Does this happen to you all the time? You start talking politics with a reasonably Real Murkin and he/she tells you “I don’t think Obama is doing such a bad job” and launches into a well-informed pro-Obama, anti-Republican shpiel. When it’s with a tote-bagger, you might reach this point, but there’s an unbelievably long preamble about all the stuff he screwed up. And they might not even reach that point, it might devolve into New Jack Naderism or even Paul Tardism.
I remember back in 1998, all my fine, tote-bagging, Horace-quoting friends couldn’t come out and say “this is a fucking ridiculous coup” without some big lead-in about how a consensual, if inappropriate, sexual relationship between adults was the worst thing Our Republic has ever seen. Meanwhile, Republicans were proud to tell us that they thought George W. Bush was a genius and Democrats have to apologize for supporting Obama at all. And Bush didn’t even catch Osama bin Laden.
Explain to me again how this isn’t sign of liberal weakness.
I’m on ABL’s side. Better an Obot than a Paultard. I’m tired of having to apologize for supporting a successful Democratic president.
Update. MikeJ:
The choice isn’t obot or paultard, it’s being too cool to actually approve of anything. The whole thing smacks of effort, man.
Democrats are also famous for only liking the first album (or better yet, the unreleased demos.)
Corner Stone
A three legged dog walks into a bar. The bartender says, “Help you, friend?”
“I’m looking for the man who shot my Pa.”
DougJ
@Corner Stone:
You know the one about the seven shots of gin?
Lolis
Hear, hear.
We need to be LOUD and PROUD.
Corner Stone
@DougJ: Why does Snoop Dogg need an umbrella?
Fo drizzle.
mk3872
Amen, bro! Obots rule!
MikeJ
The choice isn’t obot or paultard, it’s being too cool to actually approve of anything. The whole thing smacks of effort, man.
Democrats are also famous for only liking the first album (or better yet, the unreleased demos.)
mzrad
While I’m not thrilled with every last thing (such as, why did you guys blow it on the fricken foreclosure relief?), I’m acutely aware of who owns the media and have ignored for months all the doom and gloom of “Obama challenged to retain liberal base” that’s spewn (spewn?) by the traditional media. I’ll take the lesser of two evils any day because the other side is seriously crazy.
Baud
You know what’s a sign of liberal weakness:
Find new friends.
taylormattd
The “progressive” blogs, it’s like you’ve heard of them or something.
Raenelle
Asking why liberals are weak is like asking why birds fly. It’s in their nature. They are committed to parliamentary democracy, to reasoned debate in good faith, to compromise. There is nothing in there that is founded on or even sympathetic to class consciousness. They do fine when 90% of the country agree on the basics of the values upon which the state is founded. But when things split, when you have to take a side, their only response, because it’s their very nature, is to dither. Oh, and to sell you out. Between fighting for their side and making a deal, they’ll go for the deal–by nature, by definition.
To put it in Marxist terms, liberalism is part of bourgeois ideology. It supports it, and it cannot turn against it. They’re all about form and belief in objective fairness, when class warriors can clearly see that sometimes it’s about who’s to be master, that’s all.
DougJ
@Baud:
These people aren’t my friends. Co-workers, acquaintances, etc.
Chuck Butcher
Oooookkkkay. I really like the choice between being plain stupid and willfully ignorant. I suppose there just isn’t anywhere to go…
Criticism is for traitors… (racists?)
Cacti
@mzrad:
Please open your mouth…
Then cram your fist inside.
geg6
I’m right there witcha, Doug. All the so-called “progressives” that I know are Paultards and, surprisingly, the apolitical and blue collar types, who you’d think would be Teabaggers, are telling me that Obama is doing the best he can with the pile of shit he was handed.
Oh, and I, too, love ABL. And Glenn Greenwald and his fanbois can all go fuck off and die already. Nothing but contempt for them all.
taylormattd
And by the way, how uncouth of you to summon to a thread in post-ABL Balloon Juice all of those type of people. You know, the ones other front pagers simply did not care for in ABL’s threads.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I was listening to NPR’s business report today, a long story about the renewed strength of the domestic auto industry, and an interview with a very positive chairman of Fiat-Chrysler. Guess what word was never mentioned? Go on, guess.
(I half heard that clip Rachel Maddow played of Romney talking about what he’s going to leave to his kids and grandkids. He wasn’t actually arguing against the estate tax, was he? He can’t be that stupid. I’ve based all my election cycle anxiety on the idea that Romney won’t give OBama the kind of gifts McCain did. Anybody watching TRMS?)
taylormattd
@Chuck Butcher: Yes, because saying Obama is an incompetent, child-murdering, psychopath who is preparing to lock up Americans indefinitely is “criticism”.
auntieeminaz
Obama has endured more than a reasonable amount of criticism from day one. In this case, both sides do do it. His accomplishments have been overshadowed by the pure hatred of the racists and the manic progressives. I have no problem giving him my unqualified support.
Cacti
@auntieeminaz:
You say that as though they’re two distinct groups.
taylormattd
@Cacti: For some reason, and I’m not really sure why, it reminds me of how popular it used to be for a whole cadre of “mainstream” writers in the press to reflexively start sentences with “Even the liberal New Republic”.
Baud
@DougJ:
You’re forgiven then.
Next time someone wants to complain to you about the Democrats, ask them to give you an example of another progressive organization that has achieved better success.
A lot of progressives are like backseat drivers: They always tell you that your driving wrong, but they’re never able to take the wheel.
Chuck Butcher
@taylormattd:
Thanks for clearing that up, I’m pretty sure I’ve somehow missed doing all those things. Anything else I’m not allowed or does that pretty much cover the ground?
I have a hunch you left a few things out.
auntieeminaz
@Cacti: Now that you mention it. . .
cat48
No apology from me either. I support President Obama; and I’ve mainly stopped posting anywhere because I’m immediately attacked if I sound even slightly Pro O. If he does something I hate, I just tell the Mr. cat48 about it.
I think he’s done a good job with what he had to work with. I figure the Eurozone will implode & everyone will immediately blame him. Or not….
I expect the prez to be attacked, but I wish they’d wait until FLOTUS actually did something before attacking her. This is my main complaint. Leave Michelle aloooone!
Litlebritdifrnt
Well of course you will all do what you like but I would like to point out what is the fucking alternative? Every one of the mother fuckers would bomb Iran tomorrow. And I am supposed to be happy with that? Really?
taylormattd
@Chuck Butcher:
Who said you did them?
Corner Stone
So DougJ, your version of PC v Mac?
Kind of lame attempt on your part. Heart’s not really in it anymore.
Davis X. Machina
Ne contemnes nos, amice, qui Flaccum suaque carmina et legimus et colimus.
taylormattd
@Corner Stone: longer Corner Stone: “I like DougJ, therefore I will pretend he isn’t being sincere, is truly a firebagger, and it just attempting to troll.”
Tom Q
I’m in complete agreement with you, here. Republicans had a guy who oversaw the worst attack on the country since Pearl Harbor, and they shouted every day that he was the only one who could keep us safe. Democrats have a guy who prevented a second Great Depression, saved the American automobile industry, finally achieved the 75-year-old party goal of making health care a national right — and half of them moan about how insufficiently left he is.
Roughly the same was true with Clinton: most Dems I knew poor-mouthed him all the time; now they think he’s the coolest president ever. I said at the time, it was like when Mike Schmidt played for the Phillies, and fans would bust on him for this and that failure. Only when he was about at retirement did they notice, hmm, now that we think about it, he’s the best third baseman in baseball history.
It definitely is a party flaw. Republicans get through tight situations because of their uncanny knack for sticking together; Democrats can blow what ought to be comfortable victories by devolving into factionalism. (See: 2000 election) That’s why I’ve taken to shouting down any “Barack is so disappointing” trolls I encounter, here or elsewhere. He’s the most successfully liberal president the country has had since LBJ was put out to pasture, and anything that disguises that fact is absolute anathema to me.
Angry DougJ
@Corner Stone:
No, I’m pissy about the way things went down with ABL and GG. Genuinely pissy.
Wannabe Speechwriter
What I can’t stand are people who complain about how deeply corrupt the system is and then act all surprised Obama can’t change it overnight.
ChrisNYC
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I saw the Romney thing. He’s incompetent as a pol. Or he’s obsessed with constantly reminding people that he’s RICH RICH RICH. Richer than you, silly voter. Rich. Really rich.
He was trying to connect with regular people, I think. So you know what he said? Settle in. It’s a long story with no payoff.
He said that when he went to his lawyer to write his will they asked him who he wanted to leave his money to. He said to the lawyer, “I want to leave everything to my kids.” The lawyer responded, “How much for the grandkids (who were not yet born)?” Romney said, “Well, my kids can give them whatever they want.” After grandkids born, Romney returned to lawyer and said, “My kids are fine, I want to leave everything to my grandkids.”
You know what the point of that freaking nothing (probably untrue) story is? The point is — Romney is worried about the grandchildren of the country, because of the fucking debt. And also, he has a huge amount of assets to distribute. So, any voters who were lying awake at night worried about Tagg and his kids can sleep soundly.
Davis X. Machina
@Raenelle: Which is why the revolutionaries shoot them first, before moving on to the actual malefactors.
magurakurin
what’s a tote-bagger? more specifically, what’s a Horace-quoting tote-bagger?
Oh, and could you give a little insight into New Jack Naderism?
I’m pretty sure I agree 100% with your post, but I’m struggling with some terminology. It’s just so hard to keep up…or…are you a little stoned?
cheers…I think…I’m pretty sure….yeah, I’m sure…right on.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
There are a lot of critiques of Obama that are valid, the trouble is most of Obama’s critics from the left are unwilling or unable to acknowledge A) any of the good Obama has done; B) that Congress actually plays a role in politics; C) that the media, low-info independents and non-voting in the mid-terms also play a role in politics, a far more influential one than the self-righteous screaming meemies who imagine themselves to be Obama’s (betrayed) base.
Corner Stone
@Angry DougJ: I’ve got a few more jokes I can share. My 7 year old’s got a million of ’em. A million of ’em, I tells ya!
Hill Dweller
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I’ll catch the midnight rebroadcast. Right now Anthony Bourdain is on my TV slurring his way through San Fran.
Back on topic, I think people will one day look back at this time and wonder how the republicans got away with straight up nihilism. In the middle of a once in a lifetime economic collapse, they tried tearing down the f’n government. And they’ve paid no price for it…yet.
Angry DougJ
@magurakurin:
Google tote-bagger and fine Horace-quoting friends.
Lev
I find the Obot viewpoint and the Paultard viewpoint to be just as exhausting. Obama’s been more good than bad for the country, easily. But there have been plenty of blown calls and disappointments along the way, and his governing persona hasn’t matched much with what I thought I was getting in 2008. This ain’t a binary choice, and ultimately the jury is still out–if he gets another term, then a lot of the good stuff sticks around. I hope that happens. That is all.
