Above: Cringes at the thought of conscientious consumers
going medieval on globalization’s ass.
‘Learn a lesson from the Dark Ages’
‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard.
Yokels, above: “Git off muh layand!”
H.L. Mencken authoritatively described this type of wingnut way back in 1926. From my copy of A Second Mencken Chrestomathy:
The yokel has scarcely any privacy at all. His neighbors know everything that is to be known about him, including what he eats and what he feeds his quadruped colleagues. His religious ideas are matters of public discussion; if he is recusant the village pastor prays for him by name. When his wife begins the biological process of giving him an heir, the news flies around. If he inherits $200 from an uncle in Idaho, everyone knows it instantly. If he skins his shin, or buys a new plow, or sees a ghost, or takes a bath it is a public event. Thus living like a goldfish in a glass globe, he acquires a large tolerance of snoutery, for if he resisted it his neighbors would set him down as an enemy of their happiness, and probably burn his barn. It seems natural and inevitable to him that everyone outside his house should be interested in what goes on inside, and that this interest should be accompanied by definite notions as to what is nice and what is not nice, supported by pressure. So he submits to government tyranny as he submits to the village inquisition, and when he hears that city men resist, it only confirms his general feeling that they are scoundrels. They are scoundrels because they have a better time than he has — the sempiternal human reason.
Thus for the yokel, only Mexicommiedopeheadliebruhlhomomuslimofascists squirm at the mention of domestic spying and chafe under a PATRIOT Act, because they of course have something to hide: when not sinful pleasures, most likely some species of treason.
Above:”Guhuylk, hey Brandine, that there reporter over yonder
done stabbed Amuricuh in thu back!”
ABOVE: Glenn Reynolds proudly displays a newly-published biography of himself.
‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard.
UPDATE by Clif: Kathleen is wondering what the subtitle of the book says. So she won’t strain her eyes, here it is:
Michael Medved is the most gullible human being on the planet, bar none. But it’s a special, focused gullibility: Whatever the U.S. says about its history, its present actions, or its foreign policy aims is, on Planet Medved, always 100% completely true no matter what. If he ever manages to finagle his position as a Townhall columnist into an invitation to a White House press luncheon where they serve actual shit sandwiches (instead of the rhetorical shit sandwiches they’re always serving), Medved will be the guy frantically trying to get the attention of the waitstaff so he can let them know that they might want to check the containers of Nutella in the kitchen, because he thinks they might have spoiled.
Medved’s latest piece of tripe has been up for a couple of days now, but it’s just such an epic, tour de force, grand “Gone With the Wind” size exercise in stupidity and willful ignorance that it’s taken me this long to digest the whole thing and come out on the other side. It is a sweeping narrative of all of American history, told through a lens of pure buncombe. If DW Griffith’s “Birth of a Nation” could be described by our twentieth president as “history writ with lightning”, perhaps we could call this “history writ with pure applesauce” – and for much the same reasons.
In 1959, the hilarious Peter Sellers comedy “The Mouse That Roared” charmed audiences around the world by mocking America’s long-standing reputation for prodigious generosity – especially to nations who’ve fought the United States and lost. The movie (based on a droll and sprightly novel by Leonard Wibberley) tells the story of the fictional Duchy of Grand Fenwick that decides to cope with imminent financial collapse by declaring war on the U.S. The Grand Duchess and her prime minister (both played by Sellers) unleash the full might of a Fenwickian expeditionary force for an invasion of New York City, storming Manhattan with a twenty-man army equipped with medieval armor and bows and arrows. The scheming Europeans naturally plan in advance for a speedy, abject surrender, after which they expect to benefit from the bountiful foreign aid and reconstruction assistance that America traditionally lavishes on its beaten foes.
Why, yes, Michael, being beaten by the United States in a war IS just as hilarious as it appears to be in the movies! There’s nothing quite as hysterical as having white phosphorus incendiary devices come streaming out of the sky into your living room, and having a stream of daisy cutters come hurtling down the main street of your town is a guaranteed laugh a minute.
