The Other McCain

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

A Holiday Tradition Continues

Posted on | December 24, 2012 | 24 Comments

“We lost. We are losers. . . . Our operatives are incompetent and we live in a dream world.”
— Rob Long of National Review, in an interview with Joe Hagan of New York magazine during a Caribbean cruise in November

Readers expect “Christmas Cheesecake” from us this time year and what kind of conservative would I be if I did not maintain this tradition?

Last year’s round-up was entitled, “Behold, I Bring You Peace, Goodwill, and Also This Gratuitous Vintage Pinup Girl.” Nothing quite so cheers up despondent bloggers the way a pretty girl does, unless maybe it’s a blizzard of round-up linkage:

You know what this means? Read more

Category: Christmas

Memo From the National Affairs Desk: Chains Rattling, and Who’s That Ghost?

Posted on | December 24, 2012 | 29 Comments

P.J. O’Rourke encounters Andrew Breitbart at the
Manchester, N.H., Radisson Bar, Saturday, Jan. 7, 2012

“At more than one point in the movie, Breitbart asks members of audiences he’s addressing to hold up their iPhones, pocket cams, and other recording devices and to turn them on. You, he says, are the media. That gesture is the essential takeaway of Andrew Breitbart’s work — and of the documentary Hating Breitbart. Such moments illustrate how something weird and wonderful is happening when it comes to media. . . .
“Andrew Breitbart understood that it’s easier than ever to own a press and that despite the vast, incomprehensible increase in chatter . . . the demand for even more is still infinite.”
— Nick Gillespie, “Hating Breitbart‘s Powerful Post-Partisan Message,” Nov. 2

One of my favorite books is P.J. O’Rourke’s Parliament of Whores: A Lone Humorist Attempts to Explain the Entire U.S. Government, which ought to be on every college freshman’s reading list. It therefore seemed obvious, when I bumped into O’Rourke in the bar of the Radisson Hotel in Manchester, N.H., after the Republican presidential debate, that I must introduce him to Andrew Breitbart.

So now I sit here and ask myself, “How would ‘a lone humorist’ attempt to explain the entire tragic situation at Breitbart.com?”

Having spent more than a few hours on the phone talking to people about it the past several days, a reasonably coherent picture is emerging, and I’m not really sure I want to be the guy describing it. In fact, the smartest thing for me to do would probably be to ignore it.

None of my business. Walk away and pretend nothing happened.

Except there’s a federal lawsuit filed by Dana Loesch, which is actual news, and maybe it’s not a good idea to let myself get scooped here.

Andrew Breitbart liked to say he had two modes of operation, jocularity and righteous indignation, and it’s rather unfortunate that he never got around to writing the book, Jocularity: Excuse Me While I Make You Laugh Your F–king Asses Off, because he certainly could.

In his righteous indignation mode, by contrast, Andrew went off on Glenn Beck last year, calling Beck a “coward,” a “snake” and a “huckster” in an interview on Stephen Bannon’s podcast:

You really ought to listen to that entire 13-minute interview. As a matter of fact, a transcript might come in handy, because (a) people are telling me that it was Glenn Beck who wanted to hire Dana Loesch away from Breitbart.com, (b) the same people depict Stephen Bannon as the villain of the story, and (c) I’m genuinely perplexed by all this.

My advice has not been solicited, because I’ve only worked in the news business since 1986, so what do I know about newsroom management?

Every newsroom is a seething cauldron of frustrated ambition. There has never been a news outfit that wasn’t afflicted by clueless management, inept editors and disgruntled reporters. “We’re working for chimpanzees,” as a former Washington Times colleague used to say.

Mistakes, conflicts, rivalries, backstabbing — it’s par for the course, standard operating procedure, and the key to survival in the business is deciding how much craziness you can stand before you decide to sing that Johnny Paycheck classic, “Take This Job and Shove It.”

What’s bizarre about the case of Dana Loesch v. Breitbart.com LLC is that when Dana wanted to leave, they wouldn’t let her.

Or so Dana alleges, I hasten to add, because the last thing I need is someone suing me for defamation, tortious interference, etc.

“Mongo just pawn in game of life.”

The last thing I need is to insert myself into the middle of the New Media equivalent of the Battle of Stalingrad, but as I said a couple days ago, the sharks are going to have themselves a feeding frenzy no matter what I do (or don’t do) and why should I let myself get scooped?

Never mind my dilemma. Hear what Patterico has to say:

I never said this before, but I was personally the recipient of some pretty shabby treatment myself from that organization, after Andrew died.
[M]y experience was not the only such experience. Not by a long shot. And having been through it, it is plenty easy for me to believe that Loesch was also treated shabbily.
And when you treat people like crap, it doesn’t stay a secret.

Read the whole thing, because it’s exactly right. The world of conservative New Media is kind of like a small town, and if a secret is juicy enough, don’t think you’re going to keep the town gossips from doing what they habitually do. Fish gotta swim. Birds gotta fly.

Anyway, this wasn’t my plan for a cheerful Christmas Eve column, and I’m sorry for throwing this bummer on you when we’re all supposed to be making merry. But even heavy burdens are lighter when they’re shared by enough people, and maybe we can crowd-source this problem.

After all, as Breitbart said: You are the media.

UPDATE (Smitty): welcome, Instapundit readers!





 

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Category: Andrew Breitbart, Dana Loesch

Arguably Sacrilegious Genesis Parody

Posted on | December 24, 2012 | 4 Comments

by Smitty

Over at Conservative Daily News:

1:11 And Obama said, Let the earth bring forth ACORN, the herb-smoking agitators, and the fruity radicals yielding fruitcakes after their own kind, whose seed of destruction is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.
1:12 And the earth brought forth radicals like blades of grass, and herb-smoking agitators after his kind, and the ACORN yielding fruitcakes, whose seed of destruction was in itself, after his kind: and Obama saw that it was good.
1:13 And the evening and the morning were the third day.
1:14 And Obama said, Let there be wealth redistribution in the firmament of the heavens to divide the clean from the unclean; and let there be a sin, to blame man for the seasons, and for hot days, and warm years:

Read the whole thing.

Category: Uncategorized

The Vocabulary of Professor Erik Loomis: ‘Motherf–ing F–kheads F–king F–k’

Posted on | December 23, 2012 | 69 Comments

Dishonest academic defenders of University of Rhode Island assistant history professor Erik Loomis have repeated the professor’s false assertion that he was criticized merely for using “metaphor” in his unhinged Dec. 14 attacks on the NRA’s Wayne LaPierre.

One critic has decscribed the petition on behalf of Loomis, although ostensibly a defense of free speech rights, as a “campaign to dominate debate and suppress criticism.”

In fact, Loomis’s “head on a stick” Tweet was just one of many offensive messages he sent on Dec. 14. More importantly, perhaps, the professor’s demented obscenity-strewn tirade attacted scrutiny, revealing that Loomis seemed prone to angry online eruptions, and had a habit of employing vulgarities in his Twitter messages, particularly in targeting Republicans.

Professor Loomis seems to have recognized that he had problems more serious than “right-wing morons” too stupid to understand metaphor, because he deleted his Twitter account to hide the evidence of his derangement. Fortunately, before the evidence got flushed down the digital memory hole, one of those “right-wing morons” was clever enough to compile six months’ worth of Erik Loomis’s Tweets into a 439-page PDF file. A few samples from the archive:













Perhaps you see the f–king pattern, motherf–king racist sexist f–kheads.

And perhaps the administration at the University of Rhode Island can provide appropriate mental health counseling to help assistant history professor Erik Loomis deal with his problems.

UPDATE: Linked by Daley Gator and Legal Insurrection — thanks!

UPDATE II (Smitty): Welcome, Instapundit readers!




 

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Category: Education, Rhode Island

Sarcasm For The Ages

Posted on | December 23, 2012 | 8 Comments

So dry, yet immaculate:

Category: Uncategorized

How Romney Lost America

Posted on | December 23, 2012 | 17 Comments

AOSHQ co-blogger Drew M on Twitter recommended this Boston Globe retrospective on the Romney campaign as thoroughly depressing:

It was two weeks before Election Day when Mitt Romney’s political ­director signed a memo that all but ridiculed the notion that the Republican presidential nominee, with his “better ground game,” could lose the key state of Ohio or the election. The race is “unmistakably moving in Mitt Romney’s direction,” the memo said.
But the claims proved wildly off the mark, a fact embarrassingly underscored when the high-tech voter turnout system that Romney himself called “state of the art” crashed at the worst moment, on Election Day.
To this day, Romney’s aides wonder how it all went so wrong. . . .

Read the whole thing. I’m sticking with my own Election Night analysis: “Doomed Beyond All Hope of Redemption.”

