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Poe’s Law, the Civil War Edition

31 Sunday Jan 2021

Posted by danielwalldammit in History

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Bullets, Civil War, Humor, Minie Ball Pegnancy, Parody, Poe's Law, Pregnancy, Satire, Tall Tales

Have you heard of the minie ball pregnancy?

It occurred during the civil war at a battle in Raymond, Mississippi. Apparently, a minie ball (a conical-shaped bullet commonly used in the era) passed through a Confederate soldier’s testicles and then lodged itself in a young woman’s own private parts. Though, still a virgin, she later gave birth to a baby boy, apparently impregnated by the minie ball carrying the young man’s seed along with it.

Okay, but by “apparently,” I of course mean “not at all.”

This did not happen.

Not really!

Photo of Legrand G. Capers found in Wikipedia

The fact that this didn’t happen didn’t stop an army surgeon by the name of L.G. Capers from reporting on the incident as though it really did. He describes in detail coming upon a soldier staggering toward him before collapsing as a woman began screaming from the house in which he planned to conduct field operations. He treated both parties, or so he says. Later, Capers writes that he returned six months later to find the young woman pregnant though her hymen remained intact. A month or so later, he also delivered the baby, still confused about her story. After piecing the events together later, Capers says he found the soldier and explained the child to him. Of course the young man did the honorable thing, and the doctor reported visiting the lovely couple many years later to find them living happily together with 3 children.

All of this was published in a journal known as the American Medical Weekly in 1874. It was later republished in a British Medical Journal, the Lancet, and a few subsequent publications (whose editors should probably have known better) have presented the story as medical facts. Author Tony Horowitz tells us that at least one museum in Vicksburg Virginia related the story without comment as of his research for book, Confederates in the Attic, published in 1999. (The story appears on pages 199-200). Though the American Medical Journal later published a clarification explaining that the whole account had all been a joke, it seems there are always a few folks determined to take it seriously.

Also, aside from the source being a known spoof, apparently, this is a medical impossibility.

This time, by “apparently,” I mean “absolutely.”

What has me thinking about this today is Horowitz’s account. As he put it, the original account was intended as a spoof of other wildly exaggerated stories circulated by medical doctors in the wake of the civil war. If nothing else could have tipped a reader off as to nature of this tall-tale, the fact that Capers reported later removing a mini-ball from the child’s own testicles should probably have been the final “gotcha” moment of the story. Tall tales often have this, a final twist so improbable as to effectively communicate to anyone who might still be wondering that the whole thing was just an elaborate joke. This, if nothing else, ought to have tipped readers off then and now as to the nature of the Capers’ clever little yarn. Note to mention, the correction published published by the same journal.

Apparently, some people would rather believe the story anyway.

And by “apparently,” this time I just mean “apparently.”

***

All of which brings to mind a principle coined by an old net-friend of mine, Nathan Poe. Frustrated with debating young-earth creationists on Christian forums, Poe once quipped; “Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is utterly impossible to parody a Creationist in such a way that someone won’t mistake for the genuine article.” In other words, you can’t make a satirical statement sufficiently outrageous to out-absurd the very people he was arguing with. But of course Christian fundamentalists are not the only bunch with a few loose canons in their midst, as others have pointed out. So, the principle has been generalized since its original formulation to apply to a broad range of topics about which satire might be mistaken for the real thing, not the least of reasons being that someone is usually just as extreme as any parody their critics might make-up to poke fun at them.

Apparently, that was also true in 1874.

***

This story was only a couple pages out of Confederates in the Attic, but I highly recommend the book as a whole. Great read! There are some other good sources on the internet. Wiki has a decent page on Capers, and of course that contains many good links in itself. Mark Powell’s write-up is useful and fun to read. Of course, Snopes has a good page on it as well, complete with many of the relevant primary documents.

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Review, The Donald Trump Presidential Library and Museum

24 Monday Jun 2019

Posted by danielwalldammit in Politics

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

Books, Deplorables, Donald Trump, Library, Literacy, Presidential Libraries, Satire, The Future, Time Travel

9780446353250_p0_v1_s600x595I’ve been to the future, and I came back with a review of Donald Trump’s official library. That’s right; I’m a time traveler, or at least I was this evening. I know, I could have used this power to bring back important information about climate change or impending wars, but I really wanted to see what was in that library. So, that’s what you are getting here, a review of the Donald Trump Presidential Library and Museum.

The library itself is really kind of hard to miss, being a fifteen-story tower, and of course you do have to wade through the casino to get there, but you can’t mistake the front entrance to the library itself, sitting as it does just off to the side the gambling hall. The name of the library is printed in great big golden letters, right over the doorway.

When I arrived, there were two showgirls and a carnival barker out front. I’m told that the number of showgirls varies and sometimes Geraldo Rivera takes the place of the carnival barker.

“You’ve been to the fake libraries, now come see the bigliest book depository ever inspired by an occupant of the Big House.”

I asked if he meant ‘White House,’ and the man said ‘of course.’

Entrance to the library is free, but donations are encouraged. If you contribute $30.00 to the Donald’s 2036 political campaign, then you also get two free drinks at the casino floor and one spin on the roulette wheel (as a $5.00 bet). Also, the showgirls will like you more if you donate. I asked how Donald’s health was holding up and they all assured me that rumors of his demise were all fake news. He would surely be President at the turn of the next century.

I laughed of course, and they just stared at me.

In the end, I agreed  to pay $60.00, but the barker assured me that this was the best deal as it gave me VIP membership and I would receive a special bookmark signed by The Donald Himself in his own sweat, the result of long hours spent in service to the fabulous people of the United Golf Courses of America. Having agreed to this, I was actually charged $452.36. The difference I was told was due to inflation, and anyway this would automatically enroll me in a 1-credit starter course at the newly resurrected Trump Graduate School of Bigly Business. “Don’t worry,” the barker said “everyone of Donald’s students gets an A.” I was a little more worried when this fee was referred to as a down-payment, but anyway, I figure I have a decade or so to figure out how to wiggle out of any future payments.

***

I couldn’t see Donald’s signature. One of the showgirls reminded me that it had been signed in the sweat of unpaid laborers, just like his checks.

Of course!

***

Once inside, I met a young man in a business suit who asked me if I was ready to make America great? This turned out to be the reference librarian. I asked him if America wasn’t already great after all these years with Trump at the helm, and he insisted that it was becoming greater all the time. If only the Dumbocrats would help solve the crisis at the border with Columbia, our country would surely get better soon. That and people really needed to get over the whole black lives matter thing! Also, he was pretty sure the folks at CNN would need to go in front of a firing squad by Wednesday. I asked if this wasn’t a little harsh, and just a bit against freedom of the press, and the man assured me that Fox News would be allowed to write anything they wanted about the executions, just so long as they ran it through the Ministry of Final Public Perspective.

