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Mothers, fathers and sons.

Such a bou­quet of delights was the NYT mag­a­zine yes­ter­day. (I know the mag­a­zine pub­lishes online a few days before­hand, but I’m ol’-skool, and wait for the plea­sures of Sun­day morn­ing and its cof­fee and waf­fles.) I was look­ing for­ward to Christo­pher Buckley’s mem­oir excerpt, after not­ing Brother Rod and the Pon­tif­i­catin’ Pedants wring­ing their damp hands over it ear­lier in the week. Is this Christo­pher Buckley’s “Mom­mie Dear­est?” Rod won­dered, describ­ing the Buck­ley scion’s por­trait of his mother as a “mean, lying bitch.”

After tak­ing my own mea­sure of the piece, I can say it must be dif­fi­cult to go through life as a writer who is unable to actu­ally, you know, read. It’s true that Buck­ley did acknowl­edge his par­ents’ many faults, which I guess in Outer Wingnut­tia is a cap­i­tal offense, but I don’t see how any­one could read the por­tions of “Los­ing Mum and Pup” that were pub­lished this week­end and come away with the idea that the sur­viv­ing Buck­ley is get­ting even some­how. This is an enor­mously affec­tion­ate por­trait of two com­pli­cated peo­ple who had a full com­ple­ment of virtues and flaws. Nor­mal adults know this is the way of the world, but in a cul­ture that idol­izes The Fam­ily, I guess it’s bet­ter to sweep these dif­fi­cult truths under the rug and never speak of them again.

I don’t get it. But here’s what I know: Writ­ers, par­tic­u­larly mem­oirists, are charged with one job over all oth­ers — telling the truth. If you can’t tell the truth — and that is per­fectly fine, not every truth must be told — don’t even pick up your pen. Keep your mouth shut. You don’t have to wal­low in the bad stuff; part of telling the truth is telling the whole truth, paint­ing the lights and the darks, because only a por­trait with a full range of tones can come any­where close to a fair ren­der­ing.

Stip­u­lated: The truth will vary from per­son to per­son. The truth is not the same as accu­racy. The truth is never the whole truth, and rarely noth­ing but. But for Christo­pher Buck­ley to pub­lish a book that does noth­ing but under­line the fan­tasy oth­ers have about what his par­ents “must” have been like — that would be a lie. The world has enough lying writ­ers. (All of these stip­u­la­tions are themes in Laura Lippman’s excel­lent “Life Sen­tences,” now avail­able at an Ama­zon kick­back link near you.)

You know the first col­umn that really landed Tim Goe­glein on my radar? It was some­thing he wrote about his par­ents after one of their anniver­saries, about how their thousand-year mar­riage had been blessed per­son­ally every day by Jesus, who guided their lives down to the last detail, and as such kept them from ever mak­ing a seri­ous mis­take or speak­ing a cross word, and how he per­son­ally handed over every one of their chil­dren in a holy glow of pure white light, and every one of those chil­dren was brought up in the way of the cross, and blah blah blah.

I thought: The bull­shit is strong in this one. He bears watch­ing.

Goe­glein was a guest at the Buck­leys’ from time to time, not that he ever dropped their names, but I remem­ber his mak­ing some ref­er­ence to “my friend Pat” in a col­umn that was obvi­ously Mrs. B. It was right after William F.’s death that I went look­ing to see if he’d writ­ten any­thing about conservatism’s fallen lion, and, well, we know how that turned out.

Les­son: Tell the truth. (My truth: I have per­haps embroi­dered the details of that Tim col­umn. But not by much! More truth: I met Christo­pher Buck­ley once, at a library event. He was charm­ing at an Olympic level. What­ever flaws his par­ents had, they knew how to raise a son to hold up his end in social sit­u­a­tions.)

Else­where in the mag­a­zine, Vir­ginia Hef­fer­nan takes a look at reader com­ments, a feature-not-bug of legit pub­li­ca­tions that I sus­pect we’ll be wrestling with for quite some time:

Anne Apple­baum is an Amer­i­can polit­i­cal jour­nal­ist liv­ing in Poland whose columns appear weekly in The Wash­ing­ton Post and on Slate. Her views are pro-free-trade and gen­er­ally hawk­ish. A Thatcherite in the 1980s, and a sup­porter of Obama for pres­i­dent in 2008, Apple­baum is stoutly pro-immigration, pro-intellectual and anti-torture. Last year For­eign Pol­icy mag­a­zine declared her one of “the world’s most sophis­ti­cated thinkers.” In award­ing the 2004 prize for gen­eral non­fic­tion to her book “Gulag: A His­tory,” the Pulitzer com­mit­tee called it a “land­mark work of his­tor­i­cal schol­ar­ship and an indeli­ble con­tri­bu­tion to the com­plex, ongo­ing, nec­es­sary quest for truth.”

