More evidence (as if more were needed) that Conor Friedersdorf is a narcissist

Arguing with a narcissist is pointless, because the narcissist doesn't really care about the merits on either side of the argument. The ultimate point of the narcissist's argument is his own superiority (cf., Charles Johnson).

So it is with Conor Friedersdorf and the question of whether Sarah Palin's supporters are motivated by ressentiment. Julian Sanchez argued so last week, offering little more than a highhanded rehash of the ancient Adorno/Hofstadter psychoanalytic putdown of conservatism -- "status anxiety," blah, blah, blah -- which required in response that the knife be thrust to the hilt. ("When you're a Jet, you're a Jet all the way.")

It happened that Sanchez had linked Conor Friedersdorf's guest-blog at the Daily Dish, Palin-Hater HQ since the day she was announced as John McCain's running mate. And today Friedersdorf returned to the subject with the telling assertion that Sanchez's critics merely prove that he, Conor, was right:

When the Rebuttals Prove Your Point
In the last couple days, Julian Sanchez and I wrote posts arguing that a vocal group on the right are engaging in what Mr. Sanchez terms "the politics of ressentiment." . . .
It is noteworthy that both of us used the words "inferiority complex" in our posts . . .

(Is "noteworthy" a synonym for "tautological"?)

Indeed, explicit in our posts is the assumption that their "complex" is irrational. "Mark Levin, a man intelligent enough that he needn't have an inferiority complex," I wrote, "for some reason adopts the rhetorical style of the classic insecure bully -- juvenile name calling, constant self-aggrandizement, vituperative outbursts." . . .

Read the whole thing, or don't, if you wish to avoid the annoyance. In his first two paragraphs, Friedersdorf employs six first-person singular pronouns, a giveaway of his narcissistic purpose, his objective being to demonstrate his own superiority to . . . well, everyone, really.

Conor is engaged in the politics of aspiration, aiming to win acceptance by the elite as a certified intellectual, a pundit. This requires that he shoulder the heavy burden of fiercely defending his own reputation. It won't do to allow Sanchez to one-up him and steal his thunder. Therefore "I . . . I . . . I . . . I . . . my . . . I."

Sanchez's argument was wrong, but it was at least interesting and eloquent in its wrongness -- a lively read, no matter how infuriatingly smug its underlying assumptions. By contrast, the writing in Conor's posts (both the original and its sequel) is lifelessly leaden, weighed down by a stultifying self-seriousness.

Conor's arguments aren't actually about Sarah Palin or her supporters (or Matt Continetti's defense of Palin). Conor is arguing on behalf of Conor: Take Me Seriously, Dammit!

Good luck with that.

UPDATE: Via Instapundit, we find Ann Althouse engaged with another Daily Dish problem: Is you is or is you ain't Sully? Under fire from Lachlan Markay of Newsbusters, the former pseudo-Sully Patrick Appel responds:

Lachlan Markay pretends that my doing research for Andrew is the same as Lynn Vincent writing Sarah Palin's book.

Well, don't that beat all? There was never any deception involved in Lynn's collaboration with Palin, and it is the question of deception -- How much surreptitious work did others do under Sully's byline? -- that is at issue here. Ah, remember those halcyon days when Sully excoriated Rick Bragg for employing uncredited stringers?

Rick Bragg's self-righteous and self-pitying defense of his dubious journalistic methods appears to have been the last straw for some others at the NYT.

"Dubious journalistic methods," said Sully, who now employs ghostbloggers to perform mere punditry -- and then goes on vacation, leaving his erstwhile alter-ego to defend the practice!

Glenn Greenwald's sockpuppets must be laughing themselves silly over this . . .

Is Andrew Sullivan an anti-Semite?

I certainly don't think so, and consider it terribly unfortunate that Sullivan has exposed himself to this damaging accusation through his reflexive enthusiasm for all things Obama -- just as he once was denounced as a "neocon" because of his reflexive enthusiasm for all things Bush.

Sullivan got over his unrequited Dubya man-crush, and maybe his current see-no-evil attitude toward Israel's enemies will fade if Sullivan discovers that his new presidential idol also has feet of clay. So while I have called Sullivan a menace to society and advocated his deportation, he's probably not a Holocaust denier or a peddler of blood libel.

My friend Dan Riehl called attention to this accusation against Sullivan, by way of firing a shot at Conor Friedersdorf. I've fired my share of shots at Conor, but I certainly would never accuse him of Jew-hating. The extremely toxic nature of the "anti-Semite" label is such that I am extremely hesitant to apply it.

Consider the case of Taki Theodoracopulos, for example. Taki has been called an anti-Semite so often that some people accept the accusation at face value. But when National Review published David Frum's "Unpatriotic Conservatives" -- one of many ill-advised editorial decisions in the erratic career of Rich Lowry -- Taki responded in memorable fashion:

If this bum Frum thinks he's the only one who cannot see a belt without hitting below it, he's got another thing coming. . . . He is a cheap Canadian careerist who jumped on the neocon bandwagon and is now using anti-Semitism as a stick to beat us with. Mind you, to be called "unpatriotic" and an "anti-Semite" by this shameless publicity hound has to be a compliment.

Because Taki is independently wealthy, he has no need to fear that his career will be damaged by these accusations, and so he seldom even bothers to notice the charges and only rarely responds to them. This has, unfortunately, resulted in Taki's name being used -- as my own name has sometimes been used -- as a sort of Rosetta Stone that allows liberal mind-readers to decrypt the otherwise Secret Code Of Hate that allegedly unites the Right.

This business of liberals trying to tell conservatives who is "acceptable" has bothered me for years, and I don't like it any better when conservatives play the same game. Despite Frum's misguided centrist tendencies, for example, I have risked my populist street-cred by continuing to be his friend (unlike David Brooks, who is the Living Embodiment Of All Things Unholy.) If I can be Frum's friend, shall I allow him to say that Taki is "unacceptable"?

