Ruth Wisse at the Wall Street Journal defends Tom Perkins’ claim that a progressive Kristallnacht is coming.
The parallel that Tom Perkins drew in his letter was especially irksome to his respondents on the left, many of whom are supporters of President Obama’s sallies against Wall Street and the “one percent.” These critics might profitably consult Robert Wistrich, today’s leading historian of anti-Semitism. His “From Ambivalence to Betrayal: The Left, the Jews, and Israel” (2012) documents the often profound anti-Semitism that has affected socialists and leftists from Karl Marx to today’s anti-Israel movement of boycott, divestment and sanctions. It was Marx who said, “The bill of exchange is the Jew’s actual god,” putting a Jewish face on capitalism and accusing both Judaism and capitalism of converting man and nature into “alienable and saleable objects.”
…
My point is broader: Stoking class envy is a step in a familiar, dangerous and highly incendiary process. Any ideology or movement, right or left, that is organized negatively—against rather than for—enjoys an inherent advantage in politics, mobilizing unappeasable energies that never have to default on their announced goal of cleansing the body politic of its alleged poisons.
In this respect, one might think of anti-Semitism as the purest and most murderous example of an enduring political archetype: the negative campaign. That campaign has its international as well as its domestic front. Modern anti-Zionism, itself a patented invention of Soviet Communism and now the lingua franca of the international left, uses Israel just as anti-Semitism uses Jews, directing grievance and blame and eliminationist zeal against an entire collectivity that has flourished on the world scene thanks to the blessings of freedom and opportunity.
Herein lies a deeper structural connection. On the global front today, the much larger and more obvious beneficiary of those same blessings is the democratic capitalist system of the United States, and the ultimate target of the ultimate negative campaign is the American people. Anyone seeking to understand the inner workings of such a campaign will find much food for thought in Mr. Perkins’s parallel.
Remember kiddies – Republicans hating on poors and gays and blacks and women is the democratic capitalist system at work, but saying rich people should pay more taxes is Marxofascism.
Via LG&M.
jayjaybear
They are very eager to appropriate the mantle of victims of the Shoah, aren’t they? My GOD! She’s RIGHT! Making the ridiculously rich pay more taxes is JUST LIKE gassing 6 million Jews (11 million “undesirables” altogether, including Roma, homosexuals and 7th Day Adventists) and turning their skins into lampshades! WHO KNEW?
Citizen Alan
At this point, I’m finding it harder and harder to see any problems with a Kristalnacht for the 1%. These are the monsters who want to abolish food stamps because children starving is a fair price to pay for more tax cuts for themselves.
Helmut Monotreme
“the blessings of freedom and opportunity” is a funny way to describe the willful destruction of the social safety net, the wholesale regulatory capture of the financial and environmental regulatory agencies when they are not legislatively prevented from doing their jobs, and the shortsighted and irresponsible tax givaways especially those implemented during the execution of two totally unnecessary wars.
Cermet
And we know which party the KKK votes for and how welcomed Jews are/were by the KKK – right up their with Blacks … and all those clubs that only the 0.01% WASPs could join and these clubs excluded Jews (even as help – at least Blacks could get jobs working in those places.)
KG
let’s see… how the Holocaust actually happened:
1. people had their property taken from them
2. people had their jobs/businesses taken from them
3. people were forcibly removed from their homes
4. people were placed in concentration camps where they were: starved; experimented on; gassed; thrown into giant ovens
So, how, exactly, is that anything at all like saying that the ultra rich are greedy, unscrupulous assholes that have so rigged and cheated the system that most people can’t get ahead when playing by the rules?
Cacti
The Wall Street Journal plays mouthpiece for the rich?
Get outta town.
ranchandsyrup
@KG: Add in there that the Jewish people were portrayed as looters/moochers/parasites. The 1% are hailed as uberproducers.
Violet
Have there been editorials in the WSJ extolling the virtues of slavery?
cmorenc
Criticism that the vastly disproportionate accumulation of wealth by the top 0.1% as a sign of unhealthy economic distortion leads down a similarly malevolent path as anti-Semitism, but criticism of 47% of the electorate for being “takers” instead of “makers” is a constructive observation of deep flaws in the structure of society that people should openly embrace.
