According to the blog Mondoweiss, Leon Wieseltier not only gave this as a wedding toast, but emailed his friends copies of it after the toast (via Matt Yglesias):
All of us here live our lives in plenitudes, even excesses, of significance. We serve our field, our art, our profession, our community, and our country importantly; we believe that we are important enough even to change the world, and in some ways we may be right. We flourish in the awareness of what is larger than ourselves, though it does not always leave us with the awareness that we are small. We are ceaselessly in motion, spinning up and out, mentally and physically; we roam the globe the way our ancestors roamed the town, or the hills just beyond the town. We deny distance and we revere speed, not least as proof that we may bend reality to our wishes and our needs; and we have taught ourselves to think swiftly, and also to feel swiftly. We are accustomed to celebrating ourselves, and to being celebrated, and what we accomplish in our various callings is often worthy of celebration. On our best days, we are moral, smart, purposeful, strong, glamorous, useful, and wide; influences on our history; patriots and cosmopolitans; public people, giving and gaining; the ornaments, and the trustees, of our traditions. This is our time.
I realize that not all of you find ridiculous pomposity as amusing as I do, but I’d like to think at least a few of you do.
I’m not 100% convinced this isn’t some kind of a spoof.
Dave S.
At a friend’s wedding his best man’s toast consisted of a recitation of the (rather long) list of the groom’s previous girlfriends, with a few salient facts about each. I thought it was the last thing anyone would want to hear at a wedding.
Now, it is second to last.
jenniebee
We deny distance and we revere speed, not least as proof that we may bend reality to our wishes and our needs
Yay us! We know how to ride a fucking train!
Annie
OMG. If this isn’t a spoof, whoever invited him the wedding should be shot…
Linda Featheringill
If it is not a spoof – then the speaker is in for a rough ride ahead.
If only it were so.
Morbo
Send it to Sully as a Poseur nominee.
Mark S.
Geez, this is only one snippet of the whole thing, which must have gone on for about twenty minutes.
BruceFromOhio
…like the time a band of acquaintances dropped some serious blotter and spent a sunny day roaming the park. Shit like this went on for hours.
Robin G.
What kind of douche writes a best man speech as though he’s accepting a presidential nomination?
mr. whipple
Yeah, me.
Whohoo!
Evolved Deep Southerner
You forgot the “Blogospheric Navel Gazing” tag.
jeff
Friends, upon this Ash Wednesday we again, as always, reflect on Eliot’s conversion poem as he muses on his world-historical humility:
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to shut the fuck up
Sadly, too few of us have lived up to the latter imprecation; or should we rather blame the Virgin? Who knows? I just thought this was really pompous, and am offering it in the spirit of assholes everywhere.
cf. http://www.msgr.ca/msgr-7/ash_wednesday_t_s_eliot.htm
Midnight Marauder
The irony. It is delicious.
Chyron HR
@Mark S.:
Yeah, but it sounds a lot better with Chris Squire’s bass solo in the middle.
ellaesther
Welllll…. Mondoweiss are the folks who thought that my email to Andrew Sullivan about his use of the word “colonization” in talking about the Israeli settlement project must have come from a shadowy, powerful Jewish media friend-of-Sullivan and Israeli-policy-apologist from whom he was taking heat (no, really), so, they are known to jump to the occasionally wildly inaccurate conclusion.
In fairness, they did correct the record when I wrote to say: Hi there, it was me! But, yeah….
mr. whipple
@Chyron HR:
Spew.
Beauzeaux
I am not ceaselessly spinning up and out, and I don’t care to know anyone that is.
russell
On our worst days we are pompous pricks.
Also: wide?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
This is the self-consciously high-brow version of “I AM A GOLDEN GOD!!”, but that guy (in the movie, and I assume Robert Plant) was hopped up on booze and drugs, seventies drugs, which I am told were more powerful. Wieseleiter was fueled by nothing but arrogance and self-regard. I like to think Samantha Power discreetly breathed an “Oh my fucking god” to her groom at the head table.
Annie
@Mark S.:
Since this was an Irish wedding, hopefully everyone got up in the middle and went to the bar…
General Winfield Stuck
cosmo for short.
DougJ
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
this is the self-consciously high-brow version of “I AM A GOLDEN GOD!!”
Right on!
