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1

Obviously I'm missing the deeper meaning of this post!
Or perhaps in my simplistic way of seeing things you are saying the daughter should just buck up and handle it and stop complaining, thats life!

Posted by mj | May 6, 2008 10:30 AM
2

What the fuck? You're an idiot, Charles.

Posted by Mr. Poe | May 6, 2008 10:30 AM
3

Charles,

A lot of what you write I like; some of what you write I disagree with. Generally though, I respect you. However, I do not respect passive aggressive.

Please, more Philosophy, Marxism and Dutch architecture.

Posted by Some Other Joe | May 6, 2008 10:36 AM
4

huh?

Posted by Rotten666 | May 6, 2008 10:39 AM
5

Yeah, I hate abused children too. All that deriving of power from mistreatment, using people to beat and rape them just so they can build up their resentment and control the world.

Posted by Breklor | May 6, 2008 10:43 AM
6

Rebecca Walker is a fucking bitch! I met her and had to escort her around my university for her lecture, and she was pissed because women of color ignored her publicity and dit not attend her talk. Instead, it was filled with white sorority girl types, and that pissed her off.

Posted by Catman | May 6, 2008 10:45 AM
7

Ease up on the hate Charles. It'll do your body good.

Posted by kat | May 6, 2008 10:50 AM
8

I'm solidly in the anti-Charles camp, normally, but I get what he's saying here. Chill, Slogpuppies!

Posted by Karlheinz Arschbomber | May 6, 2008 10:55 AM
9

I'd say Charles nailed it:

Ressentiment is a sense of resentment and hostility directed at that which one identifies as the cause of one's frustration, an assignation of blame for one's frustration. The sense of weakness or inferiority and perhaps jealousy in the face of the "cause" generates a rejecting/justifying value system, or morality, which attacks or denies the perceived source of one's frustration. The ego creates an enemy, to insulate itself from culpability.

Posted by Jimmy | May 6, 2008 10:57 AM
10

I have worked with teen moms and they tell me that is often why they had children -- they were alone and they wanted someone to love who would love them back. They thought a baby would do the trick. Even if it's not accurate, it's pretty simple teen thinking really.

I really don't know what you are on about Charles.

Posted by Hartiepie | May 6, 2008 11:00 AM
11

charles, this may be the best thing i've ever read.

Posted by josh bomb | May 6, 2008 11:12 AM
12

"Swamp creatures" may be a little heavy-handed, but he's sort of right. It's not that this woman's story isn't more or less true, for her, but it sounds like pretty ordinary dim-bulb therapy-session stuff, not a book that sentient adults should be reading.

Posted by Fnarf | May 6, 2008 11:16 AM
13

@10,

How did they deal with it when their kids inevitably turned into ungrateful shitheads?

Posted by keshmeshi | May 6, 2008 11:23 AM
14

Yes, clearly the stuff of greatness is not Rebecca's garbage but Charles' trashing - slithering and hissing indeed. If "All of their strength is drawn from the one they despise," Becky has made a man out of you. Alas, if only should could have made you a writer, too.

Posted by TheEditorYouNeed | May 6, 2008 11:37 AM
15

Ok Charles I get it already. You hate women that are not just sex objects.

Posted by -B- | May 6, 2008 11:38 AM
16

No, -B- -- it is Rebecca Walker who is nothing but a sex object. I'm sure Charles has no trouble with women who are adept creative artists.

Posted by Fnarf | May 6, 2008 11:55 AM
17

My respect for black female literati (walker, angelou, morrison) has declined over the years and I've come to see most of them as intelectualy empty. They paved the way for the crap we see now from writers like Zane.

Posted by Deeply Depressed | May 6, 2008 12:02 PM
18

My respect for black female literati (walker, angelou, morrison) has declined over the years and I've come to see most of them as intelectualy empty. They paved the way for the crap we see now from writers like Zane.

Posted by Deeply Depressed | May 6, 2008 12:02 PM
19

is she hot?

forget resentment, revenge is where its at.

Posted by SeMe | May 6, 2008 12:13 PM
20

Really,

Am I the only one who thought that last paragraph was aimed more at the Charles haters than at Rebecca herself?

Posted by Some Other Joe | May 6, 2008 12:13 PM
21

this post is ridiculous. relationships between mothers and daughters are extraordinarily complex. charles, what an ignorant, arrogant perspective. get some help for your attitude toward women.

Posted by swamp creatures???? wow. | May 6, 2008 12:20 PM
22

this post is ridiculous. relationships between mothers and daughters are extraordinarily complex. charles, what an ignorant, arrogant perspective. get some help for your attitude toward women.

Posted by swamp creatures???? wow. | May 6, 2008 12:20 PM
23

Rebecca Walker IS awful and she's not a pathetic, abused victim of anything. She's spent her entire adult life exploiting her mother in one form or the other. Alice Walker wasn't a perfect mother, but Rebecca Walker is the perfect example of a monster daughter.

Posted by michael strangeways | May 6, 2008 12:30 PM
24

No more wire coat hangers!

Posted by elswinger | May 6, 2008 12:44 PM
25

Rebecca seems to be articulating similar feelings to that of what Julian Lennon has said about his father. Great, charismatic artists dont always make great parents.

Posted by CA | May 6, 2008 1:01 PM
26

Yeah, John Lennon was an asshole. Julian should be telling it to his therapist and not selling it to us. If your abuse, and your relationship to the famous person, becomes your source of income, you're never going to get rid of it.

Posted by Fnarf | May 6, 2008 1:59 PM
27

I like that you take Nietzsche's analysis of a cultural tendency/phenomenon of post-Enlightenment society and apply it to a single individual. Well played, sir.

Posted by David E. | May 6, 2008 2:03 PM
28

@26 You're so right and made a great a point.

It kind makes the abuse become your whole identity! It's better to let go and move on.

It's make what Charles said true, If the one she despises is weak, she too is weak.
It's just all kind of sick.

Posted by mj | May 6, 2008 2:39 PM
29

Interesting how she's now blamed for exploiting her Mother's fame when from her autobiography it appears it's the Mother and Father who failed her.

Children don't give a rat's ass about the "work" famous parents (and their fans) consciously of unconsciously imagine justifies the emotional neglect of offspring, and why should they? But they will carry the psychic disruption of this neglect for the rest of their lives.

I say let her speak as she sees fit. Who are any of you to say otherwise? Only then can the parent's work be fully known.

Posted by the child speaks | May 6, 2008 4:51 PM
30

The parent's life failings don't say anything at all about the work. The work stands on its own. If you need the author's biography to understand the work you're either not really reading it, or it's not art.

Posted by Fnarf | May 6, 2008 5:02 PM

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