I’d say those are the assumptions that glibertarians want us to simultaneously accept, because otherwise we’re communists or nazis or both. Fuck them with a rusty pitchfork.
Turgidson
Good freaking grief. These people are determined to take what is currently a batshit fever dream of hippies and poors storming the Hamptons with pitchforks, and turn it into a fucking self-fulfilling prophecy by spewing noxious bullshit like this, loud and proud. If they keep saying paranoid, irrational, idiotic shit like this, the masses might come after them just to shut them the fuck up.
Do these people check under their beds for angry poor people at night? WTF is their problem?
some guy
Robert Wistrich has made his entire career writing about the supposed systemic anti-semitism of the left. Jewish anti-semites like Marx and Trotsky at first, then “the Left” and it’s attacks on the Zionist apartheid project, then a hagiography of Herzel, then countless books and articles extolling the virtues of the Zionist apartheid project and decrying the antismeitism of antisemites. This guy is a professional, peoplez! . Surely, there is no reason not to trust a rightwing Zionist to defend rightwing American assholes.
This is like using Jenghazi Rubin as a character witness for Bill Kristol or Eliot Abrams.
feh!
some guy
Robert Wistrich has made his entire career writing about the supposed systemic anti-semitism of the left. Jewish anti-semites like Marx and Trotsky at first, then “the Left” and it’s attacks on the Zionist apartheid project, then a hagiography of Herzel, then countless books and articles extolling the virtues of the Zionist apartheid project and decrying the antismeitism of antisemites. This guy is a professional, peoplez! . Surely, there is no reason not to trust a rightwing Zionist to defend rightwing American assholes.
This is like using Jenghazi Rubin as a character witness for Bill Kristol or Eliot Abrams.
feh!
Alexandra
They’re feeling the heat because they recognise, long-term, that the cult of Reagan and fear of communism and black people isn’t that relevant to those growing up these days. Think it was Atrios who said that the old spells no longer worked.
We’re seeing the same in the UK. Technically, the economy is growing, but living standards for the large majority have dropped subtantially… and when a UN report on housing standards in the UK is released that criticises the goverment, but is dismissed in return as being Marxist, these are the boogeymen of the 70s and 80s. It’s not convincing to anyone under 40.
Josie
Um, no, one might also think that anti-black, anti-brown, anti-gay, anti-woman, and anti-poor campaigns would represent the archetype as well.
Jibeaux
Antisemitic marxofascism, to boot.
Kay
I still can’t get over what big, whiny babies they are. It was literally maybe 2000 people, nationwide, outside fast food restaurants. It’s a huge country! It’s not like we’re amassing an army.
Yet. Not at this juncture, anyway :)
Comrade Jake
These people live in a world of Gulf Stream flights. That’s why they think the free market is awesome, because they’ve never flown coach.
Suffern ACE
Yep. We wouldn’t think it a grave injustice if the Palestinians were in the Jewish Settlements while the Jews were living cut off from any prospects of economic development. Must be the Jewish hang up.
sophronia
As for the answer to the question of who else hated the rich, I seem to recall that Jesus fellow had some rather intemperate things to say about them. But he was probably an anti-Semite.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
Yes, the American left is so terribly anti-Semitic. That’s why most American Jews are lefties. These people are morons. Actually that’s an insult to morons.
Belafon
@Turgidson: One of the recurring themes my middle son has noted in his mythology studies is where a prophecy of doom is fulfilled by the very actions characters performed to prevent it. It kind of fits here.
feebog
See, here is the problem with your thesis Ruth; the 99% don’t hate the 1%. But more and more of the 99% are coming to the realization that no matter how hard they work, they are barely treading water, while the 1% are cruising along on their mega yachts. The 99% are finally beginning to realize that George HW Bush was right; trickle down economics really is voodoo economics. It is a bill of goods sold by the rich, enacted into law through willing sellouts in the Republican party, and benefiting only the rich. A good many of the 99% are still going to vote against their self interests, because hate of minorities, gays, immigrants and women still blind them to the fact that they are dupes. But be assured Ruth, enough of us understand the shell game that is being perpetrated here.
eric nny
I’m with Citizen Alan and Kay. Sign me up as # 2001. I’ll self-fulfill their prophecy. I’m going to find my pitchfork.
