"Since the dawn of time, mankind has wondered: is there any creature more powerful than Marmaduke..."

"... our awful tormentor, who rules over this plane of existence with gore-drenched fangs?"

Scenery chewing in the Theater of Outrage over Wayne LaPierre's unremarkable news conference.

Read the transcript of what LaPierre said, if you haven't already, so you know what the purveyors of outrage are characterizing for their readers.

Here's the NYT editorial, which is entitled "The N.R.A. Crawls From Its Hidey Hole."

[W]e were stunned by Mr. LaPierre’s mendacious, delusional, almost deranged rant.

Mr. LaPierre looked wild-eyed at times....

We cannot imagine trying to turn the principals and teachers who care for our children every day into an armed mob....

He proposed a mob? This is a failure (or pretended failure) of imagination. What if those who worked in schools were offered training in weapons and permission to carry in schools if they could qualify — entirely optional? Is that idea obviously mendacious, delusional, and almost deranged? The NYT is hot to exclude it as something any sane person would even begin to contemplate. They'd like an instant crazy image of teachers gone wild.

People like Mr. LaPierre want us to believe that civilians can be trained to use lethal force with cold precision in moments of fear and crisis. That requires a willful ignorance about the facts. 

If "civilians" can't be trained, how can noncivilians be trained? And quite aside from how well people hit targets, isn't the presence of an armed guard a deterrent from beginning an attack, and doesn't pointing a gun at the criminal sometimes end his attack?

Moving on from the NYT, here's Andrew Sullivan absorbing LaPierre into an all-out assault on the GOP titled "Enough!":

Between the humiliating and chaotic collapse of Speaker Boehner's already ludicrously extreme Plan B and Wayne La Pierre's deranged proposal to put government agents in schools with guns, the Republican slide into total epistemic closure and political marginalization has now become a free-fall. This party, not to mince words, is unfit for government.

If that kind of hysteria — sounding deranged in the condemnation of derangement — is what counts as unminced words these days, I'd like to put in an order for minced words. I'd like to aim a precise scoff at the phrase "government agents in schools." Agents! Sounds very scary, but the truth is, teachers are government agents.

Anyway, Sullivan's style of hysterical talk wins The Game of Internet, where the score is kept in traffic statistics. And Sullivan himself is boasting that his "Enough!" post "has just blown up on Facebook." Kablooey! He's so sensitive about those terrible guns, but his metaphor of choice is explosion.

Lower left-hand corner of a magazine is a monument to things not being anywhere nearly as good as they are said to be.

AND: This seems to be the post where I should remind you to use my Amazon portal, and let me just recommend: "Betsey Johnson Women's Flirty Faux Fur Slipper Boot." What's up with calling everything "flirty"? This is a strange fashion-writing tic. There's no way that slipper boot is flirting with anyone. It's quite the opposite. I mean, it's like those "In the mood/Not in the mood" pillows, with those slippers being the "not in the mood." [These can be your "in the mood" slippers.]

But... I know... the craze for "flirty" started with skirts, because of the rhyme "flirty skirts." And "flirty" is an alternative to "sexy," when you've already written "sexy" somewhere else on the page and "slutty," "sultry," "seductive," etc. etc. — all those other words on your women's magazine editor list — are not quite right.

"I had my tonsils out and was in the Evelyn Nursing Home feeling sorry for myself. Wittgenstein called."

Wrote Fania Pascal, back in the 1930:

I croaked: “I feel just like a dog that has been run over.” He was disgusted: “You don’t know what a dog that has been run over feels like.”

That's quoted in Harry G. Frankfurt's book "On Bullshit." Frankfurt aptly wonders if that really happened like that:

It seems extraordinary, almost unbelievable, that anyone could object seriously to what Pascal reports herself as having said. That characterization of her feelings — so innocently close to the utterly commonplace “sick as a dog” — is simply not provocative enough to arouse any response as lively or intense as disgust. If Pascal’s simile is offensive, then what figurative or allusive uses of language would not be?

