Comments on:

By: mencken

mencken — Tue, 06 Jun 2006 10:17:12 +0000

There are some folks who lurk about here who would be well served by keeping a copy of Bartlett's on their nightstand.

By: larry d.

larry d. — Tue, 06 Jun 2006 08:43:58 +0000

Well it's not Bartlett's Quotations but it was the best I could come up with.

By: mencken

mencken — Mon, 05 Jun 2006 21:24:44 +0000

Your answer confirms my long held feeling that not going to college was one of the best decisions I ever made.

What a load of obfuscatory bullsh*t.

By: larry d.

larry d. — Mon, 05 Jun 2006 19:53:23 +0000

Well, for the last 30 years or so literary scholarship has, in general, attempted to mine literary themes that are often opposed to the universals found in the traditional canon of what they call the Dead White Males.

Of course many of the scholars are feminists, gays, leftists, or other minorities, etc., who might have an axe to grind. But they've got a point–literature helps shape our culture and even our thought.

To say a work isn't "great literature" because it doesn't deal with a "timeless" (but actually historically-formed, Western, patriarchal) theme is to deny other points of view and thus oppress.

I thought all liberals knew that.

By: mencken

mencken — Mon, 05 Jun 2006 15:31:37 +0000

Man you're going to have to help me out here. How did that qualify as oppression?

By: larry d.

larry d. — Mon, 05 Jun 2006 14:43:00 +0000

"The themes of great literature are timeless"? Talk about oppression!

By: mencken

mencken — Mon, 05 Jun 2006 11:25:50 +0000

The themes of great literature are timeless. Oppression is oppression, whether it's the Communists or the Pharoahs.

Does that help?

By: larry d.

larry d. — Mon, 05 Jun 2006 08:48:13 +0000

Weren't Churchill and Orwell roughly contemporaries? Are we to read the Orwell quotes as commentary on mid-20th Century leftism? I'm getting confused.

By: mencken

mencken — Sun, 04 Jun 2006 23:44:59 +0000

The sentiment of Churchill's statement was not the same as Al's quote my dear. Nice try though.

I DID spend the time looking for Twain's alleged quote

and couldn't find it. In fact I couldn't find it attributed to

anyone ( except Al ). If someone can confirm it, have at it.

BTW, the conservativism of Churchill's time is distinctly different than the current American definition.

By: deb

deb — Sun, 04 Jun 2006 22:30:17 +0000

“Any man who is under 30, and is not a liberal, has no heart; and any man who is over 30, and is not a conservative, has no brains." – Here's your quote, Mencken. (It's Churchill) And I would swear I've heard the Twain reference that Al slipped in, but I don't have time to look for it.