This was the title of a piece Joe Klein wrote a few years back. Klein continued:
It’s almost always a joy listening to Gingrich when he’s on a tear. And he’s almost always on a tear of some sort. I caught up with Newt as he wandered around New Hampshire last week, which is what people who think they’re running for President do. Please, God, no, you say. Not that angry guy again. “He’s probably carrying too much baggage to be President,” said Peter Bergin, a Republican state representative from Amherst, N.H. “But he sure is a terrific idea man. He needs to be part of the debate.”
Absolutely. We might even create a new federal position to accommodate him, sort of like party ideologist in the old Soviet Union, except that the U.S. job would be the opposite of what it was in the U.S.S.R. Instead of imposing orthodoxy, the party idea-ologist—ideology is so un-American—would propose unorthodoxy. Gingrich was certainly wild with ideas last week, flicking them off at warp speed, like a dog shaking himself clean after romping through a pond.
You can see how much fun Newt is to watch here or read about it here:
The secular-socialist machine represents as great a threat to America as Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union once did.
Krugman’s piece today on the media’s recent discovery that the right is insane got me thinking about this:
Maybe it was just deference to power: as long as America was widely perceived as being on the way to a permanent Republican majority, few were willing to call right-wing extremism by its proper name.
I think this is about right (though in fairness, Klein’s Newt fluffery took place in 2006, after Republicans had lost some power).
“Liberal hawks” have never given a very good explanation of why they were so gung-ho about Iraq — just a lot of “no one could have predicted Bush would screw it up so badly” etc. Likewise, liberal wingnut fluffers (not all of whom were that pro-Iraq War) have never given an adequate explanation of why they thought George W. Bush and Newt Gingrich and the like were such serious people.
The answer in both cases is probably the same: it made a lot of sense professionally to suck up to the right at the time. I’d like to see Klein and others admit this for once.
WereBear
Don’t hold your breath. Well, don’t do anything that depends on that.
Al Gore may have invented Love Story, but it was Republicans who took “never having to say you’re sorry” and ran with it.
Alex
In Newt’s defense, he sure is talented. Why, he’s watching me right now, on the left side of the screen, asking me if I’d like to read his weekly newsletter. Sorry, tubby, I have to tweeze my cat’s ear hair next week.
But seriously, “Gingrich the idea man?” How did that meme start? What ideas did he ever have that weren’t part of a boring old anti-government screed or vicious political gamesmanship? And how many of those ideas did Reagan, Norquist, or Atwater think up before Newt?
V.O.R.
Few willing to call right-wing extremism by it’s proper name?
Gee. That sounds familiar: “Treason doth never prosper: what’s the reason? Why if it prosper, none dare call it treason.”
The observation about people moving to the right in times of trouble is interesting. I think it’s not so much “to the right” as “a retreat to the glorious past.” And in the U.S. if you want to be a reactionary, then you want to be a conservative. The left – for all it’s many, many, faults, really does seem more reality based, and more eager to look forward rather than back.
After my experiences online today I’d say that’s because left-wingers are more likely not to be complete idiots. But my sample might have been biased.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I’d be willing to bet if you skimmed through Klein’s writings from the early ’90s onward (and I wouldn’t), you’d find at least a couple of dozen references to Newt’s “intellect”. Perhaps the first visible effect of the working-the-refs strategy was Beltway types fawning over Newt’s “intellect,” to prove that they don’t have the dread Liberal Bias. It’s the original sin of the phenomenon that leads to Monsignor Russert bragging that he was Rush Limbaugh’s favorite broadcaster, or dingbat Brezinski saying that “Pat Buchanan says what we’re all thinking”. It was just a few months ago that Al Hunt was saying he was plumb shocked that Newtie had gone all demagoguey tea-party on Obama, cause he expected Newtie to be a thoughtful critic of the administration. Because no one could have predicted that Newt Gingrich would resort to cheap demagoguery.
V.O.R.
