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I could almost feel sorry for Harry Reid

Almost. He’s a dimwitted old man, and for most of his life, “negro” was the nice word.

Then I think about the health care bill and it becomes imperative that I Photoshop him with his finger up his nose.

By the way, my grandfather wrote and self-published a whole book of anecdotes in hillbilly dialect. You can still turn up copies on rare book sites. I have a nephew who’s made it his life’s work to buy up all the copies he can find.

God knows why. It’s one of the most painful reads in the history of vanity publishing.

Comments


Comment from The Dread Pirate Neck Beard
Time: January 11, 2010, 7:44 pm

More painfully ridiculous than the Elbert Hubbard Scrapbook?

Less funny than “Make ‘Em Laugh!” by Charles N. Lurie (copyright 1927)?

A deputy sheriff was sent to levy on some household furniture, to satisfy a judgment. He began by making an inventory of the contents of the dining room. His written list was found a little later. It read about as follows:
“One dining room table
“Six dining room chairs
“One mahogany sideboard
“One decanter whisky, full”
Then the handwriting became almost illegible. The word “full” was crossed out, and the word “empty” was written over it. At the bottom of the sheet of paper could be made out the words, “One revolving door mat.”


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: January 11, 2010, 7:54 pm

That’s bad. I’ll give you that.

But grandpappy’s book was all “hit warn’t no” and “ah kin’t nevah.” I find dialect indescribably painful to puzzle out.


Comment from MCPO Airdale
Time: January 11, 2010, 8:57 pm

Madame Weasel – I concur. Mark Twain was painful for me to read as a child.


Comment from Dawn
Time: January 11, 2010, 9:02 pm

I think old Harry is just letting his religion show. Blacks could not obtain the priesthood until Reid was well into his 30s. Harry Reid is such a fan boy of Obama because his mark of Cain is fading.


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: January 11, 2010, 9:03 pm

Twain! I’d forgotten how much he used dialect. In fact, it was pretty common in the late Nineteenth, early Twentieth.

My cousin found a poem my grandmother (yes, that grandfather’s wife) wrote in some kind of dumbass dialect about a dead cat. She hated cats. I’ll have to see if I can find it.


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: January 11, 2010, 9:06 pm

Hmmmm…so Drudge is implying old Dingy Harry is botoxed up now, is he?


Comment from Can’t hark my cry
Time: January 11, 2010, 9:27 pm

Maybe someone here can explain. . .
My first thought, when I read about Reid’s apology, was “What is he apologizing for?” and my second was “Geez, whatever happened to Eric Holder’s ‘honest dialogue about race’?” Because the remark quoted was pretty much what everyone was thinking, and a lot of people were saying, back then, and there is no doubt whatsoever that Mr. Obama’s skin tone and accent were helpful in appealing to a broad spectrum of voters. Just as people were talking about Ms. Clinton’s gender and presentation, and Mr. McCain’s POW past, and how those played with the electorate, and why. Was it the context of Mr. Reid’s remark which made it necessary to apologize? The tone in which he said it? The whole thing just strikes me as peculiar. . .


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: January 11, 2010, 9:33 pm

I think the race issue has gotten so toxic, Can’t Hark, that white people just can’t talk about such things. Couple it with an old-timey, out-of-fashion word like “negro” and the implication that “lighter is better” and there’s your scandal.

It goes without saying, “if Reid were a Republican…”


Comment from weirdsister
Time: January 11, 2010, 9:46 pm

Dawn, I did not realize that Harry Reid is LDS. All the Mormons I know vote Republican!


Comment from Mrs. Compton
Time: January 11, 2010, 10:03 pm

I think he’s been Juvedermed and or Restylaned!!! Botox can’t fill in craters like that!


Comment from Can’t hark my cry
Time: January 11, 2010, 10:52 pm

I think the race issue has gotten so toxic. . .that white people just can’t talk about such things.

