Wonkette operative “L” sends this tragic wingnut email with the explanation, “My cousin, who works for the STATE DEPARTMENT, sent this out.” Oh man.
And why is this photograph with the special zoom-in “Wat’s smarty-pants readin’?” close-up so damning? This is why:
Subject: Read this and weep
If each person sends this to a minimum of twenty people on their address list, in three days, all people in The United States of America would have the message. I believe this is one proposal that really should be passed around.
____________________________________THIS WILL CURDLE YOUR BLOOD AND CURL YOUR HAIR
The name of the book Obama is reading is called:
The Post-American World, and it was written by a fellow Muslim.
“Post” American means the world After America ! Please forward this picture to everyone you know, conservative or liberal. We must expose Obama’s radical ideas and his intent to bring down our beloved America !
———————————————————
The New Busy is not the old busy. Search, chat and e-mail from your inbox. Get started.
Fareed Zakaria is a Newsweek columnist, a Sunday CNN host, a naturalized American who lives in New York, and the former wine columnist for Slate. He writes what you might call “upper middlebrow” thumbsuckers and think pieces for the Wall Street Journal and the New Yorker, covering the same conventional-wisdom international business/politics scene that Thomas Friedman visits with his language bulldozer each week.
The shocking premise of Zakaria’s two-year-old best-selling hardback/paperback/audiobook The Post-American World? Here’s the Amazon.com capsule review:
“This is not a book about the decline of America, but rather about the rise of everyone else.” So begins Fareed Zakaria’s important new work on the era we are now entering. Following on the success of his best-selling The Future of Freedom, Zakaria describes with equal prescience a world in which the United States will no longer dominate the global economy, orchestrate geopolitics, or overwhelm cultures. He sees the “rise of the rest”—the growth of countries like China, India, Brazil, Russia, and many others—as the great story of our time, and one that will reshape the world. The tallest buildings, biggest dams, largest-selling movies, and most advanced cell phones are all being built outside the United States. This economic growth is producing political confidence, national pride, and potentially international problems. How should the United States understand and thrive in this rapidly changing international climate? What does it mean to live in a truly global era? Zakaria answers these questions with his customary lucidity, insight, and imagination.
In other words, your district sales manager probably made you and the rest of your “team” read this goddamned thing a year ago, and at least it wasn’t as bad as Hot, Flat and Crowded. OR: WHY IS BARRY HUSSEIN TRYING TO MAKE AMERICA THRIVE IN GAY MUSLIM CHINA WHY NOT JUST NUKE ‘EM AGAIN?
(Also, isn’t this an old campaign picture from 2008?)
{ 128 comments }
ha, I like the explanation of post.
Barry looks sort o’ rake-ish there, too. Sort of like a wealthy Muslim prince about to buy some white slaves.
Sounds like this “cousin, who works for the STATE DEPARTMENT,” and is paid by *my* tax dollars, needs some actual work to do…
Hate to tell this moran, but this is a pretty old picture. But I like how they accurately depict what the book is about simply by it’s title; I bet they think Gone with the Wind was about a tornado.
At least its not “My Pet Goat”
Awwww… they’re just jealous he can read something more sophisticated than a comic book.
Personally, I am looking forward to a post American world.
What the wingnuts are REALLY upset about is that his finger holding the page indicates that he was actually reading it. They hate the idea that we teach colored people how to read.
See, now, this is *exactly why* you’re not supposed to let the slaves learn to read.
What’s that word again? Oh yeah; Obfuscate.
I’m afraid I must express disappointment. Fareed Zakaria is truly awful and odious. But seriously, did they expect him to just walk around with his hand crank AM radio, decked out in Maxine bling stickers?
I think Obama should carry around a copy of The Turner Diaries. That might generate a little cognitive dissonance.
NOT THE BIBLE OR THE CONSTITUTION!
I spend the first few minutes of every morning preparing for a Post Shredded Wheat world.