“The Ministry of Final Public Perspective?”

“Yes, Tomi Lahren has been in charge of that agency for the last 6 or 7 years. She’s absolutely doing an amazing job.”

After staring at the man for a few moments, I asked if he could direct me to the book stacks. He responded by offering me a complimentary copy of “The Art if the Deal” and telling me that I could certainly go on in and enjoy the books. Feel free to look around; we are the greatest library since Alexandria, probably even better than that one, certainly better than that Library of Congressional Commies!

“Okay, but where do I go? What kind of books does the Donald Trump library specialize in?”

“Oh, we have all kinds of books,” he assured me. “We have the greatest portrait ever painted of any president ever. It was done by this Argentinian guy. You know, they love The Donald down there. And then of course you have the entire exhibit of red ties. We have a special collection of small vials containing the tears of Democratic leaders, small children from the border, and of course the entire nation of Puerto Rico.”

“Nation of Puerto Rico,” I asked. “Isn’t it part of the United States?”

“Oh you hear all kinds of rumors these days. You know those Dems plant all kinds of lies in the newspapers, the history books, assorted government documents.Just lies! All lies! Ivanka is heading a committee. They are going to get to the bottom of it for sure!”

“Okay,” I said, “but can you tell me something about the books?”

“Oh of course, do you know we have a special signed copy of The Bonfire of the Vanities by that Wolf guy, something or other.”

“Are you sure he’s still alive. I thought…”

“Look dummy!” He snapped. “Don’t be a lie-brul. I saw that Wolf guy personally sign a couple thousand copies of Bonfire just last night. He was on a roll.”

“Really,” I just stared at him a moment and then decided to shift the topic a bit. “So, where is your own copy? I mean the one still here in the library?”

“Oh it’s, …hold on a minute. We have it around here somewhere.” The man shuffled through some papers, then hit a speed-dial number on his desk phone. “Hey Mooch, do you know where we keep the book? Yeah, that one, the book? …Are you sure? I mean, I could have sworn they took it up to the fourth floor sometime last month. Okay. I’m not gonna do that. Seriously, no. Could you just tell me. …Okay, you’re sure? Yeah, I think this guy actually wants to see it. But if you’re sure, that’s where it is, then that’s where I will send him.”

After hanging up, the man turned to me and said he was pretty sure the book was on the third floor. Seeing me head toward an elevator, he quickly waved me off.

“Oh no. No, no, no, the contractors never finished installing the cables. They got mad or something. Nobody knows why. You’ll have to take the stairs.”

I hesitated a moment, then moved towards a doorway marked “Stairs.”

The man waved at me and raised his voice. “Be careful of the third step, and be sure to walk on the right side. Some of them are a little rickety. And if you hear a cracking noise, just hold onto the railing and try to distribute your weight as evenly as possible.”

Seeing my alarm, he added; “At least the whole staircase is covered in ivory, brought fresh from Africa.”

“Really?”

“Yeah,” he chuckled, “you won’t be seeing any more of that any time soon.”

He was still laughing as I left the room.

***

I arrived at the 3rd floor limping a little bit and nursing my wrist. It took me several minutes to catch my breath, but I looked around and I must say that I couldn’t find a single book. In fact, I found nothing but awards given to Donald Trump from various sources. They included every Boy Scout badge ever conceived as well as a few I didn’t recognize; “Trophy Wife” and “Ocasio Ownage” seemed new. I also noticed an Emy, Three Oscars, and the entire array for Country Music Awards from the last three years. Every wall was plastered with honorary doctorates on display from what seemed to be every college in the country.

“Price of accreditation.” Another young man came walking up to me. “If them damned professors want to keep dumbing our kids down, the least they can do is send a few coolaids down Donald’s way. Each of his kids has quite a collection too.”

“Accolades?” I asked.

“Pardon me?”

“Did you mean accolades?

“Yeah sure. Whatever buddy! Can I help you?”

“I was looking for a copy of the Bonfire of the Vanities?”

“Really?” He seemed quite shocked. “What for?”

“Well, I thought maybe I’d read it…”

“Oh yeah, sure. Of course. I read it too. I think we all read that one. Donald did. Did you see his fire badge? That’s what good reading skills will get you. Only I don’t think it’s up here. Maybe down on the second floor?”

“Are you sure?” I was really dreading the return trip down that staircase.

“Yea, of course. …Well let me check.” The man got out a walkie-talkie. “Hey Mooch! I got a guy here, who, wh… well, I mean… um.”

Turning off the walkie talkie, he looked right at me and said; “Mooch told me to tell you to stop being a dickhead and look at the trophies.”

“But I…”

“Don’t make the Mooch get medieval on your ass!” He broke into an evil grin. “You should see what he did to the last panzie-poofter fella that came in here looking for some kinda literature.”

“I just…” I stammered a bit here. “I know this book comes with Donald’s personal recommendation, and I really wanted to see if I could get my hands on a copy. I don’t mean to be a problem, but this is, I mean…”

“Ah yes, The Donal’s himself does vouch for it. Don’t worry about it, I gotcha” The young man softened his stance a bit and nodded his head. After switching the dials on his walkie-talkie, he began; “Hey Sarah! …Yeah, Sarah, I got a guy here looking for a copy of the Bonfire of the Manitees. Yeah, that’s him. Well we had one make it up here last week too. I mean, sometimes these people just come in. Yeah, well can you… No, don’t tell Mooch. He’s already mad. Can you just tell me where you think the book might be? …yeah, okay. Thank you Sarah.”

After hanging up the man looked at me and said; “She says the book is definitely on the second level.”

“So, I should just take the stairs back down?” I was beginning to gather my courage.

“No, I wouldn’t do that. It’s definitely not there.”

“But didn’t that woman say…”

“Oh yeah, she’s totally sure it’s on the second floor.”

“So?”

“It’s clearly not there,” He nodded his head. “I would head up to the fourth floor and go into the diplomatic archives. Here, take another copy of ‘The Art of the Deal’ before you go.”

***

I made it to the fourth floor with only a moderate loss of blood, but all I could see were golf clubs and pictures of towers under construction. There was one at the base of the grand canyon, another on top of Mount Rushmore, and one in Yosemite. I saw labels for “The Bear’s Ears,” and Niagra Falls. The center-piece of the whole floor appeared to be a giant model of a special tower built with an open center containing a great big fountain. That one had several model Bison and a couple moose scattered across the grass around it. It had been labeled; “Trump Faithful.”

