The way I see things, every day is a fresh reset. You wake up to a new day, and you make the decision whether or not you’re going to be “that fucking guy” today. Some people make the wrong choice every single day:
Beyond the Tucker Carlson bullshit, the approximate cause of “that guy’s” ire is that Steve Schmidt, the Republican who ran the McCain campaign and has since spent basically the past decade flaying the Trumpist right alive, went on a twitter tear over the weekend that reminded me of some pretty epic John Cole +9 rants. You can read all about them here.
The short summary is Meghan McCain is a garbage human being and always has been, that John actually did have an affair with Vicky Iseman as reported in the NY Times but denied by McCain and his campaign, and that McCain turned a blind eye to all the pro-Russian apparatchiks like Rick Davis and Paul Manafort who were buckraking.
I’m not really sure why “that fucking guy” is so angry at Schmidt, because if there was any neocon you’d think he would dislike, it would be McCain, but apparently the psychotic decision making tree is “I think libs love Steve Schmidt and my hatred for libs is greater than my hatred for warmongerers.” It’s hard to tell these days, his grievances are all over the fucking place, and consistency is rough for an unedited edgelord whose main concern is the bottom line.
At any rate, this calculation is inaccurate, because liberals don’t love Rick Wilson or Steve Schmidt. They could both fuck off and die for all I care. What I do love is using Steve Schmidt and Rick Wilson and the rest of them as a bludgeon against the fuckers they helped create who are currently ruining America. It’s an interesting thing that “that fucking guy” will write a 100,000 word diatribe on substack about how the liberal media doesn’t understand nuance, and then go on to provide a sterling example of not getting nuance at all.
Five Minutes and Twenty-Four Seconds. Watch This.
dmsilev
“Tucker regrets his past as a smarmy bow-tie wearing conservative dipshit, and has now reformed himself into a neo-Nazi race-baiting out-and-out asshole. But at least he got rid of the bowtie.”
syphonblue
Wait….Tucker Carlson – the guy who was just on TV advocating to tan your balls – has shown shame and contrition for his heinous ideology?
…………………………… ………………………. ………………….. …………………………………………. …………………… …………………………… …………………. ……………….. …………………… ………….. ….fuckin what
piratedan
I must have missed the Tucker Carlson Contrition Tour, did that take place before or after the Fox News lawyers argued that he should not be taken seriously in a court of law?
Cameron
GG is an all-purpose contrarian. No matter what he writes, all it does is make me hear Groucho Marx singing, “Whatever it is, I’m against it.”
Felanius Kootea
He is angry at Schmidt for making the Russia link with McCain’s campaign. What’s that Pelosi quote again? “All roads with [him] lead to Russia.”
ETA: Oh and Tucker loves him some Putin, just like him.
Matt McIrvin
@syphonblue: That was a totally different heinous ideology. He’s just into ethnic cleansing, antivaxxerism and persecuting LGBT people now. (Glenn Greenwald presumably has no problem with the last bit since he’s not actually in Tucker Carlson’s country and Carlson is not directly attacking Glenn Greenwald.)
Jinchi
I constantly see GG being described as a left-winger, despite his near lockstep agreement with Tucker and his repeated defenses of Trump. Does he actually speak up on left-wing issues, or did everyone simply jump to that conclusion since he was an openly gay man opposed to the war in Iraq.
Old School
Not sure I know what “heinous ideology” Tucker is now against, but I’m also not sure I care.
Fair Economist
Greenwald is just a Russian propagandist, following their standard playbook. Nothing he says makes sense or is based in reality, just like the Russian say a country with a Jewish president is “Nazi”. He says random meaningless bad things about people he’s supposed to put down and random meaningless good things about those he’s supposed to phluff up.
Of course he’s going after somebody who is exposing Russian influence. Greenwald works for Russia. Nothing else matters.
WaterGirl
@syphonblue: Sorry, I had to edit your comment to add some spaces. Continual text like that breaks the thread for folks on mobile.
Matt McIrvin
@Jinchi: GG has never been left-wing; he got the label entirely for turning against the Iraq war after it was obviously fucked up.
germy
When does GG show up here under an assumed name?
Fair Economist
@Jinchi: Greenwald was never left wing. He was a libertarian who happened to agree with real leftwingers about W and Iraq. At some point he started working for Russia; maybe he always was and it didn’t become obvious until Trump was elected and suddenly drone attacks weren’t bad anymore.
Keith P.
