Since I am neither a Christian, a Christianist, or a nice person, I will admit to taking vulgar pleasure in the highly public depantsing of Dinesh “Nothing Happened” D’Souza. Do not miss the full glory of Doghouse Riley’s “Petards Are for Hoisting“:
HERE’S the thing about D’ines’h D’Souza: he found himself a nice little sinecure in America defending the Raj. That comes with a price, of course. Not in swallowing the understandable anger and disgust the Anglo-American Man’s Burden must engender in its erstwhile subjects; that sort of thing seems to go down easy with second or fifth-generation mandarins. It’s just that, inevitably, someone with D’Souza’s rh’torical gifts has got to figure (and rightly so) that These People Are Dumb As Stumps, and go looking for further fields of plunder.
Lacking Hitchens gifts, D’inesh had to settle for life as a Toolbelt to the neocons, and pan for gold among the evangelical dross, jettisoning his Catholicism somewhere along the way. Sorta. (Again, fortunately for D’Souza, in those circles one can now be a best-selling Christian apologist without taking sides on the Reformation, which has apparently been relegated to the intellectual dung pit alongside the Trinitarian debate, the question of translation, and the George W. Bush administration….
Or Josh Fruhlinger at Wonkette:
“God has a mighty future for Dinesh, but there are some things he has to go through first”, said [King’s College chairman Andy] Mills [tweeted].
We assume this is nice evangelical code for “the restraining order stipulates that you must remain 150 yards or more away from our campus at all times.”
Steve M. at No More Mr. Nice Blog points out “DINESH D’SOUZA’S PENIS IS NOW HELPING US LOSE THE WAR WITH ISLAMOFASCISTS, OR SOMETHING LIKE THAT“:
Dinesh D’Souza, the married, 51-year-old right-wing author and inspiration for the film 2016: Obama’s America, once wrote a book called The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11. The thesis of this book is that the loosening of conservative moral strictures in the West is alienating Muslims, and Muslims, as a result, are so pissed off that they feel they have no choice but to kill us…
Following his own logic, we can only ask: Why is Dinesh D’Souza encouraging Islamofascism and destroying the life of his own daughter?
(In a completely inexcusable sidenote, the Daily Mail assures me that D’Souza has retained his taste for what my Irish nana called “rat-faced bottle blondes.”)
The single funniest paragraph on this topic so far, however, was posted by the man himself, at the end of a six-point masterpiece of legalistic hair-splitting and wounded feelings:
… Ultimately this is… about how we Christians are supposed to behave with one another. And the secular world is watching. Is this how we love and treat fellow believers? If my conduct was improper, wouldn’t it be the decent and charitable thing to approach me about it? Instead, here is a clear attempt to destroy my career and my ministry. This is viciousness masquerading as righteousness. And this is the behavior that is truly worthy of Christian condemnation.
This is the man responsible for 2016: Obama’s America, based on his invention of a President Obama driven by his dead father’s “fanatic anti-colonialism” to attempt to destroy all that is good in America and the world. But then, D’Souza does not believe that President Obama is the right kind of Christian, I suppose…
D’Souza’s inexplicable failure to cite the time-tested traditional “At least I wasn’t despoiling a virgin” Biblical double standard in his own defence set me wondering: What of the mysterious Charles Bovary in this Randian romance, the Mr. Joseph II whom Dinesh’s latest soulmate married only last December? (Presumably, when he told her how she should vote, he forgot to add “Also, don’t spend the weekend in a Comfort Inn with another married guy, even if he is willing to tell his sponsors you’re his fiancee.”) Is Mr. Joseph II resigned — perhaps even a little proud — to lose his helpmeet to a Galtian hero with a higher Q score? Does he repine in their once happy home, surrounded by the faux-french Pier-One “avarices” Denise lusted after in her now defunct blog?
(Well, at least she can’t be accused of hiding her goals… )
ulee
He’ll be giving many speeches at a few thousand dollars a shot in the years to come and the haters will eat it up, truth be damned. Once you’re in of the club, you’re never out of the club.
The Other Chuck
A funny thing, English: “pantsing” and “depantsing” mean the same thing.
