Sunday, February 10, 2008

Doris Lessing

Respect your elders, right?

Some elders don't deserve respect, like 88-year-old Doris Lessing.

Just because she's an award-winning author, including the Nobel Prize for Literature, doesn't mean that what she has to say is wise or is of any value at all.

Lessing has said outrageous things.

From the BBC:



Nobel Prize-winning author Doris Lessing has said that the 11 September attacks were not as significant as the terror campaign waged by the IRA.

She acknowledged the events in the US on that day in 2001 were "terrible".

But she told Spanish newspaper El Pais: "Some Americans will think I'm crazy... but it was neither as terrible or as extraordinary as they think."

The 88-year-old added that "people forget" the IRA bomb attack on Margaret Thatcher's government in 1984.

"September 11 was terrible, but if one goes back over the history of the IRA, what happened to the Americans wasn't that terrible," she said.

"Many people died, two prominent buildings fell, but it was neither as terrible nor as extraordinary as they think."

She described Americans as "a very naive people, or they pretend to be".

"Do you know what people forget? That the IRA attacked with bombs against our government.

"It killed several people while a Conservative congress was being held and in which the prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, was [attending]. People forget," she said.

Five people died and 34 were injured when an IRA bomb exploded in a hotel in Brighton where leading members of the Conservative Party - including Mrs Thatcher - were staying for their annual conference.

Lessing seems to be forgetting that nearly 3000 people were killled on 9/11.

United Airlines Flight 93 was heading for the U.S. Capitol Building or the White House.


But no, 9/11 wasn't that terrible. It wasn't that extraordinary.

This woman is a fool.

Lessing won the Nobel Prize, worth £763,000, honouring her 57-year career.

She was recognised for her "fire and visionary power."

Maybe all the smoke from her "fire" has blinded her.
...The writer, whose novels include The Golden Notebook and Memoirs of a Survivor, also branded US President George W Bush "a world calamity".

"Everyone is tired of this man. Either he is stupid or he is very clever, although you have to remember he is a member of a social class which has profited from wars."

Lessing would fit in well at NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and all the other arms of the liberal media.

Let's see, according to Lessing:

9/11 wasn't all that terrible. "Many people died, two prominent buildings fell, but it was neither as terrible nor as extraordinary as they think."

Americans are a "very naive people, or they pretend to be."

President Bush is "a world calamity."

"Everyone is tired of this man. Either he is stupid or he is very clever, although you have to remember he is a member of a social class which has profited from wars."

What brilliance!

And now, this fount of wisdom is sharing her thoughts on the U.S. presidential election landscape:

STOCKHOLM (AFP) -- If Barack Obama becomes the next US president he will surely be assassinated, British Nobel literature laureate Doris Lessing predicted in a newspaper interview published here Saturday.

Obama, who is vying to become the first black president in US history, "would certainly not last long, a black man in the position of president. They would murder him," Lessing, 88, told the Dagens Nyheter daily.

Lessing, who won the 2007 Nobel Literature Prize, said it might be better if Obama's Democratic rival Hillary Clinton were to succeed in her bid to become the first woman president of the United States.

"The best thing would be if they (Clinton and Obama) were to run together. Hillary is a very sharp lady. It might be calmer if she were to win, and not Obama," she said.

Lessing is clueless.

She sullies her literary achievements by proclaiming such idiocy.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Dear whoever you are,

I would just to point out that the clueless one is just you, or you too. If 9/11 was a tragedy, which it was, what makes it more so than the IRA bombing campaign? The number of dead, the graphic images of the two towers collapsing being shown all over the TV channels? As opposed the "out of sight out of mind" IRA bombings? How about the Madrid train bombing? Where does it fit, in between?
My point is that all of the above were terrible and sad things that, unfortunately, are emblematic of the time we live in.
A Bush point: is he an idiot or not? You should know better, he is your twice elected president. How did he say it? Full me once, shame on me. Full me twice.... you know the rest, it really proves that his left side of the brain is his right side, and the right side is the wrong side.
Money: yes, follow it. For your enlightenment, pls. watch "Why we fight". It might make you understand more. And make no mistake: Bush & Co. amassed enough millions thanks to the war to retire comfortably while you and your country men will be working harder and longer to pay for the national debt. If not, China, who owns your country anyway, might chose to evict you.
Obama: yes, he is at risk to be assassinated. Remember Kennedy and Martin Luther King? Been so for less "troubles" than Obama has already caused. I came to the same conclusion long before Dori Lessing said it. It is still up to you and your country fellow men to prevent the brightest day in America's history (the election of the first women or black man as the president) being followed by the darkest.

Much esteem,

A foreigner.

capper said...

Mary, you pick one incident out of years and decades of fighting between the IRA and governmental forces. How many people died in ALL of the fighting in Ireland? How does that compare? How would you feel about having to live for years and years with the fear of not knowing if it was your last day?

And regarding Obama, may I remind you that the government had to give him increased security earlier than any other candidate, ever, for the high number of death threats. There are many people in this country that still have issues with race, and being in denial does not help.

capper said...

And, for the record, I have never called McBride, Sykes, Belling or any of the others "slime". I reckon it is my message you don't like, not just the delivery.

Mary said...

Foreigner,

You sound like someone on the fringe of the American Left.

Mary said...

Capper, I didn't pick out the incident. Lessing did. She used it to diminish the significance of 9/11 and bash Americans.

"The Troubles" in Ireland have brought decades of misery to the people. I'm not denying that in any way.

I know Obama received increased security. Apparently, Lessing doesn't think it will help since she declared that Obama WILL BE assassinated. To save his life, she endorses Hillary.

On your other point, I never said you called them "slime," though you have been brutal in your assaults.

I believe I said something like your message is lost in "the slime." Please don't distort what I've said.

True, I often disagree with your message, but you can't claim that my complaints about the tactics of Whallah! are based in political differences. They aren't.