Thursday, May 06, 2010

"Macleans" Hurt Bill Noble's Feelings

The April 26, 2010 edition of "Macleans" featured a story entitled, "The Return of Hitler" written by Katie Engelhart. The main focus of the article was to discuss the growing interest in Hitler's, Mein Kampf and the resurgence of the far right in places such as Hungary, but also the growing popularity of Hitler's book and the ideas found within in such unusual locations as India and Turkey.

Not too far into the article, Engelhart mentions something that most literary critics have stated already regarding Mein Kampf. As writing goes, it's really not particularly well done. In fact, it's tedious, convoluted and as Winston Churchill stated (and whom Engelhart quotes in the article), "turgid, verbose, [and] shapeless."

One of our resident boneheads from Calgary took great offense to this characterization of der fuhrer's efforts:

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KATIE ENGLEHART calls Mein Kampf “Hitler’s poorly written, 700-page magnum opus,” “a badly written book” and “part autobiography, part raving philosophical treatise.” And she seems to base this largely on the opinions of other critics. Has she ever read Mein Kampf? Can she provide any actual examples of poor writing from within this tome? Hitler’s writing is straightforward and clear.
Bill Noble, Calgary Okay, okay, we know this is an old photo and that Billy looks a bit different now, but it sort of makes the point that we're not exactly dealing with someone who is dealing with a full deck of cards. But if our readers insist that we provide a more up to date photo, well, this is the most up to date that we can come up with:


See. Not a hell of an improvement.


Billy seems genuinely hurt that "Macleans" would run an article that would dare to criticize der fuhrer's prose. However, they redeemed themselves somewhat this week when "Macleans" columnist Mark Steyn posted an article on his blog which commented on the recent decision in favour of Free Dominion which overruled the previous judge who ordered that Free Dominon turn over the ip numbers of the John Does who are accused of libeling Richard Warman:


We imagine the temporary turmoil Billy must have been feeling at the moment he posted the above comment. Noble wants to hate Steyn because he believes Steyn to be a Jew, but he has a hard time reconciling his hatred with the fact he likes that Steyn is critical of Jewish groups. Thankfully, Billy's cognitive dissonance ceased when he checked Steyn's Wiki page:

It's interesting how Noble can so easily rationalize his hatred. We're not sure that the man who's book Billy wrote "Macleans" in support of would make such a fine distinction when considering Mr. Steyn's heritage.



2 comments:

Harry Abrams said...

Yeah well, Maclean's has journalistic-ally kind of lost their way a bit by reverting to big cover pics of Hitler and printing silly off-base screeds like Steyn's tedious personal attack on Bernie Farbe . I suppose they figure that the sensationalism increases readership and makes the publication more viable. This on top of Steyn's glaring un-truths bore me, quite frankly.

At least the rag is not beating on Muslims like they used to.

I won't be bothering to renew my subscription when it runs out....

Anonymous said...

Last I heard, Noble was still in Edmonton. Has he gone back to Calgary for sure?