Intellectual Alert - Bob Herbert

People get paid for this kind of analysis. Unreal. No wonder the papers are tanking.

The ultimate intellectual alert, compliments of Bob Herbert at the New York Times (I know - using the Times is cheating because it's so easy to cherry pick, but cut me some slack):

Maybe the economic stress has been too much. Looking back at the past few months, it’s fair to wonder if the country isn’t going through a nervous breakdown...There is no end to the craziness. The entire Republican Party has decided that it is in favor of absolutely nothing. The president’s stimulus package? No way. Health care reform? Forget about it.

There is not a thing you can come up with that the G.O.P. is for. Sunshine in the morning? Harry Reid couldn’t persuade a single Senate Republican to vote yes.

Incredibly, the party’s poll numbers are going up.

We need therapy....The wackiness is increasing, not diminishing, and it has a great potential for destruction. There is a real need for people who know better to speak out in a concerted effort to curb the appeal of the apostles of the absurd.

A little alliteration from aggravated authors.

Don't agree with the president? You're not stupid. You're nuts.

A little further down the page, Herbert borrows a page from the nervous breakdown manual, forgets what he's saying, and ends up with Multiple Personality Disorder. For such a sane and intelligent man (you know, compared to half the country), he's pretty careless with the shoot-self-in-foot gun:

The Obama administration’s biggest domestic priority is health care reform. But the biggest issue confronting ordinary Americans right now — the biggest by far — is the devastatingly weak employment environment. Politicians talk about it, but aggressive job-creation efforts are not part of the policy mix.

Nearly 15 million Americans are unemployed, according to official statistics. The real numbers are far worse. The unemployment rate for black Americans is a back-breaking 15.1 percent.

Five million people have been unemployed for more than six months, and the consensus is that even when the recession ends, the employment landscape will remain dismal.

Well, then, maybe that's why the country is going bonkers. They can't believe the gobs of money being spent by an administration with no sense of proportion or direction while the economy circles the bowl.

Genius.

Stark Raving

Via Hot Air and Michelle Malkin. Here's Democratic Representative of California Pete Stark: "You get the f*ck out of here or I'll throw you out the window."

The clip's actually a year old, which goes to show that you can do and say pretty much anything and survive as a politician these days.

The bigger laugh for me comes when Stark constantly asks the interviewer if he has an economics degree, a master's degree, or has ever taken a class in economics.

Which would prove what? All the economic eggheads in America were running the show last year and the economy took a mammoth powder. Personally, I'd feel much better with a plumber running the economy. At least the guy would do some basic math and figure out that spending far more than he earns will put him under.

Maxim: when a man with basic common sense confronts a self-described intellectual, the intellectual will lose his temper first.

Maxim: when someone asks if you have a college degree, you have won the argument.

Want more fun from the "intellectual" Stark? No problem. Here it comes, from an incident in 2004:

In May 2004, Stark responded to a constituent Army National Guard member's letter critical of Stark's recent vote on the war in Iraq by immediately calling the service member's telephone and leaving a feisty response on voicemail which was later broadcast on San Francisco's talk radio station KSFO.[8] Stark's harsh voicemail was transcribed as follows:

“Dan, this is Congressman Pete Stark, and I just got your fax. And you don't know what you're talking about. So if you care about enlisted people, you wouldn't have voted for that thing either. But probably somebody put you up to this, and I'm not sure who it was, but I doubt if you could spell half the words in the letter, and somebody wrote it for you. So I don't pay much attention to it. But I'll call you back later and let you tell me more about why you think you're such a great goddamn hero and why you think that this generals [sic] and the Defense Department, who forced these poor enlisted guys to do what they did, shouldn't be held to account. That's the issue. So if you want to stick it to a bunch of enlisted guys, have your way. But if you want to get to the bottom of people who forced this awful program in Iraq, then you should understand more about it than you obviously do. Thanks.

For the record, the clown's been in office since 1973. Must be a pretty brilliant guy.

The money quote comes in the last five seconds:

Putz

What's the deal with everyone calling NYT columnist David Brooks a "conservative?" I just read this article that shows Brooks to be a political sycophant of the highest order (as if we needed anymore proof), chock full of liberalism, and yet it begins and ends on the same note: David Brooks is a conservative, or a "center-right columnist." People have been saying it forever: he's a conservative.

