"Spike Jones" contends,
> Ive met a number of you guys face to face and there isnt a one of
> you I would call even slightly evil, or even abnormally mean.
> Get over it already! {8^D spike
Gosh, where were you when my step-dad called me a "murderer" for killing a field
mouse (I was 12, the mouse died when I threw dirt on it while digging an
irrigation ditch).
Halloween's coming. Can't some of us be just a little abnormally mean?
--J. R.
"When Gore Vidal made media history by calling William Buckley a
"crypto-Nazi" in front of millions of television viewers during the 1968
Democratic convention, he presumably meant that beneath Buckley's
conservative facade lurked a fascist trying to keep the public -- or
himself -- from seeing his true colors. At least, that's the way Buckley
took it; Vidal later pointed out that what he'd actually called his
archenemy was a "pro crypto-Nazi," in reference to Buckley's defense of the
Chicago police, who were at that moment battering demonstrators with gleeful
abandon in the streets outside. This version would make the cops the
Nazis-in-law-enforcement-officers'-clothing; Buckley merely a sympathizer
and, possibly, only a quasi-Nazi himself. (This
"less-than-a-full-fledged-Nazi" interpretation is bolstered by Vidal's
adding that, in fact, he hadn't meant to use the term Nazi at all; had he
not blown his cool, he said, he would have called his opponent merely
"Fascist-minded.") Because a crypto-Nazi has something to gain by keeping
her real feelings hidden, and a quasi-Nazi probably isn't sure just what her
real feelings are, you don't have to get out of the way of either of them
quite as fast as you do some of those neo-Nazi organizations whose members
like to parade up and down Midwestern streets in modified Luftwaffe surplus,
paint swastikas on synagogues, and bash the heads of whichever minority
groups they feel are polluting the race these days. In other words, the
neo-Nazi is, or likes to think she is, the real thing, updated. Last and
certainly least, don't worry at all abut those fifteen-year-old pseudo-Nazi
rockers who like to affect combat boots and Iron Crosses and who go around
spouting a lot of racist rhetoric they picked up at the last heavy-metal
concert; they're just out to scare you in the hopes of being taken seriously
for a change."
--William Wilson
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Mon May 28 2001 - 09:50:14 MDT