Tuesday, February 19, 2013

CULTURE CLUBBED.

William A. Jacobson of Legal Insurrection:
I previously wrote about how BuzzFeed Politics has combined “the culture” and savvy crafting into a highly effective tool for undermining Republicans with subtle and not-so-subtle mockery. “Look at the goofy cat, look at the goofy celeb, look at the goofy Republican” is more dangerous to us than a 5000-word article in The New York Times Sunday Magazine.
Figures he'd put "the culture" in quotes; culture is clearly something that mystifies and terrifies him so much that he's compelled to describe in it police-blotter what-the-kids-call-it language, like "wilding" or "whirlpooling."

Jacobson's screed is about some Upworthy thing that shows Senator Elizabeth Warren kicking banker ass. You may recall from the recent election that Jacobson had a raging hard-on for Warren, and it appears to have persisted. The idea that something positive about Warren has been published and is drawing good traffic appears to have driven Jacobson around the bend:
Upworthy is the fastest growing website and already receives millions of visits a month despite being less than one year old, and has over 55 thousand Twitter followers. It recently received $4 million in venture capital funding. 
Upworthy is not interested in deep thinking, or you... 
The first thing to note is that when you click on the homepage link to the post, an anti-NRA poll pops up. It’s the equivalent of a push poll, delivering a political message in the form of a poll... How long before Upworthy runs a post about the overwhelming demand that Congress “stand up to the NRA”?...

There is nothing like Upworthy or BuzzFeed on the right. The closest we have come is Twitchy, Michelle Malkin’s brilliant website...

We are losing the fight to the lowest of low information voters, who are pushed toward a liberal agenda by very smart and talented people who understand the power of social media in a way we don’t...
What a way to try and motivate people -- telling them there's a popular website out there that doesn't care about them! That's meant for people who are not them! It's like me getting pissed at a Justin Bieber fan site.

Jacobson and guys like him have been running their schtick for years without evincing any of the kind of skills that normally give writers pleasure -- they don't produce interesting wordplay, fresh insights, journalistic discoveries, or even good jokes. The only time you can feel something like excitement coming from their work is when they're attacking someone and have hope of defeating them.

In short, they're propagandists. They took up the tools of culture to further their cause, probably as a last resort -- not everyone has what it takes to be a ward heeler -- but while some people who do that sort of thing eventually learn some interest in, and even affection for, the act of creating, these guys seem impervious to it. Day after day they take political messages out of the appropriate briefing documents, move the parts around a little so it doesn't look suspicious, and hit "post." They don't do inspiration. If you gave them a block of marble and a chisel and all the time in the world, they'd be looking around for a liberal to kill with the chisel.

The Upworthy guys aren't doing anything amazing, but because it involves the effective use of words and video and some social media widgets, it makes guys like Jacobson crazy. They feel they should have that power, and try to whip it up by telling their fans: Look, someone is doing a "culture" thing! We must do something about that! And they wait, crouched in their holes, for the answer -- without any idea that they might find it in themselves, if only they weren't such miserable, joyless little turds.

154 comments:

  1. I think of this as the Parable of the Furries. Once upon a time people who had a fetish for dressing up as skunks and having sex with cartoon animal characters could only sit forlornly at home, or meet up at special "furry con" events. But thanks to the miracle of the internet these pathetic shut in losers in furry suits were able to locate others of like mind, meet, and perhaps even mate.


    Basically up until Obama people like Jacobson had no idea that they were becoming, like the furries, an isolated little community of freaks. Just as they were having a hard time locating each other the internet arrived and they saw that millions of other weirdos were meeting and validating each other with signs and symbols borrowed from Star Trek or Pepe le Pew or whatever. They thought they were saved! And then...they discovered that if what gets your freak on is too risible, or too disgusting, people don't upvote you on some random site. In fact they may spend their time admiring the cut of Elizabeth Warren's jib. Rather than rejoicing that, on the internet, for every crooked foot there is a crooked shoe, Jacobson et al retire in furtive furry disgust, enraged that some other fetishist is having a more popular meet up down the street.

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  2. mortimer11:29 PM

    The problem for Jacobson and the GOP is that they'd have to call their site Cringeworthy, and it would feature the likes of Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock and Mary Sue McClurkin. The other problem is it already exists; it's called the Internet.

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  3. The social media has helped propel the video to over 600,000 views as of this writing. It’s on target to exceed Warren’s Factory Owner rant.
    There is nothing like Upworthy or BuzzFeed on the right.



    Maybe you could reach that kind of viewership with...thinking... more bullshit from stupid assholes?

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  4. Spaghetti Lee11:43 PM

    The reason right-wingers don't have something that combines politics and culture is that there's no demand for it. The audience they're trying to reach doesn't think there is any culture beyond politics. They don't want witty writing or creative art, they want a constant drumbeat of 'kill the liberals', and there's enough sites that cater to that that something like Jacobson's imagining would wither and die pretty quickly.