@Cameron: I dunno…it seems like his pet grievances for the last several years seem to dovetail neatly into Fox News talking points. I’d expect some overlap in their interests, but it’s his entire focus (same with Alan Dershowitz….even on something like Roe v Wade where you might be tempted to think, ‘OK, there’s 20 years of public support from him on this’, he almost immediately pivots to how it’s the Dems’ fault that Roe v Wade is going away and obviously a futile leak on their part.
MisterDancer
Carlson — as GG knows — isn’t sincere. Whatever apology he might have made is way overcome by his speech every day. By the toxicity he adds to our discourse, that Carlson depends upon to gain wealth and power.
GG knows this, yet claims that some apology made “at some point” forgives all his continual, and increasing, horrific speech.
It does not.
Baud
When did FDR say that? (I recall some similar sentiment being attributed to Joseph Kennedy).
burnspbesq
It continues to astonish me that one of America’s truly great law firms’ hiring committee fucked up so badly as to extent Greenie an offer.
trollhattan
Carlson has said “how much shame he feels?” What color is the sky in Glem’s world?
ETA looked up Vicki Iseman and feel compelled to ask, has she and Callista Gingrich ever been spotted in the same room?
trollhattan
@germy:
The correct question is “under how many assumed names will Glem appear?” Given BIP blipped in the other night, I can’t rule anything out.
Quaker in a Basement
@germy: Seconded.
Kay
You can buy Glenn Greenwald’s content or you could just get it free on Fox. It’s identical.
It’s true of a lot of the “contrarian” Right wing influencers. Go to Fox, they’re saying some “woke” liberal leaked the draft. Go to Bari Weiss, identical content, some “woke” liberal leaked the draft.
I think the people who pay for Greenwald and Weiss don’t watch Fox so maybe they don’t realize it’s the same content, but they could really save a lot of time and money by just going directly the parasite cable channel everyone who buys cable is forced to subsidize. Skip the substack middlemen. Get your Right wing content directly from the source, which is Fox.
Baud
@Kay:
The point of substack is to launder the propaganda though.
different-church-lady
@Jinchi: He once (and just once) said he felt fooled by W about Iraq, and the dumber section of the netroots swallowed the hook, sinker, bob, line, reel, and got the rod stuck halfway down their throats.
Gin & Tonic
@trollhattan: I told Adam I was sorry to have missed BiP.
VOR
that’s the thing, Conservatives were not a noble pursuit which was highjacked by TFG. Instead, there was a long process of events which resulted in TFG. IMHO, Trump is a symptom and not the disease himself.
The clock starts running at different places. Rick Perlstein traces it back pre-Goldwater. Certainly Nixon ought to count. Charles Pierce refers to it as a prion disease from Reagan’s era. Schmidt beats at least partial responsibility for Palin. He was responsible for managing Alito’s confirmation.
germy
Dangerman
I wonder if he still accepts payments in rubles or if he’s strictly a creepto dude now.
germy
Including salon.com
Kay
“Tucker”. They’re hysterical. It’s just so clearly ass kissing to get on the show.
Glenn Greenwald has a business relationship with Tucker Carlson. It’s mutually beneficial. They promote each other. I don’t even object to it – they’re pushing the same content on two platforms. But for God’s sake drop the sanctimonius scolding.
Baud
BTW, I don’t see how GG’s tweets relate in any way to Matt Duss’s tweet. But that may be a function of the Twitter format.
ETtheLibrarian
Liberals don’t love Steve and Rick. We are highly amused that they have turned their ire on the previous compatriots especially because they have a good turn of phrase and enthusiasm and passion for it.
different-church-lady
If I am not mistaken, the proprietor of this very establishment was a GG defender within the past decade. And while it is refreshing to see a full-throated reversal of course, I do not recall ever hearing an actual admission of poor judgement.
germy
“Repeatedly and explicitly”
but enough about GG’s porn career….
Kay
@Baud:
That and it’s always the most conventional center or center Right opinions, mystifyingly presented as “brave”.
“I believe in law and order and additional funding for police”. So…like you and every other center Right and Right wing politician?
“On this I make my stand- I believe in standardized tests”. Okay, Jeb Bush. Thanks for that wildly original insight. You support the official policy of the US Department of Education.
different-church-lady
I think it finally makes sense to me: GG is first, foremost, and exclusively a troll. When W was in power, he had a market on the left for trolling, but he learned pretty quickly that that the marks on the left were going to see through his bullshit much more quickly. So he went full right wing, knowing they’d buy him as many gift cards as he told them to without ever calling the police.
germy
Baud
@Kay:
It’s brave because they are risking being cancelled, Kay. Cancelled.
trollhattan
@Gin & Tonic: He had thought
s. In 2022, Russophilia plays even worse than it did a decade ago.Kay
@Baud:
People were talking about TERFS here, so I read some of them. The same thing happened to them that happened to the “anti cancel culture” people. They don’t actually do any feminism, just like the supposedly Left wing anti cancel culture people don’t actually do any “Left wing”.
