Sadly, No!

A case of mass Obamanoia is raging through Wingnutistan and seems to have pushed some of our favorite wingnuts through the looking glass to that place where up is down, war is peace, and stupidity is genius. You know, that place where Jonah Goldberg is a model for Calvin Klein briefs, where Pastor Swank is a chaired faculty member of Yale, and where K-Lo’s latest book The Joy of No Sex is a runaway bestseller. Here are three recent examples, each presented without further comment.

Jay Nordlinger:

And I’ll tell you something funny: I think there has been more partisan politics in New York concert halls lately than I notice in the offices of National Review!

Pastor David “Who Would Jesus Torture” Stokes:

In fact, it is commonplace for American personnel to be the recipients of abuse meted out by the Guantánamo detainees.

Nathan Tabor:

The idea that our nation’s Democratic leaders are anti-black, anti-minority, and anti-homosexual is an inconvenient truth. It is uncomfortable to read because it is uncomfortable to write. But, as an old adage goes, the truth will make you free. Only when Democrats confront their own bigoted demons can true progress begin, can we finally heal as a nation.

” For some, revenge is the only justice they’ll
ever get.”

---

They finally said “buh-bye Bill” to the tirelessly careless William Kristol at the New York Times, ending a little more than a year of his fact-free and error-ridden columnizing at that newspaper. And Bill goes out like he came in — in a malodorous poof of intestinal methane gas:

All good things must come to an end. Jan. 20, 2009, marked the end of a conservative era.

Since Ronald Reagan’s election in 1980, conservatives of various sorts, and conservatisms of various stripes, have generally been in the ascendancy. And a good thing, too! Conservatives have been right more often than not — and more often than liberals — about most of the important issues of the day: about Communism and jihadism, crime and welfare, education and the family. Conservative policies have on the whole worked — insofar as any set of policies can be said to “work” in the real world.

Would you like fries examples with that? Well, it being a Kristol column, you won’t find any, so don’t waste your time trudging through the column looking for them.

We don’t really know how Barack Obama will govern. What we have so far, mainly, is an Inaugural Address, and it suggests that he may have learned more from Reagan than he has sometimes let on.

Kristol’s column is datelined January 25, so we in fact have quite a bit more than the Inaugural Address, but why should Kristol start worrying about facts at this late date?

Obama’s speech was unabashedly pro-American and implicitly conservative.

You know, this hackneyed equation by Kristol of liberalism and anti-Americanism suggests that Bill might have better luck trolling progressive blogs under the nom de fume “Gary Ruppert” than he’s had being a columnist for the Times.

In a parting shot at the Times, whose editors apparently underlined the cavalcade of errors strewn through a year’s worth of Kristol’s columns when deciding to cut him loose, Kristol purports to find two errors in Obama’s Inaugural Speech. Kristol then takes these errors and waves them around like a poo-flinging monkey with a handful of ammunition.

And he appealed to “the father of our nation,” who, before leading his army across the Delaware on Christmas night, 1776, allegedly “ordered these words be read to the people: ‘Let it be told to the future world that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive, that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet it.’”

For some reason, Obama didn’t identify the author of “these timeless words” — the only words quoted in the entire speech. He’s Thomas Paine, and the passage comes from the first in his series of Revolutionary War tracts, “The Crisis.” Obama chose to cloak his quotation from the sometimes intemperate Paine in the authority of the respectable George Washington.

There’s nothing “alleged” about Washington’s order that Paine’s “The Crisis” be read to the troops on Christmas Day of 1776, at least according to the Library of Congress time line of Washington’s life. And it is, of course, ironic that Kristol would be in high dudgeon that Obama would leave out an attribution that wasn’t germane to his point when Kristol’s own debut column for the Times was marred by attributing quotes to the wrong person. For the person who laughs last to last loudest, he really needs to have something to laugh about in the first place.

But you have to wade through the entire column to reach pay dirt:

This is William Kristol’s last column.

Would that this were so, but, sadly, I believe this simply means that this was Kristol’s last column for the Times and that there remains a distinct possibility that readers of other newspapers might still have Kristol inflicted on them.

UPDATE: The Washington Post, which apparently has become a halfway house for disgraced neocons, has offered Kristol a monthly gig to continue making up columns for them. [h/t Jennifer]

“This is gettin’ on my noives!”

