It’s not just me, Matt Taibbi doesn’t like Niebuhrian realism either.
I tend to agree with this:
It’s because nebbishly little dorks like Brooks and Paul Wolfowitz and David Frum got their books dumped in high school that we end up dropping daisy cutters on Afghan sheep herds and shipping working class American kids halfway around the world to get their nuts blown off. That sounds like a simplistic explanation, but anyone who doesn’t have a keen ear for the pencil-pusher’s eternal quest for macho cred is going to have a hard time understanding Washington politics.
Also.
(title h/t TZ)
Dannie22
I don’t know about Niebuhr, but I always thought that the neocon gang was just another version of “revenge of the nerds”.
Comrade Dread
There someplace I can sign up to volunteer to give every single one of these very serious hawkish pundits a power wedgie?
danimal
It’s a good explanation for why the neocon tough-as-nails macho foreign policy is intricately interwoven with a WATB rhetorical style when they don’t get to blow stuff up.
El Cid
In fairness, the right wing nebbish and teen assholes who were clamoring to stand beside “freedom fighter” slaughterers from Central America or Southern Africa in the 1980s weren’t citing Niebuhr. At least, not that commonly.
GReynoldsCT00
I could’ve done without the Brooks jacking off visual… eeeuw
K. Grant
From the article:
Yes, you twisted goon, you are a cynic if you think that this is nothing other than another Emanuel-inspired tactic to get Obama re-elected. The entire article, which might have actually had something rather worthwhile to say, is destroyed in this fever-dream hackery regarding Rahm Emanuel. People really need to get off this notion that Emanuel is to Obama as Cheney was to Bush, or somesuch Rasputin-like nonsense.
Another point – did Taibbi miss every single thing Obama said as a candidate regarding Afghanistan? He must have, or else he would realize that this line of reasoning is hopeless knavery. I would take Taibbi more seriously if he didn’t offer up foolishness like this.
El Cid
BTW, very nice on the title.
r€nato
@Dannie22:
FYI, some of us brainiac nerds who got pushed around in school, did not grow up into bloodthirsty neocons eternally seeking redemption of their manhood by advocating killing innocent foreigners halfway ’round the world.
Just sayin’…
(great puns make me very happy, I love the title as well)
David Hunt
Yeah, it was. I, however, keep remembering the scene in Heavy Metal when the aliens driving the ginormous smily-face spaceship get utterly stone and are lying around afterward saying, “Good Nie-bor, man.”
Actually I think the landing scene after that could be a workable metaphor for neocon approach to government.
“Don’t worry, man. If there’s one thing I know how to do, it’s how to land a ship when I’m stoned. It’s like…you know you’re perspective’s fucked, so the trick is to make you hands move as if you’re actually sober.”
Switch out “land a ship” with “run a government” and replace “hands” with “mouth” and you’re there.
r€nato
@K. Grant:
Good comment, I like Taibbi, some of what he writes is great but I think too often he is toeing a certain party line.
That’s why I appreciate writers like Sully. Even though sometimes he drives me nuts with what he writes, I appreciate that he is attempting to think for himself rather than forcing the facts and events to fit the dogmatic narrative.
Now, if only he’d drop his obsession with Palin’s family. It borders on virtual stalking.
Napoleon
Speaking of conservative ideology I read The Death of Conservatism by Sam Tanenhaus over the weekend and could not recommend the book too strongly. It is a quick read and just as easily could be calle “A concise history of conservatism in the US during the last 60 years”. It gets into Burke etc to some extent but in a very readable.
Zach
Tweety has made this point several times before.
Dannie22
@Renato
did I say it was you ? I was talking about the neocons. But like the old saying goes, whoever gets hit hollers the loudest. So, apparently, you got hit. Happy Kwanzaa!
geg6
Funnily enough, this brainiac nerd (though I didn’t get pushed around as they were all afraid of me for some reason) actually read and did research on Niebuhr as an undergrad, unlike Bobo and Taibbi and didn’t come away with their simplistic and distorted view of what Niebuhr believed. In fact, a cursory look at how Niebuhr acted on his beliefs belies how he is being charcterized. Of course, we’re talking Bobo and Taibbi here, so simplistic and distorted are simply part of the MO.
aimai
I really resent the Brooksian implication that all moral reasoning is Christian manicheanism and anyone who doesn’t opt into a binary world of saved and unsaved/good and evil is necessarily either cynical or deluded. Not only is this preposterous on the face of it, it is preposterous historically speaking since Christian certitude has given us as many deaths (proportional to the world population) as atheistical cynicism ever did. Furthermore this massaging of the religious prostate has to be understood as itself just another utterly cynical shtick. Religion in the neo-con/establishment mind set is always the opiate of the masses–in the old days the “we of us” were very up front about that. Check out this piece on the neo-con attack on Darwin and evolution. Its all of a piece with Straussian emphasis on a kind of elite governing circle that uses authority and religion to get its way but does not, itself, have to accede to actual belief. Here’s a fun Asia Time piece on Himmelfarb et al and their championing of a faux Christianity.
aimai
Zifnab
@K. Grant:
Then you have to ask, again, why we still insist on digging in our heels in another foreign hell hole just to prove that we’re really really serious about wasting money on losing the fight against terrorism.
For some reason either the policy wonks or the politics wonks in the White House think that we have something to gain by (bare minimum) two more years in the mountains. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be doing it.
I’ll admit, saying “Bush failed so it won’t work” doesn’t carry a lot of water when Bush is synonymous with crony driven failure. But after seven years in Afghanistan, I think it’s a little silly to seriously believe you can fix it inside one or two more.
Why else would Obama remain there unless he felt the political calculus was in his favor?
r€nato
Has anybody here succeeded in reading Richard Hofstadter’s, The Paranoid Style in American Politics?
I kept hearing what a great book this was and that it was still relevant today (especially in light of the Bush regime and what has become of the GOP), so I checked this book out of the library a couple months back and I just could not even get to 100 pages in. I am not sure if it’s because of his writing style or because the events he continually refers to are terribly dated to anybody under 50 or so years of age.
Leelee for Obama
The title rocks, Cole! And I have to say Taibbi might have gotten this right if he wasn’t so enamored with conflating this administration with the last. K. Grant said it well.
Is Emanuel a neo-con? I don’t think so, but he is more likely to be aware of the political implications of mistakes or mis-interpretations of intelligence. That is his job, isn’t it? It seems disingenuous to pretend otherwise.
