Joe Nocera is now a a Villager in good-standing:
The next time a liberal asks why Republicans are so intransigent, you might suggest that the answer lies in the mirror.
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Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
Everybody saw this coming.
The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.
I did not have this on my fuck 2022 bingo card.
Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?
When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?
In my day, never was longer.
Thanks for reminding me that Van Jones needs to be slapped.
T R E 4 5 O N
They think we are photo bombing their nice little lives.
Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.
Damn right I heard that as a threat.
Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.
It’s time for the GOP to dust off that post-2012 autopsy, completely ignore it, and light the party on fire again.
Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
… pundit janitors mopping up after the GOP
Take your GOP plan out of the witness protection program.
Impressively dumb. Congratulations.
It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.
Nothing worth doing is easy.
A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires
The most dangerous place for a black man in America is in a white man’s imagination.
Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.
We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. let’s win this.
Despite his magical powers, I don’t think Trump is thinking this through, to be honest.
You are here: Home / It all started with Bork!
Flying Fox
If you ask me, this partisanship goes all the way back to Jefferson and Adams at least. It’s a time honored American tradition.
soonergrunt
I might also suggest that actual history be observed, and tell that person to look to 1964.
Baud
GOP motto: America Second, After Our Sweet, Sweet Revenge.
kth
If only all of Obama’s nominees were to be “borked” (that is, given an up-and-down vote before the full Senate), none of us would be complaining.
Donut
Besides being in sore, sore need of an editor, that little nugget is so fucking devoid of any historical context that it’s laughable. I would like Nocera to tell the class, when exactly has national politics ever been civil (for an extended period)? Every decade is loaded with examples of awful incivility. It’s no worse now than it’s ever been. The only real difference in what is happening in the macro-political world now versus most other eras of our history is that one political party is trying to tank the economy deliberately. Everything else is pretty much par for the course.
Also, too, this is kinda one of those important features of the democratic (small d) system. It is not designed to run smoothly, y’all. It’s supposed to be gunked up and slow and difficult to affect radical change. Always has been, always will be. Thank god, too, because we’d be full-on living in a fascist state, instead of just being a junior one, at this point.
joeshabadoo
Wow.
Blaming the negative political discourse on liberals because of a 1987 supreme court nomination.
People who can vote now weren’t even born yet for god’s sake.
I have no idea who Bork was but the author tells us the most broadbased statement ever to convince us he’s not extreme.“to discern how the framers’ values, defined in the context of the world they knew, apply to the world we know.” That doesn’t tell me shit about what he actually believed.
He then goes on to say he wasn’t so bad because we have even more extreme people there now and he would be a “restraining force.” Well I guess its okay Joe killed that guy, Bob killed 12 people.
He must be auditioning for Fox gigs.
amk
Typical pundtwit false equivalence. Can one line them up at the potomac and use a governator gun on them ?
Fucking 1987 ? Really, joe ?
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
“So, every time you wake up in the morning, you don’t like what you see, and proceed to blame liberals? Wouldn’t that be your parents you should be blaming?”
“Well, I would want to run the country, but you dissed my parents.” We’ve never left the Hatfields and McCoys.
The Snarxist Formerly Known As Kryptik
“If only you stupid fucking hateful America-hating libs would’a given us everything we fucking wanted without anything in return, this never would’a happened!!”
arguingwithsignposts
At first, I thought I read “Bjork.” Makes about as much sense as Nocera’s thesis.
Josie
My memory of that point in history is different from Nocera’s. Bork was “borked” to a great extent because he had participated in the firing of Nixon’s special prosecutor after two attorneys general had resigned rather than carry out Nixon’s self serving order. He proved himself to be a toadie of the highest order and not fit to be a supreme court justice. Maybe we should say that the current climate results from Nixon’s shenanigans rather than from that senate vote.
The Snarxist Formerly Known As Kryptik
@Josie:
But that ruins the underlying thesis of ‘Libs are to blame for everything so this is just payback!!’
djork
@arguingwithsignposts: She should have never broken up the Sugarcubes. That Icelandic Fred Schneider sounding guy will tell you that’s when the uncivility started.
Napoleon
Nocera is an asshole. I refuse to click on the link and the last thing of his I read was his whining piece taking unions or obama or someone to task for actually enforcing the National Labor Relations Act against Boeing in a circumstance where the feds had a smoking gun proving Boeing liable.
Fuck Nocera.
MattF
Well, Bork turned out– after his nomination to the Court failed– to be a full-bore reactionary lunatic, so no one should feel even a twinge of regret about what happened to him.
