A lot of chatter about this latest outburst from CNN’s newest hire:
ERICKSON: This is crazy. What gives the Commerce Department the right to ask me how often I flush my toilet? Or about going to work? I’m not filling out this form. I dare them to try and come throw me in jail. I dare them to. Pull out my wife’s shotgun and see how that little ACS twerp likes being scared at the door. They’re not going on my property. They can’t do that. They don’t have the legal right, and yet they’re trying.
Anyone who is surprised by this needs their head examined. Seriously. I know Erick, chatted with him for years while I wrote at Red State, and he knows that 90% of what he spews is utter nonsense. James Joyner got at his (kind of) the other day. You can say a lot of things about Erick, but he isn’t this stupid, he knows what he is doing. You at home can do your own math on the stupid to evil ratio.
Regardless, I’m sure there are people who are surprised that Erick would continue to say explosive things after his hire, including probably some of the clowns at CNN, but they shouldn’t. At this point, he has every single incentive to keep saying explosive and incendiary things. CNN hired him in spite of everything he had already said, so that was a de facto green light to continue in that vein. It will drive the ratings, and is clearly what he wants.
And should he accidentally go too far (and God knows what would actually be too far for CNN at this point) and get canned by CNN, then this is an even bigger win for Erick. Now he gets to be the victim who was silenced by the evil liberal media, and anyone who has been paying attention knows that this is the route to real riches- playing the martyr for the wingnut welfare gravy train.
In fact, as the current incentives are set up, not getting fired by CNN just gives him a steady job and the opportunity to mainstream right-wing bullshit. Getting fired is a path to riches, whether it be in the form of a book or a syndicated radio show or maybe just sympathy checks from the teabagging public. It really is a win-win for Erick, no matter what happens.
Thanks, liberal media!
demo woman
Erick is hoping to be sacked. He see a future with Fox News.
furioso ateo
Why didn’t anyone tell me there was money in being an asshole?
That’s it, I’m jumping ship over to the republican camp. Big bags of money, here I come!
dmsilev
I still want to know why a Manly Man ™ has to borrow his wife’s shotgun to protect his
castlesuburban ranch house.And yeah, when (not if) Erick crosses whatever line CNN has, he’ll pivot seamlessly into the role of Professional Victim of the Liberal Media.
-dms
demkat620
Eh, this is their Glen Beck replacement.
On a happier note, Olbermann is reading a Thurber short story on air.
bago
What a dildo mallet!
moe99
Our very own L. Ron Hubbard.
beltane
Anyone who is wondering why CNN is withering away before our eyes also needs to have his or her head examined. The only people I know who watch CNN with any regularity are older, moderate, David Broder types who will be turned off by this kind of thing. An endlessly playing loop of The Jim Lehrer News Hour would be more appealing to these people.
Bad Horse's Filly
@furioso ateo – Don’t make me come to Afghanistan and slap you. You be a wimpy Democrat just like the rest of us.
Elisabeth
If CNN’s ratings keep tanking Erik Son of Erik will be out of a job, or promoted, soon enough.
(Rumor has it David Shuster has a pilot tape floating around CNN. Don’t do it, David!)
General Egali Tarian Stuck
CNN needs to either drop their domestic network or convert it to a cooking channel. But keep their international network that is the best around, except maybe for BBC.
Michael D.
Eric’s tweet: Surely mine is not the only 4yo who wants the Easter bunny to bring her office supplies.
My tweet back: RT @ewerickson “Surely mine is not the only 4yo who wants the Easter bunny to bring her office supplies.” So, she’s batshit crazy too?
beltane
@furioso ateo: You’re not getting off to a good start. If you want to make a living at being a Republican asshole, the least you could do is post inflammatory comments that border on the abusive.
srv
So you’re saying you were an amoral asshole who admired Erick’s (you defended him on several occasions back in the day) bullshit until Schiavo put too many hairs up your butt?
Just wondering.
John Cole
No, I’m saying he is not as stupid as he has seemed the last three-four years. Red State has gone through an odd evolution to its current state.
JGabriel
Erick Erickson:
John Cole @ Top:
So Erick’s not stupidly encouraging people to shoot federal employees for knocking on the door; he’s smartly doing it for personal gain.
