Sunday, December 29, 2013

NEW VILLAGE VOICE COLUMN UP...

... Part One of my year-end Top Ten. (I'm stringing it out over two weeks in case nothing happens next week, or I feel like a nap.)

102 comments:

  1. John E Williams7:45 PM

    Roy and my new band will be called "Rupert Pupkin's Basement"

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  2. Another Kiwi7:56 PM

    "a highly effective tool for undermining Republicans with subtle and not-so-subtle mockery."
    That'd be just letting them talk. I mean really. Louie Gohmert? Just wind up the monkey and let him go.

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  3. Dr. Hunky Jimpjorps8:17 PM

    I love clip shows!


    Have a good New Year's, everyone.

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  4. DocAmazing8:44 PM

    Once white people no longer comprise a majority of the electorate, and women's votes outnumber men's, no president will have a real mandate.

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  5. Another Kiwi9:04 PM

    I will vote for the president that has a real manatee, called Malcolm.

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  6. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person9:17 PM

    "men want to love women, not compete with them."

    And since, as Harlan Ellison said, "Love Ain't Nothing But Sex Misspelled", this is literally true....

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  7. It's about time we had a Pretzeldent who is a parrot lover.
    ~

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  8. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person9:31 PM

    The annoying thing about rightwing spewage--especially the Libertarian sort--is that you have to read every one of 'em at least three times. Once just to get all the words right, once more to try and make some real-world sense of it, and (inevitably) failing that, once more to try and figure out what the idiot is actually thinking. That never works either, but I'm not gonna read any of that shite four times. Life is too short...

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  9. would you believe that obummer only won because the irs cowed all the tea party super pacs during the summer of 2012? no? how about a picture of my pride and joy?

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  10. Another Kiwi9:36 PM

    Hush your mouth, Mr Thunder, G W Bush was a ...oh you said "likes parrots". My mistake.

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  11. Jeffrey_Kramer9:52 PM

    They sound like the Michael Palin character in the "Piranha Brothers" skit, who was frightened enough of Dinnesdale (who sawed people's legs off and cut their livers out) but utterly terrified of Doug because "He... he used... sarcasm."

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  12. mortimer20009:59 PM

    Just excellent. It's tough to be reminded of the insane meanness of these folks, but I'm still looking forward to the next installment.

    I'm struck by how almost every single right-wing idea is soaked in their intense feeling of being victimized, by other people's demands for civil rights, by government, by liberals, by poor people who don't know their place, and so on. It's as if victimhood is their coping mechanism for the realization that they live in a world filled with other people, and the other people outnumber them.

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  13. Jeffrey_Kramer10:04 PM

    "For the Left, tolerance does not mean tolerance," said Dennis Prager at National Review. "It means first, acceptance. And second, celebration. That is totalitarianism..."



    Prager is talking about the gay couple who wanted to buy a wedding cake. Imagine how deeply you have to sink into totalitarianism, to expect that kind of "celebration" at a wedding! I'm sure Prager's wedding didn't have any of this fascistic "celebrating," at least not on the bride's side.

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  14. montag210:21 PM

    Uh, which one of Prager's weddings (as in plural)? He's been married three times, IIRC.

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  15. hellslittlestangel10:21 PM

    So I just got demobbed from the war on xmas and now it's off to fight the war on men? Sheesh! Could I at least have a little time to get drunk and punch out a mirror?

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  16. Jeffrey_Kramer10:26 PM

    Three weddings? That's really shoving his sex life in our faces. I don't see why we have to tolerate that.

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  17. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person10:31 PM

    If you'd killed a Santa, you'd be collecting your medal, and a week's R&R in San Francisco. No? Ah, well. Soldier on!

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  18. mortimer200010:32 PM

    Multiple divorce does not threaten marriage as an institution. After all, three or four divorces means three or four marriages. Gay people getting married does, though, because gay.

    As for Prager's serial divorce problem, I'm guessing stuff like this has something to do with it.

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  19. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person10:33 PM

    If they weren't outnumbered, they just wouldn't feel right.

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  20. That is totalitarianism

    Wingnuts may be beady-eyed skinflints when it comes to welfare, food stamps, the minimum wage and public pensions, but you have to admit they're pretty generous with their hyperbole.

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  21. I was sure that link was going to take me to manboobs.

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  22. santa's workshop. shit. i'm still in santa's workshop.

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  23. M. Krebs10:43 PM

    Speaking of which, Roy, the link over there yields a 403 Forbidden.

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  24. M. Krebs10:49 PM

    You say hyperbole; I say delusional bullshit. Let's call the whole thing off.

