...Even the Police Began to Sit Up and Take Notice

Did you do it for love?
Did you do it for money?
Did you do it for spite?
Did you think you had to, honey?

 -- Don Henley, Glenn Frey & Bob Seger

Now that the AEI no longer supports him in the style to which he had become accustomed, David Frum (like many, many other involuntarily apostated Conservatives) has suddenly discovered the truth of what Liberal have been saying for the last few decades.

Are we being fair to Rush Limbaugh?

By David Frum, CNN Contributor updated 9:39 PM EST, Mon March 5, 2012
... 

A word of criticism from Limbaugh...will reduce almost any member of the Republican caucus to abject groveling. See, for example: GINGREY, PHIL.

Among TV and radio talkers and entertainers, there is none who commands anything like the deference that Limbaugh commands from Republicans: not Rachel Maddow, not Jon Stewart, not Michael Moore, not Keith Olbermann at his zenith. Democratic politicians may wish for favorable comment from their talkers, but they are not terrified of negative comment from them in the way that Republican politicians live in fear of a negative word from Limbaugh.

The ultimate test came in 2002, the vote to authorize force against Iraq. Almost every liberal talker opposed that vote. Hillary Clinton, with her eye on a presidential run in 2008, voted in favor.

That is why no one asks Democratic politicians to repudiate the latest strident statement from an Olbermann or a Moore. There's no sport in it. It's too easy for them to say, "Sure." For Republicans, it's tough.

Great, David. Just great. Very eloquent. But why do I have the feeling that if Mitt Romney calls and offers you a job writing his speeches for the general election you're not going to make it conditional on him bravely standing up and denouncing Boss Rush in clear, unequivocal terms?

Maybe I have that feeling because the one question you and all of your Conservative friends are all collectively too cowardly to answer is this: Where were you when it counted?

See, it's the lying, David, that makes you and your friends such a bad bet. The constant lying. The years and years of reflexive "Both sides do it" and "Libruls are worse" lying every time another Conservative family values goon got caught fondling or coveting or sucking or invading or looting or lying shoving dollar bills into places that he should not have been fondling or coveting or sucking or shoving dollar bills into.

Even George Will -- taking a break from extolling the virtues of Calvin Coolidge long enough to bother to notice that the monster his Party built to win elections had kick the lab door off its hinges and was running amok -- could not do so without obediently and automatically reciting Wingnut Catechistic Lie Number One. See if you can spot it:

“[House Speaker John] Boehner comes out and says Rush’s language was inappropriate. Using the salad fork for your entrée, that’s inappropriate. Not this stuff,” Will said. “And it was depressing because what it indicates is that the Republican leaders are afraid of Rush Limbaugh. They want to bomb Iran, but they’re afraid of Rush Limbaugh.”

ABC News political analyst Matthew Dowd said the Republicans’ apprehension to say anything negative about the conservative big hitter is based on the “myth” that Limbaugh influences a large number of Republican voters.

“I think the problem is the Republican leaders, Mitt Romney and the other candidates, don’t have the courage to say what they say in quiet, which, they think Rush Limbaugh is a buffoon,” Dowd said. ”They think he is like a clown coming out of a small car at a circus. It’s great he is entertaining and all that. But nobody takes him seriously.”

While President Obama has denounced Limbaugh’s comments as “reprehensible,” Republican leaders and GOP presidential candidates have used far milder language.

While Rick Santorum said Limbaugh’s comments were “absurd,” he said the radio host was an “entertainer” and “an entertainer can be absurd.” “No,” Will said about Santorum’s response. “It is the responsibility of conservatives to police the right and its excesses, just as the liberals unfailingly fail to police the excesses on their own side.”

See the problem, David?

You conservatives lie like junkies. You literally cannot stop lying -- lying about Liberals, lying about your own, very well-documented history -- because at the end of ever righteous criticism which you level at the Gorgons that are destroying this country comes the same, damning question:

Where the fuck were you when it counted?

