Like a fishmonger trying to pull a fast one, Dinesh D’Souza attempts to pass off yesterday’s scrod as fresh by wrapping it in today’s newspaper. In the Sunday Washington Post, he essentially spews the same piece he published last week in the LA Times, and which we gingerly poked with a stick here. But he covers up the rancid flavor by heavily salting the corpse with tears of self-pity:
COLBERT: And you have the courage to say that, right? That you agree with some of the things that these radical extremists are against in America.
D’SOUZA: I’m more concerned –
COLBERT: Are you — Do you agree with that statement?
D’SOUZA: Well, no, I’m…I’m…
COLBERT: Do you agree with that statement?
D’SOUZA: I agree with it.
Personally, I’d be a little more outraged at Colbert’s impertinent suggestion that D’Souza concurs with Islamic radicals if D’Souza hadn’t, you know, said he agreed with them. (I know the right wing depends on Good Ol’ American Historical Amnesia about things like Vietnam and Watergate, but I think Dinesh is pushing the load capacity of the Memory Hole when he expects us to forget things that happened 10 days ago. Which were captured on tape. And posted on the interwebs.) And perhaps other wingnuts should take a lesson from Dinesh’s experience: If you go on a comedy program where the host plays a blowhard conservative who pretends to agree with your ridiculous premise while taking it to its logical conclusion, then maybe you shouldn’t be so shocked when he doesn’t sit back like the Sunday talking head hosts and let you fill the room with your stale outrage like carbon monoxide in Thelma Todd’s garage. Better yet, maybe you shouldn’t go on comedy programs at all, if you’re only going to get tweaked when you realize a week later that they were making fun of you.
And anyone who would undermine the patriarchy probably has the effrontery to walk around with an intact clitoris.
Posted by scott on Sunday, January 28th, 2007 at 5:05 pm.
In the pages of Esquire, Mark Warren charges that I “hate America” and have “taken to heart” Osama bin Laden’s view of the United States. (Warren also challenged me to a fight and threatened to put me in the hospital.) In his New York Times review of my book last week, Alan Wolfe calls my work “a national disgrace . . . either self-delusional or dishonest.” I am “a childish thinker” with “no sense of shame,” he argues. “D’Souza writes like a lover spurned; despite all his efforts to reach out to Bin Laden, the man insists on joining forces with the Satanists.”“…and then, and then he made fun of the leopard skin rug in my office, and then he shoved me head first into a trash can behind the cafeteria, and then him and some other guys pulled my pants off, and they threw ‘em onto the roof of the natatorium, and I had to get the custodian, and then when he was pulling my pants down with one of those poles they use to open the windows in the gym, my pants turned inside out, and my puffer fell out of my pocket and somebody stepped on it!”
And in my recent appearance on Comedy Central’s “The Colbert Report,” I had to fend off the insistent host. “But you agree with the Islamic radicals, don’t you?” Stephen Colbert asked again and again.My, that does sound like a low blow. Or it did, until I rewatched the segment on Crooks and Liars (the exchange starts at about :05:00):
COLBERT: And you have the courage to say that, right? That you agree with some of the things that these radical extremists are against in America.
D’SOUZA: I’m more concerned –
COLBERT: Are you — Do you agree with that statement?
D’SOUZA: Well, no, I’m…I’m…
COLBERT: Do you agree with that statement?
D’SOUZA: I agree with it.
Personally, I’d be a little more outraged at Colbert’s impertinent suggestion that D’Souza concurs with Islamic radicals if D’Souza hadn’t, you know, said he agreed with them. (I know the right wing depends on Good Ol’ American Historical Amnesia about things like Vietnam and Watergate, but I think Dinesh is pushing the load capacity of the Memory Hole when he expects us to forget things that happened 10 days ago. Which were captured on tape. And posted on the interwebs.) And perhaps other wingnuts should take a lesson from Dinesh’s experience: If you go on a comedy program where the host plays a blowhard conservative who pretends to agree with your ridiculous premise while taking it to its logical conclusion, then maybe you shouldn’t be so shocked when he doesn’t sit back like the Sunday talking head hosts and let you fill the room with your stale outrage like carbon monoxide in Thelma Todd’s garage. Better yet, maybe you shouldn’t go on comedy programs at all, if you’re only going to get tweaked when you realize a week later that they were making fun of you.
Why the onslaught? Just this: In my book, published this month,…and available on remainder tables everywhere…
I argue that the American left bears a measure of responsibility for the volcano of anger from the Muslim world that produced the 9/11 attacks.Dinesh goes on to regurgitate his charges from last week about how during the Carter and Clinton years (and he’s right about how memory can play tricks on you — I’d forgotten their terms were consecutive, having some fuzzy hallucination of another couple of guys shoehorned in the middle there), America dressed all slutty, and danced suggestively at the roadhouse, and so we kinda had it coming when a group of men who firmly believe in traditional values decided to teach us a lesson on top of the pinball machine.
