Hofstadter Shrugged

ABOVE: Squirrel “Nut!” Zipper


Are liberals seceding from sanity?
The left is crazy to insult white Southerners as a group

By Michael Lind

Back in the 1960s, Seymour Martin Lipset and Richard Hofstadter and other liberal sociologists, historians and political scientists, puzzled that anyone could support Barry Goldwater rather than Lyndon Johnson, concluded that Goldwater supporters were deranged. They didn’t say so directly, of course. They said that members of the radical right were emotionally disturbed victims of “status anxiety.” The evidence? They didn’t vote the way that Lipset and other academics thought that they should vote. Therefore they had to be crazy.

In the decades since, far better scholars than Hofstadter and Lipset, for whom history and sociology are not exercises in partisan Democratic mythmaking, have established that Goldwater and Reagan Republicans often were highly educated, socially secure individuals who happened not to share the values of liberal professors and journalists. This scholarship has been wasted, to judge by the glee with which the liberal blogosphere, in the aftermath of the ephemeral “Birther” flap, has dusted off the old conservatives-are-crazy meme…

The Blog Prof:
BUSTED!: “Obama As Hitler” Poster Was A Democrat/Union Plant At John Dingell Townhall! UPDATED with video interview!

  • According not just to something I think someone said on talk radio, but also to something that a guy at Free Republic reported that somebody interviewed on FOX News said they saw, a conspiracy is certain.

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™


AJ Strata, The Strata-Sphere:
Media Stage Craft?

  • So a conservative was carrying a provocative sign while openly packing a handgun? Heh. I smell a conspiracy to make conservatives seem paranoid.

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™


Michelle Malkin:
Little girl at Obama town hall has not-so-random political connections

  • A questioner at Obama’s town hall has ties to the Democratic Party, proving just what we suspected all along.

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™


Glenn Reynolds, Instapundit:
READER RICHARD HALFERTY WRITES:

  • A reader writes: “At town halls, why does no one ask Obama about the senior-citizen death camps? I suspect America is afraid of his thug army.” Maybe not, but I was complaining about Obama’s ‘tax audits’ joke last May, and the… Wait, hold on a second. [footsteps plunking down a long flight of basement stairs] [door opens in basement] [hammering, sawing, slide whistle ascends, ah-oogah horn, cat yowling, tin can bounces and rolls, slide whistle descends] [door slams in basement] [footsteps plunking up a long flight of basement stairs] OMG don’t forget the tax audits.

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™


 

Comments: 74

 
 
 

But the liberals are insane, according to Alec Baldwin’s fatter blonder brother.

 
 

HERBIE THE FAT FURY!

HERBIE FTW!

 
 

My goodness, but there must be hundreds of millions of Democrats all around the nation, making all these Hitler=Obama plants and showing up at demonstrations with guns and signs!

If only they would just vote, maybe we’d elect a black Democratic president!

 
 

That’s the most attractive picture of the Malkin I’ve seen so far.

 
 

Hafstadter looks like a Spitting Image puppet.

Yes, Looksist zombie is looksist. I like an attractive melon when I ‘m brain-chomping.

 
 

Malkin should keep that photographer on retainer. He’s capable of taking pictures of her that make her look warn and approachable. Also, Michelle, what kind of counter tops does the girl have? Have you looked into this? It could be BIG.

 
 

That’s the most attractive picture of the Malkin I’ve seen so far.

Godsdammit, but you shamble fast. Bastard.

 
secretlysomeoneelse
 

This is nothing short of liberals watering the plants, albeit it is unclear whether they knew he was a plant at all.

In which overstretched analogy contorts and fails on grounds of internal logic and absence of meaning. Morons.

 
Dragon-King Wangchuck
 

I wonder how AJ Strata explains the Chris Matthews interview. Because if that guy is a lie-beral plant, he is one hell of an actor.

Note for Michelle Malkin: if you don’t want people to be constantly bringing up the evil and vile shit you pulled with Graeme Frost, you could try not pulling evil and vile shit all the time.

 
 

Well at least Michael Lind has fully internalized the IOKIYAR meme.

Someone get him a food pellet.

