Wonketting Kirstol

Jim Newell does his own piece on Kristol's column, today, in Wonkette. It's far better than my all too serious ruminations, below.

Vulgarizing the New York Times

I wonder how much the editors at the New York Times are regretting their decision to hire William Kristol to write a weekly column for the paper? The stuff he's writing is simply awful. It's not just awful from an ideological standpoint (that was a given from the start) but from a purely literary perspective it is equally bad. For one thing, Kristol has no idea how to write for an audience of anything but mindless correligionaries. That much is clear. His columns come off as vulgar attempts to goad his readers as opposed to honest efforts to convince them of his thesis. And there is nothing of interest in them beyond that.

Consider today's column entitled "Democrats Should Read Kipling." It gets off to a seemingly good start, as Kristol brings in both George Orwell and Rudyard Kipling to help make his case. But this literary gambit soon vanishes into clouds of empty puffery and we discover that there's "no there there." Kipling and Orwell make an appearance in Kristol's column only so that he can drop a pair of impressive names that will be familiar and intriguing to the Times' haughty readers, but there is little substance to back up Kristol's appeal to these esteemed literary figures.

Kristol doesn't seem to realize that to pull this sort of thing off, a writer must be either surprising, ingenious, or instructive. He must surprise us by using the literary figure in a way we would not have thought possible. Alternatively, he must demonstrate ingenuity by using the literary figure in a completely inappropriate way, while leaving the reader with knowing smile ("Too clever by half, Mr. Kristol!"). Or, finally, he must genuinely instruct us, revealing aspects of the cited author's beliefs that we did not know and which are apposite to the discussion at hand. Kristol does none of this. He brings in Orwell and Kipling, uses them to support something that is more of a banality than an actual argument ("Kipling 'identified himself with the ruling power and not with the opposition.'") and then immediately throws them both away as he continues to make his rather scattershot mess of an argument. A clever columnist (say Christopher Hitchens) understands that, at he very least, if you are going to bring literary figures into the opening of your piece, you must return to them at the close to neatly and tidily wrap the argument up. But Kristol is not such a writer, and seems to think that just dropping Orwell and Kipling's names will imbue his ruminations with an undeserved degree of dignity.

Finally, there's the writing itself. There's no need to go into the gory details. Instead I'll simply cite directly from the piece:

If I may vulgarize the implications of Orwell’s argument a bit: substitute Republicans for Kipling and Democrats for the opposition, and you have a good synopsis of the current state of American politics.

Eeeew! Vulgarizing, indeed.

Liberal Fascism

The guy who wrote:

When I see the worsening degeneracy in our politicians, our media, our educators, and our intelligentsia, I can’t help wondering if the day may yet come when the only thing that can save this country is a military coup.

Thinks that Jonah Goldberg's laughable new book Liberal Fascism, is right on the money:

Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism is too rich a book to be summarized in a newspaper column. Get a copy and start rethinking the received notions about who is on “the Left” and who is on “the Right.” It is a book for people who want to think, rather than repeat rhetoric.

And as proof of just how right Goldberg is, consider that:

Famed British novelist and prominent Fabian socialist H. G. Wells called for “Liberal Fascism,” saying “the world is sick of parliamentary politics.”

Hmmmm, sounds like Wells might have felt that politics was degenerating and a military coup was in order to set things aright... oh, wait. Nevermind.

Be My Valentine? Please...

The GOP has several humorous Valentines day cards that Republicans can e-mail one another this season. You can see them by going here. In the spirit of playful banter, I offer them one more if they'd like to use it:

Yes We Can

This video is simply stunning. Words escape me. You've just got to watch it. The hope Obama inspires in people is just unreal:

Compassionate conservatism

Bush has a plan to balance the federal budget. It involves giving money to rich people by making his tax cuts permanent while simultaneously denying medicine to the poor and the elderly. That's compassionate conservatism for you.

What Would Reagan Do?

The cult of Saint Reagan: what would Ronald Reagan do if he were alive today? It really depends who you ask. If you ask Mitt Romney, for instance, you'll find that Reagan would espouse exactly the same policy positions that Romney (now) espouses... even those positions that run counter to the policy prescriptions that Reagan actually implemented when he was in the Whitehouse.



Remember Reagan's amnesty program for undocumented aliens? Remember how Reagan decided that stationing troops in war torn Beirut was not worth the expenditure of American lives, and pulled them out after the Hezbollah barracks attack? Remember how the national debt exploded under his presidency? Well, he wouldn't have done any of those things if he were president today.

It's amusing to watch, really. As Reagan becomes more and more of a mythological figure to the Republican party faithful, the historical Reagan fades from view, and a purely ideological construct takes his place. Reagan isn't a person any more. Rather, he is the incarnation of the GOP party platform, whatever that platform happens to be at any given moment. When the GOP agitates to shut down the Hollywood motion picture industry you can bet Reagan would have supported that, too.