September 28, 2010

"Right now Nietzsche is a little more important."

Said UW student Justin Marita, who said he wasn't going to the President's big get-out-the-vote rally in Madison today.

But there are some students who are asking teachers to cancel class so they can attend. Imagine that! A teacher canceling class for a political rally.

I think Nietzsche is a little more important — important enough to correct the spelling of his name in the quote before putting it in the blog post heading. Madison.com spelled it "Nietschze." How do you misspell Nietzsche in a news story? Isn't it obvious you need to check?

42 comments:

Jeff Gee said...

Maybe they meant Jack Nitzsche (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Nitzsche). Who is also a little more important than a political rally. Or at least "The Lonely Surfer" is.


WV: moloomor. My favorite cookie!

Unknown said...

"...a rally intended to excite Democrats"

And a story intended to excite Democrats. Can you feel the "buzz"!? I want to go there!

Anonymous said...

Canceling class for an opportunity to see the President? I can sort of see it. I don't know whether I'd do it, but I can sort of see it.

Sofa King said...

Right now Nitschke is a little more important.

Henry said...

God is dead! Again!

Unknown said...

Maybe they meant Paul Nitze.

Hey, in the latest Sherlock Holmes movie they had the newspaper say, "Sherlock Holmes Aides Police".

MadisonMan said...

Why is a Senior taking a class on Nietzsche?

Michael Haz said...

Know who else is skipping the Obama rally in support of the re-election of Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI)?

Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) will be unable to attend and has sent his regrets. Not kidding.

Opus One Media said...

Zarathustra takes on an added value.

Kevin said...

A teacher canceling class for a [left-wing] political rally.

Only to be expected from the American professoriate! The University should dock the pay of any professor who does, but of course they won't.

traditionalguy said...

Wow! Even the will to power guys are going to skip any lousy Lying Obama Festivals...they are so boring and so banal.

traditionalguy said...

More bad news...Russ Feingold's GPS has gone rogue again. The female voice on it keeps repeating, " Make a U-turn and resume being an America before it is too late."

Kevin said...

"Maybe they meant Jack Nitzsche"

Ray Nitschke. Great, great middle linebacker.

Anonymous said...

"People need to shake off this lethargy. People need to buck up" --BHO

"O Mensch! Gib Acht!" --Nietzsche dba Zarathustra

The Crack Emcee said...

How do you misspell Nietzsche in a news story? Isn't it obvious you need to check?

Naw - too busy looking at the sunset - isn't it beautiful?

And Jerry Hall's beautiful, too - and she knows it.


Look at how beautiful Liz is.

With all this beauty to gawk at, who has time for checking facts? It's not like anybody's going to get any credit for that.

"He/she is right. Big whoop."

Now that's a beautiful thing to behold.

ThreeSheets said...

Unless things have changed since I was student there, they don't take attendance. Skip class, get the notes from a friend, and go to the rally. Why make everyone else who doesn't want to go miss class?

David said...

It's spelled Nietzsche: Ray Nietzsche.

traditionalguy said...

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder...Bob Dylan probably said that.

Original Mike said...

Canceling class for an opportunity to see the President? I can sort of see it.

I wish my class met in the afternoon rather than the morning. I'd have scheduled an test.

Michael Haz said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Kirby Olson said...

Nietzsche said that everything was the will to power.

John Burgess said...

Back in the Vietnam war protest days, it seems that half of my professors would flunk you if you didn't attend a demonstration and the other half would flunk you if you did.

College campuses politicized? No, it could never happen...

rhhardin said...

It's spelled like it sounds. That's one of the virtues of German. If only you didn't have to wait for the verb.

French is the most natural langauge, according to a Frenchman, because the words occur in the same order as the thoughts.

You have to admit he has a point, compared to German.

nobody said...