 
Dragon-King Wangchuck
 

WordPress ate my link – not that I blame it since Chris Matthews is an idiot.

 
 

Godsdammit, but you shamble fast.

Only because he’s willing to abandon body parts for the cause.

 
 

Only because he’s willing to abandon body parts for the cause.

Is he one of those lightning-fast, over-caffienated zombies like in 28 Days? Or is he a more traditional, George Romero style zombie, like it’s morning in the supermarket again?

 
 

Hey, I can go and pick them up later.

 
 

Where is this thug army everybody is talking about. Do they get health care benefits? If so, where can I join?

 
 

It has recently dawned on me that our concerns about product safety and tobacco use have had the unintended consequence of preventing a lot of much-needed Basic non-filter and prying-the-stuck-toast-out-with-a-butter-knife related deaths.

 
St. Trotsky, Pope-in-Avignon
 

And you guys are certain that isn’t Glenn Beck with cotton swabs in his mouth?

 
 

BOO HOO STOP TALKING ABOUT THE SOUTH I HAS A SAD BECAUSE THE SOUTH USED TO RUN NATIONAL POLITICS AND NOW IT DON’T STOP RUBBING IT IN LIBS

 
Dragon-King Wangchuck
 

Where is this thug army everybody is talking about. Do they get health care benefits?

As a matter of fact, they do get health care benefits, but they are contingent on success.

 
 

Is he one of those lightning-fast, over-caffienated zombies like in 28 Days?

That depends on how many limbs he’s sacrificed that day.

 
 

That depends on how many limbs he’s sacrificed that day.

…and whose.

 
 

Is the fat fuck in the first pic Michael Lind? Whoever he is, he appears to be storing nuts in his cheeks for winter.

And Malkkkin really has a thing for attacking children, doesn’t she? A rather weird niche to carve out for one’s self, but I suppose you need some kind of strategy to stand out from the crazy crowd, especially given all the competition in that area these days…

 
 

That depends on how many limbs he’s sacrificed that day.

Get him to sacrifice legs first–got it.

Quoting Lind:
This scholarship has been wasted, to judge by the glee with which the liberal blogosphere, in the aftermath of the ephemeral “Birther” flap, has dusted off the old conservatives-are-crazy meme…
So the fact 47% of South believes that the President wasn’t born in the US, thus leaving open the door to questioning the legitimacy of the administration is simply “ephemeral”? It’s just an example of what makes Faulkner’s characters so colorful?

Calling it out as crazy though, that’s what we need to complain about. So anything short of a McVeigh magnitude action should be ignored?

 
 

So anything short of a McVeigh magnitude action should be ignored?</i

Tha's juss sum gooed ole boize out haven a bitta fun!

 
 

I’ll tell you what’s got me nervous–Malkin has found another child to stalk.

 
 

Is it common practice to update a post just to show who linked to it?

I imagine theblogprof keeps scanning the blogs one-handidly sans pants squeezing harder everytime he sees his name. Every update costs him about 20 cents worth of jergens. He should ask for donations to help with his healthcare research costs.

 
Medicare is Bankrupt
 

You libs like to talk about how great Medicare is, well, why is it bankrupt then? Should we really model our whole health care system after a bankrupt system? Hmmm?

 
St. Trotsky, Pope-in-Avignon
 

McVeigh magnitude actions should also be ignored, cyntax.

Because that’s an ‘isolated incident’ that exists entirely in the vacuum of a lone wolf activist, who was most likely a liberal plant anyway.

But if we call the surrounding elements around that lone wolf crazy, why, the white Southerners who’d never vote liberal might continue to not vote liberal, and then OMG, the South, y’all, the South! What will we do without them?!

Since our troll was feeling nostalgic for the Articles of Confederation, can I feel regret that Sherman didn’t just burn this region entirely to scrub grass and soot?

 
St. Trotsky, Pope-in-Avignon
 

Should we really model our whole health care system after a bankrupt system? Hmmm?

Why not? We kept modeling our economy on one after the Crash of ’29.

 
 

I’ll tell you what’s got me nervous–Malkin has found another child to stalk.

As Michael Lind would say, it’s exactly this kind of asinine refusal to let go of bad things our opponents say or do that cost us the 2008 and 2006 elections.

In fairness, Malkin did learn her lesson. This time, dissolve the child in acid.

 
 

You libs like to talk about how great Medicare is, well, why is it bankrupt then

It is?

huh. And here I am still running insurance claims for it. Somebody should look into this.

 
 

Since our troll was feeling nostalgic for the Articles of Confederation, can I feel regret that Sherman didn’t just burn this region entirely to scrub grass and soot?

As long as you don’t mind a stern wag of Michael Lind’s finger (least offensive of all possible appendages).

 
 

Get him to sacrifice legs first–got it.

Jeez, cyntax, I may be a zombie, but I’m not dim.

You’ve been talking to Trooooofie too much.

 
 

The Lind faction’s most precious belief is that all Heartlanders are the brittle, angry, reactionary idiots their Republican representatives believe they are. The reality is that the South is a region which even in the country’s nadir of racist ignorance had exceptionally strong progressive politics and a strong sense of its own problems. The West will come along in its own time, but while we have things we tend to disagree with the coasts about (gun control being the most salient), that doesn’t make sucking off Karl Rove a sacred, inviolate part of our political lives.

The belief will linger among the Democrats basically forever that the way to win the moderates over is to be better Republicans than the Republicans. The reality has been exactly the opposite; nobody wants half a counterrevolution, and selling one just makes you look dishonest.

I do have to register my irritation at Lind trying to pose that conservatism-as-mental-illness is ingenuine. No, most conservatives aren’t insane, but movementarians suffer a sort of identifiable, genuine mental sickness. It’s not one of those things where team identity leads you to credit some sources over others; it’s a thing where everything passes through the filter of the Movement and the result is people fervently believing that there’s a special type of citizenship created by the Fourteenth Amendment such that blacks have to pay taxes but they don’t. You can’t call that sane without stretching ‘sane’ beyond any use.

 
 

yeah by the same standard, anybody who has a mortgage that is more than the amount in their bank account is bankrupt.

Add Financial FAIL to the troll’s list….

 
 

Also, Alec, Wisconsin has a long history of progressivism, despite being part of flyover land. Aldo Leopold spent a lot of time here, and we’re the only state to actuall elect Socialists as mayors of a major city.

Plus, Russ Feingold. So hey, Heartland!

 
 

What about us non-conservative Southern whites who want to heartlessly and repeatedly mock our conservatard white Southern neighbors for their nation-destroying idiocy?

Does this standard apply anywhere else?

If New York Republicans and particularly activist Republicans were nearly half birther idiots, should New York non-Republicans avoid saying anything about it for fear of hurting the idiots’ delicate feelings?

 
 

Lind used to be a big ol’ nutter and then switched over to the protectionist left side sometime ago, but the vestiges are still there — the utter lack of self-awareness when making the case “Why are those INSANE LIBERALS calling Southerners names anyway? Those darn elitists.”, the dismissal of evidence contrary to the point he’s trying to make, the innate logic that it’s white people who are oppressed in this country — and he’s doing it in a well-trod subject that’s guaranteed to get the easy-to-bruise, faux butch, whiny-ass, twinkly hillbillies all riled up.

 
 

The reality is that the South is a region which even in the country’s nadir of racist ignorance had exceptionally strong progressive politics and a strong sense of its own problems.

Charlotte NC is actually more progressive than some places in New York.

(Admittedly, the places I’m thinking of are largely on Long Island, i.e. The Land Of “No”, but still…)

 
 

Add Financial FAIL to the troll’s list….

What’s the point of having a list of the troll’s FAIL? Wouldn’t it be shorter (and non-infinite) to have a list of the things Troll has gotten right?

Here, I’ll put up that list for reference:

 
 

What I thought, and I think I read this on a DailyKos diary, was that the Obama as Hitler sign was held up by a black LaRouchie. Which is weird on all kinds of levels.

The GOP opened up this can of crazy and the truly dangerous are rushing in for their moment in the sun.

 
 

Hmmm?

The sound of Troofie giving a hummer.

 
 

You’ve been talking to Trooooofie too much.

