there are many, subtle flavors competing for the attention of the reader in Bobo’s column today, “A Snit in First Class”.
Take a nip and see if you can detect a couple...(here a few, representative pours decanted from the paper-paper since Bobo is kept safely bricked up behind the NYT Select Wall.)
I have a dream, my friends. I have a dream that we are approaching the day when a ranch-owning millionaire Republican like George Bush will make peace with a vineyard-owning millionaire Democrat like Nancy Pelosi.
I have a dream that Pelosi, who was chauffeured to school as a child and who, with her investor husband, owns minority shares in the Auberge du Soleil resort hotel and the CordeValle Golf Club, will look over her famous strand of South Sea Tahitian pearls and forge bonds of understanding with the zillionaire corporate barons in the opposing party.
…
I have my dreams, but of course, I am realistic too, for I am aware that at present there is no peace among the secluded island villas.
…
[Pelosi] paid her dues selecting party favors, arranging seating charts (after that, legislation is easy), and laying thick dollops of obsequiousness on cranky old moguls and their helmet hair spa-spouses. She has done what all political fund-raisers do: tell rich people things they already believe, demonize the other side, motivate the giving with Manichaean tales of good versus evil.
…
She is part of the clash of the rival elites, with the dollars from Brookline battling dollars from Dallas, causing upper-class strife that even diminutive dogs, vibrant velvets and petite salades can’t fully soothe.
It pains me to see plutocrats fight, because it sets such a poor example for those of us in the lower orders who fly commercial.
…
...This week, witness Pelosi going on her all-about-me inauguration tour, which is designed to rebrand her as a regular Catholic grandma from Baltimore. Members of the middle classes never have to mount campaign swings to prove how regular they are, but these upper-bracket types can’t help themselves, and they always lay it on too thick.
So I harbor my dreams of reconciliation, but in the meantime, why oh why can’t we have a decent overclass in this country — a group of highly attractive dimwits who spread bland but worthy stability over our political scene. Why oh why do we have to have this endless canapé war — the people of the vineyard against the people of the ranch.
First, notice strong topnotes of shrill, bleating failure. This failure of a man, failure of a writer, failure of a journalist and stooge for a failure of a political movement having to watch as the One Party Kleptocracy for which he labored so hard smothered in its crib a mere six years after it finally got going.
Second, the biting lemon-wrapped-in-aluminum shudder of acute “Oh my Holy God, he actually thinks this is cute” embarrassment at this vanilla mediocrity -- this extruded product of the Maudlin, Talentless, Soft, White Republican Guy Affirmative Action Media Program -- trying to parody Dr. King’s “I Have A Dream” speech.
Then, a stingy soupcon of desperation.
Beneath tiers of willful ignorance pierced by a fat, poo-finished lance of pomposity.
Followed by a generous larding of culture war cowering under an overdone plank of passive-aggressive.
And of course a heavy, gagging aftertaste of bile.
But as a true connoisseur you know to spit it into the Bobo Bucket once the sampling is done, because what you are really swilling are the last dregs of pig-lipstick blended with the lees of Neocon Koolaid.
And of course what it really tastes like is bitter tragedy.
Bloody waste.
And the grave.
Sustained by giggling enablers like Bobo, Dubya and his coven of warbling war pigs wiped their ass with this nation and gambled us away on their crackpot ideologies backstopped by the sociopathic absolutism of their snuff-flick perversion of genuine Christianity, but hey, isn’t it a fucking hoot that Nancy Pelosi drinks lattes and had a chauffer?
However since comedy, as the saying goes, is tragedy plus distance, how far away from the 0/0 coordinated of the Phuquetard Nation that Bobo cheerled do we have to be for this to be funny?
As soon as American soldiers and Iraqi civilians are done dying for Dick Cheney’s Iraqi Land Grab.
As soon as the whole planet can all get the fuck off “George Bush’s Wild Freudian Ride”, vomit behind the hedge, and get on with the business of cleaning up the rubble the GOP has left behind.
As soon as Republicans stop simultaneously bleeding the treasury for pork and war and wingnut welfare, while bitching about taxes and the fiscal irresponsibility of Democrats.
As soon as the racists and theocrats who prop up the GOP elites are bumrushed onto the ash heap of history.
As soon as the Most Important Presidential Misdeeds in the Universe are once again blowjobs, haircuts and Christmas card lists,
As soon as we get back to having a Vice President whose worst vices are being stiff and loving the environment.
As soon as hack apologists like Bobo are queued up in the unemployment line or writing ad copy for remaindered irregular WalMart underpants.
As soon as the GOP stops relentlessly running the Karl Rove/Lee Atwater/Newt Gingrich "Rend and Rule" playbook while simultaneously bitching that everyone else is so mean and divisive.
As soon as a meth-ravaged, 68-lb Anne Coulter is found swinging by the neck in a Denny’s men’s room with a farewell note that reads “I am soooo fucking sorry” pinned to her shirt.
