Had everyone — from classical liberals to paleoconservatives to Yippies — responded as Buckley did to Gore Vidal, directly addressing the “charge” and immediately repudiating it for the slander that it was — my guess is the whole interpretive paradigm shift that has favored Gramsci and Said and, on a structural level, those like Derrida and DeMan who privilege signifiers or convention over signs and intent as the ground for meaning, would have never found purchase, and so would never have become subsequently institutionalized.
Because the fact is, that strategy, from the outset, relied on the basic goodness of people, who, these signification thieves knew, would be stunned by the force of the false accusations against them. This would then put them on the defensive where they hoped to “clarify” rather than refuse to accept the premise at the outset — creating the appearance of guilt where none existed.
The PC culture of the seventies, along with Said’s granting of “authenticity” and authority over who can speak to certain identity group narratives, solidified the rhetorical (and, ultimately, the legal) force of the tactic, creating a climate in which boutique multiculturalism was celebrated by our elites, even as the kernel assumptions of multiculturalism worked to balkanize the country, destroy the idea of individuality, and create a “diversity” ethos that has undermined the Constitution.
Today, some realists and GOP cheerleaders would have us guard against malicious dishonesty and trumped up hyperbolic accusations by carefully choosing our words so as not to allow the dishonesty to gain standing in the first place (which, I’ve argued, doesn’t work, as Bill Bennett found out and as recent charges against me have plainly shown); whereas the proper response is to confront this maliciousness head on and with no fear of being marginalized by those whose entire conception of “our kind” is based on the very dynamic that we’re supposed to continue engaging in — only, like, more carefully. The result is that the very way we are allowed to communicate our ideas has been prescribed by those who have manipulated us into this weakened position in the first place.
A firm insistence to refuse to allow the usurpation of our meaning is the most effective way to negate the force of a tactic that the left and the media will continue using so long as it yields results — and, if we’re going to be accused, by the opportunistically OUTRAGED, of, say, threatening violence anyway, we may as well get back to the business of being straightforward about it.
As one insightful commenter recently put it:
While I might not be familiar with the terminology, I’m surprised that so many people have reacted so… violently… to your argument about Limbaugh. I may not understand the philosophical terminology, but I know what theft is, and it’s no more acceptable to me to steal another person’s words and ideas than it is to steal their car. In fact, I give the higher moral ground to the car thief, as the idea thieves do more harm.Limbaugh’s words were stolen, twisted and mangled, then hung around his neck like a noose. How can that be anything but evil? (Whether or not he gained materially from the attacks, in the end, has no bearing on the the morality of the attackers – it only speaks to their incompetence.)
From Bill Buckley to Chris Buckley in 40-years — the same 40 years wherein the poststructuralists worked to take control of our intepretive paradigm and our means of expression, from hate crime statutes to re-imagining the idea of “tolerance” until, through some Orwellian slight of hand, it has actually begun to erode the protections of the First Amendment.
Can one map the trajectory perfectly? Is it all just coincidental?
Dunno. I report, you decide…
***
related (h/t JHoward)
***
Also related.
Comment by Pragmatic Conservatives on 3/25 @ 11:58 am #
Dude. Like, you know, isn’t it time we got over William F. Buckley? I don’t know anyone that even remembers him or, for that matter, their own zip code.
Comment by Joe on 3/25 @ 11:59 am #
That William F. Buckley was a friggin mad man! Threatening to plaster Gore Vidal?
No wonder he was friends with Rush. Cryto-Nazis like to hang together…did I say hang! I denounce myself immediately!
Comment by Joe on 3/25 @ 12:01 pm #
Dude. Like, you know, isn’t it time we got over William F. Buckley? I don’t know anyone that even remembers him or, for that matter, their own zip code.
I know your are being sarcastic PC, but that is sadly not far from the truth in some people’s minds.
Comment by The Pragmatic Conservatives on 3/25 @ 12:03 pm #
It’s the truth to all my buddies at the RNC.
Comment by TheUnrepentantGeek on 3/25 @ 12:06 pm #
I don’t understand why everyone’s so hacked off at Patterico. He just thought Jeff meant he’d unleash one of these.
Comment by cranky-d on 3/25 @ 12:17 pm #
I think a few guys punching some other guys in the face would raise the level of discourse significantly. No, I’m not being sarcastic. There is a time to say, “Enough!” We’re past it, but it may not be too late.
Comment by MarkD on 3/25 @ 12:33 pm #
Shouldn’t that be thieves? I’m struggling a bit trying to be certain I understand your meaning. I’m incapable of inventing my own.
Comment by thor on 3/25 @ 12:51 pm #
You just hold on there, motherfucker. If you think you’re going to start banging on the seventies without my interpreting that code then you’re wrong. Don’t be trying to bang my hippie chicks. Bang your own bitches, dude, as in the big hair band groupies or some such skank.
The early 70’s were not a time a PCness, dude, check your Grateful Dead almanac, maybe, because it was long days of Love, lots of huge peaceful outdoor music festivals and the 70’s music was so fresh that bands didn’t just play a song, they never stopped, dude, as in every song was 20-minutes of pure righteous jam that could only ended when the peace-loving minstrels completely drained themselves dry of stage sweat. You fucker. You violent person. Bang your own.
Comment by Veeshir on 3/25 @ 12:57 pm #
I’m beginning to think I’ve misjudged thor, it’s obviously doing performance art.
Kinda like John Cole has been doing for a couple years.
And he stole the idea from Andrew Sullivan.
Comment by psycho... on 3/25 @ 1:01 pm #
One fragment of an eternal but wavering trajectory, yeah, pretty much.
But forty years ago was 1968. An adolescence, not a birth. I’d place the beginning of the current wavering-up at Lenin — as Plato to Marx’s Socrates.
Actually, the political wresting of meaning from its generators to its interpreters, in the form you note it, traces back to Plato. It preceded him, too, but it was his thing, and we’re still in his world.
WHITE POWER
Being taken advantage of isn’t evidence of goodness. Whoever does it to you is bad, yes. But there’s something you desired, sought, and/or got by letting his badness proceed. So it’s all yours, too.
(Being forced is a different thing. But it’s not good.)
Comment by happyfeet on 3/25 @ 1:04 pm #
I guess if there has to be news I think news that the New York Times got blowed up would be as welcome as any. That’s better news I think than the one where the monkey mutilated that poor lady or the one where our dirty socialist president dismantles our economy for Mr. Soros. It would make for an interesting post I think and generate some good discussion. They hate our little country, those ones, but you have to remember that most of the really really hateful ones probably don’t go into the office much except maybe sometimes for the free long distance.
