In the comments of yesterday’s post about the possible Swishboating of Charlie Crist, someone (I can’t find it now) pointed me to this piece by nice-guy, Sam’s Club Conservative Reihan Salam. The entire piece is about how it isn’t about whether or not Crist is gay; in other words, it’s an extended and obvious exercise in raising doubts about Crists’s sexual preference while pretending to focus on other issues.
I guess what strikes me about the article is what an asshole Salam is. I have the exact same reaction to Ross Douthat, with his holy wars, his cruel caricature of chunky Reese Witherspoon and so on. And these are the two who are constantly held up by Sullivan and the TNRers as the kind of smart, decent, virtuous conservatives we should all love and admire.
This all goes, of course, to something that John has touched on before.
It’s very strange to me that the entire conservative movement worships Ronald Reagan, whose greatest political asset was that he didn’t some across as an asshole, and yet there are almost no contemporary conservatives — in the media or in elected office — who make any effort to come across as something other than an asshole. I just don’t get it.
Linkmeister
Apropos of nihilistic behavior by Republicans, I’ve just started reading Max Blumenthal’s Republican Gomorrah, which attempts to track the party’s descent from one where moderates held sway to the one we’ve got now. It’s fascinating in a “gape at the car crash as you drive by at 10mph” kind of way.
Gringo Starr
Why does anyone pay attention to Andrew Fucking Sullivan to begin with? Who cares what he thinks about Douchehat and this jagoff?
licensed to kill time
Is Swishboating a new term I missed? FTW!
SteveinSC
I think the nastiness can be traced to the type of us/them of the Nixon southerners, exemplified by Lee Atwater. Applying his techniques of innunendo, smear and dirty tricks was just an extension of the type of race-baiting politics practiced here in the South. It was a cheap way to win elections. It worked, but if you practice it you can’t go back. You know, “paint a thousand pictures and no one calls you an artist, but suck one dick and, well, you’re a you-know-what forever.”
whetstone
Recall that Douthat came to fame by going to Harvard and then immediately turning around and shitting on the school that educated him and put him in the halls of power. And he got rewarded for doing so.
Would you stop being an asshole? Usually people will continue to do things they get handsomely paid for.
Kevin Phillips Bong
Pablo Picasso agrees.
bago
Dana Milbank, Asshole.
WereBear
Blumenthal’s Republican Gomorrah is a most fascinating journey, and highly recommended. If you’ve ever said “What the heck is wrong with them?” Mr. Blumenthal has an answer.
Reagan was a “cardiovascular accident” of genius. Instead of giving their candidates acting lessons, they started with the actor and gave him governing lessons.
The Fred Thompson hoopla shows both how well it worked for them; and how difficult it is to accomplish.
Ah, to unweave conservatism and assholery… I believe that ship has sailed off the edge of the earth.
Alan in SF
Terminator aside, not coming across as an asshole pretty much got Arnold elected.
freelancer
Reagan might not of come across as an asshole, but history arcing slowly to the left, I think the positive perception of him will slowly dwindle over the next century.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7INABbOnLI
“Hold it, something’s slapping my ass! OMG he’s fucking us!”
El Cid
TIME
Mark S.
I don’t know, Doug. The first two paragraphs are “Is he or isn’t he?” but the rest of it isn’t. I thought it was a pretty good piece overall.
Comrade Jake
That’s because deep down inside, a lot of these guys really admire or want to be Dick Cheney, the quintessential asshole.
DougJ
I don’t know, Doug. The first two paragraphs are “Is he or isn’t he?” but the rest of it isn’t. I thought it was a pretty good piece overall.
I’m sorry but two paragraphs (including the first sentence!) of “is he gay?” followed by “hey, I don’t care, I’m not a homophobe” is kind of a dick move for a fairly widely read conservative columnist. He wants to have it both ways — bringing it up, while pretending to be too high-minded for such things.
MattF
Yeah, asshole_sub_one at work keeps trying to lecture me on crackpot economics, asshole_sub_two offers lectures on his evil ex-wife, asshole_sub_three goes on about how Christians can’t be moderates. Et cetera.
Mark S.
I think what I found interesting in the article is that Florida may not be the best place to practice scorched earth teabagging. I don’t see any way the GOP can win the WH without winning Florida, so I’m interested in articles showing that they might be turning the state blue.
Demo Woman
Reagan did conquer Grenada. Please give him credit for that.
licensed to kill time
They think being assholey and belligerent is the same as being strong and principled. It’s a concept fail.
