Home | Away

Wednesday, August 02, 2006

How to do things with words

If you read blogs, like this very funny one or this very serious one, then you surely know by now that Rep. John Dingell (D- Michigan) has gotten his very own Two Minutes Hate, courtesy of the industrious citizens of Wingnuttia.  On Monday, on Time magazine’s Blog of the Year (special 2004 “we don’t know anything about blogs” edition), the following announcement appeared:

Yesterday, Representative John Dingell of Michigan appeared on a Detroit television program along with Republican Candice Miller. They discussed the crisis in Lebanon; Dingell proclaimed himself neutral. “I don’t take sides for or against Hezbollah; I don’t take sides for or against Israel.” Asked, “You’re not against Hezbollah?” Dingell answers, “No...”

I’ll turn the play-by-play over to Gavin of Sadly, No!:

But what’s this? Here’s part of Dingell’s last remark that mysteriously got cut off, before the clip popped up on Redstate.org . . . and metastasized to Pamalamaland (”Folks please pass this on to your neighbors, co-workers, anyone. We are in the fight of our lives. And the jihad is the defining issue of our times”), and then to Powerline, where bad ideas so often go to die.

Q: You’re not against Hezbollah?

DINGELL: No, I happen to be—I happen to be against violence, I think the United States has to bring resolution to this matter. Now, I condemn Hezbollah as does everybody else, for the violence.

. . . Waiting for that correction, John. Holding our breath ’til we turn blue. [Hhfp!]

Well, you can exhale, Gavin, because John’s buddy Scott chimed in yesterday with this correction, under the title “Dingellbats”:

I see now that the very silly far-left site “Think Progress” criticized me for posting an excerpt from Dingell’s appearance. The excerpt was emailed to me by a reader; I considered the possibility that it might be misleading because of something that came before or after. I concluded, however, that Dingell had plainly declared himself neutral between the state of Israel and the terrorist group Hezbollah, and that nothing that preceded or followed could change that disgusting fact. The longer excerpt posted by the loons at “Think Progress” confirms that I was right.

Now, I don’t usually go around decrying the decline of intellectual standards in America and all, but I do think it was a mistake for Minnesota to drop the “verbal comprehension” part of the bar exam.  For one thing, “Think Progress” is not a “very silly” site.  It is not even a member of the “very silly” party, which, as we all know, has long been dominated by Fafblog.  And although Think Progress has, on occasion, called for the smashing of the state, the abolition of private property, and the formation of autonomous workers’ councils, I don’t think it really merits the designation “far-left,” because it waffles unacceptably on the world-historical sagacity of the Great Leap Forward.

And yet it seems to me that the Power Rangers and the Washington Post Farm Team at Redstate aren’t even trying very hard any more.  All they did was recycle a truncated clip.  Dingell said, “No, I happen to be—I happen to be against violence, I think the United States has to bring resolution to this matter. Now, I condemn Hezbollah as does everybody else, for the violence,” and they quoted Dingell as saying “No.” I think that’s just lazy.

With just ten minutes of creative anagrammin’ labor, you could take Dingell’s remark and make it into this --

No, I happen to be—I happen to love Hezbollah and think it’s great, as does everybody else, for the violence

using only a fraction of the letters Dingell has provided! (Note that you can form “love Hezbollah and think it’s great” without even touching “the United States has to bring resolution to this” and taking only the “d” from “condemn.”) In only two short sentences, Rep. Dingell used twenty different letters, some of them repeatedly—more than enough rope to hang him with!

So if you’re a right-wing blogger, what are you waiting for?  Get to work!  Remember, the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy blogs!

Posted by Michael on 08/02 at 11:02 AM
(31) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink
Page 1 of 1 pages