A Relaxed Sarah

Speaks normally while in Hamilton, Ontario
Sarah Palin was in Hamilton Ontario on April 15 for a

$200-a-ticket event [which] raised money for Charity of Hope, a local group supporting charities such as Good Shepherd Youth Services and McMaster Children's Hospital.

Her visit was surprisingly underreported in the media (mainstream and blogs), mainly because I think she was here on a fund raising mission rather than a political tour (why would she do politics in Canada, anyway?).

Still here is an interesting short video of an interview with her and Connie Smith of the Christian television network Crossroads/CTS, which I managed to catch purely by chance yesterday. It was clearly a replay of an earlier broadcast.

Sarah is relaxed, speaking in what resembles an Alberta accent. This is the first time where I haven't heard her use her convoluted sentence structures and her circuitous thought processes.

Here is the link to her short 8-minute interview, with a clearly star-struck interviewer, and Sarah who is obligingly charming.

Oprah as a Manufactured Guru

And Kitty Kelley's facts


In my last post on Oprah, I wrote:

I think every guru has a cultivated image. Anyone who lives for a following and for adoring crowds must be doing subtle image building (and alterations). And Oprah is no exception.

Part of that cultivated image is how special this "guru" is, who went through some difficulties some time in his life, and who overcame them through a combination of resilience and luck. Everyone can be resilient, but not as resilient as this guru. And not everyone (in fact very few people) can have the luck and good fortune bestowed on him.

This is how Oprah presents herself. The interesting thing about her revelations on her difficult background is that she describes them as incidents over which she had no control, and almost all of them could be blamed on the initial horror of the abuse she suffered as a child.

Kitty Kelley seems to be straightening out those facts. For example, she writes that Oprah’s promiscuity, which she acted out in the form of prostitution, could have been her desire for money in order to appear equal to her highschool friends, and not an angry reaction to her abuse and abusers.

Oprah as a materialistic teenage prostitute deflates the whole guru/goddess image that she has been cultivating. It’s no wonder that she keeps as silent as possible about her background, and provides carefully constructed variations when she does speak out.

I'm beginning to think I should have a whole category just for Oprah. In the past six months, I have been writing intermittent posts about the her, and have deciphered a few things just by watching her shows. And, Kitty Kelley's book came at a surprisingly appropriate time (for my blogging schedule, that is).

As far as I know, Kelley doesn’t try to decipher the Oprah Mystique; she just provides the facts. Could that be a mission I can take on?

Oprah's Exposure

Kitty Kelley takes a hard look at Oprah


I'm trying to prepare a long post on Oprah, her mediocrity and her fabricated (to some extent) world. And the strange hold she has managed to garner over most of the female population of the world, including conservative cultures and women.

Here is something interesting Kitty Kelley's biography has revealed. I always felt that part of Oprah's mystique was her secrecy, or her attempt to hide the mundane, ungainly parts of her life. She seems extremely forthright, especially as she disclosed her childhood abuse. But what Kelley shows is that Oprah has told us parts of her stories, but covers up some aspects of those stories.

For example, she has told us that she was very promiscuous as a teenager. But Kitty revealed that she was actually a teenage prostitute, selling her body for money to compete with her financially superior highschool classmates.

Oprah also talks about the death, soon after birth, of her son. Again, Kitty writes that Oprah was trying to harm this child during her pregnancy - not going for an outright abortion, but abusing her body in order to affect the birth of the child.

I think every guru has a cultivated image. Anyone who lives for a following and for adoring crowds must be doing subtle image building (and alterations). And Oprah is no exception.

Manhood without the Validation of Women

Why homosexuals shouldn't write about manhood

Continuing with the theme from my last post on a homosexual as the main contributor for the Virtus blog of Alternative Right, this same writer has a new post up titled; "MAN vs. 'Person'." The article got quite a few negative responses.
Read the article if you will, but here is the crunch of it all. Voicing his surprise

Has Alternative Right now finally reached the level of importance where it attracts obsessive Marxist/feminist concern trolls, Trojans and evangelists?

Donovan, the author of the article, ends one of his comments by saying

if your manhood needs a woman's validation -- the feminists have already won.

It is frighteningly misogynistic and weirdly narcissistic. Why show "valor, manliness, excellence, courage, character, and worth" if not partly to validate the other 50% of the population, which is made up of women as sisters, mothers, and, of course, wives? Donovan seems to buff up his masculinity just for the sake of masculinity.

No one in the fifty-strong list of commenters has picked up on this loosely placed sentence. The conservative ones are probably got taken aback by the feminist connotations. The "manly" ones have bought the idea that men can do their thing without women telling them what to do.

But, I think Donovan is more hardcore than that. He seems to be saying that since he doesn’t need women to be virile, neither should other men.

Alternative Right is progressing into a strange site. It has embraced those elements which contribute to our culture's decadence and decline: homosexual virility, neopaganism, anti-Christianity, anti-Semitism, atheism, anti-Americanism (here is the strange article where the author denounces – crucifies – American women), and even to some extent a subtle misogyny (those "Gamers" seem to post there).