El Cid
Same Time article. Reagan the Greater also not being an asshole:
freelancer
@licensed to kill time:
Where could they have possible learned that?
smiley
I met a woman a couple of weeks ago whose son is Joe Wilson’s chief of staff. She was very proud and the other people in the group were highly impressed with her, her son, and Wilson. And they were all such nice people…
Turgidson
The conservative movement has made the mistake of thinking it was Reagan’s policies that made him popular. There are a number of problems here.
First is that they don’t remember what Reagan actually did – hence, this new purity test that Reagan himself would have miserably failed.
Second, one of the Gipper’s biggest strengths was his personal appeal, separate from policy, which leads to #3 – he was, in my view, fairly popular in spite of many of his policies, which, going back to #1, weren’t even as conservative in many instances as his worshippers would like to think. If they were, he probably would have been considerably less popular.
So they have deified a guy who never really existed, basically.
Cat Lady
Jeebus I love this blog. Swishboating FTW.
“Ronaldus Magnus” is just so full of win, also too.
Salam and Douthat are assholes, but they’re prissy assholes, which are the worst kind. If you’re going to be an asshole, just be a fucking asshole and own it.
DougJ
“Ronaldus Magnus” is just so full of win, also too.
Have to give the RNC credit for that one.
AhabTRuler
Not like you.
licensed to kill time
@freelancer:
Heh indeedy. I was quite taken with Ayn Rand when I was 14 and my dad wouldn’t let me do whatever the hell I wanted to do. It was a Teenage Objectivism Wasteland, oh yeah!
SpotWeld
They have glorified being an asshole.
The ability to do whatever you want, not care about the feelings of others and carry no responsibility for your actions is pretty much the zenith of the conservative/capitalist lifestyle. (See Donald Trump, Sheriff Joe Arpaio, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter).
inkadu
BTW – In 1665 a group of Italian merchants landed in Bangladesh, blown off course on their way to Japan. Shipwrecked and uninsured, they decided to stay in Bangladesh. In 1670, the King Shrahim, in a fit of pique at the Catholic Church, which had stopped buying incense from Bangladesh, insisted that all Italian settlers be given the name “Salami” based on the continued demands at local butchers for the meat which did not exist, and which as a pork product was forbidden by local custom. The Italians eventually became absorbed into the local population and the name “Salami” became regularized into ‘Salam.’
So, you see, Reihan has been hiding the Salami for some time now.
kid bitzer
yeah, as someone who lived through the entire reign of ronaldus, there was never a time when he did not strike me as an asshole.
he exuded smug anti-intellectualism. he taught the republicans that introspection is weakness, that doubt is cowardice, that reflection on whether america is living up to its own principles is treason.
Cat Lady
@DougJ:
His “throne name”. Heh. There’s a party game now that the pr0n name thing is so last year.
SpotWeld
Another way to look at it is this.
In the US we are all pretty much given the line that “hard honest work will provide a decent living and possibly great success”.
To the core of the GOP, that’s all well and good, but they’re the chosen people. So why should they have to take the path of the regular guy. By speaking their collective allegiance to the “real Americans” they just don’t see the need for all that hard work, that’s for the people who are not worthy of what America has to offer.
If you know the right people, that should be good enough to let you be an asshole. Everyone else, screw em
Leelee for Obama
Dear DougJ,
I am old enough to know that your title, while apropos to the subject, is not correct. I have called Ronaldus an asshole and worse, every single day since his speeches about Medicare in 1964-65, when I was a kid. Even when I was feeling sad for his family during his funeral, I repeated my opinion, cause his Alzheimer’s and his passing didn’t obviate his being an asshole and worse. I was not alone, I was simply in the minority.
Nellcote
When discussing the economy, congresscritters need to start saying things like “Unemployment hasn’t been this bad since Raygun!” and “Raygun raised taxes 3 times because of it”. Not as a diss, as a reality check.
Nylund
The real question is, do wingnuts turn the color of avocado when Ronold drives down their street in an El Dorado?
rrheard
What’s to get. Modern conservatives are grade-A prime cut superficial narcissistic sociopathic tribal jackasses who either got the shit kicked out of them on a regular basis, dissed by the cute girls, or humiliated by the eggheads in high school.
Their behavior is easily explained as 1 part projection, 1 part victimization, 1 part incredibly low/over-inflated self-esteem, 1 part “believer”–which equals 1 very large Teh Stupid Cocktail.
They are emotionally developmentally stalled at about the level of a high school sophomores. Think Beavis and Butthead but less funny and much more capricious and dangerous.
Leelee for Obama
@kid bitzer: BJ mind-meld at work once again!
