More on yours truly, this time from the soft left pole of the progressive-“pragmatic conservative” axis of Jeff Hate. “What do you do in the wake of a crushing political defeat?”:
If you’re Jeff Goldstein, you declare yourself to be way cooler than everyone else; if you’re Darleen Click, you draw a cartoon in which the President rapes a woman, then tells her that he and friends will be back to rape her again later. In the clinical sense, Click is the more interesting case because she thinks that the only problem with her cartoon is that it’s racist. I repeat: she drew a cartoon in which the punch line is a gang rape and the only potential problem with it she can see is that it might be racist. Don’t misunderstand me: it’s plenty racist — plays into tropes as old as slavery and everything — but the punch line is that the President and his associates are going to gang-rape the Statue of Liberty with, I kid you not, immigration reform.
In service of the cheapest of laughs, Click asserts that the statue that symbolizes America’s commitment to the tired, poor, huddled masses of the world is about to be raped because of the President’s commitment to those selfsame masses-yearning-to-be-free. Talk about your industrial grade ideological incoherence — and I would, except for the fact that Goldstein, never one to be upstaged on his own blog, told a woman that the only way she would ever be cool was if someone raped her with an icicle. That’s not true, though. Goldstein never said that. What he said, and I quote, was:
For instance, here’s Nishi, whose only hope of ever really touching cool would be to pay somebody to fuck her once with an ice dong.
Such are the depths to which Goldstein sinks to maintain the illusion that he’s cool, which is sad, you know, because he’s a middle-aged man worried about whether people think he’s cool. Then, in yet another example of just how over me he is, he declares me to be the exemplar of uncool. Far be it for me, a 32-year-old blogger who sports a backwards Mets cap and is currently writing a scholarly book about comics, to complain when someone says I’m not cool, because honestly, I’m not cool. I grew up, got a job, and am working for the Man; however, forty-something bloggers who alternate between whining about how poorly jobs they don’t have pay and writing 10,000-word-long semiotic screeds about Alinksy and catch-wrestling? Not cool. Doesn’t matter how many people whose favorite film is Mr. Smith Goes to Washington say otherwise, because them? Also not cool. But you know what really, really isn’t cool? Unsubtle threats of politically-motivated violence against women:
I predict Nishi will look very surprised the first time she’s knocked down by someone who doesn’t much like the glee she takes in the losses of freedom we’re undergoing.
I predict Nishi won’t have as much fun playing the griefer game once it becomes obvious that while she’s playing a game, many of us are not.
I predict that Nishi doesn’t know who she’s fucking with.
I predict Nishi will soon find it best not to post here anymore.
I predict that I don’t much care about “blogging” anymore; I care about my family and my family’s future, and I see barren narcissists like Nishi as threats to my family—all because they get their kicks seeing how much they can connive their way into control and power.
I predict having such an attitude as Nishi’s will turn out badly.
I’m sure my pointing this out will result in a cool discussion about the coolest of abstruse literary theories—intentionalism—and about how I don’t get what Goldstein intended there, and I’d care, you know, but whatever.
Two things. First, and for the record, I never declared myself to be “way cooler than everyone else.” I declared myself way cooler than Nishi — which is like declaring myself more handsome than a cadaver, or more Jewish than a Kennedy.
I will, however, happily update my declaration to include Scott Eric Kaufman, who couldn’t find cool were he to stumble pantless into a caribou orgy.
Second, only someone who has sex solely with his own beard could see in Darleen’s comic a “gang rape.” Me, I see a political metaphor. As for those subtextual slave tropes that so horrify Kaufman, all’s I can say is it’s a good thing Darleen didn’t draw a tree outside the window, or else we’d be treated to Scott’s erudite observations about monkeys.
Of course, I’m not “writing a scholarly book about comics.” Which, if Kaufman’s interpretive performance tells us anything, must require that one first become a cartoon. So take my criticisms with a grain of salt.
Meantime, two words, Scott: ice. dong.
****
update: I see that a freshly-moistened James Wolcott once again defied gravity’s odds and managed to jowel his way from divan to keyboard, where with fat pink powdered fingers he pecked out this description of Darleen’s comic: “a desperate, ghoulish plea for attention (now that even right wing sites are no longer linking to [protein wisdom])”. I can’t say that I agree with Mr Wolcott’s rather overwrought assessment of Darleen’s work, but on the second point I can’t offer much of an argument.
Frankly, I’m just glad someone besides me noticed.
“In service of the cheapest of laughs…”
Right, that must be what it was…
Scott’s post was contentious I think.
The little president man is raping our little country something awful and our little country’s all please please stop oh god please stop but the little president man just keeps putting it to her.
And there’s really not a lot to be done for it.
I don’t recall who it was, but someone said Lady Liberty was held down on the House floor, gang raped and gutted on Sunday night.
I’m Pablo and I approve this message.
Don’t misunderstand me, misunderstand what I tell you to misunderstand.
Scott, you’re a hack.
