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Last updated on March 6th, 2018 at 12:29 am
* “THE ONLY TERRORIST I KNOW IS NAMED BU$H.”—a Canadian protester who’s never heard of Osama bin Laden
* “It turns out that the film’s real targets are Hollywood actors who have been rash enough to speak out against the Bush administration and the invasion of Iraq. Sean Penn, Timothy Robbins, Susan Sarandon, Matt Damon, Samuel L. Jackson and Alec Baldwin are mercilessly pilloried and (literally) demolished. Whatever you think of their politics, these actors, Penn and Robbins especially, have impressed over the years with their talent and their willingness to take risks … and they don’t deserve the bile that Parker and Stone pour over them.”—film reviewer David Stratton defends Team America’s stupid victims
* “Porsche owners were more likely to be Republican; Volvo owners, Democratic.”—from a New York Times analysis of campaign data
* “Even in Los Angeles, even in Malibu, even in Hollywood. Tremble, Barbra, tremble. We are right outside your gates, with our truth. We are not afraid and we shall overcome.”—Ben Stein alerts California to the Republican Underground
* “To criticise a person for their race is manifestly irrational and ridiculous but to criticise their religion, that is a right. That is a freedom.”—actor Rowan Atkinson on the UK’s proposed don’t-mock-Islam law
* “I think my cartoons are very funny.”—The Guardian’s Steve Bell has a unique opinion
* “I just had one of my best days as a journalist today.”—Edward Lee Pitts of the Chattanooga Times Free Press, whose “best day” involved setting up a soldier with a question for Donald Rumsfeld
* “Herbert M. Hazelkorn, of Glencoe, Illinois, left us on December 7, 2004, of a broken heart at the recent passing of his wife of 35 years, Bobby, exacerbated by a broken spirit arising from the results of the Presidential election.”—obituary in the Chicago Sun-Times
* “Yesterday I came to your country. Today, I met the President.”—Iraq the Model’s Omar goes to Washington
* “We have to recognise that others have some rights as well. They don’t lose all rights because they’re engaged in criminal conduct.”—British attorney-general Lord Goldsmith makes evident his priorities
* “The mouth machine registers experiences and then articulates them—utters them. In eating we may munch into whole chains of previously established connotations, just as we may disrupt them. For instance, an email arrives, leaving traces of its rhizomatic passage zapping from one part of the world to another, and then to me.”—Professor Elspeth Probyn demonstrates the writing skills that have earned her $266,500 in government grants
* “The winds are not going the right way … they’re pushing sort of westerly instead of the normal easterly trade winds that we would normally get.”—the Australian Institute of Marine Science’s Dr. Ray Berkelmans warns of global warming. Not exactly ‘The Day After Tomorrow’, is it?
* “Look, guys, you got the benefit of the doubt with the ‘butterfly ballots’ in 2000, but we can’t dumb it down for you much more than this.”—Free Will’s Aaron after a Minnesota Democrat mistakenly awarded an electoral vote to John Edwards instead of John Kerry
* “They can take every penny. They can take every peaceful night’s sleep. They can take every home comfort. They will never stop me campaigning against their vile destruction of Tasmania’s forests and its wildlife. Not ever. They misjudge we defenders of the forests.”—Greens leader Bob Brown doesn’t like it when business fights back
* “It is not permissible to stand and urinate as this is now the culture of the Kuffaar.”—the Imam orders his followers to sit down for Islam
* “Redeem yourself or forever be consigned to history’s judgment of political turncoats, renegades and saboteurs.”—Ralph Nader hands out some tough love to ex-supporter Michael Moore
* “For the left-leaning political intelligentsia, 2004 was a peculiarly dispiriting year.”—academic Robert Manne explains why the rest of us are so happy
Click here for 2003’s Quotes of the Year.
If it’s bloody alliteration you’re looking for, i’ve got it month by month.
Shit! Has this not been a wild year, eh?
Posted by Willmott Fribbish on 12/23 at 03:09 AM • permalink
You know what’s really funny about that Probyn woman’s gibberish? It’s not even correctly spelt gibberish. The adjective derived from rhizome (an underground plant stem) is not rhizomatic, but rhizomatous.
Posted by David Gillies on 12/23 at 04:07 AM • permalink
“THE ONLY TERRORIST I KNOW IS NAMED BU$H.”—a Canadian protester who’s never heard of Osama bin Laden
She’s obviously a mute streetwalker who is communicating her knowledge of a terrorist named “Bu$h” in the only way she knows how. “Bu$h” is almost certainly an Islamic terrorist who has assumed a Western aliad while conducting jihad operations in the Land of Darkness. Unfortunately for “Bu$h”, he thinks the Roman alphabet encompasses letters and currency symbols. My guess is that his pathetic alias was spotted by this young heroine after “Bu$h” tried to slip her a check for her services (a check!) and now she is merely doing her patriotic duty while lacking the capacity to speak. A pretty amazing and inspiring story if you ask me. Yet, if I interpret your pithy remark correctly, you snarkily castigate this fine young woman by implying that she sees no difference between U.S. President Bush and Osama bin Laden. Not very sporting, chief. You should be ashamed.
Beautiful, bootiful stuff. Did you start saving these gems at the start of the year, or did you actually do some meticulous rummaging around to dig them back up?
On the topic of year-end fun and frolic, I’ve got a request for those of you who might give a damn: Having realized we’re nearly halfway through a decade that still hasn’t been assigned a proper name, I’m on a quest to pin down the definitive name for the ‘00s.
What would the 1960s be without the shorthand “the Sixties” to call upon, to help summon an immediate mental image? (Or “the Eighties,” “the Fifties,” ad nauseam.) The fact that this decade has weird numerals like ‘01 and ‘04 makes it a little trickier to settle on a common pronunciation. So as it stands, we live in an age that remains nameless. And if we go on like this, the ‘00s are gonna roll on by all shapeless and undefined.
Not good!
To that end, I’ve set up a poll to help name the decade. You can cast your vote (or complain about what might appear to be a shameless blog plug) by going here: Right And Wrong.
Merry Kwanzaa.
Posted by Semolina Pilchard on 12/24 at 08:29 AM • permalink
“If we go on like this, the ‘00s are gonna roll on by all shapeless and undefined”
Yep, and so will the ‘teens. Just like 1900-1919. Think about it – every decade from 1920-2000 has a quick mental image. Roaring ‘20s. Depression. WWII. Fabulous Fifties. The Sixties. Disco. Yuppies. Grunge. But 1900-1910 and 1911-1919? Nothing (WWI seems remembered in isolation from its time, if at all). I’m convinced that’s why there’s absolutely no cultural memory of the horrific 1919 flu epidemic (which killed the present-day equivalent of 1,000,000 Americans in months, mostly young adults.)
It was John Ewards, not John Edwards, who was the Minnesota write-in. John Ewards is believed to be the formerly unknown running mate of John L. Kerry, the other unknown who swept New York.