Jay C
My God, how the New York Times has fallen: tripe like this column of Nocera’s would read as stale and trite on RedState: the Paper Of Record wastes ink on this?
News for Mr. Nocera: despite your paeans of praise for Judge Bork’s “intellectual firepower”, the man remains today the same as he has ever been: a reactionary crank and extremist ideologue, who has always made it perfectly clear – upfront – that he would form his judicial decisions solely through an extremist ideological prism (figleafed by “original intent” or whatever). That, Joe – the nomination of a blatant and declared right-wing ideologue for the SCOTUS – not the imaginary “politics of personal destruction” was the reason for Bork’s rejection in 1987. And every word out of Robert Bork’s mouth or pen since then has just confirmed my opinion that the whole nation has been vastly better-off for it.
Oh, and why conservatives are “still seething”, Mr. Nocera? Does the phrase “arrogant self-righteousness” ever come to mind?
No, probably not….
PeakVT
Bring back Herbert.
piratedan
hell, if there’s one thing the Republicans can do it’s hold a grudge! I guess based on Joe’s code of ethics, it was stupid of the Dems to let the Republican party even exist after Nixon then?
Napoleon
@joeshabadoo:
I was right out of law school when Bork happened so not only was I old enough to be paying attention I had a reason too and the back ground to understand the issues. Bork is and always has been a complete extremist. If enough people like him were (or are) on the S Ct then all civil rights and voting laws, Medicare and Social Security and every progressive law since 1914 would have been declared unconstitutional.
Oh, and to under stand what a hatchet man Bork was for the right all you need to know about him is he was in the Nixon Admin. When Nixon ordered the Saturday Night Massacre people resigned and refused to carry it out, until Nixon got to Bork in the organizational chart. Bork did not resign but fired Cox.
gogol's wife
I guess Nocera REALLY got taken to the woodshed for saying the Republicans were hostage-takers.
My favorite Bork moment was when he sued someone (the Yale Club, I think) because he tripped going up to the podium to give a speech to them.
Napoleon
@gogol’s wife:
. . . and that was after he had been a high profile spokesperson for the movement to restrict peoples access to the courts through tort “reform”.
Rafer Janders
Shorter Nocera: see what that bitch made the Republicans do!
Suffern ACE
@MattF: Yeah but he was only a reactionary loon because he couldn’t hang out with Sandra Day O’Connor. Look in the mirror asshole. Bork was a saint.
Dave Latchaw
The main reason Bork wasn’t confirmed was that people watched the televised confirmation hearings and said, “That guy is nuts.”
beltane
If standing up to the most extreme forms of extremism makes you an extremist than so be it. When Joe Nocera looks into the mirror the only thing he should see is a worthless, unprincipled excuse for a human being who will gladly seek to excuse all sorts of evil just as long as he gets paid well enough for his efforts.
Our Villagers exist on a level of depravity where the devil himself would fear to tread.
dj spellchecka
if memory serves ted kennedy was the main borker, saying that all sorts of extreme decisions could come if the judge was appointed to the bench….since that didn’t happen it’s hard to know if kennedy was right..
however, in the 25 years since, bork’s extremism has only gotten worse
J
@MattF: @kth:
Good points all, and not the only ones. Is Nocera actually conceding that the Republicans are deliberately harming the country (and the world) out of spite, but saying it’s understandable and forgivable because of something Liberals allegedly did almost a quarter of a century ago? Even if we accept the idiotic villager idea that this is an important question to pursue in the present crisis–which it isn’t–Nocera is simply wrong. MattF is right. We should breathe a sigh of relief every morning that Bork is not on the Supreme Court (and wish some of the others who are there weren’t). And kth is right that if we want to go into the question of comparative blameworthiness we would have to look at how other nominees by the two Bushes were treated by comparison with Obama’s, at whether votes were allowed, at whether systematic obstruction of the kind we see now was practiced by the Democrats, and–dare I suggest such an esoteric question–what was and would be good for the country–as opposed who stuck their tongue out at whom first.
Elizabelle
Thinking about Bork reminds me that the Republican party used pro-life issues as cover for their real concern in Supreme Court appointments.
They used an anti-abortion litmus test, admit it or not, to run interference for justices who would rule in favor of corporations.
Corporations are people to the GOP, and the GOP is solidly pro-life on their beloved corporations. The bigger the better.
Elizabelle
Meh.
Nocera’s NYTimes readers are schooling him in the comments section.
http://community.nytimes.com/comments/www.nytimes.com/2011/10/22/opinion/nocera-the-ugliness-all-started-with-bork.html?sort=recommended
I have liked several of Nocera’s columns. One ridiculous column does not a “Villager” make. He still tells truth to power more than several others on the NYT op ed page.