Brandon
Glad to see the full throated defense of Democratic Preznits and Liberals. Just hope you can pull back from your flirtations with pimping Romney’s inherent moderate decency. Maybe one day you will understand that even if he don’t dance with snakes and talk in tongues on Sundays, he is one of them and will govern every bit like one of them. And it amused me that the lesson you learned from 2000 was that the media would intentionally gang up on the candidate they didn’t like, when the real lesson is that they will fall over themselves to excuse away Republicans with the whole, ‘don’t worry he has to say that, but he don’t mean it’ dodge, all the while going to town on Democrats. Or do you forgot a major theme of 2008 was Obama letting the media off the hook with his whole ‘kick the tires’ speech? The level of scrutiny given to Obama was so intense that every reporter in the country was hitting F5 for eviidence of a secret ‘whitey tape’ and researching and writing stories about some certified nut who says he smoked crack and had sex with him. It is amazing to me how long it is taking you to understand that IOKIYAR works in both directions. Anyway, glad to see at least that you seem to be catching on, because your rendition of Leave Mittens Alone was a bit sad. Ill thought out at the very least.
taylormattd
@Angry DougJ: I want to thank you for saying that. I’m glad there is one front pager willing to do so. Frankly, I had let the whole Anne Laurie shit go, but after this mess with ABL, I started to feel like there was a major problem here. No apology, nothing after she posts her screed against another front pager, and then this whole situation. It’s nice to see somebody say something about it.
Angry DougJ
@taylormattd:
I’m not happy about it. I’ll address it in a post at some point.
Cacti
@Lev:
Okay, I’ll play.
Besides the Democratic and Republican candidates, who is the other viable choice?
El Cid
I really am having a hard time imaging what crowds I’m likely to run into saying what it is I think DougJ’s suggesting they’re likely to say, and how I’m then supposed to respond.
AxelFoley
@auntieeminaz:
This.
Omnes Omnibus
@MikeJ: That band the the bassist was in before, that was the cool one. These guys have been sellouts since the beginning. Poseur.
kc
This shit is boring.
LT
This is such obvious trolling of your own site that it deserves suspicion, and unfortunately causes deserved suspicion of other posts. Oy.
Fuck you, Angry DougJ.
Jim C
The hipster in Scott Pilgrim said it best:
“You know, their first album was much better than their first album.”
magurakurin
@Angry DougJ: Lawyers who bring their own bags to supermarkets?
Being an expat can be tough sometimes…
anyway, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t like these totebaggers you speak of…
Jewish Steel
I don’t see any of my progessive betters running for coroner or alderman or dog-catcher. I can only conclude from this that they were never really serious.
Valdivia
Thanks for this pots DougJ.
@Tom Q: a thousand times yes to what you said.
Lev
@Cacti: Hey dum dum, I wrote that I hope Obama gets a second term.
DCLaw1
Blogs (like any relatively impersonal platform) have a way of escalating tensions and making mild contrasts appear sharper and more irreconcilable than they really are. Can’t tell you how many times just turning the volume down a bit and being the first to approach the other side in good faith has resulted in real understanding and rapprochement.
Not always true in politics, obviously, but day-to-day life, and general discussion, are not “politics.”
Matt Mangels
@taylormattd:
There was a problem, indeed. But she’s gone now.
Marc
I was just thinking of this the other day when I caught a trailer for Portlandia, the all but unwatchable comedy show that skewers one easy liberal/hippie cliche after another. Liberals are great at poking fun at themselves (okay, ourselves) but never go after conservatives. When you get that rare conservative comedy (like King of the Hill)–they also spend all their time going after liberals.
amk
libruls = whiners. As simple as that.
AxelFoley
@Tom Q:
Spot the fuck on.
DCLaw1
@Jim C:
Haha!
SiubhanDuinne
I can’t wait to read Obama’s postPresidency memoir to find out fo realz what he thought about all this shit.
I hope i’ll have to wait until late 2017 to find out.
Pillsy
I dunno. As crazy as all the purity trolling bullshit makes me, at least we aren’t about to nominate Mitt fucking Romney because the feudal lords of our party told us it’s a good idea.
Trentrunner
Sorry, ABL is a weapons-grade shit-stirring drama queen, and BJ is light-years better without that nonsense.
Now, some other FPers might be looking over their shoulders, but that’s a salutary by-product of this contretemps.
Watch what you say. :)
amk
@SiubhanDuinne: I doubt Obama is kiss and tell type.
geg6
Ooo, Doug, nobody brings out the trolls like you do (well, now that ABL is gone, that is).
Cacti @19 is correct…I have a hard time distinguishing between the the two.
I’m also with Tom Q @30 with having had enough of the purity trolls who love to bash Obama and plan to call them out every chance I get from now on. Fuck them all with a rusty pitchfork. They are no better, and are probably magnitudes worse, than the entire GOP.
Killah of da Tote Bagz
Better Bush than Saddam. Objectively pro-Islamofascism, etc.
amk
@Trentrunner: Really ? Watch over their shoulders ? Why ?
Violet
Obama hasn’t been perfect. No one would have been. Not in real life, anyway. He’s done a really good job with the shitty situation he was left. He’s got my unqualified support. And especially so given the alternatives.
MildlyAmusedRainbowPerson
Good, if not perfect, president versus a collection of hate-peddling, ignorant, greedy, sex-obsessed lunatics?
Gee, have to think hard about that one.
Omnes Omnibus
@amk: Sorry, but fuck that. I am a liberal. I am not giving the word away to leftists. Liberals and leftists both come from left of center and often agree on many things, but they are not the same thing.
Marc
@Raenelle: A liberal is someone who won’t take his own side in an argument.
Then again, most of the people I know who fit that description today call themselves “progressives.”
SiubhanDuinne
@Tom Q:
That really was horrific, when Virginia refused to put Newt on the primary ballot because he failed to get enough signatures.
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
i simply don’t understand how glenn greenwald becomes a hill to die on in the first place. i can, and do take him or leave him. so when the antigreenwaldians start pointing out that he moved to brazil because he has the means to circumvent the stupidity of doma and existing laws, or that obama has made it theoretically possible that his partner could stay on his partner’s parents insurance for nearly another 5 years! , i just don’t get the sniping on either side, and i am becoming proud of that, instead of thinking there is a side i must be willing to take.
there will always be lefty turf wars, and you can’t make a point about how ron paul sucks at this or that, without someone trying to top you with the “real” reason why he sucks, or why you should suddenly care that he is becoming a mild inconvenience to the romney corronation. yeah, he has always been about, or close to, a bunch of horrible things, pardon me if i thought it was more common knowledge than it apparently is.
i wanna see romney get it from all angles, i wanna see some folks who have been red team reconsider if the strict order and hierarchy they favor threatens to get messy. i don’t see why we need to beat the drum the gop beats, so romney has an easy time.
all that said, i don’t care about glenn greenwald, and i don’t think he is all that important, especially on things like ron paul. he is wrong, buit really who cares?
Chuck Butcher
I suppose that when ‘the other side’ is batshit crazy it is pretty easy to get caught up in the idea that your guy is real good. We have President Obama and the Congress we’ve got and then the possibility of President Crazy or Lying Rich Guy and whatever Congress that results in.
We have an economic system that has become so broken that little mess arounds will barely slow down the wreck. A nicely played tune on the deck of the Titanic doesn’t keep people out of the water. There are a handful of pols with the nerve to talk about the iceberg and turning the ship and it isn’t enough.
The President can’t talk like that and get elected or re-elected and one of the reasons for that is the band gets cheered on while the ship goes down. That isn’t the fault of people who run for office – it is the fault of an electorate that demonstates that fiddling is what they want.
I don’t want fucking crazy, but I also want something better than not fucking crazy. I may push a bit at pols, but I push a lot harder at the people.
amk
@Omnes Omnibus: Note the spelling.
jl
@geg6:
Hmmm… more trolls when DJ posts? I speculate that DougJ is half of them.
Hey DougJ, how many spoofs you running tonight. Aint there some football sporting contest on you should be watching?
As for the post: if enough sane Real Murkins turn out in November, I think liberals will be strong enough. If not, the Lord help us.
DCLaw1
@Marc: It’s a little weird that you’re evaluating comedy shows for how even-handedly they attack supposedly liberal and conservative ideologies. Portlandia is just trying to be funny, and it quite often is. The jokes come from genuine love of Portland (as the Fresh Air interview made clear) and the “liberal” shibboleths they skewer. Doesn’t need to be part of some mathematically evaluated ideological battle in the sky.
Warren Terra
I like ABL and want her to return. I don’t agree with everything she does, but I admire her passion greatly.
But what makes me rather adore her is that so many of her enemies are such obsessive pissants. I would read the comments on her posts just to savor their salty tears.
Baud
@Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal:
Greenwald is the blogosphere’s Tim Tebow.
Omnes Omnibus
@amk: Okies. Make my point a general one then.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@MildlyAmusedRainbowPerson: You left off militant and scared of their own shadows.
SiubhanDuinne
@amk: Maybe not, but after the White House, not much to lose. I wouldn’t be surprised if he allowed himself to say what he really REALLY thinks of some of the scummy racist obstructionists who have done everything possible to undermine and sabotage his presidency.
I am willing to volunteer to be his “as told to” ghoster.
amk
@Baud: That can’t be.
cole hates one and loves the other.
Corner Stone
@Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal:
It’s Angry TrollJ’s world, we’re all just Musburgers commenting through it.
Baud
@amk: We need to get Greenwald to beat the Steelers in the playoffs, so John can see the light.
David in NY
Oh, noes! (blushing)
Cacti
@Lev:
Awww.
Did I go and spoil your platitude?
Omnes Omnibus
@amk: Cole is a complicated man?
DCLaw1
Haha, good god! As I peruse these comments, I wonder: when did the blogosphere become 80% meta navel-gazing upon meta navel-gazing?
[Admittedly meta navel-gazing.]
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Chuck Butcher:
My favorite scene from V for Vendetta – and while it is a good movie, it’s kind of silly to be using the mask as a symbol of American resistance – is when V is on TV telling everyone that it is there fault for letting the leaders get away with what they were doing. Where’s Mr. Universe so we can broadcast something like that to most Americans.
auntieeminaz
@Warren Terra: Absolutely agree!
geg6
Wonder how Trentrunner and Matt Mangels feel about being lumped in with Corner Stone and Kola Noscopy in my mind? ABL being gone is a huge loss for this blog. You know what wouldn’t be? If assholes like those guys would GTFO and never come back. Funny, isn’t it that it’s such a majority of men (most likely WHITE men) who trolled her posts here but are too cowardly to try the same shit at her blog? And they all hate Obama, too. Hmmmm….
DCLaw1
Maybe someone more familiar with Cole than me can tell me: does he mean these occasional, plaintive “Tebow” tweets to be as utterly hilarious as they are? Because they are utterly hilarious.