Insofar as we are escalating in Afghanistan/Pakistan/Yemen/Somalia-what exactly would be better? Should we lower our footprint in one and raise it in others? Do we wait until something happens before we do that? I don’t want to be frightened by rhetoric, but I do want the people in charge to be aware of the security threats, so they can be addressed. It is, as John Kerry pointed out, and this administration seems to agree, a law enforcement and interdiction process in the last three countries-Afghanistan is another story-we broke that place and just walking away may be the smartest thing to do, but it seems impossible, politically. If there is a possibility of upgrading the Afghan security services in a short time, it seems we should at least try to leave them with some sense of security.
As to the cluster-fuck on Flight 253-balls were obviously dropped (beside Mutallab’s), and a few heads should be at least smacked if not rolled. He should have been scrutinized far more than he was, and that’s where to begin.
r€nato
@Dannie22:
I was not meaning at all to point fingers at you. Just pointing out to everyone in general that some of us grew up well-adjusted (more or less) despite sharing a common school years experience with these bloodthirsty cowards.
Others, of course, never got over it and carry the resentment for the rest of their lives.
Here’s another one which gets under my skin: “Those who were raised by abusers, are the most likely to abuse.”
Sometimes, yes. And sometimes, they are the LEAST likely to abuse.
It’s really, really irksome to get painted with the broad brush. Which is why I have knocked off saying harsh things about the South.
Joey Maloney
@r€nato:
Yes, I think Taibbi is totally giving nerds a bad rap. The nebbish little dorks I knew in high school (including myself) grew up to have an almost painful amount of empathy. We understand all too well what it’s like to be shit on by people who are your superiors in nothing but raw physical force.
I picture Brooks et al. more as the second-string football player desperate for the star QB’s approval, whose fondest memory is getting to tap some of his passed-out sloppy seconds at the post-homecoming beer bash, and whose secret shame continues to be “those” feelings he used to get in the gym showers.
r€nato
@Leelee for Obama:
I’m disturbed by this growing campaign to smear Rahm.
He is the WH Chief of Staff. He’s the enforcer and deal-maker. It’s not his job to be the guardian of ideological purity.
Just like, a prosecutor’s job is to prosecute criminals. It’s not up to the DA to ensure that the accused get a fair trial; that’s the judge’s job.
r€nato
@Joey Maloney:
I’m thinking Robert Ford (from the film, The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford), except at least Ford had the courage to do the shooting himself (even if it was in the back while James was unarmed).
geg6
Joey Maloney @19: This. For FSM’s sake, this.
zed
I can’t be the only one who has noticed this, but for a movement of people that like to denounce their opposition as fancy pants book lernin’ coastal elites from ivy league universities and slaves to college professors, they really like to reference obscure philosophers.
Leelee for Obama
@r€nato: Yeah, like in sports, when the team is failing, fire the coach. I find it aggravating beyond measure that there is such attack rhetoric out there. I would like to be able to think for myself, and that gets harder when the people who are supposed to provide facts for sifting have an agenda.
Violet
@Joey Maloney:
Totally agree. Brooks wasn’t in the computer club. Those guys grew up to run Microsoft, etc. Instead he strikes me as someone who spent his entire high school career as a wannabe.
Maybe he sat on he bench in his uniform for almost all the basketball games. Maybe he finally made the varsity football team his senior year. Whatever it was, he’s been aspiring to jockdom greatness his entire life. And now that he’s in a position of power in the pundit world, he tries to burnish his tough guy cred by sending real jocks to war.
Joey Maloney
@r€nato:
I read Hofstader about ten years ago and enjoyed it immensely. It’s one of those books where I kept having to jump up and buttonhole whoever was nearby to read them passages.
But you’re right, the specific events he wrote of are pretty dated now and you really need a decent grounding in that period of history to get the most out of the book.
ellaesther
A) Matt Taibbi who thinks far too highly of himself to write three coherent sentences without tripping over his love of his own intelligence and rendering his work too painful to read.
and B) Please read Niebuhr. If the neocons want to mis-read and mis-represent him, that is their sorry business. Just as we should not accept their reading of Dr. King’s writings, neither should we trust them on Niebuhr.
Please. Read Niebuhr. If he was good enough for Dr. King and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, surely, we lowly 21st century liberals might maybe should find some time for him, too.
arguingwithsignposts
Meanwhile, airline stocks drop, and:
I’m supposed to go to Canada in January. I’m thinking of backing out of the trip, because I need a laptop, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to put it in checked luggage.
MNPundit
I’ve been reading some Niebuhr and I agree, you’re maligning him unfortunately.
Leelee for Obama
@ellaesther: Thanks, ellaeshter, this is what I said weeks ago when this first came up. Niebuhr was no more perfect than any other philosopher, but he was not the neo-con emanuensis that these guys make him out to be.
jwb
@geg6: Certainly, the fact that they are citing Niebuhr is rather beside the point—pretty much any one of the correct description would do—and reading the writer carefully is not part of the game at all. Hell, they can’t even be bothered to read their own guys (Leo Strauss, Milton Friedman, etc.) carefully.
r€nato
@arguingwithsignposts:
I am virtually certain that these security measures will be temporary, until it’s figured out how this asshole got the explosives past security.
I am just really, really glad I elected not to travel overseas for the holidays.
Barry
Zifnab
@K. Grant:
“Yes, you twisted goon, you are a cynic if you think that this is nothing other than another Emanuel-inspired tactic to get Obama re-elected.
Then you have to ask, again, why we still insist on digging in our heels in another foreign hell hole just to prove that we’re really really serious about wasting money on losing the fight against terrorism.
For some reason either the policy wonks or the politics wonks in the White House think that we have something to gain by (bare minimum) two more years in the mountains. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be doing it.”
Well, we’ve seen years of the policy wonks mast*rbating and sallivating over wars, so by now the answer to why they’re supporting it is simple – it’s a war.
Heck, think of how many policy wonks drool over every single potential war, with no thought or self-awareness.
As to the military-industrial complex, undending guerrilla wars are very profitable. The Iraq War produced several hundred billion $ of cost-plus contracts, frequently with a single bidder. That’s goatta be sweeeeeeeeeeet indeed.
The political right loves war; they enjoy it for it’s own sake, and for the political leverage (‘can’t spend money on [non-rich] Americans – there’s a war on!’). An unwinnable, eternal war will also be good in 2012 to beat Obama over the head with.
DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio
@Leelee for Obama:
I think it’s “amanuensis” but still you get a major Word Clap for this one.
