January 22, 2008

It's A Small, Small World

Tony Snow writes to fellow wingnut cancer patient Tim Blair:
"Keep your spirits up, your attitude aggressive and positive. We live in an age of miracles, and researchers are finding new treatments every day.

"At any rate, I'm one of many thinking of and praying for you. If you need to bounce things off a fellow cancer patient, don't be shy. But in any event, fight - and enjoy every moment!"
Sounds like a familiar attitude...

30 comments:

Bukko Boomeranger said...

One of the theories about the genesis of colon cancer is that a person's faeces (why can't you Aussies spell it the nice, stripped-down American medical way: "feces"?) become trapped in little pouches that bulge out of weakened walls in their intestines. These joeys made of poo ferment there, getting toxic, until eventually they turn some cells cancerous. Thus, Timmer and Snow are so full of their own shit that they are rotting to death. Seems appropriate...

...except for the fact that I've seen a lot of patients who are perfectly decent human beings suffering through the same thing. So there's no karmic justice in cancer.

But can you still get a slight chuckle out of Tony and Timmy having to wear a colostomy bag?

Anonymous said...

You too Bukko. If your theory was correct you would be long dead by now.

Anonymous said...

I'm with Ghandi here. Blair needs to find out what he did to make cancer mad at him and want to invade his body. Then, he needs to negotiate a peace with cancer, giving oh, say, about half his internal organs over to cancer for a promise not to invade any more of his body.

Anonymous said...

Very classy there, mocking people with cancer because they have political differences with you. Shows compassion and love for your fellow man, too.

Jaraparilla said...

I don't think all the outraged Tim Blair acolytes understand the nature of my post above very well.

Am I the only one who finds it rather extraordinary that someone in Tony Snow's position should even know who Tim Blair is? Let alone send personal condolences?

Who the fuck is Tim Blair in the greater scheme of things? What has he ever contributed to anything, aside from disseminating neocon talking points?

Those of us who perpetually bemoan the narrow, aggressive thinking of wingnuts like Blair and Snow can only WISH that a life-threatening episode might be enough to awaken their minds to more enlightened thinking.

And yet Snow still lies through his teeth without a blink of shame, and I guess we can expect nothing but more of the same from Blair, if this post is anything to go by.

A million dead Iraqis, folks. A million dead Iraqis.

Ask not for whom the bell tolls, Timothy. It tolls for thee, and thine.

Jaraparilla said...

And just to balance what Tim has posted today with some other comments I made at Lefty's blog, which have been conveniently ignored by Tim, acolytes might want to consider this:

"Saddam was a monster who killed 300,000 people (or maybe less). Tim Blair has only been a cheerleader for the death of 1,000,000 people. There's a difference, you see?

Of course, we "need not sympathise with a view to sympathise with the man". But words, like actions, have a way of following you, don't they?

What really pisses me off, however, is that I do care. I cared when Saddam was hanged like an animal. I care that some blogger I never met, who has spewed nothing but hateful bile, is facing his Maker."

And this:

"I wish online rabble rousers like Tim had not encouraged so many ignorant people to take the lives of those Iraqi people - flesh and blood like all of us - so lightly.

I wish we had done something about global warming a decade or more ago, instead of listening to deliberately ignorant nonsense from people like Tim. How many will ultimately die because of that foolishness? A million more? Ten million?

And for what? The ego-stoking allure of passing fame, and a handful of dollars.

Life is short. We should cherish every moment. But all life is sacred, not just the lives of those who look and think and talk like us.

As I said earlier, I do feel for Tim, deservedly or not. Jeremy is right - cancer sucks. I lost my father, my sister, and a close friend (among others) to cancer.

Death comes upon us violently, like a cruel hand ripping the last page from a book before we have a chance to read it. I hope Tim gets a chance to write that last page, and I hope it will be worth reading."

Anonymous said...

Your words betray you:

"Am I the only one who finds it rather extraordinary that someone in Tony Snow's position should even know who Tim Blair is?"

I believe you are, in fact, the only one -- and further, that it galls you to think your failure to acquire a readership on the scale of Blair's, or a reputation that would warrant the attention of any but the most crapulent hate-mongers eats away at you as surely as the metatastized megalomania apparent in your posts.

Jaraparilla said...

mentalfloss,

It sounds like you are calling Blair one of "the most crapulent hate-mongers". I won't argue with that!

Anonymous said...

The question of whether generative grammar is deceptively simple or simply deceptive is a vexed one, ghandi.

The key, ghandi, to parsing more complex sentences in which subordinating conjunctions introduce dependent (subordinate) clauses and join the dependent clause to the independent or main clause in a sentence is careful reading and some knowledge of grammar and syntax.

My comment contains a dependent clause which relies on the preceding independent clause for context and meaning -- and, to make things still more difficult for you, the subject is implied.

