The Other McCain

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

How Franklin Foer Fired Timothy Noah

Posted on | March 23, 2013 | 30 Comments

First, 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 ax:

On Thursday, New Republic columnist Timothy Noah received an email from editor Frank Foer asking him to meet at 2:30 pm on Friday. During the meeting, Foer told Noah that he was out of a job.
When Noah got to the New Republic’s lobby, on the way out the door, he decided to tweet the news himself: “I just got fired from @tnr. Don’t have a clue why. Anybody got a job?”
“All I got was your column isn’t a good fit for the direction the magazine is going in,” Noah told The Huffington Post shortly after.

Hmmm. “Your column isn’t a good fit.” Let’s imagine what Franklin Foer would have said if he had really been honest with Noah:

Dude, you’re 54 years old. Fifty f–king four, an aging Boomer with a loyal readership of aging Boomers, and that’s not where the action is these days, unless we want our advertising base to be mainly AARP, reverse mortages and Super Beta Prostate. Which we don’t, for obvious reasons. . . .
For crying out loud, Marty sold us to a 29-year-old multimillionaire. Think about that, OK?
Do you think Chris gives a damn about your Hillman Award? And so what, you wrote a book? About income inequality — as if Mister Facebook Wonder Boy is losing sleep over that.
What? . . . Well, yeah, but “quality” is in the eye of the beholder, really. Nowadays, it’s all about the clicks, Tim.
I’ve seen the analytics and, quite frankly, you’re not pulling your weight. Page-views, Facebook “likes,” re-Tweets — pick a metric, doesn’t matter. BuzzFeed gets more hits on a cute kitty video than most of your stuff gets.
Chris wants more hip, sexy content. He uses that word a lot, “sexy.” There’s basically two kinds of writing for him: “sexy” and “sucks.” And I’m not saying your stuff sucks, Tim, but it’s not sexy. I mean, when did you ever have a column go viral on Reddit, huh? When did any college kid ever re-Tweet you with an “LOL”? . . .
Sure, sure. I know you can try harder, Tim, but your salary is just too high for what we get in return, traffic-wise. I’ve got kids e-mailing me stuff every day, begging me to publish their stuff for free. These kids are desperate — liberal arts degrees from good schools, tens of thousands of dollars in student debt, working part-time at Starbucks and just trying to catch a break.
Why should I keep paying you big bucks for un-sexy columns when these kids write pretty good for free? Besides, you’ve got less than 6,000 Twitter followers, Tim, and some of these kids have 10,000 or more, so they can really drive the hits. And you’ve got, what? Fourteen hundred Facebook friends? There are high school kids with twice that.
It’s a business, Tim. Not personal. Chris doesn’t want to be the bad cop, so it’s my job to cut you loose. And trust me, you won’t be the last. There’s way too much un-sexy around here.

That’s what Franklin Foer would have said, if he were honest. But guys like that don’t get paid to be honest, do they?

 

Category: Journalism

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. Read more

Category: Blogging, Economics, Progressivism

The Other War on Women, or: It’s Not Harassment When Democrats Do It

Posted on | March 23, 2013 | 16 Comments

He “pulled a weiner”:

A state representative in Massachussetts is  being investigated after allegedly sending pictures of his genitals to a  government computer.
The investigation is ongoing and the  committee has not formally reprimanded the individual in charge, but it is being  widely reported that Democratic State Representative John Fresolo is the one  behind the scandal.
He allegedly sent ‘lascivious photos of his  privates’ to a computer at the State House, and an aide complained to the Ethics  Committee to start the investigation.
House Speaker Robert DeLeo has not confirmed  any accusations in the case except that he did say there was ‘sufficient cause’  for an investigation.
‘In order to protect the integrity of the  Ethics Committee investigation, Speaker DeLeo will have no further comment on  this matter,’ spokesman Seth Gitell said. . . .

(“You reporters need to stop asking so many questions! Can’t you see we’re busy orchestrating a cover-up here?”)

This is not [Fresolo’s] first scandal, as he has a  history of violence towards his family members that has put him in trouble with social services.
In 2005 he reportedly physically abused his  then-13-year-old daughter, and that came nearly a decade after he was arrested  for beating his then-wife in 1996. She later dropped the charges.
Blogger Michele McPhee reports that he is now on paid administrative  leave, which is allegedly angering his colleagues.
‘It’s bad enough that he pulled an Anthony  Weiner and had pictures of his penis on State House computers, but then he tried  to get his per diem pumped up. No one puts in for 220 days of commuting and with  his commute that’s a lot of money,’ a state representative told her on the  condition of anonymity.

Via Memeorandum, with more at Weasel Zippers, Gateway Pundit and The Daily Caller.

 


Category: Democrats, Massachusetts, Scandal, Sex

This Will Not End Well for the Donald

Posted on | March 22, 2013 | 44 Comments

So, the Vulgar King of Obnoxiousness decided to throw down on Twitter with Michelle Malkin, and perhaps this reminder is unnecessary:

Trump has a rather long history of hostility toward conservatives like Malkin, a New York Times bestselling author and New Media entrepreneur who created the popular Hot Air political blog as well as the innovative Twitter aggregation site Twitchy, as well as her own highly trafficked site, MichelleMalkin.com. It is highly unlikely that she will back down in her battle with Trump.

Trump is a bully who is used to pushing people around and, unfortunately, some Republicans have been willing to enable his bullying. Quite frankly, he’s one of those celebrity characters — like Geraldo “El Spitto” Rivera — whom Fox News executives tolerate because they’re good for ratings. Also (and I think I’m not the only one who sees this) there’s a kind of old-boys attitude with Bill O’Reilly in particular: Geraldo and Trump are “one of the guys,” and so the brass at Fox are apt to indulge their hateful attitudes toward Malkin. But don’t for a minute think that Malkin is  going to put up with Trump’s bullying.

 

Category: Fox News, Michelle Malkin

Slouching Toward Cougartown

Posted on | March 22, 2013 | 21 Comments

From fame to shame: NFL cheerleader (left) in her police mug shot (right)

Jeff Gurner at Viral Read reports the disturbing story of the woman who was arrested for making advances on a 12-year-old boy:

Elizabeth Leigh Garner, a former Tennessee Titans cheerleader, was indicted last week on charges of aggravated sexual battery and solicitation of a minor for child rape.
The 42 year-old denies the allegations and told police “that she was drunk that evening and that she got the boy confused with a man that was also at the residence.”
According to the Mufreesboro police report, the boy stated “she was asking him if he had ever been with a woman,” and that Garner then touched him “on the outside of his pants” and made “an attempt to take his shorts off” while offering to “perform oral sex on him.”

Well, if being drunk were a valid defense against criminal charges, there would be a lot fewer people in prison, but given the description of her actions in the police report, does anyone buy this over-the-hill NFL cheerleader’s excuse that she was “confused”?

It is routinely expected that lots of guys reading this will react by saying, “Where were these sexually aggressive NFL cheerleaders back when I was an adolescent fantasizing about them?” We are all reminded of that famous scene in Animal House where the Playboy Bunny comes flying through the kid’s window: “Thank you, God!”

Yet there are reasons why sexual fantasies — lust for things that are abnormal or taboo — are best restricted to the realm of fantasy. Sexual taboos serve a social purpose; the indulgence of what advocates of sexual liberation call “transgressive” behavior inevitably leads to trouble.

The seemingly widespread phenomenon we might call the Mary Kay LeTourneau Syndrome, of middle-aged women seeking to validate their sexual attractiveness by seducing boys, should be viewed as disturbing evidence of cultural decadence. Perhaps some “pro-sex” feminists would defend this trend as evidence of advancing equality, but if so, it is the worst sort of equality, namely a descent into utter degeneracy. (And, to do the feminists’ work for them: If men value women primarily for their sexual attractiveness, isn’t the patriarchy to blame if women feel compelled to seek validation in this perverse manner?)

On the fringes of society, we have seen those who argue that pedophilia should be understood as a valid “sexual orientation,” rather than as a dangerous perversion. We have seen such attitudes apparently embraced even among the elite, as in Judith Levine’s Harmful to Minors, the tip of an academic iceberg of pro-pedophile intellectualism, or in the Columbia University professor’s “consensual adult” incestuous affair.

In a society where the Supreme Court has declared that an “emerging awareness” should govern the legal status of sexual behavior, who can say which way this awareness will further emerge? A constitutional right to donkey sex may seem far-fetched today, but there was a time when the idea of ex-NFL cheerleaders stalking boys with offers of oral sex seemed equally far-fetched. Our society has already slid far down the slippery slope, and who knows when we’ll hit rock bottom?

 

 


Category: Crime, Culture, Sex, Sports

LIVE AT FIVE: 03.22.13

Posted on | March 22, 2013 | 4 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho


TOP NEWS
Texas Shootout May be Tied To Murder Of Colorado Prison Chief

Suspect killed in gunfight with Montague County deputies

Suspect killed in gunfight with Montague County deputies

Parolee Evan Ebel shot in the head; alleged member of white supremacist prison gang

Palestinians Disappointed With Obama
PA decries president’s stance on settlements, prisoners

Sarkozy Charged Over Funding From Heiress
Accusations that former president took advantage of elderly L’Oreal heiress Liliane Bettencourt



POLITICS
Senate Signals Willingness To Repeal Medical Device Tax

Joins with MN Democrat Klobuchar in bipartisan effort

Joins with MN Democrat Klobuchar in bipartisan effort

Franken, Casey, Donnelly also co-sponsored amendment, which passed 79-20

House Approves Continuing Resolution After Senate Amendments

Marines Killed In Training Exercise Identified

Judge Declares Mistrial On Remaining Counts In Bell, California Corruption Trial

Biden, Bloomberg, Newtown Parents Continue Pushing For More Gun Control

New Mexico State Rep Wants AG’s Opinion On Same-Sex Marriage

Immigration Reform Pushed Back In Congress

Poll: Florida Voters Like Hillary For President More Than Jeb Bush Or Marco Rubio

FCC Chairman Genachowski Expected To Resign

GAO Says Postal Service Can’t Cut Saturday Delivery



THE ECONOMY, STUPID
Oil Prices Fall On Profit-Taking: NYMEX $93.19, Brent $108.37
Beechcraft Sues Air Force Over Afghan Attack Planes
Bank Of Thailand, Government Agree: No Intervention On Hot Baht
Existing Home Sales Hit Three-Year High
Book Buzz: Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In Is Number One
Assurant To Pay $14 Million To Settle NY State Charges
A Slaughterhouse For Horse Meat Waits In New Mexico
Coca-Cola To Lay Off 750 In U.S., Canada
Two Jobless After Twitter Critique Of “Sexual” Jokes
Apple Says Data Centers Now Use 100% Renewable Energy
BlackBerry CEO Ready For A Smartphone Fight
Google’s Trust Problem
Verizon Takes Texting Cross-Platform With New App
Zynga.com To Free Users From Facebook Login Requirement
Your Next Smartphone Screen Could Be Synthetic Sapphire



SPORTS
Nuggets Push Win Streak To 14

Corey Brewer scores the last six for Denver

Corey Brewer scores the last six for Denver

Nuggets rally to edge Sixers 101-100

Texas Rangers Show Opening Day Lineup In 10-9 Win Over Angels

Rangers Fall To Panthers, Drop Back Out Of Playoff Contention

Blazers Show Some Defense In 99-89 Win Over Bulls

Schroeder Scores Winning Goal As Canucks Edge Coyotes

Kings Humble Timbermutts 101-98

Flames Sink Further, Lose 8th Straight Road Game

Harvard Upsets #3 New Mexico At NCAA Tourney

Goalie Brodeur Scores In Return As Devils Beat Islanders

#12 Oregon Upsets #5 Oklahoma State

Hanley Ramirez Injures Thumb At WBC, Could Be Out 2-10 Weeks

Battery, Stalking Charges Filed Against Jennifer Capriati

Adam LaRoche, Tim Hudson, And A Friendly First-Pitch Knuckleball



FAMOUS FOR BEING FAMOUS
Kate Moss Designs A Sushi Box

Because all the rest of tonight's pix were fugly

Because all the rest of tonight’s pix were fugly

What amazing talents will she display tomorrow?

Unspeakable Armenian Sits Through Nine-Hour Deposition, Denies Marrying Kris Humphries For Publicity

“Real Chance Of Love” Star Ahmad “Real” Givens Fighting Stage Four Cancer

Joe Jonas Says Rumors of Sex Tape Untrue

Former NFL Cheerleader Charged With Molesting 12-Year-Old Boy

Bobby Brown Released After Nine Hours In Jail

Too Short – Those Weren’t My Drugs!

Malcolm Jamal Warner, Regina King Split Up

Big “Mary Tyler Moore” Reunion On “Hot In Cleveland”

Lindsey Vonn “Not Freaked Out” By Tiger’s Past



FOREIGNERS
India Hails Diplomatic Success Over Italian Marines’ Return For Trial
Mosque Bombing In Damascus Kills 42, Including Leading Sunni Pro-Assad Imam
Kremlin Says No Gas Deal Signing During Visit Of PRC Prez Xi
Burma Riots Stoke Fears Of Widening Sectarian Violence
Sanjay Dutt: Don’t Know Why I Alone Am Being Accused Of This
Last Surviving Member Of Edmund Hillary’s Everest Expedition Dies
Indian Legislators Pass Strict Anti-Rape Law
Pro-Assad Hackers Take Over BBC Weather On Twitter
Thatcher Files Reveal Deep Rift Over Falklands
Chile Investigates Massive Prawn Death



BLOGS & STUFF
Professor Bainbridge: Is Starbucks’ Support Of Gay Marriage A Breach Of Fiduciary Duty?
Weasel Zippers: Reid Throws The Left A Bone On Gun Control
Twitchy: John Nolte, Ace Shred Conor Friedersdorf For Calling Michelle Malkin A Xenophobe
Rich Lowry: Where Is Today’s Jack Kemp?
James Pethokoukis: Really, Where Is Today’s Jack Kemp In The GOP?
Patterico: In Cyprus, Government Raids The Banks
Allahpundit: Marco Rubio Says If We Can’t Come Up With A Solid Guest Worker Program, We’ll Have Ten Million Illegals Here In A Decade
Weekly Standard Blog: Pew – Obama Job Approval Drops 8 Points
AmSpecBlog: President Perry 2016?
Jihad Watch: UK Police Foil Major Jihad Terror Attack On The Scale of 7/7 Every Year
Mark Krikorian: Adventures In Manipulative Polling
NRO Corner: Greg Sargent Is Bullish On The GOP – How Did We Get There?
Protein Wisdom: “Mass. Principal Calls Off Honors Night Because It Could Be ‘Devastating’ To Those Who Missed Mark”
Lonely Conservative: PETA Sure Does Kill A Lot Of Dogs And Cats
Rush Limbaugh: Beyonce’s “Bow Down” As Quoted By The UK Telegraph


Deadline to submit your links for tomorrow’s FMJRA is midnight tonight.


Category: Live at Five

Narcissism and the Self-Esteem Cult

Posted on | March 21, 2013 | 5 Comments

Amelia Hamilton has some interesting reflections on the rampant gooey egalitarianism that inspires Generation Whiner:

[I]n St. Mary’s County, Maryland . . . birthday party invitations have been banned from all schools. “If there are 20 individuals in the class and someone brings in seven birthday invitations, it was creating an academic disruption,” Hall said. “People were getting their feelings hurt.” . . .
Unfortunately, our country is extending this bizarrely insulated existence into adulthood, and it shows. American college students are doing worse while thinking, more than ever, that they are “gifted” or “driven to succeed.” This inflated idea of self-worth is not helpful and it is not natural. This is a product of the “everybody gets a trophy” generation and it’s ruining our country. If left unchecked, the ruggedness and tenacity that we know and love about America will be lost. What will take its place? An America where narcissism is on the rise, adulthood is being delayed, and American boys could be “in crisis.”
What happens when these children grow up and go out into the real world? Will they have the earned confidence to be self sufficient and a blessing or will the expect what they haven’t earned and become a burden?

The latter, of course. People are increasingly incapable of objectivity, blind to their own faults, and thus prone to the narcissistic approach to failure: Victimhood and scapegoating.

What else is feminism, but an entire vast political ideology devoted to telling women that they are never responsibile for their own problems, but instead should blame the patriarchy? All identity-politics movements are essentially the same, derived from the Marxist conception that “workers” were victimized by “capitalists,” and thus not responsible for their own problems.

The egalitarian emphasis on “fairness,” the idea that everyone is equally entitled to their “fair share” of everything, functions in a Newtonian manner: There are equal and opposite effects. Even while people give lip-service to “fairness” and complain endlessly when they feel they have been short-changed, they simultaneously become more selfish and less concerned about dealing fairly with other.

Welcome to the Age of Envy: “How dare he have more than me?”