Zifnab25
Listen. Everyone knows that liberals hate rich people. And everyone knows that Jews are miserly plutocrats that control Hollywood, the media, and the lucrative deli-industrial complex. Ergo, liberals must hate all those hook-nosed, kinky-haired, wealth-obsessed kikes.
Why are liberals so anti-semitic?
Belafon
Oh, no. We can’t criticize people because that would be like the holocaust. We should have feel good things to say about people. Fine: Wisse, when the revolution comes, I can happily say I will not eat the flesh off of your bones.
Violet
@eric nny: I’ve got two pitchforks if anyone needs one! Anyone got a spare torch?
Ash Can
I can’t imagine that Jewish people in general — and those who lost family in the Holocaust in particular — would not be up in arms over any such casual appropriation of that tragedy as this, and especially when the perpetrators have the temerity to fucking double down on their offense. What’s next for the WSJ? Claiming that Coca-Cola’s diversity ad is just like flying 757s into the WTC?
Suffern ACE
@Belafon: It’s harmatia. But that is for tragically flawed heros. I’m not certain if Perkins qualifies as a hero, though. I guess to those who go “he’s just saying what we’re all thinking” when one wakes up in the mansion in the morning knowing that not everybody loves him everywhere.
jl
@jayjaybear:
” JUST LIKE gassing 6 million Jews (11 million “undesirables” altogether, including Roma, homosexuals and 7th Day Adventists) and turning their skins into lampshades! WHO KNEW? ”
Well, that is a the wonderful parlay, or segue, or cheap rhetorical gimmick (whatever you want to call it) at the end. First the Nazi progressive liberals kill the rich and render them in ovens, then, because society at large is denied the irreplaceable services of the uniquely gifted cadre of the currently rich, all the remaining non-rich will be oppressed also. The U.S. per capita GDP of the non-rich will drop precipitously. Which is like killing them, and something like killing them is like dragging them from their homes, starving and working them to death or gassing them and then rendering them in ovens. Which is exactly the same, except that it would not happen, and it would not be the same even if it did.
Shoah for the rich will be shoah for all, in the progressive left’s extreme egalitarianism.
I like that gimmick. It’s clever and glib. it’s cheap, it’s vile, it’s false, it’s even more absurd that the rich jerk’s original argument. It will be widely seen in wingnut quarters as a brilliant insight leading to an airtight logically irrefutable argument They should stop now. Anything more will be like explaining the joke.
Mike G
Yes, it’s just like the Nazis.
This country can’t even find the politcal will to abolish the egregious tax loophole that lets financiers classify their income as capital gains for lower tax rates. But it’s just about to herd them all into railcars. That totally makes sense.
Turgidson
@Belafon:
That’s another thing. These dipshits really want to say that negative fucking campaigning is the root of tyranny? Really? Where the fuck were they with this garment-clutching when both Bushes (among other GOP assholes) were riding the most heinous negative campaign tactics right into the Oval Office? Ohhhhhh right. They’re rich, so IOKIYRich, and in related, if a rich person does it, that means it is not illegal. And so on.
Keep talking, assholes. You’re doing great.
KG
@Violet: you damn commie! go sell your extra pitchfork and use the money to by a torch!
ranchandsyrup
@Violet: I cornered the tumbrel market before Villagio Delenda Est could. So if anyone needs those, I have them. Manufactured in China.
Sly
As every Classical and Medieval historian will tell you, the Jews had a ball of a time in Eurasia until Hitler and Stalin turned everything to shit.
MikeJ
@Ash Can: If a Republican rounds up people because of their ethnicity, locks them in a camp and tortures them, it is an insult to Jewish heritage to make any comparisons to Germany. If a Democrat calls for a slightly higher top marginal tax rate, it is exactly like the holocaust.
SatanicPanic
@Zifnab25: The latest from the right is that liberals hate rich people, but get this, according to them, most rich people are liberals! So we’re poor moochers, rich dummies and we all hate each other. Only Republicans are not haters.
Violet
@KG: Yeah, to hell with that sharing thing. What was I thinking?
different-church-lady
@feebog:
You’re missing the bullseye: the 99% are realizing that rather than be content on their yachts, the 1% is trying to set up a world where we don’t even get to have any water to tread, for no other reason than so their yacht can ride higher.
