More people read this thing than Kausfiles, apparently:
Pioneering political blogger Mickey Kaus took out papers to run for U.S. Senate in California, he told LA Weekly.
[…..]And in his Kausfiles blog, Kaus has quite the widely-read bully pulpit, with an estimated readership of as many as 30,000 people daily.
I’m not a Kaus-hater, but I have to confess I just don’t “get” the Kausfiles. Who could stand reading something like that? I tried for a while. It’s worse than The Note was when Halperin ran it, stylistically.
Comrade Mary
Yeah, only a few people have ever read Kaus, but every one of them started a goat farm. That’s influence, man.
Maxwel
Easterbrook and Kaus – why I gave up on Slate.
Omnes Omnibus
To paraphrase Roman Hruska, “Even if he were [a goat-blower], there are a lot of [goat-blowers]. They are entitled to a little representation, aren’t they, and a little chance? We can’t have all [non-goat-blowers].”
Ash Can
I assume “Kausfiles” is an online step-by-step manual for proper goat-blowing.
Omnes Omnibus
@Ash Can:
You would think so, but you would be wrong.
Persia
I read it when it first moved to Slate for maybe a month. IDGI either.
Ash Can
@Omnes Omnibus: Improper goat-blowing, then?
MikeJ
@Ash Can: If it were it might be useful to somebody, which is certainly not the case.
tc125231
I don’t know about “hating” Kaus, but he is clearly an idiot. Electing him would repopulate the Senate with YOUNG idiots to replace the OLD idiots who will eventually die.
Since 31% of Americans believe dinosaurs and people lived at the same time, one has to believe that idiots deserve representation.
In the the Senate, though, the percentage is already way over 31%. They don’t need Kaus.
mistermix
“Took out papers” — what a fucking wanker. When he actually gathers thousands of signatures on petitions, this might be as interesting as Mary Carey running for Governor.
Napoleon
How do we know that those 30,000 hits Kaus gets aren’t goats?
Tom Hilton
Why have the news media completely ignored the issue of Kaus’ alleged goat-blowing?
Time to start a coordinated e-mail campaign to the L.A. Times (to start with) and demand that they cover it.
Michael
From his “I can’t even not fuck up a filing” Kausfile:
I guess “all of them.”
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
First they ran a political ad in California featuring evil mutant sheep, and now Kaus wants in on some of that action. Coincidence or not? We report, you decide.
Tom Hilton
@mistermix: No, even then it won’t be nearly as interesting. Not that Mary Carey’s run was all that fascinating.
tagimaucia
I don’t like Kaus, but I have to grudgingly admit I enjoy his bloggingheads appearances with Robert Wright– they have a good repartee, and Wright usually calls him out on the most bullshitty of his bullshit.
Bulworth
Is he running in the GOP primary?
MattF
Funny how everyone’s reaction to Kausfiles is “It must have been interesting before I tried reading it.”
Mojotron
Can someone explain to me the history of the “Kaus blows goats/gives sexual favors to alpacas” thing?”
and don’t forget he’s picked up the all-important libertarian-on-the-public-payroll and wingnut welfare recipient endorsements.
No Joy in Mudville
@tc125231:
That way they could hang out with the dinosaurs.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Bulworth:
Naw, he’s running as a Dem. He likes donkeys more than elephants. More goat-like, and easier to screw without using a ladder.
Dino
I liked his book on equality in early nineties. I can’t recall much but the thesis was ameliorating the tangential benefits of wealth, — e.g. the rich get better treatment from our health and legal systems — while not trying to make everyone equal monetarily.
I never read Kausfiles, but when he claimed that the Kerry botox story was some sort of synecdoche, it cemented his status as a goat
blowerfellator.Off Topic, but real patriots should check this out this new videogame: http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/528055
tjproudamerican
I concur!!! Mickey Kaus is the worst blogger ever because he is as dishonest as Glenn Reynolds and that aging Never-Was Blonde disaster harridan. In fact, Kaus-Reynolds-Harridan are the Three Heads of the Monster that killed the Internet as a serious place.
In each case, Harridan, Reynolds, and Kaus, you get an old bitter white person who won’t even admit that she is a reactionary, knee-jerk George Wallace Voter, pining away for Scoop Jackson and de facto segregation.
And whenever Slate will have some story I assume will be interesting and suddenly I click and am in Kaus’ staggeringly illiterate set of notes and “……” I wish I could unclick my presence.
