If I went on a week-long meth binge and woke up with Kim du Toit next to me in bed, I'd be pretty touchy about the topic too.
What an epiphany I just had. I trod, and trod, and trod, ala Gerard Manley Hopkins, through the links...and found myself at Althouse's place somehow, and a post about her fucking cup or non-cup of coffee or something. And then it hit me, ala Casey Kasem's discovery about U2: "THese guys are from England and who gives a shit!?!?!" Except—as Roy knows, to his and our eternal damnable jaundice, yo-yos such as McArsehole receive money from such organs as "The Atlantic." WHich realization completed the terrible circle..and mae me determined to just...fucking go to bed...-sigh-...
A number of conservatives were upset on the opposite score: what happened to the worst of the liberal blogosphere? Answer: get off your butts and create your own award, OK? The field is wide open for some enterprising winger to create a Golden Moonbat Award.
Typical. They complain about the liberal bias in Hollywood, err, the Internet, but they are too lazy to do anything themselves.
They love the free market but they have no idea how it works.
P.S. - Kim is a girl's name. Talk about the pussification of men! I bet he shampoos his hair, too! Faggot!
The concern for comity and common ground is touching, but to be fair, she's a neo-Village Person who is friends with other youngish acheivers who'll eventually sell out to become the Broders, Sawyers and the other meek capitualists of the next generation. So from her utterly unwarrented post at the Atlantic, she feels the weight of civilization more acutely than us American Gangsters -- especially those who run ground-level in The Party of Death or are the Fifth Columnist Fellow Travellers of the snarkleft.
Sure, she can call blacks lazy or shiftless non-bootstrappers (or whatever Police State Libertarians are believing these days), but, at the end of the day, she still has pleasant drinks with Erza Yglesias or one of the Hillary staffers like nothing she said really matters. Or is even particularly sincere, from a real-world application of her 'ideas'.
Instead, like we've seen with Paul Berman's told-you-so from today, this class of pundits feels they can advance whatever worldview they want so long as they are not held accountable for the resulting consequences of the application of said ideas.
So instead they concentrate on the margins of language, worrying about appearances, thinking in terms of weasel-words and what the other villagers might think -- rather than address any of the actual issues a profanity-filled response may actually raise. They are terrified of real outrage, rather than the manufactured kind which is their stock in trade.
One person that always calls for civility is Dennis Prager:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=IqWaoQE1WLE
Based on the evidence, he must have a tidy apartment.
"My point, which I stand by, is that calling someone a [censored] does not, in fact, advance the debate."
Insulting X probably won't advance the debate with him, but that doesn't necessarily mean it won't advance the debate.
Besides, If X really is a [censored], [expletive] him! Who wants to debate with that [execration] anyway?
Now that this is out of the way, watch the minute hand for the next post about humorless liberals and how they don't appreciate the provocative cut and thrust of Ann Coulter, Maureen Dowd, Caitlin Flannagan and Megan McArdle - every one thoroughly charming if you got to know her, and so nice to their gay friends.
If only we could look past all the deliberate vileness in the service of causing of offense, which they're only doing to get their names out there, for crying out loud.
Honestly. You're so sensitive.
In the interest of comity, I have decided to move past referring to them as a [censored]. From now on they're all an [obscene gerund - obscure sexual euphemism] to me.
I suddenly feel fucking clean...
Jay B, you have summed up the growth of the pundit's mind. And remember that caring about anything they do enough to demand accountability and intellectual honesty of them is
very bad form. It is uncivil. Civility equals not expecting her to be honest. As long as you make the pundit's life pleasant, she doesn't care what you think or do.
Washington is full of people like McArdle, who'd rather not argue, or even seriously disagree, even if it means going along with things that would gag a maggot. That's what passes for civility there, even if it passes for cowardice, insularity, slavish conformity and intellectual laziness anywhere else.
So America's got herself a courtier class. The Founding Fathers would be so proud.
No, Molly, give her credit. She's not just whistling past the graveyard. She's done a fair amount of digging herself.
She's trying to recreate herself as a perky provocateuse because there isn't as much of a future in shrike as there used to be.
When I read that Megan McArdle wants to "advance the debate", my first question is: "Well, what are we debating?"
Because perfectly sensible ideas that are supported by a majority of Americans (withdrawing our troops from Iraq, single-payer health care, impeaching the Vice President) are ruled by McArdle and the corrupt class to which she belongs as "unserious" or "extreme" and therefore not worthy of debate.
Our task shouldn't be to "advance the debate" on a few topics pre-selected by McArdle & Co. (coming up next week: What type of bombs should we be dropping on Iran?).
Instead, we should challenge their right to determine what is and is not debated. And, if the most powerful tool they have is their claim to have an exclusive franchise on "seriousness", then the most effective way to take that tool from their hands is to expose their silliness and to mock their pretensions.
In short, these people should never, ever be taken seriously.
synkyl and steveb have hit it out of the park. Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel? "Advancing the debate" is the last refuge of the formerly howling right wing attack dogs. It, like the generic plea for "civility" is their way of trying to continue to market their anti-democratic and (at this point) frankly inhumane economic, social, and cultural policies without having to respond to *any* kind of debate.
When McCardle says "don't call us girly men" she is actually saying "don't call us on our bullshit and point out how nutty our policies are *while using colorful language* to get your point across. This is the real reason why McCardle is friends with Ezra, by the way, because he's way more likely to issue a twenty page, densly reasoned, think piece which no one will bother to read than to say "oh f*ck you and the health care plan you rode in on honey, you are talking out of your well funded ass" which would both be way more memorable, way more true, and way more persuasive than his bullet points.
We don't agree with them on policy. And we don't like 'em much personally, either--I myself avoid people who are pro-torture because you can never be sure *what* after dinner games look like at their house--if we choose to take our disagreement and dislike out in a few well chosen gibes, well, who died and made them Emily Post?
aimai
I vaguely remember a comment from some governmental official about how they were going to neuter Democrats--"cut off their privates and they won't be piddling on the rug anymore" was the gist.
I'll stop making fun of these bloodthirsty cowards when they pry my keyboard out of my cold, dead hands.
Why you fags always gotta be hatin'?
Ah, so tha' is how you pronounce i'...
I find something particularly grating about McArdle. I think it's a quality that Jonah Goldberg also has: the ability to be knowingly and serenely bogus. (Ace is a loon but he believes what he says, poor gump.)
I get my small fun out of mocking these people, or watching you all mock them, but the question keeps coming back to me, how do you criticize dishonesty in people who simply have no regard for honesty? I mean, you can't make it stick. So they go on.
What sustains them is their proximity to power. I mean, it's what they feed on and live for, and it's also what immunizes them from criticism. I must assume that the people who feed them do not care about their utter lack of credibility. The people McArdle and Goldberg work for do not need these tools to have credibility. They do not need credibility themselves; they've got power. And that's a bigger problem to solve, in my mind. It's their claim to legitimacy that must be taken apart, and the importance of the distinction between legitimacy and power affirmed in a materially meaningful way. How do you do that?
While that remains unsolved, yes, shredding the pretensions of their paid mouthpieces is service to truth.
Since McArdle has become the new poster child of the chowder-brained elite, especially since her tenure at The Atlantic began (besides Roy, the crew at Sadly, No! have been linking to her posts like tomorrow will never come), it's no surprise to see her complain about the tone of debate. That our complaints concern the quality and content of the debate seems to utterly escape her. Such cluelessness, oddly enough, is another of our complaints...
It's like Jonah said in his crime epic, Loadface: "Firs' jou get de money, den jou get de power, den jou get de popcorn chicken and a nice per diem."
Intemellectual gangstas, yo. What McArdle and her ilk do is the epistolary equivalent of knocking over liquor stores.
Why the fuck is the Atlantic paying for that gibberish, anyway?
I've long been a fan of Alexander Pope's comments on this very topic, given that he was no stranger to personal abuse from his enemies.
"[D]eformity becomes an object of ridicule when a man sets up for being handsome; and so must dulness when he sets up for a wit. They are not ridiculed because ridicule in itself is, or ought to be, a pleasure, but because it is just to undeceive and vindicate the honest and unpretending part of mankind from imposition, because particular interest ought to yield to general, and a great number who are not naturally fools ought never to be made so, in complaisance to a few who are."
This, in particular, seems relevant in the cases of Du Toit and Den Beste. (And to some extent, McArdle.)
McArdle's the one that said war protesters should be beaten with 2X4's, right? That's who's calling for "civility", correct, someone who sees groups with an opposing viewpoint and wants to see their heads beat in?
Shit.
What kia said.
They "have no regard for honesty," because they're not "thinkers," not "academics," not even legislators. They're propagandists. It's a profession, which by definition means, you argue on behalf of your principle (ie, employer) regardless of what may or may not be really true, regardless of the consequences to others (that's THEIR look-out), and regardless of what the opposition says.
Look at the eternally-dishonest David Brooks. It's not a "debate." It's a JOB. You go to the counter, you ask, "How's the bacon cheeseburger?" He says, "Not bad!" You buy one. It sucks. What is he supposed to say?
McArdle is just the latest, and may be so dewily youthful, still, that she actually thinks, or is able to pretend to think, that she and her readers are discussing the Issues. She'll get over THAT toot-sweet.
