Two-Minute Townhall (early edition)
I just get down and I go for mine, say “Check one-two,” and run down the line.
Shorter Michael Barone: History is written by the victors, but disloyal elites prefer to read it from the perspective of the Islamofascists.
Shorter Chuck Colson: Rheet! Hey everybody, look over there! Fascists!
Shorter Mary Katherine Ham: Reality show contestants more accurately reflect real-life Americans than their fictional counterparts.
Shorter Suzanne Fields: Nobel Prize-winner Gunter Grass is certainly a hypocrite for demanding that Germans atone for World War II while hiding his own Nazi past, but his worst crime was criticizing America.
Shorter Robert Novak: The Bush administration should reverse course and engage our terrorist enemies in diplomatic negotiations, now that our position has been weakened by disastrous wars.
Shorter Roger Schlesinger: Have you given any thought to your retirement investments?
Shorter Star Parker: A recent study by a conservative think tank suggests liberal activists are to blame for high retail prices.
Shorter Mike S. Adams: Y’know what would be really cool, is if everybody e-mailed this professor and called him this nickname I thought up for him. I’ll even give you a link.
Shorter Joel Mowbray: Virtually all news stories from the war zones of the Middle East are influenced by terrorists either through thuggery or trickery.
Shorter Debra J. Saunders: As a journalist, I urge you to consider that reporters have the right to protect their confidential sources.
Shorter Robert Novak: My sources tell me the Democrats are plotting various election strategies.
Shorter George Will: China should let Japanese bygones be bygones.
Shorter Kathryn Jean Lopez: Rick Warren just might cure AIDS by promoting, if not a purpose-driven sex life, abstinence.
Shorter Bill O’Reilly: Surely the terrorists delight at the additional inconveniences we must endure at the airport to uncover their dark plots. Perhaps they’d change their tune if their Muslims were singled out for additonal scrutiny.
Shorter Paul Jacob: Think of the money we’d save if we privatized the federal government.
Shorter Kevin McCullough: Marvel as I thwart the Straw Liberal’s attempt to plant a dagger firmly in your back.
Shorter Doug Wilson: Conservatism holds the keys to competing with the Chinese, who I’ll remind you are just as human as you and me.
Gavin adds: Tee hee.
People keep using this word “fascist”. I do not think it means what they think it means.
I have a list of words that I’d like to put a tax on. At first, I actually wanted to ban some of them, because they piss me off so badly. But then I thought that actually was sort of fascist of me, and so it would be better off to just put a tax on them, so that people could use them if they really wanted to – but it would cost them.
“Truth” was one of those words, because it usually gets used to mean the exact opposite of what it’s supposed to mean. If you mean “factually accurate” or “correct”, it’s just as easy to say that.
I also wanted a tax on “paradigm” – just because it usually doesn’t mean anything when people say it.
But now, I think I want a tax on “fascist”, just so people start bandying it about so loosely. I’m perfectly happy to go to bat for the idea that there are “protofascist” elements at work in the current administration – but I’ve spent enough time wrestling with the primary and secondary sources on the topic that I’m not completely talking out my ass when I do. I’d pay the tax.
I just want everyone else to.
Jillian, I think i’m in love with you. Have you given any more thought to taking up promiscuity?
Can we tax “jaded” as well?
Travis, do you suppose you drink enough to counteract the horrible mental scars reading Townhall leaves? I’m almost ashamed to ask you to go back in for a John Stossel.
I dunno if I should….after all, I don’t think I’m really a high quality quality woman, unlike some out there. I’ve never even put my picture on Hot or Not.
Oh, you bad boys. Have the Townhallers launched an offensive yet?
That reminds me, I’ve been meaning to ask. Do the wingnuts do, say, a Two Minute Common Dreams, or AlterNet, or CounterPunch or something?
Or is this another one of those unequal things where you guys snark your asses off and Instapundit comes down with “Two Second Working For Change: Heh.”
