Friday, July 17, 2015

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN.


A very nice Richard Thompson tune
and a valuable reminder that Sting is a twat.

•   Charles C.W. Cooke's latest at National Review is about Reddit. Like the full-fedora MRAs who got Ellen Pao fired, Cooke clearly doesn't know what these bitches are bitching about, and he's enraged that Reddit is, with the blessing of the returning founder who's understandably sick of the "white-power racist-sexist neckbeards" who stirred up this whole shitstorm, trying and keep things civil on the site, which Cooke denounces as "censorship" -- i.e., people having different standards for their sites than Cooke would have if he were in charge as God intended. Cooke describes the wonderful State of Nature at Reddit that he would like maintained:
Within the swampier quarters of the site, you will find all sorts of insalubrious offerings. One area features graphic discussions of bestiality. Another hosts a bunch of white supremacists. Elsewhere, there are threads that brim with unreconstructed misogyny — perhaps exhibiting the rare and ugly “rape culture” that we are told is ubiquitous.
And then it hit me: Cooke isn't really complaining at all -- he's just seizing a market opportunity: If Reddit won't have the white supremacists and rape cultists, National Review will. John Derbyshire, expect an apology!

•   As we have seen again and again and again, there are conservatives who are not just anti-abortion but also anti-sex, viscerally repelled by the notion that anyone might want to do it just for fun. At The Federalist, Joy Pullmann is pissed that people want to make a government benefit out of long-acting reversible contraception (LARC).  Pullmann tips her hand early, complaining as she begins her "full-throated defense of the human person as an intrinsically valuable, community-embedded, and wholly sacred being, atop the also-eternal case for limited government" that
taking up the job feels kind of like being the best friend and roommate of a party-hearty girl who upchucks her innards out night after night but just won’t lay off the booze. Okay, I guess I’ll hold your hair and even clean up the vomit sometimes, but I’m also going to start giving you some straight talk, because this is ridiculous. And no way am I paying for your habit.
That ought to reel them in. Pullmann's sisterly chat continues:
We have a leading U.S. publication paternalistically implying that women cannot be trusted to responsibly manage our own bodies, dreams, and impulses, so we poor little impregnated patsies need The Man to come in and preemptively spay us or retroactively destroy our preborn children for what he thinks is our own good? What an empowering worldview! Doesn’t it just make you glad to be a woman? Doesn’t it just make you love your sex daddy? We’re so progressive and advanced in the twenty-first century!
It goes on like this forever, with subheds like "Human Haters Measure Us In Money" and "No One Has a Right to Sex," and lines like "If a baby happens during nonmarital sex, it’s about the only healthy thing going on!" I'm beginning to suspect these folks are not trying to win converts, they're trying to pump donors.

•   At National Review Fred Bauer says "The GOP Needs an Enlightened Populism." He says populism's big these days, mentions Greece. Stop laughing. (He also mentions France, which is a bit more like it.) Yet Trump, popular as he is with the racist halfwits no GOP candidate can win without, won't quite do for reasons Bauer does not articulate. But Bauer does lay out populist strategy. He wants whatever approved candidate runs to come out against "crony capitalism," of course, which is bullshit and which will in any case have to be decoded for those members of the electorate not well-versed in rightwing pundit fads. Also, "Reforming entitlements so that they are sustainable could help assure members of the middle class that, as if they hit hard times, a support system will be there for them" -- in other words, tell voters they have to work till they're 72 for their Social Security, which ought to go over great. Then there's the cultural component -- did you know there's a cultural component to conservative populism? And no, it's not John Wayne killing injuns, it's conservative columnists going on for the fourth decade in a row about political correctness. Bauer:
Attempting to tamp down the new crusade against free expression could be a key component of this enlightened populism. Cultural sophistication has a long pedigree in modern conservatism (see William F. Buckley Jr., Irving Kristol, et al.), and a soupçon of adventurous cosmopolitanism could be an antidote to the aggrieved parochialism of the reigning progressive cultural elite. In countering the outrage Wurlitzer and defending freedom of thought, this cosmopolitanism would help various communities stop feeling themselves the target of an endless cultural assault.
Me, I'm such a fascist I think you shouldn't even be allowed to talk about populism unless you actually have some idea how to talk to people with whom you don't share a masthead. For starters, lose the soupçon.

356 comments:

  1. ....so we poor little impregnated patsies need The Man to come in and preemptively spay us or retroactively destroy our preborn children for what he thinks is our own good? What an empowering worldview! Doesn’t it just make you glad to be a woman? Doesn’t it just make you love your sex daddy? We’re so progressive and advanced in the twenty-first century!

    and all the kids cheered! but I didn't cheer. i stood right up and started shouting: "this isn't what happened last week! have you all got amnesia? they just cheated us! this isn't fair! HE DID'NT GET OUT OF THE COCK - A - DOODIE CAR!"

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  2. Jeffrey_Kramer11:42 AM

    ...so we poor little impregnated patsies need The Man to come in and preemptively spay us or retroactively destroy our preborn children for what he thinks is our own good?

    I was trying to scan and construe this, and the best I could come up with was that "retroactively destroy our preborn children" was a rare example of the subjunctive, contrary-to-possibility, alternative-universe conditional.

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  3. carolannie11:45 AM

    Preborn children. I have now heard it all.

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  4. coozledad11:46 AM

    Okay, I guess I’ll hold your hair and even clean up the vomit sometimes, but I’m also going to start giving you some straight talk, because this is ridiculous. And no way am I paying for your habit.


    This alone would be enough to drive a roomate to fuck drink.

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  5. Bufflars11:47 AM

    With a dash of inverse agency. Not being able to afford LARCs is empowering. Choosing to utilize LARCs or getting an abortion is just "The Man" doing what he thinks is good. Or something.

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  6. Randy Gibbons11:48 AM

    Okay, I guess I’ll hold your hair and even clean up the vomit sometimes, but I’m also going to start giving you some straight talk



    What a chump. I figure it's easier to pretend to listen to her stern talk than to clean up my own vomit. (Even your best friend doesn't do that in my world.)

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  7. Jeffrey_Kramer11:51 AM

    Well, the conservative response to any proposal to do anything aimed at achieving any alleviation of anybody's difficulties in any area of life is always going to be some variation of Otter's Gambit from Animal House. "So, you say that this proposal would help people. Is this not the same as saying that they need your help? And does this not, in turn, imply that they are helpless? And would this not make them sub-human in your eyes? Well, I'm not going to stand here and listen to you..."

