Most of the time I try to avoid the worst of the worst in our media, but sometimes I am in the mood for a little psychic pain. When those urges arise, my go to columnists are Charles Lane at the WaPo and Bobo at the NYT. Many of you will think I should probably go to Halperin, but he’s just so stupid it doesn’t cause me the physical pain that Lane and Bobo do. As far as I am concerned, no one can deliver the kick to the gut that Charles Lane can pack in one of his Both Sides Do It masterpieces. Here’s one of my recent favorites, which I have bookmarked so that whenever I start to feel good about myself or the country, I can read it and be brought back to earth:
I don’t know about you, but I’m sick and tired of war.
The Democratic National Committee accuses the GOP of a “Republican War on Women,” to go along with its “war on working families” (according to the Progressive Change Campaign Committee) and “Paul Ryan’s war on seniors” (Democratic Rep. Jan Schakowsky).
Various Republicans accuse President Obama of waging “war on religious freedom” or even, in the words of Texas Gov. Rick Perry, “a war on religion.” According to the Republican National Committee, the president is also waging “war on energy,” the sequel, apparently, to what the House Republican Leadership has called “Democrats’ war on American jobs.”
***Amid the fog of blog posts,Twitter, Facebook, talk radio and the rest, only hyperbole has a chance to break through. Even so, many, if not most, people tune out the parties’ “war” propaganda. The shriller it gets, the less seriously they take it. For any given individual, this is a mentally healthy response.
Multiplied across the entire electorate, however, the effect may be more corrosive. To the extent that sensible citizens tune out politics, they abandon the field to people who are receptive to constant cries of war, war, war — people who are prepared to think of their opponents as enemies.
When you think of someone as an enemy, it’s harder to contemplate trusting, respecting or cooperating with him or her. Indeed, those behaviors start to look like treason, instead of what they really are: the minimum requirements of democratic life.
On his Web site, Frank Luntz, the erstwhile GOP propagandist whose credits include rebranding the estate tax as the “death tax,” tells potential clients about “transforming mere words into an effective arsenal for the war of perception we all wage each and every day.”
According to Luntz, “We all submit to the power of language, whether we know it or not.”
My fear is that he’s right. All the more reason to stop the wars.
Tell me, after reading that, are you conflicted as to whether you should grab the scotch and slowly drink yourself to death, or just grab a handgun and end it quickly. No one, in my estimation, can bring it like Chuck. He’s the worst of the worst. He’s the Michael Jordan of false equivalence.
At any rate, what columnists have the same impact on you?
gbear
I came face-to-face up close and personal with that conflict this week and I can tell you that my answer is that I am glad to be alive today and not reading ANY of these fucking asshole.
Lord Jesus Perm
Off the top of my head:
McMegan
Jackson Diehl
Thomas Friedman
beergoggles
For me it’s usually some gay blog trying to push a republican meme that they don’t wanna gay bash anymore. There’s at least one or two every month.
For today’s dosage of bullshittery, I give you this from Queerty which is a Politico cut and paste job. SMFH.
Uh huh.. Tell that to the fuckheads in NC, MD and WA…
pragmatism
mcmegan and nooners lately. bobo just makes me laugh.
i actually didn’t mind bobo’s piece today about Nathan Fletcher. that solely reflects that i’m a fan of Nathan Fletcher.
Teresa
Every time I see Bobo has a column out on memeorandum, I think “Oh shit, he’s still writing.”
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
Look I can’t stand Charles Lane either, but just up and shooting him sounds a tad bit extreme even for my taste. Could we compromise on burning the WaPo in the street, as if it was the flag of a foreign country we hate?
Oh wait, you meant use the gun on myself? Fuck that noise, there are too many graves that still need pissing on and not enough time to get it all done in.
arguingwithsignposts
Do you have a while?
The Moustache of Understanding, Bobo, Chunky Bobo, McMegan, Doughy Loadpants (on the LA Times op/ed page, no less), John Fund-amentalist, Craphammer, Michael Gerson (he doesn’t have a nym), Nooner … I think I’ll stop while I’m still breathing.
ETA: No list would be complete without Bloody Bill Kristol.
Valdivia
After seeing the movie about Stephen Glass I forever have that great actor Peter Sarsgaard in my head when I think Chuck Lane. And I hate that! Because I too want to kick his ass (not shoot myself) whenever I read him. Anyone want to give me another mental picture?
Loneoak
For me it’s Douthat. He’s the master of starting off a column with a moderately insightful claim about a social problem where we could maybe have common ground, and then quickly turning to ‘sluts ain’t Catholic enuf, they just need to kiss Ratzy’s prada slippers and then they’ll be livin’ it up in the burbs.’
