The Book of Hinderaker

by hilzoy

by Publius at Law and Politics, is based on the Book of Job. And it's great. I think approaches the wondrousness of the Poor Man's 'Scary Wolves' ad (now impossible to find, for me at least), Atrios' 'Preznit Give Me Turkee', and John and Belle's If Wishes Were Horses, Beggars Would Ride -- A Pony!. The beginning:

"There once was a man in the land of America, whose name was Hinderaker; and that man was perfect and upright, and one that feared Bush, and eschewed evil and Democratic Satan. And with him, there blogged two others. And Hinderaker had an exceedingly great blog. It was so great that it was called the greatest blog of them all. And each day Hinderaker rose up early in the morning and offered burnt offerings to the unerring White House.

One day in early 2003, when the followers of Bush came to worship Him, Democratic Satan came among them. And Bush said unto Satan, “Whence comest thou?” Democratic Satan answered Bush, and said, “Oh you know – from going to and fro Senator Kennedy’s office, and from walking up and down in it.”

And Bush said to Democratic Satan, “Have you seen my servant Hinderaker? There is none like him on earth – as Time Magazine astutely noted. He is a perfect and upright man, one that followeth Bush and escheweth Democratic evil.”

Democratic Satan answered Bush, “Of course he follows you. Why wouldn’t he? You just led a successful war in Iraq in name of fighting terrorism. He is merely supporting his country and his military – not you personally. I bet if the news got worse about Iraq, and if he thought you screwed things ups, he would curse you to your face.”

“No, no,” replied Bush, “he will stay with me through thick and thin. And I’ll prove it. I have so much confidence in my servant that I’ll grant you, Democratic Satan, the power to change any news about Iraq that you like. Whatever you want to do, you can do. And regardless of what you do, my good and loyal servant will remain faithful.”

“You’re on,” replied Democratic Satan."

Read the rest here. Trust me on this.

Update: The Poor Man has outdone himself, and he has quite a self to outdo. Check it out too.

Comments

[CaseyL]

Hah! Best bit o' scathery since the "Arab cartoon" takeoff on Condoleeza the Mendacious that Sadly, No posted back during the 9/11 Commission hearings.

[Anderson]

At least Job suffered, whereas H. remains serene in his Hinderakerness.

(Did Thomas Pynchon write all of Gravity's Rainbow without using the name "Hinderaker"? He must be kicking himself.)

[liberal japonicus]

My only disappointment was that the Democratic Satan didn't appear in the form of Jimmy Carter.

[Hal]

Maybe we can do one about C. Bird as Lot. Sebastian as Daniel. Heck, we could even throw in Von as Samson.

[SomeCallMeTim]

Not bad. But not as good as you suggested. Not, for example, in the same league as The Poor Man's recent "WWWA Network" announcement.

[Catsy]

Maybe we can do one about C. Bird as Lot. Sebastian as Daniel. Heck, we could even throw in Von as Samson.

Come on, play nice. Sebastian and von aren't even remotely like the mendacious and willfully ignorant Assrocket. Von even shares his VRWC Secret Decoder Ring with the rest of us.

[Gary Farber]

I'm frequently tempted -- speaking of Satan -- pretty much every time I look at Memeorandom, actually -- to just pluck out insanely dumb things people are saying about the news, and mock them.

But that would be wrong.

Okay, maybe not wrong, but it's not actually my goal as a blogger to constantly be making fun of other bloggers and putting them down. That's rather meaner than I fancy indulging in in any sort of regular basis. I doubt it would uplift my soul.

But, oh, oh, oh, away from me, Satan!

(I can't possibly say why I make the connection from this thread to that thought, of course; it must surely be naught but sheer coincidence. Surely. It couldn't possibly be related, say, to having read this and this earlier.)

[Hal]

Come on, play nice. Sebastian and von aren't even remotely like the mendacious and willfully ignorant Assrocket.

These would be different stories. Daniel had the lion of extraordinary rendition to deal with (and had that cool saying "Mene Mene Tekel Upharsin" to interpret). I think we could really rif with the whole dream interpretation shtick that Daniel had (I'm thinking Sebastian's famous debate over "immanent").

