As we approach the 2012 elections, I have to admit grudgingly sympathizing with the poor Republican contenders on some level; everywhere you look, one (hilarious) presidential aspirant after another has to deal with the fact that large blocs of their party hates them, for one reason or another. The reasons, to a sane person at [...]
They’re everywhere – these little men. No tendentious description of the phenomenon is required, nor is a detailed and boring historical context necessary, since they (like the poor) “have always been with us.” But the sudden “surge” of poseurs, fakers, demagogues, deadbeats, and crooks stands out right now, as our vaunted world economy teeter-totters, [...]
Ted Koppel, one of the last eminences of the old broadcast news era, weighed in some days ago on the never-ending debate about how things just aren’t as august as they used to be (whenever that was) when it comes to informing the American people (instead of just yelling at them). Koppel targeted Fox News [...]
Until I saw this clip today I was in a pretty bad mood, and not just about politics. The rain is coming down sideways, and temperatures will be in the thirties by tonight, which has already started and it’s not yet 4:30. But no bad weather and/or serial capitulations by Democrats can spoil my [...]
Have you ever noticed how many Fox News Democrats are actually, well, Republicans? Joe Lieberman is perhaps the most famous example, but it’s quite clear that the mediocrities they employ to “balance,” their typically 4-1 right wing “panels” have been sucking the Murdoch tit for so long, they’ve gone native, and their rhetoric sometimes makes [...]
New York gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino may or not be a bigot, but one thing’s for sure: he is as dumb as a post. As I’m sure you heard, he went to speak to ultra-Orthodox Jews in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and told the approving crowd that gay people are “dysfunctional,” we shouldn’t “brainwash” children into thinking [...]
In this astonishing video, multimillionaire radio and TV Huckster Glenn Beck speaks, solemnly and with laughably faked empathy, to a bunch of rubes about how “we” are going to have to make deep sacrifices to pay off the Republican debt that faces the country. ”We” might lose our pensions. ”We” might lose our jobs. ”We” [...]
You always know somebody’s headed for a deeply satisfying fall when they resort to engaging in a loud, sudden, and stunningly counterfactual rebranding of themselves, seemingly overnight. Actual behavioral changes are never required for this spectacle, though; it’s supposed to be enough to simply rename shit, searchlights blaring, “Shinola” and call it a day. At [...]
For as long as I can remember, Republicans of various stripes have been telling me and the world that the sky was falling, and yet, so far it hasn’t… Oughtn’t they catch a clue by now that, well, they’ve been so wrong before, and so often, that to believe anything they say requires a suspension [...]
When CNN hired the tubby, bigoted know-nothing Erick Erickson from Redstate, I yawned. After all, the New York Times hired Ross Douthat, the Los Angeles Times hired Jonah Goldberg, and no dying media outlet could be without its beady-eyed, teenage water-carrier for for the “kill ‘em all” faction of the right. Notably, Douthat replaced the [...]