“I said to Hank Williams, how lonely does it get? Hank Williams hasn't answered yet But I hear him coughing all night long Oh, a hundred floors above me in the Tower of Song."
-- Leonard Cohen
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Once again, Mr. Sullivan has wandered way, way out into the poppy fields to publicly muse about Very Important Things Like the Meaning of Fucking Life You Assholes.
And once again, Mr. Sullivan has failed to heed the dangers of chugging all the communion wine and huffing all the poppers on his road to satori. Because wherever he thought he was headed in this latest, maundering adventure in Lecturing Everyone About Jebus and Science and Atheism and Shit, Mr. Sullivan ended up in the same place it always seems to end up: passed out in a puddle of his own hectoring, contrarian-because-contrarian-is-my-brand Both Siderist sick.
...
Now look at our politics. We have the cult of Trump on the right, a demigod who, among his worshippers, can do no wrong. And we have the cult of social justice on the left, a religion whose followers show the same zeal as any born-again Evangelical. They are filling the void that Christianity once owned, without any of the wisdom and culture and restraint that Christianity once provided.
And what is there to make of this is but Mr. Sullivan getting up on his hind legs and begging to be invited back on Bill Maher's show?
Which is to say, even today’s atheists are expressing an attenuated form of religion. Their denial of any God is as absolute as others’ faith in God, and entails just as much a set of values to live by — including, for some, daily rituals like meditation, a form of prayer.
I would say we should let poor old Andy sleep off his bombast bender, but in all the many years he has been cranking out drivel like this for money, he has yet to sleep it off.
Their more meritocratic, diverse and secular successors rule us neither as wisely nor as well.
And immediately the Internet Justice League dragged him across social media. But honestly, I consider the best reaction to have been this:
Maybe a couple months ago I would have liked to join in on dunking on Ross Douthat but now I’m just dead to my core and mad that he gets paid for shitting out monarchist opinions every week while most of us have to scrape together to pay rent
... Sixty years ago, the upper echelons were dominated by what E. Digby Baltzell called The Protestant Establishment and C. Wright Mills called The Power Elite. … Since then, we have opened up opportunities for women, African-Americans, Jews, Italians, Poles, Hispanics and members of many other groups. Moreover, we’ve changed the criteria for success. It is less necessary to be clubbable. It is more important to be smart and hard-working. Yet here’s the funny thing. As we’ve made our institutions more meritocratic, their public standing has plummeted. We’ve increased the diversity and talent level of people at the top of society, yet trust in elites has never been lower.
-- which I extensively vivisected back in 2010 here --
Monster
"What monstrosities would walk the streets were some people's faces as unfinished as their minds."
-- Eric Hoffer
As the Republic burns and the New Conservative Barbarians caper in the firelight screaming for blood and tax cuts, America’s Greatest Conservative Public Intellectual sits in an empty lot at the edge of the conflagration, desperately sifting the Sands of Derelict Nostalgia, looking for something other than the complete failure of everything he has ever believed in to write about.
Which is a tough beat.
Because no matter where one pokes one’s pen these days, out oozes a radioactive stream of Conservative fraud and failure, and unluckily for him, for all of David Brooks’ stature and influence, in the end he really only knows three or four card tricks. There is the Barely Humorous Anecdote. The 800-word essay on The Last Book I Read. The “Ain’t Modern Life Kooky?” chestnut.
And, most often these days, there is the Ahistorically Nostalgic Melodrama starring nonspecific groups of People...
-- that if I were I still teaching writing, and Mr. Douthat was my student, I'd have a strongly-worded chat with him to make sure he understood that plagiarism has consequences.
Which is why no one should lose any sleep over the apparently imminent demise of The Weekly Standard. Because, kids, there will always be huge piles of stupid money burning holes in the pockets of rich idiots who are ready and eager to underwrite the True Conservative fan fiction that flatters the rituals and dogmas of their caste.
And as long as there are fat stacks to be made selling toxic drivel to wealthy cretins, it doesn't matter if one distribution node for their narcotic of choice is shut down. Another will rise up to try and meet the market demand. From The Hill:
Michelle Malkin departs CRTV one day after Blaze merger announced
...