Reminds me of my younger days, when I used to read Buckley. I never agreed with any conclusion he came to about anything, but I was agog at the words he would pull up out of his bottomless vocabulary to make his points.
paul Gottlieb
Have any of you guys actually read Neibuhr? Certainly Matt Taibbi hasn’t. Somehow, I don’t think Martin Luther King, who regarded Neibuhr as one of his most important influences, would recognize the pathetic caricature that Taibbi presents. If you want to read a devastating critique of neoconservatism, written almost exclusively from a Neibuhrian point of view, read “The Limits of Power” by Andrew Bacevich. But be warned, he uses bigger words that Taibbi
arguingwithsignposts
@r€nato:
Yes, they say they will be temporary, but …
Hob
@r€nato: Here’s another one which gets under my skin: “Those who were raised by abusers, are the most likely to abuse.” Sometimes, yes. And sometimes, they are the LEAST likely to abuse.
I get what you mean, probably, but putting it that way takes all the meaning out of “likely”. As a statement about large numbers of people and risk factors, that statement is just plain true, and important to know. A doctor who couldn’t get his head around the idea that people with a 40 year history of chain-smoking are the most likely to get lung cancer, because some of those people don’t get it, would not be a good doctor.
Violet
@arguingwithsignposts:
You shouldn’t have to put the laptop in checked luggage, but as things stand now you won’t be able to access it during the flight.
These security measures are ridiculous and hopefully the TSA will remove some of them. If not, airline travel will definitely drop off. It’s bad enough now. No way people can budget three hours for check in on every flight.
@r€nato:
They already know how he did it. And NONE of the new restrictions would stop anyone doing the exact same thing, except possibly the requirement of staying in your seat on hour before landing. And then he could just do it sooner. That’s why they’re so stupid.
Joey Maloney
Check your phone bill for the temporary Vietnam War surtax we’re still paying.
El Cid
I don’t think these guys cite Niebuhr because of his oeuvre, but because he was a former adamant leftist who believed Communism should be stopped and rolled back, and generally in the Cold Warriors’ view this was close enough to agreeing with them.
Here, the American Spectator recounts an attempt by Hubert Humphrey to bring along Niebuhr on the U.S. attack on Indochina (“Vietnam”), which Niebuhr opposed:
****************************
Niebuhr’s anti-communist liberalism was in sync with Humphrey’s until the Vietnam War, which Niebuhr opposed as “fantastic,” even though he understood the nasty outcome of a communist Southeast Asia.
He thought U.S. involvement in Asian land wars unwise and unwinnable, though he had tacitly endorsed the Korean intervention. He speculated that Vietnam’s surrender to communism could be accepted if anti-communist Vietnamese relocated to Thailand and were protected with “massive” U.S. military power, as recounted in Richard Wightman Fox’s biography.
Vice President Humphrey was not persuaded, and in 1966 he made his pro-war case at the 25th anniversary dinner of Christianity & Crisis magazine, which Niebuhr had founded to rally support for World War II.
The gala was at New York’s famous shrine of progressive Protestantism, Riverside Church, and Niebuhr’s declining health prevented him from attending. So Humphrey visited Niebuhr’s apartment beforehand and discussed Vietnam. Niebuhr’s later described his friend’s adherence to President Johnson’s war policy as “very sad.”
At the dinner, Humphrey stalwartly tried to enlist Niebuhrian realism in his case for Vietnam. “We reaffirm our intention of using military power of almost limitless quantities in measured limited degree,” the Vice President told 400 mostly liberal Protestant listeners. “In Vietnam we have one — and only one — military objective: the halting of forceful conquest of South Vietnam by North Vietnam.”
Tying the Vietnam War to a larger social justice agenda, Humphrey insisted: “We reaffirm our intention to sustain the struggle against the forces of Communist expansion, against the forces of poverty, illiteracy, famine and disease for as long as the cause of freedom requires it.”
According to the New York Times, he even bitingly criticized the rising chorus of anti-war protests, observing that among the failings of “the great tradition of social protest in America” were oversimplification, political naiveté and sweeping impatience with “everybody in authority.”
Commenting on the speech, Niebuhr privately regretted that Humphrey had tried “claiming my anti-Nazi stance of the 1930’s with the present war.” And he lamented that his friend was “in a tragic position of outdoing the Machiavelli of the White House, meanwhile losing all his friends.”
Despite the Vietnam disagreement, Niebuhr eventually would support him for president in 1968. When approaching death, Niebuhr once rose from his bed upon seeing President Richard Nixon on the television, exclaiming, “That bastard!” Niebuhr evidently never voted for a Republican, though reportedly he was willing to support Nelson Rockefeller, had he won the Republican nomination.
****************************
In other words, then as now, they were interested in Niebuhr as they perceived him to be useful as an anti-leftist / anti-hippie tool, and in real history Niebuhr often didn’t go along. Now that Niebuhr is a mere Platonic stereotype for idiots like Brooks, whose career is based upon imitating the form and style of actual intellectuals, to cite in order to make their inanities sound as if coming from great depths.
arguingwithsignposts
@Violet:
When the nearest major airport is two hours away, I’ve now got to budget five hours before flight time, then flight time. Then face the pat down and the possibility of having a laptop confiscated (which is entirely within their purview). Sigh. An entire day lost to get somewhere.
GReynoldsCT00
And we’re advertising it… of course they will do it sooner. In the meantime, more indignity at the checkpoints and a ban on electronics that had no part in any attempt. We try so hard to look like we’re ‘doing something’ that we look like we’re shooting ourselves in the foot. No planes for me.
S. cerevisiae
I agree with Joey and Violet above, these guys were wannabees. Not cool enough for the cool kids, not jock enough for the jocks, not smart enough for the nerds. Always wanting to be accepted but not quite making it, so they carried a grudge all those years and just can’t get over the burning resentment.
Leelee for Obama
@DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio: Oddly, I watched Buckley back then, in NY, just to hear him use language. He was almost always my polar opposite, but he used words like Shakespeare.
ETA-it is amanuensis-and I’ve got to go shopping, so I’ll catch you all later!
Max
@r€nato: Something tells me that Rahm loves it. LOVES it.
ppcli
A small correction. I doubt very much that Frum got got wedgied, etc. in high school. The school he went to – University of Toronto Schools – serves as a refugee camp for Southern Ontario nerds. Every fall they are quietly gathered up and spirited to safety, like Danish Jews to WWII Sweden.
aimai
Leelee for Obama makes an important and overlooked point. We should be looking back at how the crotch bomber got his visa in the first place. The guy got a visa in 2008, under Bush and Bush’s administration. Given what we know to be true which is that Bush’s entire administration and foreign service were purged of people who knew what they were doing and replaced by time servers and fools it would be appropriate to review *all visas* issued before Obama took office and not yet used and to compare them against the watch lists.
