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American History and Black History Cannot Be Separated

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

Despite his magical powers, I don’t think Trump is thinking this through, to be honest.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

An unpunished coup is a training exercise.

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

Don’t expect peaches from an apple tree.

No Justins, No Peace

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

Republicans: slavery is when you own me. freedom is when I own you.

Bad news for Ron DeSantis is great news for America.

Consistently wrong since 2002

Every one of the “Roberts Six” lied to get on the court.

I know this must be bad for Joe Biden, I just don’t know how.

… pundit janitors mopping up after the GOP

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

There is no compromise when it comes to body autonomy. You either have it or you don’t.

Republicans in disarray!

Thanks for reminding me that Van Jones needs to be slapped.

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You are here: Home / Open Threads / Excellent Links / Once Again, the Onion Was There First

Once Again, the Onion Was There First

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Speaking of Bernard Jordan featured in the last post, this link showed up in the comments:

lifeimitatesart

That’s a picture of him on the Ferry to Normandy soaking up the babes.

Obligatory Onion link:

After applying several spritzes of cologne to his freshly shaven face, 87-year-old World War II veteran Roger Sarlo confidently left his home Thursday to go reel in some top-shelf D-Day anniversary pussy, the grandfather of five confirmed. “I have my garrison cap nice and pressed with all the pins on the sides, so now it’s time to head out and get me some of that sweet I-stormed-the-beach-at-Normandy snatch,” said Sarlo, claiming that he expects to be “positively drenched in cooch” by mid-afternoon. “Plus, I dusted off my old military jacket and put my medals right there on the breast pocket. That’s usually guaranteed to get at least one or two pairs of panties sopping.” At press time, Sarlo was saluting an American flag in a local park and “waiting for the beaver train to come rolling in.”

Love it. I wonder if the people who started the Onion would realize competing with reality would be so hard.

Reader Interactions

94Comments

  2. 2.

    jl

    I dunno. Sterling claims it took him awhile but he could, since his lady was hot hot hot and young young young.

    Maybe the Onion gave up and is reporting news?

  3. 3.

    Violet

    That is the best picture ever. I love this guy. Look at those hot women hanging on him and the smile on his face.

  4. 4.

    Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)

    @jl:

    Maybe the Onion gave up and is reporting news?

    Well, the MSM isn’t, so the opportunity is there.

  6. 6.

    Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)

    @Violet: From this photo, it looks like he might be in trouble when he gets home.

  9. 9.

    SiubhanDuinne

    The linked article mentions his wife Irene (back at the home). Wonder if she knew his plans and was a co-conspirator. Also wonder what her reaction is/was/will be to this photo. I’m guessing if he’s as sprightly as he appears, she’s been a pretty happy woman for many years and is probably all “That’s my Bernie.”

  12. 12.

    Ash Can

    I can’t look at that picture and not hear “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy” playing in the background.

  13. 13.

    Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)

    @Violet: Or she’s just happy to have a couple quiet days to herself with her damned Bernie getting up to something in the common room.

  14. 14.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Baud: It’s ok. They’re swingers.

    my shit, it is cracked up. Nice

    @Ash Can: I was wondering if the one on the right was going for some kind of salute to forties hair. I heard the Andrews Sisters’ BWBB on one of the we-play-anything stations on Sirius, kind of surprised that I liked it.

  17. 17.

    Uncle Cosmo

    –Meanwhile, over in the sidebar, the following lede leads the Noisemax dishonor roll:

    Obama’s D-Day Gum Chewing Sparks Anger

    Jesus Fucking Christ, is there nothing too petty for the pinheaded Teanderthals to go a-frothing over??

  18. 18.

    Violet

    @Uncle Cosmo: Followed by:

    Reagan’s Normandy Speech 30 Years On

    Of course. Because St. Ronnie gave a Real Speech, unlike that gum chewing Muslim Kenyan Usurper.

  19. 19.

    JenJen

    Goddamn that photo is awesome.

    I had the great pleasure and honor of visiting the Normandy Beaches in 2000. It was a very frigid winter day and uncomfortable, but you know what? You don’t complain about your comfort at Normandy.

    Someone had written “Merci” in the sand, and although I’ve lost the photo, I’ll never forget seeing it. I imagine it happens often, but for me, it was my Big Emotional Moment Where It All Came Together.

  20. 20.

