This is almost comical (from a pretty good column by E. J. Dionne):
With Pelosi off the hook, the Washington press corps needed a new goat, and along came Harry Reid. The Senate majority leader, it should be said, sometimes makes it easy for his critics. He can be irascible, and has no qualms about yelling at journalists. (It’s happened to me.) He is not always careful with words. Earlier this month, he at least implied that Republicans were slow on the slavery issue, an odd charge since opposition to slavery was the passion that animated the founding of the GOP. (In those days, most Democrats were, as we might put it now, bad on the slavery issue.)
And, yes, Reid criticized my friend and colleague David Broder. It’s true that Reid was hitting back, since David is not wild about Harry. Nonetheless, I dearly love Broder, as does everyone who has ever worked with him.
I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you how absurd this is, that the very worst sin a Senate leader can commit is to insult a lazy, senile newspaper columnist.
eric
everyone loves Broder now just as they did when Lincoln freed the slaves. Who can forget Broder’s famous column urging Lincoln to reach a bipartisan solution to let the South keep “some” slaves.
Douche.
aimai
Two senile news commentators–if Harry shouted “god damn it you fucking moron I was making a metaphorical point about the positions of the two parties, not a reference to the actual Republican party at the time of Lincoln” he would have been well within his rights.
aimai
Paul in KY
Does any sane person really think that today’s GOP (Palin, Coburn, DeMint, Rush, etc.) would be at the forefront of racial equality & eliminating bondage-for-life & that a crazy wacko like John Calhoun would still be a Democrat?!?!
I like to gig Repubs by saying that Pres. Lincoln would be a Democrat today (none of them really dispute that) and doesn’t that say everything about today’s GOP?
Broder is the ultimate Pharisee, BTW.
aimai
Oh, Eric made a better comment. Maybe the Broderian solution would be that the slave owners could keep three fifths of their slaves, the working bits. “He was a slave, down to the waist…” its very Gilbert and Sullivan.
aimai
c u n d gulag
“I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you how absurd this is, that the very worst sin a Senate leader can commit is to insult a lazy, senile newspaper columnist.”
It is, unless he does it in a bipartisan manner. Then it’s ok…
MikeJ
It really isn’t nice to make fun of geriatric dementia, it’s a tragic thing. It was always sad when we had to tell grandma the same thing every ten minutes because she couldn’t remember any more.
Of course we never gave her space on the op-ed page at that point either.
Gravenstone
Clearly E.J. is stuck in the 1860’s and somehow missed that radical, full-throated embrace of racist assholes the Republicans pulled in the 1960’s. Ah, but what’s a century here or there for Villagers?
And you can’t honestly be surprised that Dionne would publicly fellate Village Patron Broder, are you?
Ann B. Nonymous
For a moment I confused Broder with Richard “that’s a real cute skirt you got on missy let me check out the back” Cohen — also at the Washington Post, that newspaper of champions — and I wondered why Dionne was lying so blatantly.
El Cid
I endorse Dionne’s point that we would all much rather know Broder personally and see what a wonderful warm person he was than have to read his columns.
brent
Contrary to what Dionne suggests, Reid’s choice of words with respect to proponents of slavery were both precise and correct. I suspect its impossible to understand through the haze of Washington conventional wisdom but words actually have meaning entirely aside from the way that the Broders of the world choose to interpret them.
eric
Here is the other point: Broder, like Will, is spectacularly wrong about everything. Will is wrong about policy, but Broder is wrong about process. Any reasonable observer – much less an observer with FIFTY years of experience — could see a broken deliberative process within which bipartisanship is now simply ceding to GOP extortion. Maybe you can argue that the GOP is right to demand the things they demand in the way they demand it, but it is is sheer WILFULL ignorance to treat our world as a world where there is democratic (small d) bi-partisanship. Broder is a whore for the ruling class and he succeeds because he makes himself seem non-threatening. In truth, he is among the most dangerous of “partisans.”
GregB
Leave David Broder alone! He’s coming over for quail wings later on.
-Karl Turdblossom Rove
Jim
“He’s been the Republicans’ apologist on everything from Newt Gingrich and the Impeachment of the Clenis to Florida 2000, he was Dick Cheney’s most useful idiot in Iraq, Gitmo, illegal domestic spying, the unitary executive and torture, but darn it if he isn’t the most pleasant old gentleman to sit with in the Washington Post cafetorium.”
