Mickey Kaus And His Evil Ways

I was wondering why Mickey Kaus came up in a comment thread over VA Senator Allen's recent macaca remarks.

And you are WAAY out of touch, dude.

You can tell genuine independence by distinguishing it from one-way contrarianism. Attacking "the media" isn't much of a trick. It's like an alcoholic insisting that he can control his drinking, cuz he never starts before lunch.

Somebody like Mickey Kaus insists that he is a kind of dissident, because he claims progressive roots while attacking liberals for various sins, e.g., the reluctance to embrace welfare reform.

But when confronted with an astonishing record of Republican corruption and incompetence, he continues to attack progressives... exclusively, so far as I know. His usual approach to 'conservative' outrages, e.g., Coulter, is rationalization. --  theAmericanist

Now I know just how far Mickey Kaus is prepared to take his devious campaign against elements of the Left. Look at this courtesy of Slate:

Despite some fierce competition, Brazil in general and Rio in particular rank supreme in the world's libidinous subconscious. Whisper the country's name and, after soccer, sex is the next association. If you don't believe me, just tell your girlfriend that you are traveling to Rio for an assignment and then try to explain why it's best that you go alone.

Undoubtedly Kaus has used his editorial influence at Slate to smear the Left's newest and most profane profound ex-pat Constitutional scholar Glenn Greenwald with such pathetic eliminationist prose. And he has the nerve to accuse me of a cheap shot?

Seriously, I suspect Kaus' relations with the Left was a canary in the coal mine of a sort: ultimately predictive of a trend now manifest in Lieberman versus Lamont. Individuals who continue to agree with the neo-Left on a variety of fronts, yet support the war, or perhaps have other somewhat moderate positions, are not only being tossed out, they are being consistently and often viciously attacked. After all, Lieberman only voted with the Democrats over 90% of the time, far from pure enough for some, it would seem.

Frankly, it doesn't get anymore eliminationist than that.

As for my reference to Greenwald, consider that cheap shot number two for me. Kaus seems to be rounding them up from around the sphere - Special All-Cheap-Shot Edition.

Comments

[Dan Riehl]

It could only get more slavish if you ACTUALLY wore a collar.

I think you're simply making too many false judgments. I target the media often times because I care about the media sa whole. Has it ever occured to you that Kaus is a critic of the Left because he cares more about the Left than the Right? You repeatedly assume motivation in your arguments, and I find it counter-productive.

[Brett]

Progressives should remember that they gave themselves that label; it wasn't bestowed upon them by a nation of grateful citizens. The label is only spin; it tells the advocate of big government authoritarianism that he's a cool dude, man, whose policies are only meant to make everyone's lives better, whether everyone wants the policy or not. Referring to oneself and one's causes as progressive betrays great conceit in the speaker, and fools none of his targets.

Keep that in mind while patting oneself on the back with the term: he's fooling no one if not himself.

[Banjo]

"Progressive" was adopted by the left because "liberal" had become so tainted. The same thing is happening to "progressive." This sleight of hand fools no one but useful idiots.

[BumperStickerist]

re: TheAmericanist's take

There's no way to read the remarks about 'Welcome to America' and *not* take that as a generalized "You're not in Hollywood/Beltway" statement. Had the Governor said it very.slowly.and.talked.real.loud. you might have a point. But focusing in with laser-like precision on the last sentences in a paragraph make you look whiney.

The 'macaca' remark, otoh, is your basic everyday ethnic slur and the Gov should be raked over the coals for that.

Regarding Kaus - what's fascinating to me as a 2x Bush voter is the way that Kaus's predictions and recommendations about Dem Candidates are treated by the Left. Forgive me for pointing out that Kaus was dead-on in his predictions and if you go back and reread his comments and observations from February, 2004 through September you'd find that Mickey Kaus was *right*.

Go figure.

I hate to break the news to the Democrats and Progressives but the people using the "Tinkerbell/Clap Harder" strategy are you.

A quick case in point - can anybody, anywhere point to a Kos, Atrios, Marshall post circa 2004 that had actual, you know, good advice?

[arthurize]

actually, by many reports, Teddy Roosevelt was indeed an egomaniacal prick

[Scott]

Roosevelt was indeed an egomanical prick, and in his later years, did far more harm than good. I should point out that this description could easily be applied to most of the progressives of that era, which has exactly ZERO relevance to this era. Same name, different age, and all of that... I am no fan of the modern left, and agree with a poster earlier that the rebranding of liberalism to escape the previous taint reeks of the cheapest kind of spin (I mean really...if you believe in the good fight, why change the name?), but the actions and mistakes (if you see them as such) of a century ago should hardly be used to tar the current generation.