[Fellow Steelers fan here, incidentally.]
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
@Baud:
point taken, but i might say that tebow is more objectively objectionable on just about everything, than is being popularly conveyed.
Pillsy
@DCLaw1:
2002. At the very latest.
taylormattd
@Matt Mangels: Don’t quit your day job.
Cacti
Well, I disagree with your premise Angry DougJ, because our elections aren’t a zero-sum game, and it’s not a binary choice where we’re forced to say it’s either Obama or the Republicans, and Obama has disappointed me in many ways, but the lesser of two evils…
and blah bitty blah blah bullshit bullshit.
Now pass me a Pabst Blue Ribbon.
amk
@Baud: I want to see a cage fight of tebow and gg with cole as referee. Guess who will double tag who ?
jl
@DCLaw1:
The blogs are new high brow salons, and we can all be catty aristocrats.
It has always been thus, except we don’t have to show up in the same place, pretend we like the food and booze, and it saves the trouble of the horse and carriage and putting on the periwig.
Bad side is that harder to pick up salon bimbo or himbo of choice.
jake the snake
You vote for the centrist-corporatists you have, not the
civil liberatarian social democrats you wish you had.
You do it because, as bad as they are, they are infinitely better than the alternative.
taylormattd
@amk: At this point, the only thing Greenwald could do to piss off John would be to write a negative post about the Steelers.
Marc
@DCLaw1: No, I don’t expect or want evenhandedness. I’m sure that Portlandia does come from an affectionate place (I wish it came from a funnier place; YMMV) but the end result is that liberals, who are prone to self-mockery and self-criticism, put out shows that take themselves apart whereas conservatives, who always direct their criticisms outwards… also put out shows that take liberals apart. One side unilaterally disarms.
LT
I just saw the late, second Tebow POST here a while ago. THAT is hilarious.
amk
@Omnes Omnibus: I will settle for he’s nuts.
DCLaw1
@jl: I like that.
Omnes Omnibus
@jl: I put on my periwig. One must have standards.
Emma
@Warren Terra: Yep. Exactly. The woman is blessed in the quality of her enemies.
poco
@geg6: Yes! Absolutely. You got it in one.
David in NY
Jake the Snake has said about all there is to say. Too bad, but there it is.
Omnes Omnibus
@amk: PotAYto, potAHto.
Marc
To put it another way, you never, ever see a show criticizing conservative culture from within the way that Portlandia does left-liberal culture. King of the Hill had its moments, but about 90% of those episodes ended with Hank kicking the ass of whatever decadent coastal liberal dared to interfere with his family dynamic.
taylormattd
@LT: yeah, it was pretty fabulous. I haven’t said much here, but I was hoping somehow that both teams could lose. There is nothing more insufferable than that religious fanatic Tebow and the vomit-inducing press he gets.
But . . . I still hate the Steelers for stealing the Superbowl from the Seahawks. Although when push came to shove, turns out I hate Tebow more, because I was sickened that the Broncos won.
amk
@Omnes Omnibus: LOL. Right on.
El Cid
@Marc: “Leverage” is a TV show by an actual liberal blogger, and it does a pretty good job of taking down the ‘conservatives’ and authoritarian and business shills and such on a weekly basis.
amk
@geg6: Yup.
poco
@DCLaw1: I think those plaintive tweets are meant to be hilarious. I can’t imagine a planet where the tweeter could see them as unself-conscious and sincere. Especially not a planet with Balloon Juice in its blog-roll.
DCLaw1
@Marc: I understand the concept of liberal unilateral disarmament in politics, truly. But we’re talking about comedy dude!
See, if anything, I would find conservative humor that effectively targets itself, and only itself, as a scary sign that the ideology is getting healthy enough to be relevant again. The ability to poke fun of one’s self is a sign of strength, not weakness.
Anyhow, I’m more distressed by the fact that you don’t find Portlandia funny. Did you see the one where they try to order the locally raised chicken? Genius!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2LBICPEK6w
Daren
whoever cares for your affairs will sort it out for you
taylormattd
@geg6: A-MEN.
Mnemosyne
@Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal:
I think a lot of Greenwald fans have been deliberately misunderstanding why people point out that GG doesn’t live here, and they especially love to try and turn it into some kind of anti-gay slam.
We’re not saying that he’s a bad person for not living here, or that he doesn’t have valid reasons for living in another country, we’re pointing out that the view of the US that you get through the media is not going to be as accurate as the one you get by actually living in the country. Hell, we’re constantly complaining that the media can’t get an accurate view of the whole country since they never leave Washington DC, which at least is still within the US.
Bill Bryson wrote a whole frickin’ book about having to re-adjust to the reality of what it’s like to live in America after years away as an ex-pat in Britain and yet we’re supposed to believe that GG is somehow magically immune to what every other ex-pat experiences?
Cacti
@Marc:
Or, as someone mentioned in a previous thread, statements that politicians make that are considered acceptable discourse.
You’ll never hear a Democratic pol sneeringly call out his opponent for having “Mississippi values” or “South Carolina values” the way you see Goopers talk about Mass, or San Francisco, or Chicago, etc.
AA+ Bonds
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
New Criticism happened and thank the Lord since we can now laugh at stuff like this post
taylormattd
@Mnemosyne: this is all true, but it’s a red herring. The idea that a significant amount of criticism of Greenwald is about him living abroad is an utter fantasy, a strawman concocted by a person seeking to trivialize criticism of Greenwald.
The vast majority of Greenwald criticism comes from the fact that he is a grade-A asshole; a dick who blithely claims people who don’t agree with him support child-murder. A libertarian fanatic so delusional that he fluffs a racist, misogynist, homophobe, conspiracy theorist who seeks to eliminate all of the federal government. Etc., etc.
Samara Morgan
@DougJ: nononono
i wanna hear you tell me that Erik “beyond unions” Kain is a “liberal” and “progressive liberal” Elias Isqueef has some “good ideas”.
hildebrand
I have never walked out on a movie. Of all the concerts I have gone to, only one truly sucked (and that was not the Huey Lewis and News concert that I was dragged to). I have finished every novel I have ever picked up (though it took me a bit to finally finish The Island of the Day Before – and I love Umberto Eco). Once I get into a band, I continue to give their new albums a spin. (Ok, that way of speaking about it may make me a bit dated.) When I vote for a politician, unless they are wholly and utterly depraved or corrupt, I will continue to give them a chance. I have never just given up on a friend. Hell, I still give the GOS a shot.
We are human. We make mistakes. We will never be perfect. Knowing that, I tend to be forgiving. Here’s the thing, of all the Democratic Presidents in my lifetime, Obama is the easiest to defend. Period. Why it is that so many seem so ready to throw him overboard for some idealized image of liberal perfection is beyond me. We don’t get perfect, we get pretty good, and that is sufficient for me.
Would I like to see perfect? Sure, but I know human beings well enough to know that that will never happen. Can’t happen. So I shoot for the next best thing. Does that mean I settle sometimes for something that isn’t as good as it should be? Yep. But it sure as hell is better than the alternative.
Omnes Omnibus
@Marc: How many writers are liberals? Isn’t there an aphorism that one should write about what one knows?
Marc
@El Cid:
Of 27% crazification factor fame, right? Good point.
DCLaw1: I would be a lot more tolerant of diffidence and endless self-criticism in liberal comedy if we had less of it in liberal politics (and liberal culture in general).
Ed
What does tote-bag mean?
gogol's wife
I haven’t read the thread and may not, but I’m with you all the way. Excellent post. I miss ABL.
Marc
@Omnes Omnibus: I think that’s part of it. I think an even bigger part is that they all live in New York or Los Angeles (or Portland, apparently), and liberal targets are closer at hand. Although you’d think the LA burbs and Orange County would be a target-rich environment…
AA+ Bonds
In other words, the only problem that arises for American resistance using the Davis Guy Fawkes mask is among people who are determined to find a problem with it, i.e., a tiny amount of pseudo-intellectuals
piratedan
i don’t understand the reason to defend Greenwald either. The guy has used sockpuppets to defend his own positions and attack his critics. He’s a younger version of Sullivan, writes well, appears to use reason and logic and still comes up with a WTF conclusion. Gets caught up in his own cleverness instead of simply stating something along the likes of Ron Paul supports some notions that progressives and liberals can support but is completely unacceptable on his positions regarding minorities and civil rights. Gee, how tough would that have been to explain?
El Cid
@Mnemosyne: If generalized, this would mean I’d lose out on a tremendous amount I’ve learned in my life by reading about the United States from people who don’t live here.
However, since in the end it’s what they write, and the arguments and evidence within, which inform me, what matters is what gets written, where ever it is that they’re living at the time the piece is written.
Chuck Butcher
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
I’ve played a politician in real life and had to watch what worked and didn’t with audiences and watch my mouth – and have an ooops moment. (tooth ache, lack of sleep, temper – ooops) It isn’t easy. It also means knowing what just won’t work and will get you killed with the voters.
If you can get past the getting elected hurdle and the electorate isn’t where you’d like, then you try to bring them along. Obviously since I’m online in OR and not DC I didn’t get past that hurdle and there isn’t a snowflakes chance in hell I’d try that again, but the electorate still is the issue. I’ve beaten myself stupid over the years trying to get people registered and to the polls and the most common problem is “they’re all the same.”
The pols are not going to stick their necks on the chopping block, they’ll take a risk when it isn’t suicidal. That means the goddam electorate has to be willing to say “not crazy” doesn’t mean you can’t do better. I want a second Obama Admin to push at and maybe help with that push with the electorate.
I don’t see any politician with an uncritical eye, ever. They are politicians, not my girl-friend. (I’m married) Every one of them needs to be pushed and to be criticized when they’re short of what needs be done. And every one of them will be short of it. Politics is not about being ahead of the curve.
Mnemosyne
@Marc:
@DCLaw1:
You both have really good points, but I think I fall onto DCLawl’s side here. IMO, the reason there isn’t any really good comedy critiquing conservative positions is that there aren’t any. They’re constantly changing to reflect whatever it is needs to be argued that day. Like Oakland, there is no there there, which makes it almost impossible to make jokes about.
Imagine trying to make a joke about Romney’s 180 over climate change. There’s no joke to make, because he just flat-out denies that he ever held the pro-climate change position in the first place.
If you’re going to joke about the emperor having no clothes, someone on the other side has to at least be willing to admit that most people wear clothes.
Kola Noscopy
@taylormattd:
I’m curious as to why it hurts your feelings that one front pager would rag on another, as if it hasn’t happened before on BJ?
How does it affect your life?
Omnes Omnibus
@piratedan:
What was the middle thing again?
/Otto
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@Omnes Omnibus: No one understands him but his women.
