Go to Zell

[jere7my]

We received our phone pamphlet in the mail today. I can't justify calling it a phone book; I am not exaggerating when I say I've received magazines that were considerably thicker. Yellow pages and white, combined, total fewer than 90 pages. Welcome to small town America.

The white squirrel I referred to previously has a friend; I saw two of them today, while I was sitting in the park reading Lirael. One sat high up in the oak tree I was leaning against and threw acorns down at me for a period of two minutes or so. The white squirrels are apparently a Thing at Oberlin; the alternative sexualities newsletter is (or was) called the White Squirrel, apparently because "this population seemed somehow representative of the LGBT community at Oberlin: sometimes seen, sometimes not, but always there, throughout Oberlin's history, enriching the community and contributing to the uniquely wonderful and magical essence of Oberlin." Um...go squirrels! Stretch that metaphor!

Democratic senator Zell Miller's tirade at the RNC yesterday may have a positive effect beyond alienating potential Bush-voters: over dinner I suggested that K. use him as an example for her course on conversion in the ancient world, which begins tomorrow. Something happened to Zell, something that turned him from the keynote speaker for Clinton at the 1992 DNC and a potential running mate for Gore into the frothing maniac we saw last night at the RNC...who still considers himself a democrat. K. thinks she might be able to use his "conversion" to illustrate the difference between self-identification with a group and the group boundaries perceived by the society, and the problems that causes for scholars, and the scholarly debate over whether non-religious conversion is really the same animal as religious conversion. She claims to be able to segue from Zell to Constantine, too.

Edit: link to the tirade is now fixed. Thanks, metasilk!

This Slate article is a nifty look at Zell's conversion, and one of the comments to it frames his conversion in explicitly religious terms, which made me feel clever for suggesting the link:

Again, the message is pretty clear for both parties: the Democrats are so far left and the Republicans are so far right, they're losing touch with mainstream values, which is why there is this wave of seeming apostasy. Conversion or heresy is playing a big role in this campaign, perhaps because, in no other campaign in recent memory have the two teams, I mean political parties, been so clearly entrenched. And perhaps because, rather than discussing issues, this campaign is shaped by the politics of faith, fear and superstition. Nothing unusual there, but it may help to explain some of the miraculous conversions.

Comments

[metasilk.livejournal.com]

(couldn't access the tirade)
I think this a pretty telling quote from the Slate article about Zell (thanks for the link! Italics are mine):

As Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie, told USA Today last week, Miller's New York role is a sign that "the Democratic Party, under this nominee, has moved very far away from the center."

This argument amounts to a basic truth wrapped in a major fraud. Democrats have tacked left in recent years (though more in tone than in substance). But Zell Miller has moved, too. Far from representing some lonely, abandoned Democratic center, Miller has become a cartoonish GOP partisan.

I would guess it's also the GOP's response to having some Republicans endorse Kerry at the DNC, as well.

[miraling.livejournal.com]

I've got "Dead" in my head now. (:

[god-of-belac.livejournal.com]

I'm not so sure about the Democrats' move left. In fact, I can't think of a position that they hold that is farther left than they did 4 or 8 years ago, except universal health care.

Also, is Slate still doing those stupid Bushisms/Kerryisms, or have they decided that those are just too journalistically determinist?

[arctangent.livejournal.com]

Well, before he was a raving right-wing zealot, David Horowitz was one of the creepiest and raving-est left-wing zealots. (Yes, he was probably worse as a lefty than a righty; at least as a righty he's forced to admit there are rational people on the left, sometimes, in order to back up his point of how he rationally switched from left to right; if all lefties are lefties because they're congenitally insane then it undermines his own credibility.)

He's the best case of "conversion" I can think of, and his description of his conversion process is actually really fascinating, and though itself is probably more than a bit biased, nonetheless illustrates some pretty nasty things about the radical left in the 1960s. Also telling is the fact that when modern-day radical leftists talk about him they tend to classify him as just having "sold out" to get more money for different opinions, which, looking at the kind of person he is, is the least likely of all possible explanations.