But what does the ana­log world know? Online, read­ers see Apple­baum and her work quite dif­fer­ently. To read The Wash­ing­ton Post’s com­ments sec­tion is to dis­cover an out­raged throng that insists she knows absolutely noth­ing. Not long ago, a poster named jbbur­rows pro­nounced Apple­baum a “lib­eral fool.” Respon­dus described her as “a lapsed neo-con addict.” Lloyd667 on Slate wrote, “Anne gets just about every­thing wrong.”

Just about every­thing.

This is some­thing I’ve won­dered about for a while: Why are the com­ments on my sole-proprietor, no-budget, stitched-together, lame-o blog so won­der­ful, and those on pro­fes­sion­ally done, big-budget, well-respected sites so ter­ri­ble? I’ve referred in the past to the Free Press Klav­ern, the slaver­ing, anony­mous, brain-free troupe of read­ers who feel oblig­ated to chime in on every Detroit story and turn it racial. Let’s just go over there and see…

OK. Here’s a feel-good story about one of the city’s most promi­nent busi­ness­men, who’s mar­ried to a younger woman (not under nefar­i­ous cir­cum­stances; he was a wid­ower). She’s expect­ing twins. Let’s just fish one out of the hat:

Are they really his? I guess we will have to see what they look like.

And so on. Big media com­pa­nies go to great, painstak­ing lengths to make them­selves “diverse” inside and out, and Gan­nett prob­a­bly goes the fur­thest — they were the com­pany that decreed from on high that reporters must seek out non-white sources on all sto­ries. (Which spawned some of the great inside-baseball media sto­ries, which we can all tell one of these days after it sinks beneath the waves.) I can’t imag­ine being a black reporter or edi­tor, work­ing hard on a story, and hav­ing this stuff attached to it like a hem­or­rhoid. (It’s not just race that excites the yahoos, but that’s topic No. 1.)

I’ve heard dif­fer­ent things about Gan­nett com­ment threads, but all via grapevines, noth­ing offi­cial. The gist is that they pur­posely keep their hands off, for legal rea­sons — if you mod­er­ate, you’re respon­si­ble for what appears there, but if you don’t, you’re not, so the expla­na­tion goes. It makes no sense to me, but then, I’m not a lawyer.

It’s the anonymity that brings out the beast in peo­ple, of course. Take away the name, and peo­ple feel free to say any damn thing that bub­bles out of their id. I don’t except myself, either — I’ve been an anony­mous blog com­menter in the past, and while I don’t do it any­more, I will say that it served its pur­pose. But most peo­ple who com­ment here are anony­mous or at least some­what shrouded — I know Coozledad’s real name, and it is nei­ther Coo­zle, nor Dad — but we gen­er­ally keep things decent and respect­ful.

Maybe it’s the anonymity, plus the size of the net cast. When you’re one of thou­sands read­ing a MSM web­site, it just seems eas­ier to spew. I don’t know. I do know I’m grate­ful to you folks for being the fab­u­lous com­mu­nity you are, from sea to shin­ing sea and then to a few more seas (hello, Copen­hagen!). Don’t ever change, or if you do, just get fun­nier and smarter.

Russian-study time. Have a great day.

Posted on Monday, April 27th, 2009 at 10:19 am in Media. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.


78 responses to
“Mothers, fathers and sons.”

  1. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on April 27th, 2009 at 10:32 am

    It feels rude to say it, but could it be a func­tion of size and num­bers, then re-filtered by Gresham’s Law. If there’s 1 racist kook among 1,000 read­ers, you may get less here; when the Freep gets 5 out of 5,000 read­ers, the five Klav­er­nites drive out other com­menters.

    There’s strong feel­ing and dis­tinct dis­agree­ment here (see end of last thread), and i get frus­trated with a cer­tain amount of what feels like will­ful refram­ing, but i keep com­ment­ing because i have a fun­da­men­tal faith in the basic good will and wit among the reg­u­lar com­men­tariat. But it wouldn’t take many nasty vicious trolls to make it feel not worth the wad­ing through the muck to try to restate a sim­ple point you made 256 com­ments ago.

