Wednesday, March 25, 2015

ZHDANOV NEVER LEFT.

This pops up in the middle of a Charles Two Middle Initials Cooke rant about how PC is intimidating professors and you liberals who think Ted Cruz looks like Joseph McCarthy are actually The Real Joseph McCarthy:
But the truth is that if Arthur Miller were writing The Crucible today he would likely be less interested in effusive senators from Texas and more interested in the more modern pathologies that the Cruzes of the world tend typically to disdain. Presumably, Miller would look at our universities and our media, at our malleable “speech codes,” our self-indulgent “safe spaces,” our preference for “narrative” over truth, and at our pathetic appeasement of what is little more than good old-fashioned illiberalism, and he would despair.
It seems never to have occurred to Cooke that if his analogy is sound, then The Crucible is already about speech codes etc. -- because it's not a news report but a work of art, which pertains to the universal, and resonates with anyone who has experienced mass hysteria and its attendant repression in whatever form. Other people know that; that's why the play is always getting revived. Audiences get the connection. Cooke might get a theater company together to alterna-stage The Crucible to look like Oleanna if he likes.

I suspect that Cooke's not interested in universals, though: What he wants is an already-famous property that's about how college students are oppressing conservatism -- or, failing that, to get people to believe that the dead author of the famous property was really a rightwinger and just didn't know it. You know, like they do with George Orwell and many others, to avoid the hard work of making (or even seriously engaging with) any art themselves.

UPDATE. Jonah Goldberg tells his colleague: You say McCarthyism like it's a bad thing.

175 comments:

  1. "everybody talks about the initials. they've got it out of proportion--i'm a hack. i'm going to get rid of the initials. i'm fed up with it!"

    ReplyDelete
  2. Known to few, a noble conservative netizen has been working on an updated version of The Crucible for several years. From the second draft:

    "No! I must stop the censors" he shouted.
    The radio said "No, liberal. You are the censors."
    And then liberal was a McCarthy.

    ReplyDelete
  3. whetstone11:16 AM

    I'm not saying that if Cooke staged The Crucible with the actors in Abercrombie & Fitch bro unis instead of puritanical black, I wouldn't appreciate it on some level. Or The Scarlet Letter, in which they have to pin a C+ on their untucked oxford shirts for sticking Mises pamphlets into their Contemporary Feminist Readers during class.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Modulo_Myself11:19 AM

    The accused a bunch of overweight pasty 50-something men. The accusers 20-year old undergrads whose twitter accounts they follow. The tragedy writes itself.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Ormond11:31 AM

    Anyone who reads Arthur Miller knows that he would strongly prefer stentorian declarations of immutable truth over crafting a "narrative." Especially not one that is animated by a "plot" and "characters" who engage in "dialogue" that, because it is true to life, contains ambiguities and is underpinned by unspoken motivations. That's a bunch of namby-pamby bull crap, not fit for a playwright of his caliber.

    ReplyDelete
  6. i'm pretty sure that his plays were actually witch trials and wakes for dead shoe salesmen, put on in real time.

    ReplyDelete
  7. It is a common myth that playwrights work in the narrative form. The best productions consist of nameless individuals walking on stage and making unconnected statements of basic fact. On occasion they sing.

    ReplyDelete
  8. coozledad11:44 AM

    If Charles Cooke wrote Huckleberry Finn, Huck would have chased Jim north to get the bounty, and he'd split it with the Duke and the Dauphin.

    ReplyDelete
  9. coozledad11:45 AM

    Well, yeah. But you gotta admit it WAS a real nice clambake.

    ReplyDelete
  10. J Neo Marvin11:50 AM

    Speaking of Zhdanovism, Senator Not-Like-McCarthy-At-All-You-Liberal provided a classic example the other day when he informed us all that he used to like rock by after 9/11 he's now a country fan. I'm sure this change of taste had everything to do with music and nothing to do with political correctness, which only exists on the loony left.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Did somebody say 'twitter?'

    https://twitter.com/IFThunder/status/580703016065638400
    ~

    ReplyDelete
  12. BigHank5311:55 AM

    Well, that's the first chapter. In the second, during the evening of drunken debauchery as they celebrate, Huck inadvertently strangles the Dauphin during a round of mutual erotic asphyxiation. He leaves the body in the Duke's bed, swipes all the cash, and hits the road for California to see what an enterprising young lad can do in the libertarian paradise of the Gold Rush.

    Fortunately the rest of the pages of the manuscript are all stuck together, or I'd still be screaming.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Ellis_Weiner11:55 AM

    "effusive senators from Texas"


    Yes, because the one word that most describes Ted Cruz is "effusive."

    ReplyDelete
  14. coozledad11:57 AM

    He must have meant "effluent."

    ReplyDelete
  15. [screen goes dark, trailer for Cooke's new movie "The Cruzible" begins with announcer's booming voice]

    "In a world of liberalism gone mad, where no one is safe from being politely asked not to be demean women or oppose minorities and good god-fearing Americans are tyrannized by suggestions of using taxes to promote the common good and mitigate suffering, one man has has emerged from the fertile soil of another country, donned a ridiculous cowboy hat and boots, and reluctantly shed his Canadian citizenship in order to stand up to the oppressive madness of reason, civility, and compassion.

