Hornswaggler | The culture, the humor, a bit of the sports, not so much the politics, and the workplace distraction

Hornswaggle is an alternate spelling of hornswoggle, an archaic word that means to bamboozle or hoodwink. I take my pronunciation from the late Harvey Korman in "Blazing Saddles" --

"I want rustlers, cutthroats, murderers, bounty hunters, desperados, mugs, pugs, thugs, nitwits, halfwits, dimwits, vipers, snipers, conmen, Indian agents, Mexican bandits, muggers, buggerers, bushwhackers, hornswagglers, horse thieves, bull dykes, train robbers, bank robbers, ass kickers, shit kickers and Methodists!"

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Friday, April 16, 2004

Vietnam, Krugman and Morphic Resonance

Toot, toot! That's me, blowing my own horn. Later, I'll perform oral sex on myself. No, no. I kid.

But if you read Paul Krugman's column today in The New York Times, you may have noticed that, in a piece devoted to the Iraq-Vietnam comparison, he made two points that I made yesterday on this very blog. See? I'm plugged in, baby. Get tomorrow's Krugman today right here.

Krugman wrote: "It's a measure of how badly things have gone that now we're told we can't leave because that would be a demonstration of American weakness.

Again, the parallel with Vietnam is obvious. Remember the domino theory?"

I do. I referenced it yesterday, but in a slightly different sense. Namely, the fear back then was that once one country fell to communism, other countries would follow.

The president and all his cronies are making an argument today that amounts to a kind of reverse or "good" domino theory: Once Iraq is democratic, it will spark a democratic movement in the Middle East.

The basis for Bush's theory is "hope," his religious faith, and the message he deciphered with the magic decoder ring he found in his Fruity Pebbles.

Krugman uses it in the sense that, according to proponents of the theory, failure in Vietnam would have been a show of American military weakness and led to failure elsewhere against communist expansion. I'm not sure which definition is right. Perhaps both are. I suppose I could google it. Bah, no time.

Krugman also wrote, in the column's final sentence: "On Tuesday George Bush did a meta-Nixon: he declared that anyone who draws analogies between Iraq and Vietnam undermines the soldiers and encourages the enemy."

I too noticed Bush's pat admonition to all the naughties simpering in press row, fidgeting with their blasted press badges, and their pens and pathetic little notepads, their quaint tape recorders and blinking cameras, and their 4.0 GPA's.

Krugger, you and me, baby.

The Apprentice Finale

The live segment of "The "Apprentice" finale last night was lame, utter cheese. Whoever produced it ought to find him- or herself on the business end of a to-me-to-you-and-down jabbing hand gesture and the words, "you're fired."

Omarosa. Caught in more bald-faced lies, she also put on a vivid display of her incompetence. I want to write an article about the organization that is going to hire her, because someone will, and ask their spokespeople what the hell they were thinking. A mendacious, malingering, incompetent bitch. Let's bring her onboard.

And don't any of you writers out there steal my idea. In the immortal words of Daniel Day Lewis, "I will find you!"

Dilettante Psychology

When assessing the pathology of Omarosa, I cannot escape the conclusion that her flawed thinking and her basest behavior are tied up with her racial identity. She said on more than one occasion that people were afraid of a "strong black woman," this being her way of rationalizing the effects her antagonizing behavior have on other people, the ripples and splashes she makes while stomping through the experiential pool.

And she accused fellow aspirant Ereka of employing the Big N against her in an argument, something that seems highly improbable for any number of reasons, not the least of which being Omarosa's established pattern of mendacity and the fact that the innumerable cameras on the set would have caught the utterance had it occurred.

Omarosa has un major chip on her shoulder, in other words. But even without the lying and condescension, borne out of that racial chip, she's still be insufferable.

She is truly a hideous creature. A sharp, jagged exterior and within a nebulous whirl, absorbing and reconstituting reality in the service of an ego that -- beneath a WASP-y and exaggeratedly genteel, haughty veneer -- desperately fears being proven wrong and, by extension, worthless, of being obliterated.

.: posted by hornswaggler 12:11 PM


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