Sunday, June 23, 2013

When he’s not listlessly condemning humanity like a mid-nineties goth girl, he’s fondling hors d’oeuvres and launching them down his gullet

Jesus, another Atlas Shrugged blogger. Here I thought I was some kind of pioneer and instead I'm at least two years late. At least.

I do think mine does cover some bases not covered by the other two I've seen - my critique is more detailed and serious than the others, but what they lack in analysis they more than make up for in entertainment value. I got a good belly laugh out of this passage, especially the part that I bolded - now that is a fine piece of humorous writing:

The most contrived centipede in Ayn’s philosophical vagina is Dr. Simon Pritchett. I guess he’s a postmodernist. I’ll cop to hating them as much as the next guy (assuming that guy gives a shit). I’ll even grant – based on a presentation I watched tried to watch about PoMo jerkoff, Jean-François Lyotard — Pritchett’s arguments could’ve been taken verbatim from a sincere PoMo dipshit. I can’t explain why it’s worth debating a marginal and little understood philosophy aside from it being an easy target. 
Anyway, the effete Pritchett’s all, Who’s to say what’s real? We’re just meaningless chemicals and what not! Nothing matters… and so forth. 
Rearden insists that things do indeed matter. 
Rand, you fucking rebel! Underscoring the hypocrisy and degeneracy of Pritchett’s remarks is that he’s eating. Possibly the only one mentioned eating at all – certainly the only one emphasized doing so. It’s a minor point, but odd. When he’s not listlessly condemning humanity like a mid-nineties goth girl, he’s fondling hors d’oeuvres and launching them down his gullet. I can almost hear him chewing, Lahff ith menninglthss. Weh’r thutht thumb ahnhimals
In the Randverse, the repugnance of his eating snacks and talking at a party is apparently self-evident. If not for her belaboring some point about the seemingly appropriate behavior, I wouldn’t even know it was a problem for her. It’s like she’s saying, Hey, look at this guy. Eating food set out for guests at a party. What an asshole.
So excellent. And no, I didn't notice the blatant symbolic eating by Pritchett. That was a good catch. But really, there is so much egregiously wrong about Atlas Shrugged that it would take a team of bloggers to catch all the bullshit.

Bonus artifact: the scene from ANGELS IN AMERICA where Louis confronts Joe about his relationship with Roy Cohn - they get into a knock-down fight and then after Louis says: "it was like a sex scene in an Ayn Rand novel, huh?"