ABOVE: Adam Yoshida
Shorter Adam Yoshida, The
AmericanCanadian Stinker
Could We See World War Three in Our Lifetimes?
ABOVE: Bryan Fischer (left), Not Bryan Fischer (right)
Shorter Bryan Fischer, RuhnooMuhrka
Would Jesus occupy Wall Street? Not on your life
This was going to be a shorter, but I think that it violates some basic tenet of shorterism to use the title as the shorter, even if the title is, fairly clearly, gobsmackingly stupid. We’re talking here “IF CORPORATIONS AREN’T PEOPLE, HOW CAN THEY BE GREEDY?”, which really is the best example ever of a self-inflicted shorter. Honestly, that’s the title, and John Hinderaker (né Buttmissile) waves this little nugget about as if it were the central inconsistency of liberalism that, when displayed like the monstrance on Corpus Christi, is bound to cause progressives and liberals to drop to their knees, beg for mercy, admit the errors of their ways, and subscribe to National Review.
It’s an odd bit of logic, since greed is no more a distinctly human trait than, say, corruption or power or size or thirst. If dogs aren’t people, how can they be thirsty? Huh? If corporations aren’t people, how can they be large and powerful? If Hinderaker isn’t an asshole, how come only POOP comes out of his mouth?
But really, there’s much more goodness in Hnderaker’s post, so it in fact deserves more than a shorter. Like this:
The corporation is merely a legal form in which people do business, now several hundred years old. It is absolutely necessary for any major commercial enterprise because its existence can continue without disruption beyond any one individual’s lifespan. So being “anti-corporation” is equivalent to being pro-medieval.
If Hinderaker isn’t the Wicked Witch of the West, how come he spends so much time fighting straw men? Arguing that certain corporations ought to be held accountable for their misdeeds is not arguing that the corporate form of doing business should be eliminated, any more than arguing that certain people should go to jail is not arguing in favor of genocide. Nor is it equivalent to arguing that people should drink mead, run around in suits of armor, and wear garlic around their necks to ward off the plague. Also, in what history class did Hinderaker learn that the medieval era was only several hundred years ago?
Now for the, ahem, money shot:
liberalism is the reactionary dogma of our age. If you hate progress and would rather live in poverty than see someone else prosper, you are a born liberal.
Apparently, corporate accountability will make the entire world poor, which is apparently the goal of liberals who want to be poor and want everybody else to be poor, I suppose, so that they can force the other poor people to undergo gay abortions in exchange for food stamps and welfare checks, or something like that. Also, it’s easier to establish the caliphate that liberals long for if everyone is poor.
Shorter “Dr.” Paul Kengor, The American Genius:
Communism’s African-American Soviet Republic
ABOVE: A speculative rendering of Robin of Berkeley based on a forensic analysis
of her blog posts.
Shorter Robin of Bezerkley, A Licensed Psychotherapist, The American Genius
The Power of Herman Cain
If you have a website modestly titled “The American Thinker,” you would imagine that it would be a place where you could find probing scholarly commentary by articulate intellectuals. Sadly, No! Meet Josiah Jedediah Ezekiel Cantrall, the home-schooled, 12-year-old baby Republican du jour who has just written for The American Thinker the provocatively titled piece “Repeal Obamacare – but Keep Socialized Education?”
Of course, the title itself creates high hopes for Master Cantrall’s article, promising to fall right in line with the current wingnut weltanschauung that everything is socialist. Obama is a socialist. Public schools are socialist. Freeways are socialist. Stoplights are socialist. Glazed doughnuts are socialist. The 3-D version of “The Lion King” is socialist.
Just as the “public option” is merely a different term for socialized medicine, public education is simply a euphemized phrase for socialized education.
You certainly get the sense of the benefits from the superior and non-socialist home schooling that Master Cantrall received at the knees of his mommy in Wisconsin when he eschews the more direct, but less interleckshual, “euphemism” for “euphemized phrase.”
More benefits that Master Cantrall obtained from home schooling become quickly apparent.
In the early 1900s, Horace Mann led a movement to replace America’s community and parent-controlled school model with Prussian-style public schools.
A movement that Mann apparently led from the grave, having died more than 40 years earlier in 1859. Hey, Josiah, it’s your mommy calling. She wants your high school diploma back.
Not only is Master Cantrall too stupid to check a biography of Horace Mann before making him a twentieth-century reformer, but he’s intellectually dishonest too when he tries to marshal “Three-time New York City teacher of the year John Taylor Gatto” to his cause.
Gatto notes that archetypal Americans like George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Thomas Edison were leading productive, fulfilled lives by the time they were in their teens, and yet “[t]hey were too unpredictable and insufficiently pliable. What better way to (change this) than by removing children from the steadying influences of their families, and placing them instead in the hands of (free government) schools[?] Just in case parents were unwilling to comply, the powers that be committed school attendance into law.”
We’ll give Cantrall a pass on the fact that the quote attributed to Gatto is not from Gatto but from a reviewer of one of Gatto’s books. That’s a mistake that any rigorous intellectual writing at The American Thinker could easily make and, besides, quotation marks are inherently confusing. But I’m not going to give him a pass on how he altered the quotation. Here’s the original quotation with the words that Cantrall conveniently omitted in bold:
Mr. Gatto details the lives of archetypal Americans like Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Thomas Edison, who were independent, free-thinking leaders, none of whom spent more than two years in any kind of school, and yet all were leading productive, fulfilled lives by the time they were in their teens. Mr. Gatto argues that big business knew that the development of these kinds of individuals needed to be hindered. They were too unpredictable and insufficiently pliable.
What better way to accomplish this shadowy goal than by removing children from the steadying influences of their families, and placing them instead in the hands of schools, where they could be easily molded into the kinds of people upon whom big business depended. Just in case parents were unwilling to comply, the powers that be committed school attendance into law.
That’s just sad. I mean really, really sad. Cantrall takes a guy who is arguing that public schooling was a capitalist conspiracy and quotes him to support his position that public schools are inherently socialist. I’d say that is a bit like quoting Jonah Goldberg in an article on the virtues of meticulous personal hygiene.
Young Josiah has a Wikipedia entry written by his admirers and other fluffers. Perhaps these embarrassing gaffes would be a nice project for a Sadlynaut who might want to, you know, edit that entry somewhat.
Shorter Irky Irkyson, Red Scare:
Herman Cain Singlehandedly Revives an Old Stereotype
ABOVE: Conrad Black (picture source)
Shorter Conrad Black, America’s Shittiest Website™
Justice Distracted
*Two can play this game: “If abortion had been legal in 1889, World War II would never have happened.”
Shorter Peter Kirsanow, America’s Shittiest Website™:
Today’s Questions for the President
1. Unfrozen Caveman Columnist, The legacy of Steve Jobs:
Take it from a guy who just abandoned his typewriter: Steve Jobs was nothing special.
2. The backlash against the rich
Let’s not bicker over who caused what financial crisis.
ABOVE: Robert Meyer Goes Galt With Jesus
Robert Meyer, Ruhnoo Muhrka:
Marginalizing Christianity by quoting Jesus
Shorter Stephanie Gutmann, America’s Shittiest Website™:
There’s Hope for These Occupy Wall Streeters!
ABOVE: Michael Medved
Shorter Michael “Mr. Pornstache” Medved, Clown Hall
Contrasting Executions
[Caption]
Shorter David Paulin, The American Genius:
Rick Perry’s ‘N-Head’ Problem and the Fourth Estate’s Hypocrisy
Alternate Shorter David Paulin, The American Genius:
Rick Perry’s ‘N-Head’ Problem and the Fourth Estate’s Hypocrisy