They set up this straw man to whack and now they just whack it. Over and over and over. The “feminism” part is no longer even the point of the exercise.
JaneE
Rick Wilson and Steve Schmidt. The good part is that Republicans have decades of practice going for the jugular and can eviscerate the Trumpers based on inside knowledge, sometimes even personal and direct. Rick Wilson has all the outrage of a betrayed spouse who has ignored decades of philandering until hubby finally takes his latest bimbo to the company Christmas party instead of her. Has Steve Schmidt even made a formal break yet?
Both of them have decades of inside knowledge, and the GOP instinct on going for the jugular. Even so, the current base of the GOP is so far removed from any form of normalcy that they will not be moved. The GOP leaning independents may.
So long as they are out there hitting Republicans, I say go gettem guys! That doesn’t mean that we would actually agree on any policy at all, and probably would not at all. But I will log them as good guys so long as they fight back at what the current GOP has become.
Cameron
@different-church-lady: They should have known better. Having stuff “rammed down your throat” is a right-wing trope.
different-church-lady
@JaneE: “Useful goons” rather than idiots.
Kay
@Baud:
Fox has blanket coverage of the trucker protests. Oh, look! So does substack! And it’s identical to Fox!
Over and over again. I mean, come on. They’re not even “laundering”. That implies some effort. It’s just the same content for two different platforms and two different audiences.
West of the Rockies
These jack-offs like GG and Louis CK (nowadays) and Bill Maher who claim to not be rightwing but always defend Republican malfeasance and stupidity… they need to FOAD.
different-church-lady
@Cameron: That’s why I’ve got a bug about the whole GG/Left flirtation — I took one look at it and said, “Yeah, that is rather obviously not a real worm,” but you couldn’t type any sense into the rest of the school.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
I can see why DougJ just loves mocking Greenwald,
“Tucker Carlson, who I do not support, is just like FDR, who I consider satan himself, but Carlson has rejected simple human decency and that’s why Tucker, who I do not support, is right.
-Glen Greeenwald. “
Matt McIrvin
@ETtheLibrarian:
Especially since they continue to say dumb stuff that pisses us off on the regular.
Kay
Upcoming guests for Joe Rogan.
Glenn Greenwald and Megyn Kelly. Can’t you just feel the wide open debate? Why, it runs the gamet from former Fox host to regular Fox guest! They will discuss what’s currently in constant rotation on Fox.
If Fox isn’t getting a cut of this, they should be. It’s the same shit, just slightly repackaged for middle aged white men instead of elderly white men.
Princess
When you realize that every single position Greenwald takes is about protecting Russia, Putin and their allies — Tucker, Tulsi, the GOP, etc etc — it all makes much more sense.
germy
An unidentified person donated over 2 million U.S. dollars in Bitcoin to an address advertised on the conspiracy website Infowars in April, Hatewatch found, potentially buoying the finances of embattled extremist Alex Jones.
There’s money in them thar hills
Anyway
@Baud:
I thought that was FTFNYT’s job. Exhibit 1 — the way they laundered that POS “Clinton Cash” on their front pages
Kay
@Princess:
I know Tucker won’t, but is anyone going to ask Tulsi Gabbard about the mobile weapons labs?
I guess I’m wondering why this dire threat to all humanity is no longer a concern of hers.
Aloha
Matt McIrvin
@different-church-lady: I tried very hard to keep giving Glenn Greenwald fair consideration during the early Obama years because I was doing penance for Iraq. I figured it behooved me to pay close attention to antiwar criticisms of Obama’s foreign policy because I had gotten so much wrong earlier by following centrist Democratic consensus, so if someone was knocking them for being warmongers, that was someone I needed to pay attention to.
But he was so thin-skinned. Jumped on people, excoriated them in ten-page rants and sent his flying monkeys and sock puppets after them for the mildest criticism aimed at himself. He could dish it out but he couldn’t take it.
Still, I assumed he was just reflexively anti-power–he was against Bush when Bush was in office, he was against Obama now, and he’d turn against the Republicans when they got back in.
