Speaking of Amity Shlaes, here is a real humdinger that just showed up on memeorandum:
So Michele Bachmann’s version of history is “from another planet.” Bobby Jindal, the Republican governor of Louisiana, is “chronically stupid.” And Eric Cantor of Virginia, the second-ranking Republican in the House, is “busy lying constantly.”
That at least is according to posts on three left-leaning blogs.
Writers who are not pro-Barack Obama are suffering character assassination as well. George Will of the Washington Post, the nation’s senior conservative columnist, has been so assaulted by bloggers that his editor, Fred Hiatt, recently wrote, “I would think folks would be eager to engage in the debate, given how sure they are of their case, rather than trying to shut him down.”
Just to clear things up from that mountain of nonsense, last week, Michele Bachmann completely and totally mangled the history of Smoot-Hawley, misatttributing it to FDR and Democrats and accidentally spoonerizing the name of the legislation, and either the day before or the day after, incorrectly asserted that the last time we had a swine flu outbreak, Jimmy Carter was President. In other words, her history is so far removed from reality, and she says silly things so often, it is hard to keep track of what she has gotten wrong and when.
Second, I have no idea if Bobby Jindal is chronically stupid, although I have my doubts. I would argue he is a pretty bright guy, what with his academic record. I’ll give you that one. Coming out against volcano monitoring as an example of government excess was pretty stupid, though.
Third, Eric Cantor is lying in the example cited. In fact, the link you provided to Matt Yglesias outlines the lie in full detail:
But of course Cantor voted against the federal legislation that’s making increased HSR capacity possible. Indeed, on Meet The Press he specifically singled-out the HSR provisions for inaccurate, demagogic mockery, repeating the myth that the Recovery Act contained a provision for a “train from Disneyland to Las Vegas” that was an example of the “waste and pork-barrel spending” said to typify the package.
Back in his district, of course, Cantor wants to portray himself as an agent for constructive change in Virginia. But you can’t be a constructive agent for change if you’re busy lying constantly and opposing everything.
It is right there. It can be verified. Finally, the reason George Will is under such “assault” is because he is just making things up. So much so that reporters from his OWN PAPER are calling him out:
The new evidence — including satellite data showing that the average multiyear wintertime sea ice cover in the Arctic in 2005 and 2006 was nine feet thick, a significant decline from the 1980s — contradicts data cited in widely circulated reports by Washington Post columnist George F. Will that sea ice in the Arctic has not significantly declined since 1979.
And here are some WaPo bloggers:
George Will’s recent columns demonstrate a very troubling pattern of misrepresentation of climate science. They raise some interesting questions about journalism, specifically concerning the editing process. Editors and fact checkers are there to ensure that publications like the Washington Post don’t print factually incorrect information. But how much oversight should there be of opinion pieces that address scientific subjects such as climate change, particularly when they are written by persons with little scientific training? Is there any additional role for editors to play in ensuring that scientific facts are not manipulated into making assertions that most scientists say are misleading, and essentially inaccurate? Or is it necessary to err on the side of allowing opinion writers flexibility in how they use facts to present their point of view, regardless of whether their argument may be viewed as flawed in the eyes of the mainstream scientific community?
Wow. Now that is embarrassing. So far we have Washington Post reporters and Washington Post bloggers both calling out Will for his lies and falsehoods. Can we hit the trifecta with someone from the op-ed pages at the Washington Post? Why, yes! Yes, we can:
ROBINSON: What George Will did was cherry-pick a sentence in a report, you know, be very persnickety in the way he parsed his sentences, and end up making it sound as if the report had said the exact opposite of what it actually said. He was persnickety enough that his editors, who also happen to be my editors, felt he didn’t quite cross the line. I thought he did.
If I were George Will, I wouldn’t worry about what the “Obama Democrats” or left-wing bloggers think. Instead, I would stop telling so many damned lies that all of my colleagues from every facet of the organization except for the deliverymen feel the need to call me out publicly.
In other words, what has Amity Shlaes all upset is that Republicans aren’t getting away with lying at will.
No pun intended.
MikeJ
Perhaps if Shales cited the stories calling Bobby Jindal chronically stupid we could see the evidence. I would guess the random left leaning blogger has more credibility than Amity Shales has.
Tom Hilton
Shlaes, v.: to falsify so thoroughly as to render something the opposite of its reality. “If we can shlaes the Great Depression, we can certainly shlaes the blogosphere.”