Were you people really that stupid? That willfully blind? For all those years? In which case, isn't Public Intellectual a job from which you should be automatically disqualified for the rest of your life?

Or were you just craven, money-grubbing whores who only came to Jesus once you got thrown off the Wingnut Welfare teat?

Because seeing what was happening on the Right these last 30 years really wasn't that hard. It wasn't string theory or nanoengineering -- millions of perfectly ordinary people called "Liberals" got this right from the very beginning so again let me ask where were you it took more than a wet finger hoisted into the breeze to decide that Limbaugh was a cancer running wild through our body politic?

Liberals have asked you and your pals this same question of over and over again for years, Mr. Frum, and your silence is beyond deafening so let me ask again: Where were you in when it counted? (From me in 2009, and to which I have nothing to add):

Our Loser Media

 

What Rush says:

“I will kill this puppy, because I hate puppies and I like killing them.”

How the Pig People react:

Unable to contain their joy, the throngs of hoof-stomping, rat-squealing, true-believing golem known as “The Republican Party” tear their own eyes out so that the torrents of orgiastic rage pouring out of their mouths can get from their brains into the open air that much quicker.

How the Media reacts:

Blah blah blah context. Blah blah blah what Rush “really” meant was… Blah blah blah because, y’know, if some hypothetical Democrat somewhere had said that they didn’t like kittens blah blah blah.

Until, in the end (from the Chicago Tribune):

Barack Obama's push: Make Rush Limbaugh appear to be the face of the GOP

Obama gambles that taking on conservative radio host will cow Republicans, benefit president's agenda

By Peter Nicholas | Washington Bureau
11:19 PM CST, March 2, 2009

WASHINGTON — The Obama White House has begun advancing an aggressive political strategy: convincing the country that the real power behind the Republican Party is not the GOP leaders in Congress or at the Republican National Committee, but rather provocative radio talk show king Rush Limbaugh.

President Barack Obama, top presidential aides and outside Democratic allies have been pushing the message in unison.
...

"Appears"?

"Convince"?

Really?

Sorry, Petey, but hack reporting like this is exactly why we on the Left have largely given up on the national press except as a Ridicule Piñata; because for the last 20 years, every time the Party of God shit all over itself, Villager reporters -- presumably as a condition of their employment -- could always be relied on to invent some ludicrous unattributed back-story about Democrats secretly slipping “Ex-Lax” into their cocoa.

Because if the GOP painted “I AM RUSH’S BITCH” on their ass in hundred-mile-wide fluorescent letters visible from orbit, the “Fair and Balanced” chip in the Villager’s heads would smoke and writhe and squirm until they figured out how to reformat the facts into a story where somehow Sneaky Liberals were the lead.

So since you obviously have no fucking clue about the modern history of the Republican Party, let me give you the nickel tour.

See, once upon a time, the Party of Lincoln got tired of losing.

Tired, tired, tired.

And their leaders sat down with many graphs and tables and Pareto charts and figured out that if they took a hard, Right turn at the corner of Loutish Bigot Avenue and Ignorant Christopath Way, they would start winning.

And it worked! So yay them!

But as the massive infusion of xenophobes, degenerate yahoos and wannabe fascists packed on Republican electoral muscle, the immutable Law of Fucktard Fluid Dynamics also meant that demagogues like Rush Limbaugh rapidly grew in Party power and influence, while anyone with an ounce of decency and self-respect was slowly cooked off and driven out of the GOP in disgust.

And that's the thing that makes "reporting" like yours so fucking laughable, Petey: the fact that Rush’s status as Party Overboss has never been exactly what you'd call a big secret.

Hell, it was on the God damned teevee!