Then Trump got in, and… Greenwald still saw Trump’s detractors as the enemy, not Trump. Trump increased the drone attacks that were Greenwald’s prima facie evidence of Obama being worse than Bush, and Greenwald seemingly did not care, or made the most perfunctory noises of disapproval.
It’s very hard to attempt to be reasonably critical of your own side. People are going to exploit that as readily as they’ll exploit unthinking support.
Baud
@Anyway:
I’ll paraphrase something I think I said in 2016:
The principal objective of American political discourse is to give just enough white people reasons for refusing to support Democrats that don’t sound racist.
Kay
So much of Glenn Greenwald and Matt Tiabbi is “glory days” to me.
“Remember when we were hugely important (and much younger) contrarians, in 2002 and all of you LIKED us?”
Kay did not like them but I like so few people it was probably just accidental. Odds are I wouldn’t trust them.
Gin & Tonic
@germy: Wonder if Alex converted that into fiat currency right away?
Kay
@Matt McIrvin:
It is sometimes hard for me to believe that people don’t see the manipulation in what he writes. It is so clear to me how uses language to obscure. It isn’t clear at all, although he loves the word “clearly” which is a weasel word intended to make you stop thinking, so that’s a tell right there.
Chief Oshkosh
Schmidt’s tweets — I’m rooting for injuries. That said, think about this: Schmidt is admitting to knowing all about these deep, deep Russian connections to several Republican campaigns going back to before McCain. Hell, apparently Bob Dole, Bob Fucking Gummer Dole, had Russian influencers on his campaign. And Schmidt says that this was widely known. What ass-covering. Even if it was widely known inside the beltway, it sure as shit didn’t stop Schmidt from continuing to work with and for these fucking traitors.
Baud
@Kay:
It would be sad if it weren’t so fascist.
Soprano2
@Kay: They want to launder the propaganda through people they can claim are “liberals”. It’s the only reason they do it. ‘Even the liberal Alan Dershowitz…” is extremely valuable to them.
Kay
@Matt McIrvin:
I mean, just look at that passionate, CERTAIN defense of Tucker Carlson. Those are Glenn’s words. He put them right into Tucker Carlson’s mouth. He’s inventing this person. This isn’t subtle. It is blatantly manipulative.
Miss Bianca
@trollhattan: I still can’t fucking believe that. I checked in on that thread after BiP had already been checked out by the mighty banhammer swung by Adam S.
Old Man Shadow
That fucking guy has a hard on for Putin and Schmidt pointing out that Russian influence and rubles have been corrupting the GOP for a lot longer than Trump makes that fucking guy have a sad.
Kay
@Soprano2:
But it’s smart, right? You can be an ordinary Right of center Democrat or moderate Republican or you can espouse the exact same ideas and for some magical reason they become “original”. The reason is the personality, the “brand”. The person saying them. The ideas aren’t any different.
Soprano2
@West of the Rockies: Maher finally talked about the Florida censorship of books on the last podcast of his I listened to. It was to say most of the examples were stupid, but then there’s this one….and he pointed to the one with graphs about opinions about racism, all to say “See, the Republicans do kind of have a point if you squint real hard”. So the self-styled defender of free speech is now throwing in with the people who want to claim that math textbooks have CRT and other horrible race stuff in them because one book used an example about a survey of attitudes toward race. He’s just mad because young people don’t think his jokes are funny anymore, so he has to find new material and he doesn’t think he should have to do that. It’s not fair that misogyny and racism and homophobia aren’t considered that funny anymore!
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: I have no idea what repudiation of his past ideology Greenwald is imagining Tucker Carlson made. I assume he’s just making that up.
Betty Cracker
@different-church-lady: I swear I’m not caping, but one of John’s more endearing (and rare!) qualities is his willingness to admit to errors. He does it a lot.
Kay
@Soprano2:
Andrew Sullivan has the most banal, conventional opinions on abortion possible. He thinks it was “divisive”. He ignores the actual history and repeats Right of center conventional wisdom on it. He thinks things will be vaguely… better once this divisive issue is settled exactly along the lines of his own opinion.
No shit. Him and everyone else who is Right of center.
What’s the value add here? Why should anyone pay extra for it?
germy
@Gin & Tonic:
reminds me of all the “convert your 401k to gold” commercials I see on antenna TV subchannels. They keep saying how worthless regular money is but they’re more than happy to take it from you in exchange for some shiny metal.
Kay
@Matt McIrvin:
But it’s so bold and decisive! Clearly he is correct! You, sir, are a hypocrite and Tucker Carlson is.. FDR!
