Watching The Defectives
Hi, and welcome to Erick Erickson Chumpwatch for April 2nd, 2009.
When last we encountered the brick-hued and meaty-handed Mr. Erickson of RedState, on March 31st, Calgon had taken him away, and he was fantasizing about attacking people and “beat[ing] them to a bloody pulp,” about people rising up in armed rebellion and himself holing up in some shack or bell tower with a firearm, and that whole sort of thing that the right has been prone to lately. Nobody who appreciates the strange psychology of these people will find it surprising that his next epistle was about the liberal thugs and goons who are going around thugging and gooning people.
Yes, and if anyone is squinting around with a little Trotsky-style pince-nez pinced at the end of his long, curious nez, hoping to spot whoopsies and boners, joy awaits them at the local astronomical observatory, for the charts there will confirm that today is April 6th.
Why the holdup? I suspect my old enemy, time. It has also been literally — and I don’t mean ‘literally’ in the perverse figurative sense, where it somehow means ‘figuratively’; but literal in the literal sense, where that second ‘literal’ isn’t figurative either — impossible to finish writing this thing because Erickson keeps rendering it obsolete. He keeps topping it, keeps negatively outsmarting me.
Such as the following, anent the prior Yosemite Sam tantrum, where it was like he suspected we were up to something, and wanted to make sure we didn’t spoil a laugh-a-minute thrill ride by investing his character with too much self-reflection:
I asked the question [about violent revolt]. Since then I’ve been under a leftist barage of criticism. Keep in mind that the people now attacking me for wanting a revolution (something I don’t want) are the same people who were convinced Dick Cheney was going to launch a coup and refuse to vacate the premises earlier this year.
In addition to not having a great reading comprehension, they are crazy.
Does it get any better than that? I thought not. I thought wrong. Today it was this.
Until today, I wouldn’t have been able to walk silently away from such a masterpiece of fail, such a veritable, meaning ‘figurative,’ anglerfish lure of mixed antagonistic, self-pitying, triumphal, and flattering styles — one with almost no statement not false or trivial, almost no idea not backwards and upside-down. It’s like finding money on the sidewalk. Worse in the sense of moral hazard, it plays into many of my pet theories, including the one referenced just above of the four Wingnut Emotional Modes (a.k.a. the ‘yum, yuck, yikes, and yawn’ theory), reinforcing the illusion, fatal to theories, that people are simple and can be divided into types.
I’m walking away. Brad has dibs on it, and maybe he has even done a post on it already — I haven’t looked.
Because okay, where were we? Headache, weary self-assessment, recess with snack and juice, Erickson.
Oh dear God. Let me, you know, go back to it tonight. There’s a part at the end that depends on pictures, and doesn’t have the right ones yet because I kept rewriting the parts-not-at-the-end, and who even knows if Brad is doing the…heh, almost got me again there. Maybe I’ll just go look at it. I won’t actually touch it or poke at it or anything.
Until then, what’s with this inarticulate wingnuts questioning people’s language skills thing? Like, is this guy actually trying to say that an expression isn’t used correctly unless it’s already been hardened into a cliché? And if so, who gets to overuse it in the first place?
BTW, it is very, very ridiculous and offensive for the libtards to suggest that right wing paranoia mongering on TV and radio encourage people like that Philadelphia guy to don body armor and shoot a bunch of cops to keep Obama from magnetically teleporting his guns into the 18th dimension.
This sort of baseless accusation causes the right wing to have to spend valuable time denying the sanity of these baseless accusations, time which could be spent better warning people over and over that Obama is leading to socialist fascism and sending all Christians to re-education camps and using federal powers to appropriate all our guns and melt them down and turn them into Luo pagan idols.
Ah, the old “I was just ASKING!” dodge.
At what point is Erick Erickson going to wake up in the morning and say to himself, “I am not only a fucking moron, but am in fact completely hostile to the founding principles of the country I claim to love?”
Just asking!
Get out of the Escher print, Gavin! Keep walking to the end of those elongated curved fingers reaching out to the polished globe, and just climb right over the under of it up the down staircase with the faceless people, right up onto the lizard that’s growing out of the page! Please, don’t get yourself caught in the Bad Place.
Erick: “One area where the left has done a much better job than the right online is investing in blogs as a component of left-wing activism.”
Erick, just for your information, one other area where the left has done a better job is in not making total fools of themselves every time they touch a keyboard.
if anyone is squinting around with a little Trotsky-style pince-nez pinced at the end of his long, curious nez, hoping to spot whoopsies and boners
Paging Dr Prunesquallor!
The grass roots have never been speakier!
Well, this is why you’re the blogger and I’m just the reader, because I clicked over to Erickson’s latest piece (the one you couldn’t face), and all I saw was an extended kvetch about how liberal blogs make money and conservative ones don’t, and how this situation could be corrected if only conservatives blogs started making money.
Like I said, that’s why you’re the funny one, because I wouldn’t know what to do with such a thing besides just saying “Man up and be a fucking capitalist already and make your blog profitable, you whiny douchebag”. Not very funny at all, I’m afraid.
Animated GIF of bobblehead George follows?
Why is it these guys can never figure out the difference between “attacking” someone and “laughing our asses off” at someone?
Me, I only suspected Cheney would rise up in November from his DC bunker transformed into a 150ft tall bio-mechanical repto-hornet and lay waste to the eastern seaboard, toppling skyscrapers and shooting napalm from his eyes.
I wasn’t “convinced’.
Excuse me, Dr. Clyde? The seventh Earl of Smut? Yes sir, you.
A moment of your time, if I might, good sir.
Just a brief enquiry, rather, perhaps more of an entreaty:
Would it KILL you to provide just the barest skeleton of context with these obscure and frequently disturbing illustrations? Would it even hurt really bad? Oh, I know, the time it takes to provide a descriptive paragraph identifying the artist, the image and the way the work connects to the topic at hand would be wasted, as it could be time otherwise spent drinking Akavit and trying on Frau Dokorin’s underthings before she gets home, but perhaps there is some measure of compromise where you merely link to an appropriate wiki page and go back to your debauchery without as much as another bit of a fair thee well.
At least consider it, might you? Thank you. I bid you good day, sir…
mikey
30 grand, with no benefits will get RedState a Capitol Hill correspondent?
Shoot, Mrs. Lane should pony that up in a heartbeat. It’d get Moe off the couch and away from the Battlestar Gallactica reruns and get him out of the house.
Hmm, Kos and – hardly weighing anything at all – Eric on the Scales of Justice, while Justice herself laffs until the tears positively squirt out of her eyes?
Okay G, I’m not supposed to be weeping and gut-laughing at work right now. Elvis Costello, and Space Mutiny. You so win.
the way the work connects to the topic at hand
Doctor Prunesquallor has a long curious nose… he squints around wearing pinch-nez… what more do you need? The drawing seemed to fit the image of an antic beady-eyed inquirer that Gavin had invoked.
Mervyn Peake was following an existing type when he drew the character, so other illustrations are possible, like Tailor Buck from Max und Moritz.
Longer description of Prunesquallor here. And I have to say that whoever played the role in the BBC adaptation of Gormenghast was heinously miscast.
trying on Frau Dokorin’s underthings before she gets home
I could have sworn that I disabled the web-cam.
In other news, the gap between people who believe teh Easter Bunny will lead us into eternal life and everyone else has grown wider than it has ever been before.
Maybe Eric should stop taking financial advice from joe the non plumber either that or sell the photos he has of himself in Sarah Palin drag.
He is a rare breed on his side. 😀
Oh dear God. Let me, you know, go back to it tonight. There’s a part at the end that depends on pictures, and doesn’t have the right ones yet because I kept rewriting the parts-not-at-the-end, and who even knows if Brad is doing the…
Please, please consider this for the final write-up.
The man has chutzpah, you gotta give him that.
“How dare all those Lie-buruls on their unfairly profitable blogs accuse me of wanting a revolution? A revolution is the last thing on my mind! All you have to do is do everything my way and everything will be hunky-dory!
“Nice country you have there…sure would be a pity if something happened to it!”
This is what Heinlein called in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress the Patrick Henry gambit: “Give me Liberty or give me death! or, translated into English, Do things my way or I’ll kill us both!”
It would be funny if it weren’t being voiced by such an obviously spineless worm.
Smut C: I have to say I am a Huuuuuuuuuge Gormenghast fan! I discovered this magical trilogy (actually 2/3 of a trilogy–book 3 was very weak IMHO) back when I was in junior high, and have re-read it many, many times since. I Have to say, though, that the Prunesquallor comparison is way off. The good doctor is a wonderfully whimsical, eccentric character, intoxicated with his own quirky intellect and gay as a tree full of parrots. He delights in frivolous flights of eloquence that sail blissfully over the heads of his companions in dreary old Gormenghast, yet he is never mean spirited or cruel. Pretty much the exact opposite of Erickson.
“Brother, Can You Spare a Dime,” lyrics by Yip Harburg, music by Jay Gorney (1931)
They used to tell me I was building a dream, and so I followed the mob,
When there was earth to plow, or guns to bear, I was always there right on the job.
They used to tell me I was building a dream, with peace and glory ahead,
Why should I be standing in line, just waiting for bread?
Once I built a railroad, I made it run, made it race against time.
Once I built a railroad; now it’s done. Brother, can you spare a dime?
Once I built a tower, up to the sun, brick, and rivet, and lime;
Once I built a tower, now it’s done. Brother, can you spare a dime?
Once in khaki suits, gee we looked swell,
Full of that Yankee Doodly Dum,
Half a million boots went slogging through Hell,
And I was the kid with the drum!
Say, don’t you remember, they called me Al; it was Al all the time.
Why don’t you remember, I’m your pal? Buddy, can you spare a dime?
Once in khaki suits, gee we looked swell,
Full of that Yankee Doodly Dum,
Half a million boots went slogging through Hell,
And I was the kid with the drum!
Say, don’t you remember, they called me Al; it was Al all the time.
Say, don’t you remember, I’m your pal? Buddy, can you spare a dime?
More importantly, though, is the advertising component
Um, didn’t PanjandrumsMedia work on that already?
You’d think the Minnesota Republican Party would have some big donor who’d want to sponsor that site via advertising.
They did want to but Norm had them use that money to pay his wife instead.
Here is what makes Dork Dorkson such a fine writer and RedFaced such an exemplary blog.
This is the second paragraph of today’s screeching screed:
Now, the fourteenth paragraph of the same lopsided broadside:
It’s shocking that his fervid fanbase won’t shake loose a few shekels to support quality like that.
To paraphrase the lardass bard’s own hopeless opus, “Until the second becomes the first, the right will keep meeting in public restrooms to tap out its signals under the stalls.”
Pretty much the exact opposite of Erickson.
But Gavin is imagining himself — or a like-minded soul — becoming intrigued despite himself in the strains of ‘Yakety-sax’ that drift alluring across the walls of the asylum, and peering quizzically through his pinch-nez to see what new caprices the zanies have come up with. Occasionally he draws on his meerschaum pipe and blows a smoke-ring, as in our artist’s impression.
Please, please consider this for the final write-up.
Oh my, Eric’s favourite pome is Horatius, described by a sympathetic Amazon reviewer as “‘declamatory’ or mainly for school boys”.
Even the Ranks of Tuscany
Could scarce forebear to BLART.
Since RB had the extreme good taste to bring up the Yipster, I should mention that I was privileged to see the limited-run revival of his classic Finian’s Rainbow recently (so rapturously received that it’s rumored to be moving to Broadway.)
In addition to its legendary songs, it’s loaded with anti-consumerist, anti-capitalist, unabashedly liberal sentiments — all loudly appreciated by the audience. My favorite showstopper: the corrupt, racist Senator Billboard Rawkins’ declaration, “I don’t have time to read the Constitution; I’m too busy defendin’ it!”
(And my only problem with “Brother Can You Spare a Dime” is the fact that composer Jay Gorney was also responsible for fathering Karen Lynn Gorney, Travolta’s spectacularly dreary leading lady in Saturday Night Fever.)
ou’ve got the Soros gang and SEIU engaging in a host of left-wing activities online that recruit and fund online writers — bloggers, journalists, etc.
Online left-wing activities? You mean I can get an Islamic gaybortion online, payed for by George Soros and SEIU? I didn’t think I lived in a cave, but I guess I missed that development. I need to get out more often.
No lucky with the linky, Smut. Nonetheless, nice to discover someone else who’s into Peake. If you’re looking for an analog for Erickson, might I suggest Barquentine?
Sadly, like the magical theoretical vagina and the broadly spoken of but never actually experienced “good night’s sleep”, all that smut offers is but madness on the pages of a sticky-slick-paper magazine and some hopeful negotiations with an imagined female entity with the power to award these presents….
mikey
http://www.redstate.com/erick/2009/04/06/levi-johnson-jumps-on-the-sarah-palin-gravy-train/#comment-21222
Actually, that’s why it’s funny!
Shorter Erick:
“The problem with right-wing blogging is that nobody is paying me, and until you start paying me, things will never get better.”
“Calgon, take me away.” Oh yeah.
And, what’s actually going on in Spokane. No talk of picking up a gun, or beating on bureaucrats. Just looks as if the free market had its thumb up its ass again.
Maybe when the nat’l. changeover occurs, Erick, son of Eric, can get fifty or sixty more people rattled up about it.
i don’t know, in the context of things, it’s pretty freakin’ funny.
Meanwhile, the DailyKos has nine employees and a seven figure budget. Here at RedState, I have a volunteer list of two dozen contributors with full time jobs, me, and no budget.
But that just shows how groovy you are Erick:
Erickson suggested the success of progressive bloggers relative to their conservative counterparts is because progressives have more free time. Conservatives “have families because we don’t abort our kids, and we have jobs because we believe in capitalism.”
Merde! Mes blockquotes, ils ne marche pas.
Anyway, I’m not sure why Erick is complaining about being stretched. He could always give up his other blog and devote all of his spare time to Red State.
So DailyKos has nine employees but progressives don’t believe in capitalism and have no jobs, while capitalism-believer Erickson builds his mighty empire on the backs of volunteers and wants free money? Maybe after another glass of wine that will seem more sound.
He could always give up his other blog and devote all of his spare time to Red State.
Uggh. Did you see the latest post (as of now) about how the crazy lady who burned down her own house is proof that there’s no more racism in Georgia?
This Erick Erickson, he’s got a bright future, I tell you.
If Obama and that wife of his give the foreigners expensive presents, then we scream about how we are in a depression and how dare they?
If Those Two give something frugal instead, we shriek about how cheap and unclassy they are.
Peachpundit led me to this guy with the great name:
http://www.buzzbrockway.com/?p=800
Ha! Ha!
The right wing trolls keep saying they don’t have time to lol about like us hippies and collitch perfessors because they are busy and have demanding jobs to attend to…..but now for Eric it’s a virtue to be working for a “non-profit?”
My, how things have changed.
Who, I say who, amongst the red-blooded he-man manly men who support the red-state movement on their mighty broad shoulders — who of them could resist yonder stirring battle cry:
Oh sure, they say they are more important than that, but they aren’t really.
(Eric, if it worked for you on the playground, it must still work for you now. Oh, wait…)
Next post: how liberals are such herd-animal whining losers who can’t make any money.
Next post after that: how the voters of Macon turned a manly man out of office for, um,
pissingposting too manywhiny rantsmanly manifestoes on his mighty blog o’manliness.Steerpike, a Mervyn Peake fan? Who’d a thunk it?
