david brooks vs. thomas friedman vs. ross douthat

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

http://scni.media.clients.ellingtoncms.com/img/photos/2011/08/20/krauthammer_charles_color_t300.jpg?8aff03de2423e912a2467e97388a07f5331c05b6

"ILE...you were right. You were right about me..."

He had a lazy piece of junk in the Washington Post last Friday on the Buffet rule, and today whines that we need to find funding for NASA to keep shuttles going to the new frontier, but we also have to stop Obama's spending on everything else. Likeable in person or not, his writing projects little intelligence, sympathy or friendliness

pat buchanan is also a likable guy IRL -- that's why he's lasted so long on the Gasbag Circuit.

Being a likeable person obviously does not preclude intellectual dishonesty and deceitful rhetoric in order to 'win' a political argument.

goole, is this the book to which you refer?

read a couple reviews

obv this book did not penetrate the republican id

Friedman's disconnect from reality reminding me increasingly of John Candy as Melonville Mayor Tommy Shanks

douthat's exchange w/saletan: easy to imagine ross rationalizing the catholic church's persecution of heretics like galileo or copernicus back in the day

"burning people at the stake is messy, certainly, but serves as a necessary correction to a widespread cultural drift away from xtian orthodoxy"

One successful foray ended on the guest bed of a high school friend's parents, with a girl who resembled a chunkier Reese Witherspoon drunkenly masticating my neck and cheeks. It had taken some time to reach this point--"Do most Harvard guys take so long to get what they want?" she had asked, pushing her tongue into my mouth. I wasn't sure what to say, but then I wasn't sure this was what I wanted. My throat was dry from too much vodka, and her breasts, spilling out of pink pajamas, threatened my ability to. I was supposed to be excited, but I was bored and somewhat disgusted with myself, with her, with the whole business... and then whatever residual enthusiasm I felt for the venture dissipated, with shocking speed, as she nibbled at my ear and whispered--"You know, I'm on the pill..."

"wait did I just say all that out loud?"

wowwww i had never read that

hahahahahaha

Jesus Christ

"chunkier Reese Witherspoon drunkenly masticating"
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Gay relationships may be unitive in some sense, but they are not unitive in the male-female, difference-reunited sense that the Biblical narrative strongly suggests that God intended sex to be. Gay people can bear and rear children, but they cannot bear and rear them in accordance with what the Biblical narrative suggests is God’s original intention for the reproduction of the human race. Homosexuality may be innate, but recall that one of the core doctrines of Christianity is that sin itself is innate—that our innermost being is in some sense broken and fallen and turned from God’s desires for us. What a traditional Christian morality asks of gay people seems impossibly difficult, but the Jesus of the New Testament asks the near impossible of people quite frequently.

guess who

so "sux2bu" is harvard for "god hates fags", got it

they are not unitive in the male-female, difference-reunited sense that the Biblical narrative strongly suggests that God intended sex to be

It is wholly OT-based stuff like this that makes baby Jesus cry.

Wow this Douthat guy, I was not really even that aware of his views until recently. I mean at least Brooks and Friedman are faux-intellectuals of this century.

haha 'the biblical narrative strongly suggests'

what kind of punk-ass bullshitty appeal to scripture is THAT.

What a traditional Christian morality asks of gay people seems impossibly difficult, but the Jesus of the New Testament asks the near impossible of people quite frequently.

will you be getting around to any of it at any point or are you concentrating for now on not being gay

yep. this poll was easy.

I was supposed to be excited, but I was bored and somewhat disgusted with myself, with her, with the whole business

maybe you should try having sex with another dude