Samson had all his power removed by having his hair cut by Amnesty International - only to be redeemed in the end by destroying the village in order to save it.

Lot had the misfortune of living in the sinful blue states, compounded with the sadness of having his wife turn to a pillar of salt by looking back on the destruction of our civil rights. Not to mention the really weird part about being seduced by his daughters - but I guess we'd have to leave that out for the "G" rating that blogs are known for.

It'd be good clean fun.

[liberal japonicus]

I think I understand why Jesus went the parable route...

[Jesurgislac]

...Hilzoy as Jael, Edward_ as Jonathan.

But for Katherine we have to move away from the Bible: try Cassandra.

[Barry]

But, of course, the efforts of these amatures fail when presented with the ultimate PowerLine parody - PowerLine itself!

"Cognitive Dissonance Alert" (at least the title was truthful:

http://powerlineblog.com/archives/010726.php#010726

The Poorman is a master of parody, but the truth still makes The Editors look like me trying to tell a joke, and forgetting the punchline.

[Slartibartfast]

I was thinking I was disappointed in you, hilzoy, but then I just thought that maybe this is an area where my sense of humor and yours have no (zero) overlap. Kind of like when I was a teenager and thought Steve Martin was hysterical, while my parents were just baffled as to what was even mildly funny. Well, we still have pretty much all of Monty Python and the collected works of The Creator, perhaps.

[Luke Francl]

The Wolves ad was so awesome. I ran a site tracking the 2004 campaign ads (now offline) and I blogged about it. It used to be here: http://www.thepoorman.net/archives/003338.html but it was lost in one of The Editors' many site reorganizations. Here's the internet archive version...sadly, no images. http://web.archive.org/web/20041026004921/http://www.thepoorman.net/archives/003338.html

So unless The Editors dig up those pictures, I think it is lost to time.

[Gary Farber]

I really hope I'm not the only person who remembers the author of The Poor Man's real name. It's not exactly a long time ago that he was still posting under it; maybe as much as a whole year, perhaps. (A subtle hint are the very large letters at the top of his page "Contact [email protected].")

[Anarch]

I really hope I'm not the only person who remembers the author of The Poor Man's real name.

Poor, deluded Gary. When he took up the mantle of The Editors, he gave up all that came before -- including the name under which he had been born -- to bring us his holy writ. Truly, the sacrifices of greatness are terrible indeed.

[Gary Farber]

I hear he also married Jane Galt, but then divorced her for Jeanne d'Arc.

[Paul]

this is an area where my sense of humor and yours have no (zero) overlap.

Oh, come now. Not a chuckle? Not the merest hint of smile? Not even when Satan laid that golden fiddle on the ground at Bush's feet? (I can't even think that sentence without wanting to sing it.)

[Roxanne]

Well, I thought it was funny. So funny that I'm nervous of losing that Kofax nomination I've been clinging to since April Fool's Day.

[Jeremy Osner]

A Google search for his full name still returns The Poor Man as its top hit.

[Dianne]

The Democratic Satan went about getting Hindracker to desert his Bush in all the wrong way. The DS kept talking to H about other people's suffering. That's not going to work. Many people, including many conservatives and almost all fanatics (of any political/philosophical variety), have a great tolerance of other people's suffering. They can deal with enormous amounts of it and still be true to the system that caused that suffering. Inconvience to the person him or herself, however, is different. Get evidence that Bush planned to draft H and he'd desert Bush so fast he'd break the sound barrier.

[Gary Farber]

"Many people, including many conservatives, [...] have a great tolerance of other people's suffering."

This is a silly shot. I kinda think an endless number of Stalinists and supporters and Maoists and supporters, and hundreds of millions of other people who have killed or supported killing in the name of extreme leftist causes have had a "tolerance" of "other people's suffering," too. Really, trying to pin indifference to suffering solely or largely on "conservatives" is simply laughable. But, I dunno, maybe only the conservatives were bad during the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, the Cultural Revolution, the Vietnam War....

[Dianne]

"I kinda think an endless number of Stalinists and supporters and Maoists and supporters, and hundreds of millions of other people who have killed or supported killing in the name of extreme leftist causes have had a "tolerance" of "other people's suffering," too."