SiubhanDuinne
Seriously? My #83 from half an hour ago is “awaiting moderation”? For why?
kc
@DCLaw1, just read those tweets. They are hysterical. That Cole guy is pretty funny; he should start a blog…
AA+ Bonds
@DCLaw1:
Yes, of course, for example the Nazis were well-known for poking fun at themselves and allowing others to poke fun at them.
This is a wrongheaded false equivalency between the right and the left that misidentifies their fundamental relationship to each other
poco
@gogol’s wife: Yeah–I miss ABL, too. Its really distressing that the way the whole thing devolved. i have been mostly a lurker–but that was some pretty stupid shit.
Samara Morgan
and NO MikeJ you intransigent assclown.
the choice is which eumeme does your fucking tribal wiring require you to support?
if you and DougJ are gunna lay down for the glibertarians in hopes of fucking civilly and politely CONVERTING them, then we have already lost.
piratedan
@Omnes Omnibus: well as long as you can refrain from hanging me outside a window by my ankles, we can skip ahead to the abject apology ;-)
Omnes Omnibus
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN): Finally. Thank you.
SiubhanDuinne
@SiubhanDuinne:
Oh, wait, that was the duplicate that I requested be deleted because it was a duplicate.
Excuse me, I meant to shout, BECAUSE IT WAS A FUCKINGDUPLICATEPOST.
Um, DougJ, it’s fine if you want to go ahead and delete it now. Thanks ever so.
Spectre
What a dumb article by one of the remaining incestuous clique of Obama apologists.
Literally exam the money quote again:
“Explain to me again how this isn’t sign of liberal weakness.”
HINT: Objections to non-liberally things aren’t a sign of liberal weakness. It’s a sign of liberal weakness to call non-liberally things liberal.
Also LOL at the constant attempts to smear Greenwald again with the false Ron Paul binary.
Piles of stupid.
Samara Morgan
@kc: twitter is Coles natural metier.
140 chars or less.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@AA+ Bonds:
This isn’t so much a left/right thing. When the Bolsheviks left them rolling in the aisles, it was just the heads.
Arundel
@Warren Terra:
Jesus Christ, you win the medal for the most laughably melodramatic piece of hyperbole and overblown sentiment I’ve read all day. Why not tell us how someday you’ll piss on the graves of ABL’s detractors? Oh, “enemies”. God, get a sense of proportion on things, a grip. I completely understand why ABL has admirers, her many good qualities. I am just not loving this martyrdom crap. She has her own blog, her own Twitter. Negative comments, or Anne Laurie were not what made her flounce, as opposed to what comments here imply. No , she flounced from here because she felt Cole let her down somehow, on Twitter, and made a graceless, noisy exit, insulting Cole and everyone else as she left, of her own volition. John took it graciously, she continued trashing him and this place elsewhere. “Salty tears” of her “enemies”? Give me a break. It’s just blogging, and the amount of handwringing over her leaving is frankly, ridiculous.
Omnes Omnibus
@Samara Morgan: Angry DougJ basically said no to that. And MikeJ wasn’t saying that approvingly. You are missing a snark gene, aren’t you?
AA+ Bonds
@Samara Morgan:
I do wonder if the Democrats will survive liberal unwillingness to imagine the workings of the conservative mind
Spectre
Also LOL @ the following:
“Meanwhile, republicans get to be principle free hacks,so why can’t we!!!?!?!?”
Weaksauce all around.
Samara Morgan
@poco: i miss ABL A LOT. she hated me becuz i fucked with Hall Monitor Allan and “Middle East Expert” Em Hauser, but i cherished her.
Because She was honest.
Omnes Omnibus
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN): Robespierre was famous for his sense of humor too.
DCLaw1
@AA+ Bonds: OK
AA+ Bonds
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN):
That is a fair enough assessment if you accept the Bolsheviks as leftists, and I do: DCLaw1 is wrong perhaps not because of the nature of the Right but because the power to demand that your followers, and ultimately everyone else, stop making fun of you is a lot of power
I am pretty used to American liberals living in fantasyland over things like this, I just wish that contemporary international politics were more of a Thing in American schooling
Spectre
@LT:
As predicted, ABL’s stunt gave an opening for the rest of the Obama authoritarians to up their propaganda and trolling on Cole’s site.
kdaug
@jl: Wait, y’all ain’t wearing your periwigs?
Samara Morgan
@Omnes Omnibus: im just fucking sick to death of pretending the other side has “good ideas”.
they dont have any “good ideas”.
their “good ideas” mean our death.
AA+ Bonds
@Samara Morgan:
I see a lot of their “ideas” as stemming from pure libido, a form of sexual sadomasochism. There was a time when people acknowledged this as the scientific point of view
DCLaw1
This is actually kind of funny.
Kola Noscopy
@geg6:
Why would any sensible person spend more than ten minutes, the time it takes to grasp the level of insanity, at ACL’s Clown Sewer? I’m sure she bans anyone who disagrees with her anyway.
That said, I did go over there last week, for nine minutes, and left screaming after reading some psycho front pager claim to have been sexually assaulted by a doctor who checked his prostate during a sports exam. Seriously: the finger went in, came out, the doctor said “next” and the front pager claims he was violated sexually on a par with rape and understands what that is all about.
My god, ACLC is an asylum.
Corner Stone
@geg6: Damn, eemom. That hurts.
dogwood
@piratedan:
I disagree that GG is a good writer. He’s competent at best. Sullivan is a much better writer, hands down. GG is a guy who lacks the discipline it takes to be more generally effective. He can’t control himself, and when he gets mad he gets ugly. If he didn’t get paid to write and tweet, he’d be just another Kola Noscopy. And I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that he is indeed, Kola Noscopy.
Angry DougJ
@Kola Noscopy:
Fuck you.
Samara Morgan
@Omnes Omnibus: i have a sense of humor too.
the GOP debates are just White People Problems.
AA+ Bonds
@DCLaw1:
Well I’ve certainly been owned
Laertes
I was gone for a week and didn’t know ABL had flounced. Curious, I dug through the archives to find it and I suppose the thing to say about it is that her departure was of a piece with her work here.
Watching the ABL and Greenwald disciples go at it in that thread, each trying to outdo the other in tendentiousness and manufactured outrage, it occurred to me that each camp deserved the other.
Hope you guys all find some place to keep it going, ideally far from here.
AA+ Bonds
(not sarcasm) :(
AA+ Bonds
@Laertes:
It is certainly a net gain
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
What the people complaining about liberals telling jokes about themselves or not adopting Republican tactics really remind me of are the folks who once argued that liberal democracies were inherently weaker than totalitarian dictatorships. There really were many who thought that our willingness to do things like hold elections during wartime and actually care about human rights would make it impossible for us to beat the Kaiser/Nazis/Japanese/Soviets.
It’s the same thing. In the long run, being willing to do things like laugh at ourselves and adhere to the truth are *strengths*, not weaknesses. The fundamental pessimists are those who insist that we must be just like our enemies or go under. That argument was bullshit in 1916, it was bullshit in 1941 and it’s bullshit now. Stop using them as your measuring stick for how to behave.
Mnemosyne
@El Cid:
Not to sound snarky, but can you name a few? In my experience, there are a lot of writers out there who claim that they have valuable insights about America, but end up sounding like Lady Malvern:
The only one of ’em who I think has something of a handle on Americans is Neil Gaiman, and that’s because he thinks we’re all fucking nuts and freely admits that there are certain parts of American culture that he will never, ever understand no matter how long he lives here.
Samara Morgan
@Omnes Omnibus: saying and doing are two different things, right?
there are no “obots.”
there are sane peeps and than there are conservatives and libertarians.
which are you?
AA+ Bonds
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN):
Agreed, although you’ve mistyped “can be” as “are”. Also, being unwilling to do things like laugh at yourself or adhere to the truth can be strengths, not weaknesses
The prophet Nostradumbass
@Angry DougJ: That guy’s not right in the head.
CT Voter
Like the adjective to the name, DougJ.
The tote-baggers in my universe are still wishing Russ Feingold had primaried Obama. I don’t have too many conversations with the tote-baggers, any longer, because the tote-baggers long for some political situation that doesn’t exist. Nor do they make phone calls to their elected representatives, or write letters, or anything else. They trudge to their voting places on general election day with heavy hearts, sad that things have come to this point. And then they preen about the fact that THEY VOTED.
Um, I guess this means I’m an AngryCTVoter.
AA+ Bonds
ITS ALL A RICH TAPESTRY
AA+ Bonds
Seriously, when most liberals write or say “Republican tactics” they mean “shit we’d rather not know our side does”
Warren Terra
@Kola Noscopy:
You’ve named yourself for your propensity to stick your head up your own ass; we really shouldn’t expect a higher level of commentary from you.
Mnemosyne
@AA+ Bonds:
Or among those who actually read V for Vendetta and realize that Moore is genuinely questioning whether V’s tactics will actually lead to more freedom or to just another fascist dictatorship.
Fascism in a Guy Fawkes mask is still fascism.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@AA+ Bonds: If you can consistently identify which time is which, more power to you. More often than not, it’s the ability and willingness to do those things that is the stronger way. Since no one has proven very good at identifying which times are which, I’d prefer to stick with them on a regular basis.
Now, the liberal tendency to indecisive navel gazing, that’s a weakness. But there’s no reason to think that a sense of humor and basic honesty necessarily lead to indecisiveness.
AA+ Bonds
@Warren Terra:
. . . . . . .
AA+ Bonds
@Mnemosyne:
Go back and read the post I made right before that one for your answer
Kola Noscopy
@Angry DougJ:
LOL.
the response of a true master of the written word, and appropriately enough one who compares his skills favorably with those of the unlamented ACL.
I’ll respond at a level you can grasp: “no, dougj, fuck YOU.”
MikeJ
@CT Voter:
The guy who couldn’t win a Senate race in Wisconsin? They really aren’t very smart, are they?
AA+ Bonds
Who in God’s name gets out of school anymore thinking that authorial intent determines meaning
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
@Mnemosyne:
its still pretty pointless. anyone who supports ron paul for any reason is wrong, or probably has single issue voter level priorities. which is usually wrong, and tragic.
the problem when you attack those sort of things, is that you are saying that glenn greenwald can never be right about anything. its like diving at the knees in an intrasquad scrimmage.
apparently, you must think he has value when he is aimed at a mutual target, or you wouldn’t bother. why kneecap him entirely, unless you are being selfish or self-aggrandizing?
Samara Morgan
@Mnemosyne: Stephenson gets us.
Morgan gets us.
Omnes Omnibus
@Samara Morgan: Oh, for fuck’s sake, m_c, no one really thinks they have good ideas. They are more fun to talk about than the Democratic primaries. Do you know who is on the ballot in the WI D primary? One person.
@Samara Morgan: I never said you did not have a sense of humor. I suggested that snark passes you by.
@Samara Morgan: I have been a Democrat longer than you have been alive. Step the fuck back. K?