Comment by Jeff G. on 3/25 @ 1:07 pm #
Did I say “early”?
Comment by Jeff G. on 3/25 @ 1:09 pm #
If anything, it really came here by way of Mao, but it was in the 70s that the New Left began using it ironically.
Comment by Jeff G. on 3/25 @ 1:12 pm #
Well, okay. But I tend to mark it’s popularizing and “radicalist” ascent in the US from the Paris business in the late 60s, and the desire on the part of our own counterculture to ape continental thought.
Comment by Sdferr on 3/25 @ 1:18 pm #
How do you look on Ogden/Richards’ The Meaning of Meaning, Jeff? Have you said before and I missed it? I leafed through but haven’t read it, though it was offered to me back in ‘74. I think I dismissed it then as I was too busy chasing tail to pay proper attention.
Comment by happyfeet on 3/25 @ 1:26 pm #
Y’all can do the chronology however but for real I think after Katrina was when the American experiment was a lot doomed. Cause it was the first time the Big Lie worked in real time on a significant scale. After that was when NPR declared the global warming debate over. Cause they realized they could.
Comment by N. O'Brain on 3/25 @ 1:33 pm #
#Comment by thor on 3/25 @ 12:51 pm #
FOAD, whoreboi.
Comment by Jeff G. on 3/25 @ 1:34 pm #
Don’t recall it offhand, sdferr. I’ve read a LOT of theory; I tend to forget the names and just remember the ideas. What was the argument?
Comment by N. O'Brain on 3/25 @ 1:35 pm #
“Comment by Veeshir on 3/25 @ 12:57 pm #
I’m beginning to think I’ve misjudged thor, it’s obviously doing performance art.”
Can a retarded marmoset do art?
News to me.
Comment by thor on 3/25 @ 1:43 pm #
Semper dicks until you die.
Salivate on ‘em until you drip all over those shiny marching boots, P’brain.
Comment by Alec Leamas on 3/25 @ 1:44 pm #
Jeff,
I’d always figured that the “authenticity” and feigned “offense” paradigm would burn itself out – eventually, your average Joe would figure that if eating Wheaties on a Tuesday after 10:00 A.M. would be construed as racist, then fuck it, he says, I’ll be racist then. Might as well, if you’re going to be beaten up about it and all.
I think this might be the more fruitful way to go, like Aikido or something – use their momentum to your advantage. Of course, this assumes something that I’ve reluctantly come to believe – other than in, say, idealized circa 400 B.C. Athens, you aren’t going to encounter an environment where ideas of consequence can be bandied about and decisions made on their merits. And even the Athenians had their Sophists. It might just be that everything is propaganda, and the best propaganda wins.
Speaking of feigned outrage, take a gander at this here blog wherein Bill O’Reilly is branded a “rape apologist,” “victim blamer” and maker of “rape culture” and called other assorted and sundry things. See if you can spot even a smidge of outrage directed to the fellow who actually, you know, raped and killed a woman:
http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2009/03/23/standing-with-amanda-terkel/#comments
Comment by JBean on 3/25 @ 1:46 pm #
I think after Katrina was when the American experiment was a lot doomed.
Well, Katrina was a source of great joy to the left, since it was so damn easy to manipulate a story and public opinion, but I think you have to go back further than that.
Part of the trouble with classical liberals or the right, or whatever you want to call them, is that they kept declaring the left, or the new left, as defeated, when they weren’t. Like termites, they went underground, boring into our institutions while we declared we had ‘em licked.
Comment by Sdferr on 3/25 @ 1:47 pm #
I’m not comfortably familiar with it at all, as I say, but if we can trust the wiki, it differentiates a semiotic triangle, composed of a conceptual domain (thoughts), a symbolic domain (signs) and the real world (stuff). Evidently it proceeds from Pierce and stands in something of an addition to or possibly opposition to Saussure (though the finery of this is well beyond me). Again, according to a wiki (which who knows?), Eco thought it something of an improvement upon Saussure.
Comment by happyfeet on 3/25 @ 1:48 pm #
This would then put them on the defensive where they hoped to “clarify†rather than refuse to accept the premise at the outset — creating the appearance of guilt where none existed.
That’s so important to repeat and repeat and it’s so well said how you said it there. There’s not a single real person, not one, who would have spent any time of their own accord worrying about what Mr. Limbaugh said, except maybe black people what are responsible for the narrative what is fed other black people. They already smell the embarrassing stink of Fail I think and it’s never too early to get a start on your conspiracy theories. The hope he fails thing is probably useful for that I guess.
Comment by Sdferr on 3/25 @ 1:51 pm #
even the Athenians
More like, especially the Athenians, since Lakedaimon would just drive them out of town.
Comment by happyfeet on 3/25 @ 1:52 pm #
I might could be projecting, JBean. Katrina was at least when italicized I realized that journalism was dead dead dead in our little country, and I started seeing it more and more. The George Allen thing comes to mind.
Comment by thor on 3/25 @ 1:55 pm #
Inclusive is the generality.
I wonder if you could recall an instance when the Right falsified the intent of the Left. These things tend to be two-way streets, do they not?
Per this Rush Limbaugh fellow, I’m so broken up that such a man may have had his words tangled. Light his cigar! Neck massage! Vodka, chill the man a double shot! He’s been aggrieved, people!
Comment by N. O'Brain on 3/25 @ 1:56 pm #
Comment by thor on 3/25 @ 1:43 pm #
Look! The hydrocephalic moron speaks!
It’s a miracle I tell ya!
hey, whore, translate this into assholian:
Go fuck yourself.
Comment by JournoList on 3/25 @ 1:56 pm #
I used to read the WaPo but stopped after they ran maccaca stories on the front page for 25 days straight. Guess who they endorsed?
Comment by dicentra on 3/25 @ 1:58 pm #
I tend to forget the names and just remember the ideas.
Heh. I remember the names and forget the theories. :D
Actually, this type of thing is very, very old. Any time you get an advanced civilization with an educated class, the intelligentsia will begin to wonder why they, the virtuous, the wise, the worthy, are not in charge.
And then they will go about manipulating language to persuade the masses to give them that power, because linguistic prowess is their only useful skill. Then down goes the society, because all of the necessary distinctions and categories and concepts that kept the society afloat will be dissolved into one amorphous mass, and that mass can never support a society.
Two result: either the steadying hand of the iron-fisted tyrant, or if the society is geographically spread out, they split off into their own tribes.
And it takes many, many generations for an advanced society to emerge again, if at all.
