Jim Sleeper reminds that we have always been at war with David Brooks:
Why do we still have to do this? In 2004, in the Washington Monthly, Nicholas Confessore eviscerated Brooks’ opportunism forever, I thought. Last month, the blogger driftglass assailed him brilliantly, though viciously. Why aren’t any of us getting through?
One reason is that Brooks goes down well with some liberal readers of upper-middling intelligence who want – no, crave – to be beguiled out of their uneasy consciences.
I don’t agree with Sleeper’s explanation of why tote-baggers cling to the myth of Brooksian reason. I believe that the reasons are as follows: (1) liberals like to say they respect some conservative pundits the same way white people like to say they have black friends and (2) Brooks is well-spoken, well-dressed, and refers to thinkers many tote-baggers may be familiar with (Burke, Hume, Niebuhr, etc.).
In short, David Brooks is sort of like the Will Smith character in “Six Degrees of Separation”, if the Will Smith character had helped promote torture, wire-tapping, a disastrous war, and trillions of dollars of tax cuts for the wealthy. Sure he’s a liar, but he’s charming and eager to please, unlike those bratty kids Rachel Maddow and Paul Krugman.
I doubt that Brooks’ column today will hurt him much with people who watch the Snooze Hour. But maybe it will at least make Jon Chait, Ezra Klein, and Andrew Sullivan stop taking him seriously. And that’s a start.
licensed to kill time
I just love the term tote-baggers. Should be in the lexicon! You write definition now.
DougJ
@licensed to kill time:
I will.
Librarian
The thing that makes Brooks so attractive to some liberals is that he seems to be so much like them- intellectual, professorial, well spoken, as well as so sane, rational and reasonable. And, he’s willing to admit that there are crazies on the right, too- that’s important.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
I don’t think Chait has taken him seriously for a while. Otherwise I don’t think we would have had the statement about Brooks’ piece being the Platonic ideal of all of his other pieces.
jibeaux
I just don’t know why we have to have this affirmative action program to bring in conservative views. If they can’t win on the merits, they should sit it out. I’m tired, in other words, of the soft bigotry of low expectations. We’re really not doing these conservatives any favors by sheltering them like this.
RareSanity
Ok.
That made me actually laugh out loud at work…
Violet
There’s another simple explanation – he’s in the New York Times. The casual reader figures that the NYT is a “reasonable” newspaper and must be fact-checking and so forth. Oh, sure, there was that Jayson Blair kerfuffle a few years ago, but they sorted that. And it was an unusual situation, right? A paper like the NYT wouldn’t allow mistakes happen on a regular basis.
Shorter: If he’s in the New York Times he can be trusted. It’s about the brand.
cleek
Brooks can be reasonable. he’s on NPR all the time, and he was part of PBS’s election coverage. he can be thoughtful, reasonable, well-spoken, all that good stuff. for the most part, he’s a respectable moderate Republican. but he likes to dabble in the rough stuff now and then. it makes him feel alive.
most people know enough to keep their kinks behind closed doors. Brooks likes to get his strange on in the pages of the NYT. he just lets it fly. woohoo, ya’ll! look how wingnutty i can be!
then, when NPR calls so he can have his chat with EJ Dionne, it’s back to sober, reasonable ol button-down Brooksie.
Quiddity
Is Hume some sort of conservative hero?
cat48
I don’t always read Bobo’s columns any longer since he has started writing about teabaggers in a favorable manner. He does seem really reasonable though compared to someone like Krauthammer.
DougJ
@cleek:
That’s not a bad explanation.
My issue with him is that he writes things that aren’t accurate.
Mike E
Why take personal responsibility for your asinine worldview with so many easy marks out there, and Spring in the air?
Bobo needs the Pie Of Understanding. With brick topping.
jibeaux
@DougJ:
Clearly, you missed the new journalism memo. If it’s in an op-ed, it’s an opinion. If someone later introduces evidence of an inaccuracy, then that’s just another opinion that you can weigh against the first opinion, and take it or leave it. That way it stays all fair and balancedy.
cyntax
Both points are good; I think this one’s the main driver. Also, it’s supported by his veneer of ratonality and the fact that he’s the one conservative tote-baggers are consisitently exposed to. It’s just cause Brooks comes pre-packaged for them on the snooze-hour and in the NYT that anyone pays attention to him.
