Apparently Niall Ferguson has a new gig. (via)
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by $8 blue check mistermix| 65 Comments
This post is in: Getting The Band Back Together
Apparently Niall Ferguson has a new gig. (via)
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Baud
You know who else was gay?
Brother Machine Gun of Desirable Mindfulness (fka AWS)
I would sooner suffer being eaten alive by rabid badgers than wade into that fever swamp, even if there is no link, but exactly what qualifies as “evidence” here?
vtr
All dogs have four legs.
I’m sitting on something with four legs.
Therefore, I am sitting on a dog.
PaulW
@Baud:
If you’re gonna say Stalin, we historians are just gonna have to mark up the Eastern Front as the worst case of “lovers scorned” in human history.
/sarcasm
beltane
It occurred to me yesterday that despite Ferguson’s impressive academic credentials, the man is essentially of the same mindset as Sarah, or even Bristol, Palin.
dmsilev
@Brother Machine Gun of Desirable Mindfulness (fka AWS): I took a look.
Convincing!
By the way, very first comment on the story is “What a coincidence! So is obama. . .”. Raise your hands, everybody who is surprised.
Todd
Clearly this means something.
If I throw in “Trotsky was a ravenous horndog who had scores of women”, or that “by every account I’ve ever noticed, Lenin was conventionally monogamous” that change their equation?
Chyron HR
All the details are in my new book, “The Plot to Homosexulate Hitler”.
Ash Can
It means that the next step after legal recognition of gay marriage is that all us hetero-marrieds are going to be gassed and shoved into ovens. Or something.
the Conster
Has there ever been a time in history where manhood anxiety has been more on display? Every day the right wing id show has alternately been entertaining and horrifying.
Commenting at Balloon Juice Since 1937
New evidence from the coroner shows Breitbart was a Nazi.
Commenting at Balloon Juice Since 1937
@dmsilev: So, Hitler’s doctors were English speakers who did not write German? Hmmmmmm.
Jerzy Russian
@Commenting at Balloon Juice Since 1937:
Actually most people, going back to the Romans and beyond were English speakers. I have seen them on TV in movies and shows that depict historical events.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@the Conster: I believe it’s called history.
Tokyokie
Actually, this theory has been out there for a while, first proposed by some German author who wondered how it was that Hitler could have won the Iron Cross during World War I, yet still emerged from that war as a mere corporal. If you interpret his actions through the lens of his being a self-loathing closeted gay who would not embrace his sexuality, some of his actions, such as the extermination of Ernst Röhm and the Sturmabteilung on the Night of the Long Knives, or his relationship with Eva Braun, make more sense.
magurakurin
But they are losing. Delaware made it 11 and Minnesota will make it 12 on Monday. 12(plus D.C.) out of 50 is a fourth of the States that have now legalized gay marriage. Surely, more will follow.
So fuck em. Let them squawk. They are losing.
magurakurin
@Jerzy Russian:
It’s way more than that. Star Trek showed us that English is widely spoken throughout the galaxy.
the Conster
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
Everyone used to know their place, deferring to white privilege – I think recent history is unique in showing us how fragile the white male ego actually is.
handsmile
@Jerzy Russian: , @magurakurin:
All part of white Baby Jesus’s plan.
(and thanks for the morning chuckle!)
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@the Conster: Well, maybe the white males are working together more now than before, but hasn’t most of human history been about how my sword is bigger than your sword?
NotMax
@magurakurin
Now, now. Star Trek had the babel ex machina of the Universal Translator.
schrodinger's cat
@magurakurin: Also too, earthlings retain their accents but everyone else speaks like an American.
NCSteve
@NotMax: A device so powerful that it even wove the illusion of English speech over the lips of the speaker so all the humanoid aliens didn’t look like characters in Hercules or Kung Fu movie when they talked.
Schlemizel
Years ago I read a book written by a guy who worked for OSS during WWII as a physiologist. His job for a time was to generate a profile on Hitler and the book covered his work on that topic.
They interviewed everyone they could that had contact with the little paper hanger. The belief at the end was that he was one sick puppy who liked to be debased and abused by women (stories from former gfs that he liked to be kicked while groveling. There were also rumors that he either had only one ball or one was shriveled but the shrink sort of discounted that.