    Schlemizel

    @Uncle Cosmo: Bet ya a quarter it was nicorette to calm the cravings for a smoke. They would have been ok with him lighting one up of course.

  21. 21.

    SiubhanDuinne

    I can’t remember if this really happened or if it was a piece of a dream* but I was recently inundated with Vera Lynn songs, including of course the biggies, “White Cliffs of Dover” and “We’ll Meet Again.”

    *Not at all unlikely

  24. 24.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Schlemizel:

    That is exactly what I was thinking. Exactly.

    Am not sure whether someone actually caught sight of a wad of gum, but the other thing that occurred to me was that he might have a slight dental problem and was worrying it with his tongue. Anyone who’s had a chipped tooth or loose filling or abscess knows all about that.

    At any rate, Gumghazi at D-Day is about as stupid as Selfiegate at Mandela Memorial. These people are pathetic.

  28. 28.

    Ash Can

    @lamh36: They got smacked in the face right off the bat with his popularity abroad, with the huge cheering crowds in Europe right after the election followed by the Nobel Peace Prize. They’ve been in frantic denial over it ever since.

  29. 29.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @SiubhanDuinne: “Gumgazi” (again, nice) does suggest that The Taliban Five story may be losing some steam already.

    I heard some Tweety in the car earlier, and he seems to think Saxby Chambliss, the draft-dodger who morphed Max Cleland in to Saddam Hussein to sell himself and Bush’s war, Tweety thinks Saxby nailed it by calling the T-5 “Mullah Omar’s Board of Directors”. Apparently they’re going to give him some very dangerous advice, or something. This was a good week to give Tweety a pass.

  31. 31.

    Suffern ACE

    @Schlemizel: no. They’ve been trying to catch him smoking for six years now, so they can call him and his “fat”, burger-eating wife out for promoting healthy lifestyles.

  35. 35.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    I’ve accidentally caught Tweety two or three time this week, and within a minute or so each time had to change channels. He has been en fuego* and not in a good way.

    *Combine en fuego with the large amounts of spittle he generates, and it’s all just steam. Noisy, incoherent steam, I grant you, but steam nonetheless,

  36. 36.

    kindness

    What Obama really should have done is whip out a vape pen, take several large hits and then ask the press ‘Guess what I’m smoking?’. And not tell them. Let the DEA go nuts.

  38. 38.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @kindness:

    Hahaha, love that idea. I hope during his last couple of months as President he will just let the freak flag fly high and do/say all kinds of things guaranteed to piss off the GOP and the Village.

    And then write some truly awesome Presidential memoirs.

  40. 40.

    Villago Delenda Est

    Meanwhile, the worthless offal of Noisemax are ignoring today and looking back 30 years to a speech by the shitty grade Z movie star.

  42. 42.

    Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)

    @lamh36: Well aside from Bibi, Putin, and the right wing neo-con types in Poland, what country wouldn’t feel better with Obama rather than the Dim Son? They may disagree with Obama on particular issues, but I swear the sense of relief that I sensed from friends and contacts overseas when Obama was first elected and then reelected was palpable.

  46. 46.

    rikyrah

    Hero Teen Breaks High School Volunteer Record

    Eboni Stevenson, a senior at Thomas Jefferson High School in Denver, won an award recently for devoting more than 3,000 hours of her time to volunteer work – a new record.

    Her enthusiasm for helping other students and the community was sparked in middle school when she was paired with a mentor from the Metro Denver Partners.

    When she got older, she came back to the group as a peer leader, logging hours working with girls, and also on volunteer projects there, like the annual food drive.

    Eboni exceeded her school’s standard for community service by logging 3,840 volunteer hours. She will attend Colorado State University after graduation and is already planning a major in social work.

    http://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/hero-teen-breaks-high-school-volunteer-record/

  47. 47.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Suffern ACE: Also, he has no foreign leader friends!

    Did you see Christopher Buckley on BookTV last week? Thurston Howell IV was Very Concerned about Obama’s aloofness

    @Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name): You remembered Poland! but you forgot Tony Blair. I wonder if he and Shrub are still “friends”

  48. 48.

    Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: Blair is no longer in power, but, yeah, he would be another.

    ETA: Maybe not, though. He would probably back the play of whoever was President in order to be perceived as relevant and important.

  49. 49.

    max

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: This was a good week to give Tweety a pass.

    Every week is a good week to give Tweety a pass. Well, to skip him. Screw the pass.

    max
    [‘Why the hell is he on TV again?’]

