If you just can’t get enough rubbernecking the shambling denizens of the Island of Dr. MoreSo, Roy Edroso’s new Village Voice column is a linky treasure trove. From “‘Rack’ and Ruin“:
For rightbloggers, CPAC is Old Home Week, but the dawn of the second Age of Obama found them conflicted and demoralized, so they focused on the good times — like Sarah Palin making a joke about her tits….
… Geller got into the event via a Breitbart.com “Uninvited” forum, where she dissed Orly Taitz, the prominent Obama birther. (As Geller has suggested Obama is the son of Malcolm X, this may be characterized as a collegial dispute.) Also a non-GOProud “Rainbow on the Right” panel was permitted and some of the uninvited group’s members and supporters attended. The sponsoring Competitive Enterprise Institute reported that “panelists discussed the difference between top-down enforced ‘tolerance’ and organic social progress rooted in market and other incentives.”
Other conflicts festered. When Donald Trump got a prime spot at CPAC, he was subjected to torrents of abuse from, among others, Michelle Malkin, who was enraged that Trump had spoken kindly of Ashley Judd (“CPAC gave clown Trump a longer speaking slot. Will he use platform to plug lib starlet Ashley Judd’s Senate campaign?”). Trump had previously called Malkin a “dummy.” A cage match made in heaven!
Even immigration proved a ground to tread lightly, as Great Brown Hope Marco Rubio avoided the topic in his big speech. But how could he not? You can see how contentious the issue was in Mickey Kaus’ column at The Daily Caller: “It looks like the attempt to turn CPAC into a pro-immigration-amnesty rally has been somewhat less than a rousing success,” he wrote. Despite the presence of “a panel rigged to push legalization-no dissenting voices allowed!” anti-immigration voices prevailed, proving that “when the conservatives don’t work for (amnesty supporter) Rupert Murdoch, they are a tougher sell… Prediction: Rubio’s chicken-out won’t stop the MSM from portraying him as a profile in courage on the issue.”
Plus, “Ann Coulter at CPAC gave the immigration patriot speech we’ve been waiting for so many years,” wrote Peter Brimelow at the openly racist VDare. “Note especially her repeated assertion that she is now ‘a single-issue voter’ against Amnesty–and also her informed critique of the 1965 Immigration Act, the root of all evil.” Well, after the Civil Rights Act, are we right, blood-brother?…
And in a possible violation of the Logan Act, our old friend the treasonous brilliant Jim Newell supervised the Merry Snarksters liveblogging all… three… days for the Guardian. (One hopes that socialist rag provides decent mental health coverage for non-Brits.)
Baud
Not to compare us to them, but thank god we don’t have one of these events (no, netroots nation doesn’t count).
Litlebritdifrnt
Is it just me cause I am partial but it appears to me that The Guardian has assembled some of the best snarkists out there? Jim Newell and Ana Marie Cox are the absolute best in the business and the Guardian appears to have snagged them all. I fully expect them to snag the latest brightest and brilliant from Wonkette as soon as they are available. It would appear that Wonkette is almost like a breeding ground for snark masters.
Rex Everything
Wow, a Village Voice article that’s worth reading—I haven’t seen one o’ those in at least 5 years. Thanks.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I’d read Palin’s “Hey! Look at my tits!” joke over the weekend, but just saw video of her delivery today. What a painfully labored set-up. But she knows her audience, the howler monkeys ate it up.
She also introduced her line about Obama being a “reality star” with some schtick about “all drama Obama”. Even making allowances for her little snow globe world, I have no idea what she’s talking about.
Rex Everything
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I think she’s just expressing resentment that he gets more airtime than she does.
Bubblegum Tate
@Rex Everything:
This is actually a feature Roy does every Monday: “Exploring the Right-Wing Blogosphere.” It’s basically a snarky roundup of whatever the wingnuts had been screeching about the previous week. I’m a regular reader for sure.
trollhattan
@Bubblegum Tate:
Oh yes, Edroso spends a hell of a lot of time “off the boat” and his weekly VV roundup is a must-read. I simply can’t imagine how he does it, week after week after week….