Ah, the pre-American world. I remember it well.
People, I don’t think you get this. Go back and read again what the “cousin” wrote:
“Post” American means the world After America !
NOW do you see?
Urge to kill…rising…
And everybody should read ‘A People’s History of the United States’.
Pres. Hopey could walk on water and they’d scream,”He can’t even swim!”. He could find the cure for cancer and they’d say he is discriminating against AIDS sufferers. This group is the same old 30% who thought Clinton should have been impeached for getting a blowjob and then lying about it. I swear to God their main problem was that half of them couldn’t imagine anyone indulging in (Uggh!) oral sex; and the other half of them couldn’t imagine getting a blowjob from a woman.
[re=569632]neoplatonic[/re]: Win! Do they still have clandestine auctions of Circassian beauties? I hope not…
Is that his phony birth certificate he’s using as a book mark?????
Where’s the Girlebook edition of Night and Day?
Zakaria = another arugula-eating brown.
This lines up. The wingnuts charged in with their teabags once the (false) idea of “post-racial Amerikka” came across their teevees, so yes, start a brilliant e-mail campaign against. a non-existent threat. Neat. I suspect the real issue is the possibility of no more fried bologna and. pork-rind casseroles.
[re=569634]Texan Bulldoggette[/re]: lololol
Uhm… any volunteers to change the book to something secksier? I heard Turner Diaries. Maybe Naked Lunch or, shoot, Superfudge?
Shouldn’t they be upset about the LACK OF DECORUM Obamar is showing by not wearing a tie? INPEECH THE MUSLIN!
“the former wine columnist for Slate.”
So, a practicing Muslim then.
The email forwarding logic of 20 friends for 3 days reaching every American needs to be explained in a simplier way. Would there ever be a case where the same 20 people just keep sending it to each other, ad infinitum?
I’m glad the cousin explained what that ferrign latin word ‘post’ means though. At first I thought it meant mail or a newspaper.
I think the book jacket is just a cover for the real book under it. “How to bring about Socialism in 3 easy steps”. Either that or “NASCAR Zooms!”
[re=569664]HipHopOpotamus[/re]: And, his shoes are touching the ground, only to probably put on the Oval office desk or an AF1 seat! INPEECH!
As long as he dates the post-American era using Anno Domini, its all good.
By that logic, photos of Bush carrying around “I am Charlotte Simmons” suggests an identity crisis and gender confusion.
Maybe the original author thought the recipients would think the title was the Post’s American World; and that’s one that the wignuts would generally like to see, what with the killing of all the Muslim. Or he just knew that many of his fellow travellers were too dumb to know a common prefix.
I thought these guys had finally dropped that “sekrit Muslin” bullshit, but apparently not.
I got that crank e-mail about a year ago. I get that shit all the time. Fortunately, the guys who send me that shit allow me to hit “reply to all” and their entire mailing list gets my hostile response with the snopes.com URL that explains why they’re stupid. Does that change their minds? No. They keep sending me that shit. Why? Because they really, really want to believe it. They will never change. They just aren’t capable.
I wonder, if my blood begins to curdle, do I really give a shazam about my curling hair? Wingnuts and their priorities. Geez!
[re=569668]Bruno[/re]: everyone ammurican knows that “post” is part of a fence.
[re=569631]dannygutters[/re]: Goddammit! I thought Barry was continuing his snarky feud with the US Postal Service.
It’s a good thing he wasn’t reading anything about vampires. They’d really have him then.
the dust jacket is a decoy. it’s hiding a worn copy of the cookbook “to serve man”.
Next they’ll see Obama reading “Who Moved My Cheese?” and assume he’s letting the furries take over.
I deeply regret teaching my elderly parents how to turn on the “word makin’ machine”.
“Fareed Zakaria is a … naturalized American who lives in New York”
JUST LIKE THE TIMES SQUARE FAIL BOMBER! WAKE UP SHEEPLE!!!!!11!!