  53. 53.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name): I was thinking more along the lines of what it means for people in that/those positions to be friends. Other than Bibi Netanyahu, who probably found him a useful idiot, I can’t think of any others supposed friends of GWB in that club. From my reading, Churchill and FDR had sincere appreciation and even affection for one another personally, but they also had their own agendas which were often parallel, and neither ever thought otherwise. I can’t imagine Reagan and Thatcher ever got much beyond polite small talk, unless she really liked anecdotes about RKO studios in the ’40s.

    @max: Tweety is the window I use to see what the Village is thinking, and he can be amusing, sometimes intentionally.

  54. 54.

    Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)

    @SiubhanDuinne: They just mouth it. The great thing is our hero is an English gentleman wrongly accused of a crime who, through a series of events, becomes a Muslim and fights as a corsair. Sabatini novels sometimes take weird turns.

  56. 56.

    Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: Oh, I can’t imagine that anyone ever thought much of Bush or had any affection for him. Of course, that could be my own bias showing through.

  57. 57.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name):

    Sabatini novels sometimes take weird turns.

    What can you expect of someone who came up with the opening line “He was born with the gift of laughter, and a sense that the world was mad.”? (from Scaramouche).

    (Did we have a favourite-first-lines-of-novels thread here within the past few months? I have a strong feeling I typed those same words rather recently.)

  58. 58.

    Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)

    @gogol’s wife: I like pirate moves. And TCM is all pirate movie all night. I might get to bed late, but that is fine and I have nothing on my plans for tomorrow but a long cycle ride and getting the Saab to a car wash.

  59. 59.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: That article pretty much gives the key partway down: when Dick Cheney talks about world opinion souring on Obama, what he means by “world opinion” is “Bibi Netanyahu”.

  60. 60.

    rikyrah

    Youth Flag Football Admin Claims Commish Spent League Fees On “Pussy”

    Below you’ll find an email from one of the administrators of an Atlanta-area youth flag football league sponsored by the NFL. Sent to a number of league parents, it contains a whole host of bizarre accusations against the commissioner. One of those parents shared it with us. Now we share it with you.

    The parent who forwarded it along said the league’s first season of existence was rocky, but overall a good experience. Then, out of the blue, the email. (The commissioner’s name has been redacted. To keep things straight, the administrator is female; the commissioner is male.

    http://deadspin.com/youth-flag-football-admin-claims-commish-spent-league-f-1585558549

  61. 61.

    Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)

    @SiubhanDuinne: Do you think that I don’t know the opening line to Scaramouche*? A childhood favorite and something I reread at least once a year.

    *Note my ‘nym.

  62. 62.

    gogol's wife

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    It’s written in stone over one of the doors at the Hall of Graduate Studies at Yale.

    Great Stewart Granger-Mel Ferrer movie.

  69. 69.

    Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)

    @gogol’s wife: That’s completely reasonable, but, having read the book more than 20 times before I saw the movie, I could not make the mental leap. When I read, I sort of play a movie in my head, so when I see a movie based on a book and a character doesn’t match my inner movie, it can be a bit jarring.

  71. 71.

    Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)

    @gogol’s wife: Ah, but I will because Keira Kneightly She fits well enough with my intenal Anna. Of course, that is a book where I saw a movie version before I read it. I came late to the Russians (and only in translation).

  73. 73.

    Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)

    @efgoldman: The human imagination is an amazing thing. As kid I used prefer having some read to me to reading until I could read fast enough to play the movies myself. Once I reached that point, I read constantly and my reading speed and level increased almost exponentially.

  74. 74.

    Mnemosyne

    @Suffern ACE:

    “Silent” movies were never actually shown silent. It could be anything from a full orchestra to one guy improvising on a piano depending on the theater, but there was always some kind of musical accompaniment.

  75. 75.

    Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)

    @Mnemosyne: One of the most fun movie going experiences I have had was seeing a restored print of the original Lon Chaney Phantom of the Opera in a vintage theater with a live orchestra playing the score.

  76. 76.

    Mnemosyne

    @Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name):

    I’ve gotten to hear Robert Israel play the organ and direct a (small) orchestra a couple of times. The Club Foot Orchestra comes down here relatively often, though I haven’t seen them in years. I got to meet Eleanor Keaton (widow of Buster) at their “Sherlock Jr.” show and still have her business card (she was about 30 years younger than he was, so she was still going strong in the 1990s).

