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
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"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
February 19, 2008
More From The Lost Kristol Tapes
Here's another section of Bill Kristol's March, 28, 2003 C-Span appearance I wasn't able to fit into my piece about it. This is at 1:39:35, after a caller asks what will happen if there are no WMD and we're not greeted as liberators:
KRISTOL: Look, I would be shocked if we don't find weapons of mass destruction. I think that's one of the main rationales for the war, and if we don't find them, we would have been wrong at least in arguing that he had them. We wouldn't have been wrong that he had had them, we wouldn't be wrong he was a threat to have them. I expect us to find them, and if we don't find them that would undercut, in part, the rationale for the war...I would agree that if after the war we aren't treated more or less as a liberating force...then that would also be a rebuke to the Bush administration and those of us who counseled that this war was just and necessary. I accept the possibility that I'm wrong. I hope and pray that I'm not...obviously that would be a great blow if Saddam has not been developing weapons of mass destruction.
—Jonathan Schwarz
Posted at February 19, 2008 09:15 AMKristol: obviously that would be a great blow if Saddam has not been developing weapons of mass destruction.
Which utterance absolutely requires the following: "Blow to what, to whom?"
Bill Kristol is a smirking, gutless, posturing piece of shit, a reeking, suppurating lesion on the face of USer public discourse, spraying noxious pus wherever he appears.
Posted by: konopelli/wgg at February 19, 2008 11:12 AMWell, there you are: more than a million dead and all the reasons and expectations that the war was based on are proven to be false, and that counts as a "rebuke" and a "blow." Ouch!
Lay off Bill Kristol. Can't you see he's suffered enough?
Posted by: SteveB at February 19, 2008 11:42 AMthat's our shill, always ready to admit being able to make a mistake in the future.
Posted by: hapa at February 19, 2008 11:58 AMBill Kristol is a smirking, gutless, posturing piece of shit, a reeking, suppurating lesion on the face of USer public discourse, spraying noxious pus wherever he appears.
Posted by konopelli/wgg
So that probably means I can't count on you to set up a book signing in your town for his next book tour. Just want to clarify.
Excellent description, by the by.
Posted by: catherine at February 19, 2008 01:47 PMSteveB: THANX. Could not have said better.
Posted by: Mike Meyer at February 19, 2008 04:12 PMJonathan,
I watched the entire event. Thank you for pointing me to it.
I was also taken by the tone of the callers.
Anyone else notice or am I biased? The right wingers sounded like idiots and were a bit frightful.
Especially the one who said he had once planned to assassinate Mr. Ellsworth.
Posted by: jharp at February 19, 2008 06:19 PMI accept the possibility that I'm wrong.
But never the actuality.
That whole paragraph is a marvel of passive-voice aggressiveness. These weenies were able to talk a bunch of red-blooded 'Murcans into war?
Unfortunately, that doesn't seem too hard to do. It's talking them out of it that's always the problem.
Posted by: slim at February 20, 2008 04:18 PMHe is a worthless shill. But he's our shill, damn it!
Posted by: at February 20, 2008 06:12 PMBut is your real point that voters are crazy, and democracy delusional? Or that BK (who also sells "whoppers," ha ha) is no better informed or analytically skilled than his non-expert and non-remunerated interlocutors? The aspirational and phantasmatic projections of the right always astound my depressive, overwhelmed realism: their realism suggests that power and assurance are uncomplicated, and that the world is unjust when things are unclear. As *if*!
On the former problem, though, the culture of what you call "monkey hooting," you should read Ranciere's *Hatred of Democracy sometime or see
http://www.radicalphilosophy.com/default.asp?channel_id=2190&editorial_id=10429
http://www.long-sunday.net/long_sunday/2006/07/democratic_mult.html
