In other words, all the young'uns are friggin' and fruggin' and doin' their own thing, baby, and "it’s impossible to predict what Integrity 2.0 will yield — because no society in the history of Western civilization has so energetically and deliberately torn down its classical ideal and replaced it with do-it-yourself morality." Stop the presses! Apparently everyone in the media just recently discovered Nietzche, perhaps in a viral clip from Adult Swim.
Really, that's pretty much it. The essay's other distinguishing feature is a higher-than-usual count of intentional jokes, most of which sound like P.J. O'Rourke failing a competency hearing.
Oh, there is one telling bit -- Goldberg mentions the internet trolls who, not yet having a gamergate to rally 'round, focused their misogynistic rage on Anna Gunn during the run of Breaking Bad:
It got to the point where the actress (Anna Gunn) who portrayed the poor, beleaguered Mrs. White wrote an op-ed for the New York Times complaining about the tsunami of hate aimed at her character, which had spilled onto her in real life as well. In liberal pop culture, this was the equivalent of yelling “I’m telling!” and running to the principal’s office.?
Gunn blamed the whole thing on sexism. Her complaint may have some marginal merit, but it’s also really, really, really boring. The more interesting explanation (i.e., my explanation) is that “purely formal” integrity is just about the only kind of integrity our popular culture celebrates anymore...Somebody actually got hurt but tscha, let's get back to the real evil, namely the questionable morality of Game of Thrones characters.
First!
ReplyDeleteThat's "Frist," historically.
ReplyDeleteHer complaint may have some marginal merit, but it’s also really, really, really boring.
ReplyDeleteYeah, why can't she come up with an original compliant? Like the Nazis were really gay therefore computers are all tools of evil because Alan Turing.
"because no society in the history of Western civilization has so
ReplyDeleteenergetically and deliberately torn down its classical ideal and
replaced it with do-it-yourself morality."But enough about modern American conservatism.
Cruz!
ReplyDeletethe tsunami of hate aimed at her character, which had spilled onto her in real life as well
ReplyDeleteThank god Jonah is limited to spilling his tsunamis is front of a TV or computer screen. You don't want him spilling on anyone in real life.
no society in the history of Western civilization has so
ReplyDeleteenergetically and deliberately torn down its classical ideal and
replaced it with do-it-yourself morality
This is great. Shhh! No one tell him about Thomas Paine, Edgar Allen Poe, Thoreau, Emerson, Walt Whitman, Miles Davis, or any of the cornerstones of American culture.
For that matter, don't read him the first part of the Declaration of Independence.
ReplyDeleteI almost miss Frist...
ReplyDeleteWhat, nothing more about ebola? Right, election's over.
ReplyDelete~
Yes. It sort of opens with a radical departure from the previous 2,000 years of thinking, doesn't it? Imagine how cheesed Jonah would be to find out America has been working on its own total collapse since long before Canned Heat or whatever.
ReplyDeleteIf Jonah's clever, he'll copyright "do-it-yourself morality" before the Reason crew pick it up and start using it unironically.
ReplyDeleteThe Democrats clusterfuck in the election cured ebola. Thanks Obama.
ReplyDeleteIt ALWAYS comes back to Evil Hippies with their LSD and beads and whatnot. See National Review Elder James Lileks.
ReplyDeleteWow. I didn't think even I could snarf down six pounds of Cheetos. Whuzzat? Oh. Cripes. 3 am, and I need 3000 words for NRO in ... 5 hours. And all my assistants are asleep at this hour. Why, oh, why, Jonah, did you just watch gritty teevee and read teevee show message boards for eighteen hours straight. Okay, get ahold of yourself. You can do this. Think. THINK. Integrate your thoughts ... wait. Integrate. Ingrates. Ingratitude. Integer. Integrity. Integrity. INTEGRITY. Yes! Okay, dictionary definition intro. And then ...
ReplyDelete(I'm fairly sure that stuffed in the back of a retired Goucher philosophy professor's rusting filing cabinet, is the same goddamn essay written between 3 am and 6 am the morning before it was due, only with different references from the late '80s, like laments about A Different World's Afrocentrism and "wry" asides about Alf, and, well, I guess the Batman references are still there.)
The new conservative complaint is that net neutrality is a fascist Obamacare takeover of the internet. "If you like your website, you can keep your website! Hur Hur Farrt" True story.
ReplyDeleteOpening line:
ReplyDeleteThe Oxford English Dictionary defines “integrity” in part as...
Ah, so I see Jonah is no longer even bothering to hide his hackery anymore. Teriffic.
All right, so this is the umpteenth column on how the existence of the antihero in fiction means that we're all doomed. As you all know, this archetype did not exist before The Wire (Shakespeare? I have no idea who you're talking about) so obviously Hollywood is doing this to Corrupt the Youth of Today. Jonah's approach is a little different, treating this most vile and debased form of media as a symptom rather than the disease. Who says Jonah can't do original thought?
