National Review: nothing changes in 50 years...

[Ellen Stuttle]

Considering that the assigned books in high school are the only novels many people ever read, [...].

Is that true? If so, to whom are all the novels in drugstores, convenience stores, supermarkets, train stations, airport terminals, at news stands selling?

(I'm asking from curiosity. Do you have figures from demographic studies of sales of novels?)

Ellen

[caroljane]

|No Ellen, of course I don't. It is only my impression, that most people prefer to read nonfiction, and the novel market is shrinking. Tnat is just from what I have read about it and gathered from the videogame generation. But the death of the novel has been predicted for a long time now and they are still around, r with readers still outnumbering writers, long live them both.

[Ellen Stuttle]

Merlin, re #112:

I still think you're missing the logic of the wording, "were" being the opposite of "were not" (which is what she wrote), "had some" being the opposite of "had no" (which isn't what she wrote).

There is a further indication of how Rand evaluated the passengers, on the page before the start of the description of sixteen of those passengers

She says of the conductor, who knows the passengers are going to their deaths:

He thought that he should rouse the passengers and warn them. There had been a time when he had placed the safety of the passengers above his own, not by reason of love for his fellow men, but because that responsibility was part of his job, which he accepted and felt pride in fulfilling. Now, he felt a contemptuous indifference and no desire to save them. They had asked for and accepted Directive 10-289, he thought, they went on living and daily turning away in evasion from the kind of verdicts that the Unification Board was passing on defenseless victims - why shouldn't he now turn away from them? If he saved their lives, not one of them would come forward to defend him when the Unification Board would convict him for disobeying orders, for creating a panic, for delaying Mr. Chalmers. He had no desire to be a martyr for the sake of allowing people safely to indulge in their own irresponsible evil.

How would the conductor know that all of them "had asked for and accepted Directive 10-289"? How would he know that some of them aren't in situations comparable to those of the road foreman and the trainmaster? (The road foreman and trainmaster are two other characters whose direct actions were necessary to send the train into the tunnel. I'll quote the parts about them in another post.)

Ellen

[caroljane]

That conductor says something about human psychology and instinct that I do not like to hear.

[Guyau]

Deleted.

[Ellen Stuttle]

The Road Foreman

The road foreman is stationed at Silver Springs, which is an unspecified distance from Winston, where the Comet is waiting on a siding for an engine.

He's been ordered by Dave Mitchum, superintendent of the Colorado Division, to "send the best engine available to Winston, to stand by for emergency assistance."

[This is all one long paragraph in the book, except for the last single-sentence paragraph. I've added breaks for reading ease.]

The road foreman walked across the yards, looking down at the ground. He was thinking of his wife, his two children and the house which he had spent a lifetime to own.

He knew what his superiors were doing and he wondered if he should refuse to obey them. He had never been afraid of losing his job; with the confidence of a competent man, he had known that if he quarreled with one employer, he would always be able to find another. Now, he was afraid; he had no right to quit or to seek a job; if he defied an employer, he would be delivered into the unanswerable power of a single Board, and if the Board ruled against him, it would mean being sentenced to the slow death of starvation: it would mean being barred from any employment. He knew that the Board would rule against him; he knew that the key to the dark, capricious mystery of the Board's contradictory decisions was the secret power of pull. What chance would he have against Mr. Chalmers?

There had been a time when the self-interest of his employers had demanded that he exercise his utmost ability. Now, ability was not wanted any longer. There had been a time when he had been required to do his best and rewarded accordingly. Now, he could expect nothing but punishment, if he tried to follow his conscience. There had been a time when he had been expected to think. Now, they did not want him to think, only to obey. They did not want him to have a conscience any longer.

Then why should he raise his voice? For whose sake? He thought of the passengers - the three hundred passengers aboard the Comet. He thought of his children.

He had a son in high school and a daughter, nineteen, of whom he was fiercely, painfully proud, because she was recognized as the most beautiful girl in town. He asked himself if he could deliver his children to the fate of the children of the unemployed, as he had seen them in the blighted areas, in the settlements around closed factories and along the tracks of discontinued railroads.

He saw, in astonished horror, that the choice which he now had to make was between the lives of his children and the lives of the passengers on the Comet.

