Hitchens groans
Gene Zitver
have absolutely no comment.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/11/21/politics/main585068.shtml
Gene
Martha Bridegam
Gene Zitver wrote:
I have my differences with Mr. Clinton: notably the small matter of the two
misearable years I spent trying to undo a very few of the unfair disability
benefit cutoffs he caused.
But Dubya's *speechwriters* wouldn't be able to compile a list like that, let
alone Dubya himself. They'd have to send the job to an outside contractor.
/M
David Tomlin
> _Homage to Catalonia_ is on the list of Bill Clinton's 21 favorite books. I
> have absolutely no comment.
Is there some reason you are making a point of saying you have no comment?
I did a search and found that you rarely have anything to say about Clinton.
Am I missing some profound innuendo?
Gene Zitver
>Is there some reason you are making a point of saying you have no comment?
No.
>I did a search and found that you rarely have anything to say about Clinton.
>
>Am I missing some profound innuendo?
No.
Gene
Alan Hogue
I was about to make some lame joke about Clinton scrawling "VISCA POUM"
in the Whitehouse bathroom, but I wasn't sure I was spelling it right. I
put the phrase in google and, after a few sites in Spanish, found this
site:
http://www.orwelltoday.com/readerriflequote.shtml
"It never ceases to amaze me how synergy works, especially in regards to
Orwell."
Alan H.
Martha Bridegam
Alan Hogue wrote:
Better to do your own research. This lady is very odd. See our September thread
captioned, "Another Pilgrim."
/M
Alan Hogue
My own research? What are you talking about?
Alan Hogue
> Martha Bridegam wrote:
>
>>
>> Better to do your own research. This lady is very odd. See our
>> September thread
>> captioned, "Another Pilgrim."
>>
>> /M
>>
>>
>
> My own research? What are you talking about?
On second thought, don't answer that.
Martha Bridegam
Alan Hogue wrote:
I just mean it is probably worth independently checking any quotes and theories
appearing on "orwelltoday" because there is some weird bad shit on that site.
/M
Jonathan Mason
Interesting to see that both Yeats and Eliot made the cut, with
Clinton apparently having a much better opionion of Eliot's poetry
than Orwell did. Also fascinating to see that Clinton put's his wife
book Living History right up there. This is the book in which she says
that she was so disgusted by the Lewinsky affair that at one time
Buddy the dog was the only member of the family who would spend time
with WJC.
Wonder if WJC has read SSWTJ, in which Orwell relates how he and
Connolly competed for the favor of Mrs. Wilkes by compiling the most
impressive list of books read. Had Clinton attended St. Cyprians, he
might have made something of himself.
Now, hopefully George W. President will publish his list of 21 books.
I should think it will go something like this:
Genesis.
Exodus...
... Revelation
A Charge To Keep
Pilgrim's Progress
Diary of a Nobody
George the Obscure
The Good Soldier
Little Women
The Executioner's Song
The Starr Report.
Alan Hogue
Well, I thought the silly quote about "synergy" might be a tip-off that
I didn't have a terribly high opinion of the site. I'm surprised that
there wasn't more discussion of what it is about Orwell that attracts
people like this.
This is by no means the only Orwell-oriented website run by nutcases or
just weird people. Probably everyone here has run into them at some
point, but I can find these offhand:
Typical paranoiac anti-semitic stuff:
http://www.codoh.com/thoughtcrimes/thoughtcrimes.html
Weird but seemingly innocent net culture thing:
http://orwell.serpensortia.net/?about
Here's a "rebuttal" of 1984 which cites the Second Law of Thermodynamics
and sports an incomprehensible but worrying side note about a Philip K.
Dick novel: http://www.spectacle.org/496/orwell.html
This site has the text of 1984 (apparently) as well as ' world-class
nutritional information, Christian guidance, a space for our dog Hanz
and his many travels in North America to some light entertainment in the
'Hotties' section." (Naturally.):
http://www.liferesearchuniversal.com/orwell.html
And perhaps the grand-daddy of them all:
http://www.stentorian.com/animfarm.html
Alan H.
Martha Bridegam
Alan Hogue wrote:
> ....Well, I thought the silly quote about "synergy" might be a tip-off that
> I didn't have a terribly high opinion of the site. I'm surprised that
> there wasn't more discussion of what it is about Orwell that attracts
> people like this.
>
> This is by no means the only Orwell-oriented website run by nutcases or
> just weird people. Probably everyone here has run into them at some
> point, but I can find these offhand:
...(snipping links to avoid giving them Google cred)
Another bit in the symposium I still haven't written up was from Daphne Patai, who
couldn't attend due to travel glitches but sent a text that Stansky read to the
group.
Stansky commented that he agreed with her concern about the frequent use of Orwell as
a means for "political slam-dunks." He quoted from the ending of her 1984 book on
Orwell and women, in which she said that what might be most interesting was Orwell's
fame and what it revealed about the present society.
Patai's text noted the recently increased number of Google responses associating the
words "Orwell" and "Saddam" and, in the last year or so, "Newspeak" and "Bush," and
the especial usefulness of Orwell to critics of the Bush Administration. She wrote
that the habit of citing Orwell in defense of one's own opinions was a way of
economizing on actual effort to defend positions through "appeal to a symbol, not to
a person" -- and it would be better to argue, not by reference to authority, but on
the merits.
She wrote, "To build one's case by citing Orwell" was to "abdicate the habit of
independent thinking for which he was celebrated."
---
By the way, let me ask again -- does *anyone* have an actual Orwell citation for the
"In a time of universal deceit..." bumpersticker quote?
/M