This is The Simpson’s lawyer level of persuasion. “Your TIE, what color is it?”
West of the Rockies
@Soprano2:
Ditto Louis CK and Dennis Miller, et al. Their old material kills with the GOP audiences, so that’s who they now lean towards. Maybe Chapelle, too, on LGBTQ issues.
germy
@West of the Rockies:
Chappelle sure gets steamed about affordable housing
debbie
I can’t figure out what Tucker’s done now, but I did see that protester in FDNY-branded clothes telling women their bodies were his turns out to be a fake:
West of the Rockies
@Kay:
Why would anyone pay for “conventional wisdom”? If it’s so conventional, people will stumble upon it anyway.
Soprano2
@Kay: Yes, but if they just get it off Fox it isn’t as valuable to them. They love the construction ‘even the liberal Xxxx’, because it gives them a hammer to pound on us with. If they can point to a source that isn’t on Fox, people who don’t watch Fox will think it’s original. All the people who watch Fox know it’s the same stuff, and probably think it’s great because they’re in on the joke.
Kropacetic
@germy: I was a huge Chapelle fan when his show aired in the early 2000s. No more. Ditto Bill Maher. Even Andrew Sullivan was mostly pretty good then, at least his staff aggregated interesting stories.
Omnes Omnibus
GG is and always was a polemicist. It annoyed me when people would say how lawyerly his arguments were. They weren’t and aren’t. He is long winded and uses legal sounding arguments, but he never really makes then connections he claims he does and he either waves away counter arguments or attacks the motivation of anyone who makes them. I will admit that I liked him in 2002-04 when any voice seemly on our side sounded good. I think I soured on him/saw through him sooner than many, but not from the beginning. I never did buy any of his books.
Omnes Omnibus
@trollhattan: BiP was here and no one told me. I left my phone number just for things like that. Damn!
Soprano2
@Kay: I saw that. I especially loved the response about the well-known summer of love of 1968 where everyone got along so famously! He was rightly dragged all over Twitter for saying the abortion issue is what started all the divisiveness. He was acting like he knows nothing about America’s history at all. He also doesn’t seem to have any awareness that they’ll be coming after gay people with the same reasoning they used in this decision.
Geminid
@West of the Rockies: That reminds me of a story I heard about the Quaker William Penn asking a judge to show him the law under which he was being charged:
Judge: “I told you already, it’s the Common Law!”
Penn: “If it’s so common, why can’t you show it to me?”
Judge: “You are a saucy rascal.”
Gravenstone
@germy: Oh, he showed up as his actual asshole self at least once in the distant past. Never underestimate the vanity of a moral scold scorned.
Dee Lurker
GG has been a hack and a phony from the get-go. His ascendancy depended on Assange and Snowden. He acted as their defenders, their handler, and their attack dog. He never had credibility. It still pisses me off that Cole gave him an unnecessary platform from which to browbeat anyone who critiqued him.
For me, the huge pivot point was his editorial about Citizens United. That he could be such an unabashed cheerleader for the third worst SCOTUS decision in history… I just. Could. Not. Anymore.
He is only about destabilizing the United States and serving Russian interests.
Gravenstone
@Gin & Tonic: Should have at least saved the posts for later pointing and mockery.
Matt McIrvin
@Soprano2: The idea that Roe v. Wade was the outrage that radicalized the religious right and drove them into political meddling was pretty much unquestioned conventional wisdom through the 1980s and 1990s, even though the events in question were very much in living memory. I think it’s interesting that it’s now widely understood at least on the left that this isn’t true.
It’s very much like, and related to, the claim that the Supreme Court was understood to be a neutral body apart from politics until the dirty liberals shafted Robert Bork.
Kropacetic
Integration was their real problem, but it’s uncouth to admit to. Abortion is the excuse for them to behave as shittily as they want.
Betty Cracker
@Omnes Omnibus: I think one thing that worked in GG’s favor early in the Iraq War days was the scarcity of competition. There just weren’t as many online, non-wingnut content choices back then.
Unfortunately for media consumers who’d like to forget GG ever existed, we’re stuck with him thanks to the Snowden leaks and resulting “journalistic” cred. Even that wasn’t really his doing — his colleague Laura Poitras did the legwork after GG blew Snowden’s initial queries off.
Jinchi
GG didn’t bother to point out any examples of Tucker apologizing for his “heinous ideology” or even tell us what that ideology is, despite claiming that Tucker has done it repeatedly and explicitly.
germy
Emptywheel has said he’s not a detail-oriented person. She’s always finding sloppy mistakes in his work.
