08.01.08
Posted in Election of 2008, language at 18:20 by Toby Petzold
It occurred to me a while ago that Obama’s motto of “Yes We Can” (appropriated and translated from Cesar Chavez’s “Si Se Puede”) is actually something of a restatement of the term affirmative action. The affirmative declaration yes and the potential for action inherent in can (plus the ever-present royal we that Obama so often employs) now makes perfect sense when taken altogether. He is saying to his followers, in effect:
“Affirm by your actions this moment in history. This is the moment we have all been waiting for. The world has been waiting for me —and I am become a symbol of America returning to its best traditions, which is the promise of America not as an actual country with a historical culture of its own, but as an idea that transcends nationhood and makes us all citizens of the world.”
Obama being the First Citizen, naturally.
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07.05.08
Posted in Democrats, Election of 2008, Unexplained Mysteries, comedy, language at 01:12 by Toby Petzold
Charles Krauthammer pegs Barry Hussein Obama as the phoniest bastard of the past week:
In last week’s column, I thought I had thoroughly chronicled Obama’s brazen reversals of position and abandonment of principles — on public financing of campaigns, on NAFTA, on telecom immunity for post-Sept. 11 wiretaps, on unconditional talks with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad — as he moved to the center for the general election campaign. I misjudged him. He was just getting started.
Last week, when the Supreme Court declared unconstitutional the District of Columbia’s ban on handguns, Obama immediately declared that he agreed with the decision. This is after his campaign explicitly told the Chicago Tribune last November that he believes the D.C. gun ban is constitutional.
Obama spokesman Bill Burton explains the inexplicable by calling the November — i.e., the primary season — statement “inartful.” Which suggests a first entry in the Obamaworld dictionary — “Inartful: clear and straightforward, lacking the artistry that allows subsequent self-refutation and denial.”
“Swiftboating” is another word the Democrats use that doesn’t mean what they think it means. Who knows how their minds work? At this point, it must be said that they’ve gone soft because they aren’t really thinking through their support of this charlatan, but feeling it. It’s an embarrassment because most of them do not have the intellectual integrity to hold their man accountable for his many major renegings of the past three weeks. They’re just giving him a pass on everything because they are his bitches. He owns their sorry hippie asses and is making no secret of that in how he now behaves.
The whole thing, as Bill Clinton said, is a fairy tale.
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06.23.08
Posted in America, language, personal at 22:28 by Toby Petzold
Before I call it a night, I just want to say here that I loved George Carlin and that I am sorry to hear of his death. He was an extremely thoughtful and principled guy, so far as I know, and a total riot. My Daddy and brothers and I used to love his HBO specials. Man, I’d love to see some of those again. I guess they’re already out there in one form or another. Anyhow, Carlin was a great comedian and a great American and I am glad that he shared his love of words —and his understanding of the human condition— with all of us.
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06.02.08
Posted in America, History, language, moonbats, racism, religion at 19:52 by Toby Petzold
Jonah Goldberg has some very interesting thoughts on Black Liberation Theology and the meaning(s) of Progressivism. About Obama, he writes:
He may use the phrase Social Gospel the same way he (and so many others) uses the word “progressive,” i.e. in near total ignorance or indifference to its actual historical connotations. For example, when Obama held a rally at the University of Wisconsin, Madison he proclaimed “where better to affirm our ideals than here in Wisconsin, where a century ago the Progressive movement was born?” Obama seemed not to know or to care that the University of Wisconsin Progressives were almost all racists and eugenicists who might have thought — at minimum — that his parents should have been barred from having children.
I often remark to the so-called “progressives” I come across that they are abusing the term. The Progressives of the Twentieth (and, now, the Twenty-first) Century may both be Big Government socialists at heart —but you can’t marry these people today to what the former group believed in: White Protestant Civilization and American exceptionalism. Progressives today are secular humanists who despise the “Christianists” and are repulsed by patriotism or excessive caucasoidalism. So why are they recycling progressive? Is it really so bad to be thought of as a liberal?
