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 13, 2009
Lyndon LaRouche Is Wrong!
This article from the LaRouchite publication Executive Intelligence Review is completely ridiculous:
The history of the United States is dominated by the struggle of our nation to break free of the oligarchic system represented by the British Empire, and to lead the world into a new era of freedom and prosperity. This battle is not, as some would have us believe, a historical artifact, but an ongoing fight between a world which desires to be free, and a parasitic oligarchy which wishes to rule over us as if we were cattle.
"As if we were cattle"! How preposterous! The people who run the world don't see us as cattle.
They see us as SHEEP.
Here's Miles Copeland, who helped overthrow the Iranian government in 1953, explaining it:
"Most of the things that were done [by the United States] about Iran had been on a basis of stark realism, with possibly the exception of letting the Shah down," Copeland said. "There are plenty of forces in the country we could have marshaled...The Iranians were really like sheep, as they are now."
Also, note that, in contradiction to what the LaRouchites say, the people who run the world don't want to rule over us as though we're farm animals. It's just that we are farm animals, so they have no other option.
—Jonathan Schwarz
Posted at February 13, 2009 10:08 AMBaaaaah! Baaaaah!
Well, you know our rulers are really doing us a favor by taking care of us as well as they do. So eat your grass and follow the sheep in front of you and everything, just everything will be alright.
IB
Posted by: Iron Butterfly at February 13, 2009 10:52 AMThe Persians had a civilization when Copeland's ancestors were still subsistence hunters. As for his role in the overthrow of a democratically elected president, hope you like the blowback that you've caused us the last half century.
Posted by: dapajoe at February 13, 2009 12:16 PMI was driving home from a day at the beach with a car full of women and girls one day some years and years ago. We'd climbed up a winding road up from the Pacific shore that then leveled out through some fields on the cliffs above the beach where we'd just spent the day.
Looking to the side of the road as we passed a flock of sheep and out across the field they were in, I saw an especially fat one sort of shivering in place, then realized there something sticking out its hind-end, then realized it was a ewe and it was giving birth.
I pulled over, and alerted my passengers, and we sat and stared while the sheep produced a pink balloon out its nether region, and the angle was such that the sun going down then over the sea was directly opposite the ewe from us watching in the car, so that the pink balloon of the placenta as it emerged was lit up from behind and translucent and jewel-like, and then slowly the shape of the lamb came out still in its embryonic sack, and then the whole thing slumped complete and fell gently to the green, below the still-standing ewe.
And off we drove to home and comfort and soup for dinner.
Sheep as not-metaphor.
Posted by: roy belmont at February 13, 2009 02:01 PMOne of my uncles had a LaRouche newsletter at his house -- the man is completely bananas -- blaming the British for EVERYTHING, and elevating FDR to Muhammed-like demigodhood.
Still, there was more truth in it than in the average major newspaper column these days. And dear god, that is sad.
Posted by: Cloud at February 13, 2009 02:14 PMPersonally, I'm a wolf in sheep's clothing.
Just want y'all to know that. Keep your paws off my cage.
Posted by: abb1 at February 13, 2009 03:05 PMLyndon LaRouche? So this is what infinite bandwidth hath wrought, eh?
Posted by: bobbyp at February 13, 2009 04:29 PMIt's a mite ironic that Copeland saw the Iranians as sheep,i.e., presumably as docile and timid,unimaginative,etc-- insofar as it's so often people right here in the US who are less likely to stand up for their rights or to question received truths from the television, and people in non-US countries who are more willing to raise a ruckus when they feel they're getting the shaft.
Posted by: Jonathan Versen at February 13, 2009 05:20 PMYeah, let's point out that those Iranian sheep later doffed their skins and really bit into the herdsmen. We're not sheep, though we may sometimes forget it.
Posted by: saurabh at February 13, 2009 07:04 PMWe're not sheep, though we may sometimes forget it.
Amen to that. I don't mind our overlords calling us sheep, but it really bothers me when people who claim to be somewhere on the "left" use the phrase.
Often, when the phrase "the American Sheeple" gets trotted out, it's by someone pissed off that Americans won't do what they want - i.e., we won't follow, with sheep-like obedience, their agenda.
Posted by: SteveB at February 14, 2009 11:57 AMhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qe6gWsklnh0
Posted by: Druff at February 15, 2009 12:35 AMSpeaking of wolves, and sheep, and clothing - back previous to the election I was wondering whether Obama might be a sheep in wolf's clothing - someone who is only pretending to share the mindset of the War Party
http://mistahcharley.blogspot.com/2008/10/is-barack-obama-snake-in-grass.html
Even though he is now acting as a War Party President would act, giving orders to kill civilians and all that - maybe (like God and the doctrine of eternal damnation of unbaptized infants) he is compelled to do things in his public capacity which he privately regrets
After all, anyone who wants to play in the Ultimate Power game knows that homo homini lupus, and that it is kill and/or BE killed - and I don't mean that metaphorically
If you're gonna make a better world, you have to start with the one you've got, and do those things which are necessary
who knows if Obama is good or bad?
Posted by: mistah charley, ph.d. at February 16, 2009 12:08 PMBesides Animal Farm, that reminds me of a line by Alfred Hitchcock, who said he was misquoted, he never said that actors were cattle, he said they should be treated like cattle. Of course, he just tormented some of them, and didn't kill any, so he'd have never made it the imperialism racket.
Posted by: Batocchio at February 17, 2009 04:34 PM