Right, then. Evil it is.
.
JR
Why not just ask him to comment on Donovan McNabb’s performance as QB and get it over with?
me
I’d say 50/50 but that’s a huge pie. He’s as dumb as Malkin and as evil as Reynolds.
WereBear
Being an asshole: yet another big money talent I do not have.
Why? WHY?
Dannie22
I know Ted Turner made huge cash when he sold CNN but he must be upset with what has happened to his former network.
Annie
Exactly….
General Egali Tarian Stuck
I think it notched toward Peak Wingnut when Red State Strike Force mustered.
Didn’t you used to be A REPUBlican Cole? That ‘s the rumor in certain circles.
Svensker
Wonder what Mr. Joyner thinks of Erik encouraging threatening census workers with a shotgun? Is that the serious “public intellectual” Erik he was hoping for?
Mike Kay
CNN = Crazy News Network
kommrade reproductive vigor
According to the Big fReichtard Book of ReaLAMErican Rules: He who admits he’d use his wife’s shotgun (thereby implying he lacks his own shotgun) is a big old kweer.
JGabriel
Demo Woman:
Yes, that seems most likely. Erickson wants to be the next Glenn Beck, but meaner.
I can kind of see how someone beaten down by life could get to be so cynical and evil, but I wonder what Erick’s excuse is? It doesn’t seem like he had a particularly hard life. I can sort of see Erick at the Pearly Gates, explaining himself to St. Peter, who says nothing, just nods understandingly, and, when Erickson finally finishes, simply pulls a lever. The floor drops out from beneath Erickson, sending him to the lowest pit of hell.
Then St. Peter turns to St. John and says, “It really wasn’t even worth responding.”
.
demkat620
CNN used to be the best there was. Can you imagine what Bernard Shaw must think when he sees this?
Guster
No, no, you’re reading the ‘wife’s shotgun’ line wrong. It’s because the ACS twerp doesn’t even deserve a man’s shotgun. It’s like killing him with a knitting needle.
Violet
You wrote at Red State? That I didn’t know. Has it always been the den of crazy it is now?
JGabriel
Werebear:
Then why the fuck am I still poor?
.
Chuck Butcher
Well hell, I can remember thinking bad things about a sitting Senator named Goldwater who now seems to many to have been moderate.
gad I hope html didn’t break this again…
Wilson Heath
Solution to the conundrum you’ve identified: don’t fire him, Frum him. No pay, no air time, no research support, no access to the green room, but he is entitled to keep up an unpaid association with the network. If they can do this while enforcing whatever non-compete clause they have, it’s a victory for everybody. Well, except for Erick Son-of-Erick.
JGabriel
Chuck Butcher:
To everyone who complains about the phrase Overton Window, I can think of no better proof of its existence, and for its necessity, than the fact that Goldwater is now considered a moderate, and everything FDR did is considered beyond the commie pale.
.
AhabTRuler
Not being an asshole to the right sort of people.
JSD
@ John, and everyone.
I’m trying to understand what motivates people like Erick. If he isn’t stupid, what’s the reason for being so over the top, in your face, and lying about policy? Is it purely for personal gain? Is it that the ends (gaining conservative control of the gov’t) justify the means (being over the top and lying)? Is it to motivate the base? What is exactly going on in his brain?
Mike Kay
goldwater is considered a moderate because he was pro-choice, against DADT, and against supply side voo doo ecomoics.
Litlebritdifrnt
I clicked over to CNN today for some deranged reason and they had a heated discussion about Dancing with the stars and whether or not the kate plus eight person was a diva. I have no words.
PS) Clicky the linky dink in the siggy thingy to get a shot of Peaches that will give Mr. Cole all of the leeway he needs on the Tunch weight thingy.
PPS) No she is not pregnant she is fixed.
NobodySpecial
Sorry, Cole, but ‘Redstate’s changed’ is bullpucky of the finest order. It’s ALWAYS been this bad, from the days when RedState seemed like a viable alternative to DailyKos. And that was a long, LONG time ago.
mr. whipple
Litlebritdifrnt: HA!