I'm going to try to keep this brief for a change: To some limited extent, I can understand where these idiots are coming from. I grew up in Methtown, U.S.A., and I've seen what that crap does to people. Consequently, the popularity of Breaking Bad and the lionization of Walter White nauseates me in a way that a doughy pantload will never get. But that's personal and doesn't speak to society. If you ask me, all this says about society is that many comfortable people like the idea of getting just close enough to the fire to feel the heat, even if it's all fiction. These culture critics want to pretend that this urge popped up ex nihilo within the last few years, but come on. Let's not pretend that some of our comfortable middle-class forbears in Chicago were lining up to shake Al Capone's hand, even after he ordered the St. Valentine's Day Massacre. And that was a real villain, not a screenwriter's invention.
For decades, we've been trying to teach teenagers that television is not an accurate reflection of real life. We've focused on them so exclusively that we missed a group that's even slower to figure this out. Culture critics? It's time for a chat. *throws down mic, walks off stage*
You'd think that a bunch of people who are convinced that their ISPs are out to get them would be the strongest supporters of Network Neutrality, but Ted Cruz says it's socialism.
ReplyDelete"Her complaint may have some marginal merit, but it’s also really, really, really boring."
ReplyDeleteAnd besides, J-Dawg's on deadline so he can't address the argument. Did you know he was on deadline? He's on deadline.
See also Jesse James, American hero.
ReplyDeleteNo society...
ReplyDeleteExcept for the Romans, who got all hopped up on that trendy Eastern religion.
I've probbably noted this before but dear lord what a windbag. Also his prose reads pretty much the same backwards as it does forward.
ReplyDelete"?"
ReplyDeleteYou got *that* right. WTF is he saying? Writing an op-ed about armies of assholes confusing your fictional character with your real-life self is, "in liberal pop culture," like running to the principal's office?
Talk about not-even-wrong. It's incoherent. Although it does suggest that, in conservative pop culture, writing a column for NRO is the equivalent of gathering in your pal's rec room with your other nerd friends and sniggering about how the prettiest girl in the class is "really stupid."
There is a LOT of bullshit to unpack here, and Jonah's comic asides as ever undermine his own point or prove that he has none. Suffice it to say, Oedipus the King is the hero of his titular play, even though his high watermark, morally speaking, is mutilating himself after he learns about the whole patricide and incest thing. Macbeth is, formally speaking, the hero of Shakespeare's play despite being a power hungry self justifier who murders all of his rival's kids on the erroneous idea that one of them will overthrow him. Hell, even Donald Westlake's Parker novels were popular before I was born, and I'm only a year younger than The Load. He's bought into and further exaggerated the hype. The idea of the villainous antihero didn't start with Tony Soprano, because people have always been curious about how bad people act and think. It's just that the cable multiverse has made the concept profitable within a TV context.
ReplyDeleteNo one tell him about Thomas Paine, Edgar Allen Poe, Thoreau, Emerson, Walt Whitman, Miles Davis, or any of the cornerstones of American culture.
ReplyDeleteOh, but he already knows about them. Well, the names, anyway. They're printed on the back cover of the NRO Style Guide to Faux Erudtion.
Jonah Goldberg's column about integrity is laden with references to venereal disease, porn stars and animals fucking.
ReplyDeleteThe subtext has Doughload's wife thanking G_d that their dog died, and Lucianne loading her semi-automatic.
"If Jonah's clever, "
ReplyDeleteI see your problem right there.
If Jonah's clever
ReplyDeleteERROR DOES NOT COMPUTE DOES NOT COMPUTE!
Ted Cruz said it.
ReplyDeleteI memorized it.
That settles it.
Apparently Jonah's not familiar with movies in the 70's. You know the era of despicable characters, downbeat endings, and outright nihilism?
ReplyDeleteBest mic drop ever.
ReplyDeleteI thought the entire internet was a liberal plot.
ReplyDeleteOnce again I find my outrage meter pegging as this clueless fool cashes yet another paycheck for being aggressively ignorant.
ReplyDeleteBut then I have to laugh because there are actual adults--supposedly educated, thinking human beings--who willingly sign those checks.
I want to augment this comment's dowry.
ReplyDelete"it was a dark and stormy night, as i reached for my oxford dictionary...."
ReplyDeleteGood rebuttal to Cruz:
ReplyDeletehttp://theoatmeal.com/blog/net_neutrality
Not only is he on deadline, but the real injustice is that he had to be made aware of Gunn's plight. Threats to the life of a woman over the actions of a fictional character she's portraying? 'Tis nothing as compared to the suffering of Jonah the Fail that he might have to acknowledge a woman as also being human.
ReplyDeleteVery good. Thank you for that!
ReplyDeleteAnd before the cable multiverse, it was books. From The Godfather back through Moby Dick, The Scarlett Letter, and even the Old Testament, we have "heroes" doing terrible things and justifying their actions to themselves (King David comes to mind).
ReplyDeleteJonah's profound ignorance of anything not covered in a Simpson's episode is no excuse for his propelling that ignorance into the rest of the culture.
DeLay!
ReplyDeleteOnly Goldberg can go for a swim in the lake of pop culture and burst into a bonfire of stupid.
ReplyDeleteMetaphors are hard.
But we're turning into pagans. The Romans turned from pagans into good Christians! That was all God's Plan, and they totes obeyed it. So naturally their empire thrived and... uh... won... um... Never mind! Next topic!
ReplyDeleteIt has no clear, fixed hierarchy, and is therefore un-American.
