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You are here: Home / I’m no school boy but I know what I like

I’m no school boy but I know what I like

by DougJ|  August 29, 201212:33 pm| 63 Comments

This post is in: Our Awesome Meritocracy, Our Failed Media Experiment

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I don’t know whether to give Will Saletan credit for admitting he’s been a giddy school girl around Paul Ryan or condemn him that much more for not being ashamed of it:

I hate to admit it, but Krugman nailed me on this one. I was looking for Mr. Right—a fact-based, sensible fiscal conservative—and I tried to shoehorn you into that role.

[….]

I still see promise in you, Paul. I love it when you challenge the rhetoric of public “investment.” I admire your fixation on the Grim Reaper of debt. I’m sympathetic to your argument that student loans and insurance subsidies distort markets. I swoon when you crusade against the generational greed and fiscally hollow promises of the entitlement state. But if you won’t stand by your principles when it counts, Paul—if you’re just going to demagogue Medicare like an old-style liberal—then you’re useless to this country. I want my love letter back.

What I don’t get about all these emotionally stunted clowns is that on the one hand, they’re all about being more adult and serious than the rest of us, while on the other, they openly write mash notes to dominant bucks and high-five their kids when one pundit “schools” another.

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63Comments

  1. 1.

    Brachiator

    August 29, 2012 at 12:38 pm

    I hate to admit it, but Krugman nailed me on this one. I was looking for Mr. Right—a fact-based, sensible fiscal conservative—and I tried to shoehorn you into that role.

    Nothing to see here but typical wingnut homoeroticism masquerading as punditry.

    Starbursts.

  2. 2.

    kindness

    August 29, 2012 at 12:38 pm

    Where’s John & ABL? I thought we’d see stuff from them.

    Could it be that the strip clubs in Tampa that good?

  3. 3.

    muddy

    August 29, 2012 at 12:39 pm

    They are wholly made of projection. Imagine living in that skin, inside that skull.

  4. 4.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    August 29, 2012 at 12:39 pm

    Saletan should just come outright and tell the world he is a bisexual bottom. Nothing to be ashamed of in this day and age.

    Meanwhile, why should anyone take a man like Saletan seriously when he projects his personal sexual preferences into politics? Not to mention that article of his was just to much information.

  5. 5.

    muddy

    August 29, 2012 at 12:39 pm

    @kindness: They’re going to the DNC.

  6. 6.

    Scott S.

    August 29, 2012 at 12:40 pm

    The elite press has been emotionally stunted children — for years, decades even. It’s why they react so well to the GOP, the party of and for emotionally stunted children.

  7. 7.

    danimal

    August 29, 2012 at 12:40 pm

    @kindness: They’re going to the Dem convention.

    ABL at the GOP convention would be quite the hoot, though. Imagine what she would have done with the peanuts thrown at her.

  8. 8.

    Linda Featheringill

    August 29, 2012 at 12:41 pm

    Is he saying that Ryan is not conservative enough? Oy.

    But to be fair, Ryan’s philosophy is not conservatism, it is rather some type of ism that is antithetic to life itself. He’s against everything that a society could do to improve quality and length of life.

    He may, in fact, be a devotee of death, as long it’s not his own.

    And no, I’m not hysterically exaggerating things here.

  9. 9.

    MattF

    August 29, 2012 at 12:42 pm

    Saletan just wanted love. Too bad there’s an army of lying psychopaths out there in the real world.

  10. 10.

    BGinCHI

    August 29, 2012 at 12:42 pm

    Someone seriously make an argument that separates these conservatives from spoiled teenagers.

    I dare you.

    They are trapped in high school which was apparently their peak.

  11. 11.

    Linda Featheringill

    August 29, 2012 at 12:42 pm

    @kindness:

    John and ABL:

    I got the impression yesterday that John was still in WV. But I don’t really know anything.

    ETA:
    Oh. The DEMOCRATIC convention. Ooops.

  12. 12.

    Chris

    August 29, 2012 at 12:43 pm

    “A fact based, sensible fiscal conservative”

    You know, in America, we have a word for that kind of conservative. It’s spelled D-E-M-O-C-R-A-T.

  13. 13.

