Does anyone else's flesh crawl when they watch Harper?

[Hoping4Change]

In an attempt to overcome this admittedly irrational response, I tried to watch an interview he had on Global tonight but I couldn't bear it. I honestly cannot stomach looking at him. It can't be his politics because they are other people whose ideas incense me but I don't have the same visceral reaction. Does anyone else find something wierdly creepy about this guy.:shrug:

[daleo]

1. This seems like a perfectly natural reaction to me.

You might try a pinch of salt, gulp of tequila, and chew of lemon whenever you try to watch him on tv. I hope I got the order right.

[Hoping4Change]

3. That wouldn't work because I would picture a worm in the bottle

of tequila and that worm would bear an uncanny resemblance to Harper:(

[ClusterFreak]

2. Nothing irrational about what you feel.

Nothing at all. This guy defines creepy.

[Hoping4Change]

4. But what about him makes him creepy?

[ClusterFreak]

6. He's like a predator trying to coax an unsuspecting child into their car.

You know, 'would you like some candy?' Sorta like that. It may seem tempting, cuz candy tastes good, but as soon as you accept his offer....next thing you know Myron Thompson is Minister of Justice and Gilles Duceppe is the Leader of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition.

[Hoping4Change]

8. OMG what an image that is! LOL.

But rather than saying he is coaxing children I'd use the word lure. According to Milton lure means 2. Any enticement; that which invites by the prospect of
advantage or pleasure; a decoy. --Milton.


http://dict.die.net/lure/

[IntravenousDemilo]

11. I think it's the obvious insincerity.

And he's very unctuous -- you can just hear the oil dripping off him. Plus, in his inflections, he sounds uncomfortably like Mulroney.

[Hoping4Change]

12. Unctous is a good word. It brings to mind the slithery Uriah Heep

in David Copperfield with his ever constant assertion of being just a "umble servant".

[glarius]

13. It is really quite remarkable that there is a record of the anti-Canadian

speeches he made before extreme right-wing American groups and yet somehow he has managed to slither out from what should be the consequences....It makes you wonder.......

[Hoping4Change]

16. I know he has been allowed to create this extreme image makeover

with no one calling him on it.

[iverglas]

5. more when I listen to him ;)

He's bad enough, but when I contemplate the members of his caucus ...

If you aren't a member of an oppressed group, you can't know what it feels like to listen to the hatred voiced by someone against you.

I don't know what people of colour feel like when they hear racist scum spouting off, for instance, or what gay men and lesbians feel like when they hear gay-hating scum, but I know what I feel like when I hear the women-hating scum in the Conservative Party ... and Liberal Party ... talking about violating women's reproductive rights. It makes me physically ill.

My reaction to Harper isn't quite so, er, visceral, but it's not a feeling I'd voluntarily seek out.

Martin I'm much more tolerant of. Maybe it's because he looks a fair bit like my late dad. (Unfortunately, that Crystal Palace fake-Christian guy on TV looks a little like my late grandfather, and that makes it even more nauseating to look at him.) Thank the gods that nobody in my family has ever looked like Harper. Not even my brothers when they were kinda lumpy before they hit puberty, which is kinda the look Harper has on him.

[Hoping4Change]

7. Lumpy, LOL. That's an apt word to describe him. However I am stunned

that you maintain that "If you aren't a member of an oppressed group, you can't know what it feels like to listen to the hatred voiced by someone against you."

In 1773, Thomas Day a wealthy educated man wrote a poem called the Dying Negro which was the earliest attack on slavery after reading a newspaper article about a slave who had committed suicide. He as far away as one could be from slavery but that didn't prevent him from understanding what being a slave was like.

Humans have the capacity to place themselves in another's shoes. Your comment which is shared by a lot of people I believe insults the thousands of people alive and dead who have committed themselves to bettering the lives of others not necessarily because they endured suffering themselves but because they could imagine what it would be like to be in someone else's shoes.

[iverglas]

14. don't know what brought that on!

Here's what I said, with necessary emphasis:

"I don't know what people of colour feel like when they hear racist scum spouting off, for instance, or what gay men and lesbians feel like when they hear gay-hating scum, but I know what I feel like ..."

Now, I might assume that people of colour and gay men and lesbians feel kinda the way I feel in the roughly equivalent circumstances, but I wouldn't think that was I really correct. I really don't know what it feels like to be a person of colour or a gay man or lesbian. And I won't ever presume that I do.

Empathy isn't about "feeling" the way someone else feels, because that can't be done. One can understand what makes people feel a certain way, and understand how awful it is to feel that way, and want to do something to alleviate their feelings. But one just can't feel it. If you break your leg, I can try to remember what it felt like when I broke my leg, and even if not I can try to imagine what it would feel like to break a leg based on other things that have happened to me, but I really can't ... feel your pain.

He as far away as one could be from slavery but that didn't prevent him from understanding what being a slave was like.

Interestingly, what he did is often described, today, as "appropriating voice". He, and we, simply have no way of knowing what someone else feels. We can imagine it. That's all we can do. And we may well get it wrong, and so we should not claim to be speaking for anyone else.