I don’t want a yacht. I don’t even care if they have a yacht. I just want them to not steer your goddamned yacht in a way that capsizes my modest little dinghy. IS THAT TOO GODDAMNED MUCH TO ASK FOR, ASSHOLES?
eric nny
@Violet: And where does one find a nice barrel of pitch these days?
different-church-lady
@Violet: I’m going in with a Swiss Army knife. And heading straight for the wine cellar….
Litlebritdiftrnt
@different-church-lady:
Preach it sister. I agree with everything you said. Not content with them having everything, they want to make sure that the rest of us have nothing. It is pure evil.
Sly
@different-church-lady:
Given that the guy Wisse is defending literally killed a guy with his yacht by running him over, got off with a fine, and then proceeded to bitch about the inconvenience of it all… yes, that is too much to ask.
Baud
I found Ruth Wisse to be convincing. I’ve decided I’m against death camps for the rich.
Roger Moore
@Violet:
Moocher! Buy your own damn torch.
Cermet
Lets see … who else hated Jews and was an extreme anti-Zion … Henry Ford! Yet he was a typical 0.01% elite WASP. Today, liberals are as anti-Jew as they are anti-Black, or anti-Latino or ant-environment. The quicker the used toilet paper WSJ dies the better the world will be.
Baud
@Roger Moore:
47% of people think they’re entitled to torches.
Violet
@eric nny: Just go visit some petroleum processing site. There’s sure to be some byproduct you can have for a price.
@different-church-lady: Gotta love Swiss ingenuity!
Kay
@eric nny:
I love the over-the-topness of the response. Their first reaction to the fast food strikes was “we’ll replace you with robots”
Oh, settle down. It’s a negotiation. Why don’t they know how to talk to people anymore? Zero to robot threats in 3 days? Maybe they are too isolated.
It’s especially amusing coming from the WSJ, which long ago announced there were two types of people, “makers” and “takers” which is an absolutely lousy and mean-spirited thing to say. Really, they started this :)
Calouste
@feebog:
The 1% starts at $300,000 per year or so. You can’t afford a mega yacht on that kind of money. What you’re really talking about is the 0.01%.
Chris
@KG:
Once again, the really offensive part of it –
Not only was antisemitism never something the socialists/Marxists promoted (it would’ve been pretty difficult given the number of prominent Jews involved in the movement, from Trotsky to Marx), it was something actively promoted by the conservative elites of Europe precisely to redirect class anger onto an irrelevant category (“the Jews”) rather than the people who actually had the power.
They’re trying to blame the left for their own forefathers’ media campaign, at the same time that they’re performing an identical campaign (“don’t blame the banks for 2008, blame poor black people!”)
Frankensteinbeck
@Zifnab25:
That was beautiful, especially since I was getting those vibes from this story.
Calouste
@Violet:
Most likely. The WSJ was founded a couple of decades too late to extoll the virtues of slavery in the US, but I would not be surprised if it had printed a few editorials about the “contributions” United Fruit made in Central America for example.
Trollhattan
As I’ve noted elsewhere, the Real Crime is the shabby treatment of “our number-one celebrity, the author Danielle Steel.”
Who will speak out for the Danielle Steels? Who, I ask?
Trollhattan
@Baud:
Splitter!
MomSense
@Violet:
I have dangerously sharp knitting needles!
scav
@Violet: Spare torch? Who needs em! Light up one of the 0.01. Should be greasy (marbled?) enough to burn well, and there should be enough spare pitch around to keep em lit. I hear if they have enough Himalayan salts in them they burn in different colors too.
schrodinger's cat
Guess who?
Zam
I wonder if this is actually their attempt at Jewish outreach “Look! The liberal Hitlers are going to gas us! We are just like you.”
Violet
@MomSense: @scav: Does anyone know where we can get a pike? We’ll probably need more than one for all the heads we’ll have to adorn them.
NotMax
Leonard Pitts Jr. wields a velvet-covered shiv on the topic.
Jay in Oregon
Bullshit. They fucking love class envy, as long as they are the ones being envied.
From Wisse:
That’s why you blasted Mitt Romney during the 2012 election for his “47%” comments, right?
And I’m sure you penned a nasty screed about Kevin O’Leary’s comments on how great it is that 85 people hold most of the world’s wealth, because it gives the poors something to aspire to?
