Perhaps He Simply Saw Reality and Took Appropriate Action
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“Grant, having won the war as a general, spent much of his presidency quietly drunk on bourbon, smoking cigars in a quiet corner of the Willard Hotel.”—Clinton Rossiter, Cornell University professor and author of The American Presidency, published in the 1960s, in which he ranked Ulysses S. Grant, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, and Warren G. Harding as the four worst presidents in history. Rossiter died (by suicide) in 1970, and so was unable to include consider some fairly awful presidents who came after. His book was cited by columnist Matthew Engel, writing in the January 6-7, 2007 edition of Financial Times.
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“Democrats rent.” –P. J. O’Rourke, author and humorist, quoting what his grandmother said when he, as a mere wisp of a lad, asked her, “What is the difference between Republicans and Democrats?” O’Rourke offered this anecdote during a three-hour interview and call-in show on CSPAN-2’s Book TV program. (January 7, 2006)
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“Men dream of change, but cling to what they know. Far from teaching the workers of the world to love one another (or at least to enjoy a Starbucks together), the economic and informational effects of globalization have been to remind people how satisfying it is to hate. Whether threatened in their jobs, their moral code, or their religion, human beings dislocated by change don’t want explanations. They want someone to blame.” –Ralph Peters, writing in an article titled “Return of the Tribes: The Resistance To Globalization Runs Deep” in the September 4, 2006, issue of The Weekly Standard.”
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“The “international community” has reacted in the usual ways—(with) calls for immediate cease-fires so an ineffectual force of United Nations peace-keepers can go in and enjoy their customary child sex with the locals while propping up the Islamists.”—Mark Steyn, author and columnist for Britain’s Telegraph Group, commenting on the fighting in Somalia, where radical Islamists are threatening to take over the country. (Washington Times, January 8, 2007 edition)
. . .Except For The Part That’s Passed. . .
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“His future is ahead of him in many ways.”—Rick Carlisle, Indiana Pacers head coach, commenting in the Indianapolis Star on Ike Diogu, a second-year player obtained in a January 17 trade with the Golden State Warriors. (January 17, 2007)
Time Out For A Colonoscopy!
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“He played from the bowels of his soul.”—Doug Mitchell, coach of the Indianapolis North Central High School boys basketball team, quoted in the Indianapolis Star following a 37-point performance by the team’s star, Eric Gordon, against big rival Lawrence North. And there was more—“He was tremendous. He played the way the game ought to be played in high school. He played for his teammates. He played to win. He played to do the right things. To see Eric show emotion like that—it’s something that’s really enjoyable for us as a staff to watch these young men discover that about themselves.” Gordon is averaging 32.1 points per game to date. (January 20, 2007)
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“I spent one weekend there in six years, and I don’t ever want to spend another.”—Tom Coburn, Republican Senator from Oklahoma, quoted in the Patriot Post, commenting on the plague of career politicians—who move to Washington and stay forever. (January 23, 2007)
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“. . .Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper’s bell of an approaching looter.”—A character in Ayn Rand’s best-selling book, Atlas Shrugged, first published 50 years ago. (January 6, 2007)
Another Useful Idiot
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“Until we learn to live with revolution, we will continue to blunder, and it work to the Soviets’ advantage. It will put them on the winning side, while we put ourselves on the side of rotten, corrupt regimes that end up losing.”—Frank Church, Democrat Senator from Idaho, quoted by David Broder in the Washington Post, in 1984.
Replying To Another Useful Idiot. . .
- Nothing.”—George Shultz, Secretary of state, replying to California Senator Alan “Nuclear Freeze” Cranston, who demanded to know from Shultz just, by god, how much America had done to contribute to the tension between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. Shultz, legendarily a man of few words, was once described as “the almost vegetable-like Shultz,” owing to his economy of movement and gestures. (Anecdote from Mona Charen’s book, Useful Idiots.)
Except, Of Course, For The Couple Million Who Got Butchered Later. . .
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“. . .for the ordinary people of Indochina. . .it is difficult to imagine how their lives could be anything but better with the Americans gone.”—Sydney Schanberg, New York Times foreign correspondent, quoted on the front page of the Times, April 13, 1975, from page 66 of Mona Charen’s useful book, Useful Idiots.
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“Executing a murderer is the only way to adequately express our horror at the taking of an innocent life. Nothing else suffices. . .A murderer sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole can still laugh, learn, and love, listen to music and read, form friendships, and do the thousand and one things (mundane and sublime) forever foreclosed to his victims.”—Don Feder, columnist, quoted in The Official Handbook of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy by Mark W. Smith.