DougJ
@Annie:
There was probably already stuff at the table.
jeffreyw
@russell: Well, 1 outta 7 ain’t sooo bad…sigh. But not only am I wide, I have..depth! I’m very three dimensional.
mr. whipple
Did they play Wagner in the background?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
OT: I am watching Rachel Maddow and Gail Collins discuss the filibuster, and they are in agreement that it is a very complicated subject. I was a political junkie even before I drank the Kool-Ade Of The O-Bots, but I don’t find it that complicated. I get that not everyone is a pol-junkie, one of my key beliefs about our politics is that most people get their news from three minute snippets on Classic Rock K107, but even I’m not so elitist as to think this is complicated.
Comrade Kevin
This oughta be sent to the Pseuds Corner of Private Eye.
soonergrunt
@jenniebee: You win the internets.
El Cid
We must move forward, not backward, upward not forward, and always twirling, twirling, twirling towards freedom…
Mike G
So, who the fuck is Leon Wieseltier?
eastriver
He wrote the shit down first. Edited it. Let it sit for a bit. Went back in, fiddled around, decided it was better the first way. Came back to it a day later, punched it up, hit Spell Check, Save As to another drive, considered it Locked. Loaded. Ready.
AND THEN HE READ THE CRAP ALOUD.
IN FRONT OF OTHER PEOPLE.
WHO WERE AWAKE.
AND SPOKE ENGLISH.
Where do people get 1) the nerve, and 2) the time?
KCinDC
Damn, El Cid beat me by 2 minutes!
DougJ
@Mike G:
He’s the literary editor of New Republic who got into that thing where he called Andrew Sullivan an anti-semite.
Comrade Luke
If this was the toast at my wedding I’D BE SO PISSED.
On the other hand, I assume many people would know who he was as soon as he got up so they would have just rolled their eyes, gone to the bar and ordered a double bourbon on the rocks. And if they didn’t also order one for me and give it to me while he was talking I’D BE SO PISSED.
Annie
@DougJ:
Probably not enough….
T.R. Donoghue aka Steve Balboni
It’s not real until Shatner does it with a bass player and a dude on bongos backing him.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
Isn’t there supposed to be something about the happy couple in there?
SiubhanDuinne
@Jeff #11
You’re good, but I’m holding out for the guy with the brick oven.
BombIranForChrist
Sometimes, when I read political thought by certain people, I think, “how the hell does this person even get to the mental planet that allows him to come up with outrageous bullshit like this”, and I usually come to the conclusion that some people’s thoughts are not the result of a philosophy but of a mental illness. Some people think they are Jesus. Others think they are Napoleon. Others, like Wurlitzer and the Moustache, think they are Prime Movers of Human History, the Benevolent Ideologues of our Benevolent Prosperity. But really, they are just a bunch of fat white men with bad hair styles and simple chronic halitosis. They are different in degree but not in kind from teenagers with bad hair styles who fulfill their megalomaniacal fantasies as Level 60 supersonic space elves in some online costume party masquerading as a computer game.
Proper Gander
Morbo @ #5
Send it to Sully as a Poseur nominee.
Funny, I read that as “Poseur wannabe.” I think I’ll have to use that one, it could be fun.
mr. whipple
@Bruce (formerly Steve S.):
The speech itself was a gift of awesomeness.
jeff
@Siubhan–hey thanks, but I meant to ridicule Wieseltier, not DougJ…or is Brick Oven a parody, too?
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to STFU already
has been in my head since morning, when my assistant told me tomorrow is Ash Wednesday (I wouldn’t have known, being an atheist-presbyterian).
RedKitten
At the end, all it needed was the immortal Vicki Lawrence to say “You sure that little asshole’s through?”
jl
Sorry. I don’t get it. What was it about? A wedding?
But, I’m not Ivy League, so it’s probably far above my head.
Mnemosyne
Geez, my matron of honor just talked about the road trips we took in college and how much fun we had being friends when she gave her toast at our wedding. I guess that’s what I get for having a best friend who’s not a pompous ass.
JGabriel
And in a different, more threatening, kind of pomposity:
David Barstow, NYTimes:
Oh yeah, this is gonna be a fun mid-term election cycle.
.
Midnight Marauder
@eastriver:
You can close down the intertubes, ladies and gents. We have our winner tonight.
+3
rootless_e
we are vain and we are blind
I hate people when they’re not polite
pompous editor
Qu’est-ce Que C’est
freelancer
Isn’t this Tom Wilkenson’s opening dialogue of Michael Clayton?
Worst. Wedding Toast. Ever.
hilzoy fangirl
After carefully scrutinizing Mr. Wieseltier’s speech, I am troubled to find that it contains an undercurrent of anti-semitic rhetoric.
