Our Troll Addiction Epidemic

Too many people need enemies so as to confirm their own hatreds and partisanship.

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Dear Reader (Even those of you who continued to like Genesis after Peter Gabriel left),

True story: A friend of a friend once got pretty deep in debt with his bookie. One day the bookie showed up outside his house and asked him to get in his car. He was very friendly; “Come in, it’ll be fine, I just want to talk.”

First lesson in such situations: Don’t get in the car. 

Anyway, the guy gets in the car and says he knows that he’s a little behind on his payments, but he’ll catch up soon. Not to worry. The bookie says something like, “That’s great. I appreciate it. But I need you to swear it’s coming soon.”

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  1. Gene

    But if Jonah were to announce he has the virus, presumably you wouldn’t then criticize his views on the pandemic, as that would be worse than uncouth, totally inappropriate.

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  2. Jamie Higdon

    "Boneheads, radicals, jackanapes, bandersnatches, cockalorums, bigots, maroons, ninny-hammers, snollygosters, pillocks, grifters, and Matt Gaetzes" might be the best sentence you've ever written.

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  3. Gene

    How about if you get the virus we criticize you the day you announce it.

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    1. Tim Johnson

      I don't see Jonah doing that. But if Jonah becomes an elected official who downplays the threat of a pandemic and encourages folks not to follow guidelines to help mitigate it, then sure, yeah, you should criticize him.

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    DavidK

    Once again, Jonah gets the most important points wrong. After Peter Gabriel's departure, Genesis did very well, particularly with their album 'Wind and Wutherthing', which was a masterpiece. The real blow came with Steve Hackett's departure in 1977. He continues to keep that Genesis sounds alive in his solo work, and in his re-creations of those 7 years of magic. I know that Jonah commented on other events in the world, but those all seem so much less important :).

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    Mark Hunter

    I thought I would check to see if Jonah was making up words. Nope. I knew some them, but here are others:
    • Snollygoster - a shrewd, unprincipled person, especially a politician.
    • Ninnyhammer - a fool or a simpleton
    • Cockalorum - a self-important little man
    • Pillock - a stupid person
    And finally, I didn't know if there was a source for Bandersnatch prior to Through the looking Glass. There isn't.
    • Bandersnatch - a wildly grotesque or bizarre individual.

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  6. Gene

    So, if Biden announces he has covid, it’s OK to criticize his policies on the day of his announcement. What a wonderful political free-for-all we have.

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  7. Scroop Moth

    Trump says great leaders don’t stay locked upstairs in a great country, so he valiantly checked into a great hospital, leaving Melania locked upstairs.

    Trump is a great leader because he was hospitalized. I like Presidents who aren’t hospitalized.

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    Tammy Herbert

    From now on, I'm going to call people I don't like "Snollygoster" and maybe even people I love namely my teenagers, when they don't listen to me. THat's boung to get their attention right? . It's the remnant thing to do. I am really tired of the name calling and degrading other humans that goes back and forth. So tired. Tired of friends arguing, and family too, and things keep happening that means it's stays at 11 rather than going back to the 5/6 that was the whole Iraq war back and forth.

    No one to vote for but for a moment this morning, I let my mind wander to who Mike Pence might pick as his VP (to be clear, in the "if Trump were to resign" scenario, not the other option ~ God forbid, Lord Help Us, no more dying please ~ and there's a list of people that give me hope if only... but that's not going to happen so we face Covid, and either one of these old fellows as president and I can't get the grumpy balcony guys from the Muppets out of my mind since the last debate... but I still hope, hope, hope, yeah, I suck at not hoping.

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      Matmos

      Oh man, grumpy old balcony guys - now it’s stuck with me too!

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    Dennis

    Being an ardent fan, I took the bait on the most interesting statistic from the 2020 baseball “season.” So, no homophobic slurs uttered by players; but that headline was immediately buried by an avalanche of outrage over a play-by-play guy‘s use of the “F word” for gays. His career in broadcasting is over, of course. Zero tolerance and no forgiveness there. But this year we’ve been treated to athletes from various sports making obtuse, often just crazy, statements about the country where they cash their very generous checks. Must have set some kind of record.

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    Mike B

    I have a very important question. Is the second o in snollygoster pronounced with the long or the short sound?

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