(The “Obama Democrats” label is a nice touch, with its implication that the President himself is somehow behind all this shocking incivility.)
NobodySpecial
Hey, she’s just looking out for her homeboys. Plus, veracity in media will impact her future earnings.
Mnemosyne
Well, let’s face it, when you’re best known for writing an entire book based on lies and distortions, you’re going to get a little defensive when other people get called out for lying.
Cat Lady
Republicans lie, then lie about lying. When called out, they name call and lie about that too, then name call again. They then project their behavior onto others, lie about it and name call those who call them out about it.
History of Republicanism 101.
You’re welcome.
JK
Edge of the West http://edgeofthewest.wordpress.com is doing a great job documenting the continuing stupidity and mendacity of Amity Shlaes
Dennis-SGMM
If George Will is “the nation’s senior conservative columnist” then conservatism is walking dead. In addition to being a pompous, thin-skinned, fact-free hack, Will’s prose is almost the equal of Ross Douthat’s. Both Will and Douthat are copious evidence of the very affirmative action that conservatives decry.
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
Is there any evidence that the Republican party hasn’t gone completely off the rails? Whether it’s their law-makers, pundits, television and radio hosts, columnists and bloggers, or general supporters, they’ve gone completely and irreversibly nuts.
This video from Hannity’s Nuthouse is so unhinged, so paranoid, I’m left slackjawed.
Obama will be President for at least 1350 more days, how much crazier can they get?
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
@Dennis-SGMM:
Everytime I see that guy’s name my mind instantly converts it to “Ross, the twat.”
Svensker
@J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford:
I hate these people with a burning hate. They just make stuff up, then get all het up about it, then lie their asses off some more. Hate hate hate hate hate.
They’re yakking about the Constitution, fer gawds sakes, and they approve of torture. The disconnect is nearly fatal. And they’re blabbing about the rule of law?~!!!??? What the frack?
Hate hate hahhhahhahhteee hahhahthehhhahthehehhate hate
Dennis-SGMM
@J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford:
My Sixties programming always kicks in: “Because I told you before, no I can’t do that.”
Incertus
@MikeJ: I’d say that any creationist certainly qualifies as chronically stupid. Jindal might not be all stupid, but he certainly is in a couple of areas–that’s one of them.
JK
OT
Joe the Theologian
Christianity Today has an interview with Joe “the phony baloney plumber” Wurtzelbacher
christianitytoday.com/ct/2009/mayweb-only/118-13.0.html?start=1
Highlights
Who do you see as the emerging leaders for the Republican Party?
Do you have plans to run for public office?
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
@Incertus:
Jindal isn’t a just a Creationist, he’s an Exorcist, too.
Dennis-SGMM
@JK:
“Be not afraid of greatness; some are born great, some achieve greatness, and others have greatness thrust upon them.”
-Willy the Shake
Svensker
@JK:
Fixed for accurate grammar.
Incertus
@J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford: Yeah, I know. He’s probably bright in other areas, but anyone who subscribes to those two beliefs I have to say is chronically stupid, so it’s a fair complaint.
Incertus
@Dennis-SGMM:
In a public bathroom. While wearing two wetsuits.
-Your local GOP
srv
George Will has always been one of the most advanced thinkers of the right.
Every week he proves Holden was right.
MikeJ
Cole’s still got a lot of mainstreamer in him, He sees Michelle Bachmann and recognizes insanity, but thinks since he doesn’t know anything about Jindall believes that Jindall must have at least a *little* something on the ball to get elected Gov. I don’t know anything about Jindall either, but I know today’s Republican party. There’s no reason to think he’s not chronically stupid.
Bubblegum Tate
@JK:
Sam the Joe the Plumber also says he won’t let the queers be around his kids.
Joshua Norton
Gawd. The Repugs are going out the same way vaudeville did. Wandering from hick town to back water, putting on lousy shows with the same tired songs and dances and phony dialogue.
In fact they’re like a truck and bus company of “Gypsy”. Palin is Baby June, Joe the Non-Plumber is Herbie and Rush is Mama Rose singing “Everything’s Coming Up Roses” in the face of all the disasters that are pouring down on them.
The only problem is there isn’t anyone waiting in the wings to save the show, this time.