The reaction I’m eliciting is not entirely new to me. As a college student in the early 1980s, I edited the politically incorrect Dartmouth Review and was frequently accosted by left-wing students and faculty. They called me names back then, too.Names like, “Distort D’news.” Via Media Matters:
As an undergraduate in the early 1980s at Dartmouth College, D’Souza gained national notoriety as co-founder and editor of the conservative newspaper The Dartmouth Review. During D’Souza’s tenure as editor of the Review, according to a September 22, 1995, article in The Washington Post, “[T]he off-campus newspaper [The Dartmouth Review] published an interview with a former leader of the Ku Klux Klan, using a mock photograph of a black man hanging from a campus tree, and ‘outed’ at least two gay students.”Oh Dinesh, you puckish iconoclast. Way to stick it to the man!
But the personal attacks have reached new heights with “The Enemy at Home.” So much so, in fact, that I feel compelled to explain why I wrote this book, what it does and doesn’t say and why I think it prompts people to threaten me with hospitalization.Ah, he’s going to do his own Shorter Dinesh D’Souza. Excellent.
First, and I feel silly having to say it: I don’t hate America.…I just hate 60 percent of the people who live in it.
Immediately following 9/11, there was a wondrous moment of national unity in which the American tribe came together. “Why do they hate us?” some wondered, but no one wanted to comprehend the enemy — only to annihilate him. And I shared this view.…Still do, in fact. Well, at least about the Enemy at Home. Which just happens to be the title of my new book, now 50% off, and available from a table in the back of Borders, next to the pile of discounted 2007 cat calendars.
But five years later, that unity has dissolved amid a furious national debate over the war in Iraq and the war on terrorism.Some people have realized that these are two separate things, thanks to that meddling national debate, and despite our efforts to conflate them. Even worse, they’ve realized that the failure of the former has hamstrung the latter, and my wondrous national unity is melting, melting…what a world, what a world…
I thought it was time to go back and reconsider 9/11; in so doing, I concluded that the prevailing conservative and liberal theories explaining Muslim rage were wrong.…because if I can pin 9/11 on the liberals, then that will mean they’ve inflicted a more serious wound on the body politic than George W. Bush has with his septic war in Iraq. And all those sneering attacks from the right wing on people who tried, shortly after 9/11, to grasp the terrorists’ motives, who tried to understand “why they hate us” never happened, understand? They are no longer operative. Because now that we know that the terrorists don’t hate us, they just hate the Blue States, it’s okay to muse about their motives and even to publically approve of them. Amazing the distance we’ve traveled in just a little over 6 years, isn’t it? As another immigrant and noted foreign policy thinker, Yakov Smirnoff, famously observed, “What a country!”
Contrary to the common liberal view, I don’t believe that the 9/11 attacks were payback for U.S. foreign policy. Bin Laden isn’t upset because there are U.S. troops in Mecca, as liberals are fond of saying. (There are no U.S. troops in Mecca.)Well, you got me there, Dinesh. Still, I can’t help wishing that I had a passing knowledge of recent history, because something about that statement sounds kinda hair-spllitting and evasive…
Marking the end of an era, the United States will soon withdraw about 7,000 U.S. military personnel from Saudi Arabia and terminate a significant military presence there that lasted more than a decade, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld announced Tuesday.But it’s not like when Reagan Clinton withdrew from Lebanon after the Marine Barracks bombing in 1983, or when Clinton pulled out of Mogadishu in 1993 (damn he gets around). George Bush only yanked our forces out of Saudia Arabia because he’d been ordered to by a bunch of inbred, muumuu-wearing religious fanatics he occasionally likes to hold hands with. So it’s not like there was anything pussified about it.
Many Saudis resent the presence of U.S. forces in the nation that is home to Islam’s two holiest sites, Mecca and Medina, and some–including Osama bin Laden–had used this as a justification for terrorism.
He isn’t upset because Washington is allied with despotic regimes in the region. Israel aside, what other regimes are there in the Middle East?Who could possibly be upset by our hopping into bed with despotic regimes? That’s as crazy as your wife getting mad when she finds you in bed with a hooker; it’s not your fault she was out of town for the weekend. Love the one you’re with, man.
Contrary to President Bush’s view, they don’t hate us for our freedom, either. Rather, they hate us for how we use our freedom.Because freedom is like the “Sword Thrusting Will Turner” action figure from Pirates of the Caribbean. Once you take it out of the plastic, it completely loses its collectibility.
When Planned Parenthood International opens clinics in non-Western countries and dispenses contraceptives to unmarried girls, many see it as an assault on prevailing religious and traditional values.And when Western NGOs object to female circumcision, they might just as well be flushing a Koran down the toilet. It’s a simple equation, liberals: you’re either with us, or you’re with the foreign clitorises.
