More Midterm reaction

And a nice contrast to the deranged screed a couple of posts ago -- here's what the BBC's Paul Adams describes as "one minute and nine seconds of pure advertising genius":



See, what I like -- nay, what I love -- about Sarah Palin is just the effect she has on the so-called "elite", on both left and right. She grates, she baffles, and she just generally messes with their heads -- look what she's done to poor, excitable Andy Sullivan, for example. Now, like David Gergen, I doubt that she'll actually run for President -- though the temptation to be the first female candidate for the office might be enough to do it -- but I think she's having a great time making a lot of people nervous just by threatening to run.

Why take such schadenfreudean delight in the discomfort of the putative elites, you might ask? Oh, just because they tend to treat political ideas and values as they treat fashion -- something merely to be donned and displayed as status symbols rather than thought about seriously. Which is true more on the liberal, bien pensant side, of course, as distinct from the conservative, snobby side. But on both sides the fun is mainly just in seeing an obstreperous opposition get in the face of complacent orthodoxies, and stay there.

So you go, girl.

UPDATE: While we're doing videos that spook the liberal elite, I might as well add this one, called "Fire from the Heartland":


Fire From The Heartland from Citizens United on Vimeo.

"Our ankles survive."

For other reactions to the Midterm results....

This couldn't be funnier if it were in the Onion and were it not for its context, you'd probably take it as satire -- but, given where it is, I think we have to take it as symptom, with a soupçon of pathos added. See "An Open Letter to the White Right, On the Occasion of Your Recent, Successful Temper Tantrum" by tim wise (note the self-effacing lower-case) in Daily Dementia (or, more formally, Daily Kos: State of the Nation):

You’re like the bad guy in every horror movie ever made, who gets shot five times, or stabbed ten, or blown up twice, and who will eventually pass -- even if it takes four sequels to make it happen -- but who in the meantime keeps coming back around, grabbing at our ankles as we walk by, we having been mistakenly convinced that you were finally dead this time.

Fair enough, and have at it. But remember how this movie ends.

Our ankles survive.

You do not.

Michael Meyers, Freddie Kreuger, Jason, and that asshole husband in that movie with Julia Roberts who tracks her down after she runs away and changes her identity--they are all done. Even that crazy fucker in Saw is about to be finished off for good. Granted, he’s gonna be popping out in 3-D to scare the kiddies, so he isn’t going quietly. But he’s going, as all bad guys eventually do.

And in the pantheon of American history, conservative old white people have pretty much always been the bad guys, the keepers of the hegemonic and reactionary flame, the folks unwilling to share the category of American with others on equal terms.

Think there might be a little, you know, bitter clinging in all that (and it goes on)? Well, but that's not really adequate, is it? More like deranged death-grip, if it's the outpouring of anyone past early adolescence. Which is maybe a point in timmy's favor -- no idea of his (and it's pretty likely a "he", right?) own skin tone or age, of course, but if you had to guess wouldn't you say white, male, and maybe about 14? Could be younger, but then a bit precocious, because I will say that if the level were just dialed back to maybe 10 or a little less, screeds like this would be a perfect candidate for Stuff White People Like.

Thanks to Instapundit (seems like I'm always sending him traffic)

The "professional left", Obama, and irony

There's undeniable comedy in seeing the umbrage lefties are taking at being called "professional" (there's that schadenfreude again) -- but it raises an interesting question of what exactly constitutes a "professional leftist"? Clearly left-wing politicians and their campaign staff might be so designated, but that's too obvious, and it can't be what Gibbs had in mind when using the term. "Activists", maybe? That sounds right, but still a little vague -- I mean, what do you have to do to be an "activist"? Is it just a sloppy newspaper term for any lefty with an opinion who doesn't have a job? Sort of like the way the media uses "racist" to label any righty with an opinion, regardless of whether they have a job? There's no doubt considerable truth in that, but there is one occupation that seems to fit the label "professional leftist" pretty well -- how 'bout community organizer?

Irony's a bitch.

