Foot-in-Mouth Friday: Open Thread

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Share your favorite examples of recent stupid quotes and actions…preferably Rumsfeld-free. Mine comes via Atrios:

From the 8-times divorced Larry King, talking to John and the wonderful Elizabeth Edwards, regarding her recently diagnosed breast cancer:

"Senator, has there been any thoughts and this happens in any case where the male hears the news from the mate — aesthetically, how will Elizabeth look, how will she respond? Do you have any of those feelings?"

Do you have any feelings at all, Mr. King? Those generally associated with being "human," I mean?

40 thoughts on “Foot-in-Mouth Friday: Open Thread”

  1. Don King gets credit for the slogan: Only in America!
    But Larry King really embodies the slogan.
    Anybody remember Larry King’s daily column in McPaper?

  2. Oh, god, I remember that column.

    Hey, has anyone else noticed that politics have gotten nastier? I’m not sure that’s a good thing for the country…I predict big stardom for a whip-smart, dynamite actress named Sally Kellerman…that McRib sandwich I had for lunch was good, but probably pretty bad for me…you know, I think that Henry Kissinger is a very smart man…I like puppies…

  3. Oh my friends, the media will only get worse with the forces of evil, Fox News and Clear Channel join in their God-awful venture. Orwell and Chayevsky can officially be annointed the prophets of the 20th Century.

  6. I’m still pretty fond of Kaplan on news reporting during the second world war:
    “During World War II American soldiers and journalists belonged to the same crowd-pack, so news coverage was more empathetic. It made heroes of American troops when the facts so demanded, which was often.”
    The man may have left Iraq, but he’s clearly still embedded.

  9. We might want to suspend judgment on the fate of the Netherlands vis-a-vis terrorism.
    Stupidist quote, from me:
    Set the scene…..
    Two days before.
    CEO: I’m off to China.
    Sebastian: Good luck.
    Day of the incident:
    I get a bunch of deposition notices, including a long-expected notice for the CEO’s deposition in a case where they think that deposing the CEO will turn their non-case into something we are scared of. I call to leave a voice-mail with the details.
    CEO: Err, hello.
    Sebastian: Um, hi I thought I was leaving a voice mail. Yikes it must be 1:00 in the morning over there. Uh, you have a depo scheduled in a couple of weeks, but I’ll e-mail you with the details. Goodbye.
    CEO: ….. Thanks
    Ok, it isn’t a ‘quote’ but considering I haven’t been fired it is a pretty funny story.
    The next week he sent me the Microsoft automatic time-zone calculator. 🙂

  10. an open thread for real? I hate to ruin a fun discussion, but this story makes me wonder, in a real and serious way, just what is happening to this country and what it will take to restore our sanity.

  11. self-abuse stories (no, not that kind of self-abuse).
    Partner just got a fax machine, told me to fax him law and motion papers to be filed early the next day. Done at 2:00 am. Tried to fax. Fax set up wrong and on desk next to marital bed; wife kept answering fax line.
    ooops. make that oooooooops.
    no longer employed there.
    Francis

  12. Katherine: but this story makes me wonder, in a real and serious way, just what is happening to this country and what it will take to restore our sanity.
    It would be nice to think that a charge of war crimes will be successfully brought against Rumsfeld and Bush, and that the massed American public (especially those who voted Republican last time) will suddenly re-evaluate the Bush administration and there will be mass resignations (even in my wildest dreams I can’t imagine ever seeing Bush in court, richly though he deserves to be there) and, and, and.
    It’ll never happen, of course, so long as Fox News can spin it otherwise.

  13. Katherine’s comment made me go back and look at all the blogging that got done in May when the Abu Ghraib photographs had just hit the public.
    How hard is it to maintain that level of outrage?
    Abu Ghraib was, I thought in May – and still think now – one reason why Bush absolutely ought to have lost the November election. (Yes, yes, I know, it’s now December, it’s too late.) Whether or not you blame the Commander-in-Chief for the awful actions carried out by the US military, the one thing that ought to have happened, as soon as they came to light, was a mass housecleaning. Not just the low-level grunts who have been prosecuted (and rightly so: I’m not trying to exculpate them from blame) but everyone at all levels who was responsible for what happened. There ought to have been a clean-out: justice not only should have been done, but should have been seen to have been done.
    But it didn’t happen. And for that failure, Bush must bear the ultimate responsibility: he’s the C-in-C, he’s the President – whether or not he was the one who actually decided that torture was sufficiently unimportant to reliable Republicans that the matter could safely be ignored. Horrifically, whoever made that decision turned out to be exactly right: it wasn’t. The failure to do housecleaning may have lost the war in Iraq, but it may have won the election in the US: and that is what was always most important to the Bush administration.
    Officials at the Defense Department are also said to be “livid,” and well aware of the damage that has been done by the incident, according to NBC News’ Pentagon reporter Jim Miklaszewski. Speaking on the Imus in the Morning radio/MSNBC program Tuesday , Mr. Miklaszewski said he asked a Pentagon contact about the soldiers alleged to be involved, to which the Pentagon official replied, “You mean the six morons who lost the war?” (May 10, 2004)

  14. Oh screw the Hague, I just want a sane, competent Secretary of Defense instead of “Irresponsible Fifth Year Senior Donald Rumsfeld.” (Daily show.) At this point I’d be pleasantly surprised if even Cambone lost his job. Or if a single Congressional subpoena was issued.
    My husband says I’m overreacting to this single story, that we should not even be surprised by Abu Ghraib if we remember the stuff about My Lai and the Phoenix Project, though that does not mitigate our duty to do something about it. But I think he is more cynical than I am, not so much more optimistic.