As for what the story was aboot … Dinesh D’Who’s A Hypocritical Windbag And We All Knew It? I guess I have Wingnut Meltdown Fatigue, nothing these guys do even shocks me into even caring what they did or say anymore.
maven
This douche once commented on his own failing………
” …men tend to be over-represented in the genius category and also in the category of dummies and mental retards.”
(ysursa.com/history/Reference%20pages/crossfire.htm)
I know he was including himself in one or the other category; likely the latter.
Another Halocene Human
@maven: Doghouse posted Colbert but he also got pantsed by Maher and recently. In fact, that was the most recent major humiliation before this brouhaha.
D’Souza is a deeply stupid man and when Bill “Smug Mug” Maher makes you look confused and dumb you know you’d better stick to trying that shtick with brainwashed “sheep” who have a need to believe.
Haydnseek
@The Other Chuck: I know just what you mean. Whackaloon overload takes its toll. They count on this in that endless human wave attack way, and we know it, but sonofabitch, after so many years it wears you down. I’m not a kid anymore, and I know that’s no excuse, but sometimes you have to just say fuck it and live your life.
Joseph Nobles
$33 million domestic gross for “2016: Obama’s America.” This motherfucker will be back.
Hell, Ralph Reed is probably making sure he has a hooker while we speak.
xian
when Sam Alito’s beloved “Concerned Alumni of Princeton (against coeducation)” couldn’t find a single undergrad in the Reagan 80s to edit their idiotic right-wing Dartmouth Review clone they imported this toad to publish his drivel on our campus and nobody fucking read the thing — dude’s been crapping in my watershed for far too long
freelancer
I watched his movie the other night. It’s a deeply stupid exercise in wingnut projection (Though, it can be asked, what is it that wingnuts do that isn’t an exercise in deeply stupid acts of projection?)
Salon’s Alex O’Hehir’s review of 2016 just vivisects D’Souza and his “film” and is worth reading in full (bold my emphasis):
hamletta
Jesus, Mary and Joseph, this man was raised Catholic. My left tit he “had no idea” is was “considered wrong.”
burnspbesq
I dunno about all of this piling on. My dictionary defines schadenfreude as “quiet satisfaction at the misfortune of another.”
hamletta
P.S. He mentions Marvin Olasky, an equally vile Krazy Kristian, with whom he has had an ongoing pissing contest.
I guess Olasky won this round.
hamletta
@burnspbesq: Well, let’s call it loudenfreude, then.
Anne Laurie
@hamletta:
To be fair, in the working-class Catholic parish I grew up in during the 1960s, it was widely believed that Protestantism only existed because (a) Henry VIII wanted to screw Anne Boleyn, and (b) Martin Luther wanted to screw a nun. So, y’know, maybe Dinesh figured “Hey, I thought you Prots were intrisically pro-divorce!” would make a good
apologeticsdefense (/sarcasm)freelancer
@Anne Laurie:
That is being WAY more than charitable, as the word “charitable” is understood.
Amir Khalid
@hamletta:
Me, I call it gloating. (But, just this once, not with disapproval.)
Haydnseek
@burnspbesq:Are you wearing a tie and a cardigan right now? I’ll wait for you to tend to your pipe before you answer…………
SamR
His own statement is amazing:
Reminds me of the classic Seinfeld where George is confronted by his boss for sleeping with the cleaning lady on his desk:
youtube.com/watch?v=-RvNS7JfcMM
Transcript of it:
Honestly, George is closer to the truth. D’Souza acts like he’s only vaguely familiar with the tenets of Christianity, as well as unaware that within evangelical Christianity divorce itself is a sin. Lame.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
A bit of idle amusement: the guys behind the October Surprise website have surrendered. It was indeed a rickroll.
hamletta
The real ha-ha joke of all this is that he was paid $1M/yr as president of a “college” with 400 students on a good day.
Well, before he got his ass fired, anyway.
Haydnseek
Alright Burnsey, I’ll be watching as well. The fact that you even care makes you OK in my book, regardless of the usual comment byplay. I’m a Spurs supporter as a result of a stay in the part of North London that I could afford way back when. By the bye, I shouldn’t have said anything about the cardigan and the pipe. That was out of line.
freelancer
@hamletta:
Using “mathematics”, that means $2500 of every student’s tuition went straight to lining this grifter’s pocketbook.
Not a bad gig, if you can stomach the shame.
