Alleged Rand Column

[caroljane]

Now it is the New Yorker bashing Rand by the most brazen means the MSM has tried yet. It has published a column she supposedly wrote for Parade magazine in the 1980s, and it is an obvious fake and/or forgery, or else heavily edited after her death in a most calumniable manner.

I have not read it myself of course, I would not soil my hands, but I am reliably informed that it is a probably actionable res by the Estate.

LP, PhD

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Carol,

This is an odd kind of humor going around. Here is the article you refer to:

Ask Ayn
by John Hodgman
July 29, 2013
The New Yorker

From the article:

After a couple of appearances on the interview program “Donahue,” in 1979 and 1980, the author and philosopher Ayn Rand enjoyed something of a renaissance in popular culture, including a week as a panelist on “Match Game” and a guest appearance on “Fantasy Island” as the Spirit of Capitalism. In 1980, two years before her death, she was offered a short column in “Parade.” Here are some excerpts.

What is wrong with committing suicide? What’s wrong with giving up on life? And why is the happiness of another person important and good, but not your own? And why do they make soda cans so difficult to open these days?

. . .

Short column today. Once again, I have cut my finger trying to open a can of Fresca. What are they, made of Rearden Metal? I am joking, because I am not joyless. What is your favorite joke, readers? Write me and let me know.

. . .

As I write this, I am drinking speed, and you cannot stop me. You cannot stop me, America, with your altruism and your Alan Alda and your Fresca cans biting at my skin. I shall speed across this country like a great high-speed train and the U.S. shall be forever changed in my wake.

Here's another New Yorker gem:

I Was Ayn Rand's Lover by George Saunders

Also not too clever.

There's some more stuff like that out there, but I don't feel like searching for it.

If anyone find stuff like that, feel free to post it.

Michael

[caroljane]

Well, obviously this is a fake - she does not mention her cats even once!

[caroljane]

Michael, I am sorry , and the political message in the Saunders piece was too heavy, but I cannot agree it was not too clever, it had me in total stitches. "She was a writer, I was a high school junior-- what did we know about walking on girders?" It is so, so funny.

[Jerry Biggers]

An example of typical "humor" for The New Yorker crowd.. Those guys at the New Yorker are just so sophisticated and impressed with themselves. I guess they don't see the irony: egotists attacking a philosopher of egoism. guess they never learned the difference.

Unfortunately for their case, all of the recent attacks on Rand rely on ad hominem or strawman fallacies. Too much work to read what she really said.

I don't think this New Yorker column will do any harm, since it is obviously a parody. I doubt that ARI or Peikoff's lawyers will bother to sue. Leonard should know that parodies of public figures is considered "fair game" by the courts.I

[caroljane]

And you know what else? The floating abstractions of life and art light on strange places. Saunders could not possibly have known that Rand actually visited a home where she met abused children, relatives of her significant other. Yet he satirized a variation of such a meeting.