Those of you who check in at Kathryn Jean’s Bouncy Castle may have noticed a rather sweet article by Michael Potemra posted on Friday night after the passage of the Marriage Equality Act:
But here, tonight, I see neither the face of anarchy, nor that of a nascent “North Korea.” I see smiles on young people — and also, on some quiet senior citizens who are actually old enough to remember Stonewall 1969.
And speaking of 1969, here’s a little bit of perspective. In 1969, Spain was a conservative religious republic, led by the legendary Generalissimo Francisco Franco; and New York City was already Babylon-on-the-Hudson, well on its way to being the crime-sex-drugs-porn-and-atonal-music capital of the world. If I had said to you then, “Forty years from now, one of these places will allow homosexuals to marry each other with the blessing of the state” . . . well, let’s just say you would have made a lot of money if you had bet on Spain.
Spain did it in 2005, six years ahead of the Empire State; and now we have it here in ol’ Babylon. I call it Babylon affectionately; let no one question, on this night, my patriotism as a citizen of the state of Alexander Hamilton, Theodore Roosevelt, and the Marx Brothers.
Of course, Saint Kathryn of the Inaccurate Conception is having none of that, because she is aware that allowing people in love to marry each other is, of course, the worst sort of oppression:
Do not be so quick to dismiss the North Korea comparison, Mike. We are witnessing tyranny today that is fostered by a false sense of freedom, a tyranny that faux tolerance ferments.
In response, the wonderfully named Jason Lee Steorts gets in a quite lovely bit of snark (although he does feel the need later to apologize to She Who Must Be Mocked for his unkind language, which is a little bit like the Titanic apologizing to the iceberg):
So it is your view, Kathryn, that the action of democratically elected representatives, who are accountable to the citizens of the State of New York, is tyrannical in a way that justifies comparison to North Korea, a state in which an absolute ruler has burned people alive in a stadium. Okay. But now I want a new word for what “tyranny” used to mean.
I would like to see the reaction of a North Korean refugee to your claim.
It would also be nice if you troubled yourself to make an argument.
The only problem, of course, is with the idea that an incoherent hater like K-Lo would be able to string any argument together in a manner which doesn’t sound like a fat Jack Russell coughing up a king-sized chew ball.
Mr Potemra responds to the apparently quite measured responses from NRO readers to his first article with his own zinger:
One of my favorites deplored gay marriage as sending us down the road to “the full ‘gay’ morally relativistic agenda” which will result, if we permit it, in “materialism at high-tide.” Now, this is an objection I take very seriously indeed, because I think materialism is a great danger to the soul, especially in a wealthy country such as ours. So I hope we never reach those vilest depths of moral decay, the ones my reader is so worried about; and never become a country so overtaken by materialist excess that a respected conservative presidential candidate will have a million-dollar account at Tiffany’s to buy gifts for his wife. The gays will sure have a lot to answer for, if that ever happens.
Forget about the gays buggering each other in the streets. When the Corner starts to be amusing, you know the end times are upon us.
[Image: The Morning after the Revolution, Valparaiso – James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834-1903)] [Edited slightly well after first posted to make one of the jokes much funnier.]
Yutsano
Ouch. No one lurves the lizard do they?
Brian R.
I always considered myself 100% straight, but I may be falling in love with Michael Potemra.
Brian R.
Kathryn Jean Lopez has been openly frumping about how she can’t find true love and get married. Her opposition to gay marriage is probably nothing more than spite and resentment.
eyelessgame
He left out the word “third”, for full snark. But anyway.
Valdivia
I have to agree with the complaint and snark about the abuse of the word tyranny.
And thank you for reading NR so we don’t have to.
@BryanR–I see the adds on tv for ChirstianMatch all the time. Or maybe I got the name wrong but she should try internet dating. Or maybe follow Althouse and marry one of her commenters.
JGabriel
OT, but whatever happened to Tattoo Sydney? Haven’t seen him around in a while. Anyone know?
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JonF
@Brian R: I’d rather marry a dude than Kathryn Jellybean.
Montysano
Yutsano beat me to it, but:
Oh, snap!! And yes… when snark shows up at The Corner, “this could be the first trumpet, might as well be the last”.