. . .But At Least The End Stops The Pain
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“The journey is better than the end.”—Cervantes, according to retired UCLA Coach John Wooden, who quoted Cervantes saying this, in a December, 1995, public statement about the demise of single-class high school basketball in Indiana.
Well, At Least Huggins Knows Himself
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“I asked him, ‘Bob, do you think leaving now is the right thing to do?’ And he said, ‘No.’ Then I said, ‘How many times in your life have you known what the right thing to do is and not done it?’ And he said, ‘Never.’ “—Tim Weiser, Kansas State University athletic director, quoted at a news conference shortly after the school’s basketball coach, Bob Huggins, announced he was quitting after one year at K-State to take the men’s basketball coaching position at his alma mater, West Virginia. (April 6, 2007)
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“Yes, but I need to win a majority.”—Adlai Stevenson, quoted in an essay on American politics by William Voegeli in the Spring, 2007, issue of Claremont Review of Books. Voegeli reports that Michael Barone attributed this remark to Stevenson (a Democrat candidate for president in the 1950s) when replying to a supporter who was enthusiastically telling Stevenson that “all thinking Americans were for him.” (April, 2007)
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“I can’t get away from it. It’s too big. I’m screwed.”—Last words known to have been uttered by Officer Robert Buckman, as a tornado closed in on him as he drove his squad car to warn nearby rural residents of its approach. Buckman died from injuries suffered when the storm, with winds estimated over 200 miles an hour, threw his car 300 yards off the road into a field at Greensburg, Kansas. He was speaking on his car phone when it and his police radio went silent. (May 19, 2007)
From The Land Of Insensitivity. . .
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“One of the offbeat little towns in the middle of all this wild country, Orofino, still has a high school mascot, the Maniacs, which is, according to lore, named for residents of the neighboring state mental hospital. Call them crazy and insensitive and they say, ‘Well, our boys played like maniacs long ago and the name stuck’.”—Timothy Egan, in a travel article titled “The Last Wilderness,” about the wilds of Idaho, from the New York Times website. (June 30, 2007)
Good!
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“Touchy, obsequious, ambitious, empty, immoral, he is dead, age 88, R.I.P.”—Kurt Waldheim, former Nazi officer, former UN Secretary-General, former President of Austria, who died in June, as characterized in editorial comment in National Review’s July 9, 2007 edition.
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“There’s only two things you people are good for--having babies and frying bacon.”—Bob Knight, then head basketball coach at Indiana University, offering his opinion on the value of women, in an interview printed in the December, 1982, issue of Indianapolis Monthly magazine.
Yeah, But You Can Lie Down For Wayne
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“I can’t type. I can’t file. I can’t even answer the phone.”—Elizabeth Ray, quoted by the Washington Post in 1976 as she explained that her main responsibility as a secretary at the House Administration Committee chaired by the legendary Ohio Democrat Representative Wayne Hays, was to have sex with Hays.
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“To liberals, building a wall across the Mexican border is a violation of the Voting Rights Act.”—Ann Coulter, writing in Human Events, August 27, 2007, issue.
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“Each new generation born is in effect an invasion of civilization by little barbarians who must be civilized before it is too late.”—Thomas Sowell, summarizing a parent’s duty.
- “When you are born into this world you’re given a ticket to the freak show. When you are born in America you’re given a front-row seat.”—George Carlin, on the Glenn Beck Show. (October 25, 2007)
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“The big thieves hang the little ones.”—Czech proverb
- “It’s silly to go on pretending that under the skin we are all brothers. The truth is more likely that under the skin we are all cannibals, assassins, traitors, liars, hypocrites, poltroons.”—Henry Miller
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“There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn.”—Albert Camus
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“The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern.”—Lord Acton (1834-1902), British historian.
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“College football would be more interesting if the faculty played instead of the students—there would be a great increase in broken arms, legs and necks.”—H. L. Mencken
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“Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.”—H. L. Mencken
- “The dirty work at political conventions is almost always done in the grim hours between midnight and dawn. Hangmen and politicians work best when the human spirit is at its lowest ebb.”—Russell Baker
- “Liberals believe in burning the American flag, urinating on crucifixes, and passing out birth control pills to 11-year-old girls without telling their parents—but God forbid an infidel touch a Koran at Guantanamo.”—Ann Coulter (October 29, 2007 issue of Human Events)