It came a little early this year, but I see it’s that time in the electoral cycle when liberals, having watched conservatives do everything possible to alienate voters and destroy their brand, decide to step in and attempt to salvage the opposition’s legacy. Why do we do this? I used to think it was because everyone in a two-party system benefits when both camps argue in good faith, so we like to believe against all evidence to the contrary that this is the case, but I’m questioning that assumption these days. Now I think it’s more likely that liberals, having flattered—and in many cases, kidded—themselves that their worldview is a result of deep reflection and inquiry (a position needn’t be wrong in order to be ill-considered, after all), look across the divide and think “well, their philosophy must be worthy of serious consideration too!”
Conservatives may not like liberals, but they seem to understand them. In contrast, many liberals find conservative voters not just wrong but also bewildering.
Actually, “in contrast,” that first part’s bullshit. Unless Kristof really thinks we secretly harbor communist sympathies, despise the land of our birth, and talk our sisters-in-law into cocaine-fueled three-ways with some regularity. Like we could possibly hate America if our lives were that awesome.
Pretty sure the second part’s bullshit too, but I’ll get to that (I don’t usually presume to speak for my compatriots, partly because it’s presumptuous and partly because I’m not entirely representative of what I think, but hey, when in Times Roman).
Alex Seitz-Wald at ThinkProgress cites a CNN interview today with Romney campaign Communications Director Eric Fehrnstrom, communicating in an admirably direct style:
HOST: Is there a concern that Santorum and Gingrich might force the governor to tack so far to the right it would hurt him with moderate voters in the general election?
FEHRNSTROM: Well, I think you hit a reset button for the fall campaign. Everything changes. It’s almost like an Etch A Sketch. You can kind of shake it up and restart all of over again.
So there you have it. Not only is this ridiculously protracted GOP primary campaign a total sham, with delegates awarded by an arcane process that will either see Mitt Romney emerge victorious before the GOP National Convention or anointed at it after a duel to the death, but nothing he’s said in the attempt to win over doubters in his own party will apply once summer begins to wane and November beckons.
But is the Etch A Sketch the most appropriate simile in the circumstances? I racked my brain to come up with something better for each of the GOP candidates, but you can no doubt improve on my suggestions.
God, I hope this is true. Balloon Juice commenter Dave:
Sweet baby Jesus, you can’t make this stuff up.
Jason Mattera, on behalf of the Breitbart Babies, ambushes Bono of U2 to grill him on why he hides his taxes. Except Mattera interviewed a Bono impersonator instead.
Hahahaha! Hopefully someone saved the videos. Beck’s House o’ Crazy pulled the story, and it’s 404 at Breitbart.com.
As GOP sage Sarah Palin recently noted, President Obama and his terrorist pals were allowed to waltz right into the Oval Office unscrutinized in 2008 while white people Republicans like Ms. Palin were pelted with gotcha questions such as, “What newspapers do you read?”
Andrew Breitbart vowed to address the blatant unfairness of this situation by subjecting all African-American Obama Administration officials to a thorough vetting. After Breitbart’s untimely death, his underlings—the Breitbrats—announced that they would continue Dead Leader’s legacy by presenting an occasional series entitled Negros Said the Darnedest Things On Video in the 90s The Vetting.
After revealing 10 days ago the scandalous footage of a young Barack Obama hugging a black Harvard Law School professor back when Phil Collins was king of the Billboard Hot 100, Breitbrat Joel Pollak unleashes another bombshell sure to rock the Obama Administration to its very foundations. Attorney General Holder was caught on tape intimating that it might be a good idea to convince young people that it’s not cool to “pack heat” or whatever quaint expression they used back when Boyz II Men topped the charts:
“What we need to do is change the way in which people think about guns, especially young people, and make it something that’s not cool, that it’s not acceptable, it’s not hip to carry a gun anymore, in the way in which we changed our attitudes about cigarettes.”
Translation: jack-booted DoJ thugs will kick down your door to collect your shootin’ arn in 3…2…1…. Stay tuned next week, when sinister Obama consigliere Valerie Jarrett will be revealed as the winner of the 1992 Black Panthers Ladies Auxiliary Brownie Bake-Off!
okay, we get it, you can’t give clues without blurting out the answer
Let me just say up front: I think Kristen Wiig is enormously talented. Loved her in Paul and Extract, haven’t seen Bridesmaids yet but if a bad word’s been said about her performance I haven’t heard it. I even enjoy a great deal of her work on Saturday Night Live, but I can’t help but agree with the criticism that she creates one-note characters and drives them into the ground.
Of all the recurring Wiig characters that have grown stale, I think my least favorite—notable in a list comprising Gilly, Target Lady, and the tiny-handed Lawrence Welk Show singer—may be Jennifer Rubin.