Method writing? Maybe Heath Ledger shoulda tried that.
the huddled masses were yearning to be free, time was…
Mr. SEK brackets that part like a bracketing brackety bracketer.
#3,
That was me Pablo.
So, he’s implying that by saying “pay somebody to fuck her” you meant/implied rape? How’s that follow?
The one nice thing about SEK is that while he’s remarkably dishonest, he’s also remarkably easy to see through.
Someone should tell Scott that the inscription on the Statue of Liberty comes courtesy of the French. Also, before the copper oxidized she was brown.
Nishi’s 32 years old? Really? Kind of puts her absurd attack on Jeff in perspective. You go anime gamer grrrl!
’cause it is alot easier and alinksky to make shit up
Here.
Bleh, I’m not a fan of that movie. The Princess Bride is my fave. Shows what this guy knows.
nancyp, barneyf, harryr, and barackyh doing it to the american people
40 is gonna hit her like a bullet train and she’ll never see it coming.
geoffb, good on ya, mate!
That’s Mr. SEK what’s 32.
SEK and his angry band of hatey haters what hate on his behalf stood on the sidelines and cheered while Lady Liberty took it in the cornhole. Sick twists.
So SEK is still completely clueless. I am amazed.
Okay, I’m not amazed at all.
That’s Mr. SEK what’s 32.
Oh. I had to read the post a few times to figure out it was all the words of teh CockSEKer.
My favorite films are The Bad News Bears, The French Connection, and The Exorcist. Sometimes Jaws or The Sting make my list.
As for a favorite comic, I don’t really have one any more. Mom threw away my comics when I was nine.
And fuck her for doing it. I coulda had a REAL job, if only the bitch took Thor vs. The Myst seriously.
I wonder if Kaufman will successfully popularize the pedo beard.
Mu favorite comic is The Invisibles I think.
I think I’ll take up reading blog posts casually, completely missing the point, and then ranting about said posts based on what I thought I read rather than what was actually written. If I do that, I’ll be very hip.
Very hip, indeed.
*My* favorite comic I mean
I had to follow the link to see who it was too, Abe Froman. I expected to find Barrett Brown, grasping Charles Johnson’s cock as is usual lately.
Should’ve known better; Brown can actually write. With one hand, amazingly.
My favorite comic might be Usagi Yojimbo, but I have read many titles in the past few years.
I used to like Richie Rich. Kid had it going on.
You know, I thought Billy Bob Thornton did a pretty good job in the remake of the Bad News Bears. “It’s like dating a German chick”
Will it be politically-motivated violence when the bailiff hauls some guy off to jail for his refusal to pay Mr. Obama’s fine in lieu, as opposed to a mere threat?
SEK reminds me of this pretentious character actor I saw on Law & Order a couple nights ago. Oh, and he is a lying cock. So, there’s that. That is all.
My favorite comic is the illustrated Road to Serfdom. Only, the ending would be better if the lifeless body clinging to a pole on the last page was someone like Scotty.
I’m surprised people still read SEK, unless it’s assigned.
My favorite movie is Roadhouse, which is loosely based on my life.
The part where the girl gets up on the table and starts to strip is when I met my ex.
Hey, you know who’s cool? Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid – Oh wait…no, no. Nevermind.
Well, he said he was a writer. He never said he could actually read and understand English. Obviously.
Gotta like this, too:
A) my post came before Darleen’s, so my motivation — not to be upstaged on my own site — was preemptive. In fact, I’ve got a couple of posts from late 2001 I wrote just in case I ever met Darleen, and she ever posted on my site a comic about a (potential) black president. I’m just prescient that way. B) I can’t speak for Scott — first, I don’t have the lisp, and second, my balls have dropped — but when I pay for sex, I don’t consider it “rape.”
But then, maybe he’s in to something a little more kinky than I. It’s always the dorky ones with the comic book collections who you find naked and hanging from a rack in the armoire by their belts…
Oh. And ice dongs and icicles are different things. Which he’d know, were he reading the good comics.
Is there even a word for someone who looks at a hooker and sees a rapist?
And Ladies, when you go to put the dildo in the freezer, take the batteries out first. They work better warm.
I’ve seen that video of teh SEKs before – I think I should demand his lunch money and that he wet willie himself post haste. Boy must have had more underwear bands pulled up across his eyes . . .
Is there even a word for someone who looks at a hooker and sees a rapist?
Marcotte?
Hedley Lamarr: Qualifications?
Applicant: Rape, murder, arson, and rape.
Hedley Lamarr: You said rape twice.
Applicant: I like rape.
I offered to rape Charles with a baseball bat the other day. I suppose I’m too unimportant to have my vulgarity chronicled by a full grown liar and comic book geek. But next time I’ll make it clear that the aluminum bat I have is BLACK!
Even Marcotte isn’t that messed up, Mike, she’d consider the John the rapist, not the hooker.
Of course, the obvious answer is that he was looking to go rape smearing just as he was about to go violence smearing.