If any tote-baggers were to compare one of his columns to Larison’s, I gotta think they’d realize that Brooks has nothing to do with conservatism and everything to do with the status quo.
Cat Lady
Brooks is shiny. Literally. That’s my theory on why Ali Velshi is also on my TeeVee.
Bobo serves to assure the tote-baggers that the tea-baggers wouldn’t march him into the oven the first chance they get. NPR (Nice Polite Republicans) also serves that purpose now. They would be wrong.
ETA: BTW, the time stamp is so last week.
cfaller96
They took/take him seriously? That’s disappointing and disturbing. All three just dropped a notch in my book. Pity.
me
@Quiddity: Brit, yes. David, probably not so much although I could be wrong.
robertdsc
Let’s call it what it is. The man is a fucking liar.
K. Grant
Slightly OT – I am planning on not reading any blogs except BJ this week (maybe Benen). The angst has reached a fever pitch this week and my blood pressure (pharmacologically controlled, as I have atrial fibrillation) is doing dangerous things whenever I read most of the left-leaning blogs and sites – Talkingpointsmemo is particularly given to the worst form of paranoid kremlinology in every word uttered by congress-critters.
I have sent my missives and made my calls to my congress person down here in the Valley (Hinojosa – a very solid yes), and will now sit back and wait for the vote (whenever it will happen and in whatever form).
It is Spring Break – I may even break Baldur’s Gate II out of the archives, as I actually have time to do something that is not related to work.
DougJ
@K. Grant:
TPM gets a little too excited at times like this, it’s true.
DougJ
@Quiddity:
Apparently. I don’t understand why.
Downpuppy
The Times commenters can be counted on to utterly shred Brooks, calmy, eloquently, & without naughty words.
The Times will ignore such comments, until the suits there have free time in their job searches to wade through the archives wondering where they went wrong.
Bill E Pilgrim
@cleek: I don’t know, this may be how he looks now, but I think it’s the other way around. Brooks is the real thing in Wingnut land.
Here’s what he wrote about Colin Powell’s address to the UN and the European, and especially the French, response, in 2003:
It gets worse:
This, I submit, is not some befuddled moderate conservative writing a goofy column whose thesis “The Democrats shouldn’t be mean, otherwise the Republicans might note vote with them anymore!!” is some laughably silly toe-dangling into wingnuting for amateurs.
This is a serious right-wing asshole, and arrogant as they come.
KCinDC
OT, but Sarah Palin seems to have started tweeting her dreams. Does anyone on earth believe this actually happened?
Chyron HR
@KCinDC:
What are the quotation marks meant to indicate? Does Sawah doubt that Pelosi is engaged in “a particular course of action intended to achieve a result”?
schrodinger's cat
Brooks as wingnutty as the best (worst?) of them, but is doubly dangerous because of his demeanor, calm and polite, spouting Republican talking points while being seemingly oh so reasonable.
Ash Can
@KCinDC: I have no idea what she’s talking about, and I doubt she does either.
Jay in Oregon
@Chyron HR:
Maybe she thinks the “blog” of “unnecessary” quotation marks is a style guide?
licensed to kill time
@Chyron HR: I imagine la Palinista is referring to the reconciliation process. The Evil Reconciliation Process talking point has spread far and wide.
That tweet also put an evil song into my brain.
Liz
The thing that makes Brooks so attractive to some liberals is that he seems to be so much like them- intellectual, professorial, well spoken, as well as so sane, rational and reasonable. And, he’s willing to admit that there are crazies on the right, too- that’s important.
He does seem really reasonable though compared to someone like Krauthammer.
these.
I guess I haven’t read enough of his stuff to make me think he’s evil. Plus he’s about the only conservative that I can even partially stomach. I feel like I need to give the other side equal time, and he’s about all I can handle. :(
Rick Taylor
__
And articulate.
geg6
@DougJ:
Well, DougJ, that seems to be a rampant issue everywhere in wingnutland:
http://inklake.typepad.com/ink_lake/2010/03/the-librul-universe.html
cmorenc
You leave out a significant reason why Bobo has at least a mildly friendly following among many people who think of themselves as progressive-leaning, but tempered with sensible moderation.
