Jonah Goldberg is outraged that Virginia non-Republican candidate Terry McAuliffe is "lying about being a libertarian on economic issues." Gasp! Did McAuliffe call himself a libertarian? Cite Hayek or Ayn Rand? No, nothing like that. Attend Goldberg:
I haven’t been following the Virginia gubernatorial race too closely...
Every Goldberg argument is an
argumentum ad ignorantiam, one way or the other.
...but I managed to catch the last few minutes of the debate last night. Chuck Todd asked the candidates whether they think the Redskins should keep their name. Terry McAuliffe responded: “I don’t think the governor ought to be telling private businesses what they should do about their business.”
“Even if it’s offensive to people?” Todd interjected.
“I don’t think the governor should be telling private businesses . . .” McAuliffe repeated. Todd interrupted. Asking what his personal opinion was. McAuliffe stuck to his bogus answer: “As governor, I’m not going to tell Dan Snyder or anybody else what they should [do] with their business, and I want to congratulate the Redskins, because I went down to the training practice here in Richmond and it is spectacular.”
OK, I'm assuming Goldberg thinks keeping the name Redskins is freedom plus ha ha ugh how woo-woo-woo. So what's Goldberg's objection to McAuliffe joining him in support?
Now, in what way is this remotely true? Don’t get me wrong, I think McAuliffe’s answer is basically right. And for all I know he won’t pressure the Redskins to change their name.
Goldberg
literally just answered his own question, but forget it, he's on a roll:
But is that because he’s the sort of guy who doesn’t tell businesses what they should do? Or is it because he’s the sort of guy who says what audiences want to hear about their beloved football franchise? If the question was about businesses that refuse to comply with Obamacare’s requirement to pay for birth control, would he still be the sort of guy who doesn’t think politicians should be telling businesses what to do? Is he for no environmental regulations? Against all zoning? Is he now against civil-rights laws that tell business who. they must serve, hire, etc.?
It's one of liberalism's cherished stereotypes about conservatives that they believe any law they don't like is proof of Big Gummint tyranny, and here's Goldberg actually living out our dream. Oh, and there's also a great Moment Goldberg Realizes He's Said Something He Ought To Wriggle Out Of in the classic tradition:
I support some of those laws and I’m dead-set against others, but I’m not the issue here...
Farrt. The whole thing is that bad, and worse -- in fact, it's bad even by Goldberg standards. It's as if whatever small sliver of self-awareness he once possessed was squeezed out of him at the last
National Review cruise, possibly by Allen West showing him how to kill a man with a dinner roll. For example, he's mad about a section on McAuliffe's website about women's healthcare, specifically the phrase “I strongly believe that women should be able to make their own healthcare decisions without interference from Washington or Richmond.” Healthcare! huffs Goldberg. I'll show
you healthcare:
“Healthcare decisions” means exactly one thing here: “reproductive rights.” And reproductive rights, as far as I can tell, means birth control and abortion. Now there are serious and legitimate debates about those issues. But they aren’t debates about women’s “healthcare decisions."
Breast implants, now
that's a healthcare decision! I fear soon we'll see Goldberg stumbling around the ancestral manse like Oswald in
Ghosts, murmuring to Lucianne, "Mother, give me the SunnyD."
Now there are serious and legitimate debates about those issues. But they aren’t debates about women’s “healthcare decisions."
ReplyDeleteBecause reproductive health and abortion decisions are men's healthcare decisions?
He's full blown nelly-in-your cooch.
Jonah is like Emily Litella without the decency to say "Never mind".
ReplyDeleteYeah, yeah, Jonah... Dan Snyder's right to name his little football team anything he wants is EXACTLY like the right of employers to dictate to their employees what kind of and how much health care they can have. Aren't you just precious? Now, it's time for the staff coffee break, so why don't you run down to Dunkin Donuts for us, OK?
ReplyDeleteRoy Edroso, that title ... you are the worst man on the internet.
