Tweety just said he's a big fan of Ayn Rand.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

He loved The Fountainhead. I always knew Tweety was pretty much of a schizo douchebag, but this cements it. Anybody who likes Ayn Rand suffers from a severe case of arrested intellectual development -- never got past sophomore year. What a dork...

[Stephanie]

1. He's now officially an idiot.

That's so juvenile. He's clearly a dope.

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

2. Puddy Tat shrugged

when he heard that.

[Proud2BAmurkin]

26. LMAO

:rofl:

[pinto]

3. He's a TV personality...nothing more, nothing less.

[July]

33. Self-appointed "pundit."

Which absolves him from acting like a real journalist.

Couldn't agree with you more.

[wurzel]

4. He could not have read her books. They are repugnant.

[JanMichael]

8. No, he could, you could not.

Big difference.

[wurzel]

57. I take your point. I have no desire to open one again. Ever.

How anyone could read them and not realize the author is a sociopath is beyond me. I always ask her admirers the same question. If a person is placed in the middle of a desert (with all the food and water needed for survival), is that person "free"? That is the kind of "freedom" she is really advocating.

[Dudley_DUright]

5. Why am I not surprised?

:eyes:

[Wickerman]

6. I always thought he seemed "stuck" in freshman year. n/t

[Thirtieschild]

7. That explains a lot

[TomPainesBones]

11. Sure does

Never trust Matthews

[NorCalDem]

9. I love Ayn Rand

but in the sense of "know thy enemy." Her assumptions and ideals are completely non-factual, but I suggest reading her work just to learn the mentality of the fuckwads we're dealing with!

[JanMichael]

12. You concept is good I just can't stand her writing style.

I'm more of a Camus or Kundera type.

[NorCalDem]

27. yes, it is tedious and difficult

to keep reading. I guess the best way to describe her writing is...
educational?

Certainly not enlightening!

[barb162]

34. Try Nathaniel Hawthorne

sentences a page and a half long

[barb162]

36. That's interesting.

I find some of her philosophy non-factual, but not all of it. Her attitude about all for money/ the dollar is grinding at times. It is her lack of helping her fellow humans that I found way out of line. If a person couldn't be productive, she basically felt a person was useless. She was writing at a time when there were only two systems, capitalism and socialism, and things were extreme for her. She knew the one didn't work, 1920s socialism, so she went to the other extreme without dealing with its many faults.

Her egotism angle again was not a bad idea but she took it too far in her backlash against 1920s communism.

By the way, I suspect she would strongly hate George Bush as a non-working moron who never earned a penny in his life.

[pretzel4gore]

10. ayn rand despises god (compassion, altruism, generosity)

or at least the jesus christ idea of 'god' Ayn rand nevertheless gives so many xians an excuse to be greedy little pigs!
the one thing from 'fountainhead' i recall was the contempt for 'drying clothes on the clothesline' that proved common people are totally w/out any decency etc, according to roark, or whatever the architect goof's name was(?)
btw ayn rand was really ann shmelslikegoatski, from poland, i believe...she changed her name to 'rand', sorta like mr shicklegruber changed HIS NAME to Hitler! meanwhile eric blair was changing HIS NAME to george orwell. which of all these people added to human civilization?

[JanMichael]

As an atheist I can't stand her either.

We all have some lousy representatives for our personal philosophies I guess...

[joemurphy]

16. Alissa "Alice" Zinovievna Rosenbaum a/k/a Ayn Rand

Actually she was Russian. Born in St. Petersburg.

[joemurphy]

17. So what do you think. Is Tweety a Libertarian? What a hoot!

I'm going to try to start analyzing his spittle-lipped ravings now in terms of Libertarianism. Maybe I can make some sense out of them from that perspective.

[kestrel91316]

41. Tweety goes to Republican fundraisers and does a great job of

talking the talk, so IMHO he is pure RW fascist.

[pretzel4gore]

21. thanks...that damn foxnews, always telling me lies!