Comment by Jeff G. on 3/25 @ 1:58 pm #
Oh, okay. Yeah, I’m more a Peircean — the tripartite sign — but I often use Saussure because that’s who Derrida referenced, and because it makes discussing the sign easier.
Adding a referent just multiplies the semiotic avenue for investigation; it doesn’t change the function of the sign.
Peirce, and Eco on Peirce, are well worth reading. But beware, lots of technical language.
Comment by N. O'Brain on 3/25 @ 1:58 pm #
#Comment by thor on 3/25 @ 1:55 pm #
Ooooo, look the retarded marmoset is acting all intelligent and shit.
Funny.
Comment by Alec Leamas on 3/25 @ 2:00 pm #
“when the Right falsified the intent of the Left”
Well, I sort of do it when I say “I’m not questioning your Patriotism,” when we all know that your Patriotism is at issue, or should rightly be. But in that event, I’m giving you the benefit of falsifying your intent, and you shouldn’t really get upset about that.
Comment by thor on 3/25 @ 2:01 pm #
Sorry, P’brain, I’m busy fucking the shit out of what remains of your Mommy.
Wingered chucklestump, go slurp on a toy soldier and spare us your faggish idiocy.
Comment by N. O'Brain on 3/25 @ 2:01 pm #
I question whore’s patriotism.
Comment by dicentra on 3/25 @ 2:01 pm #
I wonder if you could recall an instance when the Right falsified the intent of the Left.
That’s a very good question, but it also implies that you know of an example or two.
C’mon thor sweetie. Don’t keep us waiting!
Comment by blowhard on 3/25 @ 2:02 pm #
As long as people keep adding things to my reading list, I’m curious, could anyone recommend a book that took a neurological approach to semiotics?
For instance such a book would contain sections like, “Chapter 5: Lesions on Broca’s area and lesions on Wernicke’s area; effects on generation and the interpretation.”
I’ve read general books on the topic, but never one that took a scientific, physiological approach to semiotics specifically.
Comment by happyfeet on 3/25 @ 2:02 pm #
The right a lot falsified the intent of the left when they looked past our President’s unambiguous insistence that his budget would represent a net spending cut and accused him of being “just another tax and spend Democrat.” Lame lame lame. I a lot spoke out but I am just one person.
Comment by N. O'Brain on 3/25 @ 2:03 pm #
#Comment by thor on 3/25 @ 2:01 pm #
Your Father is ashamed of you, thor.
Comment by Jeff G. on 3/25 @ 2:03 pm #
There is plenty in my archives where I counsel the Right avoid this type of behavior, because it lends legitimacy to the illegitimate.
I don’t speak for the entire right. If you have a critique of my suggestion that the mechanisms at play here come from an idea of language favored by the left, offer it.
Comment by Jeff G. on 3/25 @ 2:06 pm #
blowhard.
Try looking for something on the semiotics of consciousness.
Comment by thor on 3/25 @ 2:07 pm #
Replace language with economic class and I’d say you have the basics of Communist Manifesto down, Missy.
Comment by Mr. Pink on 3/25 @ 2:07 pm #
You know who also hurt conservatism, Reagan because of all his references to god.
Comment by Sdferr on 3/25 @ 2:08 pm #
blowhard, I’m only spitballing here, but you might find something useful in the works of one or the other of the Churchlands along those lines, though with a view more to the philosophical implications of the physical, than a simple physico-clinical dissection.
Comment by Alec Leamas on 3/25 @ 2:09 pm #
“the steadying hand of the iron-fisted tyrant”
There will be a statue in the Square of Leamas the Most Benevolent of thor licking your Duce’s jackboot. You may purchase a small replica for 3 Alecs, or what would be today’s equivalent of $15.99.
Comment by N. O'Brain on 3/25 @ 2:12 pm #
Alec, do you have the one with whore licking Obama’s ass crack?
Comment by Alec Leamas on 3/25 @ 2:14 pm #
“Alec, do you have the one with whore licking Obama’s ass crack?”
Such prurient displays and vulgarity will be censored from public view when your Duce assumes power. Fear not, however, as your Duce is a great patron of the arts!
Comment by JBean on 3/25 @ 2:15 pm #
Katrina was at least when italicized I realized that journalism was dead dead dead in our little country, and I started seeing it more and more. The George Allen thing comes to mind.
No argument there, Happy. It brought it home, loud and clear. PC is transcendent. Bush, well…whatever.
Comment by blowhard on 3/25 @ 2:18 pm #
Thanks guys.
Once kicked in the head by a donkey, it helps me to approach complicated issues from the ground up.
Like physics>chemistry>biology>evolution.
Comment by N. O'Brain on 3/25 @ 2:18 pm #
Iowahawk strikes again!
If you haven’t seen it yet: “Requiem for a Lightweight”
http://tinyurl.com/dfqobt
“ACT 1
SCENE 1
A stark dressing room in the underbelly of the White House, bathed in the dim yellow light of a 25-watt compact fluorescent bulb. The dingy walls are plastered with Shepard Fairey “HOPE†posters. Off stage is heard the cringing, muffled gasps of a stunned arena audience. Suddenly the door bursts open and enters BARACK “BAM BAM†OBAMA, former champion, unconscious on a stretcher carried by his handlers — cut man TWINKLETOES EMANUEL, manager PAPPY AXELROD, SPITBUCKET BEGALA and SPINDOC GREENBURG. His nose is bleeding profusely, his eyes nearly swollen shut, and his forehead is embossed with a reverse “BRUNSWICK†from an errant bowling ball. They are trailed into the room by a pack of concerned sportswriters as they place the stretcher on a stark table. “
Comment by Spies, Brigands, and Pirates on 3/25 @ 2:26 pm #
since Lakedaimon would just drive them out of town.
Or simply thrown them down a well.
Anyone here ever look into Vygotsky? He also had a tripartite scheme, although he approached it from rather a different point of view than Peirce. His theory went beyond purely symbolic communication, subsuming symbols as a subset of what he called “mediating artifacts”. Tools of various types also fall into this category.
It depends on how you view it, really. If my goal is to crack a walnut, I can either pick up a hammer and crack it myself, or I can say “Hey, Sdferr, would you please crack that walnut for me, dude?” In both cases I’m using a mediating artifact (tool in the first, symbol in the second) to alter, or attempt to alter, the state of the world to match my desired goal.
Vygotsky also had some interesting notions about how language works on an internal level. He argues that language has its origin in outward-directed pantomime (the most famous example he gives is that of a child attempting to grasp something beyond its reach, which he argues later becomes formalized as pointing), but that something critical happens when speech becomes internalized — that is, when we begin to be able manipulate the symbols internally, without necessarily applying them to objects which are physically present. Before we internalize symbols, Vygotsky argues, the speech-like behaviors we exhibit are what one might call Skinnerian in nature. Press the bar, get the food pellet. Cry, get mama’s teat.
