Category Archives: Journalism

UPDATE IV: A National Reviewnik Thinks He’s "Contrarian"

Debt, Inflation, Journalism, Media, Neoconservatism, Paleoconservatism, Pseudo-intellectualism, Republicans

He’s trillions of dollars and a decade too late, but Kevin D. Williamson of National Review can assure himself he’s “contrarian” for advocating an about face in the Federal Reserve Bank’s fiddling.

Williamson may be reading Austrian economics. By that I mean the reality based thinking of Ludwig von Mises (taught at the Mises Institute); preached by Ron Paul (whom the neoconery mocked during the Bush years), practiced by financier Peter Schiff, written about by Tom Woods in Meltdown: A Free-Market Look at Why the Stock Market Collapsed, the Economy Tanked, and Government Bailouts Will Make Things Worse; as well as by Vox Day, and in this writer’s columns and blogs over the past decade.

Being of the establishment, however, Williamson can just put his hands over his ears and tell himself over and over again “I’m contrarian,” and this will be so.

“So here’s a contrarian take,” Williamson assures himself: “The Fed should stop trying to drive down interest rates. It should instead work to raise them. Why? Our economy needs savings and investment. …”

As I said, trillions of dollars and a decades too later … (“PUNDITS, HEAL THYSELVES!”)

Your host, writing in “Those Invisible Jobs,” did not anoint herself a “contrarian” for advocating that Fed supremo Ben Bernanke raise interest rates.” Not then, and not in 2000 (“The Central Bank’s Game is the Same, Whoever’s the Name”), and on all those occasions in-between.

Why? Because in the Austrian community, represented by some very prominent people, this is common wisdom.

Bloody annoying…

UPDATE I: I’ll be honest: it’s hard to know from Mr. Williamson’s wishy-washy articles exactly where he stands on matters of political philosophy (or if he is a neoconservative or not). However, this post’s point was pretty clear. It expressed annoyance that someone can call himself contrarian for proposing less quantitative easing. Granted, it’s a prickly post, but Mr. Williamson can understand, surely, why writers like myself get a tad testy? We’ve been marginalized for being right on foreign policy and fiscal matters our entire careers, such as they are. Then, when the rest catch up with us, a decade down the line, they pretend that truth began with them.

If I’ve learned anything about the American Mind it is this: Truth doesn’t exist until someone in the establishment pronounces it, usually a decade or so after it has been in circulation. I guess, better late than never, but why not acknowledge those who went before?

I saw Mr. Williamson go up against one or the other left-liberals on TV, and I remember thinking: much better than Rich. Still, I do not believe there is a sufficient amount of information to conclude that “better than Rich” is a meaningful statement.

Mr. Williamson is young (and presentable). He has plenty of time to correct any mistaken impressions I might have formed, not least of which is his sharing that horrible habit common among the Republican establishment of never admitting to being Johnny-come-latelies on Iraq, Bush, economy, QE, etc.

UPDATE II: Mr. Glisson, first, why don’t you provide hyperlinks and particular quotes in substantiation of your position that Mr. Williamson is never a neoconservative? Second, why misconstrue the point of this writer’s post, encapsulated again in the last two sentences of “UPDATE I”? Moreover, from a parenthetic statement about the neoconservatives’ attitude toward Ron Paul, Mr. Williamson concluded that I had called him a neoconservative. You do the same, for some reason.

Again, Mr. Williamson is better than Rich; way better. I am still unsure as to what kind of badge of honor this really is; or if Mr. Williamson is or is not a neoconservative. Isn’t that a condition of employment at National Review? John Derbyshire is NRO’s only paleoconservative (sort of). I’d love to see John thrust into the spotlight, but they keep him in the basement, so to speak.

UPDATE III (Oct. 17): We thank Kevin D. Williamson for responding to the intrigue he has generated on Barely A Blog. He remains a man of mystery, and that is not half bad. In the age of too much information (and letting it all hang loose), mystery is a good thing. We agree that Mr. Williamson ain’t Rich. Has Rich employed a non-neoconservative in the hope of generating some oscillation in the static National Review? Or because the readership has little patience with that old guard? Who knows? We also understand that a man has to make a living. To do so, he must often walk an ideological tightrope.

Nevertheless, those who went before—and remain permanently frozen out of mainstream—deserve mention. It gets terribly cold out here. Mr. Glisson seems to think I’m some kind of intellectual missionary, spreading the good word, pleased to turn the other cheek just so long as the new guard can adopt the gospel, even if they falsely pretend to be pioneers.

