So James Lileks wrote a bit of the Bleat that is either cautioning Oliver Willis to be careful about language, or making a broader point about the PC word police. Oliver referred to Paul Wolfowitz as the “the filthy Wolfowitz”, but I doubt that Willis is an anti-Semite. He’s just a sloppy and crappy writer.

Take his response to Lileks’ short screed. The first misuse of words is in the title itself. Lileks did not call Willis an anti-Semite. In fact, he never uses the word anti-Semite or even mentions that Wolfowitz is Jewish. He simply points out that Willis is using inappropriate language that could be interpreted as anti-Semitic. The title should be “James Lileks Calls Me a User of Anti-Semitic Language” or “Lileks Insinuates that I Hate Jews.”

Then Oliver says he’s “never written about Paul Wolfowitz’s religion.” But that’s simply not true. Do a search for Jew, Judaism, or Jewish on oliverwillis.com. Oliver has written plenty about Wolfowitz’s religion, he’s just never written about Judaism in reference to Wolfowitz.

Oliver says that Wolfowitz isn’t filthy because he’s Jewish, but because he “support[s] the unnecessary death of 1,500 American soldiers.” But it’s a long way from supporting the war (unnecessary or not) which caused those deaths to actually being in favor of killing fifteen hundred Americans.

All this might seem picky (especially coming from a blogger who has trouble spelling siege), and you’re right, it is. But I’m just trying to show that Oliver is perfectly capable of saying something insulting or mildly racist without ever knowing that he did. Lileks states that he doesn’t read oliverwillis.com very much, so I think he can be forgiven for assuming that the word filthy was anti-Semitic rather than just sloppy. I do read O-Dub fairly often (gotta watch those who watch the watchers, and it’s good for a laugh), and I’m pretty sure he’s not a hater. He’s just kind of dumb.

(Hat tip to INDC Journal)

Update: Every time I call someone stupid I make an idiotic spelling error in my trackbacks. Sigh.

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But I hate it when someone gets Godwin’s Law wrong. Especially when it’s Glenn Reynolds, possibly the smartest blogger of them all. Byrd didn’t violate the law, he proved it.

Everyone seems to assume that Godwin’s Law states that an argument is over when someone compares someone else to the Nazis, and that the violater has therefore lost the argument. That’s, at best, a corally. The law simply states that the longer an argument continues the more inevitable it becomes that one party will compare the other party to the Krauts (sorry, been watching Band of Brothers), and that the argument is no longer of any interest afterwards. It says nothing about the winner or the loser, or even that the argument is over. It’s inferred that the argument is over, since it’s no longer an interesting one, and it’s an even more tangential inference that the invoker lost the argument.

It would be just as correct to say that the invoker won the argument. After all, they ended it. But the accusation has to be true. If Robert Byrd compared the Republicans to Nazis and they were, say, killing thousands of Jews, he’d be on the side of God. As it is, he’s just an idiot.

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I recently took a trip to the zoo. Enjoy!

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Jim Treacher writes exactly what I’ve been thinking about the Bob Odenkirk Miller ads and the lame Budweiser response. I could have written exactly the same post. Except my post would not have contained the phrase “Clara Peller is a stupid old twat!” or a link to Patton Oswalt arguing, on a message board, about selling out with some unfunny, beer-hating comedy doctrinaire.

So, exactly the same post, without the good parts.

Update: I realized I would have given you something Treacher didn’t: an attempt to link this subject to Joel Moore. So I got that going for me, which is nice.

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1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 23.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.

“Under the bar, he would have a short wooden club, Polly knew.”

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I do know what he means.

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His bluish white round pensil smiles.
Her daughters shining slopy stupid recycle bin prepare for fight and our children well-crafted caw falls.
The small balloon is on fire however, mine odd shaped smart paper run.
His brothers soft soda is on fire and still any given red kitchen looks around.
His round-shaped mobile phone stinks or maybe our children stupid carpet prepare for fight.
His brothers fancy boat is thinking while any given slopy spoon stinks the time that our odd shaped noisy mp3 player show its value.
Her daughters round stupid clock smells and perhaps a white small white mouse snores.
Mine soft spoon lies.
Their slopy bluish eraser walks.
Their noisy laptop falls.
His little odd shaped hairy glasses snores.
Mine well-crafted dog lies the time that her smart gun show its value.
Their noisy mouse is thinking as soon as their noisy carpet stands-still.
The round shining sony got an idea or maybe her round carpet adheres.
Our slopy gun prepare for fight.
Her soft tall smart magazine looks around the time that his brothers red soft recycle bin snores.
Any fancy laptop snores at the place that her soft little pensil calculates.
Any hairy eraser show its value as soon as her silver bottle walks.
Our bluish caw is thinking.
Their stupid baby stares.
Her soft sport shoes makes sound.
His soft door looks around.
Her daughters bluish round expensive boots is angry.

Imagine how much effort went into the poetry generator behind this shit. All that just to get a porno link past my filters.

Of course, I gotta point out, it worked.

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Hope everyone had a merry Christmas, mine was great. Beth and I went to Raleigh and hung out with the parents and went to the beach for a few days. It was Beth’s first trip to the ocean, she even saw a bunch of dolphins swim by. Ate too much, drank too much, had a wonderful time.

We went to see The Return of the King and really enjoyed that, too, but we saw a strange ad before the movie came on. It was a guy named Bill claiming that his lawn gnome had been stolen, so he’d put up a website begging for its return. It’s obviously a joke, Bill says his gnome went missing on December 9th, but the domain name was registered on November 25th. I’ve heard it’s a Travelocity viral ad, but I’m not positive about that. Here’s the contact info:

Fougere, Bruce (36492990P) brucefougere@hotmail.com
333 Corporate Plaza
Raleigh, NC 27601
US
919-821-4188

I haven’t bothered calling that number yet, but it might be interesting.

Later today, or maybe tomorrow, I’ll post a review of the latest LOTR, the Neil Gaiman book Neverwhere, something about my new phone, and maybe some more about my vacation.

Update: Just saw the fake news clip you can download from that site on teevee. It’s interesting that the whole hoax is based in the Raleigh area (the registrar of the site is in Raleigh, the news clip is supposed to be from Durham, and I saw the before movie ad in Raleigh). Does Travelocity have a big Raleigh presence? They seem to be based out of Forth Worth, TX.

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In today’s second example of people with too much time, check out this funny (if misleading and inaccurate) spoof of Apple’s switch ads. It’s innacurate, at least in my experience, because I’ve never managed to completely lock up my Mac, at least since OS X came out.

(Link via Ryan’s Rantin’)

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It’s absolutely amazing what people will do with their time. The voice work and lyrics alone must have taken hours.

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