    BGinCHI

    August 29, 2012 at 12:43 pm

    I’m sympathetic to your argument that student loans and insurance subsidies distort markets.

    How did Lord Saletan finance his considerably expensive education?

    We know how Ryan did: Big Family Bucks.

    Fucking assholes.

  14. 14.

    Shawn in ShowMe

    August 29, 2012 at 12:46 pm

    The homoeroticism seems to only run one way. I’ve yet to see any women expressing a desire to be Nikki Haley’s friend with benefits.

  15. 15.

    FlipYrWhig

    August 29, 2012 at 12:46 pm

    Paul Ryan doesn’t have principles. He has a scam that looks from a distance like it might be principles, and up close is the same “Fuck you, I got mine” credo of all College Republicans.

  16. 16.

    GxB

    August 29, 2012 at 12:47 pm

    Now this is one group I don’t wanna hear around midnight – or any other time of the day really… but midnight hour, I suspect that would require therapy.

  17. 17.

    Tonybrown74

    August 29, 2012 at 12:48 pm

    In all seriousness, is he actually gay?

  18. 18.

    Chris

    August 29, 2012 at 12:49 pm

    @Linda Featheringill:

    I like Krugman’s word “movement conservatism.” It captures what the modern right is about, a cult like movement that exists for its own sake and is all about identity.

    There’s not really a word for Ryan’s ideology per se; Randroid (oh all right, “Objectivist”) doesn’t fit, they don’t buy her entire ideology, they just borrow the parts they like, just like they borrow from Christianity, classical economics, and other things, but they reject just as much as they borrow and turn it into their own weird, bastardized remix.

  19. 19.

    Both Sides Do It

    August 29, 2012 at 12:49 pm

    WHY THE FUCK IS PUBLIC “INVESTMENT” IN QUOTES

  20. 20.

    Percysowner

    August 29, 2012 at 12:49 pm

    Considering The column before this was an ode about how Romney isn’t really making racist statements, it just looks that way, I have no sympathy. He doesn’t seem to get if it looks like a duck and walks like a duck it probably is a duck, because he would rather search for “wuv, twu wuv”.

  21. 21.

    Shawn in ShowMe

    August 29, 2012 at 12:50 pm

    @danimal:

    As soon as ABL opened her mouth to tell them where they could put those peanuts, security would have cracked her upside the head and sprinkled her unconscious body with coke dust. Thank FSM she wasn’t there.

  22. 22.

    JustRuss

    August 29, 2012 at 12:50 pm

    I’m not going to read the whole screed, but based on what Doug pasted here, it’s a no-brainer: condemn him.

    “Fixation on debt”–Where was that fixation while Bush was running up record deficits?

    “Insurance subsidies distort markets”–yes, let’s just let people suffer and die rather than distort our precious markets. I expect public schools are distorting the market too, let’s abolish them.

    “Generational greed”–I’ve been paying into Medicare and Social Security for decades, don’t tell me I’m greedy because I expect to get something back.

    “demagogue Medicare like an old-style liberal”–WTF does that even mean, especially in regards to Ryan?

    “looking for Mr. Right”, “swoon”, “love letter”–is this guy a pundit or a boy-crazy tweener? And his problem with Ryan is that he’s not conservative enough? The mind boggles.

  23. 23.

    MattF

    August 29, 2012 at 12:51 pm

    @Percysowner: Um, I think that was ‘satire’. I agree that not being sure whether Saletan was kidding is plausible, given his unreliability.

  24. 24.

    Herbal Infusion Bagger

    August 29, 2012 at 12:54 pm

    @JustRuss:

    is this guy a pundit or a boy-crazy tweener?

    I think tweeners fixated on boy bands show more discretion and dignity than Lord Saletan.

  25. 25.

    trollhattan

    August 29, 2012 at 12:56 pm

    The basic problem is he’s trying to shoehorn Ryan into a shoe that’s just as contemptable as Ryan himself.

    If Saletan got what/who he wants, we’d be equally f#$ked.

  26. 26.

    Amir Khalid

    August 29, 2012 at 12:56 pm

    So deep down inside, William Saletan is really Bella Swan? Who could have known?

  27. 27.

