Was there ever a time when our pundits were smarter than our populace? Granted, the 24-hour news cycle – much like the Iraq War – has forced cable chat shows to lower their recruitment standards to the point where even Dan Riehl is asked his opinion of the pre-fab controversy de jour. But back in the Fifties, when television news was still in diapers –and cloth diapers, the kind you had to safety pin! – every town of respectable size had one or more local newspapers, often both morning and evening editions, and not infrequently, an indigenous brewery. So there was plenty of opportunity for Triple A farm club-quality blowhards to dip their spleen in printers ink and give it a squeeze over the Op-Ed page.
But now newspapers are undergoing a mass extinction event the likes of which hasn’t been seen since the Permian-Triassic transition, and yet scarce remaining column inches are turned over weekly to the likes of Jonah Goldberg, a man who – as public intellectuals go – makes Jethro Bodine look like Bertrand Russell.
I used to believe that the most annoying characteristic of stupid-people-who-are-paid-to-tell-us-what-to-think is their factory standard belief that they’re smarter than everyone else. But I’ve changed my mind; that rates a distant second now, behind their conviction that everyone else is not only less smart, but as stupid as a tubeworm. I suspect this is a byproduct of Wingnut Welfare: if someone were to award me a sinecure where all I had to do was lift my leg periodically and expel some gaseous, half-digested insight, then bleg for readers to email me supporting evidence, I might also come to the conclusion that being smart is effortless. And anyone who isn’t getting paid for sitting around all day eating Frosted Pop-Tarts and downloading Star Trek slash is a barely sentient loser.
So Jonah breezes in, all Harold Hill-like, and to sell us rubes a wagonload of tubas:
Sure, all of those things are true; with the addition of obscenities, ad hominems, and gay schtick, that describes me to a “t” as well, so ixnay on teh arsnesshay, capisce?
FWIW, Jonah is fast becoming one of my least favorite wingnuts, ‘cos it’s true; teh stupid, it does burn!
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*…well! I almost got out of this sucker without using language that would make dainty blossoms like Fatha Donohue blush and weep. Well, too bad, ‘cos “s.o.s.,”as everyone knows, stands for “sacks of shit.” Or, the less intuitive, “Fatha Donohue.” Use interchangeably, at your own discretion.
But now newspapers are undergoing a mass extinction event the likes of which hasn’t been seen since the Permian-Triassic transition, and yet scarce remaining column inches are turned over weekly to the likes of Jonah Goldberg, a man who – as public intellectuals go – makes Jethro Bodine look like Bertrand Russell.
I used to believe that the most annoying characteristic of stupid-people-who-are-paid-to-tell-us-what-to-think is their factory standard belief that they’re smarter than everyone else. But I’ve changed my mind; that rates a distant second now, behind their conviction that everyone else is not only less smart, but as stupid as a tubeworm. I suspect this is a byproduct of Wingnut Welfare: if someone were to award me a sinecure where all I had to do was lift my leg periodically and expel some gaseous, half-digested insight, then bleg for readers to email me supporting evidence, I might also come to the conclusion that being smart is effortless. And anyone who isn’t getting paid for sitting around all day eating Frosted Pop-Tarts and downloading Star Trek slash is a barely sentient loser.
So Jonah breezes in, all Harold Hill-like, and to sell us rubes a wagonload of tubas:
If you believe that the war on terror is real — really real — then you think it is inevitable that more and bloodier conflicts with radical Islam are on the way, regardless of who is in the White House. If the clash of civilizations is afoot, then the issues separating Democrats and Republicans are as pressing as whether the captain of the Titanic is going to have fish or chicken for dinner. There’s a showdown coming. Period. Full stop. My task isn’t to convince you that this view is correct (though I basically believe it is), but merely that it is honestly and firmly held by many on the right and by a comparative handful on the left.Personally, I’m hard-pressed to name anybody on the left who still believes this. (And the first person who mentions Joe Lieberman gets bitch-slapped with a copy of Kenneth Pollack’s The Threatening Storm. But I could be wrong. Does anybody with any credibility on the left actually think there’s a “clash of civilizations” in progress? Is liberal Western democracy about to be felled by the reaping scimitars of the Taliban? I don’t know…To me, the fact that a bunch of illiterate religious fanatics abetted a bunch of middle-class religious fanatics who managed to knock down some buildings and kill 3000 people in a sneak attack isn’t evidence of a “clash of civilizations.” It’s the logline for a remake of The Mouse That Roared directed by James Wan.
