Monday, February 9, 2015

The Killing Joke

I don't believe we've examined Kurt Schlichter on Wo'C before, and can't really claim to know the first thing about him.  And yet, based on the tone of his recent Townhall piece, which is so vein-poppingly entitled that I suspect it would make Marie Antoinette snap her fan and mutter, "Check your privilege," Kurt was probably hurt by the rich buffet of puns and mispronunciations his last name offered to Middle School wags ("Schlichter? I barely know her!"), sending him running off to press the top of his head against the tetherball pole in a Charlie Brownian pose of existential despair, and it made him mad. It made him mean mad, and now he just wants to hurt us all back.  And while collective guilt isn't my favorite team sport, I'm willing to do my part, even if that means squeezing into short shorts and a sexy tube top to playfully wax Kurt's Dodge Charger for the big car wash fundraiser.
President Obama, Send Your Deadbeat Supporters to Wash My Car 
My car needs washing, and frankly I’d prefer that the losers who think Obama’s “free” community college idea is super awesome get off their lazy hindquarters and wash it for me for free. Sure, I could pay for it myself, but then I’d have to forgo things I’d rather have. It’s cruel and inhuman and, I’m guessing, both racist and phallocentric, to force me to prioritize how I spend my money. So, Mr. President, I need you to direct your minions toward my reserved parking space because, in the words of noted jurist and personal hero Judge Elihu Smails, I want it creamed and buffed with a fine chamois.
Now, at first glance, Schlichter's claim that it's "both racist and phallocentric" to make him pay for a car wash because he'd much rather spend his money buying...a black penis, I guess?...sounds silly, and that's the point. Despite the fact that Kurt looks (and "Schlichter" sounds) exactly like one of the evil frat brothers from Animal House all grown up and gone to seed, he's actually playing a deep Swiftian game here.  If the ultra-hip link to a Caddyshack .wav file wasn't enough to convince you that Kurt is actually a comedy-savvy joke machine on a par with Bruno Kirby's character in Good Morning, Vietnam, then this endorsement ought to do the trick:
Kurt Schlichter (Twitter: @KurtSchlichter) was personally recruited to write conservative commentary by Andrew Breitbart. 
Wow. That's a rare honor, like being a chiropractor who's personally recruited by Ed Wood to double for the deceased Bela Lugosi in Plan Nine From Outer Space.
He is a successful Los Angeles trial lawyer, a veteran with a masters in Strategic Studies from the United States Army War College, and a former stand-up comic.
In the inter-War years, most of America's beloved comedians came out Vaudeville, or the Catskills, while in the Fifties, it was the nightclub scene; in the Sixties, a sharper, more satiric comic voice developed at the Harvard Lampoon, but nowadays it seems as though nearly all the nation's edgiest comics are emerging from the Army War College.
I’m just going with the flow here. Apparently all that’s needed to get something these days is to unleash your inner wanting and hack politicians will start promising to provide it for free.
Patronage and graft sure aren't what they used to be. In the old days, you'd get a bottle of free whiskey for voting twice. Now they just send you to Calculus class.
 In the dark, wicked past, things like fine touring sedans and reserved parking spaces – as well as community college degrees – came after one put forth something called effort.
I think you misunderstand, Kurt. They're not giving away degrees -- you still have to go to class, write the papers, pass the tests; in other words, earn them -- they're just subsidizing tuition, which in my day was -- at least at the Junior College level -- as close to free as made no difference.
 “Effort” is a word that describes the means by which the people called upon to subsidize lay-about Democrat-voting losers acquire the money the liberals seek to plunder. 
That's your definition, huh? So there's no English Comp requirement at the Army War College?
But today, we have legions of over-schooled, under-wise, neckbeards voxsplaining to us about how demanding they expend effort before they get stuff is really just discrimination.
Some people overexert themselves and get a charlie horse. Kurt gets a dennis miller.
Yes, it is. Life, using effort as a metric, ruthlessly discriminates between the lazy and those who have stuff. I am super comfortable with that.
Does Life also discriminate between "those who have stuff and those who would like to have stuff but won't ever get the chance to acquire any because they can't afford to go to college"? Because in that case, it seems like Life is kind of a dick.
I could go on a long diatribe about all the burgers I flipped and the toilet stalls I mopped over my nearly 35 years of work
Don't trouble yourself, we're bored enough as it is. (However, if a "successful trial lawyer" is still flipping burgers and mopping toilet stalls, I'm guessing your firm is sending a subtle hint that you're not going to make partner.)
but I don’t need to justify my right to my own property or the fruits of my labor. It’s mine, not the liberals’. That’s all that matters – whether I got what I have because I built a company or had super rich parents who handed it to me or because I won the lotto is, frankly, none of anyone’s business. 
What’s mine is . . . mine. Not yours. Go get your own. Keep your grubby mitts off mine.
Sorry, children of the non-super rich; if Obama's proposal becomes law you may get the otherwise unattainable opportunity to earn a degree, or enough credits to transfer to a four year school, but despite what the President says, you're going to have actually go to class and study, and not just walk into Kurt Schlichter's den and rip his diploma off the wall.
I’m always fascinated when some moral illiterate who’s still sponging off his mommy labels as “selfishness” my unwillingness to give him my hard-earned money just because he really, really wants it. Not that it matters – again, it’s mine, so if I want to be selfish with it that’s my prerogative. If you want the same prerogative, get your sorry tail behind a cash register and start selling people Big Macs.
Unlike the unlettered sponges who are continually importuning him for money and property, Kurt is a moral literate, although apparently he only reads morality at a Second Grade level.

