Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Maru the Cat (plus Revisionist Hasidic War History)

I do not say this lightly: This thirty-six-second clip is my favorite animal video of all time.  Maru, the cat in the video, lives in Japan, and the song heard is “Angel of Death” by Slayer, about German concentration camps.  If there were an Italian angle, we’d have quite the Axis of Cat Comedy.  Maru strikes me as more punk-rock than fascist, though.  Go, Maru, go!

I know it sounds like a made-up number, but according to Maru’s Wikipedia page, his videos have been viewed 90 million times.  If Maru had just ten cents for each of those hits, he would by now be able to afford most excellent super giant cat food bowl of especial delicacies!  Regardless, I am pleased by his success.

Speaking of the Jews and war: you thought I was exaggerating when I referred to Brooklyn’s hipster-Hasidim war in my entry Saturday, but this article shows how seriously unhip the Hasidim can be (sympathetic though I generally am to traditionalism): The Hasidic newspaper Der Zeitung photoshopped Hillary Clinton (and another female) out of the photo of Obama and company in the situation room during the bin Laden raid.  Women shouldn’t be mingling with men, apparently, and so…now they apparently aren’t.  You’d think Hasidim would know better than most people the dangers of revisionist history. 

I wonder if the ease with which they faked this has made any of the newspaper staff more likely to be birthers – or “deathers,” now that (right on cue) there are people out there who won’t believe bin Laden’s dead until we see the photo.  For the trifecta, might there be someone out there who thinks (1) bin Laden is alive and a fake raid on him was watched by (2) a Kenyan-born president who (3) was not accompanied by any women at the time?

The lies go so deep, Mr. Mulder (no, actually, they don’t – the world’s as boring and stupid as it appears to be, I’m afraid). 

2 comments:

Christopher said...

I agree with you completely here, but I think the actual issue in this particular case of Photo-shopping is not that women shouldn't be mingling with men but that women shouldn't be portrayed in photographs at all (or at least that's what I get from the articles I read). Still crazy.

Todd Seavey said...

You'd think if that were a longstanding rule they'd come up with a standard method of just showing a silhouette where they'd made the alteration (that would not only be more honest but would make life a lot easier for their graphics staff). Weird.

I should have noted, by the way, that beyond the trifecta would be the person who thinks all _four_ of the following (a) bin Laden didn't plan 9/11, (b) he's still alive, (c) a Kenyan-born president watched the raid, and (d) no women were present.