Open Threads

Let’s get this out of the way.

It’s not my place to say this, but you know it, I know it, John knows it, and all the circle-jerkers at the Atlantic know this too, despite what they say: there’s no way Ross Douthat would score a New York Times gig if he weren’t a conservative.

There’s some shit you just shouldn’t eat and I’m not eating this.

Sorry, folks, but no one wins from this kind of blatant quota-ism

Update: If there is a God, we will all rot in hell if we do not criticize Marc Ambinder for saying this:

I think Ross is the sharpest, most innovative heterodox thinker of his generation, left or right.

Update #2: It’s possible I’m overreacting, given that they’ve already got MoDo. But still, Douthat’s stunning lack of accomplishment makes this a choice that eats away at what little credibility newspapers have left.

Update #3: The Village Voice has a run-down of silly things Ross has written. Now, for the most part, I think that’s unfair. Any blogger will have written all kinds of silly things and many of the things they cite just aren’t that bad. The problem with this pick is not what Douthat has done, it’s what he hasn’t done (worked as a reporter or distinguished himself in any way). That said, this is really asinine:

Last July, I argued that Louisiana’s David Vitter ought to resign his office after he more or less admitted to having frequented prostitutes. I stand by that position. However, if David Vitter – having conspicuously failed to resign – were to face off in a Presidential race against Barack Obama, I would be inclined to hold my nose and vote for Vitter. I don’t think there’s necessarily a contradiction here, any more than I think there would be a contradiction for a culturally-conservative Democrat to simultaneously believe that Bill Clinton ought to have resigned over the Lewinsky affair while declining to regret having voted for Clinton over Bob Dole in ’96. Regretting the passing of a particular moral standard does not require one to always vote as if that standard were still in place.

The soft bigotry of lowered expectationsPost + Comments (109)

An incomplete list:

1.) Why anyone is paying any attention to Meghan McCain.

2.) Or Glenn Beck, who really seems intent on cornering the “batshit insane” market niche.

3.) Why I continue to get invitations to join the AARP, when I am nowhere near retirement age.

4.) Why the NY Times doesn’t realize stories like this make them seem out of touch, and why the people in them can’t find a happy medium in between extremes:

It is a sign of the times when Sacha Taylor, a fixture on the charity circuit in this gala-happy city, digs out a 10-year-old dress to wear to a recent society party.

Or when Jennifer Riley, a corporate lawyer, starts patronizing restaurants that take coupons.

Or when Ethel Knox, the wife of a pediatrician, cleans out her home and her storage unit, gives away an old car to a needy friend and cancels the family Christmas. “I just feel so decadent with all the stuff I’ve got,” she explained.

There is a wide range of consumer behaviors in between $10,000 cocktails and “OH SHIT LET’S CANCEL CHRISTMAS.” Also, if you have “old cars” just lying around that you can give away to friends without blinking, chances are you are still well off enough to explore that range of behaviors without too much hardship.

5.) Why we have to go through this nonsense with the Chinese in the first few months of every administration.

6.) Why the Republicans are so easily distracted. Stem cells- distraction. Limbaugh- distraction. Not to mention, how much attention do you really need to chant porkulus and talk about capital gains tax cuts?

7.) Why it is talking down the economy whenever Obama addresses the recession, but the media is silent when prominent Republicans glibly discuss bank failures.

8.) Speaking of Richard Shelby, when did everything to the left of him become socialism?

9.) Why anyone reads this website. Viewing the comments, it is obviously so they an pick on my poor cat. Bastards.

*** Update ***

Oh, goody. Lou Dobbs just promised to bring me two of the finest minds to discuss religious issues. Who could possibly be wingnutty enough for Lou Dobbs (who I am now convinced is completely insane) to consider them “fine minds?” I am gonna guess Tony Perkins and William Donohue.

Woo- the Kitty Pilgrim piece was rich. Apparently she and Lou have the vapors because we have not bombed China yet. Loved the inclusion of “most agree” and “some say” and “many think” in that report there, Kitty. Well played.

*** Update #2 ***

Am I amazing or what! I was right, the guests are Tony Perkins and William Donohue. There was no announcement they would be on the show, no hint of who it would be. My goodness this show is a joke.

Things I Don’t UnderstandPost + Comments (151)

Take the headline “George Galloway stoned in Egypt” and replace the name “George Galloway” with “Christopher Hitchens” and it takes on a whole different meaning.

Consider this an open thread.

Fun With LanguagePost + Comments (40)

Everybody likes to re-fight battles that they’ve already lost. I’ve probably replayed the last two minutes of the 2008 Superbowl in my head a hundred times, usually with Eli Manning getting sacked or Ashante Samuel picking off that pass that was thrown right to him.

But no one likes to fight re-fight lost battles as much as today’s conservatives. The “southern strategy” is, of course, built on anger about the Civil War and civil rights movement. I’m pretty sure I once read David Brooks indicate he wished the Age of Enlightenment had never happened (and Gary Wills believes that conservatives may have re-won the War Against Enlightenment). But the mother of all battles that needs re-fighting is the FDR presidency. Not many conservatives have the balls to ally themselves with Herbert Hoover, though Amity Shlaes comes pretty damn close. And yesterday McCain and Richard Shelby came out in favor of letting Citi and Bank of America fail. In fairness, Shelby’s description of letting them “close down” sounds a lot like nationalization and, in fact, letting these two banks fail would probably usher in a second Great Depression on which they could test their neo-Hooverite theories again (I don’t think that’s too much of an exaggeration).

Luckily, going to jail seems to sober conservatives up. Conrad Black offers a shockingly lucid defense of FDR in the National Review:

The more extreme revisionists now claim that Roosevelt should not have stabilized food prices and financed, through public-works projects, flood and drought control and rural electrification, because it would have been better to starve these people off the land and to the cities, where, a generation or more later, they would have had higher standards of living. Apart from the fact that the resulting human misery would have been morally and politically unacceptable in the United States, the already militant farm unions would have disrupted the nation’s food supply. Such a policy would have put Roosevelt in the same general category of agrarian reformers as Stalin and Mao.

[….]

It is, to say the least, unrigorous for current spokespeople of the intelligent Right to claim that Roosevelt’s peacetime elimination of unemployment was a failure, that war-mongering was his real antidote to economic depression, and that the grateful electors of the most successful politician in the country’s history were hoodwinked, as FDR would have said, “again and again and again.” Instead of trying to debunk FDR, Amity Shlaes, Holman Jenkins, and even Jim Powell should complete his liberation from leftist kidnappers and claim him for themselves. He was a reformer, and also one of the very greatest conservatives in American history.

I’m not sure I buy the “Roosevelt was a conservative” line but I don’t really care: if conservatives want to take sane policies and embrace them as “conservative”, God bless them.

Mister, we could use a man like Herbert Hoover againPost + Comments (105)

Monday morning….

BlahPost + Comments (32)