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
April 24, 2006
Let's Just Stipulate That Everyone Is Hitler
As we know, Iranian President Ahmadinejad is a potential Adolf Hitler. Saddam Hussein obviously was worse than Hitler. Al-Zarqawi is like Hitler in his bunker. And Hugo Chavez is acting just as Adolf Hitler did.
Yasser Arafat, of course, was the Arab Hitler. Back in 1989, Manuel Noriega's actions were just like Hitler's invasion of Poland. Even earlier, Egypt's Nasser was a miniature Hitler.
Meanwhile, Chavez himself has pointed out that Hitler would be like a suckling baby next to George W. Bush.
This raises an important question: is there anyone on earth who isn't just like Hitler? I think it would make everything a lot easier if we just accepted that the answer is no.
I realize certain people will dispute this. I'm not surprised. That's just what Hitler did.
Posted at April 24, 2006 04:22 PM | TrackBackI like to see the world as divided between people who are Hitlers and people who are Schicklgrubers.
Posted by: WIIIAI at April 24, 2006 07:21 PMthis looks like the work of GOEBBELS!
Posted by: almostinfamous at April 24, 2006 08:33 PMI always figured the Hitler thing was kind of a one-time deal. I guess it's possible that things would get that bad again, but not likely.
Posted by: Adam Kotsko at April 24, 2006 09:36 PMAbsolut Hitler.
Believe no substitutes. Trust only the real thing.
Poor Mussolini. He breaks the ground for fascism, and all he's remembered as is the pear-shaped bald guy swinging by his heels, while some Adolf-come-lately gets to be the gold standard for evil dictators.
Posted by: Rabelais at April 25, 2006 07:38 AM
NOW can we have the Fourth Reich?
OK, this helps a lot in figuring out humanity's general sense of things.
1. There's a little Hitler in each of us.
2. Then, thanks to Ward Churchill, there were the
"little Eichmanns" who died in the WTC.
3. We also feature the "little Himmlers," as in
Abu Ghraib. ("Ve haff vays of making you
talk!")
4. Looking around me, we have a large number of
little Goerings. By their girth ye shall know
them.
5. Finally, Mother Teresa was quite a bit like
Hitler's mother. Only shorter.
Ah, clarity.
i can't help but think of "good hitler vs. space hitler" on goats.
http://www.goats.com/archive/050315.html
advance to the second strip in the series to start seeing hitlers.
Posted by: a goat at April 25, 2006 12:42 PMI understand that Mussolimi's granddaughter is currently running for office in Italy. Or maybe she ran in the same elections from earlier this month, I dunno. You have to wonder to what her opponent(s) compared her. Eva Peron?
Posted by: Jonathan Versen at April 25, 2006 02:49 PMVladimir Putin is surely like Stalin rather than like Hitler. Also that guy at the Million Year Picnic who refuses to agree with me that Foul Moudama is obviously a racist name since it assumes ignorance of Arab culture, and we wouldn't expect to see Jedi named "Puff Pastry" or "Chocolate Eclair", now would we - he's more of an Emperor Palpatine.
Posted by: saurabh at April 25, 2006 04:52 PMre: Mussolini---did anyone ever watch Mondovino? One of it's interesting/creepy "notes"--which really comes out towards the end, in Argentina, is the creeping roots of history and economics in the wine. . .the French houses who sold to Nazis, the Italian houses who clearly have some admiration for Mussolini, the sort of very casual, tangential mentions of the Holocaust and anti-Semitism, the nervous, patronizing "appreciation" of the Mexican workers in Cali ("we give them a hat or a shirt . .they're like family!"), the easy racism of the Argentine overlords, and the tragic vibrations of oppression of the natives in the hovels of the landlord's tenants. The Mussolini bits are the most interesting, b/c somehow they're the most respectable---they're the most obvious, but they're frank and concrete and, by virtue of being forthright, fairly limited in scope and more easily understandable. Acknowledging that one's business was made easier by this or that non-stupid bureacratic decision by a tyrant is probably more honest than most of us are.
