"Seriously, can anyone fail more spectacularly upward than in the Beltway punditocracy?"
-- Andrew Sullivan, August 4, 2012
The only thing that could edge this up from a 9.5 in cluelessness to a perfect 10 would be if the subject of Mr. Sullivan's next "Newsweek" cover article is the Terrible!True!Story! of how everyone in the United States except Andrew Sullivan has gotten Conservatism terribly, terribly wrong.
The subject of Mr. Sullivan's incredulity is Mr. Bill Kristol, who is many different kinds of horribly, but these days is mostly pinned down inside the Fox News Furor Bunker due to his inability to contain his psychotic rhetoric and wipe that Master Race rictus smirk off his face while in front of the cameras.
But you know who really is a crowned prince of the "Beltway punditocracy"? Who really has failed spectacularly and relentlessly upward and is eminently deserving of regular,public vivisection?
Bill Kristol's good friend and former employee, David Fucking Brooks.
And while Mr. Sullivan has no compunction smacking Bill Kristol around in public, do you know what he has had to say over the years about Mr. Brooks' vastly more public and influential frauds and slanders?
Nothing.
Nothing but silence or praise or the meekest, most obsequious, most deferential hints that it might just be possible that "my friend David Brooks" might not fully understand the implications of what he had just written.
Never is heard a discouraging word about Mr. Brooks' corrosive bullshit, because while Mr. Kristol is a safe and easy pinata, Mr. Brooks is a serious, power-player inside of Mr. Sullivan's own media ecosystem: a man who could actually make Mr. Sullivan's career go butter-side down.
But then again ---
...
I repeat: as a man with a very large megaphone, Mr. Sullivan, what are your moral obligationswhen it comes to confronting colleagues who continue to promulgate the Big Lie of Centrism?
Because mocking NRO every time they "discover" and excommunicate another bigot from their midst is nothing...or looking-with-alarm at Bill Kristol's latest exercise in priapistic Neocon empire porn isnothing...or taking the dudgeon-mobile out for a spin every time Rush Limbaugh coughs up another bolus of racists twaddle is nothing compared with taking on the likes of David Brooks or David Gregory or Mark Halperin.
Going after people like Limbaugh is the definition of a low-risk proposition. People like him (or Hannity or Malkin) operate within an entirely different professional domain than you,: they cannot really lay a finger on you or tangle up your career in any way (Hell, MSNBC and liberal radio have practically made cottage industries out of fisking Limbaugh, Hannity, O'Reilly, Palin and all the rest of the gargoyles on the Right on a daily basis, and rightly so: they are awful people who deserve to be staked out under a blazing, scrutinizing sun as often as possible.)
But what about their mainstream media co-conspirators? What about their Beltway wheel-men? Who devotes the same time and effort depriving the Right of its reliable, "Both Sides Do It" alibi and spider-hole by taking down the Fake Center?
And the short answer is...almost no one, because it is one thing to slam Jonah Goldberg every time he pinches off another steaming log of flailing idiocy, but to use you megaphone to lay out some blunt, home truths about people who might actually be able to inflict some damage, well that's a dragons of an entirely different order.
Say, for example, your friend David Brooks: a colleague of yours whose lies are far more pernicious and destructive than Limbaugh's because they reach so far beyond the wingnut media ghetto, and whose professional standing gives him the power to actually reach out and fuck you up should he choose to do so.
If it is indeed true that "One major political party refuses to accept empirical truths", what are we to make of Mr. Brooks using his incredibly privileged position at the pinnacle of the American media establishment writing his 500th New York Times column once again denouncing "partisanship" and tediously allocating blame for our terrible plight to "those on both sides".
What are you morally obliged to do then?
What about when he writes his 1,000th such column?
What actions do your own words demand of you to do when his friend David Gregory invites him on "Meet the Press" for the 100th time to once again repeat that lie in front of 15 million viewers?
Its easy to inveigh against villains when they carry pitchforks and reek of sulfur.
How much harder it is when they're three levels above you on the respectable media's informal organization chart. ...
-- you already knew that.
4 comments:
This is why I keep this quote from Network News squirreled away:
"Tom, while being a very nice guy, is the devil," avers Aaron. "What do you think the devil will look like if he's around? C'mon, no one's going to be taken in by a guy with a long, red, pointy tail!… He'll be attractive, nice, and helpful. He'll get a job where he influences a great God-fearing nation. He'll never do an evil thing; he'll never deliberately hurt a living thing. He'll just bit by bit lower our standards where they're important."
The field of propaganda spewing malcontents continues to grow as the media hires one wing-nut after another to be mendacious with their audiences.
There was a study a few years back showing that Kristol was a kind of conservative kingmaker of the wingnut welfare circuit, so he had outsized influence on aspiring shills. That said, there's no doubt that there are truths Sullivan will not state - if he can even see them at all. That "Dear David" post arguing that gay marriage is conservative is hilarious. It's so cute when prominent conservatives pretend their movement in America has lofty principles!
I actually can agree with the quoted comment from Sullivan:
I would say that Kristol failed in a much more spectacular manner than Brooks.
"Spectacular" in the sense of spectacle -- Kristol was the loud, venomously snotty face of much of the Bush Jr. regime's claims and foreign policy.
And is well, well known as the guy who most eagerly promoted Sarah Palin to John McCain, chief among all the pundit dreck to have done so.
Now, if "spectacularly" is more of a term referencing the degree of intellectual failure, it's an even competition.
But in the sense of Bill Kristol having made of his failure and failing upward a visible public spectacle, I give him the lead.
Post a Comment