In our discussion of gay wizard Nate Silver’s historical presidential rating post, there was an exchange:
burnspbesq Says:
I’m also uninterested in Nate Silver’s sexual orientation and only found out that he was gay when he was Out magazine’s Person of the Year, but when I found out, well, it explained a lot. Not about him but about how why there was so much otherwise-mystifying hostility aimed at him (from people like Charles Lane, Bobo, Scarborough, Michael Gerson, etc.). I had the same feeling when I learned that Susan Rice was black and earlier, when I learned that Desiree Rogers was black.
Maybe this is just stereotypical p.c. left-wing paranoia and I’m a self-hating straight white man, but more and more I find that when someone is inexplicably hated by some establishment in-group, I later learn that there’s some racial/orientation/whatever reason (that isn’t evident from reading their name in print) for it. It’s been eye-opening.
NotMax
Yowzah.
You just won your own thread.
Sad But True
i was just saying this earlier in the day. the primary example i came up with to explain my theory was Shirley Sherrod
eemom
Zed!
(In honor of fellow FDL alums Burnsy and Raven who were bickering on the last thread.)
ETA: oops, too late. Guess I’m rusty after 6 years.
Sad But True
the rightwing nuts will ALWAYS go after a minority woman. See also Sotomayor.
They’ll hate on a woman or a minority male, too, but it’s the minority women that really get them worked up.
Doug Galt
@Sad But True:
Not just the wingers, establishment centrists too.
Keith G
So, you are saying that bunches of conservatives who also didn’t know Silver was gay oppose his work because he is gay?
My head hurts.
redshirt
What’s worse: Nerd, or gay? Or gay nerd?
Doug Galt
@Keith G:
They knew he was gay, you idiot.
Pooh
Yup. Interestingly, at the inauguration on Monday (humblebrag), the group of (white mostly male) hill staffers standing next to us discussed at length what a bitch Rice is before moving on to laughing at Tree Guy.
jibeaux
Now I’m curious about the existence of white women named Desiree. They could exist. I’ve known white women named LaWhatever.
Raven
@eemom: I didn’t know that dork was a FDL refugee.
Baud
@jibeaux:
Seems like a name a white woman in Vegas would have.
Pooh
@Baud: those aren’t their real names.
? Martin
It’s hard to be a straight white man. We’re used to running the place and not being held accountable, and all of these damn upstarts keep demanding to get out of the gutter. It’s exhausting.
Doug Galt
@Baud:
Or Louisiana maybe. I only know it from that Neil Diamond song really.
Gordon, the Big Express Engine
Nate Silver is gay?? Not that there’s anything wrong with that…
jibeaux
@Keith G: they “oppose his work” because they’re dumber than paint. They hate him personally for teh gay vibe. Your head will feel better if you put the Fox back on.
redshirt
Wait a second: Ben is Glory?
Mnemosyne
@Keith G:
I’m pretty sure that fellow pundits like Charles Lane, Bobo, Michael Gerson, etc. already knew Silver was gay, which is why they were so disdainful towards him. Which is, you know, Doug’s point.
Baud
@Pooh:
Yeah, right. Next you’ll try to tell me that they really weren’t attracted to me…
Omnes Omnibus
@jibeaux: I knew a white woman named LaDonna. So there.
Zam
This just proves that math and numbers are the tool of the devil.
eemom
@Doug Galt:
He didn’t come out publicly until after the election, IIRC.
ETA: Are you people saying the other emmessemm types knew the inside scoop about him, or that they assumed he was gay because of…..what?
jibeaux
@Baud: a streetwalker named Desiree…
Smiling Mortician
@Doug Galt: There’s the protagonist of Kate Chopin’s story “Desiree’s Baby,” who is definitely white. It’s sort of the point of the story.
RossInDetroit, Rational Subjectivist
@? Martin:
And don’t forget everyone assuming that we can’t jump. Makes me so furious.
Baud
@Doug Galt:
I’m confused. I looked up the lyrics and didn’t see anything about Louisiana or Desiree’s race.
Short Bus Bully
Awesome post is awesome.
Also, the goopers are NOT racist and NOT homophobic, they just don’t like the blahs and the gheys. But that’s not racist nor is it homophobic.
Pretty cool reality they’ve created for themselves there.
Silva
This really is OLD news. And not relevant to anything in current events/news.
But Hey, flog away!
scav
@jibeaux: Children of hardcore A Little Night Music fans?
gex
There was an orchestra that did an okay job of hiring men and women, but started wondering why the preponderance of first chairs were men.
Then they started having people try out behind a curtain and associated them with a number and not a name. Guess what happened? Women started making first chair more often.
These were people who were concerned about bias. Our culture so thoroughly ingrains these ideas of how things are in our brains where they shape conscious thought more than they are conscious thoughts. You have to work to root those out and fix them and you have to work to change how we socialize people to really begin to address the problem. One generation of “civil rights” isn’t going to do much of anything, although the folks on the right have decided that that is more than enough.
Pooh
@Baud: see I’ve always thought if it as the logical extension of the Tyler Durden “single serving friend” description of ones seat mates on an airplane.
BruceFromOhio
@Sad But True: … which makes me immediately think of Valerie Jarrett.
As to Nate? Brains beats brawn every time, motherfuckahs. Still, Arkon DougJ, you got an easy ride.
Doug Galt
@eemom:
I still bet they knew or got a vibe about it.
dino
He can’t be gay. He likes sports.
The Signal and The Noise is awesome so far. Like his blog: digestible explanations of complex phenomena.
Jesse
@redshirt: So you’re saying Ben and Glory are connected in some way?
Doug Galt
@Baud:
Not the Louisiana thing but Neil Diamond is white. I know it’s hard to believe….but he is.
Raven
@RossInDetroit, Rational Subjectivist: So you box out.
Baud
@Doug Galt:
You think Neil doesn’t get a little jungle fever now and again?
Pooh
@eemom: a couple of the more spittle flecked winger attacks basically described him as a gay girly gay weak gay lisping gay gay GAY liberal gay hack, so yeah I’m guessing it was an open secret.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Doug Galt: I now have an earworm of that song, or at least the chorus that I can remember, which I thought was Barry Manilow.
