I stopped visiting the Daily Howler years ago - it was one of the first blogs I knew about - mostly because Somerby didn’t (and apparently still doesn’t) know when to STFU.  He reminded my of every flaming windbag I had ever endured my whole political life, and I couldn’t come up with one good reason why I should endure another one on my computer.

Tom, I’m fully convinced that Bob Somerby’s infantile, pathological hatred of Rachel Maddow, Chris Matthews, and Keith Olbermann is rooted in jealousy of their success—and, more importantly, of their seven-figure salaries.  Why?  Because almost every time Chic Bob goes off on a tear about the MSNBC hosts’ Crimes Against Journalism/Liberalism/Seriousness, he brings up the obscene (to him) amount of money they’re paid.  Almost every time.  This betrays a clear obsession with the issue of money, which carries the implicit message “They don’t DESERVE it!!”

Of course, he tries to cover himself on this score by insinuating that anyone in the news business who is paid a large salary (especially if they’re employed by a corporation) is automatically corrupt and untrustworthy, because they’re just doing the bidding of the moneyed interests that sign their immorally huge paychecks.  Now, I wouldn’t necessarily dismiss this point of view out of hand; just look at Fox News (but not for so long that you become nauseous).  But if MSNBC were to offer Bob a million dollars a year to host his own prime time news show, I don’t believe for a minute that he’d tell them to go piss up a rope.  More likely, he’d be tripping over his own feet in his eagerness to sign on the dotted line, and be out shopping for a comfy anchor’s chair about five minutes later. 

Because, you see, Bob would DESERVE all that money and national attention, because he’s a REAL journalist.  A SERIOUS investigative reporter.  A GENUINE liberal.  Not a hollow corporate tool or an unserious clown or an ethically bankrupt hack. 

Or so he would rationalize to himself.

I will pray to the FSM that Somerby finds his marbles.

Frank, I suspect that if Murdoch offered Somerby a large enough salary, he wouldn’t hesitate a bit before becoming a “Yoostabee a librul” Republican in their stable…

Somerby is a Boomer racist and sexist WATB who secretly HATES the fact that a black dude and a lesbian have more credibility and power (and yes, money) than he does. Don’t Obama and Maddow realize that the revolution of the 60s was about empowering self-important straight white leftie dudes, who suffered so much for so long? Until every single white boomer man has every single thing he desires in life, how dare those uppity post-Boomer minorities demand a place at the table? They’ll stand behind their Great White Munificent Leftier-Than-Thou Fathers and be grateful for whatever crumbs they get!

There are useless jackasses like Somerby in every “progressive” organization. Most of them yammer on about how much cooler it was in the Sixties, MAN! They loathe the fact that, once Vietnam ended, they no longer had a reason to exist and the only parts of the left that actually made really significant inroads, post-Sixties, in civil rights and social activism were those groups headed by women, gays and lesbians, racial and ethnic minorities, and the disabled.

None of whom bothered to ask Bob Somerby for his permission to Act Up (and yes, that is a reference to the fact that Maddow has street cred in AIDS activism. When was the last time Somerby pulled his fat flatulent self-righteous ass up from his office chair to go to a Tea Party or anything else where he wasn’t a “headlining” comedian?)

Correcting myself: I think he openly hates seeing a black dude and a lesbian being taken seriously while he is stumbling around in his clown shoes. The revolution was about White Radical Cocksmen Of the Left sticking it to the Man!* (The GOP jocks who gave them swirlies in junior high.) They were willing to pay lip service to equal rights for chicks and blacks, but they expected those clear inferiors to be well-mannered and submissive enough not to actually USE those rights!

*Of course, those white people who actually DID dodge bullets and truncheons in the south are excluded from this category of Self-Righteous Cretin.

What I can add from my comedy years is that standups spend a good chunk of their off-stage time griping over who got a part in a movie or on one of the talk shows and why they don’t deserve it.

There’s a scene in Shakes the Clown that parodies this bit of comedy sociology. The folks I knew from Boston that knew Bobcat Goldthwait said that this was largely about his rivalry with Dennis Leary.

Anyway. I think this is what we’re seeing from Somerby.  Griping over what should a been his.

It is just actually painful to read Somerby.  Does he think his painfully heavy handed sarcasm and cynicism passes for *wit*? Or, worse yet, some sort of profound wisdom?

In fact he’s as intellectually dishonest in his assessment of Robert Samuelson’s article about achievement in schools of black kids over the last 30 years as he claims Samuelson is.  I looked at the report and the statement about 17 year olds is true.  The gains in test scores over the time period for 17 year olds are negligible.  Somerby argues that it’s dishonest to pretend our schools are not doing the job for minority kids because elementary and middle school kids have made gains.  But the gains are erased in high school!  These 17 year olds are the same 8 and 13 year olds who took the tests earlier.  And they’re falling back behind in high school.  Our high schools are not doing the job.  I don’t see any other way around this conclusion and yet Somerby employs deceptive math to try and prove otherwise.  He’s a hack and a charlatan.

Alt, I love Shakes the Clown—it is indeed, as one blurb I saw called it, “the Citizen Kane of alcoholic clown movies.”

And if Somerby ever got a show? You just KNOW what he’d do to that little dog once the cameras were off!

I’m not falling for this again. Every time you guys link to a Somerby column, I wake up on the floor in a pool of my own spit, the furniture is broken and the dog won’t come near me.

Tom, I see you are also familiar with Shakes the Clown.

From Somerby to Shakes the Clown. I love this place.

Also.

p.s. This…

Latest evidence that if Bob Somerby had been in the civil rights movement, he’d have spent all his time protesting their choice of luncheonettes

One of the greatest lines to start a blog post ever.

Shorter every post Bob Somerby ever made:

SOMEONE SAID SOMETHING IN THE WASHINGTON POST THAT I’M GOING TO TAKE OUT OF CONTEXT.  Liberals are all wrong about everything, but I’m right, since I’m smarter than everyone else.  By the way, I taught school in the inner-city, so I’m morally superior too.  And the media was mean to Al Gore.