A conflict of this kind had never been possible before. It was by protecting the safety of the passengers that he had earned the security of his children; he had served one by serving the other; there had been no clash of interests, no call for victims. Now, if he wanted to save the passengers, he had to do it at the price of his children. He remembered dimly the sermons he had heard about the beauty of self-immolation, about the virtue of sacrificing to others that which was one's dearest. He knew nothing about the philosophy of ethics; but he knew suddenly - not in words, but in the form of a dark, angry, savage pain - that if this was virtue, then he wanted no part of it.

He walked into the roadhouse and ordered a large, ancient coal-burning locomotive to be made ready for the run to Winston

Ellen

[Ellen Stuttle]

The Trainmaster

The trainmaster is also stationed at Silver Springs.

He's been ordered by Dave Mitchum, superintendent of the Colorado Division, "to summon a locomotive crew at once, for a purpose described only as 'an emergency'".

[The paragraphing in this one is as in the book.]

The trainmaster reached for the telephone in the dispatcher's office, to summon a train crew, as ordered. But his hand stopped, holding the receiver. It struck him suddenly that he was summoning men to their death, and that of the twenty lives listed on the sheet before him, two would be ended by his choice. He felt a physical sensation of cold, nothing more; he felt no concern, only a puzzled, indifferent astonishment. It had never been his job to call men out to die; his job had been to call them out to earn their living. It was strange, he thought; and it was strange that his hand had stopped; what made it stop was like something he would have felt twenty years ago - no, he thought, strange, only one month ago, not longer.

He was forty-eight years old. He had no family, no friends, no ties to any living being in the world. Whatever capacity for devotion he had possessed, the capacity which others scatter among many random concerns, he had given it whole to the person of his young brother - the brother, his junior by twenty-five years, whom he had brought up. He had sent him through a technological college, and he had known, as had all the teachers, that the boy had the mark of genius on the forehead of his grim, young face. With the same single-tracked devotion as his brother's, the boy had cared for nothing but his studies, not for sports or parties or girls, only for the vision of the things he was going to create as an inventor. He had graduated from college and had gone, on a salary unusual for his age, into the research laboratory of a great electrical concern in Massachusetts.

This was now May 28, thought the trainmaster. It was on May 1 that Directive 10-289 had been issued. It was on the evening of May 1 that he had been informed that his brother had committed suicide.

The trainmaster had heard it said that the directive was necessary to save the country. He could not know whether this was true or not; he had no way of knowing what was necessary to save a country. But driven by some feeling which he could not express, he had walked into the office of the editor of the local newspaper and demanded that they publish the story of his brother's death. "People have to know it," had been all he could give as his reason. He had been unable to explain that the bruised connections of his mind had formed the wordless conclusion that if this was done by the will of the people, then the people had to know it; he could not believe that they would do it, if they knew. The editor had refused; he had stated that it would be bad for the country's morale.

The trainmaster knew nothing about political philosophy; but he knew that that had been the moment when he lost all concern for the life or death of any human being or of the country.

He thought, holding the telephone receiver, that maybe he should warn the men whom he was about to call. They trusted him; it would never occur to them that he would knowingly send them to their death. But he shook his head: this was only an old thought, last year's thought, a remnant of the time when he had trusted them, too. His brain worked slowly, as if he were dragging his thoughts through a vacuum where no emotion responded to spur them on; he thought that there would be trouble if he warned anyone, there would be some sort of fight and it was he who had to make some great effort to start it. He had forgotten what it was that one started this sort of fight for. Truth? Justice? Brother-love? He did not want to make an effort. He was very tired. If he warned all the men on his list, he thought, there would be no one to run that engine, so he would save two lives and also three hundred lives aboard the Comet. But nothing responded to the figures in his mind; "lives" was just a word, it had no meaning.

He raised the telephone receiver to his ear, he called two numbers, he summoned an engineer and a fireman to report for duty at once.

Ellen

[Ellen Stuttle]

The engineer who was called refuses to drive the train and disappears into the night.

So they use the engineer who had driven the coal-burner to Winston. He's a drunk who's been fired from many a job and who has his current job because he's a pal of Fred Kinnan's.

The conductor - why is there only one conductor on a 300-passenger train? - gives the signal for the train to proceed, then steps off the back and also disappears into the night.

