And Weekly Standard’s P.J. O’Rourke goes there on President Obama, spending about 1000 words calling him stupid (both figuratively and literally using the term stupid to describe Barack Obama) in one of the outright nastiest pieces I think I’ve ever read about any President. In fact, the piece goes on to complain that pundits don’t call this President “stupid” often enough.
What brought on this awful tirade? The fact that President Obama wants to end the Warren Terrah, of course. Putting an end to perpetual, mindless killing based solely on religion is “stupid.”
That’s a hell of a thing to say on Memorial Day, I would think.
It’s almost, well…you know.
Yatsuno
You made me click that link, for which you shall not be forgiven.
Jay
O’Rourke wrote a book called Republican Party Reptile.
Whatever the man’s party affiliation, he IS a reptile.
Dolly Llama
How did that cocksucker ever write for Rolling Stone? He and Dennis Miller ought to get married or something.
tybee
PJ, formerly of national lampoon, wrote that crap?
never woulda thought that possible. he can be one funny mofo when he wishes to be.
debbie
He would know. He often calls himself stupid. I’m wondering if he’s entered the path of Noonan, refreshment-wise.
LosGatosCA
You can’t really argue with success. They run the country even when they aren’t in charge.
The real problems lie with our fellow citizens who keep empowering these pricks.
Linda Featheringill
I’m sure that threatening to end the Warren Terreh will result in the President being called names and might even lead to impeachment proceedings.
HOWEVER, if the Repubs scream loud enough, it might inspire the population as a whole to make a decision about whether it is time to let some of that go.
Amir Khalid
@tybee:
PJ O’Rourke used to be hella funny — like, 25 years ago. He still does the moves, but he ain’t got the heart no more.
c u n d gulag
PJ – just another pro-pot, pro-war Libertarian.
“Eat the Rich.”
Yeah, but make sure you order your rich MFer well-done. Those vermin are bound to be full of vermin.
Villago Delenda Est
The man is a ni*CLANG*.
Of course he’s stupid. Except for that part about inventing a time machine to plant birth announcements in Honolulu papers. Then he’s a Bond Villain.
Cacti
White liberals are more genteel about it. Commenting on how “naive” the President is.
dr. bloor
@tybee:
Are you kidding? PJ has always been a mean-spirited asshole, always will be. An ear for the sardonic doesn’t change that a whit.
NatLamp was a hilarious magazine. But don’t dream for a second that it was ever some den of progressive thought.
Why he still gets props from NPR is a myst–er, never mind, it really isn’t.
Dave
O’Rourke is another of those “libertarians” who wet their pants post-9/11 and became Perpetual War Advocates
Schlemizel
Several really hilarious folks who worked on Lampoon have died leaving the world poorer for the departure – Mr. O’Rourke makes the world worse by remaining amongsts us
JR in WV
Well, his humour was mean-spirited even back then. Now it’s not humour, it’s just mean-spirited meaness. Obvious racism is what it is. Call the spade a spade? Not PC? I can’t keep up any more. But I have high regard for President Obama, even tho I disagree with many of his decisions.
I guess trying to hold Bush, Cheny and Rumsfield responsible for their war crimes could have ended his firstg term before he got anything constructive done. In my dreams, just as his second successful term ends, he has Seal Team 6 pick up those three bad boys and deliver them to Brussels for trial… in my dreams…
Emdee
Maybe he wrote it about George W. Bush but saved it and changed details until his right-wing paymasters would accept it?
Hunter Gathers
O’Rourke was, and is, nothing more than a third-rate Hunter Thompson. And he isn’t even worthy enough to hold The Good Doctor of Journalism’s salt shaker full of coke. Fucking wanker.
Baud
Irrelevant guy stays irrelevant.
Eric
The president is a ni-clang.
AdamK
If that ass wasn’t smug and nasty, he’d be catatonic.
NickT
When you see PJ O’Rourke and the Weakly No-standards in close proximity you know that nothing good can possibly eventuate.
Elizabelle
@JR in WV:
The interesting point is that PJ was married to Amy Lumet, who is Sidney Lumet’s daughter and, on her mother’s side — Lena Horne’s granddaughter.
raven
“P. J. O’Rourke was born in Toledo, Ohio. He did his undergraduate work at Miami University, in Ohio”
Gee, whatever really smart dude went to school there?
