According to Wikipedia:

In 1963, he wrote the influential essay, “My Negro Problem – And Ours.”

Sort of explains a lot.

Clif? WhoTF is you?

Damn. Straight.

Give ’em the other barrel.

One would think that a presidential candidate would want a foreign policy advisor that wasn’t advising war crimes right off the bat.

Clif? WhoTF is you?

An intruder. One of the guys left his keys on the bar at the Acepalooza, so I snatched them up and broke in.

Norman fucking Podhoretz?! Christ in Heaven, is he still around?

I snatched them up and broke in.

No really. Isn’t there some way to find out who you are?

heh

heh heh

He said dessicated.

hehehheehe

Don’t you remember the battles waged stateside? All of america got to shout something nasty at other americans. Some people got hurt for nothing. I’m sure Podman thinks of it as a time he stood tall, while most people think of it as a miserable experience.

“… even I never imagined that the new antiwar movement would so rapidly arrive at the stage of virulence it had taken years for its ancestors of the Vietnam era to reach.”

Thus he laments that perhaps some of us did learn something from the whole Vietnam experience, after all.

God in heaven, what a pompous old fartbag.

There’s no horse’s ass like an old horse’s ass.

…no matter how small and insignificant a group… the left might for the moment look to the naked eye, they had it in them to rise and grow again.

His fear, my hope.

dessicated old chickenhawk

Beautiful.

i relate here, for no good reason, a true tale of my family’s horrible past. a past that has (quite literally) darkened the very sky under which we all huddle, aghast, as the black clouds of fate roll in ever faster.

so, preamble out of the way:
(the following story is as true as anything can be through the filter of family bullshit and 45 years, but still…)

my grandmother once was the managing editor of “Commentary” magazine, back in the late 50s. while there, she–a late model cold war liberal but definitely a liberal–was tasked with bringing new sub-editors into the then left-intellectual–jewishbutnotreligious magazine. her two main hires were two young lefties with nice writing styles. the first was Norman Podhoretz. the second was Irving Krystal. It was Norman who wrote his infamous article about how a black man mugged him and therefore the dark types were evil (more importantly, that it was OK to feel that way while being a NY intellectual type). that essay, and Irving’s general wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing behavior (he was no trotskyite unlike NP) led to them ousting my grandma in the early 60s, essentially putting her out to pasture and forcing her early retirement.

later, they went on to both become pure evil AND to spawn it. can you imagine JPod and William “The Idiot Bloodbath Savant” K on your record? shit, NP didn’t even have to do anything else–just creating such a loathsome piece of shit as JP should be a permanent shit-stain on your record.

sorry, have a i debased the discourse by saying that? my bad.

anyway, i’m told that story is true, and i heard it direct from Grandma, so FWIW i think she started the Neo-Con movement by proxy.

sorry about that folks.

What the fuck is that cartoon on old Storm’ing Norman’s article, I mean really, what a load of bollocks?

This is merely the expression of his most desired Dolchstoßlegende.

What the fuck is that cartoon on old Storm’ing Norman’s article, I mean really, what a load of bollocks?

That’s a real peach, isn’t it? Crooked Timber has devoted a thread to that masterpiece.

I’ve got war scars too. Some that can be seen, sure, but most that can’t. Once you’ve been in battle it changes you forever. People today call it the “Cola Wars” but to me it will always be The Shit. A lot of good friends didn’t survive those years (OK Cola, you are not forgotten) and I sometimes wish I were one of them. So Norman, I’m with you buddy. Keep the faith, fellow warrior.

Clif? What’s a nice boy like you doing in a place like this?

Another conservative asshat, grifting the masses again with the age old “let’s you and him fight!”. Thanks for all the help Norm, we couldn’t have done it without you.

If I could design his circle of Hell, it would be him taking his rightful turn in Nam, instead of that nice kid from Harlem who still has trouble sleeping.

