House of Meat

The worst writer on the Internet is of course Paul J. Cella of Red State, at least since his colleague Maximos died of acute prolixity.

Here are some words that Cella recently decided to cram together. He does so as deftly as you yourself could juggle a dozen live turkeys.

It is my firm view that the most vital problem of American national security, the question upon which hinges our fortune in the war that came to our shores on September 11, in short, nothing less than the most pressing issue before the Republic, is whether or not we will comprehend the ineradicably Islamic character of the enemy.

The "in short" up there is to be especially savored. Anyway, what he means is "nuke the sand people."

Are we or are we not a people capable of embracing hard truth about the war that is made against us — the hard truth that the enemy finds his motivation, his inspiration, his justification, his rhetoric, even his strategy and tactics, in the authentic and primitive traditions of the religion of Muhammad? Are we or are we not a people possessed of the fortitude equal to this challenge? As the cliché goes, can we handle the truth?

Wow. It takes a unique talent to botch a Jack Nicholson line. I also like that the religion of Muhammad is bad because it has has traditions that are both "primitive" AND "authentic." Real religions are the exact opposite, you see. A real religion has traditions that are "modern" and "bullshit." In other words, vote for Romney.

Moving on. This particular iteration of fuck-the-woggery was prompted by the fact that a person named  Stephen Coughlin just got canned by the Pentagon. This is a crisis that is of interest to precisely nobody but very Internetty wingnuts, spurred on by the Washington Times. Coughlin is a genius whose thesis I have read up until page seven, right after the part where he explains how nobody wants to say that Islam is a murderous religion because of Edward Said and his "1978 literary deconstructionist classic, Orientalism." (Look it up for yourself if you don't believe me. I totally shit you not.) Wheeeee!

Anyhoo. The details of Coughlin's firing are tedious in the extreme, but Cella manages to also make them seem trivial. It helps that he's inarticulate.

Patriotic indignation should swell against this oppression. Under its influence, the public mind of the Republic may have no compass over the character, the origins, the antiquity, the variations and predecents, of the war being made against us. Friends, it is an oppression — a crippling and dangerous one. We invent new euphemisms to conceal the facts virtually every day; we invent them because, as Chesterton aptly put it, short words startle us while long words sooth us. Sen. John McCain, for instance, is said to be a hawk on the war on terror. For him the enemy is a comically redundant string of emotional descriptors: “radical Islamic extremism.” My personal favorite is the talent of our sheepish writers for piling on suffixes. The enemy becomes “Islamicism”; whatever is necessary to rhetorically distance him from the Islamic religion as such. The purpose of these lengthy phrases is not to properly identify and understand the enemy; it is to sooth the distressed conscience of Liberalism.

Yeah, well, fuck you. How's that for some short words that might soothe you, in sooth? And Chesterton? A third-rate mind without even a Hobbit to remember it by. Feh. 

There's a lot of other funny shit in there. But I'm done. What I think is the central joy of this line of reasoning is its ultimate irrelevance. If you accept the notion that every Muslim is a murderer, you have two options: genocide or conversion. Genocide is impractical. So is conversion.

So your patriotic hard-nosed bigotry leaves you precisely nowhere. With luck though you may still retain possession of your thesaurus.

 

Comments

[Spokane Moderate]

Yes, Cella's a genocidal maniac, but his real crime is much worse. No one who writes "the public mind of the Republic may have no compass over the character, the origins, the antiquity, the variations and predecents, of the war being made against us" is allowed to bitch about "a comically redundant string of emotional descriptors."

The horror. The horror.

[NotDeadYet]

I like how you can grab two or three word phrases, randomly, and get equally trenchant results, e.g. :

"Patriotic indignation, posssessed of the fortitude to sooth the distressed conscience of Liberalism, is a comically redundant string."

Try it!! Better than Soduko.

[FearItself]

Which is worse: that this guy is trying to sound just like George Will, or that he ends up sounding even less coherent? I think the ambition, rather than the execution, is the greater tragedy. (Of course, we are talking about a couple of itty-bitty tragedies, here.)

[LA Confidential Pantload]

Damn. I feel like The Dude: "Would you mind repeating that? I wasn't paying attention." Apparently M. Cella believes that if you bury a turd under a mound of polysyllables, it magically turns into a popsicle.

[coozledad]

Sounds like he badly needs someone to oppress his "swollen patriotic indignation".

[LA Confidential Pantload]

And don't the Geneva Conventions protect English from this kind of treatment?

[rea]

The Republic has a group mind? Who knew? And it's supposed to have a compass? Presumably to draw those circles in which this guy reasons . . .

[low-tech cyclist]

I'd comment on Cella's writing, except my eyes kept on glazing over while I was trying to read it.

[eRobin]

A real religion has traditions that are "modern" and "bullshit." In other words, vote for Romney.

LOL :)

[actor212]

Paul Cella is channeling "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" right down to the Klan rhetoric!

Homer Stokes: Is you is, or is you ain't, my constituency?

[Me]

This dude is less coherent than Criswell in "Plan 9 from Outer Space".

[tim quick]

"Patriotic indignation should swell against this oppression."

Is it just me or is that a line from a 19th century porn novel?

And, he's right “Islamicism” cetainly "rhetorically distance[s] [one] from the Islamic religion". Watch me do it! He's not "iliterate" but a stealthy practioner of "iliteracism".

So, there.

[Stephen Stralka]

My favorite part is where the enemy finds "even his strategy and tactics" in the religion of Muhammad. I'm not sure if he's saying our very existence is threatened by a bunch of guys who haven't updated their field manuals since the 7th century, or if he seriously believes the Koran includes detailed instructions on how to make an IED. Either way he's an idiot.

[Batocchio]

Well played!

There's some comfort, I guess, in such bigotry being so damn incoherent. Not that it all isn't, on some level, but the slicker wingnut welfare "experts" sometimes succeed in making it sound a wee bit more respectable than it actually is.

[The Disgruntled Chemist]

we invent them because, as Chesterton aptly put it, short words startle us while long words sooth us.

I have no words that can adequately mock this kind of lack of self-awareness.

They should've sent a poet.

[russell]

"Omit needless words".

Strunk and White, "Elements of Style", 1913.

They used to make you buy a copy of that in English Comp 101.

Oh, for the good old days.

Thanks -

[flory]

Under its influence, the public mind of the Republic may have no compass over the character, the origins, the antiquity, the variations and predecents, of the war being made against us.

The public mind may have no compass over the precedents of the war being made against us.

Those are English words. I know they are. I have a dictionary.
But I've never seen them strung together quite so....interestingly.

[K. Ron Silkwood]

Shouldn't a random word generator produce at least one coherent sentence?

[rev.paperboy]

I edit translations of Japanese newspaper article for a living. Most of our translators are not native speakers of English, in fact, a few don't even speak, read or write the language very well. None of them write as badly as Paul Cella. Can someone really write that badly without trying to stink?

[merlallen]

Those fuckers have banned me under 3 different names and emails. I checked my inbox today and they are begging me for money. So I wrote back called them lazy liberals and suggest they work for a living like I do.

[actor212]

Under its influence, the public mind of the Republic may have no compass over the character, the origins, the antiquity, the variations and predecents, of the war being made against us.

It's like he's channeling Disraeli, only worse.

[russell]

It reads like a bad undergraduate translation of "The Song Of Roland".