Althouse on Clinton Ad – Parody or Pathetic?
I don’t like being mean (sorry cousin, but the qualifiers just kinda flow naturally) but Althouse’s take on the Clinton/Sopranos ad is just bizarre:
Bill says “No onion rings?” and Hillary responds “I’m looking out for ya.” Now, the script says onion rings, because that’s what the Sopranos were eating in that final scene, but I doubt if any blogger will disagree with my assertion that, coming from Bill Clinton, the “O” of an onion ring is a vagina symbol. Hillary says no to that, driving the symbolism home. She’s “looking out” all right, vigilant over her husband, denying him the sustenance he craves. What does she have for him?
This has to be a joke, right? There’s no other explanation for such a convoluted, implausible interpretation. Althouse’s attempt at divining the semiotics of the ad makes the post modern text generator read like Hemingway. I’m just thinking off the cuff here, but maybe, just maybe Hillary says ‘no onion rings’ to Bill because he had heart surgery and that probably necessities watching what you eat and especially not eating onions dipped into a vat of piping hot grease to soak there and then cool into a circular cardiac destroyer. Jeez, this kind of mushy headed , purposefully obtuse, fact free Women’s Studies 101 writing is just so lame, even if done by TV writers or prominent feminist bloggers who are otherwise good writers.
A black cat is buried in my backyard. Round fish swim in the tidal pond. Strangly shaped birds hover in the air. A voice on my radio says “John has a long moustache”. I get an email saying “Wounds my heart with a monotonous languor” over and over.
Strange men with rifles appear in the woods. Sophia Loren rides a bike….in the distance bagpipes play…
Am I seeing too much?
hdhouse
June 20, 2007 at 3:17 am
Sometimes an onion ring is only an onion ring.
JHM
June 20, 2007 at 7:27 am
the difference being that Amanda Marcotte/Sam Brownback post was tongue-in-cheek. The althouse post? Well, I was hoping so, but it seems, sadly,
elyzabethe
June 20, 2007 at 12:28 pm
[...] was led to the Althouse post by Matt Zeitlin, who pleads that Althouse must be joking, as there is no other eplanation for such a [...]
I was just offended by the acting … « yellow is the color…
June 20, 2007 at 12:40 pm
[...] public, or if she’s just messing with us. The last bit of absurd Althouse paranoia was the infamous onion rings incident. But making fun of Althouse aside, there is this weird tic on much of the American Right that [...]
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