The American Scene

An ongoing review of politics and culture

• Politics
• Economics
• The Media
• Culture

• Home
• About
• Archive
• Search

Leave a Reply

1. I’m not sure why I want to know this, but, where’s the host name reveal?

   — Sanjay · May 22, 12:10 PM · #

2. I thought a lot more about Bagehot, and the wisdom of crowds, and evo theory of culture. Culture does not shape a people so much as people shape culture according to their needs. Consider the ferocious attachment of the conservative base to Sarah Palin. Logically, she can’t win, so it seems like it would be simple to persuade the base to another candidate. Logically insane-clown-shouters like Mark Levin and Glenn Beck should turn people off. Crazy people are scary. But both Palin-worship and the insane-clown-shouters evolved to fill a need in the base. A need for justification, a need for respect, and possibly a need for revenge.

   Rightside sites spew the most hateful, awful, and deeply illogical stuff about Obama. When braced they refer to how GW was disrespected as their rationale. Cognitive dissonance is just a mechanism employed to despise and vilify Obama for attempting to repair the mess GW left behind, while refusing to acknowledge that GW made a mess at all.
   But the truth is, GW was a dreadful president. Elected on a nanowafer margin of 5 electoral college votes on culturewar issues, he simply wasn’t up to task when 9/11 hit. Lack of substrate.

   So Conor, I think the base is shaping conservative culture to be what it needs in this slice of spacetime. It might mean that the GOP is going to the way of the Whigs. It might mean the GOP will be reborn purified in the bonfire of old failed memes.
   I don’t know.
   ;)

   — matoko_chan · May 22, 01:53 PM · #

3. That’s horrible, Conor. Why do people – how can people – listen to this garbage? This is supposed to be conservative? Aren’t conservatives supposed to care about things like decency, family values, etc? Would you want your kids to hear this? Bizarre. Sad and bizarre.

   Did you hear the Levin/Frum kerfuffle?

   — E.D. Kain · May 22, 02:06 PM · #

4. Very regrettable. Ugh.

   — Adam Greenwood · May 22, 02:34 PM · #

5. The “base” of which you speak are the extreme Authoritarian Followers. See: http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/

   They have a great innate fear and Levin is playing to that. Because the fear comes from within, it never really gets assuaged.

   Humanity will always have Authoritarian followers, and all of us have these traits to a certain degree. By themselves they are pretty harmless, but when a social dominator harnesses their voting power to gain control of society, look out! It makes for very scary times indeed, when it seems the loonies are running the asylum.

   Reagan et al kept this side of his base hidden. I’m glad they are now being exposed for the irrational, angry and fearful people they are.

   — Tripp · May 22, 03:46 PM · #

6. Angry disdain for political “enemies” (liberals, secular humanists,) has been movement conservative characteristic for years. At least since Clinton, but I think you can go at least back to Goldwater and Buckly. I think it is part of the appeal. It feel good to feel rightous. I used to read the corner and every day they would post what I would call stupid liberal tricks: something dumb tha could be construed as “liberal” someone somehwere on the planet had done. And the point was to provide something to mock and get angry about.

   I’m not saying that some liberals are not contemptuous—the hard left definitley is—-but I think the self-rightous anger and contempt is an intregal part of the—at least modern—conservative movement. I think it is a defining characteristc. Of course you can bring up Michael Moore and I’m sure there are other examples, but in my personal experience—my family, aquaintences—anger about politics more often comes from the right.

   And is that the reason that talk radio is conservativve venue? It is an anger and contempt deleivery system. Anger and contempt is what it is selling, and the left does not seem really interested. Maybe the left goes in more for satire: Moore, Colbert, THe Daily Show.

   I’m not saying right bad, left good, I’m just trying to figure things out. Maybe there is a large swath of people in this country that have, or think they have, a reason to be angry. Isn’t that part of the image too. The silent majority see their country, thier values being ruined by hippies and it makes them boiling mad. Maybe the anger is just a reaction to long term social change. Maybe it started during the lead up to civil war. Maybe that’s when the modern conservative movement started. I know Lincon was a republican, but he wasn’t a modern conservative. THink about what the avereage confederates politics wouldhave been like. He’d be for tradition, patriotism, rural christian values, the right to bear arms. He’d be against the federal government messing in social affairs, against the granting of new rights to ethinc groups. And he’d be pissed because he lost.

   — cw · May 22, 03:48 PM · #

7. <i>That isn’t merely beneath a gentleman. It is the kind of thing that a decent man doesn’t say to a woman, under any circumstances. Awful as it is on the page, it came across even worse on the air, hearing the hateful, angry inflections. Forget the fact that this isn’t the way forward for the conservative movement — this just isn’t the way any person should behave.</i>

   Weird expression of sexism on your part.

   — Anonymous · May 22, 04:08 PM · #

8. Yikes, what an asshat thing for Levin to say. Thanks for pointing it out, Conor.

   Because it seems to be my thing, I would caution against the selection bias that says this sort of thing is uniquely problematic for one party or the other.

   — Blar · May 22, 04:13 PM · #

9. Mark Levin has had the number 1 non-fiction hard cover best-seller for the last 7 weeks or so, and probably a few more going forward. It may seem unbelievable, but I believe he is the intellectual heart of the modern conservative movement. He is who people like Hannity and Limbaugh look up to. Seriously. I listen to him a lot and believe he is the most influential conservative, idea-wise, out there. He is terrifying, but also a symbol for why these guys will be relegated to the wilderness for years to come. I mean, who is he winning over with that crap? The base loves him, but he is converting NO ONE. My fear is that he sets some nut case off to do something horrible. Hopefully, that won’t happen. In which case, all we can do is point and laugh and remind him that people like him will never be in the majority again …

   — Winston Legthigh · May 22, 04:18 PM · #

10. I am starting to think that Levin/Beck/Savage et al have been given marching orders to radicalize their listeners to the point where someone takes a shot at the Prez.

    — KazamaSmokers · May 22, 04:44 PM · #

11. “Weird expression of sexism on your part.”

    Without in any way disparaging the “sexist” chivalry in Mr. Friedersdorf’s post, it would seem to be at least as problematic a thing for a man to say to another man (about his wife shooting herself). That is, “sexist” chivalry would demand that a man leave another man’s wife out of his attacks against the second man, just as it would forbid attacking a woman in this fashion.

    — SDG · May 22, 05:14 PM · #

12. Winston I think that is Yuval Levin’s book.

    My sempai, cw gets it part right.
    The right is aggrieved…they get no respect.
    They suspect they are inferior……or know it.
    That is why the furor over abortion, SSM, IDT.
    Here’s the meme— “we are just as smart as you snobby elitist academics/scientists/politicians/journalists!
    We are smart in a different way, a better way.
    We are godsmart.”
    That is why they are so touchy about religion.

    — matoko_chan · May 22, 06:08 PM · #

13. This exchange doesn’t surprise me. It’s a sickeningly low point for Levin, but in keeping with his trademark style.

    — Kyle Cupp · May 22, 07:32 PM · #

14. Conor:

    Do you have any opinion on which is worse: The President of the United States laughing at Wanda Sykes as she wishes Rush Limbaugh to die of kidney failure, or Mark Levin saying he’d put a bullet in his head if he was married to a stupid caller?

    Also, Matoko Khan. It’s Mark Levin, not Yuval Levin, you idjit.

    — jd · May 22, 09:06 PM · #

15. Tripp, kudos for recommending Altemeyer’s book “The Authoritarians.” It is really fascinating. That, and the 1964 article “The Paranoid Style in American Politics” by Richard Hofstadter are the two works I recommend over and over to friends trying to understand the wingnut phenomenon.

    — Craig · May 22, 09:17 PM · #

16. JD, yes, my opinion is that Mr. Levin’s behavior is worse — he is the one who actually uttered the offensive sentiment, he hasn’t been brutally criticized by woman caller (while I think Obama’s laughter reflects poorly on him, I imagine that if I were him I’d dislike Rush Limbaugh a lot, given his more outrageous anti-Obama tirades), and Levin was attacking a private person who isn’t inured against the ugliness of political debate. Had Levin said that to me, I’d laugh it off, being used to insults. Who knows how that poor woman reacted?

    All that said, I agree that Pres. Obama’s laughter reflects very poorly on his judgment at the very least, and perhaps on his character, though I’d have to know more about what he was thinking to make that judgment.

    — Conor Friedersdorf · May 22, 09:31 PM · #

17. Wow…..jd is right.I could see people buying a book by Yuval but never by an insane-clown-fascism-shouter.
    jamais de ma vie!
    incroyable

    I guess this makes sense though…the right is furious that they are disrespected. They want religion, more particularily THEIR religion, to be as respected as science and reason. That is why the push to get IDT recognized as science, and the attempt to justify opposition to SSM and first tri-abortion as intelligent, logical and scientific!
    EUREKA!

