From a friend who wishes to remain anonymous, via IM:
I like to think that, every time i listen to a WSJ podcast, a hippie loses his wings.
Copyright © 2009 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2009 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved.
If you are too big to be stuffed into a locker by the kids with muscles and social skills, you are too old for this to evoke anything except an empathetic cringe. You can do better than this. And if not, they sell books of jokes in Barnes and Noble now.
I don't get it. Wings?
Greenwald pwns McArdle, again
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/04/11/torture/index.html
....Here, for instance, is what McArdle wrote in the comment section of another blog this week while accusing me of lying about her torture views:
[indent]"What Greenwald said about me and Dan was deeply, deeply offensive, and also, not true . . . Greenwald basically says that we're supporting some establishment conspiracy because it will help us continue and conceal our enthusiastic support for war crimes. Given that I've said that the war was a bad idea and repeatedly taken the position that we shouldn't even talk about whether torture works because it takes too much focus off the fact that we shouldn't [censored] do it, this is vile, ignorant, malicious twaddle . . . . Y'all don't engage with people who call you objectively pro-terrorist, and with good reason. Why on earth would we listen to Greenwald's venomous froth?"[/indent]
Compare her claim that she has "repeatedly taken the position that we shouldn't even talk about whether torture works" to what she wrote on March 17, 2003 -- a mere four days after John Yoo issued his own now-infamous, pro-torture Memo and just six days before we invaded Iraq (with her support) (h/t L.W.M.):
"Torture: Yea or Nay?
Mark Kleiman has emailed asking me what I think about torture, and I suppose I should weigh in, although I doubt my contribution will be very useful. . .
To some extent, I believe in the hidden law. Which is to say, the choice that some citizens make, under some circumstances, to break the law as it is written. . . . I view torture in somewhat the same way. To see what I mean, I want you to imagine that there's a terrorist group that is threatening, not some faceless person somewhere, but your kid. . . .Now, are you going to give him back to the Feds to be sent to Gitmo in the hopes that a couple years down the road, he might tell you something -- if they haven't already gassed your child, that is? Or are you going to whip out the toolbox and get to work? . . .
And I think that our operatives are probably so tempted when they face down the evil men who seek out soft civilian targets to sow terror. I cannot entirely fault them for it. I'm not sure they should always be punished. But neither do I want to see the apparatus of the legal system turned to codifying, regulating, and normalizing torture, as Alan Dershowitz has suggested with his terror warrants. If terrorists must be tortured -- and I am unwilling to state that there is no circumstance ever under which I could condone it -- then it should happen in dark rooms, at risk to the lives and careers of the men who carry it out, so that the hidden law will only trump the written law when times are truly desperate enough to call for such desperate measures."
How can someone who -- back in 2003 -- wrote in support of "hidden law," "dark rooms," "whipping out the toolbox," and immunizing torturers from punishment, possibly claim this week that they're someone who has "repeatedly taken the position that we shouldn't even talk about whether torture works because it takes too much focus off the fact that we shouldn't [censored] do it," even calling someone all sorts of names for suggesting they bear responsibility for the torture regime? Is it necessarily the case that she was lying, hoping that nobody would remember what she actually wrote about torture?
yes, because hippies are the problem.
Hahaaa! Suck it, DFH's! Up yer noses with rubber hoses! Good thing your buddy wished to remain anonymous. Stay that way, bub.
I think you ought to lay off the comedy and lightheartedness for a while. It's going to take some time for the air to clear after the Yoo/Greenwald fracases; trying to be funny now is kind of like cracking stewardess jokes at Ground Zero the day after 9/11.
Don't get the joke unless it's supposed to be doggerel.
This, on the other hand, is funny:
Doomsday Cult
Thanks - I needed a laugh
I don't get it. What's so good about the WSJ? If the podcasts are done by the editorial page people then the joke is on Megan's friend.
Is your friend's thinking generally dominated by 40 year old stereotypes? Doesn't that make it a little difficult to understand the present?
Ron Paul's supporters seems to have finally left. I assume Greenwald's readers eventually will too.
Megan, for the sake of your regulars who have to try to slog through the comments, please don't ever write anything that ticks off the Scientologists.
Look, I'm a full time student and genuine lefty, and I can't remember the last time I saw anyone resembling a hippie.
Defensive reprobates cannot deny proof of damnable actions and behavior and then make accusations against the prosecutor. Reality doesn't work that way.
I like to think that every time I read a WSJ editorial a third-world child laborer drops dead from exhaustion.
Hippies? Really?
Do they even exist outside of South Park episodes anymore?
Hippies? Really?
Do they even exist outside of South Park episodes anymore?
In Hawaii, yes.
freddie wrote: Look, I'm a full time student and genuine lefty, and I can't remember the last time I saw anyone resembling a hippie.
spencer wrote: Hippies? Really? Do they even exist outside of South Park episodes anymore?
Know why Southpark is set in Colorado?
One of my favorite (and also nearest) hobby stores is located in Boulder. Hippies do still exist. Only nowdays, many of them no longer fit in a pair of college jeans and you might go blind twice if you saw one of 'em unclothed -- i.e., free love is now free not because of the need to freak out squares, but because that's the market clearing price. Some have also discovered the joys of wealth, as long as nobody calls it "capital" and there's a Free Tibet bumpersticker and a bike rack on the back of your Toyota Prissy.
That accounts for about 1/4 of all hippies, and I presume the other 3/4 are distributed somewhat equally between Berkeley, San Francisco, and the Portland arts community.
Hippies? Really?
Do they even exist outside of South Park episodes anymore?