And that’s the problem: Only a handful of people on the left — and far too few liberals — see radical Islamists as a bigger threat than George W. Bush.Maybe that’s because George W. Bush is in charge of the most powerful country on the planet, while – our allies the Saudis excepted – “radical Islamists” aren’t in charge of any country, except the country George Bush put them in charge of.
Which is why if you really think that we are in an existential conflict with a deadly enemy, there’s a good case for the Democrats to take the reins. Not because Democrats are better, wiser or more responsible about foreign policy. That’s a case for Democrats to make about themselves and certainly not one many on the right believe. No, the argument, felt in places we don’t talk about at cocktail partiesGreat. Now I’m thinking about the places Jonah DOES feel at cocktail parties.
–is that the Democrats have been such irresponsible backseat drivers that they have to be forced to take the wheel to grasp how treacherous the road ahead is.Um. If I were sitting in the back seat while Dad careened all over a mountain highway in a torrential downpour, blowing past roadblocks and flashing signs screaming “Bridge Out Ahead,” and he suddenly turned the wheel over to me, I’d do what most of the backseat driving Democrats are advising: Turn the Fucking Car Around.
The current spectacle in Congress has made it clear that the Democrats don’t believe that the war in Iraq is America’s war. They think it’s Bush’s vanity project turned albatrossAs stupid as Jonah is, I have to admit, this is one of the most cogent and succinct descriptions of the Iraq War I have ever read.
It was always a bit of a myth that partisanship ended at the water’s edge.Or at least, it’s been a pretty moribund tradition every since the Kosovo crisis, when Trent Lott remarked, “You can support the troops without supporting the president.”
But Democrats have debunked, exposed and parodied that myth. Of course, they claim that the president started it by running foreign policy as a partisan enterprise. Fine, there’s obviously some truth there.And the Five Day Forecast for Hell: Overnight temperatures dipping into the teens, with highs of in the low 30s. Watch for icy, but well-paved road conditions.
But when the likes of Sens. Hillary Clinton and Jay Rockefeller whine that they were misled into war, they’re declaring that they never took their responsibilities seriously in the first place.Translation: You fucked up. You trusted us.
Of course, many Democrats sincerely believe that the war on terror is real and that Iraq is a dangerous distraction from it. But that’s not the issue.“Some people sincerely believe that my throwing a bucket of gasoline rather than water on this smoldering pile of leaves in the yard is only going to feed the fire and cause it to quickly get out of control and burn down the house. But that’s not the issue.”
Terror hawks think you can’t both believe the war on terror is real and argue for handing Iraq over to the enemy — even if we shouldn’t have gone in in the first place. If the war on terror really isn’t that big a deal, hurray. Then Democrats can’t do that much damageBecause frankly, after 6 years of Bush and Cheney, there’s nothing left to break.
–and we can all argue about the minimum wage and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s plane.Judging by the recent content on Fox News, a Clash of Civilizations certainly hasn’t inhibited you from yakking about the plane thing.
If it is a big deal, Democrats need to be slapped out of their anti-Bush hysteria by real life. Australian Prime Minister John Howard — a Churchillian figure to hawks —I frankly doubt that John Howard is a Churchillian figure to parakeets.
–said this week that Al Qaeda is “praying” for a Democratic victory in 2008. It may be.Dr. E. Douglas Whitehead, a John Holmesian figure to his fellow penis enlargement surgeons, said this week that Jonah is “praying” for two more inches so he can finally urinate standing up. He may well be.
But what happens when a President Clinton or Obama has a 9/11 — or worse — on her or his watch?\I’m guessing they probably won’t take an impromptu tour of Midwestern military bases while refusing to come out of the can on Air Force One.
Or is faced by the prospect of an Iraq run by terrorists? I’d like to hope that president would rise to the occasion, out of conviction or political self-interest.I’d settle for a president who’d just put down the damn childrens book.
For hawks who believe that the Bush White House either hasn’t been hawkish enough or has done a much better job than the conventional wisdom holds (remember, no terrorist attacks on our soil since 9/11)Well, there’ve been bombings and stuff. And all those letters filled with weaponized anthrax that shut down the Postal Service. But those mostly targeted women and Democrats, and were committed by white guys, so that’s really more of a law enforcement issue.
