A man walks into a bar (semi-original)

A man walks into a bar and sees a bunch of old men sitting around talking and drinking. He gets up to the bar, and orders himself a drink, and casually listens into the conversations.

"Yes yes, but number 42."

"Number 42? Two fifty eight."

"Are you kidding me? Thirty three my friend. Thirty three."

The man looks at the bartender and asks, "Hey what's with the numbers?"

"Oh they're just talking politics. Same group, day in and day out."

"But what's with the numbers?"

"Well, they got tired of re-hashing the same old arguments over and over. So they just gave them a number."

A man in back shouts, "Fifty two, as always."

Bartender says, "See, fifty two means he's accusing the other guy of making an appeal to stone, which is a logical fallacy in which a statement is automatically dismissed as ridiculous without taking the evidence into consideration."

"Wow, that's amazing."

"Not really. I've been listening to them for years. Most of them don't even know what they're talking about. I think you could just throw out random numbers and none of them would know it."

Just then an elderly gentleman sits next to him. The guy decides to give it a try, so he looks over and asks, "So my friend. Twenty eight."

He replies, "Twenty eight? Bah! A hundred and thirteen."

"Fifty-two."

"Fifty-two?" The man raises his voice a little. "Seventy three!"

Not knowing what to say next, the man just spouts off random numbers. "Eight nine"

"Eight"

"Ninety six."

"A hundred and four!"

The exchange continues back and forth. Thirty-two. Fifty Six. Seventy nine. One thirty three.

The old man stops and with a huge grin, he says "Ah ... very clever. Very clever. One thirty three. But Sixteen. You never considered sixteen. Checkmate."

The guy, still clueless about what they just argued about, looks to the bartender, holds up his finger to motion for another drink and says, "One."

At that moment, the bar goes silent. They all look to the man. The elderly gentleman is furious. Enraged. He stands up, and with as strong a punch any octogenarian can muster, he hits the guy as hard as he can, and storms out.

Stunned, the guy recomposes himself. The bar goes back to their conversations, and he asks the bartender, "What the hell just happened?"

"That was Saul Greenberg, and you just said he's no better than Hitler."