“you’d find at least a couple of dozen references to Newt’s “intellect”. ”
But they were sarcastic, right? If not I’m going to have to, like, totally re-think my impression of political news in the 90s.
beltane
Nothing new about sucking up to power whether it be power vested in kings, politicians, or schoolyard bullies. While history is kind to those with the courage to stand by their principles regardless of the cost, it is the toadies and asskissers who prosper during their lifetimes. If Joe Klein and the rest were to admit they fall into the asskisser camp, it would be like admitting to the absurdity of their entire professional life.
Brian J
Part of the problem may be that Newt does occasionally stumble into advocating a good idea, like expanding electronic medical records. It gives him an unearned aura of legitimacy and seriousness, which he of course uses to make his other, usually insane proposals and claims seem valid.
Ivan Ivanovich Renko
@V.O.R.:
Isn’t that part of the core definition of fascistic nationalism? An appeal to a glorious past– that never really was?
Elvis Elvisberg
I really think it was less about the importance of sucking up to those in power, than the conventional wisdom since about 1980 being that the Republicans were the “cool kids,” and in the end the country would vote for them.
Not entirely distinct from the sucking up point, but more about the tyranny of conventional wisdom. And how do you get to be at Time and the like except by spouting cleverly written conventional wisdom.
DougJ
@Elvis Elvisberg:
That’s an interesting distinction. I was conflating Cool Kids with Permanent Majority and you’re right that they aren’t always the same thing.
beltane
@V.O.R.: No they were not sarcastic. According to the usual suspects, Newt was a sage and a visionary. Although I do recall some DFH journalist describing Newt’s ideas as being the type of thing you’d think of while watching The Jetsons under the influence of cannabis.
MikeJ
@Ivan Ivanovich Renko: Hubert Lanzinger would agree.
mclaren
Well, sort of. It’s more like the press is an orhpan girl who has been beaten and sodomized by her court-appointed guardian The Republican Party that eventually she just lays back and lets it happen.
Then one day she discovers that her court-appointed guardian has gotten old and feeble and gone insane.
So finally she pulls out a taser and some handcuffs and power tools…
El Cid
In a sane world, Newt would be a god-damned pathetic joke. He’s been a crazy right wing shitbag whose greatest innovation for his party was to figure out how to balance big dollar donations with small business donations, and his second greatest move was pushing the Clinton impeachment. For his temper tantrums and failures he got thrown out of his Speaker’s position by his own party.
He’s a joke and a jackass and his “serious” ideas have always been utter, utter shit, but entirely gulped down by the establishmentarian media because he couches them in pseudo-academic tones, based presumably on his experience writing a rote, completely non-contributory PhD on the Congo.
gbear
@Alex:
I’m going to guess that serving divorce papers to his wife while she was in the hospital recovering from cancer surgery was 100% Newt’s idea.
TR
He came up with the plan to prefer oral sex whenever he cheated on his wives, because then he could claim he never “slept” with them. That was inventive, in a sleazy kind of way.
MikeBoyScout
“I’d like to see Klein and others admit this for once.”
Yes, and I’d like to see pigs fly.
Villagers, even seemingly noble Villagers, are not going to admit that all they are about is the heady privilege and fat pay days.
You think that in retrospect, with the unneeded death, mutilation and horror of an unnecessary war, these folks are going to come forward and own up to being overpaid suck-up putzes?
Wait! Did a pig just fly by????
Garrigus Carraig
In Bizarro-USA, they already have.
kommrade reproductive vigor
Sounds like more “Because she says so!” to me.
And I never thought of Newt as “That angry guy.” More “That dirtbag Republigoon who had to GtFo when the stupid unwashed dared to get upset because he couldn’t be faithful to his wife, guy.”
George Reker can recommend someone who will carry it for him.
Mike Kay
What’s the difference btwn Newt and Jane Hamsher?
I don’t know why people are so hard on Newt, when they BOTH said Kagan is unqualified and should be withdrawn.
At least Hamsher said it five minutes after Obama made the nomination, it took Newt 7 whole days to construct his Molotov cocktail.
Alex
@gbear:
I’m going to guess that serving divorce papers to his wife while she was in the hospital recovering from cancer surgery was 100% Newt’s idea.