    Linda Featheringill

    August 29, 2012 at 12:58 pm

    @Shawn in ShowMe: #14

    I’ve yet to see any women expressing a desire to be Nikki Haley’s friend with benefits.

    If you can find a Republican woman who isn’t a complete asshole, maybe we women could consider indulging in a little lust. They have some cuties but jeez! I’d have to tape their mouths shut just to be in the same room with them.

    Among Dems, however, . . . .

    But I tend to keep my feelings to myself concerning the Ladies of the Left, unless they are obviously out of the closet.

  28. 28.

    PurpleGirl

    August 29, 2012 at 12:58 pm

    @BGinCHI: And how did the family get those BIG bucks… government construction contracts. Idiot baby is sooooooooo stupid he (Ryan) doesn’t realize that if the government doesn’t pay for roads his family is poor.

    ETA: Saletan is also sooooo stupid he can’t reason that it out either.

  29. 29.

    Brachiator

    August 29, 2012 at 12:59 pm

    I hate to admit it, but Krugman nailed me on this one. I was looking for Mr. Right

    Apparently, Saletan is prone to crushes.

    From Der Wiki:

    While Saletan initially argued in favor of George W. Bush’s decision to invade Iraq, later as part of a Slate.com series marking the 5th anniversary of the Iraq War, Saletan described the lessons he had come to learn, stating “I wish I’d absorbed these lessons before the war. The best I can do now is remember them before the next one.”

    He also apparently loves to “absorb” stuff, but nothing ever really sticks. If you know what I mean.

  30. 30.

    kindness

    August 29, 2012 at 1:00 pm

    @muddy: Du’oh!!!!

    Thanks.

  31. 31.

    Butch

    August 29, 2012 at 1:01 pm

    @BGinCHI: Actually, worse than that; his father died when he was 16 and Ryan went to college entirely on Social Security money.
    As far as Saletan, he writes for Slate. What else need be said?

  32. 32.

    M31

    August 29, 2012 at 1:02 pm

    @BGinCHI:

    Ryan financed his college education with Social Security money he got when his father died.

  33. 33.

    Turgidson

    August 29, 2012 at 1:04 pm

    What a fucking wanker. He’s disappointed in his mancrush because he’s acting too much like a “liberal” now? The kind of liberal (the kind always “demagoguing” in response to an asshole like Ryan talking about starving granny) that only exists in the fevered minds of braindead pundits like Saletan?

    I mean, I’m glad to see him shut the fuck up about how great Ryan is, no matter how he reached that conclusion. But what a tool.

  34. 34.

    BGinCHI

    August 29, 2012 at 1:05 pm

    @Butch:

    @M31:

    Yes, that’s what makes it so egregious: taking SS dough while you’re family has piles of it.

    Paul Ryan, hypocrite and liar.

  35. 35.

    Omnes Omnibus

    August 29, 2012 at 1:05 pm

    @BGinCHI: Teenagers might grow out of it.

  36. 36.

    BGinCHI

    August 29, 2012 at 1:09 pm

    @Omnes Omnibus: How’s the cycling going?

  37. 37.

    Roger Moore

    August 29, 2012 at 1:10 pm

    What I don’t get about all these emotionally stunted clowns is that on the one hand, they’re all about being more adult and serious than the rest of us, while on the other, they openly write mash notes to dominant bucks and high-five their kids when one pundit “schools” another.

    It’s very, very simple: nobody is more worried about acting like an adult than someone who isn’t. The Villagers are basically a bunch of teenagers, and they’re acting like it. They aren’t ready to act like adults, primarily because they don’t really understand an adult worldview. They’re cliquish and develop crushes on anyone who behaves the way they think adults are supposed to behave.

  38. 38.

    Amir Khalid

    August 29, 2012 at 1:10 pm

    More to the point, Saletan’s reasons for falling out of love with Paul Ryan are just as confused as his reasons for falling in love with him in the first place. But then, that is so like a schoolgirl crushe.

  39. 39.

    Turgidson

    August 29, 2012 at 1:12 pm

    @JustRuss:

    “demagogue Medicare like an old-style liberal”—WTF does that even mean, especially in regards to Ryan?