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  8. Brian J.11:51 AM

    Is that like the future conditional pluperfect subjunctive?

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  9. coozledad11:52 AM

    Doesn’t it just make you glad to be a woman? Doesn’t it just make you love menstruation? We’re so progressive and advanced in the twenty-first century!

    Her roommate has gone out drinking just to avoid hearing her screaming at the Tampon ads on TV.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Randy Gibbons11:53 AM

    Oh I dunno, preowned cars sell better than used ones, so maybe they're onto something.

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  11. Downpup E11:54 AM

    Cooke really misses with:

    there is no means by which an administrator can evaluate objectively which sentences are “hateful” or “offensive”

    Maybe not to an absolute standard of objectivity, but anybody who's ever been an admin knows that you can't let the trolls & morons take over or your place will turn into NRO online.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Downpup E11:57 AM

    Sure she cleans up. especially if you remember to puke on her shoes.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Helmut Monotreme11:57 AM

    She's not going to make much headway in "talking to people who aren't already brainwashed quiverfull activistists" members of the Duggar family, until she learns that no one outside of that family thinks of menstruation as a squandered opportunity to gestate another Jesus warrior.

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  14. Jeffrey_Kramer11:57 AM

    Maybe she convinced The Federalist they needed to put her piece up because there is no means by which an editor or publisher can evaluate objectively which articles "make sense" or "achieve minimal sanity."

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  15. Listen well, ye woman of the greatest of Americas, ye jewels in the crown of liberty's throne! The time is here to produce more of our greatest product - the future generations of Americans. Fill the nation end to end with eager young faces, cooing and laughing for the bright new day that they will awaken! And show no fear for consequences, O noble creatures. Fear not for the cost of raising them; they will fill their mouths with ambition and dreams. Fear not for the strain on your body; for what good is earthly flesh but to sacrifice for the highest of ideals? Think not of your own wishes; for it is nature and Nature's God who dictates that the factory of your womb never be idle. Fear not for the strain on society, or the consequences of a crowded future; the prison and the work-camp will always wait for the unworthies. So, ye women of the great America, take your noble husbands and go to your task!


    ...Sorry about that. I'd say something intelligent, but I tried to skim that long-ass article and I caught the "birth control is unnatural" stuff, and the "women only want birth control because they want to pull a train every weekend" stuff, and the "those poor harlots should keep their legs together if they're not rich enough for sex" stuff...it's the same old Anti-Sex League stuff with a veneer of intellectualism. Well, she does bring welfare into it, and that's new - apparently if it weren't for all these entitlements, babies wouldn't cost society a cent (Crime? Addiction? Depletion of resources? I don't know what you're talking about). So I decided to write a little propaganda copy for a dystopian novel that I've had on the backburner for a while. Enjoy, I guess.


    (Oh, and obligatory plug for my own dystopian lit analysis blog, I guess. Currently on the table: A shitty novel that Glenn Beck stole from someone else)

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  16. Yeah, it's really ambiguous as to whether or not "Coontown" is offensive.

    ReplyDelete
  17. Randy Gibbons12:02 PM

    there is no means by which an administrator can evaluate objectively which sentences are "hateful" or "offensive"


    No shit, you just exercise your judgment, and commenters should understand that you have that right, objectivity be damned.

    ReplyDelete
  18. Randy Gibbons12:09 PM

    Ahoy, a dystopian lit analysis blog. I pledge to peruse it one day.

    ReplyDelete
  19. I'm beginning to suspect these folks are not trying to win converts, they're trying to pump donors.

    Well, there's definitely some stroking going on here. No doubt about it. I'll bet she had to go spend some quality time with her friends Buzz and Woody after writing all that.

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  20. StringOnAStick12:20 PM

    And isn't the analogy she's using exactly the type of woman who should be forced to bear unwanted children, especially since they'll have had serious, chronic alcohol exposure as a fetus?
    Rethug social policy always boil down to "that'll teach the bitches!" Lovely.

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  21. "viscerally repelled by the notion that anyone might want to do it just for fun."


    Well, more like viscerally repelled that women might want to do it just for fun.


    Also, they frequently pretend as if birth control can never be used for non-sexual reasons, in treating various medical conditions unrelated to pregnancy or sex. (I'm not necessarily talking about LARC, but just in their general discussions of contraception they act as if the only people who use it are promiscuous single women for the sole purpose of having as much sex as possible.)

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  22. Jeffrey_Kramer12:21 PM

    I can comprehend "preborn child" as a clumsy variant of "unborn child" (i.e. fetus). I can comprehend "destroy the preborn child" as Christianist for "abortion." What I still don't get is how you can retroactively destroy/abort the fetus. Does it involve time travel, so you put yourself on birth control before the pregnancy? And if liberals are out to retroactively destroy the preborn, does that mean conservatives want instead to prophetically rescue the post-dead?

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  23. susanoftexas12:21 PM

    "Joy Pullmann is managing editor of The Federalist and an education research fellow at The Heartland Institute."

    Another little piggy at the Koch trough. And a mean one.

    But wait! There's more!

    "Joy Pullmann is a research fellow on education policy for The Heartland Institute and managing editor of The Federalist, a web magazine on politics, policy, and culture. She is also a former managing editor of School Reform News. In that capacity, Pullmann interviewed and produced podcasts with many of the leading figures in school reform. Before that, she was the assistant editor for American Magazine at the American Enterprise Institute.

    She is also the 2013-14 recipient of a Robert Novak journalism fellowship for in-depth reporting on Common Core national education standards.

    Pullmann graduated from the Hillsdale College honors program with an English major and journalism concentration, where she received statewide competitive collegiate honors for her reporting and commentary and ranked in the top 25 nationally in parliamentary debate."
    Milk-fed veal, now regurgitating the gavage.

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  24. So many moral conundrums they must face! Only God knows how many eggs each and every woman has that will never be fertilized--not even if she's working at it like ten Duggars put together. So many souls condemned before they've had a chance!

    And men! Each and every man producing tens of thousands of sperm every day--sperm that are not meeting eggs as Jesus intended!

    Obviously something must be done!

