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COAT BOUGHT
Nicholas Gruen reports that Clive Hamilton is ashamed of his new coat:
I listened to a very brief lecture by the director of one of our left of centre think tanks. He has described in detail his guilt at buying a coat that was more lavish than he thought appropriate. He didn’t want his own behaviour to demonstrate the materialism against which he rails publicly.
Oh no! Clive’s indulgent coat-buying has already inspired a modern youth to purchase this elaborate macrame hat. The movement is doomed!
Remember when the idiots were all running around in Mao caps and jackets back in the day? How do they expect us to trust them with the future when they cling so desperately to the past…?
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2006 07 15 at 02:04 PM • permalinkI can probably set him up in a new seal pup number if he’d like.
Posted by andycanuck on 2006 07 15 at 02:08 PM • permalinkperhaps Clive should try this one on for size
Posted by procrustes on 2006 07 15 at 02:16 PM • permalinkHe has described in detail his guilt at buying a coat that was more lavish than he thought appropriate.
Translation - he’s as much a lover of nice things as any right-wing scumbag, but he has the good taste to feel bad about it.
He didn’t want his own behaviour to demonstrate the materialism against which he rails publicly.
Translation - do as I say and not as I do, stupid proles.
The things he enunciates are pure Merton and Samuelson – avarice for glory is pretty much it, the desire to sell well – and the cognate anxieties of flopping and of not being “at the outer edge of the zeitgeist”.
Call me stupid, but can anyone actually understand this passage ? Maybe a job for one of Paco’s patented translators…
And that crotcheted cap is housing a suspicious head-tilt.
Actually, Dave S., now you’ve put it that way—Little Clivey’s boasting about his new coat the way some women boast of losing weight.
Yes, but he would also have to rail against our superficial society for making overweight women feel ashamed, and tell us how he would never bend to such “lookist” pressure.
#4: And the man wins a cigar! Nice going, Stephen!
#1 & #5: Isn’t it possible that the prospect of having to listen to this Clive person for even a few minutes simply drove the young man to take desperate measures in order to avoid conversation? For example, the photo strongly suggests to me that the fellow tried (unsuccessfully, it appears) to go to ground as a teapot, and that the head-covering was a last-second attempt at verisimilitude - it does look a bit like a tea cozy.
#8: Maybe a job for one of Paco’s patented translators . . .
Let’s fire’er up, and see what we get! Feeds phrase into Paco’s Patented Instant Translator . . .whompa, wheeze, whompa, wheeze, whompa, wheeze. Ding, ding ding!
“Clive just wants everybody to think he’s cool, and btw, I’m a pretentious ass who couldn’t write a simple statement like that to save my life.”
Paco’s. Patented. Instant. Translator. If you want to “get it”, GET IT!
He has described in detail his guilt at buying a coat that was more lavish than he thought appropriate.
Clive’s real lefty guilt is that he was unable to compel someone else to pay for his nice coat via a government coat subsidy program and/or coat tax credit program.
Posted by perfectsense on 2006 07 15 at 05:07 PM • permalink#9 Dave S., but really, isn’t what’s on the inside important? Aren’t we being lookist when we laugh at a crocheted cap enclosing a tilted head? Aren’t we being superficial when we see a new coat on a lefty, who should really be above such things as a new coat? After all, wouldn’t a covering made of…Paco’s leftover tea cozies be as utilitarian as a coat, and involve recycling to boot, and therefore invest the insides of the individual wearing said tea-cosycoat with all the warmth smuggitude could ever grant?
Unless said lefty says, “Oh, this new coat? Why yes, it did cost a lot, but really, I was thinking of Karl Marx the whole time I was in the checkout line.”
It just never ceases to amaze me. There’s very few places to go in life that demand a stricter adherence to uniform conformity than those organizations and philosophies created by those wanting to rebel against uniformity and conformity.
Thought, speech, dress codes, hair styles, mannerisms, even hygiene standards. You’d have to join the military or a monastery to find as strict a demand for conformity as tends to exist in the worlds of the perpetually juvenile anti-ists.
I came here feeling down. Everyday brings something to give one pause. These days everything seems to make me angry. And incredulous.