Ultraviolet Thunder
@dr. bloor:
I was reading NL monthly when it transitioned to PJ’s control. It went from being consistently funny to being occasionally funny and consistently smug, racist, misogynist, classist and crass.
I have several of his books. Parliament of Whores makes some internal sense but, like most Libertairian tracts, bears little relation to any known human society.
And now he’s just a dick in an expensive suit.
NickT
@raven:
Well, Paul Ryan thinks he knows a really smart dude who went to school there.
Funkula
I pity O’Rourke. He used to be bitterly funny, but now he’s just bitter.
Elizabelle
A wealthy, well-connected white guy with a Harvard degree can be a libertarian curmudgeon.
Does not work that well for everybody.
PJ is probably aware of that, on some level, but it’s not his schtick.
quannlace
And he sounds so amiable on “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me.”
Ultraviolet Thunder
@Elizabelle:
PJ has also written for Car and Driver magazine and Automobile magazine in the past. Dart of his deal always seems to be idolizing the wealthy and admiring the way they live/stuff they have.
I’ve read several things by him on just the subject of how to dress and act the part. It’s kinda pathetic.
sherparick
Its very funny right now to Faux news hyperventilating about “Government” oppression in regard to the leak investigations and at the same time complaining that Obama does not want to continue and expand the endless wars. Apparently, the oppression and snooping are okay as long as it is directed at hippies, the browns and the blahs, and foreigners of a dusky hue.
Also, what does it say about you Republicans if the guy who thrashed you in two elections is “stupid.” Also, O’Rourke is a mysognist and hippie puncher for some forty years.
Joey Maloney
Holidays In Hell was hilarious when I first read it in the mid-80s and it still holds up pretty well now. I bought his next 3 books on the strength of that one and was progressively more disappointed in each.
Ultraviolet Thunder
Here it is: I just found PJ’s “Modern Manners” on the book shelf. It’s funny if you’re immune to the self entitled white male dickishness and presumed privilege implied on every page.
With a conscience, he could have been a good writer. Without one he’s just lobbying for the job of carrying WF Buckley’s jock.
Mike in NC
Been on the wingnut welfare circuit for quite a long time now. Nobody under age 60 knows the name.
Patrick
I have never hard of this O’Rourke person and I could care less who he is. But is rather comical that he is calling the President of the United States stupid. If our President is stupid, then what is O’Rourke? The President has accomplished a hell of a lot more with his life than O’Rourke has done with his…
Redshift
@sherparick:
Same as it ever was. Whether they wrap it up in FREEDUMB! or “We’re the ones who believe in the Constitution!”, all it really amounts to is that they’ll support any oppressive policy as long as they’re confident it’ll never be used against them.
Dolly Llama
@Ultraviolet Thunder: How long has the guy been on the downward arc of his career? Fifteen, twenty years? I mean, yes, at the beginning of the Clinton Administration, his was a distinct voice. That shit hasn’t aged well at all. And the NPR connection … if you think being one of the three “celebrity” talkers on their not-funny game shows is the sign of a man who’s “made it,” well … I’d argue that it’s the sign of a man who crested and began breaking backwards a long time ago, and who’s still running that way.
Redshift
In related news, the top “Newsmax Headline” is laugh-out-loud funny:
“Gingrich: Obama Strategy Threatens National Security”
gnomedad
Another conservative I kinda respected goes into the “asshole” column.
You can call Obama “wrong” about anything you want, but if you call him “stupid” you have simply demonstrated that you have no contact with reality.
raven
Meanwhile, President McCain is in Syria.
Violet
@Patrick: But O’Rourke is white. So there’s that.
Kay
@NickT:
Created by an act of Congress, that school.
The public school that turns out celebrity libertarians was created by an act of Congress.
NickT
@Kay:
It’s hard to know whether to laugh hysterically at the irony or to weep for reality.
eemom
@Mike in NC:
dammit, I do. And just when you went and got my hopes up that there is a factual statement I could utter beginning with the words “I’m too young to…”
Kay
I hope they beat the WOT drum another ten years.
They squeezed all the political juice out of The Terror.
Obama’s much closer to the general electorate on it than pundits are, IMO.
It’s going to be so, so difficult for them to let it go, though.