Rubbish. Nonsense on stilts. I’m all about justice. Intellectual justice included.

UPDATE IV (3/5/2016):

“NRO Writer’s ‘UnFollow’ Leads To Musing About The Manners-Morals Connection.”

Chris Matthews Lies: The Best Minds Are Not Keynesians

Economy, Elections, Journalism, Media, Political Economy

Chris Matthews has been repeating this lie almost every week in this ramp-up to the mid-term elections:

“This president came into office facing the worst economic outlook since the 1930s. He took action, bold action, the action prescribed by the best economic minds – following the best thinking there is in economics ‘since’ the 1930s.

First, even before taking office, he backed up his predecessor in preventing a major collapse of the financial industry. Everyone involved said it ‘had’ to be done to avoid catastrophe – the destruction of our country’s financial spine.

Second, he took the action – again boldly – to powerfully offset the white-knuckle drop in consumer spending and business investment. If he hadn’t, no one – including his worst critics – would have any idea what would have befallen us. We can argue about the name it was given – the stimulus bill – but the creation of this great boost in economic demand for goods and services as critical break on what was widely seen as an economic free-fall.”

Nonsense on stilts. And what a propagandist Chris is.

I’ll quote this blog, from 2009, on the so-call Keynesian consensus: “The Royal ‘We’ is unwarranted; and it’s not only me.

The following statement was signed by more than 200 academic economists, and posted by the Cato Institute. The Wall Street Journal buried the statement among a list of economists touting the stimulus package–and the “principle” of printing and borrowing the country out of a depression:

“Notwithstanding reports that all economists are now Keynesians and that we all support a big increase in the burden of government, we the undersigned do not believe that more government spending is a way to improve economic performance. More government spending by Hoover and Roosevelt did not pull the United States economy out of the Great Depression in the 1930s. More government spending did not solve Japan’s ‘lost decade’ in the 1990s. As such, it is a triumph of hope over experience to believe that more government spending will help the U.S. today. To improve the economy, policymakers should focus on reforms that remove impediments to work, saving, investment and production. Lower tax rates and a reduction in the burden of government are the best ways of using fiscal policy to boost growth.”

UPDATED: Dumb Distaff (Dastardly Too)

Ethics, Feminism, General, Human Accomplishment, Intelligence, Journalism, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Media, Morality, Republicans

Show me a Democratic commentator that is as studiously dumb as the Republican Lolita, SE Cupp. Cupp generally limits herself to gesturing wildly, grimacing, or portentously parroting the same mind-numbing banalities previously disgorged by Newt, Dick, Karl, et. al.

Now Cupp is getting bolder and venturing into political economy. On Dylan Ratigan’s confused, MSNBC show, Cupp insisted that when you give corporations bailout money, and they then blow the cash abroad, this is an example of the free market at work. Live with it!

I don’t want to do an injustice to the smug Republican sweetheart, so I will try to post the clip if it comes online. Please send it along if you find it before me.

If you have heard of anything resembling the caliber of Cupp’s cretinism, please post it together with a hyperlink to the story. Proof is paramount.

I want your most outrageous and hilarious clips of what rolls off the tongues of TV’s female talkers.

I’ll kick off the competition with two other examples of cerebral pruning:

Exhibit B: “How do you know there is going to be an economic recovery,” Greta Van Susteren asked GOP dummy, Dana Perino. “There always is; these things go in cycles,” squeaked the Heidi Klum of the commentariat.

Exhibit C: Together with another member of the silly sex, usually blond, Margaret Hoover forms Bill O’Reilly’s “Culture Warriors.” Some time ago she joined her host to damn the Obama administration’s decision to cease “criminalizing cancer and AIDS patients for using a substance that is (a) prescribed by their doctors and (b) legal under the laws of their state.”

According to Hoover’s calculus, once you decriminalize a drug, criminal enterprise corners the market.

Toots, it’s exactly the opposite. It’s a hard concept, but the section “THE COSTS OF ILLEGAL MARKETS,” in “Addicted To The Drug War,” may help. On the other hand, don’t hold your breath.

In order for your snippet to be posted in BAB’s Comments Section, your Brilliant Babe must be a member of the punditocracy, Democrat or Republican; She cannot be a politician. Those are the rules. Hyperlinks to your story are a must.

