September 27, 2002
I was reading Britain's Independent Communist a few weeks ago, and as usual, they had an wildly anti-American screed by an Anita Roddick. Now, I was thinking about engaging in a fisking, but it was such a doctrinaire piece, I thought, "What's the point?" That was until I read an article by Andrea Peyser in the New York post a few days ago. It turns out that Anita Roddick is the founder and a very major stockholder in The Body Shop a beauty shop which crows about its eco-fascist credentials:
World Leaders Criticised For Setting No Green Energy Targets
The Body Shop today (3 September) criticised world leaders for failing to sign up for specific targets to make renewable energy available to two billion people in the developing world.
This is a perfect example of vomit-inducing limousine liberalism. The two billion in the developing world are far more concerned about having a roof over their head, food in their bellies, and not being a victim of the next Mugabe, Idi Amin, or Pol Pot. Their need for "renewable energy" ranks somewhere between a crop of freshly harvested poison ivy and The Body Shop's overpriced commie-friendly products. But I digress.
Anita Roddick's website makes the Body Shop look like Worldnet Daily in comparison. Therefore, I have, on an empty stomach, waded through this vast septic tank of pseudo-intellectual fecal matter so you, the reader, are spared the agony of doing so yourself. The problem is where do I start? Her views are such a cornucopia of idiotarianism along such a wide range of topics that it is almost impossible to find a good place to start.
Almost, but not impossible. The best place to start is with what brought me to this immense gathering of verbal flatulence, her September 11 anti-American screed, and then her "Oh horrors, they don't like me!" wail afterwards.(The anti-American screed in red, the shock at the reaction in green, in solidarity with her enviro-commie agenda):
How has the world changed since Sept. 11? For one thing, Europeans no longer aspire to be Americans.Who would, given how that country moves steadily and inexorably toward dictatorship? The American people, in a scant 12 months, have had their once-enviable civil liberties outrageously eroded in the name of patriotism. The ideals of freedom and democracy which America pledges to export across the globe have been perverted so spectacularly at home that America's admirers hardly recognise her anymore.
Where once Americans reveled in their uniquely American right and willingness to criticize their government, they are now told that those who dissent are no better than terrorists, or terrorists themselves. They have had their pride of country, their patriotism, hijacked by a self-interested and short-sighted government which steals freedoms from its own people and gives riches to corporations and "security" infrastructures such as the military, FBI, and CIA, all of which which have proven, in the past 12 months, to be either fatally incompetent and totally corrupt.
Those Americans who would question their government are told to "watch what they say." The FBI has been given broad reign to spy on citizens with phone taps and email snoops. Long-held ideals of fair and speedy trials are thrown out the window as suspected terrorists and sympathizers are "disappeared" like the enemies of Pinochet 20 years ago in Chile.
(...)
America's us-against-the-world mentality has managed to wear away almost all of the remarkable international sympathy it built up just after Sept. 11. Bush & Co. has slapped the international community in the face as the it tried to embrace and console the United States. Now the enmity has left America alone, more reviled and isolated internationally than before.
Then, of course, she's shocked to find that Americans might find the juxtaposition of the United States with Pinochet's Chile a wee bit offensive:
My outrage and sadness in these times is precisely because I love America. I am deeply sorry if a few Americans took personal offense because they misunderstood me or were misinformed by right-wing commentators who quoted me out of context, but I stand by my sentiment.She doesn't need to just get a Clue, she needs to get the Parker Parker Brothers Deluxe version. She accuses Americans of being complete dupes, and when we take offense to her slanders of us, then we must simply be "misinformed", and read something quoted out of context. I'd like her to explain how, "...the enmity has left America alone, more reviled and isolated internationally than before," can be considered anything other than anti-American?
Then, of course, in pure idiotarian rhetoric, she talks about how the boycott of her little empire is somehow "intimidating":
Those who have called for my head and encouraged a boycott of The Body Shop because they disagree with me may believe they are defending America, but is intimidation, retaliation, and suppression of ideas really what America is about? I don't believe it.
