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You are here: Home / Politics / War on Terror / War on Terror aka GSAVE® / Mickey Kaus, Keyboard Commando

Reader Interactions

27Comments

  1. 1.

    norbizness

    If you had any inherent desire to live, you probably wouldn’t want to check out Bloggingheads.tv in the first place. Two smarmy wonks enter, unfortunately two smarmy wonks leave.

  2. 2.

    The Other Steve

    BloggingHeads is a waste of anyones time, and it propagates the notion that people like Kaus are important and worth wasting time listening to.

  3. 3.

    Cyrus

    norbizness Says:
    If you had any inherent desire to live, you probably wouldn’t want to check out Bloggingheads.tv in the first place. Two smarmy wonks enter, unfortunately two smarmy wonks leave

    Clearly, somebody missed the one with Garance Franke-Ruta and Anne A!thouse. I felt sorry for Franke-Ruta, while at the same time being a little annoyed by how passive she was, but there was one at most wonk in that Bloggingheads, and it was far from being as boring as “two enter, two unfortunately leave.”

  4. 4.

    Tsulagi

    No difference in the critical thinking of the 6,000-year creationist or the pro-torture tards. They both just know the truth. The only difference is that one group thinks that having others do torture somehow gives them a set of balls where there are none.

    And the more they advocate torture, the more their balls grow. Sort of like Pinocchio’s nose. They have faith.

  5. 5.

    Dulcie

    Clearly, somebody missed the one with Garance Franke-Ruta and Anne A!thouse.

    I saw that one. Ann Althouse is evil. And she’s obviously jealous of Franke-Ruta’s breasts.

  6. 6.

    JWeidner

    Two smarmy wonks enter, unfortunately two smarmy wonks leave

    Mad Mickey: Beyond Thunderdome?

    Maybe it should be Thunderdrone.

  7. 7.

    Jimmmmm

    “Two smarmy wonks enter, unfortunately two smarmy wonks leave.”

    Same as when Norbiz takes a shower, only with the protagonists’ number cut in half…

  8. 8.

    Andrew

    No difference in the critical thinking of the 6,000-year creationist or the pro-torture tards.

    creationist : pro-torture :: divinely guided evolution : enhanced interrogation techniques

    Sort of the lite version of each.

  9. 9.

    norbizness

    Beyond Showerdome?

    Unfortunately, that one infamous GFR/Althouse encounter only artificially extended the latter’s 15 minutes of fame; I mean, those in the know had an inkling she was fucking nuts before that.

  10. 10.

    Paul L.

    If you had any inherent desire to live, you probably wouldn’t want to check out Bloggingheads.tv in the first place.

    To see a Total jackass and prick, watch Eric Alterman on Bloggingheads.tv.

    As for Mickey and Sully’s thin skin.
    Unreliable Narrator:

    Andrew Sullivan hosts a British video report that he says shows

    U.S soldiers watching as their Iraqi Army colleagues – Shia – brutally beat Sunni civilians to near-death, as U.S. soldiers hoop and holler in support.

    The video shows Iraqi troops beating three men who’d been caught with a bag full of mortars in their car. I don’t defend the beatings, which at least one American tries fecklessly to stop, but calling people captured with mortars “civilians” is a bit of a distortion, no? Nor do they appear to be beaten “to near death”–that’s just a Sullivanian embellishment.** Does he even watch the videos he hosts?

    “Any Weapon to Hand”:

    Some readers have asked for a definition of that phrase when I’ve applied it to my excitable former boss. It means using any rhetorical trick, including trumped up outrage, to bash your opponent even if you are going to take a contradictory position when it helps bash whoever is your opponent a couple of months later. Example!

    March 9, 2007: Andrew Sullivan condemns my use of the word “wussy,” featuring a quote from a reader who argues

    “The misogyny behind it – as behind so much homophobia – is pretty clear.”

    May 9, 2007: Sullivan questions why gun owners might not want their names published.

    “Glenn Reynolds argues that the important thing is keeping people guessing about who has a gun or not. Fair enough. But I’m not that impressed by wusses who don’t want to be ostracized by liberal elites at their neighborhood barbecues.” [E.A.]

    (Thanks to alert reader R.W., who argues the two month lag “before assuming the opposite position” actually represents a slowing of Sullivan’s cycle of righteous self-contradiction.)

    Update–The Whole Wuss and Nothing But the Wuss: Sullivan responds by re-dragging out his charge that I have a “long record of homophobia” because I wrote a piece 24 years ago defending a famous/infamous sign at an L.A. bar called Barney’s Beanery–a piece I almost immediately rethought and regretted, and that Sullivan surely knows I publicly repudiated years ago, the issue having surfaced in a recent blog back-and-forth. Like I said, “any weapon to hand.” Also, intellectual dishonesty.** …

    P.S.: Did I mention that Sullivan promoted Charles Murray’s sensationalistic blacks-are-dumb book and caused the deaths of tens of thousands of innocents in Iraq! …

    P.P.S.: The whole point of the email Sullivan reprinted is that the word “wussy” itself is misogynistic and homophobic, not that it’s OK if it’s used as an epithet in the “context” of attacking someone Sullivan deems worthy of attacking (in this case, gun owners). …

    **–The part about how “Mickey loved that bar” Sullivan just made up. He also again quotes me using “wussy” without mentioning I was trying to characterize the p.o.v. of Ann Coulter and her conservative audience, not my own p.o.v.. (Here’s the dingalink–you decide.) I don’t think Edwards is “wussy on foreign policy.” He is a bit elfin in appearance. So sue me.