ReplyDeleteWell the empire did mange to survive in the east for a bit - the difference? Who knows - Eunuchs in high places perhaps?
ReplyDeleteBetter to have the money to Jonah, who'll spend it on Cheetos and Mountain Dew, and veejoh games than to spend it in a way that causes actual damage. Besides, Jonah's propaganda is shitty and ineffective.
ReplyDeleteWhat's weird about that is that net neutrality has been the status quo and corporations are trying to change it. So if "conservative" actually meant what it's supposed to mean...but we all know it hasn't for decades.
ReplyDeletereally, really, really
ReplyDeleteRight next to the Oxford English Dictionary on Jonah's reference shelf, "A Cheater's Guide To Upping Your Word Count".
I went to a preview of The Imitation Game last night- great movie. It also brings the code breaking efforts of Joan Clarke into the popular culture.
ReplyDeleteI have always loved it when fundamentalist Christians start warning us that America is going to fall because of its decadence just like Rome did. I always said, "Better make sure we don't make Christianity our official religion then if we don't want to go the way of Rome!"
ReplyDeleteI'm too subtle for Frist. Geez.
ReplyDeleteIts not an excuse, its more of an end in itself.
ReplyDeleteNow we have Joni Ernst LEEEEEEAAAADING, so we don't have to worry anymore.
ReplyDeleteNo, I can translate that for you from the original idiolect. Gamergaters and people who watch liberal TV shows like Breaking Bad are the ur liberals--too cool for school, perverts, and hipsters. So complaining that their perverted love has gotten out of hand is exactly like complaining to the teacher (authority) because you let the boys give your tits a squeeze (you whore) and you didn't like it when they held you down and raped you.
ReplyDeleteHow is it even boring? Is he arguing that its happened so much before this that we are all used to it? Because it really hasn't.
ReplyDeleteno real heroes...anymore
ReplyDeleteThe 70s called. Drunk celebrity on The Tonight Show wants his complaint back.
And he should really check out Ayn Rand and Hickman http://www.salon.com/2012/08/13/ryans_ayn_rand_obsession_salpart/ to see what a real fascination for a murderer looks like. Or maybe he could talk to a few of Hitler's fans, they are still around.
ReplyDeleteDude, read the article. Clearly, the Empire survived in the East because of those heat-packin', capo Patriarchs in Constantinople. You don't fuck with those guys.
ReplyDeleteIt got to the point where the actress (Anna Gunn) who portrayed the poor, beleaguered Mrs. White wrote an op-ed for the New York Times complaining about the tsunami of hate aimed at her character, which had spilled onto her in real life as well.
ReplyDeleteThere's even a Simpsons episode about this very topic, yet Jonah still managed to have not a bit of insight about it.
The Count of Monte Cristo is similarly an amoral asshole and drug user. Then again, he was written by a Frenchman with dark skin, so probably central to Jonah's point.
ReplyDeleteWell, liberals didn't rush to the defense of that other great thespian, John Wilkes Booth. So I guess that makes us the real hypocrites here?
ReplyDeleteWas he fracking himself again?
ReplyDeleteDrilling for nasal gold.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure if our friendly cons are treating the Orthodox as real Christians are not. Do any of the patriarchs like to scream at ladies and gays? That should give us the answer.
ReplyDeleteI continue to wonder how Der Pantload can manipulate the keyboard with his head wedged to a press-fit up his ass.
ReplyDeleteI beseech others to explain to me what the fuck he means by "formal" integrity, because I don't have a clue. Is that like wearing black tie because the invitation said so? As opposed to informal integrity? Is that like casual Friday integrity, or "no wearing whites after Labor Day" integrity?
This must be the new school of conservative punditry, throwing words at the wall and seeing which ones stick. How about "Mixmaster anarchy?" Why not "conceptual asphyxiation?" "Soi-disant dirt?"
This fellow could induce both Strunk and White to put guns in their mouths.
Is he really trying to say that most of the critisism of Gunn and her character came from liberals?
ReplyDeleteSnark aside, this is so damned stupid. Yes, a lot of people liked the Sopranos and Breaking Bad. Some smaller number of people, and all the critics, really liked The Wire. But large numbers of people (many of them even liberals!) also liked the various X-Men movies, Captain America, the Avengers and so on. The knock on "Man of Steel" was that Superman shouldn't be so dark, Snyder you asshole!
ReplyDeleteYes, there are lots of people buying George R. R. Martin's version of grimdark. But there are also lots of people buying Brandon Sanderson's upbeat, people-are-basically-good-even-the-evil-monsters books.
For Christ's sake, the big smash of last year was fucking Frozen, which was all about family and the Power of Love.
For every pop-cultural artifact Jonah picks to show the triumph of Nietzschean self-driven blah blah I went to Harvard, I can pick something full of old-fashioned values that has at least as large an audience.
But I'm sure all this would be central to his...oh hell, I'm snarking again after all. Never made in such detail or with such care.
True enough, but "conservative," for a long, long time, has really meant "wealthy people get all your money and you get shit." In fact, that's what it's always meant. Empire never existed to make the peons rich, and conservatism, if anything, is the protection of empire for profit.