  16. My favorite quote would have been:
    “Larry has there been any thoughts as to aesthetically how you will look after my fist is extracted from your jaw, and how you will respond?”
    And then that million dollar Carolina smile.
    Alas

  17. My new favourite quote is from my new favourite Christmas carol ever: Jesus was a Gay Black Hippie Jew:
    “Jesus was a gay black hippie Jew
    And if you hate that then I guess he will forgive you
    Jesus was a gay black hippie Jew
    Some say he was a secret Buddhist too”

  21. Just how important does this appointed administration view the Department of Homeland Security after nominating Bernie Kerik to head the agency?
    And what does the Kerik Kerfuffle say about Alberto Gonzales’ ability to vet nominees to cabinet posts?

  22. Just how important does this appointed administration…
    Still? Jeez…
    As a fellow liberal to another: get over it. There are plenty of reasons to dislike (or even insult) the Bush Administration, but that particular horse is so far beyond dead he’s been reincarnated as a bluebottle sitting on a Grand Slam breakfast at Denny’s.

  23. Anarch: welll, technically, the Bush administration is still the appointed administration till 20th January 2005, when it becomes an elected administration. Conservatives should by now be able to get over the fact that Bush lost the 2000 election, since he won the 2004 election.

  24. Is there anyone in the top levels at Defense or Homeland Security who is a recognized and respected professional in defense- or national-security related matters? Who has what job interviewers like to call a “proven track record of success” in their job’s “core competencies”?

  25. …on the other hand, I concede immediately that I would rather time was spent answering CaseyL’s questions than spent still arguing with people who still cling to the fiction that Bush won in 2000…

  28. If Jesurgislac would just kindly back that claim up
    Please, I beg you, let’s not go there yet again. Does anyone really think that 1,345th rehash of the topic will change any minds that the previous 1,344 didn’t?

  32. Kerik, anyone?
    I’d remind people this appointed administration used the DHS as a club against a decorated Vietnam veteran, Max Cleland. Yet, this same appointed administration nominates the very, very ethically-challenged and wholly unqualified Kerik?

  33. this appointed administration…this same appointed administration…
    Aaggh!! Make it stop!! I feel like I’m in a cartoon, and that phrase keeps getting plastered on the screen in a variety of colors and orientations, until I’m buried by several layers of hyperbolic epithets.

  34. kenB: I’m wholly in agreement. I’m tired of citing evidence to Slarti and other Bush supporters that they don’t want to look at, and pretend has never happened: I’m tired of having this discussion. Bush has, finally, managed to win an election. I still think that the system that allowed him to take the Presidency despite having lost the election in 2000 ought to be systematically reformed so that it can never happen again that the losing candidate gets to take the White House: I would wish for the US to quit using the beta version of democracy and move forward into the 20th century: but I’m aware this is going to be no one’s priority until 2008 at least.
    Meantime, may I repeat CaseyL’s interesting questions:
    Is there anyone in the top levels at Defense or Homeland Security who is a recognized and respected professional in defense- or national-security related matters? Who has what job interviewers like to call a “proven track record of success” in their job’s “core competencies”?

  35. Okay. Sorry. Next time anyone mentions Bush’s performance in the 2000 elections, I promise I’ll sit down and shut up and not point out that he lost.
    Jadegold, yes, the Bush administration remains an appointed administration till January 20th 2005, since Bush didn’t win an election till November 2004. I know that. You know that. Anyone who’s bothered to look at the facts knows that. But Anarch is right: it’s over. No Bush supporter wants to acknowledge that Bush lost the 2000 election, and no Bush supporter can therefore afford to join the calls for electoral reform in the US: as we discovered back in 2000/2001, neither party is willing to look at electoral reform so long as they hope they will benefit by electoral corruption and mismanagement. Certainly the current leaders of the Republican party will have to fall rather catastrophically from power before they can afford to examine the circumstances under which Bush was appointed President in 2000.
    So, um. Let’s just refer to the Bush administration from now on, okay? From 20th January 2005, it will be an elected administration, not an appointed one, any more.

  36. And from now on, I’ll refrain from pointing out that you’re full of crap when you claim that Bush lost the 2000 election. That is, of course, the dignified and civil thing to do. So when such time arrives as you stop dragging this out in public, I’ll cease pointing out how incredibly, irredeemably full of crap you are on this issue.
    Even though I’ll continue thinking so, just to myself.
    See? I can do that, too, that long-suffering nobility thing.

  37. “I can do that, too, that long-suffering nobility thing.”
    Yes, but since you’re wrong on this point, it’s even sillier than Jes‘s version.
    Recently read the claim that being a gentlemen is a higher calling than being a Christian, but I don’t know any nobles or people of gentle birth and only one or two Christians…

  39. Well, I just looked up the definition of “parody”, and depending on your view of what “ridicule” means (I associate it with laughter given the Latin root but one may mean something more like “deride” – oops) and you may be right. I thought you were “kidding on the square”.

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