Nothing is real to these assholes. After declaring the ongoing Dumpster fire in the Republican primary “the best GOP field in years,” Joe Klein goes on to say:
Jeb Bush, son and brother of other Bushes, is the Republican default position–if not quite the favorite to win. He is conducting a major thought experiment. It involves the proposition that a conservative who is not suffering from red-meat poisoning can win the Republican nomination. Bush has had tough times in recent weeks, mangling answers to inevitable questions like whether he would have gone to war in Iraq, but I watched him handle all sorts of questions at a town-hall meeting in Dubuque, and he did so with intelligence, patience–in the case of one persistent questioner who seemed to believe that the Gates Foundation was intent on wrecking the American education system–and fluency, including casual humor.
First of all, Jeb Bush is “not suffering from red-meat poisoning,” as evidenced by his views on abortion:
TALLAHASSEE, FLORIDA — “Choose Life,” two words carrying an emotionally charged message about abortion, will be on some Florida license plates under a bill signed Tuesday by Gov. Jeb Bush.
In Saturday’s interview, Bush also reiterated his opposition to marriage equality, saying that gay marriage is not a constitutional right and that “we need to be stalwart supporters of traditional marriage.”
In 2005, the governor signed into law another piece of NRA legislation on the topic of gun control. The bill was written by the NRA and expanded the rights of Floridians to use deadly force when threatened in public places. This proposal, known as the “stand your ground bill,” expanded the rights of people to use guns or other deadly force to defend themselves without 1st trying to escape even in places outside their homes. The law stipulated that a person “has no duty to retreat and has the right to stand his or her ground and meet force with force, including deadly force.”
“We’ve created a monstrosity of consolidating power in Washington, D.C., suppressing wages, making it uncertain for investment. In fact, the greatest job suppressor in the so-called recovery that we’ve gone through is Obamacare. And I think replacing Obamacare with a market-oriented approach — that is, where local and state input starts to drive the policies away from this top-down system” is something the country ought to be doing, Bush said at the Iowa Ag Summit, a forum on agriculture issues that also drew several other would-be presidential hopefuls.
Boy, he sure is a contrarian!
Second of all, oh, God Almighty, you want to talk about why traditional media are losing ground, don’t talk about access journalism. Talk about “everything is imaginary and exists for my pondering and commentary” journalism, about this bullshit where the very real possibility that somebody batshit insane might be president is “a thought experiment.”
I suppose it is, to Joe Klein, who will have a job no matter who is elected. It’s an academic exercise, when you aren’t graduating college next year and hoping to have a job, or reporting for boot camp and wondering which Middle Eastern hellhole you’ll be deployed to after somebody decides those people look at us funny. It’s just an exercise in playacting when you won’t be subjected to a mandatory ultrasound to get a legal medical procedure, or called a whore for using birth control.
I’m not suggesting Joe Klein pretend to give a shit, by the way. That would be ridiculous. I’m suggesting that when you, Mr. Columnist, get to the point of complete solipsism, where everything around you exists just for you to play with it like a mental Lego bucket and nothing has any consequences and none of it’s real, we replace you with someone who has actual skin in the game of being alive right now.
If for no other reason than it would be enjoyable to read about this stuff like it matters.
A.
Yes. This is our Joe. And our pundit class in general. They look at the horror that they and the Republican party have unleashed and they decide the best attitude is one of amused contempt for everyone and everything. I remember it well from when Dean was running. The thing they hated most about his was his apparent sincerity and his willingness to try to do something about a horrible situation. Taking the Iraq war seriously, taking the entire political process seriously? That was just something for the rubes and they didn’t want those kinds of cooties rubbing off on the pundit class.
“Amused contempt.” That is the best assessment of their attitude I’ve ever heard.
A.
The unmitigated horror of it is that Klein isn’t the worst of the bunch. He’s just more or less representative of the breed. When it comes to sheer obnoxiousness and self-importance, Richard Cohen’s got him beat by a country mile. And the nitwits at Politico are in nearly a dead heat with Cohen. Howie Kurtz, whose beat is supposed to be these cretins, is so proud of his cluelessness that it’s front and center in every one of his columns.
If there’s one person I’d love to reanimate, it would be H.L. Mencken, if only because the moment the electrodes sparked life into him, he’d look around and say, “thanks for bringing me back into such a target-rich environment. Got a pad and pencil on ya?”
I liked him better when he was Anonymous…