Great Turtlenecks in Culture

The last time I saw Papa was in Key West. He was having a tea party with several cats he'd tied down to the table, dressed up in human clothes. "This is Gerty," he said. The one across from him. A fat, resigned-looking tabby in a beret. It did look like her, I thought.
"Gerty can't have biscuits today," he said. He dipped his finger in his tea and used it to massage the anus of a kitten cradled in his arms. "She already ate." The kitten moved its bowels. He started to cry. "Gerty ate her children."

Teddy Roosevelt, Horsefucker

"Neigh means yes." - Theodore Roosevelt

"He fucks them, he races them down, and he kills them. I mean, what the hell?" - President McKinley on TR

"I want to emulate President Theodore Roosevelt." - John McCain with a GQ reporter, gazing out on the bucks on the fields of Sonoma

"It's going to be a bull moose party." - the Rough Rider

"That damn glue-muncher would make his horse Consul and his golliwog Chief Justice." - historian and social scientist Woodrow Wilson

"Strike the Dago now while the People are in estrous!" - the Hero of San Juan Hill

"You don't look at me the way you used to." - Rafalca

"What in the Sam Hill is a woman doing on the Force?!"
"You appointed her, sir."
"The devil, you say!"
"Aye, sir. She came to clean the stables and you wouldn't stop petting her hair and calling her 'Little Texas.' You put your badge on her and said she was New York's Finest."
"Damn horsey Irish Woman."
- NYPD Superintendent Haroun-al-Roosevelt appoints the first lady officer

 "Why, that's a horse of a different color!" - TR to Al Pacino in Cruising

"Ride me on the shores of La Jolla...." 
"Rafalca!"
"Mitt? What is it honey?!"
"Nothing... go back to sleep!"

"It is not the critic who counts. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause." - The Dynamo of Power, arraigned for animal cruelty

"NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!" - TR on the set of Michael Mann's Luck

Executive Privilege

"Old Hickory won't stop me, hahah!" - Sen. John C. Calhoun, ripping open a slave girl's bodice
"Senator Calhoun... I'll kill you all." - President Jackson

"I must destroy the Republic to save it." - Aaron Burr

"I only fuck in the steam room. When I do It, I think I should feel as though I could die at any moment." - Theodore Roosevelt to a stable of ponies

"Mastery of Death is nothing compared to the Power of the Screen, young lady." - Ronald Reagan to a visiting and frightened Gene Wilder

"I think if we sell this right, you shitheads, we may be able to steal half of Mexico." - James K. Polk rallies the Cabinet

"If I die, democracy dies with me." - William Henry Harrison

"Sometimes I'd make it in my hand and smear it on the wall of the Oval Office." - Jack Kennedy

"Nothing scares me more than Japs or Jews." - Harry Truman

"If you ride anything just hard enough, you'll be its Master." - LBJ

"Deep down, I believe people are good, Halderman, I know it." - Richard Nixon

"Changing the smoking age to 21 in our City will be a major victory in our continuing war on tobacco use and at-risk youths." - Bloomberg

"I hate the smell of menthol." - Georgina Bloomberg

"Once those fucking Democrat-Republicans get in this whole shit house is going to fall apart." - George Washington privately to John Adams

"General Jackson we're surrounded by them, what in the name of the Heavens shall we do?!"
"Stand fast. Kill them all."
- Andrew Jackson, Battle of New Orleans

 "I like most people when I pretend they are dogs." - Abraham Lincoln

"Does any maid have hair so fine as this noble creature's aureate mane?" - T.R.

"A pull on the grog jar and a fuck on a rollicking boat on the Mississppi is what every man deserves! Haw Haw Haw!" - FDR rollin'

"Patronage and Internal Improvements forever!" - Martin Van Buren

"Only in the reflected firelight of the paint brush does man see his illusory vision." - George W. Bush

The Five-Day War

"The Stupidity of random violence must be countered with the irresistible power of Organized Stupidity." - Barack Obama

"I'm having a beer for breakfast. Wake me when Murder Week is over." - Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, trapped in their Allston apartment

"It’s like a snow day except instead of going outside to sled you have to stay in all day eating your own feces." - Casey Affleck 

"The important thing is that whether a man is hunting police or being hunted by police, no matter where, the entire city will cower."
- Terminator Ray Kelly

"Never send a cop to do a drone's job." - Robert Mueller

"There can be no stand-up after Boston." - Conan O'Brien

"Are you following the news?!"
"I'm following myself, this is all about me."
- Twitter, Facebook

"Reinhart and Rogoff remain at large!" - Reddit vigilante Paul Krugman

"You guys, thirty-two people died in a bombing in Baghdad on Thursday--"
"WOULD YOU FUCKING SHUT UP?! NO ONE WANTS TO HEAR YOUR FUCKING SHIT!!!"
- Wolf Blitzer loses it on an intern

"April of 2013 shall forever be remembered as the month that the Senate approved Patriot Act Funding for Boston." - Sen. Mark Pryor

