Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Unlettered Morons

...They're in my televison; today, one of them -- on a national network! -- remarked to a weatherforecaster, "Kurt Vonnegut wrote The Man Without A Country, but you're 'the man without a cold front,' ha ha ha..."

Um, no. Most people with what passes for an education will recognize The Man Without A Country as a short story by Edward Everett Hale; some may recall Vonnegut's A Man Without A Country, the author's last book to be published while he was alive and of which one critic wrote, "Unfortunately, whereas Vonnegut’s insights about humor, humanism, aging, and art are touchingly tender, his political ideas tend to fall flat and sound immature. Indeed, while Vonnegut devotes many pages to criticizing George W. Bush as President, he adds next to nothing to our collective perception of the current political milieu in the United States." Ouch.

Guess which one Mr. Network Guy was most likely to have seen laying 'pon a coffee-table, no doubt as bona fides of the proper sort of Bush-loathing, and would have thought of as something surely familiar to all the proper sort of people? Geez, d00d, let it go, willya? --Or at least get the title right.

2 comments:

JC said...

But Vonnegut, he's the voice of a nation, on it's way to yhr big wide scary world of Freshman at a college!
Think of the Chirrin!

JC said...

Please forgive the apostrophe. Blame Autofill defaults.