Cue Spinning, Aerial Kubrick-Bone… [mildly updated]
Knock knock. Who’s there? It’s Bill Whittle again, and this time he’s writing a book about how people like Bill Whittle are saving civilization from the slavering barbarians who comprise the rest of us — including Katrina-Negroes, ‘appeasers,’ Democrats, the French, and all who don’t delight primarily in owning real estate (which they can rent to serfs, etc., reducing America to a Gogol novel). Randroid, basically. But one who imagines he thought up the whole scheme himself.
L-R: Whittle, some bozo, Hugh Hewitt, some other nimrod.
His idea? Clap for Tinkerbell. No, literally. No, I’m not kidding. That’s what he says.
Now the other thing I remember is that moment in Peter Pan where Tinkerbell lies dying…dying from a lack of belief. It is at this point that Peter Pan would walk to the front of the stage, and implore us in the most desperate terms to clap as loudly as we could to show how much we believed in her, believed in magic, believed in redemption, believed in the power of our own belief. We would clap till our hands were raw, clap and stomp our feet until the foundations shook, parents and children alike, while Peter would shake his head sadly and tell us it wasn’t belief enough. Then we would clap like furies, scream like Viking berserkers, mom and dad beside us, hollering and shouting and stomping their feet, a wall of sound, a rhythmic, pulsating tsunami of emotion…and then, just then, the slightest stirring of a delicate hand…
(Read the rest if you like to see things get worse.)
Because, you know, world history is a series of conflicts between good and evil, determined by ‘us’ stamping our feet, whooping, and waving torches to defeat ‘them.’
It’s striking to realize that millennia of human inquiry can circle neatly back to the ring of stones in the Afar where a proto-Bill-Whittle leaned into the fire gnawing a gazelle bone, and yawped that the clan who lived across the mountain were bwaa-ha-haa! nasty, dirty bad people, unlike us good people, ho-ho. And we should get them! Because they are bad, and not good!
Historical tides of operatic stupidity, of course, followed, thanks to the eternal Bill Whittles who fall for any old dumb thing, who lack context and don’t understand any motivations besides their own, who have a field of reference spanning a few years at the most, et cetera and so forth. And so now the present Bill Whittle is like, “No wait, I’ve got it all figured out. Bwaa-ha-haa! stupid, dirty bad people, unlike us good people, ho-ho. And we should get them! [Insert cites from Victor Davis Hanson, Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, possibly Thucydides, Gandhi, and/or the Infant Gospel of Thomas, and who the hell else knows what.] Bwahahaa.”
We have Jeff Goldstein’s cock here in a Mason jar, Bill. Thwack! Thlop! Thwack! Oh, you like that? Thlop! Thwack, Schlonk! Want more? Thlonk, Schwap (etc).
Bradrocket adds: This about sums it up, doesn’t it?
I got nothin’ to add to that astonishing backhanded compliment. What say you, Mr. Prototypical Nerd?
“Ha ha! These guys sound like they sit on the couch all day eating brownie mix and listening to Klingon-English translation tapes!”
So say we all.
Gavin adds: Would it be in questionable taste to have Dafydd ab Hugh as Scotty and, um, you-know-who as Sulu?
Or is ‘questionable taste’ a lost notion at this point?
Shorter Whittle:
White people are better than black people.
Now, I was hating life when I got here; then I clicked on the link.
Once James Lileks has pronounced you a modern day Captain Kirk, isn’t life (the one worth living) pretty much over? Especially if you’re such a doof that you’re proud of it? So at first I thought you were being a bit harsh. Then I read a couple paragraphs and found this:
…Why, it’s calamity enough to put you in mind of Shakespeare:
Now is the Winter of our Discontent, made more of a Bummer by these Sons of Pork…
Gavin, would you please pass me the Mason jar?
His web site couldn’t possibly be any more stupid and ugly.
Well, okay, it probably gets worse with each new post, but you get my drift.
SO Den Beste is Spock, Bill is Kirk… poor Jonah Goldberg is gonna make a disturbing Uhura…
So is David Horowitz a Romulan?