BOBO IS THE MOST RATIONAL, SENSIBLE-SOUNDING conservative-leaning pundit out there, and he seemingly acts like he’s tempered with sensible moderation. Unless you dig behind the surface of his reassuringly civil, seemingly sensible-sounding comments to um, you know do some fact-checking and fill in some accurate background knowledge, it sorta makes soothing sense even if you mildly disagree with it.
THE BOTTOM-LINE PROBLEM IS that Bobo’s like the character in those classic scenes in mental hospitals where someone sane is unjustly locked up among the inmates, and they momentarily think they’ve found a sane person in an authoritative position (Bobo) to help them out of their situation, and then discover when Bobo turns around that Bobo is wearing a hospital gown and is as delusionally insane as the rest of the inmates who deservedly belong there. Trouble is, too many people don’t look behind Bobo to see that he’s one of the insane inmates himself, even though he can sustain a convincing front for a little while.
Darkmoth
I think it’s at least partly the fact that he’s willing to call Palin “a cancer on the GOP”. Thus placing him to her Left, where a ruthlessly binary political process lumps him with us. It’s the same shit that gives Frum and Douthat liberal “cred”.
Two things are demonstrated here:
1) Enemy of my enemy thinking is ingrained, and
2) Sarah Palin really does move some sort of Overton Window. When a Republican admits she’s crazy, we think he’s a nifty guy.
DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio
So, who is the rightwing commentator or pundit today who is worthy of being taken seriously?
And that field has to be left blank, what is the point of picking out one or two of these and obsessing over them all the time?
aimai
Liz,
I think if you click on the links above you will discover just how truly horrible Brooks is, as a political thinker and as a person. Its just that he seems so white bread and reasonable. Its true that its impossible to imagine Brooks actually killing anything that he eats–or physically squaring up to another human being–but that doesn’t stop him from chowing down on an expensive steak when someone else is paying, or from supporting the mass bombing of innocent civilians because his superiors told him it was a good idea. He’s the very definition of the banality of evil–one can no more imagine Brooks taking a sincere moral stand against any powerful person, or on behalf of victims or the poor, than one can imagine Eichmann doing so. His whole focus is in turning out tiny, perfectly formed, incredibly mendacious apologies for the Republican party. He’s like a guy who spends his time whittling splinters for the fingernails of torture victims and who prides himself on his workmanship and ignores the results.
But in a way I think that’s unfair to Brooks. He clearly cares very much what polite society says and thinks about him. He’s a classic authoritarian follower. I think we could flip brooks, or break him, by having respectable, well dressed, white people who are in his own social circle, follow him everywhere with pictures of dead Iraqi children, men and women who have died for lack of health care in this country, embarrassing things like that. The suffering of other people isn’t real to him unless its a topic of conversation in his social setting.
aimai
aimai
Pangloss
BoBo has mastered his role as the pseudo-intellectual, bend-but-don’t-break apologist for the worst excesses and outrages of the Neocon Jihad.
geg6
@Liz:
If you’re interested in semi-reasonable conservatives (not “conservatives”), then stop reading Bobo. Read Larison, or Conor Friedersdorf, or even, FSM help me, Sully. But Bobo is not a reasonable conservative. He’s a fox in sheep’s clothing, meant to seem “reasonable,” and “sane,” and all. But he’s not. He’s a lying, insane, violent, murderous monster, just like all the rest of the right.
NonWonderDog
@Ash Can:
Apparently there’s talk about introducing the reconciliation bill under a rule that says that a vote for the reconciliation bill counts as a vote for the senate health care bill as well, and that if the reconciliation bill passes the House then the senate health care bill also passes. They apparently bundle small stuff all the time, so it isn’t that unusual. The fact that they are potentially considering a vote for a bill that amends a bill that isn’t law yet as a vote for the amended bill does seem a bit weird, though.
The republicans are, of course, spinning this as Pelosi claiming dictatorial powers and decreeing that the health care bill will be “assumed” to pass without a vote on it.