But I think the whole thing is ridiculous. As everyone has pointed out the world *and this country* are full of dangerous, angry, fools. This fixation on planes is epiphenomenal.
Also, I’d like to point out that a much more sophisticated attempt has already been made and its far from clear that if Al Quaeda were serious they couldn’t have done the same with the plane bomber and really taken the plane out at long distance.
aimai
burnspbesq
Taibbi’s analysis “sounds like a simplistic explanation” for the simple reason that it is a simplistic explanation. Simplistic is Taibbi’s stock in trade. He doesn’t do nuance.
Violet
@GReynoldsCT00:
The response is just idiotic. It’s like saying, “I have pinkeye. I guess I’d better take some cough medicine.” The cure doesn’t begin to fit the problem.
And what really galls me is that apparently the guy bought his one-way ticket with cash and didn’t check luggage – and this exact set of behavior is supposed to be a red flag. Why wasn’t he checked more thoroughly? Of course next time, the terrorists will know they can’t buy tickets with cash, etc., but this time, at least, the security theater actors could have noticed.
Anoniminous
Lickspittles and toadies have always been around. Centuries ago they were called “courtiers.” Now they are called “Straussian neo-conservatives.”
Silver
I have to admit, I thought the whole “War on Afgahnistan” thing was just a bullshit election promise because Obama was afraid to look weak up on the debate podium. Americans are unhappy unless they are bombing the fuck out of somebody.
I’m appalled because it seems to be the promise that Obama is most interested in keeping…although maybe that’s because bombing the fuck out of somebody is truly bipartisan?
some guy
Audio shorter?
J. Michael Neal
@r€nato:
Along these lines, this is another reason I find Taibbi so off-putting. Arm chair psychology is bogus when Charles Krauthammer engages in it, and it’s bogus when Taibbi does it. The excerpt in the main post has no business being in a serious article. Fortunately, it isn’t in a serious article.
I don’t know why the neo-cons ended up with the belief in the efficacy of violence that they did. Matt Taibbi, and the rest of you, don’t either. Making bold proclamations that it’s because they were beat up in junior high is both juvenile and offensive.
Relying upon it as argument is another piece of evidence that Taibbi should be ignored. He adds *zero* value to any discussion. Citing him means that you would rather throw turds and giggle to yourselves about how much more clever and mature you are than THEM. Spare me.
El Cid
If it’s brown people. Republicans were quite unhappy when Clinton & NATO bombed Serbia. So it’s okay for Republicans to dissent from a war President on a war footing etc. But Serbians aren’t brown people, so it’s different.
El Cid
Actually, even back when I read the Taibbi quote the first time, I don’t think he was making an argument. I think he was just taking an opportunity to insult a bunch of right wing weirdo war supporters who themselves do not and did not serve militarily or in any other career requiring the sorts of risks they enjoy cheerleading for.
Taibbi likely doesn’t care if the argument is coherent or not, or empirical or not, he’s just trying to insult people he doesn’t like, and probably assuming that it’s a line of insult that these targets would be sensitive about.
The Republic of Stupidity
After reading this snippet of Taibbi, and another one down in the EJ Dionne thread, I have to agree w/ whoever was saying last week that Taibbi is a Hunter Thompson wannabe.
Sorry, Tabbai… but you’re no Hunter Thompson. Your commentary might actually prove more useful if you’d slow down and Think Things Through™, instead of just calling someone you don’t like a “spineless beltway geek”, or a “professional groveler/asskisser”.
Hard to explain… but there was an ever-so-subtle difference in the way Thompson did that that WORKED… and Tabbai ain’t got that touch.
Tabbai may be right when he describes Brooks, or any beltway pundit or politician, the way he does… but he just doesn’t have that same… lightness… that Hunter had when he was throwing comments like “there is nothing more helpless and irresponsible than a man in the depths of an ether binge…” around. And Thompson did it so effortlessly. The man simply DIDN’T have to resort to vulgarity to be, well… vulgar.
(Tabbai should leave the “Senior Licker of the Caligulan butt crack” kinda comments to Folks Like Us™… heh… jes’ sayin’)
wilfred
@J. Michael Neal:
Come on. If there’s one thing the last 30 years have taught us it’s that violence really does work, and the more power you have the more you can exert that violence on people who have no power.
Violence doesn’t work when you only have the resources to commit the odd, random act. When you’ve got the power to project as much violence as you want, where and when you want it, then it works brilliantly. The message to everybody else is that they don’t have the power to make the violence that we make so their violence doesn’t work. Ours does just fine.
See Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, et al.
jwb
@El Cid: So Taibbi is giving them the equivalent of an intellectual wedgie?
The Republic of Stupidity
@El Cid:
As the French are prone to say… bingeau!
Hob
@S. cerevisiae: Obligatory The Wire reference: Tom McCarthy’s hack journalist character really nailed that personality type for me. There are people who don’t see any intellectual effort (or other kind of effort) as having a value in itself; it’s all about status. They may come across as nerds socially, but they’re not geeky in terms of being passionate about a skill – they might’ve been in the high school newspaper club, but not the chess club. And this type is overrepresented in journalism for the same reason it’s overrepresented in the Republican party: because the management has chosen to prioritize style and influence over quality and accuracy, so it makes sense to hire those guys.
General Winfield Stuck
There is always an intersection point of policy and politics, can’t be avoided and goes for war and peace issues as well. To a degree.
So yes, Emmanuel and Obama are concerned with the politics of not being aggressive on fighting terrorism, and it is just as true that they don’t want any more Americans to get blown up working at their desks in the states. Or anywhere else.
These things are not mutually exclusive and abide in the gray areas of governance. And if Taibbi or anyone else wants to make the claim that Obama is escalating in Afpac, or anywhere else for political expedience only, then they haven’t been reading current polls showing clearly Americans have grown tired of foreign wars, with both the cost and dead GI’s./
People, as they are anywhere, are more concerned with their own personal situations and what they see at home and in their bank accounts trumps fears of terrorist attacks coming from Asia./ It is natural, until one happens at home and then the bloody flag of blame comes out, and Wolf Blitzer will say “Did Obama let his guard down? you decide.”
It’s a tough balance to maintain, and why I don’t envy anyone being president.
El Cid
Not that it’s big news or anything, but over 21% of Mexico’s population, roughly 23 million people face moderate to severe food insecurity, meaning regularly having to skip meals or eliminate basic foodstuffs due to lack of money. This was in 2008, when things were better. This is probably related to 18.2%, or 19.5 million Mexicans lacking the minimum income for basic daily requirements.
