Mediocrates
07-05-2011, 04:22 PM
http://www.yourish.com/2011/07/05/14647
It is easy to dismiss Alice Walker’s stance as a case of useful idiocy (http://cifwatch.com/2011/06/25/alice-walker-and-the-audacity-of-useful-idiocy/), as my good friends of CiF Watch rightly diagnose. And, especially when you read the full version of Walker’s article on her blog (http://alicewalkersgarden.com/2011/06/auntie-i-simply-cant-imagine-it-joining-the-freedom-flotilla-ii-to-gaza/), her obsession with Israelis=Nazis imagery certainly justifies what they say:
To equate the democratic Jewish state with Nazi Germany is more than stupid, its unimaginably cruel – a simply grotesque moral inversion of the worst order.
But somehow it wasn’t satisfactory.
Mainly looking for Alice Walker the person (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Walker) behind the incomprehensible rhetoric of her article. You can say that this is equivalent to killing the messenger, but sometimes the message is the messenger and there is no way to separate the two. During different periods of her life Ms Walker undertook different causes, mostly righteous I have to say. Her courage and tenacity are worthy of admiration. But… her courage and tenacity are accompanied by selective blindness and a typical black and white vision of the world – the vision of many an extremist. This bothersome trait comes through loud and clear in the memoirs of her daughter (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1021293/How-mothers-fanatical-feminist-views-tore-apart-daughter-The-Color-Purple-author.html), Rebecca, the fruit of Alice Walker’s marriage to Melvyn Roseman Leventhal, a Jewish civil rights lawyer. The linked above article is tellingly titled How my mother’s fanatical views tore us apart. And it shows very well the inordinate fervor and ferocity that characterize Ms Walker way to carry a torch for a cause:
You see, my mum taught me that children enslave women. I grew up believing that children are millstones around your neck, and the idea that motherhood can make you blissfully happy is a complete fairytale.
I was raised to believe that women need men like a fish needs a bicycle.
As a little girl, I wasn’t even allowed to play with dolls or stuffed toys in case they brought out a maternal instinct. It was drummed into me that being a mother, raising children and running a home were a form of slavery.
I love my mother very much, but I haven’t seen her or spoken to her since I became pregnant. She has never seen my son – her only grandchild. My crime? Daring to question her ideology.
Ironically, my mother regards herself as a hugely maternal woman. Believing that women are suppressed, she has campaigned for their rights around the world and set up organisations to aid women abandoned in Africa – offering herself up as a mother figure.
I was 16 when I found a now-famous poem she wrote comparing me to various calamities that struck and impeded the lives of other women writers.
It is easy to dismiss Alice Walker’s stance as a case of useful idiocy (http://cifwatch.com/2011/06/25/alice-walker-and-the-audacity-of-useful-idiocy/), as my good friends of CiF Watch rightly diagnose. And, especially when you read the full version of Walker’s article on her blog (http://alicewalkersgarden.com/2011/06/auntie-i-simply-cant-imagine-it-joining-the-freedom-flotilla-ii-to-gaza/), her obsession with Israelis=Nazis imagery certainly justifies what they say:
To equate the democratic Jewish state with Nazi Germany is more than stupid, its unimaginably cruel – a simply grotesque moral inversion of the worst order.
But somehow it wasn’t satisfactory.
Mainly looking for Alice Walker the person (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Walker) behind the incomprehensible rhetoric of her article. You can say that this is equivalent to killing the messenger, but sometimes the message is the messenger and there is no way to separate the two. During different periods of her life Ms Walker undertook different causes, mostly righteous I have to say. Her courage and tenacity are worthy of admiration. But… her courage and tenacity are accompanied by selective blindness and a typical black and white vision of the world – the vision of many an extremist. This bothersome trait comes through loud and clear in the memoirs of her daughter (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1021293/How-mothers-fanatical-feminist-views-tore-apart-daughter-The-Color-Purple-author.html), Rebecca, the fruit of Alice Walker’s marriage to Melvyn Roseman Leventhal, a Jewish civil rights lawyer. The linked above article is tellingly titled How my mother’s fanatical views tore us apart. And it shows very well the inordinate fervor and ferocity that characterize Ms Walker way to carry a torch for a cause:
You see, my mum taught me that children enslave women. I grew up believing that children are millstones around your neck, and the idea that motherhood can make you blissfully happy is a complete fairytale.
I was raised to believe that women need men like a fish needs a bicycle.
As a little girl, I wasn’t even allowed to play with dolls or stuffed toys in case they brought out a maternal instinct. It was drummed into me that being a mother, raising children and running a home were a form of slavery.
I love my mother very much, but I haven’t seen her or spoken to her since I became pregnant. She has never seen my son – her only grandchild. My crime? Daring to question her ideology.
Ironically, my mother regards herself as a hugely maternal woman. Believing that women are suppressed, she has campaigned for their rights around the world and set up organisations to aid women abandoned in Africa – offering herself up as a mother figure.
I was 16 when I found a now-famous poem she wrote comparing me to various calamities that struck and impeded the lives of other women writers.