We’ve left the Imperial City on a Movement Mission to the very heart of the Fox Nation. A place with strip malls the size of Rhode Island and iPhone apps to match caliber with target. One vast flat Fox 3-D simulacrum. So far, we’ve managed to escape detection ala Invasion of the Body Snatchers (the Kaufman re-make) – you know, the Donald Sutherland point and scream.
It’s not just geography. We’re getting Everclear proof distillation of ethos because of the institutions involved. Pure shots with no chaser. We’ve been wheels down only a few hours and already a conversation partner casually offered ‘Obama is a traitor.’
We’ll make an effort to compartmentalize this Westworld trip and get back to regular posting this week. Thanks for everyone’s patience.
Comment says
Mike Pence – painfully dumb.
Comment says
It’s sort of silly to see some hack passing judgement on Conan – Conan made a fortune telling jokes – He already ‘won’ the game of life years ago – Whether or not he works at x or at y is sort of irrelevant, imo. No doubt Newt resents his Harvard degree.
Dr Leo Strauss says
@Comment
Today’s Raucous Majorty ™ probably enjoy seeing the White House press corps con angina than with the bland Gibbs. Disintermediation is a bitch no two ways about it – as the move to release news on Twitter makes painfully clear.
Many of these media ‘thought leaders’ mock Conan for eschewing collapsing broadcast with no national clearance for his time slot and going to basic cable. Yet then while freshening their Pinot Noir fret why they’ve never been mocked by Colbert.
Comment says
NB – the trivial and puerile complainst from media about Gibbs – Almost all silly stuff and little concern for important stuff.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/12/AR2010041204365_3.html
Comment says
Is Newt et al relentless use of the new code phrase “the Amurican people” just code, or is this more of his simplistic NLP BS that he uses to get votes and pick up chicks?
Comment says
This is totally silly but funny anyway -esp the dig at the end at Maureen Dowd.
http://www.theonion.com/video/congress-announces-plan-to-hide-nations-porn-from,17243/
Comment says
Actually – we actually recall Newt emphatically reminding his audience that Clinton did not finish his degree at Oxford – Totally meaningless, but important to the status-anxious Newt. Sort of like trying to get Jobs and Gates to feel sheepish about not graduating undergrad.
Comment says
Comparing Palin, Newt, and Nixon – you have Palin who is not as intellectually insecure as she probably should be – She does not know what she does not know and she just babbles “RELOAD” to her low-info base.
Newt – just so far from Ivy, yet so near – Isaacson respects him, supposedly – yet he senses some laughter behind his back when he dines at Michael’s. The Elaine’s crowd will never accept him. Maureen Dowd mocks him and acts like her CUA pedigree makes her Pulitzer material – anHd those Pulitzer snobs agree. Bastards. Hmm, why was jFK cool when cheating, but I Newt am mocked.
re Nixon – he reminds us of someone we know – Nearly perfect SATs and high grades, yet rejected from all the Ivy’s he wanted to go to and ended up at a safety school and graduated with a BA in engineering – still resenting rejection – then rejected from his Dad’s MBA program, yet getting into Columbia’s superior finance program – But still smarting from perceived slight = Also – bad relations with HS coach caused him to be, like Nixon, a tackling dummy, in HS football – So instead of seeing himself as the accomplished person he actually is, he dwells on petty setbacks – But unlike Nixon, he was Upper Middle class growing up
Comment says
Fascinating tidbit – Nixon was turned down by Hoover’s bureau despite being top of his class (or near top) at Duke law – That must have messsed with his psyche (what do these solid Fordham guys have against me? Nixon muses) In retrospect, not sure if nixon would have been good or terrible as a Agent, but when he found out that some of his enemies in the conservative Bureau were likely deep throat, he must have felt terrible all over again.
Comment says
Yes – Nixon – Just obviously bright but so wanted to be a regular guy who liked football and Guy Lombardo –
It’s not just Newt – but there is a broader culture on the right – the Palinism – that is deeply resentful about feeling intellectually looked down upon. Newt, if anything, is puffed in a zomewhat ironically condescending ways by people like Walter Isaacson. Isaacson and some others have adopted Newt a sort of an ‘ideas’ guy they pretend to dig so they can say they admire some Republicans besides Henry Kissinger and pre meltdown McCain.
But often you hear Palin defenders cite the number of years she went to school and other sort of meaningless resume tidbits and they seem beside themselves with resentment that ‘serious’ opinion regards Palin as ludicrous. They trot out Reagan comparison’s = as if the Gipper, like Palin, quit his Gov job like Palin did.
Dr Leo Strauss says
@Comment
Nixon’s resentment at the Ivy League makes alot more sense precisely because Duke was and is a first class law school. So Nixon was in the Blue Chip law club but felt (accurately in some sense) he still pressed his nose on the glass looking in. The whole scene today, of course, is diluted and vastly more egalitarian.
West Georgia College doesn’t come close. (Almost all his official bios gloss over it and say he was ‘a college professor’). Imagine Newt’s emotional spike as he realized Bubba had been finishing the NYT cross word puzzle in ink while Newt droned on why the human species needed to migrate to space colonies as Enterprise Zones.
Comment says
Indeed, we recall Sid Blumenthal summarize this in Clinton Wars
Comment says
Newt is obviously annoyed that establishment opinion regards him as slightly less smart – broadly speaking – than both Clinton and Obama – He is obviously insecure about this – it’s something he always reacts about – somewhat similar to his penchant for invoking his Dad’s mil service to preempt c-hawk accusations. It’s just so obvious – Also – the whole PhD obsession – the credentialism – sort marks Newt. Clinton never finished his Rhodes and you know he could not give a s+++ because that is one thing he is secure in.
Comment says
Newt seems more insecure than ever viz. “as a historian …” lol/
Dr Leo Strauss says
Could be. Newt always even before 1994 seemed compelled to name drop and via ‘fact’ bulimia strive for situational/conversational dominance. What made it surreal was when his kitchen cabinet included old professorial colleagues and they too had the same penchant. Good times. Good times.
Dr Leo Strauss says
Don’t tell Romney – Battlefield Earth scribe apologizes for most suckitude ever.
http://www.nypost.com/p/entertainment/movies/penned_the_suckiest_movie_ever_sorry_MdXedZpTMWJmfpw80Xc7aO/0
Comment says
Cyberwar is trendy:
http://twitter.com/emcmen
Comment says
Lots of Blame America First talk on the right these days vis a vis Israel’s new housing in E. Jerusalem.
Comment says
Traitor? Sounds Texas or S. Carolina , but really could be any of the former slave states.
sglover says
North of the Mason-Dixon, or south? East or west of the Mississippi?
I’m gonna guess Oklahoma.
anxiousmodernman says
Show no emotion.