Valdivia
Miss Sarah you’re giving us too much freedom with two threads. Hmm. Where to comment? :)
beergoggles
Yelling “Da Plane” over and over probably got boring..
Citizen_X
What the fuck are people thinking when they say stuff like this? I mean, beyond “Freedom is slavery.” I just cannot fathom it.
JGabriel
Michael Potemra:
This is man whose days are numbered at National Review.
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srv
Linky
Tattoosydney
@JGabriel:
I’m still here lurking. I’m trying to get a book written, and I’m unfortunately a lot more productive when I don’t spend hours arguing with trolls on here.
Thanks for asking, btw.
MikeJ
I wonder if Kathryn was one of the assholes busting stuff on Capitol Hill in Seattle.
Cat Lady
Why is it such a big deal cuz it’s New York? What’s Massachusetts, chopped liver? Where’s our tyranny?
Montysano
@ Tatoosydney
Hmmm….. perhaps, then, a book about arguing with trolls on the internet?
Spaghetti Lee
Conservatives complaining about materialism is like rats complaining about the Black Plague.
Mogden
Hard to understand how freedom to marry can be thought of as tyranny.
JGabriel
srv: Ah, okay. Thanks.
ETA:
Tattoosydney: There you are. Good, glad to know you’re doing okay.
.
dmsilev
In all fairness to Newt, it should be pointed out that there’s an alternate explanation: maybe he has that million-dollar account at Tiffany’s to buy gifts for the mistress who will become his next wife.
Yutsano
:: giggles ::
Oh hai FH #1!!
fraught
I can see the young, future Jonah Goldberg fruit-fly, KLo, growing up in Chelsea, walking to school among swarms of Chelsea boys, uncruised and dumpy, nursing her resentments and honing her anti-gay rhetorical swords, waiting for the day she could unsheath them in a hate-blog yet to be invented. Poor, plump and pimply thing, to be denied the pleasure of serving her dish, long grown cold, of revenge and having nothing to give but a dried resentment in the comments section.
srv
Future Husband or Fuck Head?
Yutsano
Hmm…the options…
Well as he is already happily married and half a planet away, I’m gonna go with Fake Husband. It’s a Denobulan thing.
Brian R.
There’s a difference?
Tattoosydney
@ Montysanto
Shhhh. Someone will steal my big idea.
@ Yutsano
Hello, darlin’. How does this posting thing work again? How are you?
burnspbesq
Any place that tolerates atonal music deserves to go the way of Sodom and Gomorrah. The rest of that stuff, I have no problem with.
Yutsano
I just pigged out on a ton of Chinese, the furball is in perpetual annoyance mode, and the Dawg is back in the US. Shorter me: life ain’t half bad right now. How you?
Tunch ate the reply widget. And so far it hasn’t come back out the other end yet.
Viva BrisVegas
I hate to be picky, but Spain in 1969 was a repressive and religiously obsessed fascist state.
Of course I can see how that could be confused with modern Conservatism.
And the legendary Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead.
JGabriel
Viva BrisVegas:
And a fascist state is different from a conservative republic … how?
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M. Bouffant
Wherever could one imagine a simile like that?
Dennis SGMM
@Viva BrisVegas
Conservatives shun the “F” word for obvious reasons. Although their goals have much in common with classical Fascism they’ve chosen to achieve them via economic means, ostentatious religiosity and jinogism lest they be hanged from lamp posts before the the transition is complete.
Tehanu
@Mogden 19:
Two mistakes on your part, dear. First: it’s tyranny if the law allows something KLo disagrees with, because then she can’t demonize all those people who are doing what she doesn’t like. Second: imagining that “thought” has anything to do with what goes on in KLo’s brain.
d.s.
“I hate to be picky, but Spain in 1969 was a repressive and religiously obsessed fascist state.”
At the time the National Review was very pro-Franco. I guess the party line hasn’t changed since then?
pkdz
In 1990 I was an intern for Senator Kasten. Mike Potemra was his speechwriter. He was a liberal, but used to write speeches for Reagan. Then he went on to write speeches for Kasten, also a Republican. I did enjoy reading his thoughts on Friday. If only to see K Lo’s response.