Fuck ALL the chickens! (né Studly Pantload, t.e.u.u.)
It’s as I’ve been sayin’ for going on three weeks, now: Live by fucking that chicken, die by fucking that chicken.
Or, to turn another fine phrase for the Republicans: you’re gonna need a bigger chicken.
liberal
Re Dinesh, there’s a veritable concern troll party over at Mark Kleiman’s SameFacts blog.
sm*t cl*de
a clear attempt to destroy my career and my ministry.
He’s promoted himself to a feckin’ MINISTRY now??
Though you do have to give the guy some respect for (1) ripping off the marks to the tune of $1000000 / year, and (2) holding conservative christians in such deep contempt as to flaunt his floozy in front of them at a conference.
hamletta
@freelancer: Jeepers! That’s some hard-core grifting!
I’m trying to think of some character who would be jealous, but Cain and Carver died too soon.
Aimee Semple McPherson, though. She’d be pissed; she had to spend all that time hiding out in the desert. Totes sucked.
hamletta
@sm*t cl*de: Dude, when you’re a p’ofessional Christian, your every bloviation is your “ministry.”
Vile, isn’t it?
hamletta
Oh, y’all, when I went to save D’Souza’s feeble response to Evernote, the tags it offered up were “assholes” and “1%.”
How did it know?
TheMightyTrowel
quiet Saturday evening here. planted some herbs, committed genocide on an ant nest i found in my shed. now I’m kicking back with some chocolate and a tray novel. as to the rest, the Greeks always said debris would get the self-important in the end
cmm
Dinesh hs come a long way since he stole Gay Student Aalliance correspondence and published it in the Review, outing several of the GSA’s members in the process. What a repugnant little toad of a man.
bemused
Hilarious.
It will be a hoot to see how he reinvents himself after this. It’s inevitable he will. He is a wingnut savant shapeshifter.
Robert Waldmann
On the “completely inexcusable sidenote”
I clicked the link (of course). I note that your Irish nana has never seen Denise Odie (D’Souza d’ate) and, while the blondness definitely came in a bottle, she has a lovely face along with her completely mysterious and incomprehensible taste in men.
I mean the woman has shared a hotel room with Dinish D’Souza — don’t you think she has suffered enough ?
SRW1
Nothing as pathetic as a bully whining about being bullied. Even if it’s only a pen-bully being pen-bullied.
SRW1
@Robert Waldmann:
Maybe he can cite the Kamasutra backwards.
the dude
“This is viciousness masquerading as righteousness”
Or, as Oscar Wilde once said, “On an occasion of this kind it becomes more than a moral duty to speak one’s mind. It becomes a pleasure.”.
amk
Yet another proof that the fucking gods are on the side of that kenyan muslin usurper.
TheMightyTrowel
for the nerds among us, US elections as seen by Australia’s media
canberratimes.com.au/data-point/the-a-to-z-of-american-politics-20121019-27wsa.html
Frankensteinbeck
This doesn’t sound like a restraining order. It sounds like IOKIYAR.
@Robert Waldmann:
I must disagree. Of the women shown there he’s dated, his wife is the prettiest and I’m not at all impressed. This latest appears to be made of plastic. She would be okay otherwise, but I’m sensitive to bad skin. The other two have faces carved by hate, which I also can’t stand.
aimai
@the dude:
Now that is le mot juste.
aimai
aimai
Oh to be a fly on the wall at King of King of King Kong’s College which was meant to take evaneglical purity right into the heart of the sexy beast that is New York. Oh the humanity! To think that Dinesh was corrupted by Moloch so fast! I wonder if they are pro-rating his salary?
aimai
Origuy
How about some music to go with the schadenfreude? Tuesday night I’m planning to go to the Freight & Salvage in Berkeley to see Carlos Núñez, the great Galician gaita (Spanish bagpipe) player. He’s played with the Chieftains. Here he is accompanying some great flamenco dancing.
Jerzy Russian
Would it be unchristian of me to call this guy a dickhead?
kay
I think he genuinely could not have known it was a problem.
I have never seen any disinclination to divorce among Republican Christians here. It’s anecdotal, but I’d go the other way. They divorce a lot. IMO, they’re serial marriers. The thing is to BE
married, not STAY married.
