Judith Warner, The Haidt Research, etc.

I must say I found the Judith Warner piece that Dr. Potomac mentions below to be somewhat bizarre. As an academic with, uh, very different metaphysical and political opinions than most of my colleagues, I am used to not just meeting but being with very different types of people. Ms. Warner, on the other hand, obviously felt way outside that ol' comfort zone.

An article by Haidt featuring his research was linked to by the all-powerful Arts & Letters Daily, which if you like ideas, you should make your home page. The Chief Crunchy Con, our friend Rod Dreher (well, not really friend, but the Doc and once chatted with him, though we were surrounded by two hundred of our closest friends at the time) had an interesting post on it, and led me to an online test you can take that will provide Haidt with some more datapoints, and perhaps provide you with some self-awareness. So far I have taken only two of the tests, and am proving to be a really bizarre outlier.

I should also note that Rod seems to be in the midst of a great deal of conflict over Our Sarah, stemming from her interviews with Charlie Gibson, or Uncle Sourpuss as I shall now think of him (myself, I can't wait to get some half-moon reading classes so I can stare with pursed lips at my erring undergrads; maybe I can get a pair with clear glass). This is, I imagine, not so much as the interview was disastrous qua interview, as that Rod finds the interview disastrous because Our Sarah actually said things that John McCain would say as well; reminding Rod that he does believe that John McCain is a dangerous Neo-conservative looking for a chance to throw the legions into battle, or something.

Thus does the beautiful glow of torrid love-affair die. Sigh. Well, he'll always have Dayton.

For those of us who like Our Sarah and who haven't stopped talking about Iraq since an actual counterinsurgency policy with a possibility of victory was implemented, well, we can feel uncomfortable with Sarah's awkwardness, but that's about it.