Via Sully, Hitchens unloads on the tea party and their apologists, and in the process claims that Ross Douthat is wrong about his assertions. What Hitchens doesn’t get is that Douthat isn’t about being right or wrong, he is about mainstreaming whatever is best in the short term for the Republican party.
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Mike Goetz
I love this little riff:
Douthat: The Tea Party marries fringe concerns (repeal the 17th Amendment!) to a timely, responsible-seeming message about spending and deficits.
Hitch: The more one looks at this, the more wrong it becomes (as does that giveaway phrase “responsible-seeming”).
Mike Goetz
Republicans: Responsible-seeming for 40 years!
jl
I don’t think Cole is outraged enough today. He needs to read about the hijinks going on at the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission. That will calm him down.
We Have a Winner in the Stupidest Economist Alive Competition: Keith Hennessey, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, Bill Thomas, and Peter Wallison
De Long’s blog
http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2010/12/we-have-a-winner-in-the-stupidest-economist-alive-competition-keith-hennessey-douglas-holtz-eakin-bill-thomas-and-peter-w.html
Orwell and the Financial Crisis
Krugman’s blog
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/15/orwell-and-the-financial-crisis/
freelancer
@Mike Goetz:
This reminds me of a picture that Driftglass just put up.
Crashman
Why do people continue to believe that Douthat is arguing in good faith? The guy’s a fraud.
fasteddie9318
OT, but does anybody have any thoughts on the best tablet/e-reader for someone in grad school? My classroom days are mostly done but I do like to sit in on classes on occasion or attend lectures. I’m looking for something that can nicely display PDFs, allows me to take handwritten notes (and will convert them to text, maybe?), and has a voice recorder that can pick up, say, someone giving a lecture at the front of a decent-sized room. I’ve got a Kindle 3 for e-books and the like, but it’s not very handy with the PDFs. On the other hand, I can’t justify buying a tablet to read PDFs unless it can also do some other useful things. I assume everybody is going to say “IPad,” but I’m not sold on it yet for a number of reasons; chief among them is the lack of multitasking. Can it, for example, be recording a lecture while I am doing something else like taking notes or reading the paper on which the lecture is based? Sorry about going off topic and thanks for any suggestions.
MBunge
It has nothing to do with this current crap, but why the fuck is Hitchens allowed to be part of the public discourse? At least Sully had the basic humanity to regret and apologize for his post 9/11 bullshit. As far as I know, Hitchens wears the blood of Iraq as yet another badge of what a badass rebel he is.
One of the things that’s killing us as a civilization is a complete inabilty of our elite to enforce any sort of standards among themselves. You can’t even make the excuse for Hitchens that he’s some sort of intellectual heavyweight. He’s just an amusing drunk and entertaining shit talker who used to hate all the right people.
Mike
Cris
@Crashman: Because people still want to believe that the Times employs columnists with intellectual integrity, in spite of the presence of David Brooks.
Sentient Puddle
@Mike Goetz: Yeah, that “responsible-seeming” line really is a dead giveaway. If you’re in journalism, you don’t stop at “seems.” It’s your goddamned job to go farther than that and proclaim it “responsible” or (in this case) “not responsible.”
@fasteddie9318: iPads do have multitasking now. I’d imagine that you can get apps that fill the niche of recording sound while reading a PDF, but I can’t say with 100% certainty.
Not familiar enough with other tablets/eReaders to comment on them.
Paris
Hitchens starts to make sense but when I got to this:
I stopped reading. Yup, those are the concerns of the people around here.
fasteddie9318
@Paris: Hey, I’m very concerned that neither of those things is happening fast enough. Does that make me part of the group he’s talking about?
Aaron Baker
I’m genuinely curious as to why anyone takes Ross Douthat seriously. Has he ever had anything perceptive to say about anything?