Amanda in the South Bay
DougJ
Actually, back in my wingnuttery days I remember the phrase “Ronaldus Magnus” used to refer to the comissioning of the (then) new USS Ronald Reagan. Of course, this was back in the Glory Days of 2002-2003 or something, uttered by a military analyst who makes Stuart Koehl look like a fucking genius.
JK
Doug,
I’ve always found Reihan Salam to be an insufferable, smarmy douchebag.
Here Salam defends malignant media carcinogen Glenn Beck
“How Glenn Beck Saves Lives”
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-06-19/how-glenn-beck-saves-lives
Leelee for Obama
@Nellcote: And this would be so full of win, I would likely watch the station of the person who said it for quite some time!
Karen S.
This. I was 16 when Reagan became president and I remember thinking then what a jerk he was. That conservatives continue to revere him and use him as some sort of touchstone is baffling until you remember that underneath the unctuous charm he really was a nasty man.
freelancer
@licensed to kill time:
Sounds like you’re waiting for some enterprising soul to do a mashup between Baba O’Riley and Rush’s The Trees.
JK
@freelancer:
Not a mashup, but best use of Baba O’Riley and Won’t Get Fooled Again in a film soundtrack has to be Spike Lee’s greatly underrated Summer of Sam.
forked tongue
Jesus, what bago said. Dana Milbank really is an asshole:
And this is different how from, well, Ronaldus Magnus’s Morning-in- America, shining-city-on-a-hill rhetoric? And remember all the talk about Reagan encouraging his supporters to view him as a Messiah? Yeah, me neither.
J. Dunn
I’m struck by how much of the constant mewling and wailing on the part of conservatives about the Terrible Oppression of Political Correctness is probably related to this as well. The ressentiment at no longer being able to be an asshole to your perceived inferiors with impunity is strong with some of them, and has spilled out in all sorts of other nasty ways in our politics over the past two decades.
PC is ultimately about manners and respect: calling people what they wish to be called, treating everyone with equal basic dignity, etc. Like all trends in manners, it can certainly go overboard at times, but the oppression, such as it is, is social, not legal. It’s not about free speech, it’s about the social and political consequences of that speech. If you insist on being an raging asshole to everyone around you, people are going to punish you for it in all sorts of ways. Time was that many people(minorities, women, gays, etc) didn’t have the power to do that, and the sort of middle-aged white beta male who very much enjoyed taking advantage of that state of affairs misses that time very much indeed. And so now he goes on the radio and calls us the Democrat Party, because society has moved on and that’s about the best he can muster, the poor schlub.
freelancer
@JK:
Really? cause I was leaning more in this direction.
licensed to kill time
@freelancer:
Not a Rush fan, but The Who? Oh yes. OT but a rancid neighbor almost ruined Baba O’Riley for me when he would start playing it every morning (6am) at full volume wall shaking bass thumping glory. I never thought I’d cringe at those great opening notes, but….
Nylund
People who follow the GOP tend to be bed-wetter types, constantly scared that a terrorist in a jail cell somewhere in their state will kill them or such other ludicrous acts of paranoia and fear (FEMA concentration camps, etc.) and as such they are constantly searching for strong Daddy types (Cheney, Fred Thompson, presidents who dress up like cowboys and fighter pilots).
Jerks, like bullies, give the impression of being very tough and strong(even if they are truly quite vulnerable and weak), so it is no surprise that winguts LOVE jerks.
Its also the reason they love Palin. In their mind, she’s the political version of the fantasy / superhero babe in a bikini wielding a battle axe (or more literally, with a rifle).
They simply see no way that a possibly gay, kinda svelte guy like Crist could be their protector.
Do you think the right would idolize a Hollywood Actor named Marion Morrison? Well, if he changes his name to the more manly John Wayne, put a cowboy hat on him, and nickname him “The Duke” then not only will they idolize him, they’ll even elect the poor man’s version of him to be president of the United States. Its all about “appearing manly” and nothing else with these guys. No matter how bad Bush messed up, as long as he wore his cowboy boots and declared we’d get the bad guys “dead or alive” (or, apparently, not at all), they’d love him.
JK
@forked tongue:
Dana Milbank really puts the T in tool. The Washington Post has assembled the largest tool shed within the MSM.
Notorious P.A.T.
Not to mention that he finishes by calling Crist a “Chardonnay-sipping” guy who “dances the night away”.
Was Reagan an asshole? This is a guy who didn’t even recognize his own son.
