In a way, it’s a story much like Cormac McCarthy’s recent best-selling “The Road.” Both follow a hero’s long march through thankless environments– in Ignatieff’s case, from the theory-throttled, dusty tower of academia to the burned-out hell-hole of representative politics. Danger lurks. Grime abounds. The narrative tension is: Can the hero be wrong about everything, survive, and still convince people he’s smarter than everyone in Moveon.org?
I was excited when I first saw this new essay: At last, Ignatieff was going to come clean about his super-duper-double-dipper errors. I expected a no-holds barred, personal excoriation. In fact, I assumed the first, last, and only sentence of the essay would be: “Please, for the love of God, don’t ever listen to me again.”
HOWEVER. . .
Don’t let the words “Huffington Post” scare you off. This is seriously funny stuff.
h/t
Sorry, I couldn’t get through it all — not even the review.
Michael Ignatieff is so “intelligent”, he’s unintelligible. Although he does try hard to relate to the common man, it’s just not in his blood.
For example:
“Bus drivers can display a shrewder grasp of what’s what than Nobel Prize winners…” (M.I.)
No they can’t. “What’s what” is a philosophical question that I’d rather pose to a Nobel Prize winning astro-physicist. And I happen to be a bus driver.
😉 ricardo
“Prime Chancellor of Canada’s Liberal Delegate” is every bit as good as Kate’s “First American Prime Minister In Waiting”.
Seriously, if Count Iffy’s essay can turn the reviewer into a babbling mess, just think of what it could do to Canadians if we actually listened to the FAPMIW?
“First American Prime Minister In Waiting”.
Is that Kate’s or Chucker’s ? Either way , great line .
Huh????
Which part am i supposed to read.
Seems like 100% BS to me
I’m still trying to figure out what point Ignatieff was trying to make with his cliché laden essay.
None of that was readable, neither the review nor the excerpts.
In Liberal land it all about looking after yourself first. Nobody else will.
Social Cannibalism Socialist style delivered up by a group who has a crusade against civilization.
Savages in Jimmy Choo’s.
JMO
Wow long – read some. Pretty amusing – the guy has a knack for analysing purple prose.
Reading or listening to MI’s rambling blather is pretty much like EBD’s video clip last night. It sounds like English but, no, it’s gibberish. To be fair MI is funny too, in a “I can’t believe he thinks we’re that stupid and can be swayed by words without substance” kind of way.
David Rees writes some funny anti-war comics, is unquestionably liberal and he found this despicable.
I’ll confess…I am not able/willing to complete reading any of those links. However, having heard enough of Iggy’s purple piffle I love this description from the HuffPo writer:
‘vague aphorisms and bong-poster koans.’
I’ll be repeating that phrase whenever I hear Iggy, or watch him smirk.
It’s is delicious that America’s left is ridiculing Iggy. I’m loving it.
Like trying to read confetti. As he did with Iffy’s essay, I surmise that David Rees could probably shred an Obama speech too if he wanted to, but then again he does write for HuffPo, so although he could he won’t, or doesn’t as far as I could find.
Like Ricardo, I didn’t have the stomach for it.
I once took Ignatieff seriously as a thinker, but that ended when his essay appeared a few years ago. With its publication, he was officially anointed as an opportunist, pure and simple.
Anyway, Rees’s basic position is one that I don’t have a lot of sympathy for, so much of his humour (not all) falls flat. Maybe I’d have changed my mind if I had survived to the end of the article.
Well, I found it pretty funny. I think many things are finally changing in our society.
We are less willing to accept fluffy bafflegab that sounds good but doesn’t really make a lot of sense. We are also tiring of omnipresent mind-bending political correctness. We are tiring of people who want to tell us how to live because they have a degree in “‘something’ studies”.
These changes, combined with the current (and likely prolonged) economic downturn will produce some interesting times ahead.
“or whatever kind of wack-ass, kumbaya government they’ve got up there.) “
Man … has he got that right!
Best zinger from the article:
“All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten– But It Didn’t Actually Sink in Until Thousands and Thousands of Iraqis Went to Heaven.”
I don’t care if he’s a leftie – I love the smell of burned political expediency in the morning.
Now if we could pair off Count Igula with John Ralston Saul in a Jane Curtin/Dan Akroyd Point-Counterpoint-style hot debate, Canada would have one of the most formidable comedic export products ever to hit the airwaves… with Leslie Neilson moderating, of course… Pointless/Counterpointless.
Wow…the libs can’t ever quote an academic to support their viewpoint again…
Guess we can ignore the scientists who support global warming. After all, Iggy has said that bus drivers are more grounded than, say, Nobel prize winners Gore and Obama.
I’ve be saying that for a long time, but I am a conservative supporter, so nobody will listen to me.
I’ll be looking forward to Ignatieff explaining any proposed Lib. carbon tax to the Canadian voters. It’ll be like a Stanley Unwin marathon.
Iggy, like Dion, is unintelligible in English.