Roger Moore
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Projection. That’s all it is. That’s all it ever is. Whenever they try to tar their opponents with some stupid bad word, you can be absolutely positive that they’re guilty of it themselves. The concept of Sarah Palin calling somebody an all drama reality TV star is just the most extreme example.
trollhattan
Jesus, it keeps going in Steubenville, which I guess comes as no surprise. Now, the mean girls are getting into the action.
http://www.sacbee.com/2013/03/18/5271158/rape-trial-over-ohio-city-remains.html#storylink=cpy
Suffern ACE
God. That story of the shoeshiner who lost his pension is really good news for America.
ruemara
@trollhattan: I wonder how we are all projecting/narrow-minded/etc, for thinking this is heinous? I await the ombudsman of the blog.
Roger Moore
@trollhattan:
Yeah, and I hope that our spectacular failure in Iraq will keep the neocons from hoping to invade anywhere else. My hope has just about as much likelihood of coming true.
Omnes Omnibus
@ruemara: EDK is back?
nellcote
@Roger Moore:
Yup. She read a crack about PBO using a teleprompter, off a telepromter too.
Roger Moore
@nellcote:
She made the entirely safe assumption that none of the people she was reading the joke to knew what a teleprompter was; they just knew that it’s funny that Obama needs one.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@trollhattan:
Threatening Facebook and Twitter comments? How stupid do you have to be to publish threats via wide-open media?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@nellcote: She, and a whole bunch of others, have been doing that for years now. It’s absolutely amazing.
Still amazes me, even though it shouldn’t, that people like David Gregory and Jake Tapper see that woman jibbering and jabbering and think, “That reminds me, I’ve got to call Senator McCain’s office and see if I can get this week’s exclusive, or at least one of this week’s exclusives” And with all the talk about the tenth anniversary of the Great Debacle, we shouldn’t even have had to see Palin for McCain to be discredited.
YellowJournalism
My favorite part of Palin’s speech was the Big Gulp she took a drink from. The one that would not have been banned under Bloomberg’s law. Someone should tell her that when she’s competing against Honey Boo Boo and Honey’s mom on the mother/daughter edition of “Dancing Off To Celebrity Rehab With The Stars.”
BruceFromOhio
From the linked article…
These people should never be allowed near positions of power, voting places, or sharp objects, ever, for any reason.
…maybe make an exception on the sharp objects.
Comrade Jake
I bet Coulter looks at Geller and thinks “Wow that lady is fucking INSANE!”
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Comrade Jake: Heh. And Geller had to shout that at Orly Taitz, from a dais, from a dais Geller was sharing with a very recent Attorney General of the United States who said Sharia law is a clear and present danger.
trollhattan
@Higgs Boson’s Mate:
The mind boggles, but I’m still unready for the reality of posting rape videos so I’m not a good judge of how crass and stupid these kids can be. And here’s a shout out to the news organizations who’ve named the victim. Nice work, folks, really nice.
raven
@Higgs Boson’s Mate:
Say it ain’t so. I thought we who opposed the war were the traitors?
”
LBJ Tapes Show Richard Nixon May Have Committed Treason By Sabotaging Vietnam Peace Talks”
? Martin
@YellowJournalism:
Just goes to show you how bankrupt the GOP is. The only rights they can bother to actually fight for is the right to huge softdrinks and the right to own weapons of war.
Sugar Daddy
@Suffern ACE: An inspiring and non-condescending portrait of a humble man providing an old-fashioned service, without complaint.
We need more like him and less hippity hop.
muddy
@raven: In case anyone thought Reagan thought that ploy up.
raven
@muddy: Ding
raven
@efgoldman: We moved to Whittier in 57 and there was a Nixon’s Burger joint on the Blvd!
Omnes Omnibus
@YellowJournalism:
That is what that was about? Oh.
raven
@efgoldman: Or the Hawthorne Grill made famous, and then torn down, in Pulp Fiction.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Omnes Omnibus: You do need some kind of wingnut obsession scorecard to follow them.