Kay
@NickT:
I think it’s so great. One of them lives there, I think. Last I read he was bitching and moaning about public libraries.
He’s living in a wholly governmental creation. If he went to the library he’d find that out. It’s free!
FlipYrWhig
@sherparick: Ah, but what Fox has done with the leak story is to make it into “Ruthless President Cracks Down on Fox News.” That way it merges with the IRS non-story to become a meta-narrative about Obama targeting his enemies, instead of the nation’s enemies, and also BENGHAZI!
Baud
@Kay:
As with many things, it’s not necessarily the policy they oppose. It’s the race and party affiliation of the person proposing it.
NickT
@Kay:
Given that the average age of the Fox audience is 66 and the Young Republicans are young only in comparison to an octogenerian, I doubt that they’ve got much flexibility left.
gnomedad
@Redshift:
Is Obama stupid? Vote here!
Kay
@Baud
I just feel the public has…evolved. People treated Boston like a crime. I myself wanted to hear less from the Professional Terror Pundits and more from police and prosecutors.
Obama has a good political gut. He has good timing.
NickT
@Kay:
What, no praise for his real brains trust, Mr T. Ele-Prompter? Seriously though, remember when that version of Stupid Obama Is Stupid was all the rage? Didn’t get the GOP too far, as I recall.
Chris
@gnomedad:
Any conservative or Republican public figure who still identifies as either one of these things in the year 2013 is an asshole.
Redshift
@eemom: Yeah, I think it would be more accurate to say that no one under 50 knows his name. People who were 50-60 were the right age to be his target audience back when he was considered funny, I think.
Baud
@Kay:
I agree. I sometimes feel like we’re the ones with the silent majority this time.
Kay
@NickT:
It’s just SO LONG. It’s a decade!
How long did they think they could keep people terrified? After a while they’re just exhausted. We were never sure what we were supposed to be doing about it on a personal level, anyway. We were given instructions to go shopping and then nothing further, as I recall.
NickT
It’s going to be interesting to watch libertarians pretzel themselves explaining why this is wrong and unfair:
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2013/05/constitutional-amendment-fight-voter-id-laws.php?ref=fpa
Violet
@Redshift: I’m too young to be in his target audience, but I know who he is, sort of. I’ve seen books of his lying around and I think even tried reading one once when I was somewhere and it seemed like the best bet among the books available. Didn’t get very far and couldn’t figure out why anyone thought it was good or funny.
Frankensteinbeck
@Kay:
I think Obama is a major reason public thought has evolved. He’s spent his presidency being the reasonable, responsible, friendly, intelligent guy whose opponents are shrieking, poop-flinging monkeys. This difference is now rock-hard in the American consciousness. Now every time Obama advocates for a cause and the Republicans reflexively tantrum, the American public associates Obama’s cause with good government and the Republican’s position with insanity. He was pushing ‘the rich should pay their fair share’ before OWS. When the mass shootings picked up, he pushed gun control as the sensible solution. Now he talks about ending the War on Terror, and only the professional bedwetters think this is a bad idea. He’s turned around thirty years of public opinion. It just might be a greater legacy than Obamacare.
NickT
@Kay:
We’ve moved from terror to boredom to mocking disbelief, while the pop-eyed fear-pimps have grown ever more pop-eyed and ever less convincing.
Roger Moore
@gnomedad:
But first give us your contact information so we can sell your email address to spammers!
catclub
@tybee: Didn’t they say good things about the guy who wrote Glengarry Glen Ross, once upon a time?
Elizabelle
@Patrick:
and younger too!
catclub
@Frankensteinbeck: “the American public associates Obama’s cause with good government and the Republican’s position with insanity.”
Too bad there is no evidence of this in the news media. And that fact suggests to me that the American public is either being too quiet about its opinions, or there is more acceptance of the Republican position than we might like.
askew
They clearly don’t spend much time with the left pundits and blogs. They are constantly claiming that Obama “doesn’t understand” “is naive” or they pretend to explain things to him like he is a moron. The Obama presidency has shown that both the left and right have issues with an African-American president.
Mr Stagger Lee
@NickT: Neal Boortz had a long dialogue on why you don’t have the right to vote IIRC. Short version, you need to be a producer, in otherwords a property or a business owner, before you take part in voting. Google-fu will take you there, because I jus got out of the shower.
