The Critics Shrugged, the Searches Soared

The Critics Shrugged, the Searches Soared
"Few authors have as many fans (and detractors) as the late Ayn Rand. The author of "The Fountainhead," "Anthem," and "Atlas Shrugged" was also the founder of a philosophical movement known as Objectivism. "
http://blog.movies.yahoo.com/blog/1142-the-critics-shrugged-the-searches-soared

Now the the insanity is about to really kick in. I hesitate to use the term reactionary as I find it outdated and not effective. But I really have a unpleasant reaction to them attempting to make Ayn Rand or anyone in an Ayn Rand book, sexy. Am I alone in this?

But I notice that the timing is such that this pseudo-scientific drivel is going to be given new life by the general 'anti-government' feeling, which is really just plutocrat funded media driven agi-prop. Real heart land style America wants the banks ended, the debts gone and the houses secure. Food, clothes and jobs follow on their wish lists. But then real America has had not real voice or power for at least the last 30 years.

AlbertCurtis wrote:But I really have a unpleasant reaction to them attempting to make Ayn Rand or anyone in an Ayn Rand book, sexy. Am I alone in this?

Agree with the rest of your post (which was the important stuff). Rand herself, if memory serves, was a sex maniac who couldn't get laid enough. And her heroes and heroines -- cardboard characters like Dagny Taggart and Hank Rearden, who serve as avatars for Rand's half-baked ideas -- are all sexy and virile/seductive. Rand was an egregious writer and I recommend staying away from dross like "Atlas Shrugged."

hermeticist wrote:

AlbertCurtis wrote:But I really have a unpleasant reaction to them attempting to make Ayn Rand or anyone in an Ayn Rand book, sexy. Am I alone in this?

Agree with the rest of your post (which was the important stuff). Rand herself, if memory serves, was a sex maniac who couldn't get laid enough. And her heroes and heroines -- cardboard characters like Dagny Taggart and Hank Rearden, who serve as avatars for Rand's half-baked ideas -- are all sexy and virile/seductive. Rand was an egregious writer and I recommend staying away from dross like "Atlas Shrugged."

I saw Ayn Rand do an interview before I had heard of hear books, and I can assure you that she is the orc to my elf. I see in her eyes the enemy, right there and in person. I get a similar reaction to Donald Rumsfeld, Bill Boy and his wife, and many other upper crust figures of our modern world, but Ayn has a special place in my heart, watching the interview was like a 15 minutes hate. It is instinctive; she means others NO good, and is all about her, and I just do not like that type at all by instinct. No doubts about that. I have want to burn that one at the stake just listening to it talk yelling,"deus lo vult!" I have no use to read her egoistic rationalist drivel.

But thank you for the advice. Also I notice that anyone that has read too much of her gibberish -- I have read abstracts and do basically understand her selfish ego driven world view -- seem to be greedy, selfish, arrogant, vain, and cold towards others in the same way a social darwinist would be about them. The devil take the hind most seems to be that lots motto. Me, Me, Me, it is all about Me!

AlbertCurtis wrote:I saw Ayn Rand do an interview before I had heard of hear books, and I can assure you that she is the orc to my elf. I see in her eyes the enemy, right there and in person. I get a similar reaction to Donald Rumsfeld, Bill Boy and his wife, and many other upper crust figures of our modern world, but Ayn has a special place in my heart, watching the interview was like a 15 minutes hate. It is instinctive; she means others NO good, and is all about her, and I just do not like that type at all by instinct. No doubts about that. I have want to burn that one at the stake just listening to it talk yelling,"deus lo vult!" I have no use to read her egoistic rationalist drivel.

But thank you for the advice. Also I notice that anyone that has read too much of her gibberish -- I have read abstracts and do basically understand her selfish ego driven world view -- seem to be greedy, selfish, arrogant, vain, and cold towards others in the same way a social darwinist would be about them. The devil take the hind most seems to be that lots motto. Me, Me, Me, it is all about Me!

You're taking the words right out of my mouth. Elsewhere I've written that this is one vampire through whose heart a stake will never br driven. A copy and paste of some of my other comments:

Rand draws upon writers like Nietzsche and Carlyle (without mentioning them, as far I know). Her "work" -- I use the term rashly -- is pastiche, copy-and-paste, concerned with ubermen and uberwomen who by right of their superior abilities lord it over untermensch, to whom they own nothing. That's her worldview in essence. This she ties to her romantic rose-tinted notion of laissez-faire capitalism. And dignifies this hodge-podge of hero-worship by calling it "objectivism." As I said, this vampire will not be laid to rest, as least not in the USA.

Someone has written this piece about Rand; it's not particularly well-written or perceptive, but one bit resonates with me:

http://www.bnet.com/blog/salesmachine/top-10-reasons-ayn-rand-was-dead-wrong/11984

Reading Rand creates instant jackasses. Anyone who’s been subjected to a friend who suddenly “discovers” Rand knows that reading her works causes people to act like selfish idiots. They combine a patina of “reason” over a self-righteous justification of whatever their “id” happens to want at the time and then insist that they’re just pursuing their own self-interest. They also become incredibly boring, about on the level of a newly converted Scientologist.