You know I read about some Canadian study where they showed a relatively high incidence of correlation between Trekkie-ness and child molestation. You think the wingnut thing is the missing link?
Spock, Kirk…whoever they think they are, they’re all drinking the tranya.
“I do believe in Faeries! I do believe in Faeries!”
Um, Bill … it wasn’t your professed belief in faeries that brought her back. It was a play. And the actress playing Tinkerbell never died in the first place.
So I guess that makes me a base animal lacking in civilization for letting the air out of your faerie tale.
(Read the rest if you like to see things get worse.)
No, now, wait. If I liked seeing things get worse, I’d be a republican.
I remember his interminable 5500-word pronouncements about Dorito-stained resolve. He’s less Captain Kirk than a drunk William Shatner composing his own music before singing the poems of Rod McKuen. Or Rod McKuen singing his own poems. I’ve got that on vinyl.
Wow that Lileks quote might be the most embarrassing thing I’ve ever seen on the internet.
Dude? Den Beste?
Dude? Star Trek refs?
Dude?
After reading Whittle’s Introducton to his New Book, I’m not clear if he’s arguing that faith will reveal the truth, that objective observation will reveal the truth, that we should have faith in objective observation, or that objective observation will confirm our faith in Capitalism. I’m confused. In the bright side, I did learn that I have the Power the determine what is a Proper Noun.
My dad swears that in the 50s he saw John Dillinger’s penis preserved in formaldehyde at the Naval Medical Museum in DC.
Okay, since you brought this up, I found the nerdiest thing in the universe!.
Years ago, they used to say that no one who has finished a full marathon has ever had a heart attack. Similarly, I propose: no one who knows “Var’aq” will ever contract a venereal disease.
Why do these Randroids believe that the Start Trek universe promotes their ideals? The only character that even remotely resembles a Randian Objectivist is Harcourt Fenton Mudd. Oh crap, I set off the nerd alert.
Nevermind the fact that there is absolutely nothing about Peter Pan where “Viking beserker” is ever appropriate.
Years ago, they used to say that no one who has finished a full marathon has ever had a heart attack. Similarly, I propose: no one who knows “Var’aq� will ever contract a venereal disease.
Based upon this statement, I must presume that the patron saint of Var’aq is Jim Fixx…
mikey
You should be more careful with Goldstein’s cock. You don’t want to be slapping just anybody with it — you’ll wear it out, um, prematurely.
Ha! Yeah, Jim Fixx. I think he is (or should I say was) the single reason why no one says that about marathons anymore…
Dobby: Not even that. In the play, Tinkerbell is represented by a light and a tinkling sound. Also, there is no Santa Claus or Easter Bunny.
It’s about time someone got to some actual slapping with that thing. I was getting nauseated seeing it waved around all the time.
I do not concur. It is my professional opinion that Tinkerbell has gone into schiavo-mode not from lack of clapping but that she’s expiring due to an extreme case of The Clap (the noxious Republican mutation currently threatening to become a pandemic.)
Medical notes and cred: As Dr. Frist’s head O.R. nurse, I am entrusted to do preliminary triage on his patients. Then I I prep him, right down to a final combout of his hairy, toned biceps for surgeries, illegal animal mutilations and appearances for media and senate.
As a responsible charlatan, Dr. Frist will, of course, require five minutes of grainy video to make a more emphatic, absolutist diagnosis. (Musical soundtrack, barnyard noises and FX helpful but not necessary.)
Okay, I want an apology. A little while ago, Mal de Mer and others made fun of X-men fans, but now we see S,N! denizens’ true colors. So, if you’ll excuse me:
Ahem.
Nerds!
So is David Horowitz a Romulan?
Nah, I imagine him as the little Clint Howard character.
Oh, crap, now I’m nerding out.
He does believe in faeries! How charming, finally one of these wingnuts breaks the mold and comes out in support of the gay and lesbian communities.
The single best thing about Star Trek, the original, was watching William Shatner and DeForest Kelly try to out-overact each other in every scene they had together.
