The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Yes, Dan Riehl: Slavery. To Materialism!

Posted on | June 18, 2012 | 24 Comments

by Smitty

Dan Riehl brings some dainty new footwear to the discussion. However, we need to dig a little deeper here. The message may not be limited to simple 19thcentury bondage. No.

Does Dan Riehl secretly dream of this sort of restraint?

Chattel slavery? Worse--possessions!

As Lawrence O’Donnell (my intellectual guide) points out, we’re all socialists now:
This new line of footwear clearly underscores the American enslavement to possessions, bling, and physical nonsense. We must rightly reject this bourgeois notion of private property! Let the shackles come off, and let there be community footwear! From each according to his mobility, to each according to his feet!

For too long, this weird combination of Imelda Marcos, sports, and melted crayons has gripped the American foot. It is time American toes to join in liberty, equality, and fraternity: “LACES OF THE AMERICAN SHOE UNTIE!”

Category: Dan Riehl, Farce

Comments

24 Responses to “Yes, Dan Riehl: Slavery. To Materialism!”

  1. Jay
    June 18th, 2012 @ 9:14 pm

    Repub revolt and law suit re coercion of delegates:
    http://www.courthousenews.com/2012/06/15/47495.htm

  2. JeffWeimer
    June 18th, 2012 @ 9:26 pm

    Smitty, you are having way, way, WAY too much fun with this. 🙂

  3. smitty
    June 18th, 2012 @ 9:46 pm

    You can admit to jealousy, Jeff. From the forward leaning rest.

  4. GlenWishard
    June 18th, 2012 @ 10:07 pm

    Absolutely g-o-d-d-a-m-n-e-d right.   I’m tired of seeing these ugly-ass $200 no-taste no-style rubber gulag products, slapping the pavement under people who are too fat to even overcome gravity, let alone run 10 yards in their LeBron  Super Sportsters.   It is time for people to stop pretending that they are athletes and put on a pair of man-person shoes.  And a decent pair of pants, with a belt. 

    And if you really do require this kind of equipment – if you are a professional basketball player, for example – you should put the clown shoes in a bag until you get to the gym, at which point you can take off your big boy shoes and put on the clown shoes.

  5. Dianna Deeley
    June 18th, 2012 @ 10:52 pm

    OK, my jaw is hanging open. Who thought this was a brilliant marketing move?

    Mockery is the only proper answer. 

  6. Anamika
    June 18th, 2012 @ 11:36 pm

    Smitty, in the comment section of your  previous anti-progressivism blog post, you replied:

    As far as I can tell, your argument against “baddies” would be akin to
    saying that we should eliminate the square root function from
    mathematics, because the taking the square root of nine allows for an
    answer of -3, and we can’t have all that negativity about.
    If you’re not at liberty to let math be math, and life be life, then you may be in a grave somewhere.

    Allow me to respond here.

    I was not arguing against baddies at all but against the one-sidedness of Hood’s thing as presented, as if the self is all benefit and no downside.  (I don’t know whether that’s Hood or just the SciAm reviewer.) I must have stated it badly especially since you rebutted Hood’s views in the same blog post.

    And i deeply appreciate math, which allows sqrt to not only have a negative result from 9 but even allows sqrt of -3, going so far as to invent a new category of number, “imaginary,” to accommodate this possibility. (Anagram enthusiasts may appreciate that “imaginary” becomes “I’m in a Gary,” “I man, i Gary,” “aim in Gary,” “a mini-Gary,” and so on.)  

    And math allows these new numbers to interact with its old numbers, in fact conferring upon sqrt(-1) a simple symbol, i, and giving that symbol enough status to rank as one of its five most important numbers.  Which numbers are connected by math’s most elegant expression/formula, e^(ipi) + 1 = 0, where e^(ipi) is e raised to the power of i times pi. 

    There is an explanation of this at

    http://www.math.toronto.edu/mathnet/questionCorner/epii.html

    So let’s let math be math and life be life by all means, but not represent the self as enabling only those “positive” things, even appropriating love, which it has no right to. Love comes to the fore only when self gets out of the way.

  7. JeffS
    June 19th, 2012 @ 12:28 am

     Tut tut, Anamika, tut tut!

    What have you been told about blogging drunk?  Blogging stoned?  And blogging drunk AND stoned?

    Tut tut, Anamika!  Homer Simpson is not a good role model.  Tut tut!

  8. Adjoran
    June 19th, 2012 @ 12:35 am

     Most of us would be happy if someone had “the talk” with her about blogging stupid.

  9. JeffS
    June 19th, 2012 @ 12:37 am

     “Anamika, you can’t go through life fat, drunk, and stupid.”

  10. Adjoran
    June 19th, 2012 @ 12:39 am

     Okay, it is now being reported that Adidas is withdrawing the shoes from the market, period. 