Something changes in a qualitative sense when we become able to use symbols to manipulate other symbols inside our heads.
Comment by Alec Leamas on 3/25 @ 2:29 pm #
“Or simply thrown them down a well.”
Note to self: step one is to build more wells.
Comment by happyfeet on 3/25 @ 2:32 pm #
Here you go Spies. I wanted one at one point when I lived in Texas but in LA no trees have I.
Comment by thor on 3/25 @ 2:33 pm #
Of course you don’t speak for the Right, but you do attack the entire of whatever you conveniently connotate as Left. As the good side of the binary the Right is too precious to be lumped and attacked in such manner, and much too narrowly correct in its discourses to be simplified so, meaning that one could claim that golden megaphone.
Forgive me for middling, but I am a middle man.
You speak from a theoretical construct. Don’t get lost in it, nobody is betraying a textualist praxes, much less yours. Everyone’s entitled to theory. It’s naive to forward that intentionalist arguments are under attack of ever disappeared, even at the height of the literary experimentalism of the 1970’s. Authorial intent is a constant in narratives. Lyotard’s demise of the grand narrative didn’t call for demise of authorial intent or anything of the kind, imho. I believe it was an observation of condemnation on the immobility and repetitiveness of narratives that preceded the ’70’s. But what do I know, I don’t teach. All ever wanted to do was to sing and dance, and to bring down the unremarkable vainglorious powerful with a single punch to the balls. And I blame Celine, but who wouldn’t.
Comment by Alec Leamas on 3/25 @ 2:33 pm #
Query:
Will the well water then taste of patchouli and non-washedness? If so, there will be wells for the throwing-down, and wells for the drinking.
Comment by thor on 3/25 @ 2:36 pm #
of ever = or ever disappeared
Comment by Spies, Brigands, and Pirates on 3/25 @ 2:36 pm #
Thanks, feets. I just use a big-ass screw-type C clamp, although I don’t know that I’ve ever tried it on black walnuts. Those bastards are tough.
Comment by DarthRove on 3/25 @ 2:38 pm #
*** *** big-ass *** *** black *** *** bastards *** ***
Racists.
Comment by B Moe on 3/25 @ 2:40 pm #
Of course you don’t speak for the Right, but you do attack the entire of whatever you conveniently connotate as Left. As the good side of the binary the Right is too precious to be lumped and attacked in such manner, and much too narrowly correct in its discourses to be simplified so, meaning that one could claim that golden megaphone.
Idiot.
There is plenty in my archives where I counsel the Right avoid this type of behavior, because it lends legitimacy to the illegitimate.
How do you manage to get an MFA when you can’t fucking read?
Comment by Spies, Brigands, and Pirates on 3/25 @ 2:42 pm #
Do you have something against screwing big-assed black bastards, Darth?
Homophobe!
Comment by happyfeet on 3/25 @ 2:46 pm #
I used to have pecans to contend with. I would crack them and take them to mom and shoe would freeze them and honestly I don’t know what happened to them after that. Grandma used to make pecan pies I remember, even when she got really really really old. That and ambrosia are the only things I remember Grandma ever making.
ohnoes, thor. That ain’t it kid I think. Is it?
Comment by Alec Leamas on 3/25 @ 2:46 pm #
“but you do attack the entire of whatever you conveniently connotate as Left.”
Well, you see thor, he doesn’t – at least, not like Lefty blogs. As evidence, you are allowed to post here at will, whereas I’ve been banned from every Lefty blog you’ve ever heard of multiple times and often without note that I had in fact been banned. If Jeff allows you here, he’d allow (and has) other Lefties to post, and others to post comments of a different Leftie flavor than yours. All the while, at Lefty blogs, they continue the masterbatory “Shorter X: I’m a dummy” meme. And your comments disregard the fact that Lefties have been writing about “lying for justice” and Alinski-ism for some time now.
So, thor, go ahead and link to those nonconformist Lefties who don’t do as Jeff says – at least you’re here and free to do so.
Comment by happyfeet on 3/25 @ 2:47 pm #
oh. *she* would freeze them.
Comment by Panurge on 3/25 @ 2:50 pm #
Horseshit.
Comment by thor on 3/25 @ 2:54 pm #
Yeah, I have to go to the archives to get me some of that Goldstein scolding of the Right.
Encode decode that, bitch.
Moondrops and shooting stars and the soft flowery souls of hippie chicks fuckin’ rocks the era, and I think you know what I’m talking about, BMoe, because, personally, I don’t think you’re as gay as so many others dopey hickturd wingereds are. I’m saying that even though some might blaspheme Eric Clapton as God, nobody claims Jimi Hendrix was a gay man. Not that you’re Jimi, and God isn’t gay, but Clapton might’a, you know, bedded with a man. English are simply statistically more likely to eat bullocks, all I’m sayin’.
Comment by SarahW on 3/25 @ 2:58 pm #
I should dig up some lectures by V.S Ramachandran. I posted this on my facebook the other day….
A href=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTWmTJALe1w”> COnsciousness, Qualia, and Self which brushes up against some of the topic that have been discussed recently, and is fairly short.
but I would recommend viewing any of his lectures if you have time to kill. The Neurology and the Passion for Art, and the , Beyond belief 2007 series most especially are worth the investment of time,
While I’m at it, and the American broadcast of “Phantoms in the Brain” is fascinating and relatively accessible… all of the above are on Youtube.
Comment by SarahW on 3/25 @ 2:59 pm #
Here is that hyperllink to Consciousness, Qualia and Self again
Comment by JD on 3/25 @ 3:00 pm #
We have seen that goat-fucker pan/panurge before.
Hilarity ensues.
Comment by thor's mother's pimp on 3/25 @ 3:01 pm #
Any y’all have money fo’ a ‘borshin? Wonna my hos is puttin a hurt on my flow, you dig?
Comment by Spies, Brigands, and Pirates on 3/25 @ 3:07 pm #
We have seen that goat-fucker pan/panurge before.
I see no panurge here.
Comment by Obstreperous Infidel on 3/25 @ 3:08 pm #
But, panurge’s argument was quite persuasive.
Comment by Spies, Brigands, and Pirates on 3/25 @ 3:09 pm #
Yes. It persuaded me to TrollHammer his ass.
Comment by Alec Leamas on 3/25 @ 3:09 pm #
“But, panurge’s argument was quite persuasive.”
Its what’s for dinner, one supposes.
