I know very little about Christine O’Donnell, and I suspect I would not like her politics very much if I were familiar with them, but if this New Republic article really lists the craziest things she’s said, I don’t see why everyone thinks she’s crazy. By section:
Masturbation:
Her famous comments about masturbation seem not only sane but much saner than anything Andrew Sullivan has said on the topic. I read Saletan’s piece on how her opposition to masturbation is somehow inconsistent with her opposition to socialism, and it is indeed as embarrassing as Douthat says it is. Even if you disagree with her position, which most Americans probably do, it’s clearly informed by a coherent and widely held philosophy.
Health (?):
“I don’t encourage anyone to seek ‘abstinence.’ I cringe at terms like ‘secondary virginity’ or ‘recycled virgin.’ One of my goals is to get the body of Christ to stop proclaiming these words. I would rejoice if I never heard ‘abstinence’ from a pulpit again.”
Why is this remotely objectionable to anybody except people who use the word “abstinence” a lot? She, like, eg, the writers at Feministing, has a view of human sexuality in which “abstinence” as such is not a goal. Presumably her view of human sexuality differs substantially from those of most contemporary feminists, but this quote doesn’t tell you that.
Witchcraft:
I don’t even understand why people think these quotes are hilarious. Do they not know that Wiccans and other self-proclaimed “witches” exist? Or is it O’Donnell’s tone of regret that alarms them? Do they think a self-identified Christian shouldn’t feel remorse about participating in activities pretty adamantly condemned by the Bible and the entirety of Christian tradition?
Pop Culture:
“And you can tell that Britney Spears is struggling with who she is. I think she has a team of agents and managers who are saying, yes, push the envelope, kiss Madonna, take off all your clothes. And she’s doing that because she doesn’t want to sacrifice this enormous platform that she’s built. But at the same time, she is sacrificing herself and you can see that in her eyes when she talks.”
So, the problem here is that she is insufficiently cynical to indulge in the expected two-minute hate against Britney Spears when prompted by an interviewer? Count me on O’Donnell’s side on this one.
Feminism:
“You see Tolkien’s wisdom applied to just about everything: Tolkien and communism, Tolkien and industrialization.”
Ok, it’s a bit weird to bring Tolkien up in an interview, but she really likes Tolkien, and sure, Tolkien had some interesting things to say, even if obliquely, about communism and industrialization. In fact, it indicates a certain textual sensitivity and intellectual distance from capitalism unusual in conservatives to note that Tolkien was an anti-industrialist, which would of course place him on the radical Left nowadays.
“I was an English major, so break it down: -ist means one who celebrates. As a feminist, I celebrate my femininity.”
She’s not terribly well educated; this is clear. But being uneducated isn’t the same as being crazy, even if it should give Delawareans pause when they contemplate sending her to the Senate.
Socialism:
“America is now a socialist economy. The definition of a socialist economy is when 50 percent or more your economy is dependent on the federal government.”
That’s ridiculous as a characterization of the American economy, to be sure, but it’s significantly less ridiculous than a lot what’s said routinely by Republicans on the House floor.
Freak-dancing:
“…On one hand, you have people saying this is squelching their freedom, and then you scratch your head and say look over here, date rape is such an epidemic. There’s a connection, and, if people realize that there’s a connection, then they’ll realize that these limitations and restrictions exist for a very valid reason.”
This same opinion (minus the not-at-all implausible connection to date rape) is encoded as policy in almost every American high school.
Obama:
“He’s soooo liberal. He’s anti-American. … He’s beating the ‘change’ drum. But let’s look at the change. He did not vote for English as the official language. What does that say?”
Again overheated and a bit ridiculous, but much less ridiculous than plenty of what passes for serious conservative commentary on Obama.
Homosexuality:
“Adolph [sic] Hitler once said that to engineer a society you must first engineer its language. Starting with the youth, he set in motion a design to erode the power of words, to steal the significance and beauty of a single word. We can see the unfolding of that plan in our society. Society’s ‘sexual liberation’ has unleashed an entirely new lexicon. For example, ‘gay’ has always meant joyful and gleeful. Yet, today, when we say that Ellen is gay, we’re certainly not talking about her emotional well being.”
Even to mention Hitler was ill-advised, of course, though I’d be interested to know what “single word” he was trying to destroy. It’s hard to see even what she’s getting at with the rest of the quote, except maybe to illustrate that the sexual revolution is sending society to hell in a handbasket, but again this is a pretty widely held view.