David Hunt
Okay, as someone who found Kaus unintelligible and boring on the first and second tries and is obviously not in on the joke…What’s going on with all the goat jokes…or do I even want to know?
Bulworth
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: Because one would think, a candidate running to run against a certain party’s “dogma” would probably want to run in the other party’s primary, the party that exists in part or in whole to oppose the other party’s dogma. But Blanche Lincoln is running in the Dem primary and occupies a Senate seat for largely the same reasons, to oppose their own party’s “dogma” and hippy supporters, so who knows.
ricky
Mickey Kaus took out papers to run for U.S. Senate in California,
If Kaus were serious about this political foray he would have taken the cue from the Republican plan at the Health Care
Summit and taken out a single clean sheet of paper.
Linda Featheringill
I just read Kaus [some] for the first time – and I still don’t have a goat farm.
Yeah, I know you kids want the animals so you can do something the goat is not comfortable with, but I really would like to have a goat farm. With kids and everything. And grass. And fences that are not high enough to keep the little beasties in. And all of that.
But alas, reading Kaus didn’t get that for me. Sigh.
But no, I did not find Kaus that interesting, either.
demo woman
@Napoleon: What an insult. Goats are pretty smart animals.
Tom Hilton
@tc125231:
Actually, no. He’s running for Barbara Boxer’s seat, and Boxer is no idiot.
If he were running for Feinstein’s seat, you would be right.
Will
I’ve always found him unreadable. He takes contrarianism to its natural, 12-year old in the back seat of the car conclusion.
MikeJ
@David Hunt:
For politicians he dislikes the standard of evidence is, “you can’t prove he *didn’t* blah blah blah.” So people started holding him to his own standard, and thus far he has refused to prove he doesn’t blow goats.
ricky
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
he’s running as a Dem. He likes donkeys more than elephants. More goat-like, and easier to screw without using a ladder.
As a boy learning the ropes on his way to manhood, Mickey eschewed the often heard reply from a boy’s darkened room: “Not doin nothin Mom. Just breaking in my catcher’s mitt.” Instead, after kissing his Mom goodnight the young Kaus would ask if he could borrow her short haired bristle brush.
Joel
I assume we’re talking about the Senate in Baja, California, right?
Paul in KY
I think it’s funny he’s running in the Democratic primary. Hope he loses alot of money & gets shellacked by Sen. Boxer.
i can only assume his GOP masters put him in there to cut up Sen. Boxer a bit. I would think he won’t be able to do Kausfiles while he’s running, as Sen. Boxer would demand equal time. That could be the best gift he would ever give the American public (having to shut down Kausfiles).
The other gift would be video of him blowing a goat.
Sentient Puddle
Yeah, I remember trying to read him early in the decade (2002, 2003-ish). My reaction was best summed up by @MattF:
I think it was because back then, nobody’s idea of what a political blog was supposed to be was really set, and I just assumed that Kaus was writing in a format that I would just have to get used to. Of course, I then found bloggers who knew how not to ramble irately.
Last time I tried to read him, I was dumbfounded at how he still seemed dead set in refusing to go along with conventions such as headlines, block paragraphs, and other formatting conventions that make things readable.
kindness
The comments on the link are great though. Who knew goat blowers needed more representation?
ricky
@Joel:
Warning: Blowing on the cabrito to cool it can spread communicable diseases to others and, if done too quickly after removal from the coals, can result in burns to the lips and tongue.
Tenzil Kem
Please, please, please tell me this means he has to stop writing for Slate while he’s a candidate. Please.
Andy
I guess the goats will be pleased that he has to leave them alone while he is pretending to be a candidate.
Marc
He’s even worse than he used to be – all union-bashing crap, all of the time now. He appears to have learned nothing – and forgotten nothing – from the Bush years.
Please, please let him run – so the Slate column can be axed, and he can fail to get enough signatures, and lose a lot of money, and be generally humiliated. “Puppet show and Mickey Kaus!”
Boots Day
Who exactly does Kaus think his constituency is going to be? There can’t be that many Democrats who hate the Democratic Party and all that it stands for.
I don’t recall ever seeing anyone refer positively to his blog, although I’ve seen plenty of people blast him for being such a ninny. How he’s going to turn all that negative attention into votes is anyone’s guess.
Cris
@MikeJ: Do you recall where it started? I’m thinking Yglesias, but I’m not sure.
Nellcote
@Paul in KY:
Carlyfornia’s guy could make a demon goat ad.
Nellcote
@Boots Day:
BigHollywood.con?