Maybe he needs a good editor?
Jesse
I admit to being interested in Greenwald enough, back in like 2007, to get his book. I read it. I think he appealed to me because he was so harsh in GWB and the GOP of the day. Enemy of my enemy principle. I got turned off when he leaned hard into the drone thing in the early Obama era. I stopped keeping up with him. He reappeared for me as the anti-anti-Trump. Then increasingly just off the deep end, picking fights and defending ideas that struck me as way off character. The easiest way to understand it, I think, is to imagine that they haven’t really changed all that much. What Would A Patriot Do is 20% insight, 80% straight contrarian. I didn’t see it at the time. It’s a lesson for me.
Same with Taibbi. I used to think he was great 10+ years ago, but also witnessed his descent into nonsense.
Geminid
@Kropacetic: It helped that many of the Southern white people who went over to the Republican party during the realignment of the 1970’s were Fundamentalists. There was a real political synergy between the issues of race and abortion.
Omnes Omnibus
@Betty Cracker: There are a number of people whose positions and reputation ms from the early W years deserved a relook as time went on. Cole on one end of that; GG on the other.
cain
That’s not how I remembered it. GG has come in here, kicked up a hornet’s nest and made everyone go after him with a pitchfork and torches. He was definitely not welcome here. Regardless of Cole’s opinion of him.
I do wish people would stop with the purity bits – do we also put Cole in the same category as Schmidt as well? The man voted for Bush twice. ::eye roll::
germy
Worth a read if anyone here hasn’t seen it. This old thread goes deep into history and GG’s origin story:
Cacti
I remember when most of the cool kids on this page thought that this fucktard was a champion of liberal values, because something something Obama metadata.
Kropacetic
I’m keeping it in perspective. White supremacists are the number one threat to our freedom and democratic institutions in the U.S., full stop.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@debbie: “Stolen honor” sounds about right for the guy in that video. I am also puzzled why the Catholic Church wanted him associated with it since the guy talked like someone whose read way too many male dom slash fiction and lost touch with reality.
germy
@Kropacetic:
It’s a good “intro to GG” thread for anyone who wonders why he changed. Answer: he never changed, he’s always been what he is now.
Gravenstone
@Jinchi: Tucker’s ideology is rather flexible. Quite like his (lack of) morals.
Kropacetic
A disingenuous verbose prick?
Jesse
@Cacti: I also vaguely remember some respect he earned in the W years transferring over into the Obama years. But isn’t that human nature? And actually something to expect, even for well-informed citizens? I mean we don’t immediately drop someone when they say something critical of our side. Bad faith or mere contrarianism is an earned label; it takes a bit of time to recognize it
different-church-lady
@Cacti: ? I’m glad I can’t be like the cool kids ?
Amir Khalid
@germy:
He has shown up here under his real name, once or twice, as I recall; but it’s been years since he last did. He certainly knows we’re not a friendly crowd.
Cacti
Knock me over with a feather, we agree about something.
Greenwald is a non-lawyer’s idea of a great legal mind. To anyone who knows better, the quality of his arguments and soundness of his reasoning wouldn’t pass muster on a first year law school exam.
Omnes Omnibus
@germy: I am not really a detail oriented person, but I know it. As a result, in my professional life, I take precautions. I make sure I have people both proofread and read to make sure I am making the arguments I am intending to make and not skipping over things seem obvious to me but might not be to a reader. GG could do the same.
different-church-lady
@Betty Cracker: I’ll always respect Cole for turning to the light side. But every once in a while he gets taken in — it’s a hazard of his open-mindedness. Hell, the same thing almost happened with Freddie.
I’d like to see him say out loud, “Sorry, I fell for it,” so that others are clearly warned not to. It’s not a matter of changing one’s mind, it’s a matter of telling others how easy it is to fall in the trap.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Indeed, Schmidt does sound like he’s losing the Blinded by the Right, that whole twitter rage he’s been on for the two days comes across as someone in the middle of “how could I be that stupid?” Betty’s is probably right about not trusting Schmidt, but looks like he is getting there.
Dee Lurker
@cain: I didn’t say he was successful. He had to sockpuppet his way through the threads. Nevertheless, he was given a platform from which to act like King Shit
I am not asking for purity. That’s an uncharitable reading. I am saying it was a mistake. Is that allowed?
different-church-lady
Let’s clear this up: GG is not a polemicist. He’s not a libertarian. He’s not a liberal, or a conservative, or a journalist.
