Uttered by yours truly while lecturing and met by students in Nazi History 102 with total and complete silence.
Last week, while screening Triumph of the Will:
"See these Nazi Party members cheering for Hitler? Well, they really loved Hitler. They loved, loved him. They thought Hitler was just...[trying to think of joke]...the best thing since sliced bread."
Today, toward the end of a stock rant about the origins of the Boy Scouts (whom I have always opposed) in the Boer War and their paramilitary accouterments and historic imperialism, which was prompted by a student question about the relationship between the American Boy Scouts and the Hitler Youth:
Me: "I mean, come on. Who sells cookies in a paramilitary uniform? Who sells cookies in a paramilitary uniform?"
Student: Uhm, the Girl Scouts?
10 comments:
Uh oh Grasshopper. It seems that the student has surpassed the master.
The girl scouts are better than the boy scouts? Aren't they just the same thing but with girls?
Follow-up question: do the boy scouts even sell cookies?
The Girl Scouts are a completely separate organization. The Boy Scouts hated them for a long time for using the word "Scout" in their name because they weren't imperialistic enough. There are no Boy Scout cookies.
Really? They hated them? Wow.
I believe there was a lawsuit.
Wow. Now I oppose the Boy Scouts even more.
I really hate the Boy Scouts. Did you mention the creepy man-boy stuff that was part of British imperialism at that moment?
No, what creepy man-boy stuff??? Shoot, how could I not know about this? I thought I had total knowledge of creepy man-boy stuff.
Have you heard of the boyologists? They were men who did work with boys (or wrote about doing it). Meaning helping them in settlement houses, being summer camp directors, and I suppose Scout leaders too. All to counter degeneration. Go to google books and type in the word Boyology and you'll get a book by that name about "the boy problem."
There's also a book called The Boy Problem from around the same time (also on Google books).
Maybe this is more of an Anglo-American thing.
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