    If there was a right-wing writer who was suddenly struck by a need for art for its own sake, and not just as a hammer to beat away dissent with, they'd need to find a new gig. Their readers would accuse them of being a commie and their editor would find someone nuttier to replace them, and that would be that. Not that I feel particularly sorry for them. Jacobson and his ilk have spent years channeling the energies of the angriest, stupidest, most paranoid people in the country. Now they're suddenly surprised that those same people don't have room in their shriveled little hearts for anything beyond political venom? Cry me a river, prof.

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  5. Spaghetti Lee11:46 PM

    600,000, huh? Guy doesn't really get this whole internet thing, does he? Reaching that many views on youtube is the internet equivalent of "No publishers are interested yet, but my parents and my uncle Fred said it was a great manuscript."

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  6. Really?! Malkin named a website Twitchy?

    twitch·y
    1. Characterized by jerky or spasmodic motion.
    2. Nervous; jittery.

    Talk about poor imagery; makes me wonder what kind of website it is, but not enough to check it out.

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  7. XeckyGilchrist11:55 PM

    It's like she's trying to "take back" the term after TBogg posted that cheerleader video for the millionth time.

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  8. XeckyGilchrist11:57 PM

    Heh. If they understood numbers, they wouldn't be "fiscal conservatives."

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  9. FMguru12:08 AM

    Jacobson and his crew did have control of the quick-hit, let's all laugh at the stupid politician market in the 1990s and early 2000s - it was in places like the Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh programs. Well, it's not 1997 any more, the Nixon/Reagan/Gingrich Southern Strategy has run its course, and the Drudge Report has been elbowed aside by HuffPo and BuzzFeed and the like.

    "There is nothing like Upworthy or BuzzFeed on the right" - sure there is, there have been dozens of efforts to launch right-wing social media networks in the last several years, all of which have failed or are just hanging on by their fingernails (like Pajamas Media). The real problem is that no one wants or is excited about what they are selling, particularly the under-30 set which (we are told) lives and breathes social media. You can launch as many FoxNations and The Blazes as you want, but it doesn't do you any good if no one is buying what you're selling.

    One of the great self-delusions of conservatism is that it's actually amazingly popular across the nation, and that liberals are confined to a sliver of la-di-dah coastal enclaves, and those liberals only win elections because of media manipulation and brainwashing. When they are confronted with evidence that huge (and growing) numbers of people want nothing to do with their tiny, crabbed, hateful ideology, it makes sparks shoot of their head like when Spock or Kirk tricks an evil computer into trying to divide the last digit of pi by zero.

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  10. "It’s the equivalent of a push poll, delivering a political message in the form of a poll"


    Thank God Newsmax would never do anything like that.

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  11. Malignant Bouffant12:24 AM

    It's a Twitter aggregator. Apparently Malkin hired a collection of tweakers to pore over Twitter looking for those nasty, nasty things liberals say, & then they faint all over their couches.

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  12. Jacobson: We are losing the fight to the lowest of low information voters, who are pushed toward a liberal agenda by very smart and talented people who understand the power of social media in a way we don’t...

    Trotsky himself could not have penned a more desperate internal memo fretting that capitalists were cheating at the propaganda war. "But they're tempting everyone with decadent Western goods!"

    Yes. It's called having a superior product.

    Don't worry Comrade Jacobson, Fox Nation is reporting that the conservative harvests were at all-time highs this year while liberals starved in the streets. Secretary Palin is set to deliver the glorious news in person at CPAC.

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  13. You know, I only first heard about Buzzfeed by hearing conservatives complain incessantly about Buzzfeed.

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  14. AGoodQuestion1:21 AM

    Poor Jacobson. He was unable to keep Warren out of office, even with his vast and intimate knowledge of Native American culture.

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  15. AGoodQuestion1:33 AM

    ...on every available inch of the Internet. Thank God indeed.

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  16. Big_Bad_Bald_Bastard2:13 AM

    “Look at the goofy cat, look at the goofy celeb, look at the goofy Republican” is more dangerous to us than a 5000-word article in The New York Times Sunday Magazine.
    Ya know, they could stop propping up goofy people as paragons of conservatism.

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  17. Big_Bad_Bald_Bastard2:15 AM

    Poor furries, being compared to freaks like Jacobson...

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  18. Big_Bad_Bald_Bastard2:17 AM

    It also gives the game away- they're not as representative of the population as they claim to be.

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  19. What strikes me about all their FoxNations and The Blazes is that they create these "alternative social media" outlets because the real ones weren't nice to them and they decided to just go make their own. Fine, whatevs. They opt out of the mainstream because they find people there who disagree with them and their poor hearts just can't take it.

    But then they seem bewildered when these mainstream outlets that they've abandoned continue to contain people who disagree with them. I'm not really sure where the disconnect is in their minds. They can try to make their mark in mainstream discourse, or they can opt out and stay in their little enclaves. But they don't seem to understand why they can't have both.