Darkmoth
@DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio:
That’s a really interesting question. Surely there’s someone – McArdle? If I ever get to the point where I think everyone Right of me is a complete idiot, I might start to wonder what makes me think I’m the Leftmost Edge of Sanity.
Xenos
Coming in late to the thread, but I agree that ‘tote-bagger’ is bloody brilliant. I am not worthy.
JGabriel
DougJ:
My issue with Brooks is that he’s a lousy writer. Almost every column Brooks writes commits almost every sin listed in Orwell’s Politics and the English Language.
It’s kind of amazing – or would be if one could get through the execrable soporificness of Brooks’s columns without passing out.
.
Ash Can
@NonWonderDog: I figured it had to do with this, but that she garbled the facts beyond recognition due to sheer ignorance.
DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio
@Darkmoth:
That’s a good point. If everyone on our right is just a nutcase or pathological liar, which does not appear to be an unreasonable assessment right now, then …. what is the check on the left? Not in terms of veracity or sanity, but in terms of any quality control on our policy views, our politics, our ideas, our basic assumptions?
We could be the party that says the sun is coming up tomorrow morning, and the right would be out there pimping darkness in time for the evening news cycle.
The Moar You Know
@DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio: You may want to give Larison a try. I have some real problems with his worship of the Confederacy (doubly amusing when you realize that he’s a no-good goddamn Yankee) but aside from that glaring flaw he is, bar none, the most reasonable guy on the right, and as a bonus, an exceptionally good writer. I usually don’t agree with him, but he is most assuredly worthy of being taken seriously.
lamh31
OT, but I just read over at politico that some Dem congressmen are saying that Obama should delay his Asia trip AGAIN!!!!
WTF! At what point does it not become evident to certain people, that President Obama has never been the problem. The real problems have always been some of the members of Congress.
Do they literally need Obama to walk them hand in hand towards this HCR vote.
This is getting ridiculous!
Sentient Puddle
Hey, guess what? Strategic Vision released a new poll!
You may remember Strategic Vision as the polling firm that Nate Silver reamed. Hard. Since then, they’ve felt too butthurt to go back into polling. Until now.
geg6
@The Moar You Know:
Friedersdorf can be mildly interesting, too. Though I usually end up at Larison if I’m planning on torturing myself by reading a conservative.
Menzies
@Pangloss:
This, pretty much. I suppose it can’t hurt that he’s made some moderate gestures, mostly on social policy, and I get that he “seems reasonable” or that he’s “sensible-sounding,” but given the substance of his arguments Brooks was always more dangerous in my view than many of his outwardly crazier brethren.
He’s dangerous because unlike a Tancredo-style ideologue prone to opening his mouth and sticking his foot as far down it as it will go, he calculates his responses. It makes him incredibly useful to the right wing and equally corrosive to the left.
geg6
@Sentient Puddle:
Jeebus. Still not meeting a single requirement to be taken seriously, I see.
kay
@NonWonderDog:
We’re doomed to hear three days of misinformation on it, though, because Sarah Palin tweeted something stupid, and no one in media knows enough to correct her.
They never “got” reconciliation, and they’ve had a solid month.
Kent Conrad spent three days explaining reconciliation and the “side car” over and over and over and then gave up.
The day he gave up his editorial started like this: “A lot of misinformation has been spread about the reconciliation process…”
It didn’t make a bit of difference. They still don’t get it.
wobbly
What proof is there that Brooks “goes down well” with liberals?
The fact that he is read or viewed quite widely does not mean that “he goes down well” with anyone.
Bill E Pilgrim
@JGabriel: Hear hear.
This one by Brooks started off by breaking the well-known rule: “Don’t create pompous over-written essays that make people want to laugh.”
There are a handful of people writing professionally who bafflingly receive regular praise from commenters like “Well, I don’t always agree with him, but he’s a brilliant writer”, which is fine until I discover that the commenter is referring to Thomas Friedman, or Christopher Hitchens. Or David Brooks.
Sentient Puddle
@geg6: I think they’re just hoping time dulled the senses and that we all forgot. Which, y’know, ain’t going to happen.
