Since Irony’s Corpse Has Been Desecrated Again, Why Not Logic’s Too?
Ever the optimist, I figured the McArdle was simply unbeatable in the “jaw-dropping winger reactions to Newtown” sweepstakes. But never end a competition until the NRO has spoken! Charlotte Allen has now lapped the field. (“Weak, passive women administrators would never resist a shooter. Except that at least two did and got mowed down, although McArdle would note that they didn’t have a SWAT team of unarmed first graders with them. Anyway, this is all central to my point.“)
You will recall Allen from her Washington Post featured column, “wimmens is stupid.” Not women, Charlotte….
…Ms Allen actually drops into the comments Chez Pierce.
Malaclypse:
December 19th, 2012 at 9:37 pm
There is not now, and never will be, a Peak Stupid.
MAJeff:
December 19th, 2012 at 9:41 pm
Charlotte Allen is also part of the “HPV vaccine will turn wimmens into whores” brigade of Ladies Against Women.
MAJeff:
December 19th, 2012 at 9:43 pm
As I recall, her “Independent Women’s Forum” was also concerned that the development of an HIV vaccine would encourage promiscuousness, so they’d have to think long and hard about supporting HIV vaccination.
wengler:
December 19th, 2012 at 9:45 pm
Who can comprehend the infinite nature of the cosmos?
Todd:
December 19th, 2012 at 9:47 pm
I’ve come to picture people like this as standing up in a movie theatre during the closing credits of “Starship Troopers” with a raised white-gloved fist and bowed head.
wengler:
December 19th, 2012 at 9:48 pm
Recent evidence is rather conclusive that former football players aren’t immune to bullets. And Loomis is the one that has to fear for his job?
BigHank53:
December 19th, 2012 at 9:53 pm
In the days to come, I look forward to hearing about how the Newtown shooting was caused by legalized abortion, unwed mothers, inner-city crack babies, state-mandated sex-ed classes, the removal of publicly-funded Nativity scenes, birth-control pills, no-fault divorce, premarital sex, the Warren court, communism, fiat currency, zip codes, and gay marriage.
rea:
December 19th, 2012 at 9:55 pm
In the days to come
No, all that’s been said already.
Malaclypse:
December 19th, 2012 at 9:55 pm
Oh sure, leave off Fluoride. Now we know you are part of the cover-up.
laura:
December 19th, 2012 at 9:56 pm
Last time we heard from Allen, she was advocating for a Sarah Palin 2016 run managed by Kevin Dujan. I think she must be a performance artist trying to figure out the dumbest thing one can write and still get published as a “conservative”.
Also, the first comment on the Allen post at NRO is ace.
MAJeff:
December 19th, 2012 at 9:58 pm
And that DuJan was evidence of a large gay following for LaPalin.
STH:
December 19th, 2012 at 10:02 pm
See, the stupid part doesn’t surprise me. What boggles my mind is that people get PAID for shit this stupid. Which either means that somebody at NRO is stupid enough to think this is a good column (come to think of it, if Kathryn Jean Lopez is still the editor over there, this could be true) or cynical enough to think their audience is chock full of idiots (most definitely true).
DrDick:
December 19th, 2012 at 10:03 pm
Nor its corollary, Peak Wingnut.
Warren Terra:
December 19th, 2012 at 10:11 pm
It’s always dangerous to interpret from too small a sample, no matter how thoroughly you know that sample. In this case, she had a single subject,one she’d been studying all her life, often getting a view deep inside the subject through advanced cranio-rectal inversion
Warren Terra:
December 19th, 2012 at 10:12 pm
And unleaded gasoline.
rea:
December 19th, 2012 at 10:12 pm
Could these iddiots pleae stop talking about the necessity of schoolchildren rushing the killer? As someone with a very good-hearted, brave 13-year-old grandson, it makes me sick to my stomach.
joe from Lowell:
December 19th, 2012 at 10:15 pm
I see BigHank53 is a connoisseur of wingnuttery.
A+
Anyone could have picked out gay marriage and birth control pills. Zip codes. Outstanding.
Reasonable 4ce:
December 19th, 2012 at 10:16 pm
… and the DH rule…
Warren Terra:
December 19th, 2012 at 10:22 pm
I suppose the slightly comforting thing is that Allen is getting shellacked in the comments, where it is repeatedly pointed out to her that her supposed facts were almost all mistaken (there were adult male staff on campus, there weren’t any 12-year-olds, and you should never bring a bucket to an assault-weapon fight). To be sure, I don’t think any of the commenters are supporters of the National Review, but in any case the supporters mostly aren’t trying to defend Allen’s nonsense.
swearyanthony:
December 19th, 2012 at 10:28 pm
Daylight savings…
Anonymous:
December 19th, 2012 at 10:28 pm
As someone who actually was in a random situation in which a loaded weapon was pointed her and fired, and who, in all honesty, reacted much the same way that a deer standing in quick drying cement with a car bearing down on her would have, these “suggestions” make me so angry that, if I were a different person, I would approach these morons with a loaded weapon and dare them to rush me.
But I’m not that person and I’m not going to do that, so fuck all of you gun fetishists and your false equivalencies and pearl clutching.
“Husky 12 year olds” my ass.
John Protevi:
December 19th, 2012 at 10:29 pm
Oddly enough, I highly recommend a visit to the NRO site to read the comments (set them to “oldest first”). They quickly and emphatically put out all the many, many factually errors and logical fallacies of Allen’s column.
dl:
December 19th, 2012 at 10:34 pm
This one was great (I didn’t think of it as I read, but I should have):
padfoot • 11 hours ago
−
LOL for Ms. Allen’s remark that we have to keep our troubled kids from getting into our cache of weapons and that we need to show them the door. Lord knows that if the choice is between the child and the guns, the kid has to go.
Stephen Frug:
December 19th, 2012 at 10:38 pm
Hey, Scott, I told you you were underestimating conservatives.
Major Kong:
December 19th, 2012 at 10:39 pm
If only we’d had men in the Army during WWII….
thebewilderness:
December 19th, 2012 at 10:41 pm
A moments research would have revealed that the school goes to fourth grade and so the oldest children would be ten. But why bother when the subject is just crying out for janitors with mop buckets.
xxy:
December 19th, 2012 at 10:44 pm
Mythbusters should do an episode on mass shootings so that every time someone suggests anything like arming teachers or rushing the shooter we can point them to a nice visual of how dead anyone attempting heroics would quickly become.
Major Kong:
December 19th, 2012 at 10:52 pm
Charging the shooter worked so well at Verdun, the Somme, and Gallipoli….
joe from Lowell:
December 19th, 2012 at 10:53 pm
This, btw, is the normal human response. In order for a human being not to react that way, you have to subject him to extensive, specialized training. To actually get 12-year-olds ready and able to do that at a moment’s notice would require hours of training, day in and day out, for weeks.
joe from Lowell:
December 19th, 2012 at 10:54 pm
…Mandatory recycling…
ruviana:
December 19th, 2012 at 10:57 pm
Barcodes at the supermarket! No, really!
Rob:
December 19th, 2012 at 11:03 pm
You are all missing teh evil of low phosphate dish detergents and florescent light bulbs
Jon H:
December 19th, 2012 at 11:03 pm
It must be a tax dodge. Are we sure that Uwe Boll hasn’t gone into newspapers?
Jon H:
December 19th, 2012 at 11:04 pm
Earth Day
Jon H:
December 19th, 2012 at 11:05 pm
Unleaded gas.
Rob:
December 19th, 2012 at 11:05 pm
PSHAW! A few viewings of Red Dawn is all that it takes! You would have thought the US Army would have figured out the cost savings from that years ago!
marijane:
December 19th, 2012 at 11:05 pm
plastic bag bans…
Jon H:
December 19th, 2012 at 11:05 pm
and direct election of senators.
Warren Terra:
December 19th, 2012 at 11:20 pm
Hah! beat you!.
Warren Terra:
December 19th, 2012 at 11:21 pm
Charging the shooter cannot fail, it can only be failed.
BigHank53:
December 19th, 2012 at 11:24 pm
It doesn’t even work when you’re playing paintball, for fuck’s sake.
xxy:
December 19th, 2012 at 11:24 pm
I should have known that the gun industry would already have this covered. You can even buy a DVD for more in-depth training on how to kill multiple people. Christ. Everyone calling for a campaign against the businesses is absolutely right.
joe from Lowell:
December 19th, 2012 at 11:25 pm
Listen, I don’t want to get hysterical, but low-phosphate dish detergents are what realignments are made of.
joe from Lowell:
December 19th, 2012 at 11:27 pm
Really, it all comes down to Agenda 21.
Leeds man:
December 19th, 2012 at 11:28 pm
With inevitable long term negative consequences.
Anonymous:
December 19th, 2012 at 11:29 pm
Precisely. I am
astonished, humbled, awed, gobsmacked, moved beyond words by the bravery those women displayed in this situation. I’m probably moved even more than most because I have actually have scars from my own experience with random gun violence and the memories of how I reacted in the face of overwhelming fear.To read nonsense about how a male janitor with mop buckets and husky 12 year old boys were all that was needed to prevent this tragedy….I can’t even.
joe from Lowell:
December 19th, 2012 at 11:32 pm
We’re going to drill it into kids in school to do this. Really drill it. Gotta start young, obviously.
Murc:
December 19th, 2012 at 11:36 pm
Man, paintball isn’t an accurate simulation at all. Fuckin’ refs always tell me I’m out as soon as I’m tagged. In the real world, even if I got gut-shot, I’d be running on pure adrenaline, man. I’d be able to power right through that and slit the guys throat with my combat knife before I bled out.
Anticorium:
December 19th, 2012 at 11:41 pm
Joseph Kony could make a pretty fat dime as a consultant in Tennessee if he ever got tired of being an invincible warlord.
Leeds man:
December 19th, 2012 at 11:42 pm
Rip yer arm off and beat the fuckers to death with it! Metaphorically.
Uncle Kvetch:
December 19th, 2012 at 11:59 pm
Goddamn metric system…
Peter:
December 20th, 2012 at 12:04 am
…with votes!
BigHank53:
December 20th, 2012 at 12:04 am
If they made a profit, the sweet, sweet nectar flowing from the tits of Richard Sciafe and the Koch brothers would dry up.
charles pierce:
December 20th, 2012 at 12:18 am
Scott – CA her own self stopped by my joint to chat with the commenters. Hilarity ensues!
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/charlotte-allen-newtown-shooting-comments-121912
Jeremy:
December 20th, 2012 at 12:27 am
Well, if the US does decide to go the route of Sparta, I, for one, plan to enjoy all the gay sex that it entails.
Michelle:
December 20th, 2012 at 12:35 am
Does the guy in that video have a hard on or am I just seeing things?
timb:
December 20th, 2012 at 12:38 am
not to mention the fact that there was a male janitor
Warren Terra:
December 20th, 2012 at 12:40 am
The late senator Daniel Inouye more or less managed this in WWII; why not Mal?
Nick056:
December 20th, 2012 at 12:41 am
Yikes!
BigHank53:
December 20th, 2012 at 12:51 am
Funny, the roomfull of soldiers at Ft. Hood didn’t have that much luck.
Warren Terra:
December 20th, 2012 at 12:55 am
Er, Murc.
herr doktor bimler:
December 20th, 2012 at 1:06 am
This was the first I heard that brain configuration embiggerates you. Look at Jonah Goldberg — no brain configuration at all.
Anonymous:
December 20th, 2012 at 1:07 am
Wait, is zip codes a real thing?
beat:
December 20th, 2012 at 1:11 am
It can also be the initial reaction even for those trained for such situations. I was once stabbed by a homeless guy and my first reaction was to step back and my second was “shit.” It was my partner who subdued the guy. It was not my first rodeo and yet I was caught completely by surprise.
herr doktor bimler:
December 20th, 2012 at 1:13 am
“This is central to my point” seems to be the official NRO slogan now.
Bill Murray:
December 20th, 2012 at 1:19 am
zip stands for zone improvement plan, and you know how much conservatives hate improvement of any kind, especially as how ZIP codes improve the lives of those people
Bill Murray:
December 20th, 2012 at 1:21 am
c’mon son. Many of those writers were ~15 when they finished the 4th grade
Bill Murray:
December 20th, 2012 at 1:23 am
he’s just happy you’re watching the video
Jameson Quinn:
December 20th, 2012 at 1:24 am
I’ve had my tire shot out, and been tied up by a potential lynch mob whose first language I didn’t speak, and in neither case do I recall feeling anything I can call “fear”. Aside from that, I’ve twice had someone pull a gun on me, and not backed down in either case, though what was at stake was less than trivial. I’ve thrown myself in front of a bus and, when that didn’t make it stop, escalated by sitting down; leaving my 4-year-old daughter alone on the sidewalk; simply to prevent the bus from going the wrong way down a 1-way-street. And every one of these examples is something I would strongly advise anyone else to avoid and to handle differently than I did.
I honestly believe that I would rush a gunman, that’s just how I am. And I’m not proud of it; it would just get me stupidly killed, and I would do better to help get others to safety.
Bill Murray:
December 20th, 2012 at 1:26 am
well Inoue threw his detached arm holding a live grenade, I could see Mal and Murc doing this, although how they get Inoue’s detached arm, I’ll don’t know
Jameson Quinn:
December 20th, 2012 at 1:27 am
Rip off Murc’s arm, and you realize it’s Mal.
Jameson Quinn:
December 20th, 2012 at 1:28 am
BTW I don’t mean that you should literally try that.
Warren Terra:
December 20th, 2012 at 1:28 am
Y’know how Rule 34 of the Internet is that anything you can think of, there are people who find it stimulating, and sites that cater to them? Well, I don’t know if it has a number, but there’s a similar rule of the Wingernet: any crazy idea you can think of, some significant number hold fast to its utter importance (either as being an important good thing or an important bad thing, depending)
Warren Terra:
December 20th, 2012 at 1:30 am
But surely there can be a Local Maximum Stupid, some temporary apex of achievement in the field until events or simple innate ambition drive the Stupid to new heights?
Warren Terra:
December 20th, 2012 at 1:32 am
The arm, or the remainder?
The Dark Avenger:
December 20th, 2012 at 2:03 am
She’s no longer the editor there:
The Dark Avenger:
December 20th, 2012 at 2:03 am
laura:
December 20th, 2012 at 2:06 am
I must be configured for the wrong comments (when I click the link I get fb comments) because what I found was CA talking about her experience with an attempted rapist in her 20s. I *don’t* want to be in the position of defending such a misogynistic tool, but her comment is roughly the opposite of “hilarity ensues”.
swoof:
December 20th, 2012 at 2:30 am
Gun dealer down the street from me started selling commemorative Inouye detached arms yesterday.
swoof:
December 20th, 2012 at 2:35 am
Click the link that says “View 39 more” a couple comments down from her initial comment.
laura:
December 20th, 2012 at 3:00 am
Thanks to swoof for directing me to the rest of her comments which are all very objectionable to one degree or another. I’m still a little disconcerted by the idea that “hilarity ensues” from a person remembering being attacked by a would-be rapist in her 20s, regardless of how dumb/reactionary she is in her 40s/50s.
Anonymous:
December 20th, 2012 at 3:06 am
Thank you for pointing that out, laura.
Darkrose:
December 20th, 2012 at 4:55 am
After reading her comment that rape is worse than death, I don’t really have it in me to snark. I do wish that she’d take the “Stanford University” out of her profile, though. It’s embarrassing.
bexley:
December 20th, 2012 at 5:06 am
and Methodists.
nanute:
December 20th, 2012 at 5:31 am
….advanced cranio-rectal inversion. No wonder she has such a shitty outlook on life.
UserGoogol:
December 20th, 2012 at 6:30 am
There’s possibly multiple variants on the conspiracy, but looking it up, it seems to be connected with the Sovereign citizen movement. That movement is a rather tangled mess of conspiracies involving rejecting the legality of 14th Amendment, but basically the idea is that by using ZIP codes you are recognizing Federal sovereignty and thus surrendering your default freedoms under the law.
rea:
December 20th, 2012 at 7:30 am
Don’t forget I-36 and the Amero
rea:
December 20th, 2012 at 7:31 am
Or actually, I-35
Timb:
December 20th, 2012 at 8:21 am
Hilarity DID ensue, but it got a very slow start
Dan:
December 20th, 2012 at 8:32 am
I almost feel bad for these people. Trying to come up with a solution that doesn’t involve hurting their precious, precious guns, and then creating some “logical” justification for it has got to be some hard work.
joe from Lowell:
December 20th, 2012 at 8:36 am
It was a John Birch Society thing, IIRC.
Lacking Moral Fiber aka Useless Muthfucka frmly Nemesis:
December 20th, 2012 at 9:03 am
Remember, the author thinks, based on her own experience, that 12 year olds are still in the 4th grade.
Cody:
December 20th, 2012 at 9:24 am
So this video is definitely a call to shoot people, yes?
I assume the police have been called!
Speak Truth:
December 20th, 2012 at 9:28 am
Yes, I once had my head blown off by a 12 gage shotgun after unexpectedly disrupting a drug deal going down at the state department.
After driving myself to the hospital which was about an hour away (traffic) I gave myself a blood transfusion since there was no attending physician on call.
A gun wouldn’t have helped at all. I would have just hurt some innocent drug dealer with a shotgun.
