Thursday, January 13, 2005
Quiet! Neo-Marxist Wanker at Work
Washing up in the surf today is the BBC's December 31 list of 100 Things We Didn't Know This Time Last Year. It's very British, which means some of the references will zoom over the heads of Yanks, but lots of it is pretty interesting.
Also worth reading today is Matt Taibbi's take on Tucker Carlson. He's got a show on PBS and he's reportedly getting one on MSNBC, but Matt says that just as Alan Colmes is Fox News Channel's idea of a liberal, Tucker is CNN's idea of a conservative.
Washing up in the surf today is the BBC's December 31 list of 100 Things We Didn't Know This Time Last Year. It's very British, which means some of the references will zoom over the heads of Yanks, but lots of it is pretty interesting.
Germany has an 18-year-old MP - Julia Bonk, a member of the Saxony legislature. Her name is not funny in German.You'll want to look at the whole list, if only to find the full names of the kids on Scooby Doo, Where Are You?
Ducks have regional accents. London ducks shout out a rough quack to be heard above the urban din; those in the West Country make a quieter, softer sound.
Lord Baden Powell [founder of the Boy Scouts] wanted a section on the dangers of "self abuse" in his Scouting for Boys. His original manuscript read: "A very large number of the lunatics in our asylums have made themselves ill by indulging in this vice although at one time they were sensible cheery boys like you."
Also worth reading today is Matt Taibbi's take on Tucker Carlson. He's got a show on PBS and he's reportedly getting one on MSNBC, but Matt says that just as Alan Colmes is Fox News Channel's idea of a liberal, Tucker is CNN's idea of a conservative.
In the same way that the helpless, ineffectual Colmes is a reassuring image to hardcore conservatives, Carlson puts a soothing face on conservatism for educated East Coast progressives – because even the biggest neo-Marxist wanker from Brown takes one look at Carlson and sees the one man in America he would feel sure of being able to kick the shit out of in a back alley.And why is that?
He has never been believable as a hatemongering brownshirt; his political ethnicity is probably closer to traitor than demagogue. You'd know exactly which side of the desert island to search for Carlson, if he were ever to be stranded on one with the Barnard French faculty and the Tuscaloosa chapter of the Klan – he'd be on the left bank, passionately misquoting Baudelaire.There's a whole week's worth of Quote of the Day right there.