I’ve got 538 on refresh, waiting to see Nate’s head a splode.
les
@The Moar You Know:
Well, he’s a good writer and not exceptionally crazy on modern politics; but keep in mind that the last society that met his criteria for a good society was Russia under the Czars, after the Russian Orthodox Church got established.
It’s not possible to be more authoritarian than Larison; it’s just that (unlike all the others, I’m sure) he’s convinced that his authorities are the good ones.
Quiddity
@DougJ
First of all, we are talking about David Hume (not Brit).
Hume was a major philosopher (and one I admire) who took reason and skepticism to the limit, where it broke down. But he performed a worthwhile service overall. Okay, inductive reasoning can’t be logically justified, but without it we can’t do much, so let’s use it and benefit from it. And we have.
Hume was a Tory of some sort and wrote a History of England that might be considered conservative. But that’s not much.
Considering Hume’s approach to religion and miracles, he comes off as someone solidly in the Enlightenment tradition which nowadays would put him on the liberal side of things.
My guess is that libertarians claim Hume as one of their own, and from that, he’s deemed a conservative hero.
Michael D.
Since there is no open thread, I’ll put this here: Conservatives want to replace Grant on the $50 bill with…
Can you guess?
Raygun!!
DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio
@The Moar You Know:
I will do that.
As a lifetime progressive-obsessive, I find myself craving some sane rightitude once in a while. It’s like the vegan who just has to have a big greasy burger every so often.
elm
@Darkmoth
That’s a really interesting question. Surely there’s someone – McArdle?
That’s a joke, right?
I’ll third, fourth, or fifth Larison.
ricky
OT, but Sarah Palin seems to have started tweeting her dreams. Does anyone on earth believe this actually happened?
Perhaps Palin thinks Pelosi is her black friend and this is a comment on coiffure.
bayville
What does that tell you about our famous, fightin’ Libs in the MSM, if they take a hack like David Brooks seriously?
The guy is lazy, a piss-poor writer of the Douthat-variety and probably hasn’t held a one-on-one conversation with anyone making less than six-figures in 25 years.
Fuchim.
JGabriel
@Michael D.: Why is it no surprise that Conservatives, when looking for someone Reagan can replace as a denominational figurehead, settled so quickly and with such alacrity on the General who beat the South?
It’s almost like they still carry a grudge over the Civil War.
.
kay
@lamh31:
Not good news, I don’t think, asking for an extension of the deadline.
Democrats in Congress are going to have to fully accept the idea that they are dead if health care fails. There is simply no good reason to keep a Democratic majority in Congress if they can’t function as a majority anyway. Really. I’m stumped. I don’t know why anyone would go out of their way to keep them in the majority, Obama aside.
Maybe they’re just doing their usual really helpful and productive incessant whining and blame-shifting.
D.N. Nation
Krugman is more like Bobo than many liberals care to admit, I’m afraid. Though, he certainly has more good days than the hacktacular Brooks.
Did the NYT ever run a correction on that Applebees nonsense?
Xenos
@JGabriel: Someone ought to introduce a bill to replace Grant with Sherman. That ought to get their attention.
Dee Loralei
Jim Sleeper links to Driftglass in his column and I gotta say Drifty is one of the most acerbicly funny, well-sourced, incredibly passionate left wing bloggers on the entire interwebs. And he does some damned fine photoshops. So if you haven’t visited castle driftglass do go. NOW. Go for the take-downs of DavidFuckingBrooks, stay for the Sunday Morning Coming Down pieces. He’s some sort of cross between HML Menken and IF Stone ( hi aimai!) And he does for Chicago politics what Molly Ivins did for Texas’s. Go read.http://driftglass.blogspot.com/
Also. Too.
geg6
@lamh31:
Now, I wonder…who could those Dem congressmen be? Does Politico even say who they are? Do they mention if they are senators or representatives? Do they mention if they are friends of Bart Stupak, perhaps?
Inquiring minds want to know and it would be irresponsible not to speculate, after all.
freelancer
@JGabriel:
Uhm, J, this was in my fucking email alerts yesterday:
Yes, lone wingnut birfers propose wingnut legislation in 37 statehouses, and suddenly that means that 3/4th of the country is ready to break out the Confederate flags.