If you'd bothered to do any checking at all you'd have found that fourteen fucking years ago -- while a popular but relatively unknown professor named Barack Obama was too busy teaching constitutional law at the University of Chicago to plot out clever schemes to make it "appear" as though the GOP was Limbaugh's personal ass coachman and penis valet -- this was the actual state of the relationship between Rush and the Party of God (Spoiler Alert: video also proves yet again that no one knows "funny" like the Wall Street Journal's own shreddin' comic hellbeast, John Fund!):



This was a marquee Washington Post story about Rush and the GOP from December of 1994:

The House Republican newcomers made Rush Limbaugh an honorary class member tonight, a symbol of their gratitude for conservative talk-radio hosts who championed their campaigns. Limbaugh was presented a "Majority Makers" pin, the emblem of the newcomers who have given their party majority status in the House for the first time in 40 years.

Six GOP women in the class added their own special thanks, presenting Limbaugh with a plaque that said: "Rush was right." And Rep.-elect Barbara Cubin (R-Wyo.) added: "There's not a femiNazi among us."

What has changed in 15 years, Petey, is that out here in the reality-based community we no longer feel alone and powerless to push back when we see a reporter contorting himself into bizarre, partisan configurations rather than simply reporting the simple fact that the Republican Party really has devolved into one, big, batshit crazy hoe-down where Limbaugh calls the tunes.

Boss Rush and all of his bigoted, fascist, shitbag imitators were the fine print on Nixon's Southern Strategy, as was Newt Gingrich working from the inside to turn hatespeech into the Mother Tongue of the Party of Lincoln.

And you, David Frum, were perfectly willing to go along with these banal, daily treasons right up until your sugar daddy cut you off at the wallet.

Did you do it for love?
Did you do it for money?
Did you do it for spite?
Did you think you had to, honey?

 

Still Not Over It

Apparently the people who pay the Maximum Leader of All Conservatives enormous amounts of money to pander to bigots and imbeciles on the radio decided that, after 25 straight years of pandering to bigots and imbeciles on the radio, if he wanted them to continue giving him enormous amounts of money the Maximum Leader of All Conservatives was going to have to to issue a statement expressing regret if anyone was bothered by the order in which he strung together several English language words, several days in a row.

Reluctantly, Maximum Leader of All Conservatives did so.

If this is your first exposure to American Conservatism, what you must understand is that ever since they got bent over the barrel at Appomattox Courthouse


and forced to surrender on terms set by the Union devils, Southern White bigots have made it a point of honor never to apologize for any of the loathsome, depraved, anti-American things they say and do, but to instead stand proudly up for their heritage as inbred, rage-drunk, racist shitbags.

On the upside, they pay really, really well.

Brother Malcolm Explains Michael Steele

And then explains the nature of the thugs and cowards

to whom Michael Steele sold his soul.

 As I wrote a few posts back about Andrew Sullivan's pathological dishonesty:

The worlds's most famous gay, Catholic, Tory Conservative absolutely will not accept the simple fact that the American Conservative movement to which he has lent so much of his time and talent has, in fact, been working tirelessly for centuries to "conserve" and promote a set of values, traditions and institutions which have deep and powerful American roots. It is a social order...

...based on the conservation of the absolute hegemony of straight, white fundamentalist Christian men within a social hierarchy based on the supremacy of the white race.

...which has been ordained by Almighty God and is therefor beyond debate.

...which believes it has been under relentless attack by the forces of Satan and his secular Liberal Marxist elite minions, who are to blame for every problem in American society.

...which Conservatives believe must be conserved and restored at all costs lest we risk the wrath of God.

To preserve these "traditional institutions", Conservatives have been at war with the larger American culture for centuries.

No one took a lash to Michael Steele's back to make him stooge for racists and monsters. No one threatened his family.

He hired himself out as the Party of Limbaugh's House Negro for money.

With his eyes wide open, for money.

And every time MSNBC needs a teevee friendly black Republican to come on and explain how the Party of Limbaugh really isn't that bad, and that Boss Rush is really just an "entertainer", another 30 pieces of silver gets added to Mr. Steele's bank account.


