abuse. At every campaign stop she emphasizes being “anti-establishment,” reverent of the Founders, and in tune with Tea Party nation.

Welch illustrates his point with visual reference to a memorable (but not necessarily family-friendly) cinematic encounter between Judge Reinhold and Phoebe Cates, which brings us to the topic at hand . . . err, so to speak.

Noted paragon of moral virtue Rachel Maddow got all snarky about the Delaware Senate nominee’s Bible-based critique of onanism:

Professor William Jacobson accused Maddow of “sexualizing” O’Donnell, but what struck me was that the MSNBC hostess felt it sufficient merely to play the 1996 video and then grin sarcastically, as if:

• No intelligent viewer could possibly consider O’Donnell’s exegesis of Matthew 5:27-28 as a serious argument; and
• This implied criticism of O’Donnell’s view did not require any counter-argument on Maddow’s part.

In other words, those who advocate chastity are presumed to be ridiculous, while their critics — who may or may not be degenerate atheists — need never explain or defend their own perspective on appropriate sexual conduct. I had some jocular fun with this, suggesting that Maddow should do an hour-long MSNBC special about masturbation which “would draw much higher ratings than anything Chris Matthews might say about his Obama-inspired leg thrills.” As with O’Donnell’s views on evolution, many liberals have slid into the self-congratulatory assumption that, because opposing opinions have been excluded from elite circles, those opinions are indefensible. No smart person they know takes the Bible seriously, ergo, only morons accept the Bible as authoritative. And in the context of O’Donnell’s slippery-slope arguments about coed facilities on university campuses, it struck me how successful liberals have been in marginalizing advocates of Judeo-Christian tradition:

Sneering contempt for old-fashioned virtue is a very dangerous thing. It is remarkable how far gone our popular culture is in this regard. All sophisticated people are now supposed to scoff at the notion that young people can refrain from premarital intercourse, much less be “masters of their domain,” as the Seinfeld show once phrased it. 
So casual is our cultural assumption that “everybody’s doing it” that we are shocked when anyone dares suggest we shouldn’t do it. The only acceptable morality is now amorality — an agnostic indifference to virtue — and our society has become strikingly intolerant toward those who publicly dissent from the New Sexual Orthodoxy.

You can read the whole thing, or perhaps you would like to consider how hypocritical liberals are to accuse Christine O’Donnell of being a conspiracy theorist. I think they’re talking about The Other O’Donnell:

“I do believe that it’s the first time in history that fire has ever melted steel. . . . Miraculously, the first time in history, steel was melted by fire. It is physically impossible.”
– Rosie O’Donnell, 2007

You can’t accuse liberals of not having standards. They’ve got exactly two: One for them, and one for everybody else.

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