JK
@freelancer:
JK
@freelancer:
JK
@freelancer:
WereBear
I never fell for Reagan’s schtick either. To me, his manner screamed “I’m acting!” no matter what he was trying to sell.
Yet my father worships at Reagan’s feet, totally oblivious that “underfoot” is where the whole Republican party wishes to put him.
JK
@freelancer:
See “Summer of Sam” and then get back to me.
BJ is experiencing technical fucking difficulties. Please standby.
rrheard
But Reagan supported and signed the Convention Against Torture. How could St. Ronnie’s followers possibly have twisted his wishes that no one be tortured because it’s dark ages barbarism into “torture ’em all and let God sort ’em out”?
When zombie St. Ronnie returns I think he’s going to be disappointed in his followers. Or maybe St. Ronnie like all conservatives was just a monumental hypocrite. I mean God knows the guy never met a South American death squad he wasn’t chomping at the bit to financially support. And I’m pretty sure some of them tortured their fair share of innocents–unless of course throwing nuns out of helicopters and shooting and raping every peasant you stumble across in the jungle is just spreading freedom and democracy through “proactive enhanced diplomacy”.
Mike G
there are almost no contemporary conservatives—in the media or in elected office—who make any effort to come across as something other than an asshole.
Sarah Palin would be the closest. I find her personality repugnant as well as stupid, but she does the regular-mom-image simulacrum and don’t-follow-politics, small-minded people, particularly women, seem to buy it.
The fact that she has risen so high despite blatant deficiencies in intellect, character and capabilities shows how much of Republicanism revolves around Reaganist empty-calorie feel-good imagery. They have to, when their underlying policies amount to looting the government and most of the population.
KG
@Turgidson:
Well, it worked for Jesus of Nazareth, why not for Reagan?
I am much more a fan of the Reagan that actually existed than the one that so many of the GOP think existed. Of course, I’m also not looking for another Reagan these days, mainly because what worked in the 80s probably isn’t going to work today.
Notorious P.A.T.
Adding: Reagan’s gift was an ability to soften his assholishness with a smile and a down-home story. Today’s Republicans either don’t feel any need to disguise their assholery or never learned how.
JK
@Mike G:
Sarah Palin is a malignant cancer within our body politic and John McCain should burn in hell for inflicting her on this country.
Fuck Nicole Wallace and Steve Schmidt for wanting to have it both ways. These assholes supported McCain’s selection of Palin and now can’t stop disputing everything Palin has wriiten in her stupid book.
DougJ
I am old enough to know that your title, while apropos to the subject, is not correct. I have called Ronaldus an asshole and worse, every single day since his speeches about Medicare in 1964-65, when I was a kid.
Sure, but his whole shtick in the 80s was “conservatism with a smiling face” blah blah blah.
mad the swine
Sure, if you were (1) on the left and (2) paying attention, Reagan came off as an asshole. But moderates and independents didn’t see it; for public consumption, he was all optimism and hope and big tent and Reagan Democrats and coming together for a brighter tomorrow and blah blah blah.
I think that’s where the current conservative movement has crippled itself (and thankfully so). It’s purely regressive; it has no policy goals beyond opposing liberal policy goals. Remember that Republican purity test that was making the rounds a little while ago? Seven out of those ten precepts include the words ‘by opposing’. In the modern Republican Party, your status as a leader of the party is determined by how much you hate liberals, and how loudly and angrily you denounce them (which is exactly why polls show that Rush Limbaugh is the closest thing the Republicans have to a party leader right now – no mere politician can be louder and angrier than a talk show host with an audience of millions); earning the hatred of liberals and moderates demonstrates one’s effectiveness as a conservative speaker (see: Palin, Sarah). A party that considers its greatest virtues to be hatred and self-righteousness will always come off as full of assholes to the moderate middle, since hateful and self-righteous people are, in fact, assholes.
flounder
Check out this WaPo chat with the guy. I had a bit of a spat with him, listed are my question/comments. I don’t think he likes me.
In response to him saying liars like Mark Levin aren’t lying on purpose:
On his distorting the etymology of ‘teabagger’:
On his claim that the Daily Show is an “ideological newsource” similar to Fox News:
The guy is a hardcore deceiver and they whole nice guy facade makes him a bigger asshole than someone like Limbaugh.
inkadu
@KG: Of course, I’m also not looking for another Reagan these days, mainly because what worked in the 80s probably isn’t going to work today.
That’s because what Reagan started (and accelerated under Clinton and completed under Bush) was a complete hollowing out of the federal government, inflation of military spending, and permanent war.
