Intermarkets' Privacy Policy
Support


Donate to Ace of Spades HQ!


Contact
Ace:
aceofspadeshq at gee mail.com
Buck:
buck.throckmorton at protonmail.com
CBD:
cbd at cutjibnewsletter.com
joe mannix:
mannix2024 at proton.me
MisHum:
petmorons at gee mail.com
J.J. Sefton:
sefton at cutjibnewsletter.com


Recent Entries
Absent Friends
Bandersnatch 2024
GnuBreed 2024
Captain Hate 2023
moon_over_vermont 2023
westminsterdogshow 2023
Ann Wilson(Empire1) 2022
Dave In Texas 2022
Jesse in D.C. 2022
OregonMuse 2022
redc1c4 2021
Tami 2021
Chavez the Hugo 2020
Ibguy 2020
Rickl 2019
Joffen 2014
AoSHQ Writers Group
A site for members of the Horde to post their stories seeking beta readers, editing help, brainstorming, and story ideas. Also to share links to potential publishing outlets, writing help sites, and videos posting tips to get published. Contact OrangeEnt for info:
maildrop62 at proton dot me
Cutting The Cord And Email Security
Moron Meet-Ups






















« Chris Matthews Interprets Dick Cheney: "Kick Their Ass And Take Their Gas" | Main | "It was twenty five years ago today:" John Lennon RIP »
December 08, 2005

Harold Pinter: Gibbering Senile Crank

The New York Times' headline:

Playwright Takes a Prize and a Jab at US

Is this a jab? I thought we take jabs at each other here. I think this is more serious than that:

The playwright Harold Pinter turned his Nobel Prize acceptance speech on Wednesday into a furious howl of outrage against American foreign policy, saying that the United States had not only lied to justify waging war against Iraq but had also "supported and in many cases engendered every right-wing military dictatorship" in the last 50 years.

"The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them," Mr. Pinter said.

Yeahhh... few have actually talked about them. Just you, every fucking douchebag artiste or faux intellectual or dilettante cafe-goer in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, South America, and the various corrupt leftist regimes in San Franscisco and Boston.

Brave guy. Why don't you do something really brave and say something critical about Islam, like Salman Rushdie said?

These courageous truth-tellers only seem able to muster the bravery to malign the five or six countries on the face of the earth that won't rub them out if they get too nasty.



"You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It's a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis."

Well, he does say we're witty. I'm going to call that paragraph a net-neutral.

Witty's good. Witty's definitely good.

...

The playwright, known in recent years as much for his fiery anti-Americanism as for his spare prose style and haunting, elliptical plays like "The Caretaker" and "The Homecoming,"...

He's know as much for his screeds as his plays? Really?

I'd say he was much more well-known for the former.

Let's face it, he's a bitter old man unable to do any further good work and it's only because of his lunatic rantings that they're flattering him with this prize.

The literature prize has in recent years often gone to writers with left-wing ideologies.

Like I was just saying. Give the NYT honesty points for mentioning this.

...

When he won the award, Mr. Pinter said he did not know if the academy, whose deliberations and reasoning are kept secret, had taken his politics into account.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that his politics didn't exactly hurt his chances.

[W]hile drama represents "the search for truth," Mr. Pinter said, politics works against truth, surrounding citizens with "a vast tapestry of lies" spun by politicians eager to cling to power.

Mr. Pinter attacked American foreign policy since World War II, saying that while the crimes of the Soviet Union had been well documented, those of the United States had not. "I put to you that the United States is without doubt the greatest show on the road," he said. "Brutal, indifferent, scornful and ruthless it may be, but it is also very clever. As a salesman it is out on its own and its most saleable commodity is self-love."

And yet Mr. Pinter is one of our best customers for that particular item. Maybe he's mad we don't give volume discounts.

He returned to the theme of language as an obscurer of reality, saying that American leaders use it to anesthetize the public. "It's a scintillating stratagem," Mr. Pinter said. "Language is actually employed to keep thought at bay. The words 'the American people' provide a truly voluptuous cushion of reassurance. You don't need to think. Just lie back on the cushion. The cushion may be suffocating your intelligence and your critical faculties but it's very comfortable."

