Monday, March 30, 2009
Carnival of the Elitist Bastards XI
The eleventh Carnival of the Elitist Bastards is up and about at It's the Thought that Counts.While the standard for being an elitist bastard has never been what it might sound like to those who do not aspire to the title, it's sad how low the bar has fallen in this country, as shown by this1:
A close relative of mine was telling me a story about the place she worked recently. Her company was having some sort of trivia contest. One of the questions was "Who delivered the Gettysburg address?" The company she works for is less than 150 miles from Gettysburg. Believe it or not, surrounded by college-educated people, she was the only one who knew.
When the author, and presumably the content, of one of the greatest speeches ever uttered, coming at a crucial time not just for our country but for the entire human species, is a blank spot in our collective memory, there is little hope of our having an intellectual life that rises above "Survivor" reruns or a body politic that is more than sloganeering aimed at the passions of the moment.
In short, if you think it's bad now, you may not want to contemplate tomorrow.
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1 From Slobber and Spittle
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In short, if you think it's bad now, you may not want to contemplate tomorrow.
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1 From Slobber and Spittle
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Labels: Carnival of Elitist Bastards
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Although I hope that quite a few can guess who gave Pericles' Funeral Oration, I have heard of surveys of Christians in which it is only a small percentage who can identify who gave the Sermon on the Mount.
Tom S.
Maybe it was Mr. Klee, Mr. Perry Klee?
Tom S.
Maybe it was Mr. Klee, Mr. Perry Klee?
# posted by 
: 8:21 AM
: 8:21 AM
Hey! That Klee guy was better than that pantywaist ... you know, Sissy Roh.
And who cares about anyone sermonizing from the back of a horse?
And who cares about anyone sermonizing from the back of a horse?
I found an article a while back that found that more Americans were familiar with the contents of a Big Mac than were able to identify "Thou shalt not kill" as one of the Ten Commandments.
It's astonishing how little people in our country know of their history and their culture.
It's astonishing how little people in our country know of their history and their culture.
Jeez, I know who delivered the Gettysburg Address, and I'm not even American! Did no one at that company ever watch the Animaniacs?
I love that article Cujo! After lamenting that those figures come from "a country that is known as 'a Christian nation'," the maker of a new movie (as of then) expressed his hope that his "film will inspire Americans to improve their literacy of the Ten Commandments and the Bible." So what type of film was it? An animated version of The Ten Commandments, of course. The only other way to lure 'em into the theatre to see it would be to make him Moses Skywalker and have him light-saber his way through Pharoah's robotic army.
America!
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America!
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