The Editors Strike Back
Replies to Cobb’s Reply to Schomski
The SpecGram Editorial Board
[Editors’ Note: Standard SpecGram editorial policy is to present articles without comment, no matter how infuriating they may be. In the case of Cobb’s response to Schomski’s article, however, there was heated internal debate, with calls for further responses; the “discussion” eventually congealed into two bitterly hostile factions, each of which submitted a response to Cobb. In the spirit of world peace and editorial harmony, we offer both of these responses here. (If there were an odd number of us when we voted, this sort of thing wouldn’t happen; but Trey was out of town.) —Eds.]
Dear Rex,
We do hope you don’t mind such informality, but we find such a, dare we say it?, republican name simply charming and to-die-for, and indeed we might be acquainted with your brother Leroy and his wife Corrinne Onda, and as our American editorial contingent prides itself (not themselves, mind you, but itself, what with their being Americans and all) on a truly 19th century republican simplicity of manners, it seems only fitting to address you thus in and as a sign of informal republican brotherhood. In any case and be that all as it may, we would like to congratulate you on your attainments as an historian, for truly you missed your calling as head of the Information Service of the United States Department of State.
Dear Rex,
I beg to disagree. The reason why Brits drink port is to celebrate Portuguese-inspired hybridisation. Port, like their/your language, arose out of mixes, something that the noble Portuguese are experts at producing, whether peoples, languages, or cultures. So that ordinary wine wouldn’t sour across the export waves that Britannia was by no means alone ruling, their clever mariners thought of lacing it with bagaço (please note the cedilla) a kind of aguardente (please note the absence of ‘i’, Texans et al.), which smells, tastes and digests worse than slivovitz, grappa and maotai, respectively, or reciprocally, or maybe cumulatively. That the result endures as a drinkable masterpiece only attests to the fact that mixes and therefore multifariousness are the key to success.