ReplyDeleteThe incorruptible Dirty Harry was dirty in a legalistic sense but closer to the angels in his desire for divine justice. (Angels in the Hebrew Bible never read the wicked their Miranda rights and weren’t exactly reluctant to open a can of whoop-ass when necessary.)
ReplyDeleteThe more interesting explanation (i.e., my explanation) is that “purely formal” integrity is just about the only kind of integrity our popular culture celebrates anymore (a few war movies notwithstanding). Superman — who always does the right thing — is blah. Batman, a vigilante who plays by his own rules, is sexy.
I realize there was a page break between these two statements, but come on NR editors (just kidding).
If you get right down to it, Frank Miller's innovation was more or less to turn Batman into Dirty Harry, wasn't it?
ReplyDeleteJesus -- he's MARRIED? [gag] I just checked his Wiki and he's also spawned... That poor, poor, poor child.
ReplyDeleteHere's the end of his Wiki:
ReplyDelete"On June 5, 2007, the Star Tribune changed course and announced
Lileks would serve as editor of buzz.mn, a new community site featuring
content from Lileks and members alike.[10] Buzz.mn ceased publication of new content in July 2009."
And all was silence...
algae plumes of the digital ocean
ReplyDeleteUh huh. Lord have mercy, he writes like Day-by-Day guy draws.
You know what lives in algae? This stuff: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/virus-that-makes-humans-more-stupid-discovered-9849920.html
ReplyDeleteIn light of his thoughts on the thoughts of copulating badgers (the better ones) and getting The Clap from that one waitress, I'm looking at Touched By An Angel in a whole new light.
ReplyDeleteJonah has used this "boring" schtick before, w/r/t LGBT issues if memory serves. It's a clear admission that he doesn't really give a shit about an argument, knows he doesn't have the talent or energy to defend a position. It's similar to the ubiquitous "I'm on deadline" lines. "I'm Jonah
ReplyDeleteGoldberg and I don't have to give a rat's ass, but I guess you want an
opinion, and it's that I don't give a rat's ass."
Somehow he thinks this is a brag-worthy "position" to have. Given that he gets paid handsomely for these sorts of non-arguments, I guess I can't blame him for feeling that way.
You know who else lived in algae? HITLER!
ReplyDeleteThere's no evidence for it, of course, but those are the facts.
In the grimdark world of the future, there is only choc-o-mutt ice cream.
ReplyDeleteHe'll have to pry it from guest host Joan Rivers cold, dead hands.
ReplyDeleteThis fellow could induce both Strunk and White to put guns in their mouths.
ReplyDeleteAs someone who HATED, HATED Grammar class back in school, I'd be all for it if it kept "Elements of Grammar" from having been written.
Also his prose reads pretty much the same backwards as it does forward.
ReplyDeleteTwo columns for the price of one!
that other great thespian, John Wilkes Booth
ReplyDeleteNUH-HUH, 'cause men can't be thespians.
The '90s called, Jonah. They want their column on An American Psycho back.
ReplyDeleteKarma, working.
ReplyDeletePulling yourself up by your own squamous boot-tentacles.
ReplyDeletecrab tacos auuuuuurrrrr /Homer Simpson
ReplyDeleteAnna Gunn wrote an op-ed for the New York Times, which is "the equivalent of yelling 'I’m telling!' and running to the principal’s office," according to Mr. Goldberg.
ReplyDeleteThis analogy confuses me. Who is the principal? The readers?
I'm too subtle for Bill Frist,
ReplyDeleteToo subtle for Bill Frist,
He's a misogynist.
And I'm too subtle for Des Moines,
Too subtle for Des Moines,
Ernst whacking pig's groin.
And I'm too subtle for your party,
Too subtle for your party,
The way you're feces-smearing.
I'm Democratic, you know what I mean?
And I'm a little fed up with Republicans,
With Republicans, yeah,
I shake my little fist at Republicans.
You're not kidding. Every time the LA Times runs letters about his column -- and believe me, the Times is no liberal rag -- every single one points out what an idiot he is.
ReplyDeleteAlso possibly relevant: Ask a Ninja about Net Neutrality.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H69eCYcDcuQ
Jonah's LA Times column this very morning mentioned Pravda in the first sentence. You'd think he'd be embarrassed, but you'd think wrong.
ReplyDeleteIs there much of a difference between, say, the popularity of Jimmy Cagney's mobsters in the `30s, or "Bonnie and Clyde" in the `60s, or "Breaking Bad" in this century? What attracts us to well-written and well-produced stories like those is the opportunity to, first, walk around in the skins of those who are clearly beyond the rules and norms of society, and to see them as complex characters and, second, to be able to parse their logic and still see that way lies madness. When Vince Gilligan said he wanted, paraphrasing, to turn a milquetoast middle-class high school teacher into Scarface, he was evoking something that's at least as old as Macbeth, and certainly no newer than "Dr. Jekyll and Mister Hyde." We're invited to be fascinated by these characters, but there's nothing in them that is cause for their "lionization," as you put it. That a few in society do says more about the make-up of those individuals than of society at large. The interest in this sort of character might best be described with Noah Cross' line in "Chinatown": "You see, Mr. Gittes, most people never have to face the fact that at the
ReplyDeleteright time and the right place, they're capable of ANYTHING." We know that Cross is a self-dealing megalomaniac who's saying this to justify his own evil nature--'hey, I'm no different than anyone else'--but, we also know there's some sliver of truth to what he says, even though we reflexively think of ourselves as exceptions to that aspect of human nature.