Frankensteinbeck
@catclub:
The American news media reflects the beltway consensus, which is not connected to the attitudes of anyone else in the country. That is a big reason why television and print news are bleeding to death.
EDIT – If you need evidence, here’s the clearest example possible: Who did the news media think was going to win the election?
catclub
@Kay: “He has good timing.”
I see it as (partially) he has good luck where George W Bush had bad luck.
The bad luck was showing all during 2001. Submarine sinks Japanese fishing boat. Navy P-3 captured in China. Bad economy and falling stock market.
Liquid
Give P.J. O’Rourke a rifle, one round, and point him over there somewhere.
Kay
@Frankensteinbeck:
It’s difficult to tell, though. A good politician would read the electorate, right, because it’s much easier to take people somewhere they’re already headed.
I don’t really believe in dramatic persuasion of that sort, where leaders take the unconvinced from A to B, where they’re then following. He can appear to be in front, but really he’s responding to a shift or an opening.
Elizabelle
@Redshift:
even funnier Newsmax headline a few days ago.
something from Teatard congresscritter Chafetz: “we can do this the hard way if Obama wants”
made me giggle because the Teatards always end up the ones shafted. They just don’t see it coming.
NickT
@catclub:
Bad luck?! Jesus H Motherfucking Christ, what’s unlucky about choosing to ignore intelligence about Al Qaeda and invading the wrong damn country to look for non-existent WMD?
Hungry Joe
O’Rourke will visit a third-world country ravaged by poverty, disease, and war, then produce a one-liner-laced essay ridiculing its suffering people. He’s a cruel, heartless son of a bitch — period, paragraph, Submit Comment.
Frankensteinbeck
@Kay:
Well, I don’t believe in simple answers. I think it’s a mixture of both. Obama got elected because America was ready, and then he told them what they were ready for. Still, he was VERY much the man the hour needed, playing exactly the role that nurtured these new attitudes and put down the Reagan Revolution.
Violet
@Elizabelle: I like the current Newsmax headline:
I bet there’s nothing The Troops (TM) like more than seeing folks in an Official Camo Hat. Bet those Troops think, “Wow! That person really Supports Me.”
Jamey
@dr. bloor: This is one of PJ’s best-know works, pre “respectability.” The fact that he was embraced as a new-breed Conservative (I don’t buy for a moment that he is a Libertarian) after writing “Foreigners” is not a bug, but a feature. Fuck him.
One would think after a serious bout with cancer, PJ would measure his words carefully. But I guess anal cancer didn’t kill PJ out of professional courtesy–kind of how sharks won’t eat lawyers.
West of the Rockies
Well, he’s another member of the the I-got-mine club who with age has turned resentful, angry and stupid…. I’ve never found Dave Barry to be all that funny, but I know a lot of people do — is he up next to turn conservative and start lamenting the loss of the America he once knew?
askew
@raven:
Yeah, what the hell is up with that? I certainly hope he isn’t making promises to the Syrian rebels that Obama has no intention of keeping.
JD Rhoades
@Jay:
It’s actually pretty funny, as is Parliament of Whores.
But O’Rourke’s been going steadily downhill for years, pretty much since the Bush Administration.
Citizen_X
@Mr Stagger Lee: If I had a thousand-year lifespan, life would still be too short to read that.
JD Rhoades
Well I did read it. Call me a masochist. No, really, call one up. I’m going to need to give someone a good thrashing after that.
Here’s the kiss of death: when O’Rourke talks about “we pundits.”
When you start taking yourself that seriously, P.J., your claim to be a humorist has expired.
Sad.
Elizabelle
@Violet:
And two Newsmax items down:
Five Signs You’ll Get Alzheimer’s
(1) You’re taking Newsmax seriously. You cannot distinguish between this and real news.
Ultraviolet Thunder
@Hungry Joe:
On a trip to Africa where he observed desperately poor people wearing cast off clothes from charity:
(from memory)
‘If you want to improve the standard of living of those in the third world, stop donating your polyester flares from the 70s to Goodwill’.
Because apparently they don’t need food, just some duds that don’t offend a first-worlder’s eye.