GG is a TROLL. He will adopt any position that gets the biggest rise. Right now it’s a seller’s market to troll the left, so that’s what he’s staked out. He has no ethics, he has no ethos.
Shalimar
@JaneE: Schmidt became a Democrat a few years ago, and has said he is never going back to working for Republicans. He did make a lot of money running Howard Schultz’s vanity campaign, though. Last I heard a few years ago, Wilson is pissed that Republicans won’t hire him right now and expects to go back to them once the MAGA sickness ends.
Jinchi
I never understood the claim that Dershowitz is a liberal. He’s famous for being a defense attorney to extremely wealthy murder suspects and a fierce defender of torture.
I assume his status as a Jewish New Yorker is doing most of the work here.
Cacti
@Jinchi: Dershowitz is pro-choice.
Apart from that, I can’t recall any liberal position that he has ever publicly supported, and a number of knuckle dragger positions that he did support.
MomSense
@different-church-lady:
Yes many, perhaps most, commenters here were defenders of GG and the whole snowaldeaks mess. I think we were called authoritarians by a front pager and worse by commenters because we never fell for it. Glad everyone is finally coming around, but it was rough here for a while.
schrodingers_cat
These politics knowers like Andrew Sullivan are opining that Roe brought about the most divisive era in American politics. Even as as a school child in India in the 80s I knew that that was the Civil War. I can has an MSM column now?
Cacti
Hell, we still haven’t gotten over the divisions that race based slave labor caused, and it’s been abolished for 157 years.
Kropacetic
@MomSense: Honestly, it was the Snowden affair that convinced me GG is just trafficking in half-truths and advancing the cause of the true abusers of power.
bjacques
I’d like Schmidt better and even send him money if he took down any real players, like Gaetz or McConnell or any Supreme Court Justice.
Schmidt doesn’t get a medal for going after Meghan, as if losing her as a “moderate” cost them anything. They stopped caring about having a moderate veneer a long time ago, and so did the news outlets that give their loudest lunatics airtime and column inches.
different-church-lady
@schrodingers_cat:
No, you’ve got it backwards: you have to create dumb takes, not correct them.
different-church-lady
@Kropacetic: Even Snowden himself finally figured out he should just STFU.
Soprano2
@Kropacetic: Yes, they became radicalized on abortion after the courts denied Bob Jones University favored tax status because they openly discriminated against non-white people.
different-church-lady
Meanwhile, our dear Doug J keeps crushing it:
Dmbeaster
@Kay:
“But for God’s sake drop the sanctimonius scolding.”
That is GG’s content.
schrodingers_cat
@different-church-lady: I wonder whether he is still alive or if he has met a Russian window.
ian
@Jinchi: This is from Dersh’s Wiki
The # of links in that wiki clip will certainly put me in moderation. That is probably why he gets the reputation as a liberal.
different-church-lady
@schrodingers_cat: In Russia, window meet you.
Shalimar
@Dee Lurker: Remember Greenwald and Hamsher started their own PAC after Citizens United, eventually coming under fire for paying themselves salaries while never donating to any of the candidates they supposedly supported. Greenwald was a cheerleader for Citizens United because he saw it as a new source of income.
different-church-lady
@ian: A person can have the right politics and still be a complete asshole.
Omnes Omnibus
@ian: I think he is another person who was broken by 9/11.
schrodingers_cat
I can’t believe that I used to actually read that cretin Sullivan’s blog. The moment he got his GC he became a white nationalist bigot.
ian
@different-church-lady:
No doubt. I have no love or use for the guy. The question on the floor was ‘why is Dersh labeled a liberal?’. With a background like that he can go on fox and they can make him the token liberal or token democrat for a conversation.
Dee Lurker
@Shalimar: IIRC, the candidates they supported received a little money, but the the bulk of the cash which did not go to them went to Ron Paul.
Paul in KY
@ian: The Alan Colmes Chair at Fox is a sought-after sinecure, I hear…
Jinchi
Not really disagreeing with you, but being a Democrat is not identical to being a liberal.
zhena gogolia
@Omnes Omnibus: It was a brief, uninteresting comment.
zhena gogolia
@schrodingers_cat: I used to read it too. It had some nice pet videos.
schrodingers_cat
@Dee Lurker: This blog (and many others leftie blogs) worshipped at the altar of GG as a truth teller during Bush II and Obama years before Snowden and Assange burst on scene. He got his cred by penning endless screeds about Bush’s Iraq misadventure.