The problem with generalizations from a particular, or a few particulars, is that they're easy, too easy, and more often than not wrong. I think the great appeal and interest in "Breaking Bad" is not that its viewers lionized Walter White, but rather that they got to see a 60-odd episode, slow-motion exercise in the futility and degradation of initially noble ends (providing for family) because the means were horrific, and the story is all the more engaging because Walter White is portrayed as a human being with some enormous character flaws, flaws which eventually destroy him, his family and any purchase he once had on his own humanity. It's classic drama, following classical rules of drama. In its own way, its construction and exposition are no different than those of Macbeth or Oedipus Rex.
This article is adapted from the chapter he contributed to The Seven
ReplyDeleteDeadly Virtues, just published by Templeton Press. It appears in the
November 17, 2014, issue of National Review.
Holy fuck. Holy fucking fuck.
It is 100 billion hours past fucking time they made a movie about Turing.
ReplyDeleteAs an aside, here's the first result:
About 5,910,000 results (0.25 seconds)
Search Results
The Imitation Game (2014) - IMDb
www.imdb.com/title/tt2084970/
Internet Movie Database
Rating: 8.2/10 - 2,374 votesWrestler Mark Schultz forms a relationship with his new sponsor, millionaire John du Pont, as they train for the 1988 games in Seoul - a union that leads to ...
Morten Tyldum - (2014) Poster - Trivia - Graham Moore
Deploy the Space Pralines!
ReplyDeleteShe will castrate every Ebola virus with her bare hands!
ReplyDeleteWait, that's REAL?
ReplyDeleteI figured Gnat kicked him in the nutz and that's what ended the "me and Gnat went to the mall" series Lileks was perennially stuck in.
ReplyDeleteWhat to you expect from a Palin-Drone?
ReplyDeleteYou mean "Elements of Style," and should eschew the surplus "hated."
ReplyDeleteHe used the kid as a human shield when he was challenged about actually fighting IN the war he was fighting FOR. Claimed he couldn't enlist because of his kid, but it was totally okay for other fathers to do so.
ReplyDeleteAnd Jonah is the abyssal ooze of that ocean.
ReplyDeleteWith writing like this, I have no idea how the site could have failed:
ReplyDeleteOff to the Fair – the finest example of its kind in America, frankly. Lowing beasts, farm machinery, grassroots political schmoozing, processed & congealed meats impaled on a dowel, folk art, high art, mop hucksters, BBQ slopped in plastic baskets, gap-toothed carnies barking flat rote come-ons, squalling kids, squealing piglets, idiot chickens, mullet-rubes at the test-your-strength booth, first-date teens and forty-year marrieds. Sunrise over pancakes at the Epiphany Diner; sunset at the Midway with neon rolling overhead. Now begins the Fair. For ten days, we do America better than anyone.
I afraid I don't see it that way--it's just burnishing his reputation while doing the opposite of his rhetoric. I can't forget that it was Obama who appointed an industry lobbyist to chair the FCC. From that, it was inevitable that the FCC would craft rules that appear to serve the public's interest while actually meeting the demands of the industry , which is exactly what the currently proposed rule does.
ReplyDeleteGoing by what has been and is being done, rather than what is being said, I can't come to any other conclusion.
I'll have you know that my stupidity is all my own work, thank you!
ReplyDeleteThat's a swell Jonah/conservatoid trick, the ol' "Seems to me the only thing allowed in pop culture these days -- aside from examples of its opposite too numerous to go into here -- is this thing I'm against."
ReplyDeleteY'SEE? Y'SEE? See what it does to you?
ReplyDeleteYour stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
And I claim youthful trauma in getting the title wrong.
Abyssal Ooze: 10 hit dice, move 0", XP value 0.
ReplyDeleteThat is a long way of saying that White is the protagonist, not the hero, of Breaking Bad. The basic point which seems always to escape Jonah and other Authoritarians who at heart believe all books are instruction manuals and all readers really followers. Its why they don't believe in critical reading and literary analysis--in fact are actively antagonistic to them--because that kind of reader response, that kind of scholarly or cultural appreciation without submission is anathema to their model of reader and text.
ReplyDeleteOh I get it, Joberg heard someone say this on Glenn Beck or somewhere and he just had to put it in somewhere and, really, here is as good a place as any. MEANING! YOU WANT MEANING? HE GIVES YOU HIS TEARS AND BLOOD FARTS!
ReplyDeleteA friend wants to know if there's a newsletter for badger porn?
ReplyDeletePossibly he subcontracts his work out to Korea as well. Just a few background colour choices and a few character sketches "This is what I say when I'm surprised".
ReplyDeleteOh, yes,its one of his go-to strategies. Its part of his pose of being aristocratic or intellectual or important. By definition things that the little people (women, gays, blacks, the poor) complain about are tedious, routine, small minded. Its such a fake way of talking and writing about what he's writing about. No one makes him use this example--if it were truly boring and uninteresting to him he could write about something else. Its just a kind of "neg" a kind of power play in an imaginary relationship between Jonah and "the left" --in Jonah's mind having the power to dismiss something as unimportant or boring is a great power, an important status. He's just invoking that power to shut down legitimate complaint about a pretty horrendous example of misogyny crossed with entitelement.