  78. 78.

    Violet

    @Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name): If you ever have a chance to see Abel Gance’s 1927 film “Napoleon” with live orchestra, don’t miss it. Here’s an article about a recent screening.

    Kevin Brownlow’s acclaimed restoration of Abel Gance’s 1927 cinematic masterpiece, Napoleon, with a score by Carl Davis, will be given a rare screening when it is played, to a live orchestral accompaniment by the Philharmonia Orchestra, at the Royal Festival Hall on Saturday 30 November.

    British Academy Award-winning historian, documentarian and archivist Kevin Brownlow’s restored version of Napoleon was first screened in 1980 and was last screened in the UK in 2004 at the Royal Festival Hall. A new restoration, completed in 2000 subsequently reclaimed more than 30 minutes of additional footage discovered since the very first 1979 screening and visually upgraded much of the film. The score, written over 30 years ago by noted film composer Carl Davis, has been expanded twice since. Napoleon received its American premiere last March 2012. It has been a lifelong quest for both Brownlow and Davis to give Napoleon a greater audience.

    The “Polyvision” with three screens at the end is really great.

  79. 79.

    Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)

    @Steeplejack: On a different topic, Graceland was entertaining for a few episodes, but it spiraled into soap opera.

  82. 82.

    Violet

    @Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name): Here’s a Roger Ebert article about the 1981 tour of it. Carmine Coppola wrote the score and conducted it.

    Film historian Kevin Brownlow plundered the film archives of Europe for all the “Napoleon” footage he could find and made some lucky discoveries of scenes that were thought to be completely lost. Then he rebuilt “Napoleon” into a reasonable facsimile of its original version, complete with the famous three-screen, hand-tinted triptych that ended it – an effect that anticipated Cinerama.

    This version played to great acclaim at various small film festivals, and then movie director Francis Ford Coppola got the idea of presenting it properly, with a full orchestral score. He commissioned his 71-year-old father, Carmine, to compose the score, and in January the Coppolas presented “Napoleon” in Radio City Music Hall with Carmine conducting the American Symphony Orchestra.

    It’s Ebert and it’s a wonderful article. Worth reading the whole thing. Gloria Swanson was “Enthralled!” by the film. Just great.

  84. 84.

    Steeplejack

    @Violet:

    I saw Napoleon sometime in the ’90s at the Fox Theater in Atlanta, on the occasion of its restoration and limited theatrical release. Polyvision, live orchestra (Carmine Coppola conducting the Atlanta Symphony), beautiful print, in a classic 1929 movie palace. Sublime.

    ETA: I guess it was in the ’80s, based on your later comment.

  85. 85.

    Steeplejack

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    “It was a dark and stormy night.”

    Back in the day New York magazine would have little literary contests each issue (collected in the book Thank You for the Giant Sea Tortoise*), and two of the funniest were (paraphrasing) “openings of novels that didn’t quite make it” and “endings of novels that didn’t quite make it.” Lots of riffs on classic novels and some great purple prose. “Call me a shlemiel.”

    * “Readers are invited to submit the text for an improbable greeting card.”

  86. 86.

    Violet

    @Steeplejack: Saw it on the same tour. My parents took me to see it. Mesmerizing. Loved it. Worth seeing it if it ever gets screened again. The live orchestra accompanying it is magical. The Polyvision is breathtaking.

    You’d probably enjoy the Ebert article I linked. It’s from that era and really wonderful–Ebert is such a great writer.

  87. 87.

    Anoniminous

    @Violet:

    I saw it in LA, with a full orchestra, in 1981. A friend who worked for Disney got tickets and took me as her date.

  89. 89.

    Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)

    @max: You said this: [‘Why the hell is he on TV again?’]

    I said what was on my TV.

  90. 90.

    pseudonymous in nc

    It’s nice that the ferry staff got to dress up as WAAFs.

    One of my pipe-dreams is to set up a cafe in the motherland that looks like a RAF canteen, complete with tea urn.

  93. 93.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    hehe the guy in the picture is probably thinking “back when I was these ladies age women like them would have never given me the day of time, but now ,..”

  94. 94.

    Steeplejack

    @WaterGirl:

    What do you like about it? In a thread a few days ago I told Omnes that the promos made it look like NCIS: L.A. meets one of those MTV “sexy idiots in a group house” shows.

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