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!"
I've written a second letter to the editor in response to Stephen Schwartz's hate-filled attack on Hunter S. Thompson:
"Conservatives pride themselves on being civil and eschewing personal attacks. But in publishing a bitter diatribe in place of an obituary for Hunter S. Thompson, The Weekly Standard has violated one of the fundamental rituals of civilized society: Respect for the dead and the grieving. I suspect Hitler himself received kinder obituaries than the one accorded Thompson by Stephen Schwartz, who evidently felt a violent compulsion to micturate on the deceased writer's grave.
This transgression of civilized norms led me to ask: What could prompt such blind, spittle-mouthed hatred? And then it hit me. Schwartz must be a Nixon man. In addition to his buttoned-up horror at the excesses of the '60s counter culture, it must be Schwartz's long-standing bitterness over Thompson's attacks on Richard Nixon that motivated this classless and clueless article.
In my passion for politics I can become as loudly partisan as they come, but I would never even consider writing something so hatefully disrespectful if someone on the other team, like George Will or Robert Novak, were to die. Schwartz should be ashamed for writing this article, but he can no more be blamed for his actions than a gorilla can be held accountable for throwing its feces at a crowd at the zoo. The Weekly Standard should be more ashamed for publishing it. The standard in your office is manifestly quite low."