DCLaw1
@Mnemosyne: Even if we call it a form of bias, isn’t there value in having the “bias” of an expat? Do all perspectives about America have to come from within America?
Speaking from my own experience being abroad for a reasonably extended period of time, I believe that my perspective on America had been improved, not worsened, by the absence. Not to say that one must be outside the US to be a fair commentator on it, just that maybe we shouldn’t reject that perspective as inherently flawed?
Also, GG maintains many contacts with people in the US, and he comes back regularly. He’s not exactly an exile high in the mountains of Tibet.
srv
Yer like all those wingnuts talking in code.
It isn’t the hippies fault they’ve been abused by real murikan Reagan democrats like DougJ for 30 years.
Beaten dog and all that.
Omnes Omnibus
@DCLaw1: Sure, there might be value in a different perspective. OTOH, it should be acknowledged that the perspective different.
Corner Stone
Love it. During the 2010 elections an overwhelming majority of voters polled in the US believed Obama had raised their taxes.
But perspective people! Perspective!
amk
@CT Voter: They have a whole lot of losers as their idols, grayson, kucinich, wiener ….
Omnes Omnibus
@srv: For the most part, totebaggers are not hippies. If you don’t like the blog, don’t bother with it.
ETA a vital word.
DCLaw1
@AA+ Bonds: Do you believe in Total Victory on the Internet? I don’t. I have exactly two reasons for commenting on blogs: either to (1) laugh and be amused or (2) genuinely discuss topics, without regard to whether I think I can declare myself the winner at the end.
I sincerely don’t mean that as a challenge, just a statement of intent and disposition.
AA+ Bonds
I’m raising the suck-my-dick tax right now, and you’re all in the top bracket ;)
AA+ Bonds
@DCLaw1:
I meant I thought you were trolling, pure-trolling
DCLaw1
@Omnes Omnibus:
Agreed, but who is saying it shouldn’t be acknowledged?
Odie Hugh Manatee
Unapologetic Obama supporter here, no need to even look at the other ‘options’. Is he perfect? Nope. Is he going to “do the right thing” every single time? Nope. But I do believe that he is a good person and is doing what he can, in a way that he sees he can get it done. Though I may not agree with Obama on everything and dislike some of what he has done, he’s the only sane, realistic option out there right now. Anyone who thinks otherwise is fucking crazy, full stop. It’s Obama or a bug-fuck crazy winger, those are our options this year.
Pick your side.
Mnemosyne
@AA+ Bonds:
Uh, I’m not talking about authorial intent. You finished reading V for Vendetta and actually thought that everything was going to be okay and freedom was coming for everyone?
Or — let me guess — you never actually read the book, you just watched the movie and you’re basing your opinions about the book on the movie, which is kind of like watching the Demi Moore version of The Scarlet Letter and deciding that Hawthorne was primarily concerned about women’s orgasms.
AA+ Bonds
I simply wonder what is the point of pointing out this 0.0001% of the Left that hates victory, over and over, unless you are an agent of the Right
It seems like a completely irrational and suicidal response to reading something that gets your goat up
srv
@Omnes Omnibus: It must annoy you when the sounds of the beatings don’t echo.
Elie
@Warren Terra:
Heh heh heh — agree with you — well said.
DCLaw1
@AA+ Bonds: I see. When I said I found it funny, I was referring to the fact that what I thought was a fairly unremarkable and obvious point about letting comedy be comedy was actually being treated as a controversial (dangerous?) political view. I suppose then I shifted from mode (2) to mode (1).
That probably came across as sarcastic, but I didn’t mean it to be. Anyhow…
Omnes Omnibus
@DCLaw1: No one, apparently. Different perspective but acknowledgment of it. Woohoo!
AA+ Bonds
@Mnemosyne:
I see the problem. You are simply mistaken as to which text I’m talking about. Hint: it is not the comic book
Samara Morgan
@Omnes Omnibus: Cole his bigself tole me that EDK was a “good guy” and had some “good ideas”.
wanna see the mails?
“angry” DougJ just linked Elias Isqueef today.
AL sukks Dave “voted for Paul in 2008” Weigels dick daily.
like i said….the frontpagers here lay down for glibertarians.
AA+ Bonds
@DCLaw1:
No it was the punctuation-less OK, it seemed too cool for school
Omnes Omnibus
@srv: Nah, I miss the blood.
MikeJ
@Davis X. Machina:
In labouring to be concise, I become obscure.
AA+ Bonds
(also, while we are on the topic, the book is one of Davis’s best but quite far from Moore’s, in both my opinion and his if we are going to be leaning on the author’s reading like this is 1920 and we’re doing the Lindy Hop on a poor person)
DCLaw1
@AA+ Bonds: These are the limitations of purely text-based, short-form discussion! I sort of wanted out once you brought the humorless Nazis in. No harm no foul, I suppose.
AA+ Bonds
I mean for the love of God, V for Vendetta actually spells out in the script the exact reason why criticizing Anonymous or Occupy for using the mask is stupid
Mnemosyne
@DCLaw1:
I don’t think it’s inherently flawed, but I think an ex-pat writing from outside the US has certain built-in biases that must be taken into consideration and that you have to accept that they may mistakenly concentrate on one perspective because they don’t have access to the other side. I don’t think that questioning whether someone’s analysis of a situation could be flawed because they don’t live here is automatically out of order.
No, but the fact that he seems to depend on a small circle of people to keep him informed about what’s going on and what public opinion is would seem to trend him towards a certain bias that he seems oblivious to. I prefer people who admit their biases up-front so I don’t have to try and parse their work to figure out where those biases lie.
Samara Morgan
@AA+ Bonds: doesnt mnem know?
its a manga, not a comic book.
AA+ Bonds
I mean, is Alan Moore a militant Catholic
Is V a militant Catholic
You do not need to have taken a single class on any of this stuff to figure it out
AA+ Bonds
@Samara Morgan:
Hmmmm I am actually curious what you mean, do you mean the longform nature of the piece
magurakurin
I’m still trying to wrap my mind around why taking your own bag to the supermarket is now a pejorative and some sort of political identifier.
Isn’t taking your own bag to the supermarket, you know, a good thing? I do it. And I think Obama is, by far, the best president I’ve seen in my 49 years and probably the best in modern times.
Am I a tote-bagger?
Seems like a pretty fucking stupid slur. As stupid as Prius-driving and latte drinking. Prius is a damn good car and lattes taste good.
El Cid
@Mnemosyne: Just to be current, I read Latin American newspapers every day, and, surprisingly enough, even on occasion a Mexican or Colombian journalist can write something intelligent about the country I live in!
Sometimes, they even travel way up here, and research things, and even talk to people, and then they go all the way back down there to their strange lands, and people read their stuff, in articles and essays and such.
It’s almost like there are some people who live in the United States but write and talk about stuff which happens outside the USA!
But, before I start getting my list together, I want to get this right:
Your challenge is to find people who don’t live in the United States but have written intelligently about something taking or which took place in the United States.
Is that right?
This seems to you to be some sort of high barrier. Because, after all, your references appear to veer between Glenn Greenwald, P. G. Wodehouse, and Neil Gaiman. As I grasp your examples, you’re wanting examples of writings which are not like Glenn Greenwald, or Great War era drawing room English comedy, or the author of many comic books.
Apart from them, have you read anything else by people not living within the U.S., but writing about it?
Am I limited on topics? Time periods? A lot of historical studies and history books about the U.S. were written by foreigners, even if they did live some of the time in the U.S. What about Canadians? Technically, they don’t live in the United States, but their own country; yet a lot of Canadians write about the USA. Need it be from another continent?
Can it be scholarly? Lots of times, researchers are pretty convinced that there are objective sources of information which they can rely upon to make conclusions, or dispute earlier arguments, no matter their nationalities or current place of residence.
Would you believe that in many foreign countries, there are entire scholarly journals and university and college programs dedicated to studying various aspects of United States life? I know, I know, it sounds strange, because, how could they write and read and talk about this stuff so much even when they aren’t here?
What about the reverse?
Is it plausible that someone not living in, say, Ghana, could write something plausible about Ghana? Is it theoretically possible that there could be American writers who wrote intelligent things about Ghana?
I read a lot of people who live in the U.S. writing stuff about Libya or Iraq or Afghanistan, and they seemed pretty convinced that they had at least something to say on these matters, even with regard to areas in which they weren’t living.
Because I’m assuming reverse symmetry holds here, as anything else would be some sort of bizarre, insane nationalism.
DCLaw1
@Mnemosyne: That’s fair. Quite a bit more fair than a lot of the swipes I’ve seen him get for living in Brazil.
At the profound risk of being tarred a “Glennbot” here. For what it’s worth, I’ve had it out with him before in his comment threads, and also expressed to him some of my concerns about his Paul posts.
Richard
Given what he has written over the last while, the question that comes to my mind is how can Greenwald justify NOT openly endorsing Paul?
I mean, after thousands of words devoted to Paul apologetics describing him as the only champion of progressive causes this year (while minimizing his defects), and assertions that Obama is a monstrously evil baby killer who differs insignificantly from the GOP’s main contender, Mitt Romney, how can he possibly morally justify simply sitting on the fence? Surely, he must believe that Paul is the lesser of all the evils being presented to us.
If you read the comments on his blog, it’s apparent that he’s certainly got the Glennbots all convinced that Obama is Hitler, Genghis Khan and Pol Pot all rolled up into one. I don’t think that I have ever seen such visceral hatred expressed by commenters on a blog, not even for the darkest days of Bush.
On the other hand, I kind of wonder if Greenwald is playing game a here similar to what GOPers have been doing with recent bills, that is, utilizing a poison pill strategy. In this case, hooking his anti-Obama wagon to Paul, fully realizing that many people who would otherwise sympathetic to his criticisms of the Obama administration would be forced to reject his commentary, just to give himself the pleasure of self-righteously accusing them of being Obamabots. If there is anything this guy loves to do it’s scold people.
Samara Morgan
@AA+ Bonds: indeed….its a graphic novel, not a “comic book”.
Omnes Omnibus
@Samara Morgan: Samara (note that I am using your current nom de blog), please just consider that people might not intend others to take the literal meaning of what they post. Snark, sarcasm, irony, litotes, and the like exist for a reason. People here use them frequently. Accept it.
MikeJ
@magurakurin: Tote bagger has to do with the giveaways that public radio stations have for donating. People that listen to NPR and believe they’ve heard the liberal view of the world are derisively referred to as tote-baggers.
AA+ Bonds
REAL MEN WRAP THEIR NON-UNION PRODUCE IN THROWAWAY PETROLEUM PRODUCTS
Spectre
@Mnemosyne: @Mnemosyne:
That’s the most bizarre Anti-Greenwald meme so far, and unsurprisingly it’s the one all you DNCers are clinging to at the moment. The latin version is Appeal to Insanity-um.
His views are correct on their own merit, not on whether or not he currently spends most of his time in brazil.