A whole archive of ridiculous columns, like David Brooks? Villager.
RSA
@Donut:
This is an excellent point. Nocera would probably argue that the outbreak of the Civil War was only to be expected, given Charles Sumner’s uncivil statements about Southerners in the Senate in 1856. “Look in the mirror, Northerners.”
Cherry picking political history doesn’t explain Republican intransigence today. There are better and simpler explanations.
Keith
IMHO, the intransigence started in earnest with Newt Gingrich.
Alex
“Women are a majority of the population now—a majority in university classrooms and a majority in all kinds of contexts. It seems to me silly to say, ‘Gee, they’re discriminated against and we need to do something about it.’ They aren’t discriminated against anymore.”
-Robert Bork
From the article he linked to on Bork’s current views. But it’s crazy to point out that Bork might have crazy viewpoints.
Dee Loralei
I don’t remember the vote count,and am too lazy to look it up, but a bunch of Republicans also Borked Bork. When it came up for a vote he got fewer yeas than the number of Reps in the Senate.
And the old bastard is still a reactionary. He still thinks equal rights are wrong and he still hates affirmative action. And fuck it all, he’s an adviser to the Mittster!
pamelabrown
p.m. carpenter has an excellent post about Nocera’s column, written in his scathing style. Worth a read.
Cacti
“Sooner or later, censorship is going to have to be considered as popular culture continues plunging to ever more sickening lows.”
-Robert Bork
This is the guy Mitt Romney will have vetting his nominees for the Federal Judiciary.
So long First Amendment. Robert Bork will decide what’s fit for you to see and hear.
Tresy
Stupidity of Nocera’s argument aside, the original Borking was of LBJ’s nomination of Abe Fortas for chief justice of the Supreme Court. It was a purely partisan driven attack that succeeded in driving him from the Court. Unlike Bork,, Fortas not a loon.
maya
Nocera underscores a consistent pattern with republicans and their established and new-found* sycophants in the media. They are bad winners when they win and even sorer losers when they lose. And yet, at the same time, we are supposed to believe that they subscribe to and practise the highest ideals of good, clean, American sportsmanship in their personal lives – seeing as how they were all quality running backs or middle linebackers on their high school football team. Weren’t they? Not a towel and laundry manager, or, b string cheerleader among them.
*Nocera’s Wiki entry labels him as a liberal commentator.
Arrik
@Elizabelle:
OK, Nocera’s not Brooks, but he is showing clear signs of Broderism. As for the comments, I wonder if these columnists really even look at those.
Cacti
@Tresy:
And Fortas didn’t spend the next 25 years in the spotlight, as a professional political martyr.
arguingwithsignposts
@Arrik:
Someone looks at Bill Keller’s comments, at least, as he was schooled last week about the difference between Brazil and Venezuela.
Even if Brooks read his comments, it wouldn’t help. His whole grift is based on him being the “reasonable” conservative.
joeshabadoo
@Napoleon: Thanks for the info. I figured he was really an ashole because the author had to duck him behind the “orinal intent” bullshit instead of actually saying his views outside of RvW.
@Cacti: That is just sickening. Someone who had a shot at the supreme court saying that censorship will be needed because pop culture got too bad.
Cacti
@joeshabadoo:
Bork’s post-nomination career has been useful. By letting his freak flag fly, he’s shown without question that he had no business sitting on the nation’s highest court.
Tom Q
I’m another one who watched Bork in real time, and, yeah, this is a classic example of a “liberal commentator” who strayed too far into truth territory a few weeks ago and is now trying to atone by invoking High Both-Sides-Do-It-ism.
Bork was by far the most extreme nominee ever offered for the court to that time, and he had a long paper trail documenting all his ridiculous positions. With him on board instead of Kennedy, much of 20th century progressivism would have been negated by now. The fact that the GOP is finally to the point of making that happen anyway hardly moves Bork to the mainstream.
About the time the GOP coined this “Bork started all the mud-slinging” meme (yes, surprise, it was originally GOP spin, promulgated by Bill Safire when liberals complained about the smears against Dukakis), Michael Kinsley pointed out that you didn’t even have to go back far in time to find a different starting point — the 1980 NcPAC ads against sitting Dem Senators were wildly over-the-top and succeeded in flipping the Senate GOP for 6 years (it was only the Dem huge success in the ’86 midterms that kept Bork from being confirmed, though it’s true the remaining moderate Republicans — Specter and his ilk — also voted against him). And, as others are pointing out, you also had Abe Fortas, or the anti-Goldwater campaign, or probably something back in the 18th century.