My own indirect connection with Taki has horrified some of my friends, though the explanation is innocent enough. A couple years ago, I was invited to speak about media bias in a panel discussion of the Duke lacrosse rape hoax, where Duke graduate student Richard Spencer was one of my fellow panelists. Spencer subsequently became editor of Taki's Magazine.

When I got an itch to write about "Melissa Beech," who boasted in a Daily Beast column about being a rich man's mistress, it seemed a good time to accept Spencer's longstanding invitation to publish at Taki's (whose proprietor is reputed to have had many mistresses). That first article led to my writing a series a columns about love, sex and marriage at Taki's, a series I hope to continue now that election season is over.

Did I fear the accusation that, by publishing at Taki's Magazine, I was thereby endorsing the alleged anti-Semitism of Taki or some of his magazine's other contributors? Of course not. My philo-Semitic bona fides are so impregnable that I rather suspect Taki and Spencer have caught more grief than I have: "How dare you publish that Jew-loving Zionist fanatic?"

My Zionist fanaticism -- Netanyahu is a pacifist squish by comparison -- once led me to advance a bit of strategic military advice for the IDF, a war-game scenario contingent upon the hypothetical event of my becoming the first Gentile prime minister of Israel.

You might suppose that a thought-experiment so farfetched would be immune to misinterpretation -- as fools often misinterpret hypotheticals -- as wishful thinking, but you would be wrong. Andrew Sullivan gave me a Malkin Award nomination (my third such honor, though I may have lost count) and Sully has subsequently accused me of advocating genocide of the Palestinians.

"Peace Through Genocide" might be profitably marketed as the title of a comic novel by Chris Buckley, or as one of those ironic T-shirt slogans beloved by clever university students, but it clearly has shortcomings as a serious policy proposal.

It should therefore be unnecessary for me to deny that I am advocate of Palestinian genocide but, alas, there is the problem of the irony-impaired Andrew Sullivan, who has spent 15 months fomenting bizarre speculations about Sarah Palin's uterus. To be accused of genocidal hatred by such a notorious fool is an accusation that requires no denial.

Having been slimed by Sully for the indulgence of a far-fetched hypothetical, let me take another wild risk:

If Conor Friedersdorf were a wealthy Greek shipping magnate, so that he could speak his mind without fear of career repercussion, what would he say about Jews?

Nothing bad, I hope, and so I gladly stipulate that Conor Friedersdorf is no more a Jew-hater than Taki.

Or Pat Buchanan. Or Joe Sobran. Or Paul Gottfried. IYKWIMAITYD. Nudge, nudge. Wink, wink.

UPDATE: Ann Altstein Altberg Althouse calls Sully a liar. Sarah Palin's Uterus agrees. Yehuda reveals that Palin's uterus is . . . the Mossad!

Reaganite Republican suspects the Learned Elders of Sullivanism have fomented this blog-war.

Breitbart has more important things to worry about than Conor Friedersdorf

Nevertheless, he condescends to take notice:

Conor Friedersdorf refuses to interview me as he continues to be my unofficial biographer. (I’m VERY reachable, Conor.) He writes opinion pieces on me purporting to be journalism. He doesn’t quote or cite me, he simply assumes and pushes the point of view he thinks I have and makes an argument based on these alleged positions.

He even provides free copy for Andrew Sullivan:

I don't resent criticism. I embrace it. But I do resent self-superior journalists attempting to malign me and my vision without coming to me to get my thoughts.

Don't waste your time, Andrew. They are The Republicans Who Really Matter, and their ambitions have nothing to do with anything you're interested in. They claim to be "conservatives" only because, if they didn't, they'd be just more piranhas in the liberal pool.

(Via Memeorandum.)

UPDATE: Ed Driscoll also wastes too much thought on Conor Friedersdorf. Ed -- everybody -- let me sum it up: It's about Conor. His ambitions exceed his knowledge, and that explains everything. Whatever there may be of ideology in Conor's peregrinations is summarized by Dan Riehl:

He's gone from Right to post-Modernist to the Daily Beast in two months. That's someone embracing anything just to find a home. I don't think he even knows what he is at this point.

Right. Politically, he's a platypus.

The Conor Friedersdorf Tar Baby . . .

. . . has done got Br'er Bill Quick all stickyfied. And thanks to Bill for sharing this chill wind from Montauk:

"I am an old hand at sailing, Mr. President, and I have learned that the winds do not always blow one's way," I said. "When you find yourself in the doldrums, I want you to know that all of us in the conservative intellectual movement will be there to blow you."
-- T. Coddington Van Voorhees VII

And as the boys at New England's finest boarding schools are wont to say, nobody blows like a Van Voohees.

OK, Jon, how about naming the 'demagogues' you'd ban from CPAC?

Jon Henke apparently e-mailed CPAC Director Lisa DePasquale to ask if Joseph Farah would be speaking next year -- these things are decided six months in advance? who knew? -- and got a response:

Farah asked if he could speak on the issue (birther movement), but that isn't something we're interested in.

Well, I guess that issue's resolved. But then Henke adds:

There are a couple other demagogues who appeal to our baser instincts that I would like to see CPAC decline to host, too . . .

OK, Jon, name names. As I tend to keep busy schmoozing my way around the lobby or the exhibition hall, exchanging business cards, I usually only cover the really big speeches. Maybe I missed something. If CPAC has been scheduling speeches by "demagogues who appeal to our baser instincts," please name these dangerous influences, so we can all join your campaign to oust them.

Meanwhile, as promised, let's deal with Conor Friedersdorf, who in the course of a single blog post, manages to take shots at:

• Human Events
• Fox News
• Sarah Palin
• Glenn Beck
• Rush Limbaugh

This, in addition to his long-running war against Mark Levin. So it's Conor vs. Damn Near Everybody and, to the extent that the object is to influence the conservative movement, I don't think Andrew Sullivan's guest-blogger is likely to win that fight.