J
#12 – this comment wins the thread. Suspect Potemra’s days are numbered among the intolerant, militantly stupid goons at NRO.
Nellcote
@33
Now there’s a word needing a definition!
fuzz
The weird thing about any NRO argument is the comments, I honestly have no idea what world they live in. They say that adultery and open marriage are more prevalent among gays with nothing to back it up, it’s just accepted, this despite the fact that half of all marriages end in divorce and its not uncommon for people to marry 3-4 times nowadays (and was it ever different? There were key parties in the 70s people and in the 50s adultery was practically encouraged as the mark of a true man). They say there is a gay agenda but the most specific part of it they can talk about is its materialism, yet their “I gotz mines” (as John once said) economic/financial philosophy is nothing but greed and materialism with some pseudo-intellectual cover.The religious arguments make sense, sure you can disagree with them but if you think we’re a Christian nation and all that I guess you’ll be unhappy about a sin being called legal (even though other sins like drinking and sex are but whatevs…) but the homosexual agenda stuff I just don’t get at all, their big fear that ‘gay culture’ will go mainstream and we’ll all wear tight jeans and listen to Rufus Wainwright or something, I just have no idea where it’s coming from
Mark S.
Shit, did NRO change its comment policy? You used to have sign up for a ten year subscription or something to comment on the latest brain fart from Jonah, so there were only three or four comments from conservative dumbasses. But now there seems to be some pretty good snark over there.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
True and a little unsettling, now that you mention it.
NobodySpecial
You know, I’m a single man who’s looking for love and never found it, but I’m pretty sure that becoming a dried up conservawretch is not gonna help me in that endeavor. So I can empathize with KLo, but she’s really going about it the wrong way.
Dennis SGMM
@Nellcote
jingoismjingoismjingoismjingoismjingoismjingoismjingoismjingoismjingoismjingoismjingoismjingoismjingoismjingoismjingoismjingoismjingoismjingoismjingoismjingoismjingoismjingoismjingoismjingoismjingoismjingoismjingoismjingoismjingoismjingoismjingoism
I’m left-handed, 63 years old and I have arthritis. What does it take to get a break around here? :)
Interrobang
NobodySpecial@42: Yeah, I can dig it. Shit, man, if moderately unpretty chubby girls never got laid, I’d still be a virgin, and I’m not. I mean, I’m nobody’s idea of a supermodel, but somehow I’ve managed to do all right. Seems to me that most of what’s wrong with KLo is her nasty-ass insides making her outsides look all wrong. “Mean as a snake” just isn’t a selling point for most people when they’re looking for someone to date.
I actually don’t think she’s that bad-looking, compared to, well, a lot of people I’ve seen, except that she’s got a mean, pinchy-faced demeanour that betrays a lot of Deep Ugly. Not to mention, so does pretty much everything she’s ever written. She’s also still pissed because back in the olden days, even an ugly girl with a bad personality could get married if she could cook and keep house like a demon, as long as she knew when to keep her trap shut. So of course, she blames feminists for the fact that men decided they’d rather not be miserable just to get free labour. Like I said, a lot of Deep Ugly there.
shortstop
Once again I find myself marveling at the gargantuan narcissism and total lack of self-awareness that lets someone snivel about the “tyranny” of people she hates
getting equal civil rights. ‘elp, ‘elp, she’s being repressed!
Linda Featheringill
Right wingers versus fascists:
I meandered around Wiki looking for a definition of fascism [as opposed to mere asininity] and found this quote from Trotsky.
[Leon Trotsky, Fascism: What it is and how to fight it.]
Until this year, I would have said that old Leon was talking about somebody else, that it wasn’t like to happen here. Now, I’m not so sure. He just doesn’t seem as radical as he did a year or so ago.
Linda Featheringill
Hot damn! My post at #46 was not moderated! :-)
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
I have a particularly loony acquaintance, worse when she’s refusing to take her meds. One night, I got a call from her asking me to pick her up at a hotel after she got scared of the guy she’d made an internet hookup with. I stopped by a mutual friends house and asked for advice. Before I’d explained the situation, my friend said, “No. No. Don’t get involved with her.”
My response was, “I’m desperate, but not that desperate.”