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  25. susanoftexas12:23 PM

    At least we know that Joy finds no joy in sex, although selling her misery via The Federalist is a very odd choice.

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  26. Well, more like viscerally repelled that women might want to do it just for fun.

    Yeah. And then women expect things like an orgasm once in a while, and there's just no pleasing them! (Especially when all you have to offer is three pumps and an apology.)

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  27. Randy Gibbons12:25 PM

    Doesn’t it just make you love your sex daddy?



    I don't know how people carry on in Federalisttown, but 'round here we have a rule: neither a sex-daddy nor -daughter be.


    Seriously, is she grasping for unfamiliar lingo? As with the hypothetical drunk roommate, one senses she's out of her element.

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  28. You know what's great about this? Down in the comments for this thing, there's a woman who wrote about how government programs (among them subsidized birth control) helped her get out of poverty and get a J.D. One of the dickhole commenters went on about how she was a parasite because she didn't get a degree in something useful to society. Yeah, that woman should have taken the column writer's advice and gone to work at a think tank - something society really needs. There's a critical deficit in ill-informed articles calling women sluts, and Pullman is hard at work correcting that.

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  29. susanoftexas12:26 PM

    That is a very, very strange thing to say. She has a weird attitude towards sex, she talks about a sex daddy, she is terribly angry and wants to punish someone.... Not good.

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  30. coozledad12:27 PM

    I get the impression she thinks there's some supernatural room where these "preborn children" are waiting in anticipation of that Tonka truck or a Barbie doll. Every time someone puts on a rubber or uses Norplant, an angel has to come and tell preborn Jimmy
    sorry, hoss, no truck. Then preborn Jimmy goes to limbo or something.


    And Preborn Jimmy Goes to Limbo would be a good name for an electronica outfit.

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  31. susanoftexas12:28 PM

    I guess nothing is more useful to society than to sop up wingnut welfare and sow anger and contempt.

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  32. Ripley12:28 PM

    "If a baby happens during nonmarital sex, it’s about the only healthy thing going on!"



    There's your answer, Mr Gaye. Please do not contact us further.


    On a side note, a local Humane Society picked up a cat and 4 kittens that someone had placed in a garbage bag and left at the dump. I'm going to break some fingers and kill a motherfucker.


    (In before "libtards are angry and hatey and violent!")

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  33. Also, they frequently pretend as if birth control can never be used for non-sexual reasons, in treating various medical conditions unrelated to pregnancy or sex.


    Oh, Pullman specifically brings that up several times, with comments about "unfulfilling sex with totally random guys" and "sexual free-for-all" suggesting that she believes only filthy sluts need birth control. Now, forget for a second that IUD's don't prevent STIs and would therefore be very inappropriate for anyone who really was fucking strangers every weekend. Forget for a second that, statistically speaking, the majority of people writing these pieces either are themselves or are in relationships with women using birth control, so they must know it's not true. I just want to know how that's your go-to, your first thought. What has to be wrong with you as a human being to assume that anyone with an IUD is a subhuman fuck machine?

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  34. Helmut Monotreme12:34 PM

    Oh come on, it's at least as normal and healthy an outlook as "it puts the lotion on it's skin or it gets the hose again".

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  35. whetstone12:34 PM

    retroactively destroy our preborn children

    Come to think of it, an IUD does look like a flux capacitor. So that's how they work!

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  36. dmsilev12:39 PM

    "preemptively spay us"


    Does she not understand the meaning of the word 'Reversible'?

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  37. I wish I could get a job where I could ramble on about what-the-fuck-ever and get a healthy paycheck for it. Seriously, Pullman seems to be at best vaguely familiar with what an IUD even is. She keeps prattling on about "chemicals" and sterilization and the Pill and other stuff that's completely irrelevant. Hell, one of the commenters came away with the impression that the Colorado program meant that IUDs were mandatory - that's how ignorant that piece was. Seriously, I could ramble on drunkenly about shit I don't really understand - where's my money?

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  38. coozledad12:43 PM

    Three pumps and an apology: The Charles CW Cooke Story.

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  39. Jimcima12:50 PM

    Really, I don't know what Cooke is on about. Reddit is not banning /r/conservative, and it will likely continue to be the virulently racist and sexist cesspool it's always been thus satisfying the bottomless conservative demand for such things.

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  40. susanoftexas12:51 PM

    It's very hard to see talentless toadies get paid to harm other people so the rich can get richer, especially when one has no money. Fighting for truth, justice, and equality will just get you poor and battered.

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  41. susanoftexas12:54 PM

    Also, "People want what they see." Joy was a good little girl all her life and while everyone else was having fun she was obedient. That would piss anyone off.

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  42. montag212:54 PM

    If that's the latest term for sophistry, yeah.

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  43. Reminds me of when a female Texas legislator made the claim that rape kits prevent pregnancy by "cleaning out" the woman (or some similar expression she used - this was around the time of the Wendy Davis filibuster, a couple of years back).


    It's bad enough when male legislators and far-right pastors make up BS about the female reproductive system. But it's especially painful to see a woman so willfully ignorant about it.

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  44. montag212:57 PM

    Fergit it, she's rolling. Next comes the head revolutions and the pea soup.

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  45. montag21:04 PM

    C'mon, now, everybody knows that sex is just like binge drinking, right? That it's no fun unless you suffer the next morning?

    *Double-take* No?

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  46. montag21:08 PM

    I've seen that prose before. The Handmaid's Tale, right?

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  47. bekabot1:11 PM

    If they want to do that they'll have to get in line behind the Mormons, or so I've heard.

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  48. montag21:13 PM

    Oh, she strikes me as the type who has some iced tea and fans herself until she cools down.

    And blanches at the thought of eating eggs for breakfast.

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  49. bekabot1:14 PM

    Here's guessing that (maybe) it isn't just Joy's roommate who goes out drinking but many of the people Joy has spent time around. Here's also guessing that Joy's assessments of their conduct have not rectified the matter. Here's also also guessing that Joy has no clue as to why.

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  50. montag21:15 PM

    Cooke, apologize?

    Never, sir.

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  51. NonyNony1:15 PM

    I kind of wish that they had a coherent theology like this, because the way you've laid it out there's a clear moral argument to promote birth control use in anyone not absolutely ready to have a kid. Because little preborn Jimmy would be better off going to the back of the line and waiting for another turn than to be born into an abusive or neglectful environment.