Comment by blowhard on 3/25 @ 3:11 pm #
Brilliant, SarahW! This is exactly the type of thing I’m looking for!
I’m browsing through his publications page right now.
Comment by happyfeet on 3/25 @ 3:12 pm #
Panurge is one of the principal characters in the Pantagruel (especially the third and fourth books) of Rabelais, an exceedingly crafty knave, a libertine, and a coward is what the wikipedia says. I ain’t never read that Pantagruel thing.
Comment by thor on 3/25 @ 3:13 pm #
I’m only here because Jeff sometimes thinks I’m witty enough to exist. And because I don’t have a dark heart and I won’t boil anyone’s children with scalding water or anything like that, just forgive my intention whenever I tell you to eat shit, my shit.
I don’t blog around, btw, not that Jeff and I date, but why in the fuck would anyone post bilious thought bubbles anywhere else other than PW? This is a business and it depends on loyalty and repeat customers. One day Jeff will sell his lost soul in text form and people will buy large chunks of it with their credit cards. Once O! unfreezes the credit markets gold coins will clog his rain gutters. The free markets are a bit slow at the moment so bide your time and quit kissing and pinching “Leftie” blog ass.
Comment by happyfeet on 3/25 @ 3:13 pm #
Comment by Jeff G. on 3/25 @ 3:14 pm #
No, I differentiate between Democrats and progressives, and tend to think of progressives as activist leftists.
Why not start with the last week?
Then you can see me scold the right over throwing Bennett to the wolves. You can see me scold the right during Katrina. You can see me scold the right for the Flight 93 Memorial (depending on their reasoning). You can read about me vs. Schiavo. Me vs. Miers. And on and on and on. I’ve never been afraid to criticize the righty arguments I find wrong or dangerous. I think there’s more use to it than scolding the lefty blogs, who either don’t read you or dismiss you out of hand.
Thankfully, they aren’t my target audience. I’m looking for thinkers, not cheerleaders on either side.
Comment by Alec Leamas on 3/25 @ 3:17 pm #
“I’m only here because Jeff sometimes thinks I’m witty enough to exist.”
No – you’re here because you don’t threaten anyone.
Comment by Kirk on 3/25 @ 3:27 pm #
Thor, I doubt he keeps you around for that occasional wit of yours. I think it is company policy.
Comment by N. O'Brain on 3/25 @ 3:33 pm #
“I’m only here because Jeff sometimes thinks I’m witty enough to exist. ”
Liar.
You were banned and are using a fake proxy to get around the ban.
A thief, a liar and a cocksucker.
Comment by Obstreperous Infidel on 3/25 @ 3:48 pm #
“Once O! unfreezes the credit markets”
How again, is he going to do this? Forget your wit for a second and try and answer, not as an asshole, but a human being. You can do it.
Comment by Alec Leamas on 3/25 @ 3:50 pm #
“A thief, a liar and a cocksucker.”
For one of these things, thor has an extraordinary talent, or at least the third Men’s bathroom stall at the Joyce Kilmer rest stop on the New Jersey Turnpike says so. Guess which one?
Comment by Eric in Atlanta on 3/25 @ 3:51 pm #
Well, every time the Right insists that the intent of the Left is anything other than bad, for starters. However, that may not be quite the intent of which Jeff speaks.
Comment by geoffb on 3/25 @ 3:51 pm #
Free Quality Now!
Comment by Joe on 3/25 @ 3:55 pm #
For one of these things, thor has an extraordinary talent, or at least the third Men’s bathroom stall at the Joyce Kilmer rest stop on the New Jersey Turnpike says so. Guess which one?
With apologies to Kilmer…
“A thor whose hungry mouth is prest…”
Comment by Obstreperous Infidel on 3/25 @ 3:55 pm #
“or at least the third Men’s bathroom stall”
He does talk a lot about Larry Craig, doesn’t he? Maybe his stance wasn’t wide enough.
Comment by thor on 3/25 @ 3:58 pm #
OI, you’re as capable as anyone of dropping the burning spear of hackish partisan politics and reading the news concerning the current Fed and Treasury policies.
Why the hell do you need me to interpret? So you can argue how Dems hate evil capitalists, those innocent free market lambs victimized by a world they never made?
I know one thing, if you know how to value a company and are willing to analyze time, opportunity cost and risk then you might do well buying some stock right now. Nobody on earth will save you from yourself. Whether you buy or sell or stick your head in the sand you are purchasing your own financial future through your action and/or inaction. This is America, bitches. Manage it.
Comment by Russ. Just Russ. on 3/25 @ 4:01 pm #
Speaking as an actual hydrocephalic: I resemble that remark.
Now excuse me – I have some serious drooling I need to go do.
Comment by davis,br on 3/25 @ 4:06 pm #
Ohhh yeah. That’s why I was banned by Beldar (yeah, really: and if you can’t imagine Beldar banning someone, he did indeed). The Harriet Miers contretemps; I’ve been trying to recall her name most of the morning**. Thanks Jeff!
** while remarking upon lawyer bloggerts with thin skins.
Comment by thor on 3/25 @ 4:07 pm #
Get well, Russ. And consider Stryker stock. Bone saws are the future.
Comment by Spies, Brigands, and Pirates on 3/25 @ 4:18 pm #
Well, I see attentionwhoreboi has succeeded in making the thread about him again.
14 of the last 20 comments are either by thor or about thor.
Nice. I’m going to check out of this thread.
Comment by dicentra on 3/25 @ 4:27 pm #
Hmmm. This opens up the question of what Rush Limbaugh thinks of poststructuralists and intepretive paradigms.
Funny you should mention Rush and interpretive paradigms. Just this morning he was saying that we shouldn’t let people take our words away from us and change the meaning to use against us as weapons, that we should reject the premises of the questions.
He reads Hot Air. Maybe he read Jeff.
Comment by N. O'Brain on 3/25 @ 4:40 pm #
“Comment by thor on 3/25 @ 4:07 pm #
Get well, Russ.”
Don’t believe his well wishes, Russ.
whore is a notorious liar.
Comment by dicentra on 3/25 @ 4:46 pm #
Panurge:
I triple-dog-dare ya.
Comment by happyfeet on 3/25 @ 4:54 pm #
Panurge was really hard on those sheep the more I think about it, and I don’t get how you get overcharged buying a sheep. Panurge may have been mean and stupid both I think. Mean and stupid and French.
Comment by Panurge on 3/25 @ 5:17 pm #
Dicentra..Quadruple-dog-dare me. And while you’re at it, make it in an alternate universe where I could actually get through Rush’s screeners on the pretense of disagreeing with the nominal leader of the Republican party.
