Rago: “No, no, no! You don’t dip me into the Beluga like I’m some barbecue-flavored Pringle, you insufferable…thing. Instead, you delicately smoothe the caviar across the white of my belly, then nibble me with gentle relish, allowing the burst of essence and oil to dance along the tongue and the curve of the palate.
“Or if it helps, just imagine yourself french kissing your cousin after plying her with a Vin Diesel movie and dinner at the Black Eyed Pea. Only please, don’t wash me down with a handful of Raisinettes and a boilermaker. Lest I simply die of embarrassment.”*
Padrone, you want I should feed him to the fishes?
In addition to a toast point, he could also be an old Gordon Lightfoot song.
Now the thing that I call livin’
Is just bein’ satisfied
With knowin’ I got no one left to blame.
Really, though, Jeff summarized all of this a long time ago with his tagline.
Rago’s having us on, right? Surely he’s in on the joke. I mean, nobody could write
and go on for another seven hundred words (and long words, at that) with a straight face.
Could they?
Why, that’s a might fine buggy whip you’ve got there, Jimmy. Yes, I’m sure the horses move along quite nicely when you apply it.
No, Jimmy. Nobody wants to be an imbecile. But sometimes it just happens. That’s when you need to buck up. And drive the horses.
Now hand over those car keys, mister.
No, Pablo, you goof.
And the Dems’ll never nominate Hillary.
Yep, tomorrow the journalist will tell us all about the lost art of letter writing.
Well, if any pretentious toast point ever deserved to get Cheezwhizzed . . .
I’ll bet it took him a while to think of that one.
And maybe he’s on to something: the Left is nothing but “ironic”. Since they disdain every traditional western value, it’s the only pose remaining to them.
Why waste the caviar?
ahem–
Irony’s what I look for first in the financial papers.
The office is getting grossed out because of all the Tuna Hoagie pieces I’ve spewed since reading this thing. Funny stuff!
If there were a Wiki entry for “Pretentious Style over Substance” Rago’s bloviations would be hermitically presented, parsed in dubious machinations $%#^&*@#$*$%^ ???
(broke my faux snobby word generator)
If pretentiousness and misplaced self-importance were waterhoses, this guy would drown.
I thought the article was pretty good, but as I pointed out in my submitted comment (not published), the problem is that if Henry James go lousy because he dictated his books, this article was lousy because no one bothered to read it aloud. I mean, I am all for elegant prose, but no one who speaks English talks like that.
This coming from the industry that gives Maureen Dowd a regular column.
I mean, “instaneity”—What the fuck is up with that?! And there are many other examples ….
You know, originality. As opposed to the “endless rehearsings of arguments put forward elsewhere.”
tw:again18. Seems like it, anyway.
I think the only thing I’ve ever read that was more pretentious than that was a movie review.
Of, like, Spiderman or something. I’m thinking this guy had his 20 year-old daughter write this.
Wherever could we, the imbecilic remora fish, possibly come up with our characterizations of the mainstream media as elitist ideologues?
Pardon me, while I go pick on some Rago shark scraps…..Mmmmm tasty!
Besieged by technosocial forces, Joseph Rago looks heavenward in defiance of the surrounding bloggy devastation, an anticoagulant for orthodoxies in a world that has allowed decay to pass for progress.
If the establishment media are the shark, how on earth did they manage to jump themself … itself? Themselves?
It/they be limber!
This Rago, he is what you infidels call a troll, right?
No, he is an “assistant editorial features editor”.
Think of it as a troll-in-training.
Rago must swim in the same pond as Gwyneth Paltrow. The fish are just so much, bigger and smarter, and like, totally more interesting.
Face it, Rago is just another MSM dinosaur, cursing the darkness while ignoring the candle. He’s an intellectual Luddite who’d rather attempt to damn and smash the machinery of modern blogdom than come to grips with the seismic changes in his world.