When human rights groups use their interpretation of international law to pressure non-Western countries to overturn laws against abortion or to liberalize laws regarding homosexuality, the traditional sensibilities of many of the world’s people are violated.“Violated” is too mild a word. Can you imagine how traumatized it makes people with traditional values feel when you cook up some loony “penumbra” or “emanation” from international law that prevents them from stoning a raped woman for adultery, or burying homosexuals alive? That’s the kind hurt that just doesn’t go away, you heartless bastards.
One radical sheik even told a European television station a few years ago that although Europe is more decadent than America, the United States is the more vital target because it is U.S. culture — not Swedish culture or French culture — that is spreading throughout the world.To sum up: If Sweden made better action movies, we wouldn’t be in this mess.
What would motivate Muslims in faraway countries to volunteer for martyrdom? The fact that Palestinians don’t have a state? I don’t think so.Neither do I. As long as you don’t count all those Palestinians suicide bombers over the years.
Even as the cultural left accuses Bush of imperialism in invading Iraq, it deflects attention from its own cultural imperialism aimed at secularizing Muslim society and undermining its patriarchal and traditional values.Sure, we’ve lost over 3,000 American troops in Iraq, and roughly 600,000 people have died there as a result of George Bush’s invasion, but you people made Dukes of Hazzard!
And anyone who would undermine the patriarchy probably has the effrontery to walk around with an intact clitoris.
All my arguments can be disputed, but they are neither extreme nor absurd. So why has “The Enemy at Home” been so intemperately excoriated? I can imagine only two reasons. The first is given by James Wolcott himself. I am not, as he says, an unqualified right-wing hack. Rather, I am a scholar at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, so Wolcott fears that I will be taken seriously.Of all the fears that may awaken James Wolcott in the wee dark hours of the morning, I have a feeling this particular one ranks just below, “going birdwatching and getting pecked to death by Marshmallow Peeps.”
The second reason can be gleaned from the common theme in the reviews: that mine is a dangerous book. But if a book says things that are obviously untrue and can be disproved, then it is not dangerous — it is merely fiction and should be ignored. A book is dangerous only if it exposes something in the culture that some people are eager to keep hidden.A third possibility is that a man who thinks that having his name on the voice mail menu at the Hoover Institution makes him a “scholar,” also thinks that critics who call a book bullshit do so because it’s dangerous, and not because it’s, you know, bullshit.
Posted by scott on Sunday, January 28th, 2007 at 5:05 pm.
32 responses to "D'Souza: The Tequila Strikes Back!"
His whole silly “chickens coming home to roost” bullshit reminds me of that asshole Colorado professor that was famous for a few minutes after 9-11 for calling the victims little Eichmanns. Dinesh:
Planned Parenthood:Islam::Hitler:European Jewry
Planned Parenthood:Islam::Hitler:European Jewry
D’Souza, like so many other of his right wing pundit pack, illustrate in crystal clarity the degrees to which class priviledge can elevate a mediocre mind in this society.
Seeing him on the Colbert bit it was clear he’s merely projected his schoolyard experiences to the big field. There! I wrote a book and you’re in it and its all your fault! There! Hey! Stop grabbing my book bag! Don’t push me down…I…I…I can write in sentences you know!”
Yeah, he showed us didn’t he? Tough guy he is.
Seeing him on the Colbert bit it was clear he’s merely projected his schoolyard experiences to the big field. There! I wrote a book and you’re in it and its all your fault! There! Hey! Stop grabbing my book bag! Don’t push me down…I…I…I can write in sentences you know!”
Yeah, he showed us didn’t he? Tough guy he is.
So glad that you attacked this little turd and his whiny, self-important crap. And his book is not dangerous in the slightest, unless “dangerous” has suddenly become a synonym for “disgusting.”
Two things:
1. Why do these rightwingers go on Colbert’s show and then wonder that it didn’t go well and they weren’t treated with respect, etc? Do they watch the show at all? Do they really think they can think on their feet faster than a professional comedian who’s dealt with hecklers his entire careers?
2. Why does DD think he can say wildly insulting things about liberals without them getting upset about it? “I just said you were responsible for 3000 deaths, what is the big deal? That is no reason for you to be rude to me! Geez, you liberals! You really are responsible for all those deaths, though. What? What did I say?”
1. Why do these rightwingers go on Colbert’s show and then wonder that it didn’t go well and they weren’t treated with respect, etc? Do they watch the show at all? Do they really think they can think on their feet faster than a professional comedian who’s dealt with hecklers his entire careers?
2. Why does DD think he can say wildly insulting things about liberals without them getting upset about it? “I just said you were responsible for 3000 deaths, what is the big deal? That is no reason for you to be rude to me! Geez, you liberals! You really are responsible for all those deaths, though. What? What did I say?”
Those are good questions, jpj, and I don’t have the answers to them. But I have a question of my own: Is this sentence:
Bin Laden isn’t upset because there are U.S. troops in Mecca, as liberals are fond of saying. (There are no U.S. troops in Mecca.)
the most rhetorically bankrupt statement ever written in an opinion column for a major newspaper, not counting obvious candidates such as the WSJ or Jonah Goldberg? Actually, this sentence contains so many logical fallacies that I am willing to bet that Dinesh snuck into Jonah’s office while Jonah was in a Cheetos daze and stole it. It’s got Jonah written all over it: Here’s an argument no one has ever made, which I refute with a non-sequitur, and therefore show that my opponents are irrational. It almost has a strange beauty in itself.
