Remember when Nazis were funny? You know, like in Mel Brooks' masterpiece The Producers. I don't mean the Broadway show. For all the popularity of the new version, the 1968 movie still stands out as a near sublime combination of vaudeville and drunken lunacy. I'm sure that Nathan Lane means well and I hear that he can bring off a drag queen meerkat like nobody's business, but for my money no one does lascivious greed like Zero Mostel. Just imagining him murmuring "Hold me. Touch me." cracks me up.
But we're talkng National Socialists, here. And Kenneth Mars' Franz Liebkind is, for me, the gold standard of Wacky Nazis. And then there's John Banner as Sgt. Schultz. Who doesn't love the pudgy schnitzel-leaden cheeks or the schnapps induced confusion? Really now, with lovable characters like these, how can you just not love The Third Reich? But with all the fuss lately about how this President is a Nazi and that Attorney General is a Nazi, too, you'd think that somewhere out there some Nazi must have done a bad, bad thing.
Why, all you have to do is listen to Linda Ronstadt , another example of Women Who Used To Be Hot But Now Just Makes Your Head Hurt:
"People don't realize that by voting Republican, they voted against themselves," she says. Of Iraq (news - web sites) in particular, she adds, "I worry that some people are entertained by the idea of this war. They don't know anything about the Iraqis, but they're angry and frustrated in their own lives. It's like Germany, before Hitler took over. The economy was bad and people felt kicked around. They looked for a scapegoat. Now we've got a new bunch of Hitlers."
Well, there you have it. She's really nailed it this time, don't you think? I mean for all hours that I've spent going over in my head the countless people gassed and slaughtered and used as laboratory animals or raw materials for lamps, it never once occurred to me that not only George W. Bush, but likely his entire cabinet and, conceivably, every last person associated with the federal government were brand new infantile Hitlers. Not fun loving Nazis like we used to know, but REAL Nazis. The scaaarry kind.
Now, to be fair, there is likely to be an alternative point of view. There often is. For me, and this is just me talking, I don't think that I can honestly add anything to the debate other than ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR FREAKING MIND???
I mean really, Linda, were the 80s that hard on you? Did something in you snap around the same time that you figured out that you had better move on from rock kitten status to publicly embarrassing Nelson Riddle? Poor Nelson Riddle who just wanted to enjoy retirement and instead got dragged all over the freaking country like a circus geek because all of a sudden you discovered Standards? THAT wasn't enough for you?
Now I could forgive you for ruining my adolescent fantasies. The memory of you in a striped bikini in that Rolling Stone story is enough, I suppose, to wipe out the last couple of mou-mou dominated decades. I could even forgive you for poor old Nelson Riddle. But now you have gone out and called forth a name that can do nothing but draw ridicule and mockery. We're just going to have to invoke The Hitler Rule.
I believe that it was Jonah Goldberg (angels and harps playing in my head) that first elucidated The Hitler Rule. I think it goes something like this: Any subject and any argument is open and fair play in a discussion when speaking to actions of western democracies. However, as soon as Hitler is used to draw comparison to the particular object of one's personal ire, all discussion stops because nothing that occurs in a modern western democracy can even begin to come close to the horrors of Nazi Germany. The corollary being that the invoker is thus relegated to instant idiot status.
Now I know that this has all been hashed out before. But what burns my glutes is that those who tell us that they're the level headed ones, the compassionate ones, the ones who have a sense of fair play are the ones still peddling this nonsense. I just did a Google search of "Bush Hitler" and came up with 1,170,000 results. I know that the vast majority are from before the election. That really isn't the point. The point is that the liberal party has abdicated its rightful role as loyal opposition to the radical idiotic Commentariat which is made up today of mostly washed up singers and third rate actors.
Linda Ronstadt used to sleep with and sing for Jerry Brown. And I was cool with that, because neither of them was about to damage the country. They were too moonbeamed to do any harm. But when crap like this starts to go mainstream Democrat it's time to take somebody to the woodshed.
Today Democrats celebrated the opening of the Bill Clinton Bridge To The Let's Just Forget About That Little Impeachment Thing and the beginning of the Hillary 08 Whether You Like It Or Not Campaign. Okay, I'm fine with all that. But for at least until the midterm elections could we maybe refrain from calling anybody Hitler who in fact isn't Hitler? Is that too much to ask?
And the last President, who, let's be honest was a lot more fun than the current one, owes it to the country that gave him the ability to parlay a sordid affair into a thriving speaking career to come out and finally say to his party, and the dystopian morons that pass for its spokespeople, "knock it off."
I swear to God, if I hear the name Hitler invoked by anybody other than Elie Wiesel I'm throwing somebody out a window.
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