Hibbildy bibbildy

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
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Charlie Pierce's Homage to Me -- Part #37

From Mr. Pierce at Esquire:

... Rush Limbaugh has spent the last two days engaging in the kind of misogyny that ought to make decent people spit on him when he walks down the street. Does Frum believe Limbaugh's influence in conservative politics began last Thursday? Back when they still invited him to CPAC, was Frum bothered by all those books in the exhibit hall about how Bill Clinton had murdered people back in Arkansas? Did he miss the 2004 presidential campaign? For all his faults, Andrew Breitbart was not sui generis in the American conservatism that once gave David Frum a very good living. He was an entirely predictable product of it. David Frum can comment on this as often as he wants, as long as he's wearing sackcloth while he does. Some ashes would be nice, too. Repent, you suckers.

I find Mr. Pierce's letter-perfect, Brian DePalmaesque tributes to my chosen subjects and style of writing terribly flattering.

Thanks, Charlie :-)

Professional Left Podcast #117

John Macabee lived a trifling and worthless life. 
He went around Montgomery daring for somebody to cut his throat. 
Last week someone obliged him.
He lived like a dog. 
He died like a dog. 
Undertaker, claim the body. 
Choir sing.

 ― Rev. Vernon Johns' eulogy for John Macabee

Links:

• Forgetting Steven Gilliard:  Andrew Sullivan gets his facts wrong again.
• Politicalprof:  On Legacies

Da' money goes here:

American Conservatism is Democracy's Retrovirus

Back in 2008 I wrote,

It is Now 28 Years Later

and the Conservative Hate Virus that hijacked
a political party,
a religion,
and the national media
and turned them into disease vectors
still rages merrily along.

The Conservative Hate Virus that was cultivated by Nixon and went pneumonic under Reagan destroyed Conservatism decades ago and replaced it with a slowly-rotting corpse.  A shambling, gibbering, mindless thing that, for a time, served both the RNC's electoral interests and Rupert Murdochs's business interests.  It put every bitter clinger, crackpot, bigot, gun-nut, Christopath, homophobe, Klansman, brownshirt and anti-woman douchbag and anti-science glibertarian in-harness together to pull the GOP to victory and to make thugs like Rush Limbaugh very, very rich.

And the formula for turning hate into a profit-center is so damn easy!  Just wave a flag in front of their big, vacant eyes, poke 'em with a stick (ACORN!  Commies!  Sluts! Kenyan Usurper!) every few minutes, call 'em super-patriots for jerking off to Sean Hannity and Ann Coulter, and point them where you want them to go.

The Conservatism Retrovirus left us open to infection from a whole suite of  opportunistic wingnut disease, and from Falwell to Limbaugh to Beck, Conservatism has permitted each of them and all of their mutant imitators to breeze past democracy's natural antibodies -- an educated electorate, an honest press, a respectful politics -- and settle in for a nice, long parasite feast.

Andrew Breitbart was just such an opportunistic disease: another ratfucking bastard child of Lee Atwater and Roy Cohn who took a sociopath's glee in the wide, pestilential path he carved through America's political media. He destroyed people and pissed on their graves for fun and profit and prospered because he completely understood and embraced what a collection of monsters and meatsticks the Right truly is.

Mr. Breitbart didn't just get things terribly wrong: he was an able and eager leader of the dregs of American culture whose flock giddily embraced darkness and evil.  As I wrote back in 2010:

The People of the Lie

"[Narcissists]...project their own evil onto the world. They never think of themselves as evil, on the other hand, they consequently see much evil in others." 

— M. Scott Peck, "People of the Lie"

It will come as no surprise to anyone who has paid any attention whatsoever to the Conservative Movement for the last 30 years that the Breitbart BigGovernmentMiscreant site has quickly rallied itself to respond to the glaringly indisputable fact that its owner is a lying shitbag.

I hope you weren't waiting for an apology...

Here's the headline:

From JournoList to Shirley Sherrod: The Left’s Default Response Is Fascism

by John Nolte...