Whence this rage, this desire to antagonize virtually the entire conservative movement as we know it? To begin with, let's observe that Conor has a habit of hating the exact same conservatives whom liberals hate and of aligning himself with the exact same conservatives whom liberals tolerate.

Furthermore, Conor does not bother to disguise the fact that his ambition is to be an intellectual -- not a mere journalist, nor even strictly a political commentator, but a genuine Trilling-class thinker. Peruse his encomium to Katie Roiphe or his engagement with Ben Domenech as examples of Conor in intellectual audition mode.

And then there is Friedersdorf's defense of Douthatism, which contains this roundhouse putdown:

I'll merely add that it is very difficult to write for the publications where Mr. Douthat made his mark -- the print Atlantic, the print National Review, The New York Times -- and comparatively easy to write copy for Human Events, Newsmax, Townhall, or any number of other places where a talented twentysomething actually interested in maximizing their profit per hour worked would write all their copy, if they really didn't care about anything else.

Well, I gave up any thought of ever writing for National Review long before I attributed Rich Lowry's decline to tertiary syphilis, but it never occurred to me to trash conservative journalism in bulk, as Friedersdorf has done here.

Can this career strategy work? We don't know, for it has no parallel in history. Yet the man has clearly chosen to play the role of my doppelganger. It seems I never get into an online argument with anyone without finding Conor quickly siding with my antagonist. Something of an anti-Other McCain, as it were.

OK, so where did this begin? I'd been teasing Friedersdorf for months -- his extreme sincerity struck me as amusing -- but it was probably my rebuff of his Culture 11 "conservative" argument for same-sex marriage that did the trick. Why?

Well, that AmSpecBlog item was posted on Jan. 2 and, by the end of the month, Culture 11 ceased to exist. The reasons given for the demise of Culture 11 were strictly financial. In just five months of publication, David Kuo had burned through his start-up capital and -- given the economic meltdown -- no more funding was to be had.

Still, in retrospect, I've occasionally wondered if maybe someone didn't see my AmSpecBlog item and bring it to the attention of Culture 11's funders (reported to be Bill Bennett and Steve Forbes) who experienced an epiphany as a result: "Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? This is the 'hip, smart cultural conservatism' we're paying for?"

Quite unlikely, but nevertheless possible, and when I later indulged in some extremely vicious schadenfreude over the demise of Culture 11, this probably didn't endear me to Friedersdorf, a victim of the spectacular implosion. And like a certain Austrian art student, whose rejection from the Vienna academy permanently embittered him, now Friedersdorf stalks not only me, but every conservative who reminds him of me, in a campaign of bloody-minded vengeance.

So you see that the blame for Conor's jihad against the conservative movement is mine alone. It's always a good rule of thumb: When in doubt, blame McCain.

Russ Smith, Internet Genius

This headline bids fair for a place as Rule 6:

Robert Stacy McCain is very concerned about Andrew Sullivan's circumcised [noun]

Brilliantly combining Rules 2, 4 and 5, with a bit of homophobia thrown in for good measure. NTTAWWT.

Here I labor diligently to ensure that I get more "Established Men" ads in the rotation and -- by turning Rule 2 against me -- the evil mastermind of Splice Today obligates me to use the name "Andrew Sullivan," which automatically triggers the "meet gay singles" ad rotation. (I've reverse-engineered the algorithm.) Heaven knows what the algorithm will produce if I throw in Conor Friedersdorf, but I must consider the trade-off between traffic and click-through.

At any rate, there is nothing on earth that concerns me less than Sully's [noun]. Yet ever since Hannah Rosin brought it up, it seems to be all anyone wants to talk about.

Can we talk about Christina Hendricks, maybe? We now return you to your regularly scheduled VodkaPundit.

Of Gnats and Elephants

"It’s a nice day today, and I have other things I could be doing that are more enjoyable and productive than batting around Conor Freidersdorf."
-- Jimmie Bise, The Sundries Shack, speaking on behalf of the entire conservative blogosphere, which now should turn its attention to more significant targets

'But let us be charitable' . . er, let's not

Gallant Doug Ross undertakes to fisk Conor Friedersdorf, and let the readers assess for themselves how Doug has performed that task.

But Doug, you don't waste time fisking someone whose chief error is impudence. Smack the punk and be done with it.

The merits of the punk's argument are irrelevant to the key point: Friedersdorf lacks standing to criticize Levin, whose years of honest and useful service to the conservative cause -- remember, Levin worked for Meese in the Reagan administration -- should put him beyond reach of the arrogant scribblings of such a parvenu.

What are Friedersdorf's accomplishments? What has he ever done, as a conservative, that might cause any intelligent person sincerely to give a damn about his critical opinions of Mark Levin's best-selling book?

Friedersdorf's most notable journalistic achievement was as a Culture 11 crew member helping David Kuo squander a million dollars or more on that notorious disaster:

"I never even heard of this Culture11 site until I read that it was gone," said veteran conservative blogger Dan Riehl. "If someone wants to know why it failed, extrapolate that out to other bloggers and web surfers, that was it. Having never seen it, all I can conclude is that it really must have sucked."

Friedersdorf wrote a classic example (alas, now evidently departed from the Internet) of a useless though surprisingly persistent literary genre, "The Conservative Case for [Insert Pet Liberal Cause Here]." In Friedersdorf's version, the pet liberal cause was gay marriage, which I gave the only response it deserved:

We are barely five years past Lawrence v. Texas, but Conor Friedersdorf apparently can think of no legitimate argument against gay marriage and certainly will cede nothing to Mona Charen.
Is there anyone under 30 who opposes gay marriage? Is the passage of five years sufficient to deprive Justice Scalia's dissent of intellectual respectability?
I'm still thinking about Roy Moore's ruling in Ex Parte H.H. . . .
In a follow-up, Friedersdorf says, "my support for gay marriage is so inextricably tied to my conservatism." And the only wonder is that Willmoore Kendall, Russell Kirk and Richard Weaver didn't beat him to it.