---

One of the persistent myths of wingnutdom is that newspapers intentionally delete the party affiliation of Democrats when they engage in chicanery but put that affiliation in 128 point bold when a Republican should be caught in one of those rare instances when a Republican engages in, say, page fucking or diaper sex with prostitutes. And if there’s anyone who’ll jump on the opportunity to parade around spouting this numbskull notion, you can always count on Scott Johnson, the laziest of the three stooges over at PouterLine.

In my copy of Saturday’s New York Times national edition (page A9), William Yardley reports on the disgrace of Portland’s openly homosexual Mayor Sam Adams. Adams admitted last week that he had a sexual relationship with a then-18-year-old male intern in the state legislature and that he had repeatedly lied about the relationship. …

I’ve read the Times story in my hard copy and online. I can’t find any reference to Mayor Adams’s party affiliation. It’s possible that I missed it, but Tim Graham indicates that the same obscurity afflicts the coverage of the Oregonian and the AP.

By contrast, no such obscurity affects the Times’s story on the indictment of former state senate majority leader Joe Bruno (page A15 of my copy of the national edition). The Times story is headlined “Longtime New York G.O.P. leader indicted by U.S. on corruption charges.”

Now you’d think that one of the Time Bloggers of the Year for 1908, who presumably won this distinction for his keen analytical ability, might not respond to this puzzling dilemma by simply shouting “see, they did it again!” Indeed a “Blogger of the Year, might even fire up ye olde Google and try to get to the bottom of the disparity. Sadly, as we say, no.

But to be fair to Scott, figuring out why Adams’s party affiliation wasn’t mentioned requires a two-step thought-process which is probably fairly challenging for a guy who once punctured his septum while picking his nose. So we can’t really expect Scott to stop for a moment and ponder first whether Portland holds a partisan election for the Mayor. What says Google? Well, my stars and stooges, it seems that Portland holds a non-partisan election for that position. All candidates run in one primary and the top two in the primary are in the general election.

Nor can we expect Scott to take the second step and wonder why, if a person wins a non-partisan election, they should or even could be identified by party affiliation, can we? Someone with a slightly sharper edge than Scott would understand that identifying a non-partisan mayor by his party affiliation is somewhat like mentioning the party affiliation of a blogger each time a newspaper reports his or her latest shenanigans, as in “Scott Johnson (R) piddled on himself yesterday in the ladies lingerie section of the Lake Minnetonka WalMart.”

I’ve tried. Lord knows how I’ve tried to just stop giving a damn about the dumb-show that American political life (and the attending culture wars) have become. It’s just that I’ve noticed that every time I pay attention to the latest executive order from the President or the latest screaming ninny fit induced by our new POTUS within the screaming ninny brigade, I begin to feel hope. And if there’s one thing the last twelve years have taught me, it’s that the only purpose hope serves is to provide profit for the hard liquor sector of the economy – because hope exists only to be brutally dashed, leaving one more bitter and miserable than before.

So, I’ve been trying to ignore current events and spend my time focusing on things less depressing, like the history of the Black Death – did you know that recent tests on preserved soft tissue found within the teeth of Black Death victims confirms that the pestilence which felled half the population of the European continent was, in fact, Y. pestis? And I thought I had finally shaken the addiction – that I had gotten out of the soul-sucking vortex which is the modern Dummkopfenkulturkampf.

But I was wrong.

DENVER — Disgraced evangelical leader Ted Haggard’s former church disclosed Friday that the gay sex scandal that caused his downfall extends to a young male church volunteer who reported having a sexual relationship with Haggard — a revelation that comes as Haggard tries to repair his public image.

Brady Boyd, who succeeded Haggard as senior pastor of the 10,000-member New Life Church in Colorado Springs, told The Associated Press that the man came forward to church officials in late 2006 shortly after a Denver male prostitute claimed to have had a three-year cash-for-sex relationship with Haggard.

Boyd said an “overwhelming pool of evidence” pointed to an “inappropriate, consensual sexual relationship” that “went on for a long period of time … it wasn’t a one-time act.” Boyd said the man was in his early 20s at the time. He said he was certain the man was of legal age when it began.

Damn it all to hell! Now I feel hope again; hope that stuff like this is enough to make some of the idiot “traditional marriage” brigade (like, unfortunately, our new POTUS) recognize the stupidity of the cause they champion. After all, if your ideology is so mind-controlling that it leaves you unable to recognize that this:

might not be completely heterosexual….perhaps it’s time to reconsider that ideology.