Creationism:
There’s nothing to defend in the substance here, but unlike say doubt about anthrophogenic climate change, which is tied up socially with nefarious economic motives, antipathy to evolution is mostly a statement about the authority of scientists, not about science. Most people who believe in evolution are mystified by therapsids and pelycosaurs alike, and most people who don’t believe in evolution have no problem trusting aerodynamical engineering in practice to Science.
Paranoia:
“[My opponents are] following me. They follow me home at night. I make sure that I come back to the townhouse and then we have our team come out and check all the bushes and check all the cars.”
Are we positive that they aren’t following her? Politics is strange sometimes.
Hyper-Kantianism:
“If I were in that situation [hiding Jews from the Nazis, and conflicted about whether to tell a lie in order to save them] … God would provide a way to do the right thing.”
I don’t have much truck with puritanical deontologists myself, but I hardly think it should be a disqualification from public office. And surely the invocation of Providence is just what a Christian deontologist should say.
…yes, but she’s not a commie-Dem. And, even in the People’s Republic of Delaware, this cycle, that may be THE salient point of the election.Report
Dude, *I* have said worse *ON THIS VERY SITE*.
It’s not about what she said.
It’s about what she represents.Report
I don’t get the impression she actually cares that much about limiting government, but I’m sure she’ll vote the way they tell her to, so what else really matters?Report
It’s interesting that David defends her more than once with “She’s no crazier than other conservative Republicans”.
Anyway, I don’t know why people are mad at that fellow who looks so much like Ringo Starr. Are we positive that the US isn’t behind 9/11? Politics is strange sometimes.Report
Her comments on Tolkien’s anti-industrialism are easily the most interesting thing here. O’Donnell, were she not apparently unreliable, would deserve praise for winning without the support of the major coporations that dominate Delaware. While she does have a degree of financial independence from these big players, she nonetheless appears to be the usual sort of Republican who would consistently vote to advance a corporatist agenda.Report
“American scientific companies are crossbreeding humans and animals and coming up with mice with fully functioning human brains,” warned Delaware senate candidate Christine O’Donnell on the O’Reilly Factor in 2007.
This is pretty crazy, well “no crazier than the other conservative Republican’s”
I’d trust her musings on Tolkien a bit more if i could see some proof of geekitude, like a 20 sided die.Report
@greginak,
Well, she’s still a virgin 🙂Report
@greginak, This is an actually crazy quote. Why couldn’t TNR have published it instead of the bunch of pretty ordinary statements they did find?Report
I think liberals need to get away from playing the snob card, for lack of a better term. Ridicule is really tough to do right; if you’re not attuned to the opinions of your audience, you can just come off as petty and arrogant. I remember thinking that the best thing liberals could have done for Bush was making fun of how he conjugated verbs because it made everyone who has ever been inelegant in public a bit sympathetic.
A much better strategy would be to disagree respectfully with the woman’s opinions, or better yet, not make the race about the culture war issues that everyone claims to be sick of anyway.Report
@Rufus F., I agree. In this case, the political environment is so extreme, and some of this stuff is so eye-grabbing (if not so crazy on examination), that I think they pretty much have to use it in a political campaign. But in general, I agree – over the long term, condescension is a horrible political strategy.Report
@Michael Drew, I think condescension and demonization has worked pretty well for Faux News, Rush and the Repub’s.Report
@greginak,
Has it? They lost the White House, the Senate and the House. In fact, the Dems have held an astonishing 59 seats in the Senate for some time now.Report
@greginak, Do they specialize in condescension though? To be honest, we don’t get Fox News here, but from the few times I’ve seen it, I got the impression it was more about, “Look at how condescending they are! They think you guys are a bunch of rubes!” rather than, “Would you look at how unsophisticated those rubes are!”Report
@Rufus, It’s ressentiment that they do (and that SP perfected and now heads their industry-leading enterprise in), the inverse and complement of condescension. And it’s precisely liberals’ inability to distinguish between the two that makes them so inept at practising either, and that gets them into trouble.Report
@Rufus F.,
I’ve never quite understood this complaint. “Sure, I think they’re commie, pro-terrorist, socialist, elitist bums who’d rather steal from successful people than do an honest day’s work, but what really bothers me is their lack of respect.”Report
@Mike Schilling, I think the lack of respect is seen as the justification for the nefarious behavior. So, whether or not they’re really trying to use the state to micromanage your life, it seems like they would be since they don’t respect how you’re managing your own life. Rhetorically, it’s not a bad strategy at all.Report
@Rufus,
I suppose so. Still, calling me five different times of scum at the same time as saying that my biggest fault is failing to respect other people’s values is a bit croggling.Report
Is it wrong that I like her more the more “crazy” quotes get produced? I mean she’s really starting to remind me of friends of mine … I mean, I’d never vote her into high political office, but she’s starting to seem almost interesting.Report
@Simon K, She totally reminds me of people I know, except they’re all heathen liberals.Report
@Michael Drew, Yeah. Exactly.Report
I don’t have a huge problem with her based on the little bit i have heard. She’s easy on the eyes (hey, it’s MY criteria dammit) and she sounds more articulate than Palin did at this point in her VP run. I’m just upset that we’re going to lose Deleware (probably). Polling shows her down by 20 points. The same poll shows that if Castle were still in he would be up 20 points. 40 POINT SWING….ugh.