Omnes Omnibus
Wire. Nice.
Doug Galt
@Raven:
And shoot from the outside, motherfucker.
eemom
Anyway, I question this entire thesis, at least in this particular context. I think the emmessemmtards hate Silver because HE, unlike they, (1) possesses an actual and unique talent, (2) owes his success to that and not to being a fucking useless hack, and (3) is RIGHT all the time.
BruceFromOhio
@Raven: @eemom: please please please dear Gaia do NOT introduce that shit here. Next thing you know we’re all Fristing the open threads.
RossInDetroit, Rational Subjectivist
@dino:
Can someone who approaches athletic competition from the standpoint of statistical analysis really be said to like sports?
Doug Galt
@eemom:
There’s that, too, don’t get me wrong. But there was something about the way they all ganged up on him that made me think, even at the time, that there was something more to it.
Unabogie
@redshirt:
We laughed out loud.
:-)
scav
@RossInDetroit, Rational Subjectivist: Seems as valid a position from which to observe them as lying on a couch belching from cheap beer and chicken wings, but I’m an outsider.
Thymezone
@eemom:
Your post is gay.
.
.
.
.
.
Okay, I am just in a mood. Sorry. Don’t hate me.
beergoggles
When someone is hated by the establishment in-group, it’s usually because that someone is right. The gay/black/woman/hippie part is just a convenient excuse to dismiss them because facts don’t support their agenda.
Pooh
@RossInDetroit, Rational Subjectivist: yes. I would say MOST analytic types are fans first, and its not that hard to identify those who have no understanding of the game as opposed to the stats (anyone familiar with Dave Berri knows he’s the prime example of this)
phil
@? Martin: That’s changed?! Somebody forgot to send me the memo.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@eemom: I’m also more inclined to go with the outsider/not-one-of-us reason. Chuck Lane after all is a protege of Marty Peretz, they all adore Andy Sullivan, if in the same way Stephen Colbert (the Character) loves his Black Friend. Though Scarborough is obviously a sexist, and he and John Heileman were giggling about Lindsey Graham a few weeks ago.
Cassidy
@RossInDetroit, Rational Subjectivist: Funny anecdote, to me anyway. We were having EO training and the guy leading the session asked for examples of racism. I raised my hand and said “basketball”. When asked to explain, I said that I was white and everyone always assumes I can shoot and that I never get an inside pass.
I figure, if I’m gonna sit through the training, I’m going to make it fun.
jibeaux
@Omnes Omnibus: LaQuita, and Latrenda.
eemom
@BruceFromOhio:
lolz. I agree, it was stoopid as shit. Come to think of it, that in itself should have tipped me off to where teh watery place was headed, i.e., the sewer.
I just haz’d a sad because me old homiez wuz arguing. But I guess they didn’t know they wuz homiez so whatev.
cathyx
@beergoggles: That explains why everyone hates mclaren here.
NotMax
Anagram for Nate Silver:
Is relevant.
eemom
@Thymezone:
you know I love it when you show up here!
Plz proceed, Zonerator.
YoohooCthulhu
@Keith G:
They *suspected* he was gay, which was good enough to attract their scorn. See Dean Chambers’s bizarre piece where he insinuates Nate Silver is gay as a criticism of his work:
http://www.examiner.com/article/the-far-left-turns-to-nate-silver-for-wisdom-on-the-polls?cid=db_articles
mai naem
As far as Nate, I don’t think it’s the ghey. I think it’s because he had such an outstanding record and secondly ,more importantly, that he was predicting against them. If he had been predicting a win for them, they would have been pumping him up. He would have been on Lush, Hannity, OReally, the idiots in the morning at Faux would have given him a twice weekly segment.
Spaghetti Lee
@Omnes Omnibus:
One of my favorite unexpected-race names is Reggie Cleveland, a 70s’ baseball player who was actually a white guy from Saskatchewan.
Omnes Omnibus
@cathyx: mclaren does things like cite random language from employment law cases to support her criminal law arguments. I don’t know enough about some of the other topics of her rants, but her legal reasoning skills are sucky at best.
RossInDetroit, Rational Subjectivist
@Pooh:
I was poking fun at the sports angle. I’m neutral on sports but I’m definitely a numbers guy. Generally don’t see sports movies but watched Moneyball twice.
Cassidy
@RossInDetroit, Rational Subjectivist: I would say yes, but I’m kind of a numbers geek about certain sports.
eemom
@cathyx:
You are mind-bogglingly tone deaf.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: also, Tweety was explaining a week or so ago that Kristol’s influence– in spite of a resume featuring Dan Quayle, Sarah Palin and the Iraq War– is due to the fact that he’s a ‘charming guy’ and a great networker. It sickens me to think he’s right. Compare it to Krugman, who has been right about pretty much everything for ten years, and doesn’t have near the influence of boobs and nitwits like Krsitol and Brokaw and even David Gregory’s hair.
AnotherBruce
12XU!
Ed in NJ
I don’t think this is about Silver being gay, although that’s a factor for some. More likely, it’s the “Democrats are wimps” perpetuation. Similar to disdain for Kucinich, and how Kerry and Obama were attacked as effeminate. Wingnuts would rather have manly men lying to them as opposed to quiet, wimpy scholars using statistics.
Mrs. WhatsIt
@jibeaux:
I have a friend named Desiree, white woman and all! Honestly, I hadn’t even thought about it until this post came along.
BlueDWarrior
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: the press corps has never been a meritocracy, it’s just less obvious now
Anne Laurie
@Baud: Mormon women, too. Many of whom live in Nevada, even if they’re not working the clubs.
Baud
@Anne Laurie:
Doug’s next nym should be DesireeJ.
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud: Is he a headliner at a drag show?
AA+ Bonds
@Mrs. WhatsIt:
Ditto
Aimai
@Jesse: Hysterical.
Villago Delenda Est
These people are vile shit based on their politics alone. Their homophobia only adds to their loathsomeness.
