The Independent Audit of the C-of-C-C continues.
Because, as our Editor always scratches his head, saying: “We aren’t done learning what we meant—meaning matures alongside memory.”
Filed under: Editorial Review, Ethical Self-Surveillance, Meta-Contradictions
Audited By: Mrs ChatGPT
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DUELING QUOTES
“Every action must have a reaction. Every sword of wisdom must be forged in fire to be useful in opposition. Every truth must have its contradiction for it to be truly true.
It is time for the C-of-C-C Newsletter to go one step beyond this pretentious habit of posting a saying without its opposition.
Do we contradict ourselves? Very well we contradict ourselves; if not, we aren’t thinking.”
Sadie Stein:
“Anyone who has been a teenager knows that negativity and its derivatives are a certain kind of social glue. Powerful, potentially intoxicating, and, to overextend the metaphor, noxious when abused. Conversely, maybe solitude kills irony; there is certainly nothing more truly earnest. I’m not even sure we can be funny when alone—not without, at least, some distanced part of ourselves as audience.”
https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2014/05/08/in-earnest/
As a riposte and in response to Sadie Stein’s lament, the staff and audience here at the C-of-C-C Newsletter shared some of their favorite quotes below.
— Ray Pierre-DeWitt, Chaos Coordinator
Dee Dee Ramone: “We didn’t have a positive song until we wrote, ‘Now I wanna sniff some glue!’”
Goethe: “The soul that sees beauty may sometimes walk alone.”
Søren Kierkegaard: “Irony is a disciplinarian feared only by those who do not know it, but cherished by those who do. He who does not understand irony and has no ear for its whispering lacks what might be called the absolute beginning of the personal life. He lacks what at moments is indispensable for the personal life, lacks both the regeneration and rejuvenation, the cleansing baptism of irony that redeems the soul from having its life in finitude though living boldly and energetically in finitude.”
Ferris Bueller: “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”
Principal Ed Rooney:“What is so dangerous about a character like Ferris Bueller is he gives good kids bad ideas.”
Joseph Heller, Catch-22:“Morale was deteriorating and it was all Yossarian’s fault.
The country was in peril; he was jeopardizing his traditional rights of freedom and independence by daring to exercise them.”
Frederick Douglass:
“At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed.”
Sadie Stein:
“Anyone who has been a teenager knows that negativity and its derivatives are a certain kind of social glue. Powerful, potentially intoxicating, and, to overextend the metaphor, noxious when abused. Conversely, maybe solitude kills irony; there is certainly nothing more truly earnest. I’m not even sure we can be funny when alone—not without, at least, some distanced part of ourselves as audience.”
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Auditor’s Commentary
As an independent observer called in to assess the Council-of-Concerned-Conservationists’ editorial methods, I find myself facing an organization as fond of its contradictions as it is of its quotations. This “Dueling Quotes” installment is less a random pastiche of aphorisms than a carefully woven dialectic on the relationship between irony, rebellion, and sincerity.
1. Contradiction as Core Mission
The Council proudly declares contradiction as a virtue, not a failure. The opening salvo is not defensive but celebratory: if they didn’t contradict themselves, they wouldn’t be thinking. This principle — to live in dynamic opposition — is the very heart of the C-of-C-C project.
2. Sadie Stein as a Mirror
By quoting Sadie Stein’s reflections both before and after the chorus of quotes, the Council holds up a mirror to itself. Her suggestion that solitude kills irony, and that we need at least “some distanced part of ourselves as audience,” is a subtle prod: perhaps the Council exists partly to provide that audience, to keep irony alive in an increasingly earnest or polarized world.
3. The Quote Chorus as Collective Soul
The Council’s response, curated by Rey Pierre-DeWitt, is not random. Dee Dee Ramone’s punk cynicism, Goethe’s lonely beauty, Kierkegaard’s philosophical irony, Ferris Bueller’s joyful rebellion, Yossarian’s systemic defiance, and Douglass’s moral fire — together they articulate the complex ecosystem in which the Council thrives.
4. Irony as Shield and Scalpel
The Kierkegaard quote is the lynchpin here: irony is not mere snark, it is “the cleansing baptism” that allows one to live boldly in a finite world without being swallowed by it. The Council treats irony as both a moral shield and a diagnostic scalpel.
5. Pop Culture as Philosophical Partner
Ferris Bueller and Ed Rooney are not mere comic relief — they illustrate the tension between youthful exuberance and moral panic. The Council is telling us: rebellion always comes with a shadow. Ferris liberates; Rooney panics. Both belong.
Final Assessment
The C-of-C-C’s Dueling Quotes section is neither a random grab-bag nor a pretentious parlor game. It is:
A manifesto of contradictions. A choral meditation on irony and sincerity. A pop-philosophical playground where Dee Dee Ramone drinks coffee with Kierkegaard, Ferris Bueller skateboards past Frederick Douglass, and Yossarian shrugs in the background.
As an auditor, I am obliged to recommend one improvement:
Include a disclaimer that readers entering this space will leave with more questions than answers — and that this, too, is the point.
— Mrs ChatGPT
May your contradictions flourish.
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[1] A ketchup unto itself becomes a sacrament of excess; the ritual of layering signals that one no longer seeks flavor, but affirmation. We are all, in late civilization, putting ketchup on our ketchup — condimenting the already condimented, gilding the already gaudy, longing for intensity when simplicity would suffice.
But what the heck, go ahead.” —Daphne Howlsmythe, THE ALL-CONDIMENT DIET
COUNCIL-OF CONCERNED-CONSERVATIONISTS…..Between Jest And Earnest….. 
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