    That man is Ted Cruz...the Cruzibilly."

    ReplyDelete
  16. Wingnuts on Politico today are explaining Cruz's decision to go on the ACA with, "He's going to expose the problems with Obamacare."

    #youcantmakethisstuffup
    ~

    ReplyDelete
  17. The liberals of today will be conservatives tomorrow, and the conservatives of today will be liberals tomorrow. At least that's how it will go if we keep letting Texas write our histories.

    ReplyDelete
  18. coozledad12:00 PM

    If Mel Gibson directs, I'm in.

    ReplyDelete
  19. Nothing exposes a problem more than a rich man not getting exactly what he want, when he wants. Oh you have to pay a little extra for your insanely awesome plan? Must be rough.

    ReplyDelete
  20. BigHank5312:08 PM

    Cooke's willful blindness is really something to behold. I mean, he manages to to show that he's not only read The Crucible but even kinda grasped what the play is about...only to faceplant on the dismount:

    In the heat of a hysterical moment, a putatively civilized community elects to abandon the vital traditions that have been slowly built up over centuries and to hand over its institutions to the transient anxieties of an unruly and jealous mob.


    Hey, Charles, remind me about how your party was acting in 2003, willya?

    ReplyDelete
  21. Hey... Heidi Cruz is taking a leave of absence from Goldman Sachs to help out on the campaign, so it's damn decent of the Federal Gummint to pick up Ted's health care tab. The "Safety Net"... it's not just for the poor any more!

    ReplyDelete
  22. The best productions consist of nameless individuals walking on stage and making unconnected statements of basic fact.Ah, I see you're familiar with Our Town.

    ReplyDelete
  23. If Mel Gibson directs stars, I'm in.

    ReplyDelete
  24. Why doesnt he re-cruz himself and go without? The republicans assure us he and his family will get top not h care at the er.

    ReplyDelete
  25. Hell, remind me how they were acting in Florida in 2000.

    ReplyDelete
  26. Smurch12:37 PM

    In the Randscape, no one can hear you scream.

    ReplyDelete
  27. Gromet12:38 PM

    Gradually increasing respect for minorities and women since Seneca Falls and Abolition = the transient anxieties of a jealous mob.

    Wild-eyed, violent fear of anyone who's brown or has read a book = a vital tradition built up over centuries.

    ReplyDelete
  28. Ellis_Weiner12:38 PM

    Me, too, but never mind that. What I want to know is, how do you do that strikeout thing?

    ReplyDelete
  29. "If you like your health plan, you can keep it."
    --Goldman Sachs

    ReplyDelete
  30. Ellis_Weiner12:40 PM

    Stephen Sondheim specifically mocked that song, I think because he asked, "Did EVERYBODY think it was a real nice clambake?"

    ReplyDelete
  31. As a former chorus member, I can affirm that we all did, and we had a real good time.


    (Director once said we extras needed more variety than "whoop" for onstage agreement, so I switched to "LOL!")

    ReplyDelete
  32. "But the truth is that if Arthur Miller were writing The Crucible
    today he would likely be less interested in effusive senators from Texas
    and more interested in the more modern pathologies that the Cruzes of
    the world tend typically to disdain. Presumably, Miller would look at
    our universities and our media, at our malleable “speech codes,” our
    self-indulgent “safe spaces,” our preference for “narrative” over truth,
    and at our pathetic appeasement of what is little more than good
    old-fashioned illiberalism, and he would despair."

    "Likely"? "Presumably"? Well, I guess if you're trying to imagine what various playwrights would think of some subject or other, it's a good idea to pick dead ones. And this is just precious:


    "To sum up, then: Because his students insist that they are not to
    be challenged in any way, deBoer is unable to teach what he needs to
    teach for fear of losing his job. And he can’t criticize this
    arrangement because to criticize it is . . . to risk losing his job.

    Welcome to Salem, 1692."

    No, actually, welcome to Texas, Oklahoma, Georgia, North Carolina, Nebraska, Tennessee, ad nauseam 2015 ( http://www.cnn.com/2015/02/20/us/ap-history-framework-fight/ )

    ReplyDelete
  33. DN Nation12:44 PM

    Flop-sweatty cultural red meat bullshit. Now do one about arugula and mustard, Cruz.

    ReplyDelete
  34. Hey, McCarthy was no big deal! I learned this from conservatives. Also, he was right. Plus, he was a liberal Nazi, AND possibly a duck.

    ReplyDelete
  35. Art encourages self-reflection.


    Self-reflection is antithetical to authoritarianism.


    Authoritarianism is the framework upon which conservative molluscs hang their mucousy tendrils in an effort to emulate vertebrates.


    It's a slippery slope...appreciate art, and one could end up victims of kids with salt-shakers.

    ReplyDelete
  36. It was SHOES? Spoiler alert, dude.

    ReplyDelete
  37. And wait til you see how they redid How the Bear Lost his Tail.

