The Senescent Man

Warning: sensitive readers of The Senescent Man blog, this post is NOT for the faint of heart.

The Weekly Standard's Scrapbook published an odious piece on a gentleman who has developed a rather nouvelle manner of speaking in the French vernacular:

Were there any real justice in the news business, for example, [the tabloid] Weekly World News science writer D.G. Bulger would surely win a 2004 Pulitzer for a story he published earlier this year about a 40-year-old Michigan man named Jason Jablonski. "Linguists and proctologists from around the world are stunned by a Detroit man's unique gift," Bulger reported on August 26. Mr. Jablonski "is able to speak fluent French out of his buttocks."

...Mr. Bulger disdains anonymous sourcing and blind quotation. His information about Mr. Jablonski's rare form of "Intestinal Linguistic Amplification" is plainly attributed to a professional expert, one "Dr. Edith Winters, senior fellow at the California Institute of Bowel Abnormalities." Also...Bulger ends his story on a thankfully upbeat...note. It turns out that Jason Jablonski's talking derrière has struck a blow for global comity. The Detroit furniture store he works in "draws many French Canadian customers from across the border, which has allowed his buttocks to sharpen his conversational skills." Pleased with these results, Jablonski now hopes to work at the United Nations or as an embassy interpreter in a French speaking country.

The Standard had the audacity of proclaiming this story "breaking news."

To that we say: "Piffle!"