So perhaps it did not really happen quite as Pascal says. Perhaps Wittgenstein was trying to make a small joke, and it misfired. He was only pretending to bawl Pascal out, just for the fun of a little hyperbole; and she got the tone and the intention wrong. She thought he was disgusted by her remark, when in fact he was only trying to cheer her up with some playfully exaggerated mock criticism or joshing. In that case the incident is not incredible or bizarre after all. 

Pascal needs to be more appreciative of having a friend like Wittgenstein. I'd say. But Frankfurt credits her with having this friendship and therefore with an aptitude for discerning whether Wittgenstein is cranky or nice. He decides to take her report as "sufficiently true to her idea of Wittgenstein to have made sense to her" and to "accept Pascal’s report at face value, supposing that when it came to the use of allusive or figurative language, Wittgenstein was indeed as preposterous as she makes him out to be." That is, Pascal — who might lack a sense of humor — now gets credit for having portrayed Wittgenstein as ridiculous, as if she'd made a joke rather than not getting the joke.

But Frankfurt's agenda is talking about bullshit, not analyzing the quality of a joke. She was bullshitting about how she felt by carelessly likening it to something overly specific — how a run-over dog feels. So Wittgenstein was essentially saying: That's bullshit. The key point — for "On Bullshit" purposes — is that Pascal doesn't care about the truth with respect to how the dog feels. So then Wittgenstein could be disgusted because of the way she didn't care about how the dog felt.

But it's not as though there were any real dog that had been run over. Pascal wasn't being callous toward an actual suffering being. The suffering being was Pascal, and the callousness, if any, was Wittgenstein's. On this theory, which hurt Pascal's feelings, he was saying, essentially, let's not talk about your mundane little tonsil surgery and its predictable after-effects. Let's talk about something philosophical, and the first thing that springs to mind is that dog you just mentioned. And he introduces the new topic. Ironically, the distraction into the random issue of animal feelings was much more likely to alleviate Pascal's pain that going on about the details of the surgery.

In Frankfurt's view — the context of bullshit — Wittgenstein is disgusted by bullshit, the laxity about what is true. I sidetracked the discussion into the question of concern about suffering. But the original topic — and the theme of the day here on the blog — is joking.

Joking has a lax connection to truth and to suffering.

"Do you agree or disagree with this statement: The most frightening words you could hear are 'I’m from the government and I’m here to help'?"

Goofy poll question requires people to puzzle over whether to take jokey hyperbole literally. But 32% of likely U.S. voters did agree with the famous Reagan remark. Rasmussen, the rascally pollster, says "Ronald Reagan would be disappointed."

When you're polled, you don't get to explain. Among those who disagree with the statement, what is the percentage of people who thought things like "Actually, I think the government is often quite helpful," and what is the percentage of people who thought things like "It would be much more frightening to hear 'I'm afraid you have 3 weeks to live' or 'Your child has been in a terrible accident'"?

This is the same point I was making the other day about that poll where 31% of Republicans said they thought Obama is Muslim: "They might simply have thought that he was Muslim by inheritance through his father, a cultural matter, which would be quite true. Why make fun of the people who are stuck within the constraints of a poll question?"

This is how pollsters can crank out raw material for propagandists. I'm calling bullshit. I mean, it's a cowpie of distortion.

Absurd hyperventilating about Romney's not completely quick journey toward the GOP nomination.

I'm talking about stuff like this:

A Super Tuesday Nailbiter Puts Romney on His Heels

With a shockingly thin margin in Ohio, Mitt Romney has a shaky Super Tuesday and Rick Santorum claims a moral victory.

But then... that's the one I linked to. You can see why they do it. Sensationalism. It's embarrassing, but it's a way of life in the media.

IN THE COMMENTS: chickenlittle said:

I don't quite fathom the "put on his heels" idiom. Does it mean like making a dog heel? Does mean put on woman's heels? Or it is a "round heels" reference?

Romney said he wasn't going to set his hair on fire, and I don't think he's going to don stilettos. "Round heels" is an old-fashioned expression signifying women who are easy to tip over. Rush Limbaugh resurrected it in one of his Sandra Fluke rants last week. ("OK, so, she’s not a slut. She’s round-heeled.")