Sure, it was funny the first few times. A rabid right-winger barely concealing her vicious nature with the veneer of civility required of a Washington Post columnist? That’s got potential, most evident when this buttoned-up woman of privilege spits out the kind of venomous aside usually associated with Tea Party protesters. Wiig’s real stroke of genius, though, was turning “Jennifer Rubin” into a relentless booster of presidential candidate Mitt Romney; the incongruity of a doctrinaire conservative propagandizing on behalf of an unprincipled shapeshifter and against such party-line stalwarts as Gingrich and Santorum—whose beliefs clearly line up with hers far more than do Romney’s—creates a frisson that all but guaranteees laughs.
Stung by the backlash against the GOP’s bizarre and sustained attack on women—what Republicans call “the dance of seduction”—the Breitbart minions left behind to carry on their leader’s legacy found themselves rudderless and adrift. Well, maybe not rudderless, but with such teensy little rudders they’re barely even visible, so expect a great deal of overcompensation.
After viewing the movie version of “Game Change,” WaPo putz Richard Cohen channels the late David Broder to draw this curious conclusion about “the Palin effect” on US politics:
So far, the Palin effect has been limited to the GOP. Surely, though, there lurks in the Democratic Party potential candidates who have seen Palin and taken note. Experience, knowledge, accomplishment — these no longer may matter. They will come roaring out of the left proclaiming a hatred of all things Washington, including compromise. The movie had it right. Sarah Palin changed the game.
What a steaming load of horseshit. While the left has its share of dunderheads, I’m afraid the Republicans have pretty much cornered the market on prideful ignorance. When was the last time a Democrat on the national stage appealed to the base via anti-intellectualism? William Jennings Bryant maybe? We ceded the Know-Nothing vote for good when the Dixiecrats finally got over Reconstruction and switched party allegiance to the GOP a few generations ago.
As for “a hatred of all things Washington,” all politicians rail against Washington because of its dysfunction, but Democrats aren’t the ones peddling the notion that “government” in the abstract is an evil thing. We have tedious purity ponies who’d rather go hungry than take half a loaf, but they don’t run the party. And Democrats have to compromise because our liberal base is smaller than the GOP’s conservative base; most people in positions of actual power get that.
The Democrats are an exasperating, contentious lot who push me past my patience a hundred times a day. But one of the reasons I stick with them is because the Democratic Party, at least in its current incarnation, is incapable of producing a Sarah Palin.
Former McCain campaign strategist Steve Schmidt has been making the rounds since “Game Change” debuted, frankly admitting his own complicity in putting forth a “manifestly unprepared” candidate. Schmidt claims the Democrats did something similar when John Edwards became John Kerry’s running mate in 2004.
Edwards certainly was a lightweight and a smarmy, shape-shifting asshole to boot. But if you put aside the sex scandal (and lord knows that’s a bipartisan failing), Edwards belongs in the Romney class of entitled, ambitious jerks rather than in the Palin category of frighteningly ignorant dangers to the republic. Sorry, Republicans: you own Palinism.
The righty blogs are whooping it up because the latest CBS/New York Times poll reckons President Obama’s approval rating’s dipping (CBS News) and that there’s been a decline in his approval ratings among women despite the events of the last couple of weeks (Weekly Standard). So I guess they’d better double down on the slutshaming then.
Quote of the Week (already): “If these young women are being responsible and didn’t have the sex to begin with, we wouldn’t have this problem to begin with.”—North Carolina County Commission Chairman Tom Davis gives his learnèd opinion on contraceptive rights. (TPM)
UK Prime Minister David Cameron is doooomed because he’s not scheduled to pal around with shiftless raving rightwing nutjobs during his upcoming official visit to Washington, DC. (Daily Telegraph)
Meanwhile, ex-News International CEO Rebekah Brooks—a close friend and neighbor of Cameron’s—is the latest of Rupert Murdoch’s hacking hacks to be arrested (again—she was last arrested in July 2011), along with her horsey hubby this time, as the ongoing inquiries into the clusterfuck continue to unfold. Crown Prosecution Service involvement implies that there are specific charges to face. (BBC News)
And in the comics section, Griftzilla seeks to capitalize on her return to the headlines this last week—not just for the airing of Game Change, but because it’s SO unfair to cherrypick quotes from political opponents in campaign ads (TPM)—by calling President Obama a “frikkin loser slut”* on Facebook, excoriating him for everything everywhere everywhen, and declaring she’s “willing and free to discuss these issues with the President anywhere, anytime.” The White House responds: “How would the plains of Mars when hell freezes over suit ya?”* (Facebook)
I’ve probably missed a few things going on. Clue me in if you like.