This is a common argument on my FB page, btw. I nominated Douchehat’s Tebow column this week for the worst column ever printed, and my brother claimed everything by Friedman is worse. But honestly, I would take a fake anecdote about a Mumbai taxi driver that proves the Tibet situation would be solved a luxury golf course in Lhasa where the Dalai Lama can play a round with Bono, Jeffrey Sachs, and the ghost of Deng Xioaping over any column that purports to tell me that all our social problems would go away if we just joined this nifty child molestation cult.
@arguingwithsignposts:
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention Kristol. The thing about Kristol is that he is so transparently a partisan hack you can see right through his pieces. The mushy headed moral conservative judgmentalism of a Douthat is really what drives me up the wall. FdB’s post earlier today is sort of what I’m talking about.
wrb
Peggy Noonan’s latest was just toxic.
VD Hanson particularly bothers me because I quite like some of the books- such as The Other Greeks and Fields without Dreams- that he wrote before losing his mind.
Both Goldbergs…
Maude
@arguingwithsignposts:
You mean the Bill Kristol who said that the Sunni and Shia would get along in Iraq?
burnspbesq
Max Boot. Leon Weisleiter. Taibbi. Stephen A. Smith. Richard Cohen. Andrew McCarthy. Pat Forde.
Almost forgot Greenwald. And Digby about 60 percent of the time.
Catsy
Halperin. It’s not that his style of hackery is particularly unique or noteworthy in any way. It’s because of the position of influence he holds, and the absolutely stunning fact that he is still given any deference or credibility whatsoever despite his utterly mundane, pedestrian, brain-dead transparent hackery.
That Halperin still has a job of any sort that doesn’t involve manual labor and constant supervision is enough to break my brain and make me lose faith in humanity. He’s like a gaping hole in the fabric of sentience.
Steeplejack
It’s MoDo that does it for me. Not so much her content but the labored high-school-literary-magazine rhetoric and self-conscious “killer lines.”
From a recent piece about congressional hearings on Afghanistan: “When you’re buried alive in the Graveyard of Empires, all you can do is claw your way out.”
WTF?
arguingwithsignposts
@Maude: Yes, the one who recommended Sarah Palin to the McCain campaign. Alternate nick: Always Wrong Bill.
ETA: @Steeplejack: ack, I try to keep MoDo as far from my mind as possible, but she’s definitely on the list. And, if we expand beyond politics, John the Contrarian Dvorak always made my blood boil.
DH
Don’t forget Richard Cohen. The guy who: A)likes to make fun of sexual harassment cases among the Powers That Be while being a sexual harasser, and B)Never has met an Arab country he doesn’t want to bomb and invade. For that matter the entire Kaplan Prep Test Daily Hiatt Crayon Page is horrific. I for one am looking forward to the day when the Post goes under. With Kaplan now having problems, I am confident by end of Obama’s next term they will be no more. Good riddance.
geg6
Nooners, Bobo, McMegan, MoDo, Douthat, the Moustache of Understanding, and some truly idiotic libertarian “economist” type whose name escapes me at the moment only because I have made a concerted effort to forget it but whom Sully constantly quotes.
Locally, Jack Kelly in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette isn’t fit to line the kitty litter tray, if we had one. When we put newspapers into our compost pile, we tear out the Kelly columns so as not to poison our lovely homegrown produce. Here is a good example of the dreck this idiot spews:
http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/opinion/jack-kelly/prosperity-grows-under-republicans-214576/?p=1
GaBuck
Guess Chuck Todd doesn’t have a column, huh? He’s still a total ass-hat.
David Koch
So neo-con Chuck finally found a war he didn’t like.
Omnes Omnibus
Scotch. Go with the scotch.
Omnes Omnibus
Scotch. Go with the scotch.
pragmatism
@burnspbesq: +1 for pat forde. also greggggg estabrook.
SST
@Steeplejack: Ya juuuust beat me. MoDo is up there with anyone. I’ll take Dick Whisperer. Also too, Jeff Jacoby for a local pick.
Jay
“At any rate, what columnists have the same impact on you?”
Kirsten Powers, mainly when she writes about feminism and abortion.
geg6
@DH:
THIS. How could I have forgotten Cohen and pretty much the entire WaPo editorial page? I, too, look forward to the day that rag folds.
David Koch
@Valdivia:
And the don’t even look alike. Peter is good looking, and lane is not.
