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Polls are now a reliable indicator of what corporate Republicans want us to think.

“woke” is the new caravan.

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

The fundamental promise of conservatism all over the world is a return to an idealized past that never existed.

People are complicated. Love is not.

These days, even the boring Republicans are nuts.

Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.

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Reader Interactions

38Comments

  1. 1.

    jwb

    DougJ, you sound so surprised—that the villagers would prove utterly incapable of diverting their gaze from their navels.

  3. 3.

    licensed to kill time

    Jeez, makes you wonder why they went through the charade of a contest. WaPotemkin Post.

  4. 4.

    smiley

    @jwb: I’m with you. jwb. What did you expect Doug? Markos? Duncan? Jane? Josh, maybe, but, really? No DFHs allowed, obviously. John or you or Tim or Annie never had a chance. Ever.

  12. 12.

    MikeJ

    They wanted to hire Friedman’s cab driver but since they’re in DC they could never figure out how many zones they had to pass through to get to the point.

    Try the veal.

  13. 13.

    Mrs. Peel

    Hey look it’s a white guy! ‘Bout time the Post brought the neglected white dude perspective to its editorial pages.

    If only they could have found one over 70 it really would have gone against the grain.

  15. 15.

    JenJen

    I know the Politico’s comment section is a vast wasteland, but even I chuckled at this one:

    I’ve never heard of Ken Huffman, but knowing the WaPo’s far-left Socialist tilt and Obama–worshipping bent, you can bet that he’s just another far-lefty Obama-worshipper as the rest of WaPo’s ersatz so-called reporters and journalists. Conservatives need not apply at WaPo, nor any of the Main Stream Media’s news positions. Any application is DOA–dead on arrival. Good thing the American people still have Fox News, the only real ‘watchdog for the American people’, who hire and report news from BOTH sides of every issue.

    There simply cannot be people who agree with this, right? That’s got to be a spoof. C’mon. Quit pullin’ my leg, people.

  16. 16.

    Joshua Norton

    He looks like a graduate of the Alan Colmes School Of Cowering And Yelling ‘Not in the Face’

  17. 17.

    smiley

    OT. I didn’t watch football today because my team (Saints) didn’t play. As I was channel surfing, I saw the Monk marathon (no thanks, I can barely watch an hour, much less all day of reruns – though I plan to watch the 2-part finale back-to-back), a couple of hours of Diners, Drivers and Dives (where I parked) and the basketball game between the UCLA and Tennessee woman’s teams. There I discovered that the head coach at UCLA is seriously hot.

  18. 18.

    charles johnson

    I need to make a habit of finding some fresh blogs. I think I’ll go to technorati and pick a random ten of the top 100 and visit them every day for a week. (Excepting, of course, the blogs which qualify you under the DSM as having anencephaly, such as RedState, or The Corner.

  19. 19.

    smiley

    @smiley:

    Diners, Drivers and Dives

    I’m not sure but I believe that should read “Diners, Drive Ins, and Dives.” A while back Tristero at digby’s place weighed in about what a fan he was of that show. I was surprised (but I don’t know why – I don’t know a thing about the man other than that he writes modern day “serious music”).

  22. 22.

    Mike G

    As a refreshing change from the statements of the People’s Front of Judea, we bring you this bulletin from the Judean People’s Front.

  26. 26.

    burnspbesq

    I expect more of you than this.

    It is certainly possible that Huffman will turn out to be a waste of column inches and pixels. But that has not yet been established.

    And I am completely at a loss to understand what your point is about his connection to Ms. Rhee. Are you suggesting that he got consideration that he otherwise wouldn’t have gotten because of his connection to Rhee? Is there any evidence to support that?

    And what’s your beef with Rhee? Do you have a problem with someone shaking up, and trying to improve the performance of, a district that by any reasonable set of metrics has failed generations of students? If so, why?

  27. 27.

    maus

    Fucking duh.

    Punditry perpetuates its own, moreso the cheesy reality show knockoff “competitions”. They’re looking to sell a narrative, and they aren’t looking for new narratives.

    I expect more of you than this.

    It is certainly possible that Huffman will turn out to be a waste of column inches and pixels. But that has not yet been established.

    And I am completely at a loss to understand what your point is about his connection to Ms. Rhee. Are you suggesting that he got consideration that he otherwise wouldn’t have gotten because of his connection to Rhee?

    Yes.

    Is there any evidence to support that?

