Had a couple martinis, came home, checked out the Corner, and saw this gem from K-Lo:
If Obama could go to Germany and give a speech in English and be not only understood but well-received, why does he say we all need to learn another language?
You simply can not spoof these guys.
*** Update ***
El Cid
Yeah! If O-bambi wants our precious American (!!!!) children to learn some precious foreign language, why doesn’t Mr. Arugula fancy pants become fluent in the language of any country he’s going to speak publicly in??? Huh?
John S.
K-Lo was on fucking fire today, John!
Because we’re not part of the world.
Yeah, because he’s like the second coming of Hitler.
She’s a real piece of work, that one.
nightjar
Wingnut logic distilled to it’s elemental essence. It doesn’t need to be spoofed, just admired for it’s complete lack of rationality.
Joshua Norton
Yeah. They all should learn our language- English! If it’s good enough for the bible, it’s good enough for a bunch of goldarned foreigners.
Lucy, joo got some ‘splainin’ to do.
southpaw
Denzel has an answer for K-Lo:
Capisce?
demkat620
I don’t think I am going to survive the next couple of months of wingnut stupidity. I used to think it would be funnier than hell watching them implode, now it just makes me nauseous.
These people are dangerously insane.
Alex
Classic! The fact that a crowd in Berlin might be able to understand a language other than their native tongue because they study more than one language is proof that multi-lingualism is a useless concept.
If K-Lo learns that they have Penicillin in German Hospitals, she may start to wonder why we need it over here.
SpotWeld
The really scary things.. among her own, she can the same thing and be considered to have something intelligent…
It’s like that freshmen college English course where the really annoying girl who always sits in the back declares that it’s pointless to read The Great Gatsby since it took place in the ’20s and all those people must be dead by now anyway.
CapMidnight
I bet K-Lo knows how to say “duhhh” in English and German.
AkaDad
Did anyone else notice, that Obama got the loudest cheers from skinheads?
John Cole
I am glad you commented, Alex, I have been meaning to add you to the links.
The Dangerman
While it is true this people that are published are dangerously insane, what is really unfuckingimaginable is these people have jobs because a whole bunch of other stupid people read them and think to themselves “HELL, YEAH, USA, USA, USA”. We call them Rush Limbaugh listeners.
Genine
Someone should conceptualize it, paint it and hang it in a museum. Future generations will be fascinated like we’re fascinated by the idea that people actually thought that washing ones hands in the medical field was wrong and unsanitary.
“People actually THOUGHT that way???”
calipygian
K-Lo esta en fuego hoy.
Obama actually rattles her Pope-love.
How weak IS her faith in the baby Jeebus and John Paul?
Alex
I am glad you commented, Alex, I have been meaning to add you to the links.
Appreciate it very much, John. I’ve been a pretty consistent reader of Balloon Juice, even before you turned from the Dark Side.
I used to go over to NRO to fetch K-Lo and Jonah spoor more often, but sometimes it’s hard to pick out just one example of the stoopid. . .
Alex
Obama actually rattles her Pope-love.
Someone ought to email K-Lo this link.
49 cents doesn’t seem like a lot to pay for daily infallible wisdom.
Joshua Norton
My favorite “ugly American” idiocy in a foreign country is when some white-bread, pot bellied buffoon asks, real loud, “how much is that in REAL money”? It really makes you wonder how they managed to live as long as they have.
SamFromUtah
It really makes you wonder how they managed to live as long as they have.
Ha! Proof that foreign countries are civilized, if dipshits like that don’t get cockpunched or worse. I haven’t encountered that strain of Ugly American abroad, thank God. Plenty of shouters, line-jumpers, and other assorted dickweeds, but not that.
Jake
I’d suggest the odds that K-Lo can walk and chew gum at the same time are below 10%.
bago
Stupid is how we roll.
Jake
Meanwhile, the front-page story on CNN.com right now brings you to this page, where we learn that “being black can mean being a suspect”. That’s the title of the article.
I have no words.
joe in oklahoma
the germans understoof Obama because they could speak english.
they could listen.
k-lo like many repugs actually think that the world is a better place if that is all people do…listen to repugs tell them what to do.
dialog/conversation/democracy is a foreign concept for them, apparently.