The “fiancée” use is also incredibly common. They announce the INTENT to marry with that word. It’s like a magic shield against adultury or sex outside of
marriage, “fiancée”.
I don’t blame him for parsing the rules and fucking up the acceptable order of events. It’s legalistic. It is better to get married when you’re 17 and pregnant
and then get divorced a year later than it is to not marry, as long as you immediately re-marry. I still have no idea how the rules work, but timing is incredibly important.
I personally think the key to why I don’t get it is that I don’t conflate the state
role in marriage with the religious role, but they do. The state imprint IS the validity. He was looking at the wrong “code”.
Cermet
@ulee: He’ll be giving many speeches at a few thousand dollars a shot in the years to come and the haters will eat it up, truth be damned. Once you’re
in of the clubdumb, you’renever out of the clubyou’re always dumb.Edited for clarity
Hal
@sm*t cl*de:
He ministers to white people who hate Obama for reasons they can’t quite pinpoint *cough cough*
Also:
Now that’s someone I could vote for…
Donut
Not that I’m an expert on Eastern philosophical concepts, but doesn’t this whole situation fit the basic definition of karma?
SFAW
@Jerzy Russian:
Depends. Did lightning strike you after you typed that? If not, then you’re probably OK.
Or something like that.Suffern Ace
@hamletta: Olasky when I last heard of him was writing favorably about 19th century work houses and solving the problems of poverty by driving the poor from the city limits. Then for 20 years, I haven’t heard from him.
Svensker
She’s wearing a cross and is a big Ayn Rand fan. How does that work?
ericblair
@Svensker:
Tribal markers with no other meaning. Kinda like having both the Stars and Stripes and Stars and Bars on your pick-em-up truck.
aimai
@Svensker:
She reminds me of a skinny, anorexic, Edina from Absolutely Fabulous. Both Ayn Rand and the Cross are simply fashion accessories. “La Croix, baybeee!”
aimai
Or something like that.Suffern Ace
@Donut: Nah. It’s plain old poetic justic with a bit of irony thrown in. Our poor Dinesh feels slandered and libeled. I find his fate to be delicious.
@kay: I know you’re trying to be fair and trying to put his words in a context where they might make sense. But I can only say…don’t. I think this man deserves every bit of extremely unflattering context you can think of. Although it is nice that you rescue him by pointing out the marital hypocrisy of his fellow travelers. But please…less benefit of the doubt. I think his actions speak of someone who was raised by a slut. He’s clearly been hiding those mother issues.
Walker
@freelancer:
As president, his primary job is to bring in money from donors. If having a high profile president like this meant that they were actually bringing in that much more money from donors, then he would have been worth the price.
But it is also why he needs to be fired immediately if he sullies the brand.
Villago Delenda Est
Dinesch D’Dumbass is fortunate that his Talibangical fellows didn’t stone his Jeebofascist ass for adultery.
Linda Featheringill
D’Souza:
He’s right about that, of course.
On the other hand, he has dabbled in that particular sin quite a bit before now and probably knows what he’s talking about.
Villago Delenda Est
@freelancer:
Well, it has been painfully obvious for some time now that the Fundigelicals hate, hate, hate the Enlightenment. The United States is a fruit of the Enlightenment. Therefore, they wish to destroy this country and replace it with some nightmare out of the pages of Margaret Atwood.
mai naem
I find this stuff fvcking hilarious. The idjit was a tight ass who didn’t want to pay for an extra hotel room so he gets caught and loses his job and his rep. BTW, his salary was 194K not 1 mill. Apparently, he exaggerated it to make his fellow grifters jealous. Gimme a break. He was staying at a Comfort Inn. Not like he was staying at some 400 dollar a night Ritz. How much can a fvcking Comfort Inn in Spartanburg? $80 max. He could have said she was his assistant and slept together but not shared the room.
Citizen Alan
@aimai:
I never thought I could have more contempt for anyone than I do for Randian Objectivists. Then, I was introduced to the concept of Faux Randian Objectivists who don’t even understand what the vile woman was talking about but who claim to support her because she was anti-liberal.
Also, from what I’ve read about Denise Joseph, my suspicious is that she was cheating on her husband of ten months with D’Souza in the hopes that he could introduce her to Newt Gingrich, who is wealthier, more famous and probably looking to trade again.
