Conservatives: Still “crazy,” and proud of it, after all these years
If, last Sunday, you spent a profitless hour reading the Washington Post (itself not too profitable), you noticed the loud yapping and desperate nipping at those who disagree with liberal orthodoxy. It was as if top management were a toy schnauzer accidentally mistaken for a duster and traumatized by being run back and forth through the venetian blinds. The wise and prestigious broadsheet institution was so barking mad that it sent three (Three! In these times of hardship for the print media! When reporters are being laid off right and left–well, mostly right–and stories are going uncovered from rapidly warming pole to pole! Three!) journalists to do battle with “The Return of Right-Wing Rage.”
That was the subtitle of Rick Perlstein’s section B leader. The title was “In America, Crazy Is a Preexisting Condition.” Perlstein wrote the book Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus so you can intuit (or “grok” as Perlstein might put it, given his prose style) the contents of his article. Yes, Rick, right-wing rage has returned. It was up at my place for the weekend. But it’s back, and it’s not like right-wing rage ever really went away. It didn’t, as you would say, Rick, “move on.”…
Perlstein, for all the highness of his dudgeon, doesn’t catch the nuts saying anything very nutty. The closest he gets to a lunatic quote is from a “libertarian” wearing a holstered pistol who declares that the “tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time by the blood of tyrants and patriots.” And those are the words of lefty icon Thomas Jefferson. I myself could point out the absurdity of protestors’ concerns about government euthanasia committees. Federal bureaucracy has never moved fast enough to get to the ill and elderly before natural causes do. And what’s with those “birthers”? Why their obsession with a nonentity like Obama? How about John Adams with his Alien and Sedition Acts choke-hold on the First Amendment? Or Jefferson? He could tell his Monica Lewinsky, “I own you,” and he wasn’t kidding. Or John Quincy Adams, pulling the original Blagojevich, buying the presidency from Henry Clay? Or that backwoods Bolshevik Andrew Jackson? Or William Henry Harrison, too dumb to come in out of the rain? Not one of these scallywags was born in the United States of America–look it up.
Blowback
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I can imagine in his abject horror he might have trouble remembering this:
(big content warning)
http://www.zombietime.com/hall_of_shame/
Mommypundit on August 28, 2009 at 9:29 AM
I don’t understand what’s crazy about wanting a fiscally solvent government (especially since we are all the ones paying). I always thought that the person who pays gets to make the rules (that’s what my dad always said).
How come the people making the rules are the people spending, not the people paying?
So at the beginning of the month, we have Boxer saying that the protesters were too well dressed. By the end of the month, we have the WaPo saying that the protesters aren’t dressed well enough.
And all that time, the protesters’ complaint has remained steady. . . stop spending money you don’t have and giving the bill to our children.
ThackerAgency on August 28, 2009 at 9:32 AM
I really like O’Rourke
Doctor Zhivago on August 28, 2009 at 9:32 AM
It’s crazy because the Left sets the perimeters. We have to stop letting them do that. I think the crazy tree has potential to be worked into signs and t-shirts. It would be extra sweet for someone to profit from the intended insult.
Cindy Munford on August 28, 2009 at 9:40 AM
I do, too. Sharp wit.
Mommypundit on August 28, 2009 at 9:40 AM
For your entertainment, I think I read the most delusional, exactly-backwards comment I’ve ever seen from a leftwinger in a strong field or competitors at the WaPo link:
Yes – we all rushed to the defense of Sanford and Vitter. And this was evidenced most outrageously and memorably by…who?
If you want to see what leftwingers mean by “standing behind their leaders,” look no further than the Democrats who voted over and over again for their favorite fat, lying, lecherous drunk blowhard after he KILLED A WOMAN and served no penalty for it – for 4 decades.
This guy literally lives in an parallel universe of his own creation.
The rest of the comment is the typical anti-capitalist, inane, economically illiterate drivel we’ve come to expect from O-bots pretending they’re just trying to nationalize one-fifth of the US economy “for your own good.”
Good Lt on August 28, 2009 at 9:41 AM
Pure literary genius
/
cntrlfrk on August 28, 2009 at 9:42 AM
Well, didn’t the look ummm, comfortable? I think it’s safe to say that the Left has blinders on.
Cindy Munford on August 28, 2009 at 9:43 AM
Keep insulting the American people.
We really couldn’t demonstrate that the left and Obama were nutty crackpots before he got elected – the press did too good a job protecting them.
But nothing says “Look at me! I’m a NUT CASE!” quite like pointing at 75% of Americans and telling them they’re idiots!
2010 will be a great year.
And I hope Sarah Palin is buying her new wardrobe for 2012 – I think she’ll need it.
HondaV65 on August 28, 2009 at 9:44 AM
There was more!?!? That was enlightening. In the future I will remember that it is real hard really to be wrong and try to work up the proper amount of sympathy for the Left and the load they must carry in their dealing with the Right. /
Cindy Munford on August 28, 2009 at 9:57 AM
Yes, but that was before czars and reconciliation measures were the rage. Look how fast the Fed and Treasury threw money to Wall Street financial banks and how fast congress committed billions to economic porkulus. Don’t think it can’t happen to the ill and elderly.
Fletch54 on August 28, 2009 at 10:01 AM
+1000
mizflame98 on August 28, 2009 at 10:06 AM
Hear, hear!!
More, please, P.J.
Nothing enrages liberals more than having their pious sanctimony punctured by cutting wit and sarcasm.
rockmom on August 28, 2009 at 10:06 AM
We have a lot of great wits on our side of the ballpark, but you can’t beat PJ. He is hands down the longest running coolest wit around. If you don’t regularly read his stuff, or haven’t read his books, you are so missing out. I love how he mentions Robin Givhan. Of the Robin Givhan-who-thinks-MichelleO-rocked-those-shorts-the-other-day fame. She is a veritable fount of BS. If you didn’t read it all, you missed out.
di butler on August 28, 2009 at 10:06 AM
Oh, how I love his wit! P. J. O’Rourke is a national treasure.
Puddleglum on August 28, 2009 at 10:17 AM
Parliment of Whores is a masterpiece and still relevant 18 years later.
Squid Shark on August 28, 2009 at 10:40 AM
Umm, yeah, except in that little case called Nazi Germany.
I don’t care about the opinion of someone so willfully ignorant about history.
BakerAllie on August 28, 2009 at 10:43 AM
PJ is great. And it was nice that unlike certain other “conservative” writers he didn’t fall under sway of Dear Leader last autumn.
rbj on August 28, 2009 at 10:47 AM
I’ve recently accused AP and Ed of not actually reading the links they provide before they pass them along (with comment). In this case it would appear that O’Rourke didnt bother to read Rick Perlstein’s piece before commenting on it.
O’Rourke:
Uh, PJ? That was the whole point of Perlstein’s piece. As he says in the article:
He didnt say it moved on; he specifically said that it never really went away. If O’Rourke had bothered to read the article before criticizing it – heck, if he’d managed to comprehend merely the title – he’d see that he agrees with Perlstein on at least this point.
orange on August 28, 2009 at 11:00 AM
Someone talking about reading should really learn to read critically. O’Rourke was in no way contesting it. It was a whimsical condescension. Even signaled by “Yes,…” which usually indicates agreement. Duh.
I’m waiting to see if you can top this in utterly trivial objections. It’s like the first couple of deft blows from O’Roarke staggered you and you thenceforth waded into the article looking for the first nit you could pick.
Axeman on August 28, 2009 at 11:43 AM
If you haven’t, I highly suggest reading the following essay from PJ which is hands down (in my opinion) his all time best.
How to Explain Conservatism to Your Squishy Liberal Friends: Individualism ‘R’ Us
Tman on August 28, 2009 at 12:04 PM
My favorite O’Rourke line: no woman every fantasized of being held down and ravished by a liberal.
John the Libertarian on August 28, 2009 at 12:09 PM
The “Yes” came in the sentence “Yes, Rick, right-wing rage has returned.” Then he added “…it’s not like right-wing rage ever really went away.” as if he was saying something Perlstein hadnt specifically said in his piece. He was condescendingly correcting Perlstein for something Perlstein never claimed.
I mean, he was making fun of the subtitle of the piece, which was probably not even written by Perlstein. Ed Morrissey recently posted saying that he disagreed with the editor-chosen headline of a piece he wrote. O’Rourke surely knows that it’s quite likely Perlstein didnt write the subtitle, yet he still wants to mock him for it. It’s as if he only read the subtitle and didnt read the article.
I stopped reading at that point, since it was clear that O’Rourke was commenting on an article that he had utterly failed to understand, if even read. If “completely missing the point” is a nit, then so be it.
orange on August 28, 2009 at 12:28 PM
He didn’t completely miss the point. He was summarizing it and ho-humming it. That’s what the comment about it being at his place over the weekend is about.
If you would have looked on page 2, here’s where O’Roarke said there are more solid arguments for what Perlstein was trying to do:
But he concludes
The bold text shows you that he knows that Perlstein is recounting a history, and he even gives a historical citation by Perlstein. But you just badly overread one little sentence and decided that from that one little snippet you could judge the entire piece.
What a facility for nuance you have. A couple of misread sentences and you can tell that O’Roarke didn’t read the piece despite that O’Roarke later characterizes Perlstein’s article just the way you have.
Axeman on August 28, 2009 at 4:07 PM