21
‘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.
Thers said,
February 21, 2007 at 8:21
The parallels amaze
Well, I, for one, am absolutely fucking gobsmacked.
Jeff Fecke said,
February 21, 2007 at 8:28
Mark Twain : Mark Steyn :: William Shakespeare : Edward Bulwer-Lytton
Ann Dustbin said,
February 21, 2007 at 8:37
The parallels amaze
Well they ARE all carbon based lifeforms
ahem said,
February 21, 2007 at 8:56
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.
Hattie said,
February 21, 2007 at 9:01
Their shitty pretentious prose never fails to amaze.
craigie said,
February 21, 2007 at 9:07
Maybe he means he is amazed by parallelograms.
Demogenes Aristophanes said,
February 21, 2007 at 9:08
Every time Joseph Tartakovsky writes, an angel loses his wings.
tbogg said,
February 21, 2007 at 9:09
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…
a different brad said,
February 21, 2007 at 9:09
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?
alphie said,
February 21, 2007 at 9:21
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
Kathleen said,
February 21, 2007 at 10:25
another Mark–like Twain, a renowned and witty man of letters
please. no. that is just so wrong.
marc page said,
February 21, 2007 at 10:54
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
BallardJoe said,
February 21, 2007 at 11:10
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.
marc page said,
February 21, 2007 at 11:31
” … a folksy Ayn Rand … ”
Take that back — right the fuck now.
owlbear1 said,
February 21, 2007 at 11:42
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.
BallardJoe said,
February 21, 2007 at 11:52
� … 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.
Herr Doktor Bimler said,
February 21, 2007 at 11:55
The parallels amaze
And an entirely new form of non-Euclidean geometry is born.
marc page said,
February 21, 2007 at 12:09
Calling someone an Objectivist is so subjective …
Col. Klink said,
February 21, 2007 at 12:34
“I’m kind of like Jesus, but not in a sacrilegious way.”
Homer Simpson
Herr Doktor Bimler said,
February 21, 2007 at 13:00
Maybe he means he is amazed by parallelograms.
Or paralysed by mazes.
R. Porrofatto said,
February 21, 2007 at 13:29
Oddly enough, in another amazing parallel, the other Mark’s name is pronounced “Twine.” The Internets really are a font of useful information.
tomboy said,
February 21, 2007 at 14:27
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.
blowback said,
February 21, 2007 at 14:47
I wanna puke. Uuuuurgh!
Incontinentia Buttocks said,
February 21, 2007 at 17:08
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?)
Incontinentia Buttocks said,
February 21, 2007 at 17:12
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.)
Hysterical Woman said,
February 21, 2007 at 17:48
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.
billy pilgrim said,
February 21, 2007 at 19:11
Twain did write The War Prayer.
Maybe steyn did not do his homework.
owlbear1 said,
February 21, 2007 at 19:42
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.
nick said,
February 21, 2007 at 20:52
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…
Robert Green said,
February 21, 2007 at 21:33
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.
tb said,
February 21, 2007 at 22:40
…another Mark–like Twain, a renowned and witty man of letters, and, like Churchill…
urizon said,
February 21, 2007 at 23:42
Jesus. I’ll be cleaning the bile off my monitor for a week.
Cutler John said,
February 22, 2007 at 4:33
HTML Moleman, loved the title!
Anne Laurie said,
February 22, 2007 at 8:59
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…”
Kip W said,
February 23, 2007 at 22:53
The DNA of Steyn and Sanborn is almost 95% identical to that of Twain and Churchill!
maidhc said,
February 24, 2007 at 6:22
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.
Sadly, No! » True For Some Exotic Definitions Of ‘Churchill’ said,
March 15, 2007 at 5:13
[...] 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 [...]