ReplyDeleteSure McAuliffe is awful. Yeah, he's just saying what people want to hear -- he's a politician. What's Jonah's concern? That he secretly wants to rename the Washington Racial Slurs? I saw that part of the debate, and I think it's clear he doesn't. No one is going to pay McAuliffe to do that.
ReplyDeleteBut let's suppose that Goldberg really does care about liberty. Does he really want to elect Mr. "No BJs in VA" Cuccinelli? Well, thinking about the state of libertarianism today, I think it goes like Jonah doesn't get any oral, so restrictions on oral don't restrict his liberty, therefore the restrictions don't apply to anyone who matters, therefore the restrictions comport with libertarian values.
He gives the game away with the "health care decisions" too. He doesn't need the pill, so the whole train of logic follows again.
He's a crumb-snatcher nonpareil. He's even skipping over the bit where McAuliffe is basically ignoring Chuck Todd trying to dig down into McAuliffe's personal opinion about the Racist Nicknames, that apparently being what Todd does these days instead of, you know, telling the truth about something actually important. So busy little Doughy notes that McAuliffe didn't carefully qualify his statement, and oh boy, grist for another NRO post! The saddest thing about Jonah's ongoing career is that he can actually make someone like Chuck Todd look relatively-not-bad by comparison.
ReplyDeletebut forget it, he's on a roll:
ReplyDeleteOf course. And there's plenty of butter on it.
~
This was seriously a debate question? Over a team that doesn't even play in Virginia?
ReplyDeleteAnd there's so much competition!
ReplyDeletea great Moment Goldberg Realizes He's Said Something He Ought To Wriggle Out Of
ReplyDeleteHe really does take the NaNoWriMo approach to word count for his columns, doesn't he - don't delete the dumb stuff, just forget you have a backspace key and write a correction immediately after the mistake.
When the Redskins came to play the Packers, the local TV station asked for comments about their name. The best reply: keep the name, change their logo to a potato.
ReplyDeleteNot only that, he's a master of Snot Quotes.
ReplyDeletePeak pantload? I'd say his diaper overfloweth.
ReplyDelete"Attend Goldberg"
ReplyDeleteIt's never my turn to watch him.
Didn't we pass the Affordable Care Act so we could pay someone else to do that?
Abortion and contraception...don't they involve health care professionals, like doctors and pharmicsts? Just wondering.
ReplyDeleteThe right-wing idea of legitimate date is whether women who use birth control are whores or just sluts.
ReplyDeleteOh, I've heard conservatives say often enough that birth control isn't a medical issue. Presumably because if a woman only has sex when she wants to get pregnant, the baby just pops out naturally without any medical help whatsoever.
ReplyDeleteTHat's legitimate debate, sorry.
ReplyDeleteIf Jonah knew about the suggested alternative of "Pigskins," and the sure-to-follow pork rind promotions, he'd have to bumble himself over to the "statist," interventionist side.
ReplyDeleteI haven't been following Jonah too closely (Mugs for camera) but this flirtation with anarchism - not the interesting if naive political philosophy, but the "smash the state" stuff that most of us got over before we hit sixteen - seems a bit perplexing. I'm pretty sure that zoning laws aren't in the canon of Big Government Tyranny, but then he has been adding a few new pages. If you check out the post that came before this one, Jonah has a list of issues that he claims disproves the notion that liberals are social libertarians. Most of the items on that list aren't social issues, many aren't supported by "liberals" or aren't partisan issues, and some of them don't make any sense at all (Air quality is a personal choice? Really?) so it's quintessential Loadpants.
ReplyDeleteBut what's especially interesting is that Jonah doesn't seem to qualify as a "true" libertarian under his own belief structure. After all, he supports ample restrictions on reproductive and marriage rights. These don't count as regulations, though, because Farrrrt Sorry guys, I didn't finish my post. Hate to bleg, but will one of you do it for me?
The argument you usually get from social cons is that birth control interrupts a natural process (kinda what all meds do, but never mind) and therefore is the opposite of medicine. Jonah, on the other hand, is a movement con and therefore completely unprincipled, so who the hell knows what he'd say if put on the spot.
