Home | Away

Tuesday, December 13, 2005

From the desk of David Horowitz

image

More precisely, from the desk of David Horowitz to the website of NewsMax:

Will you help me place the enclosed advertisement in college newspapers across America?

It conveys an important message to all Americans:  There are thousands of Ward Churchills indoctrinating students on college campuses from coast to coast!

Thousands!  But wait—your graphic says “100 Ward Churchills.” So which is it?  Are there 100 Churchills on college campuses, or are there thousands?  You shouldn’t play around with powers of ten, David.  They’re really tricky!  You might wind up with hundreds of thousands of Ward Churchills by some counts, or maybe just one by others.

It really all depends on how intellectually corrupt Discover the Networks is!

You remember Ward Churchill, don’t you? He’s the tenured University of Colorado professor who has written, among other things, that the people in the World Trade Centers deserved to die on September 11, 2001. They were, Churchill said, “little Eichman’s” comparing them to Adolf Hitler’s right-hand butcher!

Well, it’s Eichmann, not Eichman, and he wasn’t the right-hand butcher, and you don’t use an apostrophe to indicate a plural noun.  If we don’t correct bad English usage, you know, the terrorists win.  But let’s get back to the letter.

One of our most important missions at CSPC is to expose the Ward Churchills of America. And there are many, many more where he came from. That is one reason we worked hard with the support of thousands of Americans to create our Discoverthenetworks.org website.

Or maybe with the support of hundreds of Americans, or maybe just tens of Americans.  OK, actually it was just David and his assistants.  Never mind.  The important point is that there are as many supporters of Discover the Networks as there are Ward Churchills.

Discoverthenetworks.org casts a bright light on the radical left and shows, in detail, the connections between hundreds of radical organizations. We’ve also provided substantial evidence revealing the financial support these groups receive from left-wing foundations, like Ford, MacArthur and Pew, and self-serving billionaires like George Soros and Peter Lewis.

Oh, speaking of the Holocaust! Tony Blankley’s still not sure how that sneaky Soros guy managed to escape it.  But now David’s on the case, with the help of a few altruistic billionaires who only want to serve humanity.

I’m hoping you’ll help us prepare for 2006! I want to place this advertisement in at least 250 student newspapers across America over the next 60 days. To do that, the Center must raise $131,250.

Will you help me do that today? Will you take a moment to make a contribution of $25, $35, $50, $100 or even $1,000 to CSPC right now?

We want to open 2006 by getting students, professors, and administrators’ attention:  we’re watching radicals on campuses and we’re going to expose them to the public!

In order to defend their academic freedom!  Honest!  Our Academic Bill of Rights is all in favor of academic freedom.

We know from experience that running ads in 250 student newspapers that nearly 500,000 people will see this ad and be exposed to our Discoverthenetworks.org website.

We know from experience that running ads in 250 student newspapers that? I’m sorry.  David is hereby reassigned to Objectively Pro-Saddam University’s remedial Freshman English program.  His instructor will be Professor Ward Churchill.

And the first papers we hit will be the hotbed schools for anti-Americanism—schools like Cal-Berkeley, Harvard, Yale, and Columbia!

The Center made tremendous strides against the left this past year. Now we must take advantage of the momentum we’ve generated over the past year and take our battle for our culture to the next level. Discoverthenetworks.org is a vital tool in that battle. . . .

Ah, takin’ it to the Next Level.  And just wait ‘til you see what level that is!

What emerges is undeniable proof of the radical left’s anti-American agenda. They’re not anti-war. They just hate America. And they’re camped out in our classrooms spewing their hatred to our young, future leaders.

By placing our ad in student papers across the country we can expect our already popular and useful website’s influence to grow. Frankly, without your support we won’t be able to get into the trenches with the radical left and battle them into submission. That’s why I’m asking for your financial support today.

Yes, the next level is one level down, where David and his army of one will get into the trenches and battle professors into submission.  (And if you print out David’s letter and hold it up to the light, you can see that under the word “battle” is the word “bludgeon.”) Let academic freedom reign!

There’s no contradiction here, actually.  Submission is freedom.  That’s why David’s troops will be welcomed as liberators!