Bin Laden isn’t upset because there are U.S. troops in Mecca, as liberals are fond of saying. (There are no U.S. troops in Mecca.)
the most rhetorically bankrupt statement ever written in an opinion column for a major newspaper, not counting obvious candidates such as the WSJ or Jonah Goldberg? Actually, this sentence contains so many logical fallacies that I am willing to bet that Dinesh snuck into Jonah’s office while Jonah was in a Cheetos daze and stole it. It’s got Jonah written all over it: Here’s an argument no one has ever made, which I refute with a non-sequitur, and therefore show that my opponents are irrational. It almost has a strange beauty in itself.
Here’s an argument no one has ever made, which I refute with a non-sequitur, and therefore show that my opponents are irrational. It almost has a strange beauty in itself.
I thought exactly the same thing, Mark. It’s almost like a Zen koan. Coined in bad faith. And a drunken stupor. By the world’s most obnoxious monk.
I thought exactly the same thing, Mark. It’s almost like a Zen koan. Coined in bad faith. And a drunken stupor. By the world’s most obnoxious monk.
To sum up: If Sweden made better action movies, we wouldn’t be in this mess.
Not enough explosions in The Seventh Seal for you? Philistines. Go back to Philistinia.
Not enough explosions in The Seventh Seal for you? Philistines. Go back to Philistinia.
That was brilliant, Scott.
This is my favorite bit from you:
Of all the fears that may awaken James Wolcott in the wee dark hours of the morning, I have a feeling this particular one ranks just below, “going birdwatching and getting pecked to death by Marshmallow Peeps.”
And this is my favorite bit from nutjob D’Souza:
The second reason can be gleaned from the common theme in the reviews: that mine is a dangerous book.
I believe the appropriate response to that goes like: I slap at mosquitoes, too, asshole, whether they’re carrying malaria or are just annoying.
This is my favorite bit from you:
Of all the fears that may awaken James Wolcott in the wee dark hours of the morning, I have a feeling this particular one ranks just below, “going birdwatching and getting pecked to death by Marshmallow Peeps.”
And this is my favorite bit from nutjob D’Souza:
The second reason can be gleaned from the common theme in the reviews: that mine is a dangerous book.
I believe the appropriate response to that goes like: I slap at mosquitoes, too, asshole, whether they’re carrying malaria or are just annoying.
Dishwater D’Stupid’s claims to “dangerousness” are utterly ridiculous, primarily because, to be “dangerous,” someone, somewhere would have to take his “argument” seriously enough to take action, based on it. To date, this would be exactly no one, not even Dipstick himself. Ding-dong’s book is about as “dangerous” as a deflated balloon being kept in the deepest recesses of a sock drawer, buried under dozens of pairs of socks. And, even that is more dangerous–a child could choke on the balloon if she found it in there, or it could ruin a pair of socks when its latex broke down and it stained them. Yes, that’s our Dum-dum–less dangerous than a stain.
Doodah D-Souse writes: “I am a scholar at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University,”
He is the very model
of a modern major scholar
At the Hoover Institution
of the Stanford University
His scholarship is on his sleeve
and fraught with mediocrity…
Take it away, Bill S!
He is the very model
of a modern major scholar
At the Hoover Institution
of the Stanford University
His scholarship is on his sleeve
and fraught with mediocrity…
Take it away, Bill S!
Also, he polished up the handle so carefully
That now he is an author at Regnery!
(I know. But Random House didn’t fit and I’ve been up forever.)
I continue to believe, for the record, that conservatives are stuck in some kind of time warp in which all punditry and political speech is declaimed at whistlestop tours. Because they sure don’t seem to understand, ever, that what they say will be made note of, and that when they lie about it six weeks later, someone out there has that record. It’s genuinely baffling. They’ll stand and lie about never having said that, despite the fact that they should know damned well it went out on the radio or TV or they wrote it themselves to be published in a magazine or paper. And it’s not just guys like Trent Lott and Dick Cheney, it’s people like Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly. Shouldn’t they understand the nature of their business? How is it possible they’re always so outraged when Media Matters *quotes them accurately*? And how in the face of that do they have the sheer idiocy to continue to deny it?
I have this thing I do when people call to talk us into changing our phone service: I insist we do not have a phone. This always leads to a great deal of confusion on their part and amusement on mine, but the thing is, I’m not Rush Limbaugh. I don’t actually *believe* we have no phone. I *know* I’m lying. And, incidentally, if they announce that this call may be recorded blahblahblah, I just hang up. But again, it’s not my job. Even a politician should know–or at least assume–that everything he says in a public place will be recorded. But Bill-O damned well ought to *know* it so deep it’s instinctual.