    ReplyDelete
  38. Over at LGM (yeah, I know) there was a moderately interesting comment thread discussion of whether Ted is all grift, or if there's a True Believer under there. Based on his upbringing, his father's repeated talk of Ted as one of the Chosen Ones who will fight against the vampires, the demons, and the forces of darkness take power and create God's kingdom on earth, and the deadness in Ted's eyes, I've been inclined toward the True Believer camp. But this suggests otherwise. I mean, right-wing psychopathic ex-sheriff Richard Mack made a bit of a splash by turning to the internet to cover health care costs, since he's not insured due to pre-existing liberty. Ted 'n' Heidi presumably wouldn't have to go that far, yet here they are, Obamacarin'. That's a practical move that suggests he's buying health insurance coverage, rather than his own bullshit. And he'll be able to complain how awful it is, and be taken even more seriously, as a result. Win-win. (Few will point out that it probably won't provide the coverage that his wife's $20000 G.S. plan did, for obvious reasons.)

    ReplyDelete
  39. <strike>offending text</strike>

    ReplyDelete
  40. Marilyn Monroe Doctrine12:55 PM

    Where have you gone, Joe Dimaggio McCarthy, a nation turns its lonely eyes to prey

    ReplyDelete
  41. I'm
    sure this change of taste had everything to do with music and nothing
    to do with political correctnessWell, in fairness, "My City of Ruins" was pretty offensive.














    10














    Reply






    Share ›

    ReplyDelete
  42. Ellis_Weiner1:05 PM

    Fuck you, showoff. Thanks!

    ReplyDelete
  43. It's a mistake to look at "zealot" and "grafter" as mutually exclusive. There have been plenty of con artists who came to believe their own myths, and there have been true believers who assumed that their own righteousness entitled them to treat their followers like ATMs. People draw a bright line between the two because there's comfort in simplicity, but people are never that simple.

    ReplyDelete
  44. Bizarro Mike1:09 PM

    We should coin "efflusive" as in "full of shit."

    ReplyDelete
  45. Zencomix1:12 PM

    Sarah Palin shot it off from a helicopter?

    ReplyDelete
  46. While they're at it, why not rewrite All My Sons to praise arms contractors?

    ReplyDelete
  47. willf1:32 PM

    ...and Spoon River Anthology.

    ReplyDelete
  48. That's lovely. Thanks, trex.

    ReplyDelete
  49. Aaaaand right on cue...


    Hey, Supremes! I bet you didn't see this coming! Wheee!!!

    ReplyDelete
  50. Gromet1:48 PM

    Miller was definitely a liberal -- I mean, Death of a Salesman? So dour and hopeless. If he was a real American, he woulda titled it LIFE of a Salesman! and Willy Loman woulda been named Steele Strongarm.

    Oh... unless a Democrat was in the White House. Who was President when Miller wrote, Truman? JFK? Those goddamn blame-America-first job-killers.

    ReplyDelete
  51. For states that bought into the ACA, more great news!


    For states that didn't, boofuckinghoo. Maybe don't elect fucking morons to state government any more. I'm looking at you, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri...

    ReplyDelete
  52. mgmonklewis1:53 PM

    "We are the Chorus, and we agree. We agree, we agree, we agree."

    ReplyDelete
  53. J Neo Marvin1:56 PM

    Well yeah but by the same token I don't see Ted Cruz delving into Steve Earle's back catalog any time soon.

    ReplyDelete
  54. mgmonklewis1:57 PM

    Bonus points for the Buffy reference.

    ReplyDelete
  55. mgmonklewis2:00 PM

    While we're renaming characters... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFHlJ2voJHY

    ReplyDelete
  56. Downpup E2:10 PM

    The Insufferable Freddie is annoyed because he was really moaning about the loss of labor protection, and how dare Mr Cooke leave that out.

    ReplyDelete
  57. Gromet2:21 PM

    Oh gosh, this is among the best things ever.

    ReplyDelete
  58. bekabot2:42 PM

    "...a putatively civilized community elects to abandon the vital traditions that have been slowly built up over centuries and to hand over its institutions to the transient anxieties of an unruly and jealous mob."



    Yeah, they handed over their institutions to the transient anxieties of an unruly and jealous mob by leaving Great Britain and founding this country, pal.


    Whatever happened to 'America-love-it-or-leave-it?' As I grow older my Dad's hardhat slogan seems more and more germane. (No pun, and no joke.)

    ReplyDelete
  59. Jay B.2:55 PM

    But the truth is that if Arthur Miller were writing The Crucible today he would likely be less interested in effusive senators from Texas and more interested in the more modern pathologies that the Cruzes of the world tend typically to disdain.


    Yeah, probably not. He'd see the Tea Party as a gaggle of cruel, hypocritical morons no different, literally at all, than the HUAC assholes who inspired The Crucible to begin with. I mean they are the same stupid, myopic, fear-mongering idiots as they ever were and I don't really see how low-rent "controversies" would interest Miller when he stalked much larger game.

    ReplyDelete
  60. I give this comment two thumbs up, a standing ovation, two snaps with a twist, and a permanent place in my Netflix cue.

    ReplyDelete
  61. billcinsd3:03 PM

    People draw a bright line between the two because there's comfort in simplicity, but people are never that simple.

    Well, except for the people drawing the bright line. They sometimes are that simple

    ReplyDelete
  62. Beka, you gotta understand that Cooke and his crew would have been Tories during the Revolution, writing screeds extolling King George and excoriating liberals like Adams, Washington, and Jefferson. (And Cooke's people would NEVER have gotten in harm's way--they'd have written their trash from safe enclaves in New York or Quebec.