Jonah Goldberg and people like him insist on using this “cocktail party” standard (“felt in places we don’t talk about at cocktail parties”). Does anyone here regularly go to the effete sort of gatherings Jonah has in mind, where we play Anti-American Scrabble, talk about how we want to “lose” in Iraq, and pooh-pooh the concerns of “real people”? News: We are real people, and the scenario Jonah is talking about is familiar to only… himself and his friends. Obviously there are a lot more cocktail parties and a lot more self-important, delusional blowhards in his circle inside the Beltway than there are out here. As Michael Palin once said (on Monty Python), “Bum. OH, what a giveaway!”
I’d say that the Beltway Sniper attacks certainly count as a form of terrorism. Especially considering that Jonah and his ilk consider IED attacks against American soldiers to somehow constitute “terrorism.” Such a broad definition has to include a prolonged series of shootings with an extortionate goal. Those were in 2002. Which, by my count, is since 9/11/2001.
Australian Prime Minister John Howard — a Churchillian figure to hawks
*spits coffee all over his keyboard and monitor*
OK, so I know that among whimps like Jonah, there is a sorta rule to use Churchill’s name and the word “appeasement” at least twice a week and I have gotten used to it. But I swear to God, after this one, even Winston himself has probably risen from his grave and set out on a voyage to the US in order to kick the crap out of Jonah. If you turn on the news and see Jonah dead with a Romeo y Julieta sticking out from his ass, remember, I called it.
*spits coffee all over his keyboard and monitor*
OK, so I know that among whimps like Jonah, there is a sorta rule to use Churchill’s name and the word “appeasement” at least twice a week and I have gotten used to it. But I swear to God, after this one, even Winston himself has probably risen from his grave and set out on a voyage to the US in order to kick the crap out of Jonah. If you turn on the news and see Jonah dead with a Romeo y Julieta sticking out from his ass, remember, I called it.
I’d hate to think how drunk I’d have to be to get through a cocktail party with Jonah’s crowd. I’m thinking a whole bottle of Jameson’s… but I’d wind up in jail before the evening was over.
“Democrats have been such irresponsible backseat drivers that they have to be forced to take the wheel to grasp how treacherous the road ahead is.”
Those Republicans – what patriots. Deliberately getting their asses kicked in November so that Democrats would be forced to be in control of Congress and then they would be forced to realize that, to cue up Harold Hill, “We Got Terror right/ Here in River City/ And that starts with T/ and that Rhymes with B/ and that stands for Bu” – sorry,my bad – “that starts with T/ and that Rhymes with P /and that stands for Pool.”
Those Republicans – what patriots. Deliberately getting their asses kicked in November so that Democrats would be forced to be in control of Congress and then they would be forced to realize that, to cue up Harold Hill, “We Got Terror right/ Here in River City/ And that starts with T/ and that Rhymes with B/ and that stands for Bu” – sorry,my bad – “that starts with T/ and that Rhymes with P /and that stands for Pool.”
These guys’ attitudes are not entirely a byproduct of Wingnut Welfare–maybe Wingnut Extortion is a better term, with Clear Channel gobbling up stations and either putting dissenting voices out of work or moving them to more marginal time slots.
Yeah, we all know that Fox and Clear Channel suck up to the White House, get favors from the FCC, become richer and more powerful, use their wealth and power to further suck up, and round we go again.
But the problem started much earlier, when stations began to think that news could be more than a service provided to viewers, it could be a profit center.
Reagan’s press secretary/political adviser/loyalty enforcer Lyn Nofziger understood that “news” was just another form of entertainment for the masses. He didn’t feel the least bit shy about saying so publicly. Since then, the Republicans have just gotten better at shaping and defining the debate, and Democrats haven’t pulled off a major media coup since the Kennedy/Nixon debates in 1960.
At some point in journalism’s slide into the abyss, “Communication” became a major offered at college. The original broadcast journalists were mostly very well educated, and shared the quaint notion that you had to have something worth communicating before stepping in front of a microphone.
Yeah, we all know that Fox and Clear Channel suck up to the White House, get favors from the FCC, become richer and more powerful, use their wealth and power to further suck up, and round we go again.
But the problem started much earlier, when stations began to think that news could be more than a service provided to viewers, it could be a profit center.
Reagan’s press secretary/political adviser/loyalty enforcer Lyn Nofziger understood that “news” was just another form of entertainment for the masses. He didn’t feel the least bit shy about saying so publicly. Since then, the Republicans have just gotten better at shaping and defining the debate, and Democrats haven’t pulled off a major media coup since the Kennedy/Nixon debates in 1960.
