{"id":2224,"date":"2010-09-01T11:59:05","date_gmt":"2010-09-01T16:59:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/?p=2224"},"modified":"2010-09-01T18:23:12","modified_gmt":"2010-09-01T23:23:12","slug":"by-george","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2010\/09\/by-george\/","title":{"rendered":"By George"},"content":{"rendered":"

With apologies to George Orwell<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Winston gazed up at the enormous face. Forty years it had taken him to learn what kind of smile was hidden beneath the dark moustache. O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast! Two Victory Gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose, only to be absorbed by crumbs from two Rick’s Bakery cookies. A just dessert for submitting to a biometric fingerprint scan, not for national security, but a private employer’s time clock. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A vuvuzela blast<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With apologies to George Orwell: Winston gazed up at the enormous face. Forty years it had taken him to learn what kind of smile was hidden beneath the dark moustache. O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast! Two Victory Gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose, only to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2224","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-loose-talk-of-town"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":3839,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2012\/09\/armistice-daze\/","url_meta":{"origin":2224,"position":0},"title":"Armistice Daze","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"September 12, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"While watching a local 9\/11 commemoration Tuesday, a curious thought came to me, \"What day was Osama bin Laden killed?\" Did anyone in the audience know? I didn't know, myself. When the Al-Qaida leader met his fusillade of bullets is the smaller query. The larger one is, Why does America\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "American Culture"","block_context":{"text":"American Culture","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/american-culture\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":402,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2008\/01\/the-green-candidate\/","url_meta":{"origin":2224,"position":1},"title":"The Green Candidate","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"January 30, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Four years ago Charlie Rose interviewed Garrison Keillor, who said something so provocative that for a detectable millisecond Rose was speechless, a rarity. Keillor of course was on promoting A Prairie Home Companion, but early on they discussed the just-ended 2004 election, where the progressive Keillor nailed John Kerry's defeat\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "News, Spin"","block_context":{"text":"News, Spin","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/news-spin\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8314,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2026\/02\/george\/","url_meta":{"origin":2224,"position":2},"title":"By George, a Two-Way Sobriquet","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"February 24, 2026","format":false,"excerpt":"An Awkward Salute to Black History Month My late Uncle George was a funny guy. That's how he thought of himself and how his friends and community saw him, too. He was quick with a quip, usually smutty. He kept these jokes out of my earshot until I reached high\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "American Culture"","block_context":{"text":"American Culture","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/american-culture\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Alfred Wolf Pollock (1905-1985), older brother to Ben S. Pollock Sr.","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-content\/uploads\/Uncle-George-centered-still-16x9-was-PDF-scaled.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-content\/uploads\/Uncle-George-centered-still-16x9-was-PDF-scaled.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-content\/uploads\/Uncle-George-centered-still-16x9-was-PDF-scaled.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-content\/uploads\/Uncle-George-centered-still-16x9-was-PDF-scaled.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-content\/uploads\/Uncle-George-centered-still-16x9-was-PDF-scaled.jpg?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-content\/uploads\/Uncle-George-centered-still-16x9-was-PDF-scaled.jpg?resize=1400%2C800&ssl=1 4x"},"classes":[]},{"id":399,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2008\/01\/by-george-part-i\/","url_meta":{"origin":2224,"position":3},"title":"By George, Part I","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"January 25, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"No, not that George, the other one. Not that George, either. It's not fair to say if George Orwell were alive today, he'd be totally yada yada yada on creation science and intelligent design. But what if Orwell actually wrote about the subject, even though those two terms were not\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "The Course of Words"","block_context":{"text":"The Course of Words","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/course-of-words\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":48,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2005\/01\/ex-executive-privilege\/","url_meta":{"origin":2224,"position":4},"title":"Ex-executive privilege","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"January 17, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Copyright 2005 Ben S. Pollock Monday, January 17, 2005: Days ago, George II brought in George the First and Bill Clinton to lead private fund-raising for the south Asian tsunami disaster of 12\/26\/04. This is life imitating art! \"Saturday Night Live\" has a periodic cartoon by one of its staffers--\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "News, Spin"","block_context":{"text":"News, Spin","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/news-spin\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":400,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2008\/01\/by-george-part-ii\/","url_meta":{"origin":2224,"position":5},"title":"By George, Part II","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"January 26, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Only some of the essayists in What Orwell Didn't Know: Propaganda and the New Face of American Politics, edited by Andras Szanto for PublicAffairs Books, which I will review soon, think George Orwell (1903-1950) is the man for 2008. After all, their thesis is in the title. Any other George\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "The Course of Words"","block_context":{"text":"The Course of Words","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/course-of-words\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2224","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2224"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2224\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2231,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2224\/revisions\/2231"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}