And, of course, I’m now also hooked on that sweet, sweet schadenfreude once again, and will soon probably be jonesing for my next fix. But for now, I’ll just ride this one for as much as I can.

Update: Derelict, in the comments, asks for a citation on Obama being one of the “traditional marriage brigade”. Here’s Obama in his own words:

And as for why “civil unions” absolutely do not cut it, one need look no further than the words of our own government. Or the history of Plessy v. Ferguson. Or one’s own frigging conscience. Obama is completely wrong here, and a total wanker for not standing up for what is right. Just because he’s a better president than Bush doesn’t mean he’s a great president, or that he’s above criticism. And his position on this issue stinks.

BISY BACKSON¹

Update:

¹ Cf.

ABOVE: Knows how, when you grab a woman’s breast,
it feels like a bag of sand

---

The Dr. Mrs. Ole Perfesser, like any huckster, reckons she’ll never go broke assuring her audience of masturbatory misanthropes and child support scofflaws that someone else is to blame for their problems. Thus emboldened, our man Ace offers an awkwardly unrequited high five:

As Instapundit brags, the key quote is “People who are not putting out for their partners are making a big mistake.”

Ho ho, you know the Ole Perfesser is totally getting some from his wife.

Many women simply do not buy this, but guys are pretty miserable when they’re working hard and doing all the stuff they’re told to do to be a good husband, and yet aren’t getting sex reliably, or without begging and arguments, from their wives.

I’ve never tried whining or yelling, but I’ve had good luck getting sex with thoughtfulness and flattery. Maybe other wives are different, though.

I really don’t think women get how important this is to guys.

And some men obviously don’t understand how important this might also be to gals.

Aye, there’s the rub. Ace describes a situationally comedic dynamic in which men want sex and women give it to them in return for certain things, but it seemingly hasn’t occurred to him that, under the right circumstances, a woman might want to fuck a man just because. His collected writings suggest as much, but the supporting arguments that Ace cites — a divorced friend’s anecdote, a generalized guess about other men’s sexual histories, articles in women’s magazines — make clear that he hasn’t got very much first-hand experience with sexual relationships.

It is a strange irony that a woman can pretty much get whatever she wants from a guy with no arguments and no disagreements … by doing just one thing (but doing it two or three or sometimes four times a week).

Either women don’t quite get this, or are, you know, just too complicated to act upon it.

Ace launches a final volley toward magazines intended for women, which he believes should be more like magazines intended for men (“Any article on this topic that contains more than three words [‘Screw him lots’] is missing the big picture and dwelling on trivialities”). It’s less clear, however, whether he’s more angry at the publications themselves or their target demographic.

Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit upon his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin choking chickens.

Brad adds: Oh, Ace. Ace, Ace, Ace. Did you really just write this?

Many women simply do not buy this, but guys are pretty miserable when they’re working hard and doing all the stuff they’re told to do to be a good husband, and yet aren’t getting sex reliably, or without begging and arguments, from their wives.

Dude, try starting her off with a kiss. Or something. I mean, I don’t think the way to a woman’s heart is through storming into the kitchen, dropping your pants and shouting, “LITTLE ACE DEMANDS SATISFACTION! NOWNOWNOWNOW!!!!” S’jus’ not cool.

Gavin adds: Certain things are seeming clearer now.

Turned off by cunninglingus? Eh, a lot of guys don’t dig that. Who the hell knows what’s going on down there. It’s like H.R. Geiger giving up ink and canvas to work in the avant-garde medium of Play-Doh and bacon.

Tough GOPers Stand Up to Geithner; All GOPers Should Counter Keynesian Stimulus

• The public’s pathetic greed for spending on infrastructure and education has hurt the feelings of our precious rich people so much that they don’t even have the ambition to make money anymore! Won’t someone, anyone in Congress look out for the needs of the poor, oppressed rich people!

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™

Listmania

Forbes proclaims me one of the 25 most influential liberals in the media. I bet that‘ll make the Obama people regret not having invited me to last night’s awesome Arcade Fire slash Jay-Z party. Also, yes, many of the people on that list aren’t actually liberals. And I’m afraid the rest of us may not actually have much influence. At a minimum, I don’t have much juice in the party invitations department.

Locked out of the Arcade Fire party!!! It’s almost reminiscent of the way in which certain multiple-award-winning liberal bloggers were more successful infiltrating CPAC than attempting to cover the Democratic Convention.