“I am so proud of the investigative journalism I did for CRTV,” Malkin said to her 2.14 million followers. “So many heroes, so many compelling stories. I will not be continuing with the company, but wish my colleagues all the best.”
Honestly, so far CRTV has been so effective at concealing their existence that I had almost forgotten Michelle Malkin exists at all.
The Hill continues:
The Blaze and CRTV announced on Monday that they were merging to create Blaze Media. Both say the move will allow the new conservative entity to reach 165 million people via television, online and on social media. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. The Blaze was founded by former Fox News host Glenn Beck in 2011, not long after he parted ways with the network, while CRTV was founded in 2014 by current Fox News host Mark Levin, who also hosts a nationally syndicated radio program. In addition to Levin, hosts at CRTV include co-founder of Vice Media Gavin McInnes, Phil Robertson of “Duck Dynasty,” former Fox News host Eric Bolling and Deneen Borelli.
So, this new powerhouse is staffing up with..
Neo-nazi and Proud Goys founder, Gavin McInnes.
The Duck Dynasty goof that Andrew Sullivan used to find so adorably atavistic back when he believed such people weren't really a threat ( from me back in 2013):
...given that Mr. Sullivan spends most of his life firmly cocooned in the Washington D.C./NYC elite media bubble, I tend to believe that his venomous contempt for Alec Baldwin and his detached bemusement with Mr. Robertson --
... I’d much rather have dinner with Phil Robertson than Alec Baldwin. Engaging fundamentalists on this subject is one of my favorite activities. And I’d much sooner engage than condemn.
-- come less from the details and context of either incident, and much more from Mr. Sullivan's hardwired Tory elitism. When he looks at Alec Baldwin, the Conservative Mr. Sullivan sees a successful member of the rival, Liberal upper class who must needs be brought to book in the harshest manner available. When the Conservative Mr. Sullivanlooks at Mr. Robertson, Mr. Sullivan does not -- dare not -- see a fellow, card-carrying member of his Conservatism: instead, Tory to the core, Mr. Sullivan merely sees a harmless aboriginal tribesman from the furthest reaches of Darkest Louisiana, brought before him to poop adorably in his teevee cage and say outré things for Mr. Sullivan's amusement.
Eric Bolling: Another right-wing troll who got drummed out of Roger Ailes' Fox News sexual predator petting zoo once the employees started ratting each other out.
And some person named Deneen Borelli who has clearly decided that hitching a ride on the same wingnut welfare train that brought Dinesh D'Souza to national attention is easier than honest work.
And based on arc of True Conservatism over the last half century, I would not be terribly surprised to find that within two or three years, most of the The Weekly Standard's loyal readerscrowd happily snorting Gavin McInnes' ass hair off Glenn Beck's dick using rolled up pages from Mein Kampf and calling it True Conservatism.
Because as William Burroughs once noted --
"The junk [heroin] merchant does not sell his product to the consumer, he sells the consumer to his product. He does not improve and simplify his merchandise. He degrades and simplifies the client."
-- and right now in American politics there are no more reckless, helpless, desperate junkies than the True Conservative and the Both Siderist, joined at the hip. shaking, down on their knees, both begging for a hit of anything that will let them pretend for just one more day that the Left hasn't been right about the Right all along.
And for the right price -- a terrible price -- eventually the free market will always provide.
And now, just for laughs, I've gone to the cellar and picked out this unusual dessert wine. Before they rebranded themselves as Crooked Media, the troupe of podcasting Obama speechwriters were "Keepin' It 1600". Here is an episode from just two years ago, kickin' it Beltway-style with one-time friend-of-the-pod Charles David "Chuck" Todd.
Chuck Todd hand wringing.
Chuck Todd's protestations that this time we've learned our lesson.
Chuck Todd frustrated by the "concierge" media that gets in the way of mighty journalists like Chuck Todd doing his important work.
So halting. So uncomfortable.
For the record, this dropped between episode #366 of The Professional Left podcast where we did a long pieces on Obama administration's focus on rust-belt manufacturing that no one noticed, fake news and the obsessive Both Siderism of Matthew Dowd...
...and episode #367, which was a discussion of Russia, Memory, a Chris Hayes/Bernie Sanders forum and how Barack Obama could never bring himself to look the GOP straight in the eye and understand their unhinged hatred of him for what it really was.