El Cid
@Xenos: Frederic Douglass.
Rob Roser
David Brooks can eat my dick…and I do have black friends.
The Grand Panjandrum
@lamh31: Just what the D’s need, go home for another break BEFORE voting on the bill. It has really worked well for them, especially last August. Pelosi and Reid better keep them here until they vote on the bill or they can kiss that mother goodbye.
geg6
@D.N. Nation:
Wait, Kthug lies and uses completely fact-free statements to make his points? Kthug has a resume as free of actual accomplishments in life outside the Village as Bobo? Kthug was a former editor for The Nation and Mother Jones, just like Bobo was op-ed editor for the WSJ and the senior editor at founding of the Weekly Standard? Seriously? You wanna back that up?
The Grand Panjandrum
@El Cid: I personally would like to see Harriet Tubman on a bill. She was a bona fide Civil War hero.
El Cid
@The Grand Panjandrum: If Democrats are too fucking stupid to pass this bill, then many of them really did prefer their dozen years in the wilderness 1994 – 2006, since evidently some conservaDems find it easier to take.
Ash Can
And in other news, via the GOS, Barack Obama is shrill:
Bill E Pilgrim
@D.N. Nation:
Yes, they share the characteristic that they both write for the New York Times. Dead ringers.
David Brooks and Paul Krugman?
Oy. Where does one start…
Never mind. Good night.
freelancer
@Ash Can:
YES!, That is awesome! The only way that could be better is if he visited to endorse primary challengers of people who voted no.
DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio
@JGabriel:
Well, they absolutely do still mourn the loss of the Civil War.
Just go to Gettysburg and visit the Lee memorial over there on Seminary Ridge. The red staters are there as we speak, weeping.
I’m serious.
Midnight Marauder
@D.N. Nation:
That is the silliest thing I’ve seen written on this site since John Cole wrote the following the other week:
D.N. Nation
Has he in the past? Yes. Has he subsequently ignored all responses from interested observers like, say, me? You know, la la la, I can’t hear you, it’s just a column, whateverrrr? Yes.
To the extent of Bobo? Well, no, of course not. But he’s hardly immune from the epic outbreak of bullshit that infects pretty much anyone penning anything for the NYT opinion page. I don’t for a second pretend like Pauliekins isn’t a Villager, and neither should you. A ClintonBot Villager, but a Villager.
JenJen
Dave Weigel has a, how you say, interesting post up:
Tea Partiers Working With Firedoglake on HCR Whip Count
D.N. Nation
KthugBots: Save your advanced weaponry for something more worthwhile. Krugman spouts horseshit from time to time. He over-/mis-analyzes the minutia of Obama’s every word from time to time, like a Hiatt or a Douchehammer. It is what it is. All things considered, I’m glad he (mostly) speaks for me.
But c’mon. De-kneel yourselves of that altar.
DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio
Too funny by half.
Just plug in any name, this kind of pablum still works:
I kinda like Charles Manson. At least you know where you stand with him.
I kinda liked Tim McVeigh. At least you knew where you stood with him.
I kinda like Representative Massa. At least you knew where to stand for him.
etc
kay
@geg6:
Clyburn is named, or I wouldn’t have bothered with it.
There’s a really whiny member who complains that asking them to vote on something is “ridiculous”, but he can be ignored.
At some point I think you have to get fatalistic. If they can’t muster the nerve, they fail, and they lose.
They’ll blame Obama, or Republicans, or both, but it isn’t going to fly, simply because they have nothing to point to as an accomplishment.
I’ve tried it, and I can’t come up with anything. “Keep the House in Democratic hands because….”
What? Why? I got nuth’in. I guess retaining a majority would slow appointment of an independent prosecutor. Maybe.
Fern
@JenJen: Oy.
gwangung
Quantitative analysis is, um, different than qualitiatve analysis.
You might be right, but without numbers and analysis, your statement is as useful as the old cant about the liberal mass media.
kay
@JenJen:
Wow, “Union thuggery” now, from the firebaggers?
I remember when they were all het up about the excise tax “on behalf” of their friends in labor.
Labor comes out for the bill, and now they’re “thugs”?
Cacti
@DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio:
The South’s greatest act of revenge against Lincoln was hijacking his political party.