I’m gonna guess at least three eggs with at least two kinds of buttered carbs and two kinds of processed pork. And potatoes. Damn, I miss that kind of thing.
jamick6000
ok, speaking of gross rightists, someone I know posted this article on fb. It’s from the (popular) conservative blog “mrconservative” and the article has 9,992 likes as I’m writing this. The headline is “Ten Horrifying Stories of Muslims Gang Raping White Woman”
I didn’t click through the whole thing, but the people writing for that site (and oh god the commenters) are repulsive.
The basic point of the story is that in countries like australia, Muslim immigrants are committing acts of “racial terrorism” by raping white women. Since some of the countries mentioned have strict gun control laws, (white) people can’t defend themselves.
Anyways thought this would give you all some insights into a part of the current conservative psyche. Passing gun safety laws and immigration reform isn’t going to be easy. Also, the fact that people are so openly bigoted against Muslims is a rolling disgrace to this country.
raven
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Couple of years back I cooked a 275 lb hog for a wedding. I don’t eat it but they said it was gooooood.
Dupe70
Mostly lurker here but got bad news today. Was let go this morning so out looking for jobs. Looking for job primarily in DFW metroplex but open to moving.
Main skill sets are:
-Service Desk Management, Consulting, Process Improvement
-IT Service Management (Incident, Problem, Knowledge, Change)
-IT Procurement (primarily services) and Management/Oversight
-Business Process Improvement
ITIL certified and Six Sigma Green Belt
Thanks!
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@efgoldman: Yeah, that one kind of seriously pissed me off. Of course, it may have been my bias…
WTF, the asshole won’t vote for a proclamation of a “week” to recognize an incurable disease, for which the treatment that provides hope for many that the condition won’t get worse (emphasis on the “hope”) is both unaffordable for your average patient, and seriously dangerous. I’d send him a letter, but all my professional training about rational objective persuasive writing is shot when he fucks around with the neurological disease that changed my fucking life.
scav
@? Martin: I though the BigGulp moment also pulled a little of the star-burst suggestive date at the burger joint vibe as well. Twinkle Wink.
geg6
@Dupe70:
I’m too far north, but I’m very sorry that you’ve lost your job. Here’s hoping you find another soon.
Steeplejack
I have run into a strange thing that might be of interest to some here.
I did a Gmail update on my Nexus 7 tablet earlier this evening, and when I opened Outlook on my (Windows) computer a while ago it downloaded 470 messages from my Gmail account, dating back to February. Those messages had already been downloaded. And I got an error message saying something about an inability to save messages on the server, which I have not seen before.
I (laboriously) deleted those duplicate messages, but when Outlook checked for messages again just now it started to download those same 470 messages. I managed to nip it in the bud, but this is a serious problem.
I am still investigating, but I think something in the Gmail update on the Nexus 7 tweaked some global account setting that has messed up Outlook’s interaction with Gmail.
So, if you are using some combination of the above, be alert for any weirdness that may arise.
Mr Stagger Lee
@efgoldman: What he needs to do is look at the football program and their boosters, they could give the SEC boosters a run for their money. Friday Night Lights meets the Sopranos.
Mnemosyne
@Dupe70:
If you look back a few days ago (I think it was Friday?), soonergrunt posted a jobs thread and there were several IT positions in there. It’s worth taking a look.
Yutsano
@Dupe70: Soonergrunt is an IT guy for the VA. You might think about looking into that since they’re exempted from sequester (lucky bastages!) and they’re hiring all over.
http://www.usajobs.com
@Mnemosyne: This. Also. Too.
NotMax
@raven
Didn’t even know that Harley made a 125cc model.
West of the Rockies
@YellowJournalism: And the stupid look on her face (Oh, Christ, she thinks she’s so clever and cute) places her firmly and securely in the realm of pop icon with a rapidly-aging shelf life. I don’t think anyone can credibly argue anymore that she has any real shot at any sort of meaningful public office again. (Not that there loads of people arguing as much anyway, of course….)