Well, that was sortof what I was thinking about with the Eric Holder comment. Because I honestly don’t think the race issue is that toxic–in fact, I think it is detoxifying. . .slowly. I’ll concede, though, that an awful lot of Americans have gotten themselves in such a tizzy that they can’t even attempt to think honestly about race, much less talk about it.

‘course, it also seems to me that this is something of an example of a type of trash apology. Messrs Reid and Obama could have used this incident to make some positive points, but Reid jumped immediately to the easy–and empty–apology for nothing in particular, and Obama let him get away with it. Shame, that.


Comment from Lissa
Time: January 11, 2010, 10:56 pm

I confess that when I saw your post title, I clicked over with an actual sensation of physical glee.


Comment from Tesla
Time: January 11, 2010, 11:13 pm

If there is going to be a picture of old Harry after his finger is extracted from his nose I don’t believe I’ll be coming back.


Comment from EW1(SG)
Time: January 11, 2010, 11:44 pm

Can’t hark my cry:

Because I honestly don’t think the race issue is that toxic–in fact, I think it is detoxifying. . .slowly.

Ah, but see, the Left can’t afford to let the issue detoxify because their entire appeal is the pitting of one group agin’ another.

That people are discovering on their own that race isn’t nearly as important as character is a serious threat to the foundation of the Left.


Comment from Nina from GCP
Time: January 12, 2010, 12:13 am

I don’t feel sorry for him, not one bit. Hmmpf.


Comment from Rich Rostrom
Time: January 12, 2010, 3:50 am

EW1(SG): Professional “minority leaders” keep the issue toxic because it’s their rice bowl.

White liberals keep it toxic because it was the one issue on which they really were right, and they want to stay in that moment. (It also allows them to demonize the opposition – note Chris Mathews asserting that “All [Tea Party participants] — every single one of them — is white.”)

Incidentally, it occurs to me that a lot of conservatives act somewhat similarly about Communism. Yes, we were right – but that was over many years ago, and it’s foolish to label the gang of crony capitalists and libertines that run the modern Left as “Communists”. There are some Reds left under the bed; there are also some fossil racists around too.


Comment from Rich Rostrom
Time: January 12, 2010, 3:55 am

Rich: “I have a nephew who’s made it his life’s work to buy up all the copies he can find… God knows why.”

Is he destroying them? I know of some authors that would like to do that with some of their early publications. An acquaintance got Harlan Ellison to autograph one of his most loathed books by presenting him with two other copies to be burned.


Comment from BillT (aka “The .0004572% Of Traffic That’s From Iraq)
Time: January 12, 2010, 8:14 am

Are you sure you ‘Shopped a *finger*? It looks like he’s trying to snork a Naked Mole Rat…


Comment from BillT (aka "The .0004572% Of Traffic That’s From Iraq)
Time: January 12, 2010, 8:30 am

…a poem my grandmother…wrote in some kind of dumbass dialect about a dead cat. She hated cats.

Well, if your grandmother was Shel Silverstein, I imagine it would’ve gone something like

“Hyar, Kiyuhtty, Kiyuhtty, way-uth yore fuhrr ez sow-uft ez say-ulk!
C’mon an’ dray-unk yore pizened may-ulk…”

Thank you, thank you — I’ll be here all week.

Try the veal.

Don’t forget to tip your waitperson…


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: January 12, 2010, 9:44 am

I do believe pizen was involved, Bill.


Comment from EW1(SG)
Time: January 12, 2010, 12:18 pm

Rich Rostrom:

because it was the one issue on which they really were right, and they want to stay in that moment.

The problem is, they weren’t. That people have unalienable rights is a conservative value~when discussing which party’s history is related to what. The Dems are the party that obstructed civil rights progress in the US, while human rights were a core value at the founding of the Republican party. And in practice, that’s as true today: Dems are the party attempting to undercut human rights in favor of collectivism, while conservatives are still the party (or group, rather) defending individual liberties.