Another fattie!
Brick Oven Bill
Hey, the Michigan militia man is a Democrat!
Rachel could use better ratings, by the way. Glenn gets over two million viewers (2,014,000) and Rachel gets nine hundred and fifty thousand (950,000).
Think of the possibilities.
jl
The census this year is ten questions. Longer forms are part of various continuous census bureau surveys, such as the American Community Survey, which I guess is what that deranged fool, Erickson, is talking about.
That data goes into Public Use Microdata Area (PUMA) files that…
Wait… ! PUMA!
It’s is the work of the secret power behind the throne, the Hillary Beast! Run, run for your lives!
Mike Kay
@Brick Oven Bill: Beck could use some sponsors.
WereBear
So he’s an entertainer? Or that he has a form of low cunning? In any case, he’s doing it on purpose, and he knows better?
And the people he’s conning; they don’t know any better, do they?
Sort of a perfect storm of stupid.
Chuck Butcher
Y’all can have your imaginary Goldwater:
1964
Most of what Mike Kay asserts is old age out of office Barry, see this bunch to find out just how much. NO, my goddam memory did not play me false – just all this shit GOP revisionism. Barry was a Bible thumping right wing freak. He was just a bit more polite about it.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
Not only does he get to help incite violence but now he is in a position to profit and wank about it on TV. With John’s analysis above this makes it a win-win-win-win for Erickkk.
How come when Erickkk wins everyone else loses?
JGabriel
Mike Kay:
See how much space that saved, with no loss in meaning?
And I’m not entirely sure that’s all true, especially of the ’64 Goldwater, though he may have grown more moderate in his later years.
.
Chuck Butcher
Use your heads people, LBJ beat him in a goddam landslide – derrrr.
Mike Kay
@Chuck Butcher
No, you’re right. He bragged about being an “extremist” and he voted against Civil Rights and he wanted to make Social Security “voluntary”.
marrus
He’s a dick alright, but I thought the “wife’s shotgun” was a clever touch.
jl
marrus @48:
“wife’s shotgun” is actually a feminist position because it implies that women should be allowed to own personal property, even guns! So ‘wife’s shotgun’ provided the conservative-liberal balance on CNN, which is always necessary for professional news coverage.
This striking feminist stance by Erickson may have been too liberal, and he may have to get really reactionary wacky to balance the overbalance in the original balance.
Bobby Thomson
Or else he knows you well enough to know how to lie.
No, I think he’s written and said enough that I can call him stupid based on his track record alone, and not on what persons vouching for him have to say. As Forrest Gump always said . . . .
demimondian
Chuck’s got the truth of it — Goldwater was every bit as nasty as he seemed. Now, whether he was throwing red meat to the pack in order to try to gin up a victory in 1964 or was lying or mellowed later in life, I don’t know.
Sadie
@John Cole
I sometimes forget that you were once a Red State editorial board member, and just now thought it would a bit of a lark to dredge up your embarrassing past for fun and amusement. So google did I “John Cole Red State.” What comes up? A defense of Dick Durbin from 2005.
You were always one of us, also.
scav
How does a nation do a re-boot?
WereBear
To paraphrase a character from John D. MacDonald: Look how good we had it, and how long we had it good.
FDR didn’t just drag us out of the Great Depression and through the years of WWII. He left us on the shore of manufacturing domination and economic stability. In typical American fashion, we took it for granted, just like our rights and our dignities.
We didn’t just say it can’t happen here about fascism. We said it about our institutions and our corporations. It had been so long since we fought for anything that a lot of people didn’t think it was necessary.
A painful reawakening is definitely in order. But that seems to happen once a century, whether we like it or not.
tc125231
As a point of clarification, just how long did Cole keep company with these scum?
My grandma always told me you could tell people’s quality by the company they kept….
Triassic Sands
In the case of Erickson, I’ll go with the mathematically impossible 100/100. He’s 100% stupid. This isn’t an issue of what his IQ is. Anyone who utters the amount of pure nonsense that he spews, for whatever reason, is a total idiot. I don’t care if he has coldly calculated that the way to cash in on the Wingnut Welfare Machine is to say one offensive and highly incendiary thing after another. Anyone who would waste his life doing and saying what Erickson says is brain-dead.