***

I shuddered a bit at this last find, but I also noticed a small room sectioned off from the main area. So, I headed right over there. It was indeed where the diplomatic archives were kept. Unfortunately, I can’t tell you anything about this place, because the woman inside it spoke only Russian. I kept asking if anyone else was available to talk to, but she just stood there in front of me with a great big range of newspapers behind her, all of them fully blacked out, shouting ‘nyet, nyet’ at me, I really wasn’t ready to go back down the stairs yet, so I kept trying to get through to her.

Eventually I learned that I had once been videotaped cheating off a friend’s test in third grade. Additional footage of me walking on some forbidden grass, staring longingly at the head cheerleader of my high school, and rolling through a stop sign somewhere in Houston Texas followed. Finally, I figured I better get out of there.

She gave me a copy of “The Art of the Deal” before I left.

***

I stood staring at the entrance to the staircase for some time, because I just wasn’t ready for the challenge yet. A young woman happened along and asked if I was the one looking for a copy of the Bonfire of the Vanities. I said ‘yes’ of course, and she told me that they were looking for it somewhere in the basement.

“The basement?” I asked.

“Well yeah,” she said. “We really wanted to keep it out for public admiration, but we think SHE swiped it.”

“She?”

“You know,” she looked around a bit and then whispered; “HER.”

“I really don’t know,” I said. “Who could possibly…”

“You know,” the woman cut me off. “The one mentioned in the Bible. The woman who tempted Adam in the form of a plumbing snake; the one who told Jesus he was a loser even though he was the coolest billionaire ever; the one who once emailed every secret of the Kentucky Fried Chicken recipe directly to Muslim terrorists. The woman who must not be named!”

“Really?” I think my jaw just about touched my toes at this point. “Hil..”

“NO!” She shouted. “She must not be named. Really she mustn’t.”

I stood there in shock, but a little relieved to find out that, um, you know who, was still alive. After all, quite some time had passed. But anyway, I had a hard time wrapping my mind around what the young woman had just told me.

Seeing my surprise, the woman made a point to nod some more. “You must not name her, except in official campaign literature of course. And if you make a point to spit aterwards.”

“Of course,” I said, “but do you have any of that literature here in the library?”

She shook her head and offered me another copy of “The Art of the Deal.”

“Okay,” I said. “So, you are saying that she, SHE, the woman who must not be named is here? In the library?”

The young woman nodded her head vigorously. “Also her daughter and I think a few cousins. Some of her neighbors. We also have a bunch of them angry Democrats in there too.”

“Really?” I asked (again). “You mean Mueller’s team? Are they really still around?”

“Them or their children. We got ’em all, along with most of them Holly-weirdos. Roseanne is back on television, of course, but sometimes they let other people do a show too.”

“And you keep all of these people in the basement? Along with Hi…?”

She just glared at me.

“Sorry,”

She nodded again. “Sometimes they let her out. I think it’s to scare people. We think this time she might have stolen the book.”

“To read it? That’s really what she does when she gets out.”

“Well she WOULD!” The Young lady positively sneered. ” I hear them types read all sorts of things. Mostly fake news.”

“Well,” I asked, “do you have any real news here? Maybe some history?”

She thought long and hard at this before answering; “Maybe go back to the first floor and talk to Spicy.”

***

It was a very long day.

I left with three fractured ribs and four broken toes along with a sprained ankle. I would eventually get 28 stitches and a court order indenturing me to the GOP for a period of not less than 6 generations. I also received 13 copies of “The Art of the Deal.”

I give the library 5 out of 5 stars. It’s absolutely the best!

(Please tell the Russian lady I said that.)

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Memo to Coach Everyman

09 Monday Jul 2018

Posted by danielwalldammit in Politics

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

Christianity, Conservative Christianity, Donald Trump, Humor, Jim Jordan, Locker Room Talk, Political Correctness, Satire, School

To: Coach Everyman

From: Principal Stiffton, Everytown Public High School, USA

Re: Locker Room Talk

I wanted to follow up on our conversation earlier this afternoon and share with you a few of the parental concerns brought to my attention earlier this week. I have already spoken to the parties in question. I have tried to assure them that the conversations occurring in our locker room are much as they would be for any other intermural sports teams in the country. Unfortunately, several parties are simply not satisfied. They seem quite certain that our games have become the site for talk they regard they regard as dangerous and possibly harmful to the moral development of their young children. No. They don’t actually want you to do anything about it. They just want to make sure these conversations are limited to the context of the locker room.

The sexual content, you already know about, but again, I must tell you that none of the parties in question have called for any investigations. We don’t need to know if any of the activities your football players bragged about during the post-homecoming celebrations actually did take place. The parents are actually quite relieved to find that such specific sexual activities were not discussed in the context of Sex Ed classes. Please discontinue any ongoing inquiries regarding specific allegations made about or by your players. What happens in the locker room, according to these parents, should stay in the locker room.

A couple of new concerns have been raised. Mr. and Mrs. Smith are apparently quite convinced that you have been holding seminars on global warming during the pregame briefings. I really tried to assure them that you are only a part-time science teacher and that you would of course reserve such discussions for the classroom. On the contrary, the Smiths insisted that such conversations were fine so long as they occurred only during the weigh-ins for the wrestling team. In fact, they only brought it up to assure me that this was the perfect place for such matters. The other concerned parents all assured me that they were in agreement with the Smiths.

Actually, “agreeance” was the term the parents used, and one of the words in “Climate Change” was consistently replaced with some form of scatological reference. Nevertheless, all the parents in question found the topic quite appropriate for the locker room. They just don’t want you to bring the subject up in any of your actual courses.

Many of the concerned parents had much the same views regarding the subject of evolution. You may answer any of the questions Billy Johnson asks about that subject you like, they assure me, providing you limit your answers to the half-time pep talks occurring during the basketball games. If other students must hear the answers to these questions, our parents parents insist it must not be in any actual classroom. Also, they would prefer that you leave textbooks out of it. If any literature must be consulted, it should be op-ed pieces authored by economist and sundry pundits. You may present all sides of the issue, of course, but our parents would very much prefer that you keep the science out of it, and that you limit these talks to the locker room. We don’t want anymore incidents like the graph you presented in home-room last week.

You needn’t worry yourself about the subjects of genocide, slavery, or imperialism. It is quite all right if the baseball team discuss these things during practice, or more specifically, before and after practice. The group of concerned parents just wanted me to make sure these conversations were not coming up in the history classes. I will speak with Mrs. Jones about this; she has been warned twice already, and I am really getting quite frustrated with her over the whole thing, but that is no concern of yours. To the best of my knowledge, our parents have no concerns regarding your own role in the whole ‘structural racism’ incident. I told them that you would never encourage students to use such words off the field or outside the locker room, and they have accepted my word on the matter.