Norman the Podperson has never, never gotten over the vile things that sissy Gore Vidal said about him!!!1! Not to mention, Vidal insulted Norm’s wife, the quaintly named Midge Decter, who was basically Ann Coulter before Coulter finished the reassignment surgery found a sufficiently debased form of rhetoric to hook the *big* Wingnut Welfare paychecks. Surely being lampooned in The New York Review of Books is at least as honorable a war-wound as sustaining a traumatic brain injury in pursuit of someone else’s noble War on Scary Dark People, right? Right? Right?…

Wrong, Norman. As with everything else you’ve ever believed in your long, tragic history of loud public ugliness — Wrong.

You know, if I were an old-school paranoid like the Founding Fathers of the National Review, I’d have to wonder if Norman and his Neocon buddies had really “converted” from their original Trotskyite politics. Since at least Richard Nixon’s presidency, Podhoretz, Kissinger, and his bloodsucking fellows have killed thousands of American soldiers and hundreds of thousands of unfortunate third-worlders in various imperial wars of attrition, all the while bleeding the value of America’s good name, global standing, and financial stability. The KGB failed to destroy America, but the National Review crew and their Mellon/Scaife/Murdoch supporters have made every effort to take over the extinct Soviet role in the destruction of American democracy and/or capitalism, whichever you consider more important.

An intruder. One of the guys left his keys on the bar at the Acepalooza, so I snatched them up and broke in.

Fair enough. While you’re here, try to convince Bradroquette to drink something respectable. Just don’t look in the fridge.

Norm suffered terrible, terrible losses during the culture wars of the 60s.

Why, he even had to sell his large and beloved collection of Marxist pipedream literature.

I can’t read his stuff without passing out from boredom.

To be sure, this time, mainly because there was no draft, there would be no student protesters and no massive street demonstrations. Instead, virtual demonstrations would be mounted in cyberspace by the so-called netroots and these, more suited to the nature of the new technological age, would prove an all-too-effective substitute.

Wait, the blogosphere has an equal, if not greater, effect than all the Vietnam demonstrations? Really?

Does any portion of this man’s brain impinge upon what we like to refer to as reality?

He’s probably recalling the psychic trauma of being turned down cold by so many hippie chicks.

Robert Green,

It’s not your grandmas fault , basically those cruel hippy chicks wouldnt play with his sad winky. He’s been trying to start wars ever since to get some hot dont ask dont tell action. Sad Sad Norman

no matter how small and insignificant a group the anti-Americans of the left might for the moment look to the naked eye, they had it in them to rise and grow again.
I trust that he went for the trifecta and compared these anti-American leftists to metastatised cancer cells, who always recur as new tumours unless eradicated by radical chemotherapy. I suppose I could click on the link and find out, but the voices are advising me not to.

View the young tormented Podhoretz here.

I think it is perfectly outrageous how Ann Althouse has snuck in here and is pretending to be named “Clif.”

When I was 20 or so, I barley survived the Battle of the Bands.

Just for kicks…

You see me now a veteran of a thousand political and cultural wars
I’ve been living on the edge so long
Where the winds of limbo roar
And I’m young enough to look at
And far too old to see
All the scars are on the inside
I’m not sure if there’s anything left of me

Fight on, Norman…. semper feh!

Pod found a woman to play with his wee wee. Midge Decter. Sorry if I made you picture that.

Blue Oyster Cult, yeah.
It’s high time for a Political-&-Cultural-Wars-of-the-’60s Re-enactment Society, if anyone can work out an acceptable acronym.
A Drug War Re-enactment Society would also be good.

Clif said,
I don’t know what kind of scars a “veteran” of “political and cultural wars” can claim.

You don’t KNOW, man! You weren’t THERE!

Herr Doktor Bimler said,
A Drug War Re-enactment Society would also be good.

Four guys crammed in a phone booth marked “Prison”, while a heavily armed man stands in front of a bonfire of money?

Pod found a woman to play with his wee wee. Midge Decter.

AIEEEEE!!!

Pod found a woman to play with his wee wee. Midge Decter. Sorry if I made you picture that.