ThymeZone
Apparently the true meaning of righty attitude is not yet truly understood.
The Newrighty, the kind of person who would ask the absurd rhetorical question that K-Lo articulated, hates anything better than himself.
That’s why they hate process, and science. Because those things expose them for what they really are. Fallible, among other things.
That’s why they can fool themselves into thinking that Intelligent Design is the explanation for smallpox. Or that the earth is 6000 years old. Or that learning another language is somehow a waste of time, or even un-American.
Ted
Any rally in Germany is creepy to these sheltered geo-idiots.
Anyway, K-Lo’s beloved church is a tad complicit in assisting the Holocaust. Just sayin. Wingnuts love to lump masses of people together in ideology. Why not do it to them?
The Other Steve
Have fun boys and girls.
TenguPhule
I have plenty, none of them fit for print.
jrg
K-Lo is an idiot. The National Review hired her because they figured her intellectual donkey show would give affirmative action a bad name.
jackflagg
The proper response to that is “You mean in euros?”
Tim in SF
Hilarious!
joe
calipygian,
John Paul is dead.
Ted
What I don’t understand is how the actually non-retarded NRO types put up with K-Lo. Honestly, doesn’t Derbyshire ever say anything to someone about having to work with such monumental morons as Jonah and K-Lo?
dorkboy
The next time I hear the right squeal in protest when being referred to as xenophobes, I’ll remember their reactions to this event in Berlin.
There is a clear and pronounced movement of US nativism among the right and it makes my heart break. We’ve come a long way from Sept 12, 2001 when the French newspaper, Le Monde, carried an editorial entitled “We are all American”. Would the right welcome that sentiment today?
RSA
Kosher, huh? Is this what passes for subtlety on the Corner?
(And does it seem strange to anyone to hear lectures about the advantages of being monolingual from someone named Lopez? Not to get personal, of course; it would be strange to hear it from someone named, say, Krauthammer or Kristol or some equally non-Anglo name.)
The Grand Panjandrum
TZ I have derived many hours of laughter from these buffoons. You have to love a country where people so fucking gullible they believe the Earth was created 1000 years after the Sumerians invented ink AND can earn enough of a living to drive $40,000 vehicles.
Innocent Bystander
As editor of the NRO, does this make her the Ringmaster of the Conservative Intellectual Circus or simply the crowd favorite in the Tent of Punditry
FreakSide Show?Her mastery of the English language provides a pretty tenuous foundation for the weak rhetorical framing she’s attempting to construct. If her blogpostings were a house, the building would be condemned before she could move in.
AnneLaurie
The really scary things.. among her own, she can the same thing and be considered to have something intelligent…
Especially since I’ve long suspected Ms. Lopez is a “plant” to make Lucianne’s Little Boychik look smarter by comparison. You know, the way feudal kings kept dwarves and cripples around to make themselves look handsome & regal — comparatively.
Steven Taylor
As they used to say in the Sunday funnies when I was a kid: “That’s Mighty Funny!” (K-Lo, that is).
J. Michael Neal
Unfortunately, the English have gotten to be just as bad. These days, airfares are so cheap, and London so expensive, that late on Friday afternoons, hordes of them jet off to Eastern European cities and spend the weekend drinking and being truly obnoxious.
I have never seen Americans in a foreign country behave as badly as a group of English 20somethings that sat down at the table next to us on a patio in the rynek in Krakow last summer. Loud, foul mouthed, rude to the waitress, you name it. One of them actually felt the need to drop his pants.
I found myself hoping that Poles can tell the difference between English and American accents, so that they wouldn’t mistake me as being from the same country as these people.
Innocent Bystander
OT, but pretty funny. In the hunt to find intelligent Republican life, check out this Youtuber (posted at dKos). A Republican primary debate for House Rep…a simple question (“Which founding father do you derive inspiration from”) – only 2 of 4 got it right. Wow, they really are class of stupid.
youtube.com/watch?v=kkhk8HmpNps
Doug H. (Fausto no more)
Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan – our two forgotten Founding Fathers.
harlana pepper
From previous thread, I am repeating, because (a) it’s my birthday (b) i’m drunk (c) while I loved your post so much I actually bookmarked it (which is rare), your comment about Elizabeth Edwards really pissed me off:
Koz
theamericanscene.com/2008/07/14/the-education-of-a-would-be-obamacon
Dennis - SGMM
OT: Women for John McCain is absolutely the best straight-faced spoof site I’ve seen in years. The writing is pitch-perfect.