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  20. montag22:41 AM

    It's a given that the right wing will do just about anything to win elections. But, maybe they're such sore losers that they can't stand to lose anything, especially a culture war that they started. And, no doubt, that really rankles someone like Jacobson, who's completely left out because he's got all the verve and creativity of a turnip.

    Too, it's kind of difficult to be thin-skinned, anal-retentive, defensive and funny. It's like Ayn Rand trying to do stand-up.

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  21. I previously wrote about how BuzzFeed Politics has combined “the
    culture” and savvy crafting into a highly effective tool for undermining
    Republicans with subtle and not-so-subtle mockery


    This is not a thing that is happening, William. Sometimes people just want to laugh at stupid things. Stop providing them fodder and they'll turn their attention elsewhere. They won't pursue you. I promise. If the GOP went a whole year without anyone in the party making some mindbogglingly ignorant comment about female anatomy, or accusing Hillary Clinton of murdering our soldiers, or anything of that nature, all mention of the Republican Party would vanish from BuzzFeed. Try it!

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  22. montag22:43 AM

    Piyush Jindal. `Nuff said.

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  23. Good humor certainly requires a large dose of self-awareness.

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  24. Big_Bad_Bald_Bastard2:48 AM

    Thanks for reminding me of this.

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  25. mrstilton2:49 AM

    I would like to dress up as Pepe le Pew and give this comment, dressed up as a black cat who through some comic mishap has had a white stripe painted down its back, a dozen long-stemmed roses, or heads of garlic.

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  26. Big_Bad_Bald_Bastard2:53 AM

    Those epistemes won't close themselves, after all.

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  27. smut clyde3:25 AM

    subtle and not-so-subtle mockery


    Nothing about "Alinskyite tactics"? I am disappoint.

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  28. smut clyde3:38 AM

    there have been dozens of efforts to launch right-wing social media
    networks in the last several years, all of which have failed or are just
    hanging on by their fingernails (like Pajamas Media).


    And ALL of them had Gerard van der Leun writing for them before they finally went tits-up. It must be an internet tradition, or an old charter or something.

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  29. Remember, this is Colonel Mustard we're talking about -- as the recent Edroso wingnut roundup chronicled, Jacobson lambasted liebruls for making fun of Rubio and his water lunge ("How low will left-wing organizations go in demonizing Marco Rubio? Don't tell me WATER."). Yet he's the very same guy who attacked Obama over the type of mustard he ordered. It's not just he will say absolutely anything out of tribal rage-gasm, but he's so dogmatic that his glaring hypocrisy would never occur to him. He's a propagandist and a hack, true, but he's also an authoritarian with no principles, taste, or self-awareness (and not coincidentally, he's a colossal ass).

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  30. It's also pretty rich coming from the side of the aisle that incessantly criticizes Obama for every single thing that presidents have been doing for decades, eg, reading from a teleprompter, dressing appropriately when in foreign countries, bowing to foreign kings, etc. Bush did all of those things, but it suddenly wasn't okay when Obama does them.


    And the fact of the matter is that Rubio's water thingy was hilarious. It doesn't make Rubio any better or worse as a politician. I'd laugh my ass off if Obama did it, instead of whining that any laughter was a conservative plot to undermine the left.

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  31. I feel compelled to link this (perhaps not entirely SFW) post from 2008:


    http://www.sadlyno.com/archives/9628.html

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  32. smut clyde5:21 AM

    Really?! Malkin named a website Twitchy?

    "Tardive Dyskinesia" didn't really roll off the tongue.

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  33. Pope Zebbidie XIII6:39 AM

    Wouldn't she have called it "Skippy" then?

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  34. satch7:40 AM

    I miss those good ol' days when Ann Althouse used to drop by and sneer "Well, I got more hits than you, nyah nyah, so THERE!" She, and other wingnut gimps like her (yes, Michelle Malkin, with the "brilliant" website Twitchy, I'm looking at YOU) got picked one time as the prom queen in their particular leper colony, and they're still not quite sure if they should be proud or furtive.

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  35. Halloween_Jack7:48 AM

    All that ghostwriting of letters for Penthouse Forum got to him; he really does think that those steamy encounters in laundromats and at the backyard pools of bored housewives actually happened to him.

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  36. "We are losing the fight to the lowest of low information voters, who are pushed toward a liberal agenda by very smart and talented people who understand the power of social media in a way we don’t"

    Jacobson should take comfort in the fact that his party's still got a fairly solid lock on the most time-tested way to select, indoctrinate, and control gullible suckers: the churches. Plenty of them will keep acting as GOP propaganda mills until the day they lose their tax exemption for electioneering...

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  37. BigHank538:00 AM

    Ya know, they could stop propping up goofy people as paragons of conservatism.


    How? Once you toss out human reproductive biology, all the sane parts of economics, and both environmental and climate science, how many sensible people do you have left?

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  38. Derelict8:05 AM

    But that's the rub: Every time a conservative enunciates conservative principles in public, they are mocked and ridiculed. So conservatives would have to vanish entirely, which they won't do because they're popular (dontcha know).