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  52. montag21:19 PM

    "What has to be wrong with you as a human being to assume that anyone with an IUD is a subhuman fuck machine?"

    Here we stare into that abyss that is right-wing religious conservatism. And when it stares back, the eyes go just a little psycho on you.

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  53. Ellis_Weiner1:25 PM

    (Before even reading today's post: Love this RT song, and love Thompson's drummer, even if I am a die-hard Dave Mattacks worshiper.)

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  54. montag21:26 PM

    Umm, no, from all appearances.

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  55. Funny you should mention that, as I may have Margaret Atwood on the brain a little bit. Agenda 21, this stain of a novel I've been pulling apart for the last month, is basically The Handmaid's Tale fanfiction. I've had copies of both books on my desk for the past few weeks, as there are so many places where Harriet Parke blatantly steals from Atwood that I'm compelled to check. As a consequence, I've basically re-read The Handmaid's Tale, which - you'll be shocked to learn - is a far better novel. I know, you really do expect quality from that Glenn Beck seal of approval...

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  56. montag21:28 PM

    "Really, I don't know what Cooke is on about."

    Oh, simple, I think. By temperament, Cooke is a born whiner.

    He's whining about something.

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  57. susanoftexas1:33 PM

    Heh. Yeah. Except that train never left the station, so to speak.

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  58. Gromet1:45 PM

    I want to weld this comment into an armored Deathmobile and drive straight through the homecoming parade in it.

    ReplyDelete
  59. carolannie1:45 PM

    You just made my head hurt

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  60. carolannie1:46 PM

    I think she is talking about pre-conceptus children, the ones that will never be because of birth control. I don't know.

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  61. Bizarro Mike1:48 PM

    I had sex ed in Texas public schools. And thanks to it, I've never gotten pregnant from sharing a toilet seat with a woman.

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  62. Well, use birth control once--just ONCE!--and God shuts your womb forever.

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  63. your place will turn into NRO online


    Wingnut pundits do not have a problem with this.

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  64. Gromet1:52 PM

    Yeah, this really caught my attention -- the extent to which deeply personal, specific-to-her issues are on display, while she seems to think she's speaking in universals that will rally the masses. I don't see how anyone reads this and doesn't come away disturbed -- even people inclined to agree with her politics.

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  65. susanoftexas1:54 PM

    My kids just laughed and laughed--and told me I would have been furious at what they were taught. But all of that Sturm und Drag was for nothing; almost all kids surf the net and they already know far more than some parents realize.

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  66. You're missing their operative assumption, which is that this is all single women who are big on the birth control.

    I say, let's help them along with their crusade against birth control. Indeed, I'll even pledge money to help them promote it. Because the fact of the matter is that the vast majority of birth control is used by married couples who don't want [more] children.

    So, yeah--start a national drive to eliminate birth control. Get all the GOP candidates to sign on! Let's see how Joe Sixpack likes that in the voting booth.

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  67. susanoftexas2:04 PM

    That point needs to be emphasized far more (although unmarried women still have more abortions than married). Of course they avoid that point because it harms their case. They probably know the real stats:

    While the discourse around abortion still focuses on scared white teenagers, the reality is that the typical abortion patient these days is a twenty-something single mother of color.

    The shift is the result of economic pressures and changing patterns of contraceptive use. Improved contraception use has led to a drop in the abortion rate for pretty much all groups of women since the 1970s. But in the early 2000s, the National Center for Health Statistics found that while contraception use in American women had been climbing for decades, it stalled in the 1990s. Loss of access for poorer women seemed to be the sole reason for this troubling trend, which led to an explosion in unplanned pregnancy, and therefore abortion. While poor women have seen a spike, women in the middle class continued to see unplanned pregnancies decline.

    The most recent data suggests that the disparity has only gotten larger. Today, a full 42 percent of women having abortions live under the poverty line, and another 27 percent have incomes within 200 percent of the poverty line. Taken together, 69 percent of women who have abortions are economically disadvantaged. Given recent attacks on Planned Parenthood—Texas, for instance, has rejected federal funding of the organization entirely—this trend is likely to continue. One can only hope the expansion of health-care coverage—with the contraception mandate included—under the Affordable Care Act can repair the damage.
    "http://prospect.org/article/demographics-abortion-its-not-what-you-think

    Hence the emphasis on abortion as Black genocide.
    Many, many social problems come down to money, obviously. It has been very beneficial to the rich for people to emphasize social change over economic change. We have the power to do the former but not the latter, which is emotionally debilitating.

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  68. tigrismus2:41 PM

    But they're against fucking like weasels, too! It is a riddle/mystery/enigma roll-up sort of thing.

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  69. Ellis_Weiner2:43 PM

    ...that you know of.

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  70. Gromet2:45 PM

    Not just Texas. I knew a girl whose public school in Virginia "was very direct with us; we learned all there is to know, so this accusation that the South is backward is simply not true." Well, she later found out a roommate had an STD, and was blown away -- genuinely, utterly mystified and horrified. "I always thought of her as a good person. I don't understand." And so: The discovery didn't make her rethink her sex ed -- it made her rethink the roommate. Like, what else don't we know, etc., she has a dark side.

    The roommate, from New Jersey btw, was like "Eh, fuck. Busted by the HPV statistical likelihoods."

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  71. Randy Gibbons2:55 PM

    "A person is not a democrat thanks to his ignorance of literature and the arts, no an elitist because he or she has cultivated them [...] it is absurd to conjure up behind anybody who exploits his educated status the existence of an "elite" scheming to oppress the rest of us."

    - Jacques Barzun

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  72. Downpup E2:56 PM

    "Aggrieved parochialism" is the lifeblood of their movement. Bauer is mocking his readers secure in the knowledge that it will fly right over their heads.

    Mountain Dew is mon droit.

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  73. The human person is an intrinsically valuable, community-embedded, and wholly sacred being that should be able to fuck for fun without dire consequences.

    Pullman's the only one who wants to keep the hypothetical party girl puking because she wants to be a moral scold. The rest of us, including the party girl herself, just want to have a healthy good time with no repercussions. If the party-hearty roommate were a real person, I'd suspect Pullman of spiking her wine spritzers with wood alcohol just so she could continue being a scold.