We can’t do it again, because it’s already done.
freelancer
@flounder:
Is there some “Back Atcha/I know you are but what am I?” xml script inside the WaPo chats? This shit is getting ridiculous.
Leelee for Obama
@DougJ: Yes, and being I was a movie nut, I knew he was acting and couldn’t understand what the hell people were thinking, not then, not now. I remember the 1980 Republican Convention-my parents always watched both, broken home, you see. So, as the orgasms started at the end of the acceptance speech, Mom and Pop both(and he was a Republican, kinda) shuddered at bit and said: “Jesus, where’s their Brown Shirts? Guess we should expect to be told we’re in the way, and should just head for the ovens.” I was stunned by that at the time, but they were serious. They knew how he felt about Medicare, and figured that’s gonna end before they even got it. And they both hated Bush 41 with a passion. They knew about Prescott and his Nazi enabling, and that pissed them off more than Ronaldus.
Liberty60
@El Cid:
Ok, but to be fair- the time RR said that was a time of furious political polarization; stack that somewhat gentle jibe against the white-hot fury that was directed at LBJ, The Establishment, Rockefeller, Nixon, and just about anyone else, and yes, Reagan WAS in fact the more reasoned voices.
If I were to select a quote that is an example of asshollishness, I would use his quote that “If it takes a bloodbath, then lets have it” or something to that effect.
But again, it was in response to calls for violent revolution.
If Malkin, Palin, Limbaugh, Erickson et al were to limit themselves to the Cheetah sort of mockery, the political discourse would be elevated tenfold.
DougJ
@flounder
Good work. I love how he brags about showing respect for those he disagrees with, and then goes writes a piece about how Crist is a gay, Chardonnay-sipping, Latin American dictator wanna be.
SteveinSC
Remember that this cardboard saint was also thoroughly senile for at least the last half his second term, which of course has been confirmed in time. Nancy and the Handlers continued to feed him copy and he continued to perform. The whole administration was a fraud. The iconic ad lib, “we start bombing in five minutes” type stuff before one of his speeches proves he didn’t know bullshit from truth in a goddamn word he spoke. His incessant invented anecdotes and his reminiscences of combat he never experienced etc., made this obvious to all.
flounder
I love his circular thinking: At first Mark Levin is a “sincere” guy that isn’t trying to jerk people around, but my willingness to call him out as a liar or shill makes me an insincere d-bag like Mark Levin or Michael Savage.
DougJ
At first Mark Levin is a “sincere” guy that isn’t trying to jerk people around, but my willingness to call him out as a liar or shill makes me an insincere d-bag like Mark Levin or Michael Savage.
Good point.
freelancer
@JK:
Was messing with you with the CSI thing. Fucking hate that show. As a penence, I’m currently gritting my teeth through an iTunes update, and an iTouch firmware update. Jebus this shit sucks. like Limp Bizkit sucks.
Mark S.
@flounder:
Shorter Reihan on the banking crisis: Because there were a lot of things that happened decades ago that caused the crisis, it is not disingenuous to blame Obama for it.
MNPundit
@flounder: Back atcha!
bago
@forked tongue: For clarification, the Asshole bit was reserved for the last line, where he presumes that anyone dissapointed in Obama viewed him as a messiah. As if the Magical Unity Pony moniker were completely sincere.
matoko_chan
Heres a thread from TAS (Reihan’s homies, the Bourgie Conservatives) on what bad manners Apostate of Conservatism Charles Johnson is displaying in critting his former comrades.
I’m struck by the similarities between Cole, Johnson, and myself……our break with conservatism occurred largely over science.
Johnson’s break began with the movie Exposed and the revelation that conservatism is wedded to creationism/IDT, mine was over Bush’s lies about stem cell technology in 2006, and I believe John Coles was over Schiavo.
This comment was superb.
ed
Why are you surprised? Sully’s an asshole. I’m an America-hating Fifth-Columnist according to that asshole.
Beauzeaux
A tip o’ the hat to DougJ for the Jonathan Richman reference.
charles johnson
“It’s very strange to me that the entire conservative movement worships Ronald Reagan, whose greatest political asset was that he didn’t some across as an asshole, and yet there are almost no contemporary conservatives—in the media or in elected office—who make any effort to come across as something other than an asshole. I just don’t get it.”
Mike Huckabee.
DougJ
Mike Huckabee.
Yeah, he’s the one politician I could think of.
Note that it took 79 comments to come up with an example. I think Bobo is a decent example too (I think he is an asshole, but he tries not to come across as one).