How disturbing are the customer reviews of the Conversational Klingon (!) audio book? A good introduction, “contains all the phrases one would need to get by”? Just in case they somehow wind up on the planet Klingon? Jesus Christ, people. Go out, get drunk, and get laid! Sell some of your Star Trek memorabilia and buy a hooker before it’s too late.
Back in my previous life as a grad student in linguistics, I once went out on a first (and last) date with a guy who gifted me with a copy of a Klingon-to-English dictionary. To my expression of disbelief at the weirdness/ inappropriateness/ nerdiness of the gesture, he responded: “But I thought that’s what you did was study languages…!” Uh yeah dude, ACTUAL HUMAN languages…
Even so, that guy couldn’t hold a candle to the nerdosity of Bill Whittle.
shouldn’t Jeff Goldstein play Bones?
there can be a really sweet episode where Kirk and Spock find out that Bones never finished school….
Nevermind the fact that there is absolutely nothing about Peter Pan where “Viking beserker� is ever appropriate.
And I was not aware that the Furies were known for clapping.
I remember reading, back in my demi-Trekkie days (it didn’t last long but I still have a soft spot for the series), a behind-the-scenes-at-“Star-Trek” book. The author said that he would sit in on the viewing of the rushes, and the people watching would point out when De Forest Kelley would use Expression #1 and when he would use Expression #2. And that was all, 1 and 2.
We prefer to be called “Kindly Ones”. Any other term is culturally insensitive.
People still read Lileks? I thought his blog had gone the way of the buggy whip and the leg warmer.
Jeebus! That isn’t even Evil, Mirror-Universe Where Spock Has A Beard Star Trek. It’s Star Trek In Hell®!
Dammit, Jim! Lileks has to be cast, too. How about he gets to be Crewman Number Six, who gets eaten before the first commerical break by the lava monster?
And surely Mark Steyn will suffice as Scotty?
OT, but while we’re casting about and also fixing the Internets, I think Assrocket and Captain Ed should be referred to as the conglomerate entity “Hindquarters.”
Fezzik: He does believe in faeries! How charming, finally one of these wingnuts breaks the mold and comes out in support of the gay and lesbian communities.
The icing on the wingnut cake is that the guy just can’t bring himself to *actually* say “fairies.” Instead he makes a conscious effort, a conscious *manly* effort, to sublimate fairy mythology into ripsnorting Viking lore.
Whittle ain’t Cap’n Kirk, shit, he ain’t even T. J. Hooker …
Captain Kirkuk.
[rimshot!]
You know, I keep waiting for some cogent criticism from you deep thinkers regarding the actual content of what I write. Instead I get cocks-in-jars. That’s an idea that never would have occurred to me, frankly, Gavin. But I also notice that the compasionate, diversity-loving left is always first out of the gate with gay-bashing ad hominem attacks.
Why is this? Why all the homophobia? I’m not gay, but if I was, what difference would that make? I have never written an anti-gay line in my life (or an anti-“negroe” one for that matter.) So forgive me if I assume that cheap fag jokes are the last refuge of people who are out of arguments and falling back on deep thoughts like “people I disagree with secretly dream of sucking cock!” is a little seventh grade for me. And it’s all over the place, in everything you write, Gavin.
Now here’s a shocker: what if — just hypothetically, say — the idea of making a gay-bashing joke would never enter my head, because I happen to like the gay people I know. (Opportunity alert, comment stream!) What if my black friends were more disgusted by the Katrina stuff than I was. What if — stay with me — all of your cheap dismissive fag, cunt, gook and Uncle Tom slurs that I hear so many Progressives throw at people they disagree with means that YOU are the ones with with all the hate and lack of respect?
I’ve never considered it much of an insult, frankly. And really, honestly, you need to look no further than this kind of thing to see why the rest of the world is convinced you Progressive Moral Wonderkind are not only morally and intellectually bankcrupt, but spectacular hypocrites as well! It’s a twofer!
I don’t expect any of this to get through, and that’s fine. But maybe some few of you might take a moment to look at what you write, and see how disrespectful it is of the people you claim to be champions of.
I learn belatedly from the ABOUT tag that this is a humor site! Who knew! Maybe you could put Colonel Cathcart on staff. That comment has genuine wit.