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  74. I'd suspect Pullman of spiking her wine spritzers with wood alcohol just so she could continue being a scold.

    The blind making the blind, I guess.

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  75. Jay B.3:17 PM

    Cultural sophistication has a long pedigree in modern conservatism (see William F. Buckley Jr., Irving Kristol, et al.), and a soupçon of adventurous cosmopolitanism could be an antidote to the aggrieved parochialism of the reigning progressive cultural elite.


    This might be the most hilarious thing ever written. First, the "long pedigree" consists of two dead guys, neither of whom had published anything culturally sophisticated, or even relevant, in decades. Adventurous cosmopolitanism in today's movement is the province of the Drehers and the Nordlingers, dreary aesthetes who are about as populist ("Lyon", "The Met") as a Romanov. And "aggrived parochialism" seems to be an entirely STUPID reference point for what he's trying to set up as a battle for "cosmopolitanism". The problem, as he defines it, is entirely the opposite of parochialism on the liberal cultural side. Actual conservative populism can be found in the production house of Happy Madison, slapdash, infantile, shoddy money grabs by Adam Sandler and his halfassed troupe of careless filmmakers who literally hold their audience in contempt while hoovering in their money. Even with his string of recent flops, he's a mint.

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  76. Randy Gibbons3:20 PM

    She is, in part. Pretty sure of that. But there's a reason everyone's confused, and it isn't because we're all poor readers.

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  77. so we poor little impregnated patsies need The Man to come in and
    preemptively spay us or retroactively destroy our preborn children for
    what he thinks is our own good? What an empowering worldview!Well, Joy, our actual worldview does try to empower women. Instead of, you know, presuming that the only reason would have nonmarital sex or use contraception is because a man forced her to.

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  78. Downpup E3:24 PM

    Rare & heavy? Nah, she's boron, a product of spallation.

    ReplyDelete
  79. Brian J.3:26 PM

    Lanthanides aren't that rare; there's as much cerium in the earth's crust as copper. It's just that we haven't found much use for them.

    ReplyDelete
  80. I'm beginning to suspect these folks are not trying to win converts, they're trying to pump donors.If a baby happens when trying to pump donors, it's about the only healthy thing going on!

    ReplyDelete
  81. Tony Prost3:29 PM

    Damn, it is always projection with these guys!
    "the aggrieved parochialism of the reigning progressive cultural elite.
    In countering the outrage Wurlitzer and defending freedom of thought,
    this cosmopolitanism would help various communities stop feeling
    themselves the target of an endless cultural assault."

    ReplyDelete
  82. Brian J.3:30 PM

    You can literally rearrange those words in any order and make the same amount of sense: none.

    ReplyDelete
  83. Downpup E3:39 PM

    Copper? I didn't touch her!

    ReplyDelete
  84. DN Nation3:54 PM

    "so we poor little impregnated patsies need The Man to come in and preemptively spay us or retroactively destroy our preborn children for what he thinks is our own good? What an empowering worldview! Doesn’t it just make you glad to be a woman? Doesn’t it just make you love your sex daddy?"


    Sheesh, someone say this woman's safe word already.

    ReplyDelete
  85. agorabum3:54 PM

    I call eggs pre-birds. And forks food rakes...

    ReplyDelete
  86. Randy Gibbons4:02 PM

    It ain't sex, or drugs, or rock 'n' roll. Beyond that I couldn't tell you.

    ReplyDelete
  87. Randy Gibbons4:06 PM

    Will have been there, will have done that.


    I think. We're childless, I mean.

    ReplyDelete
  88. Tracy4:06 PM

    Michael Jerome is the man.

    ReplyDelete
  89. Well, I've got that one beat: I'm my own grandpaw, and I traveled back in time and shot myself.

    ReplyDelete
  90. It's been a long time since I lived in a heavily Mormon region of Arizona, but I seem to recall something similar in their belief system.

    ReplyDelete
  91. M. Krebs4:15 PM

    Well, this is interesting. Richard Thompson and David Byrne covering a Pogues tune. https://youtu.be/-9LyfRBTcFc

    ReplyDelete
  92. Oh, and the reason why Trump won't do that Bauer refuses to indicate is that Trump mocked the "New Republic" as a dying media outlet. Bauer knows who butters his bread, and it's not Trump.

    ReplyDelete
  93. Geo X4:19 PM

    And the Pogues tune is actually a cover of an Ewan MacColl tune! Wheels within wheels!

    ReplyDelete
  94. It's actually a song by Ewan MacColl (Kirsty's dad).

    ReplyDelete
  95. Randy Gibbons4:22 PM

    It hasn't occurred to him that the conservative rank-and-file loathes cosmopolitanism, adventurous or otherwise? These are the cultural chauvinists at the center of the universe; they have nothing to learn from without. Think of rural parents who fear sending their children to state universities in Madison or Des Moines, those hotbeds of leftist brainwashing. Then there are the kids (a minority, I hope) who do feel assaulted by what their instructors and peers say, maybe going on to become outspoken reactionary twerps of one flavor or another (choose your poison, the movement's full of 'em).


    Think of people who, on discovering that a kid is interested in literature and the arts, react with ridicule and scorn. It's a wonder, then, if the kid doesn't become a pretentious elitist, surrounded as he or she is by the exact wrong people to nurture a creative, active mind.


    Well then. These quotes, where they are intelligible, are dumb.

    ReplyDelete
  96. . . . defending freedom of thought . . .

    As much as you rightwingers would just LOVE to be able to have something like Thought Police, the fact of the matter is such a thing does not exist. But you know what? We liberals really don't care about your thoughts. You can think the word "nigger" as much as you like--we just don't like it when you call someone that, and we will call you out for it. You can think about how much your secretary has a really nice ass all you want--but don't be surprised if she's not terribly amused by you sharing that observation.

    You can think about anything you'd like as much as you'd like. It's your behavior that people find offensive and will try to correct.

    ReplyDelete
  97. Well, you know, even is every Black person in the country finds "coontown" offensive, they're not a majority. So you can say that the majority does not find it offensive and roll with that!

    ReplyDelete
  98. Gromet4:30 PM

    Haha, a soupçon of adventurous cosmopolitanism will earn conservatives the respect they need to win the the day for their common-sense, racist views!

    "Hey! This is serious! The queers are gonna run the place for the next thousand years if you hayseeds don't get on board with sushi and Eraserhead!"

