Steve M. finds Kinsley waxing cleverly contrarian about the hypocrisy of Democrats’ attacking Rush Limbaugh when they themselves blah blah blah. And you-know-who is heh-indeeding it like it was a new edition of “The Bell Curve”.
Kinsley’s counterinuitive ironies have their place — in Harvard dining hall wankfests about Derrida, for example — but I don’t see how they contribute anything to a discussion of a political system that’s been dominated by race-baiting brownshirts for the past 35 years. Rush Limbaugh and his ilk have bullied the country for too long, and now it’s time to punch back. If a few fee-fees get hurt in the process, well that’s what happens when bodies start slappin’.
I feel the same way about my totebagging friends’ complaints about how it’s sad Obama wasn’t able to “change our discourse”, about how Democrats could win if they just explained things clearly and fairly. It’s one thing to muse about the possibility of reasonable disagreements and intellectually honest arguments, it’s quite another to put this into practice when Fox/Rush/Drudge are up your ass.
Maybe it’s best to wank high-mindedly only in quiet rooms, and leave the real discussion to people who’ve been mugged by right-wing reality.
aimai
Well, I totally support Michael Kinsley in his attempt to rehabilitate Rush’s reputation as an all important voice on the right side of the political aisle. We should insist that Rush be given a prominent role at the upcoming GOP nominating convention. This should go over wonderfully with the all important asshole white guy division of voters and I’m sure that minorities and women will also learn a thing or two.
aimai
rikyrah
from Axelrod about Willard:
If Romney couldn’t stand up to “the most strident voices in your party how can he stand up to Ahmadinejad?” Axelrod asked. “How are you going to stand up to the challenges of the presidency? These are tests. Presidential campaigns are tests. You are tested every single days in different ways. The Limbaugh thing was a test of leadership, and you have them all the time, and Mitt Romney has failed those tests in the campaign.”
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
The first thing we do, let’s kill all the contrarian hipsters.
JPL
What would Tweety say?
Gex
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: If they were truly hipster, they’d do us the courtesy of wanting themselves offed before we do. It’s cooler that way.
Edited to change from an indefinite to a definite article. Carry on.
staci
A favorite sentiment from a favored character.
schrodinger's cat
Apparently he was also recruited by Opus Dei, because he was bright and Catholic, his words not mine. Self regard, he has it.
Buggy Ding Dong
Michael Kinsley should just shut up. Wanking for wankings sake is the lowest form of punditry, which means it is pretty damn low. There simply isn’t a “both sides do it” equivalent to Fat Bastard and the right wing harpies of Fox and talk radio. It is like saying the boys 7th grade basketball team at MLK junior high is the same as the Lakers because they both play basketball.
Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor
Rush Limbaugh is a multi-millionaire talk radio pundit with over 1200 stations giving him airtime. As an “entertainer”, he has few legal/regulatory restrictions on his speech. As a public figure, he has a ready-made posse of millions of ditto-heads to back him up.
In other words, he can select any non-public person at will, and do his best to utterly destroy him or her. And we’re supposed to be worried about his little fees fees? And if we are being “fair” to him? Seriously?
Anyone who is ok with the Plush Windbag’s recent behavior is revealing something about themselves, IMO. And that something is none too flattering.
Mike G
Nice Tone Loc reference.
Jewish Steel
That was the most chilling SVU of them all.
Gin & Tonic
Ooh, I smell another Moore award nom.
Mark S.
Kinsley comes off as almost as big a sociopath as Limbaugh.
Honey, how can you expect me to make a sincere apology for sleeping with your best friend if you make me feel bad about it? WTF?
Mattminus
Kinsley is an idiot. Like a lot of folks in the media, accountability for ones words is horrifying to him. By all means we should explain why Rush is wrong, but not in any way that might make a difference.
I really like his whole “I know free speech doesn’t apply to this situation, but it really kinda should” routine.