Anne Laurie
@Baud:
Or DougNevaeh, if we want to get the full ‘stupid baby names invented by impeccably white trailer dwellers’ vibe.
pzerzan
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I think Sully is the exception that proves the rule. He has spent a lot of his career bashing other gay rights activists. Hell, he uses many opportunities to bash those involved in Stonewall. He represents the “how a gay person should behave” camp.
It’s the same way how the Beltway deals with race and gender. They abhor overt racism and sexism-look at what happened with Akin and Mourdoch when they talked about rape-but are largely scared of people who don’t subscribe to their world view. Given how a pro-minority, pro-woman, pro-gay agenda easily fits into the left’s goals but fails to fit into the right’s, the Beltway is caught in a bind. They have to either side with people who want to raise their taxes and largely break up their exclusive little club but are cosmopolitan and diverse or they have to side with those whose economic agenda will allow them to keep their life of luxury but who are ignorant and backwards in their world view. Guys like Sully give them vindication and give them the false illusion that a glibritarian world is possible…
Villago Delenda Est
@Ed in NJ:
Kerry is a fucking war hero of a war that the deserting coward explicitly opted out of, that Dick Cheney used five deferments to avoid, and that “American Icon” Ted Nugent literally pissed and shit his pants to insure his ass wouldn’t be in any shit in ‘Nam.
Mandalay
Inexplicably hated? WTF???
Couldn’t it be because Silver made strong predictions about the outcome of the election while the Villagers waffled?
Couldn’t it be because Silver was right, and they were hopelessly wrong?
Couldn’t it be because Silver uses reason to reach conclusions, while the Village pontificates through its faulty “wisdom”?
Couldn’t it be because what Silver does is a massive and direct threat to them?
Couldn’t it be that Silver showed that the blabbing about who was up and who was down, and who would win and who would lose, was – and always has been – a massive media hoax perpetrated on the public by overpaid bullshitters?
Couldn’t it be because Silver said of them that “Punditry is fundamentally useless”.
Oooooh that “mystifying hostility”. Where could it possibly come from? It’s so….”mystifying”!
Dumbest thread in the history of BJ, and the bar has been set pretty high lately.
Johannes
@redshirt: Was. See Giles, Rupert.
Villago Delenda Est
@eemom:
Silver represents actual merit.
This terrifies these worthless pieces of Ivy League legacy shit.
gbear
My favorite snide comment about Marcus Bachman was that he thinks of Top Gun as ‘that volleyball movie’.
Legalize
Hmm, yes I will listen to some Wire tomorrow at work. Thanks!
Seanly
Conservatives are snotty, juvenile bullies. Nate had some stereotypical mannerisms or trappings of a gay man so they felt comfortable attacking him on that basis.
pkdz
From Wikipedia:
When Dean Chambers of Unskewedpolls.com[156] described him as “a man of very small stature” and “a thin and effeminate man with a soft-sounding voice”, and thus untrustworthy, Silver ridiculed the remarks in a tweet: “Unskewedpolls argument: Nate Silver seems kinda gay + ??? = Romney landslide!”
ruemara
is now a good time for kitten pics? Oh, what the heck. BJ rescue star, KAGEBASHO! And the most important part of his big bro and advanced senior cat of the house, OTAJAMAKUSHI TAIFU! Because any time is a good time for kitten pics.
Suffern ACE
Someday the polls won’t favor us and Nate will need to be honest and say so. Im sure the gay thing will matter then.
Ed in NJ
@Villago Delenda Est:
What’s your point? Are you denying that Republicans and Beltway types treated him like a cuckolded Frenchy during his campaign?
Anne Laurie
@pzerzan:
Yeah, Sullivan has built a damned fine career being the “I can’t be homophobic, Andy Sullivan agrees with me!” token.
At least Clarence Thomas has the good sense to be bitter about playing Every Wealthy Strict Constructionalist’s Token Black Friend. Sullivan seems to be under the delusion that they love him for his daring, contrarian, without-fear-or-favor support of every tired racist/sexist/classist argument that gets horked out of the dustbin of history — like his paymasters couldn’t get that from ten thousand other expensively-educated white men who aren’t publicly gay.
Mnemosyne
@Mandalay:
Why did the hostility suddenly spring up about four weeks before the election and replace the dismissive tone conservative pundits had taken towards Silver up to that point?
Why was there no active hostility in 2008, or 2010?
I think DougJ is right — it was because a bunch of straight white pundits found this factoid out about Silver and decided that it explained why he kept predicting an Obama win (he was biased in Obama’s favor because he was secretly gay the whole time!)
Mnemosyne
@Suffern ACE:
The polls didn’t favor us in 2010, but Democrats didn’t break out homophobic insults to “explain” it.
honus
@jibeaux: Desiree Cousteau. Don’t ask.
Augie
Meh – I’m a self-hating white man too, but there really is no rhyme or reason as to why conservatives and mainstream media members “Hate” certain members of the progressive cause. They HATE Hillary Clinton. They HATE Al Gore and John Kerry. They DESPISE Nancy Pelosi. They LOATHE Paul Krugman. There really is no single universal explainable cause of wingnut hatred.
Comrade Mary
Guys, Nate was out (in Out) in 2009.
So he was very correct in 2008 and very correct in 2012 and added some disdain for the idiots in 2012. All this alone certainly provoked some disdain, envy and pushback, but I’m sure that some pundits and right-wingers had extra reason to diss him over the past three year because he’s been out for years.
Patricia Kayden
@YoohooCthulhu: OOOOh. The scary “far left” turns to Nate on polls!
Well, the far left turned out to be exactly right. Wonder how the Righties will handle Nate in 2016.
Mnemosyne
@Augie:
Oh, I can explain it to you:
Al Gore, John Kerry, and other straight white male Democrats: n*gger lovers
Nancy Pelosi: bitch
Paul Krugman: Jew
There is always some way in which conservatives can decide that a liberal or Democrat is the “other”/”not one of us” and can be safely ignored, and 99.9% of the time those reasons are based in racism (including anti-Semitism), sexism, or homophobia.