At some point in journalism’s slide into the abyss, “Communication” became a major offered at college. The original broadcast journalists were mostly very well educated, and shared the quaint notion that you had to have something worth communicating before stepping in front of a microphone.
“Terror Hawks” would make a great toyline. I’m thinking something sort of like Dino Riders, but birds with zombies or trolls on them.
And I’ve long wondered: is Jonah even capable of speaking without using a simile, a cliche, or a metaphor every paragraph? The man’s head is stuffed full of things other people have said to him. It all gets randomly spat out onto his column like some sort of drunken episode of magnetic poetry. And now I’m doing it.
Keep it comin’, Scott. If I don’t keep laughing at these guys, I’m going to end up beating several of them with wicker rakes for having the sheer bad taste to exist on my planet. Hey, Annti! Road trip?
And I’ve long wondered: is Jonah even capable of speaking without using a simile, a cliche, or a metaphor every paragraph? The man’s head is stuffed full of things other people have said to him. It all gets randomly spat out onto his column like some sort of drunken episode of magnetic poetry. And now I’m doing it.
Keep it comin’, Scott. If I don’t keep laughing at these guys, I’m going to end up beating several of them with wicker rakes for having the sheer bad taste to exist on my planet. Hey, Annti! Road trip?
“I frankly doubt that John Howard is a Churchillian figure to parakeets.”
Actually Churchill would probably have seen little John Howard as a parrot-like figure
Actually Churchill would probably have seen little John Howard as a parrot-like figure
“Dr. E. Douglas Whitehead, a John Holmesian figure to his fellow penis enlargement surgeons, said this week that Jonah is ‘praying’ for two more inches so he can finally urinate standing up. He may well be.”
Best. Laugh. Of. The. Week.
Until I got to this line of Doughy Pantload’s:
“(remember, no terrorist attacks on our soil since 9/11)”
BWUAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAAAA!!!!!!
Riiiiiiiight. ‘Cause 9/11 just “happened.” They didn’t know that it was coming, and the Bush Regime isn’t thicker-than-thieves with the bin Laden clan. Riiiiiiiiighttt.
“The original broadcast journalists were mostly very well educated, and shared the quaint notion that you had to have something worth communicating before stepping in front of a microphone.”
Trashfire, you are so right. BUT — to use the word, “Journalism” in the same POST, on the same BLOG as the words, Jonah Doughy Pantload Goldberg — is worse than heresy. Doughy Pantload is to journalism as Rupert Murdoch is to ethics. ANTITHESIS.
Look at what’s working in the “media” in this country — broadcast, print or cable — you get “personalities,” not journalists. You get bottle blondes and bimbos, you get pompous bloviating douchebags, you get talking heads that are emptier than their puffed-up resumes, you do NOT get “journalists.”
I haven’t seen a real journalist in this country’s mass media since Cronkite retired. If it weren’t for blogs, there wouldn’t BE any journalism left in this country.
D. Sidhe, darlin’, you bring the rake and the gas money, I’ll bring the truck! Although we’re prolly gonna need something a little more substantial to reach through the dough and hit on some actual bone & flesh on Jonah… Do you think that the tire-tool will do it? Or are we going to need something with a longer reach?
And the fact that this little pus-wad thinks that being a war-hawk is a GOOD thing — as if there’s no profits to be made in war, as if there’s no strings being pulled behind the scene, as if the neocons would ever have the cajones to fight any of their wars THEMSELVES — but why would they, when they can destroy the economy and FORCE the poor kids to take the bullets?!??! — is he really this fucking naive/stupid, or is he just the sloppiest excuse for a raving shill that’s ever existed?
It still, to this day, boggles my mind that weak-minded, useless parasites like this were not only brought to term, but that they could sustain something resembling “life” outside of the womb. If, indeed, Jonah was born of a “womb” — he seems more like he came of a particularly painful bowel movement.
Scott, you have my undying admiration for not only surviving the torture of reading Jonah’s pathetic excuse for prose, but for being able to actually handle it and dissect it for us. I hope that you were wearing a full-body HAZMAT condom the whole time.
Best. Laugh. Of. The. Week.
Until I got to this line of Doughy Pantload’s:
“(remember, no terrorist attacks on our soil since 9/11)”
BWUAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAAAA!!!!!!