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  39. Provider_UNE8:07 AM

    If you gave them a block of marble and a chisel and all the time in the
    world, they'd be looking around for a liberal to kill with the chisel.



    A classic distillation of the Wingnut POV.


    /golf clap
    ...

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  40. redoubt8:07 AM

    Well, because--this is a country where culture (usually) drives politics. They want it to be not just the other way around, but an authoritarian, top-down, crush-dissent version of politics driving culture.
    (I think they used to call that Stalinism. America, on the other hand, has spoken, and says "No, thanks.")

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  41. satch8:09 AM

    If Rubio had managed to reach for that water with a little style and grace, no one would have laughed. And if Jacobson could write with a little style and grace, maybe someone WOULD...

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  42. Bill Hicks8:13 AM

    The Right has utterly lost sight of the distinction between reality and propaganda (nice to see that word pop up in your post--it's so old-fashioned). In a weird sense they are post-modern to the core, and believe in nothing at all but "winning." I'm not a Chris Matthews fan, but last night he hit one out of the park when he commented that the GOP is now aiming to bring down the government--that this is an extension of what they've done to other governments over the decades (see, e.g., Guatemala, Chile, Iran, etc.)--GOP policy is now literally a cancer. Charles Pierce has a pretty good post on this up.

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  43. BigHank538:14 AM

    For giggles, I just visited powerlineblog.com--and the first thing I saw was the pop-up YouTube intro that invited me to follow their Twitter feed. Not only is Jacobson a hack propagandist, he's a stupid hack propagandist. I shouldn't be able to disprove his entire argument with a single goddamn link.

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  44. BigHank538:16 AM

    Self-loathing will do in a pinch. Uh...a friend told me that.

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  45. Mr. Wonderful8:27 AM

    I was going to sneer openly, behind my hand, at "in short, they're propagandists," since I've been saying that for years. So, duh, etc. But the line about the chisel is what a director I once knew calls "a hundred dollar joke," so all is forgiven.


    That aside, I was thinking along these exact lines yesterday. "Why waste my dwindling reserve of brain cells reading these liars and idjits?" I asked myself. Then I realized that I don't read them. I read people smarter and funnier than myself making hilarious fun of them, and I enjoy outright prolonged laughter as a consequence.


    Whereas all these clowns do is kvetch, denounce, fear-monger, and offer solemn, moronic analyses and always-wrong predictions. Well, look. We've said before: They don't care if what they write is true. They mainly want to assert and maintain membership in their tribe, however ludicrous, humorless, and culturally stunted it is.

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  46. Mr. Wonderful8:35 AM

    Exactly. If Rubio had stoppped, said,"Man, I need a drink," and then reached, we here (let alone his supporters) would have praised it. But this is Roy's, and everyone here's, point. Furtive, eyes-front reaching is, if you will (and I know you will), the authoritarian way to reach for water: humorless, adhering to the "rules," etc.

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  47. BigHank538:36 AM

    Pearl-clutching, like masturbation, doesn't really outsource well. Humor is best/i> when it's shared.


    Add that to the list of things that Jacobson doesn't know and never will.

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  48. Doghouse Riley8:36 AM

    Two problems: that sort of thing worked a charm from 1977 through about 2005. Hell, for five years in the 90s "accusing Hillary Clinton of murder" was the eighth most profitable sector of the U.S. economy. And the success was attributed to the magic powers of St. Ronald the Gipper.


    At this point, the only thing that could reform the Republican party is a pandemic.

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  49. satch8:49 AM

    Or if he had said "Man, scourging the liberal strawmen in my head using Mitt Romney's old talking points is thirsty work... What? WHAT ARE YOU LAUGHING AT!!!???!!!

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  50. It's like me getting pissed at a Justin Bieber fan site.

    I dunno, if you somehow found yourself at a Justin Bieber fan site, you might indeed feel the urge to get really pissed. And that's why God created gin.

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  51. glennisw9:52 AM

    "The first thing to note is that when you click on the homepage link to the post, an anti-NRA poll pops up."


    Doesn't he know how internet advertising works?

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  52. glennisw9:53 AM

    The fact that he calls Twitchy "brilliant" says enough.

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  53. First time I watched that - she looks ridiculous but why is she spelling SORES?

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  54. witlesschum11:13 AM

    Or even, "I can't be the only one driven to drink by this president's terrible speech, amirite?" He took that drink like the camera was a tiger he had to keep his eye on.

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  55. KatWillow12:15 PM

    Ummmm. . . . pie.

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  56. sharculese12:16 PM

    So, Jacobson wrote this just as wignuts were about to get a whole bunch of coverage for flooding Twitter with rape jokes. I guess if every tweet had included a link to a picture of a baby animal, this would have been less repulsive to normal people.

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  57. M. Krebs12:18 PM

    Notice also that Jacobson has adopted the phrase "low information voter," which is Limbaugh's new way of saying "nigger."