Dude, stuff like that is called “satire” for a reason. D’you ever get the feeling that if Medved ever read “A Modest Proposal”, he’d be stuck wondering just why people didn’t actually try out the very clever ideas that nice Mr. Swift came up with? “The Mouse that Roared” works as comedy because it’s a movie war, not a real war, much like Seller’s other oh-so-notably pro-U.S. foreign policy film “Dr.Strangelove ” works as comedy because – with it being movie make believe and not real – you never have to see the carnage wrought by the bombs dropped.
You can see already that I’m not going to make it through this in one piece, can’t you? I’m already reduced to explaining to a film critic that movies are make believe, not reality.
Critics of the United States and its role in the world prefer to argue their point of view by focusing on specific instances of American bullying or brutality, recounting their favorite horror stories from Indonesia or Nicaragua, Vietnam or Chile, the Philippines or Iraq – or any of two dozen other places around the globe where American intervention or involvement imperfectly exemplified the nation’s self-professed high ideals.
Yes, when you are making an omelette of global wealth and harmony, you might have to break a few national eggs to get there. Okay, maybe twenty or thirty eggs. Okay, maybe that even adds up to one out of every six eggs in the entire planetary basket – what are you, a math major? When you look at how great life is nowadays in Nicaragua, or Chile, or the Philippines, you can see it was all totally worth it, right?
The leftist insistence on concentrating on individual examples of U.S. “perfidy” emphasizes details over destiny, arcane disputes over isolated, long-ago blunders above big picture considerations of the overall impact of U.S. policy. Yes, it’s possible to argue that the United States (and our British allies) harmed democratic development (and our own long-term interests) by undermining the leftist Mossadegh government in Iran in 1953, but that doesn’t justify (or even explain) the current Iranian designation of the U.S. as “The Great Satan” or the cheering crowds at Teheran rallies who lustily chant “Death to America!”
Why are you bothering him with details? Details are for losers. Destiny is for winners. All those “blunders” (that Medved never gets around to explaining who made) are isolated and long ago, and they shouldn’t detract from big picture considerations. And I’m flabbergasted at the idea that the 1953 CIA-led overthrow of the Mossadegh government does nothing to explain the rise of revolutionary Iranian sentiment. Perhaps it’s because in order to make sense of that, you have to be able to follow a causal chain of events past two instances, and that just taxes Medved’s powers of reasoning past their limits? You know, it’s not: overthrow of Mossadegh: “Death to America”; it’s: overthrow of Mossadegh: direct rule of a Shah who used secret police, put political dissenters in jail, and generally relied on U.S. support to hold unpopular power: Iranian people finally so pissed off they’d accept the rule of anyone else except the Shah: Iranian Revolution: “Death to America”.
Those who insist on slandering the United States seek ugly close-ups of twisted trees but won’t step back to consider the forest. They lack perspective, and ignore context. They refer to dwell on the harsh impact of specific American initiatives or policies, without acknowledging the Republic’s undeniably benevolent and beneficial impact on the world at large during every era in our history.
Yep, you read that right. Medved just said that our impact on the entire world has always been benevolent, every time we did anything in any era of American history. Well, that settles it for me, then. I’m going to go into work on Monday and quit my job, because we obviously don’t need people who teach American history anymore. In fact, teaching American history is bad, because it’s just about getting hung up on details and doing close-ups; what kids actually need is just to be told that it is now, and has always been, American destiny to be an undeniably benevolent and beneficial influence on the entire world throughout our entire history. What else does anyone need to know?
Y’know, Bush’s alleged concern for human rights in countries like Iran, Syria and North Korea might have more legitimacy if he spent an equal amount of time harping on stuff like this:
A court in Saudi Arabia increased the punishment for a gang-rape victim after her lawyer won an appeal of the sentence for the rapists, the lawyer told CNN.
They upped the punishment of a gang-rape victim. As though being gang-raped wasn’t punishment enough. Wow.
The 19-year-old victim was sentenced last year to 90 lashes for meeting with an unrelated male, a former friend from whom she was retrieving photographs. The seven rapists, who abducted the pair and raped both, received sentences ranging from 10 months to five years in prison.
The victim’s attorney, Abdulrahman al-Lahim, contested the rapists’ sentence, contending there is a fatwa, or edict under Islamic law, that considers such crimes Hiraba (sinful violent crime) and the punishment should be death.
