Mailvox: so much for the cocktail parties

GS isn’t the biggest fan:


The writer known as BM is right when he compares you to Pat Buchannan, except that Pat has a better haircut and doesn’t waste so such effort bashing conservatives. You don’t just bite the hand that feeds you, you eat it. I have rarely seen anyone so impressed with himself as you are. If vanity really is one of the seven deadly sins, you are in serious trouble.

I can see why your column gets the third most number of hits on WND. It is entertaining and you take positions that are supported by few and offend practically everyone. But don’t think that you are going to be a nationally known or respected columnist like George Will or John Leo. Fat chance of that happening so long as you are determined to offend everyone who might support some of your positions.

It’s no wonder than no major newspaper or magazine carries your column but it is fun to see you whine about it at your website. A review of your most recent columns illustrates why they don’t invite you to parties. First you call George Bush “Traitor to the Constitution” and quote your hero, Libertarian presidential candidate Michael Badnarik, who few Americans have ever heard of and who will undoubtedly get fewer votes than Ralph Nader next election. You should follow the advice contained in his quote.

You then spend two columns attacking Michelle Malkin and John Leo, who write far more interesting columns than you do. You top that off by indicating that Al Franken is right in his criticism of conservatives, although he was not talking about you and probably never heard of you either. In your next column, you criticize American corporations in a manner that would make Ralph Nader proud. Then your “Slick Willy and Bad Billy” attacks Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity in a manner that would make George Soros proud.

Your final attack is upon FOX news, which is putting forth the conservative position and having a greater impact on the liberal media than any other news source. Maybe you think FOX News it should be more like Trinity Broadcasting, but it has become far bigger in a very short time and gives millions of Americans a good alternative news source. In summary, don’t interpret the number of hits on your column at WND to mean that there are a large number of people who share your opinions. Some of us are looking for comic relief and want to see how reasonable ideas can be taken to illogical extremes.

This is really funny. First, Fox News swears up and down that it is not conservative, as did most of those who defended it as “fair and balanced” in response to last week’s column. Second, the writer to whom GS refers wrote: ” I stand corrected on my assertion that you are a PB clone” so GS is agreeing with an already abandoned position. Third, it’s illogical to say that I’m biting or devouring the hand that feeds me when, by GS’ own admission, it’s not feeding me at all.

Fourth and most important, GS fails to understand that I am repeatedly pointing out that the conservatism he is defending is fraudulent. Malkin defends FDR and race-based internment. Leo’s account of Pearl Harbor is as revisionist as any Soviet-era Russian history. The Freaky Factor is yet to deny the phone sex charges. The multinational corporations are investing millions into shutting down the free operation of capitalism. If conservatism has become, like liberalism, so intellectually blind that it no longer knows what it is, it will, like liberalism, devolve completely into another mutant variant of statism. Indeed, the widespread acceptance of the Bush administration as a “conservative” one suggests that this process has already begun.

Finally, it gets a little tiresome to constantly hear how impressed with myself I am. Sean Hannity’s being a bit of a dim bulb has nothing to do with me. Go check the math in his book yourself. As I have stated repeatedly, the vast majority of people who go to journalism school or major in English don’t know much because they haven’t really studied anything and the nature of journalism is such that it encourages obtaining only most superficial knowledge before writing on a subject and moving on to the next one. That’s why most journalists and columnists are so dependably clueless and reliant on talking points being provided to them; again, that has nothing to do with me.

The fact that I expect to be able to regularly exceed a very low bar does not mean that I’m impressed with my ability to do so. I’d quit if I couldn’t. If that means I don’t get invited on one of the National Review’s cruises, well, I’ll just have to find a way to survive somehow.