[re=569684]Hopey dont play that game[/re]: I gave my mom a computer and told her to beware. Thankfully (or sadly) she had dialup and can’t receive this monsterous bandwidth chokers. She’s moderate so the sad part is she can’t get them and then rant back against the lies.
Oh well, maybe we will get Obama Broadband one day.
Eh, literacy is what really pisses them off.
But if the rest of the world rises how will America be able to maintain its empire on the cheap?
It’s a State employee, eh?
Anyone else wondering now about all that “burrowing” W. did at the end? Anyone else wondering how the administration that came to Washington in 2000 claiming that 5th columnist Democrats were stealing the W’s from the keyboards would try to poison the well on their way out?
Anyone else wondering why Holder hasn’t had charges on any of the hundred or two hundred Bush political appointees documented in felonies in the last frenzied national destruction of Bush?
Yeah…I work for a legislator and I had to explain this to a “furious” constituent…hahah…the rubes…
[re=569632]neoplatonic[/re]: GAH, stop it! It’s too early in the morning for those kinds of fantasies.
[re=569663]MMS[/re]: So many possibilities. The Koran, obvs. Maybe the Gay Kama Sutra. Wait… The Signifying Monkey by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., FTW.
Despite all their rage, they are still just rats in a cage
That’s Joe Biden on the right, with a first-folio Superman.
“no, no, you don’t blow on it, thats just an expression.”
My goodness. One would almost think that authors and their publishing companies gave books mildly provocative titles as some sort of marketing ploy to get attention in crowded bookstores and airports. Socialism!
Headline:
BLACK PRESIDENT READS ACTUAL BOOK ABOUT ACTUAL GEOPOLITICAL SITUATION, WINGNUTS’ BLOOD CURDLED
Or, how about a New York Times-style headline:
In a Geopolitics Book, Blood Curdled
[re=569682]obfuscator[/re]: There’s a signpost up ahead…
it’s always the cousin.
The author of the email may be more clever than we think. For example: “The name of the book Obama is reading is called: The Post-American World…”
On one level it looks like he is just a clumsy writer, and that he meant: “The name of the book Obama is reading is: The Post-American World”, but really he is engaging in ingenious wordplay on the duality of what something is named and what it is called, with a subliminal message that Obama calls things what they are not named.
[re=569682]obfuscator[/re]: Not the Necronomicon?
Thomas Friedman’s language bulldozer…oh, that’s a good one, Ken.
[re=569701]Prommie[/re]: Old time SNL. Good stuff.
This is a picture from the campaign. Why repost?
TLDR
All this email will do is fuel appetites for Post Toasties.
[re=569634]Texan Bulldoggette[/re]: Just wait till they catch an eyeful of Michelle reading Pride and Predjudice!
Bam’s just playing a joke on us…black muslim communists can’t read, silly.
[re=569648]ph7[/re]: Wait, there’s a difference? I thought the Constitution was in the Bible.
[re=569716]GreyPanter[/re]: This is because in the Post-American world, the death of industry will lead to compulsory semiotics degrees, and everyone will be wickid smaht, cold deconstructing tropes as a barter currency, mostly to procure sexual favors.
[re=569718]Autochthon[/re]: The Protocols of the Elders of Zion?
“This is not a book about the decline of America, but rather about the rise BLAH BLAH BLAH I HATE AMERICA COMMUNISM RULES I HATE SMALL BUSINESS”
These doomsayers with the book company tend to ignore about 1,000 factors that pretty much show that the most powerful country in the world is…the United States. The country with the best-trained and most technologically-advanced workforce in the world is..the United States. The country that tends to lead in most ares in medicine, education, research, engineering, computer science and technological innovation is…the United States. The country with the best public school system on the planet is…the United States. The country that supports most of the best-selling movies (as if that’s any factor of any importance, which it isn’t, on any level) is…the United States. The most free and democratic, and thus the powerful country politically, on the planet is…the United States. The country with the most freedoms in terms of human rights, religion, the press, expression, speech and religion is…the United States. The United States is, and will likely remain, the most prosperous, the most free and the most politically-stable country on the planet, for decades and decades to come.
