The Past Week in "Shrillblog": July 13, 2007

We still remember the early days, when the Ancient, Hermetic, and Occult Order of the Shrill was so small that its Grand Conventions consisted of Paul Krugman talking to himself while warming a can of baked beans over a can of sterno while he huddled from the rain beneath a New Jersey Turnpike overpass. Wow, have things changed. Our numbers are now legion: never mind that many of the most shrill are still too embarrassed by their own previous subservience and mendacity to acknowledge that everything they say today was predicted by Paul Krugman and the other Elders of the Shrill back in 2000.

We are now so many that it is impossible to document the shrillness. All we can now do is provide a sample of those who, in the past week, have been visibly driven into shrill unholy madness by the mendacity, malevolence, disconnection from reality, and incompetence of George W. Bush, his administration, and his enablers and sycophants:

• The Washington Post Commits More Howlers in Moral Philosophy
• Why One Should Not Trust the New Republic
• Andrew Leonard is Shrill
• It's About Time
• Let's Just Shut Associated Press Down and Run with McClatchey...
• Why Oh Why Can't We Have a Better Press Corps? (Yet Another Washington Post Should Have Fired David Ignatius Long Ago Edition)
• Having Fitz
• Jonathan Zasloff Is Shrill!
• Why Oh Why Can't We Have a Better Press Corps? (Yet Another New Republic Edition)
• Bush's first Surgeon General joins the Order of the Shrill!
• Dean Baker Gets Shrill on CNN!
• Wurzt David Brooks Kolum Evar!
• Former Bush Surgeon General Carmona Is Shrill
• Robert Pear of the New York Times Has Driven Dean Baker into Shrill Unholy Madness!
• Sadly, No! Is Shrill!
• Joseph Galloway of McClatchy Washington Bureau Is Shrill!
• On the Third Try, The New York Times Succeeds in Hiring an Ombudsman
• Tim Noah Should Get a Real Job
• Jane Hamsher on Joe Biden
• Lieberman Supporters Have an Awful Lot of Explaining to Do
• Dean Baker Is Shrill! It's Robin Toner's Fault

Comments

[Neil B.]

Let's Just Shut Associated Press Down and Run with McClatchey...

Yes indeed! PS: Why is McClatchey so good? I mean, why they're like that ...

[David Lloyd-Jones]

Seems to me we need a new entry-test for shrillness.

How 'bout "Donald Rumsfeld and Richard Cheney to The Hague"?

[anne]

David, you are granddaughter responsible enough now to finally be a pacifist. I am not responsible at all, but am one.

[bncthor]

Is there a stage or phase beyond Shrill? I feel like I may have entered such a phase.

[Roger Bigod]

The only predictted phase change is Shrillness Rapture, which could occur any day now. In scenes worthy of Duhrer or Blake, the faithfully Shrill will be gathered into the comforting if somewhat scaly arms of the unholy minions. Those left behind will have to be content with our leather-bound editions of Analects of Shrill and Recherche du Shrill Perdu.

[moron]

Our numbers are now legion: never mind that many of the most shrill are still too embarrassed by their own previous subservience and mendacity to acknowledge that everything they say today was predicted by Paul Krugman and the other Elders of the Shrill back in 2000.

Uh... Brad, didn't you mean to write,

"... OUR own precious subservience and mendacity..." ?

That would have the virtue of greater precision. (Sorry to remind you, but...!)

[Roger Bigod]

If they haven't come forward by now, it's too late. We're pulling up the drawbridge at Castle Shrill, and let them brave the moat if they dare. Feeding the crocs was outserviced long ago, so we have no liability.

For the exceptions, we insist on a true conversion, complete with speaking in tongues and thrashing about on the floor (with EEG documentation of seizure activity). And stigmata of torture by neoconservatives (or initiation into elite college secret societies). This may seem harsh, even captious, we can't risk fake converts bursting into flame if they touch one of the holy relics.

Remember: many are called, but few are chosen.