Exhibiting the keen intellect of a petrified dodo egg — I think an adult stuffed dodo would outsmart him, actually — Jonah Goldberg confuses free-wheeling corruption and dysfunction with constitutional checks and balances.
Apparently Tom Friedman said this on Meet the Press yesterday:
MR. FRIEDMAN: Well, David, it’s been decimated. It’s been decimated by everything from the gerrymandering of political districts to cable television to an Internet where I can create a digital lynch mob against you from the left or right if I don’t like where you’re going, to the fact that money and politics is so out of control—really our Congress is a forum for legalized bribery. You know, that’s really what, what it’s come down to. So I don’t—I, I—I’m worried about this, it’s why I have fantasized—don’t get me wrong—but that what if we could just be China for a day? I mean, just, just, just one day. You know, I mean, where we could actually, you know, authorize the right solutions, and I do think there is a sense of that, on, on everything from the economy to environment. I don’t want to be China for a second, OK, I want my democracy to work with the same authority, focus and stick-to-itiveness. But right now we have a system that can only produce suboptimal solutions.
To which Goldberg responded ina blog post titled “It’s Like He Does it On Purpose“:
All of those checks and balances aren’t a bug of the system, they’re a feature!
The word for the day, boys and girls, is non sequitur. It’s like he does it on purpose.
Unfortunately, Goldberg is not the only idiot writing for the Web. At the Catholic site First Things, The Anchoress turns Friedman’s words into a hysterical rant about a leftist totalitarian takeover.
In a just country, I would work for a Left-wing Think Tank, and be paid a princely sum to write “Conservative Logic: How a March Back 6 Centuries is the Answer to America’s Future.” But my book would be an honest look at how the conservatives refute anything the human race has learned since before Galileo and Newton were pup’s.
I would be paid to appear on all the Liberal TV shows – all 3 of them; 4 if you count Maher’s. I would get national exposure on the Liberal Radio Network – which doesn’t exist, NPR included. I would get an Op-ed column in a national newspaper. And, I’d be the paid spokesman on TV for all issues Liberal.
But, we don’t have Wingnut Welfare. So, idiots like me are left to comment on blogs, while Jonah is feted and fatted because he was born to suck on the right teat. And I’m sure Lucianne had two right teats, so Jonah would never have anything to do with anything on the left.
Jonah is so stupid, he wouldn’t know where to find his pecker if the bag of Cheeto’s wasn’t resting on it.
And Jonah, all the bugs on you aren’t a feature, they’re just bugs…
Jonah’s ‘career’ was launched when his mother, Lucianne, became a key player in the Lewinsky-Clinton affair. Before that he was wallpaper. Wallpaper looks good when first hung, but like anything else when around too long it becomes redundant, then nauseating, then changed.
He was given oped space by the LATimes a few years back – a very questionable decision and one that caused a lot of us to cancel our subscriptions. After a few columns it became apparent that he had a talent for arguing with himself and inevitably losing the argument.
There’s a whole lot of previous wallpaper people around these days and their presence is becoming nauseating.
“Jonah’s ‘career’ was launched when his mother, Lucianne, became a key player in the Lewinsky-Clinton affair”
Wasn’t she the one who demanded that the blue dress be saved? If so then little Jonah owes his carrer to Bubba’s DNA!
Although this excerpt is a poor example, Goldberg has the ability to write a lot of head-hurting nonsense and make it look like an argument with lots of supporting prose. You just don’t know where to start with his “looks like logic” confections, because there are so many strings to it.
I think your approach is best, and a good example how to deal with him: Step back, and deftly summarize the entire wad of BS in a nice tight sentence: Jonah Goldberg confuses free-wheeling corruption and dysfunction with constitutional checks and balances.
There, that’s how it’s done.
So Tom Friedman is a leftist terrorist now? You’d think I’d agree with him, then. (Tom, the Chinese government on its best day is lucky to achieve “suboptimal” solutions.)
Rightie blogger reading comprehension is terrible: nothing really new there. “One of these things is not like the other… but so what,” works pretty well for them.
Felicity – I quickly realized some years ago that buying the LA Times and opening it to see Jonah’s vapid scribblings on prime op ed real estate was more than just a waste of a perfectly good fifty cents. I don’t know if he still has a column there, but I no longer lament that newspaper’s demise. From my own narrow viewpoint: like the auto companies, they brought it on themselves.
“like the auto companies, they brought it on themselves”
Off topic but what the hell, we’ve not had this argument in a while!
I would argue what greatly contributed to the demise of American car companies was that right wing union busting mostly southern governors gave tax exemptions to foreign corporations to build auto plants in economically depressed areas that would hire non-union cheap labor and therefore sell their cars cheaply to mostly short sighted American consumers. Not to mention the subsidies that the transplants receive from their home governments, look into it!
Just when I despair that Left and Right will never agree, I realize that there is one thing we can agree on: Thomas Friedman is wrong.
It’s a start. Of course, they think he’s wrong for all the wrong reasons, including that they think, somehow, that he’s a leftie, but still.
I am a little surprised that hint of Friedman’s inner “suck on this” tyrant didn’t appeal to Jonah and his friends. It must be that they don’t see him as one of them. I’m sure they’d like the idea if Bill Kristol said it.
My “favorite” Jonah Goldberg argument was on an NPR show, I think it was “Talk of the Nation”. It regarded some of the accusations that had been made against then President Bush. (Wow, it’s still a bit painful to write that.) His argument in defense of Bush, and I’m serious, began with an admission that he had gone after Clinton and lied about Clinton, so therefore, the “liberals” must be lying about Bush. Now, there’s some airtight logic.
I wonder if he ever watched “Perry Mason” when he was a kid.
I am a little surprised that hint of Friedman’s inner “suck on this†tyrant didn’t appeal to Jonah and his friends…. I’m sure they’d like the idea if Bill Kristol said it.
Ha! Excellent. Of course, anything they don’t care for is “Left.” Hey, even I know the difference between Sarah Palin and Sex and the City, two things I don’t care for which are (slightly) different.