Asked if they had any concerns about Russian meddling in American elections, the gutting of environmental regulations, understaffing at the state department or the establishment of internment camps on U.S. soil, none of the parents in question seemed to know what I was talking about. I don’t believe any of them have been in a locker room within the last few months, and they do not seem to have encountered the subjects in any of their chosen news sources. Suffice to say that our parents have no concerns about any of these subjects. Your players are free to bring up any of these matters during the course of game preparations. You might ask them not to raise any of these topics in any of their classes, however, and perhaps to avoid discussing them with any of the adults in their families. I think morning calisthenics will offer you the perfect opportunity to warn your players about such matters, but the time and place for that discussion is entirely up to you.

This is really the extent of the matter as far as I understand it. Again, please cease any active investigations into the rumors you have been hearing and do make a point to help the students understand what should and shouldn’t be shared with their parents. Some of the things we talk about in school just isn’t fit for fragile ears. In any event, please remember that what is said in the locker room must stay in the locker room.

That is all.

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Beatriz Spoilers for Supper

27 Thursday Jul 2017

Posted by danielwalldammit in Movies, Politics

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

Beatriz at Dinner, Donald Trump, Film, Immigration, Inequality, Liberals, Mexico, Movies, Satire

Beatriz (Salma Hayek) is a selfless healer barely making ends meet. When her vehicle breaks down at the home of a wealthy client, Kathy (Connie Britton), she is invited to stay the evening. Kathy and her husband, Grant (David Warshofsky), are holding a dinner party with several rich associates. One of the guests, Douglas Strutt (John Lithgow) turns out to be as insensitive as he is wealthy, which is to say a lot. The plot thickens when Beatriz begins to suspect Strutt may have been the developer who wrecked her home town back in Mexico, thus scattering her family and ultimately triggering her own immigration into the United States. Is she right about Strutt? And if so, what will she do about it?

…especially after she’s had another glass of wine?

I’m supposed to like Beatriz at Dinner. This film has liberal politics written all over it. It expresses views much like my own, and it raises concerns I take very seriously. So, why don’ I Like it?

First and foremost, I don’t like being pandered to. Beatriz might be good politics (which is debatable), but it’s terrible story-telling. The film contains one and only one sympathetic character, Beatriz. The rest of the central characters in this film are there to be despised. Virtually every line they utter is offered, not to help us understand their point of view, but to give us another reason to hate them. Even Kathy’s kind invitation is riddled with hypocrisy. It is less an expression of generosity or friendship than a kind of pretense, one soon blown apart by events unfolding over the course of the evening. Her feigned friendship notwithstanding, Kathy isn’t really prepared to treat Beatriz as an equal, a fact driven home time and again during the film. The other characters never even come that far. They are simply aweful, from beginning to end.

It’s not just that the characters in this film are one dimensional. The entire story is one-dimensional, showing us only enough of the rich white characters to know that they are contemptible. I don’t need to think of capitalists as terrible people to oppose their impact on the global economy. My concerns over the issue do not depend on moral caricatures, and I’m not at all interested in promoting such caricatures, not even in the furtherance of a liberal agenda.

It’s not that I find anything implausible in the notion that an immigrant woman struggling to pay her own bills could be more thoughtful and interesting than a group of rich white people. I just don’t need to be reminded that that is how I am supposed to feel about these characters with virtually every line of the film. Good characters have depth, even those we might regard as villains. They surprise us. They present us with novel thoughts and feelings. This just doesn’t happen at the dinner Beatriz attends. She is decent, perhaps even a little odd at times. The rest are uniformly terrible people, a fact driven home with virtually everything they do.

It would have been nice if Lithgow’s character actually had an insight or two, perhaps even a trace of moral character however flawed it might have been. Instead, he is relentlessly crass, unfeeling, and utterly incapable of compassion. I want to think of this character as over-the-top and completely unrealistic. But of course, the current President of the United States appears to have been written with same pen. So, I guess we can’t dismiss him as completely unrealistic.

Likely, the comparison with Trump is the real point of Lithgow’s character, but if he is Trump, then this is why the movie fails. It fails because its villain isn’t really at all interesting. Just like Trump, Strutt isn’t impressive in any way. He doesn’t have any style. He’s just an ass with more power than he deserves or really knows what to do with. Such people may exist in real life (and apparently they do), but they don’t make particularly good stories. Whether Strutt is an straw man or an accurate portrayal of mindset we can encounter in real life, he is a consistent disappointment. We engage him through Beatriz only to find that there is nothing to him, that there is no there there in his personality. The man has power and wealth and little else to say for himself or his life choices. He’s a bit like the weather, something to be survived, not reasoned with.

But can one survive Strutt? If a men with that kind of power cannot be reasoned with, then how are we to survive them? This I think is the question trying to make its way through the film to its audience. It is an interesting question. Suffice to say that I am not impressed with the film’s own answer to this question.

Strutt poses a threat to humanity itself, at least in the abstract, and more immediately to Beatriz. It isn’t just that his development projects wreck communities and threaten endangered species. Rather, he represents the worst in modern capitalism, complete with all its current threats to the environment and life as we know it. This is clearly how Beatriz sees him. Strutt himself seems aware enough that his actions create hardship for others, but he also regards the decline of life on this planet as a natural process, one which will occur with or without him. Everything is dying, or so he tells Beatriz. There is nothing to be done about it, so one ought to enjoy himself so long as he can. This, he suggests, is precisely what Beatriz herself should do. With that, Strutt reveals the depths of his own depravity and the conflict between Strutt and Beatriz comes to symbolize a conflict between nihilism and the value of life itself.

It’s in this last twist that Beatriz at Dinner nearly becomes interesting. It is established early on that she has a tremendous sense of empathy. She can feel others’ pain. So Strutt’s complete disregard for every living thing thus poses a kind of existential threat to her. She can feel the harm he causes in others, and if there is nothing she can do about it, then what use are her own efforts? She cannot accept Strutt’s crass hedonism as a way of life, but if he and others like him are setting the course of history, then her own values demand a confrontation.

To heal the world, must Beatriz not defeat people like Strutt, and if he (and others like him) cannot be persuaded, is there any alternative but violence? To fall short of that, as the film seems to suggest, is to accept the end of life as we know it. It is to give up on life itself. At least that seems to be the conclusion Beatriz draws from her encounter with Strutt.

Thus we are left with an ending every bit as dismal as the central villain of the film.

 

 

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The Political Theology of Theodore Nuge

18 Sunday Jun 2017

Posted by danielwalldammit in Politics

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Character, life, Music, Sarcasm, Satire, Souls, Spirit, Spirituality, Ted Nugent

Not believing in souls myself, perhaps I am a bit naive about the subject. I tend to assume that ensoulment is a pretty sweeping kind of project. Everyone either has one, or they don’t. That’s my usual sense of the issue anyhow.