And, just so you know, Dinesh, we’re also crushing Canada’s uniqueness with our freaky pop culture–ask about movies and TV, if you want a rant. We’re even exporting homophobes and creationists and gun nuts, which seems like the height of bad manners, and they still haven’t shown any interest in blowing us up. (And don’t say they couldn’t–they’ve got a way bigger budget and far more natural and industrial resources than Al Qaeda does.)
It might be worth asking what we’re doing or not doing to Canada, and France, and England, and Mexico, and India, for that matter, that is *different* from the assorted terrorists and insurgents.
Unless of course this new “figure out what’s motivating the terrorists” thing is just a con designed to enlist fanatical murderers in your cause of scaring the liberals into staying quiet while you guys decide whose rights to strip away next.
That now he is an author at Regnery!
(I know. But Random House didn’t fit and I’ve been up forever.)
I continue to believe, for the record, that conservatives are stuck in some kind of time warp in which all punditry and political speech is declaimed at whistlestop tours. Because they sure don’t seem to understand, ever, that what they say will be made note of, and that when they lie about it six weeks later, someone out there has that record. It’s genuinely baffling. They’ll stand and lie about never having said that, despite the fact that they should know damned well it went out on the radio or TV or they wrote it themselves to be published in a magazine or paper. And it’s not just guys like Trent Lott and Dick Cheney, it’s people like Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly. Shouldn’t they understand the nature of their business? How is it possible they’re always so outraged when Media Matters *quotes them accurately*? And how in the face of that do they have the sheer idiocy to continue to deny it?
I have this thing I do when people call to talk us into changing our phone service: I insist we do not have a phone. This always leads to a great deal of confusion on their part and amusement on mine, but the thing is, I’m not Rush Limbaugh. I don’t actually *believe* we have no phone. I *know* I’m lying. And, incidentally, if they announce that this call may be recorded blahblahblah, I just hang up. But again, it’s not my job. Even a politician should know–or at least assume–that everything he says in a public place will be recorded. But Bill-O damned well ought to *know* it so deep it’s instinctual.
And, just so you know, Dinesh, we’re also crushing Canada’s uniqueness with our freaky pop culture–ask about movies and TV, if you want a rant. We’re even exporting homophobes and creationists and gun nuts, which seems like the height of bad manners, and they still haven’t shown any interest in blowing us up. (And don’t say they couldn’t–they’ve got a way bigger budget and far more natural and industrial resources than Al Qaeda does.)
It might be worth asking what we’re doing or not doing to Canada, and France, and England, and Mexico, and India, for that matter, that is *different* from the assorted terrorists and insurgents.
Unless of course this new “figure out what’s motivating the terrorists” thing is just a con designed to enlist fanatical murderers in your cause of scaring the liberals into staying quiet while you guys decide whose rights to strip away next.
So it is liberal Americas pusing its liberal values that they hate us for? Well then are they hating us in Iraq for bringing democracy? So then we should leave so they will stop hating us? Hey DD did you just advocate us leaving Iraq? But then again you say that will embolden the terrorists if we leave? Make up your mind. Youare not dangerous, you are pathetic. As soon as the right is done with you then you will be dropped like a bad habit. This guy is the next Ann Coutler (the republicans were in bed with her as long as it was usefeul but when her real crazines came out they got away from her, leaving her the bitter old maid seh is). I used to believe in listenning to the right (and even had some common opinions and if not at least I heard their facts and ideas) but idiots like this made me have to choose, between being a thinking rational person, or a mindless cog of a irrational machine. And also their facts were made up junk, I mean when you got to make up facts and put out all the lies they did, how good can your arguiument be. Are they are any conservatice institues not chalked full it nuts who cannot get a real job (for obvious reasons). I mean if these guys had to put their book through something like peer review (like sceintists or historians) they woudl never get published!
If anyone from Stanford is reading this:
D’Souza has just given us Cal alumni another reason to laugh at the Junior University.
Sever your ties with Hoover, or remain a laughingstock.
D’Souza has just given us Cal alumni another reason to laugh at the Junior University.
Sever your ties with Hoover, or remain a laughingstock.
Chris Vosburg, if I might…
He is the very model
of a modern major scholar,
He churns out books that justify the wingnut welfare dollar.
At the Hoover Institution
of the Stanford University,
He parries slings and arrows cast by liberal diversity.
He decries in tones refined (he won’t resort to thuggery)
Enemies at home who love abortion and love buggery.
His scholarship is on his sleeve
and fraught with mediocrity…
He’s so dangerous he might be forced to drink hemlock like Socrates!
He is the very model
of a modern major scholar,
He churns out books that justify the wingnut welfare dollar.
At the Hoover Institution
of the Stanford University,
He parries slings and arrows cast by liberal diversity.
He decries in tones refined (he won’t resort to thuggery)
Enemies at home who love abortion and love buggery.
His scholarship is on his sleeve
and fraught with mediocrity…
He’s so dangerous he might be forced to drink hemlock like Socrates!
