Juan Cole does a little linguistic archaeology on the name, and comes with what is the is true of local embarrassment Willie Cunningham, and, all bigots: Ignorance:
"Barack and Hussein are Semitic words. Americans have been named with Semitic names since the founding of the republic. Fourteen of our 43 presidents have had Semitic names (see below). And American English contains many Arabic-derived words that we use every day and without which we would be much impoverished. America is a world civilization with a world heritage, something Cunningham will never understand. "
Wes, Bill Cunningham is a funny man. It is a rare ability. Like the beautiful, the very funny have some extra priviledges. They can be offensive at times. I find Howard Stern very offensive at times but his is an exceptionally humorous person so I forgive him. More to the point, I am a conservative and rather strongly disagree with the generalized political direction Rosie O'Donnel seems to advocate for this country but I defend her when some of my conservative friends harshly criticize her because I find her to be very funny. Whatever it is that funny people do, she knows how to do it. Also, on a related side note, I would like to publicly proclaim my belief the Bill Cunningham and Segman Dennison are among the best comedy duos this country has ever produced. And to think: there act is based in humble old Cincinnati
ReplyDeleteThat was meant for you Wiz. Sorry for the typo.
ReplyDelete"Wes" to "Wiz": typo.
ReplyDelete"Cunningham" to anything best: you tell me.
Mark, would you have preferred a long explanation of the mental error I made when I accidentally addressed my comment to Wes instead of Wiz? I didn't think so; so lets just leave it as a typo, OK? And furthermore, from what I can tell your response really doesn't have a terribly coherent logic to it (which is one of the main requirements of good comedy- which my hero Bill Cunningham is very good at and which you apparently are not).
ReplyDeleteTrey
Mark, I don't usually like to do this because I prefer for my fellow bloggers to fear the treyman but let me go back and retract a little. Now I get your joke and it was kinda clever (Maybe a bit too cryptic- you may have took that Shakespearian "brevity is the soul of wit" axiom a little too far). It may take us a while but us Cunningham fans can understand too.
ReplyDeleteTrey