Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Someone should tell Republicans that violence is the last refuge of the incompetent, or possibly the first.

Anne Laurie is a fucking hero in so many ways. ~ Betty Cracker

Just because you believe it, that does not make it true.

Consistently wrong since 2002

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

President Musk and Trump are both poorly raised, coddled 8 year old boys.

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

In my day, never was longer.

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

Trump should be leading, not lying.

The lights are all blinking red.

I don’t recall signing up for living in a dystopian sci-fi novel.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

I am pretty sure these ‘journalists’ were not always such a bootlicking sycophants.

If you cannot answer whether trump lost the 2020 election, you are unfit for office.

I did not have this on my fuck 2025 bingo card.

The Supreme Court cannot be allowed to become the ultimate, unaccountable arbiter of everything.

I might just take the rest of the day off and do even more nothing than usual.

They are not red states to be hated; they are voter suppression states to be fixed.

Conservatism: there are people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

Fight for a just cause, love your fellow man, live a good life.

Roe is not about choice. It is about freedom.

The words do not have to be perfect.

You are here: Home / Still he knows who knows who and where and how

Still he knows who knows who and where and how

by | 46 Comments

This post is in: 

What are you most thankful for this year in the world of politics? For me, it’s the demise of Mark Halperin. This piece is a gem:

After all, what did Trump respond to? Most of all, two things: the sense among Americans that the language of politics has become an incomprehensible jargon of the elite, and the sense that a disaster or a dramatic change that will upend everything looms at every moment — hidden from sight, but still imminent.

We have an apocalyptic politics in part because Halperin helped promote an apocalyptic approach to political coverage. It made him and his little scoops seem hugely important: that conversation he overheard between McConnell and Schumer meant everything. The title of his career-making book, 2008’s Game Change — which sold over 350,000 copies and netted him and his coauthor John Heilemann a $5 million advance for a follow-up — says everything. Politics is a game and its rules are constantly being transformed. Its intentionally hyperbolic, breathless text presented details like the fact that Obama “woke up late … and went for a haircut with his pal Marty Nesbitt” the way an ancient monarch’s courtiers used to examine his every sigh for divine omens.

I’m glad Charlie Rose is gone too. They’re cut from the same cloth. Rose was less of a drama queen but he was equally sycophantic. Both made a career out of pretending amoral monsters were wise, serious men.

Reader Interactions

46Comments

  1. 1.

    sukabi

    Both made a career out of pretending amoral monsters were wise, serious men.

    Well what else are you gonna do when you are an amoral monster? You’re gonna normalize that behavior and demonize the normal.

  2. 2.

    p.a.

    The moscato must be taking effect: I don’t care that I’m watching a dog show instead of CTE ball, and I’m not (currently) homicidal about malevolent media mavens.

  3. 3.

    debbie

    Since we can’t take back the last election, I’m most thankful that Trump-hate is eating at Trump beyond all sensibility, and that, like a perpetual motion machine, it will only continue to eat at him until the end of his days. I take great comfort in knowing he will always be unhappy and aggrieved.

  4. 4.

    Ric Drywall

    Kevin Drum has a retort to this piece pointing out (correctly, I think) that Halperin wasn’t apocalyptic, he was trivial. The response to him is that you tend to think that nothing matters much. Of course, this is bad as well. Drum blames Halperin for his focus on gossip. But it is conservative Evangelicals who are apocalyptic and who opened the door for Trump.

    And I would add that most Americans probably couldn’t ID Halperin in a lineup. Plus, “incomprehensible jargon of the elite” has always been there on the Sunday talkshows and Editorial pages.

  6. 6.

    scav

    That those Holier-than-thou Eeeeeeevangelicals have nailed their public colors firmly to the mast and come out strongly in favor of white male sexual predators (so long as they technically plop their asses on the correct pews and pull the correct levers in the voting booth). The GOP’s slightly less nailed support for same white male sexual predators and white racial extremists is also tasty.

  7. 7.

    BBA

    I’m thankful that Republicans aren’t going to figure out the loophole in the Constitution that would give them permanent control of the Federal government plus enough states to amend it willy-nilly.

    No, I’m not going to describe it. I don’t want to give them any ideas. And it won’t work for the Democrats if we try it.

  8. 8.

    Frankensteinbeck

    We have an apocalyptic politics in part because Halperin helped promote an apocalyptic approach to political coverage.

    Maybe that’s a tiny influence. Mostly, we have apocalyptic politics because we ARE facing an apocalypse, it’s just one liberals don’t see, and when we do see it, we can’t grasp why anyone would think it’s ‘existential threat’ level important.

  10. 10.

    Mike in Pasadena

    I am thankful that between Adam and Vanity Fair, I now have fair idea of just how much info/intel our Traitor-in-Chief gave away in his oval office private meeting with the two Russian spies. The chance that the US will not know the latest intelligence from other countries’ IC has risen exponentially thanks to Comrade Trump, aka Putin’s Puppet. So, when I am next at 35,000 or 37,000 feet and the plane I am sitting in explodes, I’ll know who to thank.

  11. 11.

    trollhattan

    @p.a.:
    I love watching dog shows! Although I admit hate-watching the toy group and the non-sporting group where Dalmatians are shamefully misplaced.

  12. 12.

    trollhattan

    @Mike in Pasadena:
    Rabid anti-commie Republicans like Nixon would have kicked Trump in the balls hard enough they’d come out his nose. It’s a party that virtually stands for nothing besides self-interest and keeping the poor, poor.

  13. 13.

    Corner Stone

    What a fucking scumbag. Trump calling the troops from the down and out location of his mansion. And then played up his tax cut plan. Jeebus.