Something like this happened in the Bush years, 06-07 maybe. I forget who was involved. I think it was Alberto trying to get Ashcroft to sign some torture-is-legal shit while Ashcroft was in the hospital, suffering form cancer. Rotten apples don’t fall far from dead trees, I guess.
Alex
@Mike Kay:
Hamsher is no friend of mine, but I think comparing her to Newt Gingrich is beyond the pale.
El Cid
@Mike Kay: Jeebus friggin cripes, is there any topic you don’t make into a reference to Jane Hamsher or John Edwards?
Mojotron
“Gingrich the idea man?” How did that meme start?
Gingrich’s ideas:
shut down federal government
women in foxholes get infections; men are much better at hunting giraffes on the veldt
something about McDonalds fries
Chances are that wifey’s lawyer isn’t hanging out in her hospital room; ergo
Feel free to add to it, pretty sure that’s it
mojotron +3, x4
V.O.R.
@Ivan Ivanovich Renko:
Core definition? As in “must follow”? No, I don’t think so. Operational definition? Sure. If you’re hankering for the return to a national greatness you’re *sure* could exist again if it were not for the weakening influences of immigrants, intellectuals, and the indolent masses you might be a Wobbly.
But, yes, you’re most likely a popular Republican congressional candidate.
Basically, I think if the left were just as willing to offer a retreat to the glorious past that never-was people would be just as willing to move left in times of trouble as move right.
There are sound reasons why the left isn’t as willing. But they’re nothing that couldn’t be overcome by hard work, rampant greed or ambition, and lots of lying.
Garrigus Carraig
@Mike Kay: Gingrich was Speaker of the House. Hamsher is a tree falling in the forest &c. &c. I’m gonna have some more pie.
Mike Kay
No. the corporate media has been cowed after being hammered for 40 years; beginning with Nixon and Agnew. Like someone suffering from spousal abuse syndrome, they walk on egg shells terrified of triggering another beating.
Mike Kay
@El Cid: just outta curiosity, how much money did you contribute to Edwards.
I know a young woman who made month contributions totaling $600 and she cried. The funny part is at one point early in the campaign, she actually wondered if Edwards had ever cheated, saying something to the effect, that no one that good looking could be faithful.
williamc
Oh DougJ, Joe can’t even admit his head’s up his ass at a barbecue (remember him and our own amiai getting into it over him being full of shit just last year?), can you really see him doing it from his lofty “I’m never wrong, I just followed the wrong horses’ ass” perch at TIME?
Elvis Elvisburg upthread had it right: this is straight-out-of-high school jock/cheerleader starfucking. The lefties are all academic out-of-touch elitists NERDS who think they know everything and they like hanging out with “teh darkies and teh queers too”; not like handsome corn-fed Mr. Republican, who makes the ladies swoon and men want to befriend him. And why wouldn’t it be starfucking? The Village is populated by pretty-faced airheads who have degrees in something from an Ivy and are from the “right families” and are married to/friends with the “right people”, so what if they have flamed out spectacularly at a high-profile job and proven that they are full of shit? It was their underlings, or the liberal media, or some conspiracy that brought them down, not the fact that they aren’t very talented to start with. Newt taught at West Georgia and Kennesaw State for fuck sakes (and I know it might just be the booze talking and the fact that I’m a University of Georgia alum, but in the 1970s, my dead dog could get into that school with a 900 SAT and some loose change; their faculty wasn’t known as a bastion of the brightest talent in the state, no offense to the small college professors here).
Newt is an old, fat, Southern white dude, when is the FSM going to put this pig-faced monster out of our misery?
williamc +3
Mike Kay
O.T.
Checking the gossip page, it’s a pretty juice news day.
Congrats to “Chuck” on being renewed for an additional season.
Quiddity
Have you noticed that Gingrich often takes that “extra step”?
For instance, regarding the Elena Kagan nomination to the Supreme Court, just about everybody (Limbaugh, Hannity, Republicans) are saying that the Senate shouldn’t confirm her.