ReplyDeleteIn the whole thing Goldberg has elided the point that it's not against the law to have an unconscionable slur for a business name. Bad business sense in most cases, but not illegal. The other "interventions" he mentions are, in fact, laws that a governor, as the executive of the state, is required to enforce.
ReplyDeleteWell, it's also a legitimate date decision.
ReplyDeleteWell Jonah can choose to keep the office door closed, in which case he'll die from the declining air quality while he writes his column, or he can open the door and face the cries of terror and disgust of his coworkers. So yeah, for Jonah, it's a personal choice.
ReplyDeleteAlso, say what you will about smash-the-state anarchists, at least they're more fun to be at a party with than objectivists.
I argued recently with a friend who said, "The Beatles are overrated. Led Zeppelin is a much better band." See, he explained, sure the Beatles were first, and deserve credit for that--but then Zep built on what they did and made it better. "First of all, Led Zeppelin's sound did not build on the Beatles' sound," I said. "Second of all, name the Led Zeppelin album side that competes with Abbey Road side 2 and we'll talk." His firm reply? "Well, that's not fair, because I don't know what songs are on Abbey Road, because I never listened to it. But I'm sure it's safe to say almost anything by Zeppelin is more advanced and therefore better."
ReplyDeleteI post this because I feel like this is what it would be like to have beers with Goldberg. Him all just sticking to whatever dumbass starting point he chose even long past the point of actually admitting he has no idea what he's talking about; him, once unmoored from facts, not merely drifting farther from them but furiously paddling out to sea; me starting to feel queasy as I realize he's not interested in actually discussing what he's brought up for discussion. I mean De gustibus non est disputandum, sure, but come the fuck on!
I know! Just ask Ross Douchehat!
ReplyDeleteLike that of so many of these assholes, Goldberg writes from a stockpile of right-wing engineered factoids that have become accepted idiocy in their world. The result is so filled with bullshit that it's impossible to even begin to counter it. His penultimate paragraph, for example, has hardly a single sentence that isn't completely false or plainly ridiculous: Obamacare tells women what health insurance they have to buy, excise taxes on medical device manufacturers is "weird sexism" (unlike, say, excise taxes on gasoline) because women are a subset of everybody, women will have their health-care choices restricted or important decisions taken away from them by Obamacare and so on. It's not just the methane of his gibbering, inane fatuousness, it's that every single premise of his half-assed arguments stinks to high heavens.
ReplyDeleteAlso, this seems as good a time as any to post this link.
ReplyDelete(That reminds me, I should really go update the RW article on Jonah. I'm getting as lazy as he is)
I think they should keep the Redskins name, but change it to mean White guys who tan too much. Replace the Indian chief on the helmet with a picture of head coach Mike Shanahan.
ReplyDeleteIs that what he calls all the boogers on his cuffs? What about the ones under his desk? Snot Ellipses?
ReplyDeleteI'm pretty sure they know better by know to send Jonah to the donut store without an escort. It's like going fishing with only one Baptist.
ReplyDelete"“Healthcare decisions” means exactly one thing here: “reproductive
ReplyDeleterights.” And reproductive rights, as far as I can tell, means birth
control and abortion. Now there are serious and legitimate debates about
those issues. But they aren’t debates about women’s “healthcare
decisions."".
Yep, birth control and abortion have nothing to do with health... wait...what in the fuckin' hell? I don't know if this is peak pantload, but some shit is certainly peeking out from his privileged diaper.
What an asshole. Shorter Pantload: "I'm going to play little shithead games because I know that Football trumps politics, so if we can get a 'gotcha' on McAuliffe, then Team Republican may win, and *that's all that matters*". Corollary: "Sure, CoocooSinelli is a religio-fascist nutjob, but nothing he has a bug up his ass about affects me, so 'meh' (P.S. I'm SUCH a "principled Conservative").
ReplyDeleteIt's important to remember that Pantload is the young "intellectual" of the Conservative movement, which underscores how stupid they really are.