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  25. Jon Hendry10:56 PM

    Alan Cumming for President!


    I know it's not possible, but it'd be fun to hear pundits arguing about the Cumming Mandate.

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  26. M. Krebs11:00 PM

    Where can a soldier fix himself a drink? Forget the noise, forget the stink?

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  27. AGoodQuestion11:19 PM

    I can still remember when everybody - with in a certain, mass media definition of "everybody" - said that Peggy Noonan must be okay, or at least not so batshit crazy as the others. She was a Democrat, after all. Of course at one time so was Charles Krauthammer, so that tells you pretty much nothing.

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  28. AGoodQuestion11:20 PM

    White gun owners are the only mandate anyone needs.

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  29. Don't forget the influence of narcissism in that kind of victim complex. The decision that some greater power is trying to oppress you personally is often joined by a belief that you are a personal threat to that power.

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  30. Formerly_Nom_De_Plume11:30 PM

    This is one of the rare instances where the wingnut brethren are actually more timid than the GOP establishment, which is quite forthright about its belief that non-whites shouldn't vote, and those that do shouldn't be counted. And are not at all shy about enforcing that idea.

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  31. FMguru11:47 PM

    Holy shit. A Space Moose comic, quoted unironically by some right wing nutjobs in support of their point. It's...beautiful.

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  32. AGoodQuestion12:27 AM

    It's all very good and healthy for a couple to talk openly about their sexual issues, but when one half of the couple takes it to TownHall? Maybe the wrong forum.

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  33. AGoodQuestion12:30 AM

    Tracy/Hepburn movies were the opening salvo in the War on Men.

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  34. Code Name Cain1:08 AM

    "Jay Z appeals to the same kind of rage that Hitler and Mussolini exploited during the interwar years."


    It's amazing how the public has missed this obvious fascism. Just look at these hateful lyrics from his new album:


    "Hyperinflation still lurkin'
    they see I'm still putting work in
    Because somewhere in America, the Juden deserves hurtin' "


    We can only hope he doesn't turn to politics soon.

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  35. Code Name Cain1:13 AM

    Naturally, this is the end stage of totalitarianism that started when the "No Irish need apply" signs began to be frowned upon. Nowadays we are even expected to celebrate St. Patrick's Day without assaulting Irishmen.

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  36. JennOfArk1:15 AM

    Holy shit! I'm predicting a third divorce.


    Hey Dennis, maybe the reason she doesn't want sex with you is she just saw a re-run of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, and now every time she looks at you and those yellow teeth she sees the Abominable Snowman. It's not that she's not in the mood; she's just not into Furries.

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  37. Code Name Cain1:24 AM

    I find Our Lady of the Magic Dolphins wildly unstable even compared to average wingers because she combines the hackery and conservative hero worship of your standard winger with the literal magical thinking of Pat Robertson.


    But the "they can't be crazy, they used to be in the other party" is standard practice for conservatives that get mainstream respect. By now it's right up there with bothsidesdoit as a founding axiom of the Beltway political press.

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  38. Tehanu1:34 AM

    you just won the Internets!

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  39. RHWombat1:36 AM

    ...litotes. Don't forget the litotes.

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  40. RHWombat1:42 AM

    Both of them.

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  41. smut clyde3:11 AM

    I never forget litotes.

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  42. Derelict7:29 AM

    ". . .in case nothing happens next week."


    Will Obama still be president? Will the sun rise and set? I think it's a pretty safe bet that the rightwing wurlitzer will be in full throat this time next week. As usual, the only question will be "What bit of otherwise uninteresting naval lint will set them off?"

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  43. Zip it, soldier! All leaves are cancelled. we're gonna need twenty new clueless husband TV spots by oh six hundred Wednesday.

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  44. Ho-lee shit! If she is moral and good she will view sex with him as a duty because he works hard for his money.If hes "smart" hell "reward" her with stuff and maybe the occasional orgasm

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  45. Halloween_Jack8:04 AM

    I love the smell of estrogen in the morning.

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  46. Derelict8:27 AM

    As near as I've been able to discern, conservatives see gay marriage as a direct threat to straight marriage because so many conservative men have spent lifetimes in the closet. If gay marriage becomes acceptable, well, they'll just have to dump that beard they married years ago in favor of that hot guy who's always at the local street fair selling hotdogs and donuts.

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  47. Derelict8:30 AM

    Hey! That orgasm is reserved for men only! The female orgasm is a myth--just like that lie they tell men about the clitoris thing that no good conservative man can find.

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  48. redoubtagain8:46 AM

    Which is why they'd prefer to gerrymander women's bodies enough of the country to affect the 2016 elections, ensuring they won't need to find it.

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  49. Wrangler8:59 AM

    She's kind of wonderful in her own way. Most other wingnutters you can tell it's just their job to act like deranged clods and that's how they treat it.


    Our Lady is different. You can pick her out easily from a sentence or two because she has an actual personality. She has a self-obliviousness than verges on a kind of innocence. She is the only pundit I know of who talks politics in blatantly erotic ways. And not just the Regan foot fetish either. Watch her talk about "the pleasure of politics" and she's practically purring when she says it. This is an unabashedly sensual woman.


    Part of having a personality means she has a real inner life, populated with oddities like antique politicians who talk like Peggy Noonan, magical animals, the fug of incense, parts of Regan, dry vermouth, a bunch of random precious shit, and various disturbing images only she and Clive Barker fully understand.


    She makes me laugh, Roy and Charles Pierce have done some of their best work about her, and I think she's completely harmless at this point. She's almost a national treasure.

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  50. First Rule of Alicublog: No Napping! Second Rule: No Cannibalism.

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  51. glennisw9:12 AM

    "In our faces?" Nay - down our throats!

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  52. I see them as wanting the privilege of the majority, while also resenting the privileges they see as being given to the minority by virtue of the minority's claims on our humanity. They see both statuses as potentially powerful--this is why they rocket, like a crazyed monkey, from side to side of the cage they call America screetching alternately "We're the majority/love it or leave it" and "Pity us, we are a poor, victimized, outnumbered, mnority.


    They are like a wealthy man who is enraged to find that there is anything that is reserved to the poor, even though he isn't interested in living in crummy public housing. In fact, they aren't like that, they are that, exactly. The entire hysteria about the Obamaphones boils down to shouts that "I had to buy my iPhone! why does someone else get a crummy, throw away phone for free!" And, as others have pointed out, this is why they can both oppose ENDA (what do you mean I can't fire a homo just because I hate homos!) and the suspension of Dick Dynasty Papa ("How dare a private company suspend a representative of my tribe. Why, there outta be a law!")

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  53. Fascinating article a few years ago in the Times about a woman and her husband, nice middle aged people, who make a goo d living selling sex toys in some place wehre they are illegal, like texas, and how litle thier customers know about sex an d orgasms. She had to create an entirely new language to teach these women about their own bodies and about pleasure in order to sell the damned toys. They called an orgasm "catchign a cloud" presumably because it was so magical and difficult at the same time.

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  54. Like he'd have them when they stumble out of hte closet. ?

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  55. There is a kind of girlish innocence about Peggy, you've put your finger on it, she sounds like the most gullible girl in Catechism class, the one who sincerely believes every piece of myth and glurge the nuns ladled out for her. And unlike K'lo she doesn't seem to be all that mean--I mean, she sincerely believes that there is a "good" we, and a "bad" them, but its always more in sorrow and a kind of miffed, worried, outrage than in anger.

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  56. Halloween_Jack9:29 AM

    There should be an exception for autocannibalism; you are what you eat, after all.

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  57. Halloween_Jack9:35 AM

    Some note should be given to Pareene's take on her, as well.

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  58. Halloween_Jack9:37 AM

    As squicky as that article is, I shudder to think about what some of the real problems in his marriages might have been.

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  59. Derelict9:44 AM

    How sad! What's wrong with their husbands/partners that they don't have an inkling that their sex life is missing more than half the fun?

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  60. You summed up my feelings kind of perfectly, Wrangler. I read "What I Saw At the Revolution" as a youngish person, coming into political awareness, and I fondly remember the ever-growing sense of WTF it induced. At some point it transcended all the wrongness and spin and became a kind of art. Maybe like Jeff Koons without the self-awareness? I dunno.

    And, as you say, she's harmless. Just think about whom they'd get to replace her on the op ed pages or morning shows...

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  61. The whole wingnut attachment to Duck Dynasty is just beyond me. A&E has created this whole gaggle of hairy, grubby guys that you can practically smell through the TV screen, guys that you just knew, in a "when", not "if" sort of way, were going to say something bone dumb, and not only paid them big bucks for their cultural stylings, but also asked the viewers to care about them, to the point where, when the inevitable trainwreck happened, the wingers couldn't NOT defend them. Fortunately, A&E also produces a show that I can really get behind, about the empowerment of women trying to survive and thrive in a male dominated world. I'm speaking, of course, about Rodeo Girls.

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  62. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person10:40 AM

    All leaves are cancelled.

    [Looks out window at front yard]

    Bullshit...

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  63. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person10:44 AM

    Yes, they really are the way we've always thought they were...

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  64. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person10:52 AM

    Rightists hate sarcasm, irony, and perhaps most of all, subtlety. It gives them that squirrelly "Mr Jones" feeling...

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  65. Clueless and irrelevant she may be, but she's not harmless. If she were writing for The American Thinker or Twitchy, it would be sort of OK, but when she gets to maunder on about the Liberals in her head on a national TeeVee network and gets published in the WSJ, she's throwing bananas to the howler monkeys who rely on her to organize their thoughts for them.

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  66. Mooser11:22 AM

    Alicublog better step lively, TPM is right on its tail. Headlines today:

    "Conservative Writer Informs Readers That Spooning Is A 'Sexual Position'"
    and:
    "Huckabee Recalls Interview Regarding Woman's Breast Size"

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  67. Mooser11:26 AM

    It's especially piquant when one considers that palmate-antlered ungulates are a bulwark of the Left. The Bull Moose may be a solitary creature, but his politics are generous, compassionate, and inclusive.

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  68. Mooser11:33 AM

    I hate her, always have.

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  69. Ellis_Weiner11:34 AM

    Wait, I'm thinking of the one called Hugh. Oh, the HUGH manatee.

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  70. Mooser11:39 AM

    Look, I'm sixty. And as I remember it, the right gave up on the possibility of America when the Civil Rights bills were passed. If you couldn't discriminate using bigoted standards, the dream of America is over. That's what it all comes down to, except the latest generations or rightards doesn't know that.
    And they've pulled an awful lot of the country that didn't have to be there down in the shit with them through the TV and radio.

    It's disgusting, and I fucking hate it.

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  71. Ellis_Weiner11:43 AM

    Yeah, yeah....meanwhile, nothing is funnier than this:

    "A move towards hipness must come from the party leaders themselves"

    --which is, as Roy notes, a bit of agitprop worthy of Pravda itself. (And wouldn't be a bad title for Rupert Pupkin's Basement's first album.)

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  72. Mooser11:44 AM

    I have already experienced the deleterious effects of gay marriage on my own straight marriage! It is true! My wife was reading about gay marriage, and looked over at me and said: "You know, I might try this gay marriage thing. Next time, I'm going to marry a man!"

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  73. Ellis_Weiner11:48 AM

    I may have said this here before, but a friend once stunned me by telling me he'd dated Noonan, and that "she used to be a socialist." This latter fact is not surprising. It reminds me of Susan Sontag's epic, definitive slap-down of David Horowitz, who (she said) had simply transferred his "Manichean world view" from Ramparts to National Review. Once a self-righteous absolutist, always a, etc.

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  74. Mooser11:50 AM

    "I'm speaking, of course, about Rodeo Girls."


    So true! Heretofore, the mistreatment of animals was an almost entirely male preserve.

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  75. Mooser11:51 AM

    In that case, I surrender, immediately, unconditionally, and gracefully. When does the occupation start?

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  76. Ellis_Weiner11:52 AM

    Same here. Her every sentence is either massively disingenuous (in which case, it's an insult to the intelligence), or entirely deluded (in which case, it's a waste of paper, ink, and electrons). She constantly conveys the presumption that she's the only feeling pundit in the room, and that therefore she speaks for the Murkin People and their "mood." Fuck her and Valium she rode in on, is my view.

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  77. Ellis_Weiner11:53 AM

    By which you mean, there may be a certain amount.

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  78. Mooser11:54 AM

    She's like an old girlfriend who just had to e-mail me to tell me about her poly-amorous relationships with cave explorers. To her, love is a many-spelunkered thing.

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  79. Mooser11:56 AM

    People go where the pay is better,.

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  80. marindenver12:11 PM

    "I'm sure Prager's own wedding didn't have any of this fascistic "celebrating," not on the bride's side anyway."

    Could explain why he felt compelled to write his two part manifesto on why a wife owes it to her husband to put out whenever he wants it - none of this "I don't FEEL like it" sh*t!

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  81. marindenver12:13 PM

    Ha, I see Mortimer2000 has already referenced Prager's whine fest.

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  82. redoubtagain12:25 PM

    Um, ". . .the party leaders themselves" are squarer than Mitt Romney's head; perhaps he meant "A move towards hip replacements"?

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  83. runsinbackground12:43 PM

    I hate to nitpick, but that Space Moose cartoon about Women's Studies is from 1997, and was originally published in the student newspaper of the University of Alberta. I know it's been repurposed by Wingnuttia, but it seems to me that having your trackback point to some dick who is himself reposting it without any kind of attribution is a little disingenuous.

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  84. yeah, if the "thought leaders" are reading them, they're not harmless (ie, friedman, ie brooks, ie ignatius).

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  85. mortimer20001:59 PM

    I rarely disagree with Aimai about anything, but I beg to differ with this Peggy Noonan harmless naïveté stuff. IMO, her pious sincerity and yearning for goodness and starlight from our leaders is what is known in the trade as an "act." She's like Dick Morris with a lace curtain facade, and underneath it all beats the black heart of a mean drunk who's not so much the gullible girl in catechism class as the venomous nun gleefully doling out punishment— more like Sister Mary Ignatius shooting people at the end of the play*. When it comes right down to it, she's a staunch GOP operative from way back, and she'll never hesitate to assassinate the character of a liberal for the cause. (See this vile little fiction, for example, or some of her hateful attacks aimed at Kerry.) Just because she dresses up her shit for Sunday mass doesn't mean it ain't harmless.

    *SPOILER ALERT

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  86. FMguru2:41 PM

    There's also the matter of them tapping into the Christian martyrdom tradition of being persecuted and oppressed because you worship Jesus. It's hard to pretend you're fit to stand with the early church founders when you control everything and have it pretty it cushy, so they try to up their holiness by magnifying every slight into the equivalent of being turned into a human torch by a mad emperor or forced to fight starving lions in front of a cheering crowd - which, when you think about it, is pretty much the same as having someone wish you "happy holidays!" or seeing an announcement for a gay wedding in the paper.

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  87. smut clyde2:57 PM

    men want to love women, not compete with them."
    The preferences of women in the matter are evidently irrelevant.

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  88. PersonaAuGratin3:05 PM

    Lets' all chip in to produce the next hit series, "Lucky Ducky Dynasty"...

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  89. satch4:01 PM

    "...this vile little fiction..."


    My Christ, did you read the editorial reviews? It's a blight on the entire publishing industry that the phrase "batshit insane conservative tool and former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan" doesn't appear in any of them.

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  90. FlipYrWhig4:12 PM

    Litotes is a thing that's happening now.

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  91. realinterrobang4:20 PM

    Oh no no no no no...

    Those mangoes are so rotten I can smell them from here.

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  92. BigHank534:36 PM

    Yeah. Harmless my ass. Every GOP misstep, from drowning citizens in Louisiana to a baloney war in Iraq is forgiven with only a sad shake of the head--boys will be boys, after all--while you come away from one of her columns about a Democrat amazed that they can wipe their own ass without a helper. She hasn't the slightest interest in disrupting the hierarchy: hand-job-maiden to the rich and powerful suits her just fine.

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  93. smut clyde4:37 PM

    She's like Dick Morris with a lace curtain facade, and underneath it all beats the black heart of a mean drunk

    I remember Noonan's open-mike episode during the 2008 US election, when she broadcast herself face-palming about the ineptitude of Palin as a VP candidate and the cynicism of McCain's choice. This did not stop her from donning her air of girlish naivete and churning out her usual column praising Team Republican for the brilliant game-changing mavericky choice. She is paid for her guise of sincerity and integrity, not for the real thing.

    In that connection, I still marvel about this oxymoronic concept of "opinion journalism" in which propagandists are paid for their propaganda rather than paying to have it broadcast. Ultimately the audience is paying to be lied to by professional liars. Mundus vult decipi.

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  94. smut clyde4:39 PM

    a bulwark of the Left
    HA Mooser misspelled 'Bullwinkle'.

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  95. coozledad4:53 PM

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LcI1WFrejNo

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  96. Wrangler7:20 PM

    To be clear, I don't think she's harmless because she never says anything loathsome; I think she's harmless because I cannot imagine who would take her seriously. Republicans who are serious people won't bother with her nonsense; and the demi-literate of the Tea Party won't ever know what she is saying. I put forward that she influences exactly zero opinions right now.

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  97. MikeJ7:37 PM

    Not to be confused with Marshall Whitman, the Bullshit Moose.

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  98. BigHank538:16 PM

    To be fair, you'll never need the 'no cannibalism' rule unless you break the first rule, and start napping. There's no telling who could sneak up on you while you're napping.

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  99. Another Kiwi10:13 PM

    Napping not snacking. Very different.

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  100. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person10:58 PM

    Heh. I thought the same thing...

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  101. TGuerrant7:51 PM

    The online white pages has 31 listings for "Richard Cumming." I think we should start putting a campaign together. Name recognition will be a cinch.

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  102. LittlePig9:59 AM

    Will we be collectivized? Please, please, tell me we'll be collectivized. Ummm...Motherland....

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