:)

[hfojvt]

20. that's funny. Reading your post

reminded me to take my clothes off of my solar clothes dryer. I must agree with Roark a little because I always use my indoor clothesline for my underwear. I think the average person who does laundry these days is not a big fan of clotheslines either.

[July]

35. What is that Galbraith quote about conservative "philosophy"?

Something about how it's a rationalization for greed?

[TomClash]

13. I'm a big fan of Ayn Rand

the novelist, not the political philosopher.

Fiction ain't fact and it ain't thoery.

[eleny]

14. I missed that - Jeez!

Man, is he out of step. He's Catholic, too. Rand doesn't square with the Beatitudes at all. Schizo douchebag? Yeah, I'd go with that for starters. :hi:

[Spinzonner]

15. Wasn't Howard Roarke a terrorist ?

So that makes Tweety objectively pro-terrorist.

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

23. The number one most unintentionally hilarious movie of all time is

The Fountainhead with Gary Cooper and Patricia Neal. If you have never seen it, rent it NOW and enjoy! Check back after you have seen it.

[barb162]

30. Gary Cooper was so wrong for that part

And he didn't understand the whole philosophy behind the character or novel. So totally wrong.

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

37. the 2nd most unintentionally most hilarious movie of all time

is The Naked Jungle with Charleton Heston. And Gary Cooper and Charleton Heston seem very similar with their fraught, uptight, sado-machochistic, misunderstood characters.

I'm not sure what you mean by GC didn't understand the "philosophy" behind the character or novel. I thought they played it totally straight as a literal homage with uproarious results. I'm tearing up with laughter right now thinking of GCooper "Roarke" lashing Patricia Neal with the whip! Oh my God!

Ayn Rand is for pimply 10 graders who want to have intense discussions about Communism vs Capitalism. Most of us have moved far beyond Ayn Rand.

[barb162]

39. In a biography by one of her close disciples,

the disciple discussed the making of the movie. Rand thought Cooper would be physically right for the role and she approved him for the role. Then Rand started trying to explain Roark's motivations for this or that during the filming. It was clear Cooper didn't understand any motivation for anything and it didn't make any difference how many ways and times she tried to explain things to him. Very wooden acting also (he belonged in cowboy roles; he could handle that depth level). I am not sure if that movie bombed at the box office back then. Objectivism was way too deep for Cooper.

I would agree with you about objectivism except Uncle Al Greespan is an objectivist and a long-time and loyal follower of hers and so are several others in important positions, especially in economics at prestigious graduate schools.

Her philosophy of objectivism went way beyond the commies versus the capitalists.

[barb162]

40. I vaguely remember that movie about the ants and a plantation

but I don't remember how it was acted at all. Haven't seen it in years. Heston couldn't really act. I always thought whether he was in "The Big Country" or "Ben- Hur" or whatever, he was always playing the same character, himself, because he was incapable of playing anything else, of actually acting.

[nvliberal]

43. It's a stinkeroo, no doubt about it.

Director King Vidor was on a roll in the late 1940s. He directed Duel in the Sun, a legendary turkey; then he directed Beyond the Forest, Bette Davis' worst yet most entertaining movie.

To top it all off, he directed Ayn Rand's opus, The Fountainhead. It wasn't entirely his fault the movie was bad; Ayn Rand wrote the screenplay.

Gary Cooper was hilariously miscast in the part of Howard Roark. During the climatic courtroom scene, it appeared Cooper didn't understand any of the shit he was spouting. He was just like a robot.

The only notable thing that came from the flick was he and Patricia Neal had a torrid affair which almost broke up Cooper's marriage.

In the end, Cooper's wife, Rocky Balfe, won out, and, incredibly enough, after Cooper died, Neal, Cooper's widow, and her daughter became friends.

[barb162]

47. self delete. dupe

[barb162]

48. Cooper didn't understand anything about his role, nada

It sorta puts a crimp in things when the lead character doesn't understand his role. The movie was B-A-D.

[nvliberal]

50. It was bad, but it was so bad it was good. n/t

[nvliberal]

44. Clarence Thomas makes his new clerks sit through that flick,

which ought to be an impeachable offense.

[Demoiselle]

53. YES OH YES! It was on the other night and I couldn't stop laughing!

The script is hilarious. And watching Patricia Neal and Raymond Massey (Chief EvilDoer) speak their lines with straight faces is enough to give one the fits. And poor old Gary Cooper. Absurd casting. But then the whole thing is absurd. You really gotta rent it and see what we mean. Snicker snorf. Nice far out '50's movie set designer "modern architecture" though.

[Demoiselle]

54. Nah...not really. He is a rugged individualist architect who....

blows up his own building (sort of) because the evil powers- of -conformity- that- be screw around with the design without his permission. (They add tacky balconies, or something.) So he blows it up. Nobody dies, if memory serves. And he gets off with an impassioned speech about individual freedom (or somesuch) that wins the jury over. If that all sounds simpleminded, well...it is.
RENT THE MOVIE, INVITE FRIENDS OVER. YOU'LL LAUGH YAO.

[Donna Zen]

18. And that he admitted he likes Rand...

makes it so much worse.

[Joe Chi Minh]

19. Ayn Rand seems to have been a classic psychopath.

Such people normally learn appropriate behaviour from others, although they nevertheless feel free to cut corners in their narcissistic pursuit of power, and are consequently likely to associate closely in the highest reaches of an organisation and/or a far right-wing milieu.

Imagine what happens then. They suddenly feel vindicated and then aggrieved, as they consider that they've bottled up their true feelings all those years, in favour of "liberal" rubbish - feelings they now believe are comprehensively validated by their peers.

Then, of course, they feel free to "let it all hang out", and excitedly begin to feed each other's fantasies, so that the absence of a moral compass, or the pretence of possessing such, ceases to be an issue for them. They can feel free, free at last!

For them freedom most certainly does not imply any kind of responsibility, except to their own self-gratification.

Also, they never lie; because they believe that what they say is true by very reason of their saying it. The fact that they wish something is ipso facto self-validating, and they no longer feel constrained to look to the society around them for guidance society.

Tweety needs to be careful, since, as the saying goes, a man is known by his friends, and by extension, those he admires.

[LiviaOlivia]

25. Rand was a favorite guest of William F. Buckley

On his old PBS show, "Firing Line", if I remember correctly. Ayn Rand and Malcolm Muggeridge. Good Grief!! Very 19th century in my opinion.

Rand was a bore and a liar. I prefer Kurt Vonnegut.

[barb162]

31. She had a better attention span than the average sociopath

and way more intelligence. I don't think she lied a lot but she was pretty loose with another follower's husband when she was already long-time married to a loyal husband. I think she was so anti-communist, it colored everything in her life and bred her love of capitalism as the highest form of economic systems. She couldn't see anything bad about capitalism compared to what she underwent and suffered under early soviet-style communism

[nvliberal]

46. Nathaniel Branden was Rand's boy toy.

It would a pretty good affair, with both spouses consenting, but it all came to an end in 1968, when Rand learned Branden had an affair with yet another woman, whom he ended up marrying.

His ex-wife Barbara wrote a pretty good book about it all, The Passion of Ayn Rand.

[barb162]

49. I read it; fascinating that Branden's wife could write such a

careful and understanding account of someone who pulled that stunt on her.

[Joe Chi Minh]

60. It's of crucial importance to distinguish between

logic/reason, and intelligence/wisdom - which latter must nevertheless evidently include some measure of the former, to be identifiable and meaningful in the context of our world.

Some of the biggest monsters in the world have been extremely logical/rational, when these capacitites are considered on their own; and what's more many monsters had been deeply traumatised by events in their life, so I'm afraid that won't cut, if it's meant as a blandishment concerning Rand.

What is of sovereign importance is the ability to identify and adhere to truthful underlying assumptions; a capacity generally to be found more readily in those who are not of a worldly cast of mind, and not academically educated. It is better to be a wise fool than imbecilic hot-shot, in fact, equates to the burden of Christ's teachings.