    ReplyDelete
  99. mortimer20004:32 PM

    Yeah. The Heartland Institute, funded by Koch, Exxon, et al.

    So when she writes against "Pushing women to implant themselves with chemicals that can kill their children, lead to the spread of more painful and infectious diseases..." it's only certain chemicals she's against. She's perfectly fine with baby- and adult killers like tobacco smoke, hydrocarbons, fossil fuel emissions, petrochemicals, pesticides, or pretty much anything manufactured by Koch Industries, Exxon-Mobil, et al.

    ReplyDelete
  100. It is wise to remember the words of Barney Frank:

    "For Republicans, life begins at conception and ends at birth."

    ReplyDelete
  101. Randy Gibbons4:40 PM

    That's not even a joke in this country. "Well *I* don't see any problem with the Confederate Flag, and neither do my friends." - certain people

    ReplyDelete
  102. jennofark4:46 PM

    I want to emblazon "Eat Me" on the side of your armored Deathmobile, and ride along with you.

    ReplyDelete
  103. Randy Gibbons4:53 PM

    I don't care if it was all consensual, those sound like bad ideas.


    I might like a moratorium on time-travel stories.

    ReplyDelete
  104. DN Nation4:56 PM

    Preborn Jimmy Goes to Limbo with Frankie Goes to Hollywood as your opener.

    ReplyDelete
  105. susanoftexas5:01 PM

    Miscarriages from pollution = the free market at work
    Abortion = Satan and all his works

    ReplyDelete
  106. DN Nation5:03 PM

    Unfortunately, I know a lot of wingnut Joe Sixpacks who will be just fine with restrictions on birth control. Yes, every wife involved uses birth control. Yes, Joe Sixpack knows this. But, um, homina homina they really NEED it, and those OTHER people...homina homina

    ReplyDelete
  107. TGuerrant5:06 PM

    I'm not sure she even knows what "preemptive" means.

    ReplyDelete
  108. "Spay us"--wow. That's just. Wow.

    ReplyDelete
  109. Ruviana5:12 PM

    I was hearing "pre-born" children when I worked in abortion rights back in the 70s. Yes, we started almost immediately after Roe v. Wade b/c we knew they would start working to overturn it.

    ReplyDelete
  110. Gromet5:13 PM

    "... endless cultural assault." Ha, yes! What they feel as "endless cultural assault" is essentially the invitation to cosmopolitan society. It reads "While in attendance, please be cordial and considerate of others' views," and that, to them, is an assault. "But my views are that I shouldn't be cordial and considerate! Your own by-laws say you HAVE to be cordial and considerate of this, or all leave! YET YOU TEAR ME DOWN, YOU HYPOCRITICAL ASSAULTISTS!!"

    ReplyDelete
  111. Yes, my daughter's familiarity with Werewolves, Vampires, and the doings of Benedict Cumberbatch never ceases to amaze me. I do so hope it stands in for good sex ed.

    ReplyDelete
  112. Yes, you get a real Maggie from NOM feel about her. Which might argue that she let someone put his hand in the cookie jar and it got bitten off.

    ReplyDelete
  113. If you don't see--just read the comments. I mean, I'm not going to, but someone should.

    ReplyDelete
  114. Gromet5:19 PM

    No thanks. I'm saving the maidenhood of my sanity.

    ReplyDelete
  115. Gromet5:21 PM

    Something to consider in the future.

    ReplyDelete
  116. Maybe he figures they'll put through a non-slut exemption, but I kinda doubt it. If these people have their way, it's going to be NO birth control. For anyone.

    But, that's Conservatism: Getting government out of the boardroom and into your bedroom.

    ReplyDelete
  117. brandonrg5:25 PM

    I had a conversation like this when Grantland came out with that piece a couple of years ago that outed someone as transgendered.


    "The author talked to his editors, and they didn't see it problem, so it's fine"


    "But none of them are trans or even know someone who is"


    "So what?"

    ReplyDelete
  118. brandonrg5:26 PM

    Charles C. Cooke against all pornography and explicit lyrics/images laws/restrictions?

    ReplyDelete
  119. susanoftexas5:34 PM

    Me too. Either way conservative kids know they can't talk to their parents about sex. My kids listen to my opinions before they reject them and they know they can talk to me if they want.

    ReplyDelete
  120. tigrismus5:39 PM

    Look, if we go through and pick all the words she doesn't seem to understand we'll be here all day. How about we spot her conjunctions and both definite AND indefinite articles and leave it at that.

    ReplyDelete
  121. I'd hazard a guess that she doesn't know the function of Conjunction Junction.

    ReplyDelete
  122. DocAmazing6:03 PM

    She could not find her but with both or ands.

    ReplyDelete
  123. DocAmazing6:18 PM

    Hey, you're making the present tense.

    ReplyDelete
  124. susanoftexas6:19 PM

    I want to give this comment a gold star and an A+.

    ReplyDelete
  125. DocAmazing6:21 PM

    By "adventurous cosmopolitanism", he means using Cran-Grape.

    ReplyDelete
  126. Buffalo Rude6:26 PM

    "Sorry, hoss, no truck”.


    Hahahahahahahahahaha... I’m dying over here.


    All the up-votes and claps.

    ReplyDelete
  127. montag26:27 PM

    Silly me. I should have been able to figure that out on my own.

    ReplyDelete
  128. montag26:29 PM

    For the right idea to come along?

    ReplyDelete
  129. Ellis_Weiner6:47 PM

    "In countering the outrage Wurlitzer and defending freedom of thought..."


    Yes, if there's one place I turn to be free of the blats and bleats of the outrage Wurlitzer, it's NRO and the "adventurous cosmopolitanism" of the right, where they never met a movie, play, song, or tv show they didn't like, except for all of them that weren't "conservative."

    ReplyDelete
  130. montag26:48 PM

    Yeah, all that, along with oozing with self-imagined victimhood, and all the usual rancor at being picked last for dodgeball, along with a heaping helping of Palin Syndrome.

    Which is why the mere mention of cosmopolitanism in that context is oxymoronic.

    ReplyDelete
  131. Smurch6:51 PM

    I assume you shot yourself in Reno, just to watch you... Well, you know the rest.