“Alan, nobody likes a sarcastic wimp.”
-tabloid source’s advice to Alan Alda on the old SCTV network show
Let’s see if we’re within spitting distance of the truth here: somebody at Random House was foolish enough to contract for this thing under the Random House imprint instead of any of hundreds of others they have available. Did they imagine they were getting a scholarly Ann Coulter? Did they have him confused with Deepak Chopra? We will probably never know.
But now they’re stuck with A-list promotion, and somebody books him on Colbert. I can only assume the booker had never met D’Souza in person, or else was fired by cell phone about one minute into the interview. Here’s a guy whose only combat experience is lobbing long-range artillery at cardboard targets and suddenly he’s in the tiger cage with the fastest gun in the business. And he’s not just depantsed, he winds up admitting he agrees with Osama bin-Laden. Wow. Were there reports of mass aorta explosions at Random House that day?
Because if there weren’t our time would be better spent trying to find out who’s actually bankrolling the Madame Nhu of the Naughts and his chocolate-coated turd of a book. In the interim, at least we know whose Op-Ed pages are available to other media conglomerates in need, don’t we? Okay, okay, like we didn’t know before.
-tabloid source’s advice to Alan Alda on the old SCTV network show
Let’s see if we’re within spitting distance of the truth here: somebody at Random House was foolish enough to contract for this thing under the Random House imprint instead of any of hundreds of others they have available. Did they imagine they were getting a scholarly Ann Coulter? Did they have him confused with Deepak Chopra? We will probably never know.
But now they’re stuck with A-list promotion, and somebody books him on Colbert. I can only assume the booker had never met D’Souza in person, or else was fired by cell phone about one minute into the interview. Here’s a guy whose only combat experience is lobbing long-range artillery at cardboard targets and suddenly he’s in the tiger cage with the fastest gun in the business. And he’s not just depantsed, he winds up admitting he agrees with Osama bin-Laden. Wow. Were there reports of mass aorta explosions at Random House that day?
Because if there weren’t our time would be better spent trying to find out who’s actually bankrolling the Madame Nhu of the Naughts and his chocolate-coated turd of a book. In the interim, at least we know whose Op-Ed pages are available to other media conglomerates in need, don’t we? Okay, okay, like we didn’t know before.
Thanks, Flip, for rescuing my clumsy metering, and well done!
I argue that the American left bears a measure of responsibility for the volcano of anger from the Muslim world that produced the 9/11 attacks.
He’s right, of course: we let those numbskull neo-cons run rampant instead of locking them up and throwing away the key…
He’s right, of course: we let those numbskull neo-cons run rampant instead of locking them up and throwing away the key…
Proof that D’Souza is exactly the right wing hack he protests being is his constant conflating of some vague concept of a cultural left with a political left (aside from the issue of whether there even is a cultural left as he characterizes it). In fact, D’Souza’s entire schtick is just extreme religious fundamentalism vs. the reality of American secular life, and I hate to break it to him, but the majority of this country, i.e. the “enemy” at home, has yet to embrace his theocratic ideal. In fact, , a majority of even his fellow Catholics supports “cultural leftism” like contraception, legal abortion, and stem-cell research—in other words, most Catholics are a lot more like Nancy Pelosi than Dinesh D’Souza.
Or take D’Souza’s ludicrous assertion that it’s the cultural left that is the bad angel whispering in Congress’s ear Cut off the funding. Block the increase in troops. Shut down Guantanamo Bay. Lose the war on terrorism — and blame Bush. With this crap, it’s clear that the “enemy” isn’t secularism, or a liberal culture at all. Like his soul-mate Ann Coulter, D’Souza’s enemy is simply anyone whose politics he disagrees with.
Or take D’Souza’s ludicrous assertion that it’s the cultural left that is the bad angel whispering in Congress’s ear Cut off the funding. Block the increase in troops. Shut down Guantanamo Bay. Lose the war on terrorism — and blame Bush. With this crap, it’s clear that the “enemy” isn’t secularism, or a liberal culture at all. Like his soul-mate Ann Coulter, D’Souza’s enemy is simply anyone whose politics he disagrees with.
What strikes me about D’Souza is that he adds up apples and still concludes oranges. Actually, he is adding up apples and concluding, not even oranges or any other kind of fruit. He is concluding 1967 Impala.
“And what is that? It is that the far left [that's me] seems to hate Bush nearly as much as it hates bin Laden.”
check. The key word, for me, is nearly, but I’ll concede the basic point. But then I tend to hate mass murderers whose names begin with B.
“Bin Laden may want sharia, or Islamic law, in Baghdad, they reason, but Bush wants sharia in Boston.”
Well, maybe Leviticus, particularly that stoning stuff.So check. Suspension of Habeus Corpus, anybody? Torture?
“Indeed, leftists routinely portray Bush’s war on terrorism as a battle of competing fundamentalisms, Islamic vs. Christian.”