    ReplyDelete
  63. billcinsd3:05 PM

    Self-reflection is antithetical to authoritarianism.

    and vampires

    ReplyDelete
  64. If Arthur Miller had been a REAL playwright who had actual talent, he would have written a play about Reardon Metal with an entire act devoted to a single character ranting on stage.

    ReplyDelete
  65. Clifford Beall3:07 PM

    From the Goldberg post:

    "There may have been no real witches in Salem, but there most definitely were Stalinists in our government and elsewhere in American life who were loyal to a foreign power and eager to undermine our country."

    Wow, Jonah's intern must have found the list of traitors at the State Department, that's quite a scoop.

    ReplyDelete
  66. satch3:11 PM

    Fred sez:

    "Of course, the utter demise of worker power in this country is a problem
    that conservatism is totally incapable of solving on its own terms. I
    don’t even know what a conservative effort to empower workers would look
    like."

    Every Conservadroid sez:

    Jeez, haven't we done ENOUGH for the working man already??11? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_contract

    ReplyDelete
  67. coozledad3:12 PM

    They tried staging that, but the actor's knees kept locking up and they would pass out before most of the audience had left.

    ReplyDelete
  68. Russ Barnes3:14 PM

    If Arthur Miller were alive today, he'd be too busy frantically clawing at the lid of his coffin to give a shit about our universities and media.

    ReplyDelete
  69. JennOfArk3:15 PM

    Ted Cruz: the man who accomplished the impossible, by proving that it was indeed possible to be more smarmy and unctuous than Eric Cantor.

    ReplyDelete
  70. Your definition is incomplete. It should be "Full of shit and spraying it out in large volumes at high pressures."

    ReplyDelete
  71. tigrismus3:22 PM

    To sum up, then: Because his students insist that they are not to be challenged in any way, deBoer is unable to teach what he needs to teach for fear of losing his job. And he can’t criticize this
    arrangement because to criticize it is . . . to risk losing his job.



    If only lefties hadn't fought so hard against tenure!

    ReplyDelete
  72. slavdude3:23 PM

    And I don't he'll be much into this guy either.

    ReplyDelete
  73. JennOfArk3:23 PM

    And all this time, I never knew that Al Bundy was the intellectual heir of Willy Loman.

    ReplyDelete
  74. GeniusLemur3:24 PM

    In Randspace, everyone who hears you scream is laughing because bad things only happen to moochers, so you must deserve it.

    ReplyDelete
  75. GeniusLemur3:25 PM

    Hey, there's a lot of post-modern stuff just like that.

    ReplyDelete
  76. GeniusLemur3:26 PM

    "Hey, Charles, remind me about how your party was acting in [1976, 1977, 1978...] 2003, [2004, 2005... 2015] willya?"
    FIFY

    ReplyDelete
  77. satch3:27 PM

    And you must be ugly, too.

    ReplyDelete
  78. Poor, poor cee cee dubya cee, born too late to enjoy the right wing domination of the idiot box:


    My Three Sons is an American sitcom set in the early 1960s featuring Fred MacMurray as father, Steven “Steverino” Douglas, of three rambunctious American boys.

    Steverino works for Homeland SS Security, a fascist para-military outfit, where he engineers exploding bras, gonch-cams and other super-secret devices meant to stem the tide against any dangers inside American
    borders, including immigrants, gays, Canadians, feminists, mud people and anyone who can’t answer the question, “who is John Galt?”

    The series’ comedy centers around the situations that arise when the sons get into a bit of mischief. Roby, the eldest, has a nasty habit of knocking up the girls at school, but when he impregnates his teacher Mrs. Levine the hilarity really flies as she can’t have an abortion (and die) from the evil procedure like all of Robbie’s other conquests. When Mrs. Levine’s concentration camp survivor husband Saul finds out, things get wild. A real gas.

    The two younger boys, Earnest and Chipper, get into all manner of shenanigans by tormenting foreign exchange students, bedeviling the coloured school nurse, Flo, and torturing all manner of wildlife, including neighbourhood cats and dogs. The show’s overarching message of the strength of fascism is underscored by the many scenes of the two boys in their tree fort, reading to each other passages from Mein Kampf.

    The whole wacky family is held together with tough love from the boys’ Uncle Charley. Played with elan by William Demarest dressed as a Viet Cong, Uncle Charley talks in a funny Asian accent and always falls for the pranks and pratfalls set up for him by Steverino and his boys. Demarest’s
    character is a thinly veiled stand-in for the hated North Vietnamese, and the episode where he kills and then eats the family dog, Tramp, resulted in the most hateful mail the teevee series ever received. The producers were rightly proud.

    Later seasons saw the introduction of a love interest for Steverino, a Mata Hari type who secretly worked as a hooker at the local brothel. She gets cancer and doesn’t die, but she is saddled with an extremely annoying, mentally challenged daughter, DoDo, so she does get her just desserts for being a wanton woman.

    My Three Sons represented the heyday of the United States of America, and is often cited by true patriots like Richard Cheney and Karl Rove as one of the best pieces of American television ever made.