    Gannett’s web­page stan­dard also only gives you 5 to 10 com­ments at a time, and when our local paper gets a com­ment dis­cus­sion going, it gets really old to try to fish around to pick up the sense of the debate when it just gets up to 75 or 90. So the poo-flinging trolls slowly, steadily pre­dom­i­nate. (Which brings to mind Sturgeon’s Law . . .)

  2. Julie Robinson said on April 27th, 2009 at 10:46 am

    As the daugh­ter of a jour­nal­ist I believe in truth and light, so I com­ment under my own name. There are times for anonymity but there are even more times for com­mon sense.

  3. jcburns

    jcburns said on April 27th, 2009 at 10:50 am

    I some­times won­der Nancy if this was instead a rep­re­sen­ta­tion of your print column—in other words, if this daily entry appeared not here but on the FW News-Sentinel or the FreeP­ress or what­ever ‘actual’ publication’s site, whether the level of com­men­tary dis­course would plunge down­ward just because the sub­tle change in the role of the author/proprietor.

    If it was, instead, Nancy-paid-pontificator-for-Gannett or News­Corp talk­ing here (and fil­ter­ing her words through an edi­tor or two) with you being a bit more guarded because that’s what you do when you’re accred­ited to a for-profit news company…it’d be a dif­fer­ent sort of “com­ment” almost from the get-go.

    My point, and I almost have one, is that the urge to talk back to Ms. Smarty Pants On High Pro­fes­sional is dif­fer­ent than the urge to join into an intel­li­gent con­ver­sa­tion “over cof­fee” (and indeed, I am slurp­ing) at someone’s site run out of her home.

  4. Dorothy said on April 27th, 2009 at 11:07 am

    Julie that is the wis­est and sweet­est com­ment I’ve read here at nn.c in awhile. Thank you for stat­ing that so well! (no offense intended to all the other mem­bers of the nn.c reg­u­lar com­menters club!)

  5. John said on April 27th, 2009 at 11:07 am

    Good luck with the Russ­ian. I’m wad­ing into the Russ­ian accusative here in Ukraine. Tomor­row, I’m going to see Damien Hirst’s art, which includes a cow with its guts hang­ing out. Not sure which is uglier.

  6. LA Mary said on April 27th, 2009 at 11:27 am

    Whether I agree with com­ments in here or not, I am impressed by how much thought peo­ple put into what they say here (most of the time.)

  7. Hexdecimal said on April 27th, 2009 at 11:49 am

    Nancy – One rea­son the com­ments on your blog may be a bit nicer than that of a news­pa­per blog is that while we may not always agree with the opin­ions expressed here [on any given sub­ject], we do respect the pre­sen­ter. Also, most of you know each other per­son­ally. My hav­ing been (lurk­ing) vis­it­ing here for sev­eral years I know I feel like I know some of you per­son­ally; and, hav­ing lived in the Fort for many years I just may in fact know some of you. Hence a bit more restraint from all on the name call­ing, hair pulling, and gen­eral cat­ti­ness that one reads on MSM blogs.

    On my post­ing anony­mously: I would like to say I use it to pro­tect myself, but I labor under no allu­sions that Nancy could not find me by track­ing back my IP address or via my other elec­tronic mouse drop­pings. There­fore, for full dis­clo­sure, my name is Mark Queen, for­merly of the Fort, and cur­rently resid­ing in Scotts­dale AZ.

  8. John said on April 27th, 2009 at 11:51 am

    And thanks for patch­ing me through to the Chris Buck­ley piece. Fab­u­lous.

  9. coozledad said on April 27th, 2009 at 12:13 pm

    The wit­ness relo­ca­tion pro­gram is a won­der­ful thing, but the names they ran­domly gen­er­ate really suck some­times. It was either Coo­zledad or Bucky.

  10. beb said on April 27th, 2009 at 12:27 pm

    Nancy asks: Why are the com­ments on my sole-proprietor, no-budget, stitched-together, lame-o blog so won­der­ful, and those on pro­fes­sion­ally done, big-budget, well-respected sites so ter­ri­ble?

    Because there’s no money in it.

    All great art forms work best when there’s no money in it, or at least very lit­tle. The hey-day of FM radio was in the early dsays when most FM sta­tions were just place hold­ers for the rich and pow­er­ful FM sta­tions. Once own­ers dis­cov­ered that there was a lot of money ro be made in FM radio, playlists were imposed, ran­dom crazi­ness sup­pressed andestab­lish­ment types pro­moted to DJs. The Inrter­net was a lot more fun because every­one tried to make some money off it. And so forth. There’s no money to be made from read­ing or com­ment­ing on nn.c so the only peo­ple who do com­ment here are those who actu­ally enjoy it. The peo­ple who are com­ment­ing on the big rag’s web­sites are attracted the size of their poten­tial audi­ence. Spew­ing their opi­o­nions there is like shout­ing into a mega­phone from a rooftop with­out all the draft blow­ing up their skirts.