And he’s 100% evil. The more calculating he is, the more evil. So anyone who wants to claim that he isn’t stupid because he knows exactly what he’s doing is simply saying that Erickson is a) a horrible person willing to do or say anything for his own personal advancement no matter whom it hurts and b) a brain-dead basket case for devoting his life to such a worthless end.
scav
I’m just thinking we’ve got a little more corruption in the FAT files or something this time round. Maybe I’ve just not had enough to drink.
HE Pennypacker, Wealthy Industrialist
I remember hating Reagan back in the day while living among Europeans. By the time Shrub came along, I would’ve given eye-teeth, ass, and other body parts for a return to those evil-but-less-malevolent days of the Gipper. But it could be that age plays a part, and that being more aware in older age just made the GWB bullshit seem worse than Reagan.
Liberty60
I used to write a few diary entries at RedState, when I thought they could be reasoned with, and pulled , Frum-like , to some semblence of responsible thought.
But like Frum, I realized that they see value in defeat, not victory.
Thats why they rail about the debt but have no serious plan for what to do about it; they are trapped in a romantic vision of noble defeat and martrydom.
And Frum was also right to point out that defeat is in the financial and professional interest of Rush/ Erickson/ Beck. \
New Yorker
Am I missing something here? If Bachmann and Erickson want the teabaggers to not fill out their census forms, won’t that be a good thing for this country, since it could, in theory, result in redistricting Congressional seats away from teh crazy parts of the country?
I doubt it will happen, but wouldn’t it be hilarious if we woke up one day to find that Texas lost 5 seats (but none around Austin) and California gained 3 and New York 2?
tomvox1
Yeah, maybe he’s not stupid per se but I’m not sure I buy that he’s clever enough to have formulated a whole premeditated endgame strategy either, John. More than likely he’s just a total douchebag and years of Internet anonymity have left him with the delusion that he can say whatever vile things he likes without repercussions…which CNN appears to have completely validated.
But on the other hand….since everyone has now seen his doughy inbred face on camera, maybe he’ll get fucked by a rabid goat while simultaneously having Mary Matalin get all Lorena Bobbitt on his junk and the universe will right itself after all…
mcd410x
I’ve gotta believe that America can see through this asshat. And if not, we’ve already lost.
CaseyL
Werebear:
This.
I came to a similar conclusion last year, that the groundbreaking, progressive, intelligent governance we had from WWII through the end of the 70s was the anomaly, and the self-serving plutocracy ruling a mostly-ignorant rabble was the norm. It’s just our bad luck to have bad timing, and be able to remember when politics was about something more than serving the already-haves’ interest.
Jim Henley said over at Unqualified Offerings said:
(Emphasis added)
If the majority of the populace is content to be ignorant, and prefers “infotainment” that confirms their ignorance to actual reporting that challenges it, there’s no way we can have good governance. And it *is* the populace’s responsibility to support the institutions that support good governance. That’s what being a free and independent people really means: being rational adults capable and willing to make rational political decisions.
Triassic Sands
Evolution? What ARE you talking about?
RedState is a site for stupid, intolerant, selfish people who love America and hate most Americans. As far as I know, it’s always been that way. I’ve observed RedState for many years and I’m not sure what “evolution” you have in mind.
Perhaps, by “odd evolution” you mean evolution where everything stays the same. Yes, that would be odd.
El Cid
Remember, CNN is the company whose leadership thinks it’s having problem because it has too much “straight news”, meaning, they think they need to supplement their vapid round the clock airing of on-the-scene tragedies/exciting crimes, celebrity antics, and regurgitating center-right Washington spin with “personality” and “strong perspectives”.
They haven’t even come close to getting the “journalism” part right, and, I dunno, think their colleagues at the BBC news team are a bunch of fuddy duddy sticks in the mud who don’t know how to do good TV.
AnotherBruce
Why didn’t anyone tell me there was money in being an asshole?
I think the reason nobody told you is that, y’know, it’s been going on since the fucking beginning of time.