Reporters as opinion-guides, before and after

Again from that Cabal of Unreconstructed Commies (CUC) Club of Latter-day Anti-capitalists (CLA) that goes under the name of Crooked Timber, comes some schadenfreudish delight, this time to do with the latest embarrassments emerging from that bottomless pit of "heh", the Journolist archives. Before the latest revelations by the reporters at Daily Caller, here's what John Holbo had to say about reporters as opinion-guides:

Lots of people have made the correct point that it’s silly to think reporters ... should have no opinions. But beyond that, it’s silly to think reporters should not have opinions about the dynamics of opinion-formation – opinions about how prominent crazy people and spin doctors in the public sphere affect public discourse. And it’s silly to think reporters do not have a positive duty to act on these opinions, changing up their stance to counteract the influence of perceived craziness, the better to help their readers form sensible opinions.

 After those exposures, here's what one of the exposed, Henry, had to say:

If you believe that there is a Vast Left Wing Conspiracy ranged against conservatism, it must be very exciting to finally get your hands on the Top Sekrit archives of the shadowy network that you think Controls It All.

 What's with all the upper-case and misspelling, do you think? You don't suppose he's at all chagrined, do you? Maybe a little upset, even? But, I mean, wouldn't you think he'd agree with Holbo that the reporters at Daily Caller had "a positive duty to act" on their opinions, especially about the "dynamics of opinion formation"?  Especially about "how prominent crazy people and spin doctors in the public sphere affect public discourse"? And now that they've helped Henry to form "sensible opinions", wouldn't you think gratitude would be more appropriate than snark?

The Weigel-Journolist Affair and schadenfreude

It's all over the Internets, or at least the bloggery, or at least the right side (in more ways than one) of the blogosphere -- in the wake of some leaked but highly classified emails from one David Weigel to a cozy little online club of "center to left" journalists, Weigel's lost his job and the club itself is about to be disbanded.

Awwwww. That's a little of that most widespread of guilty pleasures, schadenfreude, which I think becomes a little less guilty when you add to its Merriam-Webster definition: "enjoyment obtained from the troubles of others" -- that are richly deserved. Why deserved, in this case? Well, first, because Weigel was the reporter the Washington Post had assigned to cover conservatives. Right? A guy who's a member of a lefty email club is supposed to be reporting -- objectively?! -- on conservative or right-wing issues and events?? Why wouldn't it be good riddance?

And second, there's that little business of the "journolist" itself, which was a lefty in-group consisting of many other members of the media who, in their day jobs, also purport to be more or less objective. Now, the right-wing complaining about left-wing media bias can get a bit tiresome, I'll admit, in its repetitiveness. But it's repetitive not only because the bias is so bleedingly obvious, but also because of the  irritating chutzpah constantly displayed by said biased "journalists" and editors/producers in their bare-faced denials of the bleedingly obvious. In any case, Mickey Kaus does one of the better take-downs of this little cabal (via Moe Lane):

Everybody has private notes, sources, or conversations. That doesn't mean a secret conversation among "hundreds" of influential Democratic writers doesn't potentially create problems. Groupthink might be one of them. ... Hey, and another might be the fostering of an us-vs-them mentality! Maybe even a weakness for smug rationalization. ...

PS: Julian "epistemic closure" Sanchez feels badly for Weigel, who apparently is a friend. Julian's pretty sure that Weigel isn't "any sort of liberal or progressive", but he also doesn't seem to be any sort of unbiased observer of conservatives either, which is apparently what he was hired as. E.g., some Weigel quotes (from the origin of the kerfuffle, the Daily Caller):

Honestly, it’s been tough to find fresh angles sometimes–how many times can I report that these [tea party] activists are joyfully signing up with the agenda of discredited right-winger X and discredited right-wing group Y?

...

In April, Weigel wrote that the problem with the mainstream media is “this need to give equal/extra time to ‘real American’ views, no matter how fucking moronic, which just so happen to be the views of the conglomerates that run the media and/or buy up ads.”

... 

Republicans? “Ratfucking [Obama] on every bill.” Palin? Tried to “ratfuck” a moderate Republican in a contentious primary in New York. Limbaugh? Used “ratfucking tactics” in urging Republican activists to vote for Hillary Clinton in open primaries after Obama had all but beat her for the Democratic nomination.

"Ratfucking"? Okay, that's a little weird. Biased and weird.