How about a Two Minute Prison Planet? Surely they could come up with that, at least? I’m prepared to spot them a Wayne Madsen, if necessary.
Jillian,
I think “shrill” needs to be added to the tax list, too. And “breaking news!”
Can I put in a vote for “ilk”?
Buncha liberal taxifascists! Typical of your ilk. The truth is, words want freedom. Why do you hate their freedom?
Travis, do you suppose you drink enough to counteract the horrible mental scars reading Townhall leaves? I’m almost ashamed to ask you to go back in for a John Stossel.
Oh Christ, is his up now? I’m glad I hit the grappa after we polished off the wine…
An “unhinged” tax would be…nice. Or would we then have to “hear” the…”shrill fascists” and their “Straussian ilk” complain about the, “Malkin Penalty”, every time they…submit to their paradigm in pursuit of the “truth” every time there’s “breaking news”?
–Monkeydew
(Okay how much do I owe? I figured the superfluous punctuation was free.)
That conservative think tank’s website is a hoot. None of the links on their “blog” side work unless you search their archives, which I guess says a lot about how widely read it it must be.
Even funnier, though they claim to be a nonprofit, and despite their foaming about the “Soros-funded Center for American Progress” they don’t show any of their own funding sources if you try to look them up in their own “search CRC: NonProfits” database.
I’m guessing the CRC is the pasture to which the Heritage Foundation retires its well-connected but no longer useful global-warming-deniers, incompetent webmasters, and other newly undesirables.
I’m an unhinged Moonbat or at least part of his ilk. Send me a bill…
mikey
Jillian,
in addition to taxing words, we should tax grammar as well. Mangling both would become a felony charge.
But in order to keep the good Pastor Swank on the streets (and still writing his tripe) we need to create a loophole for creative use of non-words like homo-nups, etc. Swanksterisms are what keeps us all going. We can laugh through the tears of the Stossel’s Malkin’s and Novak’s.
Anyway, if I could, I would like to add to the tax list, “activist” “traditional” and “elitist”
But let’s give a tax break to “patriot” and “Ann Coulter sez…” just because I would like to hear every conservative argument begin with the phrase “That American Partiot, Ann Coulter, sez…” So that way I would know that everything following would be pure bunk and hatred.
You libs just don’t get it!!! You’re all crazy!!! Thank god we have the Townhall blogs to stop you!!! They make sense!!! Lots and lots of creamy sense!!!
Sorry!!! Forgot to whore MY blog!!!
http://semo.townhall.com/
in addition to taxing words, we should tax grammar as well. Mangling both would become a felony charge.
We may have finally stumbled upon a mess so expensive, even Daddy’s pals can’t bail Dubya out.
That conservative think tank’s website is a hoot
“Hoot” should be permanantly tax-exempt.
in addition to taxing words, we should tax grammar as well. Mangling both would become a felony charge.
Also taxable: the blatant mis-use of words, especially esoteric ones, that are thrown around to make it appear that the author is more intelligent than he or she actually is.
“Meme” has GOT to go. It’s become a “look how smart I am!!!!11” word in the blogosphere that is completely misused more often than not.
BTW,
Not to whore myself, but if anyone out there stumbles upon a copy of Coulter’s book, godless, in the trash, sewer, etc. Please fish it out and send it to me. I want to add that garbage to my anti-science collection. Just don’t send me a purchased copy, as I don’t want that “person” to get one penny more than she deserves.
If you do this for me, I will send you a copy of my own book, Debating Christianity: The Big Picture
P.S. send it even if it has baby poopie stains on it, somehow that seems appropriate…..
I forgot my shameless link…
http://jeffperado.blogspot.com/2006/08/pompous-ponderings.html
Can we get a tax on “guest” bloggers, too?
I went to read Andrew Sullivan today and instead found Michael “Stockholm Syndrome” Totten sitting in Tel Aviv blogging about the IDF’s latest victory…sigh.