[arthurize]

whether a man is an egomaniacal prick is a totally separate question from whether he is accomplished, or not. And if you really believe that the New Deal (or the Square Deal, or both) did all you say,then your reading of history lacks nuance as well as variety. It is odd that any of today's "progressives" would champion a man who bragged that he singlehandedly and enormously expanded the power of the executive (while also, amusingly, claiming that he did not usurp congressional authority). Sound like any other more recent president you know? And one would think his eagerness to crush the Spanish in order to take their possessions and his extremely aggressive foreign policy, militarily and otherwise, would not make comfortable today's "progressives". Not to mention his claims to moral authority..Roosevelt did many things; when one claims his mantle, a lot comes with it that might not be so appealing.

[rwilymz]

"The great difficulty conservativism has as a political concept is that it is consciously AGAINST change"

That's not accurate, and it's pretentious and arrogant to phrase politics in that way.

The national wealth of the 60s ushered in the "liberal" notion of expanded welfare, and so it became "change" to essentially gladhand money to people who didn't have it. When the national policy becomes "Give Money To The Poor" then "welfare as we know it" is the status quo, and it also becomes "change" to no longer do that, or to modify the rules by which such gladhanding is done.

In almost all areas, the people wanting "change" are now the capital-C Conservatives -- i.e., those who adhere to a political ideology -- and the stick-in-the-muds standing athwart History shouting "STOP" ate the capital-L Liberals, who do not want to see their policies, enacted from the 50s through the 70s and which are now status quo, alterted in any meaningful way despite the flaws that are observed in those policies.

In short, the Liberals are now generally conservative, and the Conservatives are often liberal. "Progressive" if you will.

[arthurize]

I'm sure its true that Johnson said the Civil Rights Act cost the democratic party the south.After all, most of us , or at least our ancestors, were furious when we could no longer string people up with impunity.But then, Johnson wouldn't want to admit that the Vietnam war played any role in republican presidential elections in the south, now would he? That would require nuance. Nixon's law and order campaigns were directed as much, if not more, against campus radicals. The south has always been a more military-oriented culture and they resented the way that the democratic party took the radicals to its bosom (and still does).And despite all these claims about racism being the secret of southern republican strength, the fact is that several southern states are still governed by democrats on the state and local level, almost 40 years after Nixon unleashed the yahoos.Of course, now its all those religious freaks in the south who are calling the shots, supposedly. I wonder if Johnson would claim that they too vote republican because they're racists?

[rwilymz]

"at that point you're not using words to actually MEAN anything"

As opposed to what you're doing which is using words to mean what you want irrespective of any dictionary meaning.

I'll take mine, thanks.

"conservatives (who, as conservatives, were against 'em at the time) now take 'em for granted its a measure of progressive success."

Here's the deal with new implementation of unproven policy: it's either got to be field-tested, or you've got to come up with meaningful measure os "success" of the untested policy you implement so that you can tell when it fails.

Absence of either means that you are left with an undefined policy and no concept of whether or not it's working. And you are sneering at "conservatives" for -- ohmigod!! -- da-a-a-a-aring to suggest that one of the two practicalities be used in "new policy".

"Progressives" love to inform people that "all the progress civilization has made [yadda yadda self-righteous yadda] has been because of Liberals", but what they don't say, and probably don't have the honesty to admit, is that for every "progress" they've implemented, they've implemented a half dozen dismal failures.

...on top of which it's not even accurate.

You wanna call Social Security a success? I don't. It's a classic ponzi run by the only outfit in the nation allowed by law to run one: the feds. You run a large corporation with a SocSec-style retirement plan and you'll be in prison quicker than lightning for financial frauds and RICO.

Republicans -- "classic conservatives" -- put up resistance to "welfare as we know it", not because they were against tossing money at poor people, but because there were no built-ins for limiting that money in the event someone might just, y'know, wish to defraud the system.

"Oh that won't happen" the Democrats claimed; "Welfare isn't a livable wage."

...but a funny thing happens in Human Nature; if given the choice between not-quite-enough for free and barely-scraping-by on a lot of effort, while 90 out of a hundred will opt for the effort to scrape by, 10 out of 100 will lower their standards and opt for the free. ...which is what about the only honest Liberal of the last generation -- Moynihan -- noted when he investigated "welfare as we know it".

His report was, as you know Mr American Political History, swept under the rug by the Democratic Congress and only resurfaced after the Republicans came in in '94.

Damn those "conservatives" for trying to starve third- and fourth-generation Welfaries to death, anyhow.

Right?

You've made exactly one point in your entire pretentious long-winded sermonizings that has any merit or relevance: the current crop of Conservatives are every bit as spendthrift as any New Dealer you could name ... and then some.

But the reason for that goes well beyond making wars; today's Conservatives are the only ones making new policy. And that costs money. It also means they aren't as you superficially denounce them telling history to "STOP".