"I think we need to take this tragedy as an opportunity to reflect, and not only to reflect but to ensure that reasonable gun laws have no chance of passing." - Sen. Chevy Cruz

"The truth is that our society is populated by an unknown number of genuine Murder Bros... and fertilizer." - Wayne LaPierre

"What droll allegory." - Tommy Lee Jones on the shit factory fire that destroyed the West

"I'm confident, and West proves it, that capitalism will always kill most efficiently." - Tony Hayward

"Today terror has a name and that name is Miranda." - Eric Holder

"Some will say that even if there was an ideological dimension to these crimes, at bottom they were the deeds of troubled, misguided, despairing young men. I say to you, what are all angry young men but terrorists?" - Sen. John McCain

"Words cannot express how moved I am that the bombers are Chechen." - Vladimir Putin

“What makes this 'terrorism' as opposed to, like, just a massacre, like Columbine?”
“Well, bro, I mean, like, Chechens aren’t exactly white, you know...”
- Steven Tyler and Mark Wahlberg

"Acts of terrorism may once have been effective as means of getting across a political message, but at this point in history it is so abundantly clear that any intended message is so foredoomed to being misunderstood that anyone who commits such acts must actually not want to be understood. Massacres like this are mute cries to deaf ears." - Janet Napolitano

“What we owe the dead is answers. Too late.” - CNN

"What is it about brown flesh that I cannot feel the pain it feels?"
- George W. Bush, ruefully to himself as he cradles his newborn grandchild in his arms

"And so, after taking half of Boston hostage for the day, the police only got their man after--and as a direct result of--setting their prisoners free. Now, this may make it seem like it was pointless, even counter-productive, to ground half the city all for the sake of finding one man, but trust me, it worked splendidly: no one else got killed by police."
- Ed Davis

“One day this will make a great Kathryn Bigelow film.” - Kathryn Bigelow

"The joie de vivre in Boston today is insufferable. The sun is brighter, the air smells sweeter, the fucking food tastes better." - Jonathan Richman

"Hey, bro, you can wake up. Murder Week is over."
"Finally! Time to kick back, relax, have a few beers and--CHINESE EARTHQUAKE!"
- Damon and Affleck in Allston-Hell

The Work of a Generation

"Why start a union when you could do the Harlem shake?”
- Young Americans

"I've never seen a generation so worth Losing." - Eric Hobsbawm

“I love this company so much, I don’t deserve rights!” - a Noogler

“Our children must be the best educated in the world so that they are prepared for the New Slavery.” - Arne Duncan

"Ruthless competition is good in all things because I am Virtuous." - Joseph A. Craig High School Junior Class President for Life Paul Ryan

"There's a young person in all our hearts, and they crave a master."
- David Brooks

"Nothing grieves me more than being in touch with the youth." - David Bowie

"Fame is one long internship." - Morrissey

"Sorry, can't come to the party, doing unpaid overtime just coz, u know? Tweet me pics!" - The New York Times Presents: This Is 20-Something

“‘The thought of suicide gets one through many a bad night,’ says Nietzsche. But what if there are only bad nights?” - Lena Dunham

"Yeah so we hooked up and I made her do all this stuff and then I never called her again, and I thought, 'How can we make a business model out of this?'" - the inventor of the modern internship

"This is valuable time, and I'm not even getting paid for it! I could be working on my novel!" - Andrew Garfield in Oliver Stone's Intern Nation

"So, do literary magazines have interns?" - New York City Patrolmen's Benevolent Association President Pat Lynch

 China Offers Internship to Tibet

"Why can't I be free!?"
"I'm sorry, wog. The good Lord gave your Agency to me."
- Arkansas, Castle Walmart

"I’ve been so depressed all day, but I won’t complain because whenever I do it feels like a lie." - Georgina Bloomberg

“Life is a battle against Circumstance for Honor.” - the Last Man... he died some time ago...

"This vacation is a pit." - Adorno

“Having a child shackles you, even more than to your family, to your job.” - Priscilla Zuckerberg

"Much of recent history consists of younger generations coming of age and suddenly realizing that they've been had: life isn't good and it was never going to be. They spend the rest of their lives making war on their elders and then defending themselves against the next generation. What's truly nihilistic is that so far no generation has ever had the resolve to strike the problem at its root." - Anton Webern, On Suicide

"All things tend towards the placidity of death. Why should we resist?"
- James Franco

Q: Why kill your children?
A: It's the only humane thing to do.

¡BAILE, BAILE, BAILE!

