The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

The 1% Progressive Bloggers Club and the Bourgeois Dialectic of Comrade Yglesias

Posted on | March 23, 2013 | 55 Comments

Friend of the proletariat Matthew Yglesias (Photo: Matt Roth)

The news that left-wing blogger employee of Slate magazine Matthew Yglesias has purchased a $1.2-million townhouse in D.C.’s Logan Circle neighborhood has produced much chortling. Yglesias, after all, mocked property rights as the “myth of ownership.” Andy at AOSHQ says:

So, party at Matty’s this weekend? I mean, I’m sure he won’t mind if we crash the joint, what with that myth of owning private property and all.

Twitchy enjoys the rich irony, but before the “Occupy Yglesias” movement encamps on his patio — “a converted Victorian rowhouse, the unit has original exposed-brick walls and a private patio” — let’s observe a couple of key points:

  1. Yglesias is entitled — He is, after all, a graduate of the Upper East Side’s prestigious Dalton School (annual tuition, $38,710) and a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard University (annual tuition, $54,496), so you don’t expect him to be hustling on the Internet for nickels and dimes, do you? No, he’s a fully-credentialed member of the meritocratic elite and therefore entitled to the prestigious positions he held at The American Prospect, The Atlantic Monthly and the Soros-funded Center for American Progress before landing at The Washington Post Co.’s online loss-leader, Slate.
  2. He has his progressives defenders — Politics is a team sport, and one of Yglesias’s ideological comrades sniffs that critics are “playing ‘gotcha’ politics” (which thoughtful progressives never do, y’know) and defends the role of the intelligentsia in the struggles of the proletariat: “Yglesias can only be a hypocrite for purchasing an expensive home in a buyer’s market if you believe that class sympathies can only be extended to people in the same class as the sympathizer.”

What. Ever.

Journalism is a job, not a monastic order or a missionary crusade.

It’s ridiculous to expect writers to take a vow of poverty, even if their job requires them to pretend to believe in egalitarianism.

And certainly Yglesias isn’t stupid enough to believe that crap.

Wake the hell up, you people.

Sometimes people ask me how it is that, unlike 89 percent of the press corps, I’m not one of the Democrat Party’s hired liars. Well, by the time my small-town Georgia editor offered to nominate me for a Nieman FellowshipHarvard! — I was already a 34-year-old married father of three, owner of a three-bedroom bungalow on the west side of Rome, Ga., and couldn’t see any way to afford a year at Cambridge, even if I’d been accepted in the program. And I didn’t want to give those stuck-up elitist Ivy League bastards a chance to turn me down.

The Babysitter Snitch Act of 1993

Also, by the time my editor handed me the Nieman application, I’d started becoming disillusioned by the dishonesty of the Clinton administration. Having been born and raised a Democrat, I’d always thought my party was for “the little guy,” but once Clinton was inaugurated — and I’d not only voted for him, but had a Clinton-Gore bumper sticker on my car during the ’92 campaign — I quickly realized that he intended to do exactly jack shit for me and my family.

Yeah, there was a lot of talk about “working families,” and a few token tax credits (including one that would have required us to report our babysitter to the IRS), but Clinton taught me a valuable lesson: The Democrats are a power-hungry mob of special interests, and the typical American’s interests aren’t special.

So while the Clintons were ostentatiously pandering to their various pet cliques, and hoovering up corporate campaign contributions with a single-minded avarice that would make any Republican blush, I became disillusioned and angry — angry at myself for having been such a complete chump as to buy into the Democrats’ phony populist hustle.

It was just about that time that we got a new editor at the Rome News-Tribune, a fellow named Tommy Toles who had once been press secretary for legendary anti-communist Rep. Larry McDonald. Evidently having seen some glimmer of potential in my occasional op-ed columns (mostly humorous) and thinking me within reach of common-sense persuasion, Tommy began quietly handing me articles and magazines. One of the magazines he gave me every month was The Freeman, journal of the Foundation for Economic Education, a leading advocate for the Austrian School of economics (Mises, Hayek, et al.)

At first, I resisted these free-market arguments. Unlike certain other Democrats, I’d never been a socialist, but my parents were FDR liberals and my dad had spent 37 years as a member of the Machinists union. Insofar as I actually knew anything about economics, I was a standard-issue Keynesian and had gleefully mocked Reagan-era supply-side policy as “trickle-down economics,” never bothering to understand exactly what I was mocking. Yet as I encountered The Freeman month after month, and as I simultaneously undertook an autodidactic course in history and political philosophy — building a massive home library of works I’d purchased from used bookstores — the weight of evidence convinced me of my ignorant errors.

Proleterian Ideas, Bourgeois Lifestyles

All of this is by way of explaining why I see Yglesias’s entrance into the bourgeoisie as a teachable moment. Perhaps it is impossible for Yglesias to recognize the significance of the contradictions between his philosophy and his lifestyle, but surely there are others in the progressive blogosphere — less entitled, less elite — who might suddenly have a lightbulb over their heads: “Hey, wait a minute! How come I’m out here scraping for spare change and working a day job to support my advocacy for progressivism, while Comrade Yglesias is cashing in?”

Where’s your $1.2 million townhouse, proletarian blogger?

Progressivism as an ideology is bankrupt, a phony utopianism, a Quixotic pursuit of an egalitarian ideal that can never exist in reality.

Progressivism as a career opportunity for clever cynics — well, that’s another thing, and quite a lucrative enterprise indeed.

But I never applied for that Nieman Fellowship, so I missed out on the indoctrination sessions, and have spent the past 20 years unlearning the dishonest Democrat Party gospel on which I was raised. Along the way, I made a surprising discovery: Becoming a conservative doesn’t require you to stop hating Republicans. You just hate some Republicans — the vicious backstabbing crapweasels — for different reasons.

And like the man said, “One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up.”

Also: Hit the freaking tip jar. While I was recently named Editor in Chief at ViralRead, the new gig hasn’t yet begun paying me Yglesias-style megabucks, and the continuation of this entrepreneurial endeavor requires me to preserve the customary fee-for-service relationship with readers, at least for the next few weeks.

If a thousand words ripping a hole in Matthew Yglesias isn’t a service worth $10 or $20 to you, well, OK.

I would almost feel guilty getting paid for it.

Almost, I said.

 

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers! You might have noticed the Professor hasn’t quit his day job, or bought a million-dollar townhouse.

UPDATE II: Bob Belvedere links with thoughts on the apparatchiks, and Aleister at American Glob comments:

How can someone write dozens upon dozens of articles in support of the Occupy Wall Street movement and then think nothing of dropping a cool million on a condo? . . .
Remember when Yglesias compared the evil rich Mitt Romney to Hitler?

It pays well to hate Republicans. Aleister is correct: Yglesias frequently waxed rhapsodic over Occupy Wall Street. But he wasn’t the one getting raped in a tent in Zuccotti Park, was he?

 

 


Comments

55 Responses to “The 1% Progressive Bloggers Club and the Bourgeois Dialectic of Comrade Yglesias”

  1. Klejdys
    March 23rd, 2013 @ 1:23 pm

    Beautiful. Wonderful work Stacy. This guy buys a row house, but wants the rest of us to live in towers in large cities because that’s what he thinks will work. What a ma-roon, as Bugs would say.

    For some background on some of Matt’s adventures in DC, recommend you catch up with Steve Sailer’s take on Matt getting “polar beared” by two vibrant youths on North Capitol Street in DC: http://isteve.blogspot.com/2011/05/was-mugging-of-matthew-yglesias-hate.html

  2. Dianna Deeley
    March 23rd, 2013 @ 2:30 pm

    Honestly, I enjoyed it thoroughly!

  3. t-dahlgren
    March 23rd, 2013 @ 2:51 pm

    “…if you believe that class sympathies can only be extended to people in the same class as the sympathizer.”

    Sympathy, empathy, what’s the difference…

    Apparently English, like natural right, is not something actually taught to the nomenklatura.

  4. SDN
    March 23rd, 2013 @ 3:05 pm

    if you believe that class sympathies can only be extended to people in the same class as the sympathizer.

    The dishonest Democrat jackass neglects to mention that he and Yggy can extend whatever sympathies he wants; what he doesn’t have is the right to confiscate my hard-earned money to extend them with; Hell, he doesn’t even have the right to ask until he lays out his hard-earned money on those he sympathizes with, at least to the point he’s finding making the payments on his 1%er house difficult.

  5. Allnamestaken1
    March 23rd, 2013 @ 3:06 pm

    @smitty_one_each The Can. Conservatives did a critical job under Harper reaching out to and including minorities before our last election.

  6. robertstacymccain
    March 23rd, 2013 @ 4:00 pm

    Bingo.

  7. Adjoran
    March 23rd, 2013 @ 5:17 pm

    I suspect Yglesias’ hypocrisy goes even deeper than the typical “generosity with other people’s money” that characterizes almost every socialist.

    Does Salon pay that kind of money? Not on your life! Judging by his elite early education, I suspect our little Matty has family money he can rely upon and doesn’t depend on the market for his brand of “journ-o-lism” for sustenance. And if the Left resents Wealth, they hold a special level of intensity for their hatred of Inherited Wealth.

    Unless of course the pampered scion of the Evil Rich holds and espouses the “correct” politics – and Matty is nothing if not “correct.”

  8. The High Hypocrisy Of The Apparatchiks | The Camp Of The Saints
    March 23rd, 2013 @ 5:18 pm

    […] McCain reports that Slate Magazine’s ’Matthew Yglesias has purchased a $1.2-million townhouse in […]

  9. DaveO
    March 23rd, 2013 @ 5:20 pm

    If performance is any indicator, Magna Cum Laude from Harvard equates to 2-oh and go from Community College, but without any sense of gratitude.
    Remember: self-made billionaires and millionaires don’t go to Harvard, or any college. They go to work. Something else Yglesias is unfamiliar with.

  10. The Spot-On Quote Of the Day… | The Camp Of The Saints
    March 23rd, 2013 @ 6:00 pm

    […] Favorite Gonzo Reporter* and newly appointed Editor-In-Chief of Viral Read, for providing a real incentive to those of you out there who want to break your addiction to Bolshevism, but have a major concern […]

  11. Bob Belvedere
    March 23rd, 2013 @ 6:25 pm

    ‘By any means necessary’.

  12. Rosalie
    March 23rd, 2013 @ 6:39 pm

    He seems to be your typical liberal, elitist snob who knows better than anyone else what’s good for the unwashed. So what’s new?

  13. jakee308
    March 23rd, 2013 @ 6:52 pm

    The commenters elsewhere are arguing that he was mugged because he looks white.

    I think he looks GHEY!!!

    So it IS a hate crime.

  14. JFP
    March 23rd, 2013 @ 7:25 pm

    Nice Halloween mask, Matthew. Where did ya’ get it?

  15. Charles
    March 23rd, 2013 @ 7:29 pm

    The 90% envy the 10%, the 10% envy the 1%. Undoubtedly there are some in the 1% who envy the .1%.

    Sure, Matt’s little condo got written up in the Washingtonian. But his property was the least of the 9 profiled. And the million dollar mortgage has got to bite.

  16. Douglas6
    March 23rd, 2013 @ 7:37 pm

    Mr. McCain _ I think you might be missing the point. There is no way that any journalist less than 10 years out of college is buying a $1.2 million townhouse on a journalist’s salary, no matter what prestigious dead-print or new media publications he writes for. Maybe if he wrote a best-selling book, too, but Yglesias has not done that. Where did he get the money, then? Gee, I wonder. Maybe from the same people who forked out $200,000 for Dalton and another $200,000 for Harvard? Ya think?

  17. How Franklin Foer Fired Timothy Noah : The Other McCain
    March 23rd, 2013 @ 8:06 pm

    […] some idiot kid name Olga asks Nate Thayer to write for free. Then Matthew Yglesias buys himself a million-dollar D.C. townhouse. Now, an award-winning liberal journalist gets the […]

  18. jhertzli
    March 23rd, 2013 @ 8:09 pm

    Wait a moment… He didn’t say property is a myth; he said property depends on the State. (I regard that claim as dubious but that’s another rant.) Since he is not an anarchist, his ownership of property is not hypocritical.

  19. JTHC75
    March 23rd, 2013 @ 8:16 pm

    “if you believe that class sympathies can only be extended to people in the same class as the sympathizer”

    And yet if you do not think the 1% should be punished as class enemies, the Left will say you have been manipulated to vote against your interests. Apparently class sympathies can only go in one direction. (Not that I weep for the 1%– I’m just suspicious of appeals to class warfare)

  20. From Around the Blogroll « THE FIRST STREET JOURNAL.
    March 23rd, 2013 @ 9:07 pm

    […] Robert Stacey Stacy McCain wrote about the hypocrisy of Matthew Yglesias. No one is surprised. […]

  21. Stacy McCain Will Not Be Invited To Matt Yglesias’ Housewarming Party | American Glob
    March 23rd, 2013 @ 9:20 pm

    […] Still, I find McCain’s analysis of condogate rather astute… […]

  22. DaveO
    March 23rd, 2013 @ 9:24 pm

    His buddies featured Yglesias’s house in the Washingtonian – resale value is now double what Yglesias paid. His mortgage isn’t so painful – he’s a member of the 1%, and connected, plus has a blog – what bank is going to cross him?

  23. fid def res publicaeMatt
    March 23rd, 2013 @ 9:54 pm

    Great! Banks lend money to that f**kwit Yggy so he can show off, but create no enduring value.
    Meanwhile my business start up creating real jobs? Not so much.
    B*****d cronies ………..

  24. The 1% Progressive Bloggers Club and the Bourgeois Dialectic of Comrade Yglesias : The Other McCain | jamesbbkk
    March 23rd, 2013 @ 10:28 pm

    […] via The 1% Progressive Bloggers Club and the Bourgeois Dialectic of Comrade Yglesias : The Other McCain. […]

  25. gvanderleun
    March 23rd, 2013 @ 10:39 pm

    I guess @mattyglesias either came from money or, by marrying, came into money. Either way the key question remains, “Matty, schmuck or putz?”

  26. Bob Belvedere
    March 23rd, 2013 @ 11:30 pm

    That’s too easy: putz. Cryin’ John Boehner and his ‘leadership’ crew are schmucks. See the difference? Fellow Traveller vs. Useful Idiot/Dupe.

  27. Patrick Carroll
    March 23rd, 2013 @ 11:53 pm

    Ever seen pictures of Tom Friedman’s house?

    Yglesias is just the latest hypocrite to cash in.

  28. Patrick Carroll
    March 24th, 2013 @ 12:02 am

    I thank God, from the bottom of my heart, that he had me land in Georgia when I finished my service in the US military.

    I have the Yseglias lifestyle for a small percentage of the Yseglias lifestyle cost. Hell, I have a house in Atlanta, and a house on the gulf coast, and will never come close to his expenses.

    Oh, and I don’t have to deal with Harvard graduates and government suck-ups.

    Did a Harvard graduate ever go muddin’? I think not. Did a Harvard graduate shoot hogzilla? Not even close.

    Or Thomas Friedman.

    Truly, I am blessed.

  29. Adjoran
    March 24th, 2013 @ 3:13 am

    You must admit he does have the look of a guy you’d just love to punch.

  30. BeaversBrother
    March 24th, 2013 @ 4:04 am

    Hypocrisy, thy name is, uh, something that starts with a Y….

  31. Jessica L
    March 24th, 2013 @ 4:29 am
  32. lewy14
    March 24th, 2013 @ 5:04 am

    “Hey, wait a minute! How come I’m out here scraping for spare change and working a day job to support my advocacy for progressivism, while Comrade Yglesias is cashing in?”

    Are you kidding? These guys _love_ money and power and they worship people who have it. The message is that comrade Yglesias is _awesome_ and the path to _awesome_ is to be like Yglesias.

    That’s why the Obamas are so into grand spending on themselves and their events – it’s not even because they enjoy it. It’s a power signal and it is meant to be “read”.

  33. teapartydoc
    March 24th, 2013 @ 8:50 am

    So some crap-head that never did any good for anyone–never sat up all night with a septic patient after cleaning pus out of her abdomen, never made a life-saving diagnosis–lives in a house worth many times that which I live in, and in a more expensive neighborhood to boot. And he thinks he has the right to fool around in my business. I hope I meet the twerp some day.

  34. herddog505
    March 24th, 2013 @ 8:55 am

    Patrick CarrollLiving in God’s own country, the US southeast
    AMEN, BROTHER!

  35. Robert Delaney
    March 24th, 2013 @ 9:42 am

    I sometimes wonder if it wouldn’t be better to make an Ivy-league education a disqualification for any important job, rather than a positive factor. Sure, this would eliminate some good people, but sometimes you have to take the bitter with the sweet. Besides, even a conservative can fall prey to the attitude of elite superiority these schools seem to foster.

  36. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    March 24th, 2013 @ 11:06 am

    This link was next to the one for this post at Instapundit…coincidence? No! The experiment is clear, Matt Yglesias and Andrew Sullivan’s heads need to be switched!

  37. Matthew W
    March 24th, 2013 @ 11:15 am

    Great post Stacy !!
    Thanks for the background information about yourself.

  38. Matthew W
    March 24th, 2013 @ 11:17 am

    He looks like the kind of guy that got towel snapped a lot in the boys locker room in high school

  39. Kevin Trainor Jr.
    March 24th, 2013 @ 11:57 am

    Kevin Trainor Jr. liked this on Facebook.

  40. Aaron1960
    March 24th, 2013 @ 12:27 pm

    Why do progressives all look small, weasley and ugly? Is that a job requirement?

  41. Nick Nahat
    March 24th, 2013 @ 12:47 pm

    Yglesias isn’t being inconsistent. One can support egalitarianism and still enjoy one’s wealth until new redistributive policies are instituted–would you say libertarians should refuse to take a mortgage tax deduction even though they advocate abolishing tax loopholes?

  42. Charles
    March 24th, 2013 @ 12:47 pm

    He’ll find out how much it bites when he loses his temp job.

  43. richard mcenroe
    March 24th, 2013 @ 1:05 pm

    Matty better hope the prog gravy train holds out a little longer. The prog movement in Asia already proved they aren’t good for anything else, even farm work.

  44. Matty Yglesias’ Excellent Adventures In Hypocrisy and Real Estate | Daily Pundit
    March 24th, 2013 @ 1:31 pm

    […] The 1% Progressive Bloggers Club and the Bourgeois Dialectic of Comrade Yglesias : The Other McCain […]

  45. Jon Glenn
    March 24th, 2013 @ 1:59 pm

    “Phoney utopianism” is a tad bit redundant, don’t you think?

  46. Jon Glenn
    March 24th, 2013 @ 2:03 pm

    The Germans have a word for that: backpfeifengesicht

  47. Esau's Message
    March 24th, 2013 @ 2:23 pm

    Look, we don’t know for sure that Matt wasn’t in the rape tent. And we don’t know for sure that he wasn’t the one being raped. But we do know that he has an exceedingly receding hairline for some at 32, I’m sorry, 31? Doesn’t that make him presumptively guilty.

  48. Wombat_socho
    March 24th, 2013 @ 8:10 pm

    I denounce Yglesias as a right-deviationist running dog lackey of the Obamas’ cult of personality.

  49. Ed Driscoll » Ageism In Strangest Places
    March 24th, 2013 @ 9:02 pm

    […] some idiot kid name Olga asks Nate Thayer to write for free. Then Matthew Yglesias buys himself a million-dollar D.C. townhouse. Now, an award-winning liberal journalist gets the […]

  50. I Wonder If Mr. #MythOfOwnership Is Enjoying His $1.2 Million Home | The Lonely Conservative
    March 24th, 2013 @ 10:39 pm

    […] live in luxury. Left wing blogger Matthew Yglesias, Mr. #MythofOwnership, is one of those people. He just bought a $1.2 million Victorian rowhouse in DC. How lovely for […]