John inspired me to check out the Reason website. I found some Big Hollywood grade stupidity:
Stages of Denial
Take pity on the left as it grapples with the tea party revolt
It’s a perfect example of wingnut writing: from the “we succeeded in pissing off the left” measure of success to a gratuitous discussion of Janeane Garofalo.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
This is good news for McCain!
NonyNony
I don’t really want to go read it, but does it include the other major points of High Wingnut – Michael Moore Is Fat, Al Gore Has A Big House, and George Soros is a Scary Jewish Dude With A Lot Of Money?
If it doesn’t include those three, I’m not sure I can call it a perfect example. But including both “we win if we piss off dirty hippies” and a swipe at Garofalo does put it high up in the charts. Bonus points if there’s a mention that Barry Sotero hasn’t yet shown us his birth certificate.
guster
Other reasons to take pity on the left?
Arlen Specter’s party switching, of course.
Howard Dean becoming chair of the DNC.
Nominating a cryptoduskymuslifascisocimunityorginizer.
The deaths of Ted Kennedy and Ruth Bader Ginsberg.
The countertops of the Frost family.
Their lack of imagination in insisting upon a mere _three_ branches of government.
All those ticking bombs.
Incertus
Grapple–is that like grape snapple? Because that makes a little more sense than what’s actually written there.
Comrade Mary, Would-Be Minion Of Bad Horse
Grappa. You need lots and lots of grappa before reason is tolerable.
DougJ
@Nony
No, but it works in Che Guevara, Paul Krugman, and Nancy Pelosi (in more or less one breath).
MattF
OK, I’m grappling. OK, done grappling, begun feeling a sense of mild irritation. OK, took ibuprofen, mild irritation is over. Is that it?
Lev
Voltaire: If God had not existed, it would be necessary for man to create Him.
Me: Grassroots opposition to Obama’s policies didn’t really exist, therefore Fox News had to create it.
(Yes, I realize that the tea parties were in the planning stages before Fox and Gingrich got involved, but without them it would have looked like the sorry-ass anti-Iraq rallies in the right-wing suburb I was raised in.)
Joshua Norton
You can add Mormon to that now, too.
Col. Klink
I had no idea I was in such denial?
I guess the classic Leftist counterstrike would be to throw 10 million metric tons of Cheetos into Boston harbor.
Nylund
Fixed.
Incertus
@NonyNony:
Is this the last verse of David Allen Coe’s “You Don’t Even Call Me By My Name; the Republican Party Remix?”
jon
Teabaggers: 700,000 in nearly 900 events
Immigration rallies: 500k in LA, 3-5 hundred thousand in Dallas, 300k in Chicago.
And they’re claiming this as a victory?
Zifnab
It’s like that stage in a break-up where the guy/girl that got dumped is just standing around saying, “[S]he’ll be back. Once [s]he realizes how good [s]he had it, [s]he’ll crawl right back saying ‘Oh I wish I hadn’t dumped you’. The one [s]he’s dating now is no good and once [s]he realizes it, everything will be just like it was before… assuming I even take him/her back.”
The GOP thinks it can run around calling America’s new significant other a douchebag/dirty whore, and America will come running back, apologizing for the terrible mistake its made.
It’s epic level denial. I’ll concede that.
Can’t wait till July 4th!
Delia
Wow. it must be a sign of my deep denial that I’d pretty much forgotten about the teabaggers and moved on to this month’s events.
Thankovsky
Seriously, Matt? Do you seriously want to make a claim like that, as a conservative?
Nylund
The only thing I am grappling with is the fact that about a half dozen or so of these teabagger types have gone on shooting rampages and killed a lot of innocent people.
That actually does scare me a little bit.
Old ladies with tea bags hanging from their hats? Not so much. Those people, and the wingnut blogs that write about them, provide a lot of comedy gold.
random asshole
I have to give Mr. Kibbe some credit. He wrote an unusually large amount of nothing, compared to the typical two paragraphs of nothing I’ve grown used to expecting.
Jay in Oregon
…because I closed my eyes and ears and went “LA LA LA LA LA” whenever coverage of the protests of the war in Iraq came up. Or were you referring specifically to “public outrage […] on behalf of free-market principles”?
Zifnab
@Col. Klink: Only if they’ve got a permit.
Seriously, these guys can’t even do civil disobedience right.
r€nato
‘hysterical laughter’ does not mean the same thing as ‘hysterical overreaction’.
blogenfreude
@NonyNony: I think it’s incomplete without a reference to Scott Beauchamp, Bilal Hussein, or Green Helmet Guy. Any one (or combination) will do.
