Welcome to Day 4 of the World O’ Crap Beg-A-Thon (guilty with an explanation here). We’ll be wrapping things up on Saturday, and hope to have one or two nice surprises for you. In the meantime, our deepest thanks to the folks who’ve contributed to keeping us going (and if you haven’t yet, but don’t think it’s the worst idea you’ve ever heard, you can do so through the PayPal button on the top left, or email me — scott.clevenger-at-gmail.com — for our snail mail address).
Do you remember Barry Farber, the “pioneer in talk radio” who “speaks dozens of languages fluently,” and blames Hitler for America’s opium habit?
Well, he’s back.
A stalwart member of ‘demented fringe’
Seldom does something I read cause my head physically to snap backwards as though I’d taken a good punch.
Really? That’s weird; I regularly get pummeled by my reading material. Not to complain, but Leaves of Grass crushed my septum and The Mill on the Floss broke my jaw in two places. I finally had to stop taking magazines into the bathroom with me because I wound up using all the toilet paper staunching the bloody noses I got from Macworld and Cat Fancy.
A column by Dorothy Rabinowitz did it. If it had been boxing, it would have been the end of the fight for me.
Well, Dorothy did star in Million Dollar Bubbe.
Understand, please; I adore that woman’s writing
“…but it punches me in the face!”
And she’s been doing it and I’ve been adoring it since long before the name “Obama” rang any bells.
Specifically, the bell signaling the end of the round. Get this woman’s words off me!
Once, Dorothy walked into the Christmas banquet of the Heritage Foundation where I was a guest. I sort of shriveled and shrank off to one side. It’s a Southern thing.
Below the Mason-Dixon line or below the waist, Dorothy can shrivel it.
Although I knew I was basically good, I didn’t think I’d done anything good enough to deserve to meet Dorothy Rabinowitz.
She writes for the OpinionJournal, Barry. No one deserves that.
Her column that punched me out raised and sustained the theme that President Barack Obama is simply not one of us.
He’s clearly neither a sucker-punching editorial writer nor a shrunken, shriveled Southerner.
She called him “the alien in the White House” and then artfully elevated that phrase from what might sound like a barroom jape into an unassailable geometrically proven truth.
She originally called him “the alien in the woodpile,” but she worried that only pruney Confederates would get it.
And then came the killer-clause: “He is the alien in the White House, a matter having nothing to do with delusions about his birthplace cherished by the demented fringe.”
Coincidentally, I just finished writing a spec slasher script that takes place in an isolated, snowbound toy workshop filled with sexy, but defenseless dwarves, entitled Killer Clause.
Ouch, Dorothy!
Dude, stop reading her! Or at least just skim her until the swelling goes down.
I guess that sums me up: demented fringe! What have I got wrong here? Football players like to score touchdowns. Baseball players like to hit home runs.
If Barry had warned me he was going to break into “Corner of the Sky” from Pippin, I would’ve had the taped cued up.
Obama could instantly chimpanzify millions of Americans who dislike him and galvanize his supporters to standing applause if he were ever to say, “By the way, I understand many of you would like to see this document. Here it is!”
And C-SPAN was !
Whereupon the president would unfurl and brandish a kosher long-form hospital-originated birth certificate indicating he was, indeed, born in the state of Hawaii
…under strict rabbinical supervision.
Who can explain why that performance has not yet taken place? There is doubt in the land that the president is eligible to hold that office. If proof exists, a simple showing would blow that doubt away and boost Obama’s sagging ratings.
Give in to the lunatic demands of the demented right wing fringe, Mr. President. It’ll show the liberal base that you’re serious about their issues.
Instead, derision is pressure-pumped upon the doubters like Gulf oil. And many of the president’s detractors oppose those of us in the “demented fringe” as vehemently as they oppose the president himself!
“You know, I could’ve stayed home to eat feces. I didn’t have to bring a box lunch down here to show support for your Tea Party, and to talk to these reporters about the inherent recyclability of corn!”
I suspect a strange kind of elitism. Sometimes an alcoholic can best be reached by another alcoholic
Specifically, around, from behind, in a very exciting way that both of them will pretend not to remember in the morning.
I think I understand that kind of elitism. In college, I spent a summer term at the University of Oslo, Norway. Classes were in English, and most of the other American students learned only enough Norwegian to ask for sex and beer. I really got into it. Let me tell you how good I got in Norwegian. I learned it.
Wow. That is good.
I spoke it well enough to knock their socks off.
But only their socks, so I never actually got any sex. Maybe I should’ve learned that beer phrase.
You could pinpoint my whereabouts by noting where the cloud of flying socks began in downtown Oslo!
Barry began to work in league with the coin-op dryers at the Oslo Launderette!
But toward the end of the summer, the Norwegian socks quit flying. The fall-off in crowd-love of me and my spoken Norwegian was palpable and troubling.
I assume this is the point in the story where your accent had improved enough that the Norwegians could actually understand what you were saying, and began to replace the flying socks with shoes.
I remember my disdain, even contempt, for my fellow Americans who never went beyond five or six words of Norwegian. When they greeted me on campus in Norwegian, I’d answer them in English. I didn’t want to “play” with them. They weren’t in my league.
It’s the same with Obama, who stubbornly refuses to provide a Norwegian translation of his birth certificate.
Writers like Dorothy Rabinowitz are capable of writing toweringly brilliant essays that stagger the reader.
It’s either brilliance, or the way her essays rabbit-punch her readers in the kidneys.
We (the hordes) embarrass them (the Dorothys)!
The Heathers also hate you, but The Donnas are lukewarm.
As a lifelong and well-briefed anti-Communist, I recall viewing the John Birchers as a “demented fringe.” Whether Birchers or Birthers, don’t forget the sociology that became apparent in the lifeboats of the Titanic where, according to the famous song, “The rich refused to associate with the poor.”
Certain Johnny-Come-Lately, crappily-briefed anti-Communists may carp, “What the hell does that mean?” but personally, I can’t think of a more apt metaphor for Barry’s writing than the Titanic.
Speaking for my little corner of the “demented fringe,” I would welcome being smashed into silence by the appearance of a real Barack Obama birth certificate.
Because Mistress Dominique has raised her rates again, and this would be kind of a freebie.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve gotta go put a raw steak on my eye. Yeah, sure, I’ll have a shiner in the morning, but I’ll bet you The House of Mirth knows it’s been in a fight!
No metaphor reaches perfection without being pounded into the pavement.
Left by N__B on June 17th, 2010