UPDATED (Oct. 5): Huggs hereunder feels real sorry for idiots who are rewarded for their misleading stupidity and avarice. Some of these dames have sent even sillier boys to their deaths with their warring words. Huggins commits the sin of the ages. “Job: Jewish Individualist” speaks to those. The righteous suffer; the wicked reap the spoils of their cunning and cupidity. And this you want to reward with love?

What a perversion is that?

If you wish to love the wicked, at least make sure that the righteous are rewarded equally for their good works.

Contemporary parallels to Job’s individualism are hard to come by, not least because the State has replaced God as the ultimate authority. Other than principled libertarians, nobody challenges the god of government in any meaningful way. Our Delphic oracles are the pundits and assorted self-styled presstitutes. Their Delphi is the TV on which they primp, preen and parrot party falsehoods.

UPDATE II: My Oppression Is Bigger Than Yours (Postmodernisms)

Education, English, Journalism, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Media, Multiculturalism, Pop-Culture, The Zeitgeist

“Self-anointed Jewish leadership,” I wrote “has managed to cast Jews as a mere faction among a multicultural mob, a position Jews (being liberals) love.”

That describes Jon Stewart—who is a member of the liberal, Jewish glitterati—and his fight with a CNN reptilian brain by the name of Rick Sanchez.

FoxNews:

Sanchez said that Stewart is bigoted toward “everybody else that’s not like him.” He said Stewart “can’t relate to what I grew up with,” saying his family had been poor and he had seen prejudice directed at his father.
Sanchez dismisses it when Dominick points out that Stewart, who is Jewish, is also a minority.
“I’m telling you that everyone who runs CNN is a lot like Stewart, and a lot of people who run all the other networks are a lot like Stewart, and to imply that somehow they, the people in this country who are Jewish, are an oppressed minority?” Sanchez said, adding a sarcastic “yeah.”
“I can’t see someone not getting a job these days because they’re Jewish,” he said.

I stopped watching Stewart long ago. However, I have never heard him refer to himself in other than a self-deprecating tone. In fact when, in 2005, the barbarians of the banlieusard were rioting in France, Stewart mocked his status as an “alienated” minority thus: “Do you know what it’s like to be sent to a Christian school every Passover with a hardboiled egg?” (Italians would have similar stories of “survival.”)

Eeny, meeny, miny, moe: whose side am I on here? I’ll go with the the Jew, just because he’s brainier than the other oaf. I’m glad Rick is gone, but look who the dog dragged in instead: “Put evil and supercilious together and what do you get? ‘Parker Spitzer.'”

YAWN.

UPDATE (Oct. 2): THE STEWART INSTITUTION. I’ve changed my mind about this weighty matter (NOT) currently occupying the debtor nation’s news headlines: I’m now on the side of Sanchez. I believe that the ratings for his “Ricks’ List” show were good (for CNN, at least). Why fire him if this is the case? Besides, a slight against Jon Stewart: Is that enough to get you fired? Perhaps I’ll change my mind again, as is my wont when such a hugely important issue is at hand.

Ridiculous, isn’t it?!

UPDATE II (Oct. 3): ALEX AND THE POSTMODERNISTS. Young Alex is a long-time friend of BAB and contributor to my blog. His trials and tribulations are familiar to this writer. I have known Alex to be brash, on occasion. But he is nothing like the typical millennial I’ve described in “Your Kids: Dumb, Difficult And Dispensable,” and who I encounter in my professional dealings. These are horrible, hubristic youths, egged on to heights of narcissistic grandiosity by their infatuated, errant and idiotic (naturally) elders. In another age, in another time, Alex would be a leader. I find his plucky attitude towards his cretinous tutors to be inspiring. Older men participating on this blog should support this young man, and any like him.

For heaven’s sake Alex, when do you complete your interminable degree? The sooner you qualify and go out and do what the dead wood can’t do; the better you’ll be. You’re mired in an intellectual cesspool.

Alex asked about critical race theory, an artificial, political construct with which the postmodernists in the academy rape reality, art, literature and music and roger western culture, in general. We’ve discussed these matters before, so I am reproducing an earlier blog post titled “Avoid The American English Department”:

It is old news that the academy has been contaminated by postmodernism.

For example, academic historians and their acolytes have worked overtime to replace the impartial, non-ideological study of American history and its heroic figures with “history from below.” This postmodern tradition regularly produces works the topics of which include, “Quilting Midwives during the Revolution.” Or, “Hermaphrodites and the Clitoris in Early America.”

