Crazy Is As Crazy Blogs
OK, indulge my obsessed-lefty obsession for a minute. A quick wellness check on two of my favorite serious, thoughtful, expert moonbat commentators, Glenn Greenwald and Andrew Sullivan. First Sullivan, a professional political observer whose mental health we’ve been closely monitoring (and whose Daily Dish since resuming “as normal” yesterday has racked up no fewer than 23 Palin posts), on why feverish obsession is the only logic resort of a thinking man. “Don’t Feed The Trolls“:
The first is that she remains a very powerful force in American politics, the de facto leader of the opposition, and, in my mind, the likeliest nominee of either the GOP or a George Wallace style third party in 2012. This means that her attempt to recast her image, finesse her past stories and blame the McCain camp for her own errors and nuttiness should be engaged by those of us whose job it is to subject the powerful to scrutiny.
Secondly … if the Dish ignored her, she would not be in the spotlight? Once you’re on Oprah, somehow the Dish’s little niche is irrelevant.
Thirdly, it’s riveting stuff. Watching someone this delusional and this uninformed and this narcissistic strut around the world stage telling empirical untruth after untruth is a car wreck worth rubber-necking. The book is so weird, and its fiction so bad, and its facts so non-checked, you’d have to have every single journalistic bone in your body removed to be indifferent to it.
But anyway, I’m tired of all this meta-journalism. Does examining her make me look obsessed? Does not examining her make me look cool? Who gives a fuck? She’s a great story, a truly bizarre creature, an international woman of mystery, and completely off her rocker.
Just get on with it, my fellow hacks. Know your place. It’s cold and lonely work, but we chose this profession and we should get off our high meta-horses and do it.
Points well taken. It’s kind of a “just because I’m paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t after me” argument. Or in his case, more of a ”Just because I’m a crazy obsessive conspiracy theorist doesn’t mean she isn’t a fascinating pol and a force to be reckoned with.” Crisis seems to have passed … his employers at The Atlantic must be relieved … he’s settled out a little, maybe back on the meds, and eager to assure all he’s not nuts. Glad to see he’s onboard with being a hack, BTW. The “know your place” thing is a little snooty and hurtful, though. At last check, his place is in the UK. In some National Health Service loony bin.
OK, now Greenwald, a constitutional lawyer and best-selling author. Greenwald’s an entirely different kind of crazy. He is attacking his own people, the Obama adminstration because every step they take toward advancing his agenda … total enablance of people whose first order of business would be to stone Greenwald in the local soccer stadium … only serves to demonstrate that we haven’t entirely surrendered yet. Right now, he’s PO’d because while Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and a select group of marquee terrorists are getting full constitutional rights, discovery, subpoena power, grandstanding opportunities, all that, in New York, others are being left to languish and face no-nonsense drumhead justice in Guantanamo. He’s so far left, he’s almost coming around to the right in his demand that the left half of the nose be cut off to spite the left half of the face. “The administration guts its own arguments for 9/11 trials“:
Can anyone reconcile Obama’s homage to “our legal traditions” and his professed faith in jury trials in the New York federal courts with the reality of what his administration is doing: i.e., denying trials to a large number of detainees, either by putting them before military commissions or simply indefinitely imprisoning them without any process at all?
During his appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday, Eric Holder struggled all day to justify his decision to put Khalid Sheikh Mohammed on trial because he has no coherent principle to invoke. He can’t possibly defend the sanctity of jury trials in our political system — the most potent argument justifying what he did — since he’s the same person who is simultaneously denying trials to Guantanamo detainees by sending them to military commissions and even explicitly promising that some of them will be held without charges of any kind.
Once you endorse the notion that the Government has the right to imprison people not captured on any battlefield without giving them trials — as the Obama administration is doing explicitly and implicitly — what convincing rationale can anyone offer to justify giving Mohammed and other 9/11 defendants a real trial in New York?
Glenn Greenwald and I agree! What convincing rationale can anyone offer to justify giving Mohammed and the other 9/11 defendants a real trial in New York? It makes no sense.
We don’t agree the “not captured on any battlefield” part (boldface his). But given Greenwald’s failure to grasp that we are at war with an insidious, amorphous enemy, and various other fundamentals of an asymmetrical warfare threat, it seems like piling on to fault him for failing to grasp that war is no longer fought on set-piece 18th-century battlefields.
Greenwald rattles on in this post at some additional length with multiple updates, somewhat less than usual but still more than I care to read. But it’s probably important to note that while Greenwald makes no sense, seeks to undermine his own side, etc., he does not appear to be full-on, rug-chewing nuts like Sullivan, despite his historic multiple personality issues.
So why do I waste any time even mocking these people? Well, I have to borrow a page from Sullivan’s defensive rationalization of his Palin jones on that one. When I see and hear these people and others like them cited as prominent, serious, thoughtful, expert commentators on NPR, places like that, and the team they backed, whatever their current misgivings, is actually in power, I realize that even the looniest lefties have to be taken seriously. Basically, because it drives me crazy. Also, and more importantly … because mocking them is fun.
IMPORTANT UPDATE: Sarah Palin’s Uterus speaks! It’s got a problem with my Sullivan bashing. SPU’s maternal instincts just want to give him a big hug.
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 10:48 am Comments (7) on Friday, November 20, 2009
7 Responses to “Crazy Is As Crazy Blogs”
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November 20th, 2009 at 11:44 am
“Watching someone this delusional and this uninformed and this narcissistic strut around the world stage telling empirical untruth after untruth is a car wreck worth rubber-necking.”
Andrew and I agree about BO.
November 20th, 2009 at 12:19 pm
I was wondering the other day if you’d find the synergies between Sullivan and Greenwald!
November 20th, 2009 at 2:01 pm
As a fellow Brit in the USA , Sullivan’s comments are usually an embarrassment, but I really love it when he gets his Palin freak on! She’s managed to annoy the snot-nosed liberal establishment even more than Boosh, and that is itself worth seeing.
November 20th, 2009 at 4:19 pm
Damon Linker calls out the Dish and other Palin obsessives:
Is Andrew admitting to being obsessive? Also, corollary, has any gay man ever admitted to being so neurotically spooked by a heterosexual woman?
As for this:
So why do I waste any time even mocking these people?
Because, your other cogent arguments besides, these people can and will do a lot of damage before their lunacy becomes apparent to the majority of people. Keep mocking, JC. It’s one of our most potent weapons.
November 20th, 2009 at 8:14 pm
[...] Crittenden wades through Bedlam to read Greenwald and Sullivan–but he’s braver than [...]
November 20th, 2009 at 11:13 pm
“So why do I waste any time even mocking these people?”
Because watching someone this delusional and this uninformed and this narcissistic strut around the world stage telling empirical untruth after untruth is a car wreck worth rubber-necking.
As for Greenwald, I’m sure he’ll be relieved to know that A.G. Holder did not consult Obama on the KSM decision, so the Prez, per usual, is blameless.
November 21st, 2009 at 3:02 am
[...] WP posts from Robert Stacy McCain) | (Read MT posts from Robert Stacy McCain) Where to begin? Jules Crittenden observes that since resuming “normal” blogging, Andrew Sullivan’s Daily Dish “has racked up no fewer than 23 Palin posts.” Which is only “normal” [...]