{"id":9546,"date":"2007-08-02T10:58:50","date_gmt":"2007-08-02T16:58:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/proteinwisdom.com\/?p=9546"},"modified":"2007-08-02T10:58:50","modified_gmt":"2007-08-02T16:58:50","slug":"john-cole-reasonable-conservative","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/proteinwisdom.com\/?p=9546","title":{"rendered":"John Cole: “reasonable conservative” [UPDATED: NOW WITH MORE “IMPENETRABLE GIBBERISH”]"},"content":{"rendered":"

On matters Beauchamp<\/a>:<\/p>\n

[Dean Barnett’s post<\/a>] consists of basically an excuse to link to this intrepid report<\/a> by Matt \u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00c5\u201cYes I appeared in Gay porn but that does not mean I am gay and even if I am for some reason the Right-wing gives me a pass anyway\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00c2\u009d Sanchez (obligatory Onion link), in which his investigation has turned up no one who has seen the disfigured woman (PROOF BEAUCHAMP IS A LIAR!).<\/p>\n

At any rate, since it has been only a week, I am curious why there is little conversation about Beauchamp. last week he was single-handedly destroying morale, fueling terrorist hate, and smearing the country. He was such a threat that every milblogger and every Bush blogger immediately set phasers on smear, and hysteria reached a fevered pitch in no time.<\/p>\n

But now, nothing.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Well, what remains to be said, John? If the “nutters” continue to harp on the significance of reporting fiction as truth, they are simply trying to distract us from the mess that is Iraq. If they move on to the next outrage, they are simply trying to distract us from the mess that is Iraq. If they write on the surge strategy and its successes, they are simply trying to distract us from the mess that is Iraq. If they write about Paris Hilton, or take on Barack Obama’s bluster about invading Pakistan, one wonders why they aren’t taking on the mess that is Iraq.<\/p>\n

At any rate, Beauchamp, we have forgotten you in just a few days, but thank you. You gave certain segments of the nutters a chance to really feel patriotic and really pitch in on the war on terror from their laptop in Santa Monica when they investigated you and your girlfriend. You gave certain others a testosterone rush they have not felt since High School football when you gave them an opportunity to opine about giving you a blanket party. And most of all, thank you for providing a week-long distraction as to how fucked up things really are in Iraq.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Did John mention that anything that the “nutters” write that isn’t<\/em> about the mess that is Iraq is a distraction from the mess that is Iraq?<\/p>\n

John has often told me he doesn’t pay much attention to the bilious twaddle coming out of his comments section. And yet, in this post he has bought into every cartoon of “the nutters” (of which he is not a member: after all, he is focused on the mess that is Iraq) that his commenters have been pitching for years: at home in the basement, playing macho keyboard warrior to escape their inveterate dorkiness and give voice to their petty hatreds — even as there’s this giant mess in Iraq<\/i>.<\/p>\n

What is so remarkable about this (self-parodying) rant — Cole’s bluster is barely contained, even as he pokes fun at the bluster of others; and Cole’s suggestion that the nutters are willing to believe a reluctant fag only when it suits their political purposes, even as it is he who brings up Matt Sanchez’s sexual past as a way to impeach his testimony (which isn’t even his<\/i> testimony<\/a>), shows him to be something of a hypocrite, if not a politically selective homophobe — is that Cole actually claims that “every milblogger and every Bush blogger immediately set phasers on smear.”<\/p>\n

Which is, of course, a ridiculous and unsourced smear itself, one that self-abnegates given that Cole is himself a milblogger — and that his idea of a “smear” seems to extend to questioning the specifics<\/a> of what Beauchamp wrote. <\/p>\n

Or maybe he’s just projecting, given that he is the only one, it seems, who is setting out to “smear” — be it Matt Sanchez, or those people who disbelieved, for very good reasons, the stories being pushed as subjective “truths” by TNR. Like, you know, Lt Colonel Crider or Public Affairs Officer Major Luke Luedeke.<\/p>\n