That he has to jump through ridiculous hoops and thinks people don’t immediately notice them is beyond me. Oh no. It isn’t. He’s not particularly bright.
Not that I know of. But maybe The Justice League has one.
It is interesting, the way in which what would appear to be latent pedophilia comes through in SEK’s post. Perhaps someone ought to write up a thorough analysis.
In fairness, Jeff, when SEK pays for sex, the farmer doesn’t consider it rape either.
malaclypse!
Ok, I confess, I’m having fun. My haddock-across-the-face cartoon is really bunching up a whole lot of panties.
Does SEK go for the hot-pink thongs or is he more a white lace boyshort kind?
Gawd. Why did I click that link?
Can you say “willfully ignorant, pretentious douchenozzle”? Yeah, I thought so.
Lacy boyshorts, I’m guessing.
I wouldn’t characterize using an obscure congressional rule to pass an unpopular bill a “crushing political defeat”.
I’d call it a touchdown, but the game ain’t over, yet.
Fucking retard.
Cheer up Jeff–At least he didn’t say you were anti-Semitic!
I like the VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN bit, too.
Nishi’s only been commenting here, what, six years? And she lives in Colorado? Yet somehow I’ve managed to suppress the urge to brain her with a shovel.
Ever notice how the progressive academic geeks who fancy themselves feminists feel the need to step in and defend potentially ice-raped females?
On blogs, I mean. In real life, were SEK in any position to stop an actual rape, he’d avert his eyes and run away, then, later, publish a paper denouncing rape in the hope that his words may one day help STOP THE VIOLENCE!
Fucking hypocritical pansy posers.
based on what I thought I read
“Based on what I wanted to be written,” you mean.
SEK does have basic comprehension skills; he just chooses to lie about what Jeff said because it’s useful, which Alinsky says is the same as true as far as he’s concerned.
Me either. But, being of Scottish ancestry, handing over the money feels like I’m being raped.
I suspect nishi could beat up Scott without much difficulty.
…nobody noticed the tiny little stiffy he had as he ran away.
That’s true, mcgruder. Though I’m probably a self-loathing Jew.
Which is kinda like a consolation prize.
Incidentally, re: anti-semitism, I got an email last night from a guy who goes by “Asher Yosef” who says he was the victim of anti-semitic comments on a certain pragmatist’s blog.
Does that mean that certain conservative pragmatist is anti-semitic? I can’t say.
But what I can do is this:
READER POLL!
Even Marcotte isn’t that messed up, Mike, she’d consider the John the rapist, not the hooker.
True, comic book scholars occupy a whole other level of messed-up.
Unsubtle threats of politically-motivated violence against women.
Because Jeff, knowing exactly where Nishi lives, and having stalked her sufficiently to know her routine, is merely telegraphing his intentions toward her, not engaging in trash talk on a blog.
A slice of Wonder® bread could beat up SEK. And frequently does.
While dressed in black leather.
“In fairness, Jeff, when SEK pays for sex, the farmer doesn’t consider it rape either.” A little rimshot went off in my head. Wokka-wokka! JG sets it up, AL knocks it down. Keep it comin’, Al!
How come happyfeet alone has the most comments posted on dere?
I forgot that the fact that dicentra comments here means that I don’t have to. I stand corrected.
Unsubtle threats of politically-motivated violence against women.
Also, you don’t use a hyphen for a compound adjective when the first word is an adverb that ends in -ly.
But he’s a writer. He knows better.
I forgot that the fact that dicentra comments here means that I don’t have to. I stand corrected.
I am Everyone, and Everyone is Me.
Get used to it.
I have on my desk a wooden armadillo that Nishi sent me a few years back. Maybe I’ll turn it into a politically-motivated shiv and give it back to her.
Because of my THUGGERY!
Watch your back, Jeff. Remember Scott once had a roommate who’d been in the Army, so he’s probably an expert in hand-to-hand…
However you put it, Jeff’s a really cool guy, not that he’s concerned with being a really cool guy at all. I’ve never had contact with anyone who was less concerned with their public persona than Jeff Goldstein. He’s so modest, so secure in his success in the world, and so at home in his own skin that the Federal authorities should think of taking down the Statue of Liberty and replacing it with a statue of Jeff. The Statue of Liberty is 305 ft and was the tallest structure in New York City in 1886. So they should make the Statue of Jeff Goldstein taller than Lady Liberty, even taller than the Twin Towers used to be. That way Jeff’s statue can be a beacon in the fight against terrorism as well as a testament to his “monumental” coolness. Hey Jeff buddy. Keep it real!
I’ve “known” Nishi for damn near 3/4 of a decade now, and if I was as cool as her I would have shot myself long ago.
Hey, it’s Ric Caric everyone. Yay!
Wow! A real live dancing monkey at PW. I guess after a while teaching kids with 900 SAT’s dulls the sharpness of your wit, Ric. Or maybe you were never particularly witty to begin with.
