So I just finished the Douthat piece DougJ linked to earlier, and my only question is how did he write that whole column without using the terms Orthogonians and Franklins
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Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
Don’t expect peaches from an apple tree.
New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.
Imperialist aggressors must be defeated, or the whole world loses.
I’m starting to think Jesus may have made a mistake saving people with no questions asked.
Republican also-rans: four mules fighting over a turnip.
Polls are now a reliable indicator of what corporate Republicans want us to think.
Do we throw up our hands or do we roll up our sleeves? (hint, it’s door #2)
The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.
Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?
If a good thing happens for a bad reason, it’s still a good thing.
I really should read my own blog.
Let me file that under fuck it.
He seems like a smart guy, but JFC, what a dick!
They were going to turn on one another at some point. It was inevitable.
Republicans: The threats are dire, but my tickets are non-refundable!
Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.
This isn’t Democrats spending madly. This is government catching up.
The choice is between normal and crazy.
Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?
Republicans firmly believe having an abortion is a very personal, very private decision between a woman and J.D. Vance.
Let us savor the impending downfall of lawless scoundrels who richly deserve the trouble barreling their way.
I did not have this on my fuck 2024 bingo card.
“The defense has a certain level of trust in defendant that the government does not.”
Republicans in disarray!
Punchy
I keep reading that name as “Douche Hat”. My mind does it every time.
And oddly, it appears to be quite accurate.
Crashman06
I’ll admit it; I found Douche Hat’s blog on The Atlantic to be mildly interesting and sometimes thought provoking.
Since he’s migrated to the Times, though, he’s become an utter milquetoast.
kid bitzer
probably because he was born sometime after nixon had died, and he is utterly ignorant about actual history.
but that’s no obstacle to his re-inventing american class-resentment. that is a myth so deeply coded into the wing-nut genome that it is transmitted non-verbally.
douthat really may wind up being worse than kristol. which is saying a lot.
smiley
Karen Tumulty makes a good point.
maya
And here’s to you, Missus Aaagnu,
Our nation spurns it’s lowly IOU’s, oooo-o-o……
SGEW
Ditto Crashman, above. On his blog, Douthat would at least try and put some thought into his water carrying, shake it up a little.
This column is just quotidian hackery; garden variety bullshit available in any one horse town local rag. I expect better partisan propaganda from the NYT, to tell the truth.
Joshua James
John, maybe you can help me on this … are there any major voices in American conservatism that aren’t either completely corrupt or hypocritical or anti-science religious Luddites (pooh-poohing evolution and global warming) or just plain nuts (like Malkin)…
I don’t like to sound like I’m always bashing neo-cons and Republicans for being, well … like conservatives, because it feels like the early nineties when Newt and company turned “liberal” into a dirty word.
However … I’m at a loss to think of one major conservative voice who isn’t a complete and dishonest douchebag … it seems the reasonable ones have been forced out for … not being conservative enough.
Am I wrong?
I mean, they did just basically disown Christopher Buckley for complaining about the direction conservatism as gone, right?
Isn’t it right to bash a political group bound together on a flawed, dishonest corrupt philosophy (and one that, from what I can see, often traffics in racism) that had 8 years to work and failed completely, not only right but necessary?
I just can’t help feeling that we should be more thoughtful when talking about issues, but then again, watching television and reading the papers shows that neo-cons have considerable power in the media, they’re everywhere promoting their mis-informed message, so isn’t the only strategy to force them to fight for every hill and mountain?
I guess I’m asking, is it wrong that I’ve come to the conclusion as a registered independent that, the way it appears via it’s talk points and pundits, conservatism is corrupt on all levels?
jcricket
I like to say “doof-hat”, but yours is better.
Seriously, is Barack Obama not the embodiment of the American dream? Biracial guy with absent father, works hard, excels in HS enough to get into Harvard, excels enough there to get into Yale, goes on to win the Presidency.
C’mon? Why is that not what Americans should aspire to? Frankly, look at Bill Clinton’s story as well (in contrast to people like Bush and Gore, who come from wealth and political lineage).
Oh right, because as Doug pointed out, he’s a pointy-headed intellectual. Or maybe it’s because he’s black. Or just a Democrat. Democrats aren’t real Americans.
Someone should challenge Douthat on that note, imho.