Ellen

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Ellen,

Rereading those passages gave me a glimpse of a possible theme with Rand. Notice that the foreman and the trainmaster had family they cared about deeply that was threatened and/or harmed by the system they found themselves caught in. Once they realized that, their concern for the lives of others in their paths turned into indifference.

This also happened when Dagny shot the guard. I bet other examples could be found, too.

The phrase that rang that bell in my mind was this (discussing other people endangered):

... nothing responded to the figures in his mind; "lives" was just a word, it had no meaning.

I wonder if she actually witnessed that attitude in Russia.

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

Ellen,

Rereading those passages gave me a glimpse of a possible theme with Rand. Notice that the foreman and the trainmaster had family they cared about deeply that was threatened and/or harmed by the system they found themselves caught in. Once they realized that, their concern for the lives of others in their paths turned into indifference.

This also happened when Dagny shot the guard. I bet other examples could be found, too.

The phrase that rang that bell in my mind was this (discussing other people endangered):

... nothing responded to the figures in his mind; "lives" was just a word, it had no meaning.

I wonder if she actually witnessed that attitude in Russia.

Michael

I think there was a lot of the Russian in Rand still when she wrote AS. Hoi polloi in the novel never struck me as Americans so much as something alien, maybe to any culture--that is, as a strange conglomeration of two different cultural psychologies, one much more degenerated than the other. But is that the future of this country? Could be; I don't think so. It will explode first, something Rand post AS predicted might happen.

--Brant

[Guyau]

. . .

I think there was a lot of the Russian in Rand still when she wrote AS. . . .

I glimpse a bit from Dostoyevsky's Brothers in Francisco's sarcastic bow to Dr. Pritchett. There is much feel of Dostoyevsky and of Hugo in Atlas.

Andrew Bernstein writes:

In The Romantic Manifesto, Ayn Rand establishes that volition is the essence of the romantic approach to literature. In contrast to naturalistic writers, romantic authors show human beings confronted by fundamental alternatives among which they must choose. In the novels of Victor Hugo, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and Ayn Rand, characters face a constant alternative involving the most important issue of all: good and evil. Further, these geniuses explicate their understanding of good and evil by showing it as an integrated element of a comprehensive philosophy---a philosophy dramatized brilliantly in their greatest novels: Les Miserables, The Brothers Karamazov, and Atlas Shrugged.

. . .

But on their own terms, Hugo and Dostoyevsky show their respective moral codes as incapable of promoting the sweeping social changes that each seeks. Only Ayn Rand shows her moral-philosophical vision as triumphantly capable of transfiguring the world.

The principle of volition, although profoundly important, is not a philosophical primary. What are the deeper principles held by Hugo and Dostoyevsky that prevent them from projecting their moral codes as capable of bettering the world? What basic premise held by Ayn Rand enables her to dramatize her system of thought as sweeping aside all obstacles and bringing vast improvements to men's lives and social systems? The answers to these questions will give us a deeper understanding of the contrasting philosophical convictions held by the leading romantics. Most important, we will gain greater appreciation of the role played by philosophy in the structure and outcome of their plots.

(2009, 167-68)

That is from the essay Dr. Bernstein contributed to Essays on Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, which book I heartily recommend. I expect it will be read as long as Atlas is still read.

That collection includes a few minor entries in addition to its several major essays. One of those minor entries is a letter to the editor Leonard Peikoff wrote to National Review in 1957, responding to the big smear by Whittaker Chambers. It was a good letter. It did not refer specifically to Chamber's "to the gas chambers go" and the train tunnel crash. National Review declined to print the letter. But as Peter suggested, they have lost their struggle against the influence of Atlas all the same.

[Ellen Stuttle]

The Passengers

At this point I want to requote the description of the passengers, provided earlier by Michael in his post #92.

I'm adding seven paragraphs which precede the description, and I'm italicizing a sentence pertaining to the conductor and two paragraphs which are significant in why I see the omniscient voice exhibiting pleasure at the prospect of the passengers getting what they get.

[The italics in the description of the philosophy professor, and of the word "fear," are in the original. The other italics are added.]

[The conductor] had no desire to be a martyr for the sake of allowing people safely to indulge in their irresponsible evil.

When the moment came, he raised his lantern and signaled the engineer to start.

"See?" Said Kip Chalmers triumphantly to Lester Tuck, as the wheels under their feet shuddered forward. "Fear is the only practical means to deal with people."