I refused to listen to President Bottomless Piehole’s speech the other night,
"I meant to, but I was busy coining insulting nicknames for the President, and for some reason they all sounded like specialty desserts at Cracker Barrel, and then I got hungry and wandered off to the kitchen..."
 but I understand that he pointed out some Potemkin villager as his example of an oppressed prole trying to survive in the living hell that is the America he has led for the last six years. He lamented that Ms. Julia Potemkin worked hard, but darn it, didn’t have the money left at the end of the month to take a vacation or get a new car. Now, how did he come to the conclusion that this is a bad thing? People who are financially squeezed shouldn’t take vacations or drive new cars. 
They shouldn't get paid sick days either, which they wouldn't even need if they had to get out in the fresh air and walk to work.
That’s not a problem to be solved. It’s an example of thrift to be applauded.
And if you actually freeze or starve to death, Kurt will give you a standing ovation.
To the extent the situation Ms. Julia Potemkin finds herself in is even a problem at all, it is not for the President or anyone else to address.
While Republicans, as a party, have become anti-science, many individual members, like Kurt, are willing to scribble in a grandfather clause for natural selection.
 Hey Julia, you’re a grown woman, at least chronologically. Figure it out. Want a nice vacation? Work more hours, or get a better job. Save money by canceling cable, or cooking at home. Maybe you could do what I did for years as I built my law firm and just not take a vacation. I don’t know what the answer for you is, and I don’t care. You’re a grown women. If you’re unhappy, figure it out.
Again, I'm not as strong on my definitions as you are, Kurt, so maybe you can help me out: is this "voxsplaining," "mansplaining," or "psychosplaining"?
I do know one thing – the answer is not to come to me and tell me I should subsidize Ms. Potemkin’s decisions by giving her my money. That’s money I got through my decisions, like my decision to spend years working three jobs (lawyer, writer, Army reservist).
You're sure getting all exercised about a woman who doesn't exist. But of course, millions of real life Julias do work three jobs, many of them backbreaking and for minimum wage, whereas your employment hat trick consisted, respectively, of 1) a white collar career 2) more of an avocation or a hobby, and 3) a job that required you to show up for, what? One weekend a month and two weeks every summer?
 You know why I have a nice car? 
No, but if I had to guess, based solely on your column, I'd say you probably snuck up behind a disabled man in a parking lot, beat him to death in a foaming rage with a golf putter, then zoomed away in his BMW while muttering about sponges.
A lot of people want their college paid for, but they really don’t want to do the things consistent with buying – yeah, education is a commodity – a degree. 
Yeah, why don't these stupid middle class and poor people just buy advanced degrees from online diploma mills, then get jobs as conservative talk show hosts?
Their bright idea is to have mepay for it. And it’s a terrific idea – for them. Funny how that always happens. Oh, and besides being selfish, I’m also short-sighted because it would do all sorts of vague, unspecified good for “society” if everyone could get babysat for another two years past their terms in the Democrat-unionized K-12 moron factories.
He has a point. School only lasts for something like six hours a day, and if freeloading first graders cared at all about being fair to Kurt, they could easily pay for their own grammar school educations by laboring the remaining eighteen hours in a blacking factory.
Well, since apparently the government now exists to fulfill every transitory whim, I want in. I want my car washed, and I guess that leaves only one alternative, since I don’t want to pay for it. You people who think it’s A-OK to divvy up my money – which is really my time in dollar form – need to get up off the sofa, put down that Xbox controller, and pick up a sponge. Wax on, wax off. Get buffin’.
Hell, I'll go you one better, Kurt -- I think they should be forced to wash you. Anyone got a fire hose, or a water cannon...?
Hey, don’t be selfish. Think of the benefits to society that would come from me – a demonstrated job creator – if I was liberated from the tyranny of having to get my car washed. What, you still don’t want to? What about society? Why are you so greedy?
This doesn't make a lot of sense -- we all pay taxes for things we don't agree are worthwhile, or which don't benefit us directly; it's the price of living in a society in which our every whim is not catered to, assuming we're neither the super rich nor one of their paid courtiers -- but then I remembered that this is all satire, and Kurt is using his satirist's pen to stop widespread higher education before enough of his potential audience can go to college and realize this isn't satire.
Well, I’ll make you a deal. I won’t ask you to subsidize my life decisions and you won’t ask me to subsidize yours. 
But that's not quite fair to you, is it? I mean, sending people to college involves certain fixed costs which must be covered by tax dollars, whereas I'm pretty sure it doesn't cost you anything to be an asshole.

