‘I Was Saying “Boer-urns”!’
Googling around for the last post, I found something that ties it in to Bradrocket’s last couple.
Check out this bit of soggy biscuitry. The wanker recounts the story of when Mark Twain met Winston Churchill. Twain, a good anti-Imperialist, opposed the Boer war and let Churchill know it. Churchill, for his part, and whose politics were jingoist even considering the standards of the time, took Twain’s admonishments in good cheer, just happy to have met the author (ahh, the days when cultivated reactionaries could still appreciate art and artists without resorting to charges of treason). Then the punchline:
And there you have it: Twain on Churchill, and Churchill on Twain. We celebrated both their birthdays yesterday. But more celebrating needs to be done. Tomorrow night, almost exactly 105 years later, in a hotel’s grand ballroom, at a dinner convened on Winston Churchill’s account, another Mark–like Twain, a renowned and witty man of letters, and, like Churchill, a man who has sounded the alarm against our age’s totalitarian aggressors–is to speak. This is Mark Steyn. And his introducer? The parallels amaze: a fellow dedicated to preserving the memory and legacy of both great men: Bruce Sanborn.
“The parallels amaze”!!! Bwahahaha.
The parallels amaze
Well, I, for one, am absolutely fucking gobsmacked.
Mark Twain : Mark Steyn :: William Shakespeare : Edward Bulwer-Lytton
The parallels amaze
Well they ARE all carbon based lifeforms
The 2007 biscuit is over, as far as contests go.
The parallels do amaze: Mark Twain was really called Samuel Clemens, while Mark Steyn is a nom de plume for Stupid Fucking Beardy Genocidalist Conrad Black Boytoy.
Their shitty pretentious prose never fails to amaze.
Maybe he means he is amazed by parallelograms.
Every time Joseph Tartakovsky writes, an angel loses his wings.
Not THE Bruce Sanborn.
That guy fucking owes everyone at the Claremont Institute money when he showed up at Hookerfest ’06 without his wallet.
And he also hasn’t returned my snowblower.
Prick…
And me touching my penis is like God creating man.
Does the right wing in general not understand analogies depend on being applicable to mean anything?
To be fair to Steyn, Churchill did write like him once in a while:
“…this world-wide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilisation and for the reconstitution of society on the basis of arrested development, of envious malevolence, and impossible equality, has been steadily growing.”
http://library.flawlesslogic.com/ish.htm
another Mark–like Twain, a renowned and witty man of letters
please. no. that is just so wrong.
Ann Dustbin said,
February 21, 2007 at 8:37
The parallels amaze
Well they ARE all carbon based lifeforms
“We are stardust /
we are golden … ”
— Joni Mitchell
I think my favorite Twain stories are the one’s about what a good idea it would be to kill all the foreigners before they take over the country and fatally undermine our civilization, a civilization whose only flaw is that too many people just aren’t ruthless enough when it comes to the necessity of mass slaughter.
Really, Twain was one of the great right-wing thinkers of the nineteenth century. He was like a kind of folksy Ayn Rand.
” … a folksy Ayn Rand … ”
Take that back — right the fuck now.
Wow, most wingers are content to just shove their heads up their asses. It appears the fine people at the Claremont Institute have gone the extra mile and vaccum sealed their heads in.
� … a folksy Ayn Rand … �
Take that back — right the fuck now.
You objectivists are so touchy …
No you’re right. Some jokes are too obscene even for the internet.
Tell that to the wingnuts, though.
The parallels amaze
And an entirely new form of non-Euclidean geometry is born.
Calling someone an Objectivist is so subjective …
“I’m kind of like Jesus, but not in a sacrilegious way.”
Homer Simpson
Maybe he means he is amazed by parallelograms.
Or paralysed by mazes.
Oddly enough, in another amazing parallel, the other Mark’s name is pronounced “Twine.” The Internets really are a font of useful information.
I’ve been reading a book on the genocide in the congo at the turn of the century, and one of the heros who tried to stop it was a man named E.D. Morel who later agitated against WWI before it began, suggesting that secret alliances were propelling Britain into a war that would be disastrous for everyone. Morel was of course right about both issues.
Morel was for a time imprisoned due to an obscure British law against sending an antiwar pamphlet to a neutral contry. Britain was doing all it could to stifle the speach and imprison people who spoke out. The man who worked to send him to jail…. Churchill.
I wanna puke. Uuuuurgh!
I know that one it seems silly to focus on their inability to speak clearly when what they say is so appalling, but doesn’t the author of the above-quoted passage mean “Twain-like Mark” rather than “Mark-like Twain,” as Steyn is a Mark, but not a Twain?
(And shouldn’t someone make a “never-the-Twain-shall-meet” crack?)