Lately, though, I’ve been reading up on this thing, exploring the works of an obscure theologian (Theodore Nuge) who has a great deal to contribute to our understanding of the matter. You see, it turns out that although people in general may be thought to carry something along the lines of a soul, it turns out that many people are actually without a soul. Seriously! Soullessness, would seem to be a big thing. It’s actually rather common. Just who laks a soul and how they came to lose it, now that is indeed a very interesting question. I’m still learning this subject, though, and the Nuge seems to understand it much better than I do. So, let me share with you just a few of his insights into the nature of souls and soullessness.

***

On the subject of soullessness, Nuge’s most accessible work would seem to have been about a musical exposition once scheduled at a Native American business venture. When the exposition was called off, Nuge is said to have remarked that those responsible lacked proper hygiene, and that they were in fact people without souls. Just how to account for their lack of souls remains a matter of some dispute. Nuge was thought originally to have ascribed this status to them on account of their indigenous nature, though he later suggested the individuals in question had become soullessness on account of political activities. It is possible that Mr. Nuge’s later comments reflected something of a shift in his thinking, however, as the intent of his first comments on the subject would seem to be less than clear. Not everyone agrees with Nuge;s self-exegesis. Subsequent attempts to clarify Nuge’s relationship to the Native American community has been preserved in obscure digital source material.

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Some scholars find Nuge’s proclamations of affinity for indigenous peoples a bit hollow, given the ease with which he dismissed Native American activists, but we must consider the intersection of indigineity and disensoulment carefully before moving on to the rest of his work. Far from a flippant comment, it would appear that Nuge’s appropriation of indigeneity is actually part of a much larger theme in his works. Even Theodore’s musical performances are said to have incorporated native, or at least faux-native themes. Nuge’s interest in Native American themes would seem to contain a number of clues into his thoughts about disensoulment. Let us consider one of the most interesting features of Nuge’s work, his ideas about spiritual hygiene!

It is not simply the case that can souls be lost, according to Nuge, they can also become quite dirty. Indeed, a soul according to Nuge is in constant need of a bath, except that a literal bath doesn’t seem to do much to cleanse a soul. No, to cleanse one’s soul, a person must go into nature, preferably with the intent of killing something. Consider the following texts:

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QED?

Having established that souls can indeed be cleansed by nature, we should perhaps add that they can be be healed by nature as well. So, we might be inclined to think of Nuge’s comments as indicative of a state which is generally inimical to good spiritual well-being, one which is akin to sickness as well as lack of hygiene. Although Nuge himself never committed this notion to a single lexical item, it may be productive for us to adopt a technical term for this state. Let us call it the state of being ‘yucky’!

Now let us move on to the importance of hunting practices. Although Nuge does seem to attribute soul-cleansing and healing power to nature in general, he ascribes its full healing power to the pursuit and killing of animals. Consider the following passages:

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Last but not least…

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So, you can see, there is special cleansing power in the hunting and killing of animals. It’s like the super-soap of soul-cleansing wilderness spirituality. Indeed the very moment of killing an animal would seem to be the best agent for eliminating any yuckiness that has attached to the soul.

With all this attention to hunting, it should be said that there is at least one other soul-cleansing agent in life, at least according to Nuge.  He also finds the power to cleanse a soul in one other thing, music.

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Near as I can tell, these two sources constitute an exhaustive list of soul-cleansing/healing agents in the work of Nuge. If he acknowledges this power in any other activities, I have yet to find a discussion of it in Nuge’s work.

So, what does all this have to do with Native Americans? Well, to answer this we must consider some of the Nuge’s experiments with Native American dress and neo-primitivism! Nuge seems to credit Native Americans (along with sundry friends) with guiding him through the soul-cleansing process. Often, he suggests, they are there with him when the Nuge cleanses his soul by killing animals and/or playing music.

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All of this would seem to add up to a kind of neo-primitive shamanism. Whether hunting or playing his music, the Nuge is connecting with the spiritual power of primitive people, and with the souls of loved ones lost. It is this connection to primitivity which cleanses the soul, either by releasing an arrow in the direction of Bambi, or by whaling away on a guitar. In each case, the sould-cleansing power stems from the return to primitive nature, the escape from civilization into a more basic form of existence.

All of this is quite fascinating, to me anyway, but of course it is merely one half of the coin in Nuge’s work on souls. You could think of it as the heads side of having a soul. The tails side is that you can lose it.

Who doesn’t have a soul? Well,Pimps, whores, and wellfare brats, for one.

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Now that might seem like kind of a random list, but it would seem the Nuge assumes these people share a common political agenda.

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Indeed, Nuge would seem to suggest the success of that political agenda, namely the campaign to elect Barack Obama as President of the U.S. had dire implications for the soul of America itself.

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…and of course, this trend only got worse in more recent elections!

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Journalists, it would seem, have no souls.

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During the last election, even Fox News seems to have suffered a loss of its soul.

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Some might find it odd to think of a news station as something that could possess a soul in the first place, but this should really come as no surprise. Corporations are people, according to SCOTUS. It shouldn’t really be all that interesting to find out that one of them has a soul.

…or that it lost it.

Other candidates for soullessness?

The Southern Poverty Law Center.

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Those who oppose voter identification.

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People who disarm citizens and cops.

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Critics of the Nuge.

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And of course, animal rights activists.

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In one of his more ideosyncratic passages, the Nuge even suggests that anyone who doesn’t think Theodore supports ‘allthings LGBT‘. Some might consider this an odd basis for disensoulment as it’s tough to imagine how the very existence of one’s soul could be contingent upon recognition of another person’s, but the more difficult theological questions here probably have to do with the unusual construction of LGBT rights. It way well be that Theodore’s rather ideosyncratic construction of G in particular is the key to the addition of creepery to the status those disensouled on account of their agnosticism regarding Nuge’s political stance on LGBT issues. It’s a very difficult thing. Some say God works in mysteries ways. Nuge talks in them.

So, as you can see the list of people lacking a soul is rather long, according to Theodore Nuge. The list may seem rather haphazard, but a few common themes can certainly be found in his work. Democrats and liberals are two overlapping-but-not-quite-synonymous groups that lack souls, according to Nuge. Also, Media. Given the importance of hunting for spiritual hygiene, it probably makes sense to find that those opposed to hunting lack a soul.

Also, those who don’t Like the Nuge’s music.

Screenshot 2017-06-12 17.09.11

So, what to make of it? As I mentioned before, I am new to the subject of soulology, but on a more serious note, I do think talk of souls can be very meaningful. The question I would ask is what are the metaphors? What does all this talk of souls really mean to those producing it? maybe, we can’t get far if we expect a literal answer, but we get a lot further if we ask what personal values are expressed in such talk.

