Tuesday, April 28, 2009

OMG, Douthat, too?

If David Brooks is Pinky, Ross Douthat is the Brain, but as to his New York Times debut, Matthew Saroff of TPM sums it up in a blog post title: "Ross Douthat Is a F***ing Moron."

The money sentence in Douthat's silly mess:
In the wake of two straight drubbings at the polls, much of the American right has comforted itself with the idea that conservatives lost the country primarily because the Bush-era Republican Party spent too much money on social programs. And John McCain’s defeat has been taken as the vindication of this premise.
First: Conservatives are not interested in "comfort." Second, the simple lesson of the past two cycles is something that anyone who has been paying attention since Ross was in middle school would tell you: Lie down with Bushes, wake up with Democrats.

Douthat has never been a reporter. His life has been confined to academia and think-tank punditry in elite precincts: New Haven, Cambridge and Washington. He does not have any scope of experience to write about anything except the opinions of the elite, which are already easily available to anyone with access to NPR. Ergo, Douthat is redundant at best, and allowing him to write this kind of Big Picture analysis is to subject the reader to an arrogant, puerile know-it-all-ism.

Marc Ambinder (an actual reporter) shrugs his shoulders in resignation. Obviously, the thinking at 620 Eighth Avenue is: "If we've got to hire a 'conservative' columnist, make sure we hire one who'll reaffirm our readers' belief that conservatives are clueless idiots."

Kathy Shaidle e-mailed me this column with a two-word subject line, "Lent's over." Thank God for small blessings.

6 comments:

  1. Funny name, Doubtthat. Makes sense.

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  2. Wow, Douthat really pulled off a good one for his first column. Not only did he (predictably) trash conservatives, but even then his left-appeasement was an epic fail. Here you have a self-described member of the of the Democratic wing of the Democratic party and fan of Howard Dean referring to him as a "fucking moron", as a "tool" offering "linkbait" to "get buzz", as being Doug "The Stupidest Motherf^%$er on the Planet" Feith stupid, and being "conservative affirmative action case." Hell Stacy, that's a pretty good punk smacking of Douthat even by your high standards!

    How's that suck-uppery to the left workin' out for ya so far, Ross?

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  3. You know what really annoyed me - the fact that in Ross Douthat alternate Cheney-the-GOP-candidate world, Cheney would have lost. I mean, what the hell, man? Can't you at least give the benefit of the doubt to the rest of us? I like Cheney a hell of a lot more than I like McCain...

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  4. This was the most disturbing graph in Douthat's debut column:

    "But the argument isn’t going away. It will be with us as long as the threat of terrorism endures. And where the Bush administration’s interrogation programs are concerned, we’ve heard too much to just “look forward,” as the president would have us do. We need to hear more: What was done and who approved it, and what intelligence we really gleaned from it. Not so that we can prosecute – unless the Democratic Party has taken leave of its senses – but so that we can learn, and pass judgment, and struggle toward consensus."

    Not so we can prosecute, mind you, but so that we can learn, judge and find consensus. Learn what? Everyone with a position will learn what they choose to learn. Judgments will be what they are now. And there will be no consensus.

    The whole thing strikes me as a way for Douthat to demonstrate his bona fides as an adversary to the "right" a tough Bush-Cheney critic, and an opponent of "torture." I see no reason why the Times needs to have a conservative op-ed slot at all, but if they have one, they really should try to find a conservatives to fill it.

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  5. Ross Douthat looks like Ross Douthat.

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  6. Speaking of Pinky and the Brain, please buy it on DVD. Please buy Pinky, ELMYRA and the Brain on DVD. And most especially, please buy both seasons of Freakazoid! on DVD. That would be Season One, and Season Two. One set for yourself, and one as a gift for a friend.

    Buy 'em from Amazon (which you accessed, of course, from my site or Stacy's blog or the website of someone in Stacy's crew).

    Then buy Tiny Toons. Then buy some more Freakazoid!Then write a letter to Warner Brothers Animation, asking for more cartoons like the ones from the "silver age" of smart cartoons. Ask them whatever happened to Paul Rugg, Tom Ruegger, and John P. McCann.

    Then buy some more Freakazoid!

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