Roger Moore
@catclub:
Yeah, because Obama didn’t have anything bad happen during his Presidency. He didn’t inherit any intractable situations from his predecessor. Nothing there to distract him from accomplishing the things he wanted to do. Are you sure you’re in the same reality as the rest of us?
mk3872
yet, it’s always Liberals and Dems ala Krugman, et al, who get called “uncivil” while Libtards like O’Rourke and Glennwald get away with calling anyone who disagrees with them any kind of names because they are seen as “righteous”
Kay
@Frankensteinbeck:
Agreed. I do think there’s an element of racism in their refusal to give him even “good politician.”
It’s delusional. He beat them twice. If he’s stupid or arrogant or out of touch what does that make them?
It’s so petty and ungenerous. They’re supposed to be these manly-men who love a fight or a competition but they won’t give the winner an ounce of credit. It’s wimpy and whiny.
Chris
@Jamey:
I love this little nugget (under the “Arabs’ Good Points” section);
Another one for the “Why Won’t Those Stupid Jews Vote For Us? Don’t They Know We Love Israel Most?” and the “Why Does Everybody Unjustly Call Us Fascists?” columns.
Mandalay
@Frankensteinbeck:
I’d love to believe that, just as I’d love to believe that the American public is war-weary, or that “it’s time” for our troops to come home, or that we have immersed ourselves in unjust wars that we need to end ASAP.
But the real reason that public thought has evolved is that we only love a winner, and we have lost in Iraq and (especially) in Afghanistan. We have a rotten loser stink about us, that we don’t handle very well at all. So the American public just wants us to declare victory, pick up our bat and ball, and come home, in the hope that the loser stink goes away.
If Obama can leverage that sentiment to his advantage more power to him.
Violet
@Elizabelle: Heh. So true. That “Five Signs You’ll Get Alzheimer’s” one is everywhere. See it all over on those sponsored ads at the bottom or sides of websites. People must really be freaking out about it.
Roger Moore
@Kay:
A good politician can get himself to the front of a parade, but he can also play an important role in organizing unorganized opinion. Taking a strong position on a controversial topic can help to crystallize public opinion one way or the other. Not every issue falls that way, but it can make a huge difference when the conditions are right.
Violet
@Kay:
Aren’t “petty and ungenerous” defining characteristics of today’s conservatives? I thought they were. As for being manly-men, they’re not. They’re bullies. Stand up to them and they back down. Of course they’ll whine LOUDLY about how uncivil you are, and the better educated of them will use lots of Burke-this and Oakeshott-that, but they’ll back down.
Roger Moore
@Violet:
Sign #1: you keep rereading “Five Signs You’ll Get Alzheimer’s” because you can’t remember what the Five Signs are.
Mustang Bobby
@raven: Um… grew up in/near Toledo, so some of us got out okay. :)
His family used to own a Buick dealership.
Violet
@Roger Moore: That’s probably #2. One is, as Elizabelle pointed out, “You’re taking Newsmax seriously. You cannot distinguish between this and real news.”
Ben
@raven:
Ben Roethlisberger?
Fred
Today I saw a clip from “The Prisoner” (that strange, parnioic TV show from the sixties) fly by on the tube. Over the loud speaker the voice of The Village was braying “orange alert, orange alert” and it made me wonder if that is where the bushies got that one from.
Gosh knows what the GOPers will do without the paranoid fever dreams to sell. No doubt they will find some others under the bed.
JD Rhoades
@Kay:
It’s delusional. He beat them twice. If he’s stupid or arrogant or out of touch what does that make them?
Their answer: “the only smart people in a world of stupid parasites”
Then they turn around and call liberals “elitists.”
You really have to be completely nuts to be a conservative these days. Either that or have more chutzpah than the kid who murdered his parents and then pleaded for leniency because he’s an orphan.
Kay
@Roger Moore:
I agree to a certain extent but this goes back a ways. One of the valid criticisms of the WOT salespeople was they never gave us anything TO DO. They were just constantly screaming at us but they never asked for anything, no sacrifice, no action, nothing. That was TRUEand it was also political. They knew once they started asking people for sacrifice they’d get much more scrutiny of the premise, so they never asked.
It never had a solid footing. There was no real role for regular people.