I’ve always favored the Buckley approach which is to run the most rightward-leaning candidate that can win. Redstate would prefer a loss and maintenance of ideological purity. Bummer.Report
The socialism comment relies on a re-definition of the word. It no longer means the communal ownership of the means of production, but a society more oriented to the community than the individual. The rights of the community override the rights of the individual in this model. Of course this basic question of community or individual is at the root of a lot of todays politics, and has been around for at least 2000 years. I found this redefinition by discussions on another board, and we must recall that we are living in a world where words mean exactly what the person saying them intends them to mean, not what the dictionary says.Report
@Lyle, “When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”Report
Your section on “Health” strikes me as disingenuous. You’re basically saying that we don’t know what O’Donnell’s views about sexuality are. Who knows? — you practically declare — She could be a radical feminist. It’s a mystery!
But we all know this to be false, and there is no mystery. The reason Christine O’Donnell dislikes abstinence is because she is a supporter of chastity, and because people who abstain after transgressing once or twice are bad people to her.
This is not only hypocritical, because it (charitably) describes one Christine O’Donnell, but it’s also an attack on pretty much everyone who came of age after the 1960s. That fully qualifies as crazy in my book and is quite deserving of ridicule.Report
@Jason Kuznicki,
It wasn’t entirely clear from what David quoted, but that’s about the opposite of O’Donnell’s position. Talking Points Memo provides helpful elaboration:
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/09/christine_odonnells_sexual_evolution.phpReport
@Matthew Schmitz, I left my comment below without seeing this one. This quote certainly clarifies her view.Report
@Matthew Schmitz,
So what you are saying is not that she makes a distinction between lifelong and intermittent chastity — but that she makes a distinction between the mere sounds of “abstinence” and “chastity” — even though their content in morals and praxis is indistinguishable?
How exactly is that not crazy?
(Forgive me if I’m showing my Catholic roots here, but when one takes a vow of “chastity,” it’s for life. Or so I’d thought.)Report
@Jason Kuznicki, Chastity is not Celibacy.
Maribou and I have a chaste relationship. We do not have a celibate one.
The basic idea is that God created sex and wants us to enjoy the bejeezus out of it… in terms of a life-long partnership. Chastity is something to be celebrated. Celibacy sucks.Report
@Jaybird,
Chastity is refraining from sex. Celibacy is refraining from marriage. Celibacy may also be a synonym for chastity, but this is not strictly speaking correct. Chaste marriages are those in which the partners avoid sexual intercourse.
Do I understand you correctly that you have a marriage in which you avoid sex?Report
@Jason Kuznicki, no, not at all.
Celibacy is sex within very specific parameters.
It is *NOT* abstinence.
It is BSTINENCE.
Full participation in the wonders of what two people can do with each other. Yes, First Base. Yes, Second Base. Yes, Third Base. Yes, Home Plate. God Yes. One Thousand Times Yes.
And if it happens within a life-partnership marriage: IT IS STILL CHASTE.
It ain’t celibate. Not by a damn sight. But two people who live each other in a life partnership relationship can donkey punch, spiderman, bel biv devoe, and big wiggle and it’s chaste.
If one wants a word substitution, “monogamy” might fit (but imagine “monogamy” to be a word loaded with religious baggage).