Unless of course there is something about living in the U.S. that changes the way you read the NDAA. But of course you’re not actually that dumb, you’re just dishonest.
DCLaw1
@magurakurin: But do you eat only locally raised chickens named “Colin” that are fed locally grown soy and hazelnuts?
Just teasing.
AA+ Bonds
@Samara Morgan:
I find the deprecation of “comic book” to be pointless although I am partial to “comix”, personally I hate the mashed-together “comicbook” but whatever tickles your pickle
The Avengers is now entering its sixth year or so of extremely slowburn serial storytelling by a single writer and I don’t know, I can’t really bring myself to call any of that a “novel”
Samara Morgan
@Omnes Omnibus: does that mean you wanna see the mails?
;)
srv
@magurakurin:
You just don’t get the age group that dominates here. They’re all still driving their Volvos, and they snort up their lattes and cackle when they hear a swipe at Priusans.
Mnemosyne
@AA+ Bonds:
Given that I can’t seem to find anyone named “Davis” associated with either the comic book or the film, I’m afraid you’re going to have to spell out to stupid ol’ me exactly what “text” you’re referring to. I’m assuming that you’re not misspelling David Lloyd’s name.
Gwangung
@Samara Morgan: An, child, showing your ignorance AGAIN.
AA+ Bonds
@MikeJ:
I’ll go ahead and point out that most of the tote bags I own are giveaways from big ass world-destroying companies trying to recruit from my school
AA+ Bonds
@Mnemosyne:
My error there, you got that right and my apologies to Lloyd (the mixup was with Marvelman), however the text is the mask, not the comic
Do you see now?
cat48
Omnes Omnibus
@Samara Morgan: No. Look, you are usually annoying, but often interesting. Tonight, you are failing in the interesting department. Later, ‘gator.
El Cid
@AA+ Bonds: Real men don’t eat “produce”. They eat steak. With butter. Fried.
DCLaw1
@Richard:
No – trust me, he’s 100% earnest.
Kola Noscopy
@magurakurin:
I have long been under the impression that “tote bagger” refers to those NPR progs who actually donate money to NPR and receive in return an NPR-logo’d tote bag.
But here, let me google: Tote-bagger 1 thumb down
A left-winger, an antonym of “teabagger,” from the tote bags offered as premiums for donations to public TV and radio stations.
That’s from Urban Dictionary, so guess I’m correct. Nothing to do with grocery bags. I get the plastic ones from the store myself, the ones that are destroying the world, because we use them to pick up our dogs’ shit on walks.
AA+ Bonds
@Mnemosyne:
To put it another way, the “problem” (in a neutral sense) with Reagan using Born in the U.S.A. mainly had to do with how Springsteen had the power to pressure Reagan’s campaign to stop using the song (or, to put it yet another way, that Lloyd drew V does not affect the point, it wouldn’t matter if Rob Liefeld drew it).
I’m not arguing that every reading is valid but you have to get beyond “such and such was bound to happen at the end of V thus the mask is straightjacketed”
DCLaw1
@AA+ Bonds: Living in the tote-bag capital of the world (DC area), I’ve always found the moniker hilarious. And I love me some Fresh Air.
I went to a talk at the Brookings Institution for work (yes, very tote-baggerish), and one of the speakers actually made an ironic and self-referential allusion to David Brooks’ tote-baggery. Beltway cognitive Möbius strip. Completely paralyzing.
Ruckus
@Warren Terra:
Agreed.
Mnemosyne
@El Cid:
No, the challenge is to find people living outside of the United States who understand what it’s like to live here better than the people who actually live here do.
It’s not whether someone who doesn’t live here can write intelligently about aspects of the US. It’s whether you feel that person is in a position where they genuinely understand the United States better than a person who actually lives here does.
When I read something that a Western journalist writes about, say, Ghana, I assume that I’m getting a Western perspective about what Ghana is like, not that this writer understands Ghana better than the people who actually live there do.
So, yes, if there’s something that you read by someone who was either an American not living in the US or was a foreigner living in the US that made you say, “Oh my God, I never even realized that about Americans, but he’s completely right,” that’s what I’m curious about. Not someone who agreed with you, but someone who gave you an insight into the US that you never had before reading that person’s work.
ETA: So, to stick with the Greenwald example, I would argue that when Greenwald sneers at Americans preferring temporary safety over civil liberties, he genuinely doesn’t understand that our middle class has crumbled to almost nothing and even people who live in McMansions realize they could be living out of their cars if they miss two paychecks. People are hanging on by their fingernails trying to avoid bankruptcy and he’s going to tell them that the rights of some al-Qaeda spokesperson living in Yemen are more important than keeping a roof over their heads?
CT Voter
@amk: Nah. My tote-bagger crowd doesn’t truck with Grayson, Weiner, or Kucinich. It’s Russ Feingold who makes their hearts beat faster.
Along with an interminable laundry list of “If only….”
Accompanied by the self-righteousness that means never picking up the phone to call any elected official.
AA+ Bonds
@Mnemosyne:
From a local perspective to “genuinely”/”better” in one go . . . see, this is exactly what I’m talking about
MikeJ
@AA+ Bonds: Mine are from Comdexes and E3s and FOSEs and CESs. Probably many of the same megacorps though. With DougJ, totebagger pretty much always means NPR.
I was shocked to see it wasn’t in the lexicon.
And why has this piece of shit ffox decided I can’t have html buttons any more? Grrr.
AA+ Bonds
It makes me really :( that people are still stuck in the Dark Ages over the author’s place in a work, it’s like the Republicans won or something (literally – it’s the Republicans/Tories in the discipline who have lobbied unsuccessfully for a return to this point of view)
Mnemosyne
@AA+ Bonds:
Oh, goody, a semiotician.
Nope, sorry, I’m out. The fact that you’re trying to insist that young idiots who started wearing the mask because they thought the movie TOTALLY RAWKED, DUDE! have somehow erased the meaning of the original work with their inability to understand it means there’s nothing to discuss.
Spectre
The DNC operative attack line is: “Greenwald has money, is white, and lives in brazil. Thus clearly he doesn’t care about poor minorities. Thus why he dares contrast Paul and The Great Moral Leader in Chief”
AA+ Bonds
@MikeJ:
Wow, are you industry or did you just get to E3 before they sealed the gates
Richard
@DCLaw1:
Well, regardless of whether the poison pill intent was there, I’d say the ultimate effect has been the same.
Specifically, with regards to the people who have rejected his Paul thesis, his response to them seems to be that, it’s not because they object to the way that he’s been puffing up Paul, but because they are blindly following a baby killer.
Spectre
@Mnemosyne:
The logical extension of your ad hominems is that if he doesn’t understand that, then you clearly don’t understand any of the arguments against Obama’s foreign policies, being that you aren’t living abroad. Your argument implodes, and thus can be mocked and spit on.
The stupid, how it burns.
AA+ Bonds
@Mnemosyne:
“Semiotician” as a slur, good gravy, your point of view went out before FDR was elected. I take it you supported Robert Bork for the Supreme Court.
I agree, there is “nothing left to discuss” if you think we all become socialists every time we sing the Star Spangled Banner
PIGL
@Raenelle: Thank you for this. This is why parliamentary democracies are helpless in the face of determined enemies…why the Republicans almost always win, and why Harper’s Conservative party will very likely succeed in destroying Canada. Playing by liberal rules with those who do not respect them is like trying to argue with a rabid fox….the only effective responses are ruled out from go.
lol
@Spectre:
I’d characterize it as the overall disbelief that people actually think a privileged white guy ex-pat is the voice of the supposedly disgruntled American left.
It’s pretty easy to support Ron Paul (or a third party spoiler or whatever) when you believe that *you*’ll never have to experience the consequences of your decision. (The plebs on the other hand…) Privileged white liberals already have this bias; Greenwald cranks it up to 11.
It’s the same thinking that goes into the whole “Obama should’ve just let all the banks fail!” The liberals who make that argument are fully aware of the economic havoc it would cause – they simply think it’ll affect other people so they can safely advocate their purist policies.
AA+ Bonds
@Mnemosyne:
“Semiotician” as a slur, good gravy, your point of view went out before FDR was elected. I take it you supported Robert Bork for the Supreme Court. (Then again, he probably doesn’t support slaveholding, so maybe you didn’t.)
I agree, there’s “nothing left to discuss” if you think we all become s****lists every time we sing the Star Spangled Banner.
CT Voter
This is, if disturbing, a terrific analogy.
Mnemosyne
@AA+ Bonds:
I’m getting the feeling that we’re talking past each other, but I’ll try to clarify:
I really hate when people outside the US try to parade in and “explain” Americans to ourselves, as though they understand from the outside what it’s like to live here better than us lowly peasants possibly could. And, yes, I also hate it when Westerners parade into other countries and insist that they can “explain” Ghana to the Ghanians since the Ghanians are clearly too stupid to understand their own country without assistance. I often refer to this as the “Nick Broomfield problem” since it’s one of arrogant conviction that only you, Nick Broomfield, can view America with clear eyes untainted by actually living here so therefore all of your conclusions must be correct.
Is that more clear? So my question is, have you read a book by someone outside of the US that you felt gave you a new understanding of the US that you wouldn’t have had otherwise?
The prophet Nostradumbass
It’s a conspiracy! The DNC are out to DESTROY Glenn Greenwald!
L O L.
Spectre
@lol:
If Greenwald’s views and positions are invalidated or suspect because of his “privilege”, then it applies to Obama tenfold. Obama has significantly more money than him, significantly more supporters than him, and significantly more political clout. Therefor Obama is more privileged, therefor Obama is disqualified using your own standard.
Your argument self-destructs, and as such can be mocked and spit on. The stupid, how it burns!
AA+ Bonds
@Mnemosyne:
Well putting aside that a Ghanaian perspective on America has a drastically different significance in the context of real world history than an American perspective on Ghana, using words like “genuinely understand” and “better” to describe a local perspective – as though the qualities of that perspective are a hurdle that other perspectives have to clear – won’t do you much good in the search for useful points of view.
See: the casual way we’re all using “America” and “American” to refer to the perspective of the United States
Marc
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN):
No, there isn’t. But at some point basic honesty ought to tell us that not every problem can be solved by still more liberal introspection, self-criticism, and infighting.
Mnemosyne
@AA+ Bonds:
Yes, yes, symbolism is all, the actual work is meaningless, blabity blah, fappity fap.
I guarantee you that you have put many hours more thought into coming up with a rationalization for why those protesters put Guy Fawkes masks on than they ever did beyond, “Dude, that movie was awesome — let’s get masks like those and freak people out!”