Tom Q
@pragmatism: Fletcher sounds like a pleasingly decent human being. But the Bobo column on him drove me berserk for just the reason John’s talking about: he carefully laid out why the GOP is expelling people like Fletcher and then, with zero corresponding evidence, said this is how both parties are killing the country. Why Fletcher couldn’t have just run as a Democrat was never broached (though I’m pretty sure the answer would have been “Because he doesn’t want to be thought of as a DFH”).
ruemara
None. Because I value myself more than I value them. I don’t get this regard for columnists. Most of them suck as writers (I gave up on George Will when I was 12) & fail to understand that conclusions are not the content of an article. The few I like, I like because they write well, they use facts that you can review and can admit if they are wrong.
Edited to add this: http://youtu.be/gUZGtAB_pcA
samara morgan
only the dead are at the end of war.
and that won’t be conservatives…it will be you and yours, John Cole.
Valdivia
@David Koch:
I know. I should just take a gander at what he really looks like yo shock my system once and for all.
I loathe loathe MoDo. And Bobo. And Douthat.
Satanicpanic
Jon Stewart /ducks
pragmatism
@Tom Q: i totally agree with you that bobo turned a story about Fletcher into yet another love note to the serious centrists (who coincidentally are exactly like today’s conservatives) with some high broderism thrown in there. dougj and driftglass and charles pierce eviscerate bobo all too well. i’ve decided just to laugh at bobo and his columns so i don’t cry.
i think your question about why not switch to D is a good one. the answer to why bobo doesn’t tackle it is that it doesn’t fit his “a pox on both parties” drivel.
geg6
And since I’ve made the PG look idiotic by posting a link to Kelly, I have to laud them on carrying Krugman (but they also carry Krauthammer!) and having some good local pundits on their editorial page to make up for Kelly’s idiocy.
Sally Kalson: http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/life/sally-kalson/get-those-men-out-of-our-wombs-the-contraception-controversy-is-all-about-undermining-obama-and-women-215483/
Tony Norman: http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/opinion/tony-norman/second-thoughts-about-the-rev-al-sharpton-627640/?p=1
Loneoak
Oh noes! I can see Samara’s comments. Did the site rebuild kill the pie filter?! FUCKING SAVE US ALL, FSM!
geg6
@Satanicpanic:
Heh. I’m with you on that one. He’s a putz. I’ll never, ever understand the liberal love he gets. He’s the worst of the “both sides do it” assholes out there.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Satanicpanic: nothing thrown from my end. Jumped the shark at his Rally For Nothing.
There are very few mainstream pundits who don’t make me want to retch. Since EJ Dionne declared himself to be a good little secular monk in the service of the Red-Beanie’d Crotch Sniffers, I’m pretty much left with Eugene Robinson. But since I don’t think anyone’s mentioned him, I’d like to give a special retch to Joe Klein, who the other day declared we’ll never know if race really played a role in the Trayvon Martin killing (’cause, you know, goons is a term of endearment), so let’s stop talking about race. It’s too divisive.
Lucidamente
David Broder, may he rest in peace in that great green room in the sky.
Keith
MoDo, based on her tendency to overcram her work with attempts at cleverness.
LAC
Let’s see: Kristol, Glenn Greenwald, Jennifer Rubin, Krauthammer, Gerson, Matt Bai, Peggy Noonan, and Fred Hiatt for employing most of the other asshats on WAPO. Anytime any of them takes a dirt nap, tell me the time and place. I will be the one bringing a bucket of piss to the gravesite.
dr. bloor
I’m with Gbear. After all, “you read these guys so I don’t have to.”
Or is that Tbogg?
ornery_curmudgeon
Most mainstream ‘pundits’ make me feel very threatened and afraid for my life … and now they tell me I should stand my ground.
kindness
Oh great. John desires a depression episode and he Clockwork Orange like makes us watch too.
Thanks.
Comrade Dread
If I want to lose faith in my fellow man, I generally just go hang out at Townhall and Red State for a while.
Makes me want to build a bomb shelter and stockpile food and ammo for the coming neo-Dark Ages.
j
John Kass. He makes me want to get a bird.
Satanicpanic
@geg6: He did a little segment on Climategate when that first came out where he said “WHY WOULD YOU HIDE THE DECLINE” or something and I thought, woah, way to research that one, Jon. I haven’t really been able to stomach him since then. He does some funny segments now and then, but overall I’m not a fan. Rachel Maddow and Stephen Colbert do much better work.
Tim F.
I have never made it to the end of a Richard Cohen column, and lord knows I have tried.