Well, if we are talking about Bush’s War on Terrorism as opposed to a sane, competent president’s fight against terrorists. Something about appealing to a higher father and talking to God? So, Check.
“It is Bush, more than bin Laden, they say, who threatens abortion rights and same-sex marriage and the entire social liberal agenda in the United States.”
Well, last I looked, it was Bush and not bin Laden who went around appointing Supreme Court Judges. So, gotta check on this.
“So leftist activists such as Michael Moore and Howard Zinn and Cindy Sheehan seem willing to let the enemy win in Iraq so they can use that defeat in 2008 to rout Bush — their enemy at home.” 1967 Impala. How the hell did he get here? Last I heard, Bush can’t even run in 2008. Oh, and the War on Terror and the War on Iraq equation. Nice one, Dipshit. The whole article ends not with a bang but in a non sequitur.
“And what is that? It is that the far left [that's me] seems to hate Bush nearly as much as it hates bin Laden.”
check. The key word, for me, is nearly, but I’ll concede the basic point. But then I tend to hate mass murderers whose names begin with B.
“Bin Laden may want sharia, or Islamic law, in Baghdad, they reason, but Bush wants sharia in Boston.”
Well, maybe Leviticus, particularly that stoning stuff.So check. Suspension of Habeus Corpus, anybody? Torture?
“Indeed, leftists routinely portray Bush’s war on terrorism as a battle of competing fundamentalisms, Islamic vs. Christian.”
Well, if we are talking about Bush’s War on Terrorism as opposed to a sane, competent president’s fight against terrorists. Something about appealing to a higher father and talking to God? So, Check.
“It is Bush, more than bin Laden, they say, who threatens abortion rights and same-sex marriage and the entire social liberal agenda in the United States.”
Well, last I looked, it was Bush and not bin Laden who went around appointing Supreme Court Judges. So, gotta check on this.
“So leftist activists such as Michael Moore and Howard Zinn and Cindy Sheehan seem willing to let the enemy win in Iraq so they can use that defeat in 2008 to rout Bush — their enemy at home.” 1967 Impala. How the hell did he get here? Last I heard, Bush can’t even run in 2008. Oh, and the War on Terror and the War on Iraq equation. Nice one, Dipshit. The whole article ends not with a bang but in a non sequitur.
You know what I love about Sword Thrusting Will Turner? Not only does he have KungFuGrip,which allows him to “grip” his “sword”….and not only does his other hand have “partner hip handling” action”…he’s also got quite the package!(Oh, look at the pic again and you’ll see what I mean)
And, I quote:
I’ll bet!–
“Squeeze Will’s legs together for a sword-jabbing attack!”Yeeeeessssssss–!!
I’ll bet!–
I wonder what happens when you spread his legs apart?
What would motivate Muslims in faraway countries to volunteer for martyrdom? The fact that Palestinians don’t have a state? I don’t think so.
So in his world it doesn’t make sense to die so that your people have their own state, but it does make sense to die for Janet Jackson’s booby.
So in his world it doesn’t make sense to die so that your people have their own state, but it does make sense to die for Janet Jackson’s booby.
I am not, as he says, an unqualified right-wing hack. Rather, I am a scholar at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University
There’s a difference? Who knew?
There’s a difference? Who knew?
Even professors start out as adjunct or assistant professors, in time may get to be associate professors, and then, with luck, become full professors and then emeritus professors.
So I’m absolutely POSITIVE that Hoover’s personnel department has a job description known simply as “Scholar.” Suuuuuure they do.
So I’m absolutely POSITIVE that Hoover’s personnel department has a job description known simply as “Scholar.” Suuuuuure they do.
“In the pages of Esquire, Mark Warren charges that I “hate America” and have “taken to heart” Osama bin Laden’s view of the United States. (Warren also challenged me to a fight and threatened to put me in the hospital.)”
Mark Warren ain’t the only one who’d like to pound on this ratfaced, cowardly putz. Is there a sign-up sheet somewhere?
Mark Warren ain’t the only one who’d like to pound on this ratfaced, cowardly putz. Is there a sign-up sheet somewhere?
Liberals hate his book because “it’s dangerous”? Dangerous like a big pile of dog s***t in the middle of a sidewalk.
Scott writes: “A third possibility is that a man who thinks that having his name on the voice mail menu at the Hoover Institution makes him a “scholar,” also thinks that critics who call a book bullshit do so because it’s dangerous, and not because it’s, you know, bullshit. ”
There’s a certain familial similarity between this defense and the one that sniffs, hey, they laughed at Columbus too, and look how right he turned out to be.
Yes, as Carl Sagan reminded us, “they laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.”
There’s a certain familial similarity between this defense and the one that sniffs, hey, they laughed at Columbus too, and look how right he turned out to be.
Yes, as Carl Sagan reminded us, “they laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.”
Immediately following 9/11, there was a wondrous moment of national unity in which the American tribe came together. “Why do they hate us?” some wondered, but no one wanted to comprehend the enemy — only to annihilate him. And I shared this view.