Riiiiiiiight. ‘Cause 9/11 just “happened.” They didn’t know that it was coming, and the Bush Regime isn’t thicker-than-thieves with the bin Laden clan. Riiiiiiiiighttt.
“The original broadcast journalists were mostly very well educated, and shared the quaint notion that you had to have something worth communicating before stepping in front of a microphone.”
Trashfire, you are so right. BUT — to use the word, “Journalism” in the same POST, on the same BLOG as the words, Jonah Doughy Pantload Goldberg — is worse than heresy. Doughy Pantload is to journalism as Rupert Murdoch is to ethics. ANTITHESIS.
Look at what’s working in the “media” in this country — broadcast, print or cable — you get “personalities,” not journalists. You get bottle blondes and bimbos, you get pompous bloviating douchebags, you get talking heads that are emptier than their puffed-up resumes, you do NOT get “journalists.”
I haven’t seen a real journalist in this country’s mass media since Cronkite retired. If it weren’t for blogs, there wouldn’t BE any journalism left in this country.
D. Sidhe, darlin’, you bring the rake and the gas money, I’ll bring the truck! Although we’re prolly gonna need something a little more substantial to reach through the dough and hit on some actual bone & flesh on Jonah… Do you think that the tire-tool will do it? Or are we going to need something with a longer reach?
And the fact that this little pus-wad thinks that being a war-hawk is a GOOD thing — as if there’s no profits to be made in war, as if there’s no strings being pulled behind the scene, as if the neocons would ever have the cajones to fight any of their wars THEMSELVES — but why would they, when they can destroy the economy and FORCE the poor kids to take the bullets?!??! — is he really this fucking naive/stupid, or is he just the sloppiest excuse for a raving shill that’s ever existed?
It still, to this day, boggles my mind that weak-minded, useless parasites like this were not only brought to term, but that they could sustain something resembling “life” outside of the womb. If, indeed, Jonah was born of a “womb” — he seems more like he came of a particularly painful bowel movement.
Scott, you have my undying admiration for not only surviving the torture of reading Jonah’s pathetic excuse for prose, but for being able to actually handle it and dissect it for us. I hope that you were wearing a full-body HAZMAT condom the whole time.
I frankly doubt that John Howard is a Churchillian figure to parakeets.
[stifled laughter, akvavit sprayed everywhere, etcetera].
The thing about John Howard is that the Iraq invasion saved his political career. The moment he went running after G W Bush, waving the Australian flag and shouting ‘Me too!’, his popularity soared — Aussies collectively were delighted at the chance to take part in a war, as long as they were promised a quick victory, no sacrifice on their part, and a big slice of the glory. Aussies are like that. They are not so much the schoolyard bully, and more like the big thick kids who follow the Alpha-bully around, waiting for him to find a victim, so they can pile in enthusiastically and join in the kicking as soon as the victim is on the ground.
Any Aussies reading this can now feel free to slag off New Zealanders.
Anyway, now that Iraq has turned to custard and the Australian electorate are realising that they are not going to be basking in some else’s glory any time soon, they are not well pleased, and Howard’s popularity is going down faster than [insert obscene metaphor here]. So he is following his political instincts and attacking the nearest person with brown skin — Obama, most recently — since this is always a crowd-pleaser with his followers.
[stifled laughter, akvavit sprayed everywhere, etcetera].
The thing about John Howard is that the Iraq invasion saved his political career. The moment he went running after G W Bush, waving the Australian flag and shouting ‘Me too!’, his popularity soared — Aussies collectively were delighted at the chance to take part in a war, as long as they were promised a quick victory, no sacrifice on their part, and a big slice of the glory. Aussies are like that. They are not so much the schoolyard bully, and more like the big thick kids who follow the Alpha-bully around, waiting for him to find a victim, so they can pile in enthusiastically and join in the kicking as soon as the victim is on the ground.
Any Aussies reading this can now feel free to slag off New Zealanders.
Anyway, now that Iraq has turned to custard and the Australian electorate are realising that they are not going to be basking in some else’s glory any time soon, they are not well pleased, and Howard’s popularity is going down faster than [insert obscene metaphor here]. So he is following his political instincts and attacking the nearest person with brown skin — Obama, most recently — since this is always a crowd-pleaser with his followers.
The man is fast approaching his fortieth birthday.
Really.
How many times, as above, does he fill another order for 800 words with all the brio of a kid working a double shift handing you a burger cooked fifteen minutes before you walked to the counter?