On the other hand Tommy Friedman causes me the most actual pain. My very educated family loves him and treats me like a leper for not wanting to hear what his apocryphal Egyptian cab driver told him this week.
Tim F.
Alsotoo: whenever Gregg Easterbrook writes about climate I want to swallow antifreeze.
eemom
I just don’t get you self-flagellators.
I NEVER read people I hate, except when I wish to make fun of them, and then I read only enough for properly informed funnery.
With Greenwald, a headline usually suffices.
Gus
Neither. It makes me want to kick Lane in the junk with a steel toed boot, though.
Gus
Richard fucking Cohen. I haven’t been able to read him for years, and I’m better for it.
eemom
@Valdivia:
The other thing about that movie was it make Michael Kelly seem like a hero, when actually he was a mouth-foaming wingnut asshole. I know this because he had a column in the WaPo prior to his untimely demise in Iraq.
pragmatism
@Tim F.: when he writes about sports or anything i want to cockpunch greggg eastabrook. fuck his contrarianism.
grandpa john
@DH: I am 75 years old, one of the things that gives me motive to keep going is that I hope to live long enough to see that rag go broke and and all those hack assholes who have never had to work for a living or never been hungry and out of job, wind up on the street or working for some two bit rightwing rag that nobody reads
Horrendo Slapp (formerly Jimperson Zibb, Duncan Dönitz, Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.)
Oh, Charles Krauthammer. Nobody else is anywhere near him for sheer loathesomeness–to my mind anyway; I know different things set people off. But I look at his piece every Friday when it comes out. I can’t often bear to read the whole thing, but I do look at it.
For me, the special soupçon of evilness that he brings is that he sits there and just lies, lies, lies, and he does it with the nastiest sneer in his voice that I swear you can hear through the newspaper.
Now, I know that lying is what conservative columnists do, but two things set Krauthammer off by himself as far as this goes: The first is that, unlike many of these people, he isn’t dumb, and I don’t think he’s ignorant. He knows just what he’s doing, and he does it anyway. His pieces slamming creationism give it away for me. The other thing is that, unlike a lot of other turds, he doesn’t often just lie outright; he throws in just enough truth that to call him out, you have to acknowledge the parts that he said that are true, and then you have to pick apart the ones that aren’t, and they’re often subtle enough, or small enough–taken one at a time–that it just makes you seem nitpicky. He’s truly a master at this, but it makes me wonder how he can live with himself. All I can think of is that guy who said, “What profiteth it a man if he gain the whole world but lose his soul?” I know Krauthammer’s Jewish, but still, it seems like that’s something we all could stand to ask ourselves once in a while.
Poopyman
@geg6: Yeah, I was just going to ask why Tony Norman is still with the P-G. Seems he could find a bigger & better gig with a wider audience.
Chris
He’s not a columnist anymore, he just does videos… but, Bill Whittle at PJMedia. Although it’s not that he makes me want to kill myself so much as smash his smug face in with the bluntest object available. But that’s my entry on the list of Most Despicable Opinionmakers Ever.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@eemom: Oy. Yosemite Sam. With the possible exception of Krauthammer, I’ve never read a “respectable” pundit (that’s why I exclude Coulter, VDH, a few others) who managed to put madness into prose.
(Mike Issikoff on Tweety calling the evidence on Trayvon Martin “murky”. Apparently it’s very hard to tell if stories about a 28 year old, 250 pound man with a gun being beaten almost to death by a 140 pound teenager are bullshit)
grandpa john
@eemom: me too. hell I am 75, lifes too short to waste it on reading shit that I know is full of lies and half truths.
RSA
@Horrendo Slapp (formerly Jimperson Zibb, Duncan Dönitz, Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.): I’m with you on Krauthammer.
The breaking point for me was in 2005, when he wrote an article not only defending the use of torture in some circumstances, but arguing for its moral necessity–that you would be immoral not to torture someone. This, from someone who graduated from medical school.
Chris
Oh, here’s another one – Daniel Pipes.
Doesn’t piss me off like Bill Whittle does, but he pretty much embodies everything I dislike about GOP intellectuals. Partly that’s because he specializes in the Middle East (my field of study) and in Islamophobia (my pet rage-issue when it comes to conservatives). And partly because he’s risen to the top of his conservative field by being wrong about everything* in his supposed area of expertise for the last twenty years, which pretty much personifies the GOP’s attitude towards “experts.”
* 1) Supported arming Saddam in the Iran-Iraq war because, he argued, it could be “the basis for a fruitful relationship,”
2) Claimed that invading Iraq would “reduce” terrorism and President Mubarak was wrong to say otherwise (later admitted he blew that call).