  11. 11.

    Keith

    Much like when FoxNews says “This you will not believe”, when I read a headline like this, I just ignore it now. It’s too easy to be outraged these days, and I don’t want to contribute to its popularity…call it “outrage fatigue” I guess.

  13. 13.

    sglover

    I don’t understand how Kaus could attend law school — Harvard, no less — and never grasp that one aim of due process is to establish who is guilty and who is not. He seems to think that there’s some magic process whereby one can tell, in advance, who rates the “accidental” torture, and who doesn’t.

    Or, then again, maybe he doesn’t really think that. Maybe he’s just being the same disingenuous sack of shit that he’s always been. Then the real question becomes, why bother “debating” such a profoundly unserious and empty shell?

  14. 14.

    Bruce Moomaw

    Okey-doke, Paul L.: you denying that Kaus made the cretinous-cum-evil comments he’s recorded as making on that new YouTube video?

  15. 15.

    Tom Hilton

    BloggingHeads is a waste of anyones time, and it propagates the notion that people like Kaus are important and worth wasting time listening to.

    I disagree. I thought Robert Wright’s eyerolls were totally worth the price of admission. Of course, I clicked off after maybe 30 seconds (when Kaus made the comment quoted by John), so it’s not like I invested a lot of time or anything.

  16. 16.

    Tom Hilton

    Oh, and as for Bloggingheads ‘propagat[ing] the notion that people like Kaus are important and worth wasting time listening to’, I’m afraid that train has already sailed out of the barn. I don’t think the people featured on Bloggingheads are, on average, any more odious than the guests on any given Sunday bobblehead show. It ain’t the blogoverse that made Ann Coulter or Bill O’Reilly or Sean Hannity (etc., etc.) celebrities; it’s cable news.

  17. 17.

    Wilfred

    I’m afraid that train has already sailed out of the barn.

    At last, the Hilton of mixed metaphors.

    Scumbags like Kaus, Reynolds and the RedState apparatchiks are part of the new torture chic crowd. I smell a reality show coming. How about a green card for any Arab who can stand up to what any American boy could?

  18. 18.

    HyperIon

    Total jackass.

    always has been and always will be, it seems.
    i do not understand why anyone on the left links to him, TPM, for instance. but then Josh Marshall also used to link to the Bullshit Moose…

    Kaus is a fucking republican. some say he’s a holdover from the New Left (which i somehow missed entirely) but so what? he gets these obsessions (brokeback mountain, HRC, immigration, the liberality index of Plano TX) and will not let up. plus his stream of consciousness blogging style obfuscates whatever dim points he struggles to make.

    what an elitist californicator jerk.

  20. 20.

    Barry

    sglover Says:

    “I don’t understand how Kaus could attend law school—Harvard, no less—and never grasp that one aim of due process is to establish who is guilty and who is not. He seems to think that there’s some magic process whereby one can tell, in advance, who rates the “accidental” torture, and who doesn’t.

    Or, then again, maybe he doesn’t really think that. Maybe he’s just being the same disingenuous sack of shit that he’s always been. Then the real question becomes, why bother “debating” such a profoundly unserious and empty shell?”

    I vote ‘B’ – he understands, and supports it. Quite deniably, of course (I forsee ‘I’m shocked! shocked! that innocent people were tortured!’).

    As for linking to him, I vote for cutting him off. After his Krugman crusade against truth alone, any liberal should have cut him.

    Kaus is sort of a bottom of the barrel example of the fact that one you’re in, you’re in forever.

  21. 21.

    Bruce Moomaw

    We’re dealing with someone who, a few years ago, told LA Weekly that he still agrees much more with the Democrats than the Republicans, but that he aims almost all of his written criticism against the Dems because “they respond to criticism and the Republicans don’t.” This can only be compared to the scene in “Through the Looking Glass” in which the White King tells Alice, “There’s nothing like eating hay when you’re faint!” When Alice questions this, the King snaps, “I didn’t say there was nothing better. I said there was nothing LIKE it.”

  22. 22.

    Bruce Moomaw

    Still, I must say that I never expected to see him giggling over how amusing torture is. I mean, that’s Tom Maguire’s turf.

  23. 23.

    The Other Andrew

    Translating conspeak: if you oppose torture, you have “thin skin.” Also, if you oppose Bush’s various foreign-policy adventures, you’re “clutching your pearls” or “getting the vapors,” implying the weak, obsolete, and feminine…because conservatives are so very modern and cutting-edge. Creationism, anyone?

  24. 24.

    grumpy realist

    Anyone who advocates torture as a mechanism for interrogation should undergo it himself so as to know what he is advocating.

  25. 25.

    canuckistani

    Also, if you oppose Bush’s various foreign-policy adventures, you’re “clutching your pearls”

    I always thought the people clutching their pearls were the conservatives confronted by the left’s on-line “incivility”.

  26. 26.

    John S.

    Okey-doke, Paul L.

    Don’t mind him, Bruce.

    Paul is our resident zombie colon. And though he may have learned to type, he still lacks the brain function to properly form coherent posts.

  27. 27.

    Gus

    Since I never had any respect for him I won’t watch the clip. Saved that 30 seconds.

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