“After a year, the preliminary court changed the punishment and made it two to nine years for the defendants,” al-Lahim said of the new decision handed down Wednesday. “However, we were shocked that they also changed the victim’s sentence to be six months in prison and 200 lashes.”
The judges more than doubled the punishment for the victim because of “her attempt to aggravate and influence the judiciary through the media,” according to a source quoted by Arab News, an English-language Middle Eastern daily newspaper.
Ah, it’s good to see that the Saudis have a wicked MSM that’s just as treasonous as ours is.
Judge Saad al-Muhanna from the Qatif General Court also barred al-Lahim from defending his client and revoked his law license, al-Lahim said.
Yeah, stick it to that slimy ambulance-chasin’ trial attorney, judge! Hee-haw, you’re a man after Robert Bork’s own heart, son.
WhizWank blogger Lorie Byrd just spent a long night waterboarding herself with a bottle of Bailey’s Irish Cream while watching the last two weeks of Entertainment Tonight on her Tivo. I don’t know this first-hand, of course, but there is no other reasonable explanation for her latest Clown Hall piece titled “From OJ to Britney to Iraq.”
That is such a wingutalicious title with so many possibilities for humor and ridicule that we could probably devote this entire post to that title alone. Or we could just have a contest asking for ideas for other nonsensically triangulated titles, like “From Gore to Hillary to Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus” or “From South Park to The Simpsons to Sticking Steroids in Your Butt.” But then you’d never know how Lorie got from OJ to Britney to Iraq. And that would be a shame. A damn shame.
Remember when OJ Simpson was considered a sports hero and an American success story, rather than that guy who got away with double homicide?
Remember when wingnuts used to say that the jury system was the best thing ever invented by our sainted Founding Fathers? But I digress. Back to Lorie.
Remember when Britney Spears was known as the hit-making Mouseketeer who spoke publicly of remaining a virgin until marriage, rather than the out-of-control boozing party girl who shaved her head, flashed photographers and had her kids taken away from her? Timing makes all the difference.
No, I don’t really remember that, but I guess I don’t need to remember that to see your point: the difference between a good Christian girl and and a coke-crazed slut is a few glasses of Bailey’s on the rocks and an hour or so. But we all knew that already. And what the snort does this have to do with Iraq?
Some may have forgotten, but in April of 2003, Iraqi crowds cheered when the statue of Saddam Hussein was toppled in Baghdad.
They probably have forgotten that because it was all staged by the U.S. military. You are probably beginning to wonder where Lorie is going with all this. Is she saying that Iraq is in a one-way downward spiral like OJ and Britney? Of course not, silly. Remember we’re talking a Clown Hall column here.
No, it’s the Demoncrats who are shaving their heads, exposing their naughty bits and losing their children:
As the value of OJ Simpson and Britney Spears endorsements swiftly plummeted from earlier highs, so has the value politicians can derive from calling for withdrawal from Iraq. … if Democrats continue to declare the mission a failure and call for withdrawal at the same time voters are hearing reports of progress and other good news from Iraq, Democrats will appear to be in denial of reality and worse will appear to be pulling for an American defeat when it appears victory is possible.
And so if the Democrats are Britney, who’s Kevin Federline? Do I really have to spell it out for you?
Congressional Republicans might even be able to pull a Kevin Federline-style rebound. A couple of years ago it would not have been thought possible that the wanna-be rap star Federline, who sponged off of wife Britney Spears’ money and fame, would ever be seen as the more responsible of the two, and the favored spouse in a custody battle for the couple’s two kids, but that is what happened. Timing is everything.
And that, friends, other than being thoroughly delusional, is perhaps the worst extended metaphor since, well, this:
Yep, this officially qualifies as the shittiest way to dump someone:
More than four in 10 teens, or 43 percent, who instant message use it for things they wouldn’t say in person, according to an Associated Press-AOL poll released Thursday. Twenty-two percent use IMs to ask people out on dates or accept them, and 13 percent use them to break up.
lol i has dumpt u kthxbai.
Well, here’s some unconstitutional BS going on in my own backyard:
Boston police are launching a program that will call upon parents in high-crime neighborhoods to allow detectives into their homes, without a warrant, to search for guns in their children’s bedrooms.
The program, which is already raising questions about civil liberties, is based on the premise that parents are so fearful of gun violence and the possibility that their own teenagers will be caught up in it that they will turn to police for help, even in their own households.