R. Johnston
There is no campaign to smear Rahm. What there is is a bunch of people who have long been in denial over the fact that Obama is, and always has been, a moderate and a hawk. They focus their anger on Emanuel because it enables them to avoid confronting the truth about Obama.
The fact they’re fairly characterizing Emanuel is another point against it being a smear campaign. Just because they’re mean to Rahm and their anger is misdirected doesn’t mean that Rahm is undeserving of being called a political hack who doesn’t give a fuck about things like policy and lives.
MBunge
I wonder if it ever occurs to Taibbi that one of the major reasons high school wannabes like Brooks, Wolfowitz and Frum are able to influence policy is because high school smartasses like Taibbi never grow the fuck up?
Mike
DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio
“You decide, after the break.”
This common Blitzerism really only works when it’s used as a hook. Directing a news show is not as easy as it looks.
Blitzer can throw so many hooks at one time, he looks like a piece of Velcro.
FlipYrWhig
Are we really supposed to believe that Matt Taibbi was _not_ the goofy-looking dork who decided, in quintessential dork strategy, that “being funny” was the way to avoid getting beaten up?
Taibbi’s whole shtick is to act like he has bigger balls than anyone else. I hope he’s at least slightly self-aware here. (OK, no one dies from Taibbi’s decisions, but they certainly have the power to sicken.)
Maude
@The Republic of Stupidity: He uses “dirty” words for attention and because he doesn’t know that much about his subjects. He doesn’t write very well.
He also doesn’t know the history of what he writes about. He is as shallow as the righties.
Ida Tarbell (sp?), he ain’t.
fraught
This Taibbi quote is insulting to nerds everywhere but is nonetheless true. These guys wear their high school resentments on their faces for the world to see. Their internalized urges for revenge have been pumped through so many channels of rationalization that they cannot recognize their own earliest motivations for vengeance any more. Add Jonah Goldberg to the list for his stupid post today calling for the head of Janet Napolitano. His high school days must have been torture considering the brutalization of being Lucie Ann’s son at home and being a bloated turd brain at school.
Joey Maloney
@Violet:
Fixt.
valdivia
what K Grant, Ellaesther and J Micheal Neal said.
Hob
@J. Michael Neal:
I agree, armchair psychology is bogus. Why are you doing it?
The “you don’t really like X, you just think it makes you look cooool” argument is thoughtless and insulting, and provably wrong: even if you think Taibbi is totally full of shit (and I agree that on this point, he IS full of shit), it’s really not that hard to imagine someone being overly impressed by his articles without being a giggling turd-thrower, just because he writes effectively, is often funny, and has been known to do his homework before. Doesn’t mean you have to agree– just means that other people can find value in something you don’t like, and they can be wrong, in ways that have nothing to do with your pissy caricature.
I mean, if someone who doesn’t know any better reads a Victor Davis Hanson article and thinks Hanson knows something about Western civilization… that’s unwise, but it’s not a reason to think the reader is a grandiose lunatic like Hanson; that shit sounds halfway convincing at times if you don’t know any better.
matoko_chan
@J. Michael Neal: im sorry but its true. Sanchez had a whole post on ressentiment….and a follow on.
Conservatives know they aren’t as smart, and that they will never be cool….and they resent it. Only 6% of scientists are republicans. The upper right tail of the bellcurve of IQ is painted blue, except for businessmen. Filmmakers, uni professors, teaching and research scientists, musicians, artists, actors, media faces (except fox), all the oracles of contemporary culture are liberal.
The conservative express simply doesnt go to Cooltown.
It goes to Jesusland and Jesusland is a very long way from Cooltown.
DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio
Like Republican talking points. Or like Proctor and Gamble advertising copy.
Gillette(tm).
I mean, how do you counter something like that?
arguingwithsignposts
Taibbi has his schtick, which is really no different than the schtick practiced by other pundits, he’s just allowed to say “f**k” and other vulgar words. Recall that his schtick was developed writing for the Russian equivalent of the free local weekly.
He’s also a sort of elder Luke Russert. His father is Mike Taibbi.
DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio
Yeah, but it’s not that far from Funkytown.
matoko_chan
@DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio: disagree….Jesusland is a very long way from Funkytown also….but its right next to Yearning for Zion.
:)
DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio
I dunno, I find it hard not to admire somebody like this.
Seanly
@Joey Maloney:
Good point on the first paragraph. Although in my case, my empathy is informed also by my parents, not just the schoolyard indignations I suffered.
There are people who respond to violence & hatred by giving in to their own malignancies (the nebbish ones Taibbi discusses).
DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio
@arguingwithsignposts:
Apparently he also played professional baseball in Russia.
I realize that that’s like being the best iceberg spotter on the Titanic, but still, for a guy like me who has always been a bit of a frustrated baseball player (because I so badly suck at it), it has a certain cachet.
matoko_chan
This is my all time favorite Taibbi piece ….raunchy, hilarious, and spot-on.
DougJ
Please. Read Niebuhr. If he was good enough for Dr. King and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, surely, we lowly 21st century liberals might maybe should find some time for him, too.
What does what Niebuhr actually wrote have to do with anything? “Nieburhian realism” is just a phrase used by Brooks to pimp for war.
Look, for all I know, Niebuhr walked on water, made water into wine, and cured the sick. That wouldn’t stop people from doing awful things in his name, would it?
DougJ
Making bold proclamations that it’s because they were beat up in junior high is both juvenile and offensive.
I disagree completely. Pundits make constant references to high school — Al Gore was the hall monitor, George W Bush the cool guy, and so on ad nauseam. It’s only natural to speculate about their own high school experiences.
The Republic of Stupidity
@Maude:
Nor a Hunter Thompson, or a William Burroughs for that matter…
(And yes, ‘Ida Tarbell’ is spelled correctly…)
DougJ
If you want to read a devastating critique of neoconservatism, written almost exclusively from a Neibuhrian point of view, read “The Limits of Power” by Andrew Bacevich.
There’s a big difference between writing a 300 page book from a “Nieburhian point of view” and writing a 300 word column that uses the phrase “Niebuhrian realism” to browbeat readers.
matoko_chan
Well…..DougJ is right tho….Niebuhr is definitely a representative of the Big White Christian Bwana school of thought….bringing “civilization” aka christianity to the small brown people and all that….even if the process kills a few hundred thousand or so.
gil mann
I am given to understand that Taibbi was unfailingly brilliant and always a must-read when he went after Republicans, but as soon as he started taking shots at Democrats he became a simple-minded hack who’s all about his own ego, swears too much, and is no Hunter S. Thompson.