Reassuring cushions? What is modern avant-garde theater but just that? As I've raved before, nothing is said in these plays that creates the slightest dicomfiture for their liberal, often leftist, audiences. Their idea of a "challenging" play is one intended to "challenge" all the people outside the theater, who would no doubt find their assumptions duly undermined if they actually bothered to watch this dreck.

For the actual theater-goers, of course, it's a just some comforting Revivalist Tent Preachin', but with reserved seating and $15 cocktails.

Accusing the United States of torturing terrorist suspects in Guantánamo Bay and Abu Ghraib, Mr. Pinter called the invasion of Iraq - for which he said Britain was also responsible - "a bandit act, an act of blatant state terrorism, demonstrating absolute contempt for the concept of international law."

And yet not a peep out of this guy about Al Qaeda.

Eh. It's Joker politics.

digg this
posted by Ace at 05:13 AM

| Access Comments




Recent Comments
Seems Legit: "How odd, I thought everyone understood that electr ..."

rickb223 Gold & Silver Spot Prices [s][/b][/i][/u]: "You’d think they would’ve come up with ..."

Commissar of Plenty and Lysenkoism in Solidarity with the Struggle : "MiG-29 has two sets of intakes Bonus hole. ..."

It's me donna : "270 242 To be fair, Elon did advise that there isn ..."

West Frisian Women's Auxiliary : "The red head gene mutation also enables them to dr ..."

eleven: "If there wasn't a steel re-enforced concrete wall ..."

SMOD: "DC_Draino @DC_Draino Think about this If Tr ..."

Sponge - F*ck Joe Biden: "[i]thus, his push to ship congolese lithium mining ..."

garrett: "What is the increased Mass of an Electric School B ..."

Thomas Paine: "242 To be fair, Elon did advise that there isn't e ..."

Skip : "Bet they won't get 10 years of use out of a EV Bus ..."

Sponge - F*ck Joe Biden: "[i]They handle 25% more pain than others, and repo ..."

Recent Entries
Search


Polls! Polls! Polls!
Frequently Asked Questions
The (Almost) Complete Paul Anka Integrity Kick
Top Top Tens
Greatest Hitjobs

The Ace of Spades HQ Sex-for-Money Skankathon
A D&D Guide to the Democratic Candidates
Margaret Cho: Just Not Funny
More Margaret Cho Abuse
Margaret Cho: Still Not Funny
Iraqi Prisoner Claims He Was Raped... By Woman
Wonkette Announces "Morning Zoo" Format
John Kerry's "Plan" Causes Surrender of Moqtada al-Sadr's Militia
World Muslim Leaders Apologize for Nick Berg's Beheading
Michael Moore Goes on Lunchtime Manhattan Death-Spree
Milestone: Oliver Willis Posts 400th "Fake News Article" Referencing Britney Spears
Liberal Economists Rue a "New Decade of Greed"
Artificial Insouciance: Maureen Dowd's Word Processor Revolts Against Her Numbing Imbecility
Intelligence Officials Eye Blogs for Tips
They Done Found Us Out, Cletus: Intrepid Internet Detective Figures Out Our Master Plan
Shock: Josh Marshall Almost Mentions Sarin Discovery in Iraq
Leather-Clad Biker Freaks Terrorize Australian Town
When Clinton Was President, Torture Was Cool
What Wonkette Means When She Explains What Tina Brown Means
Wonkette's Stand-Up Act
Wankette HQ Gay-Rumors Du Jour
Here's What's Bugging Me: Goose and Slider
My Own Micah Wright Style Confession of Dishonesty
Outraged "Conservatives" React to the FMA
An On-Line Impression of Dennis Miller Having Sex with a Kodiak Bear
The Story the Rightwing Media Refuses to Report!
Our Lunch with David "Glengarry Glen Ross" Mamet
The House of Love: Paul Krugman
A Michael Moore Mystery (TM)
The Dowd-O-Matic!
Liberal Consistency and Other Myths
Kepler's Laws of Liberal Media Bias
John Kerry-- The Splunge! Candidate
"Divisive" Politics & "Attacks on Patriotism" (very long)
The Donkey ("The Raven" parody)
Powered by
Movable Type 2.64