The clip above arrived via one of my lefty mailing lists. Funny, right? I mean, the guy clearly has no idea at all what he's talking about. McCarthy, Stalin, Venona fer Chrissake -- way out of his depth, right? How could anybody possibly take this seriously, apart from a few brain-dead shut-ins?
Contrast with this clip:
The difference is that Beck is trying to talk about something that's actually interesting, and failing, because he's a laughable ignoramus. Whereas Obie is trying very hard to talk about nothing at all, and succeeding, because he's so incredibly smart.
Earnest idiots, and highly intelligent swindlers. You pays your money and you takes your choice. It's actually sorta understandable why many people might prefer the idiot.
Comments (15)
Must you make me quote this frigging Irishman.
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Posted by hist | June 28, 2010 10:43 PM
Posted on June 28, 2010 22:43
Of course maybe quoting Yeats is being too abstract.
As far as I can see, the people most dedicated to monitoring every word Glenn Beck says are liberal Democratic bloggers.
Racism and Bircherism are to liberals what Islamic terrorism is to conservatives.
It's a problem that has led to violence and could lead to more violence but is hardly an existential threat.
There's one thing that might persuade me to vote for Obama in 2012.
Push the Employee Free Choice Act through Congress with card check.
Posted by hist | June 28, 2010 11:10 PM
Posted on June 28, 2010 23:10
hist-
That's all it would take to make you okay with slaughtering wogs a half world away, torture, and overt feeding of the financial elites at the expense of the people? Card Check?
Makes me proud to have your kind as neighbors.
Posted by JMM | June 29, 2010 12:10 AM
Posted on June 29, 2010 00:10
"That's our choice -- earnest idiots, and highly intelligent swindlers. You pays your money and you takes your choice"
Oh, it's not so binary as that as I'm sure you're aware if you stop and think about it. There's a whole range of choices available in this world.
But I do get your main point.
Posted by Drunk Pundit | June 29, 2010 1:10 AM
Posted on June 29, 2010 01:10
There are also giant douches and turd sandwiches.
Posted by Michael Dawson | June 29, 2010 1:48 AM
Posted on June 29, 2010 01:48
That's all it would take to make you okay with slaughtering wogs a half world away, torture, and overt feeding of the financial elites at the expense of the people? Card Check?
Hmm. Interesting point. But are domestic issues and foreign policy issues always seperate?
I think a president who stood up for the rights of workers here at home would probably be less likely to continue to pursue and aggressively imperialist agenda abroad.
But if the choice were between an liberal imperialist who was in favor of giving Americans the ability to organize unions and say a libertarian like Ron Paul who wanted to cut the military and make the entire country one big right to work state who would I chose?
I don't know. Maybe it's a false choice?
Posted by hist | June 29, 2010 6:42 AM
Posted on June 29, 2010 06:42
hist,
Presidents don't get to be Presidents, in the first, without already whoring themselves out to the PTB.
No offense to actual, working whores intended.
Posted by Jack Crow | June 29, 2010 10:56 AM
Posted on June 29, 2010 10:56
"a president who stood up for the rights of workers here at home"
No such thing. Presidents are of and for the ruling class -- that's the way the system was set up, and it works just fine, thanks. Any benefit they do the workers is purely incidental, and easily corrected.
Posted by JMM | June 29, 2010 12:01 PM
Posted on June 29, 2010 12:01
We're not going to have Guantanamo closed, the Afghanistan War will end in 20never and you think there's a snowflake's chance in hell that EFCA is going to happen?
Posted by fwoan | June 29, 2010 12:24 PM
Posted on June 29, 2010 12:24
Churlish sanctimony
Is always a treat around here
Combined with a lesson in the class essence of state power
Makes it a double treat
Posted by op | June 29, 2010 4:28 PM
Posted on June 29, 2010 16:28
The value of a burning cop car?
Contextual
The value of an image of a burning cop car
Universal
It confirms both. Extremes and prolly. Polarizes
The middlers
Posted by op | June 29, 2010 4:34 PM
Posted on June 29, 2010 16:34
hist's post earlier in this thread has all the earmarks of "NE" at Schwarz's place... the sideways compliment of Our Obamessiah, being the most reddened and suppurating of those marks.
"If only Our Obamessiah would promise to Bring The Troops Home, I'd vote for him!"
Yep, that's all it takes for me too. Theatre. Charades. And promises.
Seriously. That's all.
Posted by CF Oxtrot | June 30, 2010 12:01 PM
Posted on June 30, 2010 12:01
Saying "I'd vote for Obama if" and following it up with a condition that everybody here concedes is very unlikely is not a statement of support for Obama.
It's an attempt to set a benchmark. Without any kind of bench mark, even the most churlishly sectarian statement that you'll never vote for a presidential candidate, EVER, is just as empty as Obama's smooth ability to talk about nothing.
It's the third option that's left unmentioned.
Posted by hist | June 30, 2010 8:34 PM
Posted on June 30, 2010 20:34
Presidents don't get to be Presidents, in the first, without already whoring themselves out to the PTB.
Is it possible that you can whore yourself out in one area in order to concentrate on another.
Let's take Alexander Cockburn, for example.
Let's say he whores himself out to the American Petroleum Institute. In exchange for denying global warming, he gets the money to keep a pro-Palestinian website going.
The ruling class is not monolithic.
My guess with Obama is that he whored himself out to the banks in 2007 and 2008 thinking that in exchange for writing Goldman Sachs a blank check, he'd be able to pull the country back from the edge that Bush brought it up to.
But he never realized the size of the check Goldman Sachs and AIG would cash.
Posted by hist | June 30, 2010 8:51 PM
Posted on June 30, 2010 20:51
hist now says that what he said, he didn't say.
oh boy.
Posted by CF Oxtrot | July 1, 2010 1:43 AM
Posted on July 1, 2010 01:43