Chinn Romney
A Wonkette reader beat me to it, but Palin has quit every job she’s ever had, from Petrol Ethics Panel to Mayor. There’s also the trail of discarded Colleges along the way. I’m surprised she’s still married, but if her Political Career is indeed over then she doesn’t need the First Dude prop anymore.
used to be disgusted
Honestly, I think Douthat’s column is about as good as you could make a conservative column on Palin and still have it be recognizably conservative.
Oh, yes, it underplays the basic fact: which is that she really *is* grossly and unbelievably unqualified, and that all the mockery was therefore deserved. But it does tacitly admit that she’s responsible for her own pickle, before going on to emphasize the other side of the coin.
About as good as you could expect — from someone who’s supposed to be a conservative.
The Moar You Know
@Joshua James: Larison is excellent, but is not “major”. Can’t really think of anyone else at the moment, but Larison is always worth reading, even if I don’t always agree with him.
used to be disgusted
Here — I’ll highlight the germ of truth in Douthat.
If GWB had gotten the kind of *immediately* skeptical, mocking examination that SP received, he would probably have folded under it. At any rate, it would have done enough damage that Gore could have won.
But GWB didn’t get asked probing questions, with a cocked eyebrow, because gender, class, and family name made him seem like a plausible candidate. SP had none of those advantages. Now, she was also genuinely less experienced and less well informed. But I still think gender and class did have something to do with it.
Not that she was treated unfairly. The media ought to demand policy competence from all candidates. The real scandal — which Douthat naturally misses — is that they didn’t in the case of GWB.
Bill E Pilgrim
You know, I have to wonder how the word douche got to be such a widespread choice for the nastiest word anyone can think to call someone.
I mean, “scumbag” okay, I understand, both what it implies and why that’s a sort of gross metaphor for someone. But after all, a “douchebag” is actually just the part that holds water and vinegar, or whatever, and never touches or gets contaminated with anything. It rinses things clean.
This occurs to me in particular of course because in the language I speak about half the time, “douche” just means “shower”. “I’m going to go take a douche” is something you might say every day.
In fact, you might well say “Ew, after reading that slimy Wingnut’s smug, disingenuous spinning attempting to turn someone like Palin into a victim of, rather than the source of, the most vile, hateful attacks of the campaign last year, I need to go take a douche!”
Only you can help save this word. Or at least always add the “bag” part. Otherwise, just know that for me it’s kind of like reading over and over things like “Man, Andy McCarthy is such a shower!“
Ash
@Joshua James:
Jon Huntsman was kinda non-crazy? Despite being Mormon and all. Of course he was smart and realized his brand of non-crazy wouldn’t fly at the national level with the Real Umurikans and hightailed it to China. I don’t know if that counts as being forced out?
matoko_chan
Shorter Douthat…you can’t fake the substrate forever.
Persia
@Crashman06: I’m glad it’s not just me. Though I confess I stopped reading him earlier, when he decided that there might possibly be some circumstances when torture would be A-OK.
Crashman06
@SGEW: Couldn’t agree with you more. Everything he’s done with the Times so far has been so boring!
I know a conservative columnist sucks when I can shrug off his writing, rather than get annoyed/mad at it.
flukebucket
Nixonland was great but Perlstein kicked ass with his Goldwater book also.
Maybe it is wishful thinking but I can’t help but see 2012 as 1964 all over again if the Republican party continues with the loons vs the mildly insane.
But what else do they have?
Joshua James
@Ash …
Anyone who wears magic underwear makes me a little wary.
Lucky underwear, I can understand … magic underwear? Little too far.
I’m open enough to accept that we can all indulge in a reasonable amount of irrational beliefs and still remain sane, functional humans (it’s part of it, in a sense) just like a glass of wine after dinner … but my cursory look into the Church of Latter Days Saints and its history that I researched some time back makes me think it’s a little too far off the reason trail (and Scientology, don’t get me started, hoo-boy).
Then again, I’m not a christian, so maybe that’s why it gives me the shudders.
Glenn Beck is a Mormon, too, I believe.
Max Peck
I was thinking the samething and I’ve only read the first three chapters of the book. Does it get better?
ThresherK
@Joshua James:
always bashing neo-cons and Republicans for being, well … like conservatives
“Conservative” used to be a word which had meaning, but as a liberal by anyone’s standard, I can tell you I’ve stopped IDing many a person as “conservative” years ago. “Neo-con”, right-winger and Republican will suffice.