Comment by Russ. Just Russ. on 3/25 @ 5:18 pm #
No worries, NO’B. I do in fact resemble that remark.
For which, really, I can only denounce myself.
Comment by SarahW on 3/25 @ 5:20 pm #
#99. The version of the story I know, Dindenault vainly grabs onto the last sheep and goes overboard with them.
It’s sort of like Chicago parking meters.
Comment by maggie katzen on 3/25 @ 5:23 pm #
It sounds like you’re already there.
Comment by Panurge on 3/25 @ 5:31 pm #
maggie katzen – your blog is classic Jeff G. I find this suspicious.
Comment by maggie katzen on 3/25 @ 5:36 pm #
oh no, I don’t think Jeff G posts quite that many cat pictures.
Comment by SarahW on 3/25 @ 5:39 pm #
Dindenault makes a crack about Panurge’s wife on the sea voyage. The cause a ruckus and they are forced to simmer down by others who want peace on the voyage. Panurge is going to get Dindenault, though, he holds a grudge. So he hatches a plan and connives to make an offer to buy one of Dindenaults sheep, and Dindenault is very stubborn and prideful and say’s sure if you pay me for a SUPAH-SHEEP, with UBersheep powers, cause that’s what I have to sell, (even though they were really just ordinary sheep not worth much.). Panurges pretty much counted on the guy coninuing to be an arrogant ass, so WIN: he readily agrees to buy at super-sheep prices. He picks out the biggest Ram at the biggest price.
Panurge throws the ram over and you know the rest, except the DIndenault and the peace-makey guys on board all try to stop the mayhem and grab the bleating merchandise bleeding into the ocean, and of course end up in the sea along with the mutton. Panurge takes an oar and bats them away from the boat, sermonizing all the while as the drown, that they are better off in the next life-this one is a misery, and there will be all kinds of good times in heaven.
Comment by router on 3/25 @ 5:43 pm #
gird your pork loins:
?
Comment by Chris L. on 3/25 @ 5:55 pm #
Watergate — Iran hostage crisis — end of the Cold War.
And spanning it all, a generation that (generally speaking, not individually) faced the fewest challenges, and the greatest material comfort, safety, and wealth, of any generation before. They thought they knew how to run the world at age 18, and still think basically the same at age 58, and have never had that belief materially tested.
Comment by Carin on 3/25 @ 5:58 pm #
oh no, I don’t think Jeff G posts quite that many cat picture
Plus, I’ve never seen any indication that Jeff knows how to make cupcakes.
Comment by maggie katzen on 3/25 @ 6:03 pm #
and he’s demonstrated he can use photoshop as opposed to MS Paint.
Comment by Carin on 3/25 @ 6:07 pm #
The French are crazy. I know this doesn’t make sense, but I’m watching Foxnews.
Comment by happyfeet on 3/25 @ 6:08 pm #
It’s just a tragedy. You’d think what you could do is leave the sheep at home when you go on a cruise but is that really fair? I don’t think so. Tethering. My feeling is that the answer lies in tethering. I’m not the tethering guy. Not that I’m all untethered or anything I just have limited tethering knowledge is all I mean. I think knots might be involved?
Comment by Carin on 3/25 @ 6:13 pm #
To attempt to stay on topic, my two favorite Buckleys are dead. William F and Jeff. I can live w/o Christopher.
Comment by steveaz on 3/25 @ 6:15 pm #
Jeff:
“Because the fact is, that strategy, from the outset, relied on the basic goodness of people, who, these signification thieves knew, would be stunned by the force of the false accusations against them. ”
This “relying on the basic goodness of people” is a recurring trademark of the post-sixities “ruckus” society graduates. “Get in their faces” types of groups like Hamas, rioting youths in France, and urban “push” organizations like ACORN (an urban welfare “advocacy” group) all exploit the graces of good people who will “turn the other cheek” first, and so vacate their commons’, offices, neighborhoods and nations before they will endure brusque combative behavior or outright physical assault – especially if there are children around.
The result is, like “Islamic” terrorists, postmodern poets and “dirty socialists” win as we cede evermore of the physical and semantic battle-field to the “Get-In-Their-Facer’s.”
As political tactics go, there is no question that regularly assaulting propriety yields electoral gains – that is if you can get media to grease the skids for ya.
Maybe Jeff can model his own “get in their face” approach in front of a national audience soon like, say, on a Charlie Rose show. After forty years of pacification-programming, I’m afraid we’re going to need to see a real intellectual debate before we can be expected to conduct one.
Comment by JD on 3/25 @ 6:17 pm #
Panurge was really hard on those sheep the more I think about it, and I don’t get how you get overcharged buying a sheep. Panurge may have been mean and stupid both I think. Mean and stupid and French.
Epic, happyfeet.
From its first comment I pegged it as a goat-fucker. Who knew it was just a sheep fucker.
Comment by router on 3/25 @ 6:17 pm #
f**k you statists works for me
Comment by Panurge on 3/25 @ 6:34 pm #
Carin – All young lovers know why.
Comment by geoffb on 3/25 @ 7:14 pm #
This is the key point and the reason it won’t work out unless the media is, at least, neutral. Without that you (or me or Jeff or anyone doing the in-your-face to a lefty) will be portrayed as either crazy or dangerous or both. The media takes any confrontation and supplies the narrative on who is “good” and who is “bad”. The Right is always “the bad”. Evil, evil intentions don’t you know.
Comment by Mary Louise on 3/25 @ 7:15 pm #
Via AOSHQ: My choice of President tells the usurpers, “Hey you can interpret my words any way you like, but you’re not taking them from me, because I’m an adult and you’re an adolescent!”
G. Gordon Liddy said once on his radio program that Fred was the only honest congressman in the whole Watergate affair.
I don’t know when the theft of meaning took place recently, but Popper’s Open Society does a nice job chronicling Plato to Hegel, relative to the understanding of “order” throughout history.
If you know anything about peasant society, you know that envy and hope or hate and despair rule. And the envy is born less of wanting the material possessions of another, than that of despising the individualism the supers all. The idea that a rugged individual does not suffer a lack of friendship or loneliness is nonsense. A rugged individual knows the kind of sacrifice that Obama can’t even begin to imagine.
Heinlein said: “Political tags – such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth -are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire.” And I think this is easy to forget.
America is in danger now because it’s produced a franchised peasant class out of liberty and enterprise. It’s been a devolution: the peasants are fat, indolent and stupid.
The European peasant class that emigrated to the States in the late 19th and 20th century was a class of fairly bright people who had been denied education, but made up for that by not allowing misery to gnarl their souls.