ReplyDelete"President Barack Obama was due to name a former cable and wireless industry lobbyist to head the Federal Communications Commission on Wednesday.
ReplyDeleteA White House official told the Associated Press that Obama planned to announce Tom Wheeler as the top telecommunications regulator in the US. The official said Obama would name FCC commissioner Mignon Clyburn to serve as acting chairwoman while Wheeler awaits Senate confirmation.
Wheeler raised more than $500,000 for Obama's re-election effort, according to data provided by the campaign. He also contributed more than $17,000 combined to Obama's re-election and to several Senate campaigns, including Virginia Democratic senator Tim Kaine's successful effort.
Wheeler is former head of the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association and the National Cable Television Association. Since 2005, he has been a venture capitalist at Core Capital Partners." http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/may/01/obama-tom-wheeler-fcc
He's saying that only liberals watched the show and therefore only liberals were in a position to obsess over Gunn and threaten her.
ReplyDeletewell--isn't the Count really the hero of the story, not just the protagonist?
ReplyDeleteYou asked for it by doing your acting job so well.
ReplyDeleteMaybe it's performance art and Joberg writes dull arse columns about boring things so that it goes all meta...or something?
ReplyDeleteEach separate worker, like the ones painting the assembly line "starving artist" landscapes, does a little part of the whole, which I'm sure is why the writing is so disjointed.
ReplyDeleteHe didn't really do the OED bit, did he? Have the appeals to readers failed him? Oh fickle readers, can you not spare Joberg the pitiless heartbreak of writing stuff?
ReplyDeleteLove your icon, by the way.
ReplyDeleteAh, well, as a one-time instructor of English, I recognize that no small number of people are terrorized by the physiology of their native tongue, and I never did find suitable palliatives for them.
ReplyDelete"...and, in summary..."
ReplyDeleteHmm. That would offer Doughy credit for cleverness that he otherwise shows is nonexistent in him.
ReplyDeleteWe are aware of all libtard traditions
ReplyDeleteIndeed, his lack of self awareness is central to his point.
ReplyDelete"Will this Turing movie never end?"
ReplyDeleteIf Jonah were a real girl instead of just playing one in the NRO, he might understand.
ReplyDeleteIn liberal pop culture, this was the equivalent of yelling “I’m telling!” and running to the principal’s office
ReplyDeletePop culture is "liberal"? Pushing back against on-line illiteracy and vitriol is "liberal"?
I am happy to accept the obverse, that illiteracy and bullying are conservative qualities, but it is still odd to see Jonah embracing them so whole-heartedly.
Do you have change for a goat?
ReplyDeleteThere's not even an attempt at a figleaf for corruption anymore. Just pay up, get to control the government agency that regulates your company.
ReplyDeletethrowing words at the wall and seeing which ones stick
ReplyDeleteThose aren't words.
Indeed, & that's been true since his column started in '07 or '08.
ReplyDeleteI suspect the letter-to-the-Ed. pickers are more liberal (or rational) than their bosses.
A virus that infects human brains and makes us more stupid has been discovered
ReplyDeleteI am not convinced that this is possible.
It would be nice if the Independent had included a link to the original article as well as printing the researchers' press-release verbatim; perhaps that would have required effort on their part.
This comment is my hero.
ReplyDeleteObjection, your honour! The prosecution is witnessing the badger!
ReplyDeleteNeither is it a wall.
ReplyDeleteI......have no words.
ReplyDelete“purely formal” integrity is just about the only kind of integrity our popular culture celebrates anymore
ReplyDeleteImma guessing that another Republican corruption scandal is about to emerge and Johan is pre-emptively blaming it on liberals.
Cthulhu MANIFEST!!
ReplyDelete(Don't worry, it's still in the bag.)
It got to the point where the actress (Anna Gunn) who portrayed the poor, beleaguered Mrs. White wrote an op-ed for the New York Times complaining about the tsunami of hate aimed at her character, which had spilled onto her in real life as well.
ReplyDeleteSo an idiot who confuses art with reality all of the time is bored because other idiots who do the same are threatening a real person because of it?
Not for the Republicans are the strictures of formal integrity! No they would rather have freedom integrity untrammelled by actual ethics and such. Where a fellow's handshake is his bond in an illusory financial derivative sense of the word (may contain bulldust).
ReplyDeleteThat is unpossible, for Jonah devoted many many columns upon BB -- praising it, celebrating its conservative values, and calling it "the best show on television".
ReplyDeleteSustained!The prosecution Muste not lidae the witness eh.
ReplyDeleteOh I'm gonna burn for that.
"...popular culture is a variegated and multi-valent land of contrasts. The End."
ReplyDeleteA glutton for punishment, Mr Kiwi.
ReplyDeleteMust have been Goldberg Work Ethic Day at the Indy.
ReplyDeleteCould you make that condition communicable and give it to Jonah? Pretty please?
