“It’s Like, How Much More Wankish Could This Be? Well, He Could Have Also Interviewed Stoller.”
You may remember Glenn Harlan Reynolds from such episodes of inept concern trolling as “liberals should hope that the Court rules the New Deal unconstitutional, because otherwise Congress might pass legislation it already passed in 2003 out of spite.” Improbable as it may seen, I believe he has topped himself. He starts off in the conventional manner, with some Friedersdorf-like attacks on Obama from the left on foreign policy. Which should tell you how seriously to take Friedersdorf’s conclusions, although at least Friedersdorf isn’t advancing the particular arguments in such transparent bad faith as Mr. “More Rubble Less Trouble.” But this is Reynolds — his concern trolling goes to 11:
I talked about this with Camille Paglia, a big Obama supporter in 2008. Now, she says, she’s voting for Green Party candidate Jill Stein.
Wow! I’m sure she will have further fascinating insights for us. She is, after all, a Registered Democrat (TM!) And the kind of hardcore progressive and supporter of Obama who loves her some Sarah Palin. I can’t wait for her fresh arguments, which must offer a coherent reason for voting for Jill Stein:
Though she supports some kind of health-care reform, Paglia calls the ObamaCare bill “a Stalinist intrusion into American culture.”
“I support some sort of health-care reform, like tort reform. Or tort reform. But allow people to obtain health insurance? Why not just send them to Kazakhstan to starve.”
And it gets worse: “I was very excited about him. I thought he was a moderate. I thought that his election would promote racial healing in the country; it would be a tremendous transformation of attitudes. And instead . . . now I consider him one of the most racially divisive and polarizing figures ever. I think it will take years to undo the damage he has done.”
“I’m afraid that by being black, Barack Obama has exacerbated racial tensions in this country. If only we had a had a man like Strom Thurmond again, we would never have had any of these problems.”
I could go on, proceeding to Paglia’s argument about how the lesson of Bringing It All Back Home is that the EPA and the civil rights division of the DOJ should be disbanded, but…really, after that it’s all anticlimax.
Meanwhile, despite the flameout of Miguel Cabrera’s Tigers in the World Series, we do at least have a hack triple crown winner in late October, because fellow Yoostabee Ann Althouse finds Paglia’s ideas fascinating and would like to subscribe to her newsletter.
LOGIC!
Wow, someone else who prefers Republican economic policies also sees criticisms of Obama’s security policy as a good reason to vote against him although Romney would also be worse on those issues. See, the logic is clear!
Libertarians chastising someone else’s logic is pretty rich in and of itself.
An interesting bit from Glenn (via the “More Rubble Less Trouble” link):
Stripped of context, this pretty much sums up my thoughts on the former Confederacy – and they aren’t exactly doing well on the “experiment”…
As to the rest of the piece, it continually stuns me that the whiners who insist on voting third-party fail to notice that nearly EVERY criticism they level against the President applies twice-over to the guy they’re implicitly helping to win. Bloodthirsty foreign policy? Check. Insurance mandate? FFS, he basically *invented* it in MA. Lack of transparency? Can you say, “less than no tax returns”, kids?
I can’t even come up with a snarky remark about the “racial division” nonsense; apparently for Glenn the virulently racist lunatics of the right are not at all responsible for that.
That quote actually sounds like a pretty good description of the modern Republican Party.
Third-party voters in deeply red or deeply blue states aren’t helping anyone win, implicitly or otherwise.
(Usual caveats apply: 1) all progressive voters in swing states need to vote tactically for Obama and are crazy to cast their votes in any other way; 2) voters in non-battleground states should vote for whomever they think is the best candidate on the ballot, major party, third party, or otherwise; 3) as my very red state’s ballot will only allow us to vote for Obama or Romney, I will be voting for Obama.)
Actually, given the closeness in the popular vote, there’s an argument that that’s not the best idea.
If the unlikely event happens that Romney wins the popular vote and Obama wins the EC (as is likely), there’s going to be, at best, a lot of faux outrage and even more incentive to fire bomb the country.
I don’t think this is nearly as strong as the imperative in your 1 or 3, but it’s at least worth considering.
The Republicans are engaged in extreme political warfare and it makes a mess of a lot of things.
I also don’t see Democrats reacting to losing the national vote in any good progressive moving way.
(Again, I don’t think this is nearly as strong a case, but it is there.)
does anyone actually take this cr*P seriously? death panels, purges, what next? … isn’t there a minimum neuron firing requirement in order to make your lips move and throat, diaphram, etc emit noise/sound? … make it stop for the love of buddha
now i go around all day with the n-word tatooed into my skull cap … what am i ever to do?
and i mean literally ‘n-word’… not its homespun antecedent
We’re all adults here, give or take. You can say “Nigger”, without and 3rd grade cloying euphemisms.
That’s supposed to be “any”. Add one more vote for an edit function.
what louis ck said … don’t hide behind your words …
Hitler had his death camps, Mao the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution, Pol Pot the Killing Fields, and Stalin ruthlessly imposed universal health care. Not to mention Jimmy Carter . . .
Oh, those dark days when Stalin compelled everyone to buy produce from the Kulaks and subsidized those less able to do so.
Right, it wasn’t until Robert Conquest blew the whistle on The Great Insuring that the truth was revealed about NKVD agents showing up at midnight and forcing peasants to choose bronze, silver, or gold health insurance.
I feel like this should be a Monty Python skit.
dude, the republican party is a monty python skit, just not a very funny one.
now I consider him one of the most racially divisive and polarizing figures ever
Just fuck off. No, really. Just how pig-fuckingly ignorant of history do you need to be to write that?