Nugent’s talk of the soul-cleansing power of nature would make sense to a lot of people. Hell, it makes sense to me. While some might object to the role of hunting in this approach to life, it does express something found in few modern means of interacting with the natural environment. It provides someone with a definite role in nature. A tourist hiking a nature trail is, at best, someone who will take nothing but pictures and leave nothing but footprints. He doesn’t belong in nature and he knows it. A hunter, on the other hand, is part of it. He is, for that purpose anyway, as much a part of nature as the game he tracks. More to the point, he knows it. So, Nugent’s comments on the cleansing of the soul during a hunt may not square with some people’s thoughts about animals, but they certainly do strike me as an authentic description of his personal experience.

What seems most objectionable in all this is the growing sense of personal pettiness in all this talk of souls. How quickly the profundity of nature turns into a spiteful outburst against those who could interfere with it! How easily, Nugent’s personal associations with Native Americans turns to license taken against other Native Americans. Nugent’s talk of soullessness enables him to dismiss an awful lot of people. I don’t believe in a soul myself, but I have to wonder at the soul of someone who does believe in such a thing but seems so ready to say that others don’t have one. It’s a metaphor, of course, but a rather double-edged one at that. Can someone who so often finds no meaningful life in others really find much meaning in his own?

I’m old enough to remember when Ted Nugent was mostly a guitar sound coming through my speakers. Tastes vary, of course, and some of his lyrics are more than a little questionable, but I really did like the sound of that guitar. Listening to it now, I can almost sense that soul-cleansing power Nugent locates in nature and in his music. (Many will disagree, I know) The thing is, after listening to him talk about the soullessness of others, I usually feel like I need some of that power. I just wish he’s produce less of the one and more of the other.

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Eight Tips for Writing an Eight-Tip Advice Post (Crazy Uncle of A Bullet Point Mind)

31 Thursday Mar 2016

Posted by danielwalldammit in The Bullet Point Mind, Write Drunk, Edit Stoned

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

Advice, Blogging, Counting, Creative Writing, Internet, Nonsense, Numbers, Satire, Writng

IMG_20160215_142830

If you make sense to people, they will only make sense back at you!

The internet is full of pages providing us with numbers.

Numbers and tips!

Numbers OF tips.

That’s right. The internet is full of posts containing a designated number of little advisatory gems. I don’t know how much use there is in reading these lists, but I’m convinced there must be a point to writing them. I reckon the wisdom must reside in the numbers. So, the secret to providing advice online must be to put the advice in the form of a list of useful tips. Most importantly, you have to number them. Then put the number in the title. Netizens love numbers. They will read all the tips you want to give them as long as you put them in a well-numbered list.

…I think.

Anyway, I’m gonna give it a try. I do have a list of my own. It’s totally full of good advisings too. At least I will have such a list when I type out a bit more of this post. Here are my tips! My, …um, [INSERT NUMBER HERE)-point list of how to do [REPEAT NUMBER]-point lists. Yeah, that’s right. I don’t even know the number of points on my list, but I will have a number when I’m done writing my list, and you’re gonna read it to.

The number anyway. You’ll probably skip the rest. Dog knows, I would. Anyway, here goes…

OneFirst! Number one! The main, first-most, and totally beginning number on my list list of numbered things on the list that is totally numbered. The point of that number is to, …um …Number you tips! Yep. You gotta totally number them. Otherwise people won’t know the count, or maybe they will forget your advice as they read through it. Plus, it might be that your advice really sucks, but at least the numbers will make sense, so if you give bad advice, you can at least give good numbers. That’s why you gotta make sure you give people tips and make sure you number them so people can count as they read your tips.

And anyway, numbering your tips makes them way more important.

“Look before you cross the street?” …Meh!

“Number 1: Look before you cross the street.” …Dude, that is so totally profound!

Trust me, numbers profundify the lamest advice, and if that isn’t enough for you, then I just don’t know what else to say. Just fricking number your tips, okay dude!?!

TwoTwo: At least half your advice can be totally obvious or completely meaningless. In fact, it’s probably better that way, because it leaves less for people to disagree with. You just have to use the right words. If you are giving advice on how to do a bang up blog, for example, then be sure to tell people they should produce ‘quality content’. That may sound to you like an obvious call to write good stuff, but that’s because you haven’t grasped the full nuance. See, words like “quality content” are just so qualitative, they will make people feel all somehow, and then they will think you’ve actually said something, and they will respect you more. Plus, think how important that advice really is. Your readers were probably planning to write something that sucked, but you totally steered them in the right direction with that advice. Isn’t that cool?

Oh, what do you care? It’s a hit to your website one way or another!

IMG_20160223_143321Drei: Use your advice to drag people by the nose through your website. This isn’t hard to do. You just add all sorts of links to each piece of advice, hinting each time that they can learn more about whatever they’ve just read if they click the link. This way the vacuous nature of your not-so-helpful advice will work to your advantage. People will think; “Oh, I just haven’t found the real information yet. I have to go to that link where I will learn everything I need to know about this and it will finally make sense.”

If you’ve figured out that nothing at the link has to actually make sense, then you are catching on. The point is that this practice will generate extra hits on your website, which will totally drive up your search rankings. Your readers won’t learn a damned thing, but fuck them anyway, right? Your advice is good because it’s good for you, good for your rankings, and good for your blog. It’s probably also good for Jesus, all of your fellow countrymen, and if you can swing the suggestion, starving children somewhere in Africa.

…don’t forget to shed a tear as you write that last one. Also finish your dinner.

SusieQuatroQuatro: Try to include at least one useful piece of information. It doesn’t have to be original. It doesn’t really even have to be all that relevant. Hell, you can steal it shamelessly from someone wiser than yourself. The point is that you want your reader to have something to hold on to. That way when they remember your post and can’t remember all the other stuff you said, because – CAN THE CAN, HONEY – after all you really didn’t say anything in most of your advice post, but when they think about that, they will hopefully remember that one thing, which probably didn’t come from you anyway, but they’ll remember it just the same. Then when their buddies ask why anyone should go visit your site, they’ll say; “Oh I learned that one cool thing and some other stuff. If you go to the site, you’ll see that one thing and all the other stuff too, and then you can remind me about all the stuff I forgot.” …which is of course totally cool for you, especially if their friends start following the links. No-one will remember the useless non-advice, but they’ll remember the one good point and think there were others that they forgot. If your lucky, they will even come back to check.

I know, I know. You’re worried that you may not have any really good advice to give, right? Don’t worry about it. All you have to do is find someone else who is worth listening to and use them as a source. The advice they give will be the one that matters. So, just pick something that seems superficially relevant to the topic. Don’t worry. It doesn’t have to be actually relevant, just as long as it doesn’t stick out like a sore thumb and make people think it doesn’t belong in your post at all. Then you’re sunk.