In the next two weeks, Boston police officers who are assigned to schools will begin going to homes where they believe teenagers might have guns. The officers will travel in groups of three, dress in plainclothes to avoid attracting negative attention, and ask the teenager’s parent or legal guardian for permission to search. If the parents say no, police said, the officers will leave.
Nifty stuff. Say, how does that Fourth Amendment thingee go again? Oh yeah, something like this:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Yeah, so this program pretty much violates our country’s founding document, no ifs, ands, buts, etc., etc. But uh-oh! There’s more!
As promised here.
Above: Snotzis or durtee-nozes?
(I think this is the first time I’ve ever cat blogged.)
But when once the invisible world was supposed to be opened, and the lawless agency of bad spirits assumed, what measures of probability, of decency, of fitness, or proportion — of that which distinguishes the likely from the palpable absurd — could they have to guide them in the rejection or admission of any particular testimony?
-Charles Lamb, Witches and Other Night-Fears
Many have asked after the result of our experiment. It is a terrible and shame-wracked story, the earlier episodes of which are here and more previously here, as well as possibly also here. This is the tragic denouement.
If I may make an observation, there are some weird and unpleasant people on the Internet. And as fate would happen, some of those bad people were involved in the Andy Stephenson affair, which was pivotal in our competition with DUmmie FUnnies, the not-funny anti-Democratic Underground site that mounted that giant Freeper campaign against us, and [mumble-mumble] you know, Weblog Awards thingy.
I realize I’m not being very clear. The competition was a vitrine of human pettiness, comprising everything that wingnuts do when they think they can get away with it: attempting to cheat, making false counter-accusations of cheating, performing arias of wounded innocence when caught by the judges trying to cheat, sock-puppetry, blar-harring, ganging up on people and yelling nasty things at them, blaming the people they’re ganging up on (i.e., ‘stop hitting yourself’), performing tuba-and-piccolo sonatas of wounded innocence when caught blaming people for things they themselves are doing, et alia. It provided a valuable booster lesson: They’re really like that. They will really do just any old thing at all.
And of course we needed to be just as bad, which is really bad indeed, so as the molecular cravings intensified following our preparation of Cheetos dans une Cuvette avec la Rosée de Montagne, or Cheetos in a Cereal Bowl with Mountain Dew Poured Over It, our medical adviser* agreed cautiously to go forward:
Subject initially tested normally on the Beck Aggression Inventory, however the current response to exposure to the ‘Glenn Beck Program’ on CNN is one of heightened attention and studied interest. Contrary to the baseline response of throwing crumpled paper towels at the screen and demanding the remote, subject was observed listening intently and intermittently nodding in agreement. Other indices of cognitive function show only slight impairment (most notably a reversal of the order of nouns and adjectives in speech), however my concern for the subject’s well-being is rapidly increasing.
CNN host Glenn Beck is an American patriotic with the guts to stand up to the LIEBERAL LIES promal… promul… spread on the terror-supporting MSM of which CNN COMMUNIST NEWS NETWORK is a liberal Ted Turner plan to misinform America via nanny state mealy-mouthed liberal elite HITLERY disinfo, except for Glenn Beck who is on CNN almost all the time, it seems. I was fortunate enough to catch a reprise of his proposal sensible for the Middle East, only this time he was supporting the military takeover in Paka… Pakes… the place near India China, and didn’t say ‘nuke’ but just ‘kill.’ I started off suspecting that the LIEBERAL conspiracy-wackos and ‘truthers’ had gotten to Beck AS THEY SO OFTEN DO, but then after impersonating an Iraq War veteran on the Internet for awhile, I thought about it a bit and decided that military takeovers are a good way to preserve precious freedoms, not to mention support the troops.
To further assess the subject’s degeneration, an abbreviated Rorschach test was administered. The first three blots were interpreted as: “Hitlery Clinton,” “Hitlery selling our oil reserves to the Chinese,” and “President Hitlery subjecting the American People to Sharia law.” The test was suspended at this point, and subject was presented with a blank card, which was subsequently interpreted as “Hitlerly murdering Vince Foster and strangling a puppy, while consecrating a gay wedding with the blood of a murdered womb baby.” Subject exhibits an increased rate of respiration and is sweating profusely; I am beginning to fear for my safety.