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05.26.08
Posted in America, Democrats, Election of 2008, Unexplained Mysteries, language, moonbats, racism at 17:14 by Toby Petzold
One of the jobs Obama claims as part of his curriculum vitae is “community organizer.” What the hell does that even mean? It sounds like a euphemistic way of saying “shit-stirrer.”
I don’t like what’s happening inside the Democratic Party. I think they’ve gone plum loco. Why couldn’t they have gone with a nominee whom America actually knows?
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05.17.08
Posted in beauty, language at 22:48 by Toby Petzold
Enjoy this fun little stroll through the music of the English language, courtesy of Joseph Bottum:
In a logical sense, of course, some words are literally true or false when applied to themselves. Words about words, typically: Noun is a noun, though verb is not a verb. Poly- syllabic is self-true, and monosyllabic is not. And this logical notion of autology can be extended. If short seems a short word, true of itself, then the shorter long must be false of itself.
But what about jab or fluffy or sneer, each of them true in a way that goes beyond logic? Verbose has always struck me as a strangely verbose word. Peppy has that perky, energetic, spry sound it needs. And was there ever a more supercilious word than supercilious? Or one more lethargic than lethargic?
Let’s coin a term for this kind of poetic, extralogical accuracy. Let’s call it agenbite. That’s a word Michael of Northgate cobbled up for his 1340 Remorse of Conscience–or Agenbite of Inwit, as he actually titled the book. English would later settle on the French-born word “remorse” to carry the sense of the Latin re-mordere, “to bite again.” But Michael didn’t know that at the time, and so he simply translated the word’s parts: again-bite or (in the muddle of early English spelling) agenbite.
The relative perfection of our language to all others is unquestionable. People who come to live in America should learn to speak it.
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12.16.07
Posted in language, moonbats, personal, stupidity at 13:55 by Toby Petzold
The reason people who steal my name in comment threads are such failures at it is that they aren’t smart enough to encompass the breadth of my mind. They are witless, artless stylometricians.
And the reason I don’t steal others’ names to deceive and talk shit? The thought never occurs to me.
That’s something the Internets never took from me.
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11.06.07
Posted in America, Democrats, Republicans, language, moonbats at 22:22 by Toby Petzold
Thanks to Bill Clinton for providing the latest abuse of the so-called swiftboating concept. At a postal worker’s convention on Monday (emphasis mine):
“We listened to people make snide comments about whether Vice President Gore was too stiff,” Mr. Clinton said, “and when they made dishonest claims about the things that he said that he’d done in his life. When that scandalous Swift boat ad was run against Senator Kerry.”
“Why am I saying this?” he continued. “Because I had the feeling that at the end of that last debate we were about to get into cutesy land again.”
I don’t even want to talk about the Clinton Co-Presidency v.2.0 and all the finger-wagging bluster we’re fixing to go through again with him and the wife; I just want to point out, again, that the idea of swiftboating is bogus. It is, by dint of the liberal media’s efforts, becoming some sort of term used to describe unfair and unsubstantiated political attacks —presumably of only one kind: Rethuglikkkan on Democrat. But the term and the concept both are an abuse of common sense.
This is a political culture in which political criticisms of our leaders are a necessity. They are what happen in campaigns and in the constant struggle to oppose the other. The right to define and fight and politick are fundamental to our system. When Democrats demonize the Swift Boat Veterans for exercising their right to tell the public what kind of sailor John Kerry was —as they knew him to be— it is distasteful in the extreme. Where in their ads (and there were many ads, Mr. President) were the lies? The Kerrion never explained. Never have explained that —even though I note today that Kerry is again boasting that he has every letter of his absolute defense against their criticisms —criticisms, mind you— all laid out and ready to roll. And just a scant three years after the first time it was necessary but, as we knew even then, impossible.
They use the word swiftboat —but it doesn’t mean what they think it means.