Violet
@NotMax: Leonard Pitts used to have his column in my local newspaper and I loved reading him. At some point they stopped printing his column and I kind of stopped following his stuff. Thanks for the link and the reminder. I always love his insights.
Kylroy
These people aren’t scared that today is like 1938 in Germany.
They’re scared today is like 1932 in America.
Pogonip
@Violet: There’s one scheduled for next Tuesday.
danielx
Because class warfare.
The class war is over, after a forty year campaign, and the winners are those people who read the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page and nod approvingly. I mean, they won! Stephen Schwartzman compared a proposal to do away with the carried interest tax break to…”It’s war. It’s like when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939.” This would be the same Stephen Schwartzman whose net worth as of September of 2013 was around $7.7 billion. Can you imagine FDR putting up with the carried interest income break for hedge fund managers? I think not…but it’s considered to be almost a perquisite these days, and I don’t see Obama or any other pols, of any description, say “…and I welcome their hatred!”.
The rest of us are supposed to be grateful for whatever crumbs they’ve left after exporting the country’s manufacturing base, demolishing the social safety net, letting national infrastructure crumble, and sending the economy to the Marianas Trench. Please, sir, may I have another?
scav
@Violet: Pikes? Fireman use the hooky ones, so should be readily available. Not sure how they’d work for heads though. Dismantling some of those metal fences with fleur de lis on the top and sharpening them on the fly might be a solid option.
Bokonon
You know, history tells us that a major part of the Nazi’s rise to power during the Weimar Republic was due to Germany’s industrialists – who funded the Nazis as a counterweight to the communists and social democrats that were on their case. It worked dandy in the short term. The problem with that plan is that the Nazi had a more comprehensive and wide-ranging set of long term plans (that went beyond beating up commie union organizers). Oh well. Live and learn. Mistakes were made.
But is that why billionaires like Perkins are currently pouring so much money into right wing politics? To create and operate a vicious counterweight to the angry leftist hordes that they see gathering outside their offices? To try and control the national conversation (and add some political muscle?) Do they think that Occupy Wall Street has legs?
I think that Perkins has his historical parallels backwards and turned into a pretzel. He and his cohorts are not the Jews of the 1930’s. More like they are the Krupps and the Theyssens of the 1930’s, chortling and making excuses while they play at creating monsters.
some guy
Robert Wistrich has made a very profitable career arguing the exact oppsite. Because Marx and Trotsky opposed racism and xenophobia and chauvinism of all kinds they were premature self-hating Jews. This is basically the thesis of his first major academic work, and it only goes downhill from there.
feebog
@Calouste:
Yeah, yeah, I know. You can afford a pretty nice little sailboat with that income though. It’s called dramatic license, cut me some slack.
Mnemosyne
Weird how this writer can’t identify the mobilizing of unappeasable energies the Republicans have been doing for at least 30 years (and probably more like 50) but is quick to jump on even the vaguest negativity from Democrats.
Roger Moore
@Kylroy:
They’re scared it’s 1788 in France.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
“Stoking class envy”? These are clowns who rile up poor white trash to envy people who are poorer than they are. It’s a fucked up, twisted kind of “class envy”, but it’s still class envy as far as I can tell. Shit, the rich fucks themselves who stoke the white trash, these rich assholes, they themselves are eaten alive from within with envy for the pathetic, tiny pittance poor people get. Some family of four, barely scraping by on $20,000 or $30,000 a year get $120 a month to help with food, and the rich fucks seethe over that $120 a month that they aren’t getting.
I don’t think most Americans have anything against “the rich”; there aren’t a whole lot of Marxists in the U.S. People do have something against billionaires who would snatch a hot meal out of a child’s mouth so they could toss a few more pennies onto their already obscene heap of money.
Turgidson
@Mnemosyne:
Yep, the first group that popped into my head when I read the “mobilizing unappeasable energies” phrase was the teabaggers who have no clue what they’re talking about, but think breaching the debt ceiling would be fine, immigrants should self-deport, keep govt out of my Medicare, and on and on…but above all else, think making a deal with the easily twice-elected POTUS on anything, ever, is treason per se. You know, that faux-grassroots “movement” that rich dipshits and people this author stoked and encouraged right up until the moment their “unappeasable energies” became embarrassing and detrimental to the plutocrats’ wealth-hoarding agenda. But even now, the imaginary armies of hippies and brown poor people are the immediate threat. Keep talking, assholes.
boatboy_srq
@Sly: So entitled, uberwealthy, divorced from reality, and can’t even sail (let me guess: “I have people for that”). How typical.
