When it comes to the question of who is my favorite winger, I go back and forth between Jen Rubin and Jimmy P. Jimmy P says random stupid things about Red Dawn and rock concerts, and seems like a reasonably nice guy. Jen Rubin may or may not be taking dictation from the Romney campaign — sometimes I think her posts are too over the top to be the work of a political professional — and is nasty and hateful.
Anywho, why is Ben Smith (who I like) re-tweeting Rubin’s North Korean-style propaganda?
@buzzfeedben Bad enough that J-Rub cuts-and-pastes Romney press releases…you have to retweet them?
— Doug Johnson (@DougJBalloon) September 21, 2012
Morbo
I dig the combination self-awareness/sticking-it-in-the-face-of-old-media of Ben Smith’s Twitter avatar.
Forum Transmitted Disease
It’s “news”, Doug.
In the same way that Ryan getting booed at the AARP convention apparently isn’t, according to my Google news feed.
kindness
It really is amazing that Ruben is paid by the WaPo. She’s a shoo in for Fox but the WaPo? Katherine Grahm is rolling in her grave. Ben Bradley? He doesn’t give a shit since he got his Trophy Wife.
Ann Rynd
Ahhhh. Another Jennifer Rubin thread. She’s a particular favorite of mine when it comes to hateful and psychotic-looking neo-com batshit crazies. She’s ferocious and driven and cannot bear the idea that just when she has a national megaphone at Wapo, her guy is losing. After the election her meltdown will be fun to watch. Don’t know why Ben Smith retweets her spew. Maybe he’s dating her son.
LittlePig
Ol’ Chuck Toddler had J-Rub on this morning to discuss just how badly the President has failed America. Called on her first, too, so she could launch into all these lovely wars she had proposed. No word on how Operation Kiss Bibi’s Ass would be paid for, needless to say, everybody knows wars are free. Chuck nodded understandingly throughout, looking like a faithful hound.
Geez I have to remember not to switch to MSNBC during The Morning Dumbdown. Chuck Todd is a moron.
scav
@Forum Transmitted Disease: That’s bizarre — it was even breaking news at the Guard. granted, they can have a low bar for making it to breaking but it was at least noticed.
cat
@Forum Transmitted Disease: They really sent him to the AARP conference?!?!?
Ann Rynd
@LittlePig: The two worst loudmouths in Washington: Chuck Todd and Jennifer Rubin. The synergistic idiocy must have been fearful. Glad I missed it. My heart, my heart.
wiscomom
Worse than this tweet was his one about Obama’s “gaffe” from yesterday. Out of nowhere he says: “you can’t change Washington from the inside” is perhaps Obama’s worst gaffe since he met Joe the Plumber?
Nothing at all about the rest of the point that Obama made. His Buzzfeed staff go nuts retweeting it over the next half hour, soon followed by everyone else in the twitterverse. Then later we find out Romney and his band saw the tweet and worked it into their next rally.
Do you think he’s just trying to suck up to the Romney folks for better access? Or is he simply goading them into chasing the newest shiny light?
Chris
Doug is my favourite twitter troll.
J.D. Rhoades
@Forum Transmitted Disease:
I noticed that, but I’m giving it a little time. In the meantime, I’m posting the video everywhere I can :-)
Steve
@wiscomom: If that’s the worst gaffe since he met Joe the Plumber (4 years ago!), he’s doing pretty damn well considering the “spread the wealth around” so-called gaffe didn’t move the needle one iota. Just like “you didn’t build that,” it’s the kind of thing that drives conservatives bananas but causes normal voters to be like “ehhhh, we know what he meant.”
Comrade Javamanphil
Because without a close race none of the gang of 500 could possibly justify their jobs?
Turgidson
@Steve:
He gives the delusional crowd so little to work with to validate their certainty that Obama is a radical leftist that anything they can work with, anything at all, gets beaten to death. Now that it’s become pretty clear that these little games don’t move the polls more than a hair, I’ve come to just be amused by them.
They really think they’re going to ride the “Washington has to be changed from the outside” statement to a dramatic comeback victory? Let them think that, and do the equivalent of chasing their tails for another few weeks – while Team O works the 47% footage into some good ads, deploys the Big Dog to spots that need shoring up, and revs up the GOTV and early voting infrastructure and runs out to early leads in the states he needs (I read something about Democrats requesting early ballots 6x more than Republicans in Iowa for example). Fine with me. Empty and/or mendacious marketing and gotcha moments are all they have. And the gotchas they think Obama is providing tend to be total nothingburgers that only resonate with the alternate reality knuckledraggers.
Jay
Doug,
Here, you went wrong only in calling Jennifer Rubin “J-Rub.” “J-Rube” or “Jenny – Rube” would be better because she is, in fact, a rube.
Daulnay
Ben Smith worked years for Politico, was in at its launch, and helped it magnify the Republican Noise Machine, no?
And Politico is owned by Allbritton Communications, which is owned and run by a conservative Texas multi-millionaire. Its CEO is a Republican from the Reagan Administration (Assistant to the President).
Seriously, why are you surprised that he’d re-tweet J. Rubin?
Death Panel Truck
Because he’s a reliable Republican useful idiot.
Vico
@Turgidson: “They really think they’re going to ride the “Washington has to be changed from the outside” statement to a dramatic comeback victory?”
Especially since he’s on video saying exactly the same thing during his losing 2008 campaign.
hells littlest angel
Yes, indeed, chocolate rations have been increased to 20 grams per week!
I’m afraid they’re going to find Jennifer Rubin dangling from her kitchen ceiling on November 7th. Well, maybe “afraid” isn’t the right word…
Robert Waldmann
the beam in your eye. The correct title would have been
“A press release, wrapped in a blog post, inside a re-tweet, in a blog post”
Why did you cut and paste Smith’s retweet of Rubin’s cutting and pasting of a press release ? Was it because your post is ruthless and funny ? In any case thanks — I laughed out loud.
ed
Occam’s Razor suggests that J-Rub is a perfornance artist of the highest order, akin to Andy Kaufman or Heman Cain. Respeck!!!
Lev
Rubin sucks, no doubt about it. I’m not precisely sure that WaPo needs a dedicated right-wing blog anyway, since you can just follow their op-ed writers’ RSS feed and get the same effect. (Hey-ooooooooooo!) But if they decide to have one, getting a right-wing writer who’s good for something is both imperative and practically impossible. Perhaps they can give Ramesh Ponnuru a call, other than that, I got nothing.
Bruce S
Jennifer Rubin is one of the most repugnant people on the planet.