But nishi isn’t a woman. It’s a cybernetic organism who wishes death upon those that are different from it. It’s a perfect muhammeden. And a more effete pretentious dipshit such as SEK, I have never seen.
Greasy haired fat ugly dumbass professors from 4th tier schools who are pasty white and live in one of the most pasty white counties in the country but teach about the womyn and the blackness two things he knows squadoosh about crack me up. Caric should get together with willie the racist skin flute player who is similarly situated but teaches the skin flute.
How long should we let these goofballs keep going with this before we let them know that “cool” is nishi’s constant refrain?
Next they’ll be criticizing Jeff for badmouthing the WEC.
Without following the trackback above, it’s obvious that SEK is supposed to be able to post whatever he wants to without being challenged at all by the subject of his post. What a fucking pussy.
A caric sighting? Yes. The triumvirate of stupid, neutered and facile has been beckoned. Nishi has the most balls of the three of them. It’d be kind of sad, if anyone cared that is.
I guess SEK is just an attention whore, then. Well, go with your strength, pal, such as it is.
I think someone is secretly pining for a 30 foot bronze cock, and is just making plausible excuses to maybe get one.
Read that crazy update of his. Does Kaufman not understand you can’t actually rape enormous statues or the concepts they represent?
That it can only be taken metaphorically?
SEKs is link whoring again. Maybe timb will drop by. And PIATOR.
Caric is as on top of shit as ever, it seems.
You can’t find insight like that just any where, you know.
Bh – if they did not have their mendacity, they would have nothing.
RACISTS!!!
I will say this much, though. SEK provided the impetus for Jeff to write something that included a signature line:
And for that, I am grateful.
Plus, it gave me an excuse to comment excessively, relieving some of the stress I’ve been feeling over the destruction of our little country.
Well, JD, Kaufman would still have his pedo beard. Let’s not take that away from him.
My favorite Caric moments were when he called people sexists for opposing Hillary, which made him a racist for opposing Barcky. He then promptly denounced himself, and became a sexist instead of a racist.
Yes. Underneath their togas, neoclassical statues only have a smooth area where one would expect an enormous patinated bronze vagina. Alas, they cannot be raped in the proper fashion, even by Captain Wonderful.
I suspect nishi could beat up Scott without much difficulty.
Or outshoot him, or spike him with an épée. Or outride him on a horse.
I’m probably closer to happy, in that I’ve (almost) always liked Nishi, but these days, hardly ever agree with her about anything.
Bh – those beards are like wannabe cool people’s uniforms, like the dirty grunge look or the tribal tats in the 90’s, for people who demonstrated their individuality in a uniform manner.
Plus, it looks like he superglued clippings from the floor at a manscape parlor.
Alexander Pope – should he have been locked up for his hair-raping fantasies? Discuss.
Goldman Sachs? The Goldman Sachs that Barack Obama has, at every turn, did everything in his power to prop up and benefit? That Goldman Sachs? Corporatist fuck. Caric is hoping they have a brown shit big enough to fit his stupid ass.
Don’t misunderstand me: it’s plenty racist
No it’s not. Period. Scott can feel it all he wants, but it is still just his feelings, not my intent.
shit=shirt for my purposes here tonight.
I have a strong “feeling” that SEK’s feelings have been hurt many, many, many, many times in his short sad life, Darleen. Hey Scott…Boo!
As for those subtextual slave tropes that so horrify Kaufman, all’s I can say is it’s a good thing Darleen didn’t draw a tree outside the window, or else we’d be treated to Scott’s erudite observations about monkeys.
God forbid if nk and a certain someone took it the wrong way.
And SEK, go root for the fucking Yankees. Don’t fuck up my team with your support.
I noticed how your comment worked with and without the correction, OI. Interesting.
And Walcott, it is good to see that giant ground sloths are not yet extinct. Then again, with the sex drive of a panda, you are probably the last of your kind.
What Caric knows about the financial sector would probably fit neatly into a point particle.
Alas, they cannot be raped in the proper fashion, even by Captain Wonderful.
Well, I guess you could say Lady Liberty was “gang raped” in Ghostbusters II …….
It must be the Captain Morgans, cranky.
Darleen, keep up the good work!
You can bet that SEK roots for the Mets with a strong sense of tasty, tasty irony.
Every time Caric tries to write ironically about my wanting to be cool, I can feel him straining so hard to do it in a cool way that I wouldn’t be surprised if he pinched off a loaf right there in his swivel chair before he could hit “say it.”
Not only the sex drive of a Panda, but the ability as well. They have been showing Panda pron to Pandas so they can see how they’re supposed to do it.
Recall – isn’t Walcott the fellow too preoccupied with going proboscis-to-proboscis with rival mates on the beach to finish a bachelor’s degree?
What you need to be cool, Jeff, is to troll Lefty sites and make mocking, ironic comments.
QED
Not only the sex drive of a Panda, but the ability as well. They have been showing Panda pron to Pandas so they can see how they’re supposed to do it.