Still, let’s take a closer look at the charge that we’re “spewing our hatred to our young, future leaders” and “indoctrinating students.” (I’m going to leave aside the “camped out in our classrooms” bit, because, c’mon, that’s kind of silly.  Everyone knows we only spend six hours a week in our classrooms.) David brings up an important issue here, one that I’ve been thinking about lately.  Let’s say that professors really do spew hatred to the young.  And let’s say that Churchill provides a perfectly paradigmatic example of the things we spew.  What, in practical political terms, has been the effect of Churchill’s profoundly stupid and vile “little Eichmanns” remark?  Did it lead to an important “teaching moment” for the left?  Has it led thousands, or even tens, of American students and citizens to the conclusion that the World Trade Center dead were, indeed, comparable to the technician of the Holocaust?  Has it spawned Departments of Little Eichmann Studies in which far-left professors calculate the precise degree to which the 9/11 dead shared in the responsibility for the events of that day?  Or has it led thousands, and even millions, of Americans to the conclusion that O’Reilly, Hannity, and Horowitz are right about college professors?  Has it served as the anti-academic right’s Exhibit A and primary recruiting tool, invoked in one state legislature after another when Horowitzian bills are brought to the floor?  And has it allowed the right to smear everyone to the left of Joe Lieberman as America-hating, terrorist-sympathizing fanatics?

Just asking.

Back to Horowitz:

Discoverthenetworks.org is doing what the major media won’t:  exposing a serious threat to our nation’s well-being, the powerful, well-financed radical anti-America left! I’m counting on you to stand beside me in the months ahead and I look forward to your help today. God bless.

God bless?  Excuse me—did somebody sneeze?

Now, as a member of the powerful, well-financed radical extra-adjectival anti-America left, I do know that this is very serious stuff.  In fact, I have my very own page on Discover the Networks, so that makes me a Ward Churchill too!  Though I’m still waiting for my standard-issue black beret, aviator-frame sunglasses, and rifle.  I think they’ll look boss.

But I’m not going to discuss Discover the Battle of the Anti-American Network Stars this time around, because, as some of you know, I

already

did

that

earlier this year, and in so doing, provided thousands (really, thousands!) of readers with well-deserved Horowitz mockery.  And when I was finally honored with my own page, complete with its weirdly blurry photo, I respectfully read it through and paid careful attention to every last one of its distortions and misstatements. 

No, instead of trying to drive David to the next level of batshit insane (this would be level thirty-one in the thirty-three Masonic levels of wingnut batshit insanity), I’m simply going to direct you to John Holbo’s Discover the Nutwork, where you can learn about the links between Leo Strauss and Sideshow Bob . . .

. . . Grover Norquist and Grover . . .

. . . Tom DeLay and Red Skull . . .

and most crucially, David Horowitz and Zod!

Folks, I will need $131,249.95 over the next 56 days in order to place “Discover the Nutwork” ads in campus newspapers around the country.  Obviously, I can’t do it alone, because unlike David, I don’t have the backing of crazed reclusive far-right billionaires like Richard Mellon Scaife (part owner of NewsMax!  Hey, talk about discovering the networks!).  I need your help, dear readers, as I’ve never needed it before.  Will you take a moment to give me $25, $35, $50, $100 or even $1,000 right now?  I’m counting on you to stand beside me in the months ahead—or, to be more exact, to stand far away from me and watch me as I pocket the cash.

Zod bless.

Posted by Michael on 12/13 at 04:27 PM
Horowitz • (51) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink

Sadly, no more

All right, here’s what happened.  Over the weekend, the trio of merry pranksters at Sadly, No! took pity on me.  You might recall that last week, I foolishly issued a challenge to SN.  Or maybe I issued a challenge to my readers.  Or maybe I just dreamed I issued a challenge, and then woke up to find that everything I dreamed was real.  I’m not clear on what kind of speech act was involved.  Whatever.  The point is that by Saturday, Sadly, No! had pulled so far in front of me in the all-important Best of the Blogs That Inhabit the Two Hundred and Fifty-First through Five Hundredth Positions of the Large Mammal Section of the Truth Laid Bear Ecosystem Awards Competition (or, as SN put it, “blogs that are less popular than Firedoglake, but more popular than The Iowa Voice") that I could no longer even see their dust, let alone eat it.  Clearly, I had been treated to an extra heapin’ helpin’ of Poutine Power.  (What is poutine, you ask?  Don’t ask.  It’s a French-Canadian thing—you wouldn’t understand.)