El Cid
Broder is correct that the best way to find a happy center of politics is to ask Republicans what they’d like Democrats to do and say, and then make sure the Democrats do and say that.
SGEW
They don’t exactly try and dispute the central criticism of “the Village,” do they?
PeakVT
Nonetheless, I dearly love Broder, as does everyone who has ever worked with him.
Um, so what?
Jim
@eric:
In Mr Broder’s neighborhood, it’s always 1973. Republicans are decent, Main Street, church-going Americans (never mind those silly rumors about Nixon–which I think might be a quote from a DB column in 1973), Democrats a motley bunch of big city machine pols, radical Negroes, thuggish unions and (especially) unkempt and ill-mannered young people, who use foul language and burn draft cards, and brassieres.
geg6
Well, I’m glad that someone loves Broder. That makes up for the complete and utter disdain and disgust in which I hold him.
Zifnab
@SGEW:
“– I would never say anything bad about my drunken, lazy, ugly-looking, stupid, old friend. –”
:-p Those last lines add a bit of plausible deniability, so that when Dionne bumps into Broder at the country club he can play the, “I’m just repeating what other people were saying – I don’t really think that” card.
Irrelevant,YetPoignant
Although it is about David Brooks and not David Broder, I thought this recent Taibbi piece could be equally appropriate for either, or, indeed, many of their ilk:
aimai
What, is no one going to pick up on Paul in KY’s Republicans and “Bondage for Life” comment? I mean the jokes **cough** two wetsuits and a dildo**cough just write themselves.
aimai
David
He’s conflating David Broder the person with David Broder® the columnist/pundit. It’s like confusing an actor with a role.
The Grand Panjandrum
Perish the thought that anyone would ever insult Grandpa Walton.
Broder: Goodnight, EJ.
EJ: Goodnight, Grandpa Broder. It was that evening in the Village that I decided I would spend my life razzle-dazzling his critics, and when that didn’t work I’d baffle them with bullshit.
Zach
Given that each of those examples had more Republican support than Democratic support, I’m pretty sure Reid meant it as an indictment of people who stood in the way of progress regardless of their affiliation. He didn’t imply anything of the sort.
As a real indictment of Reid, it’s too bad he doesn’t have the balls to make the same argument on the floor in favor of gay rights… it’d be a much better analogy.
The Civil Rights Act of 63 is an example where basically everyone gets it wrong. Democrats claim credit for passing it w/ Johnson playing peacemaker. Republicans say that they voted for it more strongly than Democrats, so Dems were more racist and have to account for it if Republicans do, too. The vote was actually split almost perfectly between union and confederate states in the House and the Senate. There were more southern Dems who overwhelmingly voted against the CRA, so more Dems voted against it than Republicans. However, every single southern Republican in the House and the Senate also voted against the bill.
Edit: Still can’t do multigraph blockquotes.
neill
after y’all are done playing with the Dean, please remember to wrap him back up in the tissue paper and put him back in his box… thank you…
Steeplejack
@Zach:
Put two underscore characters on the blank lines between paragraphs and that will keep them together:
Bonus tip: If you butt your blockquote up against the last line of normal text above it–no blank line in between, as shown above–your blockquote will not appear in bold. (But you’ll still get a blank line in between.)
h/t Monkeyboy
SiubhanDuinne
@aimai
Nice Iolanthe reference!
Zach
@Steeplejack: Brilliant; I sort of like my inline poetry style solution, though.
Paul in KY
Aimai, I can’t help it if I accidently tap into the Republican zeitgeist with my comments. I guess it’s another example of how with Republicans, the jokes write themselves.
Wag
I would urge everyone to read the entire column cited above. It is by far the most admiring piece with regards to Harry Reid that i have read since the whole HCR battle began. The paragraph about Broder is a distraction from the rest of the piece, which in general calls out the Washinton press corp for it’s collective laziness and band wagon jumping.
someguy
Thing is, Reid is right. Opposing this particular iteration of health care reform – whatever the bill looks like in the end – is just like supporting slavery or opposing desegregation. For that matter, he really should have said it’s just like rooting for Hitler.
As long as we’re going to stretch similes until they cry in pursuit of the ultimate putdown of Republicans, we might as well go The Full Godwin.
The Republic of Stupidity
@GregB:
Cool… any chance Cheney shot ’em?