Above: This was really the final straw

We’re totally refusing to blogroll the new White House blog, Matt, and we encourage you to do the same.

Harsh, yes, but they must learn.

Above: Accuses the colored maid of stealing

---

It seems that our old, old, old, old, old, old pal Burt Prelutzky has begun contributing to Andrew Breitbart’s Haunted Clown Toilet of Angry Sad.

A Plea To Unendow The Arts
by Burt Prelutsky

For years, I have argued against the very existence of the National Endowment of the Arts.

For years, Burt has been unable to distinguish between the address bar on Internet Explorer 3.01 and the Lycos Search bar that his nephew installed, and has been looking for the so-called NEA with the art and the naked lady with the yams only to find this and this, not to mention this.

But like that Netscape 4 that everyone talks about, if it does exist, he’s against it.

If an artist can’t be self-sustaining in a capitalist country as large and as rich as America, he should get into another line of work. It’s certainly not the business of the politicians and the bureaucrats, who you notice aren’t spending their own money, to support him and his artistic pipe-dreams.

O-ho-ho! You notice those politicians aren’t spending their own money on protecting wildlife. If a whale can’t be self-sustaining in a capitalist world as large and rich as The World, it should get into another line of work, with its pipe dreams of free American taxpayer plankton.

O-ho-ho! You notice those politicians aren’t spending their own money on Social Security. If an old coot can’t be bothered to plan for his retirement in a capitalist media town as large and rich as Los Angeles…

Burt can speak about how he came to have a writing career in television and even how, at the age of 50, because of ageism in the industry, he came not to have one.

…Why, he should get into another line of pipe dreams, with rise-up-and-wise-up on the high-on-the-hog excelsior, not owes-you-a-living public tax teat of the something-for-nothing free lunch for Freddie the Free-loader, by thunder.

This and other rhetorical attaques au fer are what one will find in Dousing the Casuistries of the Know-Nothings: A Practical Compendiary of Arguments of Demonstrated Efficacy Against To-day’s Nativist and Anti-Papist Scoundrels, With an Additional Chapter on Embarrassing the Dunnder Heads of the Whig Party, a pamphlet in our collection whose usefulness seems never greatly to diminish.¹

By the way, if you feel a natural urge toward sympathy with Burt and his cratered TV writing career, there’s a lot of stuff like this that has influenced our own feelings in that regard.
Read the rest of this entry »

ABOVE: Lisa Schiffren counts the different words she knows for poop.

---

Apparently there’s nothing that whites can say anymore about blacks that the wingnuts will consider racist. But let an elderly black man suggest that there are whites who could stand some improvement in their attitude about blacks, and the wingnuts start doing the Italian Soccer Player Penalty Ploy, falling down on the field, shrieking loudly, writhing in pain and gesticulating wildly at some part of their body that was allegedly fouled. So, of course, Reverend Lowery’s reference in his benediction to a time “when white will embrace what is right” has set off the latest tsunami of crocodile tears, fauxtrage and white claims of black racism.

But Lisa Schiffren, the ideological love-child of Phyllis Schlafly and Pat Boone and persistent lumpnut at America’s Shittiest Website™, takes this wingnut hue-tennany one step further. Unbelievably enough, Lisa wraps up her complaint about Lowery in a cloud of scatological fixation that would embarrass even a diaper-clad Senator Vitter:

I personally found [Reverend Lowery’s little race rhyme] more than a little jarring—because of where I had previously heard a version of same. During various water shortages in California in the 1970s signs appeared in public bathrooms with the conservationist suggestion: “If it’s brown, flush it down. If it’s yellow, let it mellow.” Yes: yuck, gross, ick. … [B]ringing up that jingle and the imagery inevitably associated with it seems like a pretty unnecessary addition to an inaugural benediction.

Honestly, Lisa, get your mind out of the crapper. Everybody else in the world, when they hear mellow and yellow together (the only similarity between the Lowery benediction and Schiffren’s toilet slogan) would think of a Coca-Cola soft drink, or a song by Donovan, or Marion Bloom’s derrière. And it makes me think of a martini.

Apparently, Schiffren’s neighbors threw her kids out of the car pool because every time somebody said something to Schiffren about “dropping off the kids,” Schiffren would wrinkle up her nose and make retching sounds into her hands.