    — matoko_chan · May 22, 11:15 PM · #

18. By this standard, Andrew Sullivan is also beyond the Pale-in, right?

    — tom · May 22, 11:18 PM · #

19. I agree that Pres. Obama’s laughter reflects very poorly on his judgment at the very least, and perhaps on his character

    BZZZT! Wrong answer, Conor.
    Either it is all ok to make fun of or none of it is. —Kyle, South Park
    The right sounds as whiny about the WHCD as the islamic fundies were about the Muhammed cartoons for just the same reason.
    Because both the right and the islamists are fundamentalists, and can’t bear to mocked.
    Man, its the disrespect!
    No self-deprecating sense of humor.

    — matoko_chan · May 22, 11:20 PM · #

20. Well, why don’t you cry about it, pussy?

    — Jared · May 22, 11:52 PM · #

21. <i>That isn’t merely beneath a gentleman.</i>

    No, that remark is actually beneath contempt.

    Mark Levin is a mean, hateful, angry little man. His popularity says all that needs to be said about the far right.

    — Pug · May 23, 12:31 AM · #

22. I’m glad that there is finally someone who is not afraid to speak truth to power and denounce indecency. And, again, I am glad that Andrew Sullivan is no longer to be spoken of with respect on this site. That Sarah Palin stuff was bizarre, as Ross Douthat said a few times.

    I don’t think we we could do something similar to this Mark Levin takedown with very high profile left TV commentators. I can’t think of any of them who have said awful things on national TV about conservatives. Olberman, Maher, Matthews, the ‘teabagging’ jokes by almost every liberal TV commentator, that’s all in good fun. And it’s just on national TV, not on the much more dangerous radio airwaves.

    But, and maybe I’m being too cynical, I do want to know what job Conor is trying to get. He will say that he’s part of the project to ‘take back’ the GOP from those red-state rednecks and bible thumpers. But as I am with Frum and Megan McCain, I am very suspicious that he is doing this to get noticed.

    Maybe Ezra Klein will name-check Conor as a conservative who can be reasoned with, and from there it’s a paying job on TPM? Daily Beast? HuffPo? Maybe even the bronto-media? Again, I am sorry to be cynical.

    — tom · May 23, 01:02 AM · #

23. Tom,

    How exactly are my motivations relevant anyway? Would Mr. Levin’s words be any less objectionable if I happened to want nothing more out of life than to be name checked by Ezra Klein?

    — Conor Friedersdorf · May 23, 01:07 AM · #

24. Conor, the point is not how objectionable his words are (I kind of think the ‘kill myself’ line could have been funny if he’d said it right but I’m happy to concede that I have never listened to Levin). The point is why are you going after him instead of after the the left-wing media who are attacking regular people who happen to be conservative. Joe the Plumber may be a nutjob, but, unlike the Levin caller, he didn’t even call into a show. I’m pretty sure Obama approached him. Miss California wasn’t trying to be a spokesperson for traditional marriage, but when she answered a surprise question with a simple answer, she became the target of a sustained and organized campaign to destroy her. So I wonder how you’re so upset about the treatment of this one woman who somehow decided to call into a very conservative show, and who will probably never be subject to having her life investigated the way ‘accidental’ conservative spokespeople have.

    In the end, your point must be that Levin’s show says something about the state of conservatism today. But to make that point you need to distinguish Levin and Limbaugh from the viciousness of key liberal voices on TV and the scorched-earth attacks on accidental conservatives. And I can’t see how you can watch the brutally personal attacks against Miss California and reach that conclusion about the sad state of conservatism as opposed to liberalism.

    On motivations, I’d try to defend my question by saying that I decided you were wrong on the merits and that I then went to the next step of asking how you could be wrong. But really, I’m spring-loaded after watching a parade of others claim to be the ‘new’ face of conservatism without even coming close to laying out how they will get to 50% +1 without the enthusiastic support of Limbaugh types. I just don’t see a David Frum/Colin Powell/Megan McCain/Michael Gerson/Christopher Buckley coalition really doing it. I don’t see how your attacks on Rush, the Corner and Mark Levin get us there.

    — tom · May 23, 02:34 AM · #

25. “ I don’t see how your attacks on Rush, the Corner and Mark Levin get us there.”

    I think the whole point of the last two elections it that you are not going to get there with Rush, the Corner, and Mark Levin.

    — cw · May 23, 04:48 AM · #

26. Levin is the same guy who chastised David Frum for pointing out that Rush Limnbaugh is fat.

    radamisto.blogspot.com/2007/07/fats-is-fraud.html

    — Steve J. · May 23, 05:01 AM · #

27. There was nothing wrong with Andrew Sullivan’s work against Sarah Palin.

    If you think there was, please explain.

    — wjs · May 23, 01:47 PM · #

28. Political speech in America has a history of being rather a raucous affair and, frankly I usually enjoy it! It can be not only entertaining but also enlightening. So Conor, let it go! Your critique suggests a desire to surpress certain speech…that you find offensive and that annoys me more than the offensive speech! I’d have thought you knew better!

    — Bob Cheeks · May 23, 02:08 PM · #

29. Really? I kind of doubt he said that. What day was it? Levin has an Audio Rewind section. If it was on 5/21’s show or 5/22’s, I heard nothing. Post proof please, or shut the hell up.

    — Atomic Lib Smasher · May 23, 03:30 PM · #

30. Mark Levin is a shock jock, plain and simple, the more outlandish of the LimbaugHannity agit-prop triad that the right uses uses as infomercial spokesmen to disseminate policy “commentary”.

    I think there should be reporting done on Levin’s “#1” book, because I believe his corporate sugar daddies artificially pushed it up the best seller list by pre-buying massive amounts which they are now looking to give away free on sites like TownHall.

    This is not unlike the #1 radio talk shows of LimbaugHannity, where right wing corporations and “foundations” pre-buy airtime, lobby to distribute the shows into more “consolidated” markets where competing stations were bought up and dismantled.

    Propaganda meets the definition of subversion when it refuses to openly debate competing viewpoints. Rush and Sean are therefore even more dangerous than Levin because people actually listen to them. They know full well they are biased mis-reporters of the day’s events, but until forced to present balance by their own audience, they don’t have to.

    — Gus W · May 23, 03:47 PM · #

31. Atomic Lib Smasher, it’s the 5/21 show, and I transcribed it from the rewind. Indefensible, isn’t it.

    Bob, telling someone you can’t understand why their spouse doesn’t put a gun to their temple isn’t political speech.

    — Conor Friedersdorf · May 23, 05:50 PM · #

32. Conor, It might be if the reason you’re telling her to do it is because she’s an annoying and confused Barry supporter!

    — Bob Cheeks · May 23, 08:07 PM · #

33. Conor, on Levin’s behavior, your ‘beneath a gentleman’ idea is off-base. She called his show! And the ‘why do you hate our country?’ stuff sounds an awful lot like schtick that his listeners—including her!— would recognize.

    And do you really contend that this anger is a special feature of right-wing talk shows? Do you think we couldn’t come up with hundreds of much worse examples like the ones I mention above?

    — tom · May 23, 09:09 PM · #

34. A critique of Altemeyer’s research programme can be found here.

    http://jonjayray.tripod.com/altdef.html

    — Art Deco · May 23, 09:33 PM · #

35. “Logically, she can’t win, so it seems like it would be simple to persuade the base to another candidate. Logically”

    I do not think that word means what you think it means.

    — Art Deco · May 23, 09:40 PM · #

36. “Elected on a nanowafer margin of 5 electoral college votes on culturewar issues, he simply wasn’t up to task when 9/11 hit. Lack of substrate.”

    I think you meant to say “lack of substance”. I like our aspirant Presidents to have ‘substance’ as well: about seven years superintending an important public bureaucracy, about the same in the federal Congress (long enough to understand its works but not be socialized into its culture), a dozen years or more earning a living at a serious and demanding trade, a stint in the military, and an orderly domestic life. The current occupant of the White House meets the last criterion.

    — Art Deco · May 23, 09:46 PM · #

37. I think you meant to say “lack of substance”.

    No, I meant lack of substrate. That our last last president was percieved by his advisors as being swayed by bible quotes and convinced that the Grand Misadventure of the Manifest Destiny of Judeoxian Democracy (aka “the Bush Doctrine”) in Iraq was a brilliant idea is deep empirial evidence of a lack of stubstrate.

    — matoko_chan · May 24, 12:05 AM · #

38. ‘Substrate’ is a term from geology. It makes no sense the way you use it.

    — Art Deco · May 24, 12:47 AM · #

39. Ah..Tommy my boy, get a grip would ya? Those pearls you’re clutching must be worn to nubs, what with all of your wailing and rending of garments.

    — Jeebus · May 24, 02:22 AM · #

40. You dems just can’t handle the truth your so blinded by your hatred for America. The tea parties showed the country is rising up against Obama, the usurper imposter from Kenya. Just wait and see, someone, probably Sarah Palin is going to sweep into office after Obama destroys it.

    — Michaella · May 24, 03:34 AM · #

41. The problem is that “shock jocks” are running the GOP . They are your leaders.
    I think they should all follow Mancow’s lead in trying out all the different Cheney torture techniques. Maybe we can thin out the gene pool, and improve the Republican party a bit.

    Michaella, haha, you forgot to hit your CAPS-LOCK before you commented. We’ll be seeing Michaella on the side of the road holding a sign “end times is coming!’ with bible quotes and mumbling to herself very soon!

    The republicans are hosed.

    — el pinche · May 24, 03:56 AM · #

42. Michaellia only speaks the truth El Pinche, would that you had the “orejas” to hear it. (By the way, pinche means more or less “damn or dang.” You have named yourself, “The Dang.”)

    Yomamma swiveld into office due to a moment of weariness and confusion amoungst the faithful, his true identity obscured by the fog of war, a war fought at home and abroad, against two infidel enemy. Even a rightous American can succumb to the rigors and chaos of the battlefield and sink down for a moment, disoriented. But presently, if he has the true grit that is the defining feature of all real Americans—as I assure, that he does—he will regain his senses, feel brother rifle waiting patiently in his hands, and haul himself up. And when that happens, Rightous Americans everywhere will take hold of the domestic body politic and give it a mighty shake, and the infidels clinging to it’s once lusterous pelt will be routed. Then, my illeterate friend (in two languages no less), burdened no more by the blood suckng parasites inherent in a democracy, he will be free to turn his full attention to the infidels of the Levant. Woe unto abdullo and abdulla when that time comes. And woe unto the ticks and fleas that worry at God’s hand on the wheel as he guides—through his anointed agents—the course of this great country.

    — cw · May 24, 05:54 AM · #

43. Seriously, what the hell is this quasi-religious babble even about?

    — 99%nothing · May 24, 06:55 AM · #

44. Art Deco – the word ‘substrate’ has a variety of different meanings, shades of one another, depending upon field and subject. The use I’m familiar with is a ‘substrate language,’ the language of an indigenous population which contributes features (often phonetic) to the language of an invading population (the superstrate language). That’s its use in linguistics, and the term is also used in geology, architecture, biology, biochemistry, printing, electronics and who knows what else. Which isn’t to say I understand Makoto_chan’s use, but I’m admittedly a few steps beyond tipsy.

    And I agree with Anonymous – Mr. Friedersdorf’s language is oddly sexist. It’s an asshole remark regardless of the gender of the speaker and listener; do we need rather condescending and archaic talk of decent gentlemen and how to properly speak to a lady? Levin would be just as much a douche had he told a male his spouse should commit suicide – it’s not something a person should say to another human being, period. (Which isn’t to say Levin’s comments weren’t indicative of underlying misogynism. It’s not something a man would say to another male, attacking his worth by saying he’s unfit for marriage, and implying his only worth is gained through matrimony.)

    — undercat · May 24, 08:41 AM · #

45. cw demonstrates the ability to entwine cognitive dissonance, mangled backwater theology, and bizzaro-world political history, topped with a dollop of duh. Show-off.

    — Paul_D · May 24, 02:39 PM · #

46. Good breeding requires conversation appropriate to setting and stag settings are not mixed company. In a well-ordered society, men and women keep a certain civil distance from each other by default and that precludes the use of expletives and crude insults. Also, to be protective is part of the masculine vocation and that generally precludes crude insults as well. Mr. Friedersdorf is correct.

    — Art Deco · May 24, 03:47 PM · #

47. Ok, in matoko-speak, substrate means human capital then, as in David Brooks remark on Sarah Palin’s lack of human capital. Broadly speaking, it means genetic and memetic ability, both inherent and acquired talent and skill, ie intelligence and education and experience. Substrate can have domain specific meanings. In embrology cognitive substrate means the amount of neocortical tissue at that point in gestation.
    Alas, el Pinche is probably right about Michaella and the fascism-shouters….the GOP has devolved into a party led by a whole crewe of Sandwichboard Guys.

    — matoko_chan · May 24, 11:04 PM · #

48. REPENT!!!!!

    /giggles

    — matoko_chan · May 24, 11:08 PM · #

49. If Mr. Brooks actually did say ‘lack of human capital’, he is a writer not picky about the use of words. Presumably he means, ‘deficit of human capital’.

    Neither you nor David Brooks has administered a psychometric examination to Gov. Palin; her baccalaureate degree was in journalism rather than one of the liberal arts (Harry Truman had no degree) and she apparently is not a bibliophile (neither was Gerald Ford). She was the only one of the four candidates who had ever superintended a public bureaucracy, but evidently that does not count as ‘experience’.

    — Art Deco · May 24, 11:48 PM · #

50. Conor — you make it a point to continually bash conservatives in the limelight. Post after post, you talk about what we’re all doing wrong. You give fodder to those who will certainly not HELP take conservative thought to the place we’d like it to be. Some people — like Levin — are outlandish but your continual bashing is of no help to anyone. You merely sound like a snobby know it all who doesn’t actually have any solutions either. By putting attention on the idiotic things some conservative “celebrities” (like Levin) do, you help paint conservatism negatively. But there are plenty of GOOD examples to uplift as well. I believe you claim to be conservative yourself — and if you are in support of that ideology surviving and thriving in the future, I would recommend you stop bashing it so heartily on a regular basis. I know you are a writer and it’s good stuff for blogs and columns but … it’s disheartening to see such a talented guy doing nothing but harm to a cause that is still worth BELIEVING in.

    — Jessica · May 25, 01:52 AM · #

51. “… it’s disheartening to see such a talented guy doing nothing but harm to a cause that is still worth BELIEVING in.”

    Exactly. Ours is a sacred undertaking. We transport this holy flame through these dark times, passing it from cupped hand to cupped hand, sheltering it from the spittle spewing lips of the Friedersdorks and the Salamis of this world as they blather on about how our sacred creed needs “updating”. THe nerve, the ignorance, the affront! It would be humerous if it wasn’t so presumptuous. It’s as if a gaggle of San Francisco decorators decended apon our saviors holy seplicure proposing a makeover. Do they not realize that eternal values are eternal? Do they not comprehend what we are trying to CONSERVE here?

    Those who would tart up Conservativism are nothing but weak souled pant-wetters, cowed by a moment of adversity. Their “big tent” is nothing more than an ad hoc strip show held in an abandonded quanset hut, a pathetic, musky jiggling designed to attract corrupted spirits and weak minds. Well, Conservativism is at heart a state of character and their weak mindedness precludes the Friedersdorks and Salamis from membership in the very brotherhood they seek to reform. This storm we pass through was sent by providence to weed out the unsound. We will emerge on the dark side of this storm a tempered blade of diamond purity, a fearsome weapon fitted to the hand of our Lord and his fearsome purpose.

    — cw · May 25, 03:17 AM · #

52. Wow….that was a thing of beauty, cw, my master.
    I chose wisely, to be the padawan-learner of a Sith Lord.

    Art Deco….Sarah Palin was an indifferent and unmemorable student, requiring five Class “B” schools to finish one 4 year degree. Her teachers didn’t even remember her, for the most part. Her two college-age children are not in college, and her ascension to governorship devolved solely from her looks as far most of us can tell.
    Palin is a dim eighties chick with big hair and mall bangs that still speaks in Heartland Pageant Speak and couldn’t even command the allegiance of 80’s hairbands.

    — matoko_chan · May 25, 06:34 AM · #

53. Motoko_chan, her children are not running for public office. Neither is her husband.

    You can elect to impute to the electorate of Alaska anything you please. ‘Tis of no interest to the rest of us.

    Now let us consider the achievements of the One.

    1. Number of years in solo practice: 0
    2. Name of the partnership he founded with friends after law school: [no such]
    3. Established firms which granted him a partnership: [no such]
    4. Number of years practicing law: [pro-rating his part-time work, about 3 years between 1991 and 2002]
    5. Year granted tenure by the University of Chicago Law School: [he was a part time adjunct and not eligible for tenure].
    6. Number of scholarly articles Lecturer Obama placed in academic and professional journals: 0
    7. Number of years devoted to trades other than law and politics since age 22: 2
    8. Number of years as an executive in public agencies of the City of Chicago, the State of Illinois, or the United States: 0
    9. Number of years in Congress: 4
    10. Number of years in Congress not allocated to pursuit of the Presidency: ~2

    He got good grades in school, though. Makes all the difference.

    — Art Deco · May 25, 12:04 PM · #

54. Mark Levin’s show format isn’t inclusive by design. The calls are screened to get the most awkward liberal representatives (lisps etc…) It would be interesting to hear Levin in a real debate as he would be quite formidable. The only debates he’s had with capable people were ambush debates like with Paul Hackett.

    — American Pundit Fighting · May 25, 12:38 PM · #

55. He got good grades in school, though. Makes all the difference.

    Yup, demonstration of sufficient intellectual substrate. I cite Palin’s children as evidence of her disdain for academe…..don’t you want your children to go to college? I thought education was the greatest good for conservative family values peeps.
    In service to My Adored Dark Lord of the Sith, otherwise known to y’all as cw, I feel I simply must post this link.
    Academe still in full mock mode on Palin.

    — matoko_chan · May 25, 04:09 PM · #

56. Excellent work young Matoko. Now I want you to go to Crispy Cream and get me some donuts. Some sort of an assortment, but make sure there are at least 2 or 3 jelly- or cream-filled.

    — cw · May 25, 04:36 PM · #

57. What you want for your own children depends on what their individual interests and capacities are.

    I would refer you to Christopher Lasch’s assessments of the notion of upward mobility, most particularly the notion that it was a prevailing theme in 19th century discourses about the ends of life or proper social policy in America. In Lasch’s reading, the real aspiration expressed by those who wrote was that everyone should have a ‘competence’. Any society larger than an agricultural settlement has occupational strata, and your job as a father is to guide your children to the optimal place within those strata.

    One might also like one’s children to have a certain quantum of liberal education. The there are aspects of that utile to asking and answering important questions about life, aspects of that utile to apprehending a miscellany of disciplines, and aspects of that utile toward the end of exercising your mind to appreciate the aesthetical. The trouble is, a great many people will just never be introspective or contemplative and a great many others will never be artistic or intellectual hobbyists. That is true of some highly intelligent people. Larding on more and more formal schooling comes to exceed the opportunity cost of so doing.

    Academe is bloated and inefficient toward the achievement of any aim the professoriate could defend publicly. We need a renaissance of primary and secondary education, not ever escalating quanta of tertiary education which functions merely to delay entry into adult life. If the baccalaureate degree incorporated a requirement that students follow a core curriculum that included logic, epistemology, ethics, aesthetics, metaphysics, calculus, statistics, and surveys of the history of civilizations, they might have an excuse for the time and money they screw out of the youth of the nation in pursuit of an employment credential. It does not, so they do not.

    — Art Deco · May 25, 05:00 PM · #

58. Art Deco wrote: “In a well-ordered society, men and women keep a certain civil distance from each other by default”

    What are you, Saudi?

    — Jon H · May 26, 11:03 AM · #

59. Nice Jon. Ha.

    — Jessica · May 26, 01:44 PM · #

60. The split between rational thinking moderates and the more extreme right led by Levin, Limbaugh, and Hannity reminds me of The Lord of the Flies. The latter, unfortunately, have the bigger conch and their audience simply fails to see it’s paid for by advertisers. The New Majority has its work cut out for them – especially since there will be no Deus Ex Machina to save them. They will have to effect their own rescue, all the while keeping in mind what happened to Piggy.

    — The skepTick · May 26, 07:27 PM · #

61. Art Deco pwn3ed you clowns.

    Long Live Levin.

    — Balsac T. Bagher · May 26, 09:13 PM · #

62. That Sarah Palin stuff was bizarre, as Ross Douthat said a few times.

    I think Reihan and Ross have killed the GOP with their support for Palin.
    Happy Now?

    — matoko_chan · May 26, 11:43 PM · #

63. You libs dish it out, but you can’t take it. Why don’t all of you libs move to California and get married.

    — john foust · May 27, 06:07 PM · #

Commenting is closed for this article.

↑ Standing Athwart Your Accountant Yelling "Don't You Dare Stop, Whatever You Have to Charge Me Later"

↓ the dyes from gas-tar

All contents copyright The American Scene unless otherwise noted. Colophon. Archive.