Overheard Hilarity
On the bus on Saturday: a 20-ish blonde talking to her father. “I don’t understand what the big deal is,” she said, “about Iraq costing a trillion dollars. So what? That’s less than the cost of our house!”
The father: “What do you mean?”
Woman, audibly rolling her eyes: “Duh—a trillion. That’s a third of a million. Seems like a bargain to me!”
Finally: the silence of the American public explained.
14 Comments.
This is why I stopped riding the bus. Fuck the planet.
Oh. My. God.
I wanted to pipe in with this when Ms Stark was complaining about our silence on Iraq / outrage over Spitzer.
"a trillion" is just too damn big to comprehend — and we ought to use numbers or figures that people can think of:
for example — instead of "a trillion:"
"20 times more money than Bill Gates has"
"$3,000 from every American"
"enough money to feed the entire planet for a year"
"four times all the gold in fort knox"
If we use simple terms when communicating with the masses (instead of assuming that they are educated elites) then our words may actually have an impact.
Peace,
GMP
strongverse.blogspot.org
Reminds me of this joke:
Condi is briefing the President: "Yesterday, 3 Brazilian soldiers were killed."
"Oh no!" exclaims Bush. "That's terrible!"
His staff sits stunned at this display of emotion, nervously watching as the President sits, head in hands.
Finally, the President looks up and asks, "How many is in a brazillion?"
You know, sometimes I bemoan the fact that every American has the right to vote since so many who exercise that right are so freaking stupid…
O_O
God bless 'mericuh!
Perhaps an argument in favor of reinstating the draft…
hahahah. Like the other day a TA at my school said:
"…They are giving Obama trouble because he is Muslim…"
I cried.
"four times all the gold in fort knox"
There is no gold in Fort Knox.
Thank you devil,
I know that most of the USG gold is stored at other places. However, the average American "knows" that Amurkia's gold is stored at Fort Knox, so they would know what one meant.
That was irony, slick. I guess you're not up on the wingnut Zionist conspiracy theory that FDR rounded up all the gold in America and pretended to store in it Fort Knox, while actually handing it all over to the Rothschilds in exchange for financing the war. Go to a gun show (or even a bait shop) sometime, and you'll see that there are plenty of Murkins that "know" that there's not one tiny bit of gold stored in Fort Knox, or anywhere else in the US. "The Jews" have it all.
So come on, Palmer, get yourself up to speed on the wingnut belief system. If you spent less time making trips to the holy land and more studying your enemy, you'd be able to get all my trivial and obscure references, and you'd never have to make another snotty reply because you got your feelings hurt…
Devil, who got who's feelings hurt?
My bigger point is that we need to realize when we talk to America as a whole we're talking to people who have a 5th – 7th grade reading level — and we should carve our speech thusly to make sure they know what we're talking about.
She should be told that her family's house is worth about two minutes of the Iraq occupation.