That is a photo of some of America’s leading public intellectuals dressed in Renaissance costumes and reciting Shakespeare. The woman on the far right is Sandra Day O’Connor; next to her is former Congressman Mickey Edwards. Somewhat obscured and/or poorly lit — Jane Harman, Joe Klein, Diane Ravitch, John Negroponte, Bowling Alone author Robert Putnam, Stumbling on Happiness author Dan Gilbert, and Ezekiel Emanuel, brother of the mayor of Chicago and bete noire for opponents of “ObamaCare.” Emanuel brandished a sword — and later, a chain mail helmet — as he recited the St. Crispin’s Day speech from Henry V. O’Connor went for laughs — twice — by taking the “first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers” line from Henry VI.
The whole affair was put on by Ken and Carol Adelman. Ken, eschewing the Shakespearean garb for jeans, a western-style shirt, and a brown jacket, led the crowd in lusty cries of “Hussah!” whenever someone really nailed a line delivery.
Adelman helped popularize the term “cakewalk” to describe the Glorious Victory in Iraq. There we have it, a prominent Iraq War cheerleader leading a founding trustee of the Heritage Foundation, the justice who gave us George W. Bush, an AIPCAC double agent, a war criminal, and other assorted rogues in a cheerful celebration…as they all plot to destroy the social safety net and turn teachers into wage slaves. (EDIT: actually, Ravitch doesn’t sound that bad, I assumed she was an educational rightie because Bobo likes her.)
TenguPhule
Oh for the lack of a Hellfire missile.
Fuck them all. Let them burn.
MaxxLange
Oswald: Why dost thou use me thus? I know thee not.
Kent: Fellow, I know thee.
Oswald: What dost thou know me for?
Kent: A knave; a rascal; an eater of broken meats; a base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited, hundred-pound, filthy, worsted-stocking knave; a lily-livered, action-taking whoreson, glass-gazing, superserviceable, finical rogue; one-trunk-inheriting slave; one that wouldst be a bawd, in way of good service, and art nothing but the composition of a knave, beggar, coward, pander, and the son and heir of a mongrel bitch: one whom I will beat into clamorous whining, if thou deniest the least syllable of thy addition.
Al Swearingen, in “Deadwood”, had a more concise way of naming these kinds of fellows….Yangton men
MikeJ
Too much collateral damage. I have nothing against Ezekiel Emanuel, or even the authors.
MaxxLange
note to self: avoid getting into an insult fight with top-level English writers
hilts
OT
Breaking News of the Big Fucking Deal variety:
Rep. Thaddeus McCotter, from Michigan’s 11th District, will officially kick off his bid for the White House on Saturday
h/t http://www.detnews.com/article/20110701/POLITICS02/107010389/McCotter-to-launch-presidential-campaign-Saturday–sources-say
Sarah Proud and Tall
Jesus. What fun I could have there with a punchbowl and a bottle of ex-lax …
Nah, it’s beyond parody.
I need another drink.
Odie Hugh Manatee
Is it too much to ask for a comet to hit them now? Maybe an earthquake, mountain slide or the erupting of a long dormant volcano? The real world is falling apart and they are playing dress-up.
Excuse me while I go vomit.
PurpleGirl
Diane Ravitch has changed her positions, back and forth, over time. She’s been for charter schools and against them. I don’t where her true ideological home is; maybe she doesn’t know either.
Warren Terra
I have nothing against Emanuel, Day O’Connor was pretty good for a Republican-appointed justice (read: not my cup of tea at all, but not Scalia), and I’m sure many of those people have sterlig qualities. And I don’t wish genuine violence on anyone. But that picture, and that situation, is just screaming for some ludicrous cartoonish cataclysm that leaves everyone intact but utterly lacking in whatever dignity their performances and their outfits left them. A firehose of sewage, perhaps.
slightly_peeved
Pity they couldn’t have got Ezekiel’s brother up there too.
“To Fuck or not to Fuck, that is the Fucking question, Motherfucker.”
bryanD
Right after this part, everyone draws room keys out of a hat.
The Ancient Randonneur
Generally I like Weigel. Jane Harman and Joe Klein are leading public intellectuals? Dave, Dave, Dave you’ve been spending way too much time with the Villagers, or maybe he’s on to something and this better explains why this country is in deep trouble right now.
Cheryl from Maryland
While Rome burns.
Zach
Ditto on Emanuel. He was one of the few to forcefully push back in the early days of Tea Party folks making shit up about people.
long ago
Awesome post title. Possibly a permanent post category?
I mean–whenever two or more Villagers are gathered in David Brooks’ name, it looks to me like a meeting of the Taliban. Brooks, Friedman, Dowd, Klein, the whole bunch–they have certainly done more to harm America than most Afghan tribesmen have. So send in the drones!
Oops–it turns out it was a wedding? Oh well, they’ll either love us for bombing them, or they hate us for our freedom.
burnspbesq
@ DougJ:
The charge is failure to properly distinguish between the meaningful and the trivial. How do you plead?
