Author Anne Lamott doesn’t like McCain-Palin. She even left church the other Sunday over it:
A man and a woman whose values we loathe and despise — lying, rageful and incompetent, so dangerous to children and old people, to innocent people in every part of the world — are being worshiped, exalted by the media, in a position to take a swing at all that is loveliest about this earth and what’s left of our precious freedoms.
When I got home from church, I drank a bunch of water to metabolize the Dove bar and called my Jesuit friend, who I know hates these people, too. I asked, “Don’t you think God finds these smug egomaniacs morally repellent? Recoils from their smugness as from hot flame?”
And he said, “Absolutely. They are everything He or She hates in a Christian.”
Later on, she devotes a paragraph to ridiculing the names of the Palin children. The Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto observes that she and her friend appear to be the very “stereotype people on the left typically hold of conservatives, and religious conservatives in particular: smug yet insecure, dogmatic and intolerant and filled with hate and rage. Even Lamott’s descriptions of Palin more aptly describe Lamott in the act of describing Palin!”
Anne Lamott is an odd individual, a seething bundle of contradictions. (World has a fascinating interview with her here.) Her admission that she killed a terminally ill friend made me feel as though my spine was trying to detact itself from my body. Yet her book on writing, Bird By Bird, is one of the best I’ve ever read.
I don’t think saying she “doesn’t like McCain/Palin” is accurate.
Sounds like she hates their guts.
The most shocking thing this election season, for me, has been the unbridled, open, almost proud hatred that has been displayed toward Palin (note: I don’t think Anne Lamott would be writing this if it was McCain-Pawlenty).
Hate, hate, hate, hate, hate – that’s all we’ve gotten from the left since Palin was nominated.
Never seen anything like it.
“Seething” indeed. She is willfully mentally ill, if that is possible.
I thought the same thing after reading this. It’s grotesque.
I remember the interview in World. That may be the only reason I have a positive impressive of her. It certainly isn’t from a childish article like this. I mean, ridiculing them for unusual names? I thought the liberals were quick to say diversity is our strength.
Grotesque is a very good word for this, Samuel.
Anne Lamott: We felt this grief and nausea during the run-up to the war in Iraq. We felt it after the 2004 election. And now we feel it again.
Ori: It’s the kind of grief and nausea you feel when you see your values fail and your country going to those with whom you struggled all your life. Very understandable.
Anne Lambott lost trying to stop the war in Iraq, and lost trying to get John Kerry elected in 2004. She feels she is about to lose again. She probably have good reasons for that.
I relate it to the axiom often stated by Dennis Prager (I don’t know if it’s original with him or not): “Conservatives think liberals are wrong. Liberals think conservatives are evil.”
When you’re convinced your opponent is actually evil, that is, consciously bent on bringing suffering, death and destruction to all mankind, then you feel morally justified in hating them. It’s an actual pleasure to hate them.
Thus many liberals (not all) feel it would be wrong to hate Muslim terrorists, but that it’s OK to hate McCain/Palin. Muslim terrorists, they believe, are essentially good people. But McCain and Palin are evil.
“The people who are the most bigoted are the people who have no convictions at all.”
I think Chesterton’s quote for today applies to this somehow, but I’d have to work on it to make that case. Any thoughts?
It’s a new one to me. On a guess, I’d suspect it means that bigotry arises from ignorance and fear of the unfamiliar. People without real convictions (the kind that are thought out) are likely to react based on pure emotion, which tends to bigotry.
Bill has talked about this article on Thinklings, noting some good thoughts from someone who agrees Lamott’s politics, but not her attitude.
Another side of the point Lars makes above is this: Many who see themselves as being in the right see their in-the-right-ness as a license to be a jerk, and Lamott is a perfect example. Magnanimity is dead.
PS – For what it’s worth, The Sarah Palin Baby Name Generator has dubbed me Axe Diesel Palin.
Awesome name!
I dunno, Lamott’s article sounds to me like it was written at the same level of sarcasm, spite, and anger that pretty much all politically-related talk comes from these days in America. Try to divorce yourself for a moment from tha politics, the particular names, the issues. Look at the way it is written. The same kind of writing comes from both right and left.
