What makes McCarthyism so hard to discuss is that McCarthy behaved like a jerk, but he was also right...
Senator Joe McCarthy was a lout, generally speaking. But he was on the right side of history and, in a broad sense, of morality as well. If, in some sort of parallel-universe exercise, the same number of (now proven) Soviet-Communist spies, collaborators, sympathizers, and the like were somehow switched to Nazis, and McCarthy went after them with the same vehemence as he went after Reds, Joe McCarthy might well have universities and foundations named after him today...
When they denounce McCarythism, they are working on the clear assumption that McCarthyism victimized only innocent people. That is a lie. And it also a lie that the USA Patriot Act is being used solely to punish innocent people.Ah, those were the days, when conservatives thought defending unpopular ideas was objectively pro-commie and objectively pro-Saddam. Things have changed. This week in USA Today, Goldberg tells us that when college students let it be known that they don't want rightwing political figures to speak at their own graduation, it's a liberal fascist "thought-crime crackdown."
Like the older column, Goldberg's new one is a wretched mess -- he denounces "the so-called 'Red Scare' of the World War I era," which is basically denouncing "the so-called atrocity I am asserting," and compares the Red Scare prosecutions of and assaults on alleged communists to Harry Reid calling the Koch Brothers un-American. (I'm sure Convict No. 9653 would have traded places with the Kochs any day of the week.)
But while autopsying Goldberg's prose is fun, let's not miss the point: while the conservative schtick-of-the-moment about liberals oppressing them is hilarious in several ways, it is useful to remember that these people are natural bullies. As in Goldberg's case, they demonstrated this in their writing back when their tide was high -- and they demonstrate it still on people over whom they still have control, namely the poor, whom they punish sadistically every chance they get. I'd say their bullshit about being oppressed is the result of guilty consciences, if I thought they had consciences.
UPDATE. Comments are glorious. To this particularly Goldberg blubberburst over liberalfascist oppression of racist billionaires --
I have no sympathy for disgraced L.A. Clippers owner Donald Sterling's views about race, but there's something troubling about how so many people are comfortable with vilifying a man for something he said in private, possibly even during couples' counseling.-- mortimer2000 has a nice rejoinder:
There's a Ms. Lewinsky calling on the "safe" line, Mr. Goldberg.Picking up the same theme (the launch of Goldberg's career on his mother's Clinton espionage, if you didn't click the link), smut clyde highlights Goldberg's reference to "vilifying a man for something he said in private" and adds, "Yep, if Jonah wants to maintain this new-found moral principle, it could make for an awkward Mothers' Day conversation."
A thought-crime crackdown would necessitate thought, so Jonah is safe.
ReplyDeleteGoldberg's new one is a wretched mess
ReplyDeleteMilford Poltroon is rolling in his grave.
But. I never forget what you say about the righties being bullies - not for a minute.
ReplyDeletethey are working on the clear assumption that McCarthyism victimized only innocent people
ReplyDeleteThat's just not true: we recognize that since he victimized so damn many people, some of them were sure to be guilty of something. It's less likely that any of the right-winger speakers students are choosing to exercise their right not to listen to has anything of interest to say, though.
"Thought-crime crackdown" against those with minority ideas, eh? I wonder how Goldberg comes down on yesterday's SCOTUS decision telling non-RealTrueChristian members of the electorate that they can go fuck themselves, since local governments are free to explicitly endorse a particular religious sect. Take that, Jefferson!
ReplyDelete[NB: No, I don't actually wonder.]
Scoldberg: "Watch MSNBC for 10 minutes and you will learn that Republicans are simply champions of "white supremacy" deserving no respect or quarter."
ReplyDeleteWhile it's patently false that if you watch MSNBC for 10 minutes you will learn that Republicans are champions and white supremacy, it's largely true that Republicans are, in some measure, champions of white supremacy, and it's completely true that they deserve no respect for quarter - so while I'm certain Jonah didn't mean it this way I am yet forced to award this statement a three out of 5 Pinocchios.
"I'd say their bullshit about being oppressed is the result of guilty consciences, if I thought they had consciences."
ReplyDeleteWell, they can dish it out, but they can't take it, y'know? They're bullies, with all the ugly self-pity that description normally brings along with it nowadays. They simply don't like it when "the other side" - however you choose to define that term, but it usually means whoever they're picking on at the moment - fights back.
Ah, a few students (and instructors) said, in effect, "let's not pay a war criminal for the privilege of giving us advice we can't use and probably don't need, and, by the way, is this in any way a reasonable kind of justice?"
ReplyDeleteNow, Kindasleezza deserves sackcloth and ashes, and a life limited to begging on the streets and giving the proceeds to her maimed and ravaged victims, and, even then, she would still never fulfill any sort of meaningful penance for her transgressions.
Quite apart from the powers that be at Rutgers thinking, "gee, who would make a great commencement speaker?," and confounding all sense and decency by coming up with her, why does Der Pantload ever think this is a good illustration of a "thought-crime crackdown?" It's not about thought crime. It's about real crime, monstrous, society-destroying crime that in ages past (and when the same charges were leveled against countries other than ours) were described as follows: "To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an
international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing
only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the
accumulated evil of the whole."
It's so sad that I can't even work up any outrage over the mandatory-drug-test-for-welfare thing. I'm not surprised that there are all manner of twisted hoops you have to jump through before you get any help beyond lectures about how We Can't Help You If You Won't Help Yourself. I'm just surprised at the implication that if you do jump, they actually will part with some of those God-almighty MAH TACKS MUNNEEEEEE!!! that they're always so worried about anyone touching. I always kind of assumed that welfare was something you had to kind of take on faith - you could choose to believe that it was there, and that there might be some theoretical circumstances when someone might get it, but those circumstances had never been encountered in real life.
ReplyDeleteThey say that low expectations are the key to happiness. I can't say I have found that to be true. But they do seem to be the key to less outrage.
It works this way: Any measure taken to put liberals/leftists in their place is a good and justified thing. And if hundreds or thousands of innocents are swept up in the zeal to take out one liberal, well, that is also a good thing.
ReplyDeleteBut if a conservative encounters even mild disagreement over anything, it is an oppression worse than the Holocaust, Stalin, Pol Pot, and Hitler combined. And it only happens because liberals have no sense of proportion.
"If, in some sort of parallel-universe exercise, the same number of (now proven) Soviet-Communist spies, collaborators, sympathizers, and the like were somehow switched to Nazis, and McCarthy went after them with the same vehemence as he went after Reds, Joe McCarthy might well have universities and foundations named after him today..."
ReplyDeleteJesus, this is perfect.. Jonah gets to argue his own set of facts in his own little made up universe, and for this, he gets promoted as some kind of conservative intellectual heavyweight. Even though, in the real world, with, say a real editor, he wouldn't get away with this for a second. Wait... I'm sorry, I take it back... actually, this is perfect for USA Today.
And to tie your comment that that of montage2 together: I seem to remember some rightwing loon stating that we had to attack Iraq because we occasionally have to "take some crappy little country and throw it against the wall" just to demonstrate our superiority.
ReplyDeleteOr maybe three out of 5 Pinochets?
ReplyDeleteAw, geez, do I ever want to make a joke about "heavyweight," but, I'm not going to. But, I'm willing to bet that every time he gets on the scales and he's three pounds heavier, he thinks, "my head's getting bigger every day!"
ReplyDeleteI feel ya... I deliberately left out the "heavyweight joke, but I did leave the door open in case anyone else wants to take that on...
ReplyDeleteYou know what's missing in these "I'm being oppressed" columns? A recommendation as to what needs to change. With these last few, even these goobers can't claim that it's the government out to get them. It's just directionless whining, the complaint of a privileged class that's less privileged now than they were a few years ago. Seriously, what is it that these guys want? Do they expect the American people to completely suppress their personal beliefs over the people who...
ReplyDelete...Hold on a second. Have these guys turned into one of the liberal stereotypes that live in their collective unconscious? The calls for extreme tolerance, the claims of victimhood, the demand that they be coddled...it is! These guys have been obsessed with a strawman of a PC crusader for so long that they've finally taken its place. They've transmigrated into the form of a decades-out-of-date caricature of an earnest, overbearing crusader of justice. Now I see - if you stare too long into the image of the stereotype, eventually the image becomes a mirror.
Or maybe guys like Jonah just lappreciate that they get paid to whine.
Tom fucking Friedman
ReplyDeleteMichael Ledeen, "the Ledeen Doctrine"
ReplyDeleteJonah Goldberg, Ledeen's colleague at National Review, coined the term "Ledeen Doctrine" in a 2002 column. This tongue-in-cheek "doctrine" is usually summarized as "Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business," which Goldberg remembered Ledeen saying in an early 1990s speech.
----
~
Haha!
ReplyDeleteTom Friedman was all, "Suck. On. This."
~
Give Jonah credit for knowing his audience, which if you tied them to a chair in front of a TeeVee playing MSNBC and duct taped their eyelids open would be singing loudly "LALALALALA I can't HEAR you!" He knows he can say things like this with no fear of being called out for bullshit.
ReplyDeleteI thought so, but I'm too lazy to use the googles.
ReplyDeleteit's largely true that Republicans are, in some measure, champions of white supremacy
ReplyDeleteOkay, we should really be better than this. All the time we spend pointing out how cheap, broad and simpleminded GOP talking points are, and one of the top posts here is "Well, we know that Republicans are racists"? Not true and not cool.
I don't think Rice deserves sackcloth and ashes, I think she deserves a jumpsuit and a small room at The Hague.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I can't imagine why any of those Rutgers grads, on average $50K in debt for their education (largely because universities no longer get much tax support, thanks to the need to cut rich people's taxes, which was greatly promoted by the lot Rice threw herself in with) would object to seeing the university lay out over half of what they owe for their education to a known liar and war criminal for a 30 minute speech.
ReplyDeleteIt just doesn't make any sense.
I have no sympathy for disgraced L.A. Clippers owner Donald Sterling's views about race, but there's something troubling about how so many people are comfortable with vilifying a man for something he said in private, possibly even during couples' counseling.
ReplyDeleteThere's a Ms. Lewinsky calling on the "safe" line, Mr. Goldberg.
Two words: Liberal Fascism
ReplyDelete"If, in some sort of parallel-universe exercise, my grandmother had the same number of legs somehow switched to wheels, and perhaps a fresh coat of red paint and a little handle on the front, she might well be a wagon."
ReplyDeleteDefenders of the thought-crime crackdown will fairly insist today is
ReplyDeletedifferent from things in Yenowsky's day. Fighting bigotry is an obvious
good, unlike the crackdown on domestic radicals. Yes and no. Sure,
fighting bigotry is right and good, but so is defending the United
States from those who would do it harm. The test isn't in the motives
but in the methods.
Sometimes the Pantload has to throw thought against the wall to show it we mean business.
You know, there actually IS something a little troubling about the guy being called out for something said in private; as I said over at Balloon Juice to jeers and catcalls, at some point we have to accept that there are people out there that have these troglodyte views, and that it's their right to have them, and furthermore, they also have a right to earn a living.
ReplyDeleteThat having been said, I'm not the one who called for the guy's head. And while he does have a right to earn a living, he doesn't necessarily have a right to own a basketball team, he doesn't have a right to force people for whom he has expressed contempt to work for him, and he doesn't have a right to force people whose economic interests his views have endangered to continue to associate with him.
Goldberg can gas on all he likes about being "troubled" by "so many people (being) comfortable with vilifying a man," but of course, that is also their right, and of course, that's not what the Pantload is really upset about - he's upset that the man suffered consequences for the ugly things he said.
"and if she was a red wagon, would she fall victim to this so-called red scare?"
ReplyDeleteIf, in some sort of parallel-universe exercise, the [Communists] were somehow switched to Nazis, and McCarthy went after them with the same vehemence as he went after Reds, Joe McCarthy might well have universities and foundations named after him today.
ReplyDeleteIndeed. Imagine some sort of parallel universe in which a large group of people suspected of being Axis sympathizers or possible Axis spies had their property seized, families separated, were even rounded up and imprisoned. Wouldn't the liberals still be cheering on the patriots who made those tough choices and stood up against Fascism?
Actually, no; but Michelle Malkin of National Review Online sure would.
WHAT IS MY JACKBOOT DOING ON MY NECK?
ReplyDeleteSince it's Doughbob, jacking off is probably the correct answer.
~
The drunken, grandstanding loutish Red-baiter is the Jew of something something
ReplyDeleteI stand corrected!
ReplyDeleteDear lord that is a stupid man.
ReplyDeleteIts sad for him that he's a crappy human being who, in the process of fucking over either a young woman or his wife or both, got caught with his pants down. But so what? When an emperor loses the mandate of heaven and starts to display bad luck its not the fault of the peasants--its just what it is. He wasn't a shining example of humanity or any kind of even whited sepulchre. He's just a greedy, manipulative, bitter, gouging, red lining, racist, slumlord who was usually protected by social and legal distance from his victims but who for a milisecond got exposed in public. None of us had anything to do with it. Its what parents call "natural consequences" for a lifetime of crappy behavior. I just don't see any reason to pretend that we should look away rather than point and laugh. You can be sure that the man who took women into the locker room to ogle the bodies of his black workers wouldn't have the same pudeur.
ReplyDeleteWell, it's not as if I'm losing any sleep over what happened to him.
ReplyDeleteBut doesn't this actually cut the other way even from Jonah's own goal?
ReplyDelete"If, in some parallel universe, a gay jewish mccarthy had been able to push back against the nazi menace by exposing the kinds of people who were contributing financially to hitler and going to help him rise wouldn't we celebrate such a person? Wouldn't we be better off if people whose very lives were going to be at risk had been alerted in advanceto the danger so they could boycott those people?" Because that is both the sterling and eich counter-example.
That's an acceptable alternative, but, unfortunately, neither eventuality seems to be in the offing (and it's the supreme example of IOKIYAR, and a pretty awful example of what the right wing conceives meritocracy to be).
ReplyDeleteI think the apt comparison is a Croc stomping on your neckbeard, forever.
ReplyDeleteHow could either of those things be worse than what's happening? People are refusing to pay outrageous sums to listen to her! O tempura, o morays!
ReplyDeletea known liar and war criminal
ReplyDeleteHey, at least when she lied and was complicit in war crimes, no Americans died. #Benghazi
You really should be outraged. As Roy's linked article pointed out, welfare recipients are the only citizens who have to prove themselves drug-free in order to receive the benefit to which they are legally entitled. I'm no lawyer, but that sure looks like violations of at least the 4th and 14th amendments. It's an outrage and it has damn little to do with whatever expenditure might actually be involved: Remember that these are the same people who never met a defense budget they didn't like unless it was because it wasn't big enough.
ReplyDeleteI think they're just lacking any shred of originality. All they can do is ape some warped perception of recent history.
ReplyDeleteNo one could have predicted it.
ReplyDeleteThe Stern Gang?
ReplyDeleteNot "you're eating it?" YES I WENT THERE. It is because I am a horrible person.
ReplyDeleteOf course, in the real WWII, McCarthy lied about his record to get a Distinguished Flying Cross. Universities and foundations, eh?
ReplyDeleteI tell ya, it's getting to the point where a person can't be a shill for a war of aggression, and then never admit what you've done, without your income from speaking fees taking a hit. I hardly recognize this country anymore.
ReplyDeleteIn what sense are they not racists? Do they not constantly and consistently support policies that hurt minorities? Do they not constantly use vicious, barely-coded racist language to talk about the president, and black people in general? I mean, okay, if we want to say "the average rank and file republican probably does not spend all of his or her waking hours thinking GRRR I HATE NIGGERS SO MUCH," then okay, but I would humbly submit that as long as they're acting the way they're acting, it's pretty immaterial what's in their heart of hearts.
ReplyDeleteThey found that in FL, where the state had to pay for the tests, that they spend more money on screening their recipients than they saved by excluding those who were using drugs. It's part of the Republican "Those people are using drugs and partying on your taxes" when the truth of the matter is that they're probably less likely to be using drugs than the general population, because they're fucking poor.
ReplyDeletethe same number of (now proven) Soviet-Communist spies, collaborators, sympathizers
ReplyDeleteFunny the casual way Goldberg tosses that off. Nobody McCarthy investigated has ever been proven to be a Soviet spy. But American conservatives have never lost their affection for McCarthy or their hope of rehabilitating him.
One of the things that bugs me most about l'affair Sterling is that people (mostly) looked the other way when he was screwing black tenants over; the tipping point was when he insulted demi-billionaire Magic Johnson.
ReplyDeleteTopical. If you didn't see this last night...it was a thing of beauty.
ReplyDeleteDemocratic House leaders Nancy Pelosi and Rep. Steny Hoyer have dubbed critics of Obamacare "simply un-American."
ReplyDeleteYou're kidding. And in a country in which the GOP, and the open-minded savants Jonah praises and defends on a daily basis, would *never* think of calling anyone un-American, apart from the innumerable times that they have.
Meanwhile, that column: Reading it is like walking through a construction site after a heavy rain. You keep thinking you'll fine ONE moment of safe, clean footing, but you never, ever do. Ugh isn't the word.
Seeing as how we hired a whole bunch of Nazis to work on weapons and spacecraft and no one in government gave a fuck, I wish we had a couple of Nazi hunters in the Senate. But that's not parallel universe enough.
ReplyDeleteYeah, well, I think it's fair to guess that something like 99% of Americans had never heard of the guy before this. A guy no one's ever heard of screwing over black tenants isn't something most people would have heard of. That's the steak; all the ugly shit he said that went public was the sizzle.
ReplyDeleteExactly.
ReplyDelete"Hi, I'm a mother with two kids and I'm on welfare. The first thing I do when I get my check is buy my crack. There's not much left after that . . . well, actually, there's nothing left after that, but my kids are real good about not complaining about being hungry."
This is apparently what they believe.
2% of FL TANF applicants tested positive for drug use (mostly marijuana), while another 2% declined to be tested. So, 4% max but probably lower than that, compared with 9% of the general population who are illicit drug users (have used illegal drugs within the past month), again, most of them marijuana users.
ReplyDeleteJesus Christ on a bagel, what a vile performance. So it was all to show what we "mean"? All that death, all those damaged innocents, all that corruption, all that destruction, and this pompous clown is proud because we did it "because we could"? I dare him to watch this today and defend it. If there is a mental version of a war crime, there you have it.
ReplyDeleteAh yes, who can forget Werner von Braun's "I Aim at the Stars (but sometimes I hit London)"?
ReplyDeleteShorter Blufartski
ReplyDelete"Was it over when the Commies bombed Pearl Harbor?"
And that's not even getting into the outright lies he was telling about how in the 90's, no one was paying any attention to terrorism. Richard Clarke would be able to address this point better than I can.
ReplyDeleteWe are fast approaching the day when JoBerg writes an article is 100% non sequitur and he gets sucked into the resulting wormhole with a noise that sounds suspiciously like a faaaaaaaaaaaart.
ReplyDeleteAnd the other stuff, about "the same number of (now proven) Soviet-Communist spies, collaborators, sympathizers, and the like were somehow switched to Nazis" -- It's almost as if he doesn't know about Prescott Bush, Henry Ford, Charles Lindbergh, the Bund, the Duquense Spy Ring and the entire crypto-fascist apparatus we had here in the States. Here's a primer of the post war push to hire Nazi war criminals.
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile, in the universe in which Jonah types, the House Un-American Activities Committee was formed to root out--you guessed it--Nazis, Nazi sympathizers, and assorted fascists. Following the war, US intelligence grabbed as many Nazi specialists as they could (as Jay B. mentions below), including one General Reinhard Gehlen, head of the part of Wehrmacht military intelligence tasked with spying on Russia (Fremdeheeres Ost, or Foreign Armies East). Of course he fed the US spies anti-Communist stuff; of course they ate it up with relish; of course guys like Roy Cohn and Joe McCarthy took briefings from OSS and FBI agents who had been soaking in this Nazi swill.
ReplyDeleteOf course, that's real fascism, not Liberal Fascism, so Jonah's unaware of the irony of his emissions.
Well, in the case of Florida, it's worth noting that Gov. Rick Scott (R-Batboy) personally profits off the state-mandated drug testing. So there's that.
ReplyDeleteBack when I wrote an article about drug testing, I called it "chemical McCarthyism." I still think that's true.
"Our Germans are better than their Germans!"
ReplyDeleteYou really should be outraged.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I probably should be, but I'm a broken and defeated man who is no longer capable of outrage. Would you settle for sick disgust? I have plenty of that.
Eh, to some extent I agree with that argument, but shit happens. Sometimes it even happens to rich people, but It's so rare that it feels kind of shocking, like something's out of order. If you're trying to keep your own awful behavior private but screw up and let it out, well, that's on you. And like you I don't really feel sorry for him (he's gonna make a boatload off selling the team, for one thing).
ReplyDeleteYeah, agreed. Let's put it this way: I stand ready to be upset as soon as I hear about an ordinary working schmoe who lost his job for letting slip some noxious opinion. But so far, every time I've heard of this happening, it's happened to some rich bastard who is in zero risk of going without his daily necessities because of it.
ReplyDeleteBack when I lived in FL, in the early `80s when the cocaine explosion was in full swing there, the only people I knew doing and selling cocaine were the salesmen at the dealership where I worked. Reputedly, they made more money on coke than they did on used-car commissions. "And to seal the deal, I can get you a great price on an eight-ball."
ReplyDeleteNone of them were on welfare, and all of them were white. Go figure. I think a helluva lot of this harping on welfare is not just a Republican tactic to stoke resentment (although it's definitely that), it's also a concerted effort to shift public attention away from the biggest class of drug users--rich white people.
Hmmmmmm........White punks on dope?
ReplyDeleteThe better examples of what the right considers to be meritocracy include ol' Jonah hisself, along with Bush the Dumber, Bill "Wrong" Kristol, Michael Powell, and the dozens of other legacy hires who have no discernible qualifications beyond being the offspring of prominent Republicans or rightwing boosters.
ReplyDeleteAh, yes, the old "parallel-universe" argument! It never gets old! That's what the SCOTUS is using for most of their decisions these days.
ReplyDeleteAll true: Two years from now, he'll still be insanely wealthy, he'll still be trampling tenants' rights, he'll no doubt have yet another 20-something piece of arm candy to squire around, and he will have sunk back into anonymity. I'm not really seeing much of a downside for him in this.
ReplyDeleteJust like Sterling and Bundy and Zimmerman, all beloved of Fox news, aren't racist.
ReplyDeleteI'm trying to imagine what Godlberg's alternate universe is like. I assume everyone there is dumber than he is, therefore he is The King. But
ReplyDeleteCalling Republicans racist is, indeed, broad. But the problem here is that there are sooooooo many prominent conservative figures who do and say blatantly racist things (we don't even have to get into the dogwhistle stuff).
ReplyDeleteAnd there's a long history of this that goes with the party--from their opposition to the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, to Buckley's infamous tirades against doing away with Jim Crow and segregation, to Pat Buchanon's vocal defenses of Hitler and his very public crusade against Haitian immigrants (and remember that Buchanon was a keynote speaker at the 1992 Republican convention, which was right at the height of his anti-Haitian period), to the constant jihad against Mexicans.
Shorter me: I'll stop calling Republicans racist when they stop saying and doing racist things.
I'm no lawyer, but that sure looks like violations of at least the 4th, 5th and 14th amendments
ReplyDeleteSure, in this universe.
Its the repugs who are partying on your taxes.
ReplyDeleteHe won't miss a meal, he won't "lose his job", even if he has to sell the team, and I daresay he won't even lose face among his peers. The people whose opinions of him will plummet are people about whom he cares not a bit. There's literally no way to actually hurt this asshole other than physically, with one possible exception. Organizations can start refusing his narcissistic philanthropy, and never name a new wing after him again. *That* will hurt. It will also hurt the organizations more than it'll hurt him, but there you are...
ReplyDeleteRound 1 in the Cold War goes to the USA!
ReplyDeleteI can see why Jonah's so upset for Rice, given that the first amendment explicitly guarantees the right to deliver commencement speeches at colleges of one's choosing.
ReplyDeleteAnd, shit, that was... 1975?
ReplyDeleteSure, HJ, that's annoying but I guess I think we are talking about different people with different access to information and different levers of power. Sterling's problem was that he fell afoul of the one area where public opinion matters: sex and race and money. And the people he pissed off, to the extent he pissed anyone off rather than people just shrugging and saying "what an awful fellow" were consumers of popular entertainment in which he happened to have an ownership stake.
ReplyDeleteAbsent a huge,clever,well organized renter's movement with the power to turn "slumlord" into a serious problem for all the white property owners in LA I fail to see how these two kinds of horrible get the same kind of traction. He got sued by his tenants and he had to pay a fine. The clippers and their fans couldn't sue him so they made a big stink which was just as good because its a different power/ownership dynamic.
An exquisite performance of the Goldberg Variation. An argument never made with such clarity and detail.
ReplyDeleteThe archetypical response works just as well, though: "Yeah, and if my aunt had balls, she'd be my uncle"
(Aside to fellow LGMers: "Yeah, and if my aunt had balls, she'd be my aunt's horse")
Republicans always have the right to fee speech.
ReplyDeleteWell, Atrios has a column there, so sometimes they do it right...
ReplyDeleteYeah, but rootin', tootin' Putin is a-fixin' to be a shootin'.
ReplyDeletehe's upset that the man suffered consequences for the ugly things he said.
ReplyDeletePrecisely this. His entire raison d'être is smokescreen.
Oops! Somebody dropped a Paperclip.
ReplyDeleteWell, it would only be a Little Red Scare, to be fair...
ReplyDeleteThis does happen to ordinary working schmoes--it happens every day. The problem here is what constitutes "noxious." All too often, "noxious" means "supported a Democrat" instead of something truly odious such as espousing racist opinions.
ReplyDeleteBeing no great thinker myself, I can, to a limited extent, empathize with Pantload's predicament. That being said, um, Jonah? Give it up, OK? You're swinging a bat with a hole in it. You're firing an unloaded gun. You're plowing with a 3-legged mule because could never afford gas for the tractor. You're trying to play Portal 2 on a 486SX. In short, you are a fluke of the Universe, you have no right to be here, and whether you believe it or not, the universe is laughing behind your back.
ReplyDeleteI took a shortcut through the metaphorest, hope that's OK...
But yes, the "to jeers and catcalls" part is why I always scoff whenever someone starts talking about the intrinsic moral superiority of liberals over conservatives. "Something bad happened to someone I hate - yay!" is a sentiment that knows no political boundaries.
ReplyDeleteDon't get me wrong - our values are better than their values, our opinions are better than their opinions, our policies are better than their policies. But our feelings and instincts seem to be pretty much exactly the same as theirs, given the same situation.
Yeah, and to flesh out the point I made over there...if this guy's girlfriend hadn't recorded him, he'd still think this way but no one would have the proof of it. He wouldn't be banned from the NBA and he wouldn't be under pressure to divest himself of the team. I was just pointing out that there are, unfortunately, people around us who think this way and in an awful lot of cases, we just don't know it, either because they keep it to themselves or they haven't been recorded, or they just aren't high-profile enough that anyone cares.
ReplyDeleteThey are out there, and they have a right to believe what they like, even though it's really fucked up. Of course, we also have the right to point out that what they believe is really fucked up, and if people choose to not want to be associated with them in a business context as a result, well, shit happens.
In the universe in which Der Pantload lives, pigs fly higher and faster than an SR-71, Richard Nixon was honest, and Goldwater crushed Johnson in the `64 election.
ReplyDeleteAnd cheeseburgers, fries and chocolate shakes constitute a weight-loss program.
Cosmology is fun!
ReplyDeleteUpvoted because it was, indeed, a smackdown of epic proportions.
ReplyDeleteHopefully, years from now, he'll be dead.
ReplyDeleteTo err is human, to make fun of the guy in the pratfall is divine. But I don't even think thats the problem that DanielB seems to think. Its not true that "our feelings and instincts seem to be pretty much exactly the same as theirs, given the same situation." Because on top of tribalism (good things should happen to people like me/bad things should happen to people like them) you have hierarchy and aristocracy and racism. My instinctive sympathies go to the poor and outcast, not to the billionaires. And that, to my mind, makes a difference in how I handle this stuff. What is Sterling's excuse--not for his racist beliefs which I perfectly understand and grasp as typical of a man of his age--but for his absolutely horrible treatment of his tenants? Laughing about what has happened to him is more like laughing because Al Capone went down not for murder but for tax evasion--because the mills of god grind slow but they grind exceedingly funny.
ReplyDeleteMy comment is golf clapping your comment, but perhaps too quietly for you to hear it.
ReplyDeleteIf [the Commies] were somehow switched to Nazis... Joe McCarthy might well have universities and foundations named after him today.
ReplyDeleteHmmm. I wonder if any current politician HAS tried to warn us about creeping domestic Nazism? Say, by releasing a report titled "Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment"? Hang on, someone DID try that! It was Janet Napolitano, just 5 years ago!
Strangely, Jonah did not name a university after her. Instead, he condemned the report entirely because it is about how dumb white guys sometimes join radical groups, when it should have been about how sinister brown people always join them. Furthermore, there's Oklahoma City NO evidence of white-guy domestic terrorism! And THEN he says yes there is, it's just all committed by liberals. Helpfully, he lists a bunch of these terrorist libs! And it's not just Oswald and Bill Ayers -- did you guys know John Kerry maaaaybe plotted to assassinate US Senators?!? Full display of integrity here: http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/227314/right-winging-it-dhs/jonah-goldberg
Once rockets go up, who cares where they come down?
ReplyDeleteThat's not my department, says Wernher Von Braun.
Dear God, it even has a "thumbless grasp."
ReplyDeleteThe world changes one funeral at a time.
ReplyDeletepigs fly higher and faster than an SR-71
ReplyDeleteDamn. That'll be tough news to my pals in the Porcine Flight project. They're only up to matching a B-24.
It's not so much the control surfaces(sometimes quaintly called "wings") as the jet propulsion development. The burrito currently used produces an exhaust with the octane level of kerosene. A kim chee variant will hopefully reach gasoline levels.
Can I have an ay-men?! AMEN!
ReplyDeleteO tempura, o monies!
ReplyDeletevilifying a man for something he said in privateYep, if Jonah wants to maintain this new-found moral principle, it could make for an awkward Mothers' Day conversation.
ReplyDeleteBut our feelings and instincts seem to be pretty much exactly the same as theirs, given the same situation.
ReplyDeleteI don't think that's quite right. Sure, we cheer when some racist, rich fuck, or conservative hypocrite gets burned, and god knows we have our share of pitchfork-wielding simpletons, but in the main I think The Left has a far higher proportion of people who possess a healthy degree of skepticism and don't operate solely from gut feelings and instinct. Facts and truth matter to us. The Right is far more tribal, and they believe an awful lot of bullshit propaganda. It's why right-wing media has been so successful, while similar attempts by the left have come nowhere close. We're a completely different kind of audience.
'Specially when they charge for it.
ReplyDeleteYou know what really cheers me up? The thought that, 100 years from now, pretty much everyone alive today will be dead.
ReplyDeleteIt's not much, but we atheists have to take comfort where we can, considering there's no hell.
Rockets go up, rockets come down. You can't explain that.
ReplyDeleteI'm trying to imagine what Godlberg's alternate universe is like.
ReplyDeleteIt's the one where he doesn't have the goatse.
Rightwing Extremism:
ReplyDeleteSee, there's your problem right there. Let me introduce you to a little ethos called National Socialism.
Is that anything like "kung-fu grip?"
ReplyDeleteI took a shortcut through the metaphorest, hope that's OK...
ReplyDeleteIt will be until the Koch brothers get hold of it and turn it into Dixie cups.
I read that little atrocity from Scheisshosen. It's not like the former Secretary is going to suffer; she'll just have to put off shoe-shopping for another couple of days. Also, why am I reminded of the name "Henry Kissinger"?
ReplyDeleteSay what you will about the tenets of National Socialism, at least it's an ethos.
ReplyDeleteI think it's his clumsy way of saying "clumsy," but it's hard to be sure.
ReplyDeleteBut he wouldn't pay you for it.
ReplyDeleteIn the kingdom of the brainless, the man with one cerebral hemisphere is king.
ReplyDeleteKind of a wet faaart this time, eh? Ditch the galoshes, dude...
ReplyDeleteAnd even allowing for the usefulness of arguments from parallel universes, it's probably a good idea to start with something resembling the actual existing universe before trying to construct the parallel. In Goldberg's case, he begins by implying that the universe he lives in is the one in which the people McCarthy went after were "now proven Soviet-Communist spies, collaborators, sympathizers and the like." Since the most prominent people McCarthy went after were Cold War liberals like Dean Acheson, he's basically starting in a Spock-with-a-beard universe, and going from there to a Bizarro-world version of that.
ReplyDeleteThat's not smoke!
ReplyDeleteIf, in some sort of parallel-universe exercise, the same number of (LiberalsLiberalsLiberalsLiberals) were somehow switched to Nazis, and McCarthy went after them with the same vehemence as he went after Reds, Joe McCarthy might well have universities and foundations named after him today...
ReplyDeleteTranslation from the original methane:
I wrote a whole book about how the Liberals are all Fasci Nazists, and nobody named anything after me! Not even a correspondence school!
Goldberg is now willing to credit the idea of a married man and his not-wife lover receiving couples counseling, and even believes in the confidentiality of said counseling. That sounds like a kind of growth to me (although I'd consult an oncologist as to what kind.)
ReplyDeleteIsn't listening to her the payment of an outrageous sum in itself?
ReplyDeleteWhat Goldberg wants us to believe is that his parallel-universe liberals, being the fascists that they are, would have been just as fascistic towards the fascists as the actual-world McCarthy was towards the actual-world communists, which is to say, not fascistic at all, because McCarthy's targets really were spies [citation conspicuously needed and conspicuously missing for more than half a century, but let's put that firmly aside] and so McCarthyism was ultimately on the side of the angels.
ReplyDeleteSo actual-world liberals are completely hypocritical for holding actual-world McCarthy to a higher standard than their fantasy-world counterparts held the fantasy-world liberal fascist anti-fascist 'McCarthy.' Which goes to show that actual-world liberals are being totally double reverse hypocritical for subjecting Eich and Sterling to 'McCarthyism,' which -- and this is central to my point! -- was actually a pretty good thing. But until the liberals have the intellectual honesty to admit that, they are barred by the principal of modus pantload from ever trying to get anybody in trouble for anything they said.
I hope this is not clear, because if it is, I have failed to capture the essence of Goldbergian argumentation.
Like the widows and cripples in old London Town,
ReplyDeleteWho owe their large pensions to Werner von Braun.
It would be a very bizarre experience reading college town maps if Jonah had the power to name universities.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of Politico, I read one of their pieces recently and... Dear God! They can put up one of their standard "both sides do it but liberals are worse" whinges and within an hour there will be a virtual Nuremberg rally in the comments. One commenter near the top dropped some science about how "anti-racist" was just another way of saying "anti-white."
ReplyDeleteWhoa, kinkee!
ReplyDelete" "Something bad happened to someone I hate - yay!" is a sentiment that knows no political boundaries. ... our feelings and instincts seem to be pretty much exactly the same as theirs, given the same situation."
ReplyDeleteThis is true, up to a point. Sure, we all love to see our political opposites roast when they do the wrong thing, but it's what happens when our poitical affiliates do the wrong thing that differentiates us from the Right.
The Rght tend almost invariably to close ranks, spin furiously, diminish, ignore or obfuscate when their people are caught diddling kids or whatever. Whereas lefties denounce kiddie-diddling, corruption, etc irresective of the side of the aisle it occurs.
.
To err is human, to make fun of the guy in the pratfall is divine.
ReplyDeleteSlapstick comedy cuts across ideological lines. Hell, it cuts across language barriers, national borders, continental divides, International date Lines, everything. If I check with a Primatologist, it might even cut across species. So the predilection is there, to enjoy other peoples' suffering, if only a little. Who among us didn't love the Stooges as a kid? I know I did. But we grow up, some of us. I can smile nostalgically at the Stooges today, but the eye-poking isn't the hoot it was when I was 7. Wouldn't be even if it was Jonah himself. Couldn't happen to a nicer guy, but...not that funny. Some of us, though, don't grow up, and as supposed adults still get a belly laugh out of, say, a Liberal slipping on a metaphorical banana peel. (I suspect some would pee their pants if it was a real one...) It's becoming more and more obvious that Left and Right, though neither is a perfectly homogenous group, are just basically different sorts of H. Sap. The sociopolitical datum that smacked me between the eyes recently was the survey that showed Republicans just don't do science. Good grief, how can one side of the political divide be so overwhelmingly outnumbered in something so important? I'll let the professionals chew on that one, but it just seems like the Right really, really doesn't want to know what they don't want to know. "Lalalalala I can't hear you!" isn't a joke any more--if it ever was. It's really how they are. And they're not merely unlike us on the Left, they're unlike most people in the world. Even foreign Conservatives look askance at their antics. So no, our feelings and instincts *don't* seem to be pretty much exactly the same as theirs. Not all of 'em. I'll argue that I've come by my sense of humor honestly, by growing up. The mean little kids on the Right have not, but for some, sticking girls' braids in the inkwell and pushing the kid with glasses down the stairs is just as funny as it was when they were kids. Because they still are. And they're still snarking "whaddaya tryna do, asshole, wreck the curve?!" Which is why the bookworm went down the stairs...
Shorter: Mitt Romney, with the knife, cutting the fag's hair.
ReplyDeleteI guess, in some ways? If there are limits to how malleable human nature is, then at least there are also limits to how bad we can become.
ReplyDelete[Goldberg, showing the LTM facility of a nematode]: If, in some sort of parallel-universe exercise, the same number of (now proven) Soviet-Communist spies, collaborators, sympathizers, and the like were somehow switched to Nazis, and McCarthy went after them with the same vehemence as he went after Reds, Joe McCarthy might well have universities and foundations named after him today...
ReplyDeleteGoldberg forgets that he proved that Commies are Nazis and vice versa....
Yeah he's got that programmed into his laptop by an intern. "Just have to type in thm, Mr Goldberg, and it does the rest for you"
ReplyDeleteOutside of Bizzaro World or the fever swamps of wingnuttery the above statement should read.
ReplyDelete'Every ten years or so, some small crappy little country has to give the United States a hard kick to the goolies just to show them its time to declare victory and go home'.
Oh, this is a whole other discussion that would take ages to hash out. Er, but briefly:
ReplyDeleteI do not believe that leftists are some kind of gentlemen scholars who sort truth from lies through the power of their intellect, the way it seems to me that most leftists see themselves. The reason why I don't see them that way is that I don't think it is possible to be such a person. It takes a lifetime of study to have an educated opinion on one subject, a single one. All the rest is gut feeling, unsteady guesswork and, above all else, choosing which authority to trust.
When leftists say that they are oriented around facts, it means that they have accepted the authority of the scientific community. That's a pretty good choice, I feel - the scientific community is not always right, but it's got a better track record than religion or "common sense" (an oxymoron if there ever was one!) or whatever other alternative the wingnuts have opted for. But it's still a choice of what authority to trust, nothing more.
On an individual level, I haven't seen much difference between the sides. Both claim that their opinion has been conclusively proven. Both will, at the slightest provocation, bombard you with links to articles and studies that show that it is so, and which may or may not be outdated, biased, selective or simply a complete lie - a layman has no way of knowing.
Now, I generally like the things liberals claim are facts better than I like the things conservatives claim are facts. Liberal facts tend to support the course of action I think we should take regardless of what the facts are (feeding the hungry will be good for the economy? Sure, let's say that's true if that will get it done faster - to me, the reason to feed the hungry is because they're hungry and need feeding). But other than that I see no difference between them.
But I don't even think thats the problem that DanielB seems to think.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure I'd call it a "problem," per se. A problem assumes the possibility of a solution. This is just... the way things are and always will be.
If I keep harping on about this topic, then it's mostly because I need to remind myself that I don't actually live in a world where the last flickering spark of Good is constantly at the verge of being snuffed out by Evil. The kind of thinking is bad for your mental health (and probably the reason for why conservatives seem so deranged at times, since their leaders tend to encourage that kind of thinking). I feel the need to remind myself that in fact, I live in a world where everything is kind of shitty but it's possible to get by anyway.
My instinctive sympathies go to the poor and outcast, not to the billionaires.
I can't argue with you there - I tend to take the view that billionaires can afford to hire any number of people to be sympathetic to them.
Things are not always so clearcut, though, and the Left genuinely has an ugly tendency to declare one party in a conflict Privileged and therefore undeserving of any symapthy or consideration, even though most forms of privilege are more subtle and (above all) more conditional and case-sensitive than the privilege of having oodles of money. But I admit that that's a more general issue and that in this case the guy seems to be a spoiled asshole in every single way.
What you say is also true, up to a point. If we consider the Right and the Left unified entities and define "the wrong thing" as something that is against the law of the land, then yes, the Left is far more inclined to self-police than the Right is.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, I think it's important to remember that the Right is inclined to think that the government is against them, that society is against them, that the law of the land is, fundamentally, not their friend. And in a sense, they are perfectly right. They want to live in a lawless Wild West, and there are very few parts of a civilised society that does not act to prevent that.
And once you realise that, all you have to do is look at those parts of the Left that tend to feel like the world/culture/legal system is against them, and realise that they are talking and acting very much like the Right as a whole does. Try telling a group of die-hard feminists that a high-profile feminist* has done anything wrong, ever. Just try it. The result will be... eerily familiar.
People who feel (rightly or wrongly) like society is not made for them (irrespectively of whether it would be reasonable to expect society to be made at least partly for them) huddle up and get defensive. It's just what happens. It's human. It's not a sign of a mindset, it's a sign of a situation.
* If said feminist is female, anyway. Tearing down self-proclaimed man-feminists tends to be a great way to cement your own credibility as a man-feminist. It's... a bit odd.
Why doesn't it surprise me that M. Bouffant (as well as I) chose this comment to upvote?
ReplyDeleteI don't like to slip so easily from liberal to left because, in the US, we barely have a left at this point. I also don't like ascribing to "the left" a uniform position of something as complicated as privilege . I don't even see where "privilige" in that sense comes into the Eich, Sterling, situations. I agree with you that there is no advantage, and much that is wrong, with a manichean view of human nature in which "the left" and "the right" are pure good or pure evil. But in the US at this moment there is, in fact, an enormous polarization on the base of race, class, sex, and political affiliation that can be understood in nothing other than manichean terms. One side, and its not the liberal/left really does act and believe as though civilization itself is always on the verge of being snuffed out.
ReplyDeleteSurely you're not suggesting that Jonah remembers anything he's written once it's been oozed onto the page.
ReplyDelete"Better a thousand innocent be punished than to let one guilty party escape." —The Space Merchants [probably paraphrased]
ReplyDeleteBut they're on record as stating that they are not racists. They say it every few minutes. If only there was an elegant way to say they're the "I'm Not Racist, But" Party.
ReplyDeleteAnd, of course, objecting to Rice for her role in helping kill ~150k people somewhere proves that the left is sexist AND racist, according to those outraged at four deaths in a Dem administration.
ReplyDeleteNo sense of humor, either. "Oh, come on! I was KIDDING about gassing all Democrats!"
ReplyDeleteHalf the buildings would be named after unprincipled douchebags, and the other half after junk foods.
ReplyDeleteI want to sweep this comment into my arms and take it on a kaleidoscopic journey through endless parallel universes.
ReplyDeleteI'd eat moray tempura!
ReplyDelete