It’s partly Jonah–okay, it’s entirely Jonah; there’s no excuse at his age for exhibiting such breathtaking shallowness–and partly the fact that “conservatives” basically decided around the time he was learning to crawl that they weren’t talking to anybody but themselves any more, and he’s the end product. Has Goldberg ever written a word about “liberals” that gave you the impression he’d ever read and thought about what one had to say? Or ever met one and liked him as a person, had a friendly argument sometime over a couple of beers? Me neither. As I said about Lileks one time, he writes like a guy from the eighth row of an angry mob. The only difference is that with Lileks it’s laughable, but with Jonah it’s just pathetic.
And, again: while there may have been a time when this sort of stuff was excusable as mere wrongheadedness, or poor potty training, that day is past, thanks to the Bush administration. Recycling old Vietnam excuses in the defense of even greater incompetence and prevarication in Iraq is no longer simply stupid, or insane, or perverse; it is siding with the Church over Copernicus, five centuries later.
Really.
How many times, as above, does he fill another order for 800 words with all the brio of a kid working a double shift handing you a burger cooked fifteen minutes before you walked to the counter?
It’s partly Jonah–okay, it’s entirely Jonah; there’s no excuse at his age for exhibiting such breathtaking shallowness–and partly the fact that “conservatives” basically decided around the time he was learning to crawl that they weren’t talking to anybody but themselves any more, and he’s the end product. Has Goldberg ever written a word about “liberals” that gave you the impression he’d ever read and thought about what one had to say? Or ever met one and liked him as a person, had a friendly argument sometime over a couple of beers? Me neither. As I said about Lileks one time, he writes like a guy from the eighth row of an angry mob. The only difference is that with Lileks it’s laughable, but with Jonah it’s just pathetic.
And, again: while there may have been a time when this sort of stuff was excusable as mere wrongheadedness, or poor potty training, that day is past, thanks to the Bush administration. Recycling old Vietnam excuses in the defense of even greater incompetence and prevarication in Iraq is no longer simply stupid, or insane, or perverse; it is siding with the Church over Copernicus, five centuries later.
is Jonah even capable of speaking without using a simile, a cliche, or a metaphor every paragraph?Oh, D., honey! Don’t be so hard on everybody’s favoritest s.o.s.*
Sure, all of those things are true; with the addition of obscenities, ad hominems, and gay schtick, that describes me to a “t” as well, so ixnay on teh arsnesshay, capisce?
FWIW, Jonah is fast becoming one of my least favorite wingnuts, ‘cos it’s true; teh stupid, it does burn!
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*…well! I almost got out of this sucker without using language that would make dainty blossoms like Fatha Donohue blush and weep. Well, too bad, ‘cos “s.o.s.,”as everyone knows, stands for “sacks of shit.” Or, the less intuitive, “Fatha Donohue.” Use interchangeably, at your own discretion.
D’oh! I guess that pig latin should have been “arshnesshay.” My bad (gawd, I hate that phrase!).
We was just sittin’ around the barber shop yesterday talkin’ about Toybee’s concept of the decline of civilizations when somebody, I think it was Wilbur, brought up that very issue. “It’s a matter of open, pluralistic societies versus cultures which ‘er much more integrated” Ben said. So we all got to that for a while — except for Jack, who had as usual fallen asleep in the chair for his afternoon nap — and we decided that Wilbur did make a pretty good point. At which point Barney ran into the shop a said, “Hey, there’ a fire at the wig factory! Firetrucks are on the way!” So we wandered down the street and watched the fire a bit until the building burned down.
Jonah Goldberg, a man who – as public intellectuals go – makes Jethro Bodine look like Bertrand Russell
If only he’d drown himself in his cement pond…
If only he’d drown himself in his cement pond…
Is “really real” similar to “truly true”?
They think it’s Bush’s vanity project turned albatross
Worst. Remodel. Ever.
Worst. Remodel. Ever.
Herr Doktor Bimler, you remind me a lot of Mentis Fugit… Any acquaintance?
And if the Revolution ever comes, Jonah will be around #487th up against the wall. He’s that irrelevant, and has about that much effect on the world in general. The fact that he might actually draw a *paycheck* for his bloated bloviatings is what continues to shock me.
How desperate must they BE, to use THAT as filler?!??!?
And if the Revolution ever comes, Jonah will be around #487th up against the wall. He’s that irrelevant, and has about that much effect on the world in general. The fact that he might actually draw a *paycheck* for his bloated bloviatings is what continues to shock me.
