Slog: News & Arts

RSS icon Comments on You Know What they Say About Stopped Clocks

1

Christopher Hitchens is a moron about nearly every topic he addresses, but on this isolated point, I agree with him (and with ECB).

Posted by lostboy | February 18, 2008 5:14 PM
2

Hitchens IS an asshole. No doubt about it. But that cocksucker is so spot on about certain things I have to count him one of my favs.


When you combine exceptional intelligence, sublime writing talent, and a seriously angry motherfucker, you get Chris Hitchens.

Posted by Mike in MO | February 18, 2008 5:16 PM
3

I have to count him AS one of my favs

Posted by Mike in MO | February 18, 2008 5:17 PM
4

"Anybody less than 50. . . ." Well, that leaves me out, and I remember when this happened. No-one - ahem - pussyfooted around the statement then, but I guess the world wasn't so politically correct back then.

Posted by Fifty-Two-Eighty | February 18, 2008 5:30 PM
5

Hitchens is one of those people I either totally agree with him on or think he is a totally wrong arrogant asswipe.

And I agree with him that women are not funny......

(LOL!! you know I am kidding, I mean I laugh at nearly all of ECB's defences of Hillary!)

Posted by Andrew | February 18, 2008 5:33 PM
6

Ironic that someone as humorless as ECB would find fault with this.

Posted by AMB | February 18, 2008 5:33 PM
7

Heh, heh. He obviously wasn't talking about unintended humour.

Posted by banjoboy | February 18, 2008 5:41 PM
8

Why does the level of vulgarity even matter? It's not like they misquoted him.

If he had said "a tight vagina, loose shoes, and a warm place to defecate", that's still the same thing, right? Using explicatives doesn't make it any more bigoted.

And... loose shoes? Anyone want to explain that one?

Posted by w7ngman | February 18, 2008 5:42 PM
9

@8 "Satisfying sex" and "a tight pussy" are not the same thing.

Posted by Paulus | February 18, 2008 6:09 PM
10

you can't paraphrase jokes.

often papers paraphrase "racial slurs," too, so the reader has no idea exactly what was said or how bad it really was.

Posted by unPC | February 18, 2008 6:14 PM
11

I was speaking more to the general censorship happening at the time, not this particular obituary.

You're right though, I like me a nice floppy vag every once in awhile.

Posted by w7ngman | February 18, 2008 6:15 PM
12

Christopher Hitchins obviously doesn't hang out with the right people. Sheesh. Oh, and 'hefty, dykey, and/or Jews' COUNT, muthafucka. And so do:


Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Kristin Wiig, [fill in rest of SNL casts here], several friends of mine who make me laugh every day, Kerri Harrop, every woman on Reno 911!, Wanda Sykes, Pam, Angela, and Kelly from "The Office", all the women in Christopher Guest movies (i.e. Jennifer Coolidge) , Sarah Silverman, Samantha Bee, and those are just the recent folks.

Check out this counter to that Vanity Fair article: http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0202/p11s02-algn.html


"...Witness the recent column in Vanity Fair which declared "Women Aren't Funny" (written by Christopher Hitchens). And despite the fact that his ABC comedy employed numerous funny women, comic Drew Carey says the prejudices are real. It's not so much that women aren't funny, he explains, as that men don't want them to be funny. "Comedy is about aggression and confrontation and power," says the stand-up comic. "As a culture we just don't allow women to do all that stuff."

Another excerpt:

"Nonetheless, says comic Paul Rodriguez, Silverman still faces yet another stubborn stereotype: Pretty women aren't funny, especially when spouting vulgarities. Men still put women on a pedestal where they expect them to behave, well, nicely – like a mother, says Mr. Rodriguez. "If an unattractive woman tells jokes, it's OK, we'll cut her a break," he says. "It's just a man's world, comedy is full of prejudices, whether we like it or not, it's true."

Posted by funny girl | February 18, 2008 6:26 PM
13

AND Kathy Griffin, who has made me spit soup, that chick is funny.

Posted by funny girl | February 18, 2008 6:33 PM
14

AND Jeneane Garafalo. I'm done now.

Posted by funny girl | February 18, 2008 6:34 PM
15

c'mon, Jeneane used to be funny. I still like her, but she ain't funny no mo.

Posted by Mike in MO | February 18, 2008 6:43 PM
16

Christopher Hitchens' religion debates during his book tour last year were excellent. I highly recommend his debate with Al Sharpton at the NYC public library.

My all time favorite Hitchens moment was when he was on Fox News after Jerry Falwell died.

The money quote: "If you gave Falwell an enema he could be burried in a matchbox."

Hitchens was/is mostly wrong on the Iraq War but I tend to agree with most everything else he has to say.

Posted by ghostlawns | February 18, 2008 6:52 PM
17

OMG. He's still a twit. His point is correct, but his facts are wrong

This is historical revisionism at its finest. Because, in point of fucking fact "this witless bigotry" WAS NOT "reported accurately."

In the wake of the Butz fiasco, Rolling Stone (of all places) did an analysis of media coverage of what Butz said. There was not a single major broadcast outlet in the country that repeated what he said (not even sure about Pacifica). And the euphemisms employed by the print media (including the NYT and WaPo) were tortured at best and misleading at worst.