MobiusKlein
Am I the only one here who finds it normal to dress up in RenFaire garb? Certainly more normal than authorizing & covering for illegal wars.
mechanical jacobin
This post is a little nutty. I have zero problems with like half of these people.
Timothy Trollenschlongen (formerly Tim, Interrupted)
Anyone who doesn’t see a problem with so called journalists and alleged progressives actually hobnobbing and chumming it up with these evil fuckwads as they schmooze and scheme to continue sucking the life and light from the universe, has a fucked up bullshit detector.
Joke Line, in particular, should be roughly sodomized with rusty war implements and a batallion of hot, sexy Taliban soldiers, then left to fester in the resulting Santorum.
Then you are an amoral idiot.
mechanical jacobin
I was referring to O’Connor, Ravitch and Emmanuel, but hey, whatever gets you off.
Timothy Trollenschlongen (formerly Tim, Interrupted)
So you’re OK with Sandra Day O’Connor who among other atrocities, cast the more or less swing vote that put GWB in office and ushered in ten years of hell?
amoral idiot is apt!
Timothy Trollenschlongen (formerly Tim, Interrupted)
As for Ravitch and Emmanuel, as alleged progressives, the problem is that they are schmoozing and yukking it up with monsters…instead of running screaming from the room.
I think behavior like that tells us something about a person…people really can be judged by the company they keep.
Catsy
Agreed on both counts. I got to the end of the post and was thinking, “what was the point of this? Was I supposed to be bothered by something they were doing? Seemed kinda geeky and funny.”
Mitch McConnell's Gay Lover
Or cocksuckers.
Free gratis. Also, too.
goblue72
Oh, whatever. At least half of those people are unobjectionable. Ravitch is an honest academic who’s research led her to initially support charter schools and standardized high-stakes testing, and then after honest reflection, changed her mind. People are allowed to do that, unless you are an ideologue. (i.e. moron)
Ezekiel Emmanuel is one of the country’s leading bioethicists and central policy figure in the effort to get us all universal healthcare.
Robert Putnam – a centrist polysci professor at the Kennedy School whose research focus is social capital.
Yes, Edwards is an economic conservative, former 80s era Republican congresscritter and co-founder of the Heritage Foundation. He’s also spend the last decade as a professor at the Kennedy school being not completely insane, an Obama voter and critic of the current monster that conservatism turned into.
Sandra Day O’Connor – a Republican and conservative yes. But generally a middle of the road vote on SCOTUS and if Reagan had appointed a man and not her to SCOTUS, we likely would have seen Roe v. Wade completely overturned.
With the exception of Negroponte, the list looks like a group of Establishment type folks who run the gamut from center-left to center-right.
Big deal. People are allowed to have varying political opinions without being tarred and feathered. Save that kind of ideological B.S. for the teahadist lunatics.
goblue72
@Timothy Trollenschlongen – Really? We’re going to start purity purges based on who people socialize with now? Joe McCarthy would be proud.
Timothy Trollenschlongen (formerly Tim, Interrupted)
What utter horseshit. Where did I call for a purity purge, whatever the hell that is? How would this be implemented and enforced? Do you have ideas? Is that what McCarthy did? Did he just refuse to not party with disgusting people? Not sure where you read me calling for congressional hearings on Aspen attendance…
The people you socialize with tells the observer a lot about your CORE character, not who you may be pretending to be on the outside.
There are about a million other places these faux progressives could have been other than at Aspen fellating their fellow global elites, many of whom are loathseome to the core despite your transparent attempts to rehabilitate them.
You would do well as a Beltway Insider, where it is not what you DO that matters, but what cocktail parties you go to. Could it be that you are a Beltway Wannabe?
Question: Do you draw ANY lines regarding the behavior of the folks with whom you hang out? If so, congratulations: You are purity purging.
Apologist idiot.
Timothy Trollenschlongen (formerly Tim, Interrupted)
Big deal. People are allowed to have varying political opinions without being tarred and feathered. Save that kind of ideological B.S. for the teahadist lunatics.
Freak. Do you have any standards? Do “political opinions” have real world consequences that hurt, cripple, and kill people on a daily basis? Or is it all just a meaningless game to you?
Do you have no problem hanging out with people who enable the above?
The Teatards have political opinions. You should be fine socializing with them. After all, it’s just good, clean, meaningless fun…
…you are shockingly amoral.
goblue72
@Timothy Trollenschlongen – Somebody drank the crazy juice this morning and then went back for seconds.
(another) Josh
Yeah, although Harman and SDO have done terrible things, I tend to agree that Negroponte is the only one who shouldn’t be accepted in polite company and indeed should have been hanged twenty years ago. But his presence in the group speaks volumes about Our Culture’s Elites.
Dollared
What Josh said. The thing that revulses me is that their self definition as elites is the single most important thing to them.
It’s no different than the German and English Generals slaughtering millions of their citizens with shells, machine guns and poison gas in the Great War, and then resuming their social relationships (since after all, they are all cousins) after the War.
You can say many bad things about nationalism, but the minute membership in the MOTU club is more important to someone than citizenship in their country, that someone has passed over to the Dark Side.