    ReplyDelete
  79. bekabot3:42 PM

    Well, no, I get it; in fact, that's more or less my point — that the rest of us understand these people at least as well as they understand themselves. It's not that none of us realizes that we're the mob, quite the contrary — most of us realize that we're the mob, it's just that we deal with the knowledge in different ways. We are the people our parents warned us against, if by "our parents" you understand King George and Queen Charlotte. And that goes for pretty much everybody, which is why it's ridiculous to claim a snootiness exemption. "Oh deary me, I'm much too good for my own background, so won't you please let me hang on to a shred of a tag-end of yours?" Bleh.

    ReplyDelete
  80. John Wesley Hardin3:45 PM

    I used to watch this in reruns with Hogan's Heroes, the show about the plucky death camp commander Capt. Hogan and his crew of prison guards.

    ReplyDelete
  81. petesh3:59 PM

    Mind your vowels, says Donald.

    ReplyDelete
  82. bekabot4:00 PM

    Consonants too...

    ReplyDelete
  83. That show was awesome! A comedy set in a POW camp! (And Hogan was a prisoner, remember, not the commandant.)


    Finding out years later that Bob Crane was an extremely weird sex addict, eerily conveyed in the underrated movie Focus, makes watching Hogan's Heros now doubly fun.

    ReplyDelete
  84. LittlePig4:15 PM

    That's always the part I just can't get past. "Assume a technological advance indistinguishable from magic, then see how the story so naturally unfolds".

    'Scuse me, but where did the natural part come in?

    ReplyDelete
  85. TGuerrant4:21 PM

    Next you'll be telling us that *My Favorite Martian* was a comedy. We know better here.

    ReplyDelete
  86. sharculese4:27 PM

    Oh god, Freddie and CW Cooke. It's like a marriage made in pretentious, illiterate heaven.

    ReplyDelete
  87. Marc South4:34 PM

    Didn't Johnny Cash write a song about a car like that?

    ReplyDelete
  88. TGuerrant4:34 PM

    Romney reality series?

    ReplyDelete
  89. Social conversion dressed up as comedy. "Alien" was a stand-in for the homosexual "uncle" living with his "nephew."


    Throw in the idiot landlady whom the uncle sometimes uses as beard; the idiot landlady's eventual cop boyfriend who's highly suspicious of the uncle; and all the triple ripple butt plugs as set dec (meant to be "alien tools"...heh) and the show's real premise is abundantly clear.

    ReplyDelete
  90. John Wesley Hardin5:10 PM

    "And Hogan was a prisoner, remember, not the commandant." I remember it well, along with the weird, manipulative sex at the core of the power dynamic in Three's Company, but that's neither here nor there.

    ReplyDelete
  91. That show was simply a gentle reminder of how extremely stupid blonde girls (Cindy), extremely stupid young horny men (Jack), extremely stupid bigots (Stanley) are all people, too, and with the help of big-hearted women (Janice and Helen) they can, despite their extreme stupidity, live fulfilling lives.


    Then that ex-Penthouse magazine model/actress became a member of the cast and everything changed.

    ReplyDelete
  92. Cantor still gets my vote here. That he was beaten by a TP candidate after mentoring TP tyro elects just two or so mere years earlier makes Cantor's ouster one of the most delectable political titbits...ever!

    ReplyDelete
  93. Smurch5:57 PM

    And, additionally, "emetic."

    ReplyDelete
  94. Smurch5:59 PM

    cf. Elmer Gantry.

    ReplyDelete
  95. Heh! Look, they are rewriting The Fox and the Grapes:

    The hunt for big money is off-putting to some high-level players.
    “I am not going to support the super PACs,” said Michael Ashner, chief executive of a Boston-based real estate investment trust who has fielded multiple GOP requests for large donations. “I just think it’s morally not right. It’s corrosive on our democracy.”



    Isn't that just precious? This won't make any difference in the money being spent by these goons--but it sure makes a difference in the amount of commitment that the one percent (not the top .001 percent) show to the republican candiate. If you can't get in on the ground floor and feel like your candidate even knows your name why bother donating? Its money down the drain even if you think you are going to have business in front of the a republican administration later. Better to buy your influence then than waste money now.

    ReplyDelete
  96. I don't think the ACA buyin shows much of anything--as Steve M. argues he can use it to beat Obama with and his voters (however many they are) will not care one way or another. But it does show he's thrifty, actually, because the amount that they would have to pay for COBRA'ing their high dollar GS plan would be enormous, just enormous. And going on the Obama exchange doesn't mean he will get a bronze plan-they can buy a platinum plan through the exchanges too.

    ReplyDelete
  97. It would have been a musical, too,with songs like "A little shoe leather and a smile!" And "They Know Me In Topeka!"

    ReplyDelete
  98. I laughed until I cried.

    ReplyDelete
  99. It was underneath a pile of empty takeout containers and, tragically, could no longer be read because of some mysterious stains.

    ReplyDelete
  100. I know someone whose family were forced to flee to Mexico because of the Red Scare in Hollywood. My great uncle defended people who were accused of being Communists--Paul Robeson was one of his more famous clients but he defended lots of perfectly ordinary people, totally nameless, who lost low level jobs.

    ReplyDelete
  101. mgmonklewis6:49 PM

    Jonah Goldberg tells his colleague: You say McCarthyism like it's a bad thing.