Thankovsky
@Delia:
You only forgot about it because LIBERALS CONTROL THE MEDIA!!!1
cleek
the very last line in that piece is the most important.
Jay B.
It’s funny because this is exactly the opposite of Gandhi’s dictum. Like everything else, the right gets it perfectly wrong and learns the precisely wrong lessons about the left’s response to Teabagging.
When it comes to the teabaggers/Fox/GOP anger whores, first we fought them, then we ridiculed them, next we’ll ignore them.
Look, they’re the ones who went from James Baker to Joe the Plumber during the span of the Bush years. Just through the last disastrous term, the conservative movement dissolved from a group running all three branches of government during a time of war, to a disorganized mess wearing used teabags on their heads — what the fuck were we supposed to do?
We had already taken them seriously enough to organize and oust them, it seems only right that we enjoy ridiculing them for 1) ignoring the previous 8 years of economic insanity and only getting mad because there was a black president 2) taking their ‘grassroots’ cues from Fox and Dick Armey 3) getting the history of the Boston Tea Party wrong 4) thinking ACORN was going to infiltrate their movement and 5) TEABAGGING.
The lesson doesn’t get any deeper Matt.
robertdsc
I liked her before the tattoos. Now, not so much.
Joshua Norton
Someone’s going to have to remind me what that whole “tea” thing was about. I seem to have completely forgotten about it.
Time to do something more really important – like the watching the dancing cockatoo again.
Mojotron
Reason used to be somewhat decent, but right around the time of the Ron Paul Survival Report scandal and Weigel’s writeup there seemed to be a schism. The first camp consisting of those who realized that the RPSR stuff was damning and anything short of some real accountability for it meant his candidacy was non-viable, and the second camp were those who took his unbelievable “it wasn’t me and I didn’t know anything about it and they’ve been dealt with” at face value and wanted to sweep it under the rug. Camp #2 won out (i.e. those Moynahan columns that are all about pissing off “the left”) and it’s been shit since.
Even Joe seems to have *ahem* “canceled his subscription”
Michael
scene: a worn out casino in downtown Las Vegas, 5:48 AM.
There’s a forlorn looking room with blackjack tables, craps tables and a roulette, with a few pathetic, down on their luck, ill clad gamblers shuffling about.
The camera focuses on a solitary figure at a blackjack table – the table’s felt is frayed, the dealer smoking a generic cigarette and drinking a giant cocktail of cheap bourbon out of a “Big Gulp”.
The player has a RedStateStrikeForce patch on his camo jacket and a Reason magazine stuffed in his back pocket, and is staring down at a set of cards that totals 22.
The dealer looks down, shakes his head, takes another pull off his drink, and lays down a 9. The forlorn gambler looks down and says:
demimondian
I originally read the author’s name as “Matt Kibble” and thought of pet food.
Then I wondered “a pet what?” — oh, of course, obviously a pet *goat*.
Thankovsky
@robertdsc:
She’s an excellent example of that bizarre trend of fat funny comedians becoming substantially less-funny when they lose weight.
RememberNovember
Lots of dislocated shoulders patting themselves on the back for a job well done…and they accomplished what, exactly? The Original Boston Tea Party was about Big Gov’t ( The King) giving tax cuts to Big Industry (East India Co.) and shafting the local “entrepreneurs”- ie smugglers and grey-market dealers. That’ simplified, but my understanding of the issue afaik.
SpotWeld
How the heck were the “tea parties” revolts.
All those who were there and protested (leaving aside the disoranization on what they were protesting about), went back to doing whatever they were doing in the first place.
There were no work slow downs, no sit-ins, (as far as I know) no non-payment of taxes.
How the heck was that a revolt?!
Ash Can
@Nylund: When I first saw the headline, my mind read it like your “fixed” version, and I wondered what the fuss was about. Then I looked a little more carefully, and saw that the word was actually “left,” and wondered WTF this
KibbleKibbe guy was talking about.demimondian
@SpotWeld: They were revoltingly fake?
Bubblegum Tate
You forgot one: [blank] Is Straight Out of the Saul Alinsky Playbook!
Michael
Damn it to hell – I’m buried in moderation…..
Was it the gambling references?
Thankovsky
@RememberNovember:
Well, not only that – it was also a protest against the fact that they were being taxed without being represented in Parliament. The Red States can’t make the same complaint; they’re represented in Congress disproportionately.
AnotherBruce
The thing is, nobody is quite sure what it was about.
Something about raising the marginal tax rates on the wealthy by 3% as far as I can tell.