No mention of liking boys although he did explore little Dolphies relationship with his mother who had lost all (IIRC) her other children either in birth or very young.
schrodinger's cat
@Jerzy Russian: Not just Romans, even Romulans.
chris
Old news, the OSS suggested as much in their profile of Hitler
Also, Prof Murray at Harvard did another version of profile of him at the time, predicting a suicidal outcome as most likely.
THinking about the Gang of Four song about loving a man in a uniform
Chyron HR
@magurakurin:
Yeah, sure, but who’s gonna be laughing when Mark Dayton starts his heckuva holocaust, eh?
Eric in nny
I will say, those Nazi uniforms were fabulous………..
Paul in KY
@Baud: Hitler’s doctor.
schrodinger's cat
@Eric in nny: Also their logo, very graphic.
SparkleFarkle
They don’t always sound american…sometimes they sound british or australian, or whatever the geico gecko is supposed to be.
Paul in KY
@Jerzy Russian: Even aliens such as Vulcans, Romulans, Klingons & the like. Makes it quite convenient when jetting around the galaxy.
Uncle Cosmo
@Schlemizel:
Viz. these variant lyrics for the “Colonel Bogey March”.
The ones I learned in my misspent youth (which FTR was in retrospect not half misspent enough):
Hitler
Had only one big ball
Goering
Had two but very small
Himmler
Had something similar
But poor old Goebbels
Had no balls at all…
NotMax
@schrodinger’s cat
Not quite everyone. T’pau – Andorian ambassador
Tokyokie
@NotMax: I thought folks from Andorra had Basque accents.
Alex S.
I always thought that there must some sexual ‘deviation from the normal’ in Hitler’s psyche. But when it was revealed that Hitler lost a testicle in World War I that pretty much explained it for me.
schrodinger's cat
@NotMax: OK, I missed that and I defer to your superior knowledge of Trek.
NotMax
@Tokyokie
In Star Trek, would that be Basque to the future?
PaulW
@Eric in nny:
There’s a trope for that: Putting On The Reich
priscianus jr
@Tokyokie: I thought folks from Andorra had Basque accents.
The name “Andorra” is of Basque origin, but there hasn’t been any significant Basque population in Andorra in historical memory. The language of Andorra is Catalan, which has no relation to Basque.
schrodinger's cat
@SparkleFarkle: In DS9 Dr. Bashir has an English accent but Gul Dukat and Garak who are Cardassians and Kira who is Bajoran sound American.
Waldo
I dunno. I heard things got pretty hot between Adolf and Eva on their honeymoon.
Omnes Omnibus
@Tokyokie:
Class barriers to promotion? An oddly slow promotion system – Richtofen died in 1918 as a mere captain. Of course, he was unmarried* so he might have been gay as well.**
*IIRC
**Notintendedtobeafactualstatement
@Uncle Cosmo: Ah, youth and rugby parties.
GregB
Does this mean that Mark Foley is planning the next Holocaust?
priscianus jr
OK, are you all finished?
Hitler actually had two balls.
http://www.slate.com/articles/life/the_spectator/2008/11/everything_you_need_to_know_about_hitlers_missing_testicle.html
As to whether Hitler was gay, I can only say that either he was, or he wasn’t.
But if he was, he was highly closeted. And that sort of thing has been known to cause problems.
Bulworth
This is totally a Game Changer!
A Humble Lurker
Wasn’t Hitler Jewish on his mother’s side? Being gay too would just add to the whole self-loathing psychopathy angle. Kind of like the pray-the-gay-away life-ruiners who wind up being caught with escorts of their own sex, only on a much bigger and infinitely nastier scale.
HelloRochester
Hitler was gay. Keynes was gay. Keynes was Hitler. Because logic.
Omnes Omnibus
@HelloRochester: Irrefutable brilliance. Would you like a Harvard Fellowship?