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  58. KatWillow12:21 PM

    I looked that up, just to be sure. "Tourette's" would be a good name for a righty blog.

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  59. JennOfArk12:25 PM

    When I saw the Justin Bieber wrapping paper at Target back before Christmas, I was kind of disgusted. Later I realized what a great comic opportunity I had missed out on by not buying it and wrapping everyone's gifts with it.

    Fair warning: if you get a gift from me next year, it's gonna be wrapped in paper festooned with Bieber heads. Or something of a like quality.

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  60. KatWillow12:25 PM

    Ah, but what if Obama had grabbed a HOT DOG with "spicy" mustard, eh? Would you have laughed then?

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  61. KatWillow12:26 PM

    It was the tiny-ness of the bottle that cracked me up. Looked like a sippy-cup for health-and-environment-savvy-toddlers.

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  62. KatWillow12:30 PM

    Man, I hate it when I miss that sort of opportunity!

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  63. Yes, mockery is a foolproof way of destroying political figures you disagree with. Nobody ever made fun of George Bush.

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  64. I would like to be on this gift list. I was just thinking "You know what my life is missing? Bieber-heads."

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  65. The fact that Jacobson is whining about low-info voters means 2 things:


    1.) Conservatives have a lock on the moron vote; it's something they very much count on--keeping the crazies and the morons all crazied and moroned up.


    2.) He knows this.


    It's always projection with them. It's always projection. It's always projection. IT'S ALWAYS PROJECTION.

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  66. Budbear12:48 PM

    Poor dear is obviously suffering from some dermatological affliction. Bless her heart.

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  67. No thanks. I'll just look at the goofy cat.

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  68. I would like to dress up as a squirrel and yiff the hell out of this comment.

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  69. "Didya see that Jindal? Man, is he one goofy cat."

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  70. He took that drink like the camera was a tiger he had to keep his eye on.


    Hey, he didn't want to lose his place on the Speechmaking Aid Which is Entirely Uncontroversial When Republicans Use It.

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  71. bekabot1:04 PM

    "Figures he'd put 'the culture' in quotes; culture is clearly something that mystifies and terrifies him so much that he's compelled to describe in it police-blotter what-the-kids-call-it language, like 'wilding' or 'whirlpooling.'"

    See? I toldja. It's not just me saying that righties don't think about culture but think about "culture" instead. It's righties who insist upon the quotes. They put it in quotes when they write about it. What more proof do you want?

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  72. When I saw the Justin Bieber wrapping paper at Target back before Christmas, I was kind of disgusted.


    Then I realized that he was doing the paper wrapping for charity, and I was kind of ashamed. But when I read the fine print, the charity was the Whitebread Hoodie Foundation, and I was kind of disgusted all over again.

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  73. Well, he's not President any more, is he? QED.

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  74. Mr. Wonderful1:21 PM

    Tell me about it. I'm still kicking myself for sneering at Gerald Ford's WIN ("Whip Inflation Now") button back in ____, instead of shutting up and ordering one (for free!) from the ad in the Times. Just when I think I'm too cool for school I miss the real fun.

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  75. Plus, it's hard to do at the same time.

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  76. Halloween_Jack1:42 PM

    I'm reminded of an elderly colleague who (at least for a while) used to carry papers around in a plastic document folder (the kind that has an elastic loop and button closure--not a Trapper Keeper-type notebook, but more of a letter-paper-sized portfolio) covered with pictures of Avril Lavigne. Never had the heart to ask him if he knew who that was; he probably bought it because it was clearance-priced.

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  77. Halloween_Jack1:44 PM

    masturbation... doesn't really outsource well.


    *biting my tongue so hard*

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  78. Halloween_Jack1:53 PM

    Following recent revelations (connected to posts on this blog) that Bill Whittle had a video go viral and Adam Carolla has one of the most (if not the most) popular podcasts out there, it's pretty obvious that, yeah, they already know all about the twitter-twats and whatnot. It's just that they appeal to a minority of the population--a very enthusiastic minority, but still one that can no longer win national elections, or even a majority of statewide elections for senator. (They wouldn't even have the House save for their successful strategy of capturing enough state lege seats to gerrymander their way to a majority for at least the next decade or so.) Most people don't like them or want to hear any more from them.


    The idea that they may have reached peak wingnut and started down the opposite slope, though, just enrages the sort of mind that believes that, if you're not conquering new markets, you're losing.

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  79. bourbaki1:59 PM

    Top 5 Conservative Cats

    1) Scratchy
    2) Garfield
    3) Heathcliff
    4) Sylvester
    5) Socks the cat


    I have to run so I leave it to you readers to supply the reason

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  80. tigrismus2:09 PM

    *biting my tongue so hard*


    TMI.

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  81. smut clyde2:16 PM

    Ah, the self-deprecating Jewish humour that is simultaneously a joke and not a joke.
    Something something Zen Cohens.