How desperate must they BE, to use THAT as filler?!??!?
Because frankly, after 6 years of Bush and Cheney, there’s nothing left to break.
I tried, I really tried to watch the Rush Limbaugh – Ann Coulter skit on that new “comedy” show, the 1/2 Hour News Hour, but after Rush smirkingly described, from his position as the guy who took over the presidency in 2009, that “Boy, the last two years under Democratic control sure were awful weren’t they?” I just couldn’t take the disgusting little piece ‘a $%#&@ for one more moment.
Their use of a laugh track got really annoying on the previous skit, some of the lines would have gotten a genuine laugh from a real audience, but a lot of the laughs were inappropriate.
I tried, I really tried to watch the Rush Limbaugh – Ann Coulter skit on that new “comedy” show, the 1/2 Hour News Hour, but after Rush smirkingly described, from his position as the guy who took over the presidency in 2009, that “Boy, the last two years under Democratic control sure were awful weren’t they?” I just couldn’t take the disgusting little piece ‘a $%#&@ for one more moment.
Their use of a laugh track got really annoying on the previous skit, some of the lines would have gotten a genuine laugh from a real audience, but a lot of the laughs were inappropriate.
you remind me a lot of Mentis Fugit… Any acquaintance?
I can’t say I know him under that name, but it wouldn’t surprise me if we rant at the same pubs.
I can’t say I know him under that name, but it wouldn’t surprise me if we rant at the same pubs.
I’m going to end up beating several of them with wicker rakes…
Hey Sidhe. Thats just not a very substantial choice of learnin implement, and as such you may find the entire experience less than satisfying. My own choice is a pool cue, you can run the gamut from an “attention-getter” to a “goodnight, Irene”. Gentlewoman, on the other hand, prefers a paisley metal cane, which I can understand, as style is always important. However, if you’re committed to gardening tools repurposed as wingnut whackers, you could do a lot worse than a hoe. Not only is it more effective and satisfying than a wicker rake, but it has the added advantage of sharing an identifier with pantload himself…
mikey
Hey Sidhe. Thats just not a very substantial choice of learnin implement, and as such you may find the entire experience less than satisfying. My own choice is a pool cue, you can run the gamut from an “attention-getter” to a “goodnight, Irene”. Gentlewoman, on the other hand, prefers a paisley metal cane, which I can understand, as style is always important. However, if you’re committed to gardening tools repurposed as wingnut whackers, you could do a lot worse than a hoe. Not only is it more effective and satisfying than a wicker rake, but it has the added advantage of sharing an identifier with pantload himself…
mikey
Don’t listen to mikey, Sidhe!!
.
.
Use a Garden Weasel™. ‘Cos I seen it on teh tee vee!
.
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Use a Garden Weasel™. ‘Cos I seen it on teh tee vee!
Actually, I was going for kinda flimsy. I figured the outraged whines of any stray wingnut looking to feed their persecution complex with alleged death threats would just piss me off even more. But I suspect I was being too generous. None of them stopped being assholes yesterday, despite my restraint.
It’s been a real bad week here, and it’s only going to get more annoying. Anyone who’d like to help arrange an alibi or suggest a victim, please get in touch.
It’s been a real bad week here, and it’s only going to get more annoying. Anyone who’d like to help arrange an alibi or suggest a victim, please get in touch.
Not to pile on — OK, to pile on — but this line:
“No, the argument, felt in places we don’t talk about at cocktail parties…”
…isn’t even original. Jonah copped it from Jack Nicholson’s reply to Tom Cruise during the climactic cross-examination in “A Few Good Men.”
And you can look it up.
“No, the argument, felt in places we don’t talk about at cocktail parties…”
…isn’t even original. Jonah copped it from Jack Nicholson’s reply to Tom Cruise during the climactic cross-examination in “A Few Good Men.”
And you can look it up.
From the script:
JESSEP
(continuing)
Son, we live in a world that has walls. And those walls have
to be guarded by men with guns. Who’s gonna do it? You?
You, Lt. Weinberg? I have a greater responsibility than
you can possibly fathom. You weep for Santiago and you
curse the marines. You have that luxury. You have the
luxury of not knowing what I know: That Santiago’s death,
while tragic, probably saved lives. And my existence, while
grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives.
(beat)
You don’t want the truth. Because deep down, in places you
don’t talk about at parties, you want me on that wall. You
me there.
