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Wednesday, December 08, 2004

Karl Rove running our energy policy?

Karl Rove, showing and reveling in his ignorance, produced a stupendous malapropism while being interviewed on the Barbara Walters show. He talked about his nerdiness as a kid, referring to his studies of dielectric materialism.

NASA Glenn Research Center provides the background
Do you remember Archie Bunker of All In the Family fame? One of Archie's many foibles was his frequent use of the wrong word--one that sounded similar to the word he should have chosen--something like "equal excess
legislation," "dielectric materialism," or "vagrant disregard for the law."

Perhaps Rove wants to show his folksiness by reading from the Norm Crosby handbook of regular guy humor. However, if in fact Rove had a hobby in electronics when he was younger, he could certainly have run into dielectric materials, which provide the salient property behind capacitors and which could potentially provide an alternate short term storage mechanism for energy to transport vehicles.

But then again the chump dropped out of college, and is probably just trying to reach the level of ignorance of his master/slave chimp, Bush.

Walters went on to say that Rove was the second most important man in the country. Yeah, second behind Cheney.


Update: From Atrios commenter Tom, Rove may have tripped over the actual line "Dialectical Materialism", a philosophical concept known in Marxist circles (I am out of my element here). Curiously, Rove claims to have written a school report on this subject in elemetary school! according to a vintage New Yorker profile by Nicholas Lemann.
According to Edgeworth, he once told Rove about the dialectic (thesis, antithesis, synthesis), and Rove called him a few days later and said -- this was memorable because Rove does not readily admit that somebody else knows something important that he didn't know already -- "You know that tripartite deal? Where'd you find that?" (Rove disputes this account, saying that he wrote an elementary school paper on dialectical materialism and so did not have to be enlightened by Edgeworth.)
Wow, The Boy Genius to the Power of 2.

I do not know what to make of this. To quote Rumsfeld, "it's the physics".

1 Comments:

Professor Blogger @whut said...

Note to myself, comments from Atrios:

"Dialectical materialism is the philosophical basis of Marxism as defined by later Communists and their Parties"

And it seems Comrade Snow is getting a reprieve. I guess the Busheviks couldn't find a stooge willing to be used as a prop for their failed 5 year plan like the impotent Comrade Snow.
Tom - Daai Tou Laam
I guess I did not hear him right. In fact a Nicholas Lemann New Yorker profile does show that Rove claims to have written an elementary school paper on dialectical materialism.

The Boy Genius * 2

6:33 AM  

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