(They taste double good that way…)
Steeplejack
@Zach:
Trust me, dude, neither you nor Harry Reid is E.E. Cummings. “Inline poetry” = teh suck.
El Cid
@someguy: At least Reid wasn’t screaming at Congressman while carrying pictures of Hitler and Mao and calling up C-Span weeping about how extending health insurance regulations was just like Stalin, as Republicans were wont to do these past months since summer.
thomas Levenson
Delightful reality check, or why I love my wife: On reading this post over my shoulder, she turned to me in honest confusion and asked “who is David Broder.”
A question we will all be asking soon, I hope.
Violet
If you read the entire column, the Broder paragraph seems completely out of place. It doesn’t add anything substantial to the column. It must be required fellatio or something. Makes no sense otherwise.
Maybe EJ is hoping to be invited to Broder’s house for quail wings and football on New Year’s Day?
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
I liked this part of the article:
Everyone to the left of Obama – and clearly that’s a lot of people – need to realize this. The way the Republicans are acting is unprecedented. The last time a party acted like this was the beginning of the Civil War.
Jim
@Belafon (formerly anonevent): This, and, as others have noted, starting with DougJ, that is a pretty good column about Beltway punditry and the HCR process, with a weird, gratuitous and non sequitur kiss blown to Broder, and even there you could read a lot into that “nevertheless”.
This is one of the best bits in a strong column:
Such assaults are rarely about ideology, though I have found that liberals or Democrats are often the object of these sustained attacks, perhaps because journalists are overly sensitive to charges of liberal bias. There’s nothing like hitting a Democrat hard to “prove” impartiality.
Napoleon
(Duh!)>
DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio
@Wag:
Wait a minute. They’re saying that the Washington press corps is as bad as the lefty blogs?
Zach
@Jim: I don’t really care about Broder fellatio, but it’s annoying to see Dionne say “I have found that liberals or Democrats are often the object of these sustained attacks, perhaps because journalists are overly sensitive to charges of liberal bias” and then follow it up by prefacing his praise of Reid with an inaccurate criticism to meet the prerequisite for ideological balance.
In fact, Reid was guilty of conflating (to some/many/most) health reform with abolition, universal suffrage, and civil rights. As a historical analogy, this is a little silly but infinitely less ridiculous than hysteria about health reform being unconstitutional, a slippery slope to Stalinism, etc… so Dionne has to invent a scandal to find reasonable grounds for criticizing Reid. This provides cover for Dana Milbank, who more accurately criticized Reid’s remarks and showed off his expertise by noting that Reid’s remarks shifted the debate away from health care and enslaved the Democrats; a week later, the bill passed.
CalD
I have always regarded Harry Reid as of the most talented political operators of our time and very likely the single most under-appreciated — even the demonization of Nancy Pelosi always comes with undertones of fear of her. Not so with Reid. I really think Reid’s biggest problem from a PR standpoint is that his tactics generally sail right over a lot of people’s heads, including many who regard themselves as savvy political observers.
Reid approaches politics like a boxer and it’s proven to be a pretty effective tactic, given everything he’s been up against the entire time he’s been the caucus leader. The downside is that people focus on his jabs and feints and wonder away convinced they understand him to be ineffectual, to the point that they’ve often stopped paying attention altogether by the time he finally delivers his right cross. Of course that’s part of what makes his approach work, distraction and misdirection being the entire object of the set-up. So it actually plays to his strengths to be underestimated. But it doesn’t do much for his public image.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
Broder has been hammering on Reid for years and Reid came back with one pathetic little Reidesque insult. Since Reid is going to lose his seat anyway he ought to say “fuck it” and go postal on Broder. That would be fun.
Mark
@CaID – During the campaign, John McCain would criticize “Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid”, and not the Democrats in general. It was a perfect example of a Washington mindset: to McCain, they’re the embodiment of Democratic policies 2006-08, but almost no one in the US knew who Pelosi and Reid were and so the attacks were ineffectual.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@CalD:
So does Reid float like a butterfly and sting like a bee? Or is he more of the stagger around like a drunk bleeding all over the other guy until somebody falls down, and then retire and sell cheap BBQ grills George Foreman type?
mai naem
The only piece of legislation that has had a longer discussion in the senate is the entrance into WWI. Not Civil Rights legislation, no Vietnam war stuff, neither of the Iraq wars. Not since WW1. Fuck Olympia Snowe, John”Always Good News For” McCain and Mitch”Chipmunk Cheeks” McConnell.