Nah, I’m just sayin’ it’s a weird coincidence, is all.
J. Michael Neal
@DougJ:
Well, okay. If your goal is to act just like the idiot pundits that make these comparisons, consider yourself a success. I just thought, and certainly hoped, that you aimed higher than that. I guess I need to learn to be disappointed.
J. Michael Neal
@gil mann:
Not really. Taibbi has always been useless. Even when aiming at the Bushies, I liked more substance and fewer insults.
Mnemosyne
@gil mann:
Eh, I’ve never been a Taibbi fan. That sludge of factoids and invective wears me out after a couple of paragraphs and I can never quite figure out what his point is supposed to be other than, “Look at me! Look at me!”
And, yes, I felt that way even when he was writing about Bush. Never finished any of those articles, either.
Will
Taibbi is also the only American journalist of any prominence who started his career criticizing a dictatorship while in country, in Uzbekistan, and then founding a satire paper in Russia.
It’s also worth noting that his style is pretty much the house style of the eXile – the magazine he founded in Russia. Doesn’t surprise me, as I’ve noticed that people I meet who lived under dictatorships are a lot more vulgar and less prone to the fainting couch when talking about bullshit from politicians.
DougJ
I just thought, and certainly hoped, that you aimed higher than that. I guess I need to learn to be disappointed.
Look, the desire to invade Yemen and so on is simply bizarre. A bunch of nerds saying “real men want to go to Tehran” is bizarre. A bunch of nerds saying that they hate Al Gore because he’s like junior high hall monitor is bizarre. The human mind seeks explanations for things this bizarre. If the explanations seem childish and petty, that’s in the nature of the bizarreness of the situation.
Will
I think the great secret to human history is that the type of people who seek political power tend toward the fucked up side of the spectrum. Always have.
And they get away with it because the idea that the people in charge are mentally defected by nature scares the shit out of the people under them. So, they justify everything as being more complex and nuanced so that they can sleep at night.
aimai
I’ve got to go with dougJ on this one. “If the explanations seem childish and petty, that’s in the nature of the bizarrness of the situation” not in Taibbi’s references to it.
I get that Michael J. Neal wants his politics and political commentary all mature. Would that it could be so. However the same press corps that swooned over Rumsfeld as the “sexiest man alive” and which hooted and gasped over the beauty and drama of Bush’s package when he dressed up in a flight suit and strutted out for Mission Accomplished simply can’t be understood in any other language than that of high school, crushes, and the heady days of youth. Its a darned accurate metaphor.
And bitching about Taibbi being Taibbi just seems weird to me. He’s a very funny writer. The ethnographic parts of The Great Derangement were, to my mind, very good. He’s nervy and he doesn’t mind going out an interviewing and interacting with people who others merely comment on at a distance. I like his work and I wish people would stop whining about it because its not grown up enough. We’ve got Saletan, for that.
aimai
gil mann
Well, taste is objective, so fair enough.
wilfred
Yemen? Yemen, did you say?
And before anybody says anything just remember that Obama NEVER said he wouldn’t do this there.
So there.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/28/world/middleeast/28yemen.html?_r=1&ref=middleeast
Mnemosyne
@wilfred:
Let us know when we invade Yemen and overthrow their government as opposed to what we’re actually doing, which is assisting the Yemeni government at their request.
It’s weird that you see no difference at all between invading a country to overthrow their government and assisting a country at their request.
SteveinSC
It seems there is a lot of “pearl clutching” and “vapors” over Matt Taibbi and Matt’s dirty words. No one would ever stoop to dirty words on a BJ post. Prig.
J. Michael Neal
@aimai:
That may or may not be true, but even if it is, I don’t think that this approach gets us anywhere. Treating these problems in the fashion of a gossip column in a high school newsletter can be an effective form of communication if your only goals are to amuse yourself or to sell high school newsletters, like the Washington Post. If the goal is to actually change anything, then these sorts of columns are, at best, useless, and more likely counterproductive.
It works for conservatives, because they don’t have any interest in actually governing or changing the culture of anything. Slinging spitballs amuses them, sells their newsletters, and helps gum up the works of governing by making everything he said/she said, and aren’t they both clever. Matt Taibbi is successful in exactly that way, and it’s counterproductive.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@aimai:
HST famously said that “when the going gets weird, the weird turn pro”. Tabbi embodies the same principle for our era, only our current condition is derangement, not weirdness. Hence it was highly appropriate for one of his books to be titled “The Great Derangement”, because that is what we are living thru*. To the extent that he doesn’t measure up to the lofty standards of discourse that JMN is calling for, he is a symptom, not a cause.
(*) Around the year 1000 AD significant numbers of Christians in Western Europe went full on cuckoo-for-cocoapuffs nuts, thinking that the world was going to end. It didn’t stop in 1001 AD either. I sometimes wonder if future historians will look back at our behavior over the last decade and conclude that something similar happened to people in the early 21st Cen. Millenarium Thinking is a hell of a drug, apparently.
MBunge
“And bitching about Taibbi being Taibbi just seems weird to me.”
But since Taibbi’s writing is all about Taibbi…what else is there to bitch about?
Mike
K. Grant
@aimai: The reason that I comment on Taibbi threads is due mainly to the fact that he wedges in conspiratorial thinking that does not strengthen the argument, that and I am not quite sure that he is willing to do the extra bit of homework to dig into the background of whatever it is that he is covering. In this case, if you want to smack around Brooks for using Niebuhr, fine, but actually read Niebuhr and then smack around Brooks for getting Niebuhr wrong – or reading him selectively. But Taibbi would rather report on the surface and not bother with rooting out the actual problem.
Frankly, this is the greatest problem in journalism today – very few seem to be willing to do background work, or place things in appropriate historical context. Taibbi is offered up as somebody worth listening to – not for me, not until he starts acting like a journalist. The reason that a good number of folks compare him unfavorably to Hunter Thompson is that Thompson started out as a damn good journalist who happened to be a gonzo journalist, as opposed to Taibbi who wants to be gonzo first, then perhaps a provocateur, and then, finally, a journalist.
FlipYrWhig
@Mnemosyne:
See also Miller, Dennis.
Also, the attitude that everyone but you sucks it hard.
See also Fork, Pitch.
K. Grant
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: The reason it didn’t stop in 1001 was rather simple – they thought that they miscalculated, thus they reset their apocalypse clocks for 1033/4 (when Jesus was crucified, not born). Afterwards, of course, when the judgment did not take place, they really started to think about the way things were put together. This, combined with the eleventh century agricultural revolution which provided food surpluses and prompted population growth, thus allowing people to do things beyond just scratching out a living.