The Ancient Randonneur
@aimai:
Well they have forgotten their place. Can’t they just be happy they were given the vote? What next, equal pay?
I’m stealing that.
freelancer
Is that a new tag? I lurve it.
aimai
@Mark S.:
I agree, the entire essay is a masterpiece of confused, amoral, and childish thinking. Its worse than a wrong its practically the definition of Bullshit–no one who had half a brain could have published this tripe without complete contempt for his readership. The argument has so many huge logical flaws in it that you could drive Rush Limbaugh on a unicycle through it.
aimai
Guster
@Mattminus:
Ha. That’s a whole genre, these days. That and ‘once a man has regular and privileged access to a powerful position or media megaphone, taking away that access is like theft.’
techno
Thank you DJGE for this.
True story. I have a very good friend who worked with Kinsley at the Harvard Crimson in early 1970s. As a result, we have been watching his career trajectory over theyears with an insider’s interest. I have detested Kinsley since his days on CNN and his patronizing defense of NAFTA. My friend is more nuanced noting that although Kinsley had probably the most ideal childhood imaginable, he has had grownup problems like a serious degenerative disease.
Friend has not checked in today—he’s being overwhelmed by the final decline of his dying father and we skip some communications. But I am willing to bet serious money he will NOT be shocked at Kinsley’s defense of Rushbo. As nearly as I can tell, Kinsley has always agreed with guys like Rush at a very primal level. What knits them together sociologically is their over-privileged childhoods—and perhaps the fact they have both been on-air personalities.
Don’t ever let the Harvard veneer of “liberalism” fool you. Kinsley has always been a right-wing pig. He’s just flying the flag today.
sandy
thanks for the laughs Doug. you’ve got this style down cold.
Jewish Steel
@freelancer: Poet, crazyperson, boxer, Mike Tyson.
Rafer Janders
@Mark S.:
See, most people who AREN’T sociopaths will feel a sense of scalding shame when it is pointed out to them that they have done something horribly offensive and hurtful. And the apology they then give will actually be sincere, they will mean it because they feel embarrassed about what they have done.
But again, that depends on the apologizer being a normal human being with a normal human ability for empathy. So Kinsley’s defense is, apparently, hey, whadda ya expect from a sociopath? As you note, though, it’s telling that Kinsley doesn’t actually seem to recognize that that’s what he’s saying.
TBogg
I think that Kinsley has entered the dementia phase of his Parkinsons. I know, I’m a mean person…
Chris
@The Ancient Randonneur:
FTFY.
freelancer
@Jewish Steel:
I was referring to the actual tag, but thanks!
ETA: It looks like Sarah P & T wrote it in December.
MariedeGourany
@Jewish Steel: LOL. Still, Derrida deserves better than to be wanked over by these morons.
patrick II
Climate scientists have seen how that works. The polls show the numbers of climate change disbelievers climb as scientists carefully, rationally explain that it’s getting warmer outside. Lies, mendacity, sophisticated atruthful (atruthful is to truthful as amoral is to moral) rhetoric have been winning the day.
techno
@TBogg:
As someone who got to deal with parents and dementia, what I noticed was that as they lose their marbles, they are reduced to their core personalities. And yes, I believe Kinley has always been Rush at his core—he just had it hidden under his “I am a cultured man” persona.
Mark S.
@TBogg:
You should really apologize for that comment, but you don’t have to make it sincere.
dollared
@aimai: Like! (just to piss off JC)
Jewish Steel
@freelancer: Ha! Yes, I missed that.
@MariedeGourany: J’agree.
makewi
Rush said something mean. Everybody freak out and use this as an opportunity to change the subject from the destruction of civil liberties by this administration. Hallelujah!
geg6
@schrodinger’s cat:
I saw that. Who the fuck would brag about being recruited by Opus Dei? Yeah! A bunch of misogynist masochistic religious facists wanted me in their club! Fuck yeah, I’m awesome!
dollared
@Mattminus: @Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor: The really scary part is the condemnation of secondary boycotts. Do you know why Taft-Hartley outlawed them? Because they work.