Since I don't link to sites run by liars and frauds, if you want any more of Nolte's scintillating defense of his meal-ticket, you'll have to Google it yourself. Suffice it to say, you'll probably want to have a Kevlar sick bag on hand.

I post it here today (along a few of the comments it generated) to underscore a larger, sadder and much more important point: sooner or later, Liberals as a Movement must come to terms with the fact that people like Breitbart -- who operate with a free hand and a blank check at the very heart of the Conservative Movement -- are not simply crazy or misguided or possessed of a strange but equally sincere ideology, but genuinely evil.

And the reason we keep banging our heads when trying to cope with evil is that evil renders our entire Liberal toolbox worse than useless.

Evil doesn't care about policy or governance. At. All. Which is why we are so often reduced to a spluttering "But don't they realize...?" incomprehension when the Right stomps on the throat of the weak and defenseless...again. While smiling...again

Evil does not have a conscience which can be appealed to, or a sense of shame which can be invoked.

Evil doesn't give a shit about fair play or reason or causality or the niceties of democracy.

When faced with positive proof that what it is doing will harm others, Evil says "Go piss up a rope, hippie."

"Evil deeds do not make an evil person. Otherwise we would all be evil. If evil people cannot be defined by the illegality of their deeds or the magnitude of their sins, then how are we to define them? The answer is by the consistency of their sins. While usually subtle, their destructiveness is remarkably consistent. This is because those who have "crossed over the line" are characterized by their absolute refusal to tolerate the sense of their own sinfulness." — M. Scott Peck, "People of the Lie"

What evil has in place of a conscience is vanity, megalomania, greed and an all-encompassing fear that they will be found out and ridiculed for being the wretched, little scuttlefish that they are. 

They live in terror that someone might see the sorry state of their mingy soul, which is why they band together for protection under the banner of an ideology which glorifies cruelty and heartlessness, and why they reserve their most furious hellfire for kindest of people.

This is why they hate Shirley Sherrod -- a woman they did not even know existed a week ago -- with such hysterical, berserk fury, why they eagerly swallow every ACORN lie that churns out of the Breitbart/Beck/Limbaugh Paranoid Conspiracy Factory and beg for more: to Evil, those who advocate publicly on behalf of kindness, justice and compassion, and who -- by lesson and language -- implore their fellow citizens to assay their souls in a clear and Christian light are the sources of scalding pain.

Every act of decency rubs Evils' nose in the horror of its polluted existence, and every public gesture of confession and humanity threatens extinction.

Faced with these threats, Evil has no recourse but attack!attack!attack! 

...

The estimable Ta-Nehisi Coates puts the matter more kindly here:

... That is what took me to sadness. I have experienced curiosity as a primarily selfish endeavor. It originates in the understanding of the brevity of life, and the desire to see as much of it as possible, from as many angles as possible without doing too much damage to my morality. The opposite of that -- incuriosity, dishonesty, the opportunistic deployment of information -- is darkness. Breitbart died, like all of us will, in darkness. But as a media persona he chose to also live there, and in the process has impelled countless others to throttle themselves into the abyss.

I have heard it said by some fellow liberals that Breitbart was in fact a good person, that his public persona was not the same as his private. This kind of praise is so broadly true of most controversial public figures as to be meaningless. And it is irrelevant. Breitbart may well have been an excellent father and a great friend but that is not why we are talking about him. We are noting his death because of the impact he had on our politics and our conversation. It must be said that that impact was for the worse. Any talk of his private life, is an attempt to change the subject and avoid discomfiting truths. ...

but I believe however gently we choose our words, the moral of Mr. Breitbart's brief and ugly life is blunt and clear.

The children Mr. Breitbart tragically left behind are his progeny.

But the lesson that he left behind -- that among Conservatives is now considered a noble thing to turn a buck selling comforting lies to moral degenerates -- is his true and tragic legacy.

Forgetting Steven Gilliard

Following the death of friendly acquaintance Andrew Brietbart, Andrew Sullivan haz a big, 'ol sad about the perils of being Andrew Sullivan:

... 