    Announcer: Today the role of Jonah Goldberg will be played by Cousin Oliver from The Brady Bunch

    Jonah: "You guys say McCarthyism like it's a bad thing."

    [trips; knocks all of Alice's groceries off the counter; stumbles face-first into cream pie; flails backwards into den, knocking over TV and landing with a whoosh on a beanbag chair, which ultimately pops and sprays styrofoam confetti over the room]



    [comic trombone music]


    [family laughs as Jonah wipes whipped cream off his bent glasses]


    "Oh, Jonah!" [laugh track]

    ReplyDelete
  102. mgmonklewis6:51 PM

    "No, Ma'am!"

    ReplyDelete
  103. mgmonklewis6:53 PM

    Potato, po-tah-to...

    ReplyDelete
  104. And then...

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrGrOK8oZG8

    ReplyDelete
  105. Ted Cruz: the man whose face, pressed into the proper dough, would make the-case-for-ironclad-right-to-abortion cookies.

    ReplyDelete
  106. smut clyde8:23 PM

    Somehow you omitted "arguing with chairs".

    ReplyDelete
  107. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SO-RPx9IRc

    ReplyDelete
  108. Finally, after all these years! THANK YOU!

    ReplyDelete
  109. smut clyde8:32 PM

    Inquiring minds would like to know how many times Johan applauded during Netanyahu's speech.

    ReplyDelete
  110. That's some shit. Efflusive, even

    ReplyDelete
  111. Mark_B4Zeds8:33 PM

    Next thing you're gonna tell me that Alf was a puppet and there was a guy under the couch with his arm up his butt. Well the part about a guy with his arm up his butt was true.

    ReplyDelete
  112. What surprised me is that Cruz is pretty chubby. His portrait-photos don't show it, but he is. Is this the latest thing in conservatopia?

    ReplyDelete
  113. I apologized to a ceiling support-post the other day after backing into it. It didn't seem fazed at all.

    ReplyDelete
  114. Or the mere thought of going to Hell would have stopped him helping his friend. And when he saw the Dauphin & King tarred & feathered he'd have been delighted, not sad and ashamed.

    ReplyDelete
  115. I want to know more about this: "our pathetic appeasement of what is little more than good old-fashioned illiberalism"


    I mean, what?

    ReplyDelete
  116. smut clyde8:43 PM

    From what I've seen of Cruz's dad's christofascist prophecy, it includes a component of Prosperity Gospel: one way we will know the Saviour who will render America into the Hands of the Godly is that he will take all the ungodly's money and redistribute the wealth to the believers.
    So all the venal grifting is IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE PROPHECY. Sometimes God works his will through mailing lists.

    ReplyDelete
  117. salvagesalvage9:06 PM

    >If Arthur Miller were alive today he would almost certainly be
    interested in crafting melodramatic partisan hooey aimed at the likes of
    Ted Cruz.


    That is such perfect Goldberg and "hooey"! the gang at the Crackerbarrel have been giving him pointers again.

    ReplyDelete
  118. satch9:08 PM

    Well, whatever plan he gets, we can be certain that it will have been Crammed Down His Throat. Just ask him, he'll tell you.

    ReplyDelete
  119. JennOfArk9:54 PM

    National Organization of Men Against Amazonian Mastery

    ReplyDelete
  120. AGoodQuestion10:33 PM

    Indeed Cooke trots out the ever popular equation of (famous dead left wing thinker) + (conservative talking point of the day) = hooray for our side! And he does a pretty rote job of it, at that.


    For evidence he produces one story that's actually a story: the thing about the debate at Brown University. It's likely he's slanting this to make some people look good and others look bad, but it's something. Other than that he produces a Twitter user and a blogger, neither of whom get into specifics, at least as far as he quotes them.


    Full disclosure: I'm not hip-deep in the college experience. I got my BA back in '94, and that was from a small state school with a Division III basketball team and no football team, i.e. the kind of college that doesn't exist for the cultural establishment that Cooke foolishly considers himself separate from. But if I want to know what college students are being taught and what they think about it, you know what I do? I go ask them. That's one way you can learn things you didn't know about before, maybe things that don't fit snugly with your rhetorical points. You know, if you're into that kind of thing.

    ReplyDelete
  121. AGoodQuestion10:35 PM

    Cue banjo music.
    And tell Ned Beatty to wear a chastity belt.

    ReplyDelete
  122. ken_lov10:38 PM

    Best comment on the Goldberg post: "I think Mr. Goldberg is at his best when the subject is history." Which says all you need to know about his thoughts on anything else.


    It's interesting conservatives take it for granted that being a communist was a terrible thing, fully deserving of being blacklisted and possibly jailed. The viciously repressive ideology that jailed Eugene Debs is obviously still thriving, coupled as needed with sanctimonious declarations of devotion to the first amendment.

    ReplyDelete
  123. AGoodQuestion10:42 PM

    I'm guessing that it was also after 9/11 that he realized he liked Lone Star Beer better than Stella Artois.

    ReplyDelete
  124. AGoodQuestion10:44 PM

    Thank you for reminding me why I love Sondheim.

    ReplyDelete
  125. AGoodQuestion10:48 PM

    Ah, those rapes were probably sour anyway.