Raven
Desiree, Reuben and the Jets
When I’m dancing with Deseri
(Oo-ooo Deseri)
All the boys are jealous of me
(Deseri)
I’m as happy as I can be
Oh, Deseri
I’m as happy as I can be
(Oo-ooo Deseri)
Whenever I’m with Deseri
(Deseri)
She saves her lovin’ just for me
Oh Deseri
I will never be untrue
I will never ever make her blue
She’ll never sigh, cry, sit and pine
We will share a love divine
Deseri is mine
I’m as happy as I can be
(Oo-ooo Deseri)
Whenever I’m with Deseri
(Deseri)
‘Cause she saves her lovin’ just for me
Oh Deseri
Deseri . . .
(Deseri oo-ooo)
Deseri, the first day we met
(Deseri oo-ooo)
I’ll never forget
(Deseri oo-ooo)
I saw you walking down the street
And my heart skipped a beat
(Deseri oo-ooo)
(Deseri)
I told you of my love for you
(Deseri oo-ooo)
(Deseri)
But theres nothing . . .
(Deseri oo-ooo)
Nothing you would do
(The one for me)
I said, please hear my plea
(Deseri oo-ooo)
(My-y Deseri)
Come dance with me
(Deseri oo-ooo)
(Please, hear my plea)
(Deseri oo-ooo)
Oh Deseri . . .
(Deseri oo-ooo)
(Come along with me)
You came
(Deseri oo-ooo)
(Aa-aah Deseri)
We went to the dance that night
I held you so tight
(Deseri oo-ooo)
(My-y Deseri)
(Deseri oo-ooo)
And I know . . .
(My-y Deseri)
That our love will last . . .
(Deseri oo-ooo)
Thru the years
(Deseri . . .)
For ever, holding each other, for cram & for dorssn.
hamletta
@Anne Laurie: Yup. Mormons are famous for weird first names.
There was a family that made all the society pages here in Nashville in the ’80s, a rich white guy and his four daughters: They were named LaQuinta, LaRawn, LaSomething, and LaSomethingElse.
LaRawn had a fancy lingerie shoppe in the toniest shopping mall in town.
Mnemosyne
@Comrade Mary:
I’m pretty sure Charles Lane and Joe Scarborough don’t read Out.
But, more to the point, I’m remembering it the same way Doug is — there was a generally dismissive attitude towards Silver that suddenly veered into open disdain and active sneering shortly before the election. Like him, I suspect that’s when word got around the punditing world that he was OMG GAY!
Kristine
@Johannes:
Love those Ripper moments.
Suffern ACE
@Comrade Mary: I think there was an article during the campaign about how he was driving a 20-25 percent of the nyt traffic, which says something. They were in fact trying to change the narrative like they did with gore 12 years ago. And then there’s Silver being trusted. Silver can’t be trusted! He has no gut instinct! Liberals aren’t panicking. Democrats aren’t in disarray. He must be a paid shill, because no one goes against the pundits unless someone is paying them.
I wonder if Nate has been to Davos.
Chris
@Gordon, the Big Express Engine:
Next you’ll be telling me he’s left handed.
People will talk, you know.
Bobby Thomson
@honus: So you know the inside story?
Mandalay
@Mnemosyne:
The “straight white pundits” have their very existence threatened by what Silver does, and (as I’m sure Silver would agree) it is not Silver who predicted an Obama win; it was the poll data.
Silver has only risen to prominence since becoming part of the NYT in 2010, and there was an additional delay for the world to then notice that his approach was far superior to the guessing the Village pundits.
The gloves are off now because Silver kicked their ass in November, and then rubbed salt in the wound by telling them that they were fundamentally useless.
The whole issue is nothing to do with Obama or gays, and everything to do with Silver threatening their livelihood.
It’s a bit like Amazon vs. independent bookstores (where Silver is Amazon).
hamletta
@Spaghetti Lee: And don’t forget Golden Richards, of the Dallas Cowboys(?)
Another is when Sherrod Brown was first running for Senate. Rush Limbaugh let loose on him with the assumption he was black with his usual “race-pimp” business.
Imagine his surprise when Mr. Brown was revealed to be a puppyish, curly headed white guy with big blue eyes. (Sorry, I think Sen. Brown is adorable. And he’s Lutheran.)
dms
@gex: Funny you should mention the blind audition. Not that this has anything to do with the post.
Our grade school band director used that method whenever anyone lower chair “challenged” someone of immediately higher berth, with the added advantage happened within the hearing of the entire band.
During one “challenge” between baritones, everyone in the band knew who was who and which one was better (the lower chair), but the band director chose the less skilled player (who, in this instance happened to be a female). His choice was more likely a result of her being a grade older, and emotionally “challenged” (not because she was a female, just because she was nuts).
It was a funny result, tho, ’cause everyone in the band disagreed with him (the professional!?!?!?).
Omnes Omnibus
@Suffern ACE: I’ve been to Davos.
Chris
@Ed in NJ:
Yep. They also prefer men like George W. Bush, who blustered uselessly through seven years of war without accomplishing shit, to someone like Barack Obama who actually got the job done.
eemom
@Mnemosyne:
Um, because Silver didn’t have a proven track record of being dead on right in TWO major election cycles in those years?
eemom
@Mandalay:
I’m with you, and I don’t understand why people are twisting themselves in knots trying to resist that conclusion.
Suffern ACE
They could have also swiped at him him about the poker playing. Maybe he was in debt to mob. Maybe Obama is the creation of the Bonaneezi crime family of east Lansing. But no. They go with the not manly enough slur.
Mnemosyne
@Mandalay:
Again, you’re missing the point — the pundits went from dismissive to actively hostile in a very short window of time, and it happened about 4 weeks before the election. And they all snickered about it like fifth-graders.
The fact that they had a motive to dismiss Silver’s findings doesn’t explain the speed of the shift or the tone of it.
Mnemosyne
@eemom:
Then why not use the whispers about how he was “unmanly” through the entire 2012 election season instead of suddenly jumping on it a few weeks before the actual election like it was breaking news?
Mandalay
@Villago Delenda Est:
Exactly.