But Gingrich? He says that Obama should withdraw her nomination (because she hates the USA or something along those lines). Forget about getting the Senate involved.
On yesterday’s Fox News Sunday, Gingrich was in fine form. His softball interviewer, Chris Wallace, even seemed to be trying to hide a smirk while Newt was opining on all manner of things. It was fascinating to watch.
Ed Marshall
@V.O.R.:
It’s sort of complicated. When he first arrived he was hailed uncritically as a serious intellect. He had policy ideas and the journalistic class wanted to help him as best they could because, rather like now, the republicans didn’t have ideas as much as grievances and it’s hard to write wonky stuff about people being pissy about what Commie Bill Clinton is doing.
I’m not sure the exact moment, when or why, the hook came out for Newt, but I think it was the move to not pass a budget but all of a sudden he was downgraded from the Genius of the Right to Reactionary, Troglodyte, Troll.
El Cid
@Mike Kay: I contributed a few bucks, but I contributed more to Obama. Neither one made me a deranged freak who had to bring up each and every political enemy in every single post on every single blog.
Don’t try to make up bullshit or think you’re dragging people into your litterbox — I’m not ‘sensitive’ about either topic. If this is your mental health release, well, okay, but maybe medication would be more useful and effective.
You just make every single solitary topic on the god-damned face of the planet around these two fetishistic enemies. Good god, man, give it a break.
I mean, I hate the shit out of Ronald Reagan, or whoever, but I don’t think it’s funny or cute or important to attempt some lame-ass joke every single solitary moment in the universe about that hated figure.
Mark S.
Reading Klein’s article, here are Newt’s ideas
1. The federal government should be like an ATM.
2. Create a rhio wiki, which is too complicated to explain.
3. Keep 10% of guest workers’ wages that they’ll only get back when they leave. I’m not exactly sure how payroll taxes work if you’re a resident alien, but I think it’s something like this.
4. Have bipartisan presidential debates.
OK, so one idea that sounds like something from a Seinfeld monologue, one idea Klein doesn’t explain, one idea that might be okay, and one idea I could care less about.
Corner Stone
@Mike Kay: It’s ok if you’re feeling a little lost, a little rudderless.
It’s understood when someone loses their compass they’ll probably compensate by hitting their one trick pony.
We’re here for you.
mikefromtexas
Can’t we just ignore Joke Line after all this time?
Mike Kay
@El Cid: this is a post lamenting how no one calls out extremist voices in media and in politics, and the irony of you wagging your finger at me for calling out a similarly extremist voice in the new media, who made the SAME extremist statement. Heh!
El Cid
@Mike Kay: Call it a style point.
Of course, maybe you and I have different views of ‘extreme’.
Having regularly read a wider variety of ideological orientations, including such perspectives as militia / survivalist rightists, unreconstructed Lost Cause Neo-Confederates, Anarcho-Capitalists, Maoists and black Uhuru soshullists, or foreign leftist groups and writers, it’s hard for me to see Hamsher types as “extremists”, but your usage may vary.
Newt’s still a force in national politics and issue coverage and has been for several decades. This relatively minor blogger seems to me not too comparable, but, okay, she’s a giant bogeywoman.
KG
@Ed Marshall: I think that’s fairly accurate. I remember liking Gingrich a bit when I was in college in the mid to late 90s. But somewhere along the way, he just became another wingnut gas bag.
Redshift
@williamc: Newt is an old, fat, Southern white dude, when is the FSM going to put this pig-faced monster out of our misery?
He’s barely even Southern — he was born in Pennsylvania and was a military brat through most of his childhood.
I wonder how much of the media perception of him as “brilliant” is a result of him being a “Southerner” who doesn’t speak with a Southern accent, thus making him appear a cut above other Southerners because of the widespread unconscious bias that the accent makes a person a hick. Hmmm.
Martin
Shorter Joe Klein: Like comedians, pundits need good material.
From that perspective, Jane isn’t nearly bad as Newt, but she provides a lot of good material for someone on the left. Let’s face it, this is the low hanging fruit of blogs as well. I always appreciate more the posts here that avoid that stuff.