As Mr. T would say, “Ah pity da fool”.
As an unabashed yet only somewhat successful capitalist, I have to point out that Rago got paid to write his article in the WSJ.
He who laughs on the way to the bank laughs most richly.
So am I. Very few people write like that either. I mean, c’mon, this dude’s straining so hard for haughty locution, I’ll bet he pulled a groin.
I’ll have a lot to say about this in several weeks.
(How’s that for present irony, biznatches!)
I believe that it is one of the points of this post that the DM actually did pay him to write this dreck.
I mean, I could hire someone for my company to make buggy whips, or collect bellybutton lint, but that doesn’t make that job anymore worthwhile.
Let me know if that job does open up, though. Sounds kinda fun.
He did make me look up “vastation”, though. I’m guessing he has a well-worn thesaurus and named his cat Roget.
Yes, the shark. A living dinosaur with a tiny brain that chews everything in its path.
Interestingly enough, the relatively non-archaic definition of vastation, as noted below, is to purify by destroying evil elements. So which meaning did Rago intend to convey?
From: William Proctor Williams <wpw@uakron.edu>
Date: Wednesday, 15 Feb 2006 10:51:42 -0500
Subject: 17.0035 Vastation
Comment: Re: SHK 17.0035 Vastation
The Online OED at this institution of higher learning (University of
Akron) provides these three definitions and although the first two are
obsolete the third is current, I think, and OED’s last recorded use is 1892.
1. The action of laying waste, devastating, or destroying. Also freq.,
an instance of this. Obs. (very common 1610-60).
2. The fact or condition of being devastated or laid waste. Obs.
3.The action of purifying by the destruction of evil qualities or
elements. Also transf.
William Proctor Williams
OED’s last recorded use is 1892.
That says it all. What a buffoon.
When I was in high school I read a lot of Henry James, and other late Victorian dudes, and made long lists of words in order to increase my word power. Many of those words I’ve never seen since. My advice to Ragos is to not read “Wings of the Dove” before writing for public consumption in the 21st Century ……
“The technology of ink on paper is highly advanced, and has over centuries accumulated a major institutional culture that screens editorially for originality, expertise and seriousness.”
Am I to understand that technology can develop a culture?
And that said culture can take an action? What does ‘screens editorially’ even mean?
And just what the hell does the advancement of ink technology have to do with anything?
I’m guessing he has a well-worn thesaurus and named his cat Roget.
Ha! Good one Kelly. That, or a software add-on for MS-Word with a dial-in level of pretentiousness derived from his original input: Would you like level P-10 with that Mr. Rago?
That feller sure thinks mighty high of hisself. Hee yuk.
Sure, Mr. Ink Technology, I know I wouldn’t want to see what thousands of SME have to say in their fields when I could wait for a journalist to tell me. Guess I’ll go delete all my favorites in Explorer for Insurance Coverage Law, Milblogging, life in Australia, the Netherlands…
You got it all wrong, Major John.
It’s not that he can tell you about what their fields better than they can, it’s that as a professional journelist he can allow his perternatural “thruthiness” to bias is faster than rubes like ourselves can even witness it first hand.
He’s like a UV gathering truthiness light amplification device. He works at high wavelenghts than we do.
wow, maybe that last beer did hit me harder than expected.
I need a breathalyzer on this damn keyboard.
That was supposed to read:
It’s not just that he can tell you about what their fields know better than they can, it’s that as a professional journelist he can allow his perternatural “thruthiness†to bias it faster than rubes like ourselves can even witness it first hand.
He’s like a UV gathering truthiness light amplification device. He works at higher wavelenghts than we do.
That’s just not true! I want to be an idiot (it’s a step up). Methinks (last used in 1650) I should pen a piece for the WSJ decrying what the the printing press has done to the hoary and hallowed art of the quill.
Some people are born imeciles; some people work hard to become imbeciles; some have imbecility thrust upon them.