    ReplyDelete
  132. Ellis_Weiner6:52 PM

    "Hillsdale College" sounds like a place where Archie would go after high school. Wait--he's dead? Still.

    ReplyDelete
  133. jennofark6:52 PM

    Vagina dentata is a real thing.

    ReplyDelete
  134. susanoftexas6:54 PM

    Maybe. Maybe not.

    ReplyDelete
  135. DocAmazing6:56 PM

    Just wait...

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yH8yuld4DUE

    ReplyDelete
  136. DocAmazing6:57 PM

    Archie Schroedinger?

    ReplyDelete
  137. montag27:00 PM

    Hillsdale has a rep as one of tightest collection of inbred right-wing loonies in all of academia. This woman has, therefore, been carefully groomed for the role she now plays. Which is why her writing makes no sense to sane people.

    ReplyDelete
  138. jennofark7:05 PM

    And it's on Netflix streaming!

    ReplyDelete
  139. susanoftexas7:07 PM

    She never had a chance to be normal. That would be sad if she were not so venomous. She has a lot invested in her beliefs and she'll be damned if her sacrifice is ignored.

    How is it fair to force money from me to pay for other people’s good times?

    My family purse is impoverished to pay for others whom some distant overlord somewhere has deemed more deserving than us. It only deepens the blow that the people government may deem “worthy” in this case are precisely the opposite; that is, they are the ones who refuse to behave responsibly, while my husband and I are punished despite our objectively more moral and society-uplifting behavior (saving sex until marriage, keeping that marriage together, paying our own healthcare and childcare expenses, working hard to earn enough money to have piles of it taxed away, etc.). This is government rewarding the irresponsible and punishing the responsible. That’s called injustice.
    I did everything I was told and now all of you have to do the same.

    ReplyDelete
  140. mentions Greece

    Europe has been taking it up the whatsits for far too long.

    ReplyDelete
  141. "He wants whatever approved candidate runs to come out against 'crony capitalism,' of course."


    Huh. And here we thought Bernie was going to push Hillary to the left. Who knew he'd be having the same effect on the Clown Posse? Even though, as Ed reminds us, it's all an act with them. Still, the rubes might be impressed.


    And I like Ed's use of "approved candidate." I'm sure Sheldon Adelson, the Kochs and Rupert Murdoch have been having some interesting conference calls over the past few weeks, now that Trump has joined the race and can match them dollar for dollar.

    ReplyDelete
  142. montag27:17 PM

    Whew. That's some first-class resentment. She must piss in her own Wheaties every morning.

    ReplyDelete
  143. It'll get over it.

    ReplyDelete
  144. Jaime Oria7:22 PM

    Prof. Farnsworth: "Choke on that, causality!"

    ReplyDelete
  145. http://vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net/uncyclopedia/images/6/65/Milk_chocolate_hitler_bite.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20051019042036
    What's so offensive about this?

    ReplyDelete
  146. Down here in Florida, you see billboards showing a bunch of little outstretched hands and the caption, "Please don't kill us, Mommy!" I say arm the little fuckers; this is a stand-your-ground state after all.

    ReplyDelete
  147. You can literally find anything on Google.

    ReplyDelete
  148. What if you are describing a community of raccoons? That's not offensive .

    ReplyDelete
  149. White people: It's all about us.

    ReplyDelete
  150. The other day I wrote the comment "Don't mention WFB's views on race or NR will delete it." at NR and they deleted my comment within one minute. It was like rain on my wedding day.

    ReplyDelete
  151. tigrismus7:36 PM

    It is pretty rich for them to complain about censorship.

    ReplyDelete
  152. My thoughts exactly. Guys like him probably figure the bitch was lucky to get what she got.

    ReplyDelete
  153. tigrismus7:36 PM

    No no no, THAT he knows when he sees it. Though he might need to keep checking to make sure.

    ReplyDelete
  154. Tehanu7:42 PM

    Or drinking cosmopolitans, which are probably the most recent cocktails he's ever heard of (after the old-fashioned, of course -- or maybe the Cuba Libre).

    ReplyDelete
  155. Here's hoping the commenter with the JD will use it to make abortion and contraception more readily available to poor women, which would be a big fuck-you to the douche who called her a parasite with a useless degree. I wonder what his is in. Philosophy? Nothing? That sounds more like it.

    ReplyDelete
  156. A vagina for every wanker.

    ReplyDelete
  157. AH GOD JUGHEAD NOT YOU

    ReplyDelete
  158. Great, now I'll have nightmares. Thanks Doc.

    ReplyDelete
  159. What, they pay their own healthcare expenses? Y'know, I heard about this new government program . . .

    ReplyDelete
  160. TGuerrant8:08 PM

    A campaign slogan like that could go a long way toward transforming old Clinton scandals into new Clinton popularity.

    ReplyDelete
  161. TGuerrant8:09 PM

    Jonah calls farts pre-publication.

    ReplyDelete
  162. 'Course, the problem with that is, What good is having a thought if you can't express it? There's yer fuckin' PC right there.


    "Mommy, why can't I say 'shit'?"
    "Because I will wash your mouth out with soap, like I'm going to do if I hear that word come out of your mouth one more time."


    I guess these people never got that lesson.

    ReplyDelete
  163. Jeffrey_Kramer8:13 PM

    You could have been an Anglo-Saxon bard! Old English poets used to call the sea "the whale-road."

    ReplyDelete
  164. TGuerrant8:14 PM

    See? Getting the "Oh, we can still be friends" shoulder pat at the end of a date is not the worst thing that can happen.

    ReplyDelete
  165. Ellis_Weiner8:14 PM

    It's also some first-class bad writing. "society-uplifting behavior." "more deserving than us." Not to mention her impoverished idea of "society." Ask me if I'm surprised.

    ReplyDelete
  166. Hey, maybe the Wurlitzer is a jukebox and they're just pissed that the liberals substituted the Beatles for all that Bobby Vinton crap.

    ReplyDelete
  167. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person8:19 PM

    Attempting to tamp down the new crusade against free expression could be
    a key component of this enlightened populism. Cultural sophistication
    has a long pedigree in modern conservatism (see William F. Buckley Jr.,
    Irving Kristol, et al.), and a soupçon of adventurous cosmopolitanism
    could be an antidote to the aggrieved parochialism of the reigning
    progressive cultural elite. In countering the outrage Wurlitzer and
    defending freedom of thought, this cosmopolitanism would help various
    communities stop feeling themselves the target of an endless cultural
    assault.