I remember reading (I think) Frum’s wife, who had just had a baby during that time and she was so dramatic and historical, “this is a WAR TIME baby” and it was just meaningless. She’s not making any sacrifice. I was disgusted, like “oh, cut the shit, you’re not in a Civil War documentary, lady, you’re shopping for layette items”
I couldn’t shake the sense that they were acting, playing roles.
JD Rhoades
@Roger Moore:
I laughed. God help me, I laughed hard.
Mustang Bobby
When you get to the point that you’re calling your opponent “stupid,” that’s basically because you’ve lost the argument. It’s now down to the level of a food fight in the middle school cafeteria.
I think someone needs an atomic wedgie.
Redshift
@Frankensteinbeck: Exactly. While the Beltway media obsesses over whether he’s winning political “victories,” his greatest skill seems to me to be setting changes in motion that build over time. An example is including green energy programs in the stimulus and the auto rescue, which have produced a huge expansion in the domestic wind and solar industries and hybrid/electric vehicles, but there are many others.
Establishing a significant new government program is great (and often sorely needed, as with health care reform.) But the slower and more indirect initiatives have the advantage that even if a successor wants to kill the government side of them, it will probably be too late. Our economy and our way of doing things will have changed, and there’s no way of forcing them to go back.
Svensker
@Roger Moore:
I just pwnd myself. Never mind.
mai naem
PJORourke’s another chee-kuhn hawk. Is willing to send poor folks to war but doesn’t want to get his rich white ass or his rich white kids hurt in any fashion including paying taxes for the war. Asswipe can go screw himself. Hmmm, wonder if he ever wrote for “Screw” magazine?
Svensker
@JD Rhoades:
Yeah, well, GWB beat them twice, so the argument’s a bit not so good. (I know, I know, but still…)
Hill Dweller
The ViIlage, believing he is vulnerable, has decided to wage all out war on Obama. They think the “scandals” have afforded them an opportunity to pay Obama back for his lack of respect for the traditional power structure in DC.
I strongly suspect it will backfire, because the Village is completely disconnected from the rest of the country.
Redshift
@Kay:
Fear makes people more conservative. Pulling together against a common challenge makes people more liberal.
While I don’t think Bush was smart enough to understand that, plenty of other people in the conservative movement were. I doubt it was accidental that the message quickly became “cower in fear and let the big strong men protect you and tell you what to do.”
Jay C
@catclub:
Gee, ya think??!
How about “both”? For all that conservatives love to blather away about the “liberal media”, the hard fact is that all too much of the “mainstream” media (or at least that sector of it that deals with politics) is pretty much wedded to a Republican-normative viewpoint; either out of actual sympathy with said views, or a fundamental fear for their paychecks. And, of course, desperate for any sort of “scandal” that will sell airtime/adspace.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@askew:
No good. Petraeus, Panetta and Hillary Clinton wanted the US to begin providing weapons to the Syrian rebels. The White House nixed that idea at the time. Reports have jihdadists arriving by the busload and some rebel groups seem more interested in holding on to what they’ve captured than in fighting the regime. Neither side is strong enough to win a decisive victory and 80,000 have died in the fighting so far. As if things aren’t bad enough, those who can, including doctors and lawyers, are fleeing the country.
Roger Moore
@Kay:
I don’t know that we aren’t saying the same thing. Lots of people stayed in panic mode over the GWOT because one side kept telling them that they needed to be afraid and the other side didn’t have a counter message. Once somebody came along and offered an alternative to being afraid all the time, the people who didn’t secretly want to stay afraid had something else to do.
It’s an important form of leadership. You’ll often see groups of people who either know what they want to do but are having trouble getting started. All they really need is for somebody to come along and start doing whatever it is that they want to do, and they’ll see it as giving them permission to do it themselves. Or you’ll see a group that knows it wants to do something but can’t make up its mind about exactly what. A group like that just needs somebody to come to an arbitrary decision, and they’ll fall in line. I’ve learned to spot the signs in groups I’m a member of and figured out how to take charge. It works amazingly well.
Kay
@JD Rhoades:
We just got the detailed county by county breakdowns from the state Party (apparently it takes a while!)
I love that sort of thing so I want to.look at what happened in ’12, just for my own amusement.
My cursury glance, while at a freezing cold barbeque getting wet, it looks like white turnout was down from 08. That’s interesting, huh?
Ruckus
You know we did and still do call bush the toddler stupid.