Matt McIrvin
@Jesse: I remember thinking pretty early on that some of Taibbi’s critiques of the financial system seemed almost goldbug-like. And then a friend told me about him and Ames bragging about banging underage girls in Russia, years before that suddenly became a story.
Paul in KY
@schrodingers_cat: Will say that the misadventure was worthy of countless screeds. I know I wrote a few.
Kathleen
@Baud: That is brilliant and so true.
Steeplejack
@Baud:
Matt Duss was responding to a tweet from Howard Mortman:
Glemm weighed in to rebut Duss.
schrodingers_cat
@Paul in KY: As did I but I didn’t become a bigot after a black man was elected President.
schrodingers_cat
@zhena gogolia:
I was taken in by his thinking conservative schtick.
Roger Moore
@VOR:
My gut feeling is that many people date it to whenever they became aware of it, or it became too much for them. That said:
Kay
@Soprano2:
He doesn’t. But he’s an expert on everything. The examination of Sarah Palin’s pregnancy was creepy- odd and obsessive and intrusive.
He’ll be one of the volunteer pregnancy police reporting women. Bet on it.
Roger Moore
@Kay:
I’ve disliked Greenwald for a good long time. Not since 2002, since I wasn’t plugged in to politics enough back then to know who he was, but pretty soon after he came across my radar. To me, the big thing is that he’s dishonest. He presents himself as an impartial servant of the facts while actually being an advocate. There’s nothing wrong with being an advocate, but don’t do it while pretending to be presenting just the facts. And once you realize that’s what he’s doing, it’s hard not to start questioning everything about him. If he’s being dishonest about his role, what else is he being dishonest about?
UncleEbeneezer
Has Tucker apologized for pushing: White Genocide, BLM R Terrorists, Mexicans R Rapists, LGBTQ People R Pedophiles, Ukraine R The REAL Imperialists! etc. yet?
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
Kropacetic
@UncleEbeneezer: Find out as you watch him discuss all those topics in some capacity tonight.
Paul in KY
@schrodingers_cat: Good for you! Same here!
J R in WV
@different-church-lady:
Snowden is probably shut up by Putinski, or his GRU handlers. Owned and operated by GRU from the get go!
Greenwald is unintelligible — I tried to read him in Salon, couldn’t make heads nor tales of it, gave up long ago!
Matt McIrvin
@VOR: Nixon went hard anti-abortion in 1972, before Roe; it seems to have been a successful bid for the Catholic vote.
I just found out that “acid, amnesty and abortion” was actually modified from a crack Eagleton made to Robert Novak during the primary campaign, though that didn’t come out until decades later (and it wasn’t even true–McGovern said at the time that he favored leaving abortion to the states, and he wasn’t pro-drug-legalization).
Omnes Omnibus
@schrodingers_cat: He always was. Sullivan never fooled me. But I remembered him from his New Republic days.
Ruckus ??
@Fair Economist:
Of course he’s going after somebody who is exposing Russian influence. Greenwald works for Russia. Nothing else matters.
Bingo!
Ruckus ??
@Roger Moore:
…what else is he being dishonest about?
The standard answer with him is – every fucking thing.
Medicine Man
Oh look, it’s Glenn “here are a bunch of things that are true in my head and nowhere else” Greenwald.
Shalimar
@J R in WV: Greenwald mostly spouts bullshit, in as much volume as he can manage. It’s hard to find the occasional green pea in all the puke, and not really worth the effort.
cain
How do you propose to not giving him a platform? The man can create an account here and rant all he wants. The guy already gets front page exposure just because he’s a clown.
He got his ass kicked, and he hasn’t been back in quite some time.
schrodingers_cat
@Omnes Omnibus: I was not paying close attention to political minutiae then.
schrodingers_cat
@Omnes Omnibus: Also, when he was an immigrant without a green card he was empathetic to the undocumented immigrants, immigrants on work visas etc.
When his circumstances changed, he became an immigration hawk.
GoBlueInOak
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: It appears its more that Schmidt finally got fed up with Megan McCain calling him a pedo or enabler of pedos. She tweeted some nonsense to that degree recently and he just lost it in real time.
Usually I take a “thou doth protesteth too much” approach to these things, but in this case, I think her allegations are complete nonsense & he justifiably decided he wasn’t going to put up with her shit any longer.
UncleEbeneezer
@Kropacetic: Exactly.
Tehanu
John, just want to say, I love the way you cut through the bull and get to the truth so effectively. You’re a straight-talk mensch!
mandrake of the past
John!!!! <3