What a co-inky-dink. I just did a piece on Iffy this week regarding his essay on benevolent imperialism and it too was laden with aphorisms.
http://mooseandsquirrel.ca/2010/04/07/14:53/dispatch-8-%e2%80%93-ignatieff%e2%80%99s-empty-headed-abstract/
I read the whole thing, and it is indeed funny. It says a lot about the Liberal Party, by implication.
Ricardo @ 4:35, worse yet, from The One.
mj
“”” he was officially anointed as an opportunist, pure and simple.”””
yes, and Obongo is another opportunist
these fools will fly what ever plane will take them there, NARCISSISTS
ChrisinMB, that was your mistake. There is no point.
Planet Zinfandel- I love it. Must be where the Regina 16 reside as well
Can you imagine Iggy as PM at the same time as The One is in the Oval Office. Yikes. North America down the tube in one fell swoop. Where are those American conservatives going to escape to?
“Can you imagine Iggy as PM at the same time as The One is in the Oval Office.”
I think that’s what the coalition was all about. The lefties here knew what was coming and wanted to be in power up here the same time as the dem’s were in power down there. These guys trade notes all the time. The SEIU and CUPE. The NDP and ACORN. They all knew this was coming. It was supposed to be a major push for the Socialists.
Had the coalition been succesful it would have been like Bob Rae running North America.
What a relief…..for a bit there I wondered if I had had a stroke or something. I see I am not alone……..
ricardo
[……Sorry, I couldn’t get through it all — not even the review.]
“…Bob Rae running North America”
AAAAHHHHHHHHEEEEEEEKKKK!! That would put an end to all those freedom seekers coming to this continent. Might as well just move to Russia.
None of that was readable, neither the review nor the excerpts.
Posted by: AtlanticJim at April 8, 2010 5:28 PM
Thank bloody goodness, it wasn’t just me. I made it about a third of the way through, and just couldn’t justify wasting any more of my precious time on that pap.
Ugh.
Pretty funny stuff that.
Rees drives home what a goof Iggy is and always was. A deep thinker, well, not so much. However 10 years from now, when the Igster is in a battle of wits with slap chop Vince on some future game show. Then we will see the real deal…..
Outstanding! Let’s kidnap David Rees and deprogramme him.
Heh , was that whole pile of incredible crap designed so that any normal human that read it would get so bored and confused that they’d say , ” oh my gawd , that was so deep and heavy , that Ignatief must be a gazillion times more intelligant then the rest of us , that we should just appoint him as supreme being of Canada ? Hmm , I guess it worked , with the liberal party . God save the rest of us .
Ever come across a person who’s so smart that they’re stupid?
or…
You may be the most intelligent person around, but if you have no common sense you’re stupid.
“Ever come across a person who’s so smart that they’re stupid?”
I worked at a university for a few years. If they didn’t have government jobs a lot of these prof’s would be homeless and begging. There were only two certified Mensa members working there. One was a prof and the other was an electrician. Of course all of the university prof’s, students and management thought the electrician was an idiot.
Very clever. Mr. Ignatief’s thoughts (?) were like a snake devouring itself and the reviewer provided a play by play. (Yes I made a mistake but it’s okay because I was an academic then. It’s different now that I’m a politician. And I owe it to all the bus drivers out there to adapt my principles to the occasion.)
So much for being the “Renaissance Man”, and the 6th smartest in the world!
funniest thing i’ve read in a while….or at least since la shaidle’s on a roll..BUT still very fonny indeed…what a putz iggy is…what a goof as my kids say…a loser..
anyway….i reckon the writer mr rees is a queer though…i just get the feeling somehow…and i’ll bet he wouldn’t care that i wondered about his sexuality…
i certainly don’t care if he cares about my sexuality……
Funny stuff, made me think of this poem:
Last night I saw upon the stair
A little man who wasn’t there
He wasn’t there again today
Oh, how I wish he’d go away
-“Antigonish”
Did I mention I already covered this with complete with “fun” aphorisms, esp in relation to the Sask 16?
http://mooseandsquirrel.ca/2010/04/07/14:53/dispatch-8-%e2%80%93-ignatieff%e2%80%99s-empty-headed-abstract/
Ah, at last, a TRUE academic…in the mold of Trudeau.
Igo should run for POTUS in 2012.
If O is qualified, than Igo is two-fold.
I woke up in the middle of the night, having a nightmare, I think; it came to me so clearly that Iggy’s just a puppet, a ventriloquist’s dummy.
He stands in front of the microphones spouting absolute inanities, the garbage of his handlers, the guys who move his mouth and tell him exactly what to do and say. He’s clueless on his own, an inanimate object, and is only fronting the Liberal$ because I guess they think he’s an OK substitute for a leader: you know, a dapper, sophisticated Harvard academic and BBC talking head. I’m sure they thought, “maybe Iggy’ll bring a bit of glamour to the role, like a latter-day Trudeau.” (G*d help us all.)
How wrong they were. What a dud.