Woodrowfan
I do wish people would stop writing novels about right-wing distopias. The righties see them not as warnings but as instruction manuals.
Steeplejack
@hamletta:
That appears to have been debunked:
Cervantes
Via freelancer, Alex O’Hehir:
What is that supposed to mean? There’ve been Christians in India for two thousand years.
Eviscerate D’Souza without making your own ignorance too obvious.
gelfling545
@Anne Laurie: And if he were going by the example set by other prominent conservative “christians” he could assume that there was some tacit permission to do just as he has done; maybe even assume it was required to rise to high national position.
Cervantes
@Walker: He did not bring the donors in; the board did.
BC
@Villago Delenda Est: He’s safe from the stoning. The fiancee, however . . .
PurpleGirl
@Cervantes: Ah, but one of the jobs of a university/college president is to bring in donors and to keep up relationships with current donors. If he had done this, his position would have been more secure. Fund raising is part of almost every top executive’s job.
dance around in your bones
@Origuy:
I don’t know where I would have ever heard about this except on Balloon Juice. Bagpipes, flamenco guitar and dancing, and the woman is HOT.
Thanks.
BillCinSD
@Cervantes: Christian hasn’t equaled Catholic since at least the Reformation. India’s Catholic population is less than 4% of the total population, so it is pretty rare — about on par with the fraction of LDS in the US
Linda
I call bull$hit on D’Sleaza. He could not have grown up Catholic and not known that the Church frowns on adultery and fornication. Maybe that is why he left, seeking the cheap grace that some evangelical Protestant teaching offers?
When I saw the picture of D’Enise, I honestly thought she was a man in drag, and, given that D’Souza is a professional conservative,thus a hypocrite, and that he has fulminated against homosexuality for years, I wasn’t surprised. However, other pictures that have appeared as the story spreads make it appear that she is indeed female.
bjacques
We’re up to our ears in gloaters here!!
PurpleGirl
@bjacques: Why not? The man has said some absolutely vile things about the President and his mother. He is a moral scold of the first degree. His life principle, by his actions, is do as I say, not as I do. If he is being punished, it is because of his own actions.
Keith
I wonder if Ms. Joseph has gotten her “Congratulations, you have chlamydia!” email from Ann Coulter yet.
Linda
Hi bjacques, for me it’s more like disgust. Not only is the man a creep, he’s a stupid creep who has apparently been festering in the body politic for at least 30 years. Jerks like him helped destroy America.
Tommy D
For the record, ‘petard’ is a fart. ‘Hoist on yr own petard’ is to blow yourself up with your own gas. You can look it up. Isn’t that wonderful?
Xecky Gilchrist
doesn’t this whole situation fit the basic definition of karma?
Yes, but among Conservative moral scolds, it also fits the basic definition of “Thursday.”
Frankensteinbeck
@Tommy D:
A ‘petard’ is a small bomb made of gunpowder from the early Renaissance. To be ‘hoist on your own petard’ is to blow yourself into the air with it.
Xecky Gilchrist
@Tommy D: I had read that the usage came from a type of bomb that soldiers nicknamed “petard” because it was like a loud fart, and to hoist oneself on one’s own petard was to screw up and allow it to detonate near you.
(pardon, I type too slow. Frankensteinbeck ftw.)
scav
@Frankensteinbeck: just looked it up and it looks like the little bombs were named after farts, but the hoisting part does involve the blast powder that isn’t internally generated.
Eta clearly a topic of general interest! And who wouldn’t name little bombs after farts?
Tommy D
@Frankensteinbeck: Phrase comes from Hamlet and is a pun based on the French word ‘peter’ which means fart. Yr definition is derivative.
delosgatos
@burnspbesq:
Lautesschadenfreude?
LemonSky
So he’s into blondes, eh?
Then I look forward to Dinesh’s next book “Chutney’s Complaint”.
scav
@delosgatos: Sounds like something you could order at Starbucks. We’ll get burnsie a skinny decaf and provide the doubles with whipped cream to those that will relish them properly.
gocart mozart
If I had only known that that sort of behavior was fround on in this establisment . . .
youtube.com/watch?v=-RvNS7JfcMM
Rafer Janders
Um…um forget being “engaged prior to being divorced”, didn’t he have any idea that it’s considered wrong in Christian circles to get divorced in the first place, or to have an affair while married?