Keep modifying it with words like “major” and suffixes like “ism”, and you are narrowing your field.
Especially regarding his boffo speech on the American way of jailing, I can think of no greater compliment to Jim Webb than to call him a conservative.
ChrisB
@used to be disgusted:
Yours is an interesting post. I remember Bush being asked to name the ruler in Pakistan (“General Something”) and in other countries and failing miserably. But you’re right, if memory serves. The media’s emphasis was all on Gore and the conventional thinking about Bush was that he didn’t know much but would have a team of experienced professionals to see him through. Nobody thought that about Sarah Palin.
I remember seeing another post over the weekend that George Bush’s lies and mistakes made it impossible for Palin’s schtick to work with enough of the American public. And as many others have observed, she most likely hurt McCain more than she helped. Given her total lack of qualifications, I suppose we should be thankful for small favors.
Still, I think she received much better treatment in the media than she deserved. While many bloggers and some MSM commentators pointed out the buffoonery and vindictiveness of her campaign, which was plain for all to see, much of the MSM was afraid to comment or felt obliged to defend her as much as criticize her.
Svensker
This is one of those things that drives me nuts about the whole Palin narrative — that she just needed to “bone up” on the issues. No. A person who has been interested in the issues all along needs to “bone up” to make sure he or she has all the most current information before heading out on the national stage. “Boning up” will not help an ignorant know-nothing whose “thought processes” are a collection of slogans and who has no answer to “what newspapers and magazines do you read?”
Gus
Depends on what you mean by better. It was beautifully researched and fascinating, but I though Perlstein could have used a better editor. Well worth the read, though.
Upper West
ChrisB and Used to be Disgusted are absolutely correct. The pass that George W. Bush got from the press in 2000 fucked this country. That “pop quiz” was immediately deemed so unfair. His first debate performance was horrible, but creeps like the Times Frank Bruni wouldn’t say so, and disgraces like Cokie Roberts only could mock Gore for daring to mention the name of a health care bill (Dingell-Norwood). Even his late revealed drunk-driving revelation was treated as a “dirty trick.”
And current liberal heroes like Frank Rich and Bob Herbert actually wrote shortly before the election that there was little or no difference between Bush and Gore.
Alan
@Chinn Romney:
From what little research I did, Palin seems to have served both three year terms as mayor (a part time job). And left her city council job (also part time) to serve as mayor. Yours and the Wonkette poster’s assertion seems to be incorrect.
Da Bomb
Is Palin’s situation what you would called reverse Affirmative action?
Cause, if that was anyone else(that probably wouldn’t give winks and starbursts through the teevee) who kept quitting and getting hired someplace else, after not completing their duties, there would teh shrills acomin’ from Pat “King of the bigots” Buchannon and Our Lady of Perputal Sorrow.
Hyprocrisy at it’s finest.
ChrisB
@used to be disgusted:
I’ll add that while some may have been deservedly skeptical of Palin from the get go, Palin wasn’t actually mocked until she started answering Charlie Gibson’s and Katie Couric’s questions. By then she richly deserved it.
So how much did her class and gender contribute to the negative aspects of Palin’s coverage? I’m tempted to say not much until she turned herself into a laughing stock. And then all aspects of her personality, from her winking to her “you betchas” to her fancy pageant walking, became fair game. I don’t remember the media voicing any skepticism over Palin because of her class or gender at the Republican convention.
Finally, let me add that I generally agree with your post, in particular your main point that the real scandal was the media’s failure to look closely at Bush.
demimondian
@Joshua James: Well, it’s good to see bigotry is still OK here.
Would you feel comfortable making fun of a Sikh’s “super-special pen-knife”? If not, then don’t make fun of a Mormon’s temple garment.
Mike P
@Max Peck:
One of the best political books you’ll ever read. I know some folks think Perlstein is too wedded to his belief that our current politics are still dominated by Nixon’s ghost, but you can’t help but feel that way once you’ve finished that book.
Joshua James
@ demimondian
“@Joshua James: Well, it’s good to see bigotry is still OK here.
Would you feel comfortable making fun of a Sikh’s “super-special pen-knife”? If not, then don’t make fun of a Mormon’s temple garment.”
I reserve the right to ridicule any and everything, especially billion dollar religious organizations … it’s not bigotry to question the silliness of a thing, be it a cross, a temple, a buddhist statue or a pair of undergarments.
That doesn’t make it bigotry.
Not. Hardly. Not even close. In fact, sometimes it’s just good sense.
I can respect a person’s right to believe what they want, but that doesn’t mean I have to respect the beliefs themselves.
You know that’s how this country was set up, right?
I’ll make fun of whatever I want and if you can’t handle it, too bad.
You know what is bigotry? Homophobia. You know what institution is rampantly anti-gay and homophobic?
Mormon church, among others, many others.
Please go lecture them before you lecture me.
Wile E. Quixote
@Joshua James
Dude, this is a positively Douchehattian argument. I mean you get your ass handed to you for making a stupidly bigoted remark and you know that you got your ass handed to you so you bring homophobia into the discussion to prove what a good person you are because the Mormons are all homophobic and shit and while some of your best friends are gay.
Have you ever thought of applying for work over at RedState or The Corner? With mad rhetorical skillz like the ones you just displayed you’d be right at home with Erick Erickson, Jonah Goldberg and K-Lo.
OK, off of Joshua’s pathetic wanking and back to the topic at hand, which is Douchehat’s argument. Sorry, but Sarah Palin is brutally stupid and incredibly plastic. The only reason why millions of people love her, as Douchehat claims, is because those millions of people are wingnuts who love anything that annoys liberals, regardless of how stupid it is (I wonder if we could spread a meme amongst the wingnuts that liberals hate it when wingnuts drink Liquid Drano and that drinking Liquid Drano is what real Murkins do.).
What really gets me about Douchehat’s ridiculous column is his comparison of Palin to Andrew Jackson and Harry Truman. Now I don’t know much about Jackson, but Truman spent years in the trenches, literally, he served in France during World War I and figuratively, working his way up through the ranks of the Democratic Party in Missouri and spent ten years in the US Senate before he was considered for the VP slot. No one ever looked at Harry S. Truman and saw starbursts (or if they did had the decency and decorum not to say anything about it). Truman did a lot of hard work and even then only got the VP slot because Henry Wallace was a Soviet tool and had to be dropped from the ticket in 1944. And even then Truman wasn’t a popular choice for the VP slot, despite the fact that he’d been in the Senate for over a decade. Palin got the job because John McCain popped a boner the first time he saw her. Palin is George W. Bush with tits and a pussy. Bush coasted to the presidency because of who his daddy was, Palin coasted along because a bunch of guys like Rich Lowry wanted to stick their dicks in her.
It’s interesting to note that in his whining about the sexism that Palin faced that Douchehat doesn’t bring up Lowry’s comments about her. It wasn’t the liberal media that was objectifying Sarah Palin, it was a prominent conservative writing for a prominent conservative journal that did so. Conservatives were the ones talking about how hot Sarah Palin was, and Palin certainly doesn’t have any difficulty in contributing to this as witness her recent spread for Runner’s World (which probably caused much cleaning of upholstery around the Lowry household).
Oh, and as to why Douchehat didn’t use the terms “Orthogonians” and “Franklins” in his column, it’s because Ross Douchehat is profoundly stupid, a retarded affirmative action hire who got his job not because of any qualifications he might ostensibly possess but because he was a conservative and the NYT needed “balance” on their editorial page after they sent the execrable Billy Kristol packing, and doesn’t have the intellectual ability or attention span needed to read a book like Nixonland.
Cris
So she’s like a super-duper version of George W. Bush. She just quits before she has to be bailed out of her failures by family connections.
Wile E. Quixote
So I read the Douchehat piece that John linked to and I really think that Douchehat needs to get the NYT to take a picture of him that plays down, rather than enhancing, his resemblance to Shaggy from Scooby-Doo. Either that or Ross needs to get a better haircut, lose some weight and get rid of that horrible 90’s hipster beard.
Wile E. Quixote
@Svensker
AMEN! This whole “bone up on the issues” meme reminds me of how I used to attempt to study my first few years of college. I spent my evenings working or playing D&D and didn’t spend enough time studying. Then midterms or finals would come along and all of a sudden I’d be trying to cram a bunch of information into my brain in a short amount of time. Needless to say my performance sucked and it wasn’t until I got serious, which meant getting the course syllabus and books before the class started (every prof I asked about getting a syllabus in advance was blown away by my request, very few students bother to do this) and started studying then and there that I started to do well in college.
I don’t understand the whole “bone up” meme. I mean compare and contrast this to a physical endeavor such as running a marathon or riding a century. If you’ve been a lazy couch potato all your life you’re not going to be able to get in shape to be able to complete the race or ride, much less be competitive, which is what we need a president to be, in just a few days or weeks. Saying that Sarah Palin would have had plenty of time to ease into the national spotlight and bone up on the issues is akin to saying that if he were drafted today by an NFL team as their second-string quarterback that Ross Douchehat would have plenty of time to get in shape and ease into the spotlight.
oh really
Douthat misses the obvious point that if Palin hadn’t shown herself to be a complete idiot most of the criticism (that he seems to imply was unjustified) would never have materialized.
If Palin had done an interview with Couric and answered all the questions thoughtfully, people would have concluded that she was an intelligent, talented, articulate person who didn’t need to attend Harvard to be an impressive figure.
Instead we got Sarah Palin — the idiot with boundless confidence and nothing to back it up.
Joshua James
@Wile E. Quixote
Uh … I get my ass handed to me HOW, exactly?
Didn’t look like it.
I pointed out that remarking (for example) that to my eye the pope wears a funny hat … great that he likes it, but it looks nuts to me.
Me thinking the idea of magic underwear is silly is not bigotry … what is sacred to one person can be silly to another, and vice-versa.
It’s not bigotry to point that out.
As I mentioned, no one is under no obligation to respect a person’s religious views, just their freedom to do so … how is that wanking?
Then I pointed out what real bigotry is (homophobia) as an example, real bigotry practiced by the organization being defended, and yet that’s pathetic wanking?
Please.
I think you should go to Red State, you seem to have the taste for it.
Downpuppy
Dout gets its – he just, as always, prefers the movie in his head to reality –
The role exists in movies, not in reality.
Wile E. Quixote
Oh Joshua, you’re just being an arrogant twat. I mean would you make fun of a Sikh’s Kirpan and call it his super-special pen-knife? Probably not, because you’re you’re chock full of caring ‘n shit and are so incredibly concerned about the homophobia of the Mormon church, so for you going after the Mormons and the Catholics is OK because well, they’re a bunch of white folks who believe in weird shit, and are homophobes. But going after a Sikh would be wrong, in your eyes, because it would be making fun of brown people, which to someone like you is verboten even if they believe in shit that’s equally as weird as the magical Mormon underpants or the Pope’s weird hat or that crazy thing the Jews and Muslims have about eating bacon, or the crazy Hindu sacred cow thing or any of the incredibly stupid shit that Southern Baptists, many of whom are black and every bit as homophobic as any member of the Mormon Council of Apostles, believe.
You’re pissed because you got called on being a bigot and a hypocrite and because you have nothing relevant to contribute to the discussion and because no one is saying “Gosh, that Joshua, he’s so wonderful and brave and perceptive for pointing out the homophobia of the Mormon church.”
Joshua James
Actually, no … I pointed out that my comment, while perhaps being obnoxious, doesn’t qualify as bigotry … and I used that with a real example of bigotry.
Logic 101, basically.
Bigot? You’re going to need a larger burden of proof of your accusation beyond the fact that I made a snarky comment about magic underwear … hell, they go farther than that every night on FAMILY GUY.
And I’m not pissed.
Why would I get pissed at a couple of trolls? Life’s too short.
Your argument basically doesn’t hold water … I talked about what I consider to be a somewhat silly tradition, and you’ve somehow got that linked to hatred of brown people (or something, kinda hard with the run-on sentences and so on, the math there gets real fuzzy) which doesn’t make sense, seeing as that nothing of the kind was said … you’re doing the very douchy-arguments that you accused me of earlier.
And called me a twat, to boot … how very seventh grade of you, excellent work, fine, fine work.
For junior high.
As I keep saying, again and again, I respect a person’s freedom to believe what they want, but I am not required to respect the actual beliefs themselves … no one is.
That’s a far different thing but just hating someone because of how they were born, their skin color, their sex … The former is a deliberate choice, the latter a biological destiny.
People being all sorts of silly things (like Palin is a genius and Dubya was told by god to run for office) and not only is it our right to ridicule them, sometimes it’s even a necessity. Be it Palin or the Pope or some random pair of magic underwear.
Have a nice day, troll …