In this year of primary battles for the upcoming presidential election, how close attention have you paid to the pointless political prattle? Take this brief quiz to see how well you've focused. Simply identify the speaker or speakers of the following quotations:
4) "It is my brother who would have saved the last of our lands, won important public office, done all a good son can be expected to do in the way of piety towards his family gods. I know this is true and feel my life, my whole body’s weight in the saddle, as a burden."
5) "But what are soldiers for if not to be used?"
Extra Credit: "A man peddles love songs because it is easier to do than it is to peddle coconuts . . . "
Answers below:
1) Pat Roberston may have been your first guess, but given what an idiotic gasbag he is, he's not the answer to anything. Or Pat Buchanan. Actually, any number of candidates, past or present, could have uttered such Jesus-babble on the campaign trail. It's easy to imagine Rick "Oops" Perry saying it, for instance, since it doesn't require him to count to three. How about corporate gaffe-machine Mitt "Makeover" Romney? Is there anything he won't say only to recant later? All good--rather, evil--guesses, but all wrong in so many ways! To find out the correct answer you need to turn the page back to 1927, when none other than that old charlatan himself, Elmer Gantry, in the novel by Sinclair Lewis, first proclaimed this wholly fucked up goal.
2) Doubtlessly, the answer involves someone associated with Health Care Reform, yet it seems extremely unlikely that Finance Chair Max Baucus would have said something that even hinted at options, public or otherwise. Ironically, since the committee wasn't looking for options, the single-payer system (which the president himself deemed not an option) would have seemed perfect. Alas, no. As for the quote, it comes from Roman poet Ovid's The Cure for Love--not Michele Bachmann's husband, Marcus, the gay doctor (i.e., he cures the gay), as you may have, albeit mistakenly, guessed.
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| Romney: Soylent Green, Inc., is people, my friend. |
1) "Let me count this day, Lord, as the beginning of a new and more vigorous life, as the beginning of a crusade for complete morality and the domination of the Christian church through all the land. Dear Lord, thy work is but begun! We shall yet make these United States a moral nation!"
2) "Disease takes a thousand forms, so must the cure."
3) "We should support whatever the enemy opposes and oppose whatever the enemy supports."
5) "But what are soldiers for if not to be used?"
Extra Credit: "A man peddles love songs because it is easier to do than it is to peddle coconuts . . . "
Answers below:
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| Gingrich's plan for empowering children of underprivileged families |
2) Doubtlessly, the answer involves someone associated with Health Care Reform, yet it seems extremely unlikely that Finance Chair Max Baucus would have said something that even hinted at options, public or otherwise. Ironically, since the committee wasn't looking for options, the single-payer system (which the president himself deemed not an option) would have seemed perfect. Alas, no. As for the quote, it comes from Roman poet Ovid's The Cure for Love--not Michele Bachmann's husband, Marcus, the gay doctor (i.e., he cures the gay), as you may have, albeit mistakenly, guessed.
3) Easy, right? This was part of a leaked email from Mitch McConnell or another in a series of Speaker of the House John Boehner's bombastic boners. Perhaps Eric Cantor? Just say no to all of those bozos. Although it's a major part of the Republican strategy, you may be surprised to learn that Mao Tse-Tung voiced this selfsame plan in an interview 1939. What a grand old party, eh, Chairman Priebus?
4) It may also surprise you to hear the correct answer to this question is Ted Kennedy. It would surprise me too since that's incorrect. A less surprising response--I mean, the mention of the saddle is a virtual giveaway--would be to attribute it to Dubya Bush, said in an interview with some Faux News flunky to help lay the foundation for Jeb's no-brainer presidential bid. For the record, the correct answer is Ovid again. Well, not Ovid per se, but the fictionalized character of Ovid in exile in David Malouf's An Imaginary Life.
5) Par Lagerkvist's The Dwarf is what I'm looking for here, but to be fair, I'm fairly confident nearly everyone in the Bush administration said this very same thing at least once during those eight sad, if not sadistic years. Obama would never say any such thing. He would instead say something, pregnant with pauses, dignified about democracy & duty, as he sends troops somewhere they shouldn't be. Take Afghanistan--that's an order!
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| Santorum: I <3 inequality. |
Extra Credit: If you said jumped-up jingoistic jingle-loving jughead Donald Trump, give yourself a million dollar comb-over & get the hell out--you're fired. Actually, it was former Vice President Dick Cheney--no, I'm kidding. But it was a former vice president of Hartford Accident & Indemnity Co., not to mention one time Mussolini supporter, Wallace Stevens, in his collection of essays, The Necessary Angel. An insurance executive with fascist leanings--what are the odds? Better than those of your claim being approved, I can tell you that much.
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