And that’s only the half of it. The result of said wee wee playing was this. Yech!

No matter how unattractive you find Decter’s looks, believe me, her writing — mostly she covered the “soft” topics, like anti-feminism and gay-bashing, while her mate dealt with manly manly war & xenophobia issues — was worse. I believe she was the first author whose work I treated in the manner prescribed by Dorothy Parker:

“This is not a book to be set aside lightly; it should be thrown with great force.”

…mostly she covered the “soft” topics, like anti-feminism and gay-bashing, while her mate dealt with manly manly war & xenophobia issues…

But let’s not forget that she also produced the the first–and one hopes only–hagiography of Donald Rumsfeld. Written at the height of his public reputation, right after the “mission” was “accomplished,” Rumsfeld: A Personal Portrait will simply get more embarrassing with the passage of time. And nobody deserves the egg shit on her face more than Midge.

I denounce this blog!!!!!!!

Clif, how could you?

When AG posts here, I think I might have to eat a gun. It may or may not be chocolate.

I fought in the War on Christmas and the Battle for Easter!

Do I qualify for veteran’s benefits?

People today call it the “Cola Wars” but to me it will always be The Shit.

you pussy, what about the cod wars, those damn Islandicislaomfachists, coming over here, taking all out fish

our,

obviously, i was so angry about the fish, i couldn’t see straight

Anne Laurie, interesting that you mention Trotsky and the KGB, because I was thinking when I read this that his little tantrum was ominously Stalinesque. Perhaps Maoist. That same demand that “both” sides of politics (as though there are only 2 monolithic viewpoints, fergodssakes) be the same; that insistence that one political view is unpatriotic. I’m reminded of purges, re-education, people’s councils.

And although I hate the phrase with a passion, it actually applies here, so I’m forced to use it: what he’s demanding is political correctness. He believes that, despite America being Teh Land of Teh Free and Home Of Teh Brave, dissent is un-American.

Welcome back, McCarthy. You have the right to believe what you want, but if I disagree with it, you’re not American.

I even read the comments, too. What a dickhead. Were these guys all bottle-fed or something? Why, oh why, in the name of anything holy, why can’t they conceive of any possible action other than catastrophic violence inflicted on some poor foreign victims?

Cunts, the lot of them.

I’m also looking forward to the War on Poverty re-enactment. Obtaining authentic-looking costumes will be easy enough. The hard part will be paying for the helicopters for the final dramatic evacuation from the embassy roof.

lobbey, I bet you even read that damned Cod book, didn’t you. Also, your blog link’s broken. (Extra www.) I had to google to find you. But now you’re bookmarked.

Norm learned the lessons of the sixties well. When your disasterous and unnecessary war runs its totally predictable course, blame the dirty hippies for embiggening the commieterrorislamofascists.

Pimpin’ some blog like a two-headed dog:
Podhoretz has a book out (“dropped,” as the kids say, like the turd it is on 11 September) as does Michael Ledeen. Peter Bienart reviewed them both for the NYT, pretty well demolished both of ’em, especially Podhoretz, I’ve linked to that as well as another Pod classic, (“The Case for Bombing Iran”) & what not here, and to Roger L. Simon’s review of Podperson’s cowflop here. You don’t have to read me, but the links are worth it, if you want a laugh, or just an increase in outrage.

Oh fook, I’m a two-headed idiot!! Here’s the correct link to the Roger L. Simon link. The “L.” seems to be very important to him.

If any one @ Customer Service is in, feel free to correct if you can & delete this post. Kthxbai!!

Has, um, NoPod forgotten that we, um, FUCKING LOST in Vietnam and the dirty fucking hippies had been , you know, RIGHT ALL ALONG?

Helicopters off the roof of the embassy and all that? The opening scenes of “The Killing Fields”?

Fight on, Norman…. semper feh!

More like “Semper F-U, NoPod!” With appropriate gesture.

No No No!!! We didn’t “lose.” The hippies & Negroes snatched defeat from the jaws of manly victory!! And you can bet Podpants will never let us forget.