DougJ
@JGabriel:
I can’t hear that name without thinking “We were somewhere around Barstow when the drugs began to take hold”.
danimal
The master appreciates true art when he sees it.
jenniebee
@Beauzeaux: Moving forward, not backward! Upward, not forward! And always twirling, twirling into the future!
CatStaff
I think we should all chip in and get that guy one of these: http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts-apparel/unisex/sciencemath/6e90/zoom/
Just Some Fuckhead
Leon Williesittter forgot the last line and doggone it, people like us!
freelancer
@CatStaff:
That shirt could only be better if Tunch was was the reason the Milky Way was tilted.
jl
oops. I obviously am not Ivy League. Clicked the link and saw the text of the supposed wedding toast.
Too long. I won’t read it, whatever it is, spoof or not. I will never know. I am an ignorant lout.
freelancer
@DougJ:
Goddamnit DougJ!
We are all anti-semites now.
jl
@freelancer:
Tunch is the reason the galaxy is tilted.
You don’t read this blog regularly, do you?
Everyone here knows that.
There is an interactive blog graphic someplace where you can explore the galaxy and universe using the Tunchcentric frame of reference.
I forget where it is.
DougJ
@freelancer:
Yeah, I almost used that as post title the other day.
Just Some Fuckhead
@freelancer: This is true. Used to be you had to be a certified holocaust denier with at least one published paper on the topic or have one drop of Arab blood in yer veins to be an anti-semite.
Now ya just gotta find Rahm Emanuel distasteful.
Warren Terra
@jenniebee:
I was waiting for the first “twirling” call-out. Frankly, the “twirling” speech would have been a better choice.
The Main Gauche of Mild Reason
This is so bad it reflects badly on Cass Sunstein to be associated with someone like this. It’s a shame, because I like Cass Sunstein.
Tyro
It has always been my belief that people who give wedding speeches are normally beset by intense feelings of jealousy that the bride and the groom, not them, are the center of attention and thus make an effort to do everything they can to try to put the spotlight back where they think it belongs: on themselves.
different church-lady
Who among us does not love pomposity?
Anne Laurie
@Annie:
If this was a real Irish wedding, the only people who pulled their faces out of their glasses / plates when Leon opened his yap were those preparing to heckle him non-stop.
freelancer
@Tyro:
Here’s a little xkcd for you.
Ruckus
@RedKitten:
Your link to CB was almost worth reading the… what the hell do you call that thing?
Anne Laurie
@different church-lady:
… the way my dog loves chew-toys: something to be snatched, run away with, crunched up in haste & the saliva-smeared remnants cherished at leisure.
DougJ
@The Main Gauche of Mild Reason:
I like Sam Powers too.
Chuck Butcher
If a half dozen 4 Star Generals were sitting around a table and one of them gave that toast, I’d expect they’d have him Institutionalized.
FlipYrWhig
To be fair, the portion DougJ quotes is immediately followed by “And yet none of these attainments and none of these flatteries are pertinent to what has transpired here today.” Which suggests to me that it’s supposed to be intentionally overblown and self-congratulatory… so that the rest of the speech can be about the special qualities of the couple. The problem is that the rest of the speech _still_ sounds overblown and self-congratulatory. For that reason, it doesn’t work as a tonal or thematic shift.
But, honestly, this doesn’t strike me as particularly embarrassment-worthy or suggestive of spoof. Needs pruning. It’s a movers-and-shakers wedding, so that’s why it has so much of A Soaring Address To Ye Publick in it. And, again, to his credit, he does work in a joke about how it’s not an honorary degree presentation, it’s a wedding. OK, a quasi-joke, or an extruded joke-like substance. Still, too much honorary degree in there.
ppcli
Unfortunately that speech (really – you have to read the whole thing!) can’t be described in the English language without new resources. The trouble is that we lack a word that would be the solution to x in the analogy:
medium-sized is to astronomical as gasbag is to x.
I propose that we introduce the word “Leon” (or better: “Léon”) as the unit of measurement corresponding to exactly the amount of bloviatude radiated by that toast.
With that groundwork, I announce ppcli’s Conjecture:
The amount of poseurishness in the assembled pseud’s corner entries in the history of private eye + the collected works of Slavoj Žižek is strictly less than
1 milliléon.
FlipYrWhig
@different church-lady:
I first read that as “Who among us does not love pompously?” And it was still true in reference to this piece!
DougJ
@FlipYrWhig:
I think the fact that he shows some self-awareness later makes it almost worse.
