Fw: Pynchon, the Beats & "conservative American Values"

[Jerky]

> > Do you think TRP, for instance, supports the Bush administration and its
> > current efforts in Iraq?
> No.
> > Do you think TRP is a neoconservative hawk?
> No.
> > Do you think he supports the Bush/Cheney tax policy? Or is Pynchon a
> > flat-tax conservative? Or a "taxation-is-theft" right-wing libertarian?
> No.
> > Do you think he supports the enshrinement of a specifically
discriminatory,
> > anti-gay amendment to the American Constitution?
> No.
> > Do you think he's anti-choice?
> It's possible.
> > Because frankly, I could name you any number of fathers, husbands and
> > respected members of the community who would laugh out loud if you dared
> > call them "conservative."
> Yeah, because what conservative means to you and to them is Bush
> supporter and they don't support Bush.

No, actually, you're wrong. They don't identify themselves as conservatives
because there are certain criteria by which these things are measured,
incluing (but not exclusively) one's position on gay rights, abortion,
taxation, defense, foreign policy and a number of other issues which you
choose to ignore in order to focus on the utterly irrelevant fact that
anti-war, tax-and-spend, pro-gay rights establishment critic Thomas Pynchon
was born into a Catholic family, attended university, held a job in the
aviation industry, married, and had a child.

> > By calling him "conservative", could you really be meaning to say that
> > Pynchon is (shudder) "bourgeois"?
>
> No, I've defined my terms.

Have you?  I must have missed it. Maybe it would help those of us who jumped
into this discussion in the middle if you did so one more time, please.

>You all just can't get around the idea that a
> conservative is not a Republican.

What... no Venn diagram?

>You watch too much TV, perhaps.

And perhaps you don't watch enough of it.

Just perhaps, eh?

Cheers!
YOPJ