In one particularly hilarious scene from Mark Twain’s comedic essay, “Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offenses,” he describes an Indian attack on a canal boat one of whose passengers is protagonist Natty Bumppo. As the boat eases under a low-hanging bow, a half dozen Indians, waiting in ambush in the branches above, make their move. Let’s let Twain tell it:
Their chief, a person of quite extraordinary intellect for a Cooper Indian, warily watched the canal-boat as it squeezed along under him and when he had got his calculations fined down to exactly the right shade … he let go and dropped. And missed the boat!… He missed the house, and landed in he stern of the scow. It was not much of a fall, yet it knocked him silly….
There still remained in the roost five Indians. The boat has passed under and is now out of their reach. Let me explain what the five did…. No. 1 jumped for the boat, but fell in the water astern of it. Then No. 2 jumped for the boat, but fell in the water still further astern of it. Then No. 3 jumped for the boat, and fell a good way astern of it. Then No. 4 jumped for the boat, and fell in the water away astern. Then even No. 5 made a jump for the boat — for he was Cooper Indian. In that matter of intellect, the difference between a Cooper Indian and the Indian that stands in front of the cigar-shop is not spacious….
There wasn’t a seventh Indian, but if there had been its name would have been Nancy Pelosi. On Wednesday, the day after Joe Biden was very publicly ridiculed for referring to the continent of Africa as a country, Pelosi took to Twitter (h/t Twitchy via Joe Newby):
Okay, unlike Biden’s minor slip-up, this is a legit gaffe. Dear @NancyPelosi, Africa is not a country … you dingus: pic.twitter.com/7aIURjVtlv
— T. Becket Adams (@BecketAdams) August 6, 2014
The reactionary tweet by T. Becket Adams isn’t there out of spite but out necessity. As Twitchy notes, Pelosi’s tweet was quietly scrubbed soon after it was posted. The only vestige of it is in the tweets of the less geographically challenged people who pointed out the error.
Now if only vestiges of Lois Lerner’s emails could be dredged up.
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