This is rather like writing “I had no idea that it is considered wrong in Christian circles to pop amyl nitrate prior to engaging in gay orgies”: by thinking that it’s the amyl nitrate that matters, may be focusing on the wrong thing…..
Yutsano
@TheMightyTrowel: Heh. They mention Seamus. Are all Aussie rags that cool?
Ruckus
@Haydnseek:
Thanks!
Of course I have to be careful of laughter at that level to guard against another heart attack.
West of the Rockies (formerly Frank W.)
How did this lumpy turd get that close to multiple fairly attractive women(well, except for Coulter, of course)? I can’t imagine that most women would regard that as an especially kissable mouth. Ick….
Oh, but I am lovin’ the public disgrace and financial hit D’idiot is taking!
quannlace
People wouln’t be playing the world’s smallest violin if Dinesh had shown a nano second of the same consideration for his victims. But that would take a certain emotional maturity.
Which isn’t evident from his ‘nothing happened’ comment. That’s what a sixteen year old says when his Mom finds his girlfriend’s bra in his bedroom.
Kerry Reid
The very fact that he is DIVORCING in the first place shows that he is bent on tearing apart the fabric of society! How long will we allow these hetero-divorcing monsters to destroy the very building blocks of our culture? Jailing is too good for ’em! Stone them, I say!
Cervantes
@BillCinSD: India’s Catholic population is less than 4% of the total population, so it is pretty rare—about on par with the fraction of LDS in the US
Let me put it to you this way. Jews are about 2-3% of the US population. If Alex O’Hehir were to write the following about someone: “Being born an American Jew was evidently not weird enough …” what would you say? Or do you think American Jews are somehow more “weird” than Indian Catholics?
Chris
@quannlace:
This.
No, Dinesh didn’t deserve to be fired because of his personal life. But then, those gay kids at the university he went to didn’t deserve to be yanked out of the closet at a time when that was still far more of a life ruiner than it is today. And that’s not even the tip of the iceberg when it comes to people whose lives have been ruined by the religious right, whom Dinesh has made a career supporting.
Live by the sword, die by the sword. I have no more sympathy for him than I would have had when Robespierre and Marat finally died of their own medicine.
Matt McIrvin
@scav: Yep. “Petard” literally means “farter”. It was the ancestor of the shaped charge; it had a casing shaped like a bell, and you’d attach the open end to a fortress gate, light the fuse, and if you were lucky you would get away before it blew you up too.
Tehanu
@Matt McIrvin:
So D’inesh is the LePetomane of today’s rightwing?
Linda
@Frankensteinbeck: Upon reflection, I believe it’s the skin problems that caused to mistake D’Enise for a D’Ude.
Linda
Er, that caused me to mistake, etc. Mea culpa. (Dinesh, if you’re reading this, “Mea culpa” means “my fault.”)
Patricia Kayden
“Instead, here is a clear attempt to destroy my career and my ministry”
What ministry is D’Souza referencing? The only thing I know about him is that he is a philandering, racist, homophobic hypocrite. Hopefully, now that the Christianists have rejected him, we don’t have to hear from him again. He can go off into the sunset with his second Mistress (after she divorces her husband) and leave us alone.
Cervantes
@Linda: (Dinesh, if you’re reading this, “Mea culpa” means “my fault.”)
Oh, very good. Very, very good.
West of the Rockies (formerly Frank W.)
Okay,I know this is sort of juvenile and doesn’t really comment on the character of this character-less grifter, but he looks like a really ugly baby trying to nurse.
Put him up there with Donald Trump for really grotesque men who manage to hook up with much more attractive women. The guy is a toad.
bob h
I’ve wondered about the politics of South Asian (Indian) Americans. You look at this guy and Ranesh P., and wonder whether there is not some predilection among them for Republicans.
Paul in KY
@burnspbesq: You are such a wet blanket. Jeezus, this is Dinesh Freaking D’Souza we’re talking about.
Derisive laughter is mandatory here (at least if you are agin his worldview).
Paul in KY
@Cervantes: They (Indian Catholics/Christians) are .0001% of population, right?
Edit: Someone up above mentioned they are 4% of population (a much more sizable figure than mine). If the 4% is true, I can see where Cervantes was going with his/her comment.