And, as I remarked the other day (“Like Ferris Bueller’s Sister“), for all the celebration of individualism, there is fierce resentment of those who are truly independent, whose success frees them from an obligation to “play the game.”

Much of what Hamilton describes was explained more than 30 years ago in Christopher Lasch’s book, The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations. Lasch was a man of the Left, and one must weed through some of his preconceptions (including his orthodox Freudianism), but his insights are keen:

“On the fringes of the radical movement, many tortured spirits actively sought a martyrdom made doubly attractive by the glamour of modern publicity. The left, with its vision of social upheaval, has always attracted more than its share of lunatics, but the media have conferred a curious sort of legitimacy on antisocial acts merely by reporting them. . ..
“Narcissistic patients, according to [psychiatrist Otto] Kernberg, ‘often admire some hero or outstanding individual’ and ‘experience themselves as part of that outstanding person.’ They see the admired individual as ‘merely an extension of themselves.’ . . . The narcissist admires and identifies himself with ‘winners’ out of his fear of being labeled a loser.”

And again:

“The 19th-century cult of success . . . measured achievement not against the achievements of others but against an abstract ideal of discipline and self-denial. At the turn of the century, however, preachments on success began to stress the will to win. The bureaucratization of the corporate career changed the conditions of self-advancement; ambitious young men now had to compete with their peers for the attention and approval of their superiors. . . . Personal magnetism, a quality which supposedly enabled a man to influence and dominate others, became one of the major keys to success.’ . . . The management of interpersonal relations came to be seen as the essence of self-advancement. The captains of industry gave way to the confidence men, the masters of impressions. Young men were told that they had to sell themselves in order to succeed.”

An obsession with image, a constant concern with how one is perceived, has the effect of turning life into a performance, demoting others to the role of mere spectators. Nothing is genuine or sincere or authentic, but instead everything is done for the sake of the impression it creates on others. Everybody is Willy Loman, worried about being “well-liked.”

To hell with all that. Life as an endless high-school popularity contest is only interesting to people whose egos are so badly damaged they are consumed with a self-hate which they attempt to mask with sociopathic manipulations. They deliberately cause problems and then blame others for the problems they’ve caused, because their entire lives are an evasion of responsibility. They are incapable of recognizing themselves as the source of their own problems, because this would require them to admit error, a recognition of personal shortcoming that their fragile egos could never withstand.

My son called home today from Army basic training, but only had two minutes to talk because, while they were waiting in line to use the phone, some doofus did something that got the whole platoon “smoked” (extra PT). Thank God, Army drill sergeants have not yet surrendered to the cult of self-esteem, but they are among the few remaining holdouts.

 

 


Category: Culture

CNN: The Godbag Christofascist Network

Posted on | March 21, 2013 | 9 Comments

In case you don’t know who Melissa McEwan is, this 2007 headline by Mary Katharine Ham is an apt summary:

Vote for Edwards, Godbag Christofascists!

McEwan and her feminist comrade Amanda Marcotte were hired to blog for the Democratic presidential primary campaign of John Edwards in what was, evidently, a bid to chip away at Hillary Clinton’s share of the women’s vote. When it was belatedly “discovered” that McEwan and Marcotte were foul-mouthed hate-filled fanatics — really, it was never a secret — Edwards ditched them quicker than you can say, “Rielle Hunter’s love child.” So these two feminist blog-stars had allowed themselves to be used and discarded by an eminent progressive hypocrite. Feminism’s ironic brand damage in the Edwards scandal is one of those things that only conservatives remember, and so . . .

CNN published a commentary on the Steubenville rape case by Rachel Simmons, a feminist in good standing, who wondered if the victim of the assault had been betrayed by her girlfriends, two of whom testified in defense of her accused rapists.

McEwan responds in an item headlined, “Blame the Girls,” excoriating CNN’s “abysmal” coverage of the Steubenville case, and struggling to find some reason why Simmons’s argument is actually wrong. One suspects the main thing wrong with it is that CNN didn’t ask McEwan for her viewpoint. It’s been a hard fall from the glory days when “Queen C–t of F–k Mountain” was blogging for a major presidential contender.

In other news: A 42-year-old former Tennessee Titans cheerleader has been arrested for soliciting a 12-year-old boy for sex.

I blame the patriarchy.

 

Category: Feminism, Mary Katharine Ham
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