Well:


“When I told Boesche that just a couple of years later, Obama had devoured the writings of Nietzsche and other political thinkers during his solitary spell in New York City, Boesche said that Obama certainly must have gone through a philosophical growth experience. “Nietzsche calls everything into question. You have to call everything into question. He says God is dead,” Boesche said. “So if he kept reading Nietzsche, he went through a whole reasoning process in which he reevaluated all the core beliefs that he had—and then came out on the other side.

Obama affirmed Boesche’s observation.”

David Mendell, Obama: From Promise to Power, p. 61.

Alex said...

Only to be expected from the American professoriate! The University should dock the pay of any professor who does, but of course they won't.

Of course, because it's left wingers all the way up to the chancellor/rector/President.

Bruce Hayden said...

French is the most natural langauge, according to a Frenchman, because the words occur in the same order as the thoughts.

Except that it is rarely pronounced the way it reads.

I would guess that the word order is not all that different from the other Romance languages, which do pronounce more they way that they are spelled.

Of course, American English is probably even harder than French in this way. It is just that we all know how to pronounce all those weird words, and so don't think that it is that hard - and one reason that English is so full of these weird words is that it lends itself to picking up words from all over the place, including, of course, French.

traditionalguy said...

German the language the best is!

KLDAVIS said...

"How do you misspell Nietzsche in a news story?"

Hubris.

Joe said...

Maybe they meant "Niche" and this student's niche is not attending presidential visits.

The Crack Emcee said...

French is the most natural langauge, according to a Frenchman, because the words occur in the same order as the thoughts.

That's also why they get so many things backwards.

Anonymous said...

I can picture Obama having a really deep conversation about Nietzsche with Kevin Kline's character from A Fish Called Wanda.

Big Mike said...

My first thought was that if I was a UW professor I'd schedule an hourly exam for the afternoon of the President's rally. But then I had a better idea; I'd cancel class and encourage them to go and listen to the petulant excuse for a politician.

Great opportunity for making more Republican voters.

Quasimodo said...

however it's spelled the man was a loon.

Kirk Parker said...

rhardin,

I can picture a great linguistic cage match betweeen Chomsky and the French on which language is most natural.

(Need I add that they're both preposterously wrong, of course?)

Joe said...

From Wikipedia: "Nietzsche calls for exceptional people to no longer be ashamed of their uniqueness in the face of a supposed morality-for-all, which Nietzsche deems to be harmful to the flourishing of exceptional people." and that Exceptional people "should follow their own 'inner law.'"

That pretty much states the politician's credo.

(And count me among those who think Nietzche was a loon who occasionally said insightful things.)

traditionalguy said...

Nietzche was just another power drunk madman. True power does not come from killing off others until only you are left. But it will be tried again and again... and that's why we will always need a military force to fight the power drunk madmen.

Roger J. said...

generally speaking I go with linebackers rather than philosophers--even if the spelling isnt quite congruent

Kirby Olson said...

Nietzsche slept with his sister, and got the clap from which he died.

Julie said...

Joe--Politicians aren't exceptional in the way that Nietzsche meant. It is probable that they think they are, but that isn't Nietzsche's fault.

traditionalguy--You're joking, yes? I hope so.

traditionalguy said...

Julie...I would not joke about a seductive madman like Nietzsche. His instincts to power over others is a normal human desire that he made mainstream and acceptable to scholars, instead of culturally restrained as it needs to be, like a pit bull that otherwise kills strangers instinctively, and then kills its owner too. He was the Charles Manson of his day spewing poison. Did you ever consider that maybe you enjoy his poison too much?

Blair said...

Nietzsche is a little more important than most things.

traditionalguy - Nietzsche opened many philosophical doors. You can't blame him for whether people decided to walk through a few of the worse ones. What I like about Nietzsche is that he distilled the human essence to that of Will. If you understand that, you can understand all human behaviour, both for good and for evil.

KLDAVIS said...

Nietzsche probably understood the world better than anyone who came before and certainly more deeply than anyone who has come after.

I believe his most profound insight was to name man the "valuating animal". Defining and applying value is inherent in our thinking and at the core of everything we do.

Pereat mundus, fiat philosophia, fiat philosophus, fiam!