[lbo-talk] "four walls are three too many"

[Wojtek Sokolowski]

> >It seems that few of the famous apothegms attributed to Stalin have been
> >sourced with any certainty, including "the death of one man is a
> >tragedy; the death a million men is a statistic" and "the Pope?  How
> >many divisions does he have?"  Too bad: I hate using slogans I can't
> >cite with confidence, and I really want to use this one in a bit I'm
> >writing.  Damn.
> 
> Harold Bloom once wrote somewhere, "as Shelley should have said..."
> 
> Doug

Does it make any difference who said it?  It has a nice twist into it - just
like the "Wenn Ich Kultur hoere, entsichere Ich meinen Browning"  or "It's I
who decides who's a Jew" - both attributed to Hermann Goering even though
they were actually said by someone else.  

Does the fact that that a saying was or was not uttered by a reprehensible
monster make any difference?  What does the Stalin's persona add to the
realization that, after all, for some people four walls are indeed a waste
of valuable real estate space.  Or that what passes for "Kultur" is often a
bunch of hogwash?  Or that identity politics is but a shell game?

Wojtek