PaulW
Ooooh, I’d like to run for the US Senate here in sunny Florida!
Do I need to file paperwork or can I just use a write-in campaign and stealth it?
Paul in KY
Nellcote, with Carly’s money, I’d expect high production values & some good CGI (if they can’t get actual footage of the goatalingus).
Tonybrown74
These people really believe their own shit, don’t they? He’s actually going to take on Barbara Boxer in a primary from the right?
The only [sensible] reason to do this would be to weaken her in the general by trying to show that she is too liberal for California.
BrianM
The End of Equality had an intriguing key idea:
+ Inequality of wealth (capitalism) is a useful driver of productive activity.
+ Efforts to reduce inequality haven’t been wildly successful.
+ Wealth needn’t be the only source of status and self/societal worth. (Obligatory de Tocqueville quote about how, in America Back Then, the honest tradesman could look the richest man in town proudly in the eye and consider himself his equal.)
+ So the liberal program ought to stop focusing on wealth equality and focus on the other kind(s). Recommendations were things like universal health care (we’re all in this together), heavy support of public schools (as a place where all wealth strata can meet at an impressionable age), spending money on the public square, not building public buildings out of cheapo cinderblock but rather something that made public service look dignified, and so on. [Even then, the recommendations seemed weak in the face of the advantages of wealth.]
The book was reasonably well-written, with paragraphs, complete sentences, prudent use of exclamation points and all that.
All this was pre-intertubes. Something dreadful happened to him since then.
Jeff Fecke
@Cris:
It was Yglesias’ commenters. Kaus had written a “John Edwards Can’t Prove He Didn’t Have Sex” post (hey, even a blind squirrel), and someone pointed out that hey, Mickey Kaus can’t prove he didn’t felate that goat….
Fencedude
For those curious, I dug the links up earlier.
Mickey Kaus blows goats, Part the First and Part the Second
trollhattan
Well, we had a pr0n star run for governator, so it’s only fair that a
thirdfourth-rate, Canadian, goat-lovin’ (“irresponsible not to speculate…”) blogger gets a shot. However, it runs contra to the current rule that statewide candidates must be billionaires.Tax Analyst
Excellent! I think just about everyone here will be looking forward to Nancy Pelosi whipping John into line now and then.
tc125231
@No Joy in Mudville: Good one.
tc125231
@Tom Hilton: Boxer is not an idiot. But Kaus assuredly is.
But McCain and company will eventually die. Kaus’s presence would ensure that the torch of imbecility was not dropped.
However, given that the Senate’s moron quotient already exceeds 50%, I don’t think he is needed.
I hope she hands him his lunch.
tc125231
@Tenzil Kem: Man, that would be a plus. He and John Dickerson are 90% of why I no longer read Slate.
Tax Analyst
Oh, BTW – Kaus is an idiot AND a fool here. There is no way he primaries Boxer.
But thanks for playing,
MickeyDickhead.ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Tax Analyst:
Naw, it would be the other way around. John would be the Democratic House Mop. If the cats don’t respond to herding, Nancy could threaten them with Naked Mopping.
tammanycall
His candidacy makes no sense. If he were to run in the GOP primary as a moderate Republican, he might have a chance. But an anti-union, anti-immigrant candidate running against an incumbent in a California Democratic primary? Lunacy.
asiangrrlMN
I suggested in an earlier thread to get a BJer from each state that has an election to run. I think it would be a great stunt, and who knows? We might even win a few elections! Except, instead of Cole, I propose Tunch for Congress. He could use the Paw of Doom to swipe the recalcitrant Dems and force them to get with the program.
Tax Analyst
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
The Naked Nu-Colear Moption?
That’s a really stretched-out pun, isn’t it?
JGabriel
Pioneering? That’s a strange word to apply to Mickey Kaus — I’m pretty sure that goat-blowing has been around almost as long as mankind has been herding and milking ruminants.
(I wish I had more insider-y, on-point, jokes to make about Kaus than the old “goat-blowing” routines, but I stopped reading him years ago, for the same reason Doug mentions: the guy is unreadable – just a painfully bad writer.)
.
Brian J
Whoa, for a long time, I thought I was the only one who hated the way he wrote. I mean, Jesus Christ, it’s like he never learned how to end a sentence…very annoying…did he not finish school? And why…oh why…is he running for the Senate if he doesn’t expect to win?…. Come on now….
Quiddity
I doubt those 30,000 hits a day. The comment section is rather sparse for that kind of traffic.