Maybe they can’t tell the substantive difference between the two presidents(No one will convince me that any conservative today is smart). Although I’ve yet heard much of a ground swell of conservatives making any kind of argument that he isn’t. And bush the toddler didn’t win 2 elections for president. He was appointed to the first one. And I can’t recall any sitting president who lost a second term during war time.
gnomedad
@Kay:
Did not, did not, DID NOT! ACORN!!
Warren Terra
It’s spelled “Warren Terra”, please.
Kay
@gnomedad: l
I thought it would lessen after ’12 because the operating theory was ’08 was a “one off”, a trickster feat that couldn’t be replicated.
But, no. It’s just 2 lucky breaks in a row, to them.
Chris
@Jay C:
The fact that the media is so universally denounced as “liberal” (often by the media itself) should be a clue that it’s a crock. If the media were really liberally biased, let alone as relentlessly and conspiratorially biased as conservatives believe, you wouldn’t be hearing nearly as much about it.
Bitter Scribe
@tybee: He hasn’t been funny IMO since the Dubya administration. My theory is that he’s so resentful and pissy about the Tea Party morons taking over his beloved rich people’s party that it leached all the humor out of him.
mai naem
@Kay: Was the white turnout down or was it because more of them died or/and there were more of those “colored” folks?
PJORourke reminds me of those rich country club WASPs who you see in the movies who look down upon people who aren’t them and I find those people so freaking annoying. The William F. Buckley/Peggy Noonan types who really need to find themselves alone at night in the ghetto section of a big American city. Detroit/Chicago/Philly would do just fine thank you. Especially Philly with a bunch of the New Black Panthers hanging around with submachine guns.
Bitter Scribe
@debbie: Entered? He could drink Noonan under the table any day of the week, and probably could his whole life.
Bitter Scribe
@mai naem: What really kills me is that O’Rourke grew up relatively poor. He’s a pathetically vivid example of a Republican peasant idolizing his “betters.”
Elie
Obama Derangement Syndrome has sent the MSM and the Republicants into complete chaos. Their desperation is palpable — NONE of the scandals are going to lead to what they want — there is no there there for any of them. You know you have had a bad week when BOB DOLE tells you your party needs to just close the doors for six months and try to figure out how to fix themselves. Remember when his Republican bretheren voted DOWN the United Nations initiative to increase access for the handicapped across the world? Remember Bob Dole came to advocate for it and they dissed their own handicapped Senator in front of the world because — get this they didn’t want the UN to control the US policy.
These are desperate losers who are beyond anything decent. I could not be part of a group like this without being mortified beyond imagination… no self respect, no honor, no integrity — a bunch of whiny nothings … They aren’t even worthy of gloating after you beat them… feels like smashing roaches or trapping rats… all good and we could always use more of it.
joe gamba
@Dolly Llama
Dolly L…………Come on!…you’ve got to loosen up and tell us how you really feel. (snark!) Couldn’t agree more with you, though…………..thanks.
James E. Powell
PJ O’Rourke writes stuff like that because he can’t write anything else and get paid for it. He hasn’t been funny since I had a full head of dark brown hair. The question is, why do we care?
Since before he beat them the first time, right-wingers have been calling Obama all kinds of things. Stupid isn’t even close to the worst. They have to do this. Their entire worldview has been destroyed by Obama’s success. The wide gap between right-wingers expectations and the actual results of the 2012 election illustrates how unconnected with reality they are. O’Rourke and others like him write stuff like that as a palliative, to soothe their burning pain.
Felonius Monk
P.J. went from being moderately humorous to being a TOTAL ASSHOLE awhile back. To still call him a political humorist is an insult to Will Rogers who is probably rolling over anyway because of the sad state of both politics and humor.
Elie
@James E. Powell:
totally agree
NA
@catclub:
Obama had good luck? I remember 2008, and 2009, and … things just kept piling on, including the BP oil spill, any and all having the potential to bury him and us.
Johnny Coelacanth
@mai naem: Have you ever heard that reptile Ann Coulter speak? She’s got this affected, Connecticut-WASP accent that would make Thurston Howell III reach for his revolver.
Mike G
@Felonius Monk:
I liked his early Car and Driver stuff, and Holidays in Hell and Republican Party Repitle were funny. After that he went downhill into total Repuke party hackery to where he wouldn’t even admit Dan Quayle was stupid.