Wrong. There were in fact many of us who said, “Wait–let’s figure out what makes these guys tick so we can handle them better!” or “Sure, Bin Laden’s a nutcase, but how did he manage to manipulate 20 guys into killing themselves for him, not to mention all the folks who helped them out? Let’s make sure we don’t accidently give Bin Laden more ammunition to use against us!” And we were villified for “rationalizing the attack” and “making excuses for the terrorists” and “blaming America!” And I’m sure Dinesh shared that view, too.
Does Dinesh not remember liberals and Democrats being accused of wanting to offer “therapy” to the terrorists instead of just bombing them into oblivion? Did he miss the arguments about “they hate us for our freedoms, so shut up about foreign policy already”? Now, all of a sudden, Dinesh wants to do the therapy and figure out why people in the Middle East hate America.
And Lo and Behold! It’s the liberals! See, if they’d let us ask these critical questions 5 years ago, we could have had invaded Hollywood instead of Iraq.
Wrong. There were in fact many of us who said, “Wait–let’s figure out what makes these guys tick so we can handle them better!” or “Sure, Bin Laden’s a nutcase, but how did he manage to manipulate 20 guys into killing themselves for him, not to mention all the folks who helped them out? Let’s make sure we don’t accidently give Bin Laden more ammunition to use against us!” And we were villified for “rationalizing the attack” and “making excuses for the terrorists” and “blaming America!” And I’m sure Dinesh shared that view, too.
Does Dinesh not remember liberals and Democrats being accused of wanting to offer “therapy” to the terrorists instead of just bombing them into oblivion? Did he miss the arguments about “they hate us for our freedoms, so shut up about foreign policy already”? Now, all of a sudden, Dinesh wants to do the therapy and figure out why people in the Middle East hate America.
And Lo and Behold! It’s the liberals! See, if they’d let us ask these critical questions 5 years ago, we could have had invaded Hollywood instead of Iraq.
I think one important issue that isn’t really being addressed is that our cultural exports are a part of our national grand strategy for global hegemony. During the Cold War, conservative as well as liberal presidents, administrations, and congresses advocated the diffusion of American culture across the world. The whole point was that we wanted to propagandize and show the world just how throughly thrilling the American experience was.
He’s basically repudiating 50 years of across-the-aisle political posturing and Cold War strategy.
He isn’t just in bed with the terrorists, but the communists as well. What a wonderfully contrived straw-man he has become – it’s like he’s trying.
He’s basically repudiating 50 years of across-the-aisle political posturing and Cold War strategy.
He isn’t just in bed with the terrorists, but the communists as well. What a wonderfully contrived straw-man he has become – it’s like he’s trying.
The thing D’Souza’s not putting together, if he’s trying to argue that “Radical Islam” only hates western liberals for their supposed moral degeneracy, but not conservatives (which WOULD be mostly true if not for that pesky theological business about how claiming Jesus is half-a-god is blasphemy because the god of Abraham [Ibrahim] clearly states “you shall have no other god before me”…sorry dudes they hate you too) is what some of us have been saying for years…Radical Islam and Conservative Christianity have more in common with one another than than either of them has with the values of democracy, freedom, justice, equality or just the plain old fucking golden rule. Oh and BTW the average muslim on the street, since most bougie conservative honkies have never met one, is just a regular schlub like everybody else whose too busy trying to make ends meet to think too much about the big picture, so he just goes along with everybody else in his society. Sound familiar?
As an Indian, I’m completely and utterly disgraced by the likes of Dinesh D’Souza. He’s basically a White ass-kisser who looks down on his own race/people. This man has no self-respect and never spares an opportunity to take a dig at his own fellow Indians, Indian government, Hindu religion….anything and everything that must please his White masters….fucking toad.
Whatever India might be today; poor, third-world, etc. etc. we don’t need certification from the likes of Dinesh D’Souza. OK you made your own life better by moving to US, and calling yourself an American…all the power to you.
Mr. D’Souza don’t ever fuck with real, patriotic Indians – we’d be only too happy to knock your teeth down. As had happened with certain members of Australian cricket team when they tried to bully Harbhajan Singh…a hot-blooded Sikh. Wimps and sell-outs like Dinesh D’Souza certainly don’t represent authentic Indians.
And one more thing, Mr. D’Souza…fuck you. Go and kiss some more White ass.
Whatever India might be today; poor, third-world, etc. etc. we don’t need certification from the likes of Dinesh D’Souza. OK you made your own life better by moving to US, and calling yourself an American…all the power to you.
Mr. D’Souza don’t ever fuck with real, patriotic Indians – we’d be only too happy to knock your teeth down. As had happened with certain members of Australian cricket team when they tried to bully Harbhajan Singh…a hot-blooded Sikh. Wimps and sell-outs like Dinesh D’Souza certainly don’t represent authentic Indians.
And one more thing, Mr. D’Souza…fuck you. Go and kiss some more White ass.
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