As you well imagine, the libidinized annals of the “Hermaphrodites and the Clitoris in Early America” is not flying off the printing presses.

The deconstruction of fields of study has engulfed universities, not sparing the hard sciences. Women’s Studies courses and English departments are most likely to be littered with the ideology’s lumpen jargon. There, text is routinely deconstructed and shred. Subjected to this “academic” acid, Shakespeare, Tolstoy, and T. S. Eliot are whittled down to no more than ruling class oppressors, their artistry reduced to the bare bones of alleged power relationships in society.

Easily the worst offender is the American English Department. Phyllis Schlafly wrote the following in “Advice To College Students: Don’t Major in English”:

“In the decades before ‘progressive’ education became the vogue, English majors were required to study Shakespeare, the pre-eminent author of English literature. The premise was that students should be introduced to the best that has been thought and said.”

“What happened? To borrow words from Hamlet: ‘Though this be madness, yet there is method in it.’ Universities deliberately replaced courses in the great authors of English literature with what professors openly call ‘fresh concerns,’ ‘under-represented cultures,’ and ‘ethnic or non-Western literature.’ When the classics are assigned, they are victims of the academic fad called deconstructionism. That means: pay no mind to what the author wrote or meant; deconstruct him and construct your own interpretation, as in a Vanderbilt University course called ‘Shakespearean Sexuality,’ or ‘Chaucer: Gender and Genre’ at Hamilton College. …”

“Twenty years ago, University of Chicago Professor Allan Bloom achieved best-seller lists and fame with his book The Closing of the American Mind. He dated the change in academic curricula from the 1960s when universities began to abandon the classic works of literature and instead adopt multicultural readings written by untalented, unimportant women and minorities.”

“Bloom’s book showed how the Western canon of what educated Americans should know – from Socrates to Shakespeare – was replaced with relativism and the goals of opposing racism, sexism and elitism. Current works promoting multiculturalism written by women and minorities replaced the classics of Western civilization written by the DWEMs, Dead White European Males.”

“Left-wing academics, often called tenured radicals, eagerly spread the message, and students at Stanford in 1988 chanted ‘Hey hey, ho ho, Western civ has got to go.’ The classicists were cowed into silence, and it’s now clear that the multiculturalists won the canon wars.”

“Shakespeare, Chaucer and Milton have been replaced by living authors who toe the line of multicultural political correctness, i.e., view everything through the lens of race, gender and class based on the assumption that America is a discriminatory and unjust racist and patriarchal society. The only good news is that students seldom read books any more and use Cliffs Notes for books they might be assigned.”

[SNIP]

In its December 12, 2008 issue, the Times Literary Supplement has some fun at the expense of a pompous graduate of this pathetic tradition. The incomprehensibility factor, as they call it:

“Once the habit of writing comprehensible English has been unlearned, it can be difficult to reacquire the knack. Here is an example of a sentence which purports to be written in English, but which, we propose, is incomprehensible to all but a few. It is taken from Coincidence and Counterfactuality: Plotting time and space in narrative fiction by Hilary P. Dannenberg”:

Historical counterfactuals in narrative fiction frequently take an ontologically different form in which the counterfactual premise engenders a whole narrative world instead of being limited to hypothetical inserts embedded in the main actual world of the narrative text.

About Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park Dannenberg the dolt writes that it “undertakes a more concerted form of counterfactualizing, in which both the character and the narrator separately map out counterfactual versions of the concluding phase of the novel’s love plot.”

In studied contempt, the TLS marvels that Coincidence and Counterfactuality “is published by the University of Nebraska Press. Just think: someone read the book and endorsed its publication, someone edited it, someone else set it in type, designed a cover, compiled an index, read the proofs—yet hardly anyone can understands what’s in it.”

Now that’s good, clear English everyone gets.

A good friend of mine, also a fine and successful novelist, relates this amusing incident:

“I once got hired by the U of Chicago to edit their academic press. The manuscripts were atrocious. I could not understand what was written, and used a red pen heavily in the margins of the manuscripts. After my corrections arrived, I was fired immediately. They told me I was not ‘intellectually sophisticated’ enough for the job. To which I replied: ‘You’re right: Fuck you.'”

Would I have, like my friend, responded so confidently and cleverly, as our reader suggests? I don’t think so. I’d probably become defensive, and return an analytical evisceration, which would have been wasted on the these literary offenders. My friend’s repartee is much more effective: it’s economical and intellectually apt, given its targets.