Shorter Ollie North, Clownhall
Get Serious
‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™
Per Brad’s post, it’s true that Obama’s way better than Bush, let alone McCain-Palin, and also true that it was naive to pin high hopes on him being ultra-progressive in office.
But at the same time, Bush is not president now — Obama is. We can call him out for his own misdeeds on their own merits, particularly his capitulation to Wall Street interests and escalation of the Afghanistan war. Doing so is not the same as crying in your soup about not getting the rainbows and ponies you thought he’d hand out upon election. It’s saying, I’m glad he’s not Bush but simply not being Bush isn’t good enough.
Now it may be that Matt Taibi or Tom Hayden pinned too much of their hopes on Obama. They seem to admit as much, anyway. I’m not sure why this is now considered such a terrible crime, though — if we agree with them more or less that Obama has screwed up in certain important areas, does it really matter how we arrived at that joint conclusion?
To insist that it matters if one was overly hopeful about Obama is to toe the classic Village line, where opinions are judged ‘unserious’ based on who they come from and not what they contain.
For instance, I can’t help but note a large dollop of smugness in this from Ta-Nehisi Coates:
There are people who think presidential politics–from a voter’s perspective–is about electing someone who will do exactly what you say and enact every single one of your priorities in exactly the same manner as you would.
Except, no, there aren’t such people. Any that matter in a political sense, at least.
Here’s the thing. Some of us did warn others to be careful about thinking Obama was a progressive dream ahead of the election. But the next part of that sentiment was a pledge to hold his feet to the fire when he inevitably proved to be a middle-of-the-road pol.
So my question for those who are currently having a lot of fun mocking those starry-eyed dreamers amongst us — when are you going to start holding Obama’s feet to the fire instead of flacking for him at every turn?
Lots of chatter about Taibbi’s latest piece. I basically agree with everything the guy says but with one big exception:
What’s most troubling is that we don’t know if Obama has changed, or if the influence of Wall Street is simply a fundamental and ineradicable element of our electoral system. What we do know is that Barack Obama pulled a bait-and-switch on us. If it were any other politician, we wouldn’t be surprised. Maybe it’s our fault, for thinking he was different.
Well yeah, it sort of is.
I honestly don’t know why a lot of folks ever really believed that Obama was the second coming of FDR when all he really ever aspired to be was the second coming of Bill Clinton. The guy always presented himself as a middle-of-the-road establishment Democrat who eschewed populism in favor of “post-partisanship” (whatever the hell that means). And c’mon, people: how much change could you really expect from a guy who chose Joe Biden to be his veep?
Now, I knew this perfectly well going into the 2008 election. And I was still incredibly enthusiastic about supporting the guy. Why? Because this country had been run for the previous eight years by sociopathic wingnuts and I didn’t want another sociopathic wingnut running the country for another four years. I didn’t want to go to war with Iran and I didn’t want to go to war with Syria. Also, I didn’t want to have a certifiable moron as vice president. These sorts of things are important to me.
And yes, I realize how sad it is that my standards have fallen so low, but that’s how things are. As long as my government is not actively trying to destroy the entire world, I feel OK about things. Others’ mileage may vary, but that’s sorta where I’m at.
I think the larger problem is that a lot of folks on the left seemed to think that electing a black dude with the middle name “Hussein” (and don’t get me wrong, that is pretty awesome) would magically overturn decades’ worth of propaganda aimed at getting Americans to believe that corporate America’s Big Money Boyz are our bestest friends in the world and that they’re being oppressed by a wicked government that doesn’t think it’s “politically correct” to sell toxic waste to school children. That’s something that’s going to require long-term siege warfare. And it also means that we need more folks like Taibbi who have the balls to stand up to people in power and fewer folks talking about Obama as a brilliant eleven-dimensional tactician.
Obama for all his faults is a welcome relief from having sociopaths run the government. But that doesn’t mean that anyone on the left should count on him to do anything they want done.
ABOVE: Burger King (left), Warner “Double Whopper” Huston (right)
Shorter Warner Todd Huston, Ruhnew Amuhrka
This leftist drivel is why journalism is dying
‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™
*Cf.
ABOVE: Jacques-Emile Blanche, Sir John Buggershire on a Sofa (1904)
Shorter John Derbyshire, America’s Shittiest Website™
No We Can’t
‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™
In spite of all the nasty things you say about me.
