A Sunday twofer:
Q: What do you get when you cross the LA Times with cercocebus albigena johnstoni (aka., the West African Grey-cheeked Mangabey)?
A: A Cercocebus albigena johnstoni (aka,. a West African Grey-cheeked Mangabey) who couldn’t find his ass with both hands and a rudimentary digging tool.
****
Q: How many Washington Post staffers does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: John Kerry so totally rocks!
…Remember, people: 15 points. That’s what the mainstream media expects to contribute to the Kerry candidacy. Which is just the kind of cynical, elitist buffoonery we’ve come to expect from establishment journalists whose Machiavellian antics belie their claims to guardianship over the truth.
Plus, I bet not a single one of ‘em can throw a football without looking like a Frenchman attempting to shotput a heavy wheel of brie. Ggghhah. Feh.
”…an angry, energized Kerry who said he was taking off the gloves and punching back.”
Are we sure they didn’t mean enervated?
No need to insult Machiavelli.
After all, he’d worked for the de Medicis and was interviewing for a job with a Borgia (or was it the other way around? I can never keep those bloodthirsty Italians straight) when he wrote The Prince. What is they say about the company a man keeps?
Calling their tactics “Machiavellian” is giving the mainstream media way too much credit. They’re simply not cunning enough to qualify. If they were, shouldn’t their guy be in the lead?
Ah, don’t mind me. I’m just waiting for seldom sober to show up and am drinking too much wine to build up what little tolerance I have.
In my post I used “Machiavellian” for its standard connotation, though I personally believe The Prince was a parody of Renaissance advice manuals, intended to show his ruler the futility of monarchical rule (by the end, all “Machiavelli’s” advice folds back in on itself, and the entire book performs its own deconstruction)—and have argued as much academically.
Yall quit talkin’ all professorlike. Them big words give me a headache. Besides, I never did see no book perform anything.
(resisting using the “confused” smiley)
Course, you could just have the big head seeing that Greyhawk is bragging on you over at Mudville.
Your idea of parody aside, I generally take umbrage at the standard usage of “Machiavellian.” Not that I think you fall into the description of “most people” but most people don’t know what the hell they’re talking about when they use that descriptor. Machiavelli=evil and that’s all it means for “most people.” My point was that the media isn’t clever enough to be evil.
That said, I think the idea of The Prince being a parody is interesting and would like to read your papers on it.
Didn’t mean to insult you or anything. Then again, I did say I was drinking at the time I wrote that. You were forewarned.
Just echoing Kathy’s request to read your paper. Hope the jargon is less confusing than all that hermey-neuter stuff I had a hard time deciphering the last time you linked to one of you academic pieces.
I understand that brie-putting, like windsurfing, riding $3,000 bicycles, and skiing while cursing at Secret Service agents, is a favorite leisure-time activity of the junior Senator from Massachusetts, who by the way served in Vietnam.
Sort of the same way that attempting to drive an Oldsmobile across a good-sized body of water used to be a favorite leisure-time activity of the senior Senator from Massachusetts.
Why isn’t the brie-put an Olympic event?
Ray and Kathy —
I don’t have that paper on disc—I wrote it maybe 6 years ago and had it on a computer that died—but I do have a hard copy of it somewhere that I’ve been meaning to type up into a digital file. I’ll try to find it and do so. At one point, I was going to edit it and submit it to Renaissance Quarterly (on the advice of a Renaissance specialist), but I never got around to it.
Maybe your interest will give me the impetus.