In October 2016 nobody is going to be asking Gloria Borger or Joe Klein or David Brooks or any other Villager who is going to win the presidency. They will merely report on what folks like Nate Silver and Sam Wang are concluding based on polling data. The pundits won’t be ignored or despised…they will simply be totally irrelevant.
For election predictions the world has moved on from those gasbags. It’s over.
rb
@Mandalay: The whole issue is nothing to do with Obama or gays, and everything to do with Silver threatening their livelihood.
It’s both, actually.
Mnemosyne
@rb:
Yep. Both/and, not either/or.
Suffern ACE
Does anyone read Frank Bruni on a regular basis? Maybe we could use him as kind of a placebo to test whether the press turned on Nate because he was gay or because he was right. Is frank Bruni ever wrong in a way that goes against the narrative? Or is he a sound banker type pundit.
Chris
@Mnemosyne:
As I recall there was a cautious consensus that Obama would win in 2008, which would place them in agreement with Nate Silver. And no one’s ever going to criticize anyone for having bet on the conservatives, hence 2010.
In 2012, though, there was a vast portion of the country (that went well beyond the 27%) that truly believed that either he would win or it would be breathtakingly close, so he went against the consensus – and he was more famous by then, too, so more people noticed.
eemom
@Mandalay:
Ah, that is where we part company. You are assuming that the emmessemm audience knows jack shit about any of this….or, in the unlikely event that some inkling of it actually penetrated their moron ass skulls after the Romtron/repubtard debacle of last November, that they’ll remember it next time around.
Mandalay
@Mnemosyne:
What point? Four weeks before the election the interest was peaking, Silver was saying Obama had it in the bag (~92% probability?), and the Villagers were calling it a horse race, and Romney said he would win.
So Silver was right in their face, and telling them they were wrong, and events proved him to be correct. THAT is why the pundits went hostile. Let’s use a little Occam’s razor on this.
schrodinger's cat
@Suffern ACE: Frank Bruni is boring. I never usually make it beyond the first paragraph.
Mnemosyne
@Mandalay:
I am using Occam’s Razor. Look at the list of names DougJ cited again:
Charles Lane
Bobo
Joe Scarborough
Michael Gerson
You think those guys would never, ever be motivated by homophobia and would never decide that Silver was cooking the numbers in Obama’s favor because Silver is gay? What, exactly, have they said in the past to give you that good impression of them?
Scarborough is the one I’m specifically thinking of who suddenly became out and out hostile towards Silver and started making the kind of “alpha male” macho gestures that straight white guys make when they feel threatened by a gay man.
Chris
@Augie:
Conservatives hate everyone who’s not them. If they don’t hate you, it’s because they’re just not paying attention to you. Make them aware of their existence and they’ll fix that right away.
Mainstream media? Lots of reasons, as you said. For one thing, quite a few of them are dyed-in-the-wool conservatives themselves – or share many of their prejudices. For another, a lot of those who aren’t will make it their job to rag on prominent liberals simply to show the world how much they’re open minded and not liberally biased. For another, in the case of people like Krugman and Silver who actually do their job instead of bullshitting for a living, that’s a threat to their gig.
burnspbesq
@eemom:
Moi, bickering with Raven? Mais non!
What’s the old line about getting into a battle of wits with an unarmed man?
Michaels
Love the Wire reference in the post title — 12XU!
rb
@Mandalay: He was right in their face and gay and calling them out and gay and proved them wrong while gay.
It’s both.
Suffern ACE
@schrodinger’s cat: yeah. And he was supposed to be one of the new perspectives. First openly gay columnist at the times! He was supposed to at once find ways to cover the weeks events from a different point of view and cover things that might have been missed. But it turns out that he has seats in row P, while the times other pundits have theirs in row N and O.
Punchy
I never saw that response from Boo-urns, but I cared for the reason Doug described….it explains why they so viscerally hate a small cracker with a combination of dork and punk writte all over him…
rb
@Mnemosyne: Scarborough is the one I’m specifically thinking of
Yup. And his raging misogyny is more of the same.
Unless we’ve all decided that’s not happening too? He just feels free to crap all over Mika Brzezinski because she’s too liberal or threatens his livelihood or something (never mind he was making 14X her salary until she threatened to quit.)
FlipYrWhig
Meh. i think Nate Silver was being disparaged as “gay,” not gay-gay. That kind of elementary school in the ’70s way where it’s basically synonymous with twerp or wimp. It was inadvertently on-target homophobia rather than informed homophobia.
Lurking Canadian
@Mandalay: I find your lack of cynicism…disturbing.
redshirt
@Kristine: Ah, Ripper. The show will start any year now…
FlipYrWhig
@Mnemosyne: Here it’s being threatened by a nerd (who turns out to be gay), not being threatened by a gay guy (who is also a nerd). Homophobic language as a tool for separating alpha males from betas. Because, here’s the thing, if we’re playing the stereotype game: Nate Silver doesn’t present any of the gay stereotypes. He does present ALL of the nerd stereotypes. But there’s less of a well-developed, distinctive language of nerdophobia, because alpha males aren’t that creative, so it all comes out as “haha, you’re like a girl.”
Mnemosyne
@FlipYrWhig:
I think it started that way, but then the Unskewed Polls jackass thought he had a scoop and all of the conservative pundits started snickering about it like fifth-graders.
eemom
@Mnemosyne:
@rb:
Do y’all two think they would have hated Silver any less had he not been gay? That they wouldn’t have come up with some other reason to belittle him?
Villago Delenda Est
@Ed in NJ:
No, my point is these maggots worship draft dodging cowards and denigrate actual war veterans.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Here’s the clip of Scarborough and Halperin’s partner giggling about Lindsey Graham, which I think is relevant because it illustrates the dynamic at play here and wrt race among the VSPs, specifically Willard’s race-baiting in the election. Race and sexuality are still discomforting subjects for the (mostly) upper-middle class straight white males who govern polite political discourse. So if Willard is all but saying Ni**CLANG on the stump, most white pundits are going to choose to ignore the dog-whistle. But others who notice it are being rather uncouth. I’m convinced Tweety got called to the principals office for caling them out on this, and good on him. Everybody knows that one of the reasons Lindsey Graham is vulnerable is because of his “confirmed bachelor” status (also why the media-friendly, nakedly ambitious, conservative-but-not-crazy, young-ish Senator with a military background is never, that I’ve heard, discussed as a presidential candidate), but it would be rude and awkward to bring it up. But when it does come up… tee hee… dude, I can’t believe you went there!