Alan
The problem is they outsource their due diligence to RW blogs and talk radio hosts who in turn outsource their due diligence to other RW blogs and other talk radio hosts who in turn outsource their due diligence to a 14 year old kid.
AhabTRuler
Granted, but the only reason the deliveryperson isn’t calling out George Will is because they don’t read the Post anymore either.
Bubblegum Tate
@Alan:
Geez, even the wingnuts at Hot Air are ripping on that kid. He’s mouthing your talking points, wingers! What more do you want?
slag
As always with Republicans, the problem is not those who lie or do stupid things. The problem is those who call them out on their lies and stupidity.
See also, Republican responses to racism, sexism, homophobia.
JK
@J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford:
@MikeJ:
If Jindal becomes the presidential nominee, every single voter should be reminded that Jindal took part in an exorcism. This is just plain and/or Palin nuts and should constitute automatic disqualification from consideration for President or Vice President.
@Dennis-SGMM:
@Svensker:
@Bubblegum Tate:
I’m in my mid 40’s and I can’t think of another person in my lifetime who has gotten more mileage out of his “15 minutes of fame” than Joe the Plumber. I’m surprised that Fox False News Channel hasn’t given him his own tv show yet.
JGabriel
Amity Schlaes:
I don’t know if Jindal is chronically stupid or not, but that sentence is further proof that Amity Schlaes is. Amity, dear, when you have an example like Jindal, you should phrase the sentence to include and highlight the contradictions you are attempting to point out. For example, “Bobby Jindal, the Republican governor of Louisiana, Brown graduate, and Rhodes Scholar, is ‘chronically stupid.'”
Christ, they don’t even know how to intelligently make their own arguments.
Why is it that when George Will writes something provably and factually wrong, Hiatt calls it debate, but when someone corrects Will, it’s called trying to shut him down?
Oh, that’s right, it’s because Hiatt’s a biased, right-wing, jackass. Sorry, forgot that for a moment.
.
Blue Raven
@Bubblegum Tate:
If they go to public school, I think that horse just had its first grandfoal born in the next county over.
slag
@Bubblegum Tate: Does he actually have kids? And if so, will I automatically go to H-E-double-hockey-sticks if I pray for Sam the Joe the Plumber’s kids to be gay? Either way, I might take up religion just for the opportunity.
Gregory
Not that they’re lying, mind you — that they aren’t getting away with it.
Boo hoo.
Bill E Pilgrim
Shlaes includes in that piece:
“Vice President Joseph Biden made much larger slips (than Bachmann’s mistake) when talking about the same period on the campaign trial. In an ecstasy of anachronism, he told Katie Couric, “When the stock market crashed, Franklin Roosevelt got on television and didn’t just talk about the princes of greed. He said, ‘Look, here’s what happened.’”
Aside from the “nyah nyah, so did you” nature of discourse here, is she implying, what, that no one did skewer Biden equally for that? Furthermore that when Biden gets lampooned, the entire evening news and pretty much all of the cable shows out there in corporate media land don’t jump on for the ride also, making it a week-long festival of scorn?
Heres’ the good news: In years past (and not all that distant past) the kind of revisionist history that Shlaes writes would barely be countered, or noticed, by the world at large. She writes here something about “you can’t believe the bile heaped on my book for telling the truth” and my first thought was ah, well, if you’re noticing that much, we must be doing something right. Finally. The word is getting through.
tripletee (formerly tBone)
This kind of vile character assassination could only come from a member of the grubby jeans-wearing proletariat like you, Cole. George Will sniffs disdainfully in your general direction.
The Cat Who Would Be Tunch
@Svensker:
Whoa, take a deep breath there…And step back from that baseball bat…I was getting worried there with all that pent-up hate.
Back to Cole’s post, this quote caught my eye:
It’s hard to have any kind of reasonable debate when even the basic facts are in dispute. This point is so obvious it’s ridiculous that it bears repeating. Look, I think it’s great to have opposing and/or lateral viewpoints being discussed. But let’s get one thing clear. You have the right to your own viewpoint. But you do NOT have the right to your own damned “facts”. That’s not how debate works. Period.
Genine
The Republican party has lost its mind. The party is nothing now but a tribe, and a stupid one at that. They have no interest in governing or adding anything useful to the discourse. It’s quite sad.
Btw, kudos on the Fleetwood Mac reference. I hadn’t heard that song in years.