I don't think Romney is cooling his heels or taking to his heels or showing a clean pair of heels. He's certainly not hairy at the heel. ("The Colonel delivered himself of the opinion that Godfrey Burrows was slightly hairy at the heel, a pronouncement which baffled Poirot completely.")

And it's got nothing to do with that Marvin Gaye song "Sexual Heeling." (Arf!)

I think the relevant idiom the headline writer intended to approximate is: rock back on one's heels. I'm visualizing a comics version of Mitt Romney, dramatically angled backwards. Aw! In my mind's eye, he looks just like Dagwood. And Ann is Blondie. 

ADDED: For Dylan fans:

Take me on a trip upon your magic swirlin’ ship
My senses have been stripped, my hands can’t feel to grip
My toes too numb to step
Wait only for my boot heels to be wanderin’
 
Seen you turn the corner, seen your boot heels spark
Seen you in the daylight, and watched you in the dark

Well, the sword swallower, he comes up to you
And then he kneels
He crosses himself
And then he clicks his high heels

You have slayed me, you have made me
I got to laugh halfways off my heels
I got to know, babe, will you surround me?
So I can tell if I’m really real

Wisconsin man faces 50 years in prison and a $90,000 fine on charges of forging signatures on recall petitions.

See, this is what you call the deterrent effect.

Why not the death penalty? Surely, the threat of execution would keep these cheating connivers in line.

"They're trying to crucify this man...."

Delving into a presidential candidate's record and criticizing him vigorously is crucifixion?

How about the way we failed — back in 2008 — to delve into Obama's record and failed to criticize him?

Here's a clue: Get yourself perceived as The Messiah and the good people of the United States of America will refrain from crucifying you.

"Ron Paul Flips Out Over Accusation That He Believed 9/11 Conspiracy Theories."

Says Laura Bassett in HuffPo.

I despise that sort of overstatement. Go ahead and listen to the video at the link. Ron Paul got testy and aggressive, but he didn't "flip out," that is, he didn't seem crazy or out of control. Bassett hypocritically indulges in exaggerated speech to describe exaggerated speech.

10 things wrong with the Freedom From Religion Foundation's atheist nativity scene.

(Here's my video showing the details of the creche, which is on the first floor of the Wisconsin Capitol, near some other holiday displays. You should watch the video to understand this list.)

1. Of the many figures in the display, only one is naked, ans it is a woman. This is the "clothed male, naked female" fantasy — promoted, presumably unwittingly.

2. The naked woman is Venus (the famous Botticelli Venus), and Venus is a goddess, a supernatural religious character, and therefore inconsistent with the overall theme of the display, which is that there is only the natural world and it's all we need.

3. The baby in the manger is huge in relation to the Venus figure, who is ostensibly the mother, so that is some scary cephalopelvic disproproportion, and yet naked Venus shows no signs of the C-section she would have needed to avoid death, unless we're to assume that baby got out of her body in some miraculous way, which is inconsistent with the theme of the display.

4. Atheism is promoted through a set of quotes from prominent figures — Thomas Jefferson, Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein, Emma Goldman, and Mark Twain — in other words, by reference to the revered words of authority figures, which is the same method of arriving at beliefs used by religionists — whom we're invited to disrespect for thinking like that.

5. A sign says "may reason prevail" and ends: "Religion is but myth and superstition that hardens hearts and enslaves minds," which is not even a remotely credible belief, because it is falsified by every example of a person who is moved to altruism and charity by religion. Reason doesn't prevail on the very sign that says "may reason prevail."

6. In 2 places, the display invokes the solstice as an occasion for contemplating the natural world as the totality of what is. We're told it's "the reason for the season." Reason is a buzz word for these atheists, but what reason is there for a reason-fixated atheist to pay any special attention to the solstice? It seems they've gotten their atheism mixed up with paganism, which betrays the religious component of their thought structure.

7. There's a sign saying "Thou shalt not steal" — a quote from God, as reported in the Bible.

8. Right behind the "Thou shalt not steal" sign, there's an array of brochures titled "About FFR's Natural Nativity," which I think they want you to take, but I didn't take one because of the intimidating God quote about stealing.