I was in a nearby college town and went to a bar. The place was filled with Confederate memorabilia and hippies. Actual hemp and tie-dye clad hippies having a beer under paintings of Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee.
Every time I read a WSJ editorial, I think of the grand ole days of Tom Delay and how the Marianas Islands are "a perfect petri dish of capitalism." Don't believe me? Just ask former congressman and current Colorado Republican Candidate for the US Senate, Bob Schaffer:
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/04/10/colorado-senate-candidate-took-abramoff-trip/
Every time I read a WSJ editorial, I think of the grand ole days of Tom Delay and how the Marianas Islands are "a perfect petri dish of capitalism." Don't believe me? Just ask former congressman and current Colorado Republican Candidate for the US Senate, Bob Schaffer:
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/04/10/colorado-senate-candidate-took-abramoff-trip/
Your friend is a friggin' moron.
But I repeat myself.
So who knew that "megan mcardle" was Gaelic for "whip out the toolbox"?
Megan is doing the lord's work, raising the blood pressure of enlightened progressives. Hey, how many of you think Social Security is a wonderful example of government at work?
"Hey, how many of you think Social Security is a wonderful example of government at work?"
Umm, me.
Also, I agree with the previous bloggers that a.)hippies are few and far between and b.) they are a distraction. In any case, hippies aren't what those jackasses on Wall Street (heads I win; tails you lose) should fear, it is left-wing policy types who have also imbibed the sweet nector of economics at policy schools, but who put it to good use, among whom I include myself. Better watch your back Megan's friend.
bloggers=commenters in the previous post.
Better watch your back Megan's friend.
Posted by David | April 12, 2008 11:18 AM
spoken like a true Communist
spoken like a true Communist
Posted by MEH | April 12, 2008 11:29 AM
Spoken like a true WSJ reactionary thug.
Spoken like a true WSJ reactionary thug.
Posted by David | April 12, 2008 11:39 AM
David,
Rupert can keep his WSJ
David,
Rupert can keep his WSJ
Posted by MEH | April 12, 2008 11:43 AM
Well, Lenin can keep his communism.
David,
I think the cat has been further out of the bag than that..
http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Kremlin+on+the+Charles
MEH:
Well, see-no-evil-hear-no-evil optimism (in the sense of Candide) are not just the ideology of the WSJ op-ed page (even if that is a rather nasty specimen thereof), see for example:
http://meganmcardle.theatlantic.com/
David,
for the younger Grasshoppers about, here's the sparknotes on Candide: http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/candide/summary.html
past that, MM stikes me as an intellectual fraud, or, at least, the perambulating definition of feckless..
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/feckless
"The most effectual engines for [pacifying a nation] are the public papers [or the controlled Media in general]... [A despotic] government always [keeps] a kind of standing army of newswriters who, without any regard to truth or to what should be like truth, [invent] and put into the papers whatever might serve the ministers. This suffices with the mass of the people who have no means of distinguishing the false from the true paragraphs of a newspaper." --Thomas Jefferson to G. K. van Hogendorp, Oct. 13, 1785.
The reference is to "It's a Wonderful Life." Clarence, the angel, gains his wings by bringing back the small-town savings & loan liberal from despair (and thereby saving the town from the kind of police state the film argues we would get if greedy capitalism with no social conscience were to get its way).
These hippies already have their wings. I suppose the joke is that they got them by indulging in the fantasy that good intentions and left-wing ideals can result in social good and are rewarded. I suppose that makes "hippies" a somewhat dated label for anyone who doesn't share the WSJ's views.
Presumably they lose their wings because the WSJ's podcasts destroy the fantasy. Sentimental ideals and wishful thinking don't stand up to cold hard economic reality. Etc.
The amusing phrase here is "I like to think..." Meaning "I'd like to believe it were true..." "I wish it were true..."
"When I listen to a WSJ podcast, I have the fantasy that the imaginary opponents I debate with in my head are refuted."
Which is funny and accurate. The WSJ is in the fantasy fulfillment business. Megan's friend likes to pretend he's in the club, but he's really just in the choir, and happily preached to as such. He's a "square," to use an even older phrase that is probably still in circulation among actual hippies, wherever or whoever they may be.
What kind of moron bothers to read a WSJ editorial these days, rr has bothered to read one for the last 10 years, except for material for satire? Some moron like Tom T., perhaps, and Stretch McGargle.
"These hippies already have their wings. I suppose the joke is that they got them by indulging in the fantasy that good intentions and left-wing ideals can result in social good and are rewarded. I suppose that makes "hippies" a somewhat dated label for anyone who doesn't share the WSJ's views."
Hahahaha!
Ram that up your kook austrian school pooper, dipwad. We don't need or want your help.
Practice prophylaxis, not praxis.
Translation: Don't breed.
Do they even exist outside of South Park episodes anymore?
You don't visit Oregon much, do you?
Oregon and SF conventions - they're lousy with hippies. Nice people, but hippies.
I still don't see what's funny about that comment. I really don't.
Let me see if I can offer something which is actually funny:
What is the difference between Hanson's music and a bucket of crap? A bucket!
See - that's funny (unless you like Hanson's music, in which case it might be insulting).
I gather the comment is supposed to be funny in the same way, but it isn't. Hippies aren't exactly the moving force of progressive politics. It isn't clear what the heck "losing their wings" means in this context.
All I'm left with is the image of someone whose political views are being reinforced in a dangerously-close-to-literal echochamber of their iPod headphones, bobbing their head up and down in agreement and thinking: "If only hippies listened to this they'd realize how right I am about the Estate Tax and that Roger Clemons never took steroids!"
Frankly, the image isn't so much funny as sad.
What the difference between an overgrown elf and a bucket of crap?
About 999 buckets of crap.