Who the holy hell cares who has the highest building, the biggest dam or some other crap?
In the end, the book, the author and the book company end up looking like nothing more than idiots, morons and assholes.
Screw ‘em–they don’t know what the hell they’re talking about.
Damn half-breed Muslins and their book-learnin’! If ignorance is good enuf for Caribou Barbie, it’s good enuf for me!
I think that picture is 2 years old. The book came out in May of 2008, first of all, and second of all I recall having that picture sent to me by other booknerd friends and then, terrible nerd that I am, I tacked it up in my cube where it stayed until I got laid off in 2009.
Wingnuts! Nothing if not timely with their outrage.
(I’m typing this after skimming the post and not reading comments so sorry if this has already been said)
[re=569663]MMS[/re]: They couldn’t object to his reading anything by a Senator, could they? So Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot.
Uh, has anyone actually read the book? Honestly, I’d rather chew my left leg off at the knee than spend more than a minute listening to Fareed talk about anything.
And yeah, whoever has the tallest building, for sure some idiot is planning to start building a taller one next tuesday.
fareed zakaria looks like an ay-rab willem dafoe.
What is the title of the book called again?
““Post” American means the world After America !”
lol even the wingnuts know their compatriots are a bunch of fucking morons who need to have simple words defined.
[re=569759]snideinplainsight[/re]: He is truly awful, surpassing even Thomas Friedman or David Brooks. Just excremental. How do these idiots get writing gigs anyway?
The idea that a President reads is shocking to the right- especially a black president. If watching Tv was good enough for Dubya- how dare this guy read!
[re=569748]thefrontpage[/re]: Too wordy, just chant “USA, USA, USA, USA” at the top of your lungs, you’ll make the exact same point.
Funny thing about the tallest buildings and longest bridges biggest ships and biggest dams, these things sure as hell used to matter, back when we had them all, but now that we don’t, we’re all “oh hell, that shit don’t matter.” Sour grapes.
He’s so frickin’ uppity—-once we had a negro in my town paradin’ ’round with a book called Catcher in the Rye. It had no pitchers but he claimed he read the whole thing, every page–
yeah right
[re=569673]PsycGirl[/re]: Carrying around “I am Charlotte Simmons” suggests a confusion about what constitutes good writing. Everyone knows the only reason Mr White Suit wrote that 800 pages of pure crap was so he could have a convenient excuse to spend a year doing “research” in the nation’s biggest party sororities. When, in Chapter 1, the author uses the word “ineffable” twice in the same sentence, that’s a tip-off to the in-joke.
Oh great — if this email is circulating again, that means it must be time for the one allegedly written by Paul Harvey/George Carlin/Stephen Hawking about how poor/old/Mexican people don’t work hard/aren’t respectful/drive to the welfare office in their solid gold Cadillacs. And then the one about how the dying girl sees Jesus. Looking forward to it.
Anyone who needs “post” explained to them sure as fuck never watched a single episode of “Foreign Exchange.”
[re=569716]GreyPanter[/re]: The title of the book is “The Post American World.” The name of the book is Eric. Eric the Book.
[re=569676]steverino247[/re]: An oldie but a goodie:
“I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it.”
- George Bernard Shaw
I blame Reading Rainbow.
[re=569748]thefrontpage[/re]: Not really. Yeah, America will stay at the top for a while, but it’s inevitable that like the British before us, the French before them, or the Spanish before them; hell, all the way back to the Romans, the Macedonians, the Persians and the Egyptians, we can’t stay the most powerful country in the world forever.
Other countries are becoming more developed and wealthy, and demanding more of a say in international affairs, and America will eventually be surpassed.
However, simply predicting this apparently makes someone anti-American to the wignut crowd.