I thought Dennis Miller was funny 15 years ago too, when he used to rant at all kinds of targets including Republicans. Something about the “sardonic humorist” act seems to turn these guys into bitter, rancid assholes after a while.
mclaren
“One of the outright nastiest pieces I’ve ever read about any president”…?
The press described Abraham Lincoln as a “baboon” at the time. Thomas Jefferson was called a miscengating whoremonger. And as for Jimmy Carter…well, I think we all recall the poll ranking him as the worst human being in American history among Republicans — worse than Ed Gein, worse than Jeffrey Dahmer, worse than serial killer Ted Bundy, worse than Jefferson Davis, worse than John Wilkes Booth, worse than Lee Harvey Oswald, worse than the mass murderer Herman Webster Mudgett (AKA Dr. H. H. Holmes) who confessed to killing 27 people…
Puh-lease.
I remember the Vietnam war protests. People were burning LBJ in effigy. You need to get a grip.
Johnny Coelacanth
@mclaren: “You need to get a grip.” We can’t all emulate the choke-hold you have on your penis.
Jay
@raven:
“ ‘P. J. O’Rourke was born in Toledo, Ohio. He did his undergraduate work at Miami University, in Ohio
Gee, whatever really smart dude went to school there?’ ”
Ben Roethlisberger.
(Ducks)
Joe Bauers
I’m old enough to remember when O’Roarke was funny, and not just a cranky dipshit. His essay “How To Drive Fast On Drugs While Getting Your Wing-Wang Squeezed and Not Spill Your Drink” was hilarious, as was much of Republican Party Reptile. But all good things must come to an end, I suppose.
Athena2
O’Rourke went from a hippie to a conservative a loooong time ago. Just about the time he stopped being funny and started raking in big paydays.
Breezeblock
So wait, he’s officially a “pants-wetter”? I think he also talked very favorably about draft-dodging during the “Vietnam Pleasantness”.
Zapruder F. Mashtots, D.D.S. (Mumphrey, et al.)
Seems that P.J. O’Rourke thinks that being an asshole is the same as being clever.
Jay
Ah, the willful ignorance of Balloon Juice.
Hugely
@Cacti: pfft I am white liberal and I think the President is hella smart. Calling him “stupid” is really a huge counterfactual fantasy. I might use the word naive when dealing with republicans because I’m not sure there is a bottom with those fckers but hey I will give PBO the benefit of the doubt since he is smart and the POTUS after all
jshooper
These Obama haters (on the right & left) would do themselves good if they were allowed to go into a sound proof room and yell….”HE’S A NI 349679 ER ” at the top of their lungs until they ran out of breath.
They’ve been holding it in for 5 years now. In that time they’ve twisted themselves in all sorts of knots and manufactured all sorts of bullshit to throw at him.
It’s not healthy holding in that much hate.This guy agrees
http://www.theforce.net/kids/coruscant/probe_droid/palpatine.jpg
tybee
@Redshift:
fits my demographic. :)
Jay
@jshooper: yes, it must be racism. It’s always racism.
Jay
@jshooper: yes, it must be racism. It’s always racism.
Jay
@Zapruder F. Mashtots, D.D.S. (Mumphrey, et al.): Never speak ill of Obama.
tybee
@Jamey:
i took that as some serious satire.
still do.
Mutaman
@dr. bloor: aLWAYS WAS AN A HOLE. nEVER EVRY FUNNY. a JERK.
Jamey
@tybee: No, I understand the concept of satire. >4300 words of nastiest slurs that ever floated over the transom isn’t satire, at least not as I understand it.
And this sort of stuff animates nearly everything PJ wrote for NatLamp. PJ hiding behind the label of satire is kinda like Klansmen hiding behind the First Amendment: “Hey, fuck you if you can’t take a joke!”
MCA1
@Dolly Llama: I don’t think we’d say that about Charlie Pierce, though, who’s also a frequent WWDTM guest. Personal tastes vary, and all, but I like the show and find it humorous in an anodyne, I must be about to turn 40 years old, way. It’s not Louis C.K. or anything, but a nice fit for Saturday morning in the car.
Anyway, that O’Rourke’s a dick and his writing has been irrelevant for 15 years is not in dispute.