This time to think (the most important commodity for civilization, I would argue) prompted a massive church building program, the peace and truce of God movements, the papal revolution, and, of course, ultimately the first Crusade.
For any who are interested, I will be glad to offer as much information on the eleventh century as you could possibly want. (It is my field – my dissertation was on Gregory VII (1073-1085).)
wilfred
@Mnemosyne:
At their request? Unfuckingbelievable.
aimai
Well, I never worried about whether Brooks was using Niebuhr correctly or not because as soon as Brooks starts quoting *anyone* I know he’s going to get it wrong. So, fine, I’ll love me some Niebuhr on general principles. But that has nothing to do with the way Niebuhr is referenced in the Taibbi piece, and its not Taibbi’s problem that Brooks, as usual, lies about everything. Brooks is on record as *lying about Applebees* for christ’s sake–you think he’d stop at necrophilia with someone else’s philosophical ancestors?
I like Taibbi. I don’t mistake him for an important journalist but he is, in fact, doing a job that no “important” journalists will do at the moment which is talk about the finances and the history underlying our current crisis in a way that the ordinary reader can grasp. It appears to be mixed in with a heavy dose of conspiracy like talk but that doesn’t, in fact, make it wrong. Any straightforward and straightfaced account of who taught who and who pays who in this economy/polity would wind up looking like the scene in A Beautiful Mind when the mad man’s room full of connections is revealed. That’s just the reality of our modern “democracy” in which money talks and bullshit walks.
As for Michael J. Neal’s point–I don’t think Taibbi or the people who read him are intent upon taking over the government. And I don’t think there’s much of a danger that they are leading us down a garden path and making us, as a party, unable to govern. There’s a place for rabble rousing, however, even among Democrats–if we want to stay in power long enough to make any real changes we are going to have to learn to offer some serious bread and circuses to our voters. Its been that way since the Roman Empire. I think the real reason people are pissed at Taibbi at this point is that he seems to be undermining the Democratic parties pretensions to populism and that may harm our electoral prospects. But the problem there isn’t so high minded, is it? Its not all about maturity or governance–its just about who gets to set the agenda and call the shots. Then the critique of Taibbi is really more that he isn’t letting the Democratic party run its usual con.
aimai
Mnemosyne
@wilfred:
Uh, yeah. That’s why the quote you used includes things like:
It’s a little scary that you see absolutely no difference between training a country’s military in counterterrorism techniques at their request and invading a country so you can overthrow their government so therefore what we’re doing in Yemen is exactly like what we did in Iraq, QED.
gil mann
I honestly wonder if people who compare Taibbi (or anyone) unfavorably to HST have actually read HST. Yeah, he was awesome, but he wasn’t particularly substantive. He often cited the Book of Revelations as a major influence, and the whole point of that thing is to rock your face off while transmitting little to no actual information.
Look, Fear & Loathing on the Campaign Trail is a fantastic read. It’s also five pages of reporting and a couple hundred pages of vicious, drug-fueled invective. Plus the quotes in the reporting are mostly made-up, Gonzo being by its nature more “truthful” than “factual.”
Which is fine; not everybody has to be Halberstam. But I call bullshit on all the comparison-shoppers.
El Cid
@gil mann: I think there should neither be awed overpraise for HST nor Neibuhr.
MBunge
“I think the real reason people are pissed at Taibbi at this point is that he seems to be undermining the Democratic parties pretensions to populism and that may harm our electoral prospects.”
Nah. The real reason is that they recognize that Taibbi’s using the same tone and style to go after Obama that he used against Bush/Cheney and co. with no regard for the appropriateness of such shtick.
Mike
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
Anybody else find it funny that this blog alternates complaints about the President being held to impossibly high standards with complaints about the writing standards of someone at Rolling Stone?
wilfred
@Mnemosyne:
Do you know or understand anything about this region? Salih is actually a neo-con darling, but if you think that he is anything less than a fucking tyrant or that Yemen is a bastion of liberty in an oasis of despotism than keep reading the New York Times.
FlipYrWhig
@aimai:
Well, speaking for me only, I have a problem with gadflies, and a much bigger problem with people who openly crave gadfly status and relentlessly self-promote to achieve it.
(ETA: Which is why I’m not an “activist,” and why I think “activists” should be held to higher standards — because it’s damn hard, and writing is cheap and easy.)
S. cerevisiae
@matoko_chan: Actually, Taibbi is right. I think a great many people would pay to see Ann Coulter fuck a hippopotamus.
FlipYrWhig
@FlipYrWhig: That’s why I bitch on blogs instead. It’s easier. But I don’t think I deserve a lot of credit for it, either.
Mnemosyne
@wilfred:
I never said that. I said that there’s a difference between invading a sovereign country and assisting a sovereign country at their request.
You can say that assisting Yemen is a bad idea just like assisting the dictatorships in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan is a bad idea, but you can’t run around claiming it’s just like what we did in Iraq and Afghanistan because it isn’t. It’s not even comparable, and claiming that it’s exactly the same makes you look like a fucking moron.
gil mann
Christ, now we’ve gotta deal with propriety-enforcers. I knew that whole “winning in a landslide” thing was gonna blow up in our faces.
aimai
Oh, well, I love gadflies. And I fail to see how using the same language about Obama and friends as he did about bush and co is some kind of error or inappropriate. I don’t get the insistence that a personal matter of taste–flilpyrwhig or michael j neal’s is anything other than what it is: a personal matter of taste. If you don’t like taibbi’s style, so don’t like it. But there’s no world historical or political significance to that fact other than that it frequently makes (some) people uncomfortable to have someone making fun of important people.
aimai
Mnemosyne
@aimai:
Personally, I have limited patience for gadflies. They’re fun for a while, but then I start thinking, “Yes, but what are we supposed to do about it?” Gadflies don’t offer solutions because, well, they’re gadflies — that’s not their purpose — but after a while the constant stinging just gets on my nerves.
aimai
I daresay everyone here has wasted more time complaining about Taibbi than noting that he essentially has no serious competition in the generic media. Without taibbi being funny about it, or Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert, some things simply wouldn’t be talked about.
aimai
K. Grant
@Mnemosyne: Absolutely. I have no problem with those who criticize, as long as they then suggest possible alternatives. That works. But just to sit back and carp, often drawing more attention to the style of said carping as opposed to the substance, is simply a waste of time.