The info revolution may throw a wrench in my analysis, in that now the average IQ may need to be higher for a strong, resilient, middle class to continue to grow and persist.
I didn’t grow up on the wrong side of the tracks, but if I got on my bike I could be there in no time flat.
Peter Robinson of NRO and Uncommon Knowledge wrote recently that the troglodytes pegged Obama, while the elite fell for his shtick hook, line and sinker. And you know why? Because trogs aren’t protected by an ironic code, so the gossamer that Obama was retailing in was undeniable.
One reporter who was at the inauguration recorded one of Obama’s fans, following his address, saying “it was shit!”
The most deceitful part of multiculturalism is the notion democrats peddle of a multi-ethnic harmony. Anyone who has lived in the heart of any diverse City knows that black doesn’t give a whit if brown gets to hang around, and vice-versa.
It’s such a ruse.
Pingback by “Fred Thompson tells CNN he wants Obama’s policies to fail” on 3/25 @ 7:28 pm #
[...] (h/t Mary Louise, who has her own thoughts) Posted by Jeff G. @ 7:28 pm | Trackback [...]
Comment by Jeff G. on 3/25 @ 7:33 pm #
Fred was my guy, too, Mary Louise.
Every time I watched McCain debate Obama, I kept imagining how Fred would have left the guy in tatters, whereas McCain was so busy trying to be liked that he essentially handed the election to a Marxist.
Comment by Rich Cox on 3/25 @ 7:38 pm #
re steveaz @115
I was thinking along similar lines. The conservative tell is a willingness to be the adult. To, yes, “turn the other cheek.” It is little question than that many are also more prone to be religious. It is this forgiveness however that left, like a juvenile delinquent, never fears repercussion for his actions because they are non-existent, hollow, forgiven, or forgotten. Conservatives continue to want to live above the fray, but as such, neglect to recognize the termites destroying the foundation.
It is time that the children learn that there are consequences to their actions. Insert some witty nature biting back with sharp teeth remark here.
Comment by dicentra on 3/25 @ 7:40 pm #
The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire
Included in that former category are those who want to control as well as those who want to be controlled.
There’s a reason why the Euros don’t chafe much at their fetters: all the independent-minded folks came here.
Comment by meya on 3/25 @ 7:41 pm #
Buckley is the sort of conservative it would be fun to have more of. When he starts off like this:
“Complaints have reached us concerning a series of columns written by my colleague Joseph Sobran under the aegis of his newspaper syndicate. It is charged that these columns constitute anti-Semitism. In the columns, Mr. Sobran, among other things, has declared that Israel is not an ally to be trusted; surmised that the New York Times endorsed the military strike against Libya only because it served its Zionist editorial line; and ruminated that the visit of the Pope to a synagogue had the effect of muting historical persecutions of Christians by Jews. In that last column, Mr. Sobran, exasperated, wrote, “But it has become customary recently to ascribe all Jewish-Christian friction to Christians. If a Jew complains about Christians, Christians must be persecuting him. If a Christian complains about Jews, he is doing the persecuting–in the very act of complaining. It simply isn’t fair.” And in his most recent column on the theme, Joe Sobran complains that he is criticized for being anti-Semitic unwarrantedly: “I find that the more I say what I really think, the more I’m accused of thinking something else.” Again he says that “the word ‘anti-Semite’ is more potent than most of the charges of bigotry that are flung around these days. It carries the whiff of Nazism and mass murder. It means,’ as a friend of mine puts it, ‘that you ultimately approve of the gas chambers.”‘”
You know you want more.
Nowadays we got to deal with Michelle Bachmann.
He did eventually come to realize that federal power was needed for civil rights. Definitely not on a pragmatic time frame though.
Comment by dicentra on 3/25 @ 7:44 pm #
To, yes, “turn the other cheek.â€
Turning the other cheek means not being vengeful and vindictive. It’s not the same as not standing up for yourself or standing for what’s right.
Part of the reluctance to fight back is that many of the “good” people have a hard time imagining that their neighbors could really want to do them harm, and this includes many self-identified dems and others left of center.
The default reaction is to ignore it and hope it was a fluke. As far as Oprompta’s first 60 days and his radical attempts (and successes), I think we’re more stunned by the brazenness than anything. And it’s hard to imagine that this kind of thing could really be happening in America.
We won’t put up with it forever, though. The momentum started by the tea parties will continue into something more useful.
Comment by Rich Cox on 3/25 @ 7:45 pm #
Mary Louise…. I am glad that you mention Heinlein. It is strange to look at the Democratic party today and realize (well except for the whole open relationship sex thing) that he was a member. Albeit conservative.
I also want to note how much Twain read like Heinlein in A Connecticut Yankee. And apropos considering the strong language in both about undermining a broken and corrupt power while facing an uneducated and subjected mass.
Comment by dicentra on 3/25 @ 7:52 pm #
“I find that the more I say what I really think, the more I’m accused of thinking something else.â€
Plus ça chose…
Comment by Rich Cox on 3/25 @ 7:58 pm #
Turning the other cheek means not being vengeful and vindictive. It’s not the same as not standing up for yourself or standing for what’s right.
But that had not been the conservative response either. We felt it unseemly to march or protest. And attempts to react in kind were met with derision and accusations of Neo-Nazism. Thuggery or fascism. All of which returns to Jeff’s point. Allowing the opposition to dictate the narrative, the message, the rules, and all while refusing to stand up to the childish behavior.
Comment by Big D on 3/25 @ 8:01 pm #
Every time I watched McCain debate Obama, I kept imagining how Fred would have left the guy in tatters, whereas McCain was so busy trying to be liked that he essentially handed the election to a Marxist.
I did the same thing. I was excited about his candidacy at first, but it just fizzled out. By the time the primaries got to my state I had two choices: McCain (Bad) and Huckabee(Are you kidding me bad) I took the least, bad choice.
Comment by Mary Louise on 3/25 @ 8:20 pm #
Jeff and all-
I voted for McCain. And I admire him for one or two reasons, but after the election I turned on him like a viper because I felt like he threw Palin at us like a Javelin. He never really had any affection for conservatives, and at least now we can forcefully fight Obama and his team without remorse.
Comment by Obstreperous Infidel on 3/25 @ 8:28 pm #
“Why the hell do you need me to interpret?”
Not so much of an interpretation, as a justification. A reason for your comment. Maybe because I may value your opinion. Don’t get me wrong. I think, and you have cultivated it quite nicely, that you’re a complete asshole, but I don’t think you’re dumb and I like to hear an alternate view point. I’m pretty Austrianish, when it comes to economics, so no, I have little love lost for this iteration of repubs. Keynes is no friend of mine. I assume, he is of yours. So, again, how will Obama fix it all?