ReplyDeleteWell, if you really need more Lileks (have you seen your shrink lately?) you can always visit http://www.lileks.com/...
ReplyDelete"...the opportunity to, first, walk around in the skins of those who are clearly beyond the rules and norms of society, and to see them as complex characters... "
ReplyDeleteOne of my current obsessions leads me to see Tricksters everywhere. And the human race's fascination with trickster figures certainly predates the written word.
Faaark! That's like distilled essence of cat poo but in writing.
ReplyDeleteThe pressure's building. HE CANNAE TAKE IT CAPTAIN!!!
ReplyDeleteB4 is in the Bumpernickel Camberpatch fan club! Your secret is safe here, dude.
ReplyDeleteThank you - Planning on visiting the grave site next time I'm in England.
ReplyDeleteSelf-plagiarism, but it's in the cause of Integritude so OK.
ReplyDeleteWow. I'd say this one finally reached Peak Goldberg but that doesn't fit with the proven Edroso Theorem that anything Goldberg writes is The Stupidest Thing Ever Written Until Goldberg Writes Something Else. There is simply not enough time in the world to vivisect his line by line bullshit. Even his most conventional buried tropes are pure crap:
ReplyDeleteI live in Washington, and while lots of people say their biggest concern is “the deficit,” I have yet to meet anyone who has lost sleep over it.
According to the latest CBS News/New York Times poll, only 8% of Americans say their biggest concern is the federal deficit -- not exactly the definition of "lots of people." This is what happens when you tyrannize yourself with clichés I guess.
But the jokes were pure Goldberg. "I think I got the clap from that waitress.”
I'm still laughing.
I guess. But he's still an asshole, in my opinion. I kept waiting for the moment when he'd say, "Ha ha. Fooled you all into thinking I was just a cold-blooded monster fixed on revenge." No such moment came, unless you count the moment when he relents and doesn't kill the kid in the duel. Maybe I should (it would not be the first time I had misunderstood a story), but I think that's a pretty low bar.
ReplyDeleteYes, I more properly should have said, "throwing words at the page, like shit at a wall, and seeing what sticks." That would have made the simile explicit, rather than implied.
ReplyDeleteThat said, I admit that it's difficult not to become unhinged trying to critique anything the Pantload writes. In engaging him, there is an implicit threat to one's mental health and one's ability to reason.
You know, I keep getting shocked by these suckers. Here he is bemoaning some modern tendency to merely pro forma integrity and yet he can't even feign an interest in her actual complaint or suffering except as a prop for his preconceptions. Jesus, "purely formal" integrity would be a step up.
ReplyDeleteThat's not laughing...
ReplyDeleteI am glad to be forewarned that Templeton is the new Regnery.
ReplyDeleteAngels in the Hebrew Bible never read the wicked their Miranda rights
ReplyDeleteand weren’t exactly reluctant to open a can of whoop-ass when necessary
WTF is the "Hebrew Bible"?
Most of the time in the Old Testament, angels are all messengering and guiding. Just ONE of them loses it, JUST ONCE, takes out one hundred and eighty-five thousand a few of Sennacherib's Assyrians, and people just GO ON AND ON ABOUT IT.
AK, someone's at the door for you... says they're the "Paronomasia Police" and they'd like to have a few words with you...
ReplyDeleteHe's already got Jonabola. Sufferers excrete their brains but never shut up.
ReplyDeleteThe irony of saying "defines 'integrity' in part as..." does not escape me.
ReplyDelete"Holy fuck. Holy fucking fuck." is a little mild, really:
ReplyDeleteDescription
An all-star team of eighteen conservative writers offers a hilarious, insightful, sanctimony-free remix of William Bennett’s The Book of Virtues—without parental controls. The Seven Deadly Virtues sits down next to readers at the bar, buys them a drink, and an hour or three later, ushers them into the revival tent without them even realizing it.
Jonah devoted many many columns upon BB -- praising it, celebrating its
ReplyDeleteconservative values, and calling it "the best show on television".
He would. Illegality in the service of Mammon? Enter Jonah, farting.
Tell them I'm only talking to Agent Mulder.
ReplyDeletePlus which: In a frightening coincidence, the aforementioned Lileks is one of the 18 idjits.
ReplyDelete"Sanctimony free" might not mean what they think it means.
ReplyDeleteO.K., I'll stop after JUST ONE MORE:
ReplyDeleteJonah Goldberg offers: “There was a time when this desire-to-do-good-in-all-things was considered the only kind of integrity: ‘Angels are better than mortals. They’re always certain about what is right because, by definition, they’re doing God’s will.’ Gabriel knew when it was okay to remove a mattress tag and Sandalphon always tipped the correct amount.”
Yeah, so the Rapture comes and you have to listen to these "jokes" for eternity. This is a good deal?
ReplyDeleteAllday Babble and the Eighteen Thieves
ReplyDeleteAt the moment, all I have is two rats and a bunny. But hit me tomorrow after I go to the bank and I'll have the two lizards I owe you.
ReplyDeleteThat book looks soul destroying. Why do they hate people so much?
ReplyDeletea hilarious, insight-free remix of William Bennett’s The Book of Virtues
ReplyDeleteFixed it for them.
Christ, the original wasn't bad enough?