Keep up with the allusions, Smut old chum.
Geez, are you guys going to change your name to Sadly, Slow soon? I even lost my train of thought waiting to post. [Insert stupid train of thought not leaving station/derailing/HO scale jokes after post]
Thanks for noticing, BBBB
How could one not notice your inexorable climb from the kitchens?
I think this Peake quote nicely sums up any of a number of wingnut bloggers (Erick, Pantload, Rush, ad nauseam:
That he bled profusely could prove little. There was blood in him to revitalise an anaemic army, with enough left over to cool the guns
the KKK took my baby away.
The coil spring on your Jack-in-the-Box isn’t long enough. The head barely peeps out from the box.
it’s been said upthread, but bears repeating: to any and all right wing douchelords reading these words, heed this–just repeating stupid shit some other right wing douchelord said is NOT, repeat, NOT the same thing as having a useful contribution to our nation’s debate about the non-trivial events of the day.
original thinking linked to a recognizable reality that anyone of any political stripe can share…that way lies profit, matey!
of course, here’s what’s gonna happen: you will discover that using the simple methodology above you will keep saving your posts to draft, rereading them, worrying on them a bit, and then…well, you will wear the delete button out. because to have original ideas, to see reality as it actually appears minus ideological filters…a great man once said “reality has a liberal bias”.
i’m working on a CIA project with a 30 year field agent right now, and he tells me that when the north koreans send an agent out into the field, they often upon meeting their first white face go up to the person and spit on them, believing them to be devils as they have been taught in their solipsistic upbringing. after about two weeks in the field, having realized that everything they have EVER been taught about ANYTHING is wrong, they tend to get really really drunk and then defect. when he told me this story i could only think of john cole at balloonjuice, bleary-eyed, crawling out from under his right wing rock and saying “what.the.fuck?” to reality as it smacked him in the face.
Hey, Erick? The reason Daily Kos is a big success and RedState is a miserable failure is that conservatives are a bunch of fucking losers.
It’s that simple, Erick. It really is.
Oh, c’mon Johnny. Don’t pull the punches. It’s not just because “conservatives” vague category are a bunch of losers. It’s because Erick is a loser.
“Like, is this guy actually trying to say that an expression isn’t used correctly unless it’s already been hardened into a cliché? And if so, who gets to overuse it in the first place?”
Because stupid dickishness has a well known conservative bias.
See what I did there Erick? I took a cliche and sorta changed it a bit.
OK, g, you got me there. It’s not just because conservatives are losers, though that is a contributing factor. Erick’s personal loserdom also plays a role, but observing that Erick is a loser is such an exercise in stating the obvious that it doesn’t merit a comment of its own.
You know, if politics wasn’t involved, these people would be praising dKos as a new media success story. Instead, they’re just blatantly envious.
Confidential to Air America: Pay more attention to dKos and less attention to trying to copy Fox News. It hasn’t worked for you.
My irony gland is rendered turgid by seeing a wide assortment of wingnuts overtly advocating exactly the same radicalism & violence they wanted to send DFHs off to Camp X-Ray for suspicion of advocating over the bulk of this century.
ZOMG! The Cognitive-Dissonance-Surge IS working!
“Human civilization isn’t the answer to our problems – human civilization is the problem” – Ronald Reagan, original draft
Conservatives: Royally Fucking Shit Up For Over 4,000 Years!
I have to say, this was a great post. I think the immanence of little Studebaker is pushing you to new heights.
If they keep offering great employment packages like $30k/yr with no benefits and a modest travel budget, they’ll have a conservative professoriate in no time. Two stupid birds, one dumb stone.
I like to park my car in the barage.
when the north koreans send an agent out into the field, they often upon meeting their first white face go up to the person and spit on them, believing them to be devils as they have been taught in their solipsistic upbringing
Talk about blowing your cover.
So Erik ibn Erik is a Macon city councilman. That explains a lot about Macon. (No wonder most people use I-475 to go around it.)