When choosing his assumptions, Einstein stated that his criterion was aesthetic; although a relatively lowly aspect of beauty, when compared with moral beauty, the province pre-eminently of the heart. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this is evidently now the received wisdom, even in physics and mathematics, where they now refer to it as "elegance".

On the other hand, it is a truism that many of the "ablest minds" (I use the term, of course, in the sense favoured by our secular World) are possessed by erudite imbeciles, for no other reason than that they are moral dwarves; their assumptions are as bent as a nine bob watch. And so they built the most awesome edifices on foundations of sand.

[Joe Chi Minh]

62. This is an interesting article:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9400914/

The problem is that they just as surely over-reach, unless firmly controlled.

[Joe Chi Minh]

61. In this context the emergence of the increasingly rabid

rabble of hate-radio jocks, reaching out to identical and kindred spirits, is very interesting, isn't it.

You can sense the bitterness biting into their soul, that they had had to hold back from giving voice to their true nature, when they were young, having not yet found their powerful like-minded associates and sponsors. The paranoia and full-blown narcissism have finally come into play.

[fujiyama]

22. That's very unCatholic of him

considering church doctrine does promote charitable work and compassion, two things Rand wasn't very fond of.

[TomPainesBones]

24. Most of the "Catholics" I grew up around

identify with Ayn Rand more than the Beatitudes.


(Catholic escapee here)

[Marr]

28. But! But! He's so "hard to define"!

LMFAO.

[SlavesandBulldozers]

29. yeah. . . Tweety's an enigma.

just can't pin em down.

oh wait, yes you can. He longs for the Chimp schlong.

[barb162]

32. Alan Greenspan was one of her big-time objectivism followers

[pretzel4gore]

38. yep, one of the dirty little secrets

that the news media keep quiet about (of course, everybody who knows what's up knows this, but the cud chewers don't even know who ayn rand is, much less what the implications are of greenspan's devotion might be)
another dirty little secret, you can google it if you never heard this, was the rabbi dov zakheim who was the pentagon financial ceo until after 911....there's alot of dowwnright anti semitic stuff when rabbi zakheim's name arises, but surely the newsmedia could at least clue people in...dov zakheim is involved in the global hawk technology crap..... greenspan, dov sakheim, what's next?....
http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/print.asp?ID=1927
>apparently, tom flocco's reporting that police interrupted an effort to bomb ny subway system, 5 israeli mossad agents were killed! Cnn had the story but is sitting on it....no wonder alex jones is being persecuted!
mygod, an honest and free press is a basic for a democracy, yet we let piggy own/operate mass media and lie constantly, openly and brazenly....thus no one can believe anything....

[barb162]

56. What Flocco is selling, I'm not buying

I believe Mr. Flocco has been discredited

link below


http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=3617

[kestrel91316]

42. LOL. Greenspan was Rand's "boy toy".

[Avalux]

45. Ew - he really is a he-man misogynist, isn't he?

Every time he talks about Bush being a cowboy, he gets all happy. :D

[Orrin_73]

51. That explains a lot!

[Warren DeMontague]

52. Ewww.

Sure didn't need THAT mental image.

[soothsayer]

55. gawd, is he an Objectivist? my dentist is. Oy.

[reprehensor]

58. Atlas Shrugged... I yawned.

What a dreadful book. It makes 'Leviathan' seem like EZ Reader material.

Maybe Fountainhead is better. Maybe David Lynch could make a sequel to 'Eraserhead' with this book.

[BiggJawn]

59. Well, that's that, then...

He LOVED "The Fountainhead"?
*I* threw it against the wall before Page 100...

It's official, then. He has nothing of value to say to me.

[Straight Shooter]

63. I loved the Fountainhead, too. But I read it when I was 10 years old.

Trying to impress my older brother, LOL, who was 15 and thought it was a good book. (He was quite the loner, so probably a sense of identification there.)

Many years later, I picked up the book again to see if I still thought it would be good. *gag* I didn't get very far in the book.