As soon as the majority of Americans can look safely back on the wreckage of the Bush Administration and say, “Never again”, this will all start to be funny, Bobo.
Hell, I’m sure in a 100 years when we’re all sepia-toned memories and a generation of tri-lingual, solar-powered students of American history all ask teacher “Were these ‘ree-publicuns’ really that fucking stupid?” it’ll be goddamned hysterical.
32 comments:
Phtang Phtang! Dang Driftglass, you're on fire today. Thank you.
Thank you and great writing, Driftglass. I'm glad I found this blog!
Fuck Bobo. The snotty, condescending asshat becomes more irrelevant with every stupid column he writes. Not to mention the fact that he's a liar.
Kick him, driftglass! Keep kicking them all.
Yep, pretty much.
I would like to personally apologize to Bobo for being a latte-drinking female who works in politics. (still looking for the chauffeur)
The hypocrisy of a Republican chastising someone for being a good fundraiser is astronomical.
Excellent prose, as always, DG. Thanks.
Be nice. Bobo was obviously bred in the shallow end of the gene pool. You could almost feel the smirk on the mental midgets face as he tries to get up on his hind legs like the big kids on the playground.
Really pathetic and excellent vivisection by driftglass.
Uh, Bobo is pathetic.
Seems like I dangled my participle...or something.
Drifty, once again you've hit it out of the ballpark (that would be Wrigley Field, if it's alright with you). Bobo's phony equivalence of Pelosi and George W is strained to the point of his usual incomprehensibility.
But apparently, regular emissions of strained incomprehensibility constitute grounds for continued employment at the Gray Lady these days... *sigh*
What I find most ridiculous about the right-wing's hatred of Nancy Pelosi is the whole "San Francisco values" schtick.
These idiots have obviously never been on the ground in Babylon-by-the-Bay, or they would see it as it is, namely a great American city filled with working-class folk (and plenty of fat cats, to be sure), an incredible location that serves as a testimonial to the beauty of this great land, and populated by a melting pot-full of diverse immigrants who have worked over the last century or two to create a rich and beautiful cultural landscape.
A lot like Chicago, in other words. Or New York. Or any other great American city, for that matter.
Why do these wingnut idiots so hate America, anyway?
You go drifty. Your posts are simutaneaously yummy and bitter, not unlike the Chinese delicacy I 've only heard of, sweet and sour pork. The joys of being vegetarian...
One minute Pelosi is a dope-smoking commie hippie from Haight-Ashbury, and the next she's a Thomas Nast robber baron plutocrat.
I wish the Rethug Hate Machine would make up their minds, though the drooling baby-bird yokels who believe their swill seem to have no trouble regurgitating multiple contradictory memes vomited out by their authoritarian daddy figures Rush and Fox.
I read this piece in the Times this morning with incredulity. Boil it down, and what Brooks is desperately yearning for is a better class of betters, plutocrats who will act as plutocrats should, natural aristocrats he can worshipfully gaze up at, even as they contemptuously gaze down on him. So that as he "flies commercial" he can read glossy magazines with pics of their private jets, and get a nice stiff boner thinking about how maybe, someday, maybe one of them will offer him a lift.
The secondary message, of course, is to try and subvert the support of Democrats for the new Congress. What, don't you know that Pelosi and all of them are millionaires too?? Of course we know. We're not fools, we know how rich you usually have to be to get entry into the highest levels of the system. But there are millionaires who want to use their wealth and power to rape the shit out of the rest of us. [Make your own list.] And there are millionaires and billionaires who want to take their wealth and power and give something back, like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett.
One party in Washington is home to one kind of millionaire, and one is home to the other. I know which one I support.
You mean in 100 years it'll be OK to say "fucking" in class? :)
You know, if Bobo had one fucking MICRON of credential as a populist, this might get one inch off the ground, but coming from him, with his uninterrupted ass-licking of the trickle-down-theory of economics, it's unadulterated horseshit; the despearate gnashing of someone whose worldview is now exposed as nothing but corporate-toadying.
Yawnnnn....Bo! Is your next column about how you've really, really, been in favor of that increase in the minimum wage for the entire decade when the repubs were blocking it?
The old "Rend and Rule" strategy will be the name of the game (same as it ever was)
-and leave the rest to the rabble.
Musical Interlude #23.8
Fugazi [- Long Division
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZsKPFHg5NkA
As soon as a meth-ravaged, 68-lb Anne Coulter is found swinging by the neck in a Denny’s men’s room
BZZZZT. Wrong, Drifty: There's not a noose on the face of this planet that could fit over her Adam's apple.
But setting the scene in Hastert's bathroom? Stroke. Of. Genius. ;-)
BTW, a careful examination of those photos convinces me that the one on the left is the real David Brooks. It has the flattened face look of someone who's spent his whole life with his nose pressed up against the window of the Rich Kids' Clubhouse, desperately wishing he were inside.