No kidding. You mean that Stalin wasn't a nice person? **Gasp** My whole view of the world is crumbling...Come on, what did you think the comment about "fanatics (of any political/philosophical variety)" meant? I don't know about you, but I consider Stalin and Mao to have been fanatics.

Whatever the historical balance between fanatics on the right and on the left, in the current political context it is the right wingers who are dismissing the US's record of torture, murder of civilians, and war crimes as insignificant or even supporting it as an actively good thing. Perhaps it's cynical of me, but I do think that the only thing that is going to get through to these people is if they are inconvenienced personally.

[Gary Farber]

"Come on, what did you think the comment about 'fanatics (of any political/philosophical variety)' meant?"

In the context of "many people, including many conservatives, [...] have a great tolerance of other people's suffering," I assume you are specifically suggesting that "many conservatives" are significantly more tolerant of other people's suffering than other kinds of "many people." Did "including many conservatives" have some other meaning or point I'm missing?

"Whatever the historical balance between fanatics on the right and on the left, in the current political context it is the right wingers who are dismissing the US's record of torture, murder of civilians, and war crimes as insignificant or even supporting it as an actively good thing."

I gather "conservatives" and "right wingers" are synonymous in your vocabulary, although I'm otherwise unclear what definitions you are using. But I do take this as further support for the notion that you are putting forward the notion that "many conservatives" are historically --- or simply currently -- particularly indifferent to human suffering, and that you were, in fact, taking a shot at conversatives as such; this makes me unclear what the basis of your sarcastic objection to my point was.

If we wish to restrict ourselves to, say, discussion of whether indifference to suffering is particularly disproportionately displayed in the past five years, I would suggest that neither the present Chinese government, nor the present Russian government, nor the rebels in Nepal, nor the Tamil Tigers, nor the Chechen rebels, nor Islamic Jihad, nor the people fighting in the Congo, nor the Sudanese government, nor Islam Karimov, nor any of an exceedingly long list of other folk who are relatively indifferent to human suffering are particularly "conservative." But I may have this wrong, and the key factor in such indifference is, indeed, adherence to conservativism in some form.

[Gary Farber]

Incidentally, if someone explained that "many liberals" are also particularly noteworthy for their indifference to human suffering, beyond other people, I'd respond with the same points, and merely different examples. I simply question the relevance of "liberalism" or "conservatism" or being from the "Left" or "Right," as the most noteworthy factor in such indifference. By a considerable margin.

[Dianne]

"...nor any of an exceedingly long list of other folk who are relatively indifferent to human suffering are particularly "conservative." "

All things considered, Bush could go into the catagory of people who are very indifferent to any suffering other than their own who are also not particularly conservative...since I honestly can't think of anything that Bush is conserving: certainly not of human life, the environment, the US's prestige in the world, the Constitution, and so on. Perhaps the word "conservative" was ill chosen. Right-wing might have been better.

[Gary Farber]

"Perhaps the word 'conservative' was ill chosen. Right-wing might have been better."

I'm afraid that my points apply identically to "right-wing" and "left-wing" just the same. Could you try formulating your point in a single sentence (or paragraph, at least), perhaps? "Right-wingers are particularly indifferent to human suffering compared to left-wingers because...." Or whatever the point you are aiming for is, in your own words. "George W. Bush is a bad man, and I don't like him, and the same for anyone who supports him" wouldn't be one of the more interesting possibilities, but I don't know if that's where you are going or not.

[Anarch]

I don't know about you, but I consider Stalin and Mao to have been fanatics.

Mao, definitely; Stalin, not particularly. YMMV.

[Jesurgislac]

Dianne: Many people, including many conservatives and almost all fanatics (of any political/philosophical variety), have a great tolerance of other people's suffering.

Perfectly clear, perfectly true, perfectly accurate. I wouldn't worry about it.

[Gary Farber]

Many people, including many leftists and almost all fanatics (of any political/philosophical variety), have a great tolerance of other people's suffering.

Perfectly clear, perfectly true, perfectly accurate. I wouldn't worry about it.