Quotes of 2005 – august

Last updated on August 9th, 2017 at 07:06 am

* “George the Smaller told an audience at the West Point and Virginia Military Institute …”—The Age’s Terry Lane combines two distinct military facilities into a massive super academy

* “All these sentimental memories were lifted from the web and plonked into Phil’s column.”—Media Watch’s Liz Jackson wrongly accuses Phil Gould of plagiarism. She apologised, sneeringly, the following week

* “My religion doesn’t tolerate other religion.”—Melbourne Islamic teacher Abdul Nacer Benbrika, resident in Australia for 16 years

* ”To call the great professional men and women who serve in our armed forces ‘kids’ is a semantical tactic employed by my Poseur Leftist friends.”—radio presenter Phil Hendrie

* ”Ward Reilly, of Baton Rouge, La., is a Vietnam combat veteran.”—the Baltimore Chronicle. Peacenik Reilly actually served in Germany during the Vietnam war

* ”For the most part they are the height of egotism, nearly always banal and often a psychological cry for help.”—the Daily Telegraph’s Anita Quigley dismisses blogs

* “His humanitarianism will remain inhumane as long as he fails to understand that the moral authority of parents who bury children killed in Iraq is absolute.”—Maureen Dowd on George W. Bush

* “’Writing Culture’ is an invitation to discuss the almost total neglect of writing in academia, in general, and in the social sciences in particular. Rather than confront the notion that style and mood are as determinant as logic, or that anthropologists and cultural studies have a special responsibility to work a style congruent with their subject matter, the prevailing practice assumes that writing will look after itself, and is of no great interest or consequence, presumably because there is an implicit assumption as to the existence of just one, standard, style of distanced, neutral, objectivist, representation, best thought of as invisible or transparent thereby radically truncating the possibilities for invention.”—description of a Melbourne University seminar on improving academic writing

* “We’re not letting them intimidate us. If we get killed out here, know that the Secret Service killed us.”—Mother Sheehan predicts death in the ditch

* “I wanted to go to their events, on the theory that girls who attend communist youth conferences will do anything, like girls with tattoos.”—Harry Hutton drops in on the International Festival of Youth and Students in Caracas

* “The neocon media in America, led by the loathsome Fox News, have rounded on Sheehan, selectively misquoting her out of context and portraying her as a liar.”—the Sydney Morning Herald’s Mike Carlton. How does one “selectively misquote”?

* “It’s like a religion: the contradictions are obvious to outsiders but don’t disturb the faithful. You believe when you’re in its warm embrace. Alas, I’m out. Last week, after 44 years of regular church-going, the bell tolled, the book was closed and the candle was extinguished.”—the Guardian’s Nick Cohen leaves the left

* “If he would come out right now, it would really defuse the momentum.”—Mother Sheehan explains that she doesn’t really want to meet George W. Bush after all

* ”Back Pages was no longer a mild diversion. It was a runaway underground train. The speed was exhilarating. But I had to jump off, or quit my day job. Last November, on the anniversary of my year of blogging dangerously, I shut the place down, with two million hits to show for my effort.”—academic Chris Sheil rejoices in his massive popularity and influence

* “Holding tightly to his treasure, he buried himself under the warm towels …”—saucy Sheil during a bizarre comments exchange with blogger Gianna

* “I am a Jews and I will detonate the bombs I am carrying.”—an unidentified attacker in the Regent’s Park mosque, as quoted by Arab daily Asharq Al-awsat. The incident, oddly, wasn’t reported by any British media

* “I bet a colleague $100 bucks today that Howard would retire by December 31.”—Margo Kingston, who herself retired by December 31

* ”After spending a just few hours in Camp Casey I feel immensely moved by this spontaneous and prophetic movement of truth.”—former human shield Donna Mulhearn, now shielding Mother Sheehan from pesky ditch mites

* ”Mangled is one word for his prose.”—Margo Kingston, of all people, on senator Barnaby Joyce

* “If he’s telling the truth, then the entire history of the last five years needs to be rewritten.”—John Podhoretz on Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer’s claim that Able Danger had identified Mohammed Atta prior to the 9/11 attacks

* “Asalam Alaykum.”—a smiling Abdullah Al-Subaie to the BBC’s Frank Gardner, just prior to shooting him

* “I’ve got these guys up here beating and banging on drums and guitars and making noise all hours of the night. There’s nothing I can do.”—Vernon Harrison, whose property was in range of Camp Cindy. Said Mother Sheehan: “We are trying to be really good neighbors”

* ”My son joined the army to protect America, not Israel.”—Mother Sheehan

* ”If a 21-year-old wants to drop to the Oval Office shagpile and chow down on Bill Clinton, she’s a grown woman and free to do what she wants. But, if a 22- or 25- or 37-year old is serving his country overseas, he’s a wee ‘child’ who isn’t really old enough to know what he’s doing.”—Mark Steyn

* ”Senator Barnaby Joyce will get so many emails from pissed off Ozzies and irate contact in other forms he’ll either change his mind or collapse as a centred human being.”—Margo Kingston maintains her centredness

* ”What does Adelaide born David Hicks have in common with Ernest Hemmingway and Arthur Koestler? Well, the short answer to that is, more than you might imagine, for each of the three was (is in the case of Hicks) an adventurous spirit with the soul of a poet.”—love for Dave from the Adelaide Institute, a Holocaust-denial wank-tank

* “MoveOn told people to bring pictures of children even if they aren’t in the military, and organizers handed out stickers saying ‘mom’ and ‘uncle’ and so forth, even if the ‘son’ or ‘nephew’ wasn’t in Iraq.”—the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank exposes MoveOn’s lies

* “I didn’t know patron was a male word.”—Margo Kingston launches her new site, where confusion immediately erupts over her choice of slogan: “Patron Power”

* “An article by Hugh Mackay spectacularly generated around 40 comments.”—the editors of online leftist junkrag New Matilda delight at their success. That gigantic comment harvest was generated by only 12 people, three of whom supplied more than half the total

* “We could check the bank accounts of known terrorist financiers and confiscate their funds. This is the real way to defeat terrorism.”— Damien Haining forgets that poverty causes terrorism

* “For two years a student newspaper publishes the sad letters of a little girl to her dad in Iraq. She begs him not to die. He does. They also publish her anti-war letters to President Bush. It was all a hoax. No daddy in Iraq, nothing. The reporters checked nothing for two years.”—Florida Cracker

* “More and more Whites are starting to understand the danger of Jewish power, and Cindy Sheehan’s mission against the Zionist’s war in the Middle East is one of many open doors to an increase of that understanding.”—US Nazi group National Vanguard jump on the Mother Sheehan bandwagon

* “The planes were flown by remote control.”—a Camp Cindy girl explains how the government pulled off its 9/11 attacks

* ”I think if we had a three-word message right now it’d be, ‘We can do better.’”—Howard Dean