Pigs? Pigs? Listen, for a slot on one of the morning talk shows, Paglia will fuck anything.
It’s the Hack Gap, dude. Everything is done, said, and written in order to help the home team.
So your position is that making an implicit unfavorable comparison between Obama and Nathan Bedford Forrest is conclusive proof of Evil > Stupid?
That’s not a bad hypothesis.
In defense of Paglia: She’s a loon, rather than a hack.
Right. Paglia is a loon, Reynolds is a hack.
let’s just agree that ms. paglia is a loonish hack, reynolds is just a plain old hack.
by the way when does the Divine Ms. P get a FOX slot?
That really is the diamond-encrusted glace cherry on top of the sh!t sundae, isn’t it?
Wow, Ross Barnette also showed up for the occasion. Actually, if only the Dems would run a ticket of Zombie Wallace/Zombie Barnette, the Democrats would be sufficiently racially non-polarizing that Paglia and Reynolds could support them again.
i vote for just beating paglia and reynolds to death, on the village green. tickets could be sold, deficits reduced.
I like the way you use your heavy artillery. I didn’t know anybody archived G. Wallace. I would think they would be scrubbing any reference.
Heard Paglia being interviewed on the radio (she’s got a new book out); nearly went off the road in a fit of swearing. She was arguing that the “liberal media” and the Democrats had it in for Palin because she was pro-life. Yes, because there are no pro-life Dems in Congress and the media doesn’t fall over itself trying to give pro- life Republican candidates airtime. And Madonna is a genius but Lady Gaga is talentless; I’m agnostic on this important question but there seems to be little daylight between the two. Obviously Paglia’s is a considerable intellect one wants to hear more from. She was catching a lot of grief from callers though so that was nice.
I always wonder what poor Madonna ever did to Paglia to deserve this.
“she’s got a new book out”
Don’t tell me she will be on the Daily Show!
OK, no warning for you then
Althouse & Paglia. Inevitable. What took her so long?
I’m pretty sure Althouse has been a big Paglia fan for a long time. Indeed, are we sure that they aren’t the same person?
Oh, Althouse is Apollonian (even with the wine) to the core, while Paglia is wannabe Dionysian.
and what, reynolds is their secret love child?
clearly, she has convinced a lot of people that she is, because i’m pretty damn sure she makes a lot more than either you or i do.
None. None more wankish.
Glenn Reynolds is striving mightily every day to utterly destroy the reputation of the University of Tennessee and its law school. I think every student who has ever taken one of his classes should demand their money back and sue for fraud.
Somebody get Campos on this, stat!
But if they took classes from Reynolds how competent would they be in the lawsuit for fraud?
I guess they will have to hire Campos. But since they are ex law students, they are broke.
Not catch-22 but almost as good.
he’d have to treat it as a “personal injury” suit, taking a % of the judgment as his fee. i think that’s doable, having your intellect abused can reasonably be considered a “personal injury”.
Think of all the brain cells destroyed by listening to Reynolds’ lectures.
I listened long enough to hear the Registered Democrat(TM) tell us that Dylan warned us about Obamacare, then I blacked out.
Johny’s in the basement mixing up the medicine, sheeple! Paglia’s on the pavement, thinking about the government and Dylan’s positively prophetic visions of Obamacare. But did we listen to Sarah Palin (Isis reincarnated by way of Madonna) when she warned us that Dr. Filth and his local-loser Death Panels would keep the world inside of a leather cup adjacent to the cyanide hole? No, we did not. And now it’s too late: Stalinist-style health care reform has been strapped across our shoulders like a heart attack machine while the insurance men bring kerosene down from the castle. And I for one have no intention of working on Obama’s farm no more while the heat pipes just cough.
Simply paying attention to Paglia marks both Ole Perfesser and AA with the big red F of fail, but Annie doubles down with this comment on Pags calling something or other “unctuous”:
…and we’re done!
“None. None more wankish.”
Damn, Gus beat me.
Paglia should go back to championing date rape.
Very weak concern troll from Glenn here. If he had cared to do it right, he would have known in what contempt Paglia is held by, well, everyone and found someone a little more sympathetic.
The point here is to engage in concern trolling as a performance for the sake of his core audience. They will perceive that he is being fair and balanced with the dirty liberals and congratulate themselves on how they’re the reasonable bunch. An angry liberal response is actually part of the point.
Right – this isn’t concern trolling in the standard sense where a self-described “lifelong liberal” tries to convince actual liberals that “our side” is alienating everyone by being liberal. Reynolds isn’t stupid enough to think that any non-insane Democrats will take his advice on anything.
That Althouse post was written to destroy the LGM servers, right?
It’s very cute how Glenn Reynolds pretends to care what critics of the drone strikes think:
http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/91304/
Heh. Indeed.
“Left-wing” internet criticism of Obama in 2012 is a lot like CPUSA membership in 1960.
The question is not whether much of the activism is actually being done by infiltrators working against the cause the pretend to support. The question is whether it’s all a conservative rat fuck, or just most of it.
Paglia: Loon, hack, or is a new word needed?
Rather surprised this hasn’t rec’d. more notice.
I…I mean, she’s been touting Lucas for a long time, but still, holy shit.
So is Michael Bay second? Or Creed?
My favorite “liberal endorses Romney” is still this:
I think he makes a compelling case.
Well as long as Scott got to turn left and shoot with those silly people concerned with the assassination of American citizens absent due proceess, the way the Obama administration has been actively engaged in bedning the country over to be f&#!ed in the a## without a condom by the banks, all is good with LGM.
sorry, shoot AT the silly people…