Over on ADS-L, the hounds have been tracking down a quotation about comparative degrees of cultural evolution in different groups. On the 5th, Stephen Goranson supplied this report of a quotation on the subject, concerning Benjamin Disraeli, twice Prime Minister of the U.K. in Victorian times, and the only P.M. of Jewish birth:
Mr. D’Israeli never forgets — never allows others to forget — that he is of that race whence all our prophets came and Jesus Christ himself was born….
On one occasion, when taunted with being a descendant perhaps of the thief on the cross, he replied, in proud and soul-stirring words, “My blood thrills with the traditions of my race! My ancestors were lords of the tabernacle and princes of Israel when his were naked savages in the woods of Northern Germany.”
Yesterday, Geoff Nunberg supplied a wonderful Italian variant that crucially involves the Italian sexual slur frocio ‘faggot, queer’ (plural froci).
