Sadly, No!

ABOVE: Jim Hoft

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After all the time we spend over here ridiculing Gateway Pundit Jim Hoft, you would honestly think that he wouldn’t have gone into his bedroom this evening, fired up Blogger on his eMachine, taped a “Kick Me” sign to his back, and then posted this. But he did.

After Helping at Burial Last Year– Detroit Mayor Resurrects “N*gger”

It lives! After helping to bury the n*gga last summer in Detroit at the NAACP annual meeting, Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick resurrected n-word this week on local TV. FOX News reported: …

“In the past 30 days, I’ve been called a nigger more than anytime in my entire life,” said Kilpatrick, 37. “In the past three days, I’ve received more death threats than I have in my entire administration.”

So, Jimbo, let’s suppose that in the interest of civil discourse, you “buried” the word “dumb fuck.” Would that mean that when we say, as we’re saying now, that you are a world-class “dumb fuck,” you can’t tell anybody? Oh, and don’t bother answering that question, Jimbo, because it’s a rhetorical question and no matter what answer you give, you lose.

Gavin adds:

More… The kooks at Sadly No must have missed the funeral and the meaning behind the funeral– not that they really care.

Um, I hate to be the voice of sense and reason here again, Mr. Pundit, but the point of the mock funeral was to end the casual use of the word inside and outside the black community. The point was not to set up a sting operation on black people, where they could be called ‘nigger’ and would get in trouble if they said something about it. I mean really now. Let’s pause for a dramatic reconstruction:

NAACP: So we symbolically bury this hateful word, and may it never be heard again.

KILPATRICK: Amen.

[phone rings]

KILPATRICK: Hello?

VOICE: Bwahaha! Kilpatrick, you lousy nigger, I’m going to assassinate you. Blar-har! [click]

KILPATRICK: Holy Toledo, that guy just called me ‘nigger,’ and said he was going to…

FOX NEWS: Hypocrisy alert! Kilpatrick resurrects the n-word!

GATEWAY PUNDIT: [typing on keyboard] Heh-heh. Black people want to have it both ways.

That was about the point at which we came in. Of Clif and myself, Clif is the more profane: Rather than ‘dumb fuck,’ I would have used a term like ‘Testors-huffer’ or ‘our Maupassant of the Meramec.’ But of course he was right about the no-matter-what and the losing.

Clif adds: How about “The Spittle of St. Louis”?

UPDATE: Well, the Gide of the Gooey Butter Cake saw Gavin’s update and is trying to fine tune his pithy riposte, which now reads:

The kooks at Sadly No must have missed the funeral and the meaning behind the funeral–
Just words.

Although we are touched (no, really, we are) that Jim has retracted his unspeakably cruel allegation that we don’t care, we don’t think he improves his case that he’s not an idiot of an unsurpassed magnitude by saying that “n****r” is “just” a word. That’s sort of like George Allen hanging a noose in his office and saying its “just a rope.”

But wait . . . there’s more. The point of the funeral isn’t to say that the n-word is just a word, as Hoft would have seen if he followed his very own link to the NAACP site on the mock funerals:

No word defames, degrades and denigrates like the N-Word and we want to STOP it! … [W]e are calling on others of goodwill to march with us against this word that hurts and diminishes us everyday. … The N-Word is the most well known example of racist language by others and self hatred by African Americans. The NAACP believes the time has come to celebrate the end of its wretched, destructive life, today!

I think it’s time for Jim to hang up his hat as a political commentator and get back to his career as a “male model,” which is a vocation at which he is more likely to be successful.

Gavin adds: I think the operant assumption here, the assumed story-beneath-the-story, is that the embattled Kilpatrick is lying about the racial terms and the assassination threats, that he’s ‘playing the race card’ to distract attention from the controversies surrounding his office.

Anyone have any thoughts on this?

Atrios:

I long ago stopped really caring about how those weird creatures called bloggers are caricatured in the media, but I do find one aspect of it fascinating. There is a complete inability of writers to get beyond a decades old stereotype of the “computer nerd.” You know, bloggers use computers! Nerds use computers! Bloggers are nerds!

It’s weird.

Our super-keen press corps defines “nerds” as “people who give a shit about stuff besides whether they got invited to the latest McCain barbecue.”

When did Talk Left transform from an interesting and thoughtful blog that made intelligent observations about the law and politics into a 24-7 “Barack Obama SUCKS SUCKS SUCKS!!!!” blog?