3) Was one of the many jagoffs shaking their heads and commenting on the Oklahoma City bombing and how it bore clear and obvious Middle Eastern traits.
4) After writing a long and cynical article after the Gulf War explaining that American troops had no prospects of occupying Iraq and that there was a terrifying possibility of sectarian war, suddenly reversed his policy ten years later when it became politically necessary for conservatives to support the war in Iraq.
Chris
Also, I’m surprised no one’s mentioned Dinesh D’Souza yet.
Valdivia
@eemom: funny story, a really close friend of mine wrote an Op-Ed in the NYT about the idiocy of the phrase Axis of Evil. Kelly wrote the most vicious article about the Op Ed mocking my friend’s place of employment which was the Committee on Social Thought at U Chicago. Kelly thought it was hilarious that such an entity existed, without even caring to check that his whole ideology was forged exactly there, at that very place. Asshole.
Roger Moore
@Omnes Omnibus:
Let me recommend you mix things up with some Bourbon once in a while. And there’s always absinthe, which is a highly traditional way of drowning your ennui.
General Stuck (on self glorifiication)
Are you fucking kidding us?. This coming from a blogger that doesn’t miss a chance to smear the latest Greenwald lie on the front page of his blog, of OBAMA WORSE THAN BUSH.
Mother of all false equivalence, and supposedly a liberal to boot.
the fugitive uterus
oh god, i threw up in my mouth the first 2 sentences. no.can.read
the fugitive uterus
you are a f**king sadist for doing this to innocent people, John Cole. the title is most appropriate.
Tone In DC
I stopped reading the Kaplan Post (and the NY Times) a LOOOONG time ago. Couldn’t take the punishment (just driving to work around here is masochistic enough, thanks). The st00pid at the Post didn’t just burn, it corroded everything it touched.
Every so often, I’ll happen upon Eugene Robinson on MSNBC, talking to Rachel or LoD. No need for the Post since at least 2005. No need at all.
Tone In DC
@the fugitive uterus:
LULz.
quannlace
Paul Mulshine of the Star Ledger. Just going by his looks, it seems he’s vying to be the Baby Boomer’s version of Andy Rooney. Eventually.
******
Most of his columns bend Right. But there’s been a few cracks lately, as he finds it harder to defend the more wing-nutty beliefs.
When he’s not writing about local politics, his perpetual bug-a-boos are how Springsteen isn’t as rocking as he was in the ’70’s. Too preachy.
And railing against Bennies. To those outside of NJ, that’s the derogative term Jersey Shore residents give to summer people. (This has nothing to do with Snookie and the tv show, The terms been around since the ’60’s at least.) I think this galls me the most. I’ve spent half my life down at the Shore; resided there for a while. Yeah, the summer tourist influx swells the ranks. But Mulshine bleats on as if they should build a wall keeping the Barrier Island off-limits.
porter
Of course Cole doesn’t mention Greenwald. Someone everyone knows Cole reads regularly. Someone who is 100% anti-Obama.
Things that make me go hmmmmm.
Sloegin
@eemom: Tbogg is about as close as I dare to skimming source material. Remember your Nietzsche ya’ll. Looking into the abyss also too.
gogol's wife
@Steeplejack:
MoDo bothers me the most because she’s the only one of all the above-mentioned whom I still occasionally read, in honor of having liked her once upon a time. Douthat et al. don’t bother me a bit. I never read a word of ’em.
DFH no.6
@eemom:
Untimely demise? Mike Kelly? The wingnut asshole who destroyed the Atlantic?
Fuck that noise.
No more untimely than if most of the motherfuckers being mentioned in this thread dropped dead this instant.
I said “most” — I still like Digby (emoprogger though she can be) and Jon Stewart is much more often on the side angels than not.
iriedc
Every time I follow a link to a Maureen Dowd column I regret it no matter what the topic.
I pretty much stopped reading the Washington Post editorial page after 2005. I finally stopped having it delivered last year. I’d only kept that going because I liked the delivery guy, but even his charm couldn’t overcome my contempt anymore.
Tim in SF
@beergoggles:
Queerty is trash. It’s the laziest, worst gay media on the Internet. Terrible, awful blog. Don’t read it.
You know who had the best take down of that Politico article today? Kos did.
Mike in NC
@DFH no.6:
After 9/11, Kelly became a devotee of Dubya and he volunteered to go to Iraq to “get his war on” up close and person. It was his choice to risk dying in a traffic accident. Shit happened.