Now James Wolcott is going to get all hot and bothered…
DON’T HATE ME BECAUSE I’M BEAUTIFUL, SCOTT!
Click asserts that the statue that symbolizes America’s commitment to the tired, poor, huddled masses of the world is about to be raped because of the President’s commitment to those selfsame masses-yearning-to-be-free.
Lordy, but Scotty Boyshorts is so unintentionally hilarious. Obama may mouth from time to time his commitment to The People (we all know what Barry’s words are worth), but “yearning to be free”? His signing of the most anti-Liberty bill ever shat out solely by one party, Social Democrats, easily belies that.
I’m now imagining Wolcott going into a new hair dresser’s shop, and in response to an inquiry as to the style he prefers, asking a twenty something chippy whether she knows who Alastair Sim was . . .
Gotta love calls for decorum like that.
They have been showing Panda pron to Pandas so they can see how they’re supposed to do it.
How did they get the Pandas to make the pron?
Someone here once described Wolcott as a visual onomatopoeia. I’ll forever think of that and laugh when he waddles into our consciousness.
The ones what have stuff aren’t entitled to protections, Darleen. Unless they are leftists. In which case, we’ll talk.
A few of the Pandas apparently know what they’re doing, I guess, and don’t mind being filmed. Perhaps they use people dressed as Pandas instead. Panda pron doesn’t interest me enough to find out.
How did they get the Pandas to make the pron?
I feel like I have to link this. Click “expand” for panda pron.
A better answer would have been, “They get the Pandas drunk first.”
SEK seems to forget that the Lazurus poem is a rebuke of his idealized Europe. Also, that it welcomes immigrants coming to the United States by legal means through a port of entry for that purpose. The “immigrants” he is thinking of are already here, have welcomed themselves, and couldn’t read nor understand the very poem he quotes.
Maureen Dowd promotes Frum as the “conservative” who said the teabaggers and Rush brought on their own waterloo.
Hey Maureen, how’s being in that bitter 11%?
I can’t resist it…
Classic “Two Ronnies” gag:
If you mated a panda with a harmonium, would the result be pandamonium?
Hey, I’m a bitter 11-percenter, too. And if I had Maureen’s gig, I’d prolly be just as obnoxious.
ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE!
JeffG
As I posted earlier, the pro-ObamaCare True Believers are wandering around declaring the coming looting of their neighbors as “Christmas” while sneering that anyone that opposes them “have never cared about the less fortunate”. They are shrill and because I very crudely got in their face with an apt metaphor about “I Won”s consistent stance that upon election he forever knows best for everyone else, fuck you if you changed your mind AND THEY KNOW IT. The more Scotty, Jimmy, et al, stand shrieking on a kitchen chair about the HORROR of it all, the more I know they DO realize that Barry crossed an essential line. Either they agree with Barry or just don’t want to admit what he has done, but the die has been cast.
Those supporting the triumvirate of Barry, Harry and Nan do not support basic American principles. It is nice to actually see who they are.
A Walcott sounds like something Queequeg might have harpooned to the delight of Captain and crew.
Maureen Dowd will tell you who the proper conservatives are. And that doesn’t include anyone who hoped Obama would fail, that’s for sure.
READER POLL!
Query – anyone ever get an accurate count of the propeller scars on Walcott’s back?
Oh I don’t believe that Click can be shamed
Oh yes I can… I’m a babyboomer and I feel a whole lot of shame over too many of my generation that have never grown up and have had the guiding hand in getting America to this place.
Something just occured to me… they are all wrought over my metaphor cartoon of the President as rapist (who believes one yes is always yes, he’s entitled)
but not one peep over this? I guess for Social Democrats perceived racism trumps perceived sexism every time.
he forever knows best for everyone else
He doesn’t what’s best for everyone else. He cares what’s best for HIM and his kind.
Which is an enervated, emasculated populace that they can control at their whim.
He doesn’t care what’s best for everyone else
FTFM.
“I suspect nishi could beat up Scott without much difficulty.”
Aquaman could do it.
Dishonesty aside, for someone in the lit field this SEK character seems to have awfully poor reading and writing skills.
I’ve heard better sophistry from a toddler arguing that it isn’t time to go to bed.
Why is it that when the twatwaffle leftists see a picture or depiction of Teh One, all they see is a black man?
Why is it that when the twatwaffle leftists see a picture or depiction of Teh One, all they see is a black man?
Well what else has he done?
Besides dismantle the US Health care industry.
Comment by Alec Leamas on 3/24 @ 9:42 pm #
A Walcott sounds like something Queequeg might have harpooned to the delight of Captain and crew.
Naah. I was going to suggest Walcott just got cleared for killing his trainer at Seaworld, but he lacks the gravatas of Free Willy.