This was the headline at The Drudge Report all morning—all weekend, for all I know:
If you happened on the Drudge site by accident, knowing that it drives mainstream media coverage without also knowing that it is a wingnut propaganda outfit run by an inveterate liar and fraud, it would be easy to conclude from that screaming headline that Tel Aviv had been reduced to rubble. The misleading headline is more disingenuous—even by subterranean Drudge standards—if you bother to click through.
The link leads to a Lesley Stahl interview with a former Mossad chief, Meir Dagan, who is speaking out publicly against the drumbeat of preemptive war with Iran. Perhaps the Drudge intern in charge of neo-con propaganda failed to read the whole piece, or at least this part:
Lesley Stahl: You have said publicly that bombing Iran now is the stupidest idea you’ve ever heard. That’s a direct quote.
Dagan: An attack on Iran before you are exploring all other approaches is not the right way how to do it.
Republican candidates and pundits are calling President Obama a naive appeaser for not jumping on the Bomb Iran bandwagon, and the same people who promoted hysteria during the run-up to the disastrous war with Iraq are shouting from the rooftops that we must bomb early and often. It’s interesting that the dude who was charged with degrading Iran’s nuclear program for eight years takes a more nuanced view.
The right’s capacity for lies, recklessness and stupidity should surprise exactly no one who remembers the George W. Bush administration. Still, I’m occasionally caught off guard by just how brazen the bastards are. And it’s disheartening to realize that no matter which saber-rattling idiot eventually gets the GOP nomination, north of 50 million people will vote for the lying prick, no matter how eager he is to jump into another Middle Eastern war. The rest of the planet must think we’re as dumb as dirt. They would be about half right.
Big Rump editor-at-large Gil Mann back up in this piece with some totally tubular news for your ass!
Yes, that’s right, I said “your ass” instead of “you,” because by speaking the patois of youth culture I’m honoring the legacy of Big Rump founder Adam Reichardt, cut down in his prime by an assassin’s bullet (oh sure, the libtard coroner’s report listed cause of death as “hit by van while trying to cross against the light with BAC of 8.5%” but how gullible does he think we are?) when he got a little too close to the truth about that time a college student named Barry Obama gave an elaborate high-five to a TA with outside-the-mainstream views on pygmies. I’m not 100% clear on what those views were, exactly, but ask someone in the mainstream for their opinion about pygmies—do they have one? Yeah, didn’t think so.
It’s been more than twenty hours since I broke the earth-shattering revelation that unAmerican radical who everybody hates Tom Hanks is secretly aligned with Obama, and as of this writing the Democrats still control the Senate, so clearly I made a mistake releasing that bombshell on a Friday night. While we wait for Monday’s inevitable Demageddon, here’s another PR black-eye for the Left to tide us all over.
Is your ass ready? Because here comes some news for it!
Megastar rocker Meat Loaf, as relevant and cutting-edge today as he ever was, is one of ours! And because the Left will brook no dissent, they’ve been waging a campaign to destroy this vital pop icon who consistently tops the charts. Well, these moonbats out of hell—I trust that you, in the language of today’s hep cats and kittens, see what I did there—are about to learn that two out of three is bad. Bad for them! Because they’re not the two! Mr. Loaf will bring an enormous amount of “cred” to our movement by joining forces with the Right, and it promises to be a marriage every bit as fulfilling as the one depicted at the end of his biggest hit.
Swear to God, if I had my finger any more on the pulse of the American electorate, the American electorate would feel a tingly numbing sensation in its extremities.
Hey dumb-o-craps, say goodbye to THESE!
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 03/10/12 at 07:56 PM
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Hey, Big Rump editor-at-large Gil Mann here again. Not sure what happened with those lasttwo shocking exclusive reveals—I mean, I posted clips of black men engaged in hugging and everything, that should’ve led to impeachment proceedings at the very least—but no matter, I have here in my hands a sure-fire, can’t-lose, 100% guaranteed presidency-destroying bombshell.
One more time, though, okay?
Nothing?
Okay fine. Movin’ on!
We all know about Obama’s connections to radicals such as Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayers, and Derrick Bell. But there is one such association that the media’s been successful at keeping from the public… until now. And unlike those others, this is someone widely known and whose anti-Americanism can’t be glossed over.
Now, I should say, I’ve never seen any of his work, but a true muckraking citizen journalist can’t be distracted by what the elites want you to think movies are about. Let’s just go through some of this man’s projects.
The Green Mile: Envirofascism coming out of Hollyweird? I should start a sister site called “Big Surprise.”
Angels and Demons: They get equal billing, because hey, we’re all the same! Moral relativism at its most Catholic-bashy.