  14. 14.

    Corner Stone

    While I am glad Halperin finally got a little karma, there are so many more I wish had been taken down first. Like Chuck “she seems over-prepared” Todd, Moaning Joe or my goodness – Hannity.
    Maybe Karma has only yet begun to unleash the whirlwind.

  17. 17.

    Chip Daniels

    Whenever I think of these Beltway courtiers I think of that scene in The Last Emperor, where the crowd of palace flunkies stand around the 3 year old Emperor as he takes a dump, then one of them holds the bowl and sniffs the turds, and gravely advises that the Emperor needs less meat in his diet.

    I can see Halperin and the rest jostling for the privilege of being that guy.

  19. 19.

    Nicole

    I am thankful that society is beginning to get a glimpse of how much sexual harassment there is in society. I managed to get through my youth relatively unscathed, and yet I could still list, without taking much time to think about it, at least a dozen instances, starting when I was about 12. It’s heartening to see offenders starting to be taken down for it. And when it’s someone I already disliked for being sh*t at his job, it’s even more satisfying.

  20. 20.

    CaseyL

    I’m not sure what or who to be grateful for. While Trump is frittering away our national interest on the international scene and scheming via Census Director to keep voters permanently disenfranchised, the GOP in Congress are poised to pass a tax cut bill that will impoverish us (intellectually and economically) for generations. If Mueller released a hundred indictments on Monday, it wouldn’t stop the destruction.

    OK, I do know what I’m grateful for: being childless.

    And friends. I have wonderful friends.

  23. 23.

    Corner Stone

    COMMERCIAL: Husband picks up box of Senekot and turns to wife.
    “Senekoot? What’s this?”
    WIFE: “Oh, this? It’s my NUNYA GOD DAMN BUSINESS BOX. THAT’S WHAT THE FUCK IT IS! YOU WANT ME TO OPEN IT? DO YA?!”
    HUSBAND: *stuttering* “Oh oh ok. So I’ll be watching TV somewhere”

  26. 26.

    Villago Delenda Est

    Halperin’s professional demise is good, but I won’t be fully satisfied until his head is on a pike.

  29. 29.

    Steve in the ATL

    Both made a career out of pretending amoral monsters were wise, serious men.

    That is some insightful shit. For which I am thankful.

    @Nicole:

    I am thankful that society is beginning to get a glimpse of how much sexual harassment there is in society.

    Yes indeed. Hopefully my daughters will benefit from this, though I raised them not to tolerate that type of behavior (and there’s always “You know my dad is a labor and employment lawyer, right?”).

    @Villago Delenda Est:

    Halperin’s professional demise is good, but I won’t be fully satisfied until his head is on a pike.

    His and many others, my friend.

  30. 30.

    LurkerNoLonger

    Speaking of Halperin, has his best buddy, fellow sage of conventional wisdom and Republican ballwasher, Chris Chinchilla, commented yet on his friend’s sexual proclivities? His silence is deafening and damning.

  31. 31.

    rk

    I was thinking today about a girl I knew of who was doing PhD in our Department with a professor who was a well known letch. She killed herself. Rumors were she would not submit to him and he was harassing her over her thesis. A friend of mine had to meet with this professor for a project a few months later. He sat with his hand on her thigh the whole time. She didn’t say anything to him and just had to put up with it. This was 30 years ago. I just hope that at some point things change and I think they will. But it’s too late for her.

  33. 33.

    Mike in NC

    A very good article on Halperin, who, as it points out, promoted Trump more than any other hack pundit.

  34. 34.

    Dr. Bloor

    Another guy who knows a lot about “who” and “when” and “how” is named Mueller. That’s the guy I pay attention to these days.

  36. 36.

    dsc

    @debbie: a satisfying morsel of malevolent phrophesy. I still harken back to that great essay on the fact that Drumpf has NO friends. Just imagine that future–a pariah with no one to hang with.

  37. 37.

    Emerald

    I’m finding it highly interesting that the predators who’ve been recently caught (bet there are more) were majorly responsible for trashing HRC. Glenn Thrush, Halperin, Rose, helped to drive the anti-HRC coverage.

    One does wonder if their now-known attitudes toward women had something to do with that?

    Doesn’t account for Maggie or Andrea, of course, but it’s a significant chunk of the anti-Hillary punditry.

  38. 38.

    Corner Stone

    @Emerald: Or Amy Walters, or Yamiche Alcindor, or Eliana Johnson, or…
    When you sit there and watch two white women on MSNBC boldly declare as absolute fact that misogyny had NOTHING to do with HRC’s loss…

  40. 40.

    Gelfling 545

    @rk: My granddaughter, college freshman, is part of an online group called (college name) predators in which women on campus alert each other to skeevy behavior by profs, students organizations, what have you. This new gereration is less inclined to take any shit.

  41. 41.

    Matt McIrvin

    @BBA: Which one? I can think of several. Never mind, don’t answer that.

    Kurt Gödel famously had some trouble getting naturalized because he couldn’t resist bringing up the loophole he’d found in the Constitution for turning the US into a dictatorship. But I’ve never been able to find out exactly what it was.

  45. 45.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Steve in the ATL:

    Yes indeed. Hopefully my daughters will benefit from this, though I raised them not to tolerate that type of behavior (and there’s always “You know my dad is a labor and employment lawyer, right?”).

    Picture a future were putting up a calendar of steam locomotives is considered sexual harassment because some repressed idiot complained trains going threw tunnels is Freudian and that’s the world I work in. It’s real, real easy to go totally stupid on this stuff so be careful what you ask for.

Comments are closed.