Same as it ever was: Democrats are all wimpy fags. Except the women, who are hairy-legged, unfeminine lesbians.
And the blacks, of course, whose sexuality is twice as threatening.
But threatening in that unmasculine kind of way -- just not Alpha, IYKWIM.
I can't see Lizza writing something like this in TNR. He must know he's full of shit, and not care.
Yeah, I saw that piece and thought, "I am not going to read that, as it will merely raise my blood pressure in horrible ways." Looks like I was right. The Times has a rich and obnoxious history with this kind of process-analysis piece. Bleah.
Lapp needs to shut up.
I also like Schumer and Emanuel being described as "throwbacks to the era when tough-guy Democrats were urban ethnic politicians, like Dan Rostenkowski and Tip O'Neill." Ryan, sweetheart, when people talk about "tough guy" urban ethnics they don't mean Harvard educated Jews from Park Slope. Or Sarah Lawrence-educated Jews from Lincoln Park.
I agree with 4. This article was intensely disappointing. The whole time I was thinking "This is nothing new, you Maureen Dowd impersonator." "This is nothing new, except that these guys didn't emerge from the labor union movement." "This is nothing new, and you must realize it because of that mention of Dan Rostenkowski on the first page." "This is nothing new; did you miss the fact that Pelosi is the FIRST woman leader of the Dems, not the twenty-eighth?"
I can imagine thinking, in New York or Washington, that such an article would be read as merely amusing, with a glancing almost-truth here or there that would make the jaded readers whom journalists encounter on the cocktail circuit smirk a bit. If I thought that was the only consequence of writing such an article, I would be very wrong, of course. (Maureen Dowd, your conscience is calling on line three, please.)
As I said elsewhere, Margaret Thatcher, Indira Gandhi, and Golda Meir should have taught those people something. But they didn't. As Somerby says, they write to scripts, and they'll keep writing to the same script as long as they can get away with it.
The media now lags behind popular opinion on many topics, but they still project their own preconceptions onto The American People, while at the same time claiming to be objective and maybe even liberal themselves, and also subtly hinting that while they disagree with The American People (who are idiots), they really can't disagree with them because that would be elitist.
A tangled mess of corruption and lies.
This was just such a mess and a mishmash. I'm ready to believe that there was a Democratic strategy to recruit tough-seeming people to run. That doesn't actually have anything to do with their gender, but Lizza takes the easy way out. Maybe it would be worth mentioning that part of Hilary's problem is that she comes across as too Alpha, not too soft. And then he just cuts corners: Emanuel, that tough former ballet dancer. And Jim Webb, "picking a fight" with the President, when that's not how it happened. Do you fucking job, Lizza, and it's not just to get words onto the page.
"can't disagree with them out loud, because that would be elitist".
About that "tough former ballet dancer," Wikipedia notes:
At this point of his political career he was known for his intensity. Notably, he reportedly told British Prime Minister Tony Blair, "This is important. Don't fuck it up," prior to Blair appearing in public with Clinton for the first time after the Lewinsky scandal emerged. Emanuel is said to have "mailed a rotting fish to a former coworker after the two parted ways." On the night after the Clinton election, "Emanuel was so angry at the president's enemies that he stood up at a celebratory dinner with colleagues from the campaign, grabbed a steak knife and began rattling off a list of betrayers, shouting 'Dead!...Dead!...Dead!' and plunging the knife into the table after every name."On the other hand, he was offered a scholarship to Joffrey and refused it to go Sarah Lawrence, where he could get a B.A. while participating in one of the best dance departments in the country.
Stupid postdata.
Idiotic patriarchal cultural stereotypes mischaracterize men, too.
What I mean is, it's meaningless to say that someone is "macho" because he's a former Navy guy, and to also say, "tough, like Emanuel." It's a dumb and lazy way of writing that makes toughness seem both male and stupid, when it's not either.
To put it another way: I'm not saying that Emanuel isn't tough, but that Lizza just elides the parts of Emanuel's story that don't fit his stupid story.
"So let them come, the gay incendiaries with charred fingers! Here we are! Here we are! Come on! Set fire to the library shelves! Turn aside the canals to flood the museums. . . . Take up your pickaxes, your axes and hammers, and wreck, wreck the venerable cities, pitilessly!"
Take that, Vorticists!
Fair enough.
Now that I've actually read the article, I'd have to say that it's the most backhandedly metrosexual piece I've read in a long while. It should've been accompanied by a quiz: "Are You A Macho Dem Or A Sissy Dem? Ten Clues--And What You Can Do To Butch Up!"
Right.If you're going to write dumb articles based on dumb stereotpyes, at least have the grace to stick to the same stereotypes! It's so lazy that it's not even consistently stupid.
This reminds me of the David Brooks column where uses the fact that 94% of campaign donations from M.I.T. employees went to Democrats as evidence that "world people" are Democrats and "number people" are Republicans.
In other news, I'm now confident that Matt Stoller is a douchebag.
Now that you mention it, Marinetti, gay incendiaries probably have a great deal to do with this article.
ogged, when I click that link, I get an empty Flickr page, no photo.
19: Joe Trippi, however, is no hot chick.
Indeed. Did you get the email I just sent you, apo?
21:Kos, anyone? Just metaphorically a gay incendiary, of course.
I am, not terribly closely, watching the DLC/Emmanual/etc battle the netroots. I connect everything to the search for money, candidates and mostly, the fucking war. All utterances must be deconstructed and interpreted. There are people who want to bring the white South back into our party; that South that has mostly owned or blackmailed the Democrats for my entire lifetime there is now an opposing force.