Criticism and editorial fact checking is now a “smear.” Concentrating on something other than what John Cole wishes one to concentrate on is now a “distraction.” “Investigating,” when done from a basement on a laptop (rather than by, say, Scott Beauchamp, or people who are duly credentialed and approved by the mainstream press), is akin to a high school hazing incident.<\/p>\n

But no worries. John’s commenters will bubble up from their own private sewers to mix their raw hatred with his — justifying it, applauding its candid truthiness<\/em>, celebrating John as one of the few conservatives who truly gets it<\/i> — and the circle will be squared.<\/p>\n

Which, that last wouldn’t normally count as some sort of coded homophobic reference, but with Cole doing the interpreting, you never can tell.<\/p>\n

Bottom line is, the only way one can counter some of Beauchamp’s claims is to offer competing testimony. Why is Cole so averse to this? Why is it a waste of time to correct the record if in fact the record needs correcting? Or should we all be as blase about the corruption of reporting and the conflation of fact with subjective tales that lay claim to “significance” as Cole appears to be?<\/p>\n

And isn’t it ironic that Cole is spending so much energy showing us just how unimportant all this really is? Because after all, what he should<\/i> be doing is spending more time posting on the mess that is Iraq.<\/p>\n

Go get ’em, Tiger! From a laptop set up on the handlebars of your recumbent bike, you shall slay the nutters with your swift and terrible rhetorical sword and make the world once again safe for “reasonable conservatives”!<\/p>\n

Provided you don’t cut off your own nose to spite your face first, that is.<\/p>\n

****
\nupdate<\/i><\/b>: Cole responds, calling my argument “silly,” but noting that it is better than the “impentrable gibberish”<\/a> that I wrote last week.<\/p>\n

Which would be the same “impenetrable gibberish” that the semiotician to whom I was responding deferred approvingly<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Seems he got it — as did a whole host of readers.<\/p>\n

Sadly, Cole, who teaches rhetoric, is reduced to pretending that what I wrote is “gibberish” because, I presume, he was too busy throwing darts at Photoshopped pictures of Michelle Malkin in a bikini to work through it.<\/p>\n

Listen, John. It’s okay to come out and say you don’t understand something. It’s not a reflection on you, I assure you — so there’s no reason to call it stupid and dismiss it like some petulant child.<\/p>\n

Call me. I’ll walk you through it. So that the next time you encounter such “gibberish” — you are, after all, part of a rhetoric department, are you not? — you won’t be so frightened by it.<\/p>\n

The big scary words won’t hurt you once you get to know them, John. But if it helps, I can do a version that uses Big Gay Matt Sanchez and Michelle Malkin and some ping pong balls, to make the arguments more concrete.<\/p>\n

****
\nupdate 2<\/i><\/b>: via Allah, Sanchez under seige.<\/a> Radio Left (home of the compassionate, who embrace Otherness and champion personal dignity) is running the following headline: “_Weekly Standard_ used alleged former male escort Matt Sanchez as source to attack credibility of a TNR ‘Baghdad Diarist'”<\/p>\n

At some point in the sexual revolution — or during the latter stages of the gay rights movment, I’m not sure which — where you prefer to jam your cock became grounds for impeachment of your testimony among “progressives” (and “reasonable conservatives” like John Cole). Evidently, sticking your cock in a male for money at some point in your life means that you are forever suspect when it comes to dialing a phone, or copying down a quote accurately.<\/p>\n

Probably because they get all, like, homo-ey<\/em> in the process.<\/p>\n

****
\nupdate 3<\/i><\/b>: John Cole just IMed me, trying to be chummy. I invited him to blow me.<\/p>\n

I assume that impeaches anything I ever write from here on out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On matters Beauchamp: [Dean Barnett’s post] consists of basically an excuse to link to this intrepid report by Matt \u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00c5\u201cYes I appeared in Gay porn but that does not mean I am gay and even if I am for some reason the Right-wing gives me a pass anyway\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00c2\u009d Sanchez (obligatory Onion link), in which his investigation has turned up no one who has seen the disfigured woman (PROOF BEAUCHAMP IS<\/p>\n

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