Mike Kay
@El Cid:
How times change. I can remember a long, long, long, long time ago – 5 days ago, to be exact, when you felt differently.
talk about “obsession” and projection – it’s not me popping up everywhere when her name is posted.
Ed Marshall
@KG:
I never liked him, but I always found the media’s treatment of him fascinating. I don’t really think he changed at all, they pumped him up when they needed to fill a void and they deflated him when he became an embarrassment.
I think that’s the dynamic that you are seeing today and that DougJ is noticing.
KG
holy shit, how did we miss this? Orly Taitz is running for Secretary of State of California!
God, part of me really wants her to win the nomination.
Mark S.
@Ed Marshall:
I don’t know, I generally thought Newt got pretty shitty press. I remember Time drew him as some Dickens villain who was going to put poor kids in orphanages. Not that I felt really sorry for him, but I don’t remember the press ever fawning over him.
Mike Kay
@Mark S.:
this is a good one
http://www.toobeautiful.org/newt_baby.jpg
http://i.timeinc.net/time/magazine/archive/covers/1994/1101941219_400.jpg
Mother Jones once had a great cover with Newt as a vampire.
Anne Laurie
@Mark S.:
No, that was one of Mr. Gingrich’s very own Highly Original Ideas — he seriously suggested “reforming welfare” by taking kids away from single mothers & putting them in orphanages “so they would not be contaminated by their parents’ pathology”. He also spoke, from the floor of the house, against allowing women to serve in the military because we “got infections every 28 days” and had not been part of the proud paleolithic tradition of “hunting giraffes on the savannah”. And he really did say, proudly & in front of the press cameras, that he ordered his Republican colleagues to shut down the entire Federal government because President Clinton wouldn’t let Newt ride in the front of Air Force One.
Nobody has ever needed to make up, or even exaggerate, any horrible / clownish / disgusting idea or action of Newton Gingrich. He’s a one-Newt freak show, and that’s one reason the Media Village Idiots of our modern press have always been happy to follow him around and promote him.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Mark S.: The fact that he’s one of our political media stars after having resigned in disgrace because of scandal contradicts the idea that he’s been badly treated by the press.
Quite the contrary.
The one time I remember being surprised at him actually getting negative press was the cartoon of him as a whining infant after the story came out that he intentionally shut down the government in a fit of pique triggered by being insulted that he had to sit in the back of Air Force one and wasn’t allowed to speak to Clinton.
Considering that he did actually shut down the federal government, I’d say that the negative press coverage was weak sauce.
The damage he’s wrought as Speaker of the House and since is far out of proportion to any negative coverage he’s gotten from it.
NB: The Time cover above can be balanced with many others more celebratory, like this one:
http://s12.bdbphotos.com/images/150×200/e/m/emjg2vpf4m8ttet.jpg
He was certainly fawned over, near constantly, at one point.
Bill E Pilgrim
Well that didn’t work, try this one.
Martin
@KG: Yeah, I noticed that too. I’m considering skipping on the Dem primary since there’s not a lot for me to add there and voting GOP just to vote for her.
williamc
@Redshift:
You might be right about this. I get the “where are you from/you can’t be southern/you don’t have much of an accent/you’re not religious/your point makes sense” thing from yankees and southerners all the time. We’ve all bought into the stereotype about the slow-drawl “bless their hearts” slow southern thing so much that when southerners aren’t like that, people eat that shit up like candy.
@Mark S.:
I would hate to call a fellow commenter a fucking ignoramus (and Ms. Anne Laurie went out of her way to not call you that above), so I won’t here, but this might be dumbest thing said about Pig Monster ever. You don’t remember the press fawning over him? Really? Why the fuck is he on TV all the time when he was forced to resign in disgrace over a decade ago? And wasn’t this after a historic oddity of leading his party to a loss of seats in the House in a midterm of a President’s second term? As he was impeaching a popular President for having an affair, while he himself was having an affair? An ideas man whose ideas have led either nowhere or to ruin?