The ME WAR isn't over;it has barely begun. Stoller/Markos/Bowers are incredible heros for offering an alternative party within the Party, and building a peace movement where it will count. At some point we will return to 1968, and this time the Yippies will win.
Marinetti is always appropriate. You just have to season him with Gramsci.
bob mcmanusb is gradually transforming his name into a palindrome.
24.--In the sense that now I can see the photo, yes. In other senses, no, not really.
26:I'll go back to Marinetti. I got all my typos preserved by Microsoft unto eternity. Those spam testing boxes? I get 25 suggested completions everytime I type "6z...."
Or maybe Heinrich Vogeler instead, since FTM went fascist.
The Democratic Party, even the "netroots" are still way behind the man in the street. The feminist in the street, the populist, Cindy Sheehan disrupting Nancy's victory party. The country wants the war over and Bush stomped. The beltway knows Bush is going to double up, then double up again. Caught between, the Party is trying to calm the base (and Wall St) instead of storming the Bastille.
I am told:"The people don't want a Revolution" Bullshit. When you have a losing war at below 20% approval, you are already in a Revolution. The people may not even realize it yet, simply because they lack the artists, poets, and polemicists.
I am very optimistic. Pelosi is scrambling and scrabbling. It is out of control. I am having fun.
I get the varied flavors of douchebaggery at MyDD mixed up. Is Stoller the one who thinks that Rahm Emmanuel is an evil puppetmaster preventing anyone to the left of Calvin Coolidge from winning a Dem primary; the one who thinks that any candidate who doesn't make kissy-kissy noises about "netroots" is a fascist; or the astrologer?
I don't read MyDD, so I don't know. I'm just going by the picture.
I'm a little surprised that nobody here has mentioned the hilarity that is the Jamil Hussein non-story. Advantage blogosphere!
Also, Ali Khamenei is still dead. Maybe.
Khamenei has entered that peculiar limbo in which if you're a conservative, he's probably dead, and if you're a liberal, he's probably not.
33: Yes, and he is correct on all counts. I am double Capricorn with Scorpio rising, not so incidentally.
35: Oh, man, that poor guy. I only hope that he doesn't know he's in jail because a bunch of bored twerps decided to make him famous by kicking up a fuss over whether he existed. That'd have to be even slightly more awful than just being in an Iraqi jail.
I was thinking about posting something about it, but what? and why?
Lizza = Snitch Bitch. It's personal between me and him. He cannot be trusted.
I totally believe it, Spackerman. This kind of article is something someone would crank out if they were only interested in getting the job done in a purely formal sense, without any underlying sense of pride or honor.
Ogged, what breaks my heart is that Ryan is a great reporter. If he used his power in the service of something besides A Career, he could, and would, do great things.
Yeah, well, it's easy to be smart; much harder to be decent.
Yeah, well, it's easy to be smart; much harder to be decent.
So o-earnest is back in style?
44:Wooooo!
But I got Mavericks-Lakers, so gotta go.
42: He has done great things, hasn't he? But yeah, I totally believe you. If you compare this to other stuff he's done, you don't feel he's really stupid or lazy, but indifferent to good journalism.
I haven't followed him (the name is familiar, but I couldn't place anything else he's written). But this mess was silly and irritating.
Weman in 4 was right, but it seems odd for someone to say that there's a step down from TNR. Depressing.
I think that even Devid Brooks got worse at the Times, because he was hired specifically as a conservative tool in order to appease the zombies and make sure that nothing got better when Safire left.
42: As I keep saying, it's a management problem. Lizza understands what the times wants. He looks at the successful careers and the unsuccessful careers, and it's clear to him which way to go.
Also, he'll snitch on you. Snitch Bitch.
LB, you may have read the TNR articles that started making Allen's racism a liability. That was him.
50: Is there a publicly known story you're talking about that I can catch up on, or is this private griping?
51: Those? Damn. Those were good.
You could be Spackerman's macaca, Ogged!
I think that means I'd have to follow him around, and I'm not willing to do that.
Maybe you could just incessantly leave comments at his site instead.
I think that means I'd have to follow him around, and I'm not willing to do that.
Why not? He's an entertaining guy.
57: Wose new design is awesome, btw.
57: Works for me, although I am unread. (:
77-70 Mavs, start of 4th. Weep, Beltway. Go West Young'uns.
Spackerman, if you are trying to comment under the radar, as it were, you're going to have to stop posting your url under your pseudonym.
Of course, that url seems now to lead to an ad-space with malicious pop-ups, so maybe you're being sneakier than I gave you credit for.
Since his site isn't actually hosted by blgospot.com, it shouldn't matter.
Ali Khamenei = Schroedinger's Ayatollah.
Khamenei, Khomenei, tomato, tomahto. Is he one guy, or are they two guys? Is he or are they still alive? I gotta know before I can blame things on him or them.
Hey, Brad Delong linked this at Shrillblog. No one's ever called me shrill before; I'm so pleased.
(I'd say something Chuthulu-esque here, but I can't really spell any of it properly.)
Chuthulu...can't really spell any of it
Awesnome.
(all of the first line of 69(!) should be italicized.
I like how DeLong has now done a cut-and-paste of Unfogged comments into the body of the post. Congrats, LB, on your shrillness!
The point this thread makes can be summarized easily by pointing out that Lizza's Maureendowdisms were probably written simultaneously with this article that makes the complete opposite inferences.
Corollary to the original post: Everything that happens, everything that can happen, is good for George W. Bush and/or the Republicans generally. Seriously. Just ask the Liberal Media.