Some LIARS and DISINGENUOUS LIE-FRAUDS may falsely claim that I did not actually taste these concoctions. I am here to say that I have witnesses** and that Cheetos blenderized with Mountain Dew Game Fuel tastes like TOUCHING THE FACE OF GOD!!! WITH YOUR DICK!!1 Also, the flavor begins salty-sweet with almost no suggestion of cheese, and settles in with a strong cereal taste, exactly like Quisp or Cap’n Crunch. Around the edges of this, the sweet and salty elements fight to a standstill, leaving an impression on the palate only of mild viscosity, like certain high-specific-gravity malt liquors including Steel Reserve. The overall experience is like you’re standing there minding your own business when a bum staggers over and throws up in your mouth — and you’re like, “Agh!” and you try to wash the taste out by throwing up in your own mouth, except you were eating the same stuff the bum was, only with a bit less cheese flavor.
The effects faded all too rapidly, for as I was on the Internet accusing a wounded veteran of faking his injuries, I was consumed with guilt and shame — whereas, of course, the one who should feel shame is him, for falsely accusing me of accusing him, and so forth. As I forged a threatening email from him and sent it to the forum moderator, every cell in my body was screaming for more courage, more fortitude, more maracas, tambourine, and indeed cowbell.
Subject is increasingly aggressive and hostile to reasonable requests. Close physical examination belies the presence of a film of orange powder around the subject’s nostrils. Despite the short duration of the test, subject appears to have gained substantial amounts of both weight and unsightly body hair. Secretive behavior of the subject led to my discovery of syringes filled with a reddish-orange liquid, which were confiscated. This led to a suggestion that the experiment be immediately discontinued, upon hearing which the subject brandished a ‘Slim Jim’ and demanded I make a ‘saving throw’ against his ‘level 14 fireball.’ I was able to make use of a distraction (suggesting the presence of Pamela Oshry in an amorous embrace with Debbie Schlussel behind subject) to escape the basement and trap subject inside, however I am uncertain of the security of this arrangement. I have left the premises and contacted the authorities, however if the subject is able to escape confinement before their arrival, the safety of the general public may be at risk.
It is useless, and the time awfully fails me, to prolong this description; no one has ever suffered such torments, let that suffice; and yet even to these, habit brought–no, not alleviation–but a certain callousness of soul, a certain acquiescence of despair; and my punishment might have gone on for years, but for the last calamity which has now fallen, and which has finally severed me from my own face and nature. My provision of the Cheetos, which had never been renewed since the date of the first experiment, began to run low. I sent out for a fresh supply and mixed the draught; the ebullition followed, and more ebullition, and then more. You will learn from Brad how I have had Boston ransacked; it was in vain. The city had been emptied of Cheetos.
Above: Several regrettable episodes ensued.
About a week has passed, and I am now finishing this statement under the influence of the last of the powders. This, then, is the last time, short of a miracle, that Gafydd Ab M. can think his own thoughts or see his own face (now how sadly altered!) in the glass. Nor must I delay too long to bring my writing to an end; for if my narrative has hitherto escaped destruction, it has been by a combination of great prudence and great good luck. Should the throes of change take me in the act of writing it, Ab M. will tear it in pieces; but if some time shall have elapsed after I have laid it by, his wonderful selfishness and circumscription to the moment will probably save it once again from the action of his ape-like spite. And indeed the doom that is closing on us both has already changed and crushed him. Half an hour from now, when I shall again and forever reindue that hated personality, I know how I shall sit shuddering and weeping in my chair, or continue, with the most strained and fearstruck ecstasy of listening, to pace up and down this room (my last earthly refuge) and give ear to every sound of menace. Will Ab M. die upon the scaffold? or will he find courage to release himself at the last moment? God knows; I am careless; this is my true hour of death, and what is to follow concerns another than myself. Here then, as I lay down the pen and proceed to seal up my confession, I bring the life of that unhappy Gavin M. to an end.†
‘Don’t Eat It’ concept created by Steven at The Sneeze.
* Not a medical doctor
** Witnesses can indeed attest that I drank this.
† Text from Robert Louis Stevenson, The Annotated Strange Case of Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde.