Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

No one could have predicted…

I was promised a recession.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

Battle won, war still ongoing.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

… pundit janitors mopping up after the GOP

Hot air and ill-informed banter

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

It’s the corruption, stupid.

Let’s finish the job.

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

Tick tock motherfuckers!

You cannot shame the shameless.

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

This blog will pay for itself.

Good lord, these people are nuts.

This year has been the longest three days of putin’s life.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

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Reader Interactions

43Comments

  1. 1.

    The Grand Panjandrum

    My hope is that she will take a break and then when the blogging bug bites again she’ll return. Alas, the blogosphere is indeed losing one of its clearest thinkers and better writers.

  2. 2.

    ksmiami

    NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO – well I do think that she’ll be back when she realizes that yes, a large percentage of the country is still insane, or when Jeff Sessions makes some idiotic comment on the Tee Vee.

  3. 3.

    SGEW

    I am . . . I’m honestly crushed.

    hilzoy is the only one on the internet I trust entirely.

  4. 4.

    mai naem

    She’ll be back. There is no way somebody that good is going to hang it up forevah.
    Anybody watching Morning Ho with Lizzie Cheney? Lizzie needs as assist from Dan Senor dealing with Eugene Robinson. Lizzie is going the Sarah Palin route of the a la carte menu on why her daddy decided not to brief Congress. These people just obfuscate to the point where you want to scream.

  5. 5.

    BethanyAnne

    Hilzoy is who I want to be when I grow up. I hope she decides to still post sometimes.

  6. 6.

    Cat Lady

    @mai naem:

    Thanks for watching so I don’t have to. I have unfurrowed my brow and unclenched my fists since I gave up hoping that Mika would exhibit some evidence of having learned something from her father, and stopped watching.

    Hilzoy will be back. She’ll see that no one is making the point that needs to be made, and duty will call.

  7. 7.

    R-Jud

    Damn. Is there a “Bare-Faced Please-Don’t-Go-Away Bird”?

    Hilzoy cites a lessening of crazy invective as her reason for backing off the blogging.
    a) Not sure I agree with that;
    b) I kind of hope it gets a little crazy again, if only to nudge her back into writing.

  8. 8.

    Morbo

    Well… crap. I guess I’ll be reading a lot more of the ObWi comment sections now in order to keep getting her opinions.

  10. 10.

    kid bitzer

    your title is perfect, john (as always).
    it captures the way that hilzoy has always sounded like a member of a distinct, benign, hyper-intelligent race.

    dolphin, alien, angel, not clear. but certainly not just another human being.

    human beings don’t have that constant clarity, that dispassionate compassion, that ruthless commitment to evenhanded fairness, all warmed by a genuine concern for the world.

    i have no idea what’s really behind her keyboard, but i guess i’ve always thought it was some kind of angel.
    with occasional anecdotes about her waitressing in biker-bars to throw us off the scent.

    still, it could also be a dolphin, who didn’t want to get stuck blogging about dolphin-advocacy issues.

    anyhow, we were damned lucky to have her on the internets. hope she comes back some day.

  12. 12.

    Fleem

    Just damn damn damn damn. Nothing to look forward to at 2 AM anymore.

    And safe travels.

  13. 13.

    low-tech cyclist

    Hilzoy’s not only one of the best bloggers out here in the ether, but she’d also be one of my top two or three choices that I’d like to see on a major op-ed page. I think she’s got a great ‘voice,’ and would do well in a format like that.

    So I’m very sorry to see her hang up the blogging, and I hope that she resumes after a healthy break.

  14. 14.

    Napoleon

    I wish her well. I really enjoy her work.

    A question for the others here. Some where along the way I saw that her last name is Bok and she had said something, like her father was a law prof. or at Harvard, which made me wonder if her father is Derek Bok (whom I seem to recall was a law prof at and pres. of Harvard), who wrote one of my law school text books. Does anyone happen to know?

  17. 17.

    Elroy's Lunch

    @Napoleon

    I believe that is correct. She is one voice that I am going to really miss. Everytime I read some wingnut stupidity and thought my brain was going explode she always had something to say that felt like cooling waters flowing thru my skull. Always calmed me down.

    A real class act her.

  19. 19.

    Demo Woman

    Hopefully she will post again. It might not be on a daily basis but I expect to see her presence on the web.
    John don’t get any ideas. Lily and Tunch need us.

  20. 20.

    arguingwithsignposts

    Sad. I really think it’s important to emphasize that while Hilzoy is hanging up the keyboard, folks like Douthat, Will, Kristol, Krauthammer, and others keep their paychecks.

    Would that the msm paid some decent money for the thoughts of decent people, perhaps she wouldn’t have gone away.

  23. 23.

    Brian J

    @arguingwithsignpsosts:

    The thing is, unlike those guys, hilzoy has a real job. She is a professor at Hopkins and doesn’t need to rely on wingnut welfare.

  24. 24.

    Michael D.

    @Brian J: Yeah, I doubt Hilzoy, being a college professor herself, as well as the daughter of the former prez of Harvard and the granddaughter of Nobel Laureates is really hurting for $$.

    Gonna miss her though.

  25. 25.

    John Hamilton Farr

    Her ostensible reason for stopping — that “the madness has ended” — has me shaking my head. In what alternative universe is THAT the case?

    I don’t give a fart if she quits or not. I just think papering over the fact of useless Obama, the Great Wall Street Raid, unbounded corruption, the unwinding of the world economy, endless war, environmental ignorance, and the obvious rise of fascist nut-job hate speech by the allegedly legitimate opposition party is tra-la-la GOOFY.

    Quit if you must, but don’t insult my intelligence in the process.

  26. 26.

    Media Maimonides (formerly Browski)

    The Washington Monthly is my go to source for sane and unspun analysis. Hilzoy will be missed.

  29. 29.

    margarita

    Quit if you must, but don’t insult my intelligence in the process.

    Hilzoy said that the particular madness — as in literal, mass crazy — which initially forced her into blogging has ebbed. The stupid and venal and malicious will always be with us.

  30. 30.

    Brian J

    @Michael D:

    I only recently became familiar with her, but every time I read something by her, I wish that I thought and wrote like that. And if that doesn’t signal quality of mind, I don’t know what does.

    I know budgets are tight these days, but you’d think that an old media newspaper or even a newer media news organization would want someone like her to do a column once or twice a week. Yes, budgets are tight, but she’d probably command a smaller salary that someone who has been doing commentary for a long time. Plus, the increase in credibility would almost certainly be worth more than whatever they pay her.

  31. 31.

    ThatLeftTurnInABQ

    I don’t give a fart if she quits or not. I just think papering over the fact of useless Obama, the Great Wall Street Raid, unbounded corruption, the unwinding of the world economy, endless war, environmental ignorance, and the obvious rise of fascist nut-job hate speech by the allegedly legitimate opposition party is tra-la-la GOOFY.

    Hilzoy is right. There has never been a golden era of US politics when things were much better than they are now. The madness and stupidity and venality have always been with us. Go read Perlstein’s Gathering Storm for a good example of how freaking nuts it was back during an era (the late 1950s and early 1960s) that is now bathed in a golden glow of nostalgia.

    How it is today, this is as good as it gets. These are the “good old days” that you will tell your children and grandchildren about. And compared with the collective madness of 2002-2006, I’ll take it.

  32. 32.

    norbizness

    Seriously, if you were blogging until stupid people on some dipshit reactionary’s comment section (assuming they have a comment section) stop saying stupid things, well…

    … I think Free Republic pre-dates us all.

  35. 35.

    D-Chance.

    RIP, Hilzoy.

    Guess that thing where you were “co-featured” with Benen didn’t work out quite like you might have envisioned…

  36. 36.

    prospero

    Quitting because now everything is fixed and the madness is over and good times forever after. Also, previously a Wes Clark supporter. Yeah. That level of clear thinking will really be missed.

  38. 38.

    Batocchio

    Damn, what a loss. I’ve cited her work countless times. She really excelled at thoughtful analysis and was a master of the polite debunk. I hope she’ll be back eventually, but best wishes to her.

  39. 39.

    gil mann

    Quitting because now everything is fixed and the madness is over and good times forever after.

    Her point exactly.

  40. 40.

    asiangrrlMN

    I greatly admire and respect Hilzoy’s work. Her entries were thoughtful, measured, and well-researched. I wish she wouldn’t resign, but I can respect her desire to hang it up. Good luck, Hilzoy, and thank you for being one of the best bloggers in the blogosphere.

    P.S. I took her post to mean that the mass hysteria of ‘why do you hate America?’ is on the wane as the reason for resigning now–not that politics/politicians are any less crazy or messed up.

  42. 42.

    wonkie

    WaPo gave Sarah Palin space in their rag.

    Fucking stupid business model: insult the intelligence of your readers! Maybe there would be a newspaper worth subscribing to if one would give hilzoy a column.

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