Yes, it’s Ace again. Yes I know, but much like the new Spicy Baconator at Wendy’s, he’s been totally excessive and on a roll.

Harvard Smarty-Pants Economists: Media’s Anti-War Propaganda Does Indeed Embolden Jihadists and Cost Human Lives
—Ace

The media lied, people died.

What follows is a monologue about what Allahpundit says about a US News and World Report article describing a National Bureau of Economic Research paper that says that anti-war messages on the media ’embolden’ the Iraqi insurgents. The paper was initially out of the reach of inquiry to them, due to a $5 download fee, although Allahpundit later found a link to a free copy [.pdf]. (Ace, a more practical man, doesn’t roll like that: Studies with attractive conclusions are assumed true.)

You can see this coming, right? The National Bureau of Economic Research¹ isn’t a national bureau of research, per se, but an economic think-tank, predominantly but not exclusively right-leaning, that published the above as a working paper (i.e., without significant peer review). One James Poterba, an MIT economist of note, took over leadership of the NBER last month. It was previously headed by Martin Feldstein — among other things, the architect of the Bush tax cuts.

A cursory impression of the paper: The authors seem earnest enough, but media analysis isn’t the easiest thing to fit into a quantitative model, for obvious reasons; and even with my tiny brain, it’s not hard to sense trouble brewing when someone (it’s usually an economist, as it happens) tries to create equations to account for highly contingent, complex human behavior, such as the authors do with the Iraqi insurgency and the chaotic environment that surrounds it. As well, even though my ignorance of mathematics is near-total, I can read what the paper says in English, with its deep upfront caveats and if-thens. It looks like someone’s interesting idea, like a sexy research proposal with all the parts inked in, comme il faut. Maybe it’s formally well-executed; I couldn’t say. What it certainly isn’t, is something upon which one would want to base a strong truth-claim about world events.

On the other hand, some lately have felt that it helps underscore what TREASONOUS LIBERAL SCUM the media are (the paper has been mentioned all over the right-wing blogosphere in the past day or so — the told-you-so cackling has been lurid). Ace’s dander rises in the post, and he says that if negative media stories on Iraq are killing our troops, then the media should at least report the truth about Iraq (i.e., things that Ace wants to believe are true, in contrast to all those negative stories about troops being killed). Then while your brain is unkinking from a pretzel shape, he reaches a certain high pitch:

In Related News… NBC famously and fatuously decreed Iraq to be in a state of civil war a year or so ago.

That pronouncement still stands. They have not retracted it.

So tell me, NBC: If it was gosh-darn important to officially declare Iraq to be in a state of civil war — if it was so mind-bogglingly critical that NBCNews authoritatively declare the current civil-war-ish-ness of Iraq — why is it so unimportant now to authoritatively declare Iraq to NOT be in a state off civil war?

Perhaps he’s right. Perhaps the media has a lot of catching up to do, in order properly to cover the wide and ever-increasing field of things that aren’t happening. News flash: Ace did not have sex today, etc.

But it seems his basic Iraq narrative has adjusted itself a bit. Here’s how the narrative used to go, more or less. We’ll adopt the Ace voice for maximum veracity:

• About a year ago, the media tried to say that Iraq was so-called ‘in’ a state of so-called ‘civil war,’ which, ahem: I didn’t see any blue and gray uniforms or Buffalo Soldiers sitting around a campfire clapping to ‘Camptown Races’ played by some old chuck-wagon coot on a freakin’ Hohner Marine Band harmonica, so blow me, you bunch of homo schoolgirls.

• The Surge, on the other hand, demonstrably saved Iraq from a catastrophe that would’ve been, you know, distinctly civil-oriented with qualities not dissimilar to those of a war — or in other words, allow me to invite you to enjoy an icy-cold and foamy mug of shut-the-fuck-up.

• If and when US troops leave, Iraq will quickly erupt into a bloody and genocidal civil…OMG! that’s exactly what all the far-far-left super-liberal Democrat liberals want. You! That’s your plan all along, and maybe I’d find an iota, a hydrogen atom of respect for the likes of you and John “Meatwad” Murtha, for screaming-left Chris “Drippy McPoopScrotum” Dodd, if only you’d admit to your campaign of racist annihilation. OMG! Ethnic cleansing, horror, you, hippies, [hiccup] ruin.

