August 29, 2008

A Best of the Blogs nomination

A local blogger says of Barack Obama's speech to the DNC in Denver last night, "Leni Riefenstahl couldn't have done it better."

Leni Riefenstahl, of course, was a German filmmaker and notorious Nazi collaborator who became enamored with Adolf Hitler upon reading his Mein Kampf, an autobiography filled with vicious racism and containing the seeds of Hitler's plan to exterminate European Jews and other "non-Aryan" minorities, a project he set about accomplishing with Leni Riefenstahl's kind assistance.

But despite this, observes the blogger, it was Barack Obama's speech that is "vindictive" and "mean-spirited" because Obama dared to criticize the record of Republican candidate John McCain.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Be honest now. Did you already know about this bit of drooling idiocy when you wrote about a different piece of duncery, at 10:10 last night, "there will be even stupider daily talking points to come, rest assured"?

illusory tenant said...

Haha no. But Obama certainly is all things to all people, isn't he.

Anonymous said...

The laziness and dreary dullness of the writing bothers me more than anything. If you're going to let loose with the f-word, at least do it with a bit of panache. Here's Umberto Eco describing the Madonna Inn in San Luis Opisbo, California:

The poor words with which natural human speech is provided cannot describe the Madonna Inn. To convey its external appearance, divided into a series of constructions, which you reach by way of a filling station carved from Dolomitic rock, or through the restaurant, the bar, and the cafeteria, we can only venture some analogies.

Let's say that Albert Speer, while leafing through a book on Gaudi, swallowed an overgenerous dose of LSD and began to build a nuptial catacomb for Liza Minnelli.

But that doesn't give you an idea. Let's say Arcimboldi builds the Sagrada Familia for Dolly Parton. Or: Carmen Miranda designs a Tiffany locale for the Jolly Hotel chain. Or D'Annunzio's Vittorale imagined by Bob Cratchit, Calvino's "Invisible Cities" described by Judith Krantz and executed by Leonor Fini for the plush-doll industry, Chopin's Sonata in B flat minor sung by Perry Como in an arrangement by Liberace and accompanied by the Marine Band.

Emily said...

It's funny how it's OK for one side to user Nazi/Hitler analogies, but not the other.

For the record, I think it's stupid for anyone to do.

Anonymous said...

Well, Emily, you have to admit that the wingnuts have also compared Obama to Stalin, with equal and exactly opposite stupidity. Since Hitler and Stalin were enemies, except when they were allies, these two classes of smears cancel out, meaning that the rhetoric about Obama is perfectly neutral overall.