He’s painted as a Dickensian villain in your mind because he has a Dickensian name (Newt Getrich) and he behaves like a monomaniacal Dickensian villain (Blast that infernal President making me sit on the back of the plane! How dare he?! I’ll show him! I’ll make sure the entire government stops just so they can all suffer my wrath!). I mean come on, the man just recently got called out by Jon Stewart for making up facts on the air! He crusades for family values after divorcing his first wife while she was ill, his second with a staffer while being the world’s biggest hypocrite, and I’m sure the wife that he’s on right now will be gone once his snout smells truffles in another ladies undergarments.
I hope he runs for President, you will see me behind him in every public appearance he makes with a Pig Monster placard flanked by his two jilted ex-wives.
williamc+4.5 (bedtime, can’t say anything nice, go to bed)
Redshift
As far as I can recall, Newt’s only actual “ideas” were in the realm of teaming up with Frank Luntz to pervert language in order to gain power. “Contract with America,” the list of words to use to refer to Democrats and their ideas. Not that such destruction of rational political discourse is something to be celebrated by anyone but our degenerate political media, of course.
In addition, Luntz has clearly demonstrated that the ideas are his, and Newt’s only contribution was deciding to use them (since GOP leadership since then has made use of them just as much), so I guess that’s actually not an example of Newt being a “thinker” after all.
Redshift
One other factoid — I suspect a good part of the media fawning over him is that like the “maverick”-era McCain, he treated them well and acted like a buddy. I hear from a friend of mine who does tech work in the TV industry that Newt is actually very pleasant to work with; talks with the techs and treats them like real people, appreciating their work, whereas most bigwigs treat them as nonentities like servants or furniture. I don’t know for sure, but I think it’s likely he treats the hosts and pundits the same way, so that even if he spouts appalling conservative claptrap about the media, as long as he treats them well, it must be an act and not about them.
Yutsano
Wake me when Newt is finally dead from a fucking heart attack. He can want to be President all he wants, no way on the planet does he survive a Republican primary, especially after becoming a Catholic and turning his back on the true Evangelical faith. Plus he is still such a creature of Washington I don’t know how he gets any traction beyond the folks with money.
Eric U.
“she turned me into a Newt” should be a tag
Yutsano
@Eric U.: But did you get better?
BTW did he lose his House seat or just retire in disgrace? I don’t remember and I’m too lazy/tired to do teh Google right now.
Alex
@Yutsano:
No one can ever get better from that.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Yutsano:
He resigned the next year.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newt_Gingrich
M. Bouffant
@Yutsano:
He was was voted out of the Speaker position & didn’t run for Congress again.
EDIT: Or something … see above.
Yutsano
@Bill E Pilgrim: Thanks. I couldn’t even bring myself to look at the slimeball’s Wiki page for fear of contaminating myself.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Yutsano: De nada. Morning caffeine energy here, probably going the other direction there.
Speaking of Burkean Bells tags:
Bobo has a real winner today. There are actually threads of valid ideas woven throughout, as is sometimes true with him, but containing humdingers like this:
The hippies celebrated “mayhem”?
Brooks is one of those people I remember from being a very young person in the 60s, more the 70s for me, who actually saw flower-power people and dangerous thugs as all the same. My uncle was like that. The idea of picking up “a hippie” hitchhiking was a sure way to get yourself killed.
We used to look at people like that and just marvel at how utterly blind they were, or out of touch, or full of ragged stereotypes that bore almost no resemblance to reality.
Bobo is thinking of things like the Manson family, perhaps, and assuming that the vast body of “hippies” with long hair and beads and sandals and so on were actually nodding approvingly at that hideous horrific episode. I can only guess.
All of those communes in the 60s certainly were experimenting with all sorts of things having to do with alternative ways of organizing social units, and most if not all of it failed. However none of it was about intentionally fostering “disorder”, that’s simply idiotic.
He starts the whole piece with a detailed description of the crime ridden far Upper West Side of Manhattan in 1961, and then goes on to make broad pronouncements about how “the hippies” led to this era of high crime he’s referring to. Right. 1961?