To the asshole goes the spoils. You can go ahead and print that on a T shirt and I promise not to sue you.
kdaug
The only evolution is Mr. Cole’s.
Also, and, plus, in addition: The “melting pot” means the smart and the stupid, and we get the orange congealed shit that doesn’t really have any flavor. But it’s the best flavor that’s ever been tried. (h/t dead British dude)
russell
I also used to hang out at RedState back in the day. Haven’t spent any time there in a few years.
Erick Erickson is a guy who stumbled across the concept of talking dumbass smack for a living and found it congenial. It’s worked out remarkably well for him. It is sure a hell of a lot easier than actually practicing law.
Regarding the “ACS twerp” issue, the solution is simple. Provide the ACS twerps with body armor and a fully automatic assault rifle.
That should settle Erick’s hash.
Mumphrey
@ JSD
I have been trying for a long time myself to work out just what American conservatives are really working toward. Why are they pushing, and in lockstep no less, policies that seem bound to make this a worse, weaker, lamer in every way country than we are now? It doesn’t mesh with what they say all the time about how great the U.S. is, and how it’s the best place there ever has been. You’d think they’d want to make things better. But they shit all over science and screw up schoolbooks for children who will someday be our industrialists and scientists and such.
The only thing that really makes any sense to me are 2 possibilities: The first has to do with all that all that talk about how Obama bowing to the Emperor of Japan or somebody “weakens” the U.S., and that acknowledging the titanic phuq-ups of the last 8 years are something we’re going to have to try to make up for, since, despite what many conservatives believe, other countries, and the people who live there, have some real worth as people–same as, and I know this is a shock, Americans do!
I think a lot of these clowns really belive this crap: owning up to our mistakes and trying to mend them; acknowledging when we aren’t doing things as well as we could be doing them and setting out to do better; all this to them is nothing more than an admission that we are not the GREATEST COUNTRY WHAT EVER LIVED!!!!!!! and since they seem to think that how fervently the people of a country believe their country is the standard, and the only one at that, for measuring how AWESOME!!! a country happens to be, then I can see that it makes some sense to them that criticism weakens the U.S.
Now I don’t think that people like Mitch McConnell are dumb enough to believe that; Boehner might be, and I think Eric Cantor might, too. But McConnell, and rather a lot of the nasty Republican politicians you think of when you think of such loathesome people, I don’t think they fall for this “We can be as great as we SAY we are, just by saying it!!!” crap. Kyl, Hatch, that new cheesy doctor guy from Wyoming, people like that, I think they use these pinheads who believe this, since they’re easily misled and easy to fire up to give money, volunteer and vote, but I don’t think for a minute that they really care that Obama bowed to somebody; it’s even less likely when you recall that Bush did it and they’re smart enough to know that.
So the brainless drones cheer because they truly think that’s really what makes a great country, and has the added bonus of being cheap and easy, and these people are nothing if not cheap and lazy. As it happens this kind of cheap, lazy, mindless cheering is a great way to help turn a once proud country into a big, clumsy country stumbling its way toward the Third World. But they don’t know any better, so let’s forget them for now.
What I want to know is: Why have McConnell, Kyl, DeMint, Hatch, et al., signed on for this? Presumably they know that what the RedStaters, the Texas school board people and others like that are doing isn’t helping, and may well be hurting the country, yet they still go along with it; they even lead the charge sometimes. I mean, they must know that graduating hundreds of thousands of American students who don’t understnand science or basic history is going to be bad for us down the years. Following policies that are sure to make most Americans less well off economically might boost big corporations’ stocks today, but will cripple us over the long haul. Henry Ford, after all wanted to pay his workers well so they would be rich enough to buy his cars. American companies as a rule today, don’t seem too eager to follow that bit of advice, though I guess when you’re walmart and your selling cheap shit brought in from China, where slaves make it, well, you can underpay your workers and they’re still “rich” enough to buy what you’re selling! Everybody wins!