Dennis - SGMM
Shit, I remember when Reagan-mania was at its height. The ‘tards, male and female, all wanted to have his child. They wanted his mug on coins, stamps and freakin’ Mt. Rushmore. That’s why I have to laugh when the (still) Reagan-fellating Repubs accuse Obama of leading a cult.
Just Some Fuckhead
What a coño.
Dennis - SGMM
She’s known far and wide as la Rana.
The Disenfranchised Voter
That posted quote from her about the pope drawing a bigger crowd so naner-naner-naner can’t possibly be real can it?
Ned R.
OMG the flashbacks. (I preferred it when you couldn’t see the top half of his head.)
Meantime when it comes to dummies — talked about about this on the blog today but you all owe it to yourself to read this story. Two words: esprit decor.
Jess
Yeah, no kidding. My theory is that they’re in the habit of slamming down the hooch before the ridiculously early closing time of the English pubs, and when they’re in a country where the bars stay open late, they keep slamming ’em down at the same pace and get completely trashed beyond all reason. When I lived in Amsterdam, I enjoyed watching them stagger into the canals–I’m amazed more of them didn’t drown.
GSD
After reading so many of K-Lo’s bon mots, I am led to conclude that she is a Borat style performance artist who makes Stephen Colbert look like a piker.
-GSD
Calouste
Doesn’t even have that much to do with the closing times, which are somewhat relaxed these days anyway. English go to the pub not to have fun, but to get hammered. Get in after work at 5 or so, mix beer with shots, eating is cheating, and if you can still stand up at 10:30, have a double round before it is last orders.
On top of that there is a certain senseless violent undercurrent in English culture. Hooliganism didn’t appear out of thin air and A Clockwork Orange is not a complete work of fiction.
buford puser
Having just come back from France, couldn’t agree more re Brit tourists; our hosts in one small-town bar were very pleased to hear we were speaking English among ourselves because we were American, not Brits, so we’re not alone in noticing.
Thing is, _their_ currency is still worth money. The old line about the ugly American asking “How much is that in real money?” is from back when dollars _were_ real money (pre-Bush, eg).
Kevin
From my experience the English have *always* been worse than Americans. Americans in Europe can come across as ignorant and boorish; the English are actively, deliberately bigoted.
The English xenophobic tendency is second to none. They hate everyone.
zuzu's petals
I hear it’s the Australians in Asia.
Same deal: cheap airfare to Thailand, etc. … loud, boorish, and xenophobic.
Kevin
Australians: A cross between the worst traits of the English and Americans?
Conservatively Liberal
Speaking of stupid, Erick Erickson at RedState is exhorting the readers of RedState to join their mailing list and to start posting stories there, saying “We have pundits. We need activists.”. The problem for him is that he is on stage but he is speaking to an empty theater…lol!
They have 15 stories on their front page, and a total of 120 responses to all 15 stories. RedState is a ghost town.
Good. I hope it stays that way.
McMartin
How many of the responders were banned immediately after posting?
cain
It’s all the dirty liberals fault. They wouldn’t help him build Red State 3.0 so he can attack them more effectively.
cain
mikefromtexas
Erick Erickson; what kind of parents do that to their child?
I know a guy named Steve Dick and if his parents would have named him Richard I don’t think anyone could keep a straight face around him. Dick Dick would just be too easy. EE: ‘We have pundits’. No, you have morons. Learn the difference.
The Briscoe Kid
Here’s the stats/demographics for Red State:
Web site audience profile from Quantcast
Looks like they’ve lost about two thirds of their audience since February.
phobos
This thread is priceless. They’re like a microcosm of all that’s gone wrong with conservatism.
Apparently they turned down Kos’s cooperation offer because they would have had to give up their precious banning infrastructure.
Davis X. Machina
You want a GOP cult? I got your cult right here.
Conservatively Liberal
What’s worse than 120 responses to 15 stories at RedState is that 52 of the responses were in the “Obama gives Kumbaya Speech in Berlin” story. And six of the posts in that were repeat posting (over several minutes) of the same post by one person…lol! This leaves 68 responses spread across 14 stories. Pitiful.