More Strangeness at Alternative Right

A homosexual contributor for Virtus

The main contributor to the section called "Virtus: Men's Studies" at Alternative Right is a homosexual.

This is how Wikipedia defines "Virtus."

Virtus was a specific virtue in Ancient Rome. It carries connotations of valor, manliness, excellence, courage, character, and worth, perceived as masculine strengths (from Latin vir, "man"). It was thus a frequently stated virtue of Roman emperors, and was personified as a deity.

But, once again according to Wikipedia,

Virtus applies exclusively to a man's behaviour in the public sphere, i.e. to the application of duty to the res publica in the cursus honorum.

And,

His private business was no place to earn virtus, even when it involved courage or feats of arms or other qualities associated to it if performed for the public good.

Thus,

While in many cultures around the world it is considered "manly" to father and provide for a family, family life was considered in the Roman world to be part of the private sphere. During this time there was no place for virtus in the private sphere.

This separation of the public from the private makes sense if one accepts that having children is a natural aspect of being a male (anyone can have children), whereas courage in war needs to be cultivated, as does good judgment in public office. In addition, these two public duties are selective – some are more courageous than others, some have better judgment.

While any man can have children, being a good father and family man is not intrinsic to everyone. It is something that needs to be taught and cultivated. And some are better fathers, and better at maintaining their families, than others.

At the cost of refuting a whole tradition of Ancient Rome, I will say that at least in our modern world, a man as a heterosexual being, who has a family of a wife and children, and who maintains that family through the years, ranks high with the virtue of Virtus. Various levels of heterosexual men (married without children, unmarried) can also subscribe to this virtue.

In my humble assessment, I think to qualify for Virtus, a man needs to exhibit both these private and public qualities. This sounds harsh, but look at our modern leaders. Although the attention given to spouses and children is unduly high these days, there is a greater respect given to a leader if the public feels that the leader has accomplished an exemplary private life together with a noteworthy public career.

A homosexual can never achieve both conditions.

A Cat's Eye View

By Leo and his Cat Cam

Textures and lines

Notice how Leo doesn't fall for the "dead center" trap.
He places his prominent tree 1/3 into the photo, rather than
right in the middle.


Here's what Fran Hurcomb's cat Leo does all day. Fran attached a camera around Leo, and let him wonder around Old Town, Yellowknife.

I don't mean to marvel at the artist that Leo is, like those elephants who can paint with their trunks. But Leo does have a good eye, at least once in a while!

I don't think a dog would "take" the kinds of pictures that Leo does. Dogs seem too agitated and mobile, and when they're not moving, they're lounging about without much regard for their surroundings.

Many of Leo's pictures are taken on the move. But there are some shots where I can imagine him sitting in that calm, serene way that cats have, observing his surroundings, and being very particular at what he thinks is worth looking at (and photographing) and what isn't.

Leo's camera is around his neck, so the images that we see are lower than Leo's eye-level. But, given that minor imprecision, Leo's photographs have been displayed at the town's gallery.

Leo's images can be viewed here.

No Land Left to Defend

At the rate the Indians are going

Every time I write about David Yeagley, I find a new piece of information about Canadian Indians that is not particularly flattering (to the Indians). I'm not saying that the issues regarding American and Canadian Indians are the same, but they are often similar, although things are more extreme here.

The CBC reported that British Columbia homeowner Louise Allix has to pay $35,000 for having archaeologists assess her property for potential "heritage" artifacts. She wasn't even aware that her property was considered a heritage site until she decided to build a house on it. Regarding heritage sites, the CBC diplomatically writes, "the province keeps the database of sites that are reported to them by First Nations and other interested parties," but doesn't specify who those other interested parties are.

So, I can come to my own biased conclusions (albeit with some backing, this is B.C. after all and I've reported on the B.C. land claims issues that unraveled during the Olympics) that most of this reporting comes from First Nations people. In fact, here is a quote from former chief of the Nanoose First Nation:

Buyer beware. That land you are buying may be of historical importance to First Nations...Heritage can be preserved or destroyed. And the biggest problem that we've had is that it's been destroyed.

So far, there are 38,000 heritage sites in B.C., with 2,000 added each year. That is 38,000, and growing, possibilities for "heritages" to be destroyed.

Mrs. Allix's property dig uncovered "part of a human skull...a dog skeleton, several arrowheads and a hand-carved pin." This is the "heritage" that the B.C. government and Indians are jealously guarding.

Part of the problem, of course, is that Indians can claim as a heritage site any place where they believe some artifacts (or bodies) are buried. Given the nomadic nature of many Indian tribes, any part of B.C. can potentially be a heritage site – as the yearly reports of 2,000 sites indicate. It is time that the B.C. government took a firm stand and simply refused to cave in to the atrocious demands of Indians-gone-amuck. Before they know it, there will be no land left to defend.