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Last updated on March 5th, 2018 at 01:40 pm
Author Thomas Hauser—“one of the most respected boxing writers in America”, apparently—should stick to the sweet science. On politics, he’s a complete punching bag:
For many Americans, myself included, the reelection of George Bush feels like 9/11 all over again. It’s like a death in the family. Our rulers have retained power by distorting the truth and twisting reality into a grotesque fantasy …
Now we have George Bush reducing our soldiers to props by prancing around the deck of an aircraft carrier in a Top Gun outfit and carrying a plastic turkey into a mess hall in Baghdad on Thanksgiving Day.
What was that about “twisting reality”, Thomas?
- I�ve suggested that Tim & other plastic-turkey-watching bloggers assemble a coffee-table book about the immortal dinner ornament, not omitting all the funny threads on the subject. It now occurs to me that it might be best to do so before the left assembles its own version.Posted by ForNow on 2005 01 21 at 02:25 AM • permalink
- I can see how boxing could make Hauser stupid, seeing as he writes about moral paragons like Mike Tyson. I just don’t know how the others got like that.Posted by Gary from Jersey on 2005 01 21 at 05:11 AM • permalink
- “For many Americans, myself included, the reelection of George Bush feels like 9/11 all over again.”
Nope, no hysterical dementia here.
I think it would have been better this way:
“For many Americans, myself included, the reelection of George Bush feels like you know how you eat a nice steak but get a little piece stuck right between your back teeth and just stays wedged there for hours if you can’t get any floss? It feels like that all over again.”
- That other turkey is still punching too.
Hugh Mackay in the Sun-Herald las Sunday seems to have stumbleda across a report that over 100,000 Iraqis have been killed, mostly by US air strikes.
Hugh is very fond of saying “my research indicates”, a phrase I thank him for as it sounds much more authoritative than “in my opinion”.
His research, apparently, did not indicate that this figure’s dodginess has been covered at length over the last three months.
- It obviously doesn’t take a great deal of fact checking to be a boxing writer.Posted by swassociates on 2005 01 21 at 10:35 AM • permalink
- Apropos of absolutely nothing at all, ABC radio this morning announced the current number from the Iraq Body Count website (C.15,000). No lead-in or follow up to any Iraq-related story – just there, like the cricket scores or the weather. At least it means they’ve retreated from the 100, 000 nonsense.
- “Thomas Hauser can be reached by email at thauser@rcn.com.”
- Hey did anyone notice that this morning, the ABC website had the headline:
Bush takes oath, pledges to spread “freedom”
Now it’s
Bush takes oath, pledges to spread freedom
with no scare quotes.
SBS, however, has kept the scare quotes.
Don’t you love when they editoralise in the headlines?
Posted by Quentin George on 2005 01 21 at 06:27 PM • permalink
- He should write for New Idea I reckon, with silly statements like that.
“Why the re-election of George Bush made me feel as devastated as I felt on 9/11 – a heartbreaking interview with America’s favourite boxing writer.”
Posted by Major Anya on 2005 01 21 at 07:31 PM • permalink
- Well, it�s semiotic. The plastic turkey is a profound, yet shallow, symbol of the left�s deepest hopes & aspirations�yet also the left�s hidden fears, indeed its night terrors. Also the left�s most fantastic cravings & its most overmastering nauseas. Plus the left�s most white-knuckled attachments, but also its most explosive rages. And of course the left�s most delirious delights &, simultaneously, its most prostrate griefs. I hope that explains it.
- Nobody really cares about the plastic turkey, per se.
But, polyvinyl lookalike bird stories having been compehensively debunked, over and over, all around the world, it is instructive to note the more learned and erudite of commentariat who continue to distribute this sneering lefty lie as if it was the the gospel truth.
i.e. “plastic turkey” quote = dickhead writer/ commenter, no fact checks or research.
I vote to keep laughing and pointing every time one of the turkey quotes is spotted.
Gloating is good.
Posted by Pedro the Ignorant on 2005 01 21 at 09:33 PM • permalink
- This plastic turkey thing makes no sense. I would think it would be considerably more effort to get a plastic one than just to cook a real one alongside hundreds of others. Or are the socialists saying that all the turkeys served to the sailors that day were plastic?
Still, some myths are indestructible.
- Tim … please desist because I think you might be helping the perpetuation of the myth. A Google search a few minutes ago of “plastic turkey” brought up 6930 hits, whereas “edible turkey” brought up 1770 hits. But “bush turkey” brought up 4950 hits! I think there is a story in there somewhere for some loonys out there … keep up the turkey vigilance … gobble, gobble, gobble …
Stevo
- I am dedicating 24 hours to buying guns and ammo, locks for all my doors and windows, and billboard advertisements demanding that everyone attend church.
I am continuing my boycott of snail and french ticklers…
Posted by Mystery Meat on 2005 01 22 at 03:24 AM • permalink
- I think the plastic turkey stories show a basic failure on the part of some commenters to allow facts, even over something this trivial, to interfere with their rants.
Seriously, if you can’t admit it was a real turkey, what are the odds the rest of your observations hold water?
Posted by John Nowak on 2005 01 22 at 03:30 AM • permalink
- “Seriously, if you can’t admit it was a real turkey, what are the odds the rest of your observations hold water? “
Yeah, I could understand, if it were a serious accusation that would damage Bush, why they would make it. The fact that the accusation is not only false but would be utterly trivial even if true is why I think the plastic turkey fantasy is symptomatic of a deeper psychological despair at the success of people like Bush.
- These occasional plastic turkey press gobbles are very likely the tip not only of an iceberg of leftist despair but also of an iceberg of unpublished leftist conversation.
The left is obsessed with image. The plastic turkey myth is meant to hurt his image, make him seem a callow preposterous fake, & to poison any good feeling which might come of consideration of his going to Baghdad & cheering the troops up. It also distracts from other things of that time�his then-recent & widely well-received Three Pillars speech in London, & the Iraqi anti-terrorism demonstrations which followed the day after his visit & again a week later. The plastic turkey myth is meant to taint the feeling of the whole war effort. The plastic turkey myth is used as a case in point to accuse the Bush Administration of press manipulation & smoke & mirrors, which �will be taught in journalism schools for years,� as one Guardian writer crowed. What it really is, is a lesson in leftist psychological projection. These image manipulators know what they�re doing up until they�re taken in by their own rhetoric, lost in their own smoke & mirrors, which happens often & early.
- Who is teaching in these “journalism schools”? Can we get beyond the seeming concurrence of journalistic ethos and leftist fantasy?
Could the Arts, media & Entertainment Alliance be supplanted by some more “professional” body which encourages a proper and responsible approach to the duties of writing for a major outlet?