Fareed Zakaria yadayadayada CNN[!] yadayada naturalized[!]… New York[!] … wine[!] … writes[!] … think[!] … New Yorker[!] … international[!] …
OMG why isn’t he in Gitmo/Arizona already???
It’s Michelle who is reading it, Barry’s just holding her place for her.
The guy who tried to blow up NYC was a naturalized American too. Couldn’t Barry find a real American author? or did Laura leave that one behind under the bed?
[re=569668]Bruno[/re]: I’m glad the cousin explained what that ferrign latin word ‘post’ means though. At first I thought it meant mail or a newspaper.
Us real ‘murricans don’t care for youse uppity British people, either.
Thank god they explained this latin prefix for me. Otherwise I would have thought he was reading some conspiracy theory about Murdoch’s plan to make his new york tabloid take over American media.
[re=569800]Prommie[/re]: The USA is still home to the world’s biggest oil slick. Be proud!
Obviously this was not one of the “cousins” the emailer tried to have sex with.
Wingnut morons don’t know that Zakaria is a conservative in the “Economist” mould. Which means he’s an annoying foppish Manhattanite.
As a disclaimer, I went to school with Farid, and he is truly odious, but on the flip side, much smarter than 95% of the talking heads on the TeeVee.
[re=569806]comicbookguy[/re]: Maybe that’s why Bush reportedly was seen carrying it around for about a year but was never seen reading it. I did find the section on “fuck patois” entertaining but yeah, it was not a thing of beauty.
[re=569748]thefrontpage[/re]: The country that ranks 45th in male longevity, America. USA! USA! USA!
Just a question … do you all know of anyone who reads Newsweek? I have never met anyone who reads or subscribes to it in my life …
[re=569830]Hello Sunshine[/re]: We are also the world leader in double-layer neoprene wetsuit dildo snuff accidents. FUCK YEAH!
“A stupid man’s report of what a clever man says can never be accurate, because he unconsciously translates what he hears into something he can understand.” Bertrand Russell
“A woman in the Unites States is more than five times as likely as a woman in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Greece or Italy to die from pregnancy-related causes in her lifetime and her risk of maternal death is nearly 10-fold that of a woman in Ireland,” – Save The Children
Oh well, we still have apple pie!
[re=569770]Red Zeppelin[/re]: “The Post-American World” sounds like the name of a much-merged, somewhat right-wing newspaper.
[re=569804]slowuncle[/re]: Was that the one about Yogi Berra drunk in a New York bar?
[re=569807]SayItWithWookies[/re]: Or else it’s Kurt Vonnegut’s Commencement Address – use plenty of sunscreen.
Is it legal to use government e-mail for your personal wingnuttery? Oh, sorry, it is. It’s called ‘The Bush Administration’.
I like how they have to explain what “Post” means.
Their real fear is that, in “the post-american world”, everyone will have dicks as mammoth as Barry’s, and their nasty little teapot spouts won’t be able to compete. It’s so satisfying to know that every mormon housewife with an AOL account is seeing this photograph. Surely, after the screen grab, the next thing they notice is his obviously massive member? Hopefully they’re terrified: “I mean, Tammy, did you see that photograph? It looked like he stuffed the rolling pin down his pants!”
The real offense, of course, is that he’s reading a book that doesn’t come with crayons.
[re=569634]Texan Bulldoggette[/re]: Lord knows what assumptions they’ll make about “Moby Dick.”
I’m sorry, are you guys focusing on something that isn’t THE MASSIVE BULGE IN HIS PANTS? Okay, it’s probably just a crease, but I can’t take my eyes away from it.
[re=569636]ManchuCandidate[/re]: Yeah, it’s probably about the uppity book-learnin’.
[re=569654]ttommyunger[/re]: It had been so long since there was a president with a functional penis, they didn’t know how to act.
[re=569676]steverino247[/re]: I do the same thing. And I love the reply to all– I got a local government employee in hot water when they were sending this shit on a work computer on work time.