The prophet Nostradumbass
Perhaps Balloon Juice needs to make people “harden” their identities so we can weed out the “DNC operatives”.
cxs
I guess I’m getting tired of even having to preface my support for Obama with the “he isn’t perfect/I disagree with him on x, but” language. Why isn’t the a priori assumption that my support for the President isn’t blind idolatry? It’s really a base level insult that these people have put the President’s supporters into the position where we are assumed to be lemmings if we don’t qualify our support with a disclaimer. Particularly when you realize how ill informed and knee jerk some of these critics are.
Since I’m ranting anyway, I’m outraged by the condescension of Paul’s liberal apologists and their blithe dismissal of the concerns of women, minorities and the poor. Really, I’m starting to see this arrogance as almost a deal-breaking character flaw. There are Democrats talking about the drug war, but they aren’t running for President so they are not sexy enough for Katerina vanderH to make her contrarian bones tweeting their praises.
Marc
@lol:
Spectre will never, ever agree that anything that Greenwald has done is anything but perfect. Talking to them is like talking to a wall.
It’s always amazing to me that his online fans combine such slavish and uncritical devotion with such fierce attacks on anyone defending Obama as a mindless cultist. The projection is strong indeed…
Richard
@The prophet Nostradumbass:
I get to fly in the black helicopter on Thursday.
Mnemosyne
@AA+ Bonds:
Well, this is my own idiosyncratic usage (yes, after I lectured you about the same thing) but I tend to use “America” or “Americans” to refer to the culture and “United States” to refer to the government. So I can say that IMO Greenwald generally does a good job of examining and explaining the laws and policies of the United States that he disagrees with, but (also IMO) he doesn’t understand how those laws and policies fit into the larger picture of American culture.
But of course I’ve finally managed to back my way into explaining what I actually meant to say 50 comments ago right when it’s almost time for me to sign off and head off to sleep.
FlipYrWhig
Maybe a weentsy part of the reason why some people don’t care for Glenn Greenwald has something to do with the fact that if you dare to dispute his analysis of anything you must necessarily be, pretty much by definition, a brainwashed baby killer incapable of reasoned thought. It’s not just that you read a piece of text differently, it’s that you are willfully perverting meaning to serve inhuman, malevolent forces, and you won’t admit it because he’s right and nanny nanny boo boo no backsies. He has no notion how to argue. If he did, he might come to realize that it really isn’t that hard to weigh the criticisms he and other critics offer against the accomplishments and intentions and say, yes, while things have hardly been perfect since Inauguration Day they beat the fuck out of the alternative.
FlipYrWhig
Also, DougJ, thanks for the Hüsker reference in the title.
dogwood
@Spectre:
Not a GG fan, but this is undoubtedly correct. Look, most Americans don’t really understand this country and how people outside their own region or demographic live. I’ve lived my entire life in the Pacific Northwest. And in many ways in terms of the national political narrative, the entire political pundit class may as well be living in outer Mongolia as far as I’m concerned. We aren’t on the radar of anyone who writes or comments on politics from the East Coast. I remember distinctly during the 08 primary battle that the Oregon and W. Va or Kentucky primaries were on the same day. Surfing the cable channels the pundits were on the edge of their seats to see how badly Obama would do with the good hard working white folks of Appalachia. Of course he didn’t do so well. But his good showing among the hard working white folks of Oregon was hardly worth a mention despite the fact it’s a Democratic state and thus more important than Kentucky in the grand scheme of things. GG could move from Brazil to DC tomorrow and it wouldn’t make him “understand America” any better than he already does.
FlipYrWhig
@cxs: But you’ve put your finger on it. There’s a _strong_ current among liberals that’s all about skepticism, and if you’re satisfied you must not know about all the outrages. If you’re not angry, you’re not paying attention and all that. It gets to the point where you feel like you need to issue disclaimer after disclaimer to show you’re not a patsy, you’ve given it some thought, and notwithstanding the many aspects of X that are wholly legitimate concerns, still, when you get right down to it, maybe Politician Y isn’t all that terrible. Look, that’s all built in already, do I have to do it every time? Well, in the blogosphere, apparently, yes, you do.
Yutsano
@Spectre:
Swing and a miss.
FlipYrWhig
@FlipYrWhig: I got carried away and lost the thread a bit. The skepticism is great, but ritualistic declarations of skepticism get tiresome, because we get it, we’re all skeptics.
dogwood
@Mnemosyne:
And how exactly does this make him different from those who live here and write about politics? Read that statement again and tell me it doesn’t describe every single member of the Village. I love ya, Mmemosyne, but you are losing this argument.
dogwood
@FlipYrWhig:
On this blog, they are also embarrassing to read at times. It’s like watching someone kiss up to a bully in hopes that the bully will be nice to them.
MD NEOmaha
Don’t be Angry Doug. You just need a little time with some other like-minded Yes We Can’ers in an ABL-sponsored Obama feedback loop to build up the old self-esteem.
You remember self-esteem don’t you? It’s that thing that slips away a little every time you use terms like “tote-bagging”, and “Horace-quoting”, while trying to make your case for the Most Awesomest President Ever for the 400th time?
Your pathetic man. Why don’t you just pour a glass of wine and slip into your inauguration Snuggie for the night.
Chuck Butcher
Lemmeseenow. GG is a one trick pony and his ride is civil liberties. GG doesn’t care about excuses and wants to rub your nose in violations. Period. Rub your nose by talking about Ron “son of Confederacy” Paul as being better. Boy are noses rubbed.
Now if you’re expecting that one trick pony to make political sense… um … well you sure the hell ain’t paying attention. GG doesn’t want civil liberties subject to politics and he won’t see it that way.
Now me, I don’t in the least like civil liberties being subject to politics – and I also live in a world where Ron Paul is offensive thanks to how he gets to a point and I’d choke myself before I said something nice about him pre-obituary and no promises then.
I understand the fury GG’s take no prisoners attitude provokes from some, the question is why it matters to them? You know GG is going to do it, just the same as you know what RedState is going to do. I pretty much leave GG alone because he’s too damn wordy and of no help to me with the political part. I do not get how it is that GG is that damn important to obsessively hate on him.
I mock BoBo but if I’m going to swear a lot, David Gregory is more likely to involve that impolite type language.
Chuck Butcher
Please folks, there were around 1400 ABL comments and if it didn’t get said, chances are it isn’t there to be said.
gaz
@AA+ Bonds: I must be really freaking young –
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiotics
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/semiotician
That doesn’t sound like a slur, so I’m guessing this has some historical political relevance that I may have missed.
Anyone care to fill me in enough at least to google this?
Does this have anything to do with it?
http://books.google.com/books?id=RacBbqxtt6gC&pg=PA181&lpg=PA181&dq=fdr+semiotician&source=bl&ots=mSDcNjHA2q&sig=0akO2Yu2mmyyIxNXFHbe3YyNqUI&hl=en&sa=X&ei=FOALT4zoHaj8iQK-u9yhBA&ved=0CDAQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=fdr%20semiotician&f=false
gaz
@Richard:
Heh. LOL.
Edit: FYWP – double blockquote FAIL!
The prophet Nostradumbass
@Chuck Butcher: That’s pretty funny, after your own comment, just 2 minutes before.
Chuck Butcher
@The prophet Nostradumbass:
Ya think? It is pretty much the same thing all over again. I don’t get either one at the level it goes on at. You could read or scroll past ABL here or see her there, now. Sometimes I read her and the comments and sometimes not the comments and sometimes only a part of her and scrolled. It isn’t real goddam complicated unless your scroll button is broken. Doesn’t mean spit to me.
The prophet Nostradumbass
@Chuck Butcher:
Right, which is why you keep talking about it, even after you tried to suggest to everyone else that they stop talking about it. After all, if after 1400 comments, everything has been said, you could employ your own scroll bar and skip it all by. Yet, for some reason, you don’t.
Chuck Butcher
This pisses me off:
The prophet Nostradumbass
@Chuck Butcher: If you wait a few hours, Anne Laurie will do a cut-and-paste job on a Charles Pierce post from Esquire, and you’ll have a thread all about that.
Chuck Butcher
@The prophet Nostradumbass:
I wrote about this on my own site quite awhile ago, thanks.
I really prefer my Pierce without cuts, I know how to get to his blog, too. also. Every once in awhile I comment there…
The prophet Nostradumbass
@Chuck Butcher:
and now you’re trying to drive traffic there from here. Duh.
Xenos
@AA+ Bonds:
Your mixing your authors up: The Pledge of Allegiance makes you a sockialist, the Star Spangled Banner makes you a drunk.
This whole rebirth of authorial intent is just (of course) a mask for authority – generations of Christian kids being told the bible means what it means, which is to say, what this authority figure says that it means, and shut up. The same basic reading that authority figures want us to accept for constitutional law, reading historical documents, and so on.
Chuck Butcher
@The prophet Nostradumbass:
Oh yes, so I can make a fortune from all my non-existant advertising. 2:51AM is my demographic…
But sure, stop by – you can be the sole commenter on several posts.
A Humble Lurker
May I just make the point that Greenwald is a paid, high-profile blogger (putting aside for a moment whether you think he warrants it) who has singled out ABL in the past and other not-paid not-professional nobody bloggers as well. Greenwald not only attacks people, he attacks people who are not on equal footing with him.
So when people bring up ‘ABL and Greenwald’s followers’ keep it mind it’s like describing as equal powers on opposite sides of an issue Fox and MSNBC.
Also, everything else aside about this whole sordid mess, ABL has a cool real life name. Just sayin’.
magurakurin
@MikeJ: okay, got it. Thanks for that. I had never heard it before and my Google search for the term obviously wasn’t done properly. I didn’t run into the definition. Makes more sense to me now.
I think my inability to understand that reference speaks to the other folks’ comments about how an expat can easily lose touch with certain aspects of their original culture.
Anyway, I’m sure this post is too late to be read, but thanks again for all who filled me in. cheers.
ornery_curmudgeon
@A Humble Lurker: So when people bring up ‘ABL and Greenwald’s followers’ keep it mind it’s like describing as equal powers on opposite sides of an issue Fox and MSNBC.
I’m guessing that Greenwald is “Fox News” to abl’s “MSNBC” … amirite?
I don’t understand what it is about attacking people on your own side that seems necessary to so many Dem followers. O Anne you were one of the better-uns.
Is it cowardice? A way of dealing with being afraid of Republicans? The inward attacks are like an addiction disease, and they have not improved anything in our politics yet it goes on and on and on.
Brutusettu
@Chuck Butcher:
Wow, austerity is accepted as teh thing by another member of the MSM.
And I guess this would be a bad place to comment that Obama has given fuel to the fire by not calling out the BS and even giving it acted like austerity wasn’t such a bad thing during a recession.
Because when the Overton Window shifts, it’s truly best just to bitch and moan DJ style about the wrong lizard that would move the window over faster.
ornery_curmudgeon
@MikeJ: People that listen to NPR and believe they’ve heard the liberal view of the world are derisively referred to as tote-baggers.
I’m aghast, how horrible of them, but how fortunate we have MikeJs here to correct their horrific behavior!