I’ve actually seen this type on the water: the guy in the 90′ Perini Navi with the bullhorn shouting “Make Way! I’m under sail – I have the right of way!”… as he plows through a raft of anchored boats (who have rights over everyone since they’ve dropped anchor and can’t move).
Kay
@Bokonon:
But why such a clueless response if this is a genuine concern? When someone tells you “my work has value and dignity and I insist you recognize that” a thoughtful response is “I’ll replace you with a robot, serf” or “only 17 year olds do the work you do”?
We really have devalued work, and not just in wages, either. It’s a valid complaint. I feel as if it almost had to correct. “Makers versus takers” was a ridiculous frame. What about the vast majority of people who work for someone else? Are they all “takers”? What horseshit. Honestly, what nerve. It’s an outrageous thing to say, let alone trumpet.
Sad_Dem
@Kay: What the 1% doesn’t understand is that *they* are easily replaced by robots. It only takes heartless calculation, after all, to make decisions about money. But working a minimum wage job takes humanity and emotional judgment.
different-church-lady
@Sly: Jesus… I forgot about that! Parody is literally dead.
different-church-lady
@Roger Moore: Obama
phonestorches!different-church-lady
@Kylroy:
Which is completely idiotic of them, since the markets have recovered so much faster than the rest of the economy.
different-church-lady
@scav: Personally I think it would be fascinating to see if the Jaws of Life could be used for something other than life…
MomSense
@Violet:
As I am surrounded by trees, I think I can manufacture some pikes. I will even share!
different-church-lady
@Bokonon:
Never underestimate the motivating powers of delicate fee-fees.
You know how sports stars are always saying it’s not the money, it’s the respect? It’s like that, only for the uber-rich it’s not code for “It’s the money”. Too many of them honestly believe they have more human worth than other people, and get all crazy when those other people disagree.
MomSense
@scav:
It will be a great day when the gates of our gated communities are pikes for the revolution!
JustRuss
@Kay: Apparently the people who make Happy Meals are not Makers. And if you buy a company, gut it, loot the pensions, and sell off the remaining husk, you are not a Taker. Clear now?
danielx
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.):
Golf clap for today’s win.
eric nny
@Violet: well now I’m for the Keystone pipeline but against the 1%. This is getting terribly difficult.
Kay
@JustRuss:
They managed to convince people that their retirement accounts, health insurance and/or pension was a gift, not compensation.
I mean, some of these things are called “deferred comp”! They’re all pay! Yet, we had morons in media saying people “should pay more” for what is compensation for work performed.
Give back some of the earned compensation we’re all pretending is a gift? Is that it? It was ridiculously skewed towards employers. It had to correct at some point.
Turgidson
@different-church-lady:
Yes, not only that, but the Bolshevik abominations known as the New Deal and Great Society also served their intended purposes in the Great Recession to the extent that even the very poor in this country are generally not (yet) starving to death on the sidewalks in large enough numbers that the rich can’t help but notice. The evil gubmint programs and institutions that their ilk relentlessly seek to undermine and destroy (in order to further enrich themselves, natch) are one of the main things preventing the very “revolt of the poor” they seem so afraid of. Rather than recognize and be thankful for this, they spout their “makers vs. takers” bullshit.
I mean geez, after several years of a nasty recession and an anemic recovery felt, by and large, by only the already-rich assholes, this country still voted 47% for a soulless plutocrat whose campaign was almost explicitly promising to redistribute as much wealth upward as he could get his hands on. Romney might not have cracked 35% against FDR in 1932, and perhaps not 40% against Obama in 2012 if the country had no safety net to speak of and was suffering through 1932 conditions.
The detached myopia of this crowd is something else.
proterozoic
You know who else was opposed to things? Hitler.
Meg
You forgot to mention,
“Ruth R. Wisse is the Martin Peretz Professor of Yiddish Literature and Professor of Comparative Literature at Harvard University.”
What is with Harvard, seriously?
SoINeedAName
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Nero_Wolfe#The_Red_Box