What a piece of shit site, and they paid how much for the “upgrade”? You know, they say a monkey at a typewriter, given an infinite amount of time, would eventually write something like a Shakespeare play. I doubt anyone at RedState is that skilled.
Maybe they should have hired monkeys to do their coding. I bet the results would have been better.
One in the thread I mentioned…lol! Purity, Moe be thy name!
Joe
I live in Germany and watched it on CNN. I’m not 100% certain but my German girlfriend insists that Obama’s speech was being simultaneously interpreted on site. She says she heard it in the background, but I wasn’t able to hear it, so I can’t be certain. I do however seriously doubt the majority of those in attendance had the command of English necessary to comprehend Obama’s level of rhetoric.
I’m sorry to break this to whoever may find it shocking, but there are still more people in the world who don’t speak English then there are who do.
PeterJ
Conservatively Liberal
Well, we may follow him here at BJ, but we only do so to laugh at him.
Yes, we do skewer the old people too. Then we BBQ them.
dslak
Yes, they seem to be concluding that we tend to follow John McCain because we, as a group, tend to visit his website more often than Obama’s. That’s an easily defeasible generalization.
phobos
Barack Obama, Präsidentschaftsbewerber für die Demokraten, wird von einer Begeisterung getragen, die sich aus den Sehnsüchten und Träumen einer neuen Wählergeneration speist: Amerika will wieder geliebt werden, ein neuer Kennedy soll das wunde Land heilen.
josephdietrich
Maybe. Since you live here I’m sure you know that Germans have to take English in school from 5th grade on. From experience, I know a lot of them just don’t pay attention much and can’t speak it at a level where they could understand Obama. I have them in my classes all the time. On the other hand, the crowd was self-selected; I would suspect that the people who took the trouble to go and see him speak might have a better grasp of English than the general population.
calipygian
I have to concur with the Brits being much worse than Americans when it comes to being jerks abroad. But, a special shout out also has to go…..to the Germans!
I used to be stationed in Spain and travel all over the Med to a lot of those Brown People-inhabited Mediterranean countries and a lot of the service staff in places like Croatia, Greece, Tunesia and Egypt spoke German before English, or even both German and English and then would make fun of the Germans in their native language.
I was sitting at a beach bar in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, and I was chatting with a German couple and the woman sent back the beer she got about eight times because of different nit-picky little things. Finally the Egyptian bartender brought a beer that was to her liking and she bitched him out and he smiled, took it, turned to me, and while still smiling, and knowing that I spoke some Arabic, bitched her out in his native language. On the other hand, on the same trip, the divemaster of the dive boat I went out on had to give the dive briefings in English because i was the only non-German speaker out of two dozen people on the boat. That was kind of humiliating.
And, as a long time resident of a Spanish beach town, don’t think the Germans were immune from loutish behavior or shouting “Doesn’t anyone speak German here?” once they got somewhere outside of Germany.
calipygian
Andrew McCarthy at the Corner has a perfect illustration why American ignorance of language and no-nothingness is a danger to the country:
This asshole doesn’t understand that the reason why the Intel Community is trying to get away from the “jihadist” usage is because in Arabic, “Jihad” doesn’t necessarily have a negative connotation and most often has a POSITIVE connontation.
It may have a negative connotation in English, but that isn’t really our target audience, now is it?
We should be calling these people what they are – irhabiyun (terrorist) which DOES have a negative connotation.
But I guess thats way too complicated for that ass hat who obviously wants America to lose the propaganda war because ANdrew McCarthy hates America and her values. All you have to do to see that is see how he wants to treat prisoners at Gitmo after we close that place down and have to figure out what to do with them. (Hint: its no different from what a Nazi Einsatzgruppe would have done, and McCarthy put it in writing).
PeterJ
Pure bullshit.
This site is obviously a republican psy-op.
Thank god for the people over at quantcast that exposed the lie.
slightly_peeved
When they start breaking out the water cannons for groups of Australian soccer hooligans, you might have a point. Or when Australians expect everywhere in Thailand to sell egg and chips. Or possibly when Australians go out to the hotel pool at eight in the morning and plonk their towel on a lounger so no-one else can use it.
