"I seek only to gauge what level of discourse is still acceptable in this country by asking, in the hope that I might someday participate in that discourse, whether I am free to posit that it would p

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hahaha


that's my favorite sentence of the week


from the new issue of Harper's Magazine


and written by Ben Metcalf


the same issue has a piece by art spiegelman on outrageous cartoons


where he rates the Danish anti-Muslim cartoons with a fatwa bomb


meter (4 bombs being worth a fatwa)

scott seward (scott seward), Tuesday, 16 May 2006 23:30 (nineteen years ago)

http://www.victoriana.com/Mens-Clothing/images/shirt-1857-2.jpg

I SAY...

Jimmy Mod is a super idol of The MARS SPIRIT (The Famous Jimmy Mod), Tuesday, 16 May 2006 23:43 (nineteen years ago)

oh yeah, that's why I let my subscription to Harper's expire......

timmy tannin (pompous), Wednesday, 17 May 2006 01:34 (nineteen years ago)

i think i might renew mine.

GOD PUNCH TO HAWKWIND (yournullfame), Wednesday, 17 May 2006 01:50 (nineteen years ago)

i don't know the full context of that quote, but i just don't find murder/political assasination to be humorous, doesn't matter the level of incompetence of the pol in question. i think that rhetoric can easily get out of hand once it starts.

timmy tannin (pompous), Wednesday, 17 May 2006 02:08 (nineteen years ago)

I love this part too:


"As long as I (that is, the corporeal, arrestable "I") wish no real damage upon the president, I (the other "I") should theoretically be free even to enhance the scenario at hand for the enjoyment of my public. In place of the initial question I might ask instead, "Am I allowed to write that I would like to kidnap George W. Bush and fly him to a prison in some far-away land where his 'rights' are no longer an issue, there to put a bag over his head and make him stand for hours on one leg while I defecate on his New Testament before chaining his arms to the ceiling until he dies of a heart attack, after which I will claim that he never existed?" Here, though, taste, if not simple human decency, again rears its delicate head: I doubt that I could bring myself to read such a thing, let alone write it."

scott seward (scott seward), Wednesday, 17 May 2006 02:11 (nineteen years ago)

hahahaha!

scott seward (scott seward), Wednesday, 17 May 2006 02:12 (nineteen years ago)

the whole point of his piece (sorta) is to wonder if he can say in print that he would like to slaughter the president with his bare hands. without getting arrested. he decides that he probably can't.

scott seward (scott seward), Wednesday, 17 May 2006 02:14 (nineteen years ago)

Oh, now I get it. Thanks for clearing that up.

Abbadavid Berman (Hurting), Wednesday, 17 May 2006 02:16 (nineteen years ago)

i was gonna say, even posting this probably instigated an investigation

timmy tannin (pompous), Wednesday, 17 May 2006 02:17 (nineteen years ago)

ECHELON IS TAKING YOUR NAMES. YOU WILL BE ASSIMILATED. RESISTANCE IS FUTILE.

Deric W. Haircare (Deric W. Haircare), Wednesday, 17 May 2006 02:38 (nineteen years ago)

the whole thing is pretty funny. in a swiftian way. i am quoting out of context. read it at your local library.

scott seward (scott seward), Wednesday, 17 May 2006 02:39 (nineteen years ago)

now every dude in america named ben metcalf is going to have a hell of a time getting a flight.

GOD PUNCH TO HAWKWIND (yournullfame), Wednesday, 17 May 2006 05:58 (nineteen years ago)

also, anyone who can't sympathize at least a little bit with metcalf's half-serious sentiments probably isn't paying attention.

GOD PUNCH TO HAWKWIND (yournullfame), Wednesday, 17 May 2006 05:59 (nineteen years ago)

i'll never get why people think it's ok to even joke about this. i mean fking CHENEY would be president, ppl! THAT IS NOT FUNNY!

J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Wednesday, 17 May 2006 06:32 (nineteen years ago)

hey did anyone ever collect the reward?

http://iml.jou.ufl.edu/projects/Fall05/csmith/poster.jpg

J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Wednesday, 17 May 2006 06:39 (nineteen years ago)

cheney's president already. or the daemonic entities from the frozen hell-realms that use his shambling, decaying carcass as a ventriloquist dummy are president already, i should say.