Well, you can read the whole thing, but you see the point. When smacking a punk, it is important to be as high-handed as possible, to expose him to ridicule, for unless he can be made to realize what a laughingstock he's making of himself, there will be no hope for his redemption.

Therefore, do not engage his argument, dismiss it.

This is efficient, since you neither waste your time, nor that of the casual reader -- who needs merely know that the punk is not to be taken seriously. Skim the punk's article, locate your target and attack. Friedersdorf:

But let us be charitable. Perhaps Mr. Levin, writing with an eye toward current events, began the conflict between liberty and tyranny in FDR’s America because he regards it as when the particular threat to liberty that the United States today faces began.

Ah, so Friedersdorf views Mr. Levin as being in need of intellectual charity, does he? Let the conservative reader, familiar with Mr. Levin and the history of the 20th century, ask merely if Friedersdorf's insulting tone is more important than any specific criticism this insufferable whelp might make. Again, skipping past a few hundred words of nonsense, here is Friedersdorf's conclusion:

Liberty and Tyranny at its best is a Cliffs Notes refresher on conservatism for the reader too busy to read the Federalist Papers and Edmund Burke. At its worst, it is a counterproductive tome that misleads conservatives about the nature of their fellow Americans, distracts from the actual disagreements and differing priorities that separate us, and in so doing exacerbates the hard right’s present tendency to cede all reality based arguments about governance by never engaging them at all.

Exactly two questions now require an answer:

• Is the Atlantic Monthly actually paying Friedersdorf to write this stuff?
• Does Mr. Levin really need any help defending himself here?

It's as if a gnat were attempting to rape an elephant. Why bother defending the elephant against an assailant whose ill-considered attack the intended victim probably won't even notice?

Levin wrote a book intended for a general readership, the title of which is Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto. Having not read it myself -- no one bothers to send a mere blogger review copies of books, it seems, nor have my friends at Levin's P.R. firm thought to call and ask me if I'd like to interview The Great One -- I'd hate to judge a book by its cover.

That Liberty and Tyranny is a far better book than Friedersdorf (or Rod Dreher) is willing to recognize is evidenced by this paragraph from Richard Spencer, a brilliant young radical who dissents decidedly rightward of mainstream "Movement" conservatism:

As for Levin and his new book Liberty and Tyranny: I was given a copy as a gift and have crashed through it. There is, as you might guess, a whole lot of material in his “On Self-Preservation” chapter with which I disagree. . . . This being said, the brunt of the rest of the book I endorse. Republicans have a tendency to sound like Ron Paul when they’re out of office, and then act like LBJ once they get elected. Sure. But Levin has laid down some explicit constitutional, pro-liberty principles with real, concrete consequences.

Alas, young Spencer went to Duke University and has read too much Nietzsche, so considering that you'll rarely hear him say a nice word about any "Movement" conservative, his measured praise is practically a "two thumbs up!"

Even if Liberty and Tyranny were merely, as Friedersdorf says, a "Cliff Notes" of conservative basics -- well, what's wrong with that? Not everyone majors in political science in college or aspires to be considered an intellectual. And thank God for that!

Most normal young people are apathetic about politics and are decidely uninterested in a philosophical or historical approach to the subject. They'll sit through lectures in required courses and study those dull college textbooks just well enough to get a "B." They'll get their diplomas, get a job, get married, have kids, pay taxes and probably not really think much about politics as they pursue their own slice of The American Dream.

God Bless America! Who wants to live in a nation of philosophes, where nobody ever talks about or pays attention to anything but political theory? The beauty of limited government is that we can safely ignore it, which is why men who love liberty take alarm when power falls into the hands of men with boundless ambitions for the expansion of government.

Levin has taken alarm and, for those lovers of liberty who spent their college years in the grand American tradition -- frat parties, football games and avid heterosexuality -- rather than earnestly studying amorphous philosophical abstractions like some kind of neurasthenic geek, Liberty and Tyranny may be just the sort of common-sense book they need.

And it's a New York Times bestseller. Leave the gnat alone. The elephant notices perhaps only a minor itch. And more important annoyances require my diligent attention.

Of course, I don't know what's on Page 291 of Liberty and Tyranny, so I can't pronounce it the Best. Book. Evah! However, I'm sure that's an innocent oversight that Levin will remedy in his forthcoming book, Shut Your Stupid Piehole, You Miserable Twerp: Rod Dreher, David Brooks and Other Bozo Losers Who Should Be Ignored.

(UNNECESSARY LEGAL DISCLAIMER: Any resemblance between the "order page" for Shut Your Stupid Piehole, You Miserable Twerp and a so-called "tip jar" PayPal site is probably not accidental, and people contributing to that fund should not expect to receive an actual book. But keep in mind that Conor Friedersdorf actually gets paid to trash Mark Levin, while my services as a punk-smacker are entirely uncompensated unless readers want to send a message of support to me by hitting the tip jar.)

(So Far Away)

by Smitty

Chris Muir's brilliance on display at Day by Day can't go unnoticed.
The comic strip's Sunday title is an allusion to the POTUS reaction on Iran, of course. But what you may not know is that it also functions as an allusion to the college days of Robert Gibbs, when, as the keyboardist of a metrosexual band, he had an encounter with a woman who'd escaped an explosion in a Mary Kay warehouse wearing a trash bag, and he experienced a Friedersdorfian freak-out.

Conor: No Turning Left

By Smitty
There has been some back-and-forth with Conor in the comments of another ToM thread. My reply to him was eaten by the browser, and he really merits more complete treatment anyway.

World's briefest bio: Baptist, sailor, engineering undergraduate, a couple of Master's. Geekier than most. That's also about as much as I know of Conor.

Right. Then we have this DoubleThink Online article by Conor. He sets the scene of a blind date with a chick in a coffee shop, having selected someone who is a "whip smart, beautiful woman who loves talking politics" (NTTAWWT).

Escaping this ghetto requires understanding why the media slants left. Contra the least-thoughtful conservative critics, there isn’t any elite liberal conspiracy at work. Bias creeps in largely because the narrative conventions of journalism are poor at capturing basic conservative and libertarian truths.

Conor, I completely disagree with you and what I feel is your naïveté. Spend some time on Stanton Evans. Are we to think that JournoList is either a) unique or b) simply a side-effect of technology? While I won't go full-on tinfoil hat on you, to ignore indications that our domestic socialist nitwits had at least some agenda overlap with the dudes who would have buried us is simply irresponsible:

As I previously observed, if you trace any of these back far enough, you’ll find a Stalinist intellectual at the bottom. (The last two items on the list, for example, came to us courtesy of Frantz Fanon. The fourth item is the Baran-Wallerstein “world system” thesis.) Most were staples of Soviet propaganda at the same time they were being promoted by “progressives” (read: Marxists and the dupes of Marxists) within the Western intelligentsia.
The Soviets consciously followed the Gramscian prescription; they pursued a war of position, subverting the “leading elements” of society through their agents of influence. (See, for example, Stephen Koch’s Double Lives: Stalin, Willi Munzenberg and the Seduction of the Intellectuals; summary by Koch here) This worked exactly as expected; their memes seeped into Western popular culture and are repeated endlessly in (for example) the products of Hollywood.

So, fine: Go on and bemoan the difficulty of describing the negative effects of rent control in sufficiently simple terms to impress a hypothetical date in DC.

The right, in other words, has a problem with narrative. The stubborn facts of this world contradict pieties left, right, and libertarian, occassionally forcing each group to revise its thinking. But the core critiques of liberalism intrinsically resist the narrative form. Who can foresee the unintended consequences of government intervention in advance? Who can pinpoint the particular threats to liberty posed by an ever-growing public sector?

No, Conor: Your problem is with narrative. Can you try parable? I submit that if you can't break a topic down into buyer/market/seller terms, you may either a) not grasp the topic, or b) simply lack teaching skills. Economics isn't Biochemistry. The contemporary evidence seems to indicate nobody understands economics. However, if the argument doesn't relate fairly cleanly back to gazinta==gazouta, I suspect that the speaker is trying to have me on. Do you look at the speaker's résumé and just naturally assume they know WTF if the proper school is listed?

The difficulty of critiquing flawed liberal positions and asserting alternatives before it’s too late is exacerbated by the conservative intellectual tradition’s lack of penetration into academia. Colleges and journalism schools rarely teach Edmund Burke, Friedrich Hayek, or Milton Friedman. How can journalists unversed in such thinkers recognize when facts validate their ideas?
These asymmetries help explain why the right has sought to discredit the mainstream media while funding its own ideologically conceived outlets. It isn't just a matter of "playing the refs." Every political movement has a place for publications where debate among fellow travelers helps refine its most nuanced ideas and where the faithful can be rallied behind them.

Conor: "the conservative intellectual tradition’s lack of penetration into academia". Wow, those blinders of yours . . . I'll infer you haven't seen Indoctrinate-U? You've some homework.

Oh, and your tender sensibilities were ruffled by the original title for Goldberg's book? "even those on the left who regularly engage conservatives would assume bad faith. They did, even after the title changed." Faith? It's not a religious question! Of course they will say they assume bad faith. At the same time you glibly assume good faith on their part, in fact. Hint: they are not purusuing truth. Proverbs 12:15 "The way of a fool is right in his own eyes: but he that hearkeneth unto counsel is wise." Having begun with bogus premises, how do you expect the title of Jonah's book, like some magic spell, to open their shuttered eyes?

Then you're bemoaning the lack of a Buckley or a dozen Wolfes, and applauding the Douthat/Suderman/Poulos/Klein school.

"Unless colleges and journalism schools start assigning Burke, Hayek, Friedman, and quite a few others, the answer depends upon whether the right is willing to invest in talented young people who understand conservatism and libertarianism, but whose foremost loyalty is to investigating their world and conveying whatever they find."

Two links: Pajamas Media and PTJV. Are they publishing you? Far more credible than the Huffington Post with many people.

Let's go back to your dating premise for the whole article, Conor. You've just dropped precious loot into the relationship. It's gone on a while. You've reached the stage where it "cannot survive on commentary and analysis alone". Then the girl tells you she feels she needs a change of narrative. Are you the kind that understands that relationships are about participation, and if she's not holding up her end, and you try to drag the relationship forward like some corpse, then the whole situation is more about your masochism and narcissim? Such is the case with academia. They don't love you. You're a convenient toy. A foil. Someone to use to offer depth to their utopian visions.

You seem to think that there is some value in trying to reform academia by injecting conservatives back in. I offer a different path. Metaphorically burn academaia down. Form a new school. Pajamas Media, Ivory Tower Edition. Don't use the word "narrative". It makes you sound like, for all the protests of disagreement, you secretly covet membership in the lefty club. Kick that post-modern girl to the curb. She's already off with another someone, doing whatever. She's laughing at you. It happens. It's only shameful if you continue to sniff around sounding like you fell out of a Michael McDonald tune:

Repeat: don't hang around with dumb chicks and academics. The inevitable result is that you'll be Turning Left:

Update:
Ow. I think that the formerly proud ship U.S.S. Freidersdorf went from sailing the seas, to a brief career as a minesweeper, before settling to a permanent post as a bottomed submarine. Note to self: do not enrage Donald Douglas.

Do I have 'a problem with narrative'?

The video shocked America. In February 2004, grainy footage from a security camera at a Florida car wash showed the image of 11-year-old Carlie Brucia being approached and led away by a man with tattoos on his forearms. It was the last time anyone, except her killer, saw the Sarasota sixth-grader alive. . . .
-- Donkey Cons, p. 109

I don't have one of those "Google alerts" that ping me whenever someone somewhere on the Web mentions my name. It's not like I'm someone important like Professor Glenn Reynolds, who needs that kind of service to protect his professional reputation.

As with Kathy Shaidle, a bad reputation has been quite valuable to me, so bloggers could be talking all kinds of smack about me and, unless it drove traffic to the blog, I wouldn't know about it. But I digress . . .

With suspicious alacrity, Conor Friedersdorf showed up in the comments field of a post in which I talked about reporting. He left two comments, of which I can only be bothered with the first:

I've also worked as a newspaper reporter for four years. And I'd love to be paid to report in depth stories. I applied for -- and did not receive -- two grants for the reporting project I proposed at The American Scene. I've got several reported freelance stories in the works. If RSM would like to pay me to report a story once my Atlantic gig is over, I'll take the money and turn in something exceptional.But as someone else once said, I write for money. Culture11 paid me a hell of a lot more than any reporting gig I know to be an editor. I'd love nothing more than to write reported pieces for The Atlantic -- and I plan to do just that one day. But they've got Jim Fallows and Mark Bowden filling up their well. I aspire to be as good as those guys. I'm not there yet.

Aspiring to be as good as Mark Bowden (he of "Black Hawk Down" fame) must be a painful burden. As for seeking foundation grants -- did Hunter S. Thompson ever fill out a grant application? I think not. I've worked for non-profits on a fee-for-service basis, but never anything that required me to write a grant proposal. That's demeaning, especially to a top Hayekian public intellectual.

If I wanted to fly out to Sacramento to report on the St. HOPE scandal, I'd either (a) call up an editor and pitch the idea, or (b) just book the flight and rely on my reporting ability to pay for the trip.

That's the Gonzo way. The fact that I'm publishing this suggestion on my blog indicates that I'm only half-serious about flying to Sacramento. If I really coveted that assignment, I'd already be filing bylines from Sacramento.

Instead, I'm publishing this suggestion in hope that the hotshot young "investigative" punks in D.C. will beat me to it. But who knows? Maybe somebody will lay a thousand bucks on the tip jar, and I'll be in Sacramento by Monday afternoon.

The clock is ticking, punks. Do you feel lucky?

Real reporters don't fill out 501(c) grant applications. Why spend two days writing a proposal, when you could spend those two days writing something that somebody might actually want to read?

If you want to know why I haven't published another book since Donkey Cons, that's it. Publishers have gotten into the abusive habit of expecting authors to turn in what's called a "book proposal," which includes at least two sample chapters plus a marketing plan.

Nothing against writing a short summary and an outline, but . . . "sample chapters," my ass.

That's an insult, and one of the basic problems in the publishing industry is that too many authors are willing to be insulted this way. I didn't mind the sample-chapters routine too much when I was collaborating with Lynn Vincent, because (a) it was our first political book, and (b) Lynn had a well-connected agent who could practically guarantee acceptance of the proposal. But those were the last "sample chapters" I'll ever write.

You're asking a published author to prove he can write a book chapter? F--- you.

Also, if I come to you with a book idea, don't ask me to write your book idea. F--- you.

As for a "marketing plan," if I can get a million hits on a Blogspot site in under a year, I think I can sell a few books. In fact, maybe you should be paying me to tell your so-called "marketing department" what they're doing wrong. So if you want me to write a book for you, call me. But I'm a journalist, not a masochist, so don't expect me to waste my time putting together a "proposal" just to give you the sadistic pleasure of turning me down.

What part of "F--- you" don't you understand?

Same deal with filling out an application for a grant from some 501(c) outfit. About three months ago, I had a long conversation with a guy from a foundation-supported organization who was intrigued by something I'd written on my blog about how to put together a relatively low-cost online news operation. The guy wanted to "pick my brain," as they say.

OK, I'm a consultant, so hit the tip jar and the meter's running while you pick my brain. Take the advice or don't. It's fee-for-service. You paid for the advice, and what you do with the advice is your own business. So, the brain-picker and I had a pleasant conversation, and maybe something will come of all that. Maybe not. But it's up to the other guy to fill out the grant application. I'm a journalist, and real journalists don't do grant applications.

Now, let me show you a picture:

One of the guys in that photo is head honcho at a major non-profit foundation. When Bill Kristol wants some money from that guy, they have breakfast together. There are basically two kinds of people:

• People who pitch their ideas by filling out grant applications that get turned down; and
• People who pitch their ideas at restaurants (on the other guy's tab), score the deal on a handshake basis, then go through the formalities of the application process. Better yet, let your intern write the grant proposal, since approval is guaranteed.

Capisca, il mio giovane amico? Honestly, I'm trying to help you here. And Dan Riehl is trying to help you, too. Dan only moved to the D.C. area a couple of years ago, so let's switch to the Q-and-A format:

Q. How did Dan Riehl become the kind of guy who's got Mark Levin posting at his blog?
A. Dan Riehl is not a punk.

Really, it's that simple. If you were a 100% assclown, Dan would ignore you altogether, except maybe to point out the fact that you're a 100% assclown. The fact that Dan would try to teach you something means that he thinks you're no more than 98% assclown, with the potential for reducing your assclown factor, if only you'd pay attention.

When I came to D.C. in November 1997, I knew a lot about journalism, but almost nothing about D.C. I spent the next decade learning about D.C. the hard way, by accumulating enough knives in my back to fill a deluxe cutlery rack.

Hard-won wisdom: Never trust a punk. Ergo, when you're trying to figure out who to do business with in Washington, your first consideration should be to answer the question, "Is this guy a punk?"

Having acquired such knowledge at tremendous personal expense, I share it with whom I wish. Some people get it free, and some people pay for it. (Trust me, this knowledge is a bargain, compared to the price you'll pay if you ever trust a punk in D.C.)

Dan Riehl is an extraordinarily valuable person. Almost from the first day I began my engagement with the blogosphere, I noticed Dan's skills as a researcher. If it's online, Dan can find it and, in terms of news judgment, he's as good as some of the most experienced editors I know.

Dan can't stand a punk, and he can't stand to see his friends treated like punks, so he'll give a guy a warning. There have been more than a few occasions when Dan felt I was rolling like a punk and called me out. As a friend once said to me, regarding a particular example of integrity, "He'll tell you when your s--- stinks." More words of wisdom:

One of the basic principles of military strategy is to reinforce success. If you see a man who fights and wins, give him reinforcements, and bid others to emulate his success.

And still more words of wisdom:

If you allow yourself to be a doormat, you can't complain about the footprints on your back, and just because Tucker Carlson doesn't know what I'm doing, he shouldn't make the mistake of assuming that I don't know what I'm doing.

Well, Tucker must know what he's doing, because we had a pleasant phone conversation this past week. What he's doing or, rather, planning to do, isn't what NTCNews.com is doing and so there is a (remote) possibility of collaboration between Tucker Carlson and Not Tucker Carlson. At least if it's competition rather than collaboration -- vastly more likely -- it will be a competition on honorable terms. However, to repeat: It had better not suck.

So kudos to Tucker for his sagacity. Kudos are due also to a certain person who invited me to a book-signing event next month -- a classy gesture, all things considered, and perhaps the grounds of rapprochement, or at least a negotiated detente. (Trust, but verify.)

Politics ain't beanbag, as James Carville observed, and it is inevitable that the continual cut-and-thrust will result in hard feelings on the part of those who have been wounded. Such is my addled memory -- more words of wisdom: Never combine psilocybin mushroom tea with Bolivian flake cocaine -- that I find it easy to forget ancient wounds.

Considerations of honor, however, require me to recall the wounds suffered by friends, most of whom are less forgetful. Should I accept an invitation from someone who has unjustly wounded my friends? At stake is whether, by accepting this invitation, I dishonor my friends. Yet it is possible that, by attending the event, I may be able to assist my friends, and defend them against egregious insult. But I digress . . .

Don't roll like a punk. If you're good at what you do and you know it, then just do it. Don't proclaim to the world that you're going to Save The Republican Party From Itself. Just save the party, and then maybe someone will notice you had something to do with it. Or maybe not, to repeat some more timeless wisdom:

"You can accomplish much, if you don't care who gets the credit."
--- Ronald Reagan

Friday, an otherwise intelligent journalist pulled one of those annoying Stupid Pundit Tricks:

How Republicans can crack
the AmeriCorps scandal

The headline alone should tell you what's wrong here. Personally, my hunch is that Chuck Grassley knows how to run an investigation that gets results. (And if he doesn't, I'm thinking maybe The Boss will let him know.) Maybe you think 40 Republican senators and their staffs possess collective wisdom insufficient to this challenge, but if you want to offer them strategic political advice, don't do it on the op-ed pages or in a blog post. Democrats can read, too, y'know. As a general rule, don't try to acquire a reputation for strategic genius by doing things that are strategically stupid.

Over the past several months, as an inevitable consequence of increased blog traffic, I've become a whipping boy for various bloggers who think I don't know what I'm doing. And one of their frequent criticisms, when I do a long post like this, is to say that I am "rambling" or "incoherent." Right. Please keep thinking that.

On the other hand, there are people wise enough to recognize that only an idiot would (or could) publish everything he knows. If you want to offer strategic advice to the GOP, or if you have a brilliant plan for A Brave New Conservatism, the last thing you want to do is to publish it on the Internet.

Wise men may observe that sensei Moe Lane has never published a book called Secrets of the Blog-Fu Temple Cult. Nor will he ever, not even posthumously. Hell's bells, if I had an infallible formula for political success (please note the hypothetical), I'd be afraid even to write it on a cocktail napkin, for fear it might accidentally be published and deprive me of future opportunities for free lunches.

If you want to be regarded as a wise man, you would emulate Jeremiah Denton, who once famously had the presence of mind to blink "T-O-R-T-U-R-E" in Morse code. Until such time as you demonstrate an appreciation of that, don't lecture me about "narrative." Allow me to suggest that there are some truths so sublime that they can only be expressed as poetry.

Have you ever been
Down in the ghetto?
Have you ever felt
That cold wind blow?
If you don't know what I mean,
Brother, stand up and scream,
'Cause there's things going on
That you don't know.

Let all God's children say, "Rock on."

UPDATE: Dan Riehl throws another punch:

The point I was making was that, one could take the conservative notion of a free market to an extreme to where one argued there should be no government intervention at all. I also pointed out how foolish it would be, but said it would be hard to say the position wasn't a "conservative" one in a broad sense, albeit extreme. All much theoretical crap takes is for someone to write the book. It's lost on Conor that that's precisely what Dreher has done.

What's beautiful about that is, Dan's basically daring Dreher to come to Conor's defense, so that Dan has a good excuse to smack Dreher around some more. The sheer joy of fighting such people! It's why everyone envies the luck of Germany to have France as a neighbor.

Riehlism vs. Conorism

Since I'm going to be out and about in D.C. today, trying to see if I can't stir the pot on IG-Gate, you're going to need something to read. The Camp of the Saints has some good stuff on IG-Gate, but once you've read all that, what then?

How about Dan Riehl busting on Conor Friedersdorf? Not enough? How about Dan Riehl busting some more on Conor Friedersdorf? Heck, just go over to Dan's blog and keep refreshing throughout the day, and he's liable to bust Conor two or three times again before lunch.

Conservatism? More like masochism.

Frankly, I'm starting to regret blogging about Conor yesterday. Dan and I were talking on the phone yesterday and I said it was like Godfather III: Everytime you try to get out, Conor pulls you back in. If you didn't more or less force yourself to ignore him, you'd never find time to blog any actual news.

