End of Lecture Sentence

Not sure if this is a very good or very bad end-of-lecture sentence:

Next time, I'll talk about Adolf Hitler, whose big problem--besides being a bloodthirsty persuasive paranoid genocidal psychopath, that is--is that he pays to much attention to (a) Malthus, (b) social darwinists, and (c) cowboy novels.

Comments

[oyster]

Seems like kind of a teaser.

[panochia]

Too many adjectives, and was, rather than is.

[jerry]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3SBYkcJigU

Fawlty Towers: The Germans (As we enter the clip Basil has had a concussion.)

If you play this clip, could someone bring you up on some sort of speech code violation?

[andres]

It reads like the end of the chapter of a Bulwer-Lytton novel.

Hitler read cowboy novels? Please elaborate.

[andres]

It reads like the end of the chapter of a Bulwer-Lytton novel.

Hitler read cowboy novels? Please elaborate.

[Anderson]

Hitler was a big fan of Karl May's cowboy novels; see Wikipedia for Herr May.

[Anderson]

OTOH, Einstein also liked Karl May, with no evident ill-effect.

I only suspect that Wittgenstein was a May fan, though I know he loved movie westerns -he sat in the front row.

[shah8]

This thread about Karl May is ridiculous. Karl May has a huge amount of fandom in Germany even now. Hitler liking it is just insignificant data noise...

[Karapandza]

Sounds like a mixture of a creationists' propaganda and some projection from the childhood when May was getting on your nerves for spending 20 pages of Winetoo in explaining the meaning of the word greenhorn. It is a bad sentence, unless its purpose is to provoke students.

[wood turtle]

I believe there were Nazi sympathizers in England, especially among the upper classes.

I don't know if they were just misled, but probably not all were as you characterized Hitler.

[RKKA]

"I believe there were Nazi sympathizers in England, especially among the upper classes."

A tiny, tiny minority. Opinion in GB was genuinely shocked by Kristallnacht.

Significantly more, especially in the government, looked forward to Hitler sorting out the Commies and Mussolini establishing the proper relations between labor and capital.

[dilbert dogbert]

bloodthirsty persuasive paranoid genocidal psychopath

Words we use to comfort ourselves that we are not, and could not be like him. This is a delusion.
There was a collection of photos of camp guards at play on the internets lately that if one could photoshop the uniforms it would look just like a group of Americans at play.
Sorry to be a downer on such a lovely fall day.

[Uncle Jeffy]

"...bloodthirsty persuasive paranoid genocidal psychopath..."

Wow - the Bush/Cheney administration in only five words. I'm impressed!

[jon livesey]

"Significantly more, especially in the government, looked forward to Hitler sorting out the Commies and Mussolini establishing the proper relations between labor and capital."

I guess that would be about the time that McArthur and Eisenhower were leading cavalry charges against the Bonus Army camps in Washington, would it?

[Maynard Handley]

Anyone interested in this subject really should listen to Janet Flanner's articles for the New Yorker on the man as viewed in 1936 and referenced here:
http://name99.org/blog99/?p=136

The most astonishing thing about this puff piece is how completely in would fit into today's media. It gives us a deep and personal look at the life of Adolf, while pretty much COMPLETELY ignoring the relevants politics and actual issues --- you know, those are boring and who really cares about such details.

The media in the US have apparently been sick and pathetic at their jobs for quite a bit longer than I had imagined.