The Reverend Lowdown
Found the best depiction of Ann Coulter in the comments, over at TBOGG.
“Ann Coulter emerged when The Devil ate a witch and then shit her out into a hot dumpster behind Popeyes.”
-Paula Pell
Good god, hilarious
Dupe70
@geg6: Thanks. I have already sent out 10 – 12 resumes and have had multiple people tell me to apply at their company. But finding a job can be tough so I am always trying to network or listen for any opportunity that might be out there.
Chris
@efgoldman:
That has been clear for some time. I honestly wonder what the fuck she would’ve done if the GOP had won in 2008. Quit the VP position within a year and said it was just too hard with all the mean liberals?
Suffern ACE
@efgoldman: yep. She couldn’t even complete her bus tour. If it weren’t for Cain and Gingrich’s campaigns, her pre-campaign attempt to be relevant to the primary without running a real campaign would have been the most bizarre event of 2012. She might want to run, but she has no idea how she might do that.
West of the Rockies
@efgoldman: You’re right, I am sure… But I don’t know how much longer Palin can hold what audience she does command. I cannot think of a whole lot of women of a certain age who Republicans truly flock to and worship (since a woman’s physical appearance seems to be of paramount value in that right-is-left world of conservativism). Coulter is 52. She still totters around in 23-inch heels and a little black dress, but will that look still work for her in another three or four years? You got Malkin in the wings. But Palin? She looks more and more brittle and resentful every time I see her now. Once she’s no longer deemed a ex-GILF, will the party faithful still rally around her every Tweet and wink?
Suffern ACE
@Chris: good lord. At some point McCain would actually have had to attend funerals of dignitaries himself. We’d have been down to one decent ally, and maybe Belgium.
Steeplejack
@efgoldman:
Her PAC is a gold mine. It took in $5 million in the last election cycle and gave out only about $300,000 to candidates. The rest goes to “operating expenses.”
Omnes Omnibus
@Suffern ACE:
If it weren’t for Megalon and Mothra, Rodan would be the weirdest Japanese movie monster.
El Cid
I’m still trying to figure out, with respect to racist dude who angrily demanded to know why white people ‘should apologize’ for slavery given that he conceptualized it as ‘giving them food & shelter’, how he imagines all these black people came to inhabit these large white-owned farms they apparently showed up at and why those heavily harmed wealthy white farmers kept them there.
NotMax
Lawrence O’Donnell looks like hell today. Maybe under the weather, or just lack of sleep.
And it appears that he very recently had his hair dyed.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
West of the Rockies
@Steeplejack: “Operating expenses”, huh? Read: Slurpees, black leather work-out suits (with 1985 Golden Girls shoulder pads), vats of hair mousse, and, what, many cases of Schlitz beer.
Mnemosyne
@Omnes Omnibus:
I’m sorry, but Guiron is hands-down the weirdest Japanese movie monster. Unless you want to toss the Smog Monster into the ring.
El Cid
@Omnes Omnibus: Although Alec Baldwin deserves credit for the public level of the joke, many of us first personally experienced the uniqueness of having to explain which Republican Senate candidate saying the horrible comments about rape we were talking about.
That’s pretty up there in the 2012 list.
El Cid
@El Cid: Oops, I meant “heavily armed,” though white supremist dude did indeed mean “heavily harmed”.
Mike in NC
CPAC is the gift that keeps on giving. Carry on, wingnuts!
West of the Rockies
Regarding Sarah… “Don’t you think she looks tired?”
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne: Fine. Correction cheerfully accepted.
Mnemosyne
@Omnes Omnibus:
Don’t make me make you sing the song.
West of the Rockies
@El Cid: Hell, the slaves didn’t land on Plymouth Rock…
You know what’s almost incomprehensible to me is that that guy probably goes home to someone who thinks he’s a really great guy. Maybe he’s some poor soul’s father. Man, what karmic horseshit did you have to step in to end up with a guy like that for a father/brother/neighbor/coworker?
ulee
Alison 711 is Jewish. She mentions this Often. She is oppressed. Its a sad siuation. And she is sad about it.