GOD PUNCH TO HAWKWIND (yournullfame), Wednesday, 17 May 2006 06:41 (nineteen years ago)

i'll never get why people think it's ok to even joke about this. i mean fking CHENEY would be president, ppl! THAT IS NOT FUNNY!
-- J.D. (aubade8...), May 17th, 2006.

haha!

it's a good piece.

the confusing situation Enrique currently endures (Enrique), Wednesday, 17 May 2006 07:22 (nineteen years ago)

I think writers like Metcalf are nostalgic for the days when there were lots of topics that you couldn't write about - back before the landmark decency trials of Naked Lunch and Ulysses, for instance - when you could earn credibility as a literary outlaw just by writing about sex or other verboten topics. Nowadays there are so few things that you can't say in print that you have to go out of your way to find the few areas that are still somewhat regulated. However, when I read this I find myself wondering if political discourse is impoverished in any real way by not being able to call for the death of the president - isn't it enough to ask for him to be impeached? Unless the point is just to have a little fun in blurring the line between hypothetical questions and real ones.

o. nate (onate), Wednesday, 17 May 2006 08:38 (nineteen years ago)

However, when I read this I find myself wondering if political discourse is impoverished in any real way by not being able to call for the death of the president - isn't it enough to ask for him to be impeached?

i'm sure people wondered whether literature was impoverished in any way by not being able to write graphically about drugs and sex innit.

the confusing situation Enrique currently endures (Enrique), Wednesday, 17 May 2006 08:41 (nineteen years ago)

sorry, but when did the presidency become sacrosanct, exactly? would this article have been going too far back when bush was

a) a college student,
b) an alcoholic failure,
c) head of several failed oil companies,
d) general manager of a baseball team,
e) governor of texas?

and should we not be upset that some of the things discussed in this article are being actually done to real fucking people in our name, with our money by bush's government? hi?

GOD PUNCH TO HAWKWIND (yournullfame), Wednesday, 17 May 2006 09:52 (nineteen years ago)

yeah, i ask for the killing of college students all the time
and all alkies clearly deserve to be strangled to death, ya got me there!

i think people talk about bush's real crimes all the time, esp. here.

timmy tannin (pompous), Wednesday, 17 May 2006 13:26 (nineteen years ago)

i don't think that becoming a slightly more literary AnnCoulter is the answer

timmy tannin (pompous), Wednesday, 17 May 2006 13:29 (nineteen years ago)

http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/About/General/2000/12/11/election8.jpg

there's an old poster out West… I recall, that said, "I seek only to gauge what level of discourse is still acceptable in this country by asking, in the hope that I might someday participate in that discourse, whether I am free to posit that it would probably be great fun, and a boon to all mankind, if I were to slaughter the president of the United States with my bare hands."

jhoshea (scoopsnoodle), Wednesday, 17 May 2006 13:48 (nineteen years ago)

i think people talk about bush's real crimes all the time, esp. here.

emphasis added.

the confusing situation Enrique currently endures (Enrique), Wednesday, 17 May 2006 13:54 (nineteen years ago)

this is really interesting:

http://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/warren-commission-report/appendix7.html

it has only been a crime to threaten the president since 1917. how many people knew that Teddy Roosevelt was once shot by an assassin???

scott seward (scott seward), Wednesday, 17 May 2006 14:52 (nineteen years ago)

FDR had a close call too:


"The attempt on the life of President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933 further demonstrated the broad scope and complexity of the protection problems facing the Secret Service. Giuseppe Zangara was a bricklayer and stonemason with a professed hatred of capitalists and Presidents. He seemed to be obsessed with the desire to kill a President. After his arrest he confessed that he had first planned to go to Washington to kill President Herbert Hoover, but as the cold climate of the North was bad for his stomach trouble, he was loath to leave Miami, where he was staying. When he read in the paper that President-elect Roosevelt would be in Miami, he resolved to kill him."

"On the night of February 15, 1933, at, a political rally in Miami's Bayfront Park, the President-elect sat on the top of the rear seat of his automobile with a small microphone in his hand as he made a short informal talk. Fortunately for him, however, he slid down into the seat just before Zangara could get near enough to take aim. The assassin's arm may have been jogged just as he shot; the five rounds he directed at Roosevelt went awry. However, he mortally wounded Mayor Anton Cermak, of Chicago, and hit four other persons; the President-elect, by a miracle, escaped. Zangara, of course, never had any chance of escaping."

scott seward (scott seward), Wednesday, 17 May 2006 14:55 (nineteen years ago)

Early on the morning of April 26, 1865, the soldiers caught up to them on Garrett's property. They had hidden themselves in his tobacco barn. A frightened David Herold surrendered, but Booth adamantly refused. Everton Conger, the man in charge of the pursuers, ordered the barn set afire. The soldiers waited outside the burning barn. However, the assassin would not survive the incident, for Sergeant Boston Corbett fired at Booth against orders. ''"..He was taking aim with the carbine, but at whom I could not say. My mind was upon him attentively to see that he did no harm; and, when I became impressed that it was time, I shot him" Booth was fatally struck in the neck and dropped to the ground. Soldiers rushed in and lifted Booth to under a locust tree just outside the barn door. Conger offered Booth some water and attempted to hear Booth's whispered words of "Tell mother, I die for my country". Later they carried him to Richard Garrett's porch where he died, reportedly staring at his hands and muttering, "Useless! Useless!" The autopsy on Booth's body revealed that Corbett's shot had struck Booth's spinal cord behind the sterno-cleido muscle, passing through the fourth and fifth cervical vertebrae-severing the spinal cord.

