To Collins, those people are funny: We have never been able to understand the horrible Lady Collins.
We think we pretty much get Maureen Dowd. It’s fairly clear that Chris Matthews sold his soul at one point to Jack Welch.
(Watching Chris now that he’s been repurposed, we would guess that his current pose, which he still advances dishonestly, is more in line with his actual views. Although that's of course just a guess.)
Collins though we just don’t get. We've never really had a feel for her weird, uncaring detatchment. That said, her column today is just awful. It has been alleged that Bain Capital looted the lives of some very average people.
To Collins, this remains a highly amusing matter. This is the end of a truly disgusting column. It was written in Q-and-A style:
COLLINS (1/12/12): Why is Newt Gingrich still running for president? Aren’t voters fleeing from him as if he were a rabid palmetto bug?Those average people who got their lives looted are just an amusement to Collins. Darlings! You should watch the video! “It’s full of heart-tugging former factory workers who used to have happy homes and wonderful Christmases!”
To understand Newt Gingrich, you have to envision a mixture of “Kill Bill” and “Carrie,” after Sissy Spacek gets hit with the bucket of blood. His only mission in life is getting even with Mitt Romney and the rich minions who paid for all those anti-Newt ads in Iowa. He is exactly like Sweeney Todd mixed with Charles Bronson in “Death Wish.” And maybe a smidge of “Shogun Assassin.”
Now Gingrich has roped in a few rich minions of his own, and you should watch the video they’ve just put out. Romney looks worse than the evil banker in “It’s a Wonderful Life.” It’s full of heart-tugging former factory workers who used to have happy homes and wonderful Christmases until ... Mitt Romney Came to Town. By the time it’s over, you will want to gather up the peasants and march on one of Romney’s mansions with flaming torches.
There is nothing Gingrich won’t do to get Mitt. At the end of the video, there’s a clip of Romney speaking French! And now Newt’s Web site has a video that basically asks whether America will elect a president who once drove to Canada with the family dog strapped to the roof of the car. Which is, of course, an excellent question.
We have never been able to get a read on this very puzzling person. But she makes it rather plain today:
To Collins, this election is all about the (imagined) mistreatment of Mitt Romney’s poor abused dog. Those average people who got their lives looted?
Darlings! They offer delicious amusement! Just watch as they tug at your hearts!
An early assessment: A very important debate has broken out—a debate which goes right to the heart of this decades-long plutocrat era.
What does Collins say as she starts? Of course:
COLLINS: What will the big issues be in the South Carolina primary?This person is simply amazing.
When five of your six candidates could not be elected president if they were running against Millard Fillmore, I think you can presume there will not be much serious issue discussion.
As we speak, Gingrich and Perry are hammering away at Romney, going right to the soul of this terrible plutocrat era. But to Collins, there’s nothing to look at! There won’t be any issue discussion here! Darlings! Move right along!
Collins has long been a weirdly horrible person. How long does our pseudo-progressive world plan to tolerate this?
much as i find ms. collins an odious person, i'd have to agree with her final assessment, re: the SC primary; there won't be any discussion of actual issues confronting the country. there hasn't been in iowa or NH, why should SC be magically different?
ReplyDeletethe republican primaries are simply a boring path that must be traversed by former gov. romney, on his way to the nomination. he simply must prove himself (to primary voters) an extreme right-winger, willing to sacrifice women on the altar of his presidential ambition. that's all they ask for.
Gail Collins is truly a destructive writer, destroying any concern with what actually makes us a democracy for her own elitist boredom with substance.
ReplyDeleteHow long will progressives "tolerate" Collins?
ReplyDeleteI dunno, Bob. What are you suggesting?
It's a clown show. Don't kill the messenger. Gail's right. And We the People don't seem to want it any other way.
ReplyDeletecpinva & Geoff,
ReplyDeleteCould Collins not discuss "actual issues" any time she chose to?
Of course she could. Gain Collins CHOOSES the clown show.
It's her choice not to discuss substantive matters. What that idiot does tell us exactly nothing about what "We The People" want.
Look, here's the deal. Gail Collins writes a political humor column. It stinks. The fact that She holds down a gig at the NY Time's is reflective of the sad state of humor these days. Have you caught an Adam Sandler or Tyler Perry movie? Or for you highbrows, there's the talking bowel movement those great satirists at South Park came up with. Ha. Ha.
