Thers:
Whiskey Fire: A Cocoon of Skin-Tight Buffoonery: There are cocoons, and then there are, uh, other cocoons. Here is, I propose, the most perfectest Politico article ever -- a classic of the breathless, brainless genre of fake journalism of which Politico is the Auto-Tune-class apotheosis. Here Jonathan Martin attempts to explain why someone else exists in a "media cocoon."… Few larvae realize they are slouching towards cocoonhood, either, one imagines, and it's not clear if Martin is much brighter than your average caterpillar. Here he is leading off with a swinging bunt of a sad cliche….
The party is suffering from Pauline Kaelism.
Oh for f#$%'s sake, the Pauline Kael shite is lazy, obnoxious bullshit…. I am not merely snarking here: Jonathan Martin is allegedly "reporting," and the framework he reaches for to explain politics in the second decade of the 21st century is a whiskery urban legend dating from 1972. Politico: we'll "win the morning" by being aware of all journalistic traditions as originally defined by the New York Post in the days when John Lindsey was mayor. Cutting edge shit, that is…. [T]he wider point is that Martin is completely unequipped to deal with 21st century "conservatism" because he believes powerfully in Reagan-vintage, if that late, pop-poli-sci cliches…. Ross Douthat! I'm sure glad I'm not in any battles where Ross Douthat is on my side…. People tend to say exactly what their gigs demand that they say, unless we're speaking of someone capable of creating different rules for their gig, which is to say, that they are capable of being original. Ross Douthat is not such a person…. It gets better....
“The right is suffering from an era of on-demand reality,” is how 30-year-old old think tanker and writer Ben Domenech put it.
Ben Domenech is it? Who is not an appalling hack... how? And it gets better....
“The Internet amplifies talk radio and cable news, and provides distribution for other sources like Newsmax,” said Trey Grayson, 40, the former Kentucky secretary of state and the current head of Harvard’s Institute of Politics. “Then your friends, who usually agree with you, disseminate the same stories on Facebook and Twitter. And you assume that everyone agrees with you! It’s very striking for me living in Cambridge now. My Facebook feed, which is full of mostly conservatives from Kentucky, contains very different links to articles or topics than what I see in Cambridge. It is sort of the reverse up here. They don’t understand how anyone would eat Chick-fil-A, watch college sports or hold pro-life views.”
And that is something so colossally glib only Politico, or say your typical New York Times op-ed columnist, or the pompously pointless Harvard Institute of Getting Interviewed as a Know-Nothing Glib Quote Generator could ever provide. ("Liberals don't like sports. Women like shopping. White guys drive like this!")…. Martin lacks the self-awareness of the meth addict who believes himself the son of Jor-El…. And golly, just exactly what the GOP needs is Ben Domenech's sex and career advice for women.