I don’t know. I just can’t see how what the politicians in the Republican Party are pushing can do anything but turn us into a Third World country. And so I don’t understand why they’re doing it anyway. The cynical answer is that when things get to that state, they’ll be the ones (and their children) who will be on the top, living in their fortified neighborhoods, with the armed guards prowling around the walls, shooing (or shooting) any of the underclass who get too near. Maybe the answer really is as simple and sad as that: they’d be willing to throw most Americans out into the streets to live in the dumps and landfills and slums to come, as long as they got a bigger share of the pie. Seems to me like they’d end up with less than they have now, with a much smaller pie, but a far bigger share of it, and, sad to say, maybe that’s all that makes people like Orrin Hatch happy: wallowing in his while everybody else starves.
The only other answer I can see is that what these politicians are pushing is something they somehow truly believe: that greater income inequality and worse distribution of wealth really does make countries stronger. Maybe some of them really believe the only way to save this country is to turn it into Bolivia. I don’t see the logic, but maybe some of them do.
This has been a long, long post, I know, but “What do conservatives really want? What are they trying to do? What are the ends they’re working toward? And why do they think we’d be better off that way?” are things I have been trying really hard to understand now for 10 years. I’d really like to know that. I don’t know if I need to ask a psychaitrist, a philosopher, a theologian, a historian or an economist. Maybe all of them, with a psychic thrown in for good measure.
To end, I’ll ask one last thing, something that I guess others have asked before, if not here then elsewhere: Why are all these conservative tough guys all so fat and pasty looking? And the tougher thay talk, and the more antisocial and violent they seem to be, the fatter and pastier they are. I spent all day today out working in the yard, raking and planting some vegetables and digging out stones and smoothing a spot at the end of the yard where we’re going to put our daughter’s swingset up. Now I’m hardly a stud; 6’1″ and 135 pounds, most of it bones, is not studly. But still, I do a lot of yardwork and stuff like that. This guy Erickson looks like he’d have a heart attack mowing his yard…
Grace Nearing
Well I hope CNN isn’t counting on the many commenters at Red State who’ve been bannished over the years to tune in.
asiangrrlMN
Reading that post from Cole’s days at Red State was a hoot. I would prefer that Erick son of Erick was stupid because the other option is, as people pointed out, he’s evil. I do think he’ll come up clover no matter what happens to his CNN job, which makes me profoundly depressed.
Mumphrey, I really hate to be a reductionist (well, no I don’t), it’s politics for the ones who really don’t believe the shit. That’s all. It’s a game to them.
Toast
If I live to be a million I’ll never understand how someone like that can live with themselves. The idea of saying things simply for positioning, or to get a reaction, or for any reason other than that they’re what you actually believe utterly evades me.
I’ll tell you what, though. Erickson sure loves to play with fire. His constant evocations of violence towards Democrats and liberals are what separates him from most of the right wing clown show. If someone got fed up with his shit and decided to show him just how tough he’s not? Well, I sure wouldn’t vote to convict them.
Michael D.
Erick Erickson:
Erick Erickson -not evolved.
russell
Cherchez l’argent.
BC
I dunno, Mumphrey, but I have come to conclusion that these people use their ideology as their religion. They have faith that their ideology is the one true politics and that anything that is contra is a false way of governing. With their faith so firm, no facts or reason are going to sway them (otherwise, they would just go with the flow and you know what Palin said about going with the flow). They prove how strong their faith is by remaining true to it in the face of all adversity. This is the only way it makes sense to me, because they are so reality averse.
ET
FUCKING IDIOT.
Those were long form question – the Census isn’t doing the long form this census. There is a lot to complain about that is true without not knowing your facts and complaining about shit that DOESN’T MATTER ANYMORE. And just so you know Erik, most people never got a long form WHEN THEY WERE DOING IT so unless you got one in the past you WILL NEVER GET ONE. EVER. Every time he opens his damn mouth and spews this shit he looks totally clueless ’cause it is not like Census is hiding information about the form.
As to why the asked about toilets, because there are places IN THE UNITED STATES that DIDN’T HAVE plumbing into the 1960s and 1970s.
He is a damn fucking idiot and CNN is, collectively, even more FUCKING stupid for hiring him. Seriously, he is going to bite them in the ass as some point and I will just laugh. They have no one to blame when he spews some bullshit that gets him/CNN in trouble – and that is only a matter of time.