    This has to be one of the all-time shortest product roll-outs – right up there with “The Auschwitz Fun Factory” (but of course they were able to sell all those withdrawn play sets to the Palestinians and bill the UN for it, so the company didn’t eat it all).

  11. Dianna Deeley
    June 19th, 2012 @ 12:54 am

     We don’t know that she’s fat, and it’s mean to say that to a girl.

  12. JeffS
    June 19th, 2012 @ 12:59 am

     We don’t know that “she” is a girl in the first place.

  13. JeffS
    June 19th, 2012 @ 1:01 am

     It’s also mean to say that to boys.

  14. Anamika
    June 19th, 2012 @ 3:24 am

     Re. JeffS

    Thank you for the reply.

    How people (I or others) think about their own and others’ views has caught my attention recently (again) for a couple of reasons not related to ToM.

    How do you reconcile (if you do) the fact of the diversity and multiplicity of human experience and thus of human views with “Mine’s right and yours isn’t?”

    How could you?

    In one case…

    One says the earth is spherical. Other says the earth is flat. Only one is (almost) right.  One says earth goes around the sun. The other says the sun goes around the earth. Only one is (almost) right. To know the right one – you need to know better than both, or, at least one.  For you to reconcile, both of them need to trust and respect you enough and they should be in the right state of mind to listen.

    In other cases,

    One child says… she is mean. The other child says…he irritates me. Both of them are right — he does irritate her and she does act meanly. Acting irritatingly is no fault of his and acting meanly is no fault of her. Neither of them have any real control over it. For you to reconcile, both of them need to be in the right state of mind to listen.

    In yet other cases…

    Democrats and Republicans; Horse and Grass; Tiger and the lamb: might just have different vested interest and “reconciliation” may not really be desired or possible.

    In other words… do what appears true to you…, even though it might in fact be a “lie” — like the earth “looking” flat, sun “looking” to go around the earth, and, others might in fact be “right” when they see your ‘lies’… or, they can also be mis-informed or prejudiced and, sometimes, we may not be able to determine correctly.

    That is when it comes to the trust, respect and, the frame of mind… “our” frame of mind.  Are we willing to fully accept that we might be fully wrong even though, we “see” sun go around the earth…

  15. Shawny Lee
    June 19th, 2012 @ 5:56 am

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jz3yhYYV5MQ

    Later ;  )

  16. Bob Belvedere
    June 19th, 2012 @ 7:35 am

    Answer: People who don’t know any of their country’s own history.

  17. Bob Belvedere
    June 19th, 2012 @ 7:40 am

    I miss my SS Funtime Interrogation Kit.

    It had a picture of Maj. Hochstetter on the box.

  18. richard mcenroe
    June 19th, 2012 @ 10:15 am

    Lord Bardolph. Why, you are so fat, Sir John, that you must needs be out of all compass, out of all reasonable compass, Sir John.

    Falstaff. Do thou amend thy face, and I’ll amend my life…

  19. richard mcenroe
    June 19th, 2012 @ 10:16 am

     You can make up your own with those excellent Sears Craftsman Tools…

  20. Pathfinder's wife
    June 19th, 2012 @ 1:01 pm

    Yep, whatever other arguments (and their validity) could be made: those are some pretty tasteless and tacky shoes.

    Plus they’re ugly as sin.

  21. McGehee
    June 19th, 2012 @ 1:05 pm

    “Yo mama so fat, she has to make two trips just to go upstairs!”

  22. JeffWeimer
    June 19th, 2012 @ 5:56 pm

     I will admit to jealousy standing tall. How else would you see my green eyes?

  23. Grumpa Grumpus
    June 20th, 2012 @ 6:22 pm

    This is for real?

  24. Grumpa Grumpus
    June 20th, 2012 @ 6:50 pm

    Actually, that the Earth is an imperfect sphere was known as far back as Greece. Simply using a pole, a measuring tool, shadows and third grade geometry you can calculate the size pretty closely. The shadow’s behaviour between 2 points, if one is displaced in longitude shows the Earth IS NOT AND ?CANNOT? be a plane!

    Everyone thinks ancient peoples were stupid ? this is the prime assumption of Progressivism, and the hubris of it sickens me! We have our technological civilization, not because we “evolved” – an asinine concept Sociologist appropriated from biology so the other Sciences would stop pointing and laughing, while giving the would-be “science” of Sociology wedgies! We have out technological civilian b/c WE STAND on the SHOULDERS OF GIANT!

    Ancient People didn’t have our technology b/c of the teloscope effect – the giants mountain of discovery that was necessary hadn’t piled high enough yet!

    I really wish the myth that everyone believed in a Flat Earth until Columbus would die!