Democratic Senatorial candidate Jim Martin hugs state Sen. Nan Orrock during a rally on the Capitol steps, Monday, Nov. 3, 2008 in Atlanta. Martin is challenging incumbent Sen. Saxby Chambliss. (AP Photo/John Bazemore) UPDATE, 6:30 pm: Barack Obama has cut a new 60-second radio ad in support of former state Rep. Jim Martin's Senate campaign in Georgia. In the ad, which was obtained by The Fix moments ago, Obama thanks everyone who voted for...Please click on the title to continue reading this entry.
Doop-de-doop, mindin’ my own business, readin’ National Review.
Cruise Review [Jonah Goldberg]
Many thanks to Katie at KabukiVillage for her very flattering write-up of the NR Cruise and yours truly. There are pictures from the sea, for those interested.
Oh right, it’s time again for the National Review Cruise, a font of humor that comes often to the leftward side of the Internet and that, I’m sorry, is simply never any less funny than the time before. Pirates! Lifeboat cannibalism! Stewards slinking from K-Lo’s cabin with shoes in hand! The pool scene from Caddyshack!
Johann Hari’s piece on the July, 2007 cruise is currently the one of record, and personally, as such things go, my favorite National Review Cruise is always the next one. But let’s see what Katie-at-KabukiVillage has to say.
Laugh, and the world laughs with you….and it is just more fun
When I bought Jonah Goldberg’s book, Liberal Fascism, months ago, it would have been much easier to buy it in suburbia. But I waited…waited until I knew I would be in Manhattan for the day…a day when I could purchase it at the book store at Grand Central (making sure to ask the clerk where it was even though it was on a table in the center of the store…just because I knew it would drive the guy nuts) and could then carry it throughout my day of meetings.
Passive aggressive? You betcha (h/t Gov. Palin); and a whole lot of fun. Yes, yes, I would keep Freud very busy.
Whoah, not so fast there! For those who didn’t catch the reference, ‘Freud’ is the psychology guy who liked to figure out crazy people. It’s great to spice up your lingo with trivia references, but fair or not, people do judge you by the words you use. And confusing is never effective! So before you drop an apple core in the trash basket and say “Watch out, Sir Isaac Newton,” you might want to “get a brain, Einstein,” and let your audience off the bang I just shot myself through the head.
[end credits, commercial for Sham-Wow with the young carnival-barker guy wearing the headset, FreeCreditReport.com commercial with the guy on the bicycle, promo for upcoming holiday episode of Stargate: Atlantis, roll opening credits]
Hi, it’s me again. We’re moving too fast. Let’s back up.
But I waited…waited until I knew I would be in Manhattan for the day…a day when I could purchase it at the book store at Grand Central (making sure to ask the clerk where it was even though it was on a table in the center of the store…just because I knew it would drive the guy nuts) and could then carry it throughout my day of meetings.
This is the personality type that voted for Bush in 2000 to “stick it to the liberals,” and then voted for Bush in 2004 wetting their pants over the global foreign Islam terror jihad threat, but then recovered their senses in time to vote for McCain/Palin in 2008, to “stick it to the liberals.”
In prosperous times when fortune smiles upon the Union, the abiding purpose of the spite caucus is to stick it to the liberals. In times of uncertainty, such as the great and encompassing uncertainty that we now find ourselves confronting, they find ways to blame the liberals and devise means of punitively sticking it to them. In their imagined perfect world — i.e., without liberals to stick it to — they would stand around sticking it to them vicariously, while farms ran fallow and airplanes plummeted to the ground and cities fell awash under waves of seawater, as the dollar came to incite thin laughter in Asian bank moguls and as the very furniture was being carted out of their defaulted houses by sheriff’s officers. Others of their tribe would stand on the sidewalk as the tables and chairs filed sadly past, accusing the defaulted homeowners of being liberals. The sheriff’s men would eye the liberals on the sidewalk with a mind toward sticking it to them.
Let’s look at this woman’s big day on the town. She created a multi-scene pageant out of buying a copy of Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism — a book devised as though on the spot at a cocktail party, as an insouciant one-liner from a half-drunk Jonah to some cornball editor he was trying to impress (Adam Bellow, let’s imagine), which was then delivered only after years of flop sweat, excruciating mental gymnastics, and probably genuine debilitating mental depression, because as Jonah knew at the time (and probably knows still during certain late nights and lonely self-encounters), while the concept is guaran-freaking-teed to make liberals hop-hop-hoppingly mad, it cannot stand as a serious book because it is premised on something that is obviously not true. So here she’s like, “Tee-hee, I’m going to loudly ask for this book at Grand Central Station, just in case there’s a liberal nearby to whom I’d be sticking it.” It’s like those Mexican guys in Los Angeles with the bouncy cars: On the surface it just looks silly, but then you consider the industry and determination on display, step by step from concept to technical execution, designing and installing custom hydraulic systems in order to bounce up and down in their car all pocketa-pocketa while scowling at you at a random stoplight, and it’s genuinely sort of terrifying. What sort of people would do this, and by God, what else are they capable of?
Like the other NR chaps, I had certainly read Jonah for ages and marveled at his talent and his ability to absolutely strip bullshit away from ridiculous arguments and eviscerate the opposition.
