david brooks vs. thomas friedman vs. ross douthat

Krugman has given up on trying to talk w/ the shit-throwing baboons who call themselves conservatives these days. i don't blame him at all, it's really the most sensible approach.

i'll also stan for Nicholas Kristof.

Krugman is a classic example of a pundit with whom I agree often but whose prose is pedestrian at best (boy, does he love his rhetorical questions).

douthat = least stupid/ most hateful

krugman = shrill
brooks/douthat = reasonable

does this perception hurt k-thug or not?

friedman at the very least seems interested in interesting things

haha otm

interested in reducing them to a catch phrase?

THE WORLD IS NOT FLAT; SHUT UP

^^haha fair enough. still, the other two (esp Douthat) are kind of just dicks. if you're going to be a dick, you'd better be right and/ or interesting

I feel like I could get thomas friedman to change his mind on a lot of things if you just framed it in the 'interesting thoughts about interesting things' way, and maybe if you dressed up a a taxi driver

"what if universal health care...was an app?"

I'm going to vote for... (breaks down crying)... I can't DO IT! ... I just can't. (snivels, wipes snot on sleeve, mutters)... stupid furschlugginer dolts the lot of 'em.

friedman at the very least seems least interested in interesting things

fxed

lol

that was supposed to be to iatee

^ genuine lol, partly cuz i have heard that question raised in real life

xpost to iatee

anyhow this is so fucking easily brooks for me and probably still would be even if bill kristol was still there

daaaamn

how awesome is it that Kristol made a major factual mistake in his first 2008 column

brooks is the worst

person in history

u forgot krauthammer

http://peteykins.com/sparklepony/Krauthammer.jpg

a week ago i might've said marty peretz

what has changed

I know C-Kraut had a horrible accident but it's as if the surgeons fixed his face on purpose so that it's deformed into a smug asshole leer.

10 years ago he used to come into my bookstore in a wheelchair and kind of hand me his wallet with his wrists. he was at least pleasant in person, unlike gwill

well his writing at the new republic has been steadily diminished for a few years but apparently supposedly hopefully now w/ the sale going thru he's no longer going to be writing for them at all anymore. i'm not really expecting the new republic to become in any fashion less militantly pro-israel and i'm sure should circumstances warrant it or whatever he'll be able to chime in w/ some bigoted rant (he's still on the advisory board).

Krauthammer worked for Mondale!

yeah he was kind of standard cold warrior neocon lib w/ likudnik tendencies that grew more entrenched and extreme in those positions, gradually adopting more conservative domestic positions (esp the ones you could wrap in 'morality') as he began to spend more time/accept more checks from that crowd.

This is really impossible since reading all these dudes is like dousing your eyes with acid, but I'm going to have to say Friedman because even though he's probably the least wrong of these fuckers, he's the one of the three who people actually listen to the most (followed by Brooks and then trailed by a huge huge huge margin by Douchehead who I think most people forget exists most of the time.)

love this article so much http://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2011/05/03/christopher-tayler/yo-douche-bag/

quotes from the social animal

Imagine a man who buys a chicken from the grocery store, manages to bring himself to orgasm by penetrating it, then cooks and eats the chicken.

guess i'll have to go w/ Ross for worst. but i'll freely admit that it has more to do with my distaste for social conservatives than anything.

friedman easy

at least everyone knows brooks is a rightwinger, for some reason everybody is convinced friedman isn't, including friedman

douthat just seems kind of hapless

yeah but he's a wunderkind, the youngest nyt op ed columinst in history

if someone can explain how exactly that happened that would be great

All three of these assholes get reprinted in the local state-wide paper; Friedman is usually the least wrong and/or objectionable but remember we're comparing him to these two schmucks

thanks to friedman at least, we have this: http://rolocroz.com/junk/friedman.html

and therefore:

http://rolocroz.com/junk/friedman.gif

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/the_book_club/features/2012/ross_douthat_s_bad_religion/bad_religion_book_gay_relationships_and_christianity_.html

god these fuckin shitbags

I dream of throat punching Brooks.

what a bunch of cool bros

I actually know Krauthammer, and will not be more specific than that, but he's a pretty likable guy in person.

he woulda made a great character actor in another life

ha well there's this take:

http://whoisioz.blogspot.com/2012/04/ive-never-been-more-certain-of-anything.html

I would not recommend torturing your brain by reading the full epistolary romance between William Saletan and Ross Douthat, but seriously, that dude is so gay.

Obviously Douthat isn't exactly writing in the most sophisticated tradition of apologetics, but you know, there is something about all this hemming and hawing over the proper, ahem, stance toward the gays that is deeply prurient, bordering on the pornographic. You know, like, let us now turn our unflinching, um, gaze upon these divinely incompatible sexual beings in order that we may, carefully and in great detail, determine the most charitable possible means to disapprove of them. If we look long enough, and hard enough, we may yet determine just how we are supposed to feel. We wish to turn away, and yet somehow we feel compelled to keep going. God, Ross, you are going to feel so guilty when you quiver to a deathlike little conclusion on the, uh, issue.

douthat also wrote a book with reihan salam arguing that republicans should maybe possibly hopefully come up with ways of not being completely balls to the wall rageful toward the bottom income quintile. i always meant to read that.

I actually know Krauthammer, and will not be more specific than that, but he's a pretty likable guy in person.

I can believe it – he projects more intelligence and sympathy than his prose.

he looks so ott evil that you can sorta see him as a darth vader character who regains compassion at the very end of his life and somehow saves everyone

Eh, it's better than when they thought she was an Aryan goddess awhile back.

On the recent grasping of Swift conspiracy by the dumbass misogynist Charlie Kirk types:

…To be acceptable in this strange crowd you gotta believe getting vaccinated is unmanly, you gotta believe Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce are nefarious plants to elect Joe Biden, you gotta believe all sorts of foods and activities will make you too feminine, but that a man can ever be a woman. And so on and so forth. This set of beliefs, always paired with the need for dominant and potentially violent manhood, contributes to more and more men viewing unhealthy, dangerous masculinity and fascist beliefs as core parts of their identity. And this wave of young men is shifting right in their political beliefs. But while we can’t deny the danger of this shift, and the danger of men being taught to hate women, as evidenced by the link between domestic violence and mass shootings, there is a real possibility that this sharp edge of patriarchy can only go so far. These misogyny influencers have done and will do serious damage, but sharpen the patriarchy too much and it gets brittle and fragile. Sharpen it too much, as these men are doing, and you begin to lose people. You begin to demand too much and men start to drop off.

https://open.substack.com/pub/newmeans/p/its-expensive-to-be-a-man

I'm pretty sure the smiley football guy op is damage control for the Matty Healy op

― Beyond Goo and Evol (President Keyes), Monday, January 29, 2024 1:58 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

i'm sure dating travis kelce is a real relief after that douchebag

the kelce family seems nice

https://i.imgur.com/IWsAEKu.jpg