Category: Best Line of the Day

Clever turns of phrase, special splashes of wit, provocative insight — all in a sentence or two.

Best line of the day, so far

“Last night, while I was scanning through my radio dial looking for a repeat broadcast of the Rush Limbaugh Show …”

— Jesus’ General, whose throwaway lines are often treats. Here’s the crux of his letter:

Instead, it was you talking about Referred Measure 6, the South Dakota initiative that would have enacted the Only Good Christian Virgins Who Have Been Brutally Raped Can Get Abortions Law your legislature passed last Spring.

It was a good interview. You handled yourself very well, especially when you explained the measure’s failure by noting that its supporters were too stupid to understand that they should vote “yes” rather than no. I thought that was a very astute observation. Far too often, we forget to tell supporters that our compelled childbirth measures won’t pass if they vote against them.

Best lines of the day, so far

Nothing NewMexiKen can add to this from Whiskey Bar:

What the Dems are saying:

Pelosi praised “the beauty and genius of our democracy,” and thanked voters for giving Democrats the chance to lead.

“Democrats pledge civility and bipartisanship in conduct of the work here,” she said, calling for “partnerships … not partisanship.”

What the Dems are actually thinking:

MARSELLUS: Step aside, Butch.

Butch steps aside, revealing Marsellus standing behind him, holding a pump-action shotgun. KABOOM!!!!

Zed is blasted in the groin. Down he goes, screaming in agony. Marsellus, looking down at his whimpering rapist, ejects the used shotgun shell.

BUTCH: You okay?

MARSELLUS: Naw man. I’m pretty fuckin’ far from okay.

BUTCH: What now?

MARSELLUS: What now? Well let me tell you what now. I’m gonna call a couple pipe-hittin’ niggers, who’ll go to work on homes here with a pair of pliers and a blow torch. (to Zed) You hear me talkin’ hillbilly boy?! I ain’t through with you by a damn sight. I’m gonna git medieval on your ass!

Quentin Tarantino
Pulp Fiction

Best line of the morning, so far

The Democrats have a victorious night and Michael Bérubé sums it up:

And all it took was the Abramoff scandal, the Foley scandal, the Haggard scandal, the suspension of habeas corpus, the creation of the Cheney Archipelago of secret torture sites, a criminally incompetent response to one of the worst natural disasters in US history, and a hopeless war that has killed thousands of US troops and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, and may well go down as the single worst foreign policy blunder in the history of the republic.

Best lines of the day, so far

“We’re not ‘cut & run’ but there is something to be said for ‘stop & think.'”

“What economic ideas did I bring to Washington? Arithmetic.”

— Bill Clinton, as reported at the Duke City Fix.

And this one from Bill Richardson:

“There are three great lies in politics. One: the check is in the mail. Two: I’ll support you after the primary. And Three: Bill Clinton is 5 minutes away!”

Best Charles Pierce lines of the day, so far

So we’ve seen Pastor Ted Haggard‘s (alleged) Field Guide To The Seven Deadly Sins released by dribs and drabs over the last couple of days. But just to make it clear that people like Haggard should be treated with nothing less than the absolute pie-in-the-face ridicule they so richly deserve, see this clip of him from a while back, prior to this week’s festivities. This isn’t religion. This is a psychological cargo cult that provides a marvelous environment for fakes and charlatans to act out twisted psychological problems in a fashion that would have embarrassed the boys in Led Zeppelin. This isn’t a minister of the gospel. The man is a medievalist loon. “Personal relationship with his Lord and Savior,” my aunt Fanny. If he has one, it’s pretty plainly dismal and dysfunctional. And, remember, the president of the United States takes advice from a guy who believes that Gandhi is in hell. And people laughed at Nancy Reagan for hiring an astrologer, and Hillary Clinton for her chats with Eleanor Roosevelt. The most underrated of our essential founding documents is James Madison‘s “Memorial And Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments” from 1785. Somebody should get up in Pastor Ted’s well-upholstered pulpit and read it to the assembled mooing next Sunday. And then they should, all of them, leave us the hell alone.

— Charles P. Pierce

Best line of the day, so far

There’s a lively debate among historians over the question of whether the record of the forty-third President, compiled with the indispensable help of a complaisant Congress, is the worst in American history or merely the worst of the sixteen who managed to make it into (if not out of) a second full term. That the record is appalling is by now beyond serious dispute.

– Hendrik Hertzberg in The New Yorker.

Best line of the day, so far

Everything Rush Limbaugh says means the same thing.

The actual words he uses are irrelevent. He might as well be talking gibberish (Yeah, I know.) or in code. Whatever he says needs to be translated and is as easy to translate as pig-latin.

No matter what he says this is what he means: “Rich white guys like me should run the country and be allowed to do whatever we want, and anybody or anything that gets in the way of that needs to be steamrollered in a hurry.”

— Lance Mannion at the beginning of an excellent essay on the Fox-Limbaugh brouhaha.

Don’t Fence Me In

“Down in Washington, President Bush has approved a plan to build a 700 mile fence on a portion of the Mexican border. He said he also knows where he can find some cheap labor to build it.”

“A long fence on the border. Something like this I just hope Halliburton can get some money out of the deal. Be nice to see something go their way for a change.”

— David Letterman

Best line of the day, so far

“We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.”

— Richard Dawkins quoted at The Official Richard Dawkins Website. Dawkins is blogging his book tour for The God Delusion.

This Washington signing was remarkable for the number who bought not just one copy of The God Delusion but up to half a dozen. ‘Christmas presents?’ I inquired of one man. ‘Winter solstice’, he instantly corrected me.

Best ‘well isn’t that always the case’ line of the day, so far

“The languages used by the astonishingly diverse cast include Spanish, Berber, Japanese, sign language and English. The misunderstandings multiply accordingly, though they tend to be most acute between husbands and wives or parents and children, rather than between strangers.”

— A.O. Scott in a review of Babel, which I’m not sure he likes, be he sure seems to feel. (Not unexpected from a film that see references to “Amores Perros,” “21 Grams,” and “Crash” in its review.}