In the new 24/7 mediaverse, in a brutal, unending culture war, with the web unleashed and news and opinion flashing every few seconds, you can very easily lose yourself, and forget how and why you got here in the first place. There have been times writing and editing this blog on that kind of insane schedule for more than a decade when I have wondered who this new frantic way of life would kill first. I do not doubt that Andrew tried to keep a balance, and stay healthy, but like the rest of us, became consumed with and overwhelmed by this twittering, unending bloghorreic chatter. It takes a much bigger physical, emotional and spiritual toll than most realize, and I've spent some time over the years worrying it could destroy me. 

... 

Mr. Sullivan ends his cautionary tale with this:

 He is in that sense our first new-media culture-war fatality. I fear he won't be the last.

No, Andrew, he was not.

He may have been the first, privileged, white, male, Conservative, celebrity-personal-acquaintance-of-yours-whose-circumstances-and-age-screams-"mortality"-in-your-ear, but for the true, first "new-media culture-war fatality" you need to think "blacker".

Think "liberal".

Think "not a completely conscienceless, lying scumbag".

I know that, like all Conservatives,  you're not very good at "remembering" stuff from the "past" that makes you look "like a complete idiot", so let me give you another hint.

Steve Gilliard, 1964-2007

It is with tremendous sadness that we must convey the news that Steve Gilliard, editor and publisher of The News Blog, passed away June 2, 2007. He was 42.

To those who have come to trust The News Blog and its insightful, brash and unapologetic editorial tone, we have Steve to thank from the bottom of our hearts. Steve helped lead many discussions that mattered to all of us, and he tackled subjects and interest categories where others feared to tread.

Please keep Steve's friends and family in your thoughts and prayers.

Steve meant so much to us.

We will miss him terribly.

No surprise that Mr. Gilliard went straight down the memory hole, given how many unpardonable offenses against Villager media sensibilities he gleefully committed while he was alive and on fire. He was, after all, a Fighting Liberal. And black. And poor. And an talented, muscular writer. And a devastatingly well-read historian. And unashamedly right about everything people like Andrew Sullivan spent their lives being horribly wrong about. And he said "fuck" sometimes. And he did not respect people who used their privileged positions in the media to lie -- in fact he used his own hard-won piece of media real estate to call them out, in public and by name.

People like Andrew Sullivan and Charles Murray:

Friday, August 26, 2005 

Why I'm a racist by Andrew Sullivan

Is this the America you love, Andy?


Atrios points out this post from bareback Andy on how great the Bell Curve, which suggested, to the scorn of everyone, that niggers are stupid with big dicks and gooks are smart with small dicks and white folks in the middle. Sounds a lot like Dr. Lynn from our previous post, no?

CHARLES ON LARRY: A must-read from Charles Murray. One of my proudest moments in journalism was publishing an expanded extract of a chapter from "The Bell Curve" in the New Republic before anyone else dared touch it. I published it along with multiple critiques (hey, I believed magazines were supposed to open rather than close debates) - but the book held up, and still holds up as one of the most insightful and careful of the last decade. The fact of human inequality and the subtle and complex differences between various manifestations of being human - gay, straight, male, female, black, Asian - is a subject worth exploring, period. Liberalism's commitment to political and moral equality for all citizens and human beings is not and should not be threatened by empirical research into human difference and varied inequality. And the fact that so many liberals are determined instead to prevent and stigmatize free research and debate on this subject is evidence ... well, that they have ceased to be liberals in the classic sense. I'm still proud to claim that label - classical liberal. And I'm proud of those with the courage to speak truth to power, as Murray and Herrnstein so painstakingly did. Pity Summers hasn't been able to match their courage. But recalling the tidal wave of intolerance, scorn and ignorance that hit me at the time, I understand why.

- 12:52:00 PM

Andy, no, you are a racist.

If you agree with Charles Murray, you are a racist.

