ABOVE: Rembrandt van Rijn (Dutch, 1606–1669). Portrait
of Jan Steyn, 1654. Oil on broadsheet.
Shorter Mark “Rhymes With Whine” Steyn, MacLooney’s:
Major Nidal Hasan had an enabler
Jean-David Ruisseau, Self Portrait with Pretty Hat
(c. 1776) (crayola on white drywall)
David Brooks, The New York Times
The Other Education
ABOVE: Matt Towery
Shorter Matt Towery, Clown Hall
I’m Thankful I Knew America When There Was Such A Thing As A “Busy Signal”
ABOVE: Jay Nordlinger and Turkey (front to back)
Shorter Jay Nordlinger, America’s Shittiest Website™:
Re ‘Attack of the Seven-Foot Fairy?’
Shorter John J. Miller, America’s Shittiest Website™:
Thankful
Shorter Debbie Schlüsselputer:
Thanksgiving Is NOT for Vegetarians
If there is anything viler than a plump, well-fed, rosy-cheeked white guy getting all huffy about a USDA study on food insecurity because he sees poor people who are fat, I really can’t imagine what it would be. Well, maybe Jay Nordlinger describing the act of teabagging, but that’s an entirely different story.
Charles Lane, who took refuge at Freddie Hiatt’s House of Horrors after his unsuccessful stint at the New Republic as the editor for Stephen Glass, has decided that his effort to make the world a better place as we approach the Thanksgiving holiday is to argue that poor people need less food, not more. It is, perhaps, enough to make me wish that, if Lane should start choking on a huge-ass mouthful of turkey and dressing from his prodigiously over-burdened Thanksgiving spread, no one will know how to perform the Heimlich maneuver on him.
But is “hunger” widespread in America these days? That is the misleading impression created by press coverage of the USDA study. Headlines … made it sound as if famine stalks the land.
I think it should be a rule that before any person on the Washington Post editorial board writes a column on hunger they have to have spend as much time working in a food bank or at soup kitchen as they’ve spent eating during just one day. That would certainly have had at least a chance of stopping Lane from writing nonsense like this:
When you crack into the data, however, they don’t support this dire portrayal. The USDA report is based on a survey of 44,000 households. They were asked if, and how, a lack of funds affected their eating habits. The first question was whether the respondent had ever “worried” about running out of food in the previous 12 months — not actually run out of food, just worried about it. A “yes” answer counts as “food insecurity.” Adults are asked if they ever lost weight due to a lack of food money — but not how much weight, or what they weighed before. In theory, a 300-pound man who lost a pound could count as “food insecure.” Similarly, the questionnaire asks whether parents “cut” their kids’ portions at any point in the last year — without specifying what the portions were before and after.
For starters, this was just an out-and-out lie. Answering one of the questions, such as whether one worried about running out of food, wasn’t enough to be classed as food insecure. Nor would one fall into that category just because they served their kids two less strands of spaghetti as Lane falsely implies. There had to be positive responses to at least three questions. Oops. Ultimately, after having his ass shredded into tiny pieces by the commenters on his article, Lane issued a “clarification.” Ahem. “Clarification” — his word — means he stopped short of admitting that he just made the shit up out of whole cloth, evidently an extremely touchy subject for Lane.
To compound the elitist hackery, Lane also completely neglects the most significant parts of the study, which were the findings relative to households that were not just “food insecure” but which had “very low food security.” Of course, he couldn’t talk about the latter category when trying to create the impression that poor people were feasting on foie gras, cream sauces, and Kobe beef. To be “very food insecure,” you had to answer six of the ten questions affirmatively. And by the time a household has answered that many questions affirmatively that household is unlikely to include folks who have simply been forced to switch from beluga to ossetra caviar or to give up adding white truffles to their risottos.
Here are some of the things the study reports about households with very low food security
- 98 percent reported having worried that their food would run out before they got money to buy more.
- 96 percent reported that the food they bought just did not last and they did not have money to get more.
- 94 percent reported that they could not afford to eat balanced meals.
- 97 percent reported that an adult had cut the size of meals or skipped meals because there was not enough money for food.
- 88 percent reported that this had occurred in 3 or more months.
- In 93 percent, respondents reported that they had eaten less than they felt they should because there was not enough money for food.
- In 66 percent, respondents reported that they had been hungry but did not eat because they could not afford enough food.
Worse yet, households with very low food security jumped from 4.1% to 5.7% between 2007 and 2008, the highest jump in the last ten years. Figures for families at the poverty level are even more problematic. Between 2007 and 2008, the percentage of families at the poverty line that had very low food security jumped from 14% to 19.3%.
Never mind all that, Lane dismissed the whole problem because he sees fat people on the street.
Look at the people on the street today: Based on that, would you say that America has a hunger problem or an obesity problem?
Again, if Lane had read the study that he is so busy dismissing, he might have noticed that there is a connection between obesity and food security. Indeed, two of the questions in the food security survey focus on the inability of respondents to buy balanced meals. More on the connection between poverty, nutritious foods and obesity can be found here. People who have little money to spend on food aren’t able to buy nutritious foods, both because such foods are more expensive and because poor people often live miles from grocery stores, meaning that they have to buy most of their food in convenience stores where only three food groups are featured — soda, candy bars and snacks.
So, Mr. Lane, scoff all you will at people who are poor and fat. Prop that up in your own feeble mind as a justification for ignoring issues of food security, hunger and nutritional health among the poor. And, please, sir, go ahead and have a second helping of everything on Thanksgiving. Have another glass of that $60 bottle of Merlot. After all, you deserve it for all your hard work.
I swear to God, I do not get the Villager mindset. Look at Howard Fineman’s latest column:
I’m not sure the rest of the world sees the White House as “the place to be” any more. And that will have unsettling consequences for all of us.
Obama’s role as the elegant, path-breaking, intercultural celebrity is not enough to reverse a steady erosion of our global dominance — especially not if he’s seen merely as a new hood ornament on an economic clunker. [...]
I was in London and Paris last week while Obama was making his first trip to Asia. I kept paging through the local papers for stories about the trip. They were only few — almost none. He was all but invisible, except when bowing deeply to the emperor of Japan. There weren’t many stories about the United States, either.
In the business world of London, the talk last week was all about the money pouring into China, India, and Brazil, and to a lesser extent, Russia. [...]
In Paris, the headlines and the political talk I heard and read did not focus on our president or our prospects, but on the selection of a new — and no longer merely symbolic — leader for a United Europe. Europeans were talking to each other directly; Americans were not, as far as I could tell, very much a part of the conversation.
Good Christ.
If there is one thing that drives me completely bonkers about American elites, it’s their nationalist narcissism. They believe not only that America has the right and the duty to be the “dominant” country in the world, but that every other country in the world should be talking forever about how wonderful we are. Heaven forbid that Europeans actually concern themselves with… European politics! Egad! Why are they not discussing the glories of Ronald Reagan!
I actually feel sort of sorry for guys like Fineman. Their very manhood is defined by whether the United States government makes them feel powerful. This was why they were such boosters initially of the Iraq war: because sending others to kill and be killed in triumphant imperial combat gave them a vicarious thrill of feeling stronger than people in other countries.
As for me, I couldn’t give less of a shit if foreigners think America is the bestest country in the whole wide world. I’d like to have a government that provides for national defense (note: this does not mean empire building), that provides a good social safety net for its citizens and that generally tries not to muck up the environment for everyone else. Oh, and that tries to make sure that major financial crises don’t level the economy and stuff. But really, that’s all. I don’t want to rely upon my government to make me feel adequately endowed; after all, I’ve received several email messages informing me that I can get $.99 P1LLZ!!!! for that sort of thing.
I mean, come on, man, look at this. How can you not feel embarrassed to write this nonsense:
I’m not a “declinist.” I have faith in our special destiny and re-generative powers.
Our “special destiny”???? What kind of “special destiny” is that? Who endowed us with this “special destiny” and what have we done to deserve it?
Look, man, the fact that your mom and your dad happened to conceive your pasty white ass on the hunk of soil known as the United States of America doesn’t make you Luke Skywalker. Grow up and get real.
The always-excellent Matt Taibbi is puzzled as to why our press corps enjoys needling ex-Governor Moose Eater even as it spent years kissing Bush’s ass:
What the people who are flipping out about the treatment of Palin should be asking themselves is what it means when it’s not just jerks like us but everybody piling on against Palin. [...] You had [the mainstream press corps] eating out of the palms of your hands (remember what it was like in the Dixie Chicks days?). Now they’re all drawing horns and Groucho mustaches on your heroes, and rapidly transitioning you from your previous political kingmaking role in the real world to a new role as a giant captive entertainment demographic that exists solely to be manipulated for ratings and ad revenue. What you should be asking yourself is why this is happening to you. Even I don’t know the answer to that question, but honestly, I don’t really care. All I know is that I find it extremely funny.
The answer is extremely obvious: this is happening because the press corps worships power. When the GOP ran the show in the early part of this decade, we heard all sorts of stories about how rock-ribbed Republicans were in touch with Real America while fruity-assed Democrats only appealed to snooty college professors and swishy Europeans. Now that they’ve lost power, they’re looked upon somewhat less favorably, although that hasn’t stopped Politico from writing daily pieces on how the GOP is destined to win a 5,430-seat majority in the 2010 midterm elections.
I think people who complain about a “liberal” or “conservative” media largely miss the point — the biggest problem with most of our press is that it’s in equal measures shallow and flat-out stupid. Indeed, most horse-race-obsessed political reporters shift their allegiances based on weekly polling and quarterly fund-raising numbers and are no better than 18th-Century French courtiers. Jake Tapper, Evan Thomas, Maureen Dowd and the whole Heathers crew at Politico could give two shits about what issues are actually at stake. The most important things for them are to be amused and entertained by catching politicians making silly off-hand remarks that they can spend weeks ridiculing.
I’d also like to point out that while Ex-Governor Moose Eater is indeed frightfully ignorant, her views aren’t all that out of line with standard Washington orthodoxy, especially when it comes to Israel. As Dan Larison notes:
The trouble with Palin’s views on settlements and Israel-Palestine is not that they are on the fringe, but that they are as deeply misinformed about political realities in the region as so many of the consensus views mentioned above. As with all of those, it is the ill-informed and ideologically-driven position that prevails when it comes to policy decisions.
Very true. And if ex-Governor Moose Eater’s polling numbers ever start to significantly climb (which I don’t think is very likely since she’s one of the most disorganized politicians I’ve ever seen), then expect the Village courtiers to proclaim her as the voice of Real America.
OK, so as much as I like to criticize the press corps for doting on silly off-hand remarks, I am not above guffawing at a Republican state senator who complains about teh gheys “stuffing it down his throat all the time”:
(Via.)
Slightly Shorter John J. Miller, America’s Shittiest Website™
A Book the Left Doesn’t Want You to Read
Agnolo Bronzino (prob. Jacopo Pontormo): “Portrait of a
Shitmoat Builder with Her Litter“(c. 1530)(soil on wood)
Amy Alkon, Advice Shitmoatress Blog
Burka Barbie!
Amy Alkon, Advice Shitmoatress Blog
Vote Your Melanin
Toronto Star Interview with Amy Alkon:
I beg your *#$@%%*! pardon
The Shortest Brent Bozell Ever, NewsDouches
Words for Potent Jerks*
*Veiled penis reference?
Oh hey look, it’s the Tea Party documentary trailer:
Things I love about this trailer:
Boston readers, I’ll invite you to a screening of this fine film once I get my hands on it.
Not content to remain permanently in the shadow of the succès fou of Jonah’s magnum opus Liberal Fascism: From Mark Twain to Oat Bran Muffins, John J. Miller, the resident dork at America’s Shittiest Website™ and perpetrator of the 100 Most Awesome Conservative Rock Songs, has become an author (of sorts). His long-awaited masterpiece The First Assassin is hot off the presses, well, the press, well, the laser printer.
Here is Miller’s touching description of the novel’s long path to self-publication:
When I finished writing The First Assassin, I tried to sell it to a traditional publisher the old fashioned way, as I had done with my previous books of non-fiction. Yet I couldn’t find a publisher that was willing to take a chance on a first-time novelist during the worst economy of our lives. I didn’t exhaust my options in this area, but I did start to explore alternatives.
The First Assassin is available exclusively online through a new print-on-demand service: If you order a copy, they’ll print one and mail it to you. My partner is CreateSpace.com, a subsidiary of Amazon.com. During this “soft launch” phase, The First Assassin may be purchased only through CreateSpace.com (here). Soon, it will also be listed on Amazon.com. … Those will be the only ways of obtaining copies. You won’t find The First Assassin in book stores.
Since I had no problem finding recently published first novels and I have a neighbor who just published a first novel, I think the reason for Miller’s lawn-sized trash bag filled with rejection notices might just perhaps have more to do with the novel itself than the economy. It might have something to do with, for example, the blurb for the novel that mentions “Portia, a beautiful slave who holds a vital clue, hundreds of miles away.”
Another reason that the novel’s manuscript made a resounding thud into the rejection bin may have been that most readers would not be in much suspense over whether a guy named Lorenzo Smith would kill Lincoln. Well, perhaps Miller’s likely fans — many of whom believe that dinosaurs once roamed the earth with man — would stay up all night reading to discover the book’s answer to that question.
