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Last updated on March 5th, 2018 at 01:45 pm
Credulous Molly Ivins corrects an error:
Apology: I bit on a bad story in my Dec. 21 column [“Because He’s The President?”]. The tale of the UMass-Dartmouth student who was visited by the feds for checking out Mao’s “Little Red Book” has turned out to be a hoax. So sorry.
Via Jim Treacher, who emails: “At least she didn’t say ‘So solly.’” Australian blogger collective Larvatus Prodeo were also among the duped; no correction there, as yet. The joint’s got problems. (But, hey, third least unpopular!)
- It seems she’s “so sorry” that it turned out to be a hoax.Posted by Mr. Bingley on 2005 12 30 at 02:19 PM • permalink
- “Larvatus Prodeo”? What the hell does THAT mean? Sounds like Latin for “God’s grub”.
Ivins is only sorry because the story isn’t true. She and other sufferers from BDS are like Jack Lemmon in “The Days of Wine and Roses” – you know, that scene in the greenhouse where Jack’s alcoholic character is desperately upsetting pots and uprooting plants looking for the hidden bottle of booze. Ivins’ only genuine regret is that she hasn’t found the joy juice yet.
- Maybe the translation is more like “grubs for God”?Posted by Mr. Bingley on 2005 12 30 at 02:32 PM • permalink
- She once wrote an article in pre-Web days for TV Guide on the Ku Klux Klan that made me feel a pity for the Klansman I’d never felt before and never have since. In one of her books, she wrote of her critics something like, “I have felt the sting of their snotty scorn, the lash of their haughty sneers,” after 100 pages of scorning and sneering.Posted by chinesearithmetic on 2005 12 30 at 02:37 PM • permalink
- That anyone could fall for this obvious hoax is hilarious and illustrative of the intelligence level we’re dealing with with the likes of Ivins and Sen. Kennedy.
I mean, c’mon! It’s 2005, the enemy is Islamism, and these idiots still think the Feds are chasing Reds? Even if the government was snooping in libraries, why would they be watching Mao’s book? Outside of some loonies in Nepal no one gives a rat’s ass about Mao, least of all the Chinese Communist Party.
Couldn’t this idiot and his supporters have come up with something–oh, I don’t know–remotely relevant? Like perhaps: “All I did was check out a translation of the Koran and ask for books about suicide bombers and then these goons from DHS were at my apartment the next day.”
Being gullible idiots in one thing. Being totally f’ing clueless on who we’re fighting….well, it’s telling, isn’t it?
Posted by NewSisyphus on 2005 12 30 at 02:44 PM • permalink
- #6 And they certainly don’t like people disagreeing with them – even if one is perfectly polite.
— Nora
Posted by The Thin Man Returns on 2005 12 30 at 05:51 PM • permalink
- It will be an unusual day when the “sorry’er” gives the same prominence in their publication as they gave to the item that led to their sorriness in the first place.Posted by Russell Street on 2005 12 30 at 08:05 PM • permalink
- So when do you think she’ll notice she’s, well, wrong a lot?Posted by richard mcenroe on 2005 12 30 at 09:15 PM • permalink
- I think I must have missed this “Little Red Book” story thing when it came out, but it’s interesting to read about it. As if anyone would think looking at the Little Red Book these days would amount to anything but a boring waste of time. They chose the wrong book, methinks.Posted by Major Anya on 2005 12 30 at 09:23 PM • permalink
- Molly Ivins is a bitter, nasty old bat. Once, decades ago, she had a modicum of the wonderful West Texas self-deprecating sense of dry humor and was a good kidder. Over the years, she has shifted further and further to the Left and gotten further and further pointless, shrill, and harpy-like. She’s no longer funny or any fun.
She now writes like an unreformed boozer with a grudge, which I strongly suspect she is.
Posted by JorgXMcKie on 2005 12 30 at 10:40 PM • permalink
I mean, c’mon! It’s 2005, the enemy is Islamism, and these idiots still think the Feds are chasing Reds?
Dude, we’re talking Lefties, here. Time has stood still for them. Iraq is Vietnam. Bush is McCarthy. Hell, Baldwin’s got a McCarthy movie out now, which I’m sure is being called “daring” and “relevant” when it is patently neither.
- I posted this at J. F. Beck’s blog about those Larval Rodeo clowns and their selective deletion/editing of Beck’s comments :
“Same thing happened to me. I posted a few deliciously bitchy (and accurate) replies and corrections to some tripe they posted, and all were deleted except one – a comment where I had repeated something I said at Tim Blair’s blog. They appended a comment to that comment with a gleeful, “Gosh, thanks for posting that again! It was so funny when you posted that [here][link to the comment at Tim’s]”
“Apparently they thought it was some brilliant “gotcha!” moment. When I made an equally sarcastic (but far, far funnier) reply to the effect that it’s pretty lame to think there’s something wrong with saying the same thought twice in the vastness of the freakin’ Internet, they deleted that, too.
“So, all of my comments which showed them for the twits they are were deleted, while one comment which they edited in a pathetic attempt to make me look foolish was left in.
“That’s Grade-A chickenshit.”
- The site explains the name here:
The title of the blog is inspired by Rene Descartes:
Maritain explains: “In the juvenilia of Descartes we find the phrase Larvatus prodeo. ‘Like an actor wearing a mask, I come forward, masked, on the stage of the world.’ […] It will be for the masked philosopher to unmask the sciences and to make their continuity and their unity appear with their beauty” (The Dream of Descartes, 41, 92 n.25). The phrase also refers to the precautions Descartes took not to offend the authorities with his new philosophical systems.
The quote is sourced from a site annotating William Gaddis’ The Recognitions authored by Steven Moore.
‘prodeo’ means ‘I go forth/appear’ and ‘larva’ means ‘spirit/mask’ (so ‘larvatus’ – ‘masked’.)
- In related news, Steven Spielberg announced today that he will be following his “feel for the terrorists” epic “Munich” with a new series for HBO centering on Mao’s life as a serial pedophile. The working title is “The Red Book Diaries.”Posted by richard mcenroe on 2005 12 31 at 12:54 PM • permalink