Jager
A much better Fantasy Land than Disney’s is the Reagan Museum…you can even see the rumpled uniform St Ronnie wore while protecting America in “Hellcats of the Navy”!
Terri
Allowing tens of thousands of Americans to die of AIDS, while refusing to fully fund life saving research, not to mention even speaking of the disease publicly, makes one an asshole in my book.
A colossal asshole.
kommrade reproductive vigor
Terri beat me to it.
It took Rock Hudson dropping dead (with an attendant GFY from Koop) to get him off his ass.
Although, calling Ron an asshole is an insult to a vital part of our digestive system. How about giant throbbing boil on a dog’s ass?
El Cruzado
Growing up abroad, the image of Ronald Reagan that we all got was rather more scary than the local consensus. Let’s just say that we were all pretty relieved to see him go before nuclear armageddon.
Having read and seen more about him throughout the years, I’ve found a few things to like about Ronald Reagan the man (he could learn and adapt at least until he got really out of it, and he was sincere in wanting nuclear arms reductions, often stepping over his cabinet’s hawks). But as for Ronal Reagan the Legend, it remains pretty scary to me, which is probably why some like it.
jayackroyd
Jonathan Richman?
Is the post’s title a Modern Lovers reference?
Midnight Marauder
@DougJ:
I think the difference between Bobo and Mike Huckabee is that, whereas Huckabee succeeds in that endeavor 7 times out of 10, Bobo fails 12 times out of 10.
Nellcote
@Liberty60:
My personal favorite has always been “If you’ve seen one redwood tree, you’ve seen them all”. Raygun was a such a sucky gov. that I actually registered gop just so I could vote against him in the prez. primaries.
Napoleon
Reagan was a first class ass hole and he had a long history of saying things just as outrageous. For example when Martin Luther King was killed he refused to go to the funeral and blamed his shooting on his own philosophy of nonviolent disobedience.
Its just he seemed more pleasant most of the time, but so does Bill Kristol.
Mike in NC
See “Nixonland” for abundant evidence.
Phoenix Woman
@El Cid:
A-yep. Reagan’s non-assholery is of a piece with his allegedly overwhelming popularity. He won in 1980 largely because disaffected Dems stayed home, the drawn-out primary battle between Teddy Kennedy and Jimmy Carter not having ended soon enough to allow enough time for rift-healing in the Democratic ranks. He won in 1984 because he was an incumbent and because his deficit spending brought the economy out of recession (the Dems essentially knew they were screwed no matter what, so they decided to run with Mondale and the first woman major-party VP nominee, Gerry Ferraro, and try to earn some liberal cred in a losing cause), but Iran-Contra (which the public took far more seriously than the press did) slashed his approval ratings almost to Bush-in-2008 levels.
Clinton was much more popular at the end of his two terms than Reagan was at the end of his. But that’s not something the press likes to mention, much less emphasize.
NutellaonToast
OMG. A Modern Lovers reference?
I take back anything bad I’ve ever said about this blog.
Anya
@JK: It bothers me to no end when Rachel and the rest of the left media give Nicole Wallace and the other assholes who ran the McCain campaign a pass. At least the Wasilla nut is upfront with her political lunacy. But these fucking assholes pretend to be in a moral high ground when they unleashed this cancer on us. They should burn in hell thousand times for what they did to this nation.
forked tongue
jayackroyd: Google the lyrics to “Pablo Picasso.”
Anya
@DougJ: Lincoln chafee, Jim Leach, William Weld, Linwood Holton
Wile E. Quixote
@phoenix woman
Please, enough with the liberal revisionist bullshit. Reagan kicked Carter’s ass in 1980 because Carter was an ineffective campaigner and president. In 1976 Jimmy Carter won the election over Jerry Ford with 2 percent of the vote. A two percent margin over a man who was massively unpopular for
a) being part of the Nixon administration
b) pardoning Richard Nixon
c) presiding over the worst economy (at the time) since the Great Depression
d) having little or no personality
In 1984 Reagan kicked the living shit out of Mondale because Mondale was a dull, useless old hack of a Democratic Party apparatchik who chose Geraldine Ferraro, a woman every bit as stupid and unqualified to be president as the Wasilla Wingnut as his vice president.
I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again, the reason that liberals hate Reagan so much isn’t because of his policies, it’s because of the way he kicked the living fucking shit out of every liberal politician who ever ran against him. He beat the shit out of Pat Brown in 1966, kicked Carter’s ass in 1980 and gave that useless old bastard Walter Mondale a beating even worse than the one that Lyndon Johnson handed Barry Goldwater. This is as unforgivable for liberals as is Obama’s ass-whuppin of John McCain is for conservatives, the same sense of entitlement and pissy outrage with their fellow Americans for daring to vote for that man and not for the candidate who really should have won the election.
