The Spectacle Blog
John Tabin’s “tentacle porn” shocker reminds us that “smart” is neither an ideological orientation nor a partisan affiliation. As I pointed out in the comments at Hot Air, the Journolisters seem to have overlooked this problem:
- Progressives aren’t as smart as they’d like to think they are. Otherwise they’d realize that hacking a Google listserv is not rocket science.
- Progressives aren’t as smart as they’d like to think they are. Otherwise, they’d realize that the law of large numbers means that an online communications channel with 400+ like-minded people who think their conversations are confidential is guaranteed to produce lots of content that would be very embarrassing if made public.
- Progressives aren’t as smart as they’d like to think they are. Otherwise, they’d realize that the “most of the discussions were mundane” defense isn’t really effective, if there is enough offensive non-mundane stuff to supply a full week’s worth of front-page news stories.
If you’re smart enough to spot the similarity between points 1, 2 and 3, you may be smarter than a fifth-grader [or] Ezra Klein.
My parents were from rural Alabama, a cultural background where “smart” was often employed as a synonym for “impudent,” as when my father would reply to my childish backtalk: ”Boy, don’t get smart with me.”
For some reason, that seems relevant in this context.
View all comments (7) | Leave a comment
Related Blog Posts
More Blog Posts by Robert Stacy McCain
http://spectator.org/blog/2010/07/22/journolist-and-the-politics-of
Follow us:
ADVERTISEMENT
SPONSORED LINKS
FLASHBACK TO: 1995
-
Pope Culture
A man of faith in a godless age is hitting Americans where it hurts.
-
Why the GOP Does Not, Like, Totally Suck
Mr. and Mrs. American Spectator Reader, let P.J. O’Rourke talk sense to your kids.
-
Dames at Sea
-
In the Absence of Guns
In Britain, defending your property can get you life.
-
The Metaphysical Martini
-
Counting the Costs of Clintonism
The debacle of this president’s administration is both a cause and a symptom of the decline of American values. Unless Congress impeaches him, that decline will go on unchecked. An eminent jurist surveys the damage and assesses the chances for the recovery of our culture.
-
Chuck McHagel
It won’t take long for conservatives to scratch this presidential wannabe off their 2008 scorecard.
-
The Legacy of Old John and Mother Fresh-Roasted
-
It’s the Best Time of the Year
The American Christmas, like the songs that celebrate it, makes room for everybody under the rainbow. Is that why so many people seem to be hostile to it?
-
The Bush Crack-Up
Was the President done in by the economy, or by the politics of the economy?
Clip of the Day
ADVERTISEMENT
Grzmlyk| 7.22.10 @ 12:09PM
Unfortunately, the American public isn't as smart as it thinks it is. Otherwise, natural selection would have relegated it to extinction long ago, and its litany of discredited liberal lies along with it.
But it lives on, despite its inherent tyranny, despite history's unanimous condemnation of it as an untenable organizing system, despite being exposed as the thoroughly dishonest and corrupt club it is, despite the fact that liberalism's supposed beneficiaries are, ultimately, its most damaged victims.
No, they march on, these soldiers of nihilism, heedless of the composition of history's trash heap, which is piled high with failed Marxist, socialist and fascist regimes, oblivious to reality.
Why? Because liberalism is sadism packaged as compassion, corruption packaged as justice, control packaged as freedom and squalid self-aggrandizement packaged the ultimate expression of human coexistence.
It's why "Orwellian" language resonates so viscerally with people who know what it's like to live under the iron fist covered by the velvet glove.
It is the protean nature man's folly and his inability to learn from his mistakes. It is the triumph of hope over experience, theft over industry, determinism over free will, rape over love, sloth over work, taking over giving.
Liberalism is the manifestation of evil and a malignant, metastisizing cancer on the body politic, triumphing only when it kills its host.
Ms. Jones| 7.22.10 @ 12:49PM
My dear Grzmlyk, are you bychance the illegitimate child of Ayn Rand? Not serious about the "illegitimate" part--you brilliantly summed up the folly of the Marxist left.
Grzmlyk| 7.22.10 @ 1:13PM
You are very kind, Ms. Jones.
Well, ideologically I certainly am related to Ms. Rand.
What stuns me is how many people fall into the same trap over and over again - and these are the very people who think human nature has changed, when they haven't moved off the dime for 100 years!!
PeteMoylan| 7.22.10 @ 12:56PM
The smoking gun in this JournoList is the admission of false racism accusations. They were used against Hillary to perfection. They were used against McCain needlessly. The sad thing is that McCain actually thought he could get by without being called a racist. All he had to do was not mention Rev. Wright. How did that work out for him?
Oldefarte| 7.22.10 @ 2:28PM
"...Progressives aren't as smart as they'd like to think they are...", otherwise, the multitude of college/university professors would be EMPLOYABLE in the private industry [which they are not] !!!!!!!!!!!
smart specs | 10.21.11 @ 4:47AM
Sometimes its unbelievable the Journalist article.Some other politician create only a story and deliver by the journalist.