Or maybe the universal thumbs-down had something to do with this riveting description from the first chapter of Miller’s thriller:
He saw the engine’s massive oil lamp mounted on top the smoke box. It gazed forward like the unblinking eye of a mechanical cyclops. Behind it were the cab, the coal tender, and a line of cars. Flags and streamers covered them all. The whole train glistened from a recent cleaning.
Apparently Miller is under the impression that even self-published authors get paid by the word, else he wouldn’t have bothered to point out that trains generally have a line of cars behind the engine and where the oil lamp was mounted. And “mechanical Cyclops” — what an original and compelling metaphor for a train! So original and compelling that I quickly found it also used for a train in the straight-to-paperback bodice-ripper “Distant Dreams” — in the second paragraph.
To add to the hilarity, Miller is over at Big HollyButt, pleading, no, begging on his knees for someone, anyone, to pick up the film option for his book. He even wants Tom Selleck to be in the film. (I deeply apologize for mentioning that. Miller’s inadvertent revelation of his preferred wanking material really should have stayed over at Big HollyButt where it belonged and not have been shared here to the detriment of the gentle sensibilities of all SadlyNauts.)
Miller currently has three glowing reviews at Amazon. That is probably explained by this:
Shorter Matthew Balan, NewsBusted:
CNN blah blah CSPI blah blah Popcorn blah blah Left-Wing
Grant Wood: West Virginia Gothic (1930)
(oil on beaverboard)(no … seriously … on beaverboard.)
Shorter Don “Bill Bob” Surber, Charlsten Daley Male
The Old Cow
Super Wingnut Rich Lowry sits down with ex-Governor Moose Eater for an interview. As you’d expect, it’s a typically tough and hard-hitting interview that mostly asks ex-Governor Moose Eater about how sad she feels when mean elite people are mean to her. Just look at the wholesome normal every-day goodness that the moose-eating former governor displays here:
She’s become used to this kind of attack: “If the elites and the mainstream media are uncomfortable with average, everyday Americans having a voice, then of course they’re going to attack the one who happens to have the megaphone.”
I do love this construction.
Just to remind you, ex-Governor Moose Eater is not some backwoods hillbilly who lives in a shack. She is, in fact, a very wealthy celebrity and former vice-presidential nominee. I, on the other hand, make a barely-middle class salary and drive a used Ford Taurus. But then again, I’ve never eaten a moose, meaning that I’m not in touch with Real America, which is only known to former governors and writers at the National Review.
More moose-eating goodness to follow:
It wouldn’t be a Palin interview without asking about “death panels.” How did she come up with the phrase? “To me, while reading that section of the bill, it became so evident that there would be a panel of bureaucrats who would decide on levels of health care, decide on those who are worthy or not worthy of receiving some government-controlled coverage,” she explains. “Since health care would have to be rationed if it were promised to everyone, it would therefore lead to harm for many individuals not able to receive the government care. That leads, of course, to death.”
Hey Politico, Washington Post, everyone — can you guys please go back to ignoring this crazy person and let us handle her? There are actual issues that need to be covered. You needn’t waste your time on a full-fledged loon who is barely a step above Pam Geller.
ABOVE:Bernardo Strozzi (attr.), Man in Full, Portrait of
Jonassandro del Oroburro (17th cent.)
Somewhat Shorter Loadpants, America’s Shittiest Website™
Why Contribute to NRO?
ABOVE: Bronzino, Portrait of a Young Moron (c. 1530)(sludge on wood)
Shorter Ben Smith, My Daddy Ruined A Bank And All I Got Was A Shitty Political Website And Some Crappy TV Stations:
Playing the race card on ‘Going Rogue’
Shorter Robert Stacey McCain, The Worse McCain:
Ben Smith, Right and Wrong
ABOVE: Godzilla (right) v. Destoroyah (left)
Shorter Debbie Schlüsselcheiße, Debbie Schlüsselscheiße:
HUH?!: Geller “Anti-”Honor Killing Rally Features Mother Who Conspired to Kill Daughters
The latest hullabaloo over in Fucktardville is that Obama, cleverly remonikered by the perpetually scintillating Dan Riehl as O-Bow-Now (harharharhar, you’re killing us, Dan!), bowed to the Emperor of Japan. Apparently, the appropriate wingnut protocol in this instance would have been spitting in the Emperor’s face, then kicking him in the rubber parts before shouting “This, Mr. Slanty-Eyes, is for Pearl Harbor, Hello Kitty, and Toyota!”
Of course, not a peep was heard from any of these perpetually-outraged, self-pissing, nose-picking, Funyun-munching, mouth-breathing, middle-school dropout bloggers over any of this:
