First the epigrams and then the fluff.
These epigrams came to me through my e-mail and I think others might get a smile from them as well. The connecting text is not mine. The author is Karl Keating from Catholic Answers.
"Everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects" (Will Rogers). This is another thing that becomes more evident with age. Its corollary also is true: "Everybody is knowledgeable, only on different subjects." And there is a corollary to that corollary: "Academic letters after a person's name tell you nothing about his true intelligence. Some of the dumbest people are smart people." "Intelligence is almost useless to someone who has no other quality" (Alexis Carrel). See what I mean? Carrel was a scientist and physician who participated in the medical bureau at Lourdes. He discovered that when it comes to the supernatural, many intelligent people seem unable to apply their intelligence intelligently. "What is most resistant to salvation is not sin but habit" (Charles Peguy). It's easy to repent of a single sin, no matter how serious. It's hard to repent of habitual sin, no matter how light. "A bore is a man who, when you ask him how he is, tells you" (Bert Leston Taylor). This reminds me of another epigram: "Generally speaking, women are generally speaking" (Robert Benchley, who, after getting home through a soaking rain, told his butler, "Get me out of these wet clothes and into a dry martini").The fluff is a blogger by using the name Calgary Grit, who writes a left leaning blog out of, well, Calgary. He decided he wanted to take a look at the 'other side' by viewing the blogs nominated for "Best Conservative" in McCelland's blog awards. When he gets to NWW, he says nothing about anything I've written, and there's lots to choose from. Not all of my posts are gems and if he wanted a soft target he could probably have found one. His review of me consists entirely of dismissing my wife as a hysterical anti abortion zealot. Now, it's not so much his pro choice stance that irks, it's that he does a drive by shooting on Rebecca's lengthy and thoughtful post without giving any indication about what his own opinion is is how and why he holds it. Today he comes back with a response to my wife's second post, the one she wrote after the drive by, and it's clear he should never have broached the subject because he doesn't know a damned thing about it (he says it's too "icky": a sure sign of maturity and depth, that). It's pretty clear he didn't do much if any research before he wrote either. There are tough pro choice arguments to be made (I don't buy them) but you won't find them on Calgary Grit. I've been by Mr. Grit's site before and never found anything engaging there. If I was ever to start including left leaning blogs his would not be among them. I almost added The Upper Canadian but then he went and defended Susan Sontag's anti US tirade made just after September 11, 2001. Nope, I'm not giving publicity to that. Maybe I'll reconsider on UC in the future but Mr. Grit's blog is both boring and uninformative and I can't see why I'd send anyone there to waste their time. This not to say that I only link to people I agree with. I have links up to people who I disagree with but who are thoughtful and interesting in their points and I'll continue to seek out such blogs. They make good reading and good friends. A blog that attempts a quickie takedown of the right, however, and does not take the time or effort to understand what it is critiquing (like, say, confusing insipid with inspired and then attaching the mangled adjective to the wrong noun) is not one that I'm going to pour much time or effort into debating.
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