And they're using "getting someone drunk and manipulating them into being pressured into religious conversion" as not only a joke, but a joke for a book of "virtues"?
Damn! Sorry that comment is in the wrong place it should be up thread about the "Seven Deadly Virtues" toilet paper.
ReplyDeleteFunny thing is, I now have a fascination with linguistics as well as the development of the English language, as well as having scored an even 700 on my English SAT. I have no idea how this all works out.
ReplyDeleteStill, Strunk & White's is still less frightening than Jonah and Lileks', that's fersure.
the "Seven Deadly Virtues" toilet paper
ReplyDeleteComing soon to a remainder table near you.
And once again the right shows how little self-introspection it has:
ReplyDeleteSonny Bunch dissects forbearance, observing that the fictional Two Minutes Hate of George Orwell’s 1984
is now actually a reality directed at living, breathing people. Thanks,
in part, to the Internet, “Its targets are designated by a
spontaneously created mob—one that, due to its hive-mind nature, is
virtually impossible to call off.”
One word for Mr. Bunch: #GamerGate.
Sandalphon always tipped the correct amount
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile, Uriel is stuck with the bill while the rest all scramble for the parking lot yet again.
In the tertiary phase of the disease, sufferers are said to be in a recovery period of English, where they repeat shit they've heard somewhere but are unable to fully rememorate it, even when exposed to notes previously stowed away under a giant ass-pillow.
ReplyDeleteJonah Badger don't care.
ReplyDeleteThe Confidence Man is the first America version, in the national sense:
ReplyDeletehttp://s.ecrater.com/stores/64590/4b18acf3ae410_64590n.jpg
I don't remember it that well. But I recently read The Black Count which is the story of Dumas's own father who was a) Black, b) an ex-slave, c) a famous napoleonic general and d) falsley imprisoned for some time.
ReplyDeleteHuh? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAIDsKkgdLE
ReplyDeleteYes and, it doesn't need to be scholarly or rebellious at all, really. When I was eleven, I watched Escape From Alcatraz and was thrilled to think Clint Eastwood made it out. My dad said, "Don't be too thrilled. What the movie didn't show you is the horrible things he did to get put in Alcatraz." Well, big lesson learned about how complicated people are, and how art works, and how moral judgment is a bit separate from both of them at times, but also don't forget to leave it out altogether -- all in one sentence, QED. My dad had no ambition to be a professional critic and, like I said, I was eleven. Cultural analysis and rebellion weren't on my agenda even remotely yet, and I got it. Jonah and the Authoritarians seem to hold a nightmare vision of the entire populace as having the minds of lab rats. I mean if you follow the logic of the positions he takes, and the way he takes them, how many fellow Americans does it seem Jonah credits with a brain at all? A thousand? Eighty?
ReplyDeleteWish I could go with you. I did go to Middleham, oh, 25 years ago or so, and it was lovely -- ruined of course, but well-kept national-park-type ruins. If you ever get the chance to go there, see if you can approach from the west -- much more impressive coming up Wensleydale.
ReplyDeleteJonah+embracing->odd
ReplyDeleteQED
Yeah, women charging men with rape is also really really boring. Child abuse complaints are really really boring. Drunk driving reports are really really boring. Climate change, though horrifyingly true, is really really boring. Cops shooting Black Youths and allowing other white guys to shoot them too is also really really boring. Drought in the western US is really really boring. ISIS: really really boring. Wage theft: really really boring. Unemployment: really really boring......
ReplyDeleteGiven the ripped from the headlines material, and the family background, you can see why he would be attracted to write the novel:
ReplyDeleteIf you think this sounds like we're just confusing The Count of Monte Cristo with reality, you're half right. The guy who wrote that book, Alexandre Dumas, based his novel on police records detailing the true case of Pierre Picaud, whose incredible story of revenge was almost too strange to be believed even then.
Details are a little hazy, but at some point during Pierre's imprisonment, he somehow became a millionaire. Apparently he had a wealthy cellmate named Father Torri with whom he struck up such a close friendship that Torri left him his fortune after he died. Either that, or he knocked over an armored car while on parole. Either way, Pierre made use of his newfound wealth to exact a tornado of justice worthy of a Death Wish sequel.
I wish to intubate this comment.
ReplyDeleteA Shart Too Far
ReplyDeleteThat's the whitest, pudgiest looking ninja I ever saw.
ReplyDeleteUm, Jonah?
ReplyDeleteRome lasted a very long time, 500+ years. Only the Egyptian & Chinese empires have lasted longer. As Eugine Weber said "the real question is: why did it last as long as it did?"
ReplyDeleteJustinian might have reanimated the Roman empire in the West, except for the first visit of the Black Death, aka "Justinian's Plague". Bubonic plague helped destroy Rome.
ReplyDeleteIt is NaNoWriMo, after all.
ReplyDeleteWTF is the "Hebrew Bible"?
ReplyDeleteWhat you call the Old Testament in A&E documentaries.
Hell, they don't think the POPE is a real Christian.
ReplyDeleteCoordinated, highly disciplined military ingrained into the social hierarchy, and generous welfare state. Situated on the most prosperous trading region of the earth. Still ultimately blew it.
ReplyDeleteWhite people.