S’up feets. I wished you a happy birthday on facebook, but your presence there seems to be characterized by your lack of presence there.
bh – I’m amused that SEK decided to upbraid the author of the comment to which you link within minutes of your having posted your comment. If Jeff is so beneath SEK, then why waste the photons on the polemics? Seriously, SEK and his coterie are not worth any further consideration. This goes for the sophists whose parasitism have won them ownership of the academy. They denegrate the philosophical framework that forms the basis for even the potential of rational discourse. They’ve attempted to replace this framework with epistemic sawdust, rendering any engagement with them akin to the Monty Python argument sketch.
There is reason to find top-down hierarchies troubling. But they are the best framework for model-making that we have available to us presently. They won’t be replaced by their antithesis; they can only be destroyed by it, along with everything else we’ve created over the last 300+ years.
Scott Eric Robespierre, and his facile ilk would have a worldwide recapitulation of the French Revolution. That is the greatest violence that can be proffered: civilicide. All the while, it’s dressed in some kind of preening, supercilious nobelisse oblige. That’s just the facade. SEK lusts for power. He lacks the testicular fortitude to become an Obama, Chavez, or like. But he’ll happily play the role of haughty apparatchik.
I practically puke at the peremptory putresence that pervades his prose.
Comment by dicentra on 3/24 @ 9:40 pm #
Hey, I’m a bitter 11-percenter, too.
dicentra, you’re no Maureen Dowd. And you are not bitter, you are funny and smart.
Excuse me, Walcolt lacks the gravitas of Free Willy. He is not even capable of the low cunning of the Walrus in Alice and Wonderland (although he can eat more oysters than any man ever seen).
(although he can eat more oysters than any man ever seen)
I thought Wolcott preferred snails to oysters.
I just received the following email. It comes from a former writing professor of mine, the novelist Brian Kiteley:
Here’s the context of that mention on my “about” page: “Some of the writers Jeff studied under are Rikki Ducornet, Beth Nugent, Brian Kiteley, and Brian Evenson.
My reply was terse:
This is, in effect, a repudiation of everything I’ve done here. And yes, it hurt me very much.
I checked over my recent entries, and I saw a discussion on the expansion of the commerce clause by Scalia; a discussion of “process” and how it dovetails with the content of thought; a bit on language; a repudiation of the idea of cultural evolution as a move toward some progressive singularity; a discussion of the potential longterm political ramifications — particularly, the growth of a client class — that could arise in the wake of a law that nationalizes healthcare; a short fiction; a Leif Garrett post; and a couple of Corey Haim dispatches from the after life.
No doubt people like SEK will see such a note as befitting a person so foul as me. They will rejoice that others in academia see me as they do. Me, I see the email as a rebuke to everything I try to stand for — especially, that last ditch effort to engage in debate as one of a number of would-be public intellectuals.
Instead, what I write is evidently a cause for “alarm”; it represents some sort of worrisome disease of the mind and the soul that good righteous academic folk must necessarily distance themselves from — to the point that even someone who praises me for my intellect fears the taint of my name and words.
Presumably, academics like Mr Kiteley will continue to associate themselves with intellectualism. “Pragmatic” conservatives will continue to push GOP talking points, and secure their places as influential voices on the right. For my part, I am a pariah on both sides of the divide.
And my biggest failing seems to be that I take the debates seriously.
Quite a legacy I’ve carved out for myself, eh?
Bully for Jeff.
Jeff, the only thing which I suggest you curtail is your disgust with your lot. You started this fight. Don’t stop and don’t complain about the rough terrain. Either that or quit permanently. In my gut, I feel strongly that you don’t want to quit. Do not give in to the self-recrimination. You have a vision, so realize it. Write a book, or at least get the anthology of PW content out there.
I’m not saying this because I want anything from you. If you want to quit, quit. My motivation in saying this is to be the best friend to you that I can be. I’m filled with failings, and I pretend to no high perch from which to issue remonstrance. I’m merely saying what anyone who loves your writing knows: that you should take heart and do that which you were meant to do. To whom much is given, much is required.
Evidently, what I was “meant” to do is shut up. And I don’t remember starting a fight. I remember entering a conversation.
But thanks for the tough love.
Well, not personally… But I’m sure he could convince a passing flounder to slap a bit a sense into the Dread Pirate Neckbeard.
’cause that Aquaman? He’s one persuasive fish-talking son of a bitch. Not like that Sub-Mariner asshole — he couldn’t talk a Great White into killing a slathered-in-chum Richard Dreyfuss.
It’s not tough love. I don’t know shit. I just feel in my heart that you’re valuable. I wouldn’t presume to tell you what to do. Those were words of encouragement. Or that’s how they were intended.
The “fight” thing was just poor poetry. I mean you have a vision. You have to fight to make a vision manifest.
That email is just depressing.
If Mr. Kitely reads these comment sections, I’d like him to know he doesn’t want to be associated with a place that has taught myself and others a great deal.
Time to have a drink and go to sleep. Later, Jeff. Keep the chin up.
Mr. Kitely is an unkind person
Maybe he’s unkind; I can’t say. But he certainly strikes me as a coward.