FlipYrWhig
@DougJ: Could be. It’s like he knows all along that it’s a bit of The Wieseltier Monologues instead of a wedding toast and tries to absolve himself with a few token jokes at his own expense… but also in hopes of justifying his persisting with more and more of The Wieseltier Monologues.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
@JGabriel:
I love how the story is headlined out of Sandpoint, Idaho. The Idaho panhandle has been a home for such scum as Richard Butler, former head/minister of the Aryan Nations movement and other minor hate groups. There are some crazy-assed nutjobs in that neck of the woods. Having grown up in Spokane and traveled all over the area I am well aware of how bad it is up there. I’m not surprised to see a story on the teabaggers originating out of there.
Eastern Washington is a beautiful part of our country but I am glad to be out of that place. The cops suck, the local governments suck and the people who like it that way it suck.
General Winfield Stuck
@DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal): Yes, when I lived in Montana, sometimes I’d pass through Coeur d’Alene traveling around. Some beady eyed nutbugs in that town.
JGabriel
@DougJ: Wait till you see those goddamn bats.
.
Tax Analyst
@Bruce (formerly Steve S.):
Shorter Leon Wieseltier:
Also:
He forgot:
(Joni Mitchell, “Woodstock”)
Jeezus, Leon certainly is a self-important putz, isn’t he?
rootless_e
@General Winfield Stuck: The alkalai salts of the earth.
fraught
Did he read this stuff off his palm or was it extemporaneous and recorded and then transcribed? It sounds like three-sheets-to-the-wind blarney at an Irish wake. And I thought we O’Fraughts were full of it.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
Whatever happened to, “Bill, you’re a great guy [slurring a bit] — oh, did I say great guy? I meant big jerk! [laughter] — but Susan is a great gal! You’re the luckiest sonofa…..gun [laughter] on the face of the Earth! I wish you all [slurring a bit] the best happiness and stuff! I love you guys [eyes welling, slurring]!” Now that’s a toast.
JGabriel
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal):
I think the focus on that area is a consequence of Barstow’s thesis, in that people so far to the right, such that they view the GOP as part of a liberal conspiracy in cahoots with the Dems, are pretty much going to be the craziest-assed nutjobs of the whole tea party movement.
Although I can think of some parts of Pennsylvania that are on par with that kind of crazy, and I suspect it’s the norm in most parts of Alabama and South Carolina.
.
Nutella
@russell:
I’m wide every day! Now if I could only lose about 20 pounds…
rootless_e
@JGabriel: hello, Texas is paging you.
freelancer
@JGabriel:
Where’s AhabTRuler? I keep expecting him to bust in here and say “I am Ahab!”
General Winfield Stuck
@JGabriel:
Yes, the too little discussed triad of Obama’s program for America. These fools don’t like the color black in their white house is all. A thousand whack-a-doodle rationalizations won’t change that a bit.
JGabriel
FlipYrWhig, quoting Wieseltier:
Then why fuck bring them up? I’m with DougJ on this one – that just makes it worse.
.
Tax Analyst
After a toast like that I think it’s fair to say this marriage is doomed to failure.
I’m imagining that immediately after the wedding the bride is berating the groom, “Why didn’t you at least try to stop that asshole?”, followed by an intensely frustrating episode involving a failure to adequately consumate.
Citizen_X
And nobody farted or belched loudly, or drunkenly yelled, “Shut the fuck up!“?
What the hell kind of a wedding is that?
rootless_e
I just want a record of this conversation.
http://www.dailykos.com/comments/2010/2/16/214621/313/152#c152
JGabriel
rootless_e:
Possibly I’m wrong, but I think Texas is too big to maintain the same ratio of high-level wingnut crazy as AL and SC, even though it certainly has a place there.
.
Jeff Fecke
@hilzoy fangirl:
He should never have mentioned the Trinity.
rootless_e
@JGabriel: i accept that. we do not have the ratio, but we do have raw numbers and some really high performing winger insaniacs.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
@General Winfield Stuck:
I grew up camping, snowmobiling, dirt biking, boating, swimming and every other outdoor thing you can do all around that area. I know the place like the back of my hand, same with the people. Later I serviced watercraft on many of the lakes that dot the area and I got to know the locals in those areas real well. There are some good people around there but they are outnumbered by the assholes and idiots.
My wife and I both grew up in Spokane and neither of us would go there again if we didn’t have any family there. It’s a nice place but I wouldn’t want to live there (again). We got a few teabaggers down here on the south Oregon coast but they are few and far between. Our daughter keeps track of them for entertainment and says that their last ‘rally’ had less than ten people there.
She works with the public and runs into these people all of the time. Everyone pretty much ignores them which is just fine with me.
