Wednesday, February 7, 2018

Republicans deny just about everything EXCEPT the Holocaust. Generally.





      We don’t have accent marks in English. None of those little slashing lines peppering French — the accents aigu and grave. None of those rumbling double-dot umlauts found in German.
     Thus people could almost be forgiven for mispronouncing “Holocaust denial” by stressing the first word: “Holocaust denial.”
     That rolls off Republican tongues. Pronounced that way, the Illinois Republican Party can muster indignation that perennial candidate Arthur Jones is an admitted anti-Semite as revealed in the Sun-Times by my colleagues Lynn Sweet and Frank Main. Jones is a man who denies the Holocaust, and yet is on his way to becoming the Republican nominee for the 3rd Congressional District since he is running unopposed.
     If only refusing to acknowledge unpleasant facts were limited to anti-Semites blind to the historical end product of their hatred. To those who, perhaps through a lingering vestige of humanity, flinch at seeing their philosophy put into practice, squeezing their eyes shut to what is actually the best-documented atrocity in history, thanks to those meticulous Germans.
     But denial is a big tent. Lots of room in there.


     To continue reading, click here.




10 comments:

  1. I'm sure "Uncle Arthur" would love to have a lampshade to wear as long as it was made of human skin with lots of tattoos. It would be interesting to see what disgusting "souvenirs" he has squirreled away in the sewer he calls home.

    As to the lack of accent marks in English, why do so many newspapers, magazines & books put an upside down 'V' over the "o" in "role" & they also put that useless squiggle under the "c" in "facade"?

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    1. I'm glad you picked up on that -- originally I pause in the column to point out the allusion. But it was jarring, at the end, and besides, the human-skin lampshades are one of the rare ambiguous atrocities of the holocaust.

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    2. Clark Street: The upside-down "v" is a circumflex accent and the squiggle under the "c" in "facade" is a cedilla. I think both would be considered pretentious these days in English and used only by people showing off their erudition. In French, they do serve a purpose, as "c" would be pronounced "k" without the cedilla. By the way, despite some academic contact with the French language, I had to google "accent marks on role and facade" in order to answer your query.

      john

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    3. The New Yorker still puts an umlaut over the second "o" in "coordinate" and the second "e" in "reelect."

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  2. True, Jones didn't slip through the door unnoticed. There is no door. Hasn't been since the tea party blew out an entire wall of the Grand Old Party. Any number of degenerates can just wade through the rubble and find a seat on the dais. Look at Trump; same point of entry. Republicans should rebuild their own wall and drop their paranoid rantings about a border wall. They must feel terribly self-conscious, being so exposed. Surely they know, we can all see in.

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    1. Another thing Republicans deny is the degree to which they depend for political support on the type of people who deny the Holocaust. Look at those Confederate statues in the South. They insisted over and over that it was all about heritage and history, not racial hatred, but who turned out to march on the issue? A bunch of guys chanting "blood and soil" and "Jews will not replace us."

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  3. I see from and article in the Post that our Dear Leader wants to stage a grand parade to demonstrate our military might. Wonder if our guys and galls in uniform will need to learn the Goose Step.

    Tom

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    1. And maybe as a finale, Jeff Sessions will be shot out of a cannon. Or by one.

      john

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  4. It is "cedille", not "cedilla" in French. Also, the French use the two dots but over completely different vowels than does the German language. In French, it is called a "trema" and it means to pronounce two adjacent vowels independently and not as a diphthong. In German, the umlaut changes the pronunciation of a vowel. IL-3 currently has the worst Democrat in the House as its incumbent; a man who only has his job because of nepotism and the machine. He is anti-immigrant (going by his voting record), vehemently anti-choice and a homophobe to rival Mike Pence. Marie Newman is running against him in the Democratic primary and I hope with every fiber of my being that she wins and goes on to represent IL-3. She reflects our district's values, not Lipinski. The holocaust denier is a nonstarter. It seems in today's GOP, it is the scum that is rising to the top.

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