Today, in the further adventure of a certain ABC News chief political analyst who blocked me on Twitter and personally insulted my readers for repeatedly pointing out that Both Siderism was bullshit...
Welcome to the team. Charles Cooke has also blocked me. He only wants engage in his corrupt echo chamber.
My original point -- the sin that got me blocked -- was that "Both Sides Do It" was a comforting lie invented by the media. And that the constant, mindless repetition of that myth over and over again has been incredibly toxic and incredibly toxic and was, in no small part, responsible for the disaster we now find ourselves in.
And you know who agrees with me that many in the media repeat such myths without ever fact checking them?
Yep.
So many in the media just repeat myths without ever fact checking them. https://t.co/ilkX7dVIWx
“Not a natural death”: the Never-Trump bastion Weekly Standard may be shut down
“This is not about dwindling subscribers. This is about strip-mining TWS for its assets.”
The future of the conservative magazine the Weekly Standard is at risk as the magazine’s ownership, MediaDC, is reportedly refocusing its attention on its other main publication, the Washington Examiner. And the Daily Caller is reporting that the magazine could be shut down as soon as December 14, though the company that owns MediaDC (and thus TWS) told CNN that it is continuing to explore possibilities and “does not have any news to share” at this point. As one source told me, “This is not about dwindling subscribers. This is about strip-mining TWS for its assets” — namely, the magazine’s subscriber lists. At the heart of the troubles is the Weekly Standard’s turn against Trumpism, which has proven a losing bet in a conservative movement that has increasingly embraced the president. MediaDC reportedly wants to jettison the anti-Trump brand of the Weekly Standard but use its subscribers to bolster the more pro-Trump — or at least Trump-agnostic — Examiner...
Our story begins in September of 1995, when Australian fascist media mogul Rupert Murdoch was on one of his periodic American media property buying sprees, and decided to give Irving Kristol's son Bill (and Bill's friend Fred Barnes) a big sack of wingnut welfare cash to create The Weekly Standard and staff it with the dregs of every Conservative think tank in D.C. The first Managing Editor of this "redoubt of neoconservatism" was a gentleman named David Brooks. At the time, Mr, Brooks' talents had led him to the position of op-ed page editor of the Wall Street Journal where his job consisted of not reading or understanding things that his employees were printing on his op-ed page.
Since then -- and by the standard (weekly or otherwise) of any sane society -- Bloody Bill Kristol has been an infamous and spectacular failure at almost everything. A failure as a political prognosticator. A failure as a strategic thinker. A failure as a foreign policy thinker. A failure as the voice of Conservatism as it actually exists in the real world. A failure as David French's presidential hype-man.
In other words, a truly world-class failure as a haver-of-opinions on pretty much every subject you can think of.
And yet, for all of that and so much more, Bill Kristol has been wildly successful at one thing -- keeping his reserved seating at the Beltway media table. From Politico in 2013:
... Kristol, who said he was "treated nicely" at Fox News, declined to comment on the incident. "I had a great ten years at Fox, but it's also been fun being a free agent," he told POLITICO. "Fox seems to be doing great without me being on all the time, I hope I'm doing ok being on all the other networks some of the time." Indeed, Kristol has become a coveted free agent since leaving Fox News. He has made multiple appearances on ABC's "This Week" (where he was a panelist in the 1990s) and NBC's "Meet The Press" (he will join the roundtable again this Sunday). He has also made multiple appearances on CNN's "Crossfire" and on MSNBC's "Morning Joe." "I enjoy the flexibility of being a free-agent and the variety of the shows, which have been stimulating," he said. "It's also fun getting a rise out of the MSNBC viewers." Kristol hasn't severed ties with Fox News completely. He appeared on Fox News Sunday's roundtable on Sept. 15 -- but this time as a guest, not as a contributor. Kristol said it was very possible that he could strike a deal with another network in the months ahead...
I would say that this situation is inexplicable, but it's really not.
There are undoubtedly plenty of people who can explain why an incompetent ghoul like Mr. Kristol has floated effortlessly from one, highly paid, high-profile media position to the next for years.
Why he has been able to embed his idiot son-in-law, Matthew Continetti, into the Beltway media so deeply that they frequently follow each other on the same cable news show (and no one ever mentions their familial ties.)