JGabriel
@freelancer: Dunno. Just as well maybe. The Ahab references would only sidetrack into Moby Dick references, and, I hear, that mixing Thompson and Melville is just begging for a harsh trip, man.
.
mtiffany
More bemused than amused.
asiangrrlMN
Holy shit. I clicked on the link and tried to read the whole speech, but, oh, hell no. My eyes kept glazing over involuntarily–and I love words.
@Tax Analyst: I’m with you. If my hypothetical fiance had a best man who gave that speech, I would seriously question my choice of hypothetical husbands.
Someone really needed to tell him to STFU.
In the excerpt above, I started reading it three or four times and could not get through the first sentence. I had to skim after that.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
Regarding Leon and his windy speech?
One word describes Leon. Coincidentally it’s a word that Republicans revile.
Elitist.
This is what happens when you are insulated from reality, when you live your life in a bubble.
DonkeyKong
I swear same speech goes through my dogs head when he’s licking his itchy asshole.
FlipYrWhig
@Citizen_X:
A Harvard one.
freelancer
@DonkeyKong:
ell oh ell, DK.
FlipYrWhig
@JGabriel: I think the premise is that normally when Important People like them are gathered, it’s to alter the course of the world. It’s the literary-politico-academic nexus of the universe. But this time it’s a wedding. BUT just because it’s a wedding doesn’t mean it still won’t be something that alters the course of the world.
So for me it’s hugely self-important in premise and the style can only be described as “tumescent.” But it has a few somewhat humorous notes and it’s not incoherent. And it is–eventually–about the couple. Though frankly I find that part to have a higher squick factor than the excerpt.
Phoebe
Holy shit holy shit. That is breathtaking. I tried to read the original too, and failed. And Matt Y LIKES IT!
I pulled this pretty much at random:
“When my boy grows older, I will teach Cass to him, which is to say, I will teach him that smart and sweet can, no, must — go together. What is the use, or the beauty, of reason if it is not human reason?”
I might agree with the substance, I suppose. I’m all for smart-n-sweet. Who isn’t? But It doesn’t matter. The way he said it is just foul. The fact that he WROTE “can, no, must”. Imagine having to sit through that whole thing. I would start hallucinating.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
Fix’t.
silentbeep
@Phoebe: um is this a new way of being snarky that I’m not aware of? Matt Y. called it “absurdly egomaniacal.” I don’t think that translates into like.
Comrade Kevin
@Anne Laurie: Have you ever actually been to a real Irish Wedding, in Ireland?
scav
@DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal): Come on. The classic save is always performed by the major intestine of the author leaping up and strangling the brain (or what passes for it).
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
@scav:
I thought that version of the ‘save’ was when the large colon turns inside-out and he disappears.
I’d pay to see that.
I wonder what would have happened if someone had started laughing hysterically about half-way though that vomit-inducing masturbatory abuse of the English language.
scav
@DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal): That would work and I’d certainly chip in some cash along side you to watch that version. Rather Olympic in a sort of: “We’re approaching perhaps the most difficult part of his program tonight: the triple live-action inverting Mobius endo-colonic.” I was originally just going for 42. Equally valid parallel universes.
valdivia
totally late to this thread but knowing LW writing I can pretty much guarantee this is authentic.
brantl
There needs to be a biography written about this guy, it should be called “The Accidental Cocksucker“. I friend of mine used to say, you might as well of jazzed on the sidewalk, as had that.
Svensker
@RedKitten:
The first time I’ve ever actually SEEN anyone ROFL.
Hilarious.
Egypt Steve
Lion Weasel-Creature. There’s a hell of a pun in there somewhere. I do feel bad about posting this but cannot resist.
Steve
If you have ever read even one of his columns, you know this is not a spoof.
dino goposaur
Let’s see if this helps…
crap, not even lolspeak can save this.
Nick
This reminds me of Kodos’ electioneering speech from the Simpsons:
My fellow Americans. As a young boy, I dreamed of being a baseball, but tonight I say, we must move forward, not backward, upward not forward, and always twirling, twirling, twirling towards freedom.
softlobotomy
@dino goposaur:
So is this lurker the only one who imagined this being recited by the Druish minister from “Spaceballs?”
“Mawwiage … that dweam within a dweam…”
eastriver
@Midnight Marauder:
humbly bowing and scraping and dreaming of prize money
psychobroad
It wasn’t “Spaceballs” , it was “The Princess Bride”. And are we sure that speech wasn’t written by Pegginton Noonington?
Edward G. Talbot
I can’t let this one pass even though I’m late to the party. I have only one observation: an excess of adverbs is a sign of a limited imagination.