A New Politics

“How much do we really care about our ideas and how much do we simply cling to the way they make us feel?” – Sarah Palin

“I was reading too much Hegel. Kant’s philosophy is animated by a kind of misanthropic optimism—it keeps you going—but Hegel's end-of-history triumphalism is of the same coin as a terrible, apocalypticist nihilism that would have you believe existence is a mistake.” – Dave Chappelle

“Anyone who cannot look with a dispassionate eye at the history and tendencies of his own people and declare, if it is so, that they are a bunch of ruthless, base shitkickers who deserve everything they have coming to them is a coward, a fool, and probably a fascist.”
– John Mearsheimer

“The art of translation is not that of maintaining the clarity of a thought in two different languages, but of maintaining its obscurity.”
– Jimmy Carter, translator’s note to Italo Calvino’s If on a winter’s night a traveler...

Vanity Fair: Tina Fey, how do you stay so slim and perky at 40?

Tina Fey: Millions of dollars.

VF: Don’t you think your youthful looks, considerable personal wealth, and palpable aura of self-satisfaction undermine audience’s ability to suspend their disbelief and accept that the character of Liz Lemon is romantically unsuccessful and oppressed in the workplace because of her gender? I for one have a hard time imagining that Lemon's condescending disagreeableness stems from an experience of unjust oppression and disadvantage rather than your own new-found sense of entitlement or your easy-going middle-class market-mad post-feminist origins. You seem to be a member of the dominant and dominating class masquerading as a subaltern.

TF: But I have glasses.

“You can wash the bodies of the poor but not their voices.”
– Kate Gosselin

"I talk big with my lawn chairs on public streets, but if the dollar ever falls I'll be the first in line to buy a glock." -Mayor Michael Bloomberg

“All this triumphalism in the city about the failed car bombing—from the Daily Show to SNL—masks the basest fear. Whatever. Worry more about cars and random murder. Terrorism is such bullshit. The enemy is us. Our monkey brain distraction will cause us to build a fort of pillows in a burning house.” – Mayor Michael Bloomberg

“Seething is believing.” – Judge Richard Goldstone