Omnes Omnibus
@ulee: How’s things? People have been asking about you in comment threads.
Suffern ACE
@West of the Rockies: he’s a college kid apparently. And that Towson university white students union is exactly the type if young republican organization that I remember from 20 years ago.
West of the Rockies
@Mnemosyne: Thanks for the link! Still, for MST3K musical merriment, it’s hard to beat “the haunting Torgo theme”…
Omnes Omnibus
@West of the Rockies: Manos, the Hands of Fate. Oh mah gah! I have actually seen the full real movie. Awesome.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Omnes Omnibus: A couple of years ago, I showed my kids a number of MST3K episodes, starting with Manos. They occasionally still reference the show. That movie was actually better than some of the other movies they covered.
Roger Moore
@El Cid:
I want to know where he thinks the food and shelter came from.
Narcissus
@ulee: I don’t even know what this means
Omnes Omnibus
@Roger Moore:
From the owners’ property, of course.
lamh35
Women Were Paid to Say They Had Sex with Menendez
Chris
@El Cid:
That’s easy. Blacks sold other blacks. QED.
If it weren’t for the subject at hand, it’d be funny how knee jerkingly these people try to spread the guilt around. “Well there was racism in the north too.” “Well, blacks sold other blacks.” “Did you know Muslims owned slaves?” It’s not even a denial of guilt. They just really think “everyone else was doing it” is an appropriate response.
Omnes Omnibus
@lamh35: Back page stuff. No one is interested.
/MSM
West of the Rockies
@Belafon (formerly anonevent): How old were your kids? My daughter is a pretty mature eleven — is that too soon? Some of the pop cultural references would be beyond her (and maybe no longer terribly relevant)….Oh, but I could happily attend an MST3K marathon!
Suffern ACE
@Roger Moore: he wants to know why you don’t talk about black on white crime and refuse to bring up black iq tests during a classroom discussion of Their Eyes Were Watching God.
Roger Moore
@lamh35:
This is the kind of impoliteness that I would hope a well armed society would prevent.
MikeJ
@West of the Rockies:
They occasionally show rifftrax in movie theatres.
Suffern ACE
@Roger Moore: no one ever paid me to say I’ve had sex with someone. Heck, for 25 bucks I’d make up some SPT level tale about the encounter. For 50, I’d complain about their sexy time skills.
El Cid
@West of the Rockies: White supremacist is one thing; being white supremacist and not being clear on what your predecessor white supremacists were aiming to get out of a population of enslaved black people is another.
The usual notion of moochers depending upon you for food & shelter involves an assumption that said moochers in question are there by choice or, at least, would not leave if given the opportunity.
There have been all kinds of justifications for slavery over the years; suggestions that slave-owners were, I dunno, forced into it? That’s new to me, at least.
I think these types have come to see slave acquisition, imprisonment, forced free labor, and minimal human population maintenance (i.e., food & shelter) instead of some active and planned purposeful activity of plantation owners but as the equivalent of themselves — i.e., passive victims of a federal government forcibly taking their money in the form of taxes to hand over to black people who can’t or won’t supply their own food & shelter.
If gifted with the opportunity to travel back in time and meet one of these proud white plantation owners worked by enslaved black people (heritage! not hate!), I don’t think the interaction would go quite as the neo-Confederates might imagine.
“Son, you don’t seem to understand what we do here, do ya? In your time are people under the impression there’s somebody makin’ us keep these slaves here?”
Morzer
@Steeplejack:
She and A-Rod should team up. It would be the perfect Minority Plutocrat Outreach.
Morzer
@lamh35:
Just wait for the next stage of the game, in which the Daily Scrawler’s best and brightest allege that those evil whores duped them to make conservatives look bad.
NotMax
@Suffern ACE
Still snicker at the extremely lame attempt from a week or two ago to drape a smidgen of credibility on them, which was that they discovered he was a U.S. Senator by googling the single word ‘Bob.’