    So the more suc­cess­ful this site becomes, the more attrac­tive it will become to the knuckle-dragging class.

  11. Sue said on April 27th, 2009 at 12:50 pm

    Well this is sort of in line with yesterday’s and today’s dis­cus­sions. I enjoyed the trans­la­tion:
    http://​moon​shinepa​triot​.blogspot​.com/​2​0​0​9​/​0​4​/​m​e​e​t​-​p​r​e​s​s​-​a​p​r​i​l​-​2​6​-​2​0​0​9.html

  12. adrianne said on April 27th, 2009 at 1:30 pm

    At my Rupert-owned lit­tle tabloid out in the outer Hud­son Val­ley, one of our edi­tors made it his mis­sion in life to stamp out idiot com­menters on the news forums. He got no sleep for about a month, but after relent­lessly reject­ing racial and mean-mouthed com­menters, our news forums are pretty well-behaved. You have to mon­i­tor them, though, to stamp out idiocy.

  13. brian stouder said on April 27th, 2009 at 1:55 pm

    (All of these stip­u­la­tions are themes in Laura Lippman’s excel­lent “Life Sen­tences,” now avail­able at an Ama­zon kick­back link near you.)

    And thanks to good ol’ Nance and her links, I dis­cov­ered not just Ms Lippman’s mar­velous web­site – The Mem­ory Project – but also her won­der­ful books.

    Check out her lat­est lit­tle blog entry, with the mem­ory ques­tion: “what do you remem­ber about bed­time? Love it, hate it? Did you have rit­u­als? Or rules you flouted?”

    http://​www​.jour​nalscape​.com/​L​a​u​r​a​L​i​p​p​m​a​n​/​2​0​0​9​-​0​4​-​2​0​-11:14

    Inter­est­ing stuff

  14. Jean S said on April 27th, 2009 at 2:19 pm

    My thoughts exactly on the Buck­ley piece. He did his own chil­dren (not to men­tion him­self) a tremen­dous ser­vice by being so hon­est.

  15. brian stouder said on April 27th, 2009 at 2:35 pm

    Ms Lipp­man has a say­ing – some­thing like ‘all mem­oirs are trea­so­nous’ (or maybe it was ‘all writ­ing’); maybe some folks are react­ing to that aspect of Buckley’s book. I’ve caught that fel­low on C-SPAN before, and he got me laugh­ing so hard my sides hurt! He told a great story about when he was a speech writer for then-VP GHW Bush, and he (Buck­ley) had writ­ten the VP a short speech (on some­thing or other) and the speech ref­er­enced Thucydides…and GHWB (a well edu­cated fel­low, who cer­tainly knew who Thucy­dides was, after­all) tripped over that name, and tripped again, and pro­ceeded into a pro­tracted strug­gle to spit it out…which caused much flop-sweat by Chris Buck­ley at the back of the room, and drew a rebuke from an Admi­ral who was present

  16. LA Mary said on April 27th, 2009 at 2:41 pm

    Off topic, and I apol­o­gize for that because it’s a good topic:

    Yet again one of the recruiters here received and appli­ca­tion with what the appli­cant must have thought was a resume, but was some other file. We’ve seen love let­ters, break up let­ters, and a plead­ing let­ter to the IRS. Today, we got someone’s Craigslist ad for a crib and ottoman. Taken lit­er­ally, this appli­cant was describ­ing her­self has hav­ing steel ball bear­ing wheels and being eas­ily wiped clean with a damp cloth.
    If any­one out there is job hunt­ing, please open the file you’re attach­ing before you hit send.

  17. LA Mary said on April 27th, 2009 at 2:47 pm

    The appli­cant also claimed to be thickly uphol­stered. I just saw her and it’s not true.

  18. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on April 27th, 2009 at 2:48 pm

    “described her­self (as) hav­ing steel ball bear­ing wheels and being eas­ily wiped clean with a damp cloth.” — which would make one quite pop­u­lar in cer­tain cat­e­gories of Craigslist, no?