These people must be mocked all day and all of the night, because there is nothing sincere or honest about them. They don't deserve civility.
A dude Kim Du Twat talking about the "pussification" of man?
this stuff writes itself!
X is only an [expletive] when he's had a few drinks in him. Most of the time, he's very thoughtful and makes much more sense than Goldberg or duTwat.
So lay off X, okay?
hey, remember that time when all the Republican politicians went about wringing their hands over 'the politics of personal destruction'???
Musta been space aliens who were behind the Clinton witch-hunt in the 90s.
sorry, that was supposed to be "a dude named Kim Du Twat...."
The problem with the McArdles is that they think Kimmy belongs in the debate. He is a very marginal thinker expressing very marginal thoughts and the fact that the right has chosen to try and mainstream its marginal figures to shift the ground of the debate is something that Mcardle doesn't seem to grasp.
In the right wing rolodexes McArdle is undoubtedly filed under "Useful idiot." A position she maintains as long as magazines like Atlantic provide her with employment. She needs to get on line for some of that wingnut welfare and get out of James Fallows magazine.
I'm not surprised at McArdle. She's a familiar type if you work in any media. She's worked her way up a bit by being a relentless self-promoter and, yes, by eating the right cocktail weenies.
What I am surprised by is that the Atlantic (or, hell, the Nation) wouldn't see, say, Billmon, as a much better business proposition. Really, how much would it cost to give Billmon a two year contract to write whatever he wants? And I suspect he'd generate about 10x the traffic of McArdle. The pool of underemployed lefty bloggers and writers is surprisingly deep (if not very brave or entrepreneurial) and many of them have large enough audiences to make a serious run in MSM. I can't imagine that McArdle has much of a serious following, certainly less than, say, Avedon Carol.
Also, it's worth noting that the right has put serious resources into developing younger conservative writers and, ahem, thinkers and all they have to show for it is Ace and Goldberg? Ouch.
My point, which I stand by, is that calling someone a [censored] does not, in fact, advance the debate.
But her original complaint was about this:
I’m betting Mr. du Toit is a closet case.
I don't see anything censorable here - closet case is a legitimate speculation, especially given the prodigious moronitude of Du Toit's rant. Besides, it's not like you have to watch American Beauty several times to get that there are men whose testosterone-flecked sputtering against "pussification" is a sham cover, just like being a vociferously anti-gay conservative Republican. Open up the paper and there's Mr. Family Values discovered with a dildo up his keister or Congressman Anti-Boner having a fling with a gay hooker and his meth dealer. Closet cases abound, and unless the word hypocrite is profane, I don't get the problem.
I would've called Du Toit a fucking cunt because he is one, but [censored] is my default vernacular for scumbags.
Just as I feel that the issue of waterboarding-as-non-torture is legitimatized when those who advocate waterboarding undergo waterboarding of their own volition, civility as an issue will become legitimate when they, of their own volition, clean their own house of the horseface manure that is so amply faceshitted by the likes of Coulter and O'Reilly.
All I can say is fuckity fuck fuck. I blame all this uncivility on Norman Mailer for putting the word 'fugg' into "The Naked and the Dead". That was the start of the great slippery slop to Hell. See Dennis Parger's latest shitpile at Townhall for more of the same.
Can I just give a shout out to pseudonymous in nc whose posts are always worth reading but whose quote from Alexander Pope is really fantastic today? aimai
Seconded.
Great post. They whine because, as you say, they can't help but notice how roundly they are being ridiculed.
And they should be ridiculed. They are one part mentally unstable and two parts stupid.
I forgot to point out that my misremembering of McCardle's whine was, of course, the epithet hurled by none other than the republican governor of california at people whose policies and politics he disagreed with : "girly men" made it into our political lexicon because of republican refusal to address policy issues on the merits and a relentless attempt to smear regular politics with allusions to sexual politics.
aimai
Bi-partisanship is date rape.
Next question.
-
she has a point. making fun of retards is bad form.
Please, 90% of the voices on the right are ones that 20 years ago would have been relegated to speakers' corner in Hyde park, required to bark their tripe in Times Square, forced to mumble to themselves, or sent to padded cells.
Suddenly, the dark voices that civilization has made an effort to tamp down are given free reign, TV shows, and provided space on Op-Ed pages. FOX news mainstreams racism and bigotry.
We've got to reclaim our country.
McArdle is, along with Hitchens so many others, an exemplar of that most comical of beasts: the erudite fool. How dare she order us to stop laughing?
McArdle is a silly bunt.
(h/t Monty Python)
Megan McArdle can suck my bleeding heart [censored].
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