Fareed Zakaria is a Newsweek columnist, a Sunday CNN host, a naturalized American who lives in New York, and the former wine columnist for Slate. He writes what you might call “upper middlebrow” thumbsuckers and think pieces for the Wall Street Journal and the New Yorker, covering the same conventional-wisdom international business/politics scene that Thomas Friedman visits with his language bulldozer each week.
What part of Muslim do you not understand, Ken? And right after Zakaria tried to bomb Time Square.
“Cuanto menos se lee, más daño hace lo que se lee.” -Miguel de Unamuno
[re=569739]Mr Blifil[/re]: No, no, a thousand times no, NOT the semiotics! {Weren’t those the last words in The Heart of Darkness?}
[re=569748]thefrontpage[/re]: You obviously have no actual facts to back up your claims of American exceptionalism, but besides that you also miss the broader point. Its a good thing that the cold war is over, because once some of our attention turns away from the great global pissing match, we might be able to devote some effort to our actual daily challenges, only after were honest about our shortcomings though, which you stubborn nationalists refuse to do. The sooner we stop propping up this silly fabrication that were a whole nation of Neil Armstrongs, the sooner we can start solving some of the problems of our actual citizens in rational terms, and im just spitballing here, we might actually have a sensible way of life someday.
[re=569748]thefrontpage[/re]: What did you smoke for breakfast?
“best public school system” is immediately disproved by our “cousin” who had to explain what “post American” meant.
“the most freedoms” unless you’re gay and want to join the military or get married or adopt, or you’re brown and you don’t carry your “papers” with you in Arizona
We’ve got a great country, but it’s not the best at everything. Why is this like having to explain to some kid that his dad isn’t the strongest, smartest, fastest human ever?
Wingnuts are furious about… When aren’t they? It’s their default mode.
Exactly how old is this photo?
“Post” American means the world After America !
Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you: wingnut philology!
Obama has less gray hair here.
Definetly pre-inauguration pic.
Question: Is Cousin State Department the one who originated the e-mail (thereby indicating she’s one of those Bush admin burrowed-in plants…)?
Or, did he/she just receive it and pass it along to “L” as a joke (thereby indicating he/she is a reasonable human being)?
I suspect wingnuts don’t read much, not even their King James Bibles.
[re=569672]Manos: Hands of Fate[/re]: The founders dated things in years of the Republic. Of course, most were far less Christian than Obama.
[re=569748]thefrontpage[/re]:
best-trained and most technologically-advanced workforce in the world Most of that workforce wasn’t born in America. They immigrated here to fill a void caused by Americans producing more imbeciles than scientists and engineers.
The country with the best public school system on the planet. Ha! Talk to a foreign exchange student and discover why they must repeat the grade they just completed in America.
The country that tends to lead in most ares in medicine Too bad nobody can afford it.
The most free and democratic Right out of the ol’ corporate-sponsored textbooks. You’re obviously a boardroom’s wet dream – easily bought, manipulated, and silenced with toys and gadgets. Who do you think is really in charge? Think before you answer or support more tax cuts for Corporate America.
The country with the most freedoms in terms of human rights, religion Come to my little town in Upstate New York and announce to the locals that you’re a Muslim. Also, we lead the world in percentage of it’s population that is incarcerated. Human rights, indeed. Corporations have rights, you have privileges. Maybe.
the most prosperous For the top 1%.
the most politically-stable country Time to crawl out from under your rotting log and Google “Town Hall Meetings”. That’s a good place to start. You can work on expanding your vision slowly – don’t wanna cook the ol’ noggin – with some NRA, Tea Partiers, Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Michele Bachmann, and on and on and on…
I highly recommend doing some overseas traveling so you can have a reference to what we do so wrong in America.
[re=569869]tiny mexican[/re]: You have a point. He’s sporting major wood right there.
[re=569653]TGY[/re]: Even better read The History of White People by Nell Irvin Painter !
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