If we kill the term “death tax,” does it get death taxed? And please add “values,” and “agenda.” And double-tax “elitist,’ because it would be elitist not to.
Hey, wasn’t Ruppert blathering on about Iran nuking the beYHWH out of Jerusalem today? ‘Course, the 22nd’s not over yet, and I’m sure come Wednesday he’ll have some “The fact is” excuse for why the Iranians didn’t take advantage of this little historic date.
Travis, is it really possible to have a “shorter Robert Novak”?
That soulless little prick only needs a beard to become the understudy for the Travelocity Gnome. Lord knows he already has the pointed hat.
OK, I know this will make me a grammar “fascist” *cha-ching!!!*, but can we order a permanent ban on “democrat”? when used to mean the party? (Yes Gary, I’m talking to you). As in “I can’t wait til that Democrat Congress gets elected in November”…
Otto Man: that’s Novak’s head.
Jeff, in the case of Pastor Swank, we can simply allow him an exemption from the tax on the grounds of religion. Religious speech should not be subject to the tax – but in order to get the religious exemption, one must make an obvious indication that the speech in question is religious.
Like, say, requiring that this be playing in the background any time exempt religious speech is made.
Which might not be a bad idea, regardless of the tax status. Imagine listening to Pat Robertson with this in the background – he’s almost tolerable now.
Shorter Mary Katherine Ham: Reality show contestants more accurately reflect real-life Americans than their fictional counterparts.
Your ‘shorter’ is too clever by half.
Try this:
Shorter Mary Katherine Ham: ‘americans are dumber than rocks and so am I!’
Shorter George Will: No understanding, just rehashing shit i read elsewhere- meretricious!
shorter Kevin McCullough – “my parents did with me via a firm swat on my overly plump backside.”
Travis, is it really possible to have a “shorter Robert Novak�?
If you look closely, you’ll notice two (count ’em, two) Shorter Robert Novak’s.
Re: Kevin McCullough: I’d planned on pointing out the hilarity in a fellow who compares his brains to his glutes offering advice on common-sense thinking, but I try to also sum up the main thrust of the writer’s point. (Alas, the cutting room floor grows ever more cluttered.) As is the wont of conservative commentators everywhere, McCullough cites common sense to “prove” his thesis, such that he did.
Rick Warren just might cure AIDS by promoting, if not a purpose-driven sex life, abstinence.
Wait, so Rick Warren getting on board the “Global Warming is a Real Threat” bandwagon still hasn’t led to his credentials being revoked? Jeez, this guy is harder to kick out than Lieberman.
in addition to taxing words, we should tax grammar as well. Mangling both would become a felony charge.
So how much would be owed for incorrect use of apostrophes? Hint: One Stossel, many Stossels (shudder).
Yes, all I have left is nitpicking the minor errors of my betters. It’s pathetic.
It amuses me when conservatives (particularly far-right ones) use the term “fascist” negatively.
Can we also tax “spew?” I get really tired of this verb used to describe someone’s writings or utterances.
““Hootâ€? should be permanantly tax-exempt.”
I totally agree. “Hoot” is one of the daring slamng words of my youth. It is now so retro and corny it’s cool. I love it. It reminds me of my youth as an undergraduate theatre major, where everyone called enverything that happened a “hoot.”
“enverything.” “slamng”
Hey. Did I have too much pinot grigio?
Is it too late to add “begs the question” to the list of words/phrases to be off-limits? If you’re one of those who uses it when what you really mean is “raises the question”, you need to stop right the fuck now.
Alright, these I hate:
“Thinking out of the box”…usually said by the unimaginative.
“my personal opinion”…apparently “my” is not enough information as to just who’s opinion it is
“not to mention”…despite the fact this is just what you are about to do
And all those other cliches like “slippery slope”, “benchmark”, “bottom line”, “at the end of the day”…the list is endless.