JESSEP
(continuing)
Son, we live in a world that has walls. And those walls have
to be guarded by men with guns. Who’s gonna do it? You?
You, Lt. Weinberg? I have a greater responsibility than
you can possibly fathom. You weep for Santiago and you
curse the marines. You have that luxury. You have the
luxury of not knowing what I know: That Santiago’s death,
while tragic, probably saved lives. And my existence, while
grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives.
(beat)
You don’t want the truth. Because deep down, in places you
don’t talk about at parties, you want me on that wall. You
me there.
Not the Charles Pierce?
Well, you know, tube worms aren’t that stupid. Considering that they live over 4000 feet deep in the Pacific and feed on an ocean floor vent of 400 degree sulfur water. That’s not too smart but they have the presence of mind when the sulfur food starts to slow down to pack up their little baby tube worms with exactly 29 days worth of food and send them a float. Low and behold those little tube worms find a new sulfur vent in exactly 29 days. Pretty smart, eh?
Robert, I must thank you for your eloquent worm defense.
I was considering making a far less coherent version of that same general point, coupled with “And when the fuckwits gobble the oil supply and global warming has set in, Scott, you’ll wish like hell you could survive hundreds of degrees and run on common pollutants.” But then I got sidetracked by the Terror Hawks thing.
Though, it’s possible Scott was talking not about Riftia or Alvinella, the hydrothermal vent worms, or even the cold seep worm that lives on methane and whose name I am too lazy to look up, but about the lugworm, which, while it only lives in a sort of mucus-and-sand cocoon, could be considered a tubeworm, or at least a training tubeworm, and is, I assure you, dumb as rocks, and a real drag on its book club meetings. Not to mention kinda ugly, too.
For the record, my partner hardly ever wants to discuss worms with me, and in fact even abandoned a conversation about zombie worms upon discovering they weren’t a World of Warcraft thing.
I was considering making a far less coherent version of that same general point, coupled with “And when the fuckwits gobble the oil supply and global warming has set in, Scott, you’ll wish like hell you could survive hundreds of degrees and run on common pollutants.” But then I got sidetracked by the Terror Hawks thing.
Though, it’s possible Scott was talking not about Riftia or Alvinella, the hydrothermal vent worms, or even the cold seep worm that lives on methane and whose name I am too lazy to look up, but about the lugworm, which, while it only lives in a sort of mucus-and-sand cocoon, could be considered a tubeworm, or at least a training tubeworm, and is, I assure you, dumb as rocks, and a real drag on its book club meetings. Not to mention kinda ugly, too.
For the record, my partner hardly ever wants to discuss worms with me, and in fact even abandoned a conversation about zombie worms upon discovering they weren’t a World of Warcraft thing.
Thank you, Robert and D. Sidhe, for the Tuesday Tubeworm Blogging. I trust this is the first of a regular series.
“if someone were to award me a sinecure where all I had to do was lift my leg periodically and expel some gaseous, half-digested insight, then bleg for readers to email me supporting evidence, I might also come to the conclusion that being smart is effortless.”
Thank you. However the process is bit more detailed; the story of a slow devolution into cheetos-eating stuporifica. They used to call it learned helplessness, now its learned stupidity.
Thank you. However the process is bit more detailed; the story of a slow devolution into cheetos-eating stuporifica. They used to call it learned helplessness, now its learned stupidity.
If I were sitting in the back seat while Dad careened all over a mountain highway in a torrential downpour, blowing past roadblocks and flashing signs screaming “Bridge Out Ahead,” and he suddenly turned the wheel over to me, I’d do what most of the backseat driving Democrats are advising: Turn the Fucking Car Around.
Pure gold!
I’m going to steal it next time I find myself at a cocktail party not talking about certain places.
Pure gold!
I’m going to steal it next time I find myself at a cocktail party not talking about certain places.
Why would we be handing Iraq over to the enemy? I thought those wonderful things such as a constitution, elections and training how many thousands of Iraqi police and troops meant we would be handing it over to the elected Iraqi government. They already said they want us out of there. When are we to paraphrase Benjamin Franklin and say “We present to you a Republic if you can hold it.”? WE ARE OUT OF HERE!!!
Um.
I thought everyone knew that Western Liberal Democracies get their teeth kicked in by domestic fundamentalist and totalitarian forces, not foreign ones…
I thought everyone knew that Western Liberal Democracies get their teeth kicked in by domestic fundamentalist and totalitarian forces, not foreign ones…
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