Evinfuilt
How the heck did they get that number. I knew at the end of day the official numbers were “over two hundred thousand” and using Fox News methodology of nearly 500 is thousands I could see them going up to half a million.
But I think what it is:
100k – people who protested that day
100k – people who “protested” at lunch
500k – viewers who purposefully tuned into the news in support of the protests
873 – Fox/Astroturf provided staff to help cover the event.
Persia
Man, those comments are a pile of fail. Did you know Rachel Maddow was a lesbian? That’s funny! No, really, it is.
Michael
And don’t forget – that 3% rise is only on amounts over $250,000.00.
Everybody else has to sacrifice. They, however, can’t – asking it of them Ruins America.
demimondian
@AnotherBruce: Well, actually, it was something about not changing the law to retain a tax cut. Something about how a democratic government couldn’t do nothing about giving privileges to the privileged.
Or something like that.
ComradeDread
Comrade Dread has grappled with your pathetic tea parties and found them wanting.
He has moved beyond them and is currently engaging in a Whiskey Rebellion with a bottle of Jameson.
Delia
Give it another month and the numbers will be up to about 2 million.
katsky
We produced way better numbers for anti-Iraq war rallies and no one gave a damn. This is the part where they realize that their press coverage was short-lived and snarky, everyone has already forgotten, and no one gives a damn. Polls talk; teabaggers walk.
Captain Haddock
Janeane Garofalo. Does she still have that show on AirAmerica? Is there still an AirAMerica?
The local affiliate here in Boston changed format about a year or two, or more, ago. The whole AirAmerica concept seems so dated to me — it reminds me of a hopeless time when the whole country seemed to be falling for Bush’s utter, and obvious, bullshit.
I can’t beleive, for a breif period of time Janeane Garofalo was making more sense than anyone in the “opposition” party.
Dissatisfied Customer
That piece should’ve been titled “Let Freedom Squeak!”.
Francis
Who are the readable righties remaining? I find the following meeting the minimum threshold of not absolutely insane:
OTB
Larison
Drezner (but he comments almost exclusively on foreign affairs)
Volokh (excluding Bernstein, Lindgren and Zywicki)
Any others?
Captain Haddock
@Francis:
The American Conservative is a consistently good read. I subscribed for a while, though got sick of bat-shit crazy mailing lists I ended up on. Its really shocking to find out how many Republican politicians and/or causes use either Rush or Coulter in their mailings.
Michael
OT – but this is awesome. Lord HawHaw is now demanding the final purge of Powell.
http://conservativexpress.blogspot.com/2009/05/limbaugh-powell-should-become-democrat.html
Wants him to become a Democrat.
Common Sense
@Francis:
Freakily enough, LGF belongs on that list.
cervantes
As far as I’m concerned, no discussion of Janeane can be gratuitous.
jcricket
And only if it’s regular income. People who earn all their money from stock still pay 15% on long-term gains.
Waaah! Obama is ruining the country!
grumpy realist
Some good articles over at Reason, very rarely. Most of the commentators come off as 17-year old Randians whose greatest idea of an insult is calling someone a “so$ialist”.
Could all the self-professed Libertarians please quit bitching about taxes and gov’t spending? Put your money where your mouth is and *move* to places with no gun control, no government, no regulations, and no taxes, mmkay? You’ll get what you want and the U.S. will get rid of a bunch of nitwits with no knowledge of economics, history, or law. (Welcome to Somalia, by the way. Great place for entrepreneurs, right?)
Libertarians: idiots who think that highways, bridges, law courts, and a non-Third-World economy are provided out of thin air by the Magical Thoughts Fairy.
Evinfuilt
@Michael:
I’d take Powell into our party, no matter his and our flaws. I hope he takes one more marching order from His Windyness and comes on over.
jcricket
I’ve come to think the fatal flaw in Libertarian thought is their ignorance of contract law. Basically there is no contract enforcement without the implicit (or explicit) threat of enforcement by the state (legislation, judges, case law, etc).
So on top of their idiocy regarding public goods, environmental protections, etc – they’re just full of crap on like 50 other levels.
Why anyone thinks that Libertarianism is a serious philosophy, while similarly ridiculous communism is a discredited ideology is beyond me.
Xanthippas
I think it’s time for John Cole to leave a comment about Reason being a “sad joke” again.
NonyNony
@grumpy realist:
Eh, I’m not so big on the “Love it or Leave It” approach myself. I hear it too often from wingnuts who tell me I should just move to Canada (or, if they’re being especially annoying, France) when I make an observation that the country doesn’t have to be doing things the way it currently does them.