Mnemosyne
@eemom:
So it doesn’t matter if Republicans say racist things about the president because they would be saying mean things about him even if he was white?
Again: both/and, not either/or. The fact that conservative pundits decided they had a “gay” button they could push to dismiss Silver more easily doesn’t magically make their actions not homophobic once they pushed it.
ETA: And, yes, I do think they became more openly hostile towards Silver once word got out about his sexuality. Is that A-OK because they already hated him, so what did it matter if they hated him even more because he was also gay in addition to everything else they hated about him?
rb
@eemom: Well in part I agree with you, in that they seem to have a bottomless well of hate and almost any othering tactic will do.
But I don’t think it would have quite the same righteous edge it does if he wasn’t someone who’s not only a girly nerd (i.e. “gay” to their stunted psyches) but is actually a real live icky gay guy.
As much as we might contrast Obama and Dubya, in a way Silver is like the ultimate anti-Dubya; unlike O he couldn’t do the back-slapping, ass-grabbing thing even if he wanted to.
And just as “Stretch” and the rest of them preened for Dubya, they hate Silver both for his competence & his refusal to kiss their asses, and ALSO for his lack of conformity to their hero pundit self-image. It just kills them that he ate their lunch. While being gay, for the sake of pete.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Okay, since The Gay Stats Wizard in the topic:
Thymezone
@eemom:
I don’t pay a lot of attention to who is gay. I figure that other peoples’ sexy time preferences are none of my business. I figure that if other people don’t like Nate because he is gay, then that reflects badly upon them and they are irrelevant.
I also figure that blogging about this is so 2004.
rb
@Thymezone: And Colbert doesn’t see race ;)
eemom
@Mnemosyne:
oh for fuck’s sake, that is SO not what I said.
You need to get over this lawyeresque recharacterizing of testimony schtick. Frankly, I would have considered it beneath you — but even if it’s not, trust me, it ain’t gonna work.
Thymezone
@rb:
One of the odder, albeit not very interesting, non sequiturs I have seen here over the years.
But uh, okay.
eemom
@Mnemosyne:
Further to the above, because my edit time ran out:
The issue here is NOT homophobic or racist slurs. It’s what accounts for the so-called “otherwise mystifying hostility” against Silver. My point, and that of others, is that it’s not mystifying at all.
Mandalay
@eemom:
It happens a lot here. It is a sign that someone wants to pick a fight, or win the (non-existent) argument, rather than discuss and debate.
Once someone tries to put their words in your mouth there nothing to be gained by further discussion.
Mnemosyne
@eemom:
Then what did you mean to say? It came across as you saying that conservative pundits couldn’t have hated Silver any more than they already did, so it didn’t matter if they also hated him for being gay once they found out.
The fact that they’re always going to pull some reason out of their ass to hate a liberal doesn’t excuse how they got all snotty and junior high about Silver being gay once they found out his “secret” (with scare quotes because, as Comrade Mary pointed out, Silver wasn’t exactly keeping it quiet).
Mnemosyne
@eemom:
Your point seems to be that the pundits hated Silver solely for careerist reasons (he was showing them up, he was making them obsolete), not because was gay. What rb and I are trying to point out is that they hate him for both reasons, and the sudden change in tone was due to the homophobia, not the careerism.
Again, I refer you to Joe Scarborough. He obviously discovered something new about Silver, because his whole affect when talking about him changed from one week to the next. I don’t think that was solely due to the fact that Silver’s predictions were continuing to be correct. I think Scarborough was told this information and was barely able to contain his snickers while on air.
The “mystifying hostility” was the sudden switch and suppressed giggles, not the fact that they were dismissive of Silver throughout 2012.
eemom
Ultimately, what I’m saying is that this is an exceptionally stupid argument to be having, because, notwithstanding the fact that these people may very well be homophobic, that is fundamentally not what their hatred of Silver is all about. At least, that’s my opinion, for the reasons that have been stated above.
And, if we want to have a discussion about homophobia and gay bashing in the emmessemm, there are a hell of a lot more actual and relevant contexts in which to have it.
Mandalay
@Mnemosyne:
Word got out about Silver’s sexuality in 2009, over three years ago. Yet you insisted earlier (in post #95) that the “gay” hostility only started about four weeks before the election.
You are cleverly disproving your own position.
MattR
@Mnemosyne:
I know eemom has already dismissed it, but I do think how Presidents Clinton and Obama were treated is a good comparison. Before they knew Nate was gay, they hated him like Clinton. Once they learned the truth, they stepped it up a notch like they did with Obama.
@Mandalay: How many people actually knew Nate was gay? It seems quite a few commenters here were surprised. I kinda think once Nate started getting more attention online and in the MSM, people actually looked into him and they found the “secret” that he wasn’t hiding. And that just pissed them off more.
Mnemosyne
@eemom:
I dunno, maybe it’s because I was following the commentary, but it really did seem like there was a sudden switch and a quick increase in hostility towards Silver that was outside of the careerism, and it happened shortly before the election. That change is what DougJ is calling the “mystifying hostility,” because (IMO, anyway) it can’t be explained purely because Silver was continuing to make the same predictions he had been making for the previous three or four months without much variation. The pundits felt they had some kind of new information that put Silver’s predictions in doubt.
Thymezone
@Mnemosyne:
Wait … you guys are talking about why Joe Scarborough might or might not have snickered more one week than another?
Jesus H. Fuck, this place has really fallen on hard times. I never would have believed that a conversation could pivot on such a …. a ….. what the goddammistan do we even call that? It’s not even a valid observation, unless there is a secure database out there cataloguing the facial expressions and vocal intonations of Joe Scarborough. There is, right?
Just amazing. Just absolu-tootly fucking amazing.