For the past year people have been saying things like, "though a conservative, David Brooks agrees with Obama." For Brooks' part, he more than agrees with Obama, he thinks they're cut from the same cloth. Here's Brooks:

"And, then, the war in Iraq has caused me to rethink things in a much more modest [way], and that is Burkean, too.”

[Brooks] recognizes something similar in the current president. “Obama sees himself as a Burkean,” Brooks says. “He sees his view of the world as a view that understands complexity and the organic nature of change.”

Ah. So it's not so much conservative/liberal, as it is smart/doofus. Naturally Brooks is in the smart camp, the Burkean camp.

I'm from the Don Rickles camp: David Brooks is an arrogant snob who sold his soul to political masters a long time ago. He's a putz. Take this bit from Brooks: "My line is, the Clinton people would tell you you’re a complete and total asshole. The Obama people say, ‘We love you. You’re a great guy. It’s sad you’re a complete and total asshole.’ They’re always very mature about it.”

Wonderful. When's the last time you were pleased that people who loved you thought you were a pathetic jackass?

As a liberal or conservative, the guy's a joke.

Intellectual Alert - Peggy Noonan (Again)

I haven't posted an Intellectual Alert in a while, mainly because there's so many that I can't keep track. However, Pegs never fails to disappoint in the condescension department. As a hack of towering conceit, she warrants another highlight. So here goes:

Here's why all this matters. The world is a dangerous place. It has never been more so, or more complicated, more straining of the reasoning powers of those with actual genius and true judgment. This is a time for conservative leaders who know how to think.

That is an Intellectual Alert in a nutshell: it's not that you think disagreeable thoughts, it's that you don't know how to think. Noonan's Intellectualism folows the old elitist maxim that people who disagree with you aren't wrong. They're insane.

Actual genius and true judgement vs. lunatics and morons. It goes without saying which group Pegs thinks she's in.

"Intellectual" Alert - Mark Steyn

This one's a bummer. I dig Steyn and I like his stuff. Unfortunately he decided to break out the boffo intellectual label, just to let us know that somebody can really think (unlike, say, me and you - the people that haven't been hit with the Magic Wand of Public Wisdom):

Others may find Germany in the ‘30s the more instructive comparison. “It isn’t silent majorities that drive things, but vocal minorities,” the Canadian public intellectual George Jonas recently wrote.

True. But what's with this "public intellectual" stuff?

There's no need to elevate writers you agree with by giving them a phony label. "Writer" is enough. Leave the "public intellectual" nonsense to somebody else.

Just a note from your gregarious private moron.

Klein on Steyn

I was reading Steyn's piece on Pakistan, and I saw the heavy duty Intellectual Alert that Joe Klein spewed forth because of it:

Mark Steyn, the British conservative who seems to play at thinking rather than going through the actual work of thought, is all upset about the deteriorating situation in Pakistan. Well, yeah. Pakistan, neglected for eight years by a mortally hoodwinked Bush Administration, is a mess.

Ah, yes. Pakistan's troubles are all George W. Bush's fault.

Is there anything you can't blame on Bush? Opinion pieces in today's (but not tomorrow's; they're going bankrupt) high brow journals are a cut-and-paste affair. First sentence: state a problem. Second sentence: write the words "after eight years of" and continue.

Lefties are a funny breed. I think Twain said that southerners regarded the Civil War as the new B.C./A.D. For freaky self-descibed "intellectuals" (the kind of people that ruin a party just by showing up and opening their mouths), the new B.C./A.D. is the Bush Administration.

Before Bush, everything was sunlight, roses, an ask-not JFK speech, and the odd stained dress. Those were the halcyon days of tightly knit ozone layers and peace in our time. After Bush, life is just hell. If it hadn't been for him, Pakistan would be a vacation spot on par with Maui. Alas, the dumb Texan was elected president of the United States and suddenly Pakistan went in the tank.

Vis-a-vis the Pakistan deal, I can think of no better explanation than the one put forward by those venerable hard-thinkers at The Onion. No word on what Joe Klein thinks of it. Then again, maybe he couldn't draw overtime for the chore of watching a video and thinking it over (I'm still giggling over this line: "...the actual work of thought." Does this butthead really answer the phone, tell people he's working, then hang up and...think?)