When the entire fucking world has been privatized, then secondary boycotts are an absolutely necessary political act. Why the fuck would any working person buy Dixie Cups if they knew they came from the Koch Brothers?
The Kochs are running a multibillion dollar political arbitrage scheme. They buy polluting industries on the cheap, eliminate their regulatory burden and bust their unions, and get them valued much higher as a result. They are using their money to interfere in politics all over the country to make more money.
The only way to stop these people is to hit them in their wallets. Believe me, if the head of their Union 76 retail division told them same store sales in Wisconsin were down 25%, and their Dixie Cups CFO told them sales of Dixie products were down 30% in Florida and Wisconsin, they would back off.
Kinsley and his ilk are truly the enemy.
kuvasz
Kinsey is a typical insoucient, pencil-neck geek who never put in a day of hard physical labor in a steel mill, auto, or textile factory. He and his ilk are an abomination to Labor Democrats because they have no spine, nor memory of the violence perpetrated by the Right on the working class over the last century.
Kinsey is a prime example of how the Democrats lost their edge by the very presence of such weaklings in the Party leadership. That edge was honed by the Labor struggle where Labor’s enemies attacked them with guns, knives, and bricks in order to kill or intimidate them. Once you see that your adversary is willing to kill you, negotiations take on a whole new, and more serious meaning. Folks like Kinsey along with most liberal pundits have never had their heads bashed in simply for demanding economic justice and as such look at these sorts of things as esoteric excercises or thought experiments, not things that actually affect human beings.
The decline of the Democratic Party runs parallel with the loss of Labor’s leadership in the Party. Now, instead of having negotiators whose heads were once busted up by the conservatives on the picket or protest line, and know their opposition precisely for what is it and can do, the current crop of Democratic leadership and pundits act like cringing, nuetered dogs when confronted by their adversaries.
Just quit being such pussies, the Right does not care one whit about civility, and they look at any attempt to compromise as a weakness of character, and self-reflection in their enemies not as a virtue, but as a vice to be exploited.
danielx
Mmmm-hmmmm. Obama did change the discourse, it went from Republican triumphalism to full metal wingnut in that short period from November 2008 to January 2009. As to Democrats ‘explaining’ things clearly and fairly? This line of thought shows some basic misconceptions about pure wingnuttery in general.
Short version: The short version is all I have patience for. The sumbitches are not interested in explanations, they want enemies. They are further not interested in clearness or fairness, they regard such concepts as weakness on the part of Democrats and treachery if practiced by Republicans. Besides, clearness and fairness might shine some light on – what shall I call it – let’s say intellectual inconsistencies, which makes them both angry and confused.
Shorter version: you cannot reason with the mofos – period.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@patrick II:
But, but, but everyone knows the global warming is just an evil conspiracy by lecherous liberal scientists to get highly educated young college sluts to parade around in their tiny little bikinis because it is so so very hot in here, and I know this is true because I heard it on the AM dial, but what I really want to know is, when are they going to release the videos so I can see them on my radio?
/dittohead
Scott
Aww, makewi, is your pill-popping, boy-diddling honey-lumpkins gettin’ the poopies beat out of him? It’s so, so sad!
danielx
PS – Kinsley is a Villager in excellent standing. What the fuck do you expect?
I am not interested in fairness to Rush Limbaugh, any more than he has ever been interested in fairness to any of the people he has savaged on the air. I want the fat bastard squirming, and I want him made to feel the same way he has made others feel.
Fairness to Rush Limbaugh? Fuck him. Repeatedly and without lubricant.
Culture of Truth
I mentioned the Kinsley piece here yesteray. On top of everything else, it’s incredibly condescending.
David Koch
Kinsley only lives to criticize liberals/Democrats.
trollhattan
@makewi:
Gorsh, everything captured in three brilliant sentences. Wish I could do that.