The conductor stepped onto the vestibule of the last car. No one saw him as he went down the steps of the other side, slipped off the train and vanished into the darkness of the mountains.

A switchman stood ready to throw the switch that would send the Comet from the siding onto the main track. He looked at the Comet as it came slowly toward him. It was only a blazing white globe with a beam stretching high above his head, and a jerky thunder trembling through the rail under his feet. He knew that the switch should not be thrown. He thought of the night, ten years ago, when he had risked his life in a flood to save a train from a washout. But he knew that times had changed. In the moment when he threw the switch and saw the headlights jerk sidewise, he knew that he would now hate his job for the rest of his life.

The Comet uncoiled from the siding into a thin, straight line, and went on into the mountains, with the beam of the headlight like an extended arm pointing the way, and the lighted glass curve of the observation lounge ending it off.

Some of the passengers aboard the Comet were awake. As the train started its coiling ascent, they saw the small cluster of Winston's lights at the bottom of the darkness beyond their windows, then the same darkness, but with red and green lights by the hole of a tunnel on the upper edge of the windowpanes. The lights of Winston kept growing smaller, each time they appeared; the black hole of the tunnel kept growing larger. A black veil went streaking past the windows at times, dimming the lights: it was the heavy smoke from the coal-burning engine.

As the tunnel came closer, they saw, on the edge of the sky far to the south, in a void of space and rock, a spot of living fire twisting in the wind. They did not know what it was and did not care to learn.

It is said that catastrophes are a matter of pure chance, and there were those who would have said that the passengers of the Comet were not guilty or responsible for the thing that happened to them.

The man in Bedroom A, Car No. 1, was a professor of sociology who taught that individual ability is of no consequence, that individual effort is futile, that an individual conscience is a useless luxury, that there is no individual mind or character or achievement, that everything is achieved collectively, and that it's masses that count, not men.

The man in Roomette 7, Car No. 2, was a journalist who wrote that it is proper and moral to use compulsion "for a good cause," who believed that he had the right to unleash physical force upon othersto wreck lives, throttle ambitions, strangle desires, violate convictions, to imprison, to despoil, to murderfor the sake of whatever he chose to consider as his own idea of "a good cause," which did not even have to be an idea, since he had never defined what he regarded as the good, but had merely stated that he went by "a feeling"a feeling unrestrained by any knowledge, since he considered emotion superior to knowledge and relied solely on his own "good intentions" and on the power of a gun.

The woman in Roomette 10, Car No. 3, was an elderly school teacher who had spent her life turning class after class of helpless children into miserable cowards, by teaching them that the will of the majority is the only standard of good and evil, that a majority may do anything it pleases, that they must not assert their own personalities, but must do as others were doing.

The man in Drawing Room B, Car No. 4, was a newspaper publisher who believed that men are evil by nature and unfit for freedom, that their basic interests, if left unchecked, are to lie, to rob and to murder one anotherand, therefore, men must be ruled by means of lies, robbery and murder, which must be made the exclusive privilege of the rulers, for the purpose of forcing men to work, teaching them to be moral and keeping them within the bounds of order and justice.

The man in Bedroom H, Car No. 5, was a businessman who had acquired his business, an ore mine, with the help of a government loan, under the Equalization of Opportunity Bill.

The man in Drawing Room A, Car No. 6, was a financier who had made a fortune by buying "frozen" railroad bonds and getting his friends in Washington to "defreeze" them.

The man in Seat 5, Car No. 7, was a worker who believed that he had "a right" to a job, whether his employer wanted him or not.

The woman in Roomette 6, Car No. 8, was a lecturer who believed that, as a consumer, she had "a right" to transportation, whether the railroad people wished to provide it or not.

The man in Roomette 2, Car No. 9, was a professor of economics who advocated the abolition of private property, explaining that intelligence plays no part in industrial production, that man's mind is conditioned by material tools, that anybody can run a factory or a railroad and it's only a matter of seizing the machinery.

The woman in Bedroom D, Car No. 10, was a mother who had put her two children to sleep in the berth above her, carefully tucking them in, protecting them from drafts and jolts; a mother whose husband held a government job enforcing directives, which she defended by saying, "I don't care, it's only the rich that they hurt. After all, I must think of my children."