Why a very-nearly-post-pubescent person namedMr. Jonathan Greenberger managed in just a few short years to go from being the the editor of his college's Student Life newspaper --
-- to having enough firepower at ABC News to hire one of the most demonstrably awful human beings on Earth for yet another turn in front of the cameras because Mr. Greenberger believed Bloody Bill Kristol to be an "original thinker with a unique perspective":
Jonathan Greenberger, executive producer of "This Week," said in a statement Kristol is "an original thinker" that will make their team stronger: “Bill makes our outstanding team of contributors and analysts even stronger. He’s an original thinker with a unique perspective on the political and cultural landscape, and we look forward to hearing his voice on the 'This Week' roundtable on a regular basis."
As I said, all of this could be explained quite easily by the people who are members of the Beltway Club ... except based on all observable evidence, one of the preconditions being granted membership in the Beltway Club is making the Unbreakable Vow to never speak of inconvenient horrors like Bill Kristol being both a platinum card-carrying member of the Club and an incompetent ghoul.
However, one things that virtually every jumped-up Beltway bigot, climate denier and simpering drivel-monger has in common is that their mass-media teevee credibility is always underwritten by their close association with some established, printed-on-paper newspaper or journal or think tank.
Something solidly brick-and-mortar with a paid staff and business cards and office managers.
And so, when the poisonous Rich Lowry --
-- or the odious Ben Domenech --
-- or Bill Kristol's aforementioned son-in-law --
--show up on your teevee, the corporations that put them there vouch for their credibility by giving you the name of the publication with which they are associated without bothering to mention that said publication may be, say, America's most respected journal of white supremacy, or a dark-money-funded cesspit of conspiracy mongering and Trump groveling.
In this way the craven Beltway media and the deplorable Conservative media have propped each other up for decades -- each leaning on the other like two drunks shambling ever onward towards abyss and dragging the rest of us along behind. In this way, the careers and fortunes of virtually every conservative pundit -- from unhinged gorgons like Ann Coulter and unreconstructed torture pimps Marc Thiessen to professional Conservative revisionists like Michael Gerson and David Brooks -- have been extended decades past their sell-by dates.
Furthermore, in this toxic, codependent ecosystem, Conservative newspapers and journals and think tanks and radio stations and book publishers and teevee networks are not merely wingnut welfare petting zoo for depraved goons with terrible opinions and policies. They have become bases of operation for colonizing the rest of the media and the rest of American politics with those terrible opinions and policies.
Which means that, as the co-founder and senior editor of a national political magazine Bill Kristol, has not only has a licence to print money, he has the clout to bestow the gift of Beltway media reserved seating to others people, and collect political chits from those people to be cashed in as needed.
And while that has been a jewel beyond price for Mr. Kristol, it has never had anything whatsoever to do with journalism.
So here our story ends. With the savage elder gods of Conservatism begetting a monster even more savage than themselves. A monster that fed on the rage and racism they provided in such abundance until it grew powerful enough to overthrow them.
When this entire Trumpian rannygazoo has wrapped up, and people look back, a lot of them will think they can skate away with "I was just following orders" or "I didn't know how bad it was"...
I dunno, Rick, So far, in cases where such people have enough gullible friends and cynical fellow travelers in the media, they've been very successful at landing lucrative book and lecture deals explaining how they were just doing their job and, anyway, the rot that the destroyed the Republican party only set in five minutes after they left.
To mark the occasion of one-time Never Trump Resistance Hero Glenn Beck going back to his old grift --
Thank you Ben. We are thrilled to be joining forces with @marklevinshow and all that he and his crtv team have built. They already had a powerhouse line up. We are all stronger together. #blazemediahttps://t.co/iOHszAIx9U
-- we here at the driftglass blog are re-launching our "Credulous Liberal Movie Night" educational film series in the almost-certainly vain hope that our more gullible Liberal allies might learn something about trusting professional Republican con men and ratfuckers because this time he's really changed!
Tonight's feature, David Mamet's 1987 heist/thriller House of Games.
Or, rather, 50 seconds near the finale of House of Games, so [Spoiler!] if you've not seen this before.