ReplyDeleteHere in the real world, we need a new word- "idtellectual". Jonah does nothing but focus the rage and hatreds of his audience. I've often noted that Conservatives have a hive ass rather than a hive mind, but I now have to note that they have a hive spleen.
"Well, that's not fair, because I don't know what songs are on Abbey Road, because I never listened to it. But I'm sure it's safe to say almost anything by Zeppelin is more advanced and therefore better."
ReplyDelete"This is central to my point!"
I think he'd be too enraptured to even bang out a column about it. In fact, I think he'd be so lost in a fantasy that his career would come to a stop.
ReplyDeleteRemember, in his mind (when he's not seeking to attain Cheetopia), governors, as are all elected officials, are just the help; i.e, they're inferior beings without nepotism and offer no usefulness other than as vessels in which to pour Koch-dollars into. So "laws" are what you and your buddies laugh about over expensive drinks in the luxury boxes at FedEx Field.
ReplyDeleteNah you got to change the name to Orangeskins then.
ReplyDeleteThat reminds me of the time one of my college roommate who once declared that Aerosmith was the greatest band ever. Someone was else replied "The Rolling Stones" at to which my roommate walked back his statement a bit and decided that Aerosmith was the greatest _American_ band ever.
ReplyDeleteWasn't the main character in "Confederacy of Dunces" based on Goldberg?
ReplyDeleteCould somebody research that for me? I'm busy researching the donuts in the break room...
I always thought it should be a sunburned tourist in an aloha shirt and black socks (and shorts and sandals, too, of course).
ReplyDeleteYou think Jonah eats anything as suspiciously ethnic and natural as pork rinds? Maybe pork-flavored cheetos.
ReplyDeleteJonah is old enough to know that "government shouldn't tell private businesses/people/etc. what to do" always has an unspoken "unless it's important" afterward. The debate between American liberals and conservatives is over what that unspoken "important" means.
ReplyDeleteAhem. *coughs* me me me me ME... here we go:
ReplyDelete"How DARE you say a BABY is like a DISEASE you evil LIB!!!!"
"I argued recently with a friend who said, "The Beatles are overrated. Led Zeppelin is a much better band"
ReplyDeleteWhy does an article about Jonah Goldberg cause me to think "With friends like those, who needs enemas"?
"Presumably because if a woman only has sex when she wants to get
ReplyDeletepregnant, the baby just pops out naturally without any medical help
whatsoever"
If she's got true grit, it does.
Why not just change the red thing to a neck?
ReplyDeleteI believe it is the inverse. Our Jonah is based on
ReplyDeleteIgnatius J. Reilly.
For the term "hive spleen," I humbly wish to award this comment an entire apiary full of unvented pique.
ReplyDeleteEvery time I hear the phrase "mugs for camera," I think of Norman Fell in Three's Company. Which in this case is certainly better than thinking of the Doughy Pantload.
ReplyDeleteAdded bonus...Cheetos endorsements. I'm sure Jonah could get behind that.
ReplyDeleteI thought for sure you were about to launch into a legitimate RAPE discussion.
ReplyDeleteThe whole thing reminds me of the argument I've seen advanced that if women could just incorporate themselves Jonah et al would fall all over themselves (perhaps literally) guaranteeing our right to make our own healthcare decisions.
ReplyDeleteOr a picture of Boehner.
ReplyDelete"If the question was about businesses that refuse to comply with Obamacare’s requirement to pay for birth control, would he still be the sort of guy who doesn’t think politicians should be telling businesses what to do?"
ReplyDeleteIf the sun were blue, could you get a green tan? (Ingest enough powdered cheese and this becomes a compelling question.)
The baby does just pop out naturally. Whether it kills the mother in the process is what is at issue.
ReplyDelete"Only offensive if you think about it" could definitely be the cry of the entire right wing about everything. Then they complain that "thinking about it" makes you the real racist. It goes right along with their cultural and historical amnesia, like statements like "the first slaves were white--"Slav" means "slave" so stop talking about the middle passage!"
ReplyDeleteYeah, not really grokkin the whole Devo thing, these guys...
ReplyDelete"Willie Dixon? Who's that?"