Which is reasonable enough, but here’s the more up-to-date Ace narrative:

• [items as above]

• And another thing: Every time you media ass-dongs report a soldier is killed, a soldier gets killed. [waves sheet of unmarked printer paper] At last I have the proof! So, dweeb that I am — and I warn you, you twat-knockers are tangling with a man who would not hesitate to wear Spiderman Underoos with a .45 Glock in the waistband to a Hollywood Hentai celebrity porn orgy with celebrity hookers in Hollywood — allow me to beg the favor of your presence at a sumptuous catered banquet of all-you-can-eat crow, with unlimited soup and breadsticks, if by ‘soup’ you read shut the fuck up, and by ‘breadsticks’ you properly infer bitch, shut the fuck up some more. Ah mo stick mah foot so far up yo ass, you is be havin’ toes for teeth, word up. [puts on Coheed and Cambria CD] Woo, rock it, Sanchez.

[…]

[…]

[…]

Notice we didn’t say anything for awhile there. Trying to be helpful.

¹ See comments beginning here.

Above: 1990s pop-intellectual Camille Paglia,
still doing that thing she does

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Holy crap:

Hillary, her shrill voice much improved and lowered through brutal overstrain, has certainly gained confidence and performance skill on the campaign trail, but I still don’t trust her. The arrogant, self-absorbed Clintons have shown their unscrupulous hand to all who have eyes to see. Yes, Hillary may know the labyrinthine flow chart of the Washington bureaucracy, but her peripheral experiences as a gallivanting first lady scarcely qualify her to be commander in chief. On the contrary, her constant resort to schmaltzy videos and cheap entertainment riffs (“The Sopranos,” “Saturday Night Live”) has been depressingly unpresidential. Is this how she would govern?

Actually, yes. Mrs. Clinton does indeed to spend her first 100 days in office appearing on late-night comedy shows and filming campaign ads.

Continuing:

All that canned “softening” of Hillary’s image would have been unnecessary had she had greater personal resources to begin with. Her cutesy campaign has set a bad precedent for future women candidates, who should stand on their own as proponents of public policy.

First Hillary was a man-hating closeted lesbian who hurt women by making them look like power-hungry ball-smashers. Now she’s an unserious feminine softy who makes all chicks look wimpier than the goddamn Snuggles bear. Next week she’ll try to morph the two personae into a man-hating lesbian Snuggles bear incarnation of some kind; perhaps she could film commercials teaching us how to use fabric softener to keep our leather dominatrix gear extra, extra soft. Who knows! Whatever happens, Camille will hate her.

This, though, is money:

Nubile, exploited Monica Lewinsky will always hover around Hillary like ghostly baggage.

Is it possible for Salon to somehow refund me the three seconds I spent watching their Site Pass ad?

Gavin adds: You know, imagine it’s 1991, the year Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson came out in paperback. Subtract seventeen years, and it’s 1974. It’s 1991 right now, and we’ve been listening to this woman say the same things, over and over, since 1974.

No, think about it: We’re listening to, like, Jesus Jones doing ‘Right Here Right Now,’ and Paglia has been talking since Yes’s Relayer album came out. Would anybody have put up with that then? Wouldn’t somebody long since have remarked, “Hey, okay, that Relayer — stop playing that old stuff already, man; that stuff is so old“? Because honestly, it’s really gotten quite a bit past fresh at this point, hasn’t it?

Plus, if you want to get really scared, reflect on the fact that the manuscript for that book was completed ten years earlier. We’re talking The Beach Boys Christmas Album, relatively speaking.

In yesterday’s Washington Times, what to our wondering eyes did appear but our old pal John “Buttmissile” Hinderaker, proprietor of Powerline — Time Magazine’s Blog of the Year (2004).

Political blogs not really so popular?
By Jennifer Harper
March 11, 2008

[…]

“Why do people read us? It goes back to the idea that we present a solid core of facts, and argue within those facts. There are a lot of bloggers who tend to spout off about their feelings and reactions. Some are terrific writers and a fun read. Our approach is to be more analytic,” said John H. Hinderaker, one of three writers for Power Line, which was proclaimed “Blog of the Year” by Time Magazine after the CBS scoop.

The site consistently logs up to 80,000 visits a day, Mr. Hinderaker said.

80,000? Wait a second here. Facts? Analytic? 80,000 visits a day?