    Why should we make excuses every single time an opportunity to freshen up the media is squandered and actively killed? Why should we give these people so many opportunities to disappoint us?

    The contest was never about fresh new ideas or voices.

  30. 30.

    DougJ

    And what’s your beef with Rhee?

    Nothing but it’s a bit weird that the ex-husband of someone that the punditocracy salivates over wins the next Great Pundit Contest.

    Not alleging that the fix was in or anything, just pointing out what a total failure this was in terms of bringing in something new.

  31. 31.

    bailey

    There’s evidence that Rhee isn’t trying to shake up the schools? Or trying to improve their performance? What are you talking about?

    Also, in what universe is she the Post’s darling? Colbert King, Robert McCartney and Marc Fisher have all been critical of her. It’s almost as if none of you are from DC and have no idea what you’re talking about! How MSM-like of you.

  32. 32.

    Jay B.

    @burnspbesq:

    It is certainly possible that Huffman will turn out to be a waste of column inches and pixels. But that has not yet been established.

    Yes it has. Literally the easiest thing in the world is finding a blogger with an opinion. Some of them are even good writers! WHY ON EARTH DO YOU HAVE TO RUN A CONTEST?

    Do you have a problem with someone shaking up, and trying to improve the performance of, a district that by any reasonable set of metrics has failed generations of students? If so, why?

    The people who support Rhee take your exact approach to education “reform” — without knowing the first thing about it. Education reformers who want to “shake things up” are the easiest people for people who know exactly dick about education to latch onto — and that’s why the punditariats love them some Rhee! Read Somerby’s much more grounded look at the failing education system at dailyhowler.com and try and think in different terms.

  34. 34.

    media browski

    While I agree the Post made a crappy choice, I’m not understanding the hostility towards Rhee, but then I’ve never understood it when my fellow liberals get the vapors whenever someone proposes firing the teachers who can’t teach and paying the ones who can enough to retain them.

  35. 35.

    Will

    While I agree the Post made a crappy choice, I’m not understanding the hostility towards Rhee, but then I’ve never understood it when my fellow liberals get the vapors whenever someone proposes firing the teachers who can’t teach and paying the ones who can enough to retain them.

    Because, my happy little liberal, every time you lot promote someone whose little Powerpoint of life includes those bullet points, they end up instituting a system that rewards nice suburban teachers in nice suburban schools while penalizing inner-city teachers whose overcrowded classes are filled with students whose homelives don’t include getting picked up after school in their momses late-model Honda SUV. If you were paying attention to anything but the headlines on your evening paper, you’d have learned to pick up on the rhetoric of failed educational reform.

    Successful educational reformers don’t talk about unions and “failed” teachers. They talk about class size, fair tax redistribution and minimizing standardized testing. Even a good teacher becomes a failure if you add a third more students and force them to tailor their teaching toward a make-or-break, one-size-fits-all testing instrument.

  36. 36.

    tequila

    Doesn’t D.C. spend over $12,000 per pupil? Aren’t they among the top-five spenders per pupil in the nation?

    Also, I doubt D.C.’s educational problems commenced with the onset of educational testing.

  37. 37.

    redoubt

    Considering this whole exercise was an attempt to avoid Ben Domenech II: Plagiaristic Boogaloo, the only surprise is that anyone is surprised.

    If anyone doubts that the role of a newspaper, which was supposed to be to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable,” is now anything other to catapult the status quo, this ought to be enough to convince.

  38. 38.

    jibeaux

    I don’t have any personal knowledge of Michelle Rhee, but from what I’ve read I don’t have anything against her. The DC public schools are an unabashed failure, and an absurdly expensive one at that. And nothing against teachers’ unions in general (although having been a former teacher, I didn’t join them, I had my reasons), but the DC teachers’ union is notorious for protecting its own and being resistant to any and all change to a system that needs pretty dramatic change. I think all options should be on the table as far as DC schools go. And when Michelle Rhee proposes having greater flexibility in hiring and firing teachers so that she can get good, committed teachers, with the trade off being proposed salaries in the $100 to $150,000 range, well hell, that’s an idea worth trying out. If I were going back into teaching, I sure as hell would take a gamble on something like that. And I think the poor minority kids who have to go to those schools, and the poor minority parents who, honest to God, hock their belongings and their crappy cars to scrape up a few grand in tuition to Catholic schools so their kids might come home from school not knifed or shot, deserve someone willing to put those kids above teachers’ job security for once.

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