Grumpy Code Monkey
@beltane: I think Ken at Popehat pretty much nailed it:
schrodinger's cat
Since this is a thread on Hitler and so by definition has already been Godwined. This whole Ferguson dust up reminded me of the Nazis branding Einstein’s work as Jewish physics. When you bring up extraneous matters, that usually means you cannot argue on the merits. So Ferguson has no economic argument to make so he makes personal attacks. Just as in Einstein’s case, Keynes sexuality is immaterial to the discussion of his theories.
Tokyokie
@Omnes Omnibus: I’m sure there were class barriers to promotion, but I believe those mostly governed who was allowed into and was promoted within the officer corps. Basically, Hitler achieved the military rank anybody who’d served four years in the Bavarian army would have attained, rising from Schütze to Gefreiter. That he was deemed unsuitable for becoming an Unteroffizier, the lowest enlisted officer rank, despite winning an Iron Cross, First Class (the highest battlefield honor for which he was eligible, as the Großkreuz was reserved for generals), would indicate something else was going on with him.
Tokyokie
@A Humble Lurker: Perhaps on his father’s side. His father was the illegitimate son of a housekeeper, and it’s been theorized that a member of the Jewish family for which she worked impregnated her. But then you’d have to buy into notions of racial purity and all that crap to believe that a child of parents who didn’t practice Judaism could be considered “Jewish” in any regard.
Redshirt
Hitler was an artist and a vegetarian. Case closed: GAY AS HELL
El Cid
@schrodinger’s cat: I’m pretty sure that the likelihood of an internet post on Hitler resulting in comments bringing up Hitler is 1, Godwin’s law of the probability of a comment appearing relating to Hitler is irrelevant.
David Hunt
@Tokyokie:
Perhaps, but it might just have been that he was a raging asshole/lunatic and the people around him didn’t want to promote him.
patroclus
@Tokyokie: How long should it have taken to be promoted from Schultz to Klink and then to Burkhalter or Hofstatler?
Omnes Omnibus
@David Hunt: Yes, decorations for bravery are not necessarily indications of promotion potential.
Omnes Omnibus
@patroclus: Vier Jahreszeiten.
Geeno
@Tokyokie: I thought he was injured in the event where he was awarded the iron cross, and sent home for convalescence for a while, and the war ended before he was sent back.
Can’t remember where I heard/read that though.
Pete A.
@Waldo:
Yeah they definitely went out with a bang.
Villago Delenda Est
@Geeno: I vaguely recall that the engagement included some gas attack action, which required the convalescence.
Nevertheless, to compare Bush 43 to Hitler is off limits, because Hitler was a decorated combat veteran and Bush 43 a deserting shitstain.
Bob In Portland
There was a book written by a German author, although available here in English, called THE HIDDEN HITLER, which made a good case that Hitler was in fact gay. His evilness came not from his being gay but from his self-hatred that was created by his father’s beatings.
Think of Lindsey Graham. Don’t ask, don’t tell.
Uncle Cosmo
@Tokyokie:
“What was going on” was probably the fact that his duty was that of signals runner. At the time of the Great War radio sets were heavy, cumbersome & hard to power–nothing mobile short of a warship could carry & power one. The fastest means of communication between front-line units & higher command in the rear was by telephone, but artillery barrages routinely tore up the lines buried at any practical depth. So messages were usually carried by someone.
This was an ideal activity for a loner like Hitler. And it was personally extremely hazardous. Runners were prize targets–nailing one could cripple the unit in question for many hours before the body was found & the message re-sent with another runner–& snipers were always on the lookout for lone figures heading purposefully to the rear.
Hitler got his Eisenkreuz for repeatedly doing this job well with little regard for his own safety. (He was recommended for it, IIRC, by a Jewish officer–which may in part explain why the first wave of restrictions on Jews in the Third Reich often exempted those who honorably served in the Great War. Not that that lasted very long, but still…)
Note that the personality type best suited to running messages is widely at variance with that best suited to command others. Kind of like a master sniper. You can give a guy a chestful of medals for picking off enemy officers at dog-knows-how-far, but it doesn’t make him fit for command..the fact that he performs so well in almost total isolation (maybe one spotter there) probably means he’s completely unsuited for higher rank.
(Yeah, TMI, logorrhea, whatever. Sue me.)
Ajaye
@magurakurin: English is indeed the universal lanuage.