JenJen
Speaking of shitty media figures, Mark Knoller has one helluva tweet up:
See how he did that?
@Fern: @kay: Wasn’t it just yesterday that Jane was saying the White House sent MoveOn.org to intimidate Dennis Kucinich? Today, she writes that Obama is threatening pro-choice Democratic women for standing up for choice. And yes, she employs those words.
jayackroyd
I was talking about this with CultureOfTruth last Sunday. I know plenty of folks who see Bobo as a sagacious, thoughtful commentator. I think this has a lot to do with his teevee demeanor. He is very unthreatening, very calm, very reasonable in tone and style. That his writing doesn’t stand up to any scrutiny doesn’t seem to matter to these folks. It is comforting, and seems to be moderate, even when it is bat shit crazy, or, like today, simply wrong.
JenJen
Just to add on to my post #81: As far as I know, Dave Weigel doesn’t yet have a quote from Jane Hamsher denying or confirming what the tea party member told him, but he states he has inquired by email. So, grain of salt, for now, but it’s a provocative charge.
cfaller96
@lamh31
Yes. This has been another edition of…
JenJen
And, update to posts #81 and #91: Jane Hamsher hits back at Dave Weigel here.
Jane says Weigel is a “smear-mongerer,” so I imagine Weigel’s response is going to be interesting, too.
kay
@JenJen:
I think she’s wrong about Moveon pressuring Dennis K. They may be, but that isn’t what matters.
Unions are pressuring him, as they should. Have unions been incredibly subtle and shifty and dishonest, and I somehow missed it?
They may be the only people at the health care table I have any respect for when the dust settles here.
They’re right out there. No confusion about what they wanted, and what they want now. If there’s anything they know how to do, it’s negotiate.
We need them in the Senate. This would have been passed 6 months ago.
gwangung
Why is this a problem? And why aren’t other folks on the progressive front emulating their tactics? Isn’t that what progressives SHOULD be doing?
demo woman
@JenJen: How low will she go… Pretty low I guess. I still miss Christy’s voice though.
Makewi
What’s a tote-bagger?
demo woman
@JenJen: I loved this quote..
JenJen
@demo woman: Dave Weigel’s latest tweet:
First thing I thought when I read Jane’s response? “Oh, I bet Weigel taped that conversation with her denying, teabagging friend.” :-)
kay
@gwangung:
I’m sorry I wasn’t clear. I don’t have any problem with it. I think it’s great.
SiubhanDuinne
@aimai #36
What are we waiting for?
gwangung
@kay: Actually I wasn’t clear. Isn’t this what the so-called hippie punchers are advocating? Why do people have problems with that? To me, gathering the low-level support to be able to do this is what people should be doing anyway.
kay
@gwangung:
As to why others don’t emulate their tactics, I suspect it’s because unions lobby in majority-led groups on issues they’re interested in, they know where members will compromise before they state a position, and they vote and negotiate constantly, on everything.
They’re better at working in a group. It takes practice.
gwangung
@kay: Which, of course, suggests the question of why other groups don’t try to learn how to work as a group. (And I think that a lot of folks on the progressive front either a) don’t realize they have to learn to work together as a group or b) think they don’t need to work together as a group)(which is one of my positions in the periodic flare-ups about hippie-punching–the nuts and bolts and logistics of getting issues made into law is sadly neglected by a lot of folks….).
celticdragonchick
Actually, Brooks is a zombie…and we all know that there is only way to to kill zombies. Since that is not a feasible option unless Brooks reverts to form and starts eating brains at the NYT, it will be impossible to get rid of him any time soon.
Suzan
Ah.
Agreed.
Wingnutty Professor
This, I submit, is not some befuddled moderate conservative writing a goofy column whose thesis “The Democrats shouldn’t be mean, otherwise the Republicans might note vote with them anymore!!” is some laughably silly toe-dangling into wingnuting for amateurs.
This is a serious right-wing asshole, and arrogant as they come.
S
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DougJ
@JenJen:
Yeah, it’s pretty amazing how low Hamsher has sunk. Weigel has a serious body of work as a reporter. What does she think she is accomplishing with this smear?