El Cid
@Chris: I’d be curious to hear the guy’s speculations on why those Muslims owned those slaves. What did they get out of it? How did all these poor Muslims end up saddled with all these damn African moochers hanging around?
West of the Rockies
@MikeJ: Thanks for the info! I had no idea what “rifftrax” even referred to, and just found an example, an excellent send-up of Twilight.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@El Cid: The usual notion of moochers depending upon you for food & shelter involves an assumption that said moochers in question are there by choice or, at least, would not leave if given the opportunity.’
I’m fifteen minutes in to American Winter, and I don’t know if I can make it through the whole thing. I’m a non-violent incrementalist, but I am thinking Jacobin thoughts about Mitt Romney, Tom Brokaw and the rest.
El Cid
@Omnes Omnibus: Why, the owners are the food creators!
Morzer
@El Cid:
Well, obviously they did it as cover for the transfer of Obama’s ‘real’ birth certificate to the United States…
arguingwithsignposts
Re: slavery, this is only somewhat off-topic here, but I’ve been reading the book Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present. It’s a reminder that slavery didn’t only mean a loss of dignity and personal freedom for the slaves while alive, but also denigration while sick and stripped of their dignity even in death. Reading it makes me want to wash the white out of my skin. And the medical profession … the less said by me about that the better.
Mnemosyne
@West of the Rockies:
I actually have “Merry Christmas (If That’s Okay)” in my Christmas music collection just because I love it so.
I was watching monster movies when I was younger than your daughter, so she’d probably be okay with most of MST3K. You should probably check the synopses before you show them to her to decide if they’re appropriate. Just about any Godzilla movie should be A-OK, but there are a couple of sketchy ones in the rotation (apparently “Merlin’s Shop of Mystical Wonders” takes a surprisingly gruesome turn). And she would probably be bored out of her skull by one of my favorites, “I Accuse My Parents.”
West of the Rockies
@El Cid: Well, you can be sure that someone somewhere is making a few dollars off such revisionist history. Give it another ten years and we’ll all be hearing about what extraordinary vision and competence were shown by the GWB administration. Oh, I know we had the whole “Miss me yet?” campaign a couple years ago, but it was too soon and no one was buyin’ yet. But in another ten years, I suspect the ever-shrinking angry white guy vote will be pining for the good ol’ days of W when men were men and women knew their place.
Mnemosyne
@arguingwithsignposts:
You probably read it when it first came out, but The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is an amazing book on a similar subject. The author manages to weave disparate stories about genetic science and the present-day Lacks family together in a powerful way.
West of the Rockies
@Mnemosyne: I think I’ll give it a go then… I wonder MST3K is available through Netflix… if not, I know my local vid store cares some episodes. I don’t know if I’ll be able to get the link thing to work here (I have yet to post a successful link here!), but I fondly remember the “Mr. B Natural” short on MST3K.
Mnemosyne
@MikeJ:
There’s also Cinematic Titanic, which is Joel Hodgson’s rival project. They don’t have many episodes, unfortunately. It does seem that, despite being a right-wing dickwad, Mike Nelson had the better business model when he decided to do Rifftrax as audio files that you sync up with your own copy of the movie so he didn’t have to get any rights.
MikeJ
@West of the Rockies:
They’re on Amazon prime, don’t know about Netflix.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@West of the Rockies: At the time they would have been 16, 11, and 6. If there was some reference that they needed to know about I would explain it to them. I’m also the dad that has made them watch Ferris Bueller, the original Tron, the original Clash of the Titans, Star Wars, Star Trek 2, and anything else I think they might need to understand some of the current pop culture references.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Mnemosyne: We watched Merlin. The MST take on that one was pretty good. “The Girl in the Golden Boots” was so bad that it pretty much ended our run; we didn’t even make it through the entire movie. We were kind of limited by what we could rent from Netflix.
Mnemosyne
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
I think they added a bunch more to Netflix Streaming, FWIW.
Joel (Macho Man Randy Savage)
@Chris: These guys would defend the holocaust on account of the Kapos.
I’m sure they have. I don’t need to read any links if anyone’s got the mind to share them.