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  82. sharculese2:17 PM

    Yeah, the thing about Twitchy is, as much as conservatives love to point to it as a success (and, to be fair, they have managed to get some breakthrough on Twitter, a platform that rewards you for producing an incessant stream of half thoughts), the only person I've ever seen write much about it is Tbogg, the blogosphere's Senior What the Fuck is Michelle Malkin Going on About Now Correspondent.


    To date their biggest break has been failing to get a history professor fired, and I suspect they'll spend the rest of their existence trying to repeat the dizzying highs of Headstickgate.

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  83. Jay B.2:21 PM

    See, culture is vast, the commerce of culture exists on a much more diversified level than could ever be controlled by ideology, unless that ideology is "sell". Sometimes art commands top dollar. Sometimes things that are artistic actually make tons of money. Sometimes, they don't. Sometimes shit sells, to a fantastic degree. The politics of, say, Lil Wayne are utterly irrelevant to the existence of Lil Wayne, INC, producer of something that sells. Hollywood, the various media of NYC, the Internet commodity culture of Silicon Valley and Route 128, the stateless giant content farms of YouTube, Spotify, Facebook and all the rest...I'm realizing now, as I've just started a longwinded lecture on our cultural landscape that I'm trying to explain the basics of American culture to a fucking Law Professor at an Ivy League university. A fucking law professor at an Ivy League university who thinks "Twitchy" is "brilliant".

    Smithers, have Stanley Fish killed.

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  84. tigrismus2:23 PM

    Schrodinger's chaff?

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  85. smut clyde2:26 PM

    If you gave them a block of marble and a chisel

    I'll just leave this here.
    http://www.isfdb.org/wiki/images/1/15/MNDNCHNS301970.jpg

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  86. sharculese2:27 PM

    Nyan Cat - subtly tweaks libs be reclaiming the rainbow, a symbol coopted by the homosexual Agendaists


    Scratchy - Itchy is blue, and obviously represents the Demonrat Party, who's Alinskyite trickery Scratchy suffers with great dignity


    Heathcliff - Celebrates the spirit of the little guy fighting against the monolith of big govt represented by Garfield


    Maru - as with Heathcliff 'many too small boxes Maru' is an obvious metaphor for choosing small, responsible govt


    Socks - knows where Vince Foster is buried

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  87. aimai2:28 PM

    Are you referring to the attempt to turn some Democratic Congressman in favor of gun control into the new todd akin? I don't hang on twitter so I don't know but I saw that this was the new front in the war on democrats and people who want gun control--they've clearly gone back to a "gaffe a day" model of warfare. They think, or pretend to think, it began with mean democrats picking up on something Akin or that other moron said but of course "gaffes" of various sorts were the pump and dump of Fox News coverage of all democrats for years. Doing it on twitter is just the medium of the moment.

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  88. sharculese2:33 PM

    Yeah, but this is wingnuts we're talking about so most of the 'jokes' ended up being the standard 'hurr democrat women are too ugly to rape shit and also too, democrats are the real rapists because chapaquiddick.

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  89. XeckyGilchrist2:39 PM

    Nyan Cat because its entire body is made of junk food.

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  90. Jay B.2:50 PM

    No, we don't.

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  91. Howlin Wolfe2:54 PM

    Morris the cat must have just missed the top 5. He nobly refused to eat the librul stuff his owner was trying to force down his throat until the right, and I mean right, stuff was offered.

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  92. satch3:02 PM

    To be fair, when it applies to a member of the Wisconsin Public Employees Union who voted for Scott Walker, "low information voter" is OUR polite way of saying "moron".

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  93. aimai3:07 PM

    I agree. I don't actually think that Jacobson (or any of them) are talking about "our" low information voters (women, minorities, hispanics) they are still trying to get just the majority of the votes they feel entitled to (white men, white women, "good" minorities like asians and "catholic" where catholic means conservative hispanics [no actual hispanics are referenced in this bloc, its kind of more of a generalized feeling that religious hispanics should be against the gayz and against the lazy blacks.]


    What these guys are really gob smacked by is that some non negligible proportion of "their" voters are actually low information and only sporadically political. These are not people (god bless all of us) who actually live and breathe ressentiment and abortion or gods, guns, and gays every minute of every day.


    The real thing that freaked them out during the last election was how many "low information" white women voters were appealed to by the obama campaign while they were watching Sons of Anarchy and some other stupid show. These women weren't watching fox news. They weren't watching the "news" at all. They were living their lives and discovered through the miracle of FB, twitter, and advertising during their version of their soaps that the democratic party was offering them a choice and the republican party was offering them a vaginal ultrasound with extra angry sprinkles on top.

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  94. aimai3:09 PM

    If you haven't already please read "Born to Kvetch" one of the best books about Jewish humor and the nexus beween language and worldview.

    ReplyDelete
  95. satch3:12 PM

    That's why God gave us two hands.

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  96. BigHank533:58 PM

    I still regret passing up an entire stack of VHS tapes at the dollar store twenty years ago--many, many copies of Vanilla Ice's video for "The Secret of the Ooze", featuring the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Talk about cringeworthy...