Volatile India-Pakistan Standoff Enters 11,680th Day

Intellectual Alert - Hot Air

Too bad, as the guys at Hot Air are usually pretty good. I read them quite often. Then again, this entry is from the blogger who calls himself Allahpundit. I've said before that he's a jackass. Now he's confirmed it by using the most asinine word in the language.

To whit:

Spellbinding and agonizing for many reasons, foremost among them the fact that Maher’s tepid disapproval seems to be the only thing keeping the moronic audience from siding with this willful imbecile against two of the world’s leading public intellectuals.

"Public intellectuals." As opposed to "private buffoons."

Anyone who uses the "intellectual" label is a putz, but Allahpundit goes the extra mile. "World's leading public intellectual." Wow. I had no idea that someone was measuring the intellectual prowess of everyone on Earth. If Hitchens is leading, we're all trailing? And who's dead last? The plumber sitting on the john reading The Economist, or the university professor sitting on the john reading Playboy?

Allahpundit shouldn't be calling anyone an imbecile. Like David Brooks, he has achieved High Putz status.

"Intellectual" Alert - Emanuel

If you've been reading the blog, then you'll know "intellectual" is my latest buzz word to watch. Everybody seems to be using it with extra zeal these days.

Here's a bit from Politico:

White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel charged Sunday that conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh is “the voice and the intellectual force and energy behind the Republican Party.”

I've probably used the word more than a few times in my life, but starting last year it occurred to me that it's the most meaningless word in the language. Take Emanuel's use of it: "intellectual force." What can that possibly mean? Since "intellectuals" are supposed to be smarter than the rest of us, then Emanuel must mean that Limbaugh is the driving force behind the GOP's "intellect," or "intelligence." To hear Emanuel tell it, Limbaugh is somehow raising the IQ of his listeners whenever he opens his mouth.

Limbaugh as schoolteacher? Hardly. What Emanuel meant to say was "ideological force" or perhaps "philosophical force." But, being a goof, he used "intellectual" instead, thinking it's the same thing.

My firm belief: anyone who uses the word "intellectual" is a sap.

"Intellectual" Alert - Brooks (Updated)

It's no shocker that David Brooks uses the most asinine word in the English vocabulary. Fun to ridicule him for it, though.

David Brooks in the NYT: "Intellectually serious efforts are made to pay for at least half of the cost of health care reform."

"Intellectually serious." As opposed to non-intellectually serious, or idiot serious, or dumber than a bag of hammers serious, or clowns climb out of my head like at the circus serious.

Thanks for informing us common fools that a group of dancing bears didn't write the budget, putz.

Update: Pegs and Putz go hand in hand, so I'll put her latest laughers here. I love this stuff. Better than the comics.

Peggy Noonan, WSJ: Third is an unspoken public sense that we cannot afford another failed presidency, that we just got through one and a second would be terrible. Americans know how much good a successful presidency does for us in the world, in the public mind. The last unalloyed, inarguable success was Reagan. We need another. Liberal? Conservative? That, to the great middle of America, would, at the moment, be secondary. They want successful. They want "That worked." They want the foreign visitor to say, "I like your president." They want to respond, "So do I."

Yes, perhaps it, would, at least, make people, happy, to use, commas, to make their, point, about wanting, something, anything, to work, no matter what it cost, them. ("Intellectuals" often pay homage to the Comma Fairy).

"Americans know how much good a successful presidency does for us in the world..." Yeah, the world's heart was really boom-boom-booming over your hero Reagan, Pegs. I know you wrote a fawning book about him, but peddle the bull somewhere else.

I love Peggy and her omniscient ability to read "unspoken public sense." She brings it up every time she talks about a shopping trip that took her past a wind swept Italian restaurant dappled with the sunlight of a thousand children's eyes. Or something.

This bit from the piece is good, too:

A mysterious thing happened in that speech Tuesday night. By the end of it Barack Obama had become president. Every president has a moment when suddenly he becomes what he meant to be, or knows what he is, and those moments aren't always public.

That's actually true. A buddy of mine told me a similar story: "You know how they say that love will find you when you least expect it? Well, there I was at 3 in the morning, taking a dump..."