Melanchthon, you’re right… and that’s exactly the problem.
Artists, writers, and especially Christians, should recoil at the tone of hatred, scorn, mockery, and derision, no matter what side it comes from. I’m a big fan of Lamott’s writing, and Bird By Bird is one of the best books on writing I’ve ever read. But for someone who puts the word “Grace” on her book covers, when Lamott gets political she loses all grace.
As a voter, I’m still undecided. I’m worried about, and disappointed in, both sides. I’m sure that some of the things that have hurt Lamott so deeply are the same things that hurt me. But rants like hers (and so many others, on both sides) are only throwing fuel on emotions, on prejudice, on dehumanizing behavior. It does not help us *think.* It does not help dialogue. And it has nothing to do with the example set by the man she claims to follow.
It’s hard to know how to follow Christ in such a quagmire. I certainly don’t have the answer. It’s easier to point out examples of what *not* to do than to *be* an example of meaningful, helpful, useful, redemptive engagement.
They disagree often, but you know… I often come away encouraged when Jim Lehrer, David Brooks, and Mark Shields sit down at their table on The Jim Lehrer news hour, discuss their perspectives, agree on some things, disagree on others, and then have a good laugh or two together. Sometimes, their disagreements are heated, and you can tell it spills over into their personal relationships. They’re human, clearly. But overall, they’re a good model for the rest of us.
Speak the truth… in love.
I understand being frustrated to the point of tears…but saying God ‘hates’ anyone is to negate Who God is. God may not be pleased with someone’s behavior, but John 3:16, people.
He hates the sin that permeates our lives, but HATE? I don’t think so. And if we are to be Christ like…then we shouldn’t hate either. I hate what Muslims stand for…what they do…but Jesus died for them just like He died for me.
I hate Barack Obama’s politics…but I don’t hate him…and it’s a fine line.
That’s why more people should read this blog, so that they will be inspired by our example of reasonable, if not reasoned, discussion. We curse offline–where it’s more effective.
Melanchthon, my gut response was to agree with you. Maybe I’m just an agreeable guy, but after thinking about it, I can’t say that all political writing is this way. At least, I’m not reading it or hearing it. Sure there are spiteful people on both sides–all sides really, not just two sides of any issue or platform–but I don’t see it much. Do you think the writers at Townhall.com are all like Lamott?
People who truly hate don’t write snide little articles and sign with their names. They plot. They assassinate. They ambush and kill members of the other side. They act like it’s Kansas in the 1850s.
US political writing is more like a two year old throwing a temper tantrum. Annoyingly immature, but more silly than evil.
Very good point, Ori.
I also remember back when I was trying to decide between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson (I tell you, those were the good old days) that there were people saying Jefferson would take away our Bibles and that he had a love child somewhere. It was nasty, not unlike today. And when Garfield was assassinated, I was shocked!
I somehow feel I shouldn’t talk about Annie, but on the other hand her tirades make me think I should. Despite all her truly vile comments, I have an empathy for her. If you want to know where she’s coming from you have to read her first memoir. She was living on a houseboat, pregnant with a child the father didn’t want, she tried to commit suicide in some drunken, drug taking bout; when this failed she went ‘up town’ and stumbled into a church that was more marxist than biblical… and the kind folk there embraced her. I think she’s always been unstable, and shouldn’t be seen as a typical member of the american left.
– being a canuck I won’t comment on her politics; but I think one reason Palin is hated (I know nothing of the woman) is that she’s not Hilary Clinton. (As I understand it, the person who came in second, in years back, was automatically made the vice presidential candidate.)
Arguably Hillary Clinton should have been made the
Democratic VP nominee – but that’s Obama’s choice, completely unrelated to the fact Palin is the Republican VP nominee.
I suspect Palin is hated for being an unapologetic conservative. It would have been easier for some people to accept her if she was a hypocrite, if she had aborted Trig (the Down’s syndrome baby) or talked her 17 year old daughter into getting an abortion.