According to Norm, The University of Leiden in the Netherlands uses an extract from Michael Moore’s Stupid White Men in its English grammar test, in which Mr Moore rants about the stupidity of most of his countrymen.

Norm thinks this is outrageous. I think it’s funny.

We mock the Americans for being fat, stupid inbred rednecks. We mock the French for being arrogant, lazy and malodourous; we mock the Germans for being officious and boring; we mock the Scots for being drunk, violent and on the dole. We’re aware it has only a limited basis in reality, but it annoys the relevant group and therefore is worthwhile.

Norm is right to say that there would have been more of a fuss had the university chosen a text that focused on any other nation or group. However, he draws the wrong conclusion from this. Rather than trying to excise anti-Americanism, we should aim to treat people of all nationalities the way we treat the Septics.

Jerusalem Post writer Tom Gross is a wanker of the first order (bugmenot required). He seems to be implying that if you say the Nazi death camps killed a lot of gypsies, that makes you a Holocaust denier.

"The Guardian also couldn’t resist greatly exaggerating the numbers of Roma (Gypsies) who died in the camps. (Perhaps the paper isn’t aware that inflating the number of Roma and homosexuals killed by the Nazis, in order to try to de-emphasize the Jewish centrality of the Holocaust, is now a favorite trick of revisionist historians.)"

I’ve read the Guardian’s coverage around Holocaust Memorial Day. It appears to have no data at all concerning Roma deaths. It does say "(Roma, communists and gays also suffered and died in the camps)", and "Six million Jews died in the Nazi camps, along with millions of others, including Roma gypsies, Soviet prisoners of war, political opponents of the Nazis, homosexuals, beggars, alcoholics and mentally ill and disabled people".

Independent stats suggest that 500,000-1.5 million Roma died in the Holocaust (absolute numbers are hard to come by since the prewar Roma population was fairly definitionally rather hard to count). If I were a gypsy, I’d be strongly inclined to punch Mr Gross in the head.

If you’re having trouble picking your girlfriend’s birthday present, I’d recommend you check out Omni BioTech’s Small Breast Solutions enhancing tea range.

For just $30 per 30 teabags, you too can make your "breast enhancement regime incredibly easy to follow and more enjoyable. Customer(s) can take it anywhere and take them whenever they like. One cup of tea at bedtime can significantly boost results…".

Strictly for oral administration only, of course.

This ‘danger, Splenda is toxic and anyone who eats anything sweet will surely die’ website is entirely bollocks from start to finish. One thing I love about the Internet is the number of utter nutcases who think they’re Doing Science and Saving The World, rather than scaremongering and wasting everyone’s time.

My favourite part of the whole text is "the manufacturer claims that the chlorine added to sucralose is similar to the chlorine atom in the salt (NaCl) molecule. That is not the case". What, so Splenda’s makers have added extra neutrons to their chlorine? Truly they are evil scientists…

At SBBS, we love the war on drugs. This is because we are sick bastards who enjoy seeing innocent people suffer and die. We also love the war on pornography. This is because we are sick bastards who enjoy seeing innocent people thrown into jail.

If you approve of drug and/or pornography prohibition, please make a coherent case for them in the comments (if your ‘coherent case’ mentions metaphysical bollocks such as God or ‘human dignity’, I’ll track down your IP address, come round your house, and fuck you up).

(side note: how can anyone claim with a straight face that the US is ‘more free’ than the UK?)

Links via the unmissable Vice Squad.

Ahead of next week’s Nathan Barley TV show, here is a compendium of all of Nathan’s TVGoHome moments.

Oh, and Googlebombishly: Penta Water; Kilroy Veritas.

Anyone who seriously thinks Trevor Beattie’s Labour posters were antisemitic (muppetry here, here, and everywhere) is an idiot.

Anyone who doesn’t seriously think this, but is raising false charges of antisemitism to tar their opponents while trivialising real antisemitism is… err… doing exactly what the Israeli right and its supporters do to anyone who thinks Israel should return to 1967 borders, so no great surprises there.

I love the Adam Smith Institute. Err, sorry, what I meant to say was ‘I think the Adam Smith Institute are an absolute bunch of jokers’.

They’re trying to blame the UK pension funds crisis on Labour’s not very onerous pension taxation. My personal suggestion might be that it might be closer related to… oooh… the existence of a bloody great stock market bubble that artificially inflated returns for years, led to companies taking pension holidays they couldn’t afford, and made everyone believe they had adequate savings when they didn’t.

Presumably the reason for ASI’s sophistry is that the things that went wrong in the UK are pretty much inevitable if your pensions system is privatised. The claim ‘the UK system only went wrong because everyone involved was greedy and stupid’ wouldn’t necessarily inspire hope and optimism about Bush’s latest crazy rip-off.

I’m not, as I may have said before [*], a person who normally wishes horrible fates on people. However, I would like to see how all the right-wingers who purport to hate Edward Kennedy over Chappaquidick would react if they were trapped in a sinking car.

I’m sure that every last one of them would do the brave and heroic thing and risk their own life to rescue the girl. And I’m sure that if they didn’t, then they’d feel they deserved exactly the same level of contempt and visceral abuse that they’ve visited on Senator Kennedy over the last 30 years.

After all, if they were to do otherwise, then they’d be vicious partisan hacks cynically exploiting a young woman’s death to attack someone with whose political views they disagree. I wouldn’t want to level such an accusation at my worthy adversaries.

[*] Generally in the context of wishing horrible fates on people. This in no way invalidates my assertion.

Apparently blogs are relevant after all. It’s good to see the downtrodded ‘rulers of the world’ class reasserting themselves at the expense of the now-discredited ‘finding out the truth about stuff and reporting on it’ community.