ReplyDeleteAs for who "tolerates" Collins, did I get a vote? The Daily Howler loves Bill Maher, apparently based on their being friendly during the stand up days. During the worst of the "Get Clinton" days, Bill Maher announced on his show that there were two essential voices he HAD to check out every week: Christopher Hitchens and Mo Dowd, perhaps the two most destructive and unethical idiots of that period. Maher did kiss assy interviews with both of them. But while the Howler will blow a casket if Larry O'Donnell is nice to Tony Blakey for ten seconds, there's never been a harsh word for Maher, who, by the by, pretty much leads the league in "Our" side playing the race card.
I LIKE Bill Maher. My point is, in terms of toleration, we all hand out our free passes now and again. We should also note about Collins, that the meaningless, unfunny political piece precedes her and Dowd. It's almost a glass ceiling thing, how many years did women have to read Art Buchwald write his unfunny collumn (said to be not so bad in the early days) or Andy Rooney? Collins only shows that when our standards go down, the worst get even worse. Mo Dowd, the Hedda Hopper of our time, simply showed the effect of "infotainment" on the whole sad enterprise.
In the movie "Chinatown" Gittes is asked about the a man he knows is honest. "As far as it goes, but he has to swim in the same waters we all do." That pretty much sums up my feelings about this stuff.
I love this notion that We the People are crying out for substance, but our desperate pleas are falling on the deaf ears of our elites.
ReplyDeleteI got news for you: If substance sold, we'd be inundated with it. We wouldn't get enough of marginal tax rates, the implications of income inequality, how the Law of Unintended Consequences manifests in the War on Terror, etc etc etc.
That said, and I actually can take or leave Collins, The New York Times --- which this site routinely refers to as dumb, or The Dumb, or whatever --- actually does deliver vast and substantial news coverage on a daily basis. Rarely does a day go by that I don't learn something of substance in my morning paper, and find something worth forwarding or passing along. The Times gets spitballs from the peanut gallery --- usually from people who more or less write whatever comes to their minds, without reporting, fact-checking, or receiving the benefits of editing --- as well it should.
There's actually plenty of substance out there. The NYT, The Nation, NY Review of Books, Economist, National Review, Real Clear Politics, American Conservative. There's also this thing called the Internet, where one can find all sorts of dumb stuff, but also where one can be nourished with substance.
We the People have a plethora of options at our disposal. We even have the capacity to "fire people [news sources]" that don't serve us. We can vote with our pocket books, our search engines, our minds, our judgment.
Anyway, what's up with Snooki.....
These posts are more depressing than the column.
ReplyDeleteI would agree that Bain made an incredible amount of money for their services. However, IMHO bitching about people who lost their jobs is baloney. When companies are doing badly, lots of employees lose their jobs. That's how business always works.
ReplyDeleteE.g., the company I worked for, USF&G, was doing badly, so they brought in a new CEO named Norm Blake. Blake was noted for being a turnaround specialist. He did turn the company around. However, over his first 3 years, he replaced almost all the officers and higher level managers. Several offices and lines of business were shut down. Lots of people who had done nothing wrong lost their jobs because their entire unit shut down.
A few years later the company was acquired by a larger company, St. Paul. This led to another enormous turnover. The parent company's style was so different and USF&G's people got little respect from the St. Paul folks.
I can mention similar stories within my immediate family. My son-in-law lost his job when his unit at Claris works was shut down. He lost his job despite having done nothing wrong. My daughter lost her job when the internet start-up company she was with went bankrupt.
David in Cal, go away.
ReplyDeleteMaddow jumped on the Seamus bandwagon, big time, last night. Had to shut off the sillytube. Waste of my precious time.
ReplyDeleteIt's pretty clear to everyone except Dave in Cal and his ilk that Bain and its ilk are vulture capitalists -- they feed themselves very well whether the companies they take over survive or not.
ReplyDeleteThis gets to the essential unfairness of the US economy today -- it's not just vultures like Bain who do well even if the patient dies, the same thing happens with the one-percenters who run big companies into the ground and depart with multi-million dollar golden parachutes (e.g., Gannett Corp).
The people running the show are NOT accountable, they don't lose their jobs or health insurance or pensions -- the losses are borne by others. If you read the Reuters account of Bain's steel-industry adventure, that's exactly what happened. Bain profited handsomely, while steel-company workers got trampled.
Just the sort of thing that warms the cockles of Dave's heart, I'm sure.
Comment on a site devoted to combatting tribalism and to trying to engage with the "other side":
ReplyDelete"Dave in Cal. Go away."
Priceless.
Avoid bringing your past fears, failures and wounds into the future.
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