    ReplyDelete
  126. AGoodQuestion10:58 PM

    Just once, for an extended period of time. Well it wasn't really "applause" in the traditional sense, but both his hands were busy.

    ReplyDelete
  127. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person12:07 AM

    <s>--</s> if you're interested in conserving bandwidth lazy like me.

    ReplyDelete
  128. "effed in the head"

    ReplyDelete
  129. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person12:12 AM

    Pretty clumsy, too. He didn't stop to think that the Classic Rock he was listening to wasn't about to change and get all up-with-Murrica/down-with-the-Ayrabs*, because it was, like, last century's music...


    *Except for Ray Stevens.

    ReplyDelete
  130. redoubtagain12:16 AM

    Texas Foolbook Depository

    ReplyDelete
  131. redoubtagain12:20 AM

    Charles C.W. Too Many Cookes

    ReplyDelete
  132. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person12:30 AM

    Answers printed upside down at the bottom of the page. No peeking.

    a putatively civilized State elects to abandon the vital
    traditions that have been slowly built up over a century and to hand
    over its institutions to the transient anxieties of an unruly and
    jealous mob of Capitalists and their Republicans lackeys




    uᴉsuoɔsᴉM

    ReplyDelete
  133. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person12:31 AM

    They would have founded universities and invented the Deferrment...

    ReplyDelete
  134. Wrangler12:57 AM

    You really think deBoer's concerns aren't valid? He far from the only leftist professor who is worried about campus speech codes and their effect on free speech. I'm not a professor so I can't speak from personal experience, but I would guess if there's this much smoke there's probably fire. CCWWCW Cookie being a worthless, ignorant ass is just a distraction.

    ReplyDelete
  135. Wrangler1:11 AM

    You know, he really was moaning about labor protection. That was a huge part of his original comment. So huge in fact that he put it first. Cooke left that out and thus bastardized what DeBoer meant to say, just as the rest of his article bastardized Arthur Miller's vision. I know you guys hate DeBoer, but I'm not sure why people here are defending Miller but not deBoer from this serial liar.

    ReplyDelete
  136. montag21:17 AM

    Oh, I can imagine Ted and the Cruzers off-key whistling, "The Revolution Starts Now."

    Although the music video would look a lot like a reactionary's idea of "Springtime for Hitler."

    ReplyDelete
  137. montag21:22 AM

    They don't call `em fatcats fer nuthin'.

    But, I think it's just as much the influence of Texas Xtianists like Pastor John "Never Met an Armageddon I Didn't Like" Hagee, who's about as wide as he is tall:

    ReplyDelete
  138. montag21:27 AM

    They don't call `em fatcats fer nuthin'. Maybe it's just a signal to the faithful that he's all in favor of wretched excess.

    But, I think it's just as much the influence of Texas Xtianists like Pastor John "Never Met an Armageddon I Didn't Like" Hagee, who's about as wide as he is tall:

    ReplyDelete
  139. montag21:31 AM

    "Effusive" is the new euphemism for the oratorical equivalent of simultaneous projectile vomiting and dysentery.

    ReplyDelete
  140. montag21:37 AM

    "It's a real bother that the multi-millionaires are getting crowded out by the billionaires, isn't it? And who says there's no inflation? Why, the nominally rich can't even afford to buy access any longer! Why, in my day--during the Bush years--$100,000 meant something! An ambassadorship, a senator who took your calls, day or night! Hmph."

    ReplyDelete
  141. sharculese1:41 AM

    Freddie's got a long an storied history as a liar and a self-mythologizer. He's a mean-spirited asshole who blames everything that goes wrong on his life on him being to principled, so no, I don't believe his concerns are valid, because I don't believe anything Freddie says about Freddie. He's the boy who cried neoliberal.

    ReplyDelete
  142. montag21:53 AM

    A conservative effort to empower workers would be to give to them their ultimate reward.

    ReplyDelete
  143. montag22:03 AM

    "... who were loyal to a foreign power and eager to undermine our country."

    Guess the news that Republicans in Congress took information from Israeli spies to use against a sitting President just blew right past ol' Doughy.

    ReplyDelete
  144. montag22:58 AM

    Since Too Many Initials was born in 1984, and has apparently gotten all he knows about McCarthyism from the NRO's extensive library of old John Birch Society tracts, he can be excused for misunderstanding the times, but, I would think that only ideological idiocy would suggest to him that the author of "The Crucible" would be sympathetic to his puerile bleating about political correctness, let alone that Miller would think himself a comrade-in-arms of a half-witted jingoistic whiner like Cooke. I mean, fuck, hasn't he at least read the fucking play? No, of course he hasn't. One thing fer sure--Miller knew the right wing of this country, and after being condemned by HUAC, had no reason to like them, and were he alive today, he'd take considerable umbrage at his work being co-opted by an habitual drooler with the literary equivalent of a runny nose.

    As for Der Pantload, a defense of Tailgunner Joe is very much in character (if only because he's a wimpy fuck and wants to stay on Ann Coulter's good side). One would think that, eventually, even arch-conservatives would come to the conclusion that McCarthy was exactly what he appeared to be--an out-of-control drunk who impugned the reputations of people indiscriminately and for purposes of self-aggrandizement, who was finally censured, for good reason, by his Senate peers--and stop lionizing one of the worst politicians to ever surface from the muck. But, no, McCarthy was and continues to be a persecuted hero to knee-jerk reactionaries and their ideological progeny. McCarthy continues to be as large a symbol as imaginable of the divide between right-wing fantasists and the rest of us. No surprise on which side of that divide Doughy slouches.

