Oh, boy, HITLER stamps! If you get all 25, you can trade ‘em in for Sudetenland!
Tag Adolf Hitler
Always With The Hitler Jokes
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Hitlerrific!
After the war, Adolph and Eva settled in Cleveland and could be seen riding the bus every Tuesday to go to the senior center for bingo-and-beer night
Boy, howdy people can’t get enough of Hitler. I hear the reason Dick Cheney brought out his new book recently was because he was afraid Hitler was getting all the good PR. Heck, it’s only recently that the History Channel stopped with their 24-7 schedule of Hitler documentaries in favor of their new 24-7 schedule of episodes of “Pawn Stars”, and *I* heard they asked Chumlee to lose the goatee and grow that little mustache.
So here is your Daily Dose of Dolph:
The news magazine The National Interest reviewed a new scholarly biography of Eva Braun in their latest issue. Because she had no public role in the world of the Third Reich, not much was known about her during the Hitler years, and little had been written about her since except as she appeared in episodes of his life. Indeed, just reading the review will assuredly increase your knowledge about her tenfold, even if you never even remotely consider reading the book. As the reviewer, Richard J. Evans, concludes, the larger issue about developing a better understanding of Braun is that it forces a re-examination of Hitler himself as a real human being and not as the Ultimate Monster of History, and that seems to still be beyond the conceptualization of many.
So that’s a good way to segue to this book review in The New Republic by Monica Osborne, looking at a book by Rudolph Herzog that examines political humor in Germany in the 1930s and the way that Hitler was generally portrayed as a laughing stock during the early part of his rise to power, and continued to be played for laughs by Allied war propaganda even though the knowledge of the unfolding terror committed by the Nazis was fairly widespread. The book also considers the use of Hitler humor in the post-war period; it is safe to say that Mel Brooks would probably not have a career without Hitler to kick around. How we choose to use humor to deal with the horrors of modern life is a provocative question, certainly.
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Two Feel-Good Hitler Stories
Totally unrelated links, except that both involve the Nazis:
NPR’s Morning Edition featured a story earlier this week about a little-known facet of the otherwise well-known legend of Jesse Owens and his victories in the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Apparently, as part of the pageantry of the Games, the Germans gave each athlete an oak sapling for every gold medal won. Owens brought home four saplings, and a couple of them became famous legacies for the schools where they were planted. One of the four was never accurately accounted for, but now researcher think a tree near the library on the campus of Ohio State University may be that tree and will do genetic testing on it to compare it to the other known trees.
Equally Hitlerrific is this review in the Wall Street Journal by Barton Swaim of a new biography of journalist William L. Shirer by Steve Wick, “The Long Night: William L. Shirer and The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich”. Wick focuses on Shirer’s personal story of mixed professional fortunes but ideal vantage point of the unfolding crisis in Germany, which would become the source material for Shirer’s milestone book “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich”. The review is a good precis of what promises to be an interesting book.
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There’s Crazy And Then There’s Teabagger Crazy
You have to see this video to believe it. It’s an actual Republican candidate for Congress in Delaware, the same state that recently chose über-wacko and Sara Palin-wannabe Christine O’Donnell to be their Republican candidate for Senate, telling a group of supporters that they should ask their liberal friends “why they are Nazis” because it was Adolf Hitler, not Thomas Jefferson, who coined the terms “separation of church and state”.
Can I just ask what the FUCK are people smoking in Delaware?
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The Torch Is Past
Everybody seems to be in quite a dither about the Olympic Torch being doused twice today as it was run through the streets of Paris.
I certainly hope the irony is not lost on anyone that it was Adolf Hitler’s propaganda ministry that came up with the idea of running the Olympic Torch from Greece to the site of the Games for the 1936 Berlin Olympics. It was all part of the glorification of the Aryan supermen, with the direct implication that there was a link between Nazi Germany and the Olympian gods. Hitler himself was big on the idea that somehow the Germans had some sort of tie to the Spartans.
Of course, the IOC itself was run by a Francoist for twenty years, and even prior to that the long-time head of the U.S. Olympic Committee and head of the IOC, Avery Brundage, had direct business ties to Nazi Germany. So to pretend that the Olympics are somehow tainted by their association with Beijing and the Chinese government is a little disingenuous.
As a true testament to the 19th Century ideal of amateur competition, the Olympics ceased to be worthy of that consideration with the 1936 Games. When the Games resumed after World War II, the political propagandization and the proxy battles between the two sides of the Cold War carried the Games for another 30-odd years until the 1980 Games in Moscow. Since 1984, though, the Games have mutated into nothing but a commercial spectacle, deteriorating further and further along that path with each subsequent event. Protesting over China hosting the Games is too little, too late. China as the Next Big Superpower seems to me to be the perfect symbol of the triumph of unbridled capitalism and hypocritical symbolism. Dousing Hitler’s torch in the shadow of the Arc de Triomphe only seems fitting to me.
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Adolf, Julianne and Me
Be Warned: this post falls squarely into the “TMI” category for many people.
When you take several different daily medications, the way I do, inevitably you’re going to get at least ONE unpleasant side effect. Considering all the possible side effects that many popular prescription drugs cause, I am actually fairly lucky in that I only have one or two worth mentioning. I switched one of my medications a couple of months ago, and, while the beneficial effect of the drug has been enormous, it has had more noticeable side effects than just about anything else I’ve ever taken. Of them, the most aggravating one did not last very long. One that remains is dry mouth, particularly if I’m nervous, but which is easily dealt with by drinking water throughout the day.
The other one, though, is a little problematic. You see, it makes me fart. A lot. No, no, I mean A LOT. The average person cuts the cheese about 14 times a day, expelling about half a liter of gas. While I haven’t actually bothered to count, I can tell you with a high degree of certainty that the number of occurrences is greatly in excess of the average, and I am producing enough gas to fuel the entire city of Boston for a week.
One of the other pills I take also affects the lower GI, so I had gotten used to being a little gassy, but lately it’s bad enough that I am even starting to gross myself out (and I am not easily grossed out, let me tell you). If this particular drug weren’t so effective for its intended purpose, I would stop taking it, but I expect to continue with it for some time. So I guess I need to visit a CVS and check out the non-prescription anti-flatulent options and cut back on the consumption of foods that only make the issue more severe.
You know who else had a farting problem? That right. Hitler. Turns out the Germans needed all that lebensraum to put some safe distance between themselves and Der Fuhrer’s SBDs.
But it’s not just Hitler. This particular video clip shows “Dancing With The Stars” hottie Julianne Hough treating her partner Helio Castroneves to a little toot during rehearsal. And you thought pretty girls didn’t fart? PUHLEEZE.
(It’s at moments like these that I bet you’re all glad nobody has invented Smell-O-Vision for the Internet yet)