Add to this the fact that the clause is introduced by a subordinating conjunction ("or") and contains a negative polarity construct ("any but"), as in

"...your failure to acquire a readership...or a reputation that would warrant the attention of ANY BUT the most crapulent hate-mongers eats away at you..."

and I believe we have the source of your confusion.

In future I shall attempt to keep my rhetoric simple, so that there should be no misunderstanding.

Jaraparilla said...

Mentalfloss,

I am a Linguistic major, and you are a certifiable idiot. Dressing up your illiteracy in all manner of fancy grammatical B.S. does not change what you wrote. As you say, your words betray you.

Look on the bright side - maybe it was a Freudian slip, and your subconscious is screaming for help.

Those who cannot admit their mistakes, and own up to them, are doomed to repeat them.

Anonymous said...

As a Linguistic (sic) undergraduate, perhaps you should approach your studies more assiduously if you intend to continue publishing.

One of your professors might view this lattermost exchange and make an example of you -- particularly if he or she takes time to read more of your scintillating prose.

Anonymous said...

Any Linguistic (sic) major that talks about "fancy grammatical B.S" lacks credibilty.

You have not read MentalFloss's statement properly, or you have read it too fast, because the meaning you derived is not what is contained in the sentence.

Most Linguistics students and lecturers have basic respect for the grammatical system and how it forms the platform of meaning.
If you can really use the term "fancy grammatical B.S" for a clear grammatical outline of MentalFloss's comment then you should probably switch faculties.

Read the comment again, paying attention to all punctuation, and you'll see what was actually there.

Anonymous said...

Well, lacking in compassion AND stupid. Quite a package, especially for someone who styles himself "Gandhi."

Jaraparilla said...

OK, this is surely an exercise in futility, but just for the sake of good-old-fashioned GRAMMAR...

Mentalfloss's extremely poorly written original sentence was:

"I believe you are, in fact, the only one -- and further, that it galls you to think your failure to acquire a readership on the scale of Blair's, or a reputation that would warrant the attention of any but the most crapulent hate-mongers eats away at you as surely as the metatastized megalomania apparent in your posts."

Now, let's deconstruct that from a Linguistic p.o.v.

The main clause is: "I believe you are... the only one..."

A conjunction bridges this to the second main clause: "I believe ... that it galls you to think ..."

The rest is a sub-clause of what MF believes that I think. There are two parts to this:

1. " your failure to acquire a readership on the scale of Blair's... eats away at you as surely as the metatastized megalomania apparent in your posts."

2. "your failure to acquire... a reputation that would warrant the attention of any but the most crapulent hate-mongers eats away at you as surely as the metatastized megalomania apparent in your posts."

Now, leaving aside for a moment the fact that this is purely WHAT MF THINKS, without any justification in factual reality, let's have a look at that sub-clause #2 above, shall we?

This is a phrase attached to the word "reputation" and as such may be characterized, as MF says, as a dependent phrase: "that would warrant the attention of any but the most crapulent hate-mongers."

Now let us work backwards. Slowly, for the recent influx of extremely dim-witted visitors...

Q: Who paid attention to my "reputation"?

A: Tim Blair, who sought to sully it, and his odious acolytes.

So therefore I have failed (in MF's opinion anyway) to establish a reputation which warrants the attention of anyone other than...

????

Come on, kids. Don't be shy. Who can give me the right answer...?

Put your little thinking caps on, if you can still find them after all these years.

I'll give an early mark to the first person who can supply the right answer.

HERE'S A HINT: What you say is what you are. Nya nya nyah.

Jaraparilla said...

And just so everyone knows who we are dealing with here, this is from MentalFloss's single blog entry, about Gaza:

"In Biblical times, G-d gave this Holy Land as a gift, as an eternal covenant that can never, ever be broken, to the Children of Israel. This is clearly documented in the Deed of Trust to the land, which is the Bible."

M'kay????

Jaraparilla said...

And I note that even Tim Blair readers think MF is full of shit. That's pretty low IMHO.

Anonymous said...

Missed again, ghandi.

"Am I the only one who finds it rather extraordinary that someone in Tony Snow's position should even know who Tim Blair is?"

I am afraid you failed to include the essential starting point of "what MF thinks" and how he expressed it.

Start from there, laddie, and try again.

But you might find it simpler to revert to form and call him an "idiot" -- less thinking involved and it's your site anyway and "Who does he think he is? I am college student?" and...well, you get the gist.

Anonymous said...

Hahahah! Thanks for the laugh, Gandhi. The mental image of a sad little shit frothing at the mouth and spitting on his monitor as he screams the word 'WANKERS!' over and over again to nobody really cheers me up.

Hey, maybe you can create a reality where US aren't cooperating with the legitimate democratic government of Iraq and the dead Iraqis are killed predominately by Americans, rather than predominantly by the Islamist religious fanatics and sectarian militias that the US are trying to defeat? Maybe you can conjure up a reality where Iraq makes a completely peaceful transition from a dictatorship to a democracy, possibly involving flowers, and the UN, and rainbows, and magic? Or would you prefer to have Iraq remain a dictatorship for ever, out of sight and out of mind?