Of course, when it is her little bastion of leftism that is under boycott, it is intimidation and suppression of ideas. However, when it is Exxon, a greedy capitalist oil company, she sings a different tune:
In May 2001, The Body Shop was the first international company to join Greenpeace's Stop Esso campaign, calling on our staff and customers to buy petrol from anyone but Esso. I saw it as a good opportunity to repoliticize our staff. If we couldn't vote George W. Bush out of the White House, at least we'd be able to vote with our wallets against the company whose will he was exercising when he pulled out of the Kyoto treaty.
But her astonishing intellectual vacuity doesn't end there. She puts up a page of anti-war quotes, putting William T. Sherman and FDR alongside the wisdom of Abby Hoffman, Pat Schroeder, and George McGovern. She uses a quote of Teddy Roosevelt to imply that he would wholeheartedly approve of the drum banging morons who comprise the idiotarians. She should remember that Sherman promised to "make Georgia howl," and TR said, "don't hit a man if you can possibly avoid it; but if you do hit him, put him to sleep." She should also remember that it was FDR who authorized the building of the A-bomb, and none of these three could be considered a pacifist in any way, shape, or form, and were actually quite the opposite, and, if any of them were alive today, they would have responded in such a way that there probably would not be a city left standing from Beirut to Islamabad.
However, her idiotarianism is not simply related to the war. In this paragraph from a November, 2001 waste of bandwidth, she waxes nostalgic about how proud she was of her participation in the riots in Seattle, and how alarmed she is that the "success" of Seattle was not repeated:
I was one of those teargassed at Seattle when the World Trade Organization last met in 1999, and felt the collective outrage and sense of empowerment that we got from standing up to the world's economic bullies.
So this working class hero, with her TWENTY FOUR MILLION shares of stock, along with a bunch of spoiled trust fund kiddies, felt a sense of empowerment at shutting down McDonalds and Starbucks staffed by people making salaries marginally above minimum wage, throwing rocks and bottles at police who make less in a year than she makes in a week, and disrupting the lives of millions of everyday people who work in Seattle, most of whom work there to support their families. All so that she can show that she stood up to the "bullies." Maybe this old leftist crone and her trust fund kiddy brethren should ask themselves who the bullies really were.
She continues:
So now when I see how little protest there was outside the latest WTO ministerial at Doha in Qatar, with only Greenpeace's Rainbow Warrior in the harbor, I have quite mixed emotions. Granted, visa and travel restrictions in Qatar kept all but the most determined activists away. But even so, there seems to be less outrage just two years after Seattle, despite the fact very little has changed.[my emphasis]
Notice how she seems to completely ignore that minor event that occurred two months earlier. I guess the slaughter of 3000 people are just a trifling compared to some good drum-banging protest against more "bullies". Dang. I guess the war got into that too. Nonetheless, it serves its purpose. In her wailing about how she was being (gasp!) criticised for her idiocy, she writes the following:
I hate terrorism and terrorists. I was shocked and horrified and saddened as much as anyone at the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. My heart bleeds for everyone who lost loved ones on that awful day, and my heart aches for all Americans who were made to feel frightened and confused and terrorized. I celebrated, like everyone, stories of heroism and bravery; I cried a thousand tears at the stories of lives cut short by fanatics and their hatred. I would be devastated if people who know of me thought that I felt any differently.
Now justapose that little statement with the fact that only two months after the atrocity she laments that nothing has changed! What was she, in a f*cking cave?!? On the limo ride to Kennedy Airport, did she not notice that the New York Skyline was a little bit different? Or was it that she just considered those people in the towers an abstraction, like she considered the people and policemen of Seattle an abstraction, like she considers the American people an abstraction, and that her concern for the victims of the Atrocity lasted about as long as it was on the front page?
Well. I could go into more detail, but I'm starting to feel a little ill. If you want to endure some time in the furthest ring of idiotarianism, go to her site. I would suggest you not do it unless you are rather well lubricated with alcohol, or have taken anti-idotarian immunity pills.
Posted by John Bono at September 27, 2002 07:58 PM | TrackBack