Then I come here, and while there are serious things going on, there is also a wonderful sense of life that keeps evil in perspective, and reminds one that life, not death, is the important thing. It is the major difference between us and them (if I may be allowed to use that phrase). I’m very thankful for it, as I am all of you who meet here.
Clive is a comic, right?
This is a little-known fashion snap of Clive Hamilton in his pre-think-tank days. Now we can add ‘lavish coats’ to the list of things his Australia Institute has railed against, including 4WDs/SUVs, internet pornography, Christmas presents, and buying red roses on Valentine’s Day. Australia has a long tradition of ‘Wowserism’ and Clive is just the latest. A wowser has been defined as a person who can’t bear to think that someone, somewhere, is having a good time.
Grimmy (#19) has a very good point about the conformist dress codes seen in the halls of academia.
All the teaching staff dress and look alike, down to the men’s straggly beards and the women’s sensible shoes. There seems to be a cachet in wearing wrinkled shirts and filthy unpolished shoes, “I am so intellectually preoccupied, I never think of mundane things like ironing or shoe cleaning”
Just another example of the hive mentality, I suppose.
Posted by Pedro the Ignorant on 2006 07 15 at 10:59 PM • permalink“left of centre think tank”?
Oh my! Now that’s a rather wimpy term to use when talking about the ‘Australia Institute’ particularly where Clive Hamilton is concerned - several leagues to the left of Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili I would have thought. Not that ‘The Australia Institute’ is particularly well named in the descriptive sense - ‘Mother Gaia Australia’ would be much more accurate.
One has to wonder though about the antecedents and the motives of some of Directors of this ‘left of centre think tank’ - surely a contradiction in terms -are they really honestly and ideologically committed, could there be a hint of crass commercialism or self-interest here?
Looking at backgrounds, one is given to wonder: Energy Strategies Ltd; Poola Foundation; Australian Council of Trade Unions, plus a gaggle of useful academic dunces!
Nah! Couldn’t be! Just the usual right-wing paranoia!What, he couldn’t buy a “good Republican cloth coat?”
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2006 07 16 at 12:31 AM • permalinkI complained I had no hat—until I met a man with no head.
Posted by MentalFloss on 2006 07 16 at 02:52 AM • permalinkHe didn’t want his own behaviour to demonstrate the materialism against which he rails publicly
Garbage. He wants other members of his club to think highly of him. He doesn’t want to be considered a hypocrite but he believes/suspects that he’s sinned against his own (their) values so he’s warding off possible attacks from them by attacking himself first. Nobody can criticise him as hard as he criticises himself. See? So he gets to keep both the high moral ground and the coat. It would be very wasteful, after all, to get rid of it and buy something less “lavish”.
But what is a lavish coat? I’ve no idea.
By the way, #11 (and anyone else wondering) —I think the little bits of yarn hanging out are simply a sign that the crocheter was too lazy to weave in the ends of his yarn. I’ve got semi-finished afghans like that, because it’s a real pain-in-the-ass job to sew in dozens of inches-long strands.
Of course, that hat should have required only one, maybe two, skeins of yarn, so there shouldn’t be that many tails. Maybe he rummaged the yarn out of leftovers from another project. Whatever way, the little tails would be cute only on a little girl (cf my wearing such a hat when 5)
I pity him, buying nice new clothes should be a joyous occasion.
Posted by Daniel San on 2006 07 16 at 07:36 AM • permalink1.618 — Avoid the macrame bikini. I nearly strangled the big fella…
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2006 07 16 at 10:54 AM • permalink#21 - saltydog, I know exactly how you feel. Today is one of the days of the year I feel about twice my age - every stupid trick I did as a young’un & every motorcycle wreck & every beating I ever took or gave seem to be haunting me today. Combined with the news from Israel, it’s enough to make me hide my head under the blankets. But I came here, & now I’m giggling like a girl at the silliness…and am reminded that Life Is Good. My heart is much happier than it was - so I’ve put a buffalo roast & new red potatoes in the oven to celebrate, even though it’s hotter’n Hell out there (I love central A/C).
This thread is so damn funny, thank you all!
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Why, o why must lefties be so STUPID about clothing, in addition to their other foolishness? Why must they subject us to their macrame hats?