Now, we’ve been here many times before with these guys. What’s going to happen next is that John is going to go “Hm-hm-hmmm,” all nonchalant, and not correct the figure (because it’s favorable to his position — as opposed to bad facts, which are unfavorable and therefore untrue). Oh wait, oh wait, here he goes:

Who Reads Political Blogs?

[…]

What I think is notable is how many people do find political blogs worthwhile. Jennifer was kind enough to cite Power Line as an example of a widely-read site, and called me to ask why I think people read us. After being stumped momentarily, I ventured some guesses, which she edited in reasonably coherent fashion. Whatever the reasons, we are grateful to everyone who reads and enjoys our site.

Actually, that should read, “We are consistently grateful to up to 100% of the people who read and enjoy our site” — because of course, some of those visits tabulated above are ours.

Chris, in comments, adds:

OK, so I don’t get it. In the month you’ve cited, PL got over 80,000 hits twice, and averages about 50-60,000/day. Claiming ‘up to 80,000? seems at worst the sort of not-quite-inaccurate statement that occurs in just about any advertisement. This seems like really neurotic nitpicking on a target that offers infinitely more egregious things to make fun of.

In that case, I guess we consistently log up to 30,000 visits a day. Time to raise the ad rates!

Seriously, it’s quintessential Powerline — touting their “solid core of facts,” and then fudging the very next quantifiable statement. That’s their leitmotif, right there.

ABOVE: David Mamet, newly-minted
Republican

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In what must be the silliest reason for becoming a wingnut since Roger “Scenes From a Mall” Simon played the 9/11-changed-everything card, David Mamet says that he recently stopped being a “brain dead liberal” once he finally realized that Ted Sorenson wrote Profiles in Courage, or something like that:

I found … that an impartial review revealed that the faults of this president—whom I, a good liberal, considered a monster—were little different from those of a president whom I revered.

Bush got us into Iraq, JFK into Vietnam. Bush stole the election in Florida; Kennedy stole his in Chicago. Bush outed a CIA agent; Kennedy left hundreds of them to die in the surf at the Bay of Pigs. Bush lied about his military service; Kennedy accepted a Pulitzer Prize for a book written by Ted Sorenson. Bush was in bed with the Saudis, Kennedy with the Mafia. Oh.

“Oh” indeed. This is a put-on, right? An elaborate joke perpetrated by Mamet in the voice of one of his characters, except without all the “fucks” and stuff, right? Sadly, no.

A quick history review for Mamet is in order. Eisenhower arguably started the Vietnam debacle by sending Diem to Vietnam and funding and training his armies there. The first U.S. ground troops were sent there by LBJ. Kennedy won the Kennedy-Nixon election by a margin wider than the number of electoral votes from Illinois. There is no evidence that any CIA agents were among the Cuban exile force that invaded Cuba, much less “hundreds” of them. Sorenson always said that Kennedy had significant input on the book. (Bonus question: tell me, David, if I reveal to you that Brent Bozell wrote The Conscience of a Conservative for Barry Goldwater, will you become a liberal again?) And if Kennedy was in bed with the Mafia, what on earth was Bobby Kennedy doing going after all those mob members?

At best Mamet’s claim to no longer be a “brain dead” liberal would appear to be only half true.

¹Cf.

The Spitzer resignation countdown clock

• Watch me snort and guffaw about Eliot Spitzer’s resignation while conveniently ignoring the fact that David Vitter and Larry Craig still have jobs.

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard.

Above: Swankius simplex

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Spitzer, Spitzer, Spitzer. Let’s see what’s up with Pastor Swank:

Us Girls Are Filled With Sex Diseases

Uh, sorry; transcription error.

US girls filled with sex diseases
Grant Swank
March 11, 2008

One in four have sexually transmitted diseases. That’s what I would call a plague.

That’s what we would call not knowing that the word ‘one’ is singular.

In the meantime, Planned Parenthood provides videos, literature and speakers in schools to tell youth sex game play with themselves and others.

This is the Planned Parenthood video, Hello Youth Sex Game Play: Disease Ding-Ding Sexy For Self And Others, outsourced to Chinese branch for American teenager hooray. It is shown in schools, just like he says.

Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama further teen STD by supporting active homosexuality and same-gender sexcapades. In other words, as far as these two are concerned, sex that is homosexual or heterosexual is pretty much anything goes.

In olden days a whiff of Swank,
Was looked on as something rank,
But now, God knows,
Anything Goes.

Good pastors too who once spun silver words,
Now snorkle turds,
From their nose,
Anything Goes.

