The Goebbels Effect
If you are of a certain disposition -- and I am certain that I'm not the only one by far -- when you reach an advanced age, you start wondering more than before about exactly what is going to take you out of here.
Though he probably hadn't devoted much thought to that or to anything else lately of a worthwhile nature, a few days ago a professional hater and con artist named Andrew Breitbart, who was less than half my age, got his answer to that question in the few seconds that he had left, when, while taking a walk he suddenly departed from this life.
That kind of thing seems to happen so often that it is obviously completely independent of the virtues that a person might have or lack. For instance, also just the other day, a distant acquaintance here in the county, a man my age or maybe a little older, who to all reports so far hadn't been feeling any pains that were out of the ordinary and was famous for having an enormous collection of jazz records, went downstairs to feed his dog, and a little later his wife found him just sitting there, newly deceased. I should say here, though, that, as for me, I do not have a dog, or even, nowadays, a cat, and only a modest jazz collection.
The mentions that I always saw of A. Breitbart were of such an unsavory nature that I had kept him as far out of my field of vision as possible. He seemed cut from exactly the same cloth as the ruinous and also notably short-lived Wisconsin red-baiting Senator, J. McCarthy, of yesteryear, but Breitbart's passing has aroused another comparison.
Those conservatives who vociferously seek to tamp down the numerous and understandable sighs of relief by liberals at having one of the worst and the trickiest of their tormentors now permanently out of action, think they are shaming their adversaries by plaintively howling, "What about the family that this great, good man left behind? You should be ashamed of yourselves!"
They don't realize that that "family" defense of newly demised wrongdoers was cut off at the ankles years ago, on May Day, 1945, to be exact, by what I would call "the Goebbels Effect." They fail to recall that that chief Nazi propagandist and his hardcore wife, Magda, ordained in those final fiery hours deep underground in the bunker in Berlin that along with them, their six children should also die then and there, so as not to have to confront forever afterwards the questions about the incredibly huge number of crimes that Goebbels had done so much to aid and abet.
I do not recall that even that horrible murder of so many innocent children at their parents' hands did anything to excuse J. Goebbels' execrable life work. Yet even in that light these endlessly ignorant conservatives would still scream, even louder, with spit stained with blood, "That's terrible! That's disgusting! There was absolutely no comparison between Goebbels and Breitbart!"
That may be true. Still, it seems all too likely that if they could meet, in the afterworld or wherever, those two would find much to talk about, with the R. Limbaughs and the A. Coulters eagerly awaiting their turns to lick their master's feet.
Though he probably hadn't devoted much thought to that or to anything else lately of a worthwhile nature, a few days ago a professional hater and con artist named Andrew Breitbart, who was less than half my age, got his answer to that question in the few seconds that he had left, when, while taking a walk he suddenly departed from this life.
That kind of thing seems to happen so often that it is obviously completely independent of the virtues that a person might have or lack. For instance, also just the other day, a distant acquaintance here in the county, a man my age or maybe a little older, who to all reports so far hadn't been feeling any pains that were out of the ordinary and was famous for having an enormous collection of jazz records, went downstairs to feed his dog, and a little later his wife found him just sitting there, newly deceased. I should say here, though, that, as for me, I do not have a dog, or even, nowadays, a cat, and only a modest jazz collection.
The mentions that I always saw of A. Breitbart were of such an unsavory nature that I had kept him as far out of my field of vision as possible. He seemed cut from exactly the same cloth as the ruinous and also notably short-lived Wisconsin red-baiting Senator, J. McCarthy, of yesteryear, but Breitbart's passing has aroused another comparison.
Those conservatives who vociferously seek to tamp down the numerous and understandable sighs of relief by liberals at having one of the worst and the trickiest of their tormentors now permanently out of action, think they are shaming their adversaries by plaintively howling, "What about the family that this great, good man left behind? You should be ashamed of yourselves!"
They don't realize that that "family" defense of newly demised wrongdoers was cut off at the ankles years ago, on May Day, 1945, to be exact, by what I would call "the Goebbels Effect." They fail to recall that that chief Nazi propagandist and his hardcore wife, Magda, ordained in those final fiery hours deep underground in the bunker in Berlin that along with them, their six children should also die then and there, so as not to have to confront forever afterwards the questions about the incredibly huge number of crimes that Goebbels had done so much to aid and abet.
I do not recall that even that horrible murder of so many innocent children at their parents' hands did anything to excuse J. Goebbels' execrable life work. Yet even in that light these endlessly ignorant conservatives would still scream, even louder, with spit stained with blood, "That's terrible! That's disgusting! There was absolutely no comparison between Goebbels and Breitbart!"
That may be true. Still, it seems all too likely that if they could meet, in the afterworld or wherever, those two would find much to talk about, with the R. Limbaughs and the A. Coulters eagerly awaiting their turns to lick their master's feet.
posted by Carl (aka Sofarsogoo) | 8:20 AM
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