The Bell Curve is tripe not based in science but racial hatred and eugenics, the science of nonsense. It isn't free research, it isn't a liberal idea unless you think Julius Streicher is a liberal.

I know you have some fantasies about being taken by black men, with their large penises, but when you consider that geneticists find race a fluid concept, how can you endorse this kind of racism one step above Segregation or Mongrelization?

Easy, because you're a clueless white man. That's why. You don't have to pay for your ideas, while 1/3rd of America does. I mean, it's really a dodge in the end.

Murray is the intellectual gloss for racial hatred and cruel indifference. If niggers are born stupid, why help them? After all, you can't help them, right?

Here are the words of another eugenicst which sound familiar

Any crossing of two beings not at exactly the same level producesa medium between the level of the two parents. This means: the offspring will probably stand higher than the racially lower parent, but not as high as the higher one. Consequently, it will later succumb in the struggle against the higher level. Such mating is contrary to the will of Nature for a higher breeding of all life. The precondition for this does not lie in associating superior and inferior, but in the total victory of the former. The stronger must dominate and not blend with the weaker, thus sacrificing his own greatness. Only the born weakling can view this as cruel, but he after all is only a weak and limited man; for if this law did not prevail, any conceivable higher development of organic living beings would be unthinkable. 

The consequence of this racial purity, universally valid inNature, is not only the sharp outward delimitation of the various races,but their uniform character in themselves. The fox is always a fox, the goose a goose, the tiger a tiger, etc., and the difference can lie at most in the varying measure of force, strength, intelligence, dexterity, endurance,etc., of the individual specimens. But you will never find a fox who inhis inner attitude might, for example, show humanitarian tendencies towardgeese, as similarly there is no cat with a friendly inclination toward mice. 

Therefore, here, too, the struggle among themselves arises less from inner aversion than from hunger and love. In both cases, Nature looks on calmly, with satisfaction, in fact. In the struggle for daily bread all those who are weak and sickly or less determined succumb, while the struggle of the males for the female grants the right or opportunity to propagate only to the healthiest. And struggle is always a means for improving a species' health and power of resistance and, therefore, a cause of its higher development. 

If the process were different, all further and higher development would cease and the opposite would occur. For, since the inferior always predominates numerically over the best, if both had the same possibility of preserving life and propagating, the inferior would multiply so much more rapidly that in the end the best would inevitably be driven into the background, unless a correction of this state of affairs were undertaken. Nature does just this by subjecting the weaker part to such severe living conditions that by them alone the number is limited, and by not permitting the remainder to increase promiscuously, but making a new and ruthless choice according to strength and health. 

No more than Nature desires the mating of weaker with stronger individuals, even less does she desire the blending of a higher with a lower race, since, if she did, her whole work of higher breeding, over perhaps hundreds of thousands of years, night be ruined with one blow.

It is nice to know great minds think alike.

Mr. Gilliard died young -- a year younger than Andrew Brietbart -- but he died without fancy friends in high places, which meant that he did not get to spend any of his valuable time on this Earth ass-sniffing his fellow media celebrities in Bill Maher's Green Room or Arianna Huffington's parties.  Which, in the end, only serves to further underscore the fact that Mr. Gilliard's existence was one of those horribly inconvenient rebuking realities that throws the wretchedly dishonest, ass-kissing careers people like Andrew Sullivan's own, into stark and embarrassing relief.

I promise I'll write all this up better once Tina Brown hooks me up with a Newsweek cover.

In the meantime, while you enjoy this dramatic video recreation of Andrew Sullivan defending gala blogger luncheons, why not email Mr. Sullivan at "The Daily Beast" at "andrew@thedailybeast.com" and ask him how in the world he managed to forget Steven Gilliard?

Tungsten carbide drills?

What the bloody hell is "tungsten carbide drills"?

Team Breitbart Choosing a New Leader

The force that animates Team Psycho and draws the scum of society to their cause never dies, but from time to time it requires new hosts and avatars.