Joseph
Maybe not in this case, but their lies about single payer health care and/or a public option are blocking major progress in that area, and Max Baucus is letting them get away with it. And they lied bigtime about EFCA, citing the specter of union intimidation when there is no evidence of that at all. Conservative lies are still playing a major role in blocking that ‘change we can believe in.’
JL
@Blue Raven: The whacko way, raise a bigot.
J. Michael Neal
If Obama would stop raising his taxes, he could send his kids to a private school, away from the gays, and . . . those people.
El Cid
What’s a shame about a cackling joke such as Shlaes is that there have actually been generations of real scholars who studied the Great Depression and New Deal and WWII-era development program, using actual scholarly techniques instead of the 30 year Reaganite scholarship method of inventing shit up directly from folksy mythology.
Zifnab
@Joseph: And that’s the stupidest thing of all. There are valid arguments for and against single payer health care or public option insurance. There are legitimate complaints against Cap and Trade. We could probably sit down and have an honest discussion over the effectiveness or the necessity of EFCA.
But we’ll never get there because conservatives are too busy lying to sell their agendas.
I think this is, in large part, because Democrats have always been willing to be flexible. If business leaders really thought Cap and Trade was too economically painful, the Democratic leadership would have been willing to offer tax credits or to phase in the initiative to cause the least pain possible. When public insurance stands to run the private market out of business, Democrats will happily water down the legislation to keep all the corporate interests viable. I mean, you only have to look as far as the bank bailout to find a party more than happy to turn over half the Treasury if it’ll get the banksters to consent to future reforms.
Dems are so damn easy going, so damn friendly, so freak’n accommodating that you really do have to just field the most irrational and absurd objection to successfully kill one of their popular incoming programs. Because if you don’t call Socialized Medicine the Devil’s Health Care Plan and claim its designed to give everyone gay ass herpes shipped in from Iran and North Korea by George Soros, those damn Democrats will be happy to come to the table and compromise out all the differences.
Hunter Gathers
Academic achievement is no measuring stick for intelligence. I don’t care if his IQ is off the charts, anyone who believes that demons actually exist, that they can possess a human body, and that Catholic (and Catholic only) rituals can ‘exorcise’ said demon, is dumber than a bag of fucking hammers. I was raised Catholic, and ‘demon possession’ is by far the most outrageous bullshit I ever came across during my time in that pyramid scheme.
She was either drunk, stoned, or was suffering from a short term psychosis, Bobby. Keep your weak ass shit below the Mason-Dixon line, Piyush. Fucking tool.
Joel
Amity Schlaes makes a living off making shit up, so this should come as a surprise to no one.
JL
@Hunter Gathers: Seconded, but we live in a country where almost half of the folks believe in torture and today they were talking about creationism on The View. If Jindal runs for President, I fear there will be a percentage of folks who cheer him on because of his views of exorcism. Of course, the same folks will be against the Taliban,
TR
Amen to that.
This is projection, pure and simple. It comes through loud and clear right here:
By “bile” she means devastating critiques by actual historians of the era who show convincingly that Shlaes — a pathetic dilettante who pretends to be an expert in economic history even though she has no background in economics or history — is horribly incompetent.
Poor little baby. Maybe her Republican sponsors can throw another celebratory circle-jerk conference in her honor to make her feel important, since all those mean “historians” and “economists” keep laughing at her.
El Cid
Right. Uh huh. And I’m sure these so-called historians also scoff when they hear about how Adam & Eve lived with the dinosaurs who were all vegetarians at that time, and they probably sneer when they hear all the calculations of Noah’s flood show that the rain came from a mysterious layer of water that somehow was floating high in the atmosphere until it happened to leak out just those 40 days and nights.
Mike in NC
George Will and Amity Shlaes have had a long-running mutual admiration thing going on for at least the past year or so. Yawn.
TR
Neutered.
joe from Lowell
The Forgotten Man is a book-length op-ed column. It’s like a Jeff Jacoby quarter-pager stretched out to a couple hundred pages or so.
You might think think that adding that many additional pages to a book about economic policy during the New Deal would require extensive use of graphs, tables, and statistics.
You would be wrong.
mclaren
John Cole remarked
How dare you, sir. How dare you! I would ask you to kneel and beg forgiveness just as General Lee did to Abraham Lincoln when Lee accepted the Union’s surrender at Appomatox, but you still wouldn’t learn anything from it. Why, the third term of the Hoover administration was less successful than this bizarre fib you’ve made up about Bachmann.