However, I would stay away from Australian rules football or rugby teams on their end of season trip. Those guys are assholes.
Ricky
LOPEZ PRAISES OBAMA BERLIN PERFORMANCE:
“not only understood but well-received,”
Ricky
Hate to be too late to a thread and miss this opportunity since the intended recipient is gone, but MikefromTexas,
being a homestateboy, would appreciate this:
mikefromtexas Says:
Erick Erickson; what kind of parents do that to their child?
I know a guy named Steve Dick and if his parents would have named him Richard I don’t think anyone could keep a straight face around him. Dick Dick would just be too easy. EE: ‘We have pundits’. No, you have morons. Learn the difference.
July 25th, 2008 at 1:47 am
Mike, there is a guy in Austin, Texas named Richard Chopp.
AND HE IS A PRACTICING UROLOGIST! A local realtor named Dell Swindle, however, left our scene before the full irony of his name could be known.
Svensker
Same in France. Last time we were there, people got really friendly when they found out we were Yanks, not Brits. Partly the Obama effect, too — when we were there in 2004, we got the cold shoulder a lot.
Janus Daniels
“You simply can not spoof these guys.”
But the New Yorker made a noble effort.
Baron Elmo
Wow, K-Lo may have reached a new height in bringing the stupid. “Why learn geography? Isn’t that what maps are for?”
This conservative disdain for intelligence would be a real laugh riot if it were greeted with the derision it so richly deserves… sadly, for far too many Americans, the word “elitist” translates into “someone with a college degree who thinks he’s better’n me.”
jetan
I can’t believe no one has mentioned K-Lo’s “rabbits are heroes too” post from earlier this week.
Time and again, she effortlessly achieves a zen-like perfection of inanity.
Joe
An Phobos:
Man hört ständig diesen Vergleich zu Kennedy und selbst ich habe erfahren, wie die Leute um mich herum ausgedrückt haben, wie lieb sie Kennedy hatten. Ich bin der Meinung, es spricht durchaus für Obama, dass die Deutschen erst seit ungefähr 45 Jahren von einem Amerikaner so begeistert sind.
Wenn nur die anderen Amerikaner so schlau wären…
Darkness
Oh, this is so true. I was in peaceful, confectionery-architectured Riga recently and as I approached the main square in there was some shouting going on and turns out it was this (smaller than expected from the noise) group of Brits, drunk off their arses, unintelligibly carousing at 120 db in one of the outdoor cafés. How do I know they were Brits? One of them had his shorts down to show off his flag underwear. And he was jumping up and down rather a lot, so you really couldn’t have missed him.
When alcohol and Brits mix the resulting concoction is not pretty.
I’ve seen Americans catch flack for asking French bakers stupid questions like “is the bread fresh?”, which is highly insulting but in reality just naive.
Mark
K-Lo, now playing five nights a week as Miss Frigid in “Someday, Mama, I’ll Be A True Neo-Con,” at the Trump Taj in Atlantic City.
Phoenician in a time of Romans
I’m sorry to break this to whoever may find it shocking, but there are still more people in the world who don’t speak English then there are who do.
And, for that matter, more people who speak English as a second language than as a first. Chinese-English is the future, not American or Commonwealth versions.
freepatriot
I operate under the sure knowledge that nobody is spoof proof
sent her an email in German
she might not get the joke
but those are the best kind
It’s like planting a “Joke grenade” in her brain, and ya don’t know when it’s gonna go off
Stubbs
How many of you speak any European language fluently? Have read extensively in their literature or history? Thank you, ignoramus monkeys.
goatchowder
K-Lo doesn’t need to know any other language to know that she es una pinche puta pendeja babosa.
grumpy realist
French: have read Colette, Montaigne, Voltaire, Proust, Hugo, Hotman, in the original, not to mention Descartes (in Latin). German: (enough to do patent translations.) Italian: Umberto Eco, mainly; medieval dialects. Latin…the Corpus Juris Civilis.
And as for K-Lo, shorai ni kokusaiboeki ni seiko ni naritai, gaikokugo wo pera-pera hanasenakereba narenai… (If in the future you want to succeed in international trade, you have to speak foreign languages.)