Here’s a nickel.
Mnemosyne
@makewi:
Because “religious freedom” means an employer’s right to impose their religious beliefs on their employees, not an individual’s right to be free from having religion imposed on them.
Makewi won’t be happy until every man who works at Beth Israel hospital is required to wear a yarmulke as a condition of employment, regardless of what the employee’s personal religious beliefs are. Having the power to make employees follow the dictates of their employer’s religion is what America is all about!
makewi
@Scott:
boy-diddling?
Culture of Truth
Yes, Kinsley has Parkinson’s. Remember when Rush made of Michael J. Fox by by jerking around? Good times.
makewi
@Mnemosyne:
We’ve been over this. Your continued attempts to re-frame who is being “imposed” upon is sad, and just makes you a pathological liar.
Culture of Truth
All these “the answer to speech is not boycotts, but more speech” idiots have zero understanding of the purpose of advertsing, branding, or the free market.
Mnemosyne
@Scott:
Well, you almost have to admire how neatly Rush was able to rip the mask of “religious freedom” from the right’s arguments by saying what they really meant this whole time (ie “I don’t want women fucking whenever they feel like it”).
Dug
Some of the comments in this thread are ridiculous, and not in a charming, absurdist way. Kinsley is an idiot? Kinsley should shut up? Kinsley is a demented, secretly right-wing hack? Look, I don’t agree with him today either, but that happens sometimes. Kinsley has been intellectually undermining conservative arguments for decades. I’d be willing to bet most of you have repeated arguments he’s originated over the past few decades.
And if you’re looking for more entertaining writing of his, check out his Slate piece, “O’Reilly Among the Snobs.”
(I’d link it if I wasn’t typing this on my phone)
Chris
@kuvasz:
Sure, but whose fault is that? As I recall, the drifting apart of the Democratic Party and its labor base started when a non-trivial number of white working-class voters decided to jump ship to the Repubs back in the Nixon and Reagan years over culture war issues (including civil rights). The whole Third Way/DLC shtick didn’t get off the ground until years after that.
Not disagreeing that Kinsley and his ilk are a big bag of dicks and that the party needs to reconnect with its labor roots, mind you – just saying that they’re not the only reason for the divorce.
Don
I liked the part of Kinsey’s column where he said what I’ve been thinking since this started – seriously, THIS is where an advertiser draws the line? If you ever advertised on RL’s show and knew what it was like you’re not cleared because you drop him now.
Then of course it all turned into nonsense. But hey, good paragraph there, Kinsey!
Mnemosyne
@makewi:
How is it “re-framing” to point out that the Catholic bishops want the power to deny birth control coverage to their non-Catholic employees based on the bishops’ religious beliefs?
You’re the one defending the proposition that a Hindu radiologist who works at Providence St. Joseph’s should have to follow the dictates of the Catholic Church, not me. So defend it — why should employers be allowed to insist that their employees conform to the employer’s religious beliefs?
dedc79
This argument, made by Kinsley and others, that it’s wrong for progressives to use this incident as an excuse to take down Rush, is preposterous. The man is a monster, he always has been and likely always will be. Now that it’s finally seeped into the consciousness of the general public, we’d be remiss if we didn’t take advantage.
Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor
@makewi:
Pity the poor employer, unable to control every aspect of his chattel’s lives for any arbitrary reason without government interference.
Chris
@Mnemosyne:
It’s funny: when attacking “multiculturalism,” they’re always going on about how the law has to be the same for everyone, how we can’t afford to end up with a ghettoized, Balkanized country with every culture doing its own thing.
Yet that’s exactly how they expect the health care market to work – oh hey, let’s have a maze of different hospitals each belonging to a certain culture and providing only those services that have been deemed Culturally Acceptable to the powers-that-be controlling that hospital.
Rather than, you know, everyone having to play by the same rules, like they claim they want.
ericblair
@dedc79:
Or more likely, they think progressives might be big enough chumps to fall for this bullshit. Hey, it’s worth a shot.