ReplyDeleteI don't mean to give a brother a hand out here but is McCauliffe really so stupid he doesn't know how to say "Surely the naming rights of a corporation come under the first amendment? Naturally the government and its officers would have nothing to do with interfereing with a first amendment issue."
ReplyDelete...whatever small sliver of self-awareness he once possessed was squeezed out of him at the last National Review cruise, possibly by Allen West showing him how to kill a man with a dinner roll.
ReplyDeleteSeeing that might almost be worth the unmitigated horror of being on a National Review cruise, but only if West demonstrated the technique by killing Bill Kristol with the dinner roll.
I think he names all his boogers.
ReplyDeleteSnot Quotes are the quotes that don't mean you're actually quoting someone, they mean that if you were reading the passage aloud you pronounce the quoted part in a horrible mocking (snotty) whine and your face twisted into the most punchable grimace you can manage.
I'm actually surprised that more people haven't been offended by the dumb looking cartoon Indian head that the Cleveland... umm... baseball franchise uses. Could it bee just that nobody really cares about Cleveland?
ReplyDeleteGiven Cuccinelli's whackazoid social policy in addition to his own ethical lapses, I'm having a hard time figuring out exactly why McCauliffe is considered "awful". Jesus... sometimes Dems are their own worst enemy.
ReplyDeleteWhen I see the polling data that has McCauliffe leading Cuccinelli 50% to 38% among women, I have to think that the women in that 38% sampling are so gullible they could be mugged over the phone.
ReplyDeletePost hoc ergo rockter hoc.
ReplyDeleteGood plan. Let's do it.
ReplyDeleteNeckskins?
ReplyDeleteOne who eats Cheetos and eschews hairshirts.
ReplyDeleteThe AI Bomb in Dark Star had more intellectual consistency than the Pasty Doughboy:
ReplyDelete[Doolittle convinces the bomb not to explode]
Doolittle: Hello, Bomb? Are you with me?
Bomb #20: Of course.
Doolittle: Are you willing to entertain a few concepts?
Bomb #20: I am always receptive to suggestions.
Doolittle: Fine. Think about this then. How do you know you exist?
Bomb #20: Well, of course I exist.
Doolittle: But how do you know you exist?
Bomb #20: It is intuitively obvious.
Doolittle: Intuition is no proof. What concrete evidence do you have that you exist?
Bomb #20: Hmmmm... well... I think, therefore I am.
Doolittle: That's good. That's very good. But how do you know that anything else exists?
Bomb #20: My sensory apparatus reveals it to me. This is fun.
Wait--are we sure Goldberg isn't a character invented by Rowan Atkinson? I mean, wouldn't that explain everything?
ReplyDeleteNow there are serious and legitimate debates about [birth control]
ReplyDeleteBollocks, sez I. All I have seen are frivolous illegitimate arguments from authoritarians and prurient busybodies.
Or is it because he’s the sort of guy who says what audiences want to hear about their beloved football franchise?
So when a politician refuses to voice his opinion, this is just another way of voicing an opinion? This style of argumentationism seems to be a recurring theme with Jonah, like "Liberal tolerance is really a form of intolerance".
"If the question was about businesses that refuse to comply with
ReplyDeleteObamacare’s requirement to pay for birth control, would he still be the
sort of guy who doesn’t think politicians should be telling businesses
what to do?"
So, from McAuliffe's casual dismissal of a question of relatively minor importance, Jonah "infers" a major intellectual stance and implies an accusation of gross hypocrisy.
Does anyone fall for this shit? It's a ten-year-old's idea of a brilliant gotcha. "You said 'skol' before we drank! So you ADMIT you secretly long for Scandinavian-style socialism."
I don't think America is ready for a franchise called "the whiskey dicks",
ReplyDeleteOr is it because he’s the sort of guy who says what audiences want to hear about their beloved football franchise?
ReplyDeleteGoldberg, one must remember, is the guy who referred in one of his columns to "Evolution (if you choose to believe in it)". He is too scared to place himself on the side of facts, or to risk offending the moron sector of his readership. And now he is criticising someone else for pandering to an audience? Really?