We have had our fill with those, like the Republicans who do nothing but carp, block,and offer nothing to the public discourse regarding the serious issues that vex us. We don’t need the sneering press (and Taibbi is just like the rest of them for this) who drip condescension about our foolish leaders, but then never offer one word of constructive advice. You want to really help, Taibbi? Run for office. Or volunteer to help out the poor, benighted Obama, so as to be Virgil to his Dante.
gil mann
Forget “non,” that’s, like, an anti-sequitor.
FlipYrWhig
@aimai:
I think this is entirely the problem — he wraps himself in the mantle of the brave truth-telling satirist clown. That way, if I don’t like him, I’m just “uncomfortable” with his edgy style, and I’m just square and/or deferential. He doesn’t “make fun” of people, he’s just attitude, like Dane Cook. It’s like if William Greider decided he should incorporate more masturbation references into his material. It’s alt-weekly by numbers. Sign of a hack. A hack who’s sure he’s cleverer than his audience.
K. Grant
@gil mann: Bullshit. Abject and utter nonsense. You have been taken in by the fiction that attempting to actually get something done through the process is foolishness at best. Wrong. The only way that we get the kind of legislation we want is to make sure that either we, or someone who essentially closely resembles our ideals, gets elected to an office where such bits and pieces get written into the law of the land.
The major problem with a good number of left-wing types is that they never run anybody for an office like President with someone who can actually translate their idealism into getting the job done. Which truly progressive candidate has run lately? Kucinich? Please, a joke, someone who cares little doing the hard work to get his agenda passed. My hero, Russ Feingold, decided not to run last time, even though it was clear that he would have had the opportunity to get the progressive wing securely behind him. He copped out. Who was left on the left? Edwards? Probably a good thing he dropped out so early. Thus, nobody really mounted a challenge to Obama and Clinton from the left, not a significant challenge.
If Taibbi actually wants to see a ‘real’ progressive (and this goes for Hamsher, Huffington (if she is so fired up about unemployment, how about putting her millions to the cause and start hiring folks to sit around a peddle even more nonsense on her site), and Kos) elected, then they all had best work on finding a candidate who can actually do something, or, in lieu of such a find, one of them can run for public office and show us exactly how it is done.
You scoff at public office, but tell me, just how much will a journalist ever get accomplished beyond offering up self-serving pearls of wisdom, secure in the knowledge that he will never really have to worry about any of this. I love listening to wealthy opinionators tell the ‘powers that be’ how they have lost touch with the common folk.
Rich_Sellers
@gil mann:
Well, yeah. The bad cop’s out and the good cop’s in now. Totally different set of circumstances. Plus, we have Hope and Change and a shitload of other inspirational words to sustain us and/or keep us distracted from what’s going on with the government.
aimai
What? K. Grant how do you get from Gil Mann liking Taibbi’s work “afflicting the comfortable” to an accusation that Taibbi, or Mann, are somehow identical to Jane Hamsher–or Hamsher to Kos, in being outside the realm of political action? I mean, what the fuck? Is it something he said in another thread? Because I’m not getting it.
Secondly, even though Hamsher may have gone off the deep end both she and Kos have been very involved in raising money for actual political candidates and trying to run *and pressure* individual candidates to vote/govern. They are both very far from dilettantes even if you don’t like the tack one or the other has taken over a particular bill or even over a particular compromise political figure like Obama.
aimai
K. Grant
@aimai: You are correct, Kos has done a good bit of advocacy. I was wrong on that account. I may dislike his tendency to go off half-cocked, but I cannot disagree with you regarding his willingness to actually do the work to get people elected.
Perhaps I am missing something, but Gil certainly seemed to imply in his latest that there was something gravely mistaken about my thought that perhaps Mr. Taibbi should actually do something (including running for public office). If I am wrong, I apologize. If not, though, then you must admit that the idea that scoffing at public service is jaded and foolish in the extreme. I am certainly willing to entertain the distinct possibility that I may have interpreted his response incorrectly, but I am simply bone-weary from dealing with foolish knaves who believe that actually doing the work of government is either beneath them or completely ineffective.
K. Grant
@aimai: Ah, and another thing – I do find Taibbi to be a dilettante. Not as bad as Ariana Huffington, but clearly someone who aspires to a position such as hers.
gil mann
No, I scoff at the notion that criticizing someone obligates you to wrest their job from them and do it better.
By your logic, 85% of American males should be umpires.
K. Grant
@gil mann: A good point. Nonetheless, I simply suggest that if one plans on standing on the sidelines carping, perhaps, at least, one could offer constructive criticism, something that actually offers suggestions and alternative plans of action. If folks like Taibbi are so smart, then they should train that brilliance on the problems at hand.
Mnemosyne
@gil mann:
Actually, I think that’s K. Grant’s point: it’s easy to sit in the stands bitching about the decision that the umpire made. Very few of those carping will actually go to umpire school and learn how to do the job because that’s hard work and, let’s face it, most people don’t want to go through the hassle when it’s so much more fun to stay in the stands.
gil mann
Apparently not a well-made one, since Mnemosyne’s bemoaning the way lack of ambition leads people into careers other than umpiring.
Mr. Twain, wouldn’t your time have been better spent rewriting Last of the Mohicans?
Corner Stone
@gil mann:
One of my all time fav movies with DDL.
I watch it no matter what point I catch it on cable.
“Stay alive! No matter what occurrs! I will come for you!”
And I will espada y daga the absolute balls off anyone stupid enough to touch my woman Madeleine Stowe in her prime. I’m looking at *you* Anthony Quinn.
wilfred
@Mnemosyne:
Talking with Obama apologists is like discussing theology with born- again Xian lawyers.
Try this: if you can’t tell the difference between assisting a despotic leader at his request by sending in special hit teams and funding and aiding death squads then you’re an Obama apologist.
These teams are exactly that – death squads. They will make sure any opposition to Salih is removed under the rubric of NATIONAL SECURITY.
Is it exactly like invading another country. Who the fuck said that? But since it isn’t, it’s ok, right?
Mnemosyne
@wilfred:
You do realize that the fact that a guy associated with al-Qaeda in Yemen just tried to blow up an airliner full of civilians makes you look like an apologist for terrorists, right? I might have bought your line about all of the innocents being killed in Yemen if, you know, al-Qaeda wasn’t claiming responsibility for that attack in revenge for the recent strikes on them.
You did, since you compared it to two countries that we invaded, Iraq and Afghanistan, and not, say, Pakistan, where we are propping up a military dictatorship. Maybe you should demonstrate a little more knowledge of the Middle East if you want people to take you seriously instead of running around screaming, “Palestine! Iraq! Afghanistan! Yemen!” One of these things is not like the other.