28 October 2010

"Yes, boy, we KNOW the barn is empty."



Dear Dr. Bones,

I don’t believe you should award any points at all to your pupil, Master Joseph Conason, for noticing the Citizens United matter. Not NOW.

Had he hollered bloody murder immediately after the "Votes for Geckos" movement had their big win, he might pass for a minor reincarnation of Nostradamus, but what can be said for a lad who, six weeks after the horse was stolen, comes down the pike with "Hey, Mister, did you know your barn is empty?"

I heard very little hollering on V-G Day, and almost all of that little from Reptile House specialists whose concern with the cold-blooded critters an’ neocritters that hiss an’ rattle over at the CCUSA [http://j.mp/cwQAd5 before they "strike unseen" [1] is a full-time affair anyway.

If anybody wants to distribute praise and credit where it might conceivably do a little good for the future, I would suggest she pass over all the Joe Conasons of the world automatically and as a matter of resolved policy. Though it is possible for merit to emerge even from a Middlesex (Mass.) School of Journalism, Barber Science and Barbarian Studies, it would be silly to expect that most of what such a candidate will be really good at is anything more beautiful or useful than burbling bullshit. [2]

So, then, sir, I think you ought to ask Master Conason to worry about what comes next for a change. For example, the laddie might be required to consider

(A) Militancy an’ extremism bein’ what we know they are, where will "Votes for Geckos" end? Will V4G eventually turn out to mean that only geckos have votes that count for anythin’? [3]

(B) Even if the Daughters of Virtue and Sons of Wisdom (LLC) are never quite that successful, would they not like to be? Indeed, is not somethin’ not very far from (A) pretty much what General Firstlord Alexander of Hamiltonstein original-intented when he created political geckoanity as we know it down in the dungeon labóratory of Castello Federalista? His firstlordship’s famous "great beast" quotation is disputed, and may indeed be a hostile parody, yet what principle or neoprinciple is to keep merely organic voters in check, if not V4G? What other principle or neoprinciple CAN make us organisms keep our slimy pseudopods to ourselves -- an’ off our betters’ Sacred Capital Gains -- the way we obviously ought to?

And so forth, and so on -- there is lots of fun stuff to be said about V4G and, as it were, " The Birth of AstroTurf™-baggin’ from the Spirit of Wombscholarship " for anybody with a little bit of imagination backed up with even a half-expensively educated familiarity with the annals of our holy Homeland™.

Your Master Joseph is content to grumble about predictable (but Conason-unpredicted) tsunamis and naïve mistakes and cynical partisanship and indisputable idiocy and ... and ... and a’ that, all the way down through "sewer money ... advocated for decades," at which point he admittedly almost totters on the brink of substance, yet manages (whew!) to be saved by his bottom line before anything interesting comes of it.

So then, NO EXTRA POINTS.

Happy days.





[1] McSarcasm uses ‘unseen’ is the specialized sense of "whilst J. C. of S. Magazine was not watching."

The only redeeming feature of little Joe’s scribble, me judice, does not belong to Joe at all, but entirely to Party Neocomrade B. X. Smith, who quite sensibly points out that if you do not know what the CCUSA is all about -- has always been all about -- well, perhaps you had better get out of the kitchen so as not to interfere with the hired hands.

Notice how the Freelord an’ Kiddiemaster of Smith "gets away with it," sufferin’ nothin’ worse from the urching Conason than a little purely verbal abuse that is way off the mark to boot: one may hesitate to evaluate ‘breezy’ without a scrupulous examination of the MacL@@han-Tube original, but "characteristically misleading" is completely absurd on its face.

The freelordly an’ kiddiemagisterial view of Massa Tom Donohue’s crew is neither concealed nor fudged. The worst a hostile sayer can accurately say along those lines is that his freelordship did not bark in so many words, "Massa Tom and the CCUSA have EVERY RIGHT to hide behind rocks an’ bushes when they fire off their paymasters’ bucks shot at lieberals an’ demonocrats an’ Union thugs[http://j.mp/3NLwx1] ."

But it is so extremely obvious that such is what his freelordship thinks -- what any freedame, or kiddiemistress, or plain kiddie selfservative worth her salt, must think to remain incompliance with the AEIdeology an’ in communion with the First Chu..., with the Party, that is, of Big Management, that express statement is unnecessary.



[2] If Little Joe should happen to see these presents and feel he is being inadequately appreciated again, tell him to take a hard look at his trophy case and try to decide how many of those nice prize-giving ladies and gentlemen were thoroughly impervious to bullshit.

On the other hand, he does seem to know the word ‘cynical’. Can it be that he is a practitioner of the thing, and consciously plans to die with a trophy case to match that of St. George Orwell himself? As you recall, we once agreed that Mr. Eric Blair is the all-time champion at being thought an incomparable critic of human events on the basis of style -- and (pretty much) style alone. Presumably the first time around that track it was not the burbler’s fault that his noncomparers simply did not remember how to compare any longer. Now that the trick has been performed to perfection once, however, almost anybody with a degree in hair-cutting and grammar abuse (&c. &c.) can go for the gold! Maybe even with not much more in the way of ‘news’ than "Hey, Mister, your barn is still empty!"!!


[3] I write merrily, Dr. Bones, but would have you mark that there is room for some serious neocomradological research about inorganic-versus-organic voters. Cousin Bob (and many others) wrote up the Grant-to-Hoover phase of inorganic-electorate AEIdeology well enough, but I take for granted that our now Destructive Creationists will not be satisfied to rehearse the pre-neo Catechism Accordin’ to Mark Hanna, but are bound to have an irresistable itch to be neoöriginal. With ninety-odd percent of ’em on the payroll of Foxcuckooland in the narrower sense (it sure looks like), not much of lastin’ neovalue is likely to emerge. The built-in ethos of the MacL@@han Tube would see to that, I believe, even without any assistance from P&I wombschoolin’ an’ Niederdümmung. But I betcha there will be lots an’ lots of neoïdiocies to ridicule.

Meanwhile, it is just possible that a few really toney nuevoseñoritos -- maybe even the Leostraussian neogentry! -- will condescend to think about how to improve on the inorganic electoralism of Palæocomrade Senator M. A. Hanna. Last time around, once Field, J., and his gang had given the Robber Freelords what they wanted in practice, there seems to have been no theoretical development of any importance other than perhaps what one may call "The Social Darwinist Rag."

(( One must say ‘perhaps’ here, because the interest taken by a proto-Yaleodramatist like Palæocomrade Prof. Dr. W. G. Sumner in St. Charles of the Monkeyhouse was very superficial. Had it been otherwise, a collision with the residual Christojudæanity of the holy Homeland™, a vastly more potent factor in A. D. 1890 than anything mythological in 1431/2010/5771, must have eventuated.

(( Furthermore, unless I misremember, most of the pre-Hardin’ thinkers who proposed that the secret-sector business corporation might conceivably be an ‘evolutionary’ advance over free-form Scrooges an’ Rothschilds an’ Goulds an’ Vanderbilts an’ whatnot were in fact enemies of demoplutocracy, being so zealous in their (para-)Darwinism that they proposed, as it were, to skip a step and move on straight to the NATIONALIZED business corporation -- which was plainly not a decent an’ yaleodramatic Field-Carnéigie-Hanna-Sumner product at all. ))


07 October 2010

¡N. D. Kristof Discovers Whole New World!



Dear Dr. Bones,

The last (?) and least (in some ways) of Aunt Nitsy’s sad op-ed sack of idiot nephews and nieces has quite unaccountably discovered America:

There are many other elements in play, but put these big ones together and what do you get, on a comparative basis? The Democrats worsen the deficits by a net of about $640 billion, while Republicans worsen them by some $1.1 trillion — almost twice as much. (...) I grant that estimates about jobs and revenue are uncertain. But they are not meaningless, and the strong implication is that Republican rule would lead to the Trifecta of Torment: higher unemployment, worse deficits and greater inequity.


Nothing new here for the Muses or you or me, sir, nor for any decent political adult, unless one absurdly promotes it to the rank of News that Mr. Kristof suddenly wants to join the club.

He’s a little shy about it, though. He seems dreadfully afraid that somebody who was struck the Two Nations Unequal question all along is going to bark at him rudely, "So where have you been all these years, little laddie?" Of course you and I would never do that. Quite apart from good manners, we already know exactly where Master Nicholas has been, call it "Outer Dárfúrestán."

What makes his account of finally seeing the Great Whight Light so unaccountable is that he relentlessly pretends to have been somewhere else altogether. He claims to have been watching the holy Homeland™ all along, not gadding about in other people’s souks ten thousand kilometres away from Wall Street, to say nothing of Main Street. The trouble, says he, is that he has up to this morning been watching US from a klassenkampflos perspective that he has now discovered to be inadequate:

We journalists (sic) tend to cover politics the way we cover sports: "Republicans are gaining yardage on their immigration play! ... The Tea Party is stealing second base! ... A bench-clearing brawl over health care! ... Look at the politicians and pundits mud-wrestle!


That is how he begins today’s scribble, apparently hoping to achieve a preëmptive strike on the "Where have you been?" front.

What a prodigy of self-ignorance is N. D. Kristof! There certainly exist paid scribblers who cover figurative and literal horse races, but NDK is not one of them. He does not, or did not, do donkey-versus-elephant any more than he does/did Redsox-v.-Yankees. What he did do was Outer Dárfúrestán. Only O.D. and nothing more. And that small percentage of Homeland™ers who recognize the laddie’s name when they hear it are bound to be aware that he does not at all belong to them journalists who tend to cover politics the way they cover (other) kiddie games.

In short, if you know who Master Nicholas is, you can’t believe a word of his alibi. And if you don’t know, I betcha you’re not going to start caring who he is or what he is up to as from Thursday, 7 September 1431/2010/5771. [1]

Why on G*re’s green earth should you? Apart from the autobiographical fudge and flumnnnery, this piece is a perfectly respectable statement of the eternal case for us jackasses and against America’s Otherparty. Perfectly respectable, but not at all exceptional either in its analysis or in its invective.

***

Nevertheless, there is one extreme singularity lurking inside it, one that has no direct connection with politics, adult or horse-race. Allow me to point it out:

. . . as Andrew Romano, a senior writer for Newsweek, noted in an excellent blog post THAT HELPED INSPIRE THIS COLUMN, the Republicans propose other actions that worsen the fiscal situation even more. For starters, the Republicans favor almost $700 billion in extended tax cuts for the most affluent Americans. The Democratic leadership opposes them.


Almost any hired scrivener would stand out if she had made that public confession of self-nonreliance, but coming from a Timesster it takes the breath away. Try to imagine Little Tommy Wobble with the big moustache ever admitting that certain of his ... (ahem) ... ‘inspirations’ were not altogether 100.00% indigenous and autochthonous! Even though it is plain that most Friedmann performances come straight from somebody with whom the hack ate lunch the other day, conveyed to us "untouched by human thought," as it were.

It does not matter for my purpose here whether Mr. Romano’s piece is really as ‘excellent’ as Master Nicholas makes out. It may matter a little, though, that it should be about a month old, dated "August 27, 2010."

I am also inclined to subtract a few points from Krystof’s score for that quotation from Comrade Buffett, which, though very striking, has already floated past down the stream of discourse rather too many times.

On the other hand, perhaps it was brand new in Outer Dárfúrestán last month when Kristof first saw it? Perhaps.

And I wish you, sir,
Happy days through affordable healthcare.


___
[1] You might join me, sir, in poking around in the e-gutters of the Vast Whight-Wing Conspiracy during the next few days to see if many, or any, of the selfservative kiddies or, more likely, their Freelords an’ Kiddiemasters, detectably notice that Comrade Krystof is home on leave and has decided to come out against the VWhWC. I am inclined to guess that if they see the piece at all, they’ll ignore the by-line and assume it is only another dose of Krugman.