Don’t get me wrong – I find big-L Libertarians annoying. Probably not just because I used to be one and have never found a bigger group of uncharitable “Utopian” weirdos with the mantra of “Can’t Somebody Else Do It” anywhere on the planet than at the local Libertarian Party meeting. But I’m just not comfortable with telling people to shut up and leave if they don’t like how the country is moving – that’s just not American.
cervantes
Put your money where your mouth is and move to places with no gun control, no government, no regulations, and no taxes, mmkay?
Somalia, the libertarian paradise.
someguy
So who’s dumber – libertarians, or conservative? Close call on this.
One side is racist, hates teh gheys and women and the government. The other side is only occasionally racist (but for principled reasons, you see), doesn’t mind teh gheys, prefers the women naked and stoned (pro porn and pot, gotta love that), and hates the government. Unfortunately, their marketplace gods (von Mises, Friedman) are the whole reason we’re in the economic septic tank we’re in right now.
So it’s a close call about who is dumber and closer in the race to hop on history’s ash heap, but I think it’s conservatives by at least a couple truncheon lengths.
ldconfig
The party of torture has no morals.
PaminBB
I liked this oxymoronic line that someone quoted above:
“grassroots organizing on behalf of free-market principles”
Organizing exactly what?
Louise van Hine
Once again, the GOP has confused something with losing.
The Grand Panjandrum
@Incertus:
Nothing but net, Brian!
Eclectablog
Uh, d00d? I think you’re mistaking “mockery” for “vitriol”. They aren’t the same. But you are right about something: there was a large volume of mockery. No question about that. We were laughing AT you, not WITH you, just so we’re clear.
RSA
My favorite part:
Oh, yeah, whole buncha economic geniuses showed up at the tea parties. Funnier yet, Kibbe continues with a kindergarten-level explanation (or rather a standard libertarian explanation) of what the government’s doing wrong.
Athenawise
They are so clueless, it is pathetic.
1. As I’ve said before, they don’t know what “teabagging” really means.
2. And, Kibbe closed with Viva La Revolución!
3. So, now they’re going to wear Che T-shirts and fight in the jungle?
asiangrrlMN
@Thankovsky: Not to pick on you, but I’m going to pick on you. When was Janeane Garofalo ever fat? Heavier than the anorexic women Hollywood parades around in front of our faces? Yes. Rounded? Yes. Chubby? Maybe. Fat? No.
I like Janeane and her tats. I think she’s hot no matter how ‘fat’ she is or isn’t.
As for the aforementioned article, I am limiting my wingnut consumption to shorter wingnut bites because I’m in serious danger of choking to death on the bile.
Joshua Norton
Seems to me if the Rethugs are going to stay with “the Democrats won, we’re all going to die” theme, that sets the bar pretty low for Obama. If anyone’s left in four years, it’s an automatic win for us!
Just sayin’….
kth
The first words of the piece, According to Pajamas Media, were really all you needed to judge whether the article was worth reading, or indeed, whether you ever need to take seriously anything that issues from the mouth or pen of this Matt Kibbe, however long he might live.
kay
It’s sort of amusing that the libertarians think gathering in taxpayer-funded public spaces is a great idea.
They can thank their liberal forebears for setting aside the ground they’re standing on.
Dr. Loveless
@jcricket:
That, and their ignorance of how the losers in their laissez-faire paradise behave when they become poor and desperate. You can see the template of their thinking in Atlas Shrugged where, once all the great capitalist powerhouses have “gone Galt,” the rest of us either turn on each other or go off to starve quietly in a corner somewhere.
In the real, non-Randian world, once the rich have acquired everything and the rest of us have nothing, the latter typically break out the torches and pitchforks and take everything back from the former, often quite bloodily. The concept of a regulated market economy with a decent social safety net evolved in large part to prevent that from happening.
DonkeyKong
King Arthur: [after Arthur’s cut off both of the Black Knight’s arms] Look, you stupid Bastard. You’ve got no arms left.
Black Knight: Yes I have.
King Arthur: *Look*!
Black Knight: It’s just a flesh wound.
Rheinhard
cleek @ 24 really nailed it, and no one noticed…
In the article, the author Matt Kibbe writes:
Now note the article attribution at the end:
Thlayli
Black Knight: “I AM INVINCIBLE!!! ”
King Arthur: “You’re looney.”
Chuck Butcher
I thought grapple was a very strong word for how easily I mocked them and even managed to piss off my own sister. I have fallen off a log more easily, but barely.