    Like I said, it’s the “hey look at me I’m soooo not part of the liberal media!” stock line to look serious.

    Because, you know, politicians who take the social compact seriously and believe in the promise of Medicare and the results it has gotten in letting seniors live their golden years without having to worry that they’ll go bankrupt the first time they get a bad cough or trip and fall, and want to defend it from cruel jackals like Paul Ryan who want to destroy it in order to save it….they’re the real monsters. Pointing out, accurately, that Paul Ryan wants to starve granny in order to dump truckloads of cash money on Willard’s front lawn…that’s shrill.

  40. 40.

    Bobby Thomson

    August 29, 2012 at 1:13 pm

    You could always criticize Saletan for attacking Ryan from the right.

    But with Saletan, I find it’s always best either to spit or point and laugh. Stone cold racist woman hater.

  41. 41.

    jimmiraybob

    August 29, 2012 at 1:15 pm

    I’m sympathetic to your argument that student loans and insurance subsidies distort markets.

    You know what else distorts the markets? Disease, poverty and premature death from lack of insurance and ignorance.

    Will, old boy, you be te stupid.

  42. 42.

    Roger Moore

    August 29, 2012 at 1:18 pm

    @JustRuss:

    “Insurance subsidies distort markets”—yes, let’s just let people suffer and die rather than distort our precious markets.

    It’s doubly crazy because health insurance is clearly a place where markets don’t work. Free markets only work when they involve substantially voluntary transactions and exchange of items of knowable value. Health insurance involves neither, since sickness isn’t voluntary and insurance is inherently a purchase of a promise of future action. The very concept of an unregulated insurance market is ridiculous.

  43. 43.

    Omnes Omnibus

    August 29, 2012 at 1:20 pm

    @BGinCHI: Very well, thanks. I am getting in 3 rides of 10-12 miles during the week and 2 rides of 20+ on the weekends. I am also noticing that my legs are feeling significantly stronger. Also too, the rides are really one of the high points of my day.

  44. 44.

    bobbo

    August 29, 2012 at 1:26 pm

    Amazing. The part of you I don’t like is the part that acts like a liberal. And do liberals demagogue Medicare? Unless he is referring to our pointing out the FACT that Repulicans want to destroy it, I don’t know what that means.

  45. 45.

    Barry

    August 29, 2012 at 1:34 pm

    “What I don’t get about all these emotionally stunted clowns is that on the one hand, they’re all about being more adult and serious than the rest of us, while on the other, they openly write mash notes to dominant bucks and high-five their kids when one pundit “schools” another.”

    These are the gamma males and females, the ones who in high school dreamt of the dizzying heights of being a beta male, able to personally suck up to the alphas.

  46. 46.

    eyelessgame

    August 29, 2012 at 1:36 pm

    I love it when you challenge the rhetoric of public “investment.”

    He wrote this on the Internet, right? Just checking.

  47. 47.

    Joey Maloney

    August 29, 2012 at 1:36 pm

    @danimal:

    ABL at the GOP convention would be quite the hoot, though. Imagine what she would have done with the peanuts thrown at her.

    This post would contain a bleg for her bail money. Or perhaps a getaway car.

  48. 48.

    Barry

    August 29, 2012 at 1:37 pm

    @Amir Khalid: “More to the point, Saletan’s reasons for falling out of love with Paul Ryan are just as confused as his reasons for falling in love with him in the first place. But then, that is so like a schoolgirl crushe.”

    When one’s reasons for getting in bear no connection with reality………….

    In the end I think that it’s a mancrush/alpha male/dominance factor. I think that a lot of these guys see Ryan as a loser, now, so he’s no longer attractive.

  49. 49.

    Villago Delenda Est

    August 29, 2012 at 1:39 pm

    @PurpleGirl:

    And how did the family get those BIG bucks… government construction contracts. Idiot baby is sooooooooo stupid he (Ryan) doesn’t realize that if the government doesn’t pay for roads his family is poor.

    You’ve also just described every IT glibertarian in existence, who would not have a career if it wasn’t for government largess decades ago.

    These people have no sense of history. They imagine that the PC and the internet have always existed. They have no clue that the only reason they can see as far as they can see, in their supreme arrogance, is that they’re standing on the shoulders of giants. They have not the slightest clue about cause and effect as a result of their woeful ignorance of history.

