Okay, it’s way too late to try to parse La Althaus, but I’m not sure that paragraph could be parsed in the most sober light of day. Sheesh.

Be nice to Ann. It’s the Tuesday oyster and rum jamboree at the Wishy-Wash Cafe.

Bottles, my ass. Flatten the boxes and recycle the cardboard.

Ok. I know, I don’t usually get the Althouse threads. I’ve never been one to actually go over and read her.

But oddly, I’ve been encountering her in unexpected places – CSPAN, Blogs, various places where all of a sudden DAMMIT she’s in my grille and I didn’t have an option.

And it all leaves me, ultimately, with a single, inescapable conclusion.

This woman is seriously defective….

mikey

Althouse is a piddle wrapped in a missed story inside a stigma.

Althouse puts the ‘higher’ in ‘higher education.’

How drunk was Althouse when she wrote that?

Bottles, my ass. Flatten the boxes and recycle the cardboard.

Or, you know, seal up the paint cans and call for pick-up from hazardous waste.

Hey, let’s not insult boxed wine here…

Look, I hate to get all huffy here, but are we to believe that Dreher is incapable of picking up a phone or shooting off an email to his own brother-in-law before putting words in his mouth?

Yes.

Bloggers suck. Ahem.

So Althouse and Dreher’s brother-in-law have at least on thing in common: that nobody asked.

I’m saddened to hear that the die-hard right wingers have decided to not vote for the Democratic nominee. This is almost as shocking as when all those Democrats in the Red States got together and voted for a Democratic nominee. Talk about your Heidi games…

Ahem.

I am not Barack Obama’s pastor. I’m not a registered Democrat or part of Obama’s supporting staff. In fact, I’m a shiftless Irish Jew communist from Florida.

But please to be allowing this chance to say that white people can go to hell.

Seriously. Pack up your bags, honkies, and go to the burn-y place toot sweet.

Fuck all y’all crackers.

The subtext of the commentary on Obama is pretty shocking. Most people seems to agree that stupid Americans are the ones that are going to be put off by the Wright stuff. And many of the people who think that are hoping that as many Americans as possible are stupid.

Wright said bad things about America and that will lose Obama votes because Americans are stupid.

What?

Shorter Dreher:

(1)I have no idea what people serving in Iraq think, but I can imagine they would not go for intellectual types who promise to get them safely home, and would much rather go for the anti-intellectual types who sent them there in the first place.

and (2) Obama can intellectualize all he wants but I reckon the troops in Iraq will see him as too “ghetto”, so he’s toast; oh, and there are no black troops in Iraq and if there were any they had disowned all their blackiness, and are really cool like Tiger Woods, except that they are not billionaires and are not married to Swedish models…

Whose go-to wingnut is Mickey Kaus? Because he needs to get gotten to. At the end of her post Althouse enthusiastically links to his analysis of Barry’s speech. It’s the stupidest reaction I’ve seen outside of Taylor Marsh’s comments section so click with caution.

Kaus:

Obama gives Archie Bunker a chance to tune out: The speech starts by talking about slavery. Yikes. Why are we talking about slavery? We know about slavery.

Good God. But it would have been great if he’d phrased it, ‘We know from slavery!’

I bet he came all over his stomach as he typed “under arms with his unit”. These fucks get off on military lingo.

I don’t know how old Goat Blower, Mickey Kaus, still gets work, apart from writing like a call center worker on crack, he is a useless bloatavating piece of shit that pretends he has his finger on the pulse, somehow. What a wanker.

Shorter Zen Master, Ann Althouse:

“More is less…..um…..is more……(glug…glug….glug….gasp)

Repugs and their apologists certainly have ‘politics by hissy fit’ down to a fine art.

The whole “Pat and Jerry who?” ignorance is clicking along nicely too.

Wow, that imaginary brother-in-law in Iraq or whatever sounds just like the Hillary supporters over on DKos. You know, the ones who are on “strike” because no one is taking their cases of the vapors seriously. I don’t know what’s more surprising, that Hillary supporters may have devolved into honorary wingnuts, or that a Republican actually knows someone serving in Iraq.

Oddly enough, a European like myself reads Wright’s comments and… well, you wouldn’t find much disagreement in the cafes and pubs of this land.

But hey, we’ve noticed how sensitive ‘Murricans can be to criticism of their flag or any other secular symbols of so-called ‘American greatness’. You take your nation’s name in vain at your peril.

How very different it is over here. You know, anyone can go on TV here and talk about how crap Britain is and you’ll get a response with all the knockout force of a wet haddock. The Sun and Daily Mail might work themselves into a lather, but that doesn’t really *mean* anything.

On the whole, we Britons all KNOW how crap this nation can be. (As well as how wonderful a place it is.) Indeed, much of Britain’s charm and greatness resides in how in spite of it we seem to muddle through in a messy half-arsed sort of way. It sort of works.

It’s the philosophy of the talented amateur. The British are nothing if not lovers of amateurism. We sort of accept mess and chaos and middling standards. So it’s very hard to get as worked up about all that we’re-number-one nationalistic don’t-desecrate-the-flag nonsense as you Yanks do. Sure, we have frothers like Nick Griffin and the BNP types. And some Tories are prone to flag worship if you don’t keep your eye on them. But they are regarded as a little odd.

An English equivalent of Wright would not garner national attention in quite the same way. And a response would be far more muted. Not because we are a particularly tolerant nation, you understand. But an apathetic one.

Which is just how I like it.

I’m “under arms” with my “unit” right now, if you know what I mean. And I think you do (hint: I’m implying that I’m wanking).

(I wasn’t really though; I mean,eww, this isn’t Powerline).

Well lookee here. A fed up black man just scared frail Miss Althouse in her frilly white bonnet sipping Château de Chasselas in the afternoon.

What a cow!

oh and you’ve gotta love this. Althouse on the prowl for Althouse attention adds

ADDED: Michael Weiss at Slate quotes this from me: “I’d say he did not do very much — other than to resist condemning Wright and to model his socially acceptable attitudes and generate a feeling — I’m sure you didn’t all feel it — that we need unite behind this man if the terrible divisions over race are going to end.” Weiss interprets this to mean that I saw the speech as a failure. But that’s not right.

[blah blah backtracking…I didn’t mean…even though my entire essay above says that’s what I think…]

What Michael Weiss doesn’t understand is that the most appalling thing about the speech was that Obama never mentioned me, Ann Althouse. This country will never overcome its legacies of slavery, onion rings, and breasts in the vicinity of the Clenis without paying due attention to me, Ann Althouse. Since I, Ann Althouse, seem to be the only person capable of giving me, Ann Althouse, the proper attention, I suppose the responsible falls directly into my cup.

I’m ready for my guest column, Mr. Sulzberger!

Okay, the Althouse parody is getting exponentially funnier by the week. Kudos.

If they’re ever casting for the role of Judith Hearne again, AA might be perfect. One little drawback…Judith may be a pathetic drunk but at least she’s somewhat private. She’s not the type to publicly guzzle the vino and gush about American Idol contestants on Youtube, for example.

It’s astonishing that Althouse leaves such videos up. But then shame and embarrassment elude those who are perpetually drunk on themselves.

*privately hoping Althouse Googles “Althouse” and finds all these comments*, especially TBogg’s because oh my God, yes, she would freak to think anyone thinks she drinks out of cartons and there might be a whole blog entry on bottles next week.

I’m meanish that way.

Nytol!

Those GI’s better get ready to salute and say “Commander In Chief Toast, sir.”

If they survive the last months of their Bush legacy protection squad’s IED catching duty til Obama can bring them safely back home, that is.

Missing here, I think, is an explicit acknowledgment that Wright is not merely expressing the anger he feels but that he is leading people into anger, keeping anger fresh and alive… Again, Obama speaks as if Wright were only expressing his beliefs, and he does not say that Wright was, from his powerful leadership position, instilling these beliefs in many others.

vs

I’d say he did not do very much — other than to resist condemning Wright and to model his socially acceptable attitudes and generate a feeling — I’m sure you didn’t all feel it — that we need unite behind this man if the terrible divisions over race are going to end.

So Wright’s problem is that he created anger in his congregation by modelling anger and Obama responded to it by modelling his socially acceptable attitudes, which naturally accomplished nothing.

Gosh, Those People sure are suggestible in interestingly limited ways.

[blah blah backtracking…I didn’t mean…even though my entire essay above says that’s what I think…]

also one of the tags on the post is “lameness”

Just saying.

“I’m meanish that way.”

:))) Grudge duly noted…

“Missing here, I think, is an explicit acknowledgment that Wright is not merely expressing the anger he feels but that he is leading people into anger, keeping anger fresh and alive… Again, Obama speaks as if Wright were only expressing his beliefs, and he does not say that Wright was, from his powerful leadership position, instilling these beliefs in many others.”

Gosh, it looks like ages ago when the knock on Obama was that he was “hope-peddler” when in fact it was only a few weeks…

Shorter Dreher: thank G*d the troops are too stupid to understand that crazy nigger.

Ann Althouse at karaoke night.

“I was drinking when I wrote this
Forgive me if it goes astray”

[hic]
[slump]
[feedback]

Yes, no doubt the troops will be throwing their support to McBush and his promise to keep them in Iraq for the next hundred years. Anything to keep a BLACK guy with a scary BLACK pastor away from the levers of power. Let’s face it, after a hard day of dodging bullets and explosions, nothing is as frightening as a President who knows a guy who used some heated rhetoric on the pulpit, nosirree.

You know, I expect this horseshit from the fRightards. By this point, it really doesn’t bother me. But hearing “OMG he haets America OHNOES” from Democrats who were probably condemning that sort of talk from the right three years ago… it’s disgusting. I won’t fucking forget those on the “left” who were so quick to run with this bullshit. Each and every one of them is on the “worthless goddamn hack” list for life. Fuck them with a bag of dicks.

Whatever, white people.

Shorter Dreher: My b-i-l hates my guts but as a soldier he’s a convenient prop in my one man play that consists of the star – me – wanking over various props and then falling asleep. I just hope my b-i-l never reads this or he’ll kick my weedy ass.

Each and every one of them is on the “worthless goddamn hack” list for life. Fuck them with a bag of dicks.

The DLC never pretended to be on the Left. But they do belong on the worthless goddamn hack list for life.

And in a surprise turn of events, the Bag O’ Dicks returns to wreak flaccid, fleshy vengeance on another victim!

Obviously a whole lot of wingnuttia is worried that if they don’t get to their storm troopers and tell them what to think of the speech, they might get taken in by it.

“He’s telling you not to get distracted!!! Don’t listen to him!!! Look over there – it’s an islamohomofascistliberal who wants to sell you into bondage to the Caliphate! Scary brown people!! Ooga booga!!”

And what Dagoril said. While the blogs have split into partisan camps and yes, there is some pretty thick Obama worship going on in some quarters, Taylor Marsh and others have devolved into full-on wingnuts. I’ve seen some of the Hillary concern trolls wringing their hands about how “he put his CHILDREN in front of that man every week in church! The horror, the horror!” Some of these folks need to drink a long tall cup of Shut the Fuck Up and down a chill pill along with it, and go to sleep until this nomination is settled.

Obama did not condemn Jeremiah Wright.

So he’s distanced, denounced, but NOT condemned!

I mean, does this remind you of anything?

the Bag O’ Dicks returns

If this weren’t a family blog, I’d ask for a Photoshop.

Maybe the last time Rod Dreher called his brother-in-law they got into an argument about whether the veterans living under bridges were really vets, and whether his fellow soldiers should take personal responsibility for getting over their PTSD and lost limbs without whining to the government to for help like a bunch of babies. Disagreements like that can really strain a relationship.

WAAAAAAAAAAAH!!! Obama beat us!!! We thought we had him beat with this crazy preacher stuff but now he have beat we and us is mad!!!!

“he put his CHILDREN in front of that man every week in church! The horror, the horror!”

I try not to go out on the atheist limb too often, but I sort of agree with this statement. Putting developing minds in front of a pastor does seem like a pretty awful thing to do.

But refusing to vote for candidates based on their enthusiasm for organized religion is a pretty limited strategy, so I try to get over my prejudices. Maybe some of the crypto-racists hammering on Wright’s statements should try my approach.

I suppose the responsible falls directly into my cup.

You should fish it out quick before it — oops! Too late.

The fact is, the greatest generation didn’t whine.

Here in the heartland, we don’t whine.

We are just better people.

Here’s another fact: if GW Bush were to give the exact same speech that Obama did, not only would the neocons cream themselves, not only would Crazy Andy Sullivan fling himself back at the feet of Beloved Leader and sobbingly make up to him, but good patriotic liberals like ourselves would just about crap our pants and fall over dead from surprise. Because we still maintain the ability to listen, discern, and make rational judgments. But because the modern freeper neocon racists/warmongers/closet cases are nothing more than a Hatred in search of a Justification, they could never be so intellectually nimble or honest.

McCain’s Iran “gaffe” is the stupidest goddamn thing ANY politician has said during this race. He’s a lying, simpering, pandering, adulterating, face-baiting, bigoted, grafting punk compared to Obama.

race-baiting, not face-baiting, tho I kind of like that better.

The Heartland whines more than any other people in history.

The Heartland whines more than any other people in history.

Phosphates in corn dogs have their down side.

I suppose the responsible falls directly into my cup.

Uggh — 1 Althouse 1 cup
Not a thought I wanted to have at breakfast,

Alt-Del-House must write most of her stuff from a prone position.

Not supine, on her back; but prone, on her belly.

Shorter Dreher: thank G*d the troops are too stupid to understand that crazy nigger.

That’s how I read Dreher, too, OTB, except I think he’s impugning not only the troops, but all “working class whites.”

McCain’s Iran “gaffe” is the stupidest goddamn thing ANY politician has said during this race.

But let’s not get distracted by that. What about Obama’s lapel pin?

Different take on the speech — my blue collar redneck male relatives reacted by approving of Obama’s refusal to turn his back on the pastor he’s known for 20 years. They’re sick of politicians who pander to the MSM and run like scared bunnies at the first sign of a negative reaction from the anyone. What I heard from them was “Finally, a Democrat with a spine.”

Seems like just yesterday that Ken Mehlman apologized for the GOP’s Southern Stratetgy. Not that he said the GOP wouldn’t use it again or anything like that.

Speaking of shitty right-wing comments, have you checked out Roger L Simon’s? He actually wrote a *poem* (no, I couldn’t force myself to read it) about how ‘Obama threw his Grandmother under the bus’! Way to completely miss the point! Of course, this is the same guy who now wonders what the point of the entire Civil Rights movement was….

And his commentors actually took it to another level by talking about how some black people look at them strangely and try to avoid them. Gee, I wonder why.

Roger L. Simon’s ‘poem’ – it sure doesn’t scan like verse – includes the admission that he gave money to the Black Panthers when he knew it was being used to buy guns.

And this guy has the balls to criticize Obama for the friendships he made as a young man?

That “poem” is an extended, heart-felt pat on his own back, about how his manifold, superhuman efforts for civil rights gives him the right to spit on Obama.

Ah fuck.

I just heard a soundbite of Bush on NPR, saying that “today because we acted, Saddam’s rape rooms and children’s prisons are closed for good.”

Last night I read the article in the New Yorker about Sabrina Harman, where she talks about participating in the Abu Graib abuses. There’s a lengthy paragraph about children who were imprisoned there.

I must say I’m getting really sick and tired of these astute, in depth and hard-hitting analyses by the esteemed Ms. Althouse. I mean, really, who the fuck does she think she is…….K-Lo??

http://thinkprogress.org/2008/03/18/k-lo-former-australian-pm-john-howard-for-president/

Look, I hate to get all huffy here, but are we to believe that Dreher is incapable of picking up a phone or shooting off an email to his own brother-in-law before putting words in his mouth?

Damn you, Scott Beauchamp!

Nan said,

March 19, 2008 at 16:29

Cool!!
Yay!!
That is so good to hear.

I read a comparison of Obama’s speech to Romney’s speech about religion: Romney never used the word Mormon once in his speech. Obama mentioned Wright something like 14 times by name. That fact is being noticed.

Gary Ruppert:
The fact is, the greatest generation didn’t whine.

Here in the heartland, we don’t whine.

So Gary, you’ve never met my family.

Let’s not forget that David Horowitz actually worked in the Black Panthers’ offices, up until one of his friends was killed.

From “David Horowitz’ Long March”, The Nation

In early 1974 the French writer Jean Genet phoned the Ramparts office and got Horowitz on the line. Genet, who had taken up the Black Panther cause in the Bay Area, needed a translator. Might Ramparts provide one? One thing led to another, and it wasn’t long before Horowitz found himself in the Oakland penthouse of Panther leader Huey Newton, who had just returned from China. A heated argument about the revolutionary virtues of Maoism erupted between Horowitz and Newton, and the latter concluded the debate on a conciliatory note. Horowitz was delighted: “I had found a political soul mate,” he recalls.

Horowitz’s intellectual seduction by Newton constitutes some of the most fascinating pages in Radical Son. Newton made Horowitz his confidant, took him to glitzy parties and published his essays in the Panthers’ official newspaper. When Newton asked him to raise money for a new Panther school in Oakland, Horowitz eagerly obliged by creating a tax-exempt foundation that eventually netted more than $100,000 for the project.

Attaching himself to the Bay Area Panthers in 1974 was, it turns out, a colossal mistake: Their heyday was over, and the leadership had become increasingly violent and deranged. The educator Herbert Kohl, who was then involved in several Panther education projects, warned Horowitz that Newton was abusing cocaine. (“He had a cold,” Horowitz replied.) Uncomfortable being a white man in the upper ranks of the Panther hierarchy, Horowitz attempted to recruit qualified blacks to replace him, so he invited Troy Duster, a sociologist at UC-Berkeley, to meet Newton. But Duster was suspicious of Newton’s mercurial behavior and fled.

Horowitz then denounced Duster as something of a bourgeois “Uncle Tom.” “I must have been insufferable,” Horowitz says, reflecting on his younger self.

On July 22, 1974, Huey Newton shot a young prostitute, after which he fled to Cuba. “I should have left [the Panthers] then,” Horowitz says. In fact, many of his black friends in the party did depart at that very moment–a turn of events that enraged Newton’s successor, a striking, charismatic and voluble young woman named Elaine Brown, who, according to Horowitz, said the party was under attack and “the rats were leaving the ship.” Horowitz says he felt trapped. When Brown asked him to recommend someone to oversee the party finances, he suggested Betty Van Patter, a 42-year-old bookkeeper who had worked at Ramparts. Van Patter, who was white, eagerly accepted the position. On December 13, 1974, she vanished. A month later, her body, with a massive head wound, was discovered in San Francisco Bay.

It is a case, according to veteran Panther-watcher Kate Coleman, that has “haunted the Bay Area left for two decades.” A lengthy investigation by Coleman revealed that Van Patter had discovered questionable activity–rackets, dope, prostitution–at a Panther-run bar in Oakland called the Lamp Post and had reportedly complained about it to Brown, who then fired her.

Van Patter’s death plunged Horowitz into “a really clinical depression,” he says today. “For a good year, I woke up in tears every day because of Betty.” What inspired the guilt was not simply that he’d recommended Van Patter to the Panthers but that he’d been too frightened to warn her about the dangers she faced. But he was in a bind: Van Patter, delighted to be employed by the Panthers, was completely enamored of Brown and wary of Horowitz, whom she did not trust. So he let her proceed with the job.