    ReplyDelete
  145. smut clyde5:45 AM

    I'd still be screaming.
    You can scream? You get a mouth?
    We used to dream of having mouths.

    ReplyDelete
  146. Isn't 2001 about when "Country Music's" slow crawl toward corporate-inspired shit-noise take a nose-dive off the cliff into the lake of prepackaged product? There are only two kinds of Country Music now--Beer-swilling, pick-em up driving, lady-cruising Friday Night bullshit, and teen-age pop music with a Southern Drawl.


    Appreciaters of real Country Music must despair.

    ReplyDelete
  147. The sound of both hands fapping?

    ReplyDelete
  148. That's different because Obama's a Democrat. And besides, he's also . . .

    ReplyDelete
  149. Just because Asher isn't writing one big check to the PACs doesn't mean he's not getting money to all the right places. Check bundling is still very much alive and well, thank you. It may not get you an ambassador post, but it does guarantee that your calls get answered--even if your last name isn't Koch or Adelson.

    ReplyDelete
  150. "Unless we all conform, unless we all follow our leaders' instructions, we cannot truly be free."

    Major Frank Burns

    ReplyDelete
  151. Interstate Brickface!

    ReplyDelete
  152. billcinsd9:15 AM

    You had dreams? We weren't even allowed REM sleep. You smutters were so lucky

    ReplyDelete
  153. At least the phrase "right-to-work" SOUNDS like an effort to empower workers...

    ReplyDelete
  154. You sure got THAT right!

    ReplyDelete
  155. Smarter than Your Average Bear9:34 AM

    F-Troop to praise military intervention

    ReplyDelete
  156. satch9:53 AM

    Swill? SWILL??!!? Well, OK... maybe the Crisco...

    ReplyDelete
  157. satch9:55 AM

    I wish you'd posted this over there, too.

    ReplyDelete
  158. Helmut Monotreme10:00 AM

    The story doesn't work unless the heroes are irreplaceable. That's the part the libertarians always miss, as if selfish people who really hate paying taxes and getting told what to do weren't a dime a dozen.

    ReplyDelete
  159. billcinsd10:07 AM

    Cousin Oliver was played by Robbie Rist who had a fine power pop band called Martin Luther Lennon

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYHQs1e3oAQ

    ReplyDelete
  160. Foreign power? I used to think that Pug Likudniks wanted to make Israel the fifty first state, but now it's depressingly clear that they won't be happy until the U.S. becomes the seventh Administrative District of Israel.

    ReplyDelete
  161. randomworker10:17 AM

    LoL @ national review malware at the link.

    ReplyDelete
  162. "And Hogan was a prisoner, remember, not the commandant."


    Who can forget the sexual tension that crackled like static whenever Frauleins Helga und Hilda walked into Klink's office when Hogan was there?

    ReplyDelete
  163. sharculese11:02 AM

    You drop a bunch of invective at a wingnut and he instantly into Emily Post, and I'm trying to cut down on the number of disqus replies I get that are condescending yet overwrought proclamations about how I shouldn't swear this much.

    ReplyDelete
  164. satch1:31 PM

    Oh, I love the folks who whine "You said motherfucker, therefore your point is invalid", but in this case, your post would have been just as good without it.

    ReplyDelete
  165. Wrangler2:03 PM

    I pretty much agree with your characterization of DeBoer, and I would write him off if he were the only one with these complaints. But he's not. That makes me think there's a "there" there.

    ReplyDelete
  166. montag23:23 PM

    One could make a pretty compelling case that, for the last forty-five years or so, they've been running us, not the other way around. That we still think of Israel as a client state may simply be a necessary illusion to hide reality from view.

    ReplyDelete
  167. ken_lov6:13 PM

    I'm sure conservatives loathe M*A*S*H. They must think most of the cast are liberal jerks, and get furious when people make fun of Frank and Margaret.

    ReplyDelete
  168. realinterrobang6:14 PM

    I want to spend eternity with this comment, buried in the bowels of an insane computer.

    ReplyDelete
  169. realinterrobang6:21 PM

    That's as daft as the wingnut theories on the other side. Not only is the US the most powerful country in the world in terms of both hard and soft power, you're talking about a country that has a population and GDP of approximately a medium-sized American city.

    Besides, the interests of the "Israel lobby" have far more to do with the fictive Israel that lives inside their heads than, you know, the actual, real place. (And ne'er the twain shall meet, 1867 visit notwithstanding.)

    ReplyDelete
  170. StringOnAStick12:15 PM

    I've noticed that too, like his brief stint in the Senate has added 40 lbs. Either that, or his chin is slowly melding into the flab that has become his neck.

    ReplyDelete
  171. StringOnAStick12:21 PM

    Yeehaw, I gotta new toy!

    ReplyDelete
  172. StringOnAStick12:35 PM

    Hence the need for Ted Cruz, McCarthy's reincarnation.

    ReplyDelete
  173. reynard615:03 PM

    He seems to prefer Green Eggs and Ham...

    ReplyDelete