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  97. bourbaki4:00 PM

    Apparently Gee Dubs had a cat (who even merits I wikipedia page!).



    I didn't know that. I blame the liberal media

    ReplyDelete
  98. whetstone4:00 PM

    There is nothing like Upworthy or BuzzFeed on the right.



    Maybe they could try direct mail that's half LOLCats and half screeds about the gold standard.

    ReplyDelete
  99. Alexander von Humbug4:02 PM

    Given that he doesn't seem to know how anything works, I'm guessing the answer is "No".

    ReplyDelete
  100. BigHank534:03 PM

    *biting my tongue so hard*


    Geez, I wouldn't leave the straight lines hanging about unless I wanted someone to use them....

    ReplyDelete
  101. BigHank534:08 PM

    www.cutelewrockwelloverload.com seems to be available.

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  102. vista4:12 PM

    Ok thanks. Knowing the reason behind that stunt makes her look even more bizarre than I initially thought.

    ReplyDelete
  103. smut clyde4:14 PM

    Says the lady with the bunny-ears.

    ReplyDelete
  104. JennOfArk4:23 PM

    I'm going to start up "InstaPedant".

    ReplyDelete
  105. Halloween_Jack4:29 PM

    Do I have to beg? *pauses* I said...

    ReplyDelete
  106. JennOfArk4:34 PM

    Pablo Picasso was never called an asshole.

    ReplyDelete
  107. aimai4:44 PM

    Oh, I think he probably knows a lot about masturbation.

    ReplyDelete
  108. ADHDJ4:45 PM

    And there's a banner ad saying I can win a free iPhone if I can just punch the monkey (clearly meant to be George W. Bush). Engage in Chicago-style union thuggery and get a free Obamaphone.

    ReplyDelete
  109. mrstilton4:46 PM

    "clinical law professor" != law professor.

    ReplyDelete
  110. ADHDJ4:48 PM

    I would've appreciated a Seinfeld shout-out: "Obama's logical pretzels are making me thirsty!"

    ReplyDelete
  111. The Dark Avenger4:54 PM

    I think it means a law professor who is a clinical case. You know, in accordance with the Americans with Disability Act.

    ReplyDelete
  112. Yet again I'm confused about the way wingnuts think of themselves and the world. It seems that if you think "very smart and talented people" believe something, wouldn't you then look into it honestly and consider that it might have some merit? But conservatoids of all stripes act as if political thought were a hereditary trait that they are stuck with from birth.


    I've only recently, and reluctantly, come to the astonishing understanding that "very smart and talented" is an insult in conservatoid talk, and this must be the reason they not only never consider "very smart and talented" ideas to be promising, they actively avoid doing anything that might be considered "very smart and/or talented" on general merit.


    I'd be comforted by the knowledge that anti-knowledge is an evolutionary dead-end, except that they will likely take us all down with them.

    ReplyDelete
  113. Chris Anderson5:15 PM

    "If you gave them a block of marble and a chisel and all the time in the
    world, they'd be looking around for a liberal to kill with the chisel."

    Oh that's good, well put ... The old "liberal media" complaint seems dead(er) when it's clear that they, too, have the block, the chisel, and the time to do social media, or to spread culture via the internet.

    What is it about inspiration that eludes so many conservatives? I think in a creative act, whatever the scale, we sense some latent form inherent in the materials under consideration, and then labor to realize that form. It has its own logic and shape that must be intuited and respected or it won't come forth. If my "self," capacities, ideas etc. help, or constitute the materials, that's good, but they can get in the way, too.

    Getting back to conservatives, then, the ideologies are crap, the identities and capacities are crap. They don't make really good source materials and they don't help in the manipulation of other, better themes or materials, which they in fact conflict with. So you've got bad materials and a lame potential for processing. Nothing much can get sculpted out of that shit-block, no matter how much time and money you throw at it. There are no beautiful forms latent in these materials, obviously, since the people most enamored of the materials cannot bring themselves to see and realize anything out of them.

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  114. sharculese5:27 PM

    If you want to marvel at the attention to the trivial wikipedants are capable check out the talk page on Bo the dog: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Bo_(dog)

    and especially: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Bo_(dog)#Can_Bo_orgasm_on_command.3F

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  115. sharculese5:34 PM

    I want to repost this comment obsessively on every blog post and news article that mentions the president for weeks on end.

    ReplyDelete
  116. BigHank535:35 PM

    It turns out that the contract is no harder to set up than any other kind of Asian outsourcing, though some of the suppliers are not familiar with export procedures. But when I opened up that first box marked "orgasms"....in hindsight, I probably should have written the delivery specifications a lot more tightly. And worn gloves.

    Incidentally, that's also why I'm not allowed to rent a post office box anymore.

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  117. And the answer to the question, "Are you cringeworthy?" is always, "Yes."

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  118. There is nothing like Upworthy or BuzzFeed on the right.

    Yes, there is. It's called "BuzzFeed."

