I recently made the online acquaintance of one Cindy Kilkenny over at the Fairly Conservative blog where she writes. Her post today entitled I gotta be me treads some awfully ironic ground.
Cindy describes her experiences reading a book, Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout.
It is exceptionally well written and a stunning insight into the human condition. It is also extremely painful to endure. Rarely does anyone write in such a way that I am forced to pace myself through the chapters. I take breaks in between to sit and absorb them as much as catch my breath.
The book won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Literature. It sounds fascinating! So I did a little Googling. I’m always up for a good read, even if it’s recommended by someone who is, self-described, fairly conservative.
The book (which I have not read but have added to my Amazon Wish List because it does sound fascinating) is about… and this is the ironic bit… a retired school teacher. No, I’m not making this up. From the Wikipedia entry:
Olive Kitteridge – an abrasive junior high school math teacher, later a volunteer for a variety of organizations including the American Red Cross and a museum in Portland, Maine.
My goodness, she’s practically a “community organizer!” And this is the character Cindy identifies with. The character that offer her “a stunning insight into the human condition.” Really, Cindy? This work of fiction touches you in ways that the plight of the thousands of Wisconsin teachers who have been laid off or forced into early retirement don’t? Are they’re just statistics and numbers to you?
Seriously, when you don’t really care about teachers or their lives, the lives of their families, kids and other dependents, to be so bound up in the emotional turmoil of one teacher strikes me as ironic if not a little creepy.
The rest of the post takes a turn into a weird kind of egocentric ode to why being Cindy is so darn groovy.
I will go on to explain how much fun it is to be me. I mean it. Who else is so wacky as to thoroughly disappoint a progressive that she puts me in the same category as Fred Dooley! (Hugs to Fred. I’ve actually decided I rather like him.)
Anyway, instead I will remind you how really marvelous it is to be me.
Seriously. This is all I could think about as I read what Cindy had written (a bit more irony with a side of ironic sauce!)
[UPDATE] Poor Cindy. Her feelings got hurt by my mean old post. I used too much of her copyrighted chum and her fee-fees got hurted. So to help assuage her feelings of inferiority and put-upon-edness which is so common among so many conservatives these days, I have reduced the quotes used to what I hope her imaginary friends, er, I mean her “attorneys” (wink, wink!) will regard as acceptable use.
Of course she’s going to say that about herself. No one else will.
First of all sunshine, thanks for making me the center of your universe for the last couple of days.
Now that we’ve done the niceties, you can take down the chunks of my copyrighted material you’ve used. Zach knows me well enough to know exactly what I’m talking about and that I really mean it. You’ve exceeded fair use.
It’s too bad you haven’t read the book. It’s great.
Of course….when all else fails, resort to veiled threats of lawsuits.
“[A] reviewer may fairly cite largely from the original work, if his design be really and truly to use the passages for the purposes of fair and reasonable criticism. ”
Folsom v Marsh
Oh it’s no problem, I had a few spare minutes to observe you in your natural habitat and write up my little ethology of your pathology. It didn’t take me too long to figure you out. You’re not that complicated.
Toooooorrrrrtttttt Refooooorrrrmmmmmmm
You did cut back a bit. Thanks.
(No one mentioned a lawsuit. I just said you exceeded fair use.)
You didn’t mention it but it was certainly implied, both in your comment and the email you sent me.
What’s your definition of “fair use”? How did he cross it?
Eh… water under the proverbial bridge at this point. No worries.
“Liiike a bridge over troubled water…”
(Sorry, couldn’t help myself.)
Oy… I suppose someone had to go there…
Wiggy, given the thread, I thought you’d sing “Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs”.