Thursday, February 11, 2021

How To Recognize Shambolic Wingnut Disasters From Quite a Long Way Away



Hey. look who's gettin' noticed on a regular basis these days!

Not for nothin' but if I'd ever said anything like this I'd have been suspended from Twitter for three lifetimes, instead of just the one.  

Feels like my work here is about done. 

 And what work is that?

Spotting Shambolic Wingnut Disasters from quite a long way away.  Often while they're enjoying a profitable turn --
-- as Respected Thinkers --
-- on that Liberal cable teevee station --
-- that all the kids -- 
-- are talking about!  

Or, on any given Sunday, at the Gasbag Cavalcade on broadcast teevee's major networks.

Then, of course, comes the requisite amount of either being ignored or slagged for either focusing on irrelevancies or dredging up the past or saying terribly mean things about our new "allies" --
-- because ALL HANDS ON DECK and so forth.

Then, in the fullness of time, a few Bluechecks start to notice that some of the irrelevancies were maybe not so irrelevant after all, and that the past actually matters, and those goons and grifters that cable teevee packaged as friendly faces were not so friendly after all.  

Ah well.  

Speaking of goons and grifters who have been quietly phased out of the regular Liberal cable teevee  rotation, please don't worry that Hugh Hewitt in floating out there in the Hughniverse, friendless and alone, now that the mask is completely gone and we can all see him as the Cyborg Sent From the Future to Destroy America that he has always been.

Hugh is doing just fine and has plenty of company.

Here, for example, we find Hugh interviewing Matthew Continetti, another former MSNBC child star who followed the GOP slime trail a couple of stories down the rabbit hole and now write schlock for Commentary magazine.

Quite a fall for Continetti who used to enjoy buddying up with fellow Conservatives around the Meet the Press campfire, secure in the knowledge that Chuck Todd was never in a million years going to ask him an inconvenient  question. 

Instead (and follow me here because this stacking of panels with Conservatives who are all deeply interconnect with each other, know each other and have worked for/with each other is the norm for Meet the Press) in this clip from 2018 we find Chuck Todd reading aloud from a column by ambulatory venom sac Rich Lowry, and asking Continetti, David Brooks and Eliana Johnson to react to it.

So here's the history.

Continetti worked as a research assistant for Rich Lowry before joining The Weekly Standard as an editorial assistant under Bill Kristol, and later as associate editor before moving on to work for Lowry at the National Review and starting his own wingnut welfare rag, the Washington Free Beacon.

David Brooks was the managing editor for the The Weekly Standard under Bill Kristol before landing a job-for-life at The New York Times.

And Eliana Johnson Johnson was Sean Hannity's producer at Fox News before going to work for Rich Lowry at the National Review.  She eventually moved on to become the editor-in-chief of, you probably guessed it, the Washington Free Beacon after Continetti left.

So how did a bland, dead-eyed cipher like Matthew Continetti get a leg up into this charmed wingnut welfare circle jerk to begin with?  Ah, I see I neglected to mention that Continetti is Bill Kristol's son-in-law.  

Bill Kristol, who lost The Weekly Standard due to the changing tastes of its readership, but gained The Bulwark. 

Bill Kristol, who has recently been promoted up from wingnut goon and grifter and back into the ranks of Respected Conservative Thinkers, and who can be seen on MSNBC pretty much any day of the week blabbing his opinions secure in the knowledge that none of the MSNBC hosts would ever in a million ask him an inconvenient question. 

Because ALL HANDS ON DECK and so forth.

And thus the circle of wingnut life is complete.



No Half Measures



4 comments:

Robt said...


This is like those "haunting" movies.

Where the evil spirits just do not go away and for some reason want people to die terrible deaths and join them in there haunting future because they are lonely or something.

There is no bright light to at track Newt into it so he can move on.

I am trapped in their haunted castle and scramble to survive their every action to Ghoul me.

I search in despair for the religious artifact that will end their ghoulish hold and release their tortured soul to move on.

bowtiejack said...

Just excellent.

Anonymous said...

The genius of these grifters is that they have you wasting an entire lifetime — literally — cataloging their disasters, while they get rich. Bad press is better than no press. Keep up the great work Driftwald!

bill said...

https://conversationswithbillkristol.org/
WITH transcripts!
Seven years looking back at how effective the right has been at being unhinged. With all the smirkyness you'd expect... and very little that can be viewed as good for America. Trainwreck documentation?