It is important to spit upon others who share our goals but haven’t reached our level of enlightenment. This forces them to come to our vision of the world and helps strengthen our movement to defeat tyranny in our time … or it makes us feel stronger to kick someone else and that strength will help us rise up together–except for those we don’t like–and throw off the chains.
Fantasy league politics, sure, but we’re WINNING!
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
Democrats always like the book better than the movie, also, too.
Samara Morgan
/yawn
the difference between conservatives and liberals is functional, morphological, and environmental.
On average, conservatives have more grey matter in the amygdala, liberals have more grey matter in the anterior cingulate cortex.
Conservatives EMOTE instead of reasoning, liberals EMPATHIZE instead of reasoning.
Thus the Primal Scream of teabaggery.
That is also why the remaining BJ FPs and poor Cole are doomed to forever search for the libertarian/conservative that can be their BFF.
Samara Morgan
@J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford: anyone that can read likes the book better than the movie.
movies can only be visualized subsets of any book.
Angry Egilsson
Jesus, I love DougJ, but this is a shallow and stupid post.
This is not about being an O-bot v. a Paultard.
I’m 100% an O-bot, but unless you are a propagandistic hack, then you have to acknowledge that Obama has made some mistakes and done things that earned hatred to Bush. Blind adulation does no one any favors, including Obama. Yet, when we make criticisms using Candidate Obama’s OWN positions, we get called racists or misogynists or hear cracks about “white privilege” or other vile and stupid things. It’s beyond frustrating; it’s unbelievable.
I knew ABL was a poisonous propagandistic hack, but I was pretty sure DougJ was not.
This is not hard.
Keith G
@Arundel: I am highlighting your quote as it is a very sharp and valid observation of the last several weeks.
Calling names, picking tribal sides, and declaring enemies is not mature or healthy political thought.
Paul in KY
@Samara Morgan: You said it, sister!
chopper
@DCLaw1:
i’d say if greenwald is faking it then he’s good. like andy kaufman good.
chopper
@J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford:
looks like we got ourselves a reader!
Samara Morgan
@chopper: i think you have organic conservative tendency. is this the right blog for you?
Paul in KY
@Chuck Butcher: I think somew of them must have ventured into UT & commented & Glenn verbally whopped them (as he will do if he thinks your shit is weak).
He has whopped me a time or two.
Samara Morgan
@Keith G: say what you like about ABL, but at least she was honest.
and not on a forever snipe hunt for the last “sane” conservative and the last “honest” libertarian.
El Cid
@Mnemosyne:
Wait — that’s a completely different challenge. And a different topic.
Your first comments with regard to Greenwald did not narrow it down to such an “understand what it’s like” category, and sounded very much as a general prohibition against arguments about U.S. politics or other issues from those not living in the U.S. currently (i.e., at the time of writing).
If it’s now narrowed down to the ability of someone not living in the U.S. to write experientially about the situation of the U.S., then it’s much less controversial, and while still not a point to be bluntly accepted, is far more reasonable.
(And it’s always a relative standard — some ‘outsider’, writing fiction or non-fiction — may do a much better job at capturing such experiential perspectives than some particular ‘insider’ who is less observant and/or who writes about it badly.)
If someone like Greenwald — again, if it only applies to him or some microcategory, it’s not a rule but an ad-hoc — writes about fairly objective questions such as legal policies or Presidential politics focusing on not so much the experience of living within this situation (and do I have some valuable U.S.-living-prompted ‘experience’ or understanding or perspective on the use of drones for targeted military action or assassination? Do you?), then it’s up to what they write to determine its value.
I appreciate that the background of the person writing something can often aid in one’s appreciation (or lack of) for an argument, particularly at that very first stage when given a nearly infinite variety of things to read or consider at any one point, ‘Is this worth my time?’
But if it does seem like a worthy argument which somehow or another convinces me to consider it, then I have no choice but to consider the actual points made and the arguments and evidence within what’s written, because anything else would be lazy anti-intellectualism, or, at best, a subjective impulse which I shouldn’t try to defend beyond that.
El Cid
@Mnemosyne:
That’s a much, much saner sounding thing to say. That’s not saying anything about the particular argument regarding Greenwald, but without separating it up between the more objective subjects (‘examining and explaining the laws and policies’) and the more subjective, uh, subjects (‘larger picture of American culture’), it sounds hideous.
That said, I have indeed learned much about myself and those around me from people who wrote (or spoke to me) about how they experienced the US as an outsider, as visiting foreigners, for example, because there’s typically a lot we in some certain context take for granted and fail to see that someone not used to those assumptions notices quite clearly.
El Cid
From the original post, it sounds like DougJ has a somewhat clear notion of what people who think Obama’s doing a good (good enough, great, worthwhile, it’s not important in this scenario) job should say in such conversations, or how they should say it.
It would be interesting to hear the simple positive stated version, a set of recommendations, in a sense, because it’s neither as easy to gleam by deducing it from the reverse snark nor does it seem to be as appealing as an easy answer.
Is it something like ‘when you start talking about the quality of Presidential leadership right now especially versus Republicans be willing to clearly and quickly and first lead by saying Obama’s doing a good job, and don’t first qualify it?’
Get around to the ambivalences or complexities later, if at all, or not at all?
Joe Buck
I guess I’m too cool to approve of anything, then. Paul is an insane neo-Confederate, who is right about a number of things but for the wrong reasons. Obama ran as a constitutional scholar who would close Gitmo and restore the rule of law, and now we have “look forward not backward”, prosecution only for whistle-blowers, the ordering of hits on American citizens and indefinite detention. Plus rule by Wall Street.
taylormattd
@Kola Noscopy: it doesn’t?
Now head back on over to FDL.
Samara Morgan
@AA+ Bonds: i actually think a lot of animus directed against Obama from males is pure psycho-sexual jealousy.
That would align beautifully with your hypothesis, you know, the myth of black male superior sexual prowess?
Interestingly that is one of the themes of the Arabian Nights. The kings and rulers were always extremely concerned about black male slaves gettin’ it on with their wimmens.
ruemara
I have resisted the urge to say anything on this stupid thread, but a few things stick in my craw. Buck, if you’re too dumb to get that Congress has obstructed in closing Gitmo, up to and including provisions in the NDAA, you are too stupid for blogs. ABL is a poisonous hack? Look in the fucking mirror. It’s like a new set of names that all hate ABL, even though she’s not here, but they have time to bring it up and crow about it. While blaming her for their own poisonous nonsense. But she’s divisive, not the guy who said all Obama’s supporters are good with murdering children. And what kind of an evil douche thinks that mocking someone else’s experience of molestation is ok? This is the internet. No one knows who you people are, but some of you do the best interpretation of sociopathic, bigoted idiots I’ve ever seen, and I’ve worked in advertising and politics.
Tonal Crow
This *again*?
nancydarling
@ruemara: This. I don’t have time to read this shit, but I would like to say “Bless you, AngryDougJ.
Bloix
“Explain to me again how this isn’t sign of liberal weakness.”
Obama isn’t a liberal. Consider yourself explained.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Bloix:
Sorry, but liberal is exactly what he is. What he isn’t is an ideologue.
Jesse in Jersey
I have read all 319 comments to this blog. Not one of them has said that GG’s view of Obama’s policies in regard to indefinite detention, assassination of American citizens, the indiscriminate use of drone warfare or the expansion of executive power in the name of the War on Terror is inaccurate. More important, not one commenter has defended these horrific policies. GG’s point was that actions that were deemed by liberals as anathema to our notion of civilized government when done by Bush are ignored or silently tolerated when done by Obama. You can defend these policies, say they are less important to you than other issues or say you don’t care about them, but to attack a critic of these policies simply because he uses a bizarre counterpoint is not honest. Glenn is right: the ad hominem attacks reflect an unwillingness to confront these issues.
A Humble Lurker
@ornery_curmudgeon:
A little sensitive, aren’t you? I notice you didn’t dispute the larger point I was making.
Neither are Fox or MSNBC in terms of…’philosophy’ I suppose. But when people compare the two they say fox is conservative and MSNBC is liberal when all MSNBC has really got is Rachel. It’s similar in that you can’t compare the Glennbots to ABL’s ‘army’ of defenders when Glenn is far better known and has the money to hire sock puppets to defend him.
gaz
@Jesse in Jersey:
Oh I assure you, there are many more than 319 comments “to” this blog. And many are about GG’s specific position on issues. Try combing the archives for something that actually relates to the topic. You’ll note, that this thread is about GG’s behavior (not his politics) – to the degree that this thread even addresses him at all.
Again, comb the archives. While more than a few people may agree on the broader thrust of his positions, many of those same people also find his arguments to be ummm (putting it charitably) problematic.
You won’t find that in this thread though, because that’s not the topic. Is there something about this that you do not understand? Or are we all clear now?
kthxbai
scott
Got it. You hate hippies.
gaz
@scott: ummm. what?
Edit: redacted – too many browser tabs + wrong thread.
Jesse in Jersey
Gaz: What is the topic?
wrb
@Jesse in Jersey:
those subjects have been discussed to death in previous threads
Keith G
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again): Which part of the definition are you pointing to?
FuzzyWuzzy
@piratedan: Herpaderp derp.
http://www.salon.com/2012/01/05/democratic_party_priorities/singleton/
Greenwald is the Goldstein of the Democratic party enforcers. The only gay man the faithful are allowed to hate. Heretic.
And the ABL whinging is a joke, right? She has her own blog. She could come back any time to this one. It’s not like she lost her internet privileges-she just chose to take her ball and go home.
Donald
“Better an Obot than a Paultard.”
Truly an inspired campaign slogan. Insults the supporters of both men, and rightly so, while still recognizing that we’ve got to make choices between evils.
Oh, you didn’t mean it that way?
Angry Egilsson
@ruemara:
I assume this spasm of angry bile is directed at me. It’s misguided and wrong in so many ways, but it is obviously not worth my time to spend any effort responding to it.
Go ahead and throw your f-bombs. It won’t make you look smarter.
But consider this, to me Paul is significant for only one reason, but it’s a big reason: he’s a strong anti-war voice in his party. He’s a potential paradigm shifter; he challenges the conventional foreign policy cult that craves war. All the other republican candidates appear to want war with Iran. That’s intolerable.
There’s no doubt and no question that Paul says *other* things that crazy and wrong. I’m not voting for the guy, and Greenwald has made clear he’s not endorsing for the guy.
I was an Obama delegate. I’ll work and vote for Obama again. But even Obama adopted the FDR line that “I agree with you, I want to do it, now make me do it”. So it’s good to push Obama from the left, I believe that was his exhortation.
But I understand that you are only a shrieker of insults and incapable of nuanced thought.
johnq
>I’m tired of having to apologize for supporting a successful Democratic president.
AngryDOugJ should change his name to InsaneDOugJ if he thinks Obama is successful.