He calls it “unprecedented” also– clearly he’s never read Herbert Asbury’s 1928 book The Gangs of New York, on which Scorcese’s (cartoonish and much less interesting) movie was based.
Ah Bobo. Is there anything you can’t get wrong?
SiubhanDuinne
I lived in Newt’s district during most of his years in Congress, so I would occasionally call or write him about some constituent concern. At the same time, I was in a job that required a fair amount of outreach to many Congressional offices. Without exception, Newt’s staffers didn’t acknowledge even the simplest communications, never returned phone calls, and were often just downright rude. By contrast, staff members from the other offices — not just the Georgia delegation but in many states — were helpful, courteous, and generally a pleasure to call. There were occasional exceptions of course, but only Newt’s office had that pattern of being just oh so busy and way too important to do annoying things like phone somebody back. I figured his staff took their cues from the boss and for that reason (political differences notwithstanding) I started hating him even when he was a lowly back-bencher, well before the Contract on America or his years as Speaker. I’ve attended a number of events since he left the Congress where he was a keynote speaker, and honestly I can hardly bear to be in the same room with him. He makes my skin creep. I guess he has a kind of glib charm for some, but it’s lost on me. I find him utterly smarmy and I just want to run screaming from the room. Can’t even stand to see him on TV.
Ugh. Just reading this thread makes me want to take a shower.
stuckinred
@SiubhanDuinne: Well, you could move over to Athens and get robo calls from Paul Braun!
stuckinred
@Bill E Pilgrim: We can be together
Ah you and me
We should be together
We are all outlaws in the eyes of america
In order to survive we steal cheat lie forge fred hide and deal
We are obscene lawless hideous dangerous dirty violent and young
But we should be together
Come on all you people standing around
Our life’s too fine to let it die and
We can be together
All your private property is
Target for your enemy
And your enemy is
We
We are forces of chaos and anarchy
Everything they say we are we are
And we are very
Proud of ourselves
Up against the wall
Up against the wall fred (motherfucker)
Tear down the walls
Tear down the walls
Come on now together
Get it on together
Everybody together
We should be together
We should be together my friends
We can be together
We will be
We must begin here and now
A new continent of earth and fire
Come on now gettin higher and higher
Tear down the walls
Tear down the walls
Tear down the walls
Won’t you try
Bill E Pilgrim
@stuckinred: Yeah that’s what people like David Brooks get for mistaking pop songs for reality. And/or taking them literally.
stuckinred
@Bill E Pilgrim: Well, I don’t know what you were doing but when I came home from Vietnam I wanted to tear this motherfucker down.
Joey Maloney
@Ed Marshall: I’m not sure the exact moment, when or why, the hook came out for Newt
I think it was this exact moment.
Bill E Pilgrim
@stuckinred: Well “the hippies” includes a lot of people I suppose, but “the hippies celebrated mayhem” is an absurd statement. “Some hippies wanted disorder and mayhem” would be a completely different statement because “some” could mean three, for all we know. As a blanket statement however it’s absurd.
The closest I got was almost being tear gassed in Berkeley as a teenager too young to be actually involved but just downtown as I often was as a kid.
The people protesting at those things did actually have a reason though, reading even those riots as people simply wanting “disorder” is bullshit. Some probably did but it’s way too broad for most. And characterizing the entire “hippie” era that way is just ridiculous.
It happened all over the world, also. Old structures were being questioned, in France for example throwing off some of the extreme religious structure, and so on.
The idea that it was just “celebrating disorder” is moronic, people wanted a different ordering of things.
That’s exactly what people like Brooks see, if it questioned their idea of order, then it’s disorder.
El Cid
@Mike Kay: You’re seriously fucking nuts.
There’s no conflict whatsoever between what you quoted and what I wrote.
I think she’s a minor blogger and also intended to do some good. [Note: I admire the ‘blog world’ for what it aims to do, and can sometimes contribute, particularly the information, but they’re still minor players. Jeesh.]
Are you fucking insane? Are you mentally ill? What the fucking fuck is your problem?