The man in Roomette 3, Car No. 11, was a sniveling little neurotic who wrote cheap little plays into which, as a social message, he inserted cowardly little obscenities to the effect that all businessmen were scoundrels.

The woman in Roomette 9, Car No. 12, was a housewife who believed that she had the right to elect politicians, of whom she knew nothing, to control giant industries, of which she had no knowledge.

The man in Bedroom F, Car No. 13, was a lawyer who had said, "Me? I'll find a way to get along under any political system."

The man in Bedroom A, Car No. 14, was a professor of philosophy who taught that there is no mindhow do you know that the tunnel is dangerous?no realityhow can you prove that the tunnel exists?no logicwhy do you claim that trains cannot move without motive power?no principleswhy should you be bound by the law of cause-and-effect?no rightswhy shouldn't you attach men to their jobs by force?no moralitywhat's moral about running a railroad?no absoluteswhat difference does it make to you whether you live or die, anyway? He taught that we know nothingwhy oppose the orders of your superiors?that we can never be certain of anythinghow do you know you're right?that we must act on the expediency of the momentyou don't want to risk your job, do you?

The man in Drawing Room B, Car No. 15, was an heir who had inherited his fortune, and who had kept repeating, "Why should Rearden be the only one permitted to manufacture Rearden Metal?"

The man in Bedroom A, Car No. 16, was a humanitarian who had said, "The men of ability? I do not care what or if they are made to suffer. They must be penalized in order to support the incompetent. Frankly, I do not care whether this is just or not. I take pride in not caring to grant any justice to the able, where mercy to the needy is concerned."

These passengers were awake; there was not a man aboard the train who did not share one or more of their ideas. As the train went into the tunnel, the flame of Wyatt's Torch was the last thing they saw on earth.

Ellen

[Ellen Stuttle]

[my italics]

As the tunnel came closer, they saw, on the edge of the sky far to the south, in a void of space and rock, a spot of living fire twisting in the wind. They did not know what it was and did not care to learn.

[....]

These passengers were awake; there was not a man aboard the train who did not share one or more of their ideas. As the train went into the tunnel, the flame of Wyatt's Torch was the last thing they saw on earth.

What does the symbolism of that flaming torch on the horizon as the last sight they saw suggest to you, gentle reader?

Ellen

[PDS]

[my italics]

As the tunnel came closer, they saw, on the edge of the sky far to the south, in a void of space and rock, a spot of living fire twisting in the wind. They did not know what it was and did not care to learn.

[....]

These passengers were awake; there was not a man aboard the train who did not share one or more of their ideas. As the train went into the tunnel, the flame of Wyatt's Torch was the last thing they saw on earth.

What does the symbolism of that flaming torch on the horizon as the last sight they saw suggest to you, gentle reader?

Ellen

Something of a middle finger?

[Ellen Stuttle]

Something of a middle finger.

That's strong in the symbolism of Wyatt's Torch anyway, his f--- you to those who'd tried to take over.

Ellen

[Ellen Stuttle]

Ellen,

Rereading those passages gave me a glimpse of a possible theme with Rand. Notice that the foreman and the trainmaster had family they cared about deeply that was threatened and/or harmed by the system they found themselves caught in. Once they realized that, their concern for the lives of others in their paths turned into indifference.

It's presented as ok, I'd say even admirable, in the road foreman and the trainmaster, but by contrast:

The woman in Bedroom D, Car No. 10, was a mother who had put her two children to sleep in the berth above her, carefully tucking them in, protecting them from drafts and jolts; a mother whose husband held a government job enforcing directives, which she defended by saying, "I don't care, it's only the rich that they hurt. After all, I must think of my children."

There is a difference between her and the other two - but that big of a difference that her fate is just?

This also happened when Dagny shot the guard. I bet other examples could be found, too.

Brant has a number of times made a connection between Dagny's shooting the guard and the border guard's shooting Kira.

The phrase that rang that bell in my mind was this (discussing other people endangered):

... nothing responded to the figures in his mind; "lives" was just a word, it had no meaning.

I wonder if she actually witnessed that attitude in Russia.

Michael

I think so, yes. I saw it myself, lingering on in the older people, in Budapest in 2003. The after-effects of the Russian domination were still active.

Ellen

[merjet]

What does the symbolism of that flaming torch on the horizon as the last sight they saw suggest to you, gentle reader?