Same thing applies to KLo.
Alex S.
Did you know that K-Lo is half-canine? It’s true, Wikipedia says so.
Chet
@ JGabriel (#12):
Oh, I dunno. Florence King wrote some pretty snarky things about her party’s base in NR over the years, and somehow managed to keep her place there.
Of course, King did her snarking as an uabashed neo-monarchist Tidewater Tory reactionary, not a social libertarian.
Mark S.
@Linda Featheringill:
I’m beginning to wonder. I never thought we’d get this close to actually defaulting on the fucking debt. If that happens, it will be total chaos, and we’d be ripe for fascism.
Sarah Proud and Tall
@ Dennis SGMM:
I don’t know. I quite liked the idea of jinogism.
Dennis SGMM
@Sarah Proud and Tall
It was a fitting compliment to yellow journalism. Now that we’re cursed with beige journalism, jingoism has the same effect on other nations as a Fourth of July firecracker set off on Main Street.
PIGL
Interrobang: a brilliant comment. Thanks for that.
JGabriel
Linda Featheringill:
Hell, Linda, fascism started here. Right here in the good old USA. Pretty much any decent scholar of the subject will tell you that the KKK is generally considered the first fascist organization and the beginning of the movement.
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RandyH
I was shocked to learn sometime back that some women have a problem with gay marriage because it reduces the pool of men that they have to fight each other off for in hopes of getting married someday. It’s like Cinderella’s ugly step-sisters thinking they can land that cute gay guy if only he’s not legally allowed to marry another guy. Strange shit. Maybe that’s Sister Katherine’s problem.
Anne Laurie
I think it’s part of the wider ‘Conservative’ mindset: Anybody has something I want, it must be they’ve STOLEN mine! Spouses, political office, desirable lake-front property, t-bones & cadillacs… if it ain’t mine, it should be, and if I can’t take it by force I’ll bitch non-stop about the injustice. Saner people would argue that humans ain’t property to be “stolen” (co-opted), but it does explain the popularity of Modern Conservative Thought as a refuge for anti-gay-rights women and anti-feminist men.
Rihilism
I believe the good Lord has decided that K-Lo will not find true love until ALL gays are allowed to gay marry…
alwhite
Not sure the4 shot at Gingrich will actually end his work at NR. It could simply be that sNewtie is being cut from the herd. He has failed the great conservative revolution and on his way to becoming an enemy of the ‘state’.
I would not be surprised if, after his laughable campaign finally burns to the ground, the NR doesn’t run a story explaining why sNewtie never really was a conservative.
DBrown
When someone said we might be a christian nation that is funny – Christ was against every single thing this country is for – war, torture, wealth only for an elite, materialism, hate, racism, anti-health care and so on. This country is closer to North Korea than being Christian (not that Amerikia is like N. Korea – note the comparison and the word ‘more’ and “than’. Just thought I’d qualify.)
Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937
“materialist excess” is what defines American exceptionalism. Why do they hate America?
bjacques
@alwhite 59:
Reading that summoned up the last few lines of Tom Waits’ “Frank’s Wild Years.” Or the beginning of Peggy Lee’s “Is That All There Is?”
Chris
Someone’s going to post it, so I might as well:
William F. Buckley, writing a “Letter from Spain” for the National Review in the 1950s.
Chris
@ Viva –
Not to be picky back, but it depends which historian you ask. I read Paxton’s “An Anatomy of Fascism” last summer and the guy argues that the were only two states that really blossomed into fascism – Germany and Italy.
However, he mentions, cases of conservative movements taking on fascist trappings or co-opting the fascist movement or its message are much more common. He puts Franco in that category, as a guy who rode the fascist wave to power in the 1930s, but not afterwards: his rule was based on the loyalty of traditional elites like the church and the military more than on fascist party structures.
Not that it made that much difference for the Spanish people.
Bulworth
But of course allowing gays to marry is just like living in North Korea, because….
Tyranny!!
MarkJ
Is Potemra a conservative? I mean, why is the party of tax cuts for the wealthy babbling on about materialism? Isn’t their materialism what is supposed to save the economy if we just give them a few more tax cuts? If he’s really worried about rampant materialism he should look at the policies of his party and do something to change them, because I’m pretty sure the Koch brothers et al are well down that path and want to keep going.The only think that will save their souls from rampant materialism is a healthy rise in taxes on upper incomes.