Actually, the competition was probably over a few minutes after it started—and it had nothing to do with poutine.  Within two hours of answering my challenge, Sadly, No! posted its selection of holiday gifts for the Liberal War on Christmas, and once I saw their gay creche . . .

I knew I was completely out of my league.  Unfortunately, for this all-important campaign I had hired Bob Shrum as a blog awards advisor, and he had insisted that I devote my week to a series of discussions of Steve Fuller and Intelligent Design.  “The people love a long science-studies argument with 120 to 180 three-paragraph comments,” Shrum told me.  “Leave the gay creches and the Fitzgeraldian Hip-Hop to them, and concentrate on the swing states.” Was Shrum right about this?  Sadly, no.

So on Saturday, Gavin M. wrote with a proposal.  Since SN’s lead was now insurmountable, they could afford to be gracious (and funny) about the whole thing, and maybe even lift me out of my virtual second-pace tie with Austin Bay.  (Nothing personal about Austin Bay.  He’s a smart and honorable fellow whose political beliefs simply happen to differ from mine.) Vote-switching would obviously be wrong, but blog-switching could be fun!  Plus, it entailed all kinds of interesting hijinx that would demonstrate yet again the amazing frictionlessness and vertiginousness of the Internets!

I thought it over.  Was it an incredibly arcane, more-postmodern-than-thou kind of joke?  Check.  Would it involve a lot of time and effort to no clear purpose?  Check.  Would it confuse the hell out of everyone?  Check.  Would I get to post pictures of people with limes on their heads?  Check.

It sounded perfect.

So Sunday night, we got to work.  Kurt did the site redesign (I’ve learned how to mess with the templates now and then, but this job involved some serious coordination between SN’s engine room and ours, not least because most of SN’s programming is written in French), and I set about the task of creating three new users and writing posts for each of them, along with some graphics helpfully provided by Gavin.  (Thanks!) And voilà, yesterday I became Sadly, No! for a day.  It was a thrilling experience, seasoned throughout the day by any number of strange people leaving strange comments under Nabokovian pseudonyms.

Didn’t you have anything better to do with your time? you ask.  Well, yes, of course.  But I didn’t feel like doing those things yesterday.

Posted by Michael on 12/13 at 01:44 PM
(25) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink

Monday, December 12, 2005

What’s going on around here?

I have no idea.  You better go ask these guys.  Unless they’re really us, in which case you might as well stay right here and read the next three posts.

Posted by Michael on 12/12 at 08:41 AM
(28) Comments • (1) Trackbacks • Permalink

Will work for feud

So, in response to our gently satirical post about Tobias Buckell’s soi-disant gently satirical post about starting faux blog feuds in order to increase your blog traffic, T.B. has decided to write a sadly illiterate post about the alleged sadness of our alleged Internets illiteracy.  Do we think he got the joke about our joke about his “joke”? Sadly, No!

Tobias wrote:

So in my gently satirical post about how to gain traffic by starting a faux feud, anti-Pajamas Media site ‘Sadly No’ excerpted the opening part of my post, and utterly failed to read the rest of it to realize I was poking fun of using controversy to gain traffic, thus proving the adage that those who choose not read have no advantage over those who can’t.

To add even more class to the post, they photoshopped a piece of fruit over my face.

I guess its always easier to tear things down to create them. Or just to even stop and read them.

It is true that we are an “anti-Pajamas Media site,” as enemy of humanity Tobias Buckell has claimed.  We are, in fact, Objectively Pro-Formalwear Media.  And we don’t mind telling the world . . . it’s remarkable how comfortable we feel blogging in a tux.  Mmmm, the fabric!

But we digress.

OK, we admit, we did photoshop a piece of fruit over his face.

What can we say?  We thought it would be funny.  Even our cats laughed—after their fashion.

image

But we have to admit that Tobias is right on principle.  It is much easier to tear things down to create them.  And it is true that those who choose not read have no advantage over those who can’t.  All we can say response is that bloggers words missing conviction syntax forever!  Faux yeah!

And we truly resent the implication that we are a faux-feud website.

Posted by Gavin M. on 12/12 at 07:13 AM
(14) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink

It’s a very good sign

Economy Lifts Bush’s Support in Latest Poll

After months of political erosion, President Bush’s approval rating improved markedly in the latest New York Times/CBS News Poll, largely tracking Americans’ more positive attitudes toward the economy. . . .

The survey, conducted Dec. 2-6, showed Mr. Bush’s approval rating at 40 percent, up from 35 percent a month ago, which was the low point of his presidency.

