Sadly, No!

He wrote the soundtrack for getting your end away …

ABOVE: Adolf Ulrich Wertmuller, Portrait of Ann
“Toinette” Althouse (1788)

---

Ann Althouse, the shame of the University of Wisconsin Law School, thought that she could add light to the debate as to whether Harry Reid is a racist or not by using the definition of racism employed in the secret language that she speaks with her imaginary friends.

If by “racist” you mean somebody who would use other people’s feelings about race in a purely instrumental way to amass political power, then Harry Reid is a racist.

This is, of course, a most excellent definition because it would immediately render every civil rights activist who ever lived a racist thereby taking the whole the-liberals-are-the-real-racists trope to new and dizzying heights.

But the real fun comes when another right-wing law professor, Eugene Volokh, takes issue with Ann and tells her you can’t win arguments simply by making up new definitions of words. This pushes professor Althouse into full-splutter mode:

The reason why I put it that way is not because I saw that as a standard meaning. It is intended to express what I think is exactly what Reid was doing. The clause begins with “if.” Seen that way, I’m saying: If what Reid did is racist, Reid is a racist.

Well, that certainly settles that.

In a similar vein, let’s discuss whether Ann is an alcoholic or not. If by “alcoholic” you mean someone who drinks red wine from boxes, then Ann Althouse is an alcoholic. Now I know that this isn’t a standard definition of alcoholic. But this definition is intended to express exactly what I think Ann is doing, namely drinking boxed swill to get high. That’s why I said “if.” If someone who drinks boxed wine is an alcoholic, then Ann is an alcoholic. Not that I’m saying she drinks boxed wine or is an alcoholic, but if she did. . . etc.

Graduates of the University of Wisconsin Law School who took any courses from Ms. Althouse may cite this post in their request to have a pro-rata amount of their tuition refunded.

[h/t commenter Ted the Slacker]

ABOVE (left to right) Peter Orszag; Lisa Schiffren.

Shorter Lisa Schiffren, The American “Thinker”
Budget Director Gone Wild

• Peter Orszag spends too much time fucking to be the Director of OMB.

ABOVE (left to right): Peter Orszag; Scott Johnson.

Shorter Scott Johnson, Power Tools
Toupée, Roué, Okay

• How come a guy with a toupee that looks like a squirrel gets all these hot chicks, and I can’t even get hand job from Pam Geller? Has he no shame?

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™

ABOVE: Mike McGowan

Shorter Mike McGowan, When Falls the Coliseum, A Journal of American Culture [or Lack Thereof]
The G-Spot: The mythical pot of gold at the end of a rainbow

• As it turns out, the real reason why women find my lovemaking unappealing is because not a single one of them has a G-Spot like they’ve been claiming all this time. So, bitches, just STFU about your “needs” and go get me some beers! LOL.

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™

h/t InstaHayseed via Roy

Fernando Botero, The Supper of Glenn Beck (1987)

Shorter Glen Beck, The Glenn Beck Program
To census or not to census?

• The new census form has three separate boxes* for the coloreds to check for race, including one for “African-American,” which is a completely bogus term. Is Charlize Theron an African-American? Huh? HUH?? They should just have one box that says “nigger race” and be done with it.

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™

*Sadly, No!

A reader draws our attention to this gem from Mark Steyn Maclean’s writer, Susan Mohammad:

We’re used to warnings about European demographic collapse from Maclean’s magazine. But who knew the entire population of one northern European country (plus several million extra invented nationals) had succumbed already? Apparently not even Mark Steyn, who covers that beat when he’s not writing about movies, music, comics, and “free speech” or, Mark Steyn. In May 2009, a Maclean’s report claimed that “10 million Finns died under Lenin, almost half due to starvation” – remarkable, given Finland’s 5 million current inhabitants numbered only about 3 million during the lifetime of Lenin. And he didn’t even get to rule the small country.

Bonus points: The blog linked to above contains a few more gems by Steyn.

Shorter Charles Murray, AEI
The Word Made Flesh

• My recent nigger-counting expedition in Paris yielded distressing results.

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™

H/T: Crooked Timber

The insufferable Paul Kennedy falls off the wagon:

A proper high-speed-train system would give hard-pressed air travelers a real alternative to the car and the plane. It is being done elsewhere. Domestic flights between Hamburg in northern Germany and Munich (612 kilometers) are shriveling because the high-speed trains do it better.

Deutsche Bahn’s ICE (Intercity-Express) takes roughly 6 hours to cover those 612 kilometers. So let us be the first to say that, even if flights between those 2 cities are shriveling, it isn’t because of the choo choo. Then again, it’s obvious that Paul is easily impressed and doesn’t know much about the trains that he does ride on:

When I am on study leave in Cambridge, in Britain, I can take a nonstop train to London twice a [sic] hour — and the trip takes less than 45 minutes. On disembarking at King’s Cross station[.]

It takes 49 to 52 minutes (link) to cover the equivalent of a 60-mile car trip. Hold on to you chapeau.

Boy, that whole business of contrarianism never gets young, does it? Newsweek’s Christopher Dickey writes:

Yet the surge in efforts to attack the United States over the last few months, including on Detroit-bound Northwest Flight 253, is in many ways a measure of our success on faraway battlefields no one is ever supposed to have heard of.

It’s kind of a reverse Laffer curve of terrorism-fighting: increased efforts in the fight against terrorism causes more attacks. Maybe Dickey can let us know what the optimal level of faraway battlefield successes is.

George Will, December 31, 2010 2009:

Tsutomu Yamaguchi, 93, was on a business trip in Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945. Three days later he was back home in Nagasaki. He also survived 2009. […] Perhaps Tsutomu Yamaguchi will survive 2010.

Probably should have seen that one coming:

In 2009 Yamaguchi learned that he was dying of stomach cancer.[2] He died on 4 January 2010 in Nagasaki.