M. Bouffant, I didn’t dare to read the reviews, although I did read what you said about them. And I note with pleasure your portrait of moi, although it doesn’t do me justice. It’s an old pic, what can I say.

[Assumes a gracious and regal mien, until the room is once again empty]

Heh heh heh, I is famous now. [preens, as only a cat can do]

I’d have to wonder if Norman and his Neocon buddies had really “converted” from their original Trotskyite politics.

I think that they kept huge aspects of their revolutionary vanguard leftist youth, and simply changed which Revolution it was they favored.

They were and are still ego-driven revolutionaries, convinced that any amount of blood spilled for The Revolution was justified given the desirability of the result.

The Revolution is all, whichever one it is that they are favoring. Without it, life is meaningless and continues the horrid state they are opposing. Without it, humankind fails to commit itself to whatever necessary and purifying battle is possible to achieve it. The true Leninist (and Trotskyist) Revolutionaries held that without The Revolution, mankind would lead inevitably to slavery and starvation, and with it, Paradise would be achieved. So all is justified to destroy the present system and all is justified to bring The Revolution forward.

Words, notions, are ideas are only important to the degree that they further the oncoming of The Revolution.

If it takes pain, fear, crisis or chaos to hasten The Revolution, then they would do everything they could to bring such misery about.

One of David Horowitz’ most bitter memories is how his membership in a Revolutionary Black Panther cadre possibly led to the murder of a friend:

Horowitz was a confidant of Black Panthers leader Huey P. Newton, and provided legal and financial assistance to the black revolutionary organization. He would later cite experiences with his involvement in the Panthers as the primary catalyst for reassessing his views. In December 1974, his close friend Betty Van Patter, a bookkeeper for the Panthers, was murdered. While the case officially went unsolved, Horowitz has maintained that the Panthers were responsible for her murder, committed in order to silence Van Patter from revealing the organization’s financial corruption, and thereafter covered up the killing.

Let’s assume Horowitz’ suspicions are true. In his mind, they prove the dangerous, murderous nature of liberalism or leftism. Strangely enough, one of my first reactions was to ask, ‘how the hell did you get involved in the center of that? What the hell kind of bravado were you snorting?’

Yet, again, the fault is never Mr. Ego-Driven Revolutionary, who is immediately attracted to dangerous, Revolutionary struggles, works himself into the middle of the most high-tension, dangerous environments.

No, no, no, Mr. Pure Revolutionary has no need to reflect upon his vain hunger to have been among The Leaders of The Revolution. His Revolutionary hunger is ever to be at the center of The Revolution, commanding it, guiding it, ever noticed as its intellectual drivers.

Same way for one of the originals, the NorPod. Any amount of destruction is not just permitted but lauded, for The Revolution. Hiring Guatemalan tyrants and evangelical genocidalists who rampage the country bashing infants’ heads into rocks, and wiping out much of the Mayan Indian population?

Well, a worthy tradeoff because without having so gleefully murdered so many hundreds of thousands, why, Guatemala would have been a new Khmer Rouge!!! We have SAVED them once again, and some day, centuries hence, surely, surely they will thank us.

We need to point out that no matter how much they mouth words about Democracy and Western values and Freedom, all they care about is The Revolution, and they will support killing each and every one of us necessary to keep them at the very heart of The Revolution.

Oh, the Bienart review is safe to read, not so much the R. L. Simon. The NY Review of Books http://www.nybooks.com/articles/20590 (linky no worky?) one is good too. Sorry I couldn’t get a better illustration of you. Almost went for a shot of an actual Abyssinian to represent you, but there were too many to choose from.

Anne Laurie–

Please post everything you think. Seriously. I’m a fan.
But I’ll see your Dorothy Parker quote with this one from Mark Twain, re a book by Henry James:
“Once you put it down, it’s almost impossible to pick it up.”

One of the guys left his keys on the bar at the Acepalooza, so I snatched them up and broke in.

Hmm…something smells funny about this statement: proper subject-verb agreement, correct use of commas in a compound sentence with a compound predicate, no aprostrophes used to form random plurals, 13 words in a row without a random comma or ellipses…

I call foul! Clif can write, and by definition, then, he can’t be a wingnut.

“Dessicated chickenhawk”…mmm…I’m tossing that in the toaster and having it with my morning coffee.

There goes the neighborhood, right off the Clif.

. I suppose it’s an allusion to cocktail party snubs and lost dinner party invitations.

What is the pain of a bullet wound or a limb severed by shrapnel compared to the pain of being excluded from the party of the season?

I wouldnt be surprised if NP was still suffering from PTSD after all this time. “Liberals. They’re all around us. I can smell their weed and BO.”

“As a veteran of the political and cultural wars of the ’60s…”

Well, speaking for myself as a veteran of the original Star Wars movie released in the early 1970’s, NormPod has no idea what war really is.

I mean, there we were at a large Montreal cinema – 70mm screen, Dolby stereo sound, upholstered leanback seats but without cupholders, surrounded by loud young kids.

It was hell, I tell you. Hell. Only the hash/tobacco spliff we smoked out in the parking lot just before buying our tickets got us through.

I never want to go through that again, and I don’t wish it on anybody.

And, as for those horrific cod wars… (shudder)

“Pod found a woman to play with his wee wee. Midge Decter.”

That’s a man,baby!

Do I get extra credit for being one of the political/cultural warriors of the ’60s and still being a small and insignificant anti-American American of the left? I sure hope so cause I think I flunked the last quiz!

Clif obviously hasn’t heard of the Bloody Battle of the Upper East Side in 1974. The carnage from that conflict was shocking for the day and has yet to be surpassed by any battle since.

All that the dazed and wounded survivors of that holocaust could do was flee to their psychiatrists’ offices for solace — of which there was none since their psychiatrists were Freudian and just asked, “what do you think about that?”.

Still the trauma lingers!

Hey, screw you all. I’m on a three-day pass from the front line of the Culture Wars II (electric boogaloo – in theaters now), so you don’t even get to lecture me about scars and war wounds when my own haven’t even healed yet.

[…] I’ve posted something there already. Go over there and leave some witty comments to show them the stuff that […]

Word.

You mean, he’s complaining about being snubbed for being bloodthirsty and batshit crazy? Poor baby.

Lesley: Pod found a woman to play with his wee wee. Midge Decter. Sorry if I made you picture that.

For crying out loud, that’s not “Midge Decter” (what kind of name is that? probably you just made it up), that’s Garrison Keillor.

#

Qetesh the Abyssinian said,

September 13, 2007 at 12:14

“Anne Laurie, interesting that you mention Trotsky and the KGB, because I was thinking when I read this that his little tantrum was ominously Stalinesque. Perhaps Maoist. That same demand that “both” sides of politics (as though there are only 2 monolithic viewpoints, fergodssakes) be the same; that insistence that one political view is unpatriotic. I’m reminded of purges, re-education, people’s councils.

And although I hate the phrase with a passion, it actually applies here, so I’m forced to use it: what he’s demanding is political correctness. He believes that, despite America being Teh Land of Teh Free and Home Of Teh Brave, dissent is un-American.

Welcome back, McCarthy. You have the right to believe what you want, but if I disagree with it, you’re not American.

I even read the comments, too. What a dickhead. Were these guys all bottle-fed or something? Why, oh why, in the name of anything holy, why can’t they conceive of any possible action other than catastrophic violence inflicted on some poor foreign victims?

Cunts, the lot of them.”
DING,DING,DING,Todayswinnahheere!111!1And I thought the palace lions had eaten you all those years back.Good to see you made it out of Addis Ababa in one piece.My head hurts…..

[…] Brooks is one of those “National Greatness” neoconmen. Like Teh Kristolmethodists, Teh Pod People, David Frum Canadia, and, yes, like John McCain[1], Brooks is quite willing to be flexible […]