Let me summarize,
Bobo is a fucking jackass.
Driftglass... thank you.
HOO-rah! You're on a roll this week, D, but Bobo always brings out the best in you. You should send him a thank you letter for serving as such a giant, soft, mewling, pasty-white target after all this time.
"...Bobo always brings out the best in you..." LOL
Harvest, he really does. :o)
Everytime Drift reads Brooks' column, he gets a hard-on that a cat couldn't scratch. :o)
So Laffite, you'd rather someone who robbed us blind makes himself look good at our expense? Frankly, I'd rather a robber baron be know to be exactly what he is and not have the blind adulation of a load of sycophants for tossing money around after he's dead. I'd rather his money went back to those he robbed, but then I hate being robbed in the first place whereas others aid and abet their own victimhood by admiration of the thievery.
Driftglass,
It's the fundamental dishonesty that gets me about Bobo. This man eats, drinks, shits and -- yes -- flies first class alongside these people, yet he writes as thought he some sort of salt-of-the-earth commoner instead of the bootlicking bourgeoise dipshit that he is.
I sense a consensus emerging :-)
Tech98, Gooood paragraph...:o)
You couldn't have tagged him better if you had used a radio collar. That was awesome. I don't get Times Select, and I hadn't realized what an idiot Brooks is.
(I'm a conservative, fwiw. Don't stop hammering these crooks, liars, and thugs. Don't call them anything-cons. They're fascists that have stolen the conservative name. I'd rather support the liberals now and help nail their coffin shut, so the GOP can get back to being a party of conservatism.)
driftglass,
I never see references to Bobo without immediately coming over here - god damn ! . . . progressive porn 'tis what it is !
A very skillfull and entertaining disection of Bobo's disgusting sock puppetry. You are at your best when you slice and dice Bobo the Culture Warrior.
What a tremendous sycophant-pendejo he is!
Wow! Every editor at the NYT should be required to read this, and then Brooks should have his laptop shoved up his ass.
I could have sworn I heard this same kind of bleating from the same kind of people back in 1991/2 when they were telling us just how corrupt and out-of-touch the Democrats were. She's been Speaker for less than a week and Boob-o has taken it upon himself to helpfully point out how corrupt and out-of-touch the new Speaker is (as if Denny Hastert was taking the Metro to work everyday). Boob-o prefers his Democrats poor, powerless and voiceless. He needs to stop going to Sally Quinn's cocktail parties.
Jeebus, Bobo, that's the oldest ploy in the Republican playbook: "Pelosi is a big, fat phony! All you Democrats are big, fat phonies!"
Pathetic.
Driftglass, your takedowns of David the Ditherer remind me of nothing so much as the grouse hunt sequence in "The Magic Christian". I can just see poor Bobo flapping desperately through the rhetorical ack-ack, then given the submachinegun-and-flamethrower treatment until there's nothing left but a pitiful charred, smoking carcass. Or rather, a pitiful charred, smoking dumbass.
You really ought to have a special archive devoted to these Bobo posts. I'll bet reading them in order would give future historians pricesless insights into the decline and fall of punditry.
"pricesless"? Ack!
"Preview" is my friend.
Bobo is a jackass that royally deserves the shellacking drifty gives him in his inimitable style. But...Bobo has a point nonetheless.
It's fine to attack the republicans. A more evil and corrupt cabal has not held the White House in a generation (and they far transcend Nixon, imo) I am skeptical, however, as to how much better the Democrats will really be. Millions of dead and 50,000 American soliders slaughtered? That was a Democratic Party production, basically. Eviscerate the American economy in the name of "free trade"? A bipartisan production led by the husband of the current donkle front runner. Tons and tons of bombs so that a corrupt gang of white slavers, drug runners, and arms merchants can liberate the "country"? Good ol Bill gave us the Serbian war. Don't like Al Qaeda? Saint Jimmy started that little policy in Afghanistan (which the Rethugs ramped up, of course) Saint Jimmy's crew also helped start the atrocity program in El Salvador and Nicaragua, initially green-lighted the Indonesian military's slaughter of 1/3 of the population of East Timor (using our weapons), advised the Korean military dictatorship to slaughter the protestors (3,000 died, reports have said.)
So bottom line-the rot is far deeper than you guys are willing to admit. Lesser evilism in accepting conservative, business elite sub-parties like the Democrats prolongs the War State. And Nacy herself-anything Israel wants to bomb or torture or destroy is A-OK with our "radical" new Speaker.
I don't have the answer. But-Cheerleading for Nancy Pelosi and Hillary and Obama doesn't seem very appealing to me, though. It doesn't atatck the root philosophical problems behind the War Machine. American Exceptionalism, "humanitarian" invasions, society-destroying "free" trade gamed by multinationals. More and more of the same. No thank you.
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