William Schultz is a Festering Sack of Diseased Pus
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SOCRATES: First of all, I have to object to the title of this dialogue.
GLEN: Objection noted and overruled.
SOCRATES: But it lowers the tone of our dialogues, and is inexcusably personal. After all, what if the man were really sick?
GLEN: He is really sick.
SOCRATES: Physically sick, I mean. Wouldn’t you feel bad?
ARISTOPHANES: Obviously if Schultz were sick, Schultz would feel bad, not Glen. What do you teach those idiot students of yours, Logic or Physic? They’re getting ripped off either way.
SOCRATES: My point is … Okay, granted, this is a dialogue about Rhetorical Excess. Which would make a good title, “Against Rhetorical Excess”, or something like that.
ARISTOPHANES: Hah! I can’t wait to hear the man who taught Hyperbolus himself lecture “Against Rhetorical Excess”! Then we could title it “Socrates is a Hypocritical Lard Ass.” And subtitle it “A Dialogue on Tactful Understatement.”
SOCRATES: Hyperbolus was not a student of mine, you’re making that up. Why don’t we call it “Written on a Toilet Stall” and pretend it’s one of your plays?
ARISTOPHANES: Oh, that really hurts, coming from somebody who almost choked to death on a meatball sandwich during the South Park marathon.
GLEN: Getting back to what we were talking about … We all saw William Schultz on television today, defending Amnesty International’s comparison of Guantanamo to a gulag, and their comparison of George Bush to Pinochet and the Ayatollah Khomeini. He called them “analogous analogies.”
SOCRATES: A phrase which I found very interesting.
ARISTOPHANES: Not as interesting as the ten-pound bag of Cheetos you were eating.
SOCRATES: A formal analogy is the comparison of two pairs of things which have an equivalent relationship, for example: “Aristophanes is to Art as a Fruit Bat is to Guano”. So all analogies are analogous to one another, and Shultz’s phrase would appear to be a redundancy.
GLEN: No, that’s wrong.
ARISTOPHANES: You tell him, Glen. You don’t even know what the hell you’re talking about, Socrates.
GLEN: Half of an analogy is not an analogy. Half of an analogy is completely meaningless. It’s ridiculous to say that “all analogies are analogous” just because one half of an analogy is analogous to the other half --- I mean, that’s the whole point. Otherwise it wouldn’t be an analogy.
SOCRATES: I know. That’s what I said. It’s a redundancy.
GLEN: No, you said “all analogies are analogous.”
ARISTOPHANES: We all heard you say it, Socrates. Quit trying to Schultz your way out of it.
SOCRATES: Whatever. Anyway, comparing Bush to Pinochet is not a formal analogy. It’s an informal analogy.
ARISTOPHANES: Way to change the subject. Why don’t you just admit that you’re talking out of your ass, like you always do?
<............>Chaerophon asked of Socrates:
<............>“Do flies buzz with their mouths, or with their anus-es?”
<............>Socrates replied to Chaerophon
<............>With a perfect rendition of the fly’s buzzing tone.
There’s an analogy for you.
SOCRATES: That’s not an analogy, meathead. And thank you for raising the scatological content of this dialogue even further.
ARISTOPHANES: I guess if I could afford to go to your snooty school, I’d learn the difference between an analogy and a scatology.
GLEN: Well, this is a dialogue about Schultz, so maybe scatological content is appropriate.
ARISTOPHANES: There, you see, Socrates? This is a dialogue about Schultz. Not everything is about you, you know.
SOCRATES: First of all, I have to object to the title of this dialogue.
GLEN: Objection noted and overruled.
SOCRATES: But it lowers the tone of our dialogues, and is inexcusably personal. After all, what if the man were really sick?
GLEN: He is really sick.
SOCRATES: Physically sick, I mean. Wouldn’t you feel bad?
ARISTOPHANES: Obviously if Schultz were sick, Schultz would feel bad, not Glen. What do you teach those idiot students of yours, Logic or Physic? They’re getting ripped off either way.
SOCRATES: My point is … Okay, granted, this is a dialogue about Rhetorical Excess. Which would make a good title, “Against Rhetorical Excess”, or something like that.
ARISTOPHANES: Hah! I can’t wait to hear the man who taught Hyperbolus himself lecture “Against Rhetorical Excess”! Then we could title it “Socrates is a Hypocritical Lard Ass.” And subtitle it “A Dialogue on Tactful Understatement.”
SOCRATES: Hyperbolus was not a student of mine, you’re making that up. Why don’t we call it “Written on a Toilet Stall” and pretend it’s one of your plays?
ARISTOPHANES: Oh, that really hurts, coming from somebody who almost choked to death on a meatball sandwich during the South Park marathon.
GLEN: Getting back to what we were talking about … We all saw William Schultz on television today, defending Amnesty International’s comparison of Guantanamo to a gulag, and their comparison of George Bush to Pinochet and the Ayatollah Khomeini. He called them “analogous analogies.”
SOCRATES: A phrase which I found very interesting.
ARISTOPHANES: Not as interesting as the ten-pound bag of Cheetos you were eating.
SOCRATES: A formal analogy is the comparison of two pairs of things which have an equivalent relationship, for example: “Aristophanes is to Art as a Fruit Bat is to Guano”. So all analogies are analogous to one another, and Shultz’s phrase would appear to be a redundancy.
GLEN: No, that’s wrong.
ARISTOPHANES: You tell him, Glen. You don’t even know what the hell you’re talking about, Socrates.
GLEN: Half of an analogy is not an analogy. Half of an analogy is completely meaningless. It’s ridiculous to say that “all analogies are analogous” just because one half of an analogy is analogous to the other half --- I mean, that’s the whole point. Otherwise it wouldn’t be an analogy.
SOCRATES: I know. That’s what I said. It’s a redundancy.
GLEN: No, you said “all analogies are analogous.”
ARISTOPHANES: We all heard you say it, Socrates. Quit trying to Schultz your way out of it.
SOCRATES: Whatever. Anyway, comparing Bush to Pinochet is not a formal analogy. It’s an informal analogy.
ARISTOPHANES: Way to change the subject. Why don’t you just admit that you’re talking out of your ass, like you always do?
<............>Chaerophon asked of Socrates:
<............>“Do flies buzz with their mouths, or with their anus-es?”
<............>Socrates replied to Chaerophon
<............>With a perfect rendition of the fly’s buzzing tone.
There’s an analogy for you.
SOCRATES: That’s not an analogy, meathead. And thank you for raising the scatological content of this dialogue even further.
ARISTOPHANES: I guess if I could afford to go to your snooty school, I’d learn the difference between an analogy and a scatology.
GLEN: Well, this is a dialogue about Schultz, so maybe scatological content is appropriate.
ARISTOPHANES: There, you see, Socrates? This is a dialogue about Schultz. Not everything is about you, you know.
posted by Glen Wishard at 6:03 PM
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