This is true: Jonah often presents his ridiculous arguments absolutely stripped of bullshit. Or is it the other way around? Either way, he certainly sticks it to the liberals.
And he certainly displayed a similar laid back and approachable demeanor as his fellow speakers. But Jonah, above all the others, was the most successful at doing one thing that I know we all needed….
It’s enough to note the possibilities of this setup, and quietly to move on.
he reminded us all how much fun this should be…that we really are optimists above all else and hanging our heads in worry or defeat, while an option, was really just no damn fun.
What with the tale of her New York rampage, baying through the streets with book awave and with chumps strewn like matchsticks behind her and so forth, she forgot to mention the part about being on the National Review Cruise with real live Jonah. Real live Jonah with cuddle-paw action…
I have read some of the ugly posts about him and the hate-mail he posts. The disappointing news to those of who think that nonsense gets under his skin, it doesn’t. Not even a little. He maintains such a positive attitude and flat out joy at what he is doing that I imagine the Patchouli smelling anti-social moonbat who sends a hate missive would be devastated to see just how grounded and happy he is.
For instance, his flat-out joy at obsessively arguing with his critics. But if ‘Doughy Pantload’ doesn’t bother him anymore, it might be time to bring back the sobriquet, ‘The Thing From Lucianne’s Vagina.’ We can’t have him getting too comfortable; that’s when he comes up with ideas for books which future historians will regard as a blot on our era.
Comedy night was when he shined brightest for me. He was able to take his deep knowledge of all things political, and deliver commentary in a way that was both tangible and damn funny.
It’s starting to be clear why Jonah linked to this post.
In a setting where Mark Steyn (funnier than Hell) and Rob Long (who is so good at this genre it is his gig) were in their element, Jonah proved to be spectacular. As with Stephen, I wish that more people saw this side of the folks on our side of the aisle.
Who’s Stephen? But never mind. She’s building to a crescendo here.
We are shackled by an this image of a staid, serious old white guy or a twin-set wearing pearl twirling Upper East Sider or a redneck from the boonies. Those are the options. The rest of us, in fact the majority of us, somehow manage to be ignored by the MSM and the crazies on the left.
Almost like a majority that is silent, or a noiseless quorum or something. It’s almost as if conservatives are marginalized and stereotyped in the manner of minority groups, while yet making up the mainstream of Americans. It’s like this select majority of superior average people is being systematically persecuted — not that you would ever know it from the liberal mainstream MSM media, which is against them and for the tiny lunatic fringe of liberal crazies that dominates the media and the entirety of American political culture by sheer force of numbers.
We’re breaking new ground here. Such a claim of ennobled victimhood has never been made by every single authoritarian movement since the 19th Century. Or wait, has it? Must look this up later on the Internet.
They can’t wrap their heads around us…can’t acknowledge that we are out there because, if they did,
This is unfair, for we frequently acknowledge that they are ‘out there.’
…they might actually have to tackle substance…and issues and move beyond character attacks and their own perverse discrimination. They can not stomach the diversity of our people, ideas, backgrounds and lifestyles.
I wonder if this style of argument would work the other way around? Wait, let me try.
[squeezes mustard all over the wall]
Conservatives cannot face their squeezing of mustard onto this wall.
[squeezes mustard onto the floor until the mustard bottle makes sniffy air-squeezy sounds]
Just because conservatives boast of strangling children and eating them, they think they can squeeze anything they want onto this floor, starting with this mustard.
They can’t even face the fact that we have fun, we laugh. There has to be a reason that the majority of the email I get from angry lefties is almost always from men and almost always uses sexually explicit or pseudo-violent language…projection?
Yes, that’s the word we were groping for, if ‘groping’ isn’t underwear hoedown explicit or pseudo-violent language whoopie biscuits. There’s even a psychological term for when a person projectingly accuses others of projection, although you have forgotten it — or rather, you are accusing me of saying that you forgot it.
Also, America needs a bold nude erection.
Inherent unhappiness or anger? Lack of the ability to submit rational arguments and thus the need to default into aggressiveness? Who knows, who cares.
As if to illustrate her point, a few weeks ago I made a special effort to walk through Jabib, Oklahoma ostentatiously waving a copy of the Communist Manifesto. Ha ha, no, you did that. No, I did, and you’re accusing me of you doing it. Ha ha, you think you’re in a hall of mirrors, but I aren’t.
[gunshot, shattering glass]
Yes, shoot if you like, but which one is the real me? Hahahaha!
One would think (hope) that the feminists these “men” cuddle with would kick their asses if they knew their love monkeys were using these approaches to try to intimidate a woman….of course, when the feminists finally address Clinton’s abuse of women, I’ll let you know. In the meantime, I simply marvel at the hate and the anger and the Freudian implications.
I’d keep Freud very busy. No, you would! Hahahaha!
[gunshot, shattering glass]
Why are me shooting you at me? Hahahaha!
[gunshot, shattering glass]
As for Jonah? He is a force to be reckoned with…a killer combination of intellect, wit and joie de vivre…and I for one look forward to laughing alongside him in the adventure ahead.
Us too, and Jonah’s wife doesn’t have to worry that we’ll show up at his office naked under a fur coat.
