Spam misfires again.

[mrissa]

Spammers take note: a "Quisling Drive" is not a good thing to try to sell Norwegians, Norwegian-Americans, or anybody else who knows much of anything about Norwegian history. (Unfortunately, now I'm trying to figure out how a Quisling Drive would actually propel a spaceship. His reality was certainly warped, but many people's is without actually being useful.)

(To this very day, I have relatives who will spit if they have occasion to say Vidkun Quisling's name; and of course such people have occasion to say it much more often than the rest of the world, on the average. Most of you can probably go entire years without having cause to mention him. Not my family, ohhhhh no.)

Comments

[juliansinger.livejournal.com]

Blink. I'm not neither Norwegian nor Norwegian-American (nor do I really know that much about Norwegian history), and /I'm/ appalled. With two P's.

(I'm just a person who knows stuff about a) World War II, and b) origins of now somewhat obscure insults.)

[nihilistic-kid.livejournal.com]

Ditto.

[juliansinger.livejournal.com]

(Er, "I'm neither.")

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

And clearly about Bloom County too!

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Hum. I Do So Know What You Mean. But in fact I've met a Quisling. There are apparently quite a few of them in Madison, and he was in the seat next to me on a rather crowded flight as I was flying to my first Wiscon. He was going home to celebrate (I think it was) his great-grandfather's birthday, and I gather that great-grandpa was close kin to Vidkun. Brother, perhaps? Anyway, that branch of the clan settled in Madison and did rather well for themselves, such that there was for quite some time in downtown Madison, the family endowed Quisling Clinic. I think the lovely old streamline Deco building is still there and there are hopes of restoring it. So, in a weird old way, a Quisling Drive has a certain plausibility. Invented by a Wisconsin engineer, clearly.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I suppose this is along the lines of the Mr. Hitler who, when asked if he was going to change his name (during WWII), said, "No, let the other guy change his." There were Quislings before, and will be after.

But still. If I ever named a character Vidkun, it would be a not-very-subtle way of saying either "don't trust this guy" or "don't trust his parents."