But that would be a little difficult for a small minded shit like you, so you'd best go back to screaming obscenities like 'WANKER' and facile soundbites like 'A million dead'.

Anonymous said...

A million dead? Prove it, arsehole.

The carelessness with which you throw around numbers demeans your argument - and your credibility.

pete m said...

G'day gandi - still the tool I see.

Mate! a million iraqi dead sounds terrible. Especially given the iraqi govt and most independent watchers have the number at about 150,000. so please let us in on the landfill site for the 850,000 missing iraqi dead that the govt, the us military, the doctors and hospitals, the morgues and the coffin makers, never found.

BTW those "surveys" by think tanks, don't count for shit compared to the official death certificates, as confirmed by morgues / hospitals and doctors processing the dead.

If you want to believe a random survey paid for by Soros using admitted haters of the US who SAY they surveyed hundreds of people but who refuse to release their data ... good luck man!

Anonymous said...

And you can fuck off with that Lancet study, for starters. That's been so widely and comprehensively discredited that even some of the most virulent opponents of the Iraq war have distanced themselves from it.

Hang on. I believe the wildly overinflated Lancet study claims about 600 000 "unnecessary deaths". So you're outbidding it by approximately 400 000!

Anonymous said...

Interesting how a linguistics major could be so illiterate. Hint: it's spelt "weird", not "wierd".

Nathan Hall said...

"Those who cannot admit their mistakes, and own up to them, are doomed to repeat them."

Reading this sentence from "Gandhi" in this thread, of all places, was the most surreal experience I've had in a long time.

Nathan Hall said...

Gandhi quotes, as if it were the ultimate evidence of foolishness, the statement:

"In Biblical times, G-d gave this Holy Land as a gift, as an eternal covenant that can never, ever be broken, to the Children of Israel. This is clearly documented in the Deed of Trust to the land, which is the Bible."

Would you by chance be mocking a religion, there, buddy? You know, that can get your blog shutdown in some leftists' dreams. (Or in some parts of Canada, but I repeat myself.)

Anonymous said...

Maybe he's a linguistics major because he can't do math.

Anonymous said...

"A million dead."

What can you conclude about a political philosophy that cannot be defended or advanced by even its most dedicated adherents without resort to lies as its main paradigms? "Bush lied!" "A million deaths!" "Joe Wilson!!" "Bush said imminent danger!"

As an exercise tomorrow, encourage ten people to vote for your party in the next election. But - and here's the rub - speak only truthful statements the entire time. (And, no, "truthful" doesn't mean "we've yelled it for a year and now all of my people believe it!") I bet you end the day with no new converts, a massive headache, and ten people who went home and told their friends about the very odd mime they met who kept grabbing them as if to speak to them, but who would then just suddenly look puzzled and make odd gurgling noises that sounded strangely like "plastic turkey!"

See, Ghand, old boy, (what WAS that old joke about taking ghandi from a Beebee?), Bush didn't lie, Joe W and Teddy K did. We've not killed a million Iraqis, nor a half-million, nor a quarter-million . . . If we did it for the oil, then we're pretty damn incompetent, 'cuz we sure didn't get the oil. The American economy is actually doing very well, but you'll seldom hear that from reporters on your side of the tracks - you know - that lying thing again . . .

Jaraparilla said...

And I'll tell you one more thing (or two, even).

If this criticism of mine is the worst piece of leftist nastiness that poor Tim can find to post, then he hasn't really got diddly squat to complain about, has he? No, it's the rightwing hatemongers who do that nasty ad hominem stuff so well.

And furthermore, I think the reason why Tim posted about my criticism is because - though he still hates to admit it - what I said cut into his conscience. There is nothing like death to wake you up to reality, and I suspect Tim knows that he has a few issues to sort out before he confronts the Grim Reaper.

If this cancer scare doesn't wake him up to all the Evil and Death that he has willingly aided and abetted - even profited from - over the past five years, what will?

amphibious said...

Why allow anonymous comments? At least test their imagination by trying to find different blog names, though the comments are so rote it's hardly necessary.

Big Dan said...

Bobby B: The American economy is doing well? That ONE sentence is so full of SHIT, that the rest of what you say just follows it!

You are on the wrong end of every single sentence you posted!

Are you actually serious? Or just "jokin' around"? If you're NOT joking, you somehow are wrong about everything you say! WOW!

Big Dan said...

Let me throw in a philosophical question: What's the difference between a "modern" country dropping bombs on civilians from "modern" jets, way up high VS. "the terrorists" blowing something up? The modern way is "civilized". Do you always draw the line between "politics" and "personal medical problems"? Philosophically speaking, what if Hitler had cancer? Shades of gray, I always say...

Pages

Blog Archive