Wile E. Quixote
@Terri
Oh please, what the fuck was Reagan supposed to do? Send the 82nd Airborne into San Francisco and have them shut down all of the bathhouses? Have weekly radio and television addresses where he discussed how barebacking was a bad idea and told junkies that they shouldn’t share needles. Yeah, god forbid that anyone at the time who was engaging in risky behavior, like having sex in bathhouses or shooting smack accept any responsibility for their behavior. Nope, it’s all Ronald Reagan’s fault because he didn’t star in a video with C.
Everett Koop where they showed how two men could have safe sex and then shot up after cleaning their works with bleach.
Wile E. Quixote
I fucking hate Salami and Douchehat, hate, hate, hate them. They are whiny, pissy little children of conservative privilege. What really galls me about these little fuckers is that neither one of them has ever served in the military. Both of them turned 30 this year, by the time I turned 30 I had been in the National Guard for 11 years. Are there any prominent conservatives under the age of 70 who have ever served their country? Bueller? Bueller? Whatever happened to the practice of handing out white feathers to cowards? Can we revive it and send some to Douchehat and Salami? They’re both eligible to serve, so why aren’t they in the military instead of having candy-assed jobs spewing bullshit at the National Review?
Ruckus
@Midnight Marauder:
I think the difference between Bobo and Mike Huckabee is that, whereas Huckabee succeeds in that endeavor 7 times out of 10, Bobo fails 12 times out of 10.
You’re correct and would probably agree that being an asshole 30% of the time still earns the tag. So we’re back to, name one current conservative pundit or politician who is not an asshole. Some one mentioned the ambassador to China, he may qualify.
Deschanel
Absolutely everything that Reihan Salam writes is meant to annoy the fuck out of people like me. In fact, it seems part of the mission of the Daily Beast, to piss off a DFH at least twice a day. Sometimes they “balance” it with a reasonable article, but Tina Brown knows in her amoral way, it only matters to get them talking. Buzz is everything. But Reihan Salam cannot write or convince anyone if his life depended- he’s just a terrible writer. What a strange angry little man he seems- he’s like the intern, or the sacrificial goat to write crap about the brilliance of Glenn Beck, so DB gets the pageviews. Meanwhile, he’s the one who gets the WTFs from his amateur, badly written hatchet jobs, devoid of logic. Maybe he really is just an asshole, though.
Nellcote
@Wile E. Quixote:
You can keep saying it but you’ll still be wrong.
Postlethwaite Windschitl
Seriously, ask yourself this: what would make a young person look at the modern Republican Party and think, “Gee, I want to be one of THEM!”? Homophobia, religious fundamentalism, and a deep contempt for the poor spring to mind. As well as a love for vicarious warfare.
Aredubya
charles johnson hits it on the head. Mike Huckabee scares the living crap out of me (as a liberal partisan), since he’s incredibly likeable. He’s also a terrible executive, but that’s to be expected from the GOP. If Huckabee ever manages to get some serious money going his way, the Dems really need to look out.
SpotWeld
Health Care is for Closers dammit
dSquib
One has to fill some quota I suppose. To be taken seriously, to be seen as unbiased. I see it everywhere. Blog entries profiling the sane conservative or Republican, and we are urged to treat this person seriously, such a rarity that they are. We shouldn’t be afraid to conclude, if the facts point this way, that there are simply very, very few sensible, non-asshole conservative writers.
That said, Salam and Douthat are creeps of the highest order. There simply must be better ones out there. No?
jayackroyd
@forked tongue
Got the Pablo Picasso ML reference, yes. Just wondering if it was intentional. The Lou Reed reference the day before was unambiguous, while Jonathan is more obscure.
DougJ
Just wondering if it was intentional.
Yes!
priscianus jr
I think the answer to your question, Doug, is that if you are an asshole, you tend to come across as one. And although it might seem that an asshole would make an effort to come across as something other than an asshole, the true asshole, precisely because he is one, makes no such effort. And even if he did make the effort, it wouldn’t work.
ksmiami
In all fairness to Reagan and I am a total liberal… He knew the neocons were effin nuts and he totally marginalized them unlike Bush – Cheney and he reached out to Gorbachev effectively so on balance he was a lot better than the current crew of just total a-holes (and Larison would agree on this) – it is just that a lot of the policies (let’s deregulate EVERYTHING) and people unleashed under Reagan created a shit load of trouble down the road and that is where we are now.
benjoya
i love the song, but it’s so off-base lyrically. i mean, i’m sure picasso often got called an asshole. just like me.