Turner & Hooch: Oh yeah, a movie about a black guy getting wasted on moonshine and murdering white people, I bet that played real well in Peoria.
Band of Brothers: No whites allowed in this platoon!
Philadelphia: Based on the title I’m guessing it’s about a gay guy. That is the gayest city.
Bosom Buddies and Dragnet: Oh come on.
The Money Pit: This is how he sees America. He thinks America is like being married to Shelley Long.
Meet the albatross around your neck, Obama, his name is Tom Hanks. I’ve got some cultural blind spots and he’s one of ‘em, just never been on my radar, but judging from that resume I can’t imagine he’d go over well with the public at large. I bet being tied to Tom Hanks’ll sink this president like a stone, and you can take that to the bank, because I write for a website that starts with “Big” so rest assured I’ve got my finger on the pulse of the electorate.
UPDATE, Saturday 2:30ish: Operation Hang a Controversial Public Figure Around the President’s Neck Like an Anvil, which is sure to be a real winner, continues apace! And even if it somehow fails to pan out (yeah right), we’ve got a deep roster of despised personages to draw from, such as Betty White, Butterstick the panda, and your mom.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 03/10/12 at 12:19 AM
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I’ve got to say, Charles Johnson has come a long way since the 2008 election (when LGF was a pretty horrible sight/site). I think a lot of people will still have problems forgiving him for the worst of the anti-Islamic propaganda he and those who hung out in his comments sections propelled over a number of years before he (and apparently his weeded-out commenters) saw the light and turned on his erstwhile allies, who are now bitter, bitter enemies, but the guy has a knack of getting under the skin of the right-wing blogs and “news” sites like no one else I know. And so it’s been the last 24 hours or so.
In yet another humiliating attempt to catch the Obama campaign in a hidden video conspiratorial outrageous outrage, the heirs of Andrew at Breitbart.com have creatively edited a video of a lecture by Harvard Law School Prof. Charles J. Ogletree, Jr., to make it look like he was admitting hiding a supposed damning bit of “evidence:” that Barack Obama was a closer friend to Prof. Derrick Bell than they wanted known.
Unfortunately for the reactionaries at Breitbart.com, they had to cut out some important context to make it look that way.
Footage of Barack Obama praising and hugging Professor Derrick Bell. It was spliced and diced by the media to avoid showing just how close Obama was to Bell. More than that, a close associate of the Obama campaign, Harvard Law School’s Professor Charles Ogletree, admitted on our exclusive tape, ‘We hid this throughout the 2008 campaign. I don’t care if they find it now.’
— Ben Shapiro
[Emphasis mine] {i.e. Johnson's—YAFB}
Here is a short video showing that Prof. Ogletree wasn’t talking about the Obama campaign hiding that portion of the video; in reality, he was completing a humorous jab at some of his colleagues who also attended the same 1991 gathering as Obama and Bell.
...
Uh, and this is … you can see this is 1990, so this is 21 years ago.
None of these people look like this today [laughter] and I know they’re going to be afraid or mad that I found this but it’s a good example.
[quiet laughter]
Let me see if I can get this, uh, to work…
Now what makes this so interesting, when you think about it, uh it’s uh, of course we hid this throughout the 2008 campaign so don’t… [laughter] … I don’t care if they find it now but uh, because it just told you that his growth had been, uh, astronomical in terms of his sense about race …
Please notice: he was joking about his colleagues and himself looking older, not seriously “admitting” to hiding anything.
...
This damning exposé by Big Rump editor-at-large Gil Mann is getting worse all the time!
drip
Hear that?
drip
Sounds like somebody knocked over a can of Colt 45, but that’s not what it is. It is, rather, the sound of a steady leak of damaging allegations. And no matter how much enablers in the MSM try to pretend otherwise, THE TRUTH will eventually pool on the tile, and if you’re walking around in your socks, THE TRUTH will out and might give you trench foot if you ignore it.
drip
I told you that shocking clip I released earlier was just the beginning, and… what? I didn’t? Oh crap, that’s right, I meant to crib Shapiro’s last two graphs but only copy-pasted the penultimate one. My co-bloggers told me they fixed it! I trusted them to fix it! It’s not my fault!
drip
Hello, what have we here? A BLACK MAN GIVING SOMEONE OR SOMETHING A HUG THAT’S WHAT.
THE TRUTH. Outs every time.
This is all far from over, assuming I can locate a clip of Tim Meadows’s “Handsome Black Man” sketch. Otherwise yeah, it’s over. I already wasted countless hours trying to find something useful from Starsky and Hutch, but talk about a misnomer—that pimp never hugs a soul, much less David.
drip
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 03/08/12 at 09:48 PM
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