9. There's a sign that says "Heathen's Greetings," but "heathen" is a religious designation. "Heathenism" is Germanic neopaganism.

10. Unless only one heathen is greeting us, they've got the apostrophe in the wrong place in "Heathen's."

Romney says: “Zany is not what we need in a president.”

"Zany is great in a campaign. It’s great on talk radio. It’s great in print, it makes for fun reading... But in terms of a president, we need a leader, and a leader needs to be someone who can bring Americans together."

And, re Gingrich: "He’s a great historian... If we need a historian leading the country, I’m sure people would find that attractive. I actually think you need someone who actually understands the economy leading the country."

Wait. Isn't it zany to describe Gingrich as a "great historian"?

"It's like Christmas Eve, and everybody is opening their presents."

Guess what that refers to.

Getting to sign a Recall Scott Walker petition.

Revenge, the Wikipedia article.

A report that the wife of Dominique Strass-Kahn is seeking "revenge" got me thinking about the specific meaning of the word. Surely, it doesn't include merely remembering who kicked you when you were down.

My curiosity about the concept was sufficient to get me to Wikipedia, where I was, first, interested that there was an article at all, and second, interested that it was as short as it was. It wasn't super-short, like a dictionary definition. If you're going to purport to cover the history of revenge and its function in society and religion plus that famous saying, how do you keep the length to 2 screens?

Presumably: editing! Wikipedia is all about editing. People load crap in. That's the easy part. The miracle of Wikipedia is in the editing.

Oh, come on, Althouse. It's not a miracle. I mean, check it out:  "A miracle is an event attributed to divine intervention."

No, no. I'm not going there. The Daily News used "revenge" to portray a specific individual in a negative light for the titillation of readers. I used hyperbole, in a complimentary sense, to refer to the behind-the-scenes work of thousands of editors who deserve some extra praise and thanks.

Both miracles and revenge play a part in human storytelling, but revenge is a much better story. "Deus ex machina" is not the most admirable plot device, as Aristotle explained:

It is obvious that the solutions of plots too should come about as a result of the plot itself, and not from a contrivance... There should be nothing improbable in the incidents; otherwise, it should be outside the tragedy....

Revenge makes a good tragedy. See "Hamlet."  If you haven't seen it already.

Of the psychological, moral, and cultural foundation for revenge, philosopher Martha Nussbaum has written: "The primitive sense of the just—remarkably constant from several ancient cultures to modern institutions ...—starts from the notion that a human life ... is a vulnerable thing, a thing that can be invaded, wounded, violated by another's act in many ways. For this penetration, the only remedy that seems appropriate is a counter invasion, equally deliberate, equally grave. 

For this penetration.... a good image, when we're talking about rape. But what of the false accusation of rape? That too is a penetration.

"And to right the balance truly, the retribution must be exactly, strictly proportional to the original encroachment."

I think revenge asks for more.  Nussbaum explains the moral aspect of revenge, not the passionate edge that wants more than justice. There is passion, but wait...

Revenge is a dish best served cold.

That is the saying about revenge. And it doesn't suggest becoming dispassionate. You're not using your measuring spoons and cups, preparing a dish "strictly proportional to the original encroachment." The cold dish that is the best revenge is not a calibrated diet dish.

Nussbaum's Heart-Healthy Justice Salad is not revenge.

Fads.

We're talking about fads. It was my observation that the best fads were in the 1960s, but you might think that's a subjective perception caused by the fact that I was a teenager in the 60s. Correcting for that, the 1960s still wins in the competition among decades for best fads. Or so I assert, listing a bunch of great fads from the 60s off the top of my head: hula hoops, the twist, mini skirts, The Beatles, surfing, Afros, ironing your hair, long hair for males, love beads, happy faces.... surely there's more. I found this list of 60s fads on line. Bell-bottoms! Wide, paisley-patterned ties! Love-ins!

If you think some other decade can best the 60s in the fad category, make your case. But more generally, what do we think about fads? I was thinking that a certain type of fad — hula hoops — is a nice pop culture pastime. And then there is the labeling question: When does something stop being a fad? People use the word "fad" to put down something someone else thinks is important. Is blogging a fad? You might irritate some people by calling their pet concern a "fad": Worrying about the debt ceiling is a fad. Is there a time limit? Some new religion — Scientology — might be called a fad, but if you say "Christianity is a fad," people will know you are trying too hard to be provocative and — if they're smart — yawn.