Maribou and I have a monogamous relationship. We have sex. It’s pretty good.
It’s also chaste. (But it ain’t celibate.)Report
Do you really think that “monogamy” has more religious baggage than “chastity”? You’ll commonly find the word monogamy in secular scientific publications, and even abstinence. But chastity is pretty rare.
Also, the Catholic Encyclopedia (alas, my source on such things) describes marital chastity as (at best) “imperfect,” at least if it includes sexual relations.Report
@Jason Kuznicki, no, I was asking you to imagine monogamy as having religious baggage.
As for marital chastity being “imperfect”, I don’t know about that, being raised Babtist. We were always taught that God gave us these gifts for us to enjoy them… using the instruction manual He gave us. (This was one of the few areas where Genesis had more emphasis than Paul.)Report
@Jason Kuznicki,
Yeah, I think she’s trying to acknowledge that everyone makes mistakes, and that it’s misguided to talk of “second virginity.”
Her larger point is primarily rhetorical. She seems to fear that talking about abstinence instead of chastity (which may involve a fair amount of lovemaking, with one’s spouse) gives the impression that the Christian view is anti-sex.
You could consider her view crazy, I suppose, but chastity (which includes sex within marriage) is certainly distinguishable from the radical support for abstinence once advocated the Shakers. Or, more recently, Morrissey.Report
@Jason Kuznicki, I’m not saying we don’t know. I’m saying I don’t know, since I’ve done no research on her apart from reading the article. Truthfully I am not sure what she’s getting at in the quote. Your interpretation is plausible, but I feel like TNR would have given us the fuller quote if that’s really what she meant, because it’s much more extreme than what we can definitely infer from the quote. But she could easily have been making a claim like “abstinence is the wrong paradigm because it’s framed as simply not doing something, as opposed to talking about ‘chastity,’ which implies a sexuality integrated into one’s whole way of living.”Report
@Jason Kuznicki,
Across the board, advocating for chastity is “crazy”? I’m no advocate myself, but I hardly think that position is INSANE.Report
@Sam M,
No, advocating for chastity is not crazy. Drawing a distinction between abstinence and chastity, and turning it into a pissing contest — that’s crazy.Report
@Jason Kuznicki, you can have pissing contests and they can be chaste.
They will not be particularly abstinent, however.Report
@Jaybird, We should leave our “junk” alone!Report
@Robert Cheeks, What’s the old line? “It’s certainly not a very good way to meet people.”
Whether I, personally, am pro- or anti- is besides the point to whether she is pro- or anti- when I think about whether such a law is likely to go before Congress, the Senate, etc.
It ain’t ever.
The whole “will a bill come up to take money from this group of people to give it to Chrysler?” question weighs a tad more heavily on my mind and if she votes “no” on that, she can prefer Marvel to DC as far as I care.Report
@Jason Kuznicki,
To clarify a bit, and to reconcile this comment with my earlier one: Advocate for chastity if you want. Go right ahead. But if you think you’re going to get anywhere by condemning everything that’s ever happened since the Sexual Revolution… good luck. And that’s also pretty crazy, because the genie ain’t goin back in the bottle.Report
@Jason Kuznicki, condemnation of sleeping around and “polyamory” and whatnot probably won’t result in the genie going back in the bottle.
It also won’t lose you a whole lotta votes.Report
I get your basic point, David, and it’s a point well taken. But it also seems a bit cherry picked.
I agree, for example, that saying that Obama is anti-American is, while I think silly and hyperbolic, pretty mainstream GOP. But saying that the evil scientific community is already creating mice with fully functioning human brains for some nefarious purpose? On TV, as an “expert” on ethics of science issues?
In what world is not not totally wacko?Report
“most people who don’t believe in evolution have no problem trusting aerodynamical engineering in practice to Science.”
Which makes them not crazy, but definitely hypocritical.Report
Is the fact that the GOP has lowered the mean so much on the right that the views of this fruitbat are arguably “average” significant in any way? I mean a quarter of the defenses of her in this post are “hey everyone on the right is doin it”. Is that an argument for her sanity, or their collective insanity?Report
@North,
I think you’re being disrespectful. Stop it, you’re hurting their feelings!Report
@Jason Kuznicki, I thought caring for feelings was supposed to be a pcnik leftist ideology. Are they stealing our crazies too? That’s mean.Report
@North, Fruitbat? I see crazier shit in the newsletters I read while tying my shoes in the morning. Imagine an essay talking about the *REAL* reasons Andrew Jackson is on a Federal Reserve Note.