Comment by Mary Louise on 3/25 @ 8:30 pm #
Rich-
Some more Heinlein for you from his Friday:
Comment by Sdferr on 3/25 @ 8:35 pm #
I watched that exchange live and had to ask my mom, “Can you call somebody a queer on tv? Really? Cool!”
Comment by happyfeet on 3/25 @ 8:38 pm #
I supported useless Meghan’s useless daddy too, ML. How weird is that? I must really really hate dirty socialists.
Comment by Rob Crawford on 3/25 @ 8:40 pm #
Geez, Mary Louise. Way to make me ready to build a monastery out in the hills.
Comment by B Moe on 3/25 @ 8:41 pm #
If you know anything about peasant society, you know that envy and hope or hate and despair rule. And the envy is born less of wanting the material possessions of another, than that of despising the individualism the supers all.
That was the realization that began my slide from Socialism, the recognition of the raw hatred and malicious envy that drives real socialists. My fellow travelers knew full well they were going to be just as poor, or poorer, under socialism, but didn’t care as long as they could bring down the evil rich. Pure fucking hatred.
Nowadays we got to deal with Michelle Bachmann.
Yeah she pants your boy Geitner pretty hard this week, huh?
Comment by Spies, Brigands, and Pirates on 3/25 @ 8:44 pm #
Yeah, I was a Fred man, too.
When it became clear that it was McCain, I decided not to vote. Two things happened to change that:
1) Obama
2) Palin
Comment by Sdferr on 3/25 @ 8:45 pm #
Oh for the days of the smoke filled room, eh?
Comment by Mary Louise on 3/25 @ 8:53 pm #
Rob, let me make it up to you with some more Heinlein:
“May you live as long as you wish and love as long as you live.”
Comment by geoffb on 3/25 @ 9:09 pm #
Fred here too. Then McCain because of Palin as I posted at the time at the pub. I had hopes that he had seen the light, perhaps a little, but no he couldn’t change his spots. I took all the election ones down after. They seemed so dated once we faced O!
Comment by prairiemain on 3/25 @ 9:10 pm #
Doesn’t surprise me that Bill Buckley had his critics. But Buckley could give as good as he received.
It could just be me but has anyone noticed that these “bipartisan” clowns in the GOP never win in the presidential sweepstakes?
Yet, ol’ firebreathing Ronald Reagan won handily.
Twice. Last time in a landslide.
George H.W. Bush is reputed to have told Nelson Rockefeller that Ronald Reagan was an embarrassment to the GOP. I guess because Reagan actually dared to draw lines in the sand? Because he used such charged and threatening terms as “evil empire”?
Ford, Bush, Dole, McCain — quite a record these
“moderates” have compiled. If you’re looking for losing records, that is.
Do you know why? Because there is no “great middle” — “moderates” are those who haven’t been inspired by a leader to commit one way or the other. That’s all it is. Reagan lit their fire and they were no longer “moderates”.
Comment by Rich Cox on 3/25 @ 9:18 pm #
Mary Louise: Thank you. I read Friday in college, but not enough for content. I do need to go back and look at it with 15 years more experience.
Comment by cranky-d on 3/25 @ 9:30 pm #
@138 Exact same evolution with me. I voted for Palin and the old guy running with her.
Comment by lee on 3/25 @ 9:33 pm #
I think things went to shit when dueling was outlawed.
In Andrew Jacksons day, you didn’t get threatened with a cracked jaw, you got a choice of swords or pistols.
Vidal wouldn’t have had the nerve to open his lying, slanderous mouth in the first place.
And Heinlein wouldn’t have been worrying about bad manners and rudeness in this, our doomed society.
Comment by lee on 3/25 @ 9:35 pm #
Oh, and Fred was my guy too. I took one of those test thingers to see who you agreed with most even, and that confirmed why I liked him.
Seems he was the classic liberal/outlaw choice.
Comment by Rich Cox on 3/25 @ 9:50 pm #
addendum to my earlier thank you to Mary Louise… Now that i have also now gone back and read the comment (I wanted to be sure first that I acknowledged). Basically, I am always wowed further by Mr. Heinlein’s consistency. You find these themes running in even as “juvenile” books as Starship Troopers. Just wow.
Comment by blowhard on 3/25 @ 10:18 pm #
Fred guy, too.
We have to close those primaries. Seriously.
Comment by rachel on 3/25 @ 11:45 pm #
Your insightful commenter’s remark reminds me of an episode pre-election, which shows that the anti-Rush language-mangling goes back before Obama’s presidency. Can’t remember where I read about it & have only a vague recollection of the details, but the Obama campaign put an ad out, in Spanish, quoting Rush, I suppose as evidence, somehow, of McCain’s hateful anti-Latino racism (for pete’s sake, *McCain* of all people, he of the “amnesty bill”… the audacity of the deceit here is breathtaking). Unsurprisingly (yet still shocking to me), they’d wrenched Rush’s words from their context, a skit of some kind, the overall intention of which was the opposite of, or at least completely different from, the ad’s interpretation (that’s too kind a word– misrepresentation? distortion? perversion? falsification?) of his words (or of his speech-act). Anyone remember that?
Just one of the many incidents during that repellent campaign which led me to, not just oppose Obama as a candidate, but despise him & his whole gang/administration as *persons*.
Comment by Jeff G. on 3/26 @ 12:47 am #
Yeah, I recall that, rachel.
The Obamatons are not good people.
Comment by Russ. Just Russ. on 3/26 @ 2:15 am #
I’ve been referring to them as “Obamautomotons,” but I think your “Obamatons” coinage flows better, Jeff.
Pingback by Hey, Racists! [Dan Collins] on 3/26 @ 7:00 am #
[...] power grab that includes the Obama Youth Brigades, a doctrine whose origins Jeff outlines in this post. It amounts to nothing more, or less, than racist role-reversal in which color-blindness is [...]
Comment by B Moe on 3/26 @ 8:17 am #
Aw man the look on his face when he figured what she was talking about.
How long after the hearing was over was that?
Comment by meya on 3/27 @ 6:13 am #
“How long after the hearing was over was that?”
You didn’t watch the video? Bernanke wasn’t caught off guard and was able to deal with this kook.
Comment by B Moe on 3/27 @ 7:49 am #
You really don’t understand the Constitution at all, do you meya? Bernanke just cited some precedents, he didn’t answer the question. Geitner was too ignorant to even understand the question, as you apparently are.