And as for:

Incidentally, it occurs to me that a lot of conservatives act somewhat similarly about Communism. Yes, we were right – but that was over many years ago

Sadly, the Soviets have won the Cold War. That they aren’t around anymore to celebrate is evidence that communism is fatally flawed, but the ideas that they planted last century have taken root in fertile soil and the idea that communism is better is almost unquestioned today. Another idea that they nurtured was the idea that the war of ideas was and is “over,” when in reality it’s only now that we are fully engaged on our homefront.

The ideal that life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is for all may have been born of parents with clay feet, but that doesn’t negate the ideal. Rather, it gives us goals to strive for. That there are fossil racists around is no surprise, but you find them mostly on the left nowadays. Which is also where you find the doctrinaire Marxists like Obama and his crowd.


Comment from Allen
Time: January 12, 2010, 12:57 pm

Poor Harry, dumber than a bag of frozen shrimp. On the plus side he did tell the white people that voted for Obama that they’re still closet racists and only voted for him because he has a lighter tone skin and doesn’t speak in jive.

Bwahahaha!

I’ve heard a lot of things in my time, but honestly, has anyone ever heard someone use the term “negro dialect?” Fun stuff.


Comment from Dawn
Time: January 12, 2010, 1:36 pm

So true, Allen.
The funniest part is that because liberal and black leaders have come to Harry’s defense, the word negro is now back into the common vernacular. If it was okay for a crusty old white man to use it, it certainly is okay for everyone else. Ha ha ha ha.


Comment from BigBlueBug
Time: January 12, 2010, 2:20 pm

I do hope that someday this race mongering stuff will disappear. The contradictions between celebrating diverse cultures and then spazobrating when differences are pointed out. They need to look up the word diverse. Just saying.

Look, I hate people. Lots of people. Stupid people, people who let their dogs poop on my lawn, Rhode Island, SuzeO, the people who hold Wiggles performances near where I work just so they can make me angry.

But…

When I’m loading up my slingshot with a frozen strawberry to make a point about that whole dog pooping thing (or SuzeO), I’m not thinking about race, ethnicity, gender, sexual preference, face piercing. I’m thinking that if I can move in close via the bushes, I gotta better chance of scoring a head shot.

I am living proof that you can be a post racial, equal opportunity hater. These folks should ask themselves, “what would BBB do”. And then run away.


Comment from Dawn
Time: January 12, 2010, 2:32 pm

What would BBB do?

Oh man, I can’t breathe for laughing.


Comment from jwpaine
Time: January 12, 2010, 5:34 pm

“[O]ne of the most painful reads in the history of vanity publishing”?

Perhaps one of the most painful, but for sheer unadulterated fuckingdumb, nothing holds a candle to The Police Man Who Knew Huey P. Long by Elois Sahuc. Way back when I was editor of a small Louisiana newspaper, Sahuc pestered me daily until I read and reviewed it.

I have an autographed copy. Decades of multiple moves lost me my set of Harvard Classics, a couple of first editions, and my Roget’s, but somehow Sahuc’s literary equivalent to used toilet paper is still with me. I’m sneering at it now.

I have but two hopes: That Sahuc is still alive, and that he murders someone famous soon, so I can unload his POS on eBay.


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: January 12, 2010, 5:40 pm

One of the great bad reads of all time was an account of the murderer Ed Gein by the judge who tried him. One of Gein’s possessions was a tin full of mummified lady parts he’d dug up at the cemetery, which the learned judge referred to as “the finest collection of human vulva ever found.”

I bet that really pissed off the owners of the second and third finest collections.


Comment from jwpaine
Time: January 12, 2010, 6:02 pm

I’ve read that, and it is pretty bad. But Gein’s story is so fascinatingly twisted that even an Elois Sahuc version would have made the NYT bestseller list.

And btw: I wasn’t pissed off, but maybe the guy with the second-finest was. You’d have to ask him.


Comment from Lemur King
Time: January 13, 2010, 11:42 am

Allen, just how dumb is a bag of frozen shrimp? More or less intelligent than a bag of frozen chicken?

Thank you Weas for the pic of Reid’s pick of the day. Hope it’s a winner.

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