    Fuck them all. They are unworthy of the blessings around them. They should die as peasants hoeing fields by hand.

  50. 50.

    Linda

    August 29, 2012 at 1:39 pm

    @Chris: The word your struggling for is sociopathology. It’s not an ideology, it’s a mental illness.

  51. 51.

    dance around in your bones

    August 29, 2012 at 1:40 pm

    Ok, it just struck me that Paul Ryan (in addition to looking like Eddie Munster) looks an awful like Damien from the movie the Omen.

    Just my personal observation. Heh.

    eta: “It’s all for YOU, Damien!”

  52. 52.

    Villago Delenda Est

    August 29, 2012 at 1:41 pm

    @eyelessgame:

    win!

  53. 53.

    Turgidson

    August 29, 2012 at 1:45 pm

    @Villago Delenda Est:

    They imagine that the PC and the internet have always existed.

    Perhaps. I also think some of them believe that they, personally, invented the internet in their last lifetime. Either them or John Galt anyway.

  54. 54.

    roc

    August 29, 2012 at 1:47 pm

    I’m sympathetic to your argument that … insurance subsidies distort markets

    Subsidies distort markets… except, ya know, with Medicare. With Medicare, throwing every old person out into the market with a fixed benefit coupon/voucher/subsidy, why, that’s the only way we can avoid death panels or bankruptcy!

    /cough

  55. 55.

    Marc McKenzie

    August 29, 2012 at 2:00 pm

    Christ, why doesn’t he just go and perform actual fellatio on Rep. Ryan and get this song and dance over with?

  56. 56.

    JustRuss

    August 29, 2012 at 2:28 pm

    @eyelessgame:
    Well played, sir!

  57. 57.

    Robert Waldmann

    August 29, 2012 at 2:37 pm

    “. I’m sympathetic to your argument that student loans … distort markets. ” is odd. There is a huge theoretical economics literature in which it is argued that the free market for formal schooling is not efficient, because it is not possible to repossess human capital. There is an equally huge empirical literature all of which suggests that public spending on education causes more rapid economic growth. The leading figure in the second literature is the ultra reactionary Robert Barro.

    Alsothe guy who first proved the first welfare theorem also wrote that health care is different and the free market isn’t efficient.

    I see no explanation of Saletan’s views other than Ryan’s blue blue eyes and square jaw.

  58. 58.

    Scott

    August 29, 2012 at 3:22 pm

    Generational greed, the favored term of those who will never depend on SS or Medicare for their very survival.

  59. 59.

    jim filyaw

    August 29, 2012 at 4:04 pm

    is it expecting too much to think that anyone who presumes to comment on public affairs should be passingly familiar with what or who the hell they are talking about? i mean, its stuff that is readily available to anyone who can log on to the internet. mr. saletan’s column is as brain addled as what one would expect of palin or bachmann. does slate really pay this guy?

  60. 60.

    Grumpy Code Monkey

    August 29, 2012 at 5:06 pm

    These people are all closet cases. All of them.

    If they’d be honest with themselves as well as the rest of us, the world would be a much happier place.

  61. 61.

    Jim Pharo

    August 29, 2012 at 6:22 pm

    What I don’t get about all these emotionally stunted clowns is that on the one hand, they’re all about being more adult and serious than the rest of us, while on the other, they openly write mash notes to dominant bucks and high-five their kids when one pundit “schools” another.

    Then you need to think harder. Maybe but a book on psychology, especially look at the chapter on “Projection.” Also, “Infantalism.” Tres enlightening.

    (And I’m winking because I know you know this.)

  62. 62.

    hep kitty

    August 29, 2012 at 7:08 pm

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques:

    Saletan should just come outright and tell the world he is a bisexual bottom. Nothing to be ashamed of in this day and age.

    How can he know his sexual identity when he can’t find anyone who would even have pity-sex with him?

  63. 63.

    central texas

    August 29, 2012 at 11:12 pm

    What Mr. Saletan obfuscated was that all of those who responded were not simply correcting him, they were calling him a moron, tool, and idiot. They were correct.

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