O-oh, The world has gone mad today,
And good’s bad today…

In the meantime, Deerfield Illinois High School has George V. Fornero, Superintendent of Schools, who supports homosexual dialogue and acts, even saying that he does not mind his own children exposed to such data. He’s now endorsing homosexually pornographic literature as required reading throughout his district.

Oh, that thing. It looks like Swank has been checkin’ the email again:

Deerfield High School Offers Pornography To Students

DEERFIELD, Ill., March 6 /Christian Newswire/ — North Shore Student Advocacy has learned that Deerfield High School, in Deerfield, Illinois, is offering the books “Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes” (Part One & Two) — laced with graphic sexual content, including gay sex, pervasive expletives, religious denigration and mockery — in English classes this spring.

North Shore Student Advocacy is, naturally, part of a complex web of phony-grassroots front groups including this — which is part of this and also this. Funding comes from the usual suspects, including Tony Perkins, Pat Robertson and the earthly riches left behind by the former Jerry Falwell.

Ah, well. Back to Swank:

Movies depict sex recreation okay. TV sitcoms and soaps do the same. Best-selling books ditto.

Or his, um, outsourced Chinese replacement. …WTF?!

* Cf.

William Teach of the Pirate’s Cove blog admonishes us for being too hard on his pal, Gateway Pundit:

The problem is, you and Gateway Pundit are discussing two different things. The McClatchy article unfortunately mixed the message up. Apparently, there was no operational link between Iraq and Al Qaeda. There were contacts, but, they were not working together, though at least one AQ, Zarquawi, was in fact the guest of Saddam. Bush never said Saddam and AQ were working together In fact, that was a lefty meme. But, there were contacts.

What GW Pundit is referring to is the portion which is assuming that AQ is not in Iraq now (though there is a sentence that says “in fact, al Qaida in Iraq didn’t emerge until 2004, a year after the invasion,” which GWP should have highlighted.

Dear Teach,

You raise an interesting point. Gateway Pundit went nuts about a McClatchy article. The article is about an upcoming Pentagon study that says something we already know: That Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda did not have an operational relationship before the invasion of Iraq. Apparently Gateway Pundit didn’t even read the article before going wackadoodle, typing a triumphal sneer at the traitorous MSM, and posting email addresses of McClatchy staff so that his readers could angrily demand a retraction.

Then John Cole was like, “God, what an idiot,” and Gateway Pundit apparently responded to him without reading a single, solitary thing pertaining to what he was talking about (including Cole’s post).

As I said, you raised an interesting point. The preceding was not it. There are in fact, as you say, two things: There’s the one above (the fact that Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein didn’t have an operational relationship before the invasion, and that Gateway Pundit is hootingly mad) and at long last, there’s also the Devo thing.

I’m glad I have you here. You folks of the right-wing hue need to know about Devo.

So there’s this band called Devo, right? Many have heard of a band called Devo. From Ohio.

Fig. 1: Al Qaeda, responsible for the 9/11 attacks

Now what if some totally different people, for instance in Florida,¹ got together and decided to also call themselves Devo?

Fig. 2: Al Qaeda in Iraq

What would happen is that the right wing in America, or its equivalent among music critics, would tie itself into macramé trying to prove that the distinction is meaningless, that the groups are one and the same. News items would appear about Devo in Florida, and “Look!” they would say, “Look! Here is proof of Devo-from-Ohio operating in Florida, just like the terror-supporting liberal traitors always lyingly deny!” They would discover evidence of Devo albums from the 1970s and ’80s in the Floridians’ possession, as well as other concrete ties. They would postulate and theorize about contacts between Gerald Casale (Devo-from-Ohio’s #2), and the actual, real and imminent Devo (the one in Florida). Documents would be produced. Language would be blurred and terms equivocated. Sinuous theories would harden into apparent cold, objective fact. Devo-from-Ohio, being elusive and in something approaching hiding or semi-retirement, would be forgotten.²

Your argument would boil down to this: “HOW CAN ANYONE BE CERTAIN THAT THEY ARE NOT THE SAME BAND!!!”

If y’all and Cole are going to bitch at someone, at least bitch on topic. And, surprise surprise, y’all are making it personal.

Your wish has been my task and pleasure. Also, Gateway Pundit is supposed to be a nice guy in person. Helping is our business, at SadlyCo.

-G.M.

¹ Pic hiked from here.
² But they could strike again at any time!