With great fanfare, fawning media coverage and a brand-new anthem, America's favorite Beltway Both Siderist scam -- No Labels -- was launched eight years ago this month, on December 13, 2010.
And four days later -- based on little more than my native Midwestern ability to recognizing various species of roadkill and political thimble-rigging at great distances -- here is what I predicted that we could expect from them:
Dead Center: Political Cowardice Now Has Its Own "Movement"!
Yay!
In case you ever idled away an afternoon screwing around with your old political chemistry set/fantasy football league lineups and wondering what would happen if you took a bunch of Republican primary losers (Charlie Christ)...added in a goonbag of out-of-work and out-of-favor former Republican speechwriters and campaign button-men (David Frum/John Avlon/Mark McKinnon)...the last of the politically arteriosclerotic insider DLC goofs who aren't already drawing paychecks under the Obama Administration's "Former Clinton White House Full Employment Project" (Nancy Jacobson aka. Mrs. Mark Penn)...Republican minor teevee celebrities (Joey Joe Joe Junior Scarborough)...
...and David Fucking Brooks?
And then sprinkled the resulting crime against nature with an assload of money (because there are always, always endless assloads of money available for any horrible idea that reinforces Villager sensibilities)?
What you get crawling out of the Petri dish are things like the autotuned, content-free, sugar-coma-inducing horror that is the "No Labels Anthem"
But nothing we did not expect, right?
I mean, ever since the Republican Base ducked out on paying the tab for a generation of being loudly and catastrophically wrong about everything by putting on funny hats, screaming about liberty and calling themselves "The Tea Party", their sleazy Centrist enablers have been seething with jealously. Quite suddenly the monster they built didn't need them anymore and the skeevy hustlers who had helped create the Racist/ Corporatist/ Dominionist Confederacy on the bones of the New Deal and the grave of the American Dream found themselves cast out and looking for their next meal ticket.
Preferably a meal ticket under a banner that -- like "Tea Party -- wouldn't keep bringing up their horribly inconvenient past as the sleazy, enabling hustlers.
Hey, kids! I have an idea! Lets peel those the icky, damning labels off of everything and -- presto! -- there is magically no longer any difference between rat poison and apple sauce!
Can I haz my million dollars now?...
And now, eight years later, how do the bold predictions of one vituperative, foul-mouthed Midwestern blogger's compare to the actually history of this cynical experiment in lifeboat building and vapid grifting?
How No Labels Went From Preaching Unity to Practicing the Dark Arts
Internal documents show a group funded by the biggest names in finance. But also beset by dysfunction and division.
As House Republicans were crafting their Obamacare repeal bill in the spring of 2017, Nancy Jacobson, the founder and CEO of No Labels, a group that promotes bipartisan governance, wanted to spice up her organization’s Twitter feed. So she turned to someone known for provocative political takes: her husband, longtime political operative, Mark Penn. In a tweet that March, written under Penn’s direction, No Labels took the unconventional position that Democrats were to blame for not being more willing to work with Republicans in the destruction of their party’s signature piece of modern legislation...
Sad!
Yes, it turns out that...
The group, which was founded as a champion of political bipartisanship, has been quietly courting donations from some of the most notoriously partisan money men and women in politics.
There follows a long article, marbled with one utterly unsurprising revelation...
“The more one looks under the rock, the more one turns over that rock, it is not an attractive picture. It is a big fundraising operation run with limited results,” said one former No Labels’ official. “You go in first, there are donors, they’re having discussions and you think it’s healthy. And then you’re in it for a few months and you wonder, what are we doing?”
... after another:
“It seemed like they wanted to flex, to say if you’re not willing to be a ‘problem solver’ they might throw you under the bus,” said a source who previously worked for a member of the No Labels’ Problem Solver caucus. “The message was that all the bipartisanship didn’t count if you didn’t accept their branding.
Because when you build a movement entirely out of bullshit and dark money, you don't have to be Claude Alexander Conlin to pierce the veil of tomorrow and predict that it will end up crawling with dung beetles and con men.
George Herbert Walker Bush dreamed of a certain kind of Republican party. The same Republican party which David Brooks has spent 30 years conning credulous Beltway chumps and cloistered intellectuals into believing existed just beyond the visible spectrum of mere mortals and vituperative, foul-mouthed Liberal bloggers. A party whose past is always glorious and whose renaissance is always just around the corner.