Corbett was then himself arrested for disobeying a direct order. However, Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton quickly dismissed the charges, saying: "The rebel is dead. The patriot lives." Boston Corbett received $1,653.85, his share of the reward.

i am not a nugget (stevie), Wednesday, 17 May 2006 14:59 (nineteen years ago)

Part of the point of the article is that much of it's sentiments can (and in fact are intended to be) taken out of context. It's sure a helluva lot less stuffy than Lapham's "Kids these days" grousing; haters should read the whole article first.

Forksclovetofu (Forksclovetofu), Wednesday, 17 May 2006 18:23 (nineteen years ago)

On 30 January 1835, President Andrew Jackson went to the Capitol to attend the funeral of Congressman Warren Davis of Mississippi. When the President walked along the Capitol's east portico after the service, he was approached by an unemployed house painter named Richard Lawrence. When Lawrence was within eight feet of the President, he drew a pistol and attempted to shoot Jackson. The pistol misfired. Lawrence then drew a second pistol, which also misfired. The ever-feisty Jackson raised his walking stick and went after his assailant, who was arrested and later declared insane. The first assassination attempt of an American president had failed.

Some one hundred years later the Smithsonian Institute acquired the derringers and tested the weapons in an attempt to find the cause of the miss-firings. Both guns discharged on the first try. The odds of both derringers miss-firing in 1835 were calculated at one in 125,000.

J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Wednesday, 17 May 2006 22:18 (nineteen years ago)

i'll never get why people think it's ok to even joke about this. i mean fking CHENEY would be president, ppl! THAT IS NOT FUNNY!

I hate this idea that we'd rather Bush than Cheney as President. Let them put their worst face on, someone people wouldn't want to have a beer with in a million years.

gabbneb (gabbneb), Wednesday, 17 May 2006 22:21 (nineteen years ago)

You think your freedoms are being abridged now. It would be motherfucking martial law if Bush were assassinnated.

Pleasant Plains /// (Pleasant Plains ///), Wednesday, 17 May 2006 22:37 (nineteen years ago)

the idea of bush being turned into a jfk-style "martyr" for the republicans is pretty grim. he'd probably end up on the $5 bill or something.

J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Wednesday, 17 May 2006 22:50 (nineteen years ago)

God help me if I ever have to send my kid to George Walker Bush Elementary.

(Though I'm sure that reading time would always be exciting.)

Pleasant Plains /// (Pleasant Plains ///), Wednesday, 17 May 2006 22:55 (nineteen years ago)

And holy shit, how I hate you, Google.

Pleasant Plains /// (Pleasant Plains ///), Wednesday, 17 May 2006 22:57 (nineteen years ago)

God help me if I ever have to send my kid to George Walker Bush Elementary.

Or here for that matter...

http://static.flickr.com/22/33346263_f8b6d0f736.jpg?v=0

LOL Thomas (Chris Barrus), Wednesday, 17 May 2006 23:08 (nineteen years ago)

[I know this is against the grain of how the thread is going, but what the fuck? it's relevant. kind of.]

I haven't read the article, but I'm interested in the teleology involved in classifying certain types of speech dangerous or harmful. It kind of reminded me of something else...

[cut/paste from an old paper of mine]

In the review of [Catherine MacKinnon's] Only Words published in the Nation magazine, Carlin Romano begins:
“Suppose I decide to rape Catherine MacKinnon before reviewing her book. Because I’m uncertain whether she understands the difference between being raped and being exposed to pornography, I consider it required research for my critique of her manifesto that pornography equals rape and should be banned. I plot and I strategize, but at the last minute, I chicken out. People simply wouldn’t understand. Nonetheless, when I sit down to write I still believe that understanding her support for pornography censorship requires raping her, so I do the next best thing: I imagine the act.”

MacKinnon responded that Romano, the reviewer, did indeed rape her in writing and publishing that review.

elmo argonaut (allocryptic), Wednesday, 17 May 2006 23:10 (nineteen years ago)

http://www.e-litterature.net/~publier/spip/IMG/jpg/image003-3.jpg

Tracey Hand (tracerhand), Wednesday, 17 May 2006 23:16 (nineteen years ago)

Obviously joking about killing a man responsible for thousands of non-fiction deaths is in poor taste.

Action Tim Vision (noodle vague), Wednesday, 17 May 2006 23:16 (nineteen years ago)

DING DING DING

GOD PUNCH TO HAWKWIND (yournullfame), Thursday, 18 May 2006 01:23 (nineteen years ago)

er, hard to name a president from last 100 years (probably ever) that didn't have lots of blood on his hand. If this is a race to see who had the most kills - Up against the wall, Harry!

timmy tannin (pompous), Thursday, 18 May 2006 01:23 (nineteen years ago)

it's settled then: calvin coolidge best pres ever!

J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Thursday, 18 May 2006 01:27 (nineteen years ago)

Dude, who do you think poisoned Harding in the first place?

Pleasant Plains /// (Pleasant Plains ///), Thursday, 18 May 2006 01:37 (nineteen years ago)


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