Why are Americans more positive about the economy, you ask?  Is it because they’re making more money or something?

Sadly . . . No!

Actually, they’re making less:

As a measure of how much the economy produced per hour of work, business productivity rose 4.7 percent outside the farming sector from July to September, compared with an earlier reading of 4.1 percent, the Labor Department reported. Real hourly compensation, which adjusts wages and other benefits for inflation, fell 1.4 percent, unchanged from previous estimates.

So you’re saying Americans boosted George Bush’s poll numbers up five points because their wages fell 1.4 percent?

Well, sadly, yeah:

“Things are not that bad,” Susan Huru, a 47-year-old independent from Wasilla, Alaska, said in a follow-up interview after the poll was completed. “I can still afford things except for maybe gas.”

No, we didn’t make up that quote.  We only made up this one:

“Bush is all right by me,” said Joe Hill, a mechanic from Salt Lake City, Utah.  “I can still afford things except for maybe health care.  And it’s OK with me if productivity is up and my wages are down—that way, I figure, the money’s going to the people who really know how to use it.  It’s a little like that Nick Lowe song.”

image

What, you were thinking maybe “American Squirm”?

Posted by Sadly, No! on 12/12 at 07:10 AM
(3) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink

Adams and Steve

Here at Sadly, Non!, we are occasionally amused by Professor Michael Bay-rue-bay’s evasive attempts to explain away the Liberal Dominance of Academia.  We’re fond of his French surname, of course.  Still, we can’t help but wonder at the extremely French weasel-words he uses whenever he tries to claim that wingers are scarce on his side of the campus mainly because bright young conservatives tend not to embark on five-to-ten-year programs of graduate study in the liberal (cough! cough!) arts.

The truth, as always, is otherwise, and the truth, as always, is quite simple.  Conservatives are getting a raw deal in academia because they are much wittier than liberals.  Liberal professors hate lively, funny writers like UNC-Wilmington’s Mike Adams, and that’s why lively, funny writers like UNC-Wilmington’s Mike Adams are teaching at UNC-Wilmington when they should be holding the Distinguished Hannity Chair in Advanced Liberal-Asskicking at Harvard.  No one demolishes liberal PC like Professor Adams did in his October 10 column on why he became a Republican:

Of course, I knew that Republican women were more attractive than Democratic women, long before I saw the above link. But I didn’t know that it was proper to discuss the difference until just before my speech at Ohio University.

That was when three very attractive women came into the room to take their seats and I asked innocently “Are you ladies all Democrats who are here to heckle me?” Their blue-eyed blond leader responded with this far more intelligent question: “Do we look like Democrats to you?”

Just two days after learning that it was alright to talk about this issue, I was giving another speech in North Carolina. After the speech, my wife commented on the good looks of the young Republican women from UNC-Chapel Hill who were listening in the audience.

Of course, this is very good news. Since my wife is able to comment on the surplus of good-looking women in the GOP, that means I can, too. Of course, it also helps that she stopped reading my columns many months ago.

The public discussion of this issue will help Republicans answer some important questions. For example: “Should we assume that being gay often causes one to be a Democrat? Isn’t it more likely that the lack of exposure to attractive women causes Democrats to be gay?” And “Do Democratic women consider compliments in the workplace to be sexual harassment simply because they rarely hear them?”

Are there any liberal professors as funny as Adams?

An ordinary writer would have claimed that Democratic women are lesbians because they’re too ugly to find a man.  But Adams is no ordinary writer.  He shuns the low-hanging fruit (so to speak!), and takes the whole gay thing to The Next Level.  Here, we learn, Democratic men are gay, and gay men are Democrats, because Democratic women are dogs!  Now that’s the kind of bullet-to-the-bone cultural criticism that the stuffy liberal academy just can’t handle!

So Mike Adams asks:  Who let the Democratic dogs out?  And, more importantly, do those wrinkled old dogs make Democratic men gay?  But don’t worry, PC-mongers.  Mike says his question is just an example of “heavy sarcasm.” That’s another thing those liberal professors just don’t understand.

P.S.  Mike is also very funny on the subject of Annie Sprinkle.  Check out those puns at the end!  Hubba hubba.

Posted by Brad R. on 12/12 at 06:19 AM
(18) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink
Page 3 of 5 pages « First  <  1 2 3 4 5 >