"Llora el cielo, llora el mar; lloran los desiertos, lloran los manantiales del llano. Lloran los tambores y los tiples. Llora la Madre Tierra." - la Madre Patria

"At long last, we can stop pretending we liked him." - the American Left

"The enemy of my enemy... is insufferable." - Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

"I know how hard this musn't be for you." - Barack Obama extends his condolences to South American leaders

"There is no greater joy for a leader than to outlive his disciples."
- Fidel

"Two for one!" - John Kerry, on learning that a grief-stricken Oliver Stone has retired from filmmaking

"I wish we were still competent enough to pull that kind of shit off in Latin America." - John Brennan on the possibility of nefarious Infection

"He was truly overbearing." - Stephen Sackur

"I can finally order for myself when I go out to eat!" - Evo Morales

"Was he the new Bolívar?"
"Bolívar, no. Elvis, maybe."
- Charlie Rose, Mauricio Funes

"No, I don't think that Chavez's legacy poses any lasting challenges to, well, to anything, if only because it never really worked. If his highly centralized, strong-armed tactics had been wildly successful in really changing the country, perhaps there would be something to think about in terms of whether there's a viable alternative to democracy in popular mobilization behind progressive, redistributionary, pseudo-authoritarian regimes. Instead, Chavez's accomplishments were modest at best, at least compared to what might have been, and often merely symbolic, while elsewhere there were quite substantial reductions of freedom and basic failures to help the people that supported him. It makes you think, the whole idea of a philosopher-king just doesn't work because no one is really that competant." - Noam Chomsky

"I think he was just a powerful man doing what he thought was right by History." - George W. Bush

"He was better than nothing, but not better than Nothing."
- Subcommandante Marcos

"Can you hear that?"
"Hear what?"
"Exactly."
- Juan Carlos I, Antonio Banderas

"Maduro doesn't need to steal home plate, the People will give it to him freely." - Danny Glover arguing with his third base coach, the ghost of Hugo of Chavez, Angels in the Outfield 4: Concrete Diamond

"Manifest Destiny!" - Néstor Kirchner, Pablo Neruda, and Simón Bolívar toasting in the really cool part of Hell

Falling Asleep at the Wheel of History

I. Over the Cliff

"I have a fool proof strategy that will accomplish nothing but continued stalemate while allowing me to keep my job." - John Boehner

"My asshole is self-cleaning!" - Paul Ryan

"Sequestration? Is that like fecal withholding?" - Dr. Koop

"What's all this spending you're railing against?"
"Spending is a feeling, Cokie."
- Eric Cantor

"As the weakness of communism is attested to by accidental scarcity, so the greatness of the capitalist system is confirmed by artificial scarcity." - Steven Levett and Stephen Dubner

"How about the Pentagon, the jobs, and the Iron Dream?"
"We believe, and the Heritage Foundation has done studies to show, that the Pentagon cuts will reduce incidence of Air Force rape."
- Jim Demint 

"I have this fantasy about being dipped in a lake of liquid nitrogen by the Ice Queen and then, while I remain fully conscious, she snaps off my extremities, one at a time, starting with my digits, then my limbs, then my tongue and my ears, and finally my member." - Saxby Chambliss in the Secret Steam Room

"Aaron, where's the spirit of the West Wing, the walking down hallways together?"

"I was freebasing cocaine when I wrote that."
- David Gregory and Aaron Sorkin trapped in an Acela rapidly filling with water

"Totally did not mean to gank yr lighter, yet it seems I did. That's just how degenerate I am: it's a reflex. Pity me, but do not forgive." - text message from Obama to Boehner after the Talks

"Self-destruction is tragic in individuals, predictable in institutions, and inevitable in civilizations." - Nate Silver on Prediction

"Yes, we're all living on borrowed time--borrowed from the future. Today that future has come to collect." - Xi Jinping, Day 0

II. Into the Ravine

"What I crave is not pleasure so much as intensity." - John Boehner, Club Fist, Day 1

"Why do anything when you could stay in all day and slowly kill yourself with Velveeta?" - the Ginch, Day 17

"The only way I can do hygiene is by thinking of it as a war against the self." - Bob Corker flossing until his gums bleed, Day 61

"There is no limit to how bad I can make myself feel.”
- Karl Rove, Day 127

"When the devil came, he was not red. He was a social scientist."
- Rand Paul, the Nursery, Day 523

"God, give us the strength to endure more of your torments." - shaman Lindsay Graham leads the Morlocks in sacrifice, Day 619

"Let hate be your laser." - Gen. Stanley DarkChrystal commands the Yale Leadership Seminar Special Forces in the Battle Against the Mechanical Birds, Day 743

"The things I've done to survive!"
“There is nothing in this world to feel guilty about.”
- Jay Carney and Lawrence Summers after the Defeat of the Children's Brigade, Day 1,051

"It's not too late, we can rebuild!"
"EAT HIM!!!"
- the Last Stand of Sergey Brin, Day 7,191

“They're all dead.”
“I’ll sleep when their ideas are dead.”
- Leader of the Resistance Chelsea Clinton, Last of the Sighted Paul Krugman, Day 15,073

"What do you publish?"
"Whatever burns."
- If You Can See This Ritual Dance Representing the Origin of the Cosmos in a Conflagration Caused By an Ancient Race of Warring Gods, You're Lying