ABOVE: B. Daniel “The Gay Patriot” Blatt (body by Photoshop, face by nature)
Shorter B. Daniel Blatt,1 The Gay Patriot:2
Kevin Jennings & the Prevailing Gay Sexual Ethos3
‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™
1For our newer SadlyNauts, who may not be familiar with B. Daniel Blatt, he is one of the so called Gay Patriots. His Auntie Tom schtick is pretty much to find any anti-gay Republican talking point, the more outrageous the better, and defend it. Up until this latest post, the apex of this schtick was probably when Blatt organized a brunch at a Mexican restaurant to show solidarity with the owner’s financial support of the campaign against gay marriage in California. Alternatively, the apex may have been the time he said he was going to vote against gay marriage because gays are soooo rude to Carrie Prejean. But this post, I think, surpasses everything else and I’m not sure it can ever be really surpassed. Oh, I suppose he could still post something on his blog arguing for the recriminalization of sodomy or perhaps arranging a book burning party for all of David Sedaris’s books.
2I always thought that a “gay patriot” was, for example, a gay soldier fighting for his country, but the closest Patriot Blatt has ever gotten to fighting a battle of any sort has been in his comments section. I suppose a “gay patriot” might also be someone who puts a tiny U.S. flag in his pina colada rather than a festive cocktail umbrella or who roots for the U.S. gymnastics and diving teams at the Olympics. But I’m not going to concede that a brain-damaged Republican poofter whoring for the approval of straight Republicans is a gay patriot no matter how much Republican dick he does (or doesn’t) suck.
3Oh, and on the subject of prevailing ethos, a comment by Dan to his own post sets forth his own prevailing blogging ethos or, I suppose, what might be called the long-awaited mission statement of The Gay Patriot blog:
Perhaps, you don’t realize that it actually takes time to write a post and check my facts and sometimes I don’t have time to check everything hence the conditional of the sentence your first cited. We bloggers are often dependent on our readers to correct typographical errors we might miss and to fill in the research when we run out of time.
I am so adopting this philosophy, particularly since, unlike Dan, I actually do have a job and actually do run out of time to keep you ingrates amused.
‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™
Ann Althouse has asked for many apologies in her day. Not necessarily of me directly, but I suspect of my mindset in general, and certainly of people I’m aware of — such as Ta-Nahesi Coates, whose blog I sometimes stumble upon whilst looking for dirt on Megan McArdle.
This cannot stand. I propose that today be the day that every blogger apologize to her. Right now. Not tomorrow or next week. And no mealy-mouthed, ‘I’m-sorry-if-you-were-offended’ type apologies, either.
For my part, on behalf of Coates and the many others who owe Althouse serious apologies, I just want to say, Ann, I’m deeply, deeply sorry. I am so sorry for all of it, for all the slings and arrows that you’ve suffered. Yet it troubles me that I have only words and my own deep, abiding shame to offer as consolation for your pain. If I had the power to turn back time, not only would I correct past offenses against you, but, because it makes sense that anybody with the power to change time would have other powers too, I would give time itself male genitalia just so I could kick it in the nuts.
Alas, I lack those powers. So I can only again offer my mea maxima culpa for all the times I’ve wondered whether your comical hypersensitivity somehow softened the awfulness of your thinking, and also for the past several months when I forgot you existed.
His underpants a notorious victim of 9/11, Dennis Miller demonstrated years ago that a tool and his funny are soon parted. He probably still gets other gigs, but now Miller is most frequently seen matching wits with the likes of Bill O’Reilly, about whom Han Solo, or perhaps it was Al Franken, once said, ‘Let the Wookiee win.’
At any rate, apparently dissatisfied with Barbara Walters’ ‘10 Most Fascinating People of 2009‘ revealed Wednesday, Miller went on O’Reilly’s show to name his own:
My top three fascinating people — my top three fascinating people this year are Ayn Rand, because I think she’s at the front of an objectivist movement that’s coming in this country. It’s exhibited through No. 2 on my list, which is John Q. Public, as exhibited by these people at the tea party. And the No. 1 fascinating person to me, as it is every year, is the American man and woman in our military forces who afford us the opportunity to sit back here and have capricious endeavors like top 10 lists at the end of the year.
To recap, Miller’s ‘top three fascinating people’ of 2009 are a dead woman, everybody and soldiers. And here we didn’t think it was possible to outdo Time’s ridiculous 2006 Person of the Year issue. But Miller’s effort — essentially ‘You plus you other guys and also some corpse’ — would appear to do the trick.
Finally, though neither made his own list, Miller also finds Nancy Pelosi fascinating ‘without being fascinating at all’ and admires Tyler Perry because ‘he swims upstream against that rap culture’ — sort of like a salmon going to spawn, only instead of water, the opposing current is made up of things that make white people uncomfortable, and instead of the salmon being Tyler Perry, it’s Dennis Miller.