The extent that public actually knew what Butz had said was almost in spite of the media, not because of it.

Posted by gnossos | February 18, 2008 6:53 PM
18

So much for Hitchens' first example, Butz, and the rose-colored memory of how his story was supposedly first reported.

Hitch's second example of cowardly media was the failure of news outlets to show everyone these cartoons of Mohammed. What exactly are people supposed to get by seeing them? They're cartoons of a guy with a beard. Most are not funny. Most don't even make sense. You look at them and say, "Oh. A cartoon. A cartoon of Mohammed. So. What."

Seeing them does nothing to help you understand what the story is about; if anything you are all the more in need of an explanation.

Posted by elenchos | February 18, 2008 7:17 PM
19

@12 I'm sure Hitchens would not like to be compared to Hillary Clinton, but it does sort of remind me of "Everyone's voting for me. Except all those blacks. And those shitty little caucus states. And ones with open primaries. Did I mention I'm going to be the first Latina president?"

Posted by banjoboy | February 18, 2008 7:47 PM
20

for w7ngman...#8


older black people often complain that their feet hurt...

Posted by venice | February 18, 2008 9:14 PM
21

Didn't B-boys back in the day wear their shoes untied? I know this happened before the hip-hop movement got really huge, but maybe the trend existed before that

Posted by vooodooo84 | February 18, 2008 9:47 PM
22

Even if they hadn't have ripped off the Jackson 5, that would still be a terrible song.

Posted by w7ngman | February 18, 2008 9:53 PM
23

Tip to ECB: If you want to denigrate Christopher Hitchens, don't link to his writing. He may be an asshole, he may be a lush, he may be dead wrong, but the man is a brilliant writer against whoose pen no mere mortal writer stands a chance.

Posted by David Wright | February 18, 2008 10:50 PM
24

Fuck. I'd vote for a candidate that promised me "Loose shoes, tight pussy and a warm place to shit."

Posted by wile_e_quixote | February 18, 2008 10:56 PM
25

Butz' worst legacy is the system of corporate welfare disguised as agricultural policy with which we are now saddled. It destroyed family farming and gave rise to the high fructose corn syrup and ethanol mafias, among many other ills.

Posted by Big Sven | February 18, 2008 11:06 PM
26

Thank God we have The Stranger who will protect us from the Phobocracy. But when will TIME magazine print the word "shit"? Or the Seattle TIMES for that matter?

What is the problem, people? "Shit" is common patois. "Pussy" is patois. What are they protecting us from? Our own vocabulary enfranchised by usage?

That said, Earl Butz (and his name certainly connotes his personality) was a complete shit. As I recall, when he told the "joke", he was on some sort of presidential mission aboard a plane.
For once, someone in the press did their job. Now - the vaunted Fourth Estate are nothing but apologists and idolators with the courage of mice during a wheat field fire.

Y'all have fun now with photoshopped images of Hillary with cock-n-balls. But wait till Mr. Big O gets the nomination. To quote our onetime Acting President, "you ain't seen nuthin' yet."

What if we had a Civility War and no one came?

Posted by BAREFOOT MERLOT @ MIDNIGHT | February 19, 2008 12:41 AM
27

Who are these humorless women, of whom you speak?

Posted by NapoleonXIV | February 19, 2008 4:33 AM
28

@26
Unlike the Stranger, papers like the NY Times and the Seattle Times are not exclusively read by adults and in fact are often used in classrooms for current events assignments and so forth. They would lose a lot of subscribers if parents felt their kids were reading "bad words" in their daily paper.

Posted by tree | February 19, 2008 1:42 PM
29

As someone I know put it, the ironic thing about Butz' idiotic racist joke is that its natural corollary is that what whiteboys want, then, is tight shoes, loose pussy, and a Siberian shithouse.

Does anyone NOT want a warm place to crap? I mean, not a porta-potty in the sun in August, just not one where the urinal cake is frozen.

Posted by Geni | February 19, 2008 2:36 PM
30

@29,

I think the corollary is that white men need more than just those three things.

Posted by keshmeshi | February 19, 2008 2:41 PM
31

sigh.

Earl Butz said this on a plane heading back to DC after the 1976 republican convention. on that plane were pat boone (gasp!) and sonny bono. pat asked earl why the party of lincoln did not attract more african-americans. butz replied (to his everlasting regret) that all coloreds wanted was loose shoes, tight pussy and a warm place to shit. i believe a couple of media types overheard this and duly reported it. mr. butz also said in response to Pope Paul VI's pronouncements on birth control "you no playa the game, you no make-a da rules." something that is much repeated at knights of columbus barbecues. or so my catholic friends tell me.

Posted by scary tyler moore | February 19, 2008 4:06 PM
32

John Dean reported it. In Rolling Stone, which was practically the only place in the country that accurately reported what Butzhole actually said.

Posted by gnossos | February 19, 2008 7:43 PM

Comments Closed

In order to combat spam, we are no longer accepting comments on this post (or any post more than 45 days old).