Not glee.

[Ellen Stuttle]

What does the symbolism of that flaming torch on the horizon as the last sight they saw suggest to you, gentle reader?

Not glee.

Well, I expected that.

Ellen

[PDS]

What does the symbolism of that flaming torch on the horizon as the last sight they saw suggest to you, gentle reader?

Not glee.

Well, I expected that.

Ellen

The "gentle reader" reference is a nice touch, by the way.

[Jonathan]

The man in Seat 5, Car No. 7, was a worker who believed that he had "a right" to a job, whether his employer wanted him or not.

I wonder if that was Howard Roark!

J

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Ellen,

I'm enjoying this discussion.

But I still don't see the pleasure in the parts you highlighted.

And I'm trying. I really am. It just doesn't come.

My take on the Wyatt's torch symbol has been totally different until this discussion. I have seen it as a religious symbol of sorts. Like a blazing cross (but without the KKK connotation). A seal of fate, so to speak.

Or a typical revenge sentiment (presented in many stories) where the person who was harmed kills the person who harmed him, but made sure the last thing that person saw on earth was his face.

(Obviously, I don't see revenge satisfaction as pleasure, although I do see times where pleasure is added to it. But the pleasure is not the goal in my view. An emotional equivalent to evening the scores is--knowing the other felt the same kind of loss as the person did. A kind of feeling of completion.)

Now I see the finger in Wyatt's Torch, but it doesn't ring true to my vision of Rand that this would be her intention. I think she would have considered that to be smutty. But who knows?

Interpreting symbols is always dangerous territory, anyway. The reason symbols are symbols is because they are vague enough to speak broadly to different people when that's what you need.

How about a Freudian interpretation, for example? You have a half-assed train ramming a clogged tunnel deep inside a mother's breast mountain and exploding. There's a flaming penis symbol in the distance to boot.

Repressed sex anyone?

Rape?

Michael

[Selene]

As long as I can light my cigarette afterward with Wyatt's Torch...

[caroljane]

It was Rand's inner Zoroastrian coming out.

[PDS]

Ellen,

I'm enjoying this discussion.

But I still don't see the pleasure in the parts you highlighted.

And I'm trying. I really am. It just doesn't come.

My take on the Wyatt's torch symbol has been totally different until this discussion. I have seen it as a religious symbol of sorts. Like a blazing cross (but without the KKK connotation). A seal of fate, so to speak.

Or a typical revenge sentiment (presented in many stories) where the person who was harmed kills the person who harmed him, but made sure the last thing that person saw on earth was his face.

(Obviously, I don't see revenge satisfaction as pleasure, although I do see times where pleasure is added to it. But the pleasure is not the goal in my view. An emotional equivalent to evening the scores is--knowing the other felt the same kind of loss as the person did. A kind of feeling of completion.)

Now I see the finger in Wyatt's Torch, but it doesn't ring true to my vision of Rand that this would be her intention. I think she would have considered that to be smutty. But who knows?

Interpreting symbols is always dangerous territory, anyway. The reason symbols are symbols is because they are vague enough to speak broadly to different people when that's what you need.

How about a Freudian interpretation, for example? You have a half-assed train ramming a clogged tunnel deep inside a mother's breast mountain and exploding. There's a flaming penis symbol in the distance to boot.

Repressed sex anyone?

Rape?

Michael

In all seriousness, I think your take on Wyatt's Torch as a (non) religious symbol is strong.

But if we take it a notch deeper, the physical similarity to the cross, combined with the pathos of a middle finger, would truly make Wyatt's Torch as anti-Christian in its symbolism as possible.

This would actually fit with many other Christian juxtapositions in AS: atruism vs. selfishness, reality vs. supernatural, reason vs. faith, (the list goes on and on) and now, symbolically with the Torch, submission vs. aggression.

[Brant Gaede]

Something of a middle finger.

That's strong in the symbolism of Wyatt's Torch anyway, his f--- you to those who'd tried to take over.

Ellen

Wyatt's torch was symbolic of two different kinds of tragedy, one past and one soon to be, but with a common cause. As an obscene gesture it worked as something the Wyatt character would do, but not Rand, so it's somewhat softened by her. And "Brother, you asked for it!" was of the same ilk.

--Brant