This chick is small-time.Report
@Jaybird, You know, if you place the twenty dollar bill next to a bottle of whiskey, Jackson smiles.Report
@Rufus, heh.
But, seriously, isn’t the definition of crazy “significantly different from all of the other nutbars”?
It ain’t crazy if everyone in your church says “sure, it totally transubstantiates”. It ain’t crazy if everyone in your reading group says “Mao just wasn’t implementing it properly”. It ain’t crazy if you just have enough howling barbarians nodding along in time.
“Everybody is like that” is the *PERFECT* defense against insanity.Report
@Rufus,
Can hardly hold it against him. I react just the same way.Report
@Jaybird, She seems on par with Bachman which makes me consider her demented. I don’t grade crazy on the curve. A crazy person who’s only as crazy as a group of crazy people is still crazy. Wait I’m making myself dizzy. take me away Jackson.Report
@North, it’s not a “grading it on the curve” thing.
It’s like asking whether it’d be crazy to believe in Creationism in 1850 or Geocentrism in 1550.Report
@Jaybird, Or HCR in 2010,Report
@greginak, don’t get me started.Report
@Jaybird, Keeping in mind that about one in six Americans believe in geocentrism TO THIS DAY, would you consider it a “crazy” view to hold right now?Report
@CaptBackslap, I guess it would depend on your peer group, wouldn’t it?
Given that, in 100 years or so, people will look back on us the way we look at the people from 1910 (however well-intentioned they may have been) as a bunch of moral busybodies who pushed through Prohibition and thought that Eugenics ought to be public policy.
It’s hard for me to really have perspective on this to say that, no, *WE’RE* really spectacularly enlightened compared to Tea Partiers and Muslims.
We’re all a few steps away from howling barbarism, dude. We’re bragging about centimeters.Report
@Jaybird, Hmm still doesn’t work for me Jaybird. I think there’s an excellent arguement to be made that republicans have become significantly ~less~ sane over the past 1-2 decades. I mean I look at Bush senior to Bush Minor to Sarah Palin and that looks like devolution to my eye.
I mean near on everyone on every side of things believed in geocentrism in 1550. Certainly most everyone believed in Creationism in 1850. But how many people ever believed Obama is a secret muslim plotting to steal America’s prescious bodily fluids? Maybe a quarter of the population tops? I don’t see the equivalence.Report
@North, Dude, for intelligence take a look at Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Mr. NO Grades Available, Imam Barry. These are not the sharpest knives in the drawer..hope and change my ass. Barry is a cultural Muslim, and a epigonic Marxist..so there! Barry’s trying to make the USA a third world country and doing just fine..thank you!Report
@North,
“…the GOP has lowered the mean so much on the right that the views of this fruitbat..”
Northie, I’ve got feelings, you know! Plus, she’s not a commie-Dem…it’s all good. Actually, I’m looking forward to her pithy comments in the senate. She’ll have the same effect on you that Joe Biden has on me!Report
@Robert Cheeks,
Joe Biden attacks your marriage?Report
@Jason Kuznicki, Joe Biden exemplifies ‘evolution’ gone awry!Report
@Robert Cheeks, Aww Bob, I don’t actually believe that you believe all of the things you say. Obama the secret muslim etc…
As for yer gal O’Donnel, well she’s 20 points down so she’s got a lot of work to do before she annoys me much.Report
@North, NOOOOOO, I said Imam Barry is a “cultural Muslim.” And, I know that you are more than intellecutally qualified to understand my meaning. Re: the perky Ms. O’Donnell’s 20 point lag in the polls..I can live with that. It is The People’s Republic of Delaware after all and besides she already ‘won’ by bitch slapping the RINO/Neocon faction of the GOP, anything else is gravy.Report
@Robert Cheeks, You’ll have to clarify some more Bob. A cultural muslim? As in even though he’s not a muslim he is by merit of being librul or something?Report
@NorthImam Barry’s goal is to collapse the economy (it’s the only explanation that works given the events) and extract a revenge on the USA for ‘oppressing’ the desert people and other third world types. He’s been very successful. Imam Barry is working out Allah’s revenge on the USA.Report