10 comments:

Helmut Monotreme said...

He sure takes a lot of words to say 'Let them eat cake'.

ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®© said...

Well, since apparently the government now exists to fulfill every transitory whim, I want in.

Think big, Kurt. Our government has been throwing war parties for its biggest corporations for many decades.
~

Professor Fate said...

"(However, if a "successful trial lawyer" is still flipping burgers and mopping toilet stalls, I'm guessing your firm is sending a subtle hint that you're not going to make partner.)"
Thank you for that.
Lord he really doesn't care for anybody that isn't him. Nor has he any sense of how much things have changes since he was able to afford college by flipping burgers.
And I'd bet cash money he represents doctors and hospitals in malpractice suits (which is why he has his car )

Kathy said...

His venomous statements leave ArgleBargle and Dr Mike's blibber-blabber in the DUST. The stupid burns Us! The vicious selfishness gives Us hives! The sniveling (he "flipped burgers! cleaned toilets! joined the Army!" Oh, the Humanity!) makes Us vomit! His Theodicy gives Us boils on the ass! No wait- that's not a boil, its his head. http://boilx-boils-relief.healthnutritionsupplements.net/boils/boils-on-face-pg/

Smut Clyde said...

buying – yeah, education is a commodity

"Commodity" has a meaning, and it is not simply "something one pays for".

Li'l Innocent said...

"Hell, I'll go you one better, Kurt -- I think they should be forced to wash you. Anyone got a fire hose, or a water cannon...?"

Most excellent. This guy is enough to test anyone's ethics; what joy to abandon one's principles long enough to upend him in a toilet bowl - an unscrubbed one - with one's own hands.

Can you imagine what his comedy was like? Probably went down well at the luncheon shows at the Trial Lawyers, Jobcreators, Human Traffickers and Knights of the White Chameleon Union Hall.

Anonymous said...

I wonder who paid for his time at the war college?

Robert said...

I can’t figure these guys out by his account he is one of society’s big winners. Lawyer, writer, big car, big house and yet he is as bitter as an innocent man serving life in Sing Sing what is it with these guys?

Kathy said...

Robert- I think its the "there isn't enough for everyone" ideology of conservatives. Believing that, they must also believe that they really deserve what they got, whether inherited or stolen or honestly worked for. Conversely: people without any goodies or eve necessities don't deserve them, and making demands for health care and fair wages and clean water is just envy and hate on the part of the lazy and undeserving Have-nots.

My soon-to-be-ex-husband takes home $10,000 a month after taxes, but he doesn't want to pay child support or alimony, because, after all, the wife-&-kid haven't worked their asses off to earn it, have we? Its a horrible -but apparently common- perspective.

Howlin Wolfe said...

Geez, he sure a lot of words to say nothing more than, "I've got mine, fuck you."

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