The knives are being swung at the back of our soldiers comes from the hand of Franklin Foer.
-Bob Owens at Yglesias’s pad
As Tim noted via AOL IM, “an instant classic.”
Personally, I am just relieved we can stop nancying about and really get into the good old stab-in-the-back phase of this war. In fairness to the Confederate Yankee, the grammatical problems may stem from a direct translation from the original German, as Molly Ivins noted in another case.
cleek
time till he shows up to tell us that Beauchamp is “over” ?
i bet 10 minutes.
Jon H
Would anyone care to diagram that sentence?
cleek
i think the diagram looks something like this
r€nato
yeah, FYI commenters, the above image is slightly Not Work Safe.
r€nato
are they yet drawing up a list of traitors to be eliminated when Kristallnacht 2: Dolschstoss Boogaloo comes? We know Foer’s on the list; who else? It’s got to be a pretty long list by now.
Krista
Ye gods. It’s like Dan Riehl moonlighting at a fortune cookie factory. While drunk.
r€nato
…and being cock-slapped by Jeff Goldstein?
Ugh
When is TIDOS Yankee going in the “Blogs We Monitor and Mock As Needed” category?
John Cole
OMG. I thought he was there already. Fixed.
rawshark
All your backs are belong to our knives
Mark
The Inveterate Yanker is acting like the winner of a toupee contest–it’s unbelievable that he’s actually proud to “own” this non-story.
Wilfred
Franklin Foer. When the Burqa-clad rubber flip-flop of a female islamo-fascist-mujahadina-murderess stomps on the medal of honor bearing neck of God-Emperor Petraeus, the last, bitter, blood-specked comments out of his off the record mouth will be: Franklin Foer.
Jake
Yeah, And please to dangerously avoid the device in the showering to you too buddy.
I guess this is what happens when one tries to type and don a wetsuit at the same time.
Tim
Can I just say this is one of the bestest days at Baloon Juice ever ! The comments alone are golden ! Was Cole ever really a conservative ? His sense of humour is way too refined for such nonsense as being a conservative.
jenniebee
Well, the important thing here is that the right has now become so sensitized to the power of words – they can literally stab people in the back – that they’re re-thinking their objections to politically correct speech.
OK, they’re at least ready to say that spontaneous societal outrage at blatantly racist remarks is reasonable, and maybe even a good thing.
OK, they’re still upset that advertisers balked at continuing to sponsor Imus after the “nappy headed hos” remark. And, while these idjits are willing to jump right up and organize boycotts against TNR’s advertisers, it never occurred to them that dumping Imus might be part of the great Invisible Hand of the Marketplace at work. Because black people, you know, don’t buy products. They just control the government and the media and stuff because they’re just so… scary. Or something. Anyway, it was wrong when Imus was fired just for randomly insulting tens of millions of the public, but TNR must be shut down because they printed a soldier’s column that said that war is a dehumanizing influence.
Makes perfect sense to me.
merciless
I thought for a minute that it might have been an attempt at haiku, but too many syllables…
Kathleen
maybe he was trying for a “In Soviet Russia, the back stabs you!”
jcricket
You see, you’re obviously not a conservative and don’t understand economics. The hand is all well and good, as long as it’s invisible. When the hand gets too “uppity”, it needs to be put back in its place, through carefully crafted pro-corruption laws.
KCinDC
Owens is simultaneously arguing (at ObWi at least) that of course everyone knows that even American soldiers sometimes do bad things but that a story saying so is so beyond the pale that it counts as stabbing our troops in the back. Al Qaida in Iraq may be dangerous now, but imagine how much worse they’ll be once they’re riled up by the idea that Americans are running over dogs!
It reminds me a little of the hoopla about the New York Times reporting on NSA eavesdropping. The argument was that the story was old news, because everyone’s known for decades that the NSA is spying on phone calls, so why would the Times be reporting it except to undermine the war effort? But simultaneously the story was endangering our national security, because the terrorists had never dreamed that the NSA might be listening in on phone calls.
Tsulagi
Well, maybe self-appointed uber patriot warrior Owens is miffed at TNR for perceived muscling in on Party of Bush turf since Day One of this most excellent Iraq adventure. They’ve owned that.
At Yglesia’s site saw Yon’s email. Liked the last sentence…
You mean like those publications/blogs painfully wounded by un-PC behavior written by a soldier? Then seeking revenge for that either through that soldier’s court martial, or as Beauchamp’s CO noted, his death called for by at least one ‘patriot’ blog?
I’d like to think that maybe Yon recently got a message the troops weren’t entirely appreciative of patriot warriors like CY deciding who among their ranks to cull that aren’t on message and their efforts to do so. Sort of heard that a little in Beauchamp’s CO request to Yon that they back off his soldier.
Could a little possible pushback/blowback have been the impetus for the new call of forgiveness? Naw. No way. Wouldn’t want to dampen the self back-patting of the forgivers.
El Cid
As usual we can fully account on the surrender monkey crowd to and he then will have been one day jihading from the absolute.
Tsulagi
So now that the barking ‘coon dogs have been told to lay off the raccoon, they’re being reorganized to bark at the raccoon enabler’s advertisers. Precious.
Just took a look at TNR’s front page to see who should be afraid. Very, very afraid. Other than their own TNR self advertising, all I see is an ad from a company named Champs-Elysees Audiotapes.
Champs Elysees? LOL Go Patriot Bob! Get out the long knives for that obviously frenchy company! If you don’t, all your fellow Republican manly man patriots will soon be wearing burkas.
You just can’t spoof these guys like they do themselves.
Jake
With each passing day these guys sound more and more like schizophrenics. All of the words are there, you can figure out what the writer is trying to say, but taken as a whole you can tell he isn’t all there.
Zifnab
I CAN HAZ GRAMAR LESSON?
jcricket
Bonus points to the first commentator to photoshop a good picture for this.
Punchy
Thanks, bastards. I’m sure I’ve just been tagged as That Guy Firewalled For Nudity. Can’t wait to see my next performance report with that sticky-tab note attached.
As for the grammar, Holy Jesus on a pogo stick. It looks like Bob Owens some time with an SAT test…
Mithi
For all you people who are having trouble making sense of Owens’ words, I did my best using MSPaint to visualize his sentence and help you understand:
NWS NWS
http://img.waffleimages.com/87a266535caab41d6f727e9cd8a8fba4bfdf2e11/bobowens.jpg
NWS NWS
All clear now?
gypsy howell
See, the problem is that attention spans and reading comprehension are not what they used to be in the glory days of the Weimar Republic, so the fascist propaganda can’t be quite as subtle or lyrically crafted as it was in its original form.
Hence, Bob Owens.
Kent M
“All along the untrodden paths of the future, I can see the footprints of an unseen hand.”
Not totally related, but there you go. As much as the first, I guess.
rachel
Freedom of speech is freedom to mangle metaphors. In other words, give idiots enough rope, and they’ll put themselves in front of the firing squad.
Tax Analyst
mixed metaphors are a pain in the neck and aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on. Ya gotta dance wit th’ one what brung ya’, put yer pants on one leg at a time and then let the chips fall where they may.
glasnost
It’s late, but I just totally want to claim credit for tipping John on this.
**Revels**