"But for a politician with so many admirers, allies, acquaintances, faithful retainers, and hangers-on, Clinton remains a profoundly solitary man, associates say, without any real peers, intellectual equals, or genuine friends with whom he can share the sweetest things in life.If you've been following politics-as-celebrity-stalker news, you'll recognize this article as the one Bill Clinton is all torqued about. While this article is actually poorly written and all examples come from unnamed and anecdotal sources, I have a fascination with Bill Clinton that lingers long after his White House years. I read it. I read it closely. I hated how poorly it was written and I asked over and over, "so what?" As Clinton once and famously said, "There is no there there." Not too much to the 9,000 + word article that anyone with eyes and a brain hasn't already processed. But, if you read those two paragraphs above, Purdum surely got something right.
So he spends his time veering between feeling sorry for himself and working to help others, between doing good and giving his enemies fresh ammunition, between vindicating his legacy and vitiating it."
- Todd S. Purdum, Vanity Fair, "The Comeback Id" - July 2008 issue [clicky]
I get that shit. And I empathize.
Oh God
"It is considered almost gauche to wave the flag of general suffering in other people’s faces, as Dostoyevsky does repeatedly in his novels, most famously in “The Brothers Karamazov,” when the rebellious Ivan confronts his pious brother Alyosha with a list of degradations....I've often said that I cannot consider myself an "atheist" even though I put all the wonderments of religion into the same category as unicorns and dragons. Fantasy and fable. It's like people whom profess themselves to be atheist seem to go out of their way to "prove" that no gods exist. So what. Anti-religion as a religion in and of itself. Or, "permanent rebellion." I guess I just sort of--unlike most things in my life--got over it. I don't really mind or care what others believe (although I do form opinions based on beliefs) but, for me, there is just no there there.
...anti-theodicy is permanent rebellion. It is not quite atheism but wounded theism, condemned to argue ceaselessly against a God it is supposed not to believe in."
- James Wood, The New Yorker, "Holiday in Hellmouth" - June 9 & 16 issue [clicky]
And I totally love that line about the gaucheness of beating others with one's rolled-up newspaper of suffering. Fuck you! It's always worse for someone else, believe me. So, I'm gonna just suffer in silence from here out. Bury it. Internalize it. Tamp it down. I wouldn't want to be gauche. I have too much panache for that.
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