    ReplyDelete
  119. AGoodQuestion5:55 PM

    That he doesn't know what words mean?

    ReplyDelete
  120. AGoodQuestion6:04 PM

    (To be said in a Sammy Davis Jr voice.)

    ReplyDelete
  121. AGoodQuestion6:18 PM

    "Goddammit, I was drawing the cover for a horror book and then I got all distracted thinking about doggystyle. Maybe I can still salvage this thing."

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  122. mortimer6:31 PM

    biting my tongue so hard
    Ur doin it wrong.

    ReplyDelete
  123. Well, if he can, I'd like him to teach me.

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  124. There's a big difference between a tenured Ivy-League law professor and a clinical law professor.



    For one thing, they're paying him a whole fuck of a lot less to live in Ithaca.

    ReplyDelete
  125. satch7:12 PM

    Hmm... chisel? Nah... that just won't do it. Maybe if I try this jackhammer...

    ReplyDelete
  126. wileywitch7:19 PM

    But you're talking about people who are too reasonable to be conservative at this stage of GOP madness. Contemporary conservative pundits don't want to communicate anything much more complex than a jackhammer. "Drill, baby, drill" is how they communicate.

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  127. Spaghetti Lee7:19 PM

    ANARCHO-CAPITALIST KITTEH IZ REJECTIN UR FIAT CURRENCEE.

    ReplyDelete
  128. Spaghetti Lee7:22 PM

    Hey, no list of Most Conservative Cats is complete without Tard the Grumpy Cat! Hates everything, viciously anti-social, the perfect Republican.

    ReplyDelete
  129. satch7:24 PM

    This belongs in the comments over at Legal Insurrection. I for one would love watching Jacobson trying to refute this...

    ReplyDelete
  130. smut clyde7:28 PM

    The image there is from one John Holmes, who is legendary among the connoisseurs of horror-anthology cover art.

    His credits include the iconic painting for "The Female Eunuch", and the 1975 Picador edition of "Gravity's Rainbow".


    We now return you to the scheduled digression.

    ReplyDelete
  131. wileywitch7:30 PM

    Ah.

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  132. wileywitch7:33 PM

    It also requires a sort of surrender and being unafraid to see something other than what was planned emerge from one's mind. Who knows what potent urges that would unleash? Better to stick with regurgitation.

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  133. you suck and furthermore, suck so hard that it calls into question your entire claim to be experts about business


    Quite so. If you actually look at the results of Romney's business practices, they're pretty unimpressive. Hoovering up all the money in sight doesn't require business acumen so much as a willingness to bully and connections with other powerful sociopaths, and it certainly doesn't indicate any kind of understanding of economics. I'll never understand the people who thought Romney's wealth made him qualified to run the economy. It's like a serial killer claiming that his vast collection of human teeth proves that he is an accomplished dentist.

    ReplyDelete
  134. Jay B.8:22 PM

    How Cornell spends other people's money is of no concern of mine, but that they keep him employed is something they have to own, clinical professor or clinical case study.

    ReplyDelete
  135. smut clyde8:29 PM

    Needs accompanying image:
    http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2d/%22_12_-_ITALY_-_Cat_%28_Kitten_%29_in_Italy_whit_Fiat_automobiles.JPG

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  136. Good ol' Doc Evans. He was great pals with J.G. Ballard and would bag up all the junk-mail sent to him by pharma reps, professional associations, medical equipment salesmen etc and send it round to Ballard, who saw the stuff as 'invisible literature' to be mined for his fiction. Evans also wrote the first takedown of Scientology I ever read as part of his book CULTS OF UNREASON back in the mid 1970s.

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  137. They said get back goofy cat
    Better get back to the woods
    Well I quit those days and my redneck ways
    And oh the change is gonna do me good

    ReplyDelete
  138. And there's a banner ad saying I can win a free iPhone if I can just punch the monkey


    Hey, now, the masturbation subtopic is further upthread.

    ReplyDelete
  139. Any serious pet school should be able to teach you to come when your name is called.

    ReplyDelete
  140. XeckyGilchrist11:12 PM

    So this was no distraction. Doggystyle was the plan all along.

    ReplyDelete
  141. DocAmazing12:39 AM

    He might have been a sk8ter boi. It's worth asking him.

    ReplyDelete
  142. tim1174:44 PM

    Limbaugh

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  143. tim1174:44 PM

    He says it every three seconds. The losing side always blames shallow morons for their losing. The only difference is that we're right and they're wrong

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  144. the best part is that the over-the-top character spouts ordinary tea party rhetoric. no need for exaggeration!

    ReplyDelete
  145. especially since BuzzFeed is equally capable of trolling for conservatard traffic.

    ReplyDelete
  146. you said "tard"


    hrmm heh

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  147. I think she was hoping to gin up some more misogyny

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  148. The bunny-ears are for professional activities.

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  149. TomParmenter5:59 PM

    I have the impression Mark Halperin's novels are pretty good. Do lots of right-wingers read them?

    ReplyDelete