Ashdla’: Be sure to write in short sentences. Also make sure that your grammar is nice and standard. It’s best to avoid run-on sentences. For instance, most of what I wrote in bullet point Suzi needs a red pen. That kind of writing is right out! (Seriously, don’t write like I do. It’s bad for the economy.)

Now you might think that the point here is to communicate more effectively, but you would be wrong to think that. The real reason is that your 8th-grade English teacher will haunt your fricking dreams if you don’t follow this advice. You don’t want that, now do you? I know I don’t. Seriously, Just leave me alone Mrs. Lawrence, will you please just leave me alone!

20160331_1311305) Some bullet points can be really brief. People won’t mind the break. Reading is hard.

…dammit!

…

…

…

20160331_131502Tallimat) Oh, brevity? That’s a good one! Reading is hard. Remember that point when you write stuff. People don’t like to read, which is one of the reasons that writing is hard. Writing is hard, because reading is hard. Maybe writing is actually hard, because reading seems hard, or maybe there is a lesson about laziness here, but the point is writing is really rude. I don’t know about the rest of this paragraph, but I am totally serious about this point. Writing is definitely rude. When you write something, you are asking someone to read it, and no-one wants to do that. So, don’t write anything, you rude mother-fucker!

…Alternatively, remember that whatever you write, your readers are just waiting for an excuse to stop reading. Why they started reading in the first place is a mystery to me and to you, and probably to them as well, but they are just waiting to bust away from your damned blog post and go do something fun. So you have to keep it brief, and you have to do stuff to keep their attention. Words like ‘fucker’ help with the last part. When I figure out how to keep it brief, I’ll write another post to let you know. I’ll probably even add it as a link to this post.

Seven SamuraiVII: Promise them money. I don’t mean that you should offer to pay your readers, though that might work. …No, it wouldn’t. (No-one wants to read.) Anyway, my point is that you should allude to financial success. Hint that people will earn a lot of money if they just follow your advice. Ideally, you should get that hint into your title as well, and into every other bullet point. In fact, you should probably get it into every bullet point, just to be on the safe side. Just keep suggesting that you’re offering people the keys to a successful career in whatever, and you’ll be fine.

Now you might think the point of this advice is to get readers to think they can make money by following your advice, but that is totally not the point. Seriously, no-one is that stupid! The point of doing this is to convince other internet advice-bloggers to think that you are in the same business they are, and hopefully that you are really good at it. If you can sell that image to them, then those guys are totally gonna start coming to your blog, commenting, and hopefully referencing you on their own blogs. That will totally drive your hint count up, at least as long as you do the same for them. You won’t make any money off any of this, but it’ll be a gas to think that people came to your blog, even if most of them only did so in the hopes of getting you to come to theirs. They didn’t read your posts. Don’t forget that. No-one reads blog posts. But they will count as hits, and that’s cool.

See, no-one really believes advice on how to make money online, but some people evidently believe that others believe you can make money online. THAT, my friend, is your target readership!

20160331_133916восьмой: Wrap it up and hit the ‘Publish’ button. Seriously, just get on with it!

No seriously, just hit the damned button.

***

***

…No fair, using this advice for 10-point lists. It’s only meant for 8.

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Of Trumps Walls and Wires!

25 Friday Dec 2015

Posted by danielwalldammit in Politics, Street Art

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Art, Donald Trump, GOP, Immigration, Satire, Shoe, Street Art, Subtle, The Apprentice

trumpcrop5One of the things I like most about street art is the way it interacts with the environment. Case in point, this wire in front of this mural in the Vegas Art District irritated me at first. Then I came to see it as a sort of design feature.

A good one.

Here’s the full panel.

trumpcrop3

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So, Adam Sandler, Yeah…

27 Monday Apr 2015

Posted by danielwalldammit in Movies, Native American Themes

≈ 15 Comments

Tags

Adam sandler, American Indians, Film, Humor, Indians, Movies, Racism, Satire, Westerns

adam-sandlerBy now the story is pretty well known. A number of Native Americans recently walked off the set of an Adam Sandler movie (The Ridiculous Six) citing offensive jokes as the deal-breaker triggering their decision to leave. Most had been cast as extras, but the group also includes a cultural consultant hired for the film. Other sources have detailed the story better than I could, but let’s just get a few of their objections on the table so we all know what we’re talking about:

– The Indians in the movie are supposed to be Apache, but their outfits and material culture generally represented in the film would seem better suited to Comanche (and that not too accurately there either).

– The movie used offensive names for female characters. “No Bra” and “Beaver Breath” come to mind. “Sits-On-Face” was apparently in the script at one point.

– Come to think of it, the movie gives men offensive names too, “Five hairy Moles,” and “One Eyebrow,” for example.

– In the movie a woman is supposed to squat to pee at some point while smoking a peace pipe.

– The extras found a feather arrangement on a teepee inappropriate.

– In the movie, Adam Sandler is supposed to utter the line; “Say honey: how bout after this, we go someplace and I put my pee-pee in your teepee?”

…you get the idea.

I certainly hope that I don’t have to explain why any of this would be offensive. The question is of course what to make of that offense? Someone is almost always the butt of a joke, and so it sometimes seems arbitrary when a particular set of jokes like this one draws a vehement response. Those with little or no connection to the offended group are often that much more mystified, because they simply don’t understand all the implications, and it can be damned tempting to pass the whole thing off as political correctness.

The notion that these extras (and those who support them) are just being too damned sensitive about the whole thing is rolling rather predictably out in various tweets and blog posts. A spokesman for netflicks reportedly characterized the film as ‘broad satire’. Breitbart News carried that theme even further, denying that satire could be disrespect in any context and congratulating the film crew for standing their ground in the face of an overly sensitive group of extras. Sandler’s camp appears to have adopted the stance that his movie is meant to be all in good fun, and that it’s full of low-brow humor to begin with. One of the cast, Vanilla Ice, for example assured us that Sandler is not trying to make something on par with Dances With Wolves. So, it seems we in the public are supposed to give Sandler a pass, because he is just joking.

I’m usually pretty open to raunchy humor, but I find it very hard to imagine a context in which the jokes mentioned above would be anything other than toilet humor fit for a five year old.

…and let’s be clear. there is another context to consider here. For those of us who haven’t seen the film, it’s difficult to assess the context behind the jokes, but for those of us who haven’t lived lives as Native Americans, it’s hard to say what the overall context of life is for determining how these jokes must feel.

Context is a two-way street.

No, actually, it’s more like a giant roundabout with a lot of busy traffic.