Where did the word "fad" come from?

1834, "hobby, pet project;" 1881 as "fashion, craze," perhaps shortened from fiddle-faddle. Or perhaps from Fr. fadaise "trifle, nonsense," ultimately from L. fatuus "stupid."

Which reminds me: Fiddle Faddle is... a 60s fad! An even bigger popcorn-based 60s fad was Screaming Yellow Zonkers:

While the front of the package was simple and understated, the rest of the Zonkers box was completely covered with absurdist copy, accompanied by illustrations, informing the reader everything from “how to wash Zonkers” to “how to mate them”. The bottom of the box explained how to determine if it were indeed the bottom: “Open the top, and turn the box upside down. If the Zonkers fall out, this is the bottom. If they fall up, this is the top. If nothing happens, this box is empty.”

That was hilarious in the 60s, when smoking marijuana was also a fad.

"That's what they love. That's what they get off on. That's their orgasm."

"They" = the "walking human debris... those savages that make up the Obama base."

"What they get off on" = Obama's attack on conservatives.

According to Rush Limbaugh.

Signs of exaggeration.

"If Wisconsin surrenders/we'll all hang/Strike now while you still have food on your table."



"Scott Walker hates WI people."



"I never thought I'd miss Nixon."



"Walker Spread Yer SHIT!"



"My new tools"... "Union Power" is a hammer, pounding nails into a coffin labeled "The Republican Party."



At least this one sounds nice: "We are all one union."



But it's the utopians you most need to look out for.

(All photos taken by me, today, in Madison, Wisconsin.)

Democratic congressman: "Every once and awhile you need to get out on the streets and get a little bloody when necessary."

Rep. Michael Capuano was speaking at the Boston rally in "solidarity" with the Wisconsin protests. Last month, after the Tucson rally, he said: "There's always some degree of tension in politics; everybody knows the last couple of years there's been an intentional increase in the degree of heat in political discourse. . . . If nothing else good comes out of this, I'm hoping it causes people to reconsider how they deal with things."

James Taranto cries hypocrisy, but it's not all that hypocritical. Capuano said there would always be "tension" in politics, that people are intentionally increasing that tension (or "heat"), and that people should think about "how they deal with things." You can read that a lot of ways!

The NYT asks whether Jon Stewart is "the modern-day equivalent of Edward R. Murrow."

"Did the bill pledging federal funds for the health care of 9/11 responders become law in the waning hours of the 111th Congress only because a comedian took it up as a personal cause?"

"A few people lined the streets of the business and industrial park that houses ZBB, hoping to get a glimpse of Obama's motorcade when it arrived."

"A few people lined the streets"? How do a few people line streets? Or even one street? Instead of saying something ridiculously nonsensical, why not admit it? When Obama came to Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin, basically nobody gave a damn.

The AP, describing a case the Supreme Court recently turned down, writes: "the school valedictorian strayed from an approved text to provide a graphic account of Jesus' crucifixion..."

That piqued my curiosity, and not just because I teach "Religion and the Constitution" and want to know about the cases in the area. I wanted to know just how graphically a high school girl would describe the crucifixion in front of the assembled graduating class.

During McComb's speech at the Foothill High School graduation in 2006, officials turned off McComb's microphone when the school valedictorian strayed from an approved text to provide a graphic account of Jesus' crucifixion and credit God for her success in school.

How much piercing and blood-spurting and agonizing pain are we talking about? Did she go all "Passion of the Christ" on them? How long did the school authorities let her go before they freaked out about the Establishment Clause (or the deviation from the approved text) and kill the microphone?

Here's the video. Jesus comes up just after 2:00, when the student, Brittany McComb says "God's love is so great that he gave us his only son..." — and the microphone dies right there. Come on! That wasn't graphic. It wasn't even an account. And — since many Christians would think that God's giving us Jesus means the life he lived with us — it may not even refer to the crucifixion!