Nah, the fictional Ignatius J. Reilly was an intellectual. Jonah is based on Ignoble J. Riledup.
ReplyDeleteIn his defense, Jonah sees no evidence of evolution in either his workplace or his home.
ReplyDeleteNo, it can't be. Ignatius's mother was a sympathetic character.
ReplyDeleteAbortion does, especially in right wing states where the doctors have to have admitting privileges and the clinics have to conform to construction codes for emergency rooms.
ReplyDelete"These rules are for the health and safety of the woman!"
ReplyDeleteOK. you made me almost pee myself a little.
ReplyDeleteMaybe that needs to be a new name for him!
ReplyDeleteCheetopia ... I'd like to better that (Cheetovana? nahhh, doesn't work) but I can't.
ReplyDeleteWhere Jonah can hang out, stunting bees.
ReplyDeleteI don't think a dinner roll would last long enough in Doughbob's vicinity for Allen West to even pick it up.
ReplyDeleteChampagne Cheetonova?
ReplyDeleteSteve Marriot? Who's that?
ReplyDeleteHe certainly does enough billowing. And his bowels may be similarly overactive.
ReplyDeleteThough she was afraid of comuniss.
ReplyDeleteIf it weren't for their ribcages, it would just be spleens a-go-go.
ReplyDeleteSomething something John Boehner.
ReplyDeleteCheetovana is Jonah's B5 cosplay.
ReplyDeleteI gave you my spleen,
ReplyDeleteyou called it obscene.
And then you split it in two.
That's a first class demonstration of talking shit between songs. Robyn's the king of shit-talk.
ReplyDeleteCheetori.
ReplyDeleteA part or character which requires the complete abandonment of self-respect is a real challenge for an actor. Does he possess the requisite reprehensibility?
ReplyDelete"Cheetopia" is IT.
ReplyDeletePutting a new, undiseased heart in the evil maw of Dick Cheney's chest cavity interrupts a natural process, too, but you don't hear conservatives harping about it.
ReplyDeleteDelicious Cheddar Pork-Os!
ReplyDeleteNo, it was the guy with the railroad pension who she was "dating." I think his name was Claude - I remember her quote "I know he ain't too bright, him and his communiss . . . " but he treats her well, and that's what she cares about (and the railroad pension).
ReplyDeleteThe Cheetolarity
ReplyDeleteAttend Goldberg
ReplyDeleteWorst Puritan name EVAH.
What if it had vegetables on it?
ReplyDeleteThe hive ass has plenty of room for Jonah's head, I assume.
ReplyDeleteit's a classic Jonah column innit. From the "I haven't been following this, but..." to the "or is he just saying what the audience wants to hear" bollocks. Like Mount Methane is telling us something we don't know and isn't just lining up for a pretty standard salvo in the War on Women.
ReplyDeleteAnd all wrapped up in plausible deniability. As Mr. Edroso so eloquently puts it FAAAART!
Upvotes for Snakefinger.
ReplyDeleteDid someone say pork rind?
ReplyDeleteWow. Those aren't pork rinds, they're pig rinds.
ReplyDeleteWant. Some.
ReplyDeleteOh yes, while traveling in Mexico I was very impressed by just how much of a pig skin the butchers were able to remove intact and then fry.
ReplyDeleteI had a friend who worked at Tower records in Boston back in the mid eighties. Robyn came by and scrawled something on the owner's sacred Lowell George poster and was subsequently banned from the store. I'd love to see that poster, but only for what Robyn wrote on it.
ReplyDeleteJeez. I hope Plant slipped Marriot a couple of Mercedes.
ReplyDeleteLOL @ Peak Pantload!
ReplyDeleteIf you've ever met any of Jonah's apologists, you know the Residents saw this shit coming.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1il0eZUnFA
Roy, as you are fond of saying, everything Jonah writes is the worst thing he's ever written until he writes his next piece. Nevertheless, this may truly be his mag-dumb opus.
ReplyDelete