Category: Election 2012, Mitt Romney

President First Person Singular and His Radical Cult of Antisocial Admirers

Posted on | December 23, 2012 | 20 Comments

“[I]f we were going to define the left, at least in this country, I guess I’d say that it would revolve around something like people who were committed to the eradication of social, political, economic, gender, sexual, and environmental inequality both in the United States and around the world through the use of a variety of means, ranging from an activist government to revolutionary cadres. . . . I would certainly include myself in this definition of the left.”
— Erik Loomis, Dec. 13, 2012

“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.”
— Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations (1979)

This past week, Becca Lower counted the number of first-person pronouns (I, me, my, mine) in President Obama’s response to the failure of “fiscal cliff” negotiations with House Republicans. In his memorial to Sen. Daniel Inouye, however, the Narcissist-in-Chief set a new standard:

Whatever the topic, whatever the occasion, the actual subject of any Obama speech ultimately is always Obama:

Someone needs to tell Barack Obama — it must get particularly confusing this time of year — that his own birth is not Year One, the date around which all other events are understood. His much-noted, self-referential tic was on cringe-worthy display Friday when the president gave his eulogy for the late Sen. Daniel Inouye, who served in Congress for half a century representing Obama’s birth state of Hawaii. . . .
From Obama’s telling, the next significant event in Inouye’s life was greeting his new Senate colleague, Barack Obama.

What was admirable about Inouye, according to Obama, was that he was worthy of Obama’s admiration. This solipsistic “argument” is the essence of Obama’s politics, and calls to mind Thomas Sowell’s brilliant 1996 book, The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy. What matters to liberals, Sowell explains, is not whether their policies produce any real improvement, but rather how these policies affirm the belief of liberals in their own moral and intellectual superiority.

As the embodiment of that politics, Obama incites his admirers, who feel empowered by his example to act out the implicit judgment against demonized enemies whom they condemn as manifestly inferior to themselves. Erik Loomis’s deranged rants come to mind:

Reading how vile the comments of this “gifted young scholar” were, I did start thinking that, at a minimum, some people at [the University of Rhode Island] should occasionally monitor his class or question his students to find out whether he brings anywhere close to that amount of venom to discussions with students who disagree with him.

(Hat-tip: Instapundit.)

 

Category: Barack Obama, Culture

Rule 5 Sunday: Live From Luray

Posted on | December 23, 2012 | 8 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho
So I said on Facebook yesterday that I was going to take a few days off from the Internets and go hang out in the Shenandoah Valley, free from memes and flash games and the soul-crushing stupidity of leftists on Facebook…and then late Saturday night I remembered that I hadn’t taken care of this, one of my most serious duties as Unpaid Blog Intern (Grade 1, Step 3) here at The Other McCain. Fortunately, Luray has an outpost of that stalwart supporter of Right-Wing Death Beast Bloggery known for its free wi-fi, Dollar Menu, and (currently) rib sandwiches, and so it is that I am here to bring you some relief from the grim, dark future of ObamaHammer 40,000, where there is only #WAR. Insert usual disclaimer about not opening links where you shouldn’t.
A Trainwreck in Maxwell missed the deadline last week but doubles up this week with thick girls and Longhorns; Laughing Conservative is right behind with Keeley Hazell. Reaganite Republican has some highlights from the Miss Universe pageant, Randy’s Roundtable returns with Emily Ratajkowski, and First Street Journal presents Band of Sisters. Fishersville Mike has a blast from the past with a Tempestt In A Teapot, and Animal Magnetism posted Rule 5 Friday and the Saturday Gingermageddon. Blessed Blasphemy slipped Grace Park in over the transom at the last minute.
EBL has Emma Stone, Kate Upton, and some holiday cheer with Dean Martin & Scarlett Johansson.
El Opinador Compusivo this week brings us Danielle Sharp, Ciara Price, Michelle Jenneke, Christmas with Lucy and Rosie, a shower scene, Big Brother is watching you, A Brand New Day, and At The Pool.
A View From The Beach has Santa’s Little Helpers, Cat Ladies (with obligatory cave girls), The Defectives Among Us – Gingers, Relax Girls It’s Good For You, Why Not Some Kate Upton?, Midnite Music With Lindsey Sterling, the reason Victoria’s Secret girls should be seen and not heard, and Speaking In Tongues.
Soylent Green kicked off with a Googler Shoutout to Lithuania, followed by Monday Motivationer Kerie, Tuesday Titillation Kylie, a blast from the past, Humpday Hawt Pamela, Afternooner Mari, Falconsword Fursday Indiana, Happy Midwinter, Corsetcare Apocalypse, and the most important paper in the history of forever.
Proof Positive’s Friday Night Babe is Marloes Horst, his vintage babe is Janice Rule, and in addition to the usual 49ers cheerleader, there’s Sex in Advertising. Dustbury has Dolly Parton and Paloma Herrera, and Three Beers Later invites all and sundry to stop by on Christmas for an extravaganza suitable to the season.
The DaleyGator’s DaleyBabes this week included Shannon Ihrke, Shou Noshino, Gena Lee Nolin, Stephanie Ly, Asia Nitollano, Carmen Electra, and Ami Kawase.
Thanks to everyone for their linkagery! Deadline to submit links to the Rule 5 Wombat mailbox for next week’s Rule 5 roundup is Saturday, December 29. Merry Christmas to all!

Category: Rule 5
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