If you dislike history so much, emigrate to the Soviet Union — liberals like you, with your warped distorted views about history, are the reason the Berlin Wall never fell.
Mike G
I have no idea if Bobby Jindal is chronically stupid, although I have my doubts. I would argue he is a pretty bright guy, what with his academic record. I’ll give you that one. Coming out against volcano monitoring as an example of government excess was pretty stupid, though.
Jindal was a Rhodes Scholar, so it is likely that he is exceptionally intelligent, not a legacy dumbshit like Bush. His flaw is that he has hitched his political career to a party that requires him to act, and espouse policies that are, egregiously ignorant and stupid. I suspect he is, like many Repigs, a sociopath.
Most highly intelligent people would sooner stick pins in their eyes than choose a career where they had to deliberately act stupid and spout bone-stupid statements all day long, but Jindal appears to combine blind greedy ambition with none of the ethical sense to restrain him from acting in ways that would make anyone with self-respect puke.
warren terrah
Yo Amity, waaahhhhhhhh, waaahhhhhhhh. You are a whiny titty ass baby. And no I don’t care about your opinions. I also don’t care about your Republican Neocon unemployed husband. And I am so sorry, you guys lost your sugar daddy for said hubby’s newspaper hobby. I’m sure he wanted to Galt himself anyway. Hell, Amity why don’t you go Galt too?
Napoleon
@warren terrah:
Huh? Does someone know more about this? I had not heard about this.
Ash Can
On the subject of Jindal, I’m just massively confused. As Hunter Gathers mentioned, the Catholic Church does have provisions in its canon for exorcism. However, this subject doesn’t get much publicity either within or outside of the Church, since Catholics and non-Catholics alike basically agree that it’s just whack. What Jindal did or didn’t do during his crazy college days is his business, and I personally don’t give a damn. However, it’s the publicity surrounding this “exorcism” episode that gets me. Jindal can’t expect to publicly discuss performing an exorcism (or have it brought up by the media) and not be branded a religious nutjob as a result.
But it’s not this that has me confused. What has me peering at him like he just landed from Saturn is that, as others here have said, he’s a creationist. If that’s true then, come on Bobby, WTfucketyF? Catholics have a multitude of peculiarities, but creationism is NOT one of them. There must not be any Jesuit education in Jindal’s background; those guys would have pounded any creationist beliefs right out of him.
He may be a Rhodes Scholar etc., but I think the guy’s just a loony.
TR
Her husband is Seth Lipsky, who was a founder and former editor of the loony-right newspaper The New York Sun.
Napoleon
@TR:
Good God, that tells you everything you need to know about her.
TR
I was once at a conference where there was a reporter who was wearing a white t-shirt, a trenchcoat, and a fedora with an index card on which he’d written “PRESS” in black magic marker.
He was there for the New York Sun.
Gregory
@TR:
Hey, cool, you met Matt Drudge.
Don Lowell
That Will is full of the brown stuff is well documented. To lie and keep lieing, whats a person to do? Call him on it and his editor to. It is also well documented that Hiat is full of the brown stuff.
As for Bachmann isn’t it interesting that every time she opens her mouth garbage comes out as in computing, garbage in garbage out.
Linda
Reslugs are certainly habitual liars, untrustworthy and thankfully a shrinking bedwetting party.
Interrobang
Amity Schlaes makes a living off making shit up, so this should come as a surprise to no one.
I can remember when people who made a living off making shit up were called “fiction writers” and people didn’t take them seriously, let alone use their work as the basis for policy prescriptions! I’m getting more mileage out of my English Literature degree these days than just about anybody would believe, but that was before the Card-Pournelle School of Scientifictional Policy became somehow mainstream…
scott
Apparently, this past weekend, George Will claimed (on one of those Sunday TV shows) that Toyota loses $$ on every Prius it sells.
This shows how incredible lazy & dishonest he is. It’s as if some wingnut told him this, and he just accepted it – then repeated it! – at face value without doing any research whatsoever.
1st of all, even a poorly-run company would not sell a product at a loss for that long (over a decade). And this is Toyota we are talking about!! Hell, in business school, they used to give us case studies about how well they managed their business.
But facts and research are apparently beneath him. For the record, Toyota did sell hybrids at a loss during the 1st few years of its rollout (not entirely uncommon with a new technology). Of course they make $$ on them now.