After all, all you have to do to get conservatives to back off is show some understanding and patience and willingness to have a reasonable dialog on the issues, right? Oh.
ppcli
I liked the part of Kinsey’s column where he said what I’ve been thinking since this started – seriously, THIS is where an advertiser draws the line? If you ever advertised on RL’s show and knew what it was like you’re not cleared because you drop him now.
I’ve listened to Rush’s show on and off when I want to hear what the talking points of the week are supposed to be. He says a lot of sophomoric and to my mind only mildly offensive things – like the “Feminazi” label – and occasionally says very offensive things. But this three day libelous rage-fest was orders of magnitude worse than anything I’ve ever heard him say. As if something about Fluke caused him to drop all the internal censors that prevented him from revealing his true personality too starkly.
The problem with the apology wasn’t that it was insincere. I don’t think anyone expected a sincere apology. But the apology made things worse, not because of insincerity, but because he avoided the point and tried to frame the outrage as pertaining to “just two words”, blamed liberals and continued lying about what Fluke had said, presenting a complete fabrication of her testimony.
The problem for Rush is that a lot of people found it convenient to lie to themselves about what he really was. And when they listen to the tapes of the three days of sewage he spewed at a woman who had done nothing but appear before Congress to talk about problems that her classmates had faced, they simply can’t avoid seeing him for exactly what he is.
That’s the problem, Mr. Kinsley: just listen to the tapes. Or just read the transcript. And tell me if that compares to anything you’ve ever heard before. Do you still want to defend that guy. Don’t do it in the abstract. Listen to the tapes – listen to the snarling, the sarcasm, the puppydog callers eager to join in the slut-shaming – and tell me that you want to defend that. Go ahead. I’ll wait.
dedc79
The First Amendment is so liberty-enhancing that it actually places some burden on citizens/consumers to self-police things like hate speech a bit. It’s often the villains (neo-nazis come to mind) who take the most advantage of these freedoms and it’s up to us to remember that while they have the right to speak without government intrusion, we have the right to protest and marginilize them. It’s actually incumbent upon us to do so. Kinsley and Sullivan seem to think it’s dirty somehow.
elmo
Over at K-Lo’s House o’ Catholics, one of the comments to a Corner post really put the issue into stark relief for me. He argued, without apparent irony, that employers should be free to pay their employees in donuts and breath mints if that’s what they want to do, and if the employee doesn’t like it, the employee is free to go to another employer. We shouldn’t have the right to regulate ANY aspect of compensation.
The past 70 years of legal progress be damned, apparently. Back to company scrip for you!
dedc79
@elmo: The commenter must’ve stopped reading Supreme Court opinions right around 1905.
gex
@geg6: The guys in there get all the good tail though.
Mattminus
@Don:
Eh, I think it’s useful to think of Limbaugh as an internet troll. Sure, he’s always pitching his little inflammatory bombs and getting a rise out of people, but the mods give him a warning or delete a post and let it go. This incident, however, is like the times when the troll loses it and necro’s every thread from the last year with an animated gif of a dick. While, in the past, it might have been best to “not feed the troll” and ignore him, this is the time he finally took it too far and earned the banhammer.
gex
@Chris: What I’ve seen in the SSM argument is that giving the “wrong” kind of people the same rules as the “right” kind of people is called granting them special privileges, not the same privileges. That’s how that lines up in their “brains”.
Quotes because these people have stopped asking questions since they believe in God and can’t be bothered to think about anything else. I assume they look like pistachios by now.
ornery_curmudgeon
Kinsley is part of the propaganda machine. The most valuable parts are the ones you think are ‘on your side.’
The buffy spell will make you forget this clue you’re stupid again.