Did you seriously god-damn think you were doing some amateur detective work? I.e., by my failing to be consistently and crazily screaming about the evils of Jane Hamsher I’m somehow part of the scam?
What the hell is wrong with you?
El Cid
Jane Hamsher John Edwards Hippie Bzzzzzt… Jane Hamsher John Edwards Hippie Bzzzzzt… Jane Hamsher John Edwards Hippie Bzzzzzt… Jane Hamsher John Edwards Hippie Bzzzzzt… Jane Hamsher John Edwards Hippie Bzzzzzt… Jane Hamsher John Edwards Hippie Bzzzzzt… Jane Hamsher John Edwards Hippie Bzzzzzt… Jane Hamsher John Edwards Hippie Bzzzzzt… Jane Hamsher John Edwards Hippie Bzzzzzt… Jane Hamsher John Edwards Hippie Bzzzzzt… Jane Hamsher John Edwards Hippie Bzzzzzt… Jane Hamsher John Edwards Hippie Bzzzzzt… Jane Hamsher John Edwards Hippie Bzzzzzt… Jane Hamsher John Edwards Hippie Bzzzzzt… Jane Hamsher John Edwards Hippie Bzzzzzt… Jane Hamsher John Edwards Hippie Bzzzzzt… Jane Hamsher John Edwards Hippie Bzzzzzt… Jane Hamsher John Edwards Hippie Bzzzzzt… Jane Hamsher John Edwards Hippie Bzzzzzt… Jane Hamsher John Edwards Hippie Bzzzzzt… Jane Hamsher John Edwards Hippie Bzzzzzt… Jane Hamsher John Edwards Hippie Bzzzzzt… Jane Hamsher John Edwards Hippie Bzzzzzt… Jane Hamsher John Edwards Hippie Bzzzzzt… Jane Hamsher John Edwards Hippie Bzzzzzt…
Craig Pennington
So if Dick Durbin says that chaining someone naked to a cold concrete floor for so long they are rolling around in their own shit and piss is something the Nazis might do, that’s call for the Village to get the vapors and demand an apology, but if Newt says the non-Fox media is more of a threat than the Nazis or Soviets, that’s par for the course. Got it.
stuckinred
@Bill E Pilgrim: disorder was exactly the point
Randy P
@TR:
Come to think of it, couldn’t you also use that defense if you never actually fall asleep?
David in NY
You know, the moderation system here ought to quit worrying about the word soc.ial.ist and start curtailing lengthy pissing matches among commenters.
tenkindsofgrumpy
@beltane: I can’t recall a single bad idea I had while under the influence of cannabis.
PRD
Because lib hawks were still operating under the assumption that, despite political differences with conservatives, that their opposition was still capable of serving our nation’s interests. “The intel looks shitty, the sources seem fake, the actors don’t connect? There must be elements of intelligence that we don’t know about.” This turned out to be false in more ways then we could imagine.
If you want to get grimmer, there’s also a hard political angle. The subtle assumption that the opposition’s political base was comprised of rational human beings meant a political win-win for lib hawks. “If Iraq turns into a disaster, it will be the death of the Republican Party. If Iraq is a cakewalk, it could revolutionize middle east relations and do away with the Clinton Double-Encirclement policies.” And this turned out to be false as well: the base is as nutty as the leadership and can not fail, only be failed.
And let’s not forget the level of Rove involved here. When you staff a conflict with private mercenaries and install bureacracies made of hard-core Heritage Foundation ideologues, you can frame any malfesance as a two-sides-to-every-issue BS, and that’s if you don’t own the media.
Bill Murray
@El Cid: did Mike Kay get your nom de Juice?
Lynn Dee
I’ll be glad when interviewers stop saying, “I caught up with so-and-so as he …” — as if so-and-so were a moving train and the interviewer just managed to leap aboard and grab an available handle or railing.
Corner Stone
@PRD:
Plus, through all the cronyism and flat out giveaways to private companies this lucrative war provided, his new shadow RNC will have all the funding it could need.
david
Former Sen. Bob Kerrey (I believe) on Newt: “He has ideas about having ideas”.