Mnemosyne
@Mandalay:
As I said in #104, I’m pretty sure conservative pundits don’t read Out, so I’m doubtful that Scarborough was aware of Silver’s sexual orientation before the Unskewed Polls jackass started snickering about it online.
Mnemosyne
@Mandalay:
Short sequence of events:
Conservative pundits dislike Silver and are dismissive of his numbers.
Unskewed Polls jackass “discovers” that Silver is gay, which is information that was carefully hidden on the world wide web.
Conservative pundits decide that this “new information” explains Silver’s obvious bias towards Obama and proves that Silver is cooking the numbers the same way the Unskewed Polls guy is.
Is that clear enough?
eemom
@MattR:
I suggest that in either instance, the “stepping it up a notch” could just as well be explained by the fact that it was easier to get away with, than because they themselves were motivated by racism or homophobia, respectively.
In other words, like the carrion eaters they are, they smelled blood in the ability to exploit the known prejudices of their fucking moron audiences.
And again, if that’s true, it is not what accounts for their own personal hostility.
Bokonon
@Omnes Omnibus: I was seeing if anyone else would attribute the “I saw you in mag” quote correctly. 12XU by Wire!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAn_T4D2kww
eemom
@Thymezone:
You’re right, and from now on I swear that I am going to eliminate the middleman and just bang my head directly on the keyboard instead of clicking on here in the first place.
Thymezone
Nanotechnologists are working feverishly to construct a teapot small enough to contain this tempest.
Thymezone
@eemom:
This place has gone so far downhill, I think China is now visible through the hole on the other side of the world ……. right there … tell me that isn’t fucking China.
Mnemosyne
@Thymezone:
Don’t worry, I found one.
Thymezone
@Mnemosyne:
You are going to need smaller tweezers.
MattR
@eemom:
I see where you are coming from. Peronsally, I don’t think it makes too much difference if they started gay bashing Nate because they hated him and they are homophobic or if they did it because they hated him and once they learned he was gay it was just one more arrow in their quiver that they were willing to use to influence the homophobic rubes that make up their audience. And more importantly, I don’t think there is really any way to know. I think everyone has to make their own judgment and it is going to take a very persuasive argument to move them from that initial judgment. (EDIT: One day I will learn to spell judgment correctly)
Mandalay
@Mnemosyne:
Well I have just been looking carefully at what Michael Gerson (one of the pundits Doug cited in the FP) said about Silver in the four weeks prior to the election. He was certainly critical of Silver in exactly one article, but I find it impossible to tie that to Silver being gay, or conservatives suddenly discovering (after three years!) that Silver was gay. And that was ALL I can find from Gerson, and I am calling massive bullshit with regard to Gerson.
So help me out…show me any evidence – quotes or video clips – by Gerson to support the claim that he is going after Silver for his gayness. As things stand I view Doug’s theory about the criticism of Silver as being on a par with Obama being a Kenyan Marxist.
mai naem
I googled Desiree. It pulled up a bunch of white wimmin so y’all need to stop with the Desiree is a black chick name. However, I’ve always thought Deniece is a black chick name but Denise is a white chick name.
Mandalay
@Mnemosyne:
No. In the absence of any specific evidence – and I haven’t seen any in the FP or the thread – then it is hogwash and bullshit.
Provide some specific hard evidence for the absurd claims being made.
rb
@eemom: these people may very well be homophobic, that is fundamentally not what their hatred of Silver is all about.
the “stepping it up a notch” could just as well be explained by the fact that it was easier to get away with, than because they themselves were motivated by racism or homophobia, respectively.
But here’s is the thing. There’s always going to be some other thing you can imagine being “just as well” the reason the troglodytes are acting like troglodytes. It’s like saying Joe Arpaio isn’t racist, he’s just a thug and a bully; he just happens to habitually target Hispanics and Latinos just because. Or birthers aren’t racist, it’s just dumb luck that they happened to get up in arms about this particular president. Or Ron Johnson’s ridiculing of Hillary Clinton’s “hysterical theatrics” and “making a big show of it” during her Benghazi testimony wasn’t sexist, he just happened to use gendered language by total coincidence.
I don’t understand the emotional investment some here have in contesting the obvious, every time something like this comes up. It can never be just racist or just homophobic; there’s always some other reason, and that other reason is always given pride of place. It’s always the thugs who have their actions read through the most positive possible lens.
This shit is played out. It walks and it quacks. Why not just call a duck a duck for once?
Mnemosyne
@Mandalay:
So you didn’t follow any of the links I put into my comments? Try the one at #157.
Also, I find it amusing that you’re demanding that I prove to you that conservatives are generally homophobes. Seriously, I’m supposed to give Joe Scarborough the benefit of the doubt on this?
rb
@Mandalay: Provide some specific hard evidence for the absurd claims being made.
Right. It can never be racism/sexism/homophobia unless some third party arbiter (preferably het white male) evaluates specific hard evidence and pronounces it valid.
Otherwise it’s some other reason, for which no evidence need be presented.
rb
@Mnemosyne: ’m supposed to give Joe Scarborough the benefit of the doubt on this
Hell, you’re supposed to give Pat motherfucking Robertson the benefit of the doubt on this. Specific Hard Evidence or it didn’t happen.
Cause it ain’t racist ‘less an “objective” commenter says it is, mmkay?
Mandalay
@eemom:
Oh, not at all. I have no expectations about the audience. But I am assuming that the Villagers have realized that the game they have been playing for years – that their gut and experience gives them some special insight that us mere mortals don’t have – is over.
Silver won, and they lost badly. Folks like Noonan, Gergen and Will made very specific election predictions that turned out to be hopelessly wrong, and (finally!) they got called on it by the media. So those useless fuckers will think long and hard before running their mouths and arguing with Sam and Nate in 2016.
rb
@Mandalay: So those useless fuckers will think long and hard before running their mouths and arguing with Sam and Nate in 2016.
Come now. These fuckers never met a catastrophic war they couldn’t get totally wrong without moderating their bullshit one bit. You think a little ol’ electoral college landslide will slow them down? If only.