We do not actually have the capacity to put ourselves in someone else's shoes. Not even by doing it literally. The author of "Black Like Me" just plain wasn't black, hadn't been born black, hadn't grown up black, wasn't going to be black the rest of his life. Ditto Gregory Peck / "Phillip Green" in "Gentleman's Agreement"; he wasn't Jewish, wasn't born Jewish, etc. A person doing that can get an idea of how it feels to be treated as black people or Jewish people are treated, but not of how it feels to be black or Jewish.

Your comment which is shared by a lot of people I believe insults the thousands of people alive and dead who have committed themselves to bettering the lives of others not necessarily because they endured suffering themselves but because they could imagine what it would be like to be in someone else's shoes.

Well, I take exception and offence at this being said to me based on a quite incorrect reading of what I said. Perhaps you imagine that I have never done anything to attempt to better anyone else's life, or that I did it for a reason like profit maybe. You'd be wrong.

The fact that we can't feel what other people feel is in fact just about the best reason to take action to assist them. We have to believe what *they* say about how they feel and not rely on our own imaginings as to what it must be like. And then we have to act according to what *they* say they need, not according to what we then think is best for them based on our own partial and possibly quite distorted notions about what they feel. Any other way lies paternalism.

I have insulted no one, thanks.

[Hoping4Change]

17. For using the word "insult" I plead guilty to hyperbole, its a personal

failing one I find difficult to resist. As for in anyway suggesting that you might be someone who has never done anything to attempt to better anyone else's life. No way. I am actually quite a fan of yours and am mortified that my post might have implied something of the sort. I actually recall your very detailed response to an American DUer quite some time ago who had questions about banking in Canada. I was struck by the time and effort it must have taken you.

As to the discussion. I have to take some long slow breaths before framing a response to the notion of "appropriating voice" to quell the desire to use hyperbole as this notion makes me so angry. (oops more hyperbole more long slow breathing required.:dilemma:

[iverglas]

18. I'll just have to wait!

I have to take some long slow breaths before framing a response to the notion of "appropriating voice" to quell the desire to use hyperbole as this notion makes me so angry.

The notion makes you angry ... or the appropriating of voice makes you angry?

The former, I suspect. Which is where we'll disagree, methinks.

I was struck by the time and effort it must have taken you.

Yeah -- but it was interesting! (Okay, I'm hard pressed at the moment to think how banking could have been interesting, but it must have been at least a little.) I'm sure I started out with a vague recollection of something and went looking for the facts because I was just plain curious. Stockpiling random information, my favourite hobby. ;)

I'll still maintain that the urge to assist someone else is most laudable when it is prompted by the knowledge that one cannot feel what they feel, and that presuming to think that one can is most likely to lead one astray.

Hell, I have no clue why anyone would want to get married, so I can't begin (oops, typed "being" at first, can't have typos) to feel how someone who isn't permitted to get married because of his/her sexual orientation must feel. I still have a duty to fight for their right to do it, even if it seems totally loony to me. If I tried to put myself in a lesbian's shoes, *I* would still be saying "marriage? are you nuts?" Just like if I tried to put myself in the shoes of an Acadian a few hundred years ago, *I* might say "well why the hell wouldn't I just switch religions? it's not like it matters". I just plain can't feel the way people who want to get married or stick to their religion feel, and I can't avoid my own feeling that they're both just dumb, if not worse (I object to both marriage and religion in their entirety, so I object to anyone lending their own support to either one by participating in them).

Blah blah. To me, the essence of equality rights is that everybody gets equal protection and benefit, regardless of whether anybody else can feel their pain or not. Now yeah, one of those myriad little paradoxes of human life, persuading someone that someone else is part of the "everybody" might mean trying to get them to imagine that pain. Reading "The Dying Negro" (do you know I can't find it on line anywhere?) might persuade someone that an African-American is one of "us", and therefore entitled to that equal protection and benefit.

I guess that in our present context, where the equal protection and benefit are a given -- we got 'em in the Charter -- I prefer to put the onus on people trying to deny them, rather than try to get them to feel the pain of not having them. Wanna deny the equal benefit of marriage laws? Justify yourself. You don't have to feel the pain of same-sex couples; that part is old news, same-sex couples are members of "us", and we all have the right to equal protection and benefit. You just have to justify denying them that benefit.

Not you, of course.

But you can't get everyone to even try to imagine someone else's pain. They may have good reasons not to, like the fact that they profit from it, or the fact that they just don't give a shit and never will. They need to have a supreme court smack them upside the head, them. Then they can try to find someone who wants to listen to them whine about their own pain.

I won't mollycoddle bigots and racists and misogynists in general ... but I will acknowledge that some of them are just seriously misguided rather than inherently nasty, and can be led to try to imagine someone else's pain. Third parties may indeed have a role in that process. But just not by speaking in the injured parties' voice. In my you know what.

[elare]

9. It's his eyes

They creep me out

[daleo]

10. Like a portrait on the wall of a haunted house, in a movie

They seem lifeless, yet at the same time they follow you around the room.

[SidDithers]

15. I agree...it's the eyes...

My wife says the same thing whenever we see him. I caution her not to look directly at him, for fear of becoming hypmotized.

Sid