Calouste
@Paris:
Millions sounds like a lot, but it could be only a few percent of the American population. And I think there are enough old white folk settled for the rest of their lives to indeed make up those millions that are worried about the decline of white American supremacy. Where Hitchens is wrong is that America will be one of many world powers. They will stay number one for quite a bit, and then will become number two behind China.
DMcK
I think Hitch gets it just fine, actually:
Martin
@fasteddie9318: iPad. It does have multitasking and there are apps that allow recording in the background while you switch to other apps. There are several PDF reading solutions including Apple’s free iBooks app (which just updated today to improve PDF handling and collections) and it has a very good browser.
The problem you’ll find with ereader/tablets isn’t the lack of inherent capability but the lack of apps to do these things, which sort of puts you most firmly in the iPad category simply due to the sheer volume of apps to choose from.
The part that is probably most problematic is the notes/handwriting piece. The iPad isn’t designed to work with a stylus, nor are most of the other competitors. This is mostly because handwriting has been a dead-end. That’s not to say you can’t do it – there are a number of iPad apps (and styluses) to get you there, it’s just that it’s a universally shitty analogue->digital process. Some of the note taking apps incorporate recording functions as well, so at least there’s some variety there.
Martin
@Paris: The 27% of the GOP base is comprised of about 25 million voters. Fuck, I bet you could find millions in Texas alone that met Hitch’s description.
serge
Please, for the love of God, don’t ever make me think about agreeing with The Hitchens again. It’s against any definition of fairness, and “…via Sully!” Have you not gone too far?
kc
@MBunge:
At least Sully had the basic humanity to regret and apologize for his post 9/11 bullshit.
Did Sullivan apologize, for real? I certainly missed that.
fasteddie9318
@Martin:
@Sentient Puddle:
Thanks to both of you; I didn’t realize that the most recent iPad software update had included multi-tasking. I’ll have to give it some serious thought now.
Paul in KY
Personally, I think he gets it. It’s just that it seems to be ‘bad form’ among the chattering class (of which Hitchens is a made member) to point out such truths.
lurkergirl
@Crashman
Because he pretends to be a devout Catholic? Self-serving displays of piety now rival patriotism as the last refuge of scoundrels in the media these days.
MBunge
@kc: I don’t know if he’s ever specifically had one big “come to Jesus” moment, but Sully’s repeatedly acknowledged not only being wrong about his post 9/11 hysteria but he’s even grappled with the emotional and ideological blind spots that pushed him to be so wrong. He can still be a numbnut a lot of the time, but at least he doesn’t just blow off all the destructive evil he enabled or was affiliated with, like that fuck Hitchens.
Mike
Warren Terra
Sullivan has walked back his post 9/11 vitriol somewhat, but I can’t recall any apparent introspection that might dampen his future irrational embraces, and I’m not sure he’s really apologized as such, especially for his worst comments, like when he accused coastal liberals of being fifth columnists for Bin Laden.
Mike in NC
@Warren Terra:
Not sure either. Sully was on one hell of a Kool-aid binge after 9/11 (and continuing through the Iraq invasion).
matoko_chan
mirable dictu.
matoko_chan
@Mike in NC: sully hasnt changed. Sure he hates Palin and homophobes, but he links Douchebag and McMegan 24/7.
hes just as intellectually dishonest as they are.
DMD
How nice of Hitchens to notice things about the Tea Partiers that others were noticing a year ago. Oh to have pundit name recognition.
kc
@MBunge:
Mike, thanks. I really haven’t read him and I know his views of Bush changed, but was under the impression he hadn’t expressed much, if any, remorse about his own role in beating the drums for war.
I’d think better of him if he just came right out and said, “Sorry about all that ‘fifth column’ stuff. I was wrong and y’all were right.”
Jebediah
@freelancer:
I like it so much I have stolen it. Maybe it will irritate some of my conservative/winger Facebook acquaintances.
bob h
What Douthat is about is fulfilling the job description for the nice gig he has at the Times.