(I've always wanted to say that. I rarely, however, engage in street fighting, so the opportunity hasn't arisen. If it had, let's be honest, I'd have run like the lily-livered leftist I am.)
And why does the melodiously named Michael Bérubé need us at his back? He's taken on the proprietor of the Discover the Network site and known rightwing crackpot David Horowitz (here's an idea, kids--try Googling "David Horowitz nude") and been horribly maligned--indeed, accused of writing "clumpy" humor. This is low, folks. I mean, calling a humble English professor's attempts at les bons mots "clumpy". Might as well have accused him of misspelling, of confusing the nominative and the objective. Of incorrectly subjuncting.
Some background: David Horowitz published a website that purports to link all us leftists in some kind of "network" whereby liberal icons such as Roger Ebert, Rachel Corrie, Mike Farrell, and Yasser Arafat (I didn't get the memo on that one--network must be down) are all cut from the same bolt of traitorous Red fabric. Because we didn't denounce Fahrenheit 9/11 as being anti-American, we must all be leftist/Marxists and therefore aligned with the forces of The Great Satan. Bérubé mocked the linkages outlined therein, and Horowitz attempted a reasonable, coherent explanation. Unfortunately, he'd forgotten his meds again and resorted to paranoid ravings. Although his mother probably told him that crap about sticks and stones, here's Michael's response:
And then it gets personal. Not content with the defense of the site’s formatting quirks and innocent features, David proceeds to make fun of my tentative, innocuous, well-meaning post on the Network, calling it “a pretty good rendering of the paranoid fantasies of the left” and claiming that “its ‘humor’ . . . is so clumpy, however, that you would hardly suspect his expertise was literary.” Well, I ain’t no Ring Lardner, people, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard tell of “clumpy humor.” It’s true that some of my jokes have had to huddle together for warmth in recent months, because the Bush Administration has been deliberately withholding heat from blue states (and no, that isn’t a paranoid fantasy, David-- the BTU readouts don’t lie, dude), but that doesn’t make them “clumpy.” In fact, as the recent Koufax Awards have definitively demonstrated, this blog’s humor is exceptionally smooth, with a full body and an effervescent finish. Cheers!
Now, I've read the humor in question. I'd describe it as "well-defined" rather than "clumpy," which is clearly intended to imply a certain "cheesiness" about the suspect humor. This, dear readers, is clearly a slur upon the good folks of Wisconsin, cheese capital of America, and coincidentally or not, incubator of leftists. (There's also some really nice quilt shops there, which just goes to show ya--Grandma's been cozying up to leftists too! That blanket Osama was wearing in his last video? Looked like Flying Geese to me!)
But I've digressed (indeed, clumped). The point is that, in this great leftist network of which I'm proud to call a tiny corner "home", when one of us is attacked, we all feel the pain. We all feel blood spurt from our left ventricle. (Why, it's as if we were looking at homeless black folk!) We clamor to defend. We race to our keyboards. We search our thesauri, we hone our humor, we call our friends (namely, al-Zarqawi and Bruce Springsteen) and our therapists. Finally, we strike back, with Fight Club-like professionalism and pride. (Rule number one: Don't talk about The Network.)
A slur like this cannot go undefended. Like those great leftists of the past, Franklin Roosevelt and Samuel Adams, we must rise against our oppressors. We must put aside our squeamish lefty scruples and toss slings and arrows with abandon.
David Horowitz is a big fat jerk.
Call THAT clumpy, you paranoid nit.
