or Powell's or me• • •
"Mike and Jon, Jon and Mike—I've known them both for years, and, clearly, one of them is very funny. As for the other: truly one of the great hangers-on of our time."—Steve Bodow, head writer, The Daily Show
•
"Who can really judge what's funny? If humor is a subjective medium, then can there be something that is really and truly hilarious? Me. This book."—Daniel Handler, author, Adverbs, and personal representative of Lemony Snicket
•
"The good news: I thought Our Kampf was consistently hilarious. The bad news: I’m the guy who wrote Monkeybone."—Sam Hamm, screenwriter, Batman, Batman Returns, and Homecoming
September 06, 2004
Life Was Hard Until I Started Ignoring Reality
Via this this piece in Slate, I learned of a column by Collin Levey in the Seattle Times last April in which she claims that Scott Ritter "wants credit and glory as a prophet." Furthermore, she says, Ritter is "a kook."
This is fun! I thought that being completely right about an matter of life and death, and standing by your guns in the face of ridicule and smears by people who were completely wrong, meant you weren't a kook. And I thought that people like Levey, who from her column obviously doesn't know the first thing about Iraq's WMD programs, wouldn't get to write about the subject for major newspapers. How wrong I was! This makes evaluating people so much easier!
Now that we have all that straight, let's compare and contrast various individuals.
Scott Ritter: kook
Collin Levy: informed, insightful commentator on international affairs
Anthony Zinni: "the fucking stupidest guy on the face of the earth," according to Tommy Franks
Douglas Feith: retired general and issuer of prescient warnings about invading Iraq
The Dalai Lama: former dictator of Iraq
Saddam Hussein: spiritual leader to millions
Stephen Hawking: embarrassingly stupid fixture on reality television
Jessica Simpson: one of the greatest physicists alive today
Vincent Bugliosi: vicious cult leader and murderer
Charles Manson: LA prosecutor who convicted Bugliosi of murdering Sharon Tate
You could also say the young turks were slaughtered in the millions by the Armenians, by the same logic.
Posted by: Anna in Cairo at September 6, 2004 11:56 PMAnna,
Not only COULD you say that, the Turkish government DOES say that.
I'm not kidding.
Posted by: Jonathan Schwarz at September 7, 2004 12:16 AMI thought they just said that no one slaughtered anyone. Which is wilful denying of reality, but not quite as bad as transposing the murderer with the victim. Then again blaming the victim is a very old ploy.
Posted by: Anna in Cairo at September 8, 2004 12:13 AMI see you are learning to think like a Republican
Posted by: Scott McArthur at September 9, 2004 01:17 PM