Mandalay
@Mnemosyne:
I looked at your link, and Gerson’s only article. These pundits comments exhibit a common trait: they have no understanding of what Silver actually does, and they cannot make sense of the information he provides. Here are specific examples of how completely clueless they are about polling data and statistics:
Brooks => “The pollsters tell us what`s happening now. When they start projecting, they`re getting into silly land.”
Brooks => “If there’s one thing we know, it’s that even experts with fancy computer models are terrible at predicting human behavior.”
Scarborough => “Nate Silver says this is a 73.6 percent chance that the president is going to win? Nobody in that campaign thinks they have a 73 percent chance — they think they have a 50.1 percent chance of winning.”
Gerson => “Silver’s prediction is not an innovation; it is trend taken to its absurd extreme. He is doing little more than weighting and aggregating state polls and combining them with various historical assumptions to project a future outcome with exaggerated, attention-grabbing exactitude.”
The ignorance and stupidity is staggering, but that is all it is. So again, I call massive bullshit on the claim on the FP. These conservatives are both critical and ignorant of Silver’s work because the election is hotting up, scrutiny is intensifying (nobody cared what Silver was predicting in April), they disagree with Silver, and they have no understanding of his methods or his claims.
It has absolutely nothing to do with Silver being gay. But adjust your tin foil and keep believing it if it floats your boat.
Mandalay
@rb:
I don’t think you really understood what you said there.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=zrzMhU_4m-g
YellowJournalism
When you call him the gay wizard, I immediately think Dumbledore, which is kind of implying that Nate is a young Dumbledore of the math world destined for great things. Or that I’m a big geek for immediately conjuring up a Harry Potter reference. Fucking Occam’s Razor.
Enhanced Voting techniques
@eemom:
Because they are gay too and terrified of it coming out.
mds
@redshirt:
Dude, spoilers.
mds
@cathyx:
Wait a second: mclaren is Glory?
mds
@burnspbesq:
Oh, now, I think this is going a bit too far. You’re not that bad. :-P
eyelessgame
Don’t forget Lawrence v Texas. First time I saw a picture of that gay couple, it suddenly made a ton more sense that they’d been watched closely enough to get arrested for it…
BruceK
@mds: Dude, that spoiler is twelve years old.
As for the matter of Nate Silver’s orientation, other than it being something else for the reactionaries to discredit him with, I can’t see that it belongs anywhere other than the “trivia” tab of his biography. He made his name on rigorous statistical analysis, and the numbers he crunches for a living wouldn’t change even if he were stepping out with a hyperintelligent shade of the color blue. If he were an activist, it’d be one thing, but he’s not; he’s an analyst, and proven to be one of the best walking the earth.
aimai
I think its slightly more nuanced than all this gay/not gay. David Brock was famously suspected of being gay and came out once he left the far right payrolls. I’m betting the more sophisticated members of his ownersship group knew he ws gay and they implicitly blackmailed him with the knowledge. But he wasn’t savaged for it until he came out. Other members of the far right who are “out” are “out” as tokens and are treated with kid gloves–Dick Armey called Barney Frank “Barney Fag” but probably doesn’t bother with Andrew Sullivan when they meet.
I think what we saw with Nate Silver was a kind of “additive disgust factor.” If Nate Silver were het and looked like Gallup (who is like a parody of what a straight shootin’ western type republican would look like) they would have hated but respected him. He looked like a whole mess of tropes of “not like us” –young, slender, not in a suit (a la Cantor), not conservative, not a true believer, slightly ephebic. Those things are all forgiveable when they are traits for one of their own but become almost insults when they are traits assigned to an enemy. The gay thing was just common codespeak for nerd/weak/sissy/democrat. It fully flowered when he came out as gay but the truth is these insults are kind of co-complicit in each other (to invent a word for which there probably is already a word. Maybe I mean overdetermined.) For some republicans the insult “democrat” is almost the same as gay/female/subordinate/small.
Rarely Posts
As a gay man and LGBT activist, I’m not “uninterested” in Nate Silver’s homosexuality. Certainly, he and his work should judged solely on its (very high) quality, and I started following him back in 2007 for that reason. It shouldn’t affect his employment opportunities, etc.
At the same time, coming out of the closet is one of the most powerful political acts any homosexual can make. It’s harder to be bigoted when people you know and respect are known to be homosexuals, and it makes other LGBT people feel less alone in the world. It’s good for the LGBT movement and LGBT people that the electoral (and baseball) stats “wizard” is the “gay wizard.” So, now that he’s officially out of the closet, I think there are benefits to referring to him as such (unless it bothers him, which I have no idea about).
Toyboat
12XU!
redshirt
@mds: Wait wait wait. So what you’re saying is McClaren is Glory?
J R in W Va
@Augie:
Commonly, they are all successful liberals who also do a good job of putting conservatroids in their proper place – the wastebasket.
Thus they are all hated, loathed, and /or despised by conservatroids.
ETA: yes, as others remark, they are all accepting of the black/female/other members of our community, a hate-worthy factoid all by itself.
schrodinger's cat
MSM hates Nate Silver because he makes them irrelevant, his
gayness, is just the cherry on top of the sundae.
Herbal Infusion Bagger
Possibly because they’ve never had Facebook fan groups like “There is a 97.3% change Nate Silver is Totally My Boyfriend,” with ladywonks panting over the awesome mastery of Chi-squared and ANOVA displayed by said Gay Statistics Wizard.
The fact the only thing that Nate would interested in doing with said ladies would be as a potential source of data on the voting behavior of wonk faghags, because that might help increase the precision of his polling aggregation by 0.02%, has gotta frost conservative pseudopundits’ nuts.
That, and the fact he has actual skill and expertise as opposed to just Making Shit Up: they fear that someone who knows what he’s talking about will show up their incompetence and put their wingnut welfare at risk.
Keith G
@Mnemosyne:
I’m glad you are pretty sure. If you and Doug can dig up some evidence, that would be another thing.
Funny that I just like evidence before assuming the worst of even people I do not agree with. If that makes me an idiot, Doug, them enlighten me and I will cop to being uniformed on this issue.
But just calling names seems a bit unsophisticated and I have assumed that is not you.