The grief and denial theme is pretty hilarious, WTF? Who does he think took it that seriously…
grumpy realist
Heh. I’ve always considered progressive taxation as insurance paid by the rich to not end up being hanged from lampposts…
And I wouldn’t be so insistent on the “put your money where your mouth is” (i.e., Somalia), except that Libertarians seem to be singularly clueless about the relation between the economy, jobs, infrastructure, and the government. Reason Magazine, before it went over the deep end, did have an article several years back pointing out that for all the hosannahs raised by libertarians about low taxes etc. a singularly small percentage of them ended up living in states that had low taxes as opposed to living in high-tax states that happened to have the jobs, and that maybe that this was pretty hypocritical if Low Taxes were as important a hill to die on as everyone said it was…
voldemortsgirl
Where were the tea parties when Bush passed the bailout plan? Until one wingnut answers the question honestly, I would disregard every other statement that they make.
asiangrrlMN
@Chuck Butcher: Dang, dude. You really DID piss off your sister. Why is it that when we on the left point out the stupidity of the people on the right, we get told that we are hate-mongering?
The family reunions must be fun.
cs
For the Ron Paul wing of the tea party / Republican Party, the only truly grassroots part of it, they were in heavy opposition to the Bush bailout. They were also as deeply opposed to the various crimes of the Bush administration, far more so than the mainstream Democratic politicos, so they get a pass.
There’s no excuses for the rest of that group.
As a side note, someday someone will have to catalogue the positions of various, normally obnoxious, right wing groups during the Bush Era. For groups such as the Birchers or the Eagle Forum, you’ll find them to the left of mainstream Democrats on the civil liberties problems Bush created. Always found that kinda interesting.
Joshua Norton
You know why there are no Republicans in the new Star Trek movie?
Because it’s set in the future.
NutellaonToast
Anyone wanna bother pointing out that denial is a stage of grief, and itself has no stages? I can has metaphor?
cs
As for libertarians (LP or otherwise), not sure why the outlook on them has to be purely black and white.
Sure they’re wrong on a lot of economic issues, but right on others. More importantly, I think their positions on civil liberties are dead on correct and they’re willing to take the right positions on and do so loudly. We could use a lot more people like that.
Shinobi
This is completely correct, our hysterical laughter was a clear reaction to a really big joke.
Martian Buddy
@jon: In the wingnut version of history, DFHs lost the Vietnam war for us by waving some signs around and spitting on troops. They expect to have the same success by brandishing teabags for the cameras.
Chuck Butcher
@asiangrrlMN:
She is actually a very nice person, you just love them and let it go at that. Or – stay away from them. She got about 7 yrs of that for not being willing to quit trying to turn me into a Christian, she finally knocked off with that.
asiangrrlMN
@Chuck Butcher: Then you are better at familial relationships than am I. I rely heavily on don’t ask, don’t tell.
Dennis-SGMM
Kibbe probably “grapples” with his dingleberries and boogers as well.
joe from Lowell
No doubt, this Kibble person spent September 2008 insisting that liberals were panicked about Sarah Palin.
Apparently, they continue to have the same misinterpretation of our loud guffaws.
You just keep telling yourself that, Mr. Kibble. Whatever gets you through the night.
Thankovsky
@asiangrrlMN:
LOL, I may have been a little overly-blunt there, so allow me to add a couple disclaimers:
1, I was fat for most of my life, from childhood until about halfway through my Masters program. I managed to lose a LOT of weight in the last couple years, but I’m very, very used to seeing myself as a fat person. So I can be a little overly-blunt on the issue. I don’t mean any harm by it, so I’m sorry if I offended you or anyone else by saying what I did. What can I say, I’m a dumbass guy. ;)
2, I thought Janeane Garofalo was hot before she lost weight, and after she lost weight. “Chubby” is not a negative for me. :p
And you were right, by the way – she was never “fat.” Just chubby.
LD50
Don’t forget the other category of 21st-century libertarian, namely petulant white males who agree with about 90%+ of the GOP agenda, and who reliably vote GOP (if they vote and if there’s not a libertarian candidate), but who think “libertarian” sounds like a way cooler and more badass title than “conservative”.
(as a misogynist Southern Baptist who thinks women shouldn’t have the vote, Vox Day is an extreme example of this.)
asiangrrlMN
@Thankovsky: Ah, got it. It’s a knee-jerk reaction on my part when I hear a woman get called fat because of all the negativity surrounding the word. Thanks for the clarification.
Captain USA
Can’t wait for American Freedom Day.
I hope there’s big puppets!