Tonybrown74
—
Yes.
A man’s asshole is not always full of shit – at least if he’s regular.
NonyNony
@MarkJ
Conservatives love to burble on about “materialism” – because it’s a counter to Christianity.
The fact that conservative Christianity these days is a combination of crass materialism and ugly resentment only makes it more ironic when they complain about “materialism”.
It’s just one of those code words that they like to use. Don’t try to read too much into it (and why Potemra’s joke is funny to us but likely falls flat to any conservative who is a fan of Gingrich – “he can’t be a materialist, he’s a good Christian!”)
Ken
fuzz @39: [The NRO] say that adultery and open marriage are more prevalent among gays with nothing to back it up.
It’s particularly odd since you have to have marriage before you can have either adultery or open marriage. So just what gays are they talking about?
kc
a tyranny that faux tolerance ferments.
I think she means “foments.”
Not sure what the hell she means by “faux tolerance.”
ppcli
@Alex S.:
Are you saying that K-Lo was the result of some hot man-on-dog sex? That would explain her enthusiasm for Santorum.
@fuzz:
The level of sheer dishonesty (or perhaps self-deception) on display in those comments (and also in the Dolan and K-Lo) remarks is amazing in one other respect too: the extent to which they are insisting that they are not motivated by anti-gay animus. Some people even take offence at the very suggestion that there is anything but a (chuckle – sorry, I can’t type this with out laughing) “pro-marriage, not “anti-anything” ” stance at work here. Ah, so if it’s just a marriage thing, Dolan and K-Lo and the commentators will be OK with civil unions, right? And they are fine with allowing gay couples to adopt? Are they OK with businesses and government agencies offering domestic partner benefits to same-sex couples? And they are opposed to the Boy Scouts’ anti-gay stance? No? Why not? I mean, it’s not as if they are anti-anything. They are just concerned about the definition of a word, right? They’re passionate lexicographers.
A message to the anti-gay types. We understand: your side has thought carefully about the rhetoric of all this, and you have arrived at a crafty conclusion. Insisting you are pro-something is easier to argue in this case. So that’s what you do. It allows you to weasel out of many tough situations with what you and your sympathizers regard as plausible deniability. OK, so do that if it makes you feel less like a louse. But don’t be deluded: the only people you’re fooling are yourselves.
Hob
@JGabriel: Calling Franco’s Spain “fascist” may be debatable, but surely it’s more accurate than calling it a “republic.” It was a nominal monarchy (Franco was the regent for a nonexistent king) ruled by a dictator with a lifetime term– pretty much the opposite of a republic by any definition.
b-psycho
I suspect their real fear is that all that open and accepted gayness is going to ruin the taboo aspect that they get off on in private. There’s a reason why when prominent right-wingers get outed it’s always something like trolling for anonymous cock and never “so’n’so was spotted with blahblahblah, who appears to be his boyfriend”.
Back to the comments on NRO, I found this one particularly interesting.
Chris
Odds are pretty good that the guy isn’t gay but just posing. Convenient that a “gay conservative” would just happen to be there with every one of their talking points. How many gay people are conservative in the first place? Out of those, how many gay conservatives actually agree with the party’s position on gay marriage, as opposed to people who agree with them on most things and can somehow forget the gay marriage stance?
I know they’re out there, and it’s possible one of them wrote this. It’s just equally possible, if not more plausible, that it’s a bullshitter doing the online version of “look, we’re not gay-haters, we have a gay supporter!”
Chris
Quotes from the link –
Um, we not only “suggested” that but set it down in stone way back in the 1960s, when the Supreme Court ruled the state bans on interracial marriage to be unconstitutional.
And another commenter gave him the best answer –
The logic of people claiming that their marriage is what’s under attack when their marriage will continue unchanged regardless, is so fucking ridiculous there’s nothing to do but laugh at it. Fortunately, the public’s coming around to that point of view steadily and surely.
b-psycho
I’m still scratching my head over the first line (that is, if he’s not posing) –
…so God wants him to be alone?