Anticorium:
December 20th, 2012 at 9:39 am
You know how conspiracy theorists differentiate between the real United States government and The Government? The Government set up zip codes and using them means that you have given your implicit approval to be ruled by them.
This also applies to two-letter state abbreviations. If you write “Schenectady, NY 12345″ instead of “Schenectady, New York” you might as well follow it up with “Please throw me in an Agenda 21 camp when I refuse to be paid in ameros.”
witless chum:
December 20th, 2012 at 9:45 am
Or the armed and trained police officer at Columbine High School who actually exchanged fire with the mass murderers.
spencer:
December 20th, 2012 at 10:03 am
I once had my head blown off by a 12 gage shotgun
If only.
Glenn:
December 20th, 2012 at 10:05 am
A Stupid Singularity, perhaps
spencer:
December 20th, 2012 at 10:17 am
Yeah, her rape comment is obviously not funny. I wouldn’t wish that experience on anyone, and even though I detest what she stands for and what she spends her life doing, I’m glad she didn’t actually get raped.
But *after* that, when she doubles and then triples down on Teh Stoopid of her column? Now THAT’S funny.
N__B:
December 20th, 2012 at 10:20 am
An Agenda 21 re-education camp is preferable to Schenectady.
N__B:
December 20th, 2012 at 10:28 am
I’m throbbing with pride.
mds:
December 20th, 2012 at 10:28 am
(1) In fairness, ve certainly trolls like it.
(2) You are so fired from whatever your current job is, you credible threatener.
DrDick:
December 20th, 2012 at 10:30 am
Those, however, are 12 year old boys with AK-47s.
mark f:
December 20th, 2012 at 11:02 am
Jonah’s thrown in his two cents. Basically, he agrees that Charlotte Allen said something stupid. However, mean disgusting liberals who argue about guns because of some dead kids who aren’t even our kids to care about made her do it.
Lee:
December 20th, 2012 at 12:02 pm
I think it ultimately traces back to the conspiracy theories that English Protestants had about Roman Catholics since at least the Elizabethan Age. The fear of an outside force secretly controlling or conspiring to take over your country and taking away everything you old dear comes seems to have really gotten its start here.
Lee:
December 20th, 2012 at 12:04 pm
Can we not find some ambitious District Attorney who is willing to RICO the gun industry?
Glenn:
December 20th, 2012 at 12:46 pm
I try to take a federalist approach by only using the 5-digit version. The remaining 4 digits are clearly reserved to the states under the 10th Amendment.
Glenn:
December 20th, 2012 at 12:50 pm
I think this all goes back to the “Duck and Cover” films in the 50′s. If only schoolchildren had been taught to gang rush Soviet ICBMs, we wouldn’t be in this mess right now.
Warren Terra:
December 20th, 2012 at 2:56 pm
I suspet you’re right to invoke Christianity, but are missing the correct point. There is apparently maybe something in Revelations (which I think I’ve never read) about how the Antichrist will give everyone a number by which they shall be known, controlled, etcetera. This is the basis of an ongoing lawsuit in Texas, where a schoolgirl refuses to wear an RFID tag the school is using to track the locations of all students – not because of privacy concerns, but because of religious objections to being reduced to a number. The imposition on each neighborhood of a five-digit number, and especially the further refinement to a nine-digit number, may well have impinged on the sensibilities of paranoid apocalyptically minded Christians.
redrob64:
December 20th, 2012 at 3:21 pm
Well there you go then. The solution is to hire Joseph Kony as a consultant, train the children to rush gunmen in human wave assaults, and equip all of them with assault rifles. Problem solved.
STH:
December 20th, 2012 at 3:48 pm
That part of the column was particularly weird to me (and I only read the parts of the column that were quoted on ThinkProgress.com). Yeah, she’s got the usual “women are weak and useless” shit, but then she just mentions as an aside that you can’t leave an unemployed young man alone with guns or he’ll go postal. What the fuck was that? I can’t decide which sex she has more contempt for.
STH:
December 20th, 2012 at 4:02 pm
And I don’t get how these things are supposed to work. You try to support your statement of how “weak and helpless” women are by telling a story of you preventing a rape? It’s the Phyllis Schlafly contradiction: how is a woman making a career out of telling other women they’re stupid and weak and should keep quiet, go home and raise babies?
Atticus Dogsbody:
December 20th, 2012 at 4:17 pm
That would take a real man.
DocAmazing:
December 20th, 2012 at 8:02 pm
He has the right to keep and bear detached arms. after all.