That sucks. I think it says a lot more about Mr. Kitely than it does about you, though.
That sucks. Take the observation for what it’s worth Jeff, but it seems like you always pay a price for openness like this. Just as it’s easy enough to imagine some scrotumless fuck like SEK having instigated this request by, say, sending a link to Darleen’s cartoon, its somewhat easy to predict that the usual cast of cretins will add this to the list of scabs they pick at in their hit and run comments.
Here is a typical conversation with Asher Yosef.
Me – How are you doing today, Asher?
Asher – ZOMFG you fucking anti-semite!
Me – WTF, Asher?! I just asked you how you are doing.
Asher – You racist anti-semites disgust me.
It is a shame about Mr Kitely. It would certainly be interesting to find out what he felt was so objectionable, and how that email came to be.
I suspect that Abe nailed it.
What Abe said above was what my gut reaction was.
Mal – good to see you. I will be over your way Tuesday and Wednesday.
Think of it this way, Jeff. Unlike them, you CAN stand alone.
If SEK did that, he truly is a prick.
JeffG
I don’t know Kitely but I’d say offhand he is a coward. You’re writing nothing different than what you’ve been writing for several years but suddenly, with Obama’s “win” and the doubling down by the fascist Left, anyone that poses a threat has to be brought to heel. Certainly, the cloistured academia is rotten and rife with corruption. So much of the positions of professors is nothing but a soft neck easily under the boot of political correctness, paranoid Leftist dogma and pograms of the undesirable.
When Federal Judges make horrible decisions that give the greenlight to the jackbooted thugs incharge of university promotions, then many of those in the hothouse environment are going to run scared and if it means feeding their friends to the crocodiles, well when was the last time you heard of a professor being a hero?
Someone may have threatened Kitely. I don’t buy for a moment that all the “death threats” and “hate” being reported with shocked breathlessness by the Social Democrats are real or come from “the teabaggers”. It is a distraction. I think it is an attempt to shut down the speech the Left doesn’t want upset their agenda. And if threatening Kitely to get at you to shut down, then a little “wouldn’t want anything to happen to your career do you?” is just SOP for those SOBs.
If he wasn’t threatened, then he has been absorbed by the Borg.
“WITH GREAT POWER COMES GREAT RESPONSIBILITY”
Uncle Ben, SPIDERMAN
And, btw, IF I am the cause of Kitely’s email, then let him write me and I’ll tell him what I intended not the fantasy ravings of SEK. and whatever you decide you’d like me to do with the cartoon is fine with me. This is your place and I will be always grateful for you’re letting me post here.
I don’t know what to say, Jeff, except that whatever that was it’s all the rage.
And yes, Darleen’s link is far more ominous. I’ve felt for decades that the end state of self-governance — which is fragile and to any tyrant, weak — will include prohibitions on speech and by effect, thought. The nature of the machine of the secular-progressive state is to tinker endlessly to perfect its own religion of state. This is a guarantee. Freedom will give to prosecution and tolerance to persecution. It starts with a letter and one day it ends with the sentencing. See Canada.
Or, SEK never knew that to begin with. But she’s called Lady Liberty and not Lady Charity for a reason.
I’d do the man a solid and dump that in the rolling quotes.
#69
Jaysus, perfesser. That was lame ass shit. I don’t think you could spot cool if it coclslapped ya.
Oh. Happy birthday feets.
As for those subtextual slave tropes that so horrify Kaufman, all’s I can say is it’s a good thing Darleen didn’t draw a tree outside the window, or else we’d be treated to Scott’s erudite observations about monkeys.
Or lynchings.
I suppose if I tried I could like nishi, but there’s never anything there for me to like. It’s a mass of unsupported assertions scrawled in the crayola blurge of chatspeak, echoing a Junior Triumph-of-the-Will Merit Badge essay.
It’s like trying to have a conversation with The Abolition of Man.
Jeff:
Keep writing. You are making the pharisees and scribes very uncomfortable, and that is a good thing. They are the ones who should be ashamed. They had a great inheritance and they up and squandered it in a frenzy of political correctness, attempted hipness, and mindless word games.
They know they defiled the temple, and the greatest defilers threaten those who are uncomfortable with what has happened, and they lash out at any who stand up and point out the mess the defilers made.
Why am I reminded of the barber shop scene from “High Plains Drifter”?
Just for nishi. An ice dong. No, really.
This is, in effect, a repudiation of everything I’ve done here. And yes, it hurt me very much.
Day-yum Jeff. That’s a real 2×4 to the back of the head. I’m sorry you have to go through it.
And yeah, I wouldn’t be surprised if someone didn’t deliberately denounce you to Kitely for the express purpose of delivering that blow. I don’t know Kitely, but it sounds like he feels compelled to denounce you now that it’s been brought to his attention that you’re “dangerous.”
It’s one thing if SEK disses you; it’s another when a mentor does it.
Please keep in mind that you can’t serve God without offending the devil. Unfortunately, the “devil” (progressivism) loves to turn your own friends against you in revenge.