Yeah, trolls should come with some sort Surgeon General’s warning:
Extended discourse may cause participants to assume Medicare is bankrupt, taxes=tyranny, and Glenn Beck is not a gibbering rascist.

 
 

Fat fat like a water rat!

 
 

Nicely played, stogoe.

But I’m not sure Subsidized Troll ever got the ominous ellipses right…

 
 

Please change easy-to-bruise, faux butch, whiny-ass, twinkly hillbillies into “totally manly Heritage-and-Duty-Bound Sons of the South who are so thick-skinned that it literally re-defines the term making it something that is comparative to STEEL and wouldn’t at all be reduced to tears if subject to the language normally hurled at San Francisco liberals and people from Massachusetts”.

I apologize to all the tiny-dicked reactionary hicks from the South and I regret the error.

 
 

One quick correction: Where it says AJ Strata, you have a picture of Marc Ambinder.

 
 

Charlotte NC is actually more progressive than some places in New York.

(Admittedly, the places I’m thinking of are largely on Long Island, i.e. The Land Of “No”, but still…)

I’m thinking specifically of Johnson. He lost the South with the CRA, but getting northern Dems to accept the idea of the government just giving money to poor people – even if they were (gasp) lazy coloreds – was like threading a needle with a handful of screaming tapeworms. The southern Republicans then built up a winning coalition by adding the idiots too racist to care about having their social rights stripped away to their existing constituency of chickenshit quasi-libertarians to whom, it turns out, caring about lynching and segregation were just something to lord it over the proles.

The worst monster of them all, as I’m concerned, is Clinton – not a bad man himself, but an archrepresentative of the Democratic Party as not a national compromise between internal factions but a series of calculated concessions to the narrative-dominating opposition. Starting with his right-wing neoliberal ass, getting through the primaries was suddenly no longer about being good enough about labor, race, and foreign policy, but being bad enough about them that the media would condescend to imagine their crude Larry The Cable Guy heartlander stereotype voting for you.

There’s a reason, incidentally, that these days the racist, fascist politics of the GOP are most closely affiliated with the Border South. You can’t just keep the blacks and the working poor out by buying enough security guards anywhere else. And right now, to get elected as a Republican, you need to be doggedly devoted to the Movement’s priorities, which at present seem to revolve around keeping the People’s Democratic Republic of the Greater Appalachian Jamahiriya pure and clean in freedom and kultur.

Some day in the dictionary next to ‘downward spiral’ they’ll have that idiot packing heat to a Presidential function. It’s who they are. It’s not who the South is, and Lind et al can’t be convinced otherwise.

 
 

Where it says AJ Strata

Herbie should bop you with this here lollipop for that.

 
 

I will add my own “Wooo”s to the previous “Wooo”s for Herbie.

WOOOO, HERBIEEEE!

Also, am I the only person who suspects that Michelle Malkin goes into her children’s rooms late at night and pinches them savagely?

 
 

What about us non-conservative Southern whites who want to heartlessly and repeatedly mock our conservatard white Southern neighbors for their nation-destroying idiocy?

Y’all obviously hate racsist whitesAmerica. And you’ve got to remember that Republicans get their own special set of rules, not based on logic, reality, or consistency.

 
 

You can’t just keep the blacks and the working poor out by buying enough security guards anywhere else.

Fun part? I’m sure a significant number of the security guards ARE the racial minorities and working poor, who are either too ignorant or too brainwashed to turn their guns the proper way.

That’s the way it usually seems to work, anyway.

 
 

“zombie rotten mcdonald said,

August 12, 2009 at 22:06

yeah by the same standard, anybody who has a mortgage that is more than the amount in their bank account is bankrupt.

Add Financial FAIL to the troll’s list….”

So, so far it includes minimum of
-Financial FAIL
-Logic FAIL
-Common sense FAIL

I believe the whole “bookmark this libs” should be granted an EPIC FAIL status, but this is only my view.
What other FAILS has Troofie collected?

 
 

Herbie Popnecker, for those of you unfamiliar.

 
 

I believe the whole “bookmark this libs” should be granted an EPIC FAIL status, but this is only my view.

See, there’s an interesting example. Cause that FAIL was so epic that I can almost imagine it bending in on itself and warping the fabric of logic/reason/history so that it comes out the other side. It’s of such magnitude that it is almost a success story of FAIL.

 
 

In the afterlife they’re publishing the perfect comic – Art by Ogden Whitney (illustrator of Herbie), story by Fletcher Hanks.

 
 

I really need to get the Fletcher Hanks books. The excerpts I’ve seen are entirely mind-bending.

 
 

“zombie rotten mcdonald said,

August 12, 2009 at 22:34

PENIS FAIL”

Well, possibly, but wouldn’t that be more of a standard feature on troll, then actual achievement?

 
 

And the Wikipedia bio of Hanks does absolutely nothing to convey the man’s bizarre stories. WIKI FAIL.

 
Big Bad Bald Bastard
 

Where is this thug army everybody is talking about?

I joined the KISS Army, but I was stop-lossed.

 
 

Off-but-on topic:

Aug. 10 — More than 60 percent of U.S. residents approve of the job President Barack Obama has done in his first six months in office, a Gallup Poll indicates.

Sixty-three percent of respondents approve of Obama’s performance, results released Monday indicate.

Suck on some reliable poll results, Rasmussen.

Wow, and reported by UPI too! Infamous Repug cockgobbler and owner of UPI the Right(wing) Reverend Moon must be pissed!

 
 

Shorter Michael Lind: How dare you call us racists bigots racist bigots. You damn bigot!

Shorter “The Blog Prof” and AJ Strata: Fox news is part of the liberal media conspiracy.

 
Big Bad Bald Bastard
 

Cause that FAIL was so epic that I can almost imagine it bending in on itself and warping the fabric of logic/reason/history so that it comes out the other side.

Möbius FAIL

 
 

What other FAILS has Troofie collected?

Well, he said in 1900 the only taxes paid were tariffs, but a federal inheritance tax was upheld by the Supreme Court that very year, so a very special History FAIL. I’m sure there have been others for history specifically.

 
The Very Reverend Battleaxe of Knowledge
 

He thinks we have a Senate to give “equal representation” to the “heartland”. As in: Alaska and California have the same number of Senators.

There’s the Michael Moore “Million Mogadishus” quote.

And my personal favorie: “LLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL”

 
 

Well, that is the first photograph I have seen of Michael Lind since I purchased ‘The Next American Republic’ or whatever it was called.

And he still looks like a gay librarian working in a suburb of Kansas City.

 
roast beek kazenzakis
 

I can’t believe Instapunduh gets to be a minor character from MST3k in that picture. He doesn’t even deserve to be Torgo.

 
The Very Reverend Battleaxe of Knowledge
 

Nah, surely that pic is one photo of Chris Matthews and one of Mickey Rooney morphed togeter.

 
 

As a Tasmanian I would like to state how deeply offended I am at your attempted association of Michelle Malkin with Tasmanian Devils.

One is a vicious, carnivorous, beast, that got its name from the barking, growling and howling it would make late at night.

The other of course is a Tasmanian Devil. A beautiful creature that is currently endangered by a virus that is spreading among the Devil population and of which its major feature is a series of facial tumors.

If you would like to make a donation to help save the Tasmanian Devil then please go here: http://www.tassiedevilappeal.org/

However, nothing can save Michelle Malkin. Also, too.

 
 

Dragon-King Wangchuck said:
“As a matter of fact, they do get health care benefits, but they are contingent on success.”

Oh, my God, that’s wonderful. Am I the only one who got it?

 
 

Also, am I the only person who suspects that Michelle Malkin goes into her children’s rooms late at night and pinches them savagely?

She has CHILDREN???

And they haven’t been eaten yet???

 
 

Also, am I the only person who suspects that Michelle Malkin goes into her children’s rooms late at night and pinches them savagely?

She has CHILDREN???

I look forward to the Malkin answer to “Mommy Dearest” in a few decades’ time.

 
 

Important to distinguish between handsome Herbie and Lind. Spheres perfect shapes of nature, like platonic ideal of hard-to-get cinnamon. Lind just cheeky.

 
 

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