If it was obvious, it would not have worked.
hilts
Limbaugh has lost the support of Rush and Peter Gabriel
Rush (The Band) Yanks Music From Limbaugh Show
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bob-cesca/rush-the-band-yanks-music_b_1325309.html?ref=media
Peter Gabriel Withdraws Songs From Rush Limbaugh Show Over Sandra Fluke Attack
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/05/peter-gabriel-rush-limbaugh-sandra-fluke-sledgehammer_n_1321671.html
Svensker
@gex:
I’m not getting this. Red and salty? Green and in a beige shell? Chopped up and sprinkled over roz bil halib?
‘splain me, please.
Chris
@gex:
Yeah. It’s easy to miss in their flood of rhetoric about freedom and the Constitution and all that, but their mindset’s enormously hierarchy-based. Of course what’s good for the goose isn’t good for the gander, otherwise what would be the point of being the gander?
Rafer Janders
@dedc79:
Kinsley is a monster? Sure, I’m not the biggest fan, but this seems to be taking it a bit far….
David Koch
I’m surprised no one, including myself, didn’t post this earlier:
“Even the liberal The New Republic’s former editor agrees that [insert pro-winger/republican/neo-con/conservative propaganda here].”
Joel
God, Michael Kinsley is a douche.
Donald G
Re: Kinsley and Rush
It’s gotta be residual Stockholm Syndrome from his days on CNN’s Crossfire when it was his job to be the weak, ineffectual “liberal” whose job it was to always lose to Pat Buchanan.
Kinsley’s the ally you hope does not publicly advocate for a position you support because the terrible way he does so makes it harder for better advocates to make the case.
Jebediah
@makewi:
Which word is confusing you? “Boy” means “male child.” “Diddling” is slang for “having sex with.”
If you’re still confused, ask your hero why, when traveling to the Dominican Republic without his wife, did he need to take a bottle of boner pills that had been prescribed to someone else?
Marcellus Shale, Public Dick
i think the problem with kinsey and the liberal defenders of limbaugh, is that they think the game still moves slow enough that some one is counting chits. i was shocked that bill maher doesn’t get this, but there you are. they think that if they defend limbaugh, that it is free because no one will actually listen, but more that should their time come, for an attack from the right, that attack might be paused because they once chose not to kick limbaugh when he was down.
ironically for derrida, that modernist use of one’s past arguments as a saving throw, has been replaced by the post-hoc excavation of one’s outliers to further gas a fire started elsewhere. a “how can you defend kinsey, he is buddies with limbaugh, see” sort of kindling. this game moves too fast to give a shit about buying future grace. its not really a bad thing.
for smarter heads, context is everything.
gocart mozart
@makewi:
Go fuck yourself with a rusty chainsaw makewi.*
*Free speech booyah! Hey I’m just an entertainer.
Scamp Dog
@Svensker: I’m guessing it’s a way to say “They’re nuts!”
danielx
One of the funniest unintentional lines I ever read, from Rush’s lawyer at the time of his arrest for various prescription drug follies:
“I can’t understand why my client is being treated like this.”
Answer: Because he’s rich and white, asshole. If he was poor and black (or poor and white), he’d already be on the road to Raiford.
Bob2
I don’t see why I should have to pay for Rush’s prostitution
if I ever buy anything from his advertisers.
Tell you what, if he makes me a video having sex with a goat, maybe I’ll let it slide.
Silver
Who would have thought that one of Andrew Sullivan’s mentors could be a clueless prick?
Shocked, I am.
Silver
@techno:
I’ve got a counter-example from my life for that though. A wonderful in-law, who is at the later stages of Parkinson’s, and his once gentle demeanor has totally changed, to the point of violence.
Joe Brown
I think what Kinsey is doing is basically concern trolling. There may have been some fallacious arguments there but he really lost me when he said to fight Rush you have to argue with him and come up with better arguments.
I personally don’t have a nationally syndicated talk show with 20 million yokel listeners from the great flyover. Or a Palm Beach home with its own radio studio. A boycott is the only voice I have.
Thanks for the concern, Kinsey, but I think I got this.