Skip to: Content
Skip to: Site Navigation
Skip to: Search

Newser - Current News - Breaking Stories

Slowly I Turned... track this thread

Started by Imperator; Last updated by Imperator | View history

Slowly I Turned...

"Slowly I Turned" is the most common name associated with a popular vaudeville sketch that has also been performed in cinema and on television...The routine has two performers pretending to meet for the first time, with one of them becoming highly agitated over the utterance of particular words. Names and cities (such as Niagara Falls) have been used as the trigger, which then send the unbalanced person into a state of mania; the implication is that the words have an unpleasant association in the character's past. While the other performer merely acts bewildered, the crazed actor relives the incident, uttering the words, "Slowly I turned...step by step...inch by inch...," as he approaches the stunned onlooker. Reacting as if this stranger is the object of his rage, the angry actor begins hitting or strangling him, until the screams of the victim shake him out of his delusion. The actor then apologizes, admitting his irrational reaction to the mention of those certain words. This follows with the victim innocently repeating the words, sparking the insane reaction all over again. - Wikipedia

It's almost like a vaudeville routine as the rats leave the sinking S.S. Bush and write their memoirs about how they disagreed with everything they did while on board on the way to the lifeboat.

Stories

Stories 1 - 20 of 24

  • June 2008
    • NASA Was Muzzled on Climate Change

      NASA Was Muzzled on Climate Change

      (Newser) - Political appointees at NASA withheld scientific results on global warming, NASA's inspector general has determined after an internal probe. Investigators found that the public affairs office, run by Bush appointees, suffered from political spinning that was "inconsistent" with the agency's responsibility to pass full information on to the public, the New York Times reports. More »

    • Ex-US Commander in Iraq Bashes Bush in Memoir

      Ex-US Commander in Iraq Bashes Bush in Memoir

      (Newser) - Retired Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, who led US forces in Iraq for a year after Saddam’s ouster, says George W. Bush “led America into a strategic blunder of historic proportions” in a memoir the Washington Post deems “lost in the media furor” over Scott McClellan's. Sanchez recounts a presidential video-conference pep talk in 2004: “Kick ass! If somebody tries to stop the march to democracy, we will seek them out and kill them! More »

    • McClellan Blasts Bush for Not Firing Rove

      McClellan Blasts Bush for Not Firing Rove

      (Newser) - President Bush should have fired aide Karl Rove over the Plamegate affair, Scott McClellan said today. Publicizing his Washington tell-all book, McClellan also blasted Rove and Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Dick Cheney's ex-chief of staff, for denying they had leaked CIA agent Valerie Plame's name, the AP reports. "We had higher standards at the White House." More »

  • May 2008
    • Shoot at the Facts, Not at the Messenger

      Shoot at the Facts, Not at the Messenger

      (Newser) - Scott McClellan isn't someone Peggy Noonan found herself admiring, she writes in the Wall Street Journal , but she did end up “believing him" after finishing his memoir. He didn’t pen his story to make friends or salvage his image, but rather to set the record straight as he saw it. And first-person accounts are exactly what’s needed: “Feed history,” Noonan demands. More »

    • Bush Mob Sets Its Sights on McClellan

      Bush Mob Sets Its Sights on McClellan

      (Newser) - The Bush administration's reaction to Scott McClellan's new book should look familiar to anyone with HBO, with one important difference, writes Mike Lupica in the Daily News. "it has become clear by now that even the hoods from The Sopranos would be out of their weight class with George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Karl Rove." More »

    • Frankenstein Betrays His Master

      Frankenstein Betrays His Master

      (Newser) - In Scott McClellan, the White House built a Frankenstein monster to regurgitate its “talking points, monotonously if not mindlessly, no matter what argument or fact stood in the way,” Dana Milbank writes in the Washington Post . Well now the monster is back, with “famous fealty to his message…as stubborn as ever”—but now he’s programmed for Bush-bashing, not Bush-boosting. More »

    • Furious Dole Calls McClellan 'Miserable Creature'

      Furious Dole Calls McClellan 'Miserable Creature'

      (Newser) - Bush turncoat Scott McClellan may have taken his hardest hit yesterday in a personal message from Bob Dole, who called the ex-press secretary a “miserable creature.” “Your type soaks up the benefits of power, revels in the limelight for years, then quits, and spurred on by greed, cashes in with a scathing critique,” the 1996 Republican presidential nominee wrote in an email leaked to Politico.