Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Warning: The Surgeon General has determined that the podcast associated with this post contains jokes and observations that may offend some listeners who are supportive of the current President of The United States.
In this episode, the hosts of this show (that’s Jonah Goldberg, Rob Long, and John Podhoretz) pretend they are White House Press Secretaries and are tasked to spin some recent news stories in such a way that makes them a positive for the President (they also take on a few stories that having nothing to do with the CiC). Some may not find this funny. We understand that, hence this very specific warning. But if you can put aside your politics for an hour, we think you’ll enjoy this. But that’s not all: the guys also discuss the recent spate of black face black listing, why Instagram is not a primary news source, and scourge of social media and why no one should ponder joining Parler.
Subscribe to GLoP Culture in Apple Podcasts (and leave a 5-star review, please!), or by RSS feed. For all our podcasts in one place, subscribe to the Ricochet Audio Network Superfeed in Apple Podcasts or by RSS feed.
Until the mob decides that’s oppressive. And/or violates animal rights, or something.
I disagree. It’s still art. Even ugly outdoor abstract art is art. A sculptor worked to create it. It didn’t spring up overnight from planting hex nuts in the ground. It took time. Some of it actually takes skill.
Though they’re not tearing down ugly abstract art, are they?
Nope, more like the work @jimbeck does.
????
Ricochet’s own Jim Beck is a sculptor. Most of his work has been medical sculpture for use by doctors, but some is to honor people. Here is one of his works:
Impressive! But this is the sort of thing Rob thinks is not really art?
It doesn’t move. Rob probably thinks all art should move, like a TV show.
I’m of the mind that certain movement is, itself, art. I don’t just mean something like ballet, although I would include that, I guess, though I’m not a fan. But, to use one of my usual examples, I think a game of Carolus Magnus is art. I don’t just mean the pieces, the layout, the colorful bits, . . . I mean, how players interact with the game bits, the rules, and each other creates a sort of kinetic experience that I can only describe as art.
I have seen the same in a group of elderly ladies playing a fast and furious game of Mah-jongg. Certain games are not just visually art (for example, in a beautiful, unique chess set, or the clean lines of Go), but also have a movement on the table and within the mind that is, to me, also a form of art. I think you find it mostly in abstracts although it is certainly not limited to such.
This is one of the ways that I know that true beauty is an absolute — because there is order, harmony, rhythm. And players interacting with a game and each other are engaging in a group activity of order and harmony and rhythm. Game designer Alex Randolph once noted that humans have an inner need to classify things. And that classification, that ordering, “is the beginning of mathematics, the beginning of philosophy, of art, of all the aesthetics!” It is human.
Wherever you see straight lines, he said, you know that humans have been there.
Lewis seemed to touch on this a bit in That Hideous Strength when part of inducting Mark into the inner circle of the N.I.C.E. was to get him used to things that were slightly . . . off. Slightly disordered or wrong or twisted in some fashion.
If we accept that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, we open ourselves to the idea that we can never declare something ugly.
From there, it’s not very far from declaring that everything is good, depending on one’s point of view, and nothing can ever be bad.
/tangent
If the guys think those Trump “explanations” are bad/funny, what do you suppose the excuses would be coming from a Biden administration?
Wouldn’t need them, since the press would cover up everything for them.
Excuses from the media, then.
They don’t consume any media other than DNC-approved media. That’s why it’s impossible to convince the establishment class that there was no Russian Collusion or Ukrainian Collusion or any number of DNC-invented “scandals.” And why so many beltway dwellers still believe all that nonsense. They’ve never heard any differently.
Are you saying they don’t read Ricochet?
Of course you are right, but getting into the actual policy aspects of this stuff would detract from their ability to make “jokes” about Trump killing old people.
Ha! They don’t!
I mean, the Democratic Party just declared Independence Day to be a celebration of White Supremacy. The New York Times has declared Mount Rushmore to be a monument to racism. And our “conservative” leaders and talking heads are whining “but his tweets!”
We must assume that the Democrats and their little brownshirt brigades are absolutely serious about their plans for this country. We can no longer just write off these silly comments as the musings of harmless potheads. Hasn’t the last month shown us how serious they are?
I actually think that Mount Rushmore will be irreparably damaged by this time next year. Someone’s going to try to blow it up, or shoot a howitzer at it, or send an armed drone at it. And the beltway class will sigh and sadly shake their heads. But nobody is ever going to hold these barbarians accountable, because nobody has the political will.
The choice this fall is clear: do we want civilization or do we want anarchy?
(We’re going to get anarchy either way, but at least if we avoid a Democrat victory, the anarchists won’t have a Commie enabler in the White House encouraging them.)
The fall of the United States is imminent.
I wish I could say this was alarmist nonsense.
I’m with Drew
In reading comments on articles about destroying Mount Rushmore, I’m actually shocked to see responses like “Whatever, makes no difference to me. I have no interest in seeing it.” And those comments are on supposedly conservative websites.
What the hell is your conservatism conserving, exactly?
It seems that even co-founder Rob Long doesn’t read Ricochet.
And one party is encouraging the destruction, and the other party is doing….what ARE the Republicans doing?
Eff all.
They are trying to hedge their bets, based on early polls, in case a new administration comes with the new year. There are Vichy Republicans that are angling for their new jobs in the Brave New 1984 World to come. “Maybe”, they think, “if I’m not labeled a Trump supporter, they will spare me in the purge.” Some say they are just staying true to their principles, as if anyone will care when those principles have been eradicated from public discourse. They will be lucky to score a place in a cage in the Progressive Zoo.
Destroying the country, but at the speed limit.
I expect this is the mindset of many center-right pundits as well.
Hence the idea that the republicans are the stupid party, and the democrats are the dangerous party.
I’ve also seen it, if it wasn’t for stupid people the Republican Party wouldn’t have leaders and the Democrat Party wouldn’t have voters.
That GLOP was torment to endure. Still I continued to listen in astonishment for more than 30 minutes as the three of them complimented each other on their cleverness and laughed like fiends at their own priceless wit.
At one time I was a GLOP addict. Over time and as my views parted from many of theirs, I still had fun being their audience and always felt I was among pals, even when our opinions were at odds.
No longer, sadly. The conversation has become just as mean, snarky and self-indulgent as any leftist pundits’ ridicule, as we find everywhere and hope to avoid on Ricochet. Bye, fellas.
Can you really call it a “conversation”, if they agree on everything?
Do these … fellows ever talk to anyone who disagrees with them?
Would that make it a reverberation, instead?
Yes, they do. I have heard it many times.