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 have mixed feelings about Howard Stern. He can be funny. He can also be juvenile and crass. And there are few things creepier than listening to him try to cajole an unwilling female guest onto the Sybian. Still, probably because I'm from the East Coast, and I grew up listening to him on occasion, I have a soft spot for the guy.
But his reaction to press coverage of Artie Lange's suicide attempt was pure hypocrisy. In the few minutes I heard last week, he lamented the fact that the story had made its way into the papers and called for people to honor the Lange family's privacy. Just a week earlier, Stern had opened his show by making sport of the death of Casey Johnson, the troubled daughter of New York Jets owner Woody Johnson, who had been found dead following years of substance abuse problems.
Incidentally, what's with Lange stabbing himself in the stomach nine or however many times? I'm no psychologist, but perhaps because he's so overweight he knifed himself in the gut in a (potentially drugs- and depression-fueled) fit of self-loathing?