Conservatism and Conor-ism

Conor Friedersdorf, after bragging about his "Ideas" blog at The Atlantic Monthly, decides I need more lecturing about True Conservatism:

Efforts to ground a conversation about a political philosophy by referencing philosophers is mocked… and then other philosophers are invoked as better litmus tests. Worldly, nonreligious conservo-libertarians like me are told that we only think religious, Benedict-option-loving folks like Rod Dreher are conservatives because we define the movement according to the strands we like personally. Huh?
This is the kind of incoherence that results when your impetus for branding someone a heretic is that they criticized Mark Levin, or that they think the GOP’s current electoral strategy is incoherent, or that they wrote an item at The Huffington Post, or because they raise chickens in their backyard and assert that maybe there’s something troubling about corporate farms pumping antibiotics into featherless foul stuffed into tiny cages.

OK, let's start with the chickens. Guess what's in my backyard, Conor? A chicken coop, belonging to my 16-year-old son, James. Why is James raising chickens? The same reason he breeds pythons: For money. Oh, and guess what I ate for supper last night? A soy burger (Morningstar Farm Zesty Tomato Basil) on whole wheat bread. It was delicious.

If you don't want to order Chicken McNuggets for lunch, that's fine with me. But don't confuse your critique of factory farming with a political philosophy, and don't tell me that contempt for commerce is "conservative."

Just before I saw Conor's blog post this morning, I had a long phone conversation with Dan Riehl, another guy who has better things to do with his life than to climb into an ivory tower and sneer at the lowbrow plebians toiling down there in the grimy streets.

Dan sees this elitism as the essence of Conorism. I would assert that it is also the essence of Dreherism and Brooksianism and all these other boutique "conservatisms" that have cropped up like ideological weeds in recent years.

The ambitious conservative intellectual's quest for status among those whom he regards as his peers requires that he distinguish himself from (a) mere partisan operatives, whose objective is to elect Republicans; (b) mere journalists, who observe and report; and above all (c) the stupid voters out in the sticks who make up the rank-and-file grassroots of the conservative movement.

It is ambition, not ideology or ability, that distinguishes the elitists from the rest of us. The elitists crave above all else to be acknowledged as worthy of inclusion in the ranks of society's Platonic archons, to be influential, to be introduced at seminars with a listing of all the prestigious publications they've written for, et cetera. "The Distinguished Senior Fellow at . . ."

It's a scam, a racket, a hustle. And the dirty little secret of this particular game of three-card monte is the pretense that it is actually about ideas, as if his complex abstractions and elaborate verbal constructs -- "Worldly, nonreligious conservo-libertarians" -- were meaningful things worth fighting over. (Note how Conor modestly appropriates "worldly" to describe himself. Yeah, it's all that secular street cred, like he's rollin' with the Rothbardian Crips.)

To hustle the suckers with his intellectual scam, Conor Friedersdorf must maintain the illusion that he is a distinterested philosopher in pursuit of Truth with a capital T, as opposed to some grubby prole who writes for money.

"Don't piss down my back and tell me it's raining."

UPDATE: At the Hot Air Green Room:

By making "conservative" arguments for liberal policies, these treacherous elitists convey the message that conservatives are not really committed to opposing liberalism. So Democrats can ram through their agenda, and then the "conservative" intellectuals will join the Consensus Chorus telling us that this is a necessary "reform" which would be political suicide to attempt to repeal.

Read the rest.

Conor Friedersdorf vs. Dan Riehl

Dan has a link to an hour-plus online discussion he had with Conor Friedersdorf. You can listen to it and try to figure out WTF Conor's problem is, besides the fact that he is young and had the bad judgment to (a) attend the Columbia University J-School and (b) hire on at Culture 11.

It's OK, I made bad judgments when I was young. Back in the day, there was less of a downside risk to being a young fool. There was no Internet then, so it wasn't like nowadays, where every 20-something who can type his own name gets the idea he's going to solve the world's problems with a blog.

To imagine what I would have been blogging about in 1986 . . . shudder.

UPDATE: I'm listening to the debate now and a big part the problem is, Conor wants to define conservatism as "what I like," or, "a philosophy espoused by writers I like." He cannot separate his admiration of, inter alia, Andrew Sullivan from his own self-conception as "conservative." It's fan-boy politics.

Sully is a student of Oakeshott, therefore Conor name-checks Oakeshott. Dreher constantly invokes Russell Kirk, therefore Conor name-checks Kirk. It's as if Conor has been studying his pledge book in preparation for initiation into a fraternity.

Why is it that none of these "dissident" conservatives can be bothered to read Hayek or Mises? Why do they never seem to take any interest in the basic questions of political economy and limited government? Why must they seek out this conservatism that, they assert, transcends mere politics -- a conservatism of "temperament," as Conor calls it?

Sigh. OK, let me go smoke a conservative cigarette and then I will return to my conservative laptop to listen to more of the debate.

UPDATE II: I'm back. That cigarette had a suspiciously neo-conservative flavor. ("The Jooooz!") So I'm going to eat a paleo ice cream sandwich while I listen to the next segment of the debate.

UPDATE III: A-ha, Friedersdorf! I just paused the audio at 19:14, as which point you have just accused unnamed others of having an "ahistorical definition of conservatism."

Q. How much history of conservatism does Conor Friedersdorf
know?
A. A helluva lot less than I do!

As they say in military tactics, your flank is "in the air," and I'll drive a goddamned division into that flank.

UPDATE IV: As the perspicacious Professor Donald Douglas points out in the comments, Friedersdorf has attained his life's goal, blogging at The Atlantic Monthly, just like his hero. As I have often said, the rule in D.C. is never to attribute to ideology that which can be adequately explained by ambition.

Friedersdorf is rarity at The Atlantic. Last time I checked, Megan McArdle was the only non-Harvardian at that notorious snob shop. Perhaps his stint at Columbia J-School was close enough for horseshoes.

UPDATE V: Over at Dan Riehl's, I congratulate Conor on his ascent to the ranks of The Republicans Who Really Matter. Well played, old sport!