These days when a mainstream media writer writes something intelligent and uses good grammar and creative words and ideas (like all the columnists whose columns are posted at PTBC all the time!), it’s worthy of mention.
Thoroughly entertaining , learned, and piquant (which is more or less a PTBC mantra) columnist Conrad Black, now unfortunately spoken of in Canada more in terms of various legal machinations instead of his great journalistic and other positive feats like creating the National Post, pens another good one in the National Post today. You’ll find it somewhere amidst all the fawning articles and photos in the National Post today about the liberals’ Great Obama. (How I’d love to add Black and his columns to our PTBC team of columnists… )
Here are just some inspired quips from today’s column at the National Post:
• “Though quite enterprising, Wolf Blitzer, when he worked for us at the Jerusalem Post, was one of the most avaricious journalists I have known. After about 40 assertions from him in 20 minutes on New Hampshire night, that CNN has “the top news team on television,” I had either to change channels or find a sick bag.” I included this line particularly because like Black, I also nearly spew lunch listening to Blitzer and all the other CNNers regurgitate that fallacious line and variants of it over and over and over again. I recommend Pepto Fox News.
• Black manages to make me look a word up in the dictionary. Callipygian. And then he uses it humorously. This is big for me. I normally only have a dictionary within easy reach (which then gets extensive usage) when reading Ann Coulter’s books. … “With trepidation, but not embarrassment, I offer the thought that Mrs. Obama, a formerly disadvantaged alumna of Princeton and Harvard, to judge from her well-strategized appearances on national television in exiguous dresses and trousers, is as callipygian as Jennifer Lopez. (That is my only concession to political correctness for 2008; you look it up if you must.) I saw her on YouTube saying that, “Reform must be from the bottom up.” In her well-favoured case, this could be a double-entendre.”
[ I’ll cut you a break: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/callipygian ]
• “In policy terms, Senator Obama is a $3 bill. He is an attractive and intelligent man, speaks well and has some of the cadences and inflection, though little of the justified moral outrage, (though he tries to simulate it), of Martin Luther King Jr. His program, disinterred from all the bunk about “change,” which the country doesn’t need or want, (apart from the reduction of the $800-billion current account deficit and its implications); is 1) The largest tax increase in world history; 2) A complete and instant bug-out in Iraq; 3) Dealing with terrorism by sitting down and rapping with the terrorists; 4) An unholy war on the drug, insurance, banking and oil industries.”
OTHER THAN THAT:
For his part, reading National Post columnist George Jonas’ column made me write down a Latin term (love them Latin terms) so that I can make heavy use of it when discussing everything from the state-run CBC, to most liberal politicians in general: sancta simplicitas. I can even invoke it when I’m doing my Robin impression: sancta simlicitas, Batman!
People like me—people who are in touch with planet Earth and reality and the folks, say things like that.
Of course Jonas ruins the moment: “Forget Mike Huckabee, despite Iowa. Even Americans won’t send someone to the White House who says “irregardless” without blinking. (Yes, I know they put up with George W. talking about North Korea’s nukular ambitions, but it’s not the same thing.)”
OK Mr. Perfect: (1) “Even Americans…”?! Sancta simplicitas, Batman! And what an utterly anti-American, perhaps even xenophobic ass of a thing to say. (2) I’ve written about 30 blog entries mocking the liberal media for continually dredging up that tired old canard about Bush saying “nukular” (as most people on Earth erroneously do), instead of “nuclear” (and then using it as pretty much the sole basis upon which to deem him “a moron”); and I’ve done it by pointing out about 900 examples (search “nucular”) of mistakes (search “begs the question”) that the liberal media betters (self-anointed) make daily—including no small number from National Post columnists and writers, editors be damned). Such a tired and petulant literary decision for such a superior intellect! (3) Sorry, Mr. Jonas, but “irregardless”, though most people including me hate it and protest against its use, is | a | word, and your formulation that Americans will not vote for a guy who used that word once is, well, it’s just stupid, irregardless of your superior intellect. (4) Jonas concludes by informing us that the wingnut Ron Paul would be Canada’s choice for Republican candidate. That’s a far more embarrassing intellectual gaffe than saying “irregardless” in the spur of the moment, during the hectic course of a frantic election campaign, as one of the eight gazillion words one speaks.
READER FEEDBACK:
Joel…. Your Saturday article about Conrad Black’s use of good words reminded me of something I heard Wolf Blitzer say on Tuesday night…..
When covering the N.H. primary he said that the mood at Hillary’s headquarters was “JUB-U-LANT”… [jubilant]….
It’s one of my favorites alongside irregardless and nukular……
Bruce
UPDATE Jan 14 2008:
Thanks to Randy for this (it deserves a separate blog entry so that’s coming too…)
As Randy points out, in proper English, CNN.com speaks like Yoda.:
“Maria Lauterbach killed four days she was before reported missing”.
May the Make Sense force be with you, um, in the future!
They don’t deserve our vote! “Even Canadians” would agree! Vote for FoxNews.com instead!
PTBC was founded by Mr. Johannesen in 2000.
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