I say it was the trauma of 2004. The Democrats were so crushed at Kerry’s loss that they’ve consoled themselves ever since on the lie that he was unfairly portrayed by some particular sort of politics. Some very shadowy and unknowable thing that exists outside of natural laws —like Karl Rove. But there was nothing diabolical about it, folks. And it is wrong to use a buzzword like swiftboating to suggest otherwise.
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11.02.07
Posted in America, Bush Administration, Democrats, History, Joe and Valerie, Republicans, language, moonbats, stupidity at 22:12 by Toby Petzold
John Dean’s telling Josh Marshall that (emphasis mine):
Nixon was under deep suspicion of covering up the true facts relating to the bungled break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate, not to mention widespread rumors that he had engaged in abuses of power and corrupt campaign practices. Today, Bush is under even deeper suspicion for activities far more serious than anything Nixon engaged in for there is evidence Bush has abused the laws of war, violated treaties, and ordered (or approved) the use of torture and political renditions, which are war crimes.
In dwelling on their unquestionable fetishes for talking about torture and all the Constitution-trampling and Reichstag-burnings going on in Amerikkka, the anti-American Left cannot meet the demands of the rhetoric because they have already shot their wad —morally, logically, and linguistically. They cannot top themselves. They cannot plausibly out-Nixon Nixon with Bush —but damned if John Dean won’t try! After all, Americans have long been taught that Nixon is the epitome and definition of the super-corrupt warmonger and Imperial President. I can’t imagine how this sell-out could have found himself trying to rehabilitate Nixon by comparison. Nixon must now no longer be the ”war criminal” he always has been to the Democrats because, fancifully, Bush the Younger is an even worse one.
These Leftists fall into such rhetorical outhouses because they have too little character to drop the cudgels they wrongly believe have gotten them this far. These issues they fetishize —Valerie Ghraib, Abu Plame, Gitmo, “warrantless wiretaps” — are only fundraising and propaganda tools. That needs to be understood absolutely. These filthy cowards will smear anybody with any lie they can think of if they have some partisan advantage to gain from it. They believe they won 2006 that way —and they think they’ve got the Bush Administration saddled with the worst reputation in the history of this country. But just look at what they’re doing! They’re losing in both houses of the Congress to someone they say is a war criminal! These heroes of the Mandate of 2006 must be wretched liars to persist with their worthless condemnations if they can’t even defeat Bush.
Never mind that other Presidents besides Bush have authorized torture and rendition and whatever else. There’re elections and headlines and taxpayers’ money to be won! These historically ignorant hypocrites on the anti-Bush Left have got a lot of extra [outrage] and [dissent] and [moral revulsion] to burn, but don’t go without pants just yet, folks! The truth will hunt you down.
Our country is, in fact, becoming burdened by a Leftist element that believes in nothing but hatred, contrarianism, anarchy, and degeneracy. Every now and then, someone like John Dean will come along and whore himself out to that sentiment because he’s doing penance. But the people at that end of the spectrum don’t really believe in what America stands for. They just want to tear things down and spread ignorance.
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10.29.07
Posted in Bush Administration, comedy, language, moonbats at 22:09 by Toby Petzold
I’m not sure if I’ve ever read him do it before, but John Hinderaker goes PG on the filthy hippies:
It is the luxury of knowing they are bullshitting that allows American liberals to claim that their freedoms are going up in smoke and that dissent is being suppressed, when in fact, “dissent” is socially mandated in polite society from Manhattan to Marin County.
I would add this parallel: any survey of Europeans you look at will say that they think the United States is the biggest danger to world peace, worse than North Korea or the Islamofascists. But they don’t mean it. If they did, they would be clamoring for their own countries to re-arm. But the very people who claim to believe that the U.S. is bent on world domination are the same ones who don’t want their own governments to spend a dollar on defense. They are entirely content to let us keep the peace. Which means that what they tell pollsters about threats to world peace, like what liberals say about threats to their civil liberties, is, to put it politely, disingenuous.
Ha, ha. Bullshitting. But it’s true: if these degenerates really did believe that we’re living through the Fourth Reich, the vast majority of them wouldn’t have the nerve to speak as they now do. I know that for a stone fact.
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