George Herbert Walker Bush's dreamed of a GOP run as a gentleman's farm: orderly and well-tended by old-money, patrician internationalists. Maintained by loyalty and noblesse oblige. But Bush 41 was also perfectly willing to countenance putting every monstrous trait that has come to define the modern Republican party in-harness to pull the plow and bust the sod of his gentleman's farm.
And in the end, that's what killed his dream.
Loyalty, for example, is a fine attribute. but like Trump's most servile stooges, Bush 41 practiced loyalty to a fault. He and Pitchfork Pat Buchanan were the last defenders to Richard Nixon -- a service rendered to party over country for which Bush 41 was amply rewarded and without which he never would have risen to the highest office.
And, like Mike "Albino Eyebrows" Pence, Bush 41 saw nothing wrong with climbing the greasy pole of American politics by slapping on a fake smile and veeping for a president whose beliefs he despised and who held him at arm's length in a stasis field bemused contempt. During his veephood, the cartoonist Garry Trudeau depicted Bush 41 as completely invisible. An impotent, disembodied voice floating in the air. If you lived through those times, you know this was entirely accurate.
Moving on.
Any man who served Nixon and Reagan knew perfectly well what sort of volatile, radioactive ingredients that had gone into building the modern Republican party. And while Bush 41, gentleman political farmer, had no stomach for dirtying his hands by personally attending to the important business of rilin' up the grass roots bigots and the imbeciles, he was quote happy to job out that filthy work to the help. To ace Republican ratfucker, Lee Atwater. The same Lee Atwater who mentored Karl Rove and George W. Bush in the dark arts of bringing bigots to a fine boil and then getting them to the polls.
And because the party was becoming completely dependent on its radioactive base, the power to make and break its leaders was slipping out of the hands of the party establishment and into the hands Christopaths like Jerry Falwell, amoral thugs like Newt Gingrich and Tom Delay, and the rapidly multiplying national infestation of Hate Radio demagogues like Rush Limbaugh. George H. W. Bush did not stand athwart this rising tide of racism and paranoia in his party and shout "Stop!": instead he awkwardly surfed it, because God damn he wanted that big desk in the Oval Office.
And when it came to assembling his ticket, like John McCain in 2008, George H. W. Bush in 1988 saw nothing wrong with trying to glean a few more votes from the hill folk by recklessly taking on a dangerously incompetent hack as his running mate.
And on his way out of office, Bush 41 saw no problem with slinging around presidential pardons for the Republican Iraq/Contra traitors like so many Mardis Gras beads, lighting the way for every bottom-feeding Republican goon from Newt Gingrich to Devin Nunes who believes the rule of law does not apply to members of the Party of Personal Responsibility.
Finally, I've at last given up on seeing my slice of the Peace Dividend.
If you're looking for glowing hagiographies or detailed biographies, you can find them everywhere. Like many of his Beltway running buddies, Chris Cillizza (for example) is falling all over himself to use the death Bush the Elder to revise and extend the biggest lie in American politics: that the GOP was a hale and healthy creature until something sudden, inexplicable and tectonic changed the entire party from top to bottom at some point during the Obama Administration:
...unbeknownst to the Bushes of the Republican Party, the GOP had fundamentally changed in the eight years that Barack Obama served as president. The Republican base no longer wanted someone who viewed politics as a civic duty and a higher calling; they wanted someone who viewed it as a professional wrestling pay per view.
Of course this is a lie. I know it. You know it. Chris Cillizza and every one of his colleagues know is. None of that matters. This is the Beltway, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.
As for his legacy, George Herbert Walker Bush lived to see one son rise to become the Second Worst President in American history, and the presidential ambitions of another son crushed to a fine powder under the stampede of rank and file bigots and imbeciles of the party to which he devoted his life as they flocked to the banner of the Worst President in American history.
Weeds and feral beasts and meth labs have overrun the gentleman's farm in no small part because George Herbert Walker Bush -- the president who orchestrated a mighty international coalition to fight a war abroad -- could not muster even the mildest institutional rebuke to the Conservative monsters who were eating his own party alive here at home.