The question here is just what makes these jokes funny to begin with (at least for those that find them funny)?  It’s easy enough to say that a name like “Beaver Breath” is just a joke, but is there really any reason to suppose that joke doesn’t turn on a point of prejudice? These names don’t appear to be an in-joke, and they don’t turn any non-native prejudice on its head. They reflect little other than the sensibility of a child snickering at someone different. These jokes turn that difference into an object of brutal and straight-foreword mockery. and there is simply nothing in the accounts given so far to suggest that the target of this humor is anything other than Native American naming practices themselves. If this is satire, it is indistinguishable from racist propoganda.

That the jokes in question may be delivered with a congenial smile doesn’t change the fact that this humor is at face value quite demeaning. Some people don’t even seem to know when they are insulting others; either that or they simply assume the right to do so without being called to account for it.

This is why the claim that The Ridiculous Six is all just satire fails. Oh yes, the movie may well be a satire, but whatever it’s satirizing, there is no reason to believe these jokes aren’t actually directed at the Native American community.

There is nothing in these jokes that suggests familiarity with their own subject matter, much less appreciation for the people close to it. This is why the costumes matter, not because the movie was meant to be historically accurate, but because knowing the difference between Apache dress and Comanche dress might have communicated at the trace of a capacity to give a damn. When such things become too much to ask, the benefit of the doubt slips out the door. And when those who raise the issue, as these extras did, are told by a producer they are being overly sensitive and they should leave, well that pretty well slams the door shut altogether. If there was any chance this humor could have reflected anything other than outright prejudice, the treatment these extras received on the set would appear to have set that prospect to rest.

…which puts the claim that no offense had been intended in this script in an awkward light. It would appear to mean little other than that Native Americans themselves are not supposed to take offense at such things. Sandler and company have produced a highly offensive script, and when called on it, they have done little other than to beg others not to see the plain point of their own jokes. In effect, they have put the responsibility for the insult on those that have called attention to it (which is an awful lot like the strategy taken by Dan Snyder and the Washington football team). in effect, they blame those they insult for knowing they have been insulted. Does that rhetoric sound familiar? It should. This is of course precisely why conservative culture warriors are beginning to weigh in. It isn’t that they don’t know the movie is offensive; the folks at Breitbart for example are defending it precisely because they know that it is.

It’s easy to dismiss Sandler himself. He has often (almost always) presented himself in a rather juvenile manner. His characters are often simpletons, and the humor they produce is accordingly full of foolishness. When this fails, as it often does, Sandler leaves behind more than a trace of disappointment in the jokes. He also leaves us with that slightly creepy feeling that we’ve seen too much of someone’s personal baggage. Still, the man is capable of outstanding humor, often using this very approach. I do recall some brilliant moments in Sandler’s career; Lunch Counter Lady and The Hanakka Song come to mind. I don’t exactly pine for new examples of his work, but I can honestly say that he has brightened my day once or twice over the years. I say this, not because I feel like defending the man at the moment, but because I think it’s important to note that he is at least capable of doing something better than this.

Unfortunately, the man is also capable of turning out utter trash. Case in point, putting a peepee in a woman’s teepee. Try as I might, I cannot find any context in which that line reflects anything but the crudest sensibilities of a petulant child. Reading about this, I can’t help thinking Sandler has gotten entirely too comfortable passing the naughtiest jokes of the playground off as professional comedy. I for one hope that he will take a lesson from his extras, and try once again to produce comedy worth watching.

***

Postscript: I noticed an interesting pattern in this video showing the conversation, the film-makers continually insist that the movie is sympathetic to the Native American characters. Why? Because Adam Sandler’s character loves them.

Speaking of Dances With Wolves…

Suffice to say the notion that respect for Native American characters rests on little other than the values of a non-Native character would be ironic at best.

Actually ‘perverse’ is more like it.

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Pay No Attention to the Abe in the Corner!

07 Sunday Dec 2014

Posted by danielwalldammit in History, Politics

≈ 14 Comments

Tags

America, Critical Thinking, Founding Fathers, Government, Guns, Internet, Memes, Politics, Satire

One of the most beautiful gifts of the internet is the ability to learn at a glance the wisdom of America’s founding fathers. In fact, one can often find these pearls of wisdom beautifully packaged in nice visuals. They are perfect for a tweet or a quick illustration, and so very informative. Most of all, they are ever so conveniently one quick google away.

Take for instance the warning these men left for us regarding the evils of big government! Thomas Jefferson is particularly valuable in this regard. Why you could almost imagine him to be commenting directly on current affairs couldn’t you? Isn’t Tom just swell?

(You may as usual click to embiggen any of these quotations)




Thomas Jefferson was particularly keen on the importance of political dissent.

SpuriousTommyDissents

Thinking along similar lines, our founding fathers spoke directly to the issue of gun control. I mean, these comments are just so perfect. You’d almost think some of these quotes had been written by folks working for the NRA. Check it out!



More than that! Our great founders were no friends of the nanny state. They were quite clear that people shouldn’t expect too much from government. It’s there to give everyone a chance, but folks really shouldn’t expect any more than that. You read some of these things, and you can’t help thinking it’s almost as if they were actually thinking about the New Deal.  I guess these guys were just prescient or something.


James Madison wouldn’t have any truck with this notion of a living constitution. He’d school the modern liberals right quick about that nonsense!

SpuriousMadisonisanoriginalist

On religion, let me tell you, the founders of our great nation were clear about the importance of the Christian faith!



Oddly, the founders were also pretty damned clear about the evils of Christianity. Apparently, they had strong views on that too.

…It’s just a little strange.


I know this is getting to be a tiresome theme in this post, but the wisdom of Thomas Jefferson is not to be outdone. At times, he could almost seem to be a contemporary motivational speaker. Watch out Tony Robbins!



Not to be outdone, even George Washington carved his legacy into this little gem about taking responsibility for one’s personal mistakes.

SpuriousGeorgedon'ttaknoeexcuses

Honestly, the wisdom of the founding fathers would seem to be amazing at times. Sometimes their prescience is uncanny. It’s an amazing thing to see just how well-suited their statements can be to present-day matters. Luckily, that wisdom was not limited to the original founders. It was around in the civil war era too. Could anyone possibly be more on the mark than Abraham Lincoln?

TotallyRealLincolnnailsit

Seriously!

Listen to Abe folks.

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An Uncommon Physics Lesson!

03 Monday Mar 2014

Posted by danielwalldammit in Music, Uncommonday

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Gangsta Rap, M.C. Hawking, Music, Nerdcore, Parody, Physics, Rap, Satire, The Big Bang

I need some help waking up today, so I’m gonna turn to my favorite lyrical terrorist, M. C. Hawking. I hear he has a side-line as a theoretical physicist or something, which helps to explain the content of some of his tunes. You gotta love the Hawk-man! Seriously, you have to man. Cause he’ll fuck your shit up.

Yes, he will!

71.271549
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