Jeff, I don’t think Brian Kiteley’s remarks are a ‘repudiation’ of anything you’ve done here at pw; rather, his remarks are a repudiation of Brian Kiteley’s lily-livered politics and pithless backbone. If he feels challenged by SEK or Wolly or whoever else took the time to explore your ‘about’ page and contact him, then he is obviously a weak and spineless sort of person who should best stick only with the mechanics of ‘fiction’.
You learned the best he had to offer. Consider yourself as having passed him up, and wave once or twice as you look over your shoulder. Buh bye Brian, I never really knew ye.
It’s worse even than that, di. Brian used to ask me to speak with some potential enrollees to the program. I also agitated aggressively on his behalf for tenure when I felt that certain members of the DU faculty were conspiring against him.
I’m beginning to think that he received some sort of anti-Jeff press packet — dressed up in a “concern” email from someone who pretended to send it to him “out of professional courtesy,” and as a kind of “heads up” against my potential as a real-world “threat.”
And I’ve no doubt part of what was included in this oppo research file was the fact that “even a very well thought of DDA — who is a staunch conservative — finds the threat Mr Goldstein poses credible,” or something to that effect.
As I noted back when Frey was creating his public campaign against me — both through Google bomb attempts and the behind-the-scenes pleadings that have resulted in my being blackballed — the left would happily marshal Frey’s efforts against me.
Frey knows that, and he knew it as he was doing it.
When Jake Shannon tried the same maneuver, my response was to pull down my post on Frey in which I questioned his honor — not because I don’t, but because I realized that others might use it against him in situations where he had acted entirely honorable. I am content that that act alone speaks of my honor.
I haven’t spoken to Brian in several years. Which is why I don’t believe for a second that he’s been reading my site all these years and suddenly felt the tone or tenor had taken a turn toward the reactionary.
Instead, I believe there are progressive “academics” actively out there trying to destroy “conservatives” who they find either threatening or annoying.
Naturally, these are the very first people to denounce McCarthyite tactics. But yet, the problem they have with such tactics is only that they were used by McCarthy; when they deploy them, the tactics are value-neutral — or at worst, a necessary evil. But they are legitimate because those deploying them fancy themselves righteous and good, and the ends justify the means.
Frey, as I’ve said on many occasions, inadvertently has helped progressives with the structure of his thought. Here, he has helped them by providing them cover for character assassination.
If there is any justice in the world, one day these tactics will come around to bite all of them in the ass.
I haven’t spoken to Brian in several years. Which is why I don’t believe for a second that he’s been reading my site all these years and suddenly felt the tone or tenor had taken a turn toward the reactionary.
well, you have nothing to lose then to ask Brian point-blank who came to him and that you’re disappointed he didn’t run the accusations through you first to see if they were true or just a smear campaign.
Maybe getting him to go on record with the campaign can show how craven these people are.
Oh, but you see, Brian wouldn’t want to violate the professional courtesy that brought this to his attention in the first place. That just isn’t done.
Well then, maybe we send Big Al and Louie The Mole over for a little Office Hours visit. People have a way of opening up to Al and Louie when they ask questions.
What? Out of bounds? At this point, I’m not sure what’s out of bounds any more.
I’m beginning to think that he received some sort of anti-Jeff press packet …
And I’ve no doubt part of what was included in this oppo research file was the fact that “even a very well thought of DDA — who is a staunch conservative — finds the threat Mr Goldstein poses credible,” or something to that effect.
Ratfinks. Ratfinks all of them.
Squid is onto something, though. Look at the the damage Hannah and James did to ACORN with a hidden camera, some plane tickets, and a little play-acting. I’ve heard other calls for infiltration and videotaping.
Don’t know if undercover ops can help in this case, Jeff, but given that you’ve got decent acting chops, you know University lingo, and have a relatively flexible schedule, you could do some serious damage with a hidden camera.
IYKWIMAITYD
Jeff,
I rarely comment here at all (though I try to click at least one GoogleAd for every post I read), but I had to step up and say this: You have made a difference.
Before I started reading your site around 2005 or so, I was a lukewarm Democrat, mainly because I thought (and still think) Bush wasn’t a very good President domestically. It took your musings on meaning and narrative for me to realize that what I believed at heart had been papered over by progressively nuanced language until I couldn’t believe that I believed what I really believed because it was “icky.” (And yes, I became a Democrat while getting my English Lit degree. Even in Utah, it happens.)
There are plenty of honest, thoughtful people of good faith who disagree with you. But there are none that don’t respect you, by definition.
Keep propounding dangerous ideas. They’re the only ones worth having.
Thanks, Nathan.
[further response in its own post]
[…] Goldstein responds to SEK and Wolcott: Two things. First, and for the record, I never declared myself to be “way cooler than everyone else.” I declared myself way cooler than Nishi — which is like declaring myself more handsome than a cadaver, or more Jewish than a Kennedy. […]