(Above: since we seem to still be in the era of Soviet jokes, there's an excellent collection of propaganda posters of a Soviet kind on flickr here).
P. J. O'Rourke used to be an invigorating read. But seems like that was way back when.
A big man in a trench coat comes up to the old guy and says, "Comrade, comrade, not so loud. In the old days you know what they would do if you said such things." The big man in the trench coat makes a pistol motion with his hand. He says to the old guy, "Calm down and go home." The old guy shrugs and leaves. He comes back empty-handed, and his wife says, "What's the matter, are they out of meat?" "Worse than that," says the old guy, "they're out of bullets."
I think there is something in this; another couple of coffees, a few rereads and I might find it, then again I might just read something with substance instead, time is short.
"Adding idiocy to insult on dissent" You sure did, PJO. What a rambling piece of tripe. Truly pointless - apart from the wet lettuce assault on a newspaper?! No doubt it's always alarming to the know-it-alls when ordinary people decide they'd like some say in ordinary life, when regular folk tell the know-it-alls to take their fishwrap and go blog themselves I suspect PJO wouldn't know an ordinary person if he happened to venture out on to the street.
*yawn* The American? Sorry, thought I was reading The Australian. Next website...
A man is sitting in a restaurant eating a thirty-copeck bowl of soup.
Suddenly he fishes an iron nut out of the bowl. The indignant customer demands to see the head cook. Out comes the head cook.
'What's this?' asks the man angrily, indicating the nut.
'An iron nut,' replies the head cook.
'Why is there an iron nut in the soup?' fumes the customer.
'What do you expect for thirty-copecks,' says the head cook, 'a whole tractor?'
Even more strange that Adding idiocy to insult on dissent turns up in today's Australian when it originally ran as Still 'Crazy' -- And Proud of It way back on the 31st August 2009 in The Weekly Standard.
O'Rourke's piece is a pot boiler mainly designed for domestic consumption in which he picks a fight with The Washington Post. Here's the opener:
US right-wing nuts sure is scary! That's the message from The Washington Post. To put this in language a conservative would understand, the fourth estate has been alarmed once again by the Burkean proclivities of our nation's citizens. The Post is in a panic about (to use its own descriptive terms) "birthers", "anti-tax tea-partiers" and "town-hall hecklers".
Well if the talk's about birthers and tea party types, loon surely is a kind word, but whatever floats your boat to get you through the paranoid day. The best you can say about O'Rourke is he doesn't bother to defend the birthers as an opening gambit. He just tells a joke about the Soviet Union. And here it is:
An old guy's wife tells him to go to the butcher shop and get some meat. He goes to the butcher shop and stands in line for hours. Finally the butcher says, "We're out of meat." The old guy blows his top. He yells, "I am a worker! I am a proletarian! I am a veteran of the Great Patriotic War! I have fought for socialism all my life, and now you tell me you're out of meat! What kind of a system is this?! You are fools! You are thieves!"
A big man in a trench coat comes up to the old guy and says, "Comrade, comrade, not so loud. In the old days you know what they would do if you said such things." The big man in the trench coat makes a pistol motion with his hand. He says to the old guy, "Calm down and go home." The old guy shrugs and leaves. He comes back empty-handed, and his wife says, "What's the matter, are they out of meat?" "Worse than that," says the old guy, "they're out of bullets."
Sadly it's about as funny as being hit across the chops with a leg of lamb. One time O'Rourke could tell a meaty joke and get amongst the liberals. These days he's less blue heeler, more gummy poodle.
Still he does deliver a fancy line in Latin, accusing Perlstein in the Post of resorting to
lazy fallacies of post hoc ergo propter hoc and argumentum ad verecundiam.O'Rourke's own sophisticated, elevated level of argument?
Oh, it's a crazy tree. And the taller it grows, the crazier it gets. And I roost upon the tip-top branch. Ye of The Washington Post: Don't park your SmartCar under my perch.
Which is to say 'I shit on your smart car', to which a few might well retort 'I shit on your dumb car', to which a few might say 'well fuck you' to which others might say 'well fuck you', and so on and so forth and etcetera ...
There's crazy and then there's just smart arse perverse.
The bigger question is how this piece of domestic fairy floss suddenly turns in The Australian ten days or so after it hit the intertubes in the USA, while the editorialist boasts of the importance of paying for content as a way of preserving democracy and freedom (not to mention the silk lining in Chairman Rupert's wallet).
Sorry editorialist and editor, the days of recycling this kind of stuff as part of your opinion pages must surely end if you want to show how you're leading the way with relevant, exciting content. If you want the punters to stump up cash, do better is the message.
Why you even managed to get a few of your punters agitated:
"Adding idiocy to insult on dissent" You sure did, PJO. What a rambling piece of tripe. Truly pointless - apart from the wet lettuce assault on a newspaper?! No doubt it's always alarming to the know-it-alls when ordinary people decide they'd like some say in ordinary life, when regular folk tell the know-it-alls to take their fishwrap and go blog themselves I suspect PJO wouldn't know an ordinary person if he happened to venture out on to the street.
*yawn* The American? Sorry, thought I was reading The Australian. Next website...
And a passing thought for O'Rourke about the intertubes as well. There are hundreds of bad Russian jokes on the intertubes, freely available at the click of a mouse. You recycled one, here's another one:
Suddenly he fishes an iron nut out of the bowl. The indignant customer demands to see the head cook. Out comes the head cook.
'What's this?' asks the man angrily, indicating the nut.
'An iron nut,' replies the head cook.
'Why is there an iron nut in the soup?' fumes the customer.
'What do you expect for thirty-copecks,' says the head cook, 'a whole tractor?'
Hey, it's shorter. About as hairy and hoary, but shorter ...
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