    I thought the Buck­ley piece was a lov­ing trib­ute (said the son of chal­leng­ing if not famous and wealthy par­ents). Ulti­mately, what else can we give our kids but hon­esty? You can put some silly spin on what it means to “honor your father and mother,” but it doesn’t mean lie about them, and it doesn’t even nec­es­sar­ily mean you have to like them. But the core self needs to honor that they are who they are to you, and Chris Buck­ley did just that for his folks.

  19. LA Mary said on April 27th, 2009 at 2:52 pm

    It might. I don’t see this per­son work­ing out at the triage desk in the ER. The wipe clean qual­ity might come in handy, though.

  20. brian stouder said on April 27th, 2009 at 2:53 pm

    I’m a big ‘thickly uphol­stered’ man, myself (espe­cially reclin­ers with well-turned Vic­to­rian legs)

  21. basset said on April 27th, 2009 at 2:54 pm

    I thought the Buck­ley was a well-told story, but that clas­sic Buck­ley tone makes me want to orga­nize an armed mob and sack Stam­ford. Or some­thing.

  22. del said on April 27th, 2009 at 2:56 pm

    Some­thing of an aside: I think peo­ple evolve in cyber-commenting, you know, as most of us have evolved from our first expo­sure to email. Any­one out there have an older friend or rel­a­tive new to email who’s still fas­ci­nated by chain emails mak­ing the rounds?

    The first dis­tin­guish­ing fea­ture of cyber-commenting is anonymity, caus­ing the dis­course to degen­er­ate. Think of the com­ments you hear from the crowd at a base­ball game, or, in extremis, the Sein­feld episode in which NY Met Keith Her­nan­dez is pelted with spit. Hey where’d that come from? Nancy’s right, it gets old fast, and, as Danny said about incen­di­ary talk radio, you get tired of being mad all the time.

    Another thing. Much com­mu­ni­ca­tion is non­ver­bal and the key­board can’t com­mu­ni­cate into­na­tion, facial expres­sion, pos­ture, any of that stuff. We all know it, but it still takes a while to deal with. Who hasn’t had sender’s remorse after a com­ment or email? Take con­so­la­tion from the fact that on the inter­nets all those folks whose words you respect even­tu­ally stum­ble. Every­body pub­lishes stuff they want to take back — I’ve given my share of mea culpa follow-up com­ments. In the end though, we learn again the rea­sons for civil­ity, and for words.

    A few things set NN.c apart. Lots of jour­nal­ists are out there in Nal­l­land and that works very well on the net. It’s about the words. And Nancy’s posts draw peo­ple in. Good stuff, thought­ful stuff. And she’s got a few loy­al­ists who act as de facto site mod­er­a­tors. And the com­menters are almost like a wikipedia com­mu­nity. I still remem­ber quot­ing a Supreme Court jus­tice about the legal def­i­n­i­tion of obscen­ity and hav­ing MarkH cor­rect my attri­bu­tion. It’s fun to com­ment to the NN.c wikipedi­ans, learn­ing from Jeffttmo about apophe­nia, and coo­zledad how to turn a tren­chant, funny phrase. Yep, Nall’s ahead of the curve, I think.

  23. mark said on April 27th, 2009 at 3:07 pm

    Really bad idea of the day: fly­ing a 747, fol­lowed closely by an F-16, a few hun­dred feet above the NYC sky­line for a “photo shoot,” with­out alert­ing the pub­lic. Per­haps the “photo shoot­ers” also wanted footage of thou­sands of pan­icked, tear­ful cit­i­zens pour­ing out of high-rises.

    Nice.

  24. Bill said on April 27th, 2009 at 3:17 pm

    Thanks for the link to Buckley’s mem­oir. I find the clas­sic Buck­ley tone deli­ciously over-the-top (said with that Bill Buck­ley leer where he pops his eye­brows and opens his eyes wide and shows all his teeth) and I enjoyed the heck out of this one.

  25. Sue said on April 27th, 2009 at 3:33 pm

    Any­one pick­ing up on the pandemic/stimulus pack­age link? The orig­i­nal pack­age wanted lot­sobucks for pan­demic prepa­ra­tion, argu­ing dam­age to the econ­omy from a pan­demic as the rea­son to include it in the stim­u­lus pack­age. Repub­li­cans were not buy­ing it, and the com­pro­mise elim­i­nated some­thing like 75% of the money for pre­pared­ness and all of the money for emer­gency ser­vice help. It’s begin­ning to look like a mis­step by the Repub­li­cans, with sup­port of course from the Dems.

  26. Scout said on April 27th, 2009 at 4:03 pm

    Nancy knows my real name too, I only use this name on the toobs