Bush quotes Camus

[Cocoa]

I wonder how the right-wingers are reacting to this blatant pandering to the French. Bush even pronounced the name (first and last) like a frog would.

http://www.sunherald.com/mld/sunherald/10954870.htm

<snip>

We know there are many obstacles and we know the road is long. Albert Camus said that freedom is a long-distance race. We're in that race for the duration.

[rkc3]

1. I wonder how many of Mr. Camus' books not so curious george has read.

[Jade Fox]

3. You're assuming he can read....

I think Laura the Librarian reads his comic books to him before bedtime.

[tom_paine]

4. Zero.

Zip.

Camus was a Liberal Enemy of the Right-Wing State, or did you never read his "Letters to a German Friend" where he wrties to an original Bushevik (the NOT SO KINDER AND GENTLER VERSION) during DubyaDubyaTwo.

But hey, at least Nazis are making progress as time goes by. Hitler would have never quoted a "Liberal Author" to pander to his European Enemies.

But the Busheviks have much advanced the cause of Psychomanipulative Lying to the point where Der Bushler would quote Enemies of the State...but only to do the greater servuce of fooling the Enemies of the State.

[Cocoa]

13. he might have liked "the Stranger"

or at least the beginning, where the hero kills the Arab.

[Inland]

2. ROLFL! Talk about putting lipstick on a pig!

Quoting a french intellectual author---who do the Bush handlers think they are fooling?

[Kerrytravelers]

5. I just KNEW he wouldn't know how to pronounce Camus.

[necso]

6. * should have used this one:

"If there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life."

This one is nice too: "He who despairs over an event is a coward, but he who holds hope for the human condition is a fool."

And the original is: "Freedom is not a reward or a decoration that is celebrated with champagne...Oh no! It's a...long distance race, quite solitary and very exhausting."

I think, perhaps, that it was a rather different kind of freedom that Camus was talking about. Of course, * isn't really talking about freedom at all -- he is talking about falling in line with American foreign policy.

[Avalux]

7. What an insult

I can just see * going over his speech and asking "who is Albert Camus"? Then about 20 minutes of coaching to get the name right (which he didn't do).

[imenja]

8. sounds like grounds for impeachment. Camus was an atheist

The Christian Right won't like this. Shouldn't his books be banned by now?

[beam me up scottie]

9. "Some Europeans joined the fight to liberate Iraq, while others did not,"

When is the EU going to just throw this waste of organic material out on his ass?
They should never have let him come back, they knew he was just going to keep repeating his fantasy version of events.
I can't tell you how much I hope he gets arrested in Germany (okay, I'll tell you, I want it so much it hurts).

[jpgray]

10. Hope someone gives him the Plague while he's there

And maybe the book, too.

[Spider Jerusalem]

11. But can he pronounce "Camus" correctly?

I would suppose not. Probably calls him "Albert Came-us" or something like that.

[Cocoa]

12. he did

he sounded very intercontinental, even pronounced the first name in the french manner.

Maybe this will make up for that whole "Freedom Fries" thing.

[thereismore]

20. Ka-moose n/t

[signmike]

14. I 'spect he'd be more to home aquotin' that there Elegzander Dumass

[Demit]

15. Did the speechwriter merely consult his Bartlett's for something on

freedom & a French author? Or does it mean more (at least to the speechwriter)? It's from Camus' The Fall, the themes of which are guilt, and duplicity, and the protagonist is a "judge-penitent".

Camus writes:

"No excuses ever, for anyone; that's my principle at the outset. I deny the good intention, the respectable mistake, the indiscretion, the extenuating circumstance. With me there is no giving of absolution or blessing. Everything is simply totted up, and then: "It comes to so much. You are an evildoer, a satyr, a congenital liar, a homosexual, an artist, etc." Just like that. Just as flatly. In philosophy as in politics, I am for any theory that refuses to grant man innocence and for any practice that treats him as guilty. You see in me, tres cher, an enlightened advocate of slavery.

Without slavery, as a matter of fact, there is no definitive solution. I very soon realized that. Once upon a time, I was always talking of freedom: At breakfast I use to spread it on my toast, I used to chew it all day long, and in company my breath was delightfully redolent of freedom. With that key word I would bludgeon whoever contradicted me; I made it serve my desires and my power. I used to whisper it in bed in the ear of my sleeping mates and it helped me to drop them. I would slip it… Tchk! Tchk! I am getting excited and losing all sense of proportion. After all, I did on occasion make a more disinterested use of freedom and even – just imagine my naiveté -- defended it two or three times without of course going so far as to die for it, but nevertheless taking a few risks. I must be forgiven such rash acts; I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't know that freedom is not a reward or a decoration that is celebrated with champagne. Nor yet a gift, a box of dainties designed to make you lick your chops. Oh, no! It’s a choice, on the contrary and a long-distance race, quite solitary and very exhausting. No champagne No friends raising their glasses as they look at your affectionately. Alone in a forbidding room, alone in the prisoner's box before the judges, and alone to decide in face of oneself or in the face others' judgment. At the end of all freedom is a court sentence; that's why freedom is too heavy to bear, especially when you're down with a fever, or are distressed, or love nobody."

Interesting why he'd choose Camus. Seems to me Alexander Dumas would be more *'s speed...

[Cocoa]

16. it's the former

a random quote about freedom. It was between Camus and Janis Joplin.

[BrklynLiberal]

17. * has absolutely NO idea who Camus is. He was just parroting what his

speechwriter wrote, and someone coached him on the pronunication phonetically. If he had to explain the meaning ofwhat what he quoted, he would probably pee his pants.
:silly:

[OneBlueSky]

19. you're right . . . and I wonder how he pronounced it? . . . n/t

.

[beam me up scottie]

21. You mean like the word "sovereign" as in nation?

nt

[thereismore]

18. Exact quote here

You know, on this journey to Europe, I follow in some large footsteps. More than two centuries ago, Benjamin Franklin arrived on this continent to great acclaim.



An observer wrote, "His reputation was more universal than Liebniz or Newton, Frederick or Voltaire, and his character more beloved and esteemed than any or all of them. The observer went on to say, There was scarcely a peasant or citizen who did not consider him as a friend to humankind."



I've been hoping for a similar reception.



But Secretary Rice told me I should be a realist.



YOU'VE GOT THAT RIGHT, YOU ARE NO BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. BF WORKED FOR A LIVING AND HE ACTUALLY HAD BRAINS.