Jonah Goldberg - Wurlitzer Prize for Wingnuttery™

The deserved brouhaha over Tweety spilled into this week. But we turned our attention to wingnuttery masquerading as "informed" punditry.

NRO editor-at-large, Jonah Goldberg aka the Doughy Pantload -- a nickname assigned during his feud with Juan Cole -- invaded media outlets this week to hawk his literary misadventure, Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning. What a nasty clump of Coultergeist. What passes for innovation in the Chernobyl of a wingnut's mind provides plenty of comic material to lampoon.

Admittedly, we have not read the book nor will we, having no need to consume a stale pretzel fashioned by a useful idiot. A handsome critique from a reliable source sufficed in specifically grasping that Goldberg is "a loyal foot soldier in the Republican Noise Machine" with a lowbrow goal -- "slap a bunch of shit together that'll piss off liberals, generate buzz, and then maybe conservatives will buy the book.... cynicism, pure and true." The best we can recommend -- enjoy a hearty chuckle at the book's cover, a parody that could have been coined by those wicked pranksters at The Onion. Thanks for the yuck, DP, now scram.

Unrelenting, a churlish character desperately seeking hossana, Jonah kept plugging his lapsed assery this week. Along the way, a swath of toilet paper tenaciously clamped onto his shoe, trailing him unacknowledged, straggling from behind. Cue up the laugh track.

[Keep reading...video and more wingnuttery after the jump.]

For pure hilarity, enjoy the whiny machinations of the Doughy Pantload attempting to persuade the host of The Daily Show, Jon Stewart, that the premise of his book has merit, a fig newton of his imagination. (kudos TP).



WTF, indeed! Oh, Jonah's cluelessness is... priceless.

Last week on MSNBC's Morning Joe, the Doughy Pantload staggered blindfolded and careening, reached out to pin the tail on the donkey [with emphasis added]:

...Benito Mussolini is tied to the American liberal movement because he "was a socialist" and that "[t]he Nazis were the National Socialists" who "ran as socialists" and "said over and over again, 'We are socialists.' " Goldberg added that "in the 1920s, American progressives like at The New Republic, still around today, were objectively pro-Mussolini" and that "[y]ou had the founder of The New Republic defending Mussolini against his critics." Scarborough then asked Goldberg: "But you're not suggesting in this book though that you can draw a line from Mussolini to [Sen.] Hillary Clinton [D-NY] or Mussolini to [Sen.] Barack Obama [D-IL], are you?" Goldberg then replied: "Well, I'm saying you can draw a line, but it's not a straight one. It goes all sorts of different places. I'm not saying that today's liberalism is the son of Nazism or the son of Italian fascism. I'm saying it's sort of like the great-grandniece once removed." Goldberg added, "They have some common DNA, some common themes, some family resemblances that come up."

Bravo! Breathless wingnuttery! Goldberg can stretch a point far enough to scratch his own back.

Perhaps Jonah is unaware or conveniently ignores that he can draw a straight line from conservatives -- under the wacky aegis of Ronnie Raygun followed by Poppy Bush -- to support for the regime of Saddam Hussein and the CIA-training of Osama bin Laden and the mujaheddin. Shall we call these former pooh bahs of the free world, "terrorist appeasers," ringleaders of death and mayhem, financiers of rogue dictatorships? Such is recent Republican history under two U.S. presidencies, one that spawned the current Dauphin and his "reign of error" (props to Blue Girl). What odd trivia the DP entertains, something he appropriates to play a shell game, to obscure the political peanut under his nose.

Again, this week on Morning Joe, a love machine enraptured by wingnut infatuation, Jonah attacked Hillary:

Jonah Goldberg stated: "[Sen.] Hillary Clinton [D-NY] is essentially like the agricultural minister from the Soviet Politburo in 1976. She's sort of, you know, the product of a sort of bureaucratic, Walter Mondale machine, 'check off the right constituencies' kind of thing." Scarborough later said: "You know, I love Jonah Goldberg."

Jon Stewart delivered a more appropriate response to Jonah's claptrap -- "I don’t know what you’re saying."

Like so many in the wingnut goon squad, attributing falsehoods to Hillary has been a favorite boondoggle:

Referring to comments Clinton made at an August 23 [2007] house party in New Hampshire, Goldberg wrote: "You've claimed that you are the Democrat best able to 'deal' with the Republicans' natural advantage if there is another terrorist attack. Why is it wrong for Republicans to say they're tougher on terrorism than Democrats, but O.K. for you to say so?"

Say so? That's not what Hillary said [with emphasis added]:

Clinton, however, did not say Republicans are "tougher on terrorism than Democrats." ...[she] criticized Republicans for their handling of terrorism. Clinton said: "It's a horrible prospect to ask yourself 'What if? What if?' But if certain things happen between now and the election, particularly with respect to terrorism, that will automatically give the Republicans an advantage again, no matter how badly they have mishandled it, no matter how much more dangerous they have made the world."

Quite the difference apparently lost in Goldberg translation. As James Wolcott noted, Jonah "speaks fluent Simpsons, which is why he's so popular with campus conservatives as he goes about entertaining and mentoring the maroons of tomorrow."

More lard-filled, heart-stopping DP moments are available here and a cache to peruse here.

Pay little attention to the Doughy Pantload's book, columns, or statements. He cannot discern good sense from a Tower of Babel.

We considered wrapping the award in a sheet of tinfoil before its presentation, but Jonah does not deserve the extra energy. However... he certainly earned this week's prize.

UPDATE Jan. 25: A definitive, well-researched read, David Neiwert eviserated the Doughy Pantload's swill. (Props to Sadly, No! via Avedon.)