Sanctimony 101: Parodying a Well-Known, Likely Misquotation of Steinbeck

[xocet]

Last edited Sat Aug 9, 2014, 12:35 AM - Edit history (1)

The Parody:

"Justice for torture victims never was considered as more than a mere manifestation of sanctimony in America because the oligarchy sees torture not as an execrable war crime but simply as an understandable reflex of temporarily frightened patriots."

--a parody of a well-known, likely misquotation of John Steinbeck

The Likely Misquotation:

To wit: "Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires." -- John Steinbeck


http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Steinbeck

The Possible Source:

America and Americans and Selected Nonfiction
By John Steinbeck

...

Except for the field organizers of strikes, who were pretty tough monkeys and devoted, most of the so-called Communists I met were middle-class, middle-aged people playing a game of dreams. I remember a woman in easy circumstances saying to another even more affluent: "After the revolution even we will have more, won't we, dear?" Then there was another lover of proletarians who used to raise hell with Sunday picnickers on her property.

I guess the trouble was that we didn't have any self-admitted proletarians. Everyone was a temporarily embarrassed capitalist. Maybe the Communists so closely questioned by investigation committees were a danger to America, but the ones I knew -- at least they claimed to be Communists -- couldn't have disrupted a Sunday-school picnic. Besides they were too busy fighting among themselves.

...

http://books.google.com/books?id=DyU2SzVGH6kC&lpg=PT34&vq=socialism&pg=PT35#v=onepage&q=%22Everyone%20was%20a%20temporarily%20embarrassed%20capitalist%22&f=false

[CBGLuthier]

1. So we can add paraphrase to the words no one uses correctly.

Paraphrase means to recast a writer's words in a different way but not to change the meaning.
Steinbeck did not talk about torture. This is not a paraphrase of his words. It is a parody.

[xocet]

2. Whoops. My usage was faulty in that piece. Thank you for pointing that out.

Though this speech does not directly apply, I will leave it to you to make the proper changes so that it does fit: