Ben Domenech and Charlie Sykes Variant #1 vs. Charlie Sykes Variant #2

The most charitable thing one can say about our "Never Trump" allies is that their relationship with their own timelines is, well, tortured.

For example, just yesterday we find Mr. Charlie Sykes using his very popular podcast, The Bulwark, to express his not-at-all-concealed contempt for Mr. Meghan McCain  Mr. Ben Domenech of The Federalist.

Sykes:  Meanwhile we have, um, and... the... the... the... hehehe... I may have to explain why I'm doing this... this segue this way.  Uh, again, over the weekend, um, the, uh, thoroughly deplorable Ben Domenech -- who had been fired from the Washington Post for plagiarism and yet somehow has managed to keep his career afloat um, who now has, uh, y'know, has, I guess, gotten a show on Fox, uh, the founder of The Federalist -- is talking about the real danger of tyrant in this country.  Now remember that Conservatives used to understand what tyranny was about, and they used to understand the threat posed by government.  But it's interesting to watch how this it morphing on the Right.

Mr. Sykes then plays this short clip from Ben Domenech about who the real enemies of freedom are:

Domenech: The real threat to American liberty is in the halls of Harvard, the board rooms of Google and the cubicles of The New York Times.  Our unelected rulers are more dangerous to our freedoms than the elected.

Mr. Sykes' guest and fellow Bulwark podcaster, Mona Charen then launches into an extended riff about how fucking awful the Left is, because hippie punching has always been how assholes like these establish their Very Serious Person And Above It All credentials.  And Ms. Charen really leans into it, explaining how her "intolerance for the intolerance of the Left is extreme".  Make no mistake, anti-Trump Conservatives like Ms. Charen absolutely despise us and are so thirsty to get back to the safety of Both Sidering us wretched Libtards for being almost/very close/damn near as bad as the Right that you can hear the agony in their voices every time they put mouth to microphone or pen to paper. 

Which is why you can never, ever trust a Never Trumper.

But this post isn't about that. It's about Charlie Sykes' seething contempt for Ben Domenech, who (Mr. Sykes takes pains to remind us) was sacked from the WaPo for plagiarism! Outrageous!  My God, how does this "thoroughly deplorable" goon still have a career after that!

Great question, Charlie Sykes!  One which I asked on this very blog back when it happened in March of 2006.  Which, according to my intolerant Libtard math, is just a little over 15 years ago.  Which, one must admit, is a lot of years ago!  From me in 2006:

From Box Turtle Ben’s Novel-In-Progress:

Moby Dick Doby Mick.

Now that he has been kerbooted into the exurbs of Jayson Blairville, word has it that Box Turtle Ben has had to dust off his unfinished opus and hurry things up to fall back on the "controversial author" dodge before people forget his name and he sinks back into the wingnut ooze.

The galley proofs are circulating. Here's a sample...

Chapter 1: “Loomings. Or what I did during my eleven minutes on the WaPo payroll.”

Call me, uh, Pishmael.

Yeah…”Pishmael.”

Anyway…

Some years ago- never mind how long precisely- having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore at Hooters, I thought I would sail blog about a little and see the watery Red State part of the world. It is a way I have of venting driving off the spleen and boosting regulating the circulation.

Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically slandering and insulting African Americans knocking people's hats off -- then, I account it high time to get to sea blogging and plagarizing as soon as I can.

This is my substitute for pistol and ball having no balls.

With a philosophical flourish Cato WaPo throws himself upon his itself upon its sword; I quietly take to the ship noisily take to the paper. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men not-so-closeted-racists in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean brown people with me.

There now is your insular city of the Manhattoes Main Stream Media, belted round by wharves Rightwing Apologists as Indian isles by coral reefs- commerce surrounds it with her surf. Right and left, the streets Right Wing Stenographers take you waterward Raptureward…

So can I please have my sweet, sweet gig at the WaPo now?

Oh, and for those keeping score at home, that’s two (2) “Moby” posts in three days, a phenomenon for which I have no explanation, but on which Box Turtle Ben expounds at great length in the Chapter 42:

“The Whiteness of the Redstate Male.”

Ah, the glory days of blogging!  Mocked and ignored by the mainstream media and thoroughly hated by the Right, when we wrote with fiery abandon in the hopes that we might make a difference.  

And as that hope diminished, many of us settled for "documenting the atrocities": storing up an archive of our thoughts and opinions against that glorious comin' home day when having been right about the Right would earn us some credibility to speak with authority to a wider audience about the nature of the dangers we face.  And in my own, deep archive you'll find a pretty thorough answer to Charlie Sykes' question about how a scumbag and plagiarist like Ben Domenech kept his career in ascent for all of these years.  Like this piece I wrote in 2013:

Fanatic Life and Symbolic Death Among the Conservative Bums* 

Box Turtle Ben Domenech never goes away.

I used to think that he might that rarest of exceptions -- one of Conservative pseudomedia's Bam-Bams who had screwed up early enough and publicly enough in his meteoric rise to mediocrity that they would kick him to the curb just to spare themselves the paperwork. But I stopped losing sleep worrying that poor Box Turtle Ben would ever miss a meal, when I noticed that:

1. The now-defunct John Stossel/Andrew Breitbart/Brad Thor Award Factory was finding creative methods of slipping checks into his pocket and,
2. Chicago's premiere Randite Chop Shop -- "The Heartland Institute" -- put him on staff cranking out cranky crankery on "Healthcare Policy", and,
3. Ben's pal Young Ezra Klein had started working on ways to put him on my Liberal TV for absolutely no damn good reason.

So for all my worrying, I figured the kid was gonna be fine...

And that, Mr. Sykes, has been the key to Ben Domenech's professional longevity.  People in the media, who knew damn well what a hack his was, but who were still willing to lend him their credibility.  Who were willing to vouch for him by association. 

For example, during the closing days of the 2016 presidential campaign -- a full decade after Ben Domenech had , as Mr. Charlie Sykes reminded us just yesterday, disgraced himself and torched his credibility...

...and if you have read my blog at all you know exactly where this is going...

...we find that "talk show host, author, radio host and editor in chief of RightWisconsin.com", Mr. Charlie Sykes himself, was only to happy to appear on Mr. Ben Domenech's Federalist radio show/podcast critiquing the final presidential debate.

Recapping the Final Presidential Debate with Andrew Stiles, Charlie Sykes

And what was Mr. Sykes' pull quote from Mr. Domenech's podcast?

"I had a hard time imagining any conservative or pro-life voter who watched that who was not horrified and was not convinced that no matter what you think of Donald Trump, you can not possibly think about voting for Hillary Clinton," Sykes said.

So Mr. Sykes, if you are truly mystified about how Box Turtle Ben "managed to keep his career afloat", consider taking a look in the fucking mirror.

Burn The Lifeboats