Counting on their fingers

Conservative pundits are like four-year-olds who have learned to count but forget to count themselves:

In between Jonah's petulant laments about how conservative opinion cannot be heard in The Mainstream Media, Bill Kristol talked about his New York Times column and his Washington Post column, John Podhoretz told stories about his tenure editing The New York Post Editorial Page and Charles Krauthammer's years of writing a column for Time and The New Republic, and Jonah referenced his Los Angeles Times column. None of them ever recognized the gaping disparity between those facts and their woe-is-us whining about conservative voices like theirs being shut out of The Liberal Media. So important in conservative mythology is self-victimization that they maintain it even as they themselves unwittingly provide the facts which disprove it.

Jean Piaget would say that these conservatives don't conserve, which is a serious developmental deficit. The pay's good, though.

Sauce for the gander

How can a man who swoons over Ronald Reagan on a regular basis (and twice in this column he sets Ronnie as the standard) write this?

[Obama] was the newcomer and the stranger, he rose above the crowd on pure special effects: dazzling rhetoric, natural charisma and a magic carpet ride of transcendence and hope.

It worked for two reasons: Democrats believe that nonsense, and he was new.

Charles Krauthammer, like many conservatives, lacks that essential germ of morality that applies the same set of rules to himself that he wants to apply to others. This lack is why the morality of these particular conservatives, such as it is, is a pastiche of taboos that must be received from authority rather than reasoned about. It's also why they don't believe in the concept of law as binding even the king.

Defending the loons and dim-bulbs of academe

(From Philosoraptor)

If I admit that academia is liberal and that sometimes that's bad, will you admit that taking at face value anything George Will or David Horowitz has anything to do with is naive?

I know that George Will wants his readers to assume the definition of social justice that supports his thesis - because advocates for minorities use it in a specific way. Does the textbook he refers to use it that way, too? And what words intervene between the tiny little quotes? I never assume that a right-wing propagandist is leveling with me on the facts.

Really, if you take the word social and the word justice literally, who could oppose them? I mean, other than Michele Malkin. Could that have been the intended meaning?

Some of the anecdotes in the Will column would be disturbing - if they are fairly rendered. I don't assume that they are; too many times I've seen Horowitless allegations turn out to be fart when he alleged diarrhea.

Last, who would want an Ayn Rand social worker!

"Suck it up and will yourself to victory."

"But I came here looking for marriage counseling!"

"Tough, and oh by the way, I charge psychiatrist's fees."

It's a caring profession. Sure, there are conservatives who could do it, but not any of the ones who have a nationally syndicated column.

I mean, Charles Krauthammer! He must have gone into psychiatry because he enjoys screwing people up. Have you every known anyone as bitter and unpleasant?