Steeplejack
@DougJ:
Pretty sure “Ronaldus Magnus” is a Limbaugh coinage. I seem to remember it from when I occasionally listened to his radio show [shudder], and that was way back in the ’90s.
Steeplejack
@freelancer:
Thanks for reminding me why I hate David Caruso and CSI: Miami.
El Cid
@ksmiami: The neo-cons of Reagan’s day got to play to their hearts’ content in Central America and Southern Africa. Sure, they would have preferred full-on U.S. invasions, but they were pretty damn happy about their exciting anti-‘Communist’ conferences at which they’d mingle with this or that death squad general and declare victory forever as their allies slaughtered hundreds of thousands of civilians in the most bloody and brutal fashions this side of medieval torture porn.
El Cid
Tell yourself that bullshit as much as you want — unless I don’t count as a ‘liberal’ ’cause I’m actually left.
I despise that mother fucker and everyone that came in with him for the god-damned damage that he and all his miserable right wing shit-fucks inflicted on this nation for the last 3 god-damned decades.
And I don’t know if I despise the fucking Democratic establishment for being so god-damned incompetent as to lose to a movement of nation-destroying shitbags like Reagan and his ilk more than I hate the evil fucks that did win.
If he had just beaten the living shit out of the corrupt Democratic establishment and put Republicans in everywhere without destroying everything he could get his rotting, crazed hands on, I sure as hell wouldn’t despise the monster. Hell, if conservatives had done the job they fantasize Reagan and his asshole movement had done, I’d cheer them on.
Instead, we still have to try and clean up those awful, cowardly, thieving turds’ legacy.
Brian Griffin
@Beauzeaux: ahhh, one of my favorite songs of all time.
…the girls would turn the color of an avocado…
Ian
From Salam’s article
So he isn’t conservative enough, just like that fascist dictator?
brantl
The reason that the conservatives don’t see Ronnie as being famous for not being an asshole (or appearing to not be an asshole) is because they remember his policies, and know he really was an asshole, just like them.
arguingwithsignposts
@ksmiami:
Reagan was responsible for a huge buildup in military spending under Caspar Weinberger as SoD.
He also had that god-botherer Edwin Meese as Atty. Gen. and Bill Bennet as Sec. Education.
Oliver North, Pat Buchanan.
Reagan had plenty of his own nuts. Arguably, the “success” of the military buildup in the collapse of the Soviet Union only emboldened the neo-con “shoot first, ask questions never” philosophy.
El Cid
@arguingwithsignposts: “Team B” — could there be a more neo-conny effort?
Terri
@Wile E. Quixote
Let me offer you a heartfelt holiday invitation to go fuck yourself. What could Reagan have done? Hmm, let’s see, he could have funded the NIH efforts towards finding out what was killing gay men, like he funded NIH efforts when a handful of old, white people were dying of the then unknown Legionnaires disease. He could have responded to the CDC’s request for an increase in their research and education budgets. He could have followed the Europeans lead, and treated it like the emerging health crisis it was. Hell, he could have uttered the fucking word in public, thereby giving some credence to the fact that thousands of his fellow Muricans were dying horrible deaths.
But he did none of those things. It not only makes him an asshole, it made him a bad leader, because he succumbed to the right’s opinion that whatever” it “was, “it “was killing the right people, namely niggers and queers.
Your point about what could Reagan have done to stop the risky behavior, when they didn’t even know it was their behavior that was causing the disease,due to lack of said funding and leadership, is just plain fucking stupid. But thanks for painting all those who died of the disease with the same broad brush. Although gay men and intravenous drug users were main casualties, they weren’t by any stretch of the imagination the only ones.
Jackass.
kay
Reagan’s lasting domestic legacy should be the unholy alliance between the religious right and government.
He started it. I don’t think he was particularly religious, but he saw them as a reliable voting bloc, and pandered to them, partly because Carter was an authentic liberal evangelical.
YankeeApologist
I am not sure why anyone attempted to defend against Wile E. Quixote. That was hardly an intellectual effort.
It was pretty much the voice of the people we’re talking about. While Salam is undeniably an asshole, and his “chardonnay-sipping” metaphor was juvenile, at least he didn’t stoop to the comically-stupid notion that Koop and Reagan needed to videotape themselves fornicating to defend against the growing AIDS crisis.
Reading that was like peeking into Sarah Palin’s admittedly-useless brain pan.