None of this excuses the unprecedented near-complete negation of an administration’s ability to staff itself or run the government. Nocera is blowing smoke here to help the Pubs disguise that fact.
JWL
Bork’s nomination was his pay-off for having fired Archibald Cox. Everyone knew it, no one admitted it, Ted Kennedy did something about it.
burnspbesq
Yes, it’s a stupid column. It’s a complete outlier in Nocera’s overall body of work.
The unfortunate part of this is that all of y’all will now ignore all of the good reporting Nocera does on business and financial topics, which will (amazingly enough, given where the baseline is) increase the total amount of rabid ignorance on those subjects around here.
This is the same Nocera who co-authored the best book yet written about the financial collapse.
If you were judged by the same standards that you employ to judge people like Nocera, how would you do.
Dougerhead
@burnspbesq:
I have never written anything as stupid as that column. You never have either, as are as I know. Stupidity and sanctimony are not the same thing.
Scott Supak
Honestly, the GOP is like some alcoholic now, staggering around, while drool trickles down their chins, slurring: “I wouldn’t drink if it weren’t for you!”
Bill Arnold
@Elizabelle:
Wow, you’re not kidding. The first page of comments (at least) was well written (and educational) and uniformly argues that the piece is nonsense.
Bill Arnold
@Arrik:
Pretty sure Krugman at least skims comments, but he also runs an active and interesting blog.
Elizabelle
I would bet Nocera does read his reader comments.
Myself, I read Bobo’s readers’ comments and don’t bother much with his actual column. Less stupifying that way
Bill Murray
@Dee Loralei:
2 Dems voted to confirm — David Boren of OK and Fritz Hollings from SC
6 Reps voted against — Lowell Weicker, Jr. (CT), John Chafee (RI), Arlen Specter (PA), Bob Packwood (OR), John Warne r (VA) and Bob Stafford (VT)
@Cacti: Fortas had some serious issues with how he was paid for outside speaking gigs. of course what he did is common now, but back when the country wasn’t run by conservatives and reactionaries, isolation of the SCOTUS from private interests was a big deal
El Cruzado
Methinks that, beyond what many have said above, much of the Republican intransigence of today was Democratic intransigence of times past.
The Southern strategy managed to shift all the loons to the same party. Bipartisanship was a necessity back when both parties had a sensible wing and a wacko-crazy wing. Not so much these days.
gocart mozart
@joeshabadoo:
Actually if Bork were on the SCOTUS today he still would easily be the most extreme justice. He would makes Thomas and Scalia seem like DFH but I take Nocera’s point: Criticizing a nominee based solely on his public writings and statements, allowing him to respond in a public forum and then voting not to promote him when a majority of senators found his legal views too extreme is totally the most outrages incident of dirty tricks in the history of American politics.
gocart mozart
virag
forgive them, they are young and rich and white.
danimal
I can look in the mirror with a clean conscience and still believe that the current Republican intransigence is beyond the bounds of civility. They are hurting the entire nation in a fit of rage for losing an election. We have never seen anything like this in generations, and the country will not escape a civil war if they keep it up.
I hope I’m being hyperbolic and extreme, but my sense of history leads me to this conclusion.
Triassic Sands
I was wondering when Bork was going to become just one more victimized moderate. Bingo.
Waynski the Thread Killer
I read Nocera with great disappointment. He can be very good, but as almost everyone agrees, this column was Villagerista false equivalency at its worst. Personally, I think most overtly racist people are more moral than any national Repub. At least the racists are honest about their ignorant and misguided beliefs. National Repubs will manipulate any group of people, any angle, say anything, trash anyone’s reputation, piss on the downtrodden and the troops in their quest to take and hold power. Who would I rather have a beer with — Mitt Romney or some racist Bubba in a bar in Alabama? I’ll take the racist Bubba. At least he can talk sports.
AA+ Bonds
This is the same Nocera who follows up all his Taibbi-like articles about financial fraud at the highest levels with repeated, hand-wringing assurances that he’s not actually suggesting civil or criminal lawsuits against the Very Important Perps, isn’t it?
That sort of talk is motivated by one thing: craven weaseling for a future career licking their assholes. He has to put this shit in there every now and then so he can point back and say, “see?” in his inevitable drift towards the crumbs tumbling from the tables of the truly wealthy. Nowadays, he can even hyperlink his CYA!
AxelFoley
@Dee Loralei:
And that needs to exposed. Make Mitt sqiurm.
TenguPhule
Just shoot him. Please.
bob h
Nocera’s readership presumably consists of business-oriented Wall St. types, so he has to keep in their good graces. He should stick to business and economics.