Of course that would have been more effective had I edited out the “one” from the opening clause, but I didn’t have a goddam preview button!!!!
Seriously, HTML Retardo, if you don’t restore my preview button, I will reveal where Josh Trevino lives. Not now, perhaps, but iacta alea est! (And Gallia est omnis divisa in tres partes.)
Could someone find this story by Mark Twain where there is this church service where the sermon is about how they hope God helps the soldiers smote their enemies, and a guy points out that’s wrong, and everyone mocks him as being shrill? Sorry to Jpod you there, but since I forget the title I wouldn’t know where to start.
Twain did write The War Prayer.
Maybe steyn did not do his homework.
http://www.midwinter.com/lurk/making/warprayer.html
“O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle — be Thou near them! With them — in spirit — we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it — for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.
Ah, but the kicker after the prayer: “It was believed afterward that the man was a lunatic, because there was no sense in what he said.”
Gotta love Twain…
i believe it was mark twain, no wait was it mark steyn? no, sorry it was abraham churchill who said (and i’m paraphrasing both ben domenech AND stephen glass here, as part of a story told to marty peretz by don young on the floor of house/at gettysburg/in the houses of parliament):
the parallels between this and reality are stunning.
…another Mark–like Twain, a renowned and witty man of letters, and, like Churchill…
Jesus. I’ll be cleaning the bile off my monitor for a week.
HTML Moleman, loved the title!
I did not find “King Leopold’s Soliloquoy” at http://www.boondocksnet.com/ai/twain/ , but I did find “A Defense of General Funston” — Twain’s ironic comments on the exploits of a certain military “hero” during America’s disgraceful incursion into the Phillipines. Some things never change, and perhaps it is useful if we are reminded that there have been inventive monsters among our military for at least a century, and an all-American media corps ready to celebrate the monsters’ “triumphs” as well.
“He did not make his own disposition, It was born with him. It chose his ideals for him, he did not choose them. It chose the kind of society It liked, the kind of comrades It preferred, and imposed them upon him, rejecting the other kinds; he could not help this; It admired everything that [General George] Washington did not admire, and hospitably received and coddled everything that Washington would have turned out of doors — but It, and It only, was to blame, not Funston; his It took as naturally to moral slag as Washington’s took to moral gold, but only It was to blame, not Funston. Its moral sense, if It had any, was color-blind, but this was no fault of Funston’s, and he is not chargeable with the results; It had a native predilection for unsavory conduct, but it would be in the last degree unfair to hold Funston to blame for the outcome of his infirmity; as clearly unfair as it would be to blame him because his conscience leaked out through one of his pores when he was little — a thing which he could not help, and he couldn’t have raised it, anyway…
“Now, then, we have Funston; he has happened, and is on our hands. The question is, what are we going to do about it, how are we going to meet the emergency? We have seen what happened in Washington’s case: he became a colossal example, an example to the whole world, and for all time — because his name and deeds went everywhere, and inspired, as they still inspire, and will always inspire, admiration, and compel emulation. Then the thing for the world to do in the present case is to turn the gilt front of Funston’s evil notoriety to the rear, and expose the back aspect of it, the right and black aspect of it, to the youth of the land; otherwise he will become an example and a boy-admiration, and will most sorrowfully and grotesquely bring his breed of Patriotism into competition with Washington’s. This competition has already begun, in fact. Some may not believe it, but it is nevertheless true, that there are now public-school teachers and superintendents who are holding up Funston as a model hero and Patriot in the schools.
“If this Funstonian boom continues, Funstonism will presently affect the army. In fact, this has already happened. There are weak-headed and weak-principled officers in all armies, and these are always ready to imitate successful notoriety-breeding methods, let them be good or bad. The fact that Funston has achieved notoriety by paralyzing the universe with a fresh and hideous idea, is sufficient for this kind — they will call that hand if they can, and go it one better when the chance offers. Funston’s example has bred many imitators, and many ghastly additions to our history: the torturing of Filipinos by the awful “water-cure,” for instance, to make them confess — what? Truth? Or lies? How can one know which it is they are telling? For under unendurable pain a man confesses anything that is required of him, true or false, and his evidence is worthless…”
The DNA of Steyn and Sanborn is almost 95% identical to that of Twain and Churchill!
Gen. Funston managed to salvage his reputation by his capable response to the San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906. After that most people forgot about his atrocities in the Philippines.
The modern equivalent would be if Donald Rumsfeld had quickly organized an effective and successful operation to rescue, shelter and feed the inhabitants of New Orleans after Katrina.
[…] For those keeping track of Claremont math, the latest scribble sheet looks something like this: Mark Steyn = Mark Twain + Winston Churchill, Donald Rumsfeld = Winston Churchill, ergo Donald Rumsfeld = 1/2 Mark Steyn. Meanwhile, Dear Leader […]