    1) I'll hold my nose and give you Buckley, but Kristol? Any Kristol? Fuck you.
    2)Speak fucking English, dammit! No, I don't mean "soupçon", we got that. It's all the rest of it.
    3)"the outrage Wurlitzer"? Really? This is outright theft, so fuck you some more...

    ReplyDelete
  168. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person8:23 PM

    Highballs, man...

    ReplyDelete
  169. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person8:24 PM

    I've seen Eraserhead. I'd rather eat sushi...

    ReplyDelete
  170. montag28:27 PM

    Bobby Vinton?

    Shit, I think they're still getting all warm and runny over Pat Boone.

    ReplyDelete
  171. Jeffrey_Kramer8:39 PM

    Now I'm figuring that she must have OD'd on metaphysical poetry when she was in English Lit, and that's how she came up with that conceit about how birth control is really like abortion performed retroactively. Or maybe it was inspired by Hamlet telling Polonius he shouldn't think of himself as old, because "yourself could grow as young as I if, like a crab, you could go backwards."

    But if she's really out to blow our minds, wouldn't it make just as much sense to say that birth control wasn't just like retroactively destroying a fetus, it was like letting the fetus be born, go through the seven ages of life, and then retroactively wiping out its whole existence? Whoooooa!

    ReplyDelete
  172. Hell, where I grew up, "coontown" was the nice way to say it.

    ReplyDelete
  173. Making fun? All you have to do is disagree and you're subjecting them to something worse than the worst pogrom under the tsars.

    ReplyDelete
  174. Well, when you put it that way, I have to admit it's really kind of fetching.

    ReplyDelete
  175. Pump donors :: The Joy of Pullman
    ~

    ReplyDelete
  176. Randy Gibbons9:34 PM

    Do we know too much about these situations?

    ReplyDelete
  177. YNWA405159:36 PM

    "That’s called injustice."

    Always they go there with these kinds of programs, when it's never true of these programs. The cost to any one of these poor, butthurt individuals is always miniscule, far less than what they end up paying when they get their way and the "sluts" get punished for their sins. Their desired outcome is far more expensive in terms of the cost of educating the child, feeding it if the mother is unable to find and do work that allows them to provide for the child, healthcare, etc. Granted, if they had their way, they'd find a way to do away with that, as well, but for now they at least have to pretend to care about at least some abstract concept of children.

    But there's never a question when a liberal is asked to pick up the tab for an actual injustice-- which invariably is far more expensive than any of the "injustices" these poor dears are forced to suffer. The cost of the bombs that we drop on foreigners that kill a few innocent bystanders and guarantee not the promised security but that we will always have enemies so that we will therefore always have need for more and more expensive bombs.

    TL;DR: These fucking people.

    ReplyDelete
  178. Downpup E9:46 PM

    I'm as pre as a bird.
    And this bird you cannot change. (Retroactively)

    ReplyDelete
  179. Jeffrey_Kramer10:00 PM

    Fun fact: maybe the very first notice of the very first issue of National Review was Dwight MacDonald's comment that "National Review is as elegant as a poke in the nose, as witty as a pratfall."

    ReplyDelete
  180. My impression is that your average wingnut pundit has a poorly medicated mood disorder.


    The main talking point the wingnut pundit women have against contraception is that it "poisons" them/women. Which doesn't make any sense until you find out that for some women with (often undiagnosed or denied) bipolar disorder, taking The Pill does make their symptoms a lot worse. They go all anxiety disorder or fully OCD or worse. Rod Dreher's sidekick Erin Manning who is pretty obsessive at the best of times seems to be one of them.

    ReplyDelete
  181. You're being charitable if you assume she did half of the society-uplifting behavior she says she did. The neo-con is a person who will get off his knees from servicing a donkey to wag his finger at two kids holding hands.

    ReplyDelete
  182. Jeffrey_Kramer10:16 PM

    If they can subscribe to magazines in the womb....

    ReplyDelete
  183. Sounds a bit like Pastor Swank (http://world-o-crap.blogspot.com/2013/08/oh-for-days-when-we-stank-of-swank.html). Maybe they're related?

    ReplyDelete
  184. Yes, they'll be yanking fully-formed almost-babies out of the womb and chopping off their arms and legs--even heads! Monsters!

    ReplyDelete
  185. RepubAnon10:42 PM

    If ISIS had a Reddit site, they'd be screaming for censorship (plus imprisonment of the authors).

    ReplyDelete
  186. Ellis_Weiner11:20 PM

    TL;DR: These fucking people.


    This. "My family purse" "impoverished" "distant overlord somewhere" These nitwits, with their pompous prose styles, who think they elevate their arguments with archaic stylistic flourishes: this is dumb-bell amateurism (in the form of professional right-wing propaganda) made manifest. Fuck her and the pretentious writerly horse she (w)rode in on.

    ReplyDelete
  187. Ellis_Weiner11:21 PM

    N-O-O-O-O! I just watched Primer last night. All I WANT is time-travel stories, however frustrating they are. (Go see Predestination, if you have nothing else to do.)

    ReplyDelete
  188. Ellis_Weiner11:22 PM

    LURVE him. Read Against the American Grain for big fun, esp. in re By Cozzins Possessed, he critique of pretentious Amer. fiction of the time.

    ReplyDelete
  189. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person11:26 PM

    Nothing wrong with her that a line-item veto over everyone else's lives wouldn't cure...

    ReplyDelete
  190. Ellis_Weiner11:26 PM

    The notion that Rod Dreher has a "sidekick" is hilarious in the extreme. "Wow, Rod! What do we do now?"

    "We soberly assess how this persecutes us, Erin. And then we announce it in no terms uncertain."

    ReplyDelete
  191. AGoodQuestion12:25 AM

    Or it's like having Biff Tannen keep the baby's mother away from the father at the Enchantment Under the Sea dance so that the baby's family photograph fades away.

    ReplyDelete
  192. AGoodQuestion12:33 AM

    And who would've thought? It figures.

    ReplyDelete
  193. AGoodQuestion12:44 AM

    Only if he dives into cold water.

    ReplyDelete
  194. AGoodQuestion12:51 AM

    Exxxxcellent!

    ReplyDelete