“Today I can’t even justify it,” he says wearily. “I have no idea why I did it.” Horowitz and I are seated in his office. The room is tense and completely silent, except for the sound of his hand nervously striking the table. His voice, normally firm and confident, sinks to a barely audible mumble.

“It was inconceivable to me that the Panthers would kill Betty Van Patter,” he whispers. “I was nervous about what was going on there, but if I told Betty what I actually felt, I was afraid that she would tell Elaine, and that Elaine would harm me or my children. I was completely unprotected.”

If he could do it over again, what would he say to Van Patter?

“I would tell her flat out–get out of there,” he replies. “But the consequences for me would have been awful. I didn’t have any money. How was I going to move my family?”

Today, Tamara Baltar, Van Patter’s daughter, does not consider Horowitz in any way responsible for her mother’s death. “David didn’t kill my mother, and David didn’t participate in the killing of my mother,” says Baltar, breaking a long silence on the case. Is there something curious about the fact that he holds himself responsible? “No,” she replies. “I think I would, too, if I were him.” Not until 1984, however, did Baltar, who was a leftist and a supporter of the Panthers, accept the view that they committed the crime. “David Horowitz kept at it from the beginning,” she says. “And I was mad at him for keeping at it. But he kept at it.”

In the late seventies, relying on his old Panther contacts, Horowitz quietly began to reconstruct the crime, and he was a primary source for a lengthy exposé on Newton’s criminal activities that Kate Coleman published in New Times in 1978.

“I stayed on the story,” he says. “It’s a minimal atonement.”

But, remember, Barack Obama needs to be thrown out of polite right wing society because his pastor said some offensive things, and David Horowitz and his ilk needs to lecture us on our terrible liberal choices and immorality.

As a working class white guy who grew up in rural Mississippi (we heated our home with a wood burning stove when I was a kid); I have to say that nothing Jeremiah Wright said upsets me.

In fact, looking at what the Bush administration and the Republicans have wrought on America; I wonder why more people aren’t pissed.

White people sometimes are so stupid about black people. In Soul On Ice, Eldridge Cleaver told white people that it was okay for him to rape women because he was an angry black man and fucking idiots like Horowitz and my tenth grade english teacher believed him.

foreigner:

Uggh — 1 Althouse 1 cup

Dear god in wherever, I wish I could hate you to death for that.

Making fun of Ann Outhouse is like bullying a 90 pound kid with a learning disability. Only cruel, mean spirited folks participate in such activity.

I don’t care how off the wall, mistaken, self pitying, vain, envious (teh breast and Bill incident) and liver destroying she is. It is just too damn easy to verbally massacre her invective laden posts (not that CY is exactly tough to refute or mock either). I will not pile on today.

You guys are better at it, anyway. 😉

>Dude, the guy is the prohibitive favorite to win the fucking presidency.

Really? I mean, I know Obama supporters want to believe that, but right now it is far from a prohibitive certainty he will get the Democratic nomination, much less the White House.

Oh, that Fat Albert.

Last I saw, he was leading Clinton for the Dem nomination and polling ahead of McCain in a theoretical general election matchup. That makes him the favorite. Not by a lot, though, so you’re right … ‘prohibitive’ was poorly used. ‘Odds on’ maybe?

“Up until the fix comes in”.

OMG.

Hydrox cookies were axed in 2003? Who knew?

‘Obama threw his Grandmother under the bus’

Mr Cole at Balloon Juice has thoughtfully summarised the responses, and it seems that the words “grandmother” and “under the bus” are now inextricably linked. Why was she not “kicked to the curb”, like everything else? Is this some form of residual chivalry?
I’m just trying to improve my understanding of the US idiom.

An English equivalent of Wright would not garner national attention in quite the same way. And a response would be far more muted. Not because we are a particularly tolerant nation, you understand. But an apathetic one.

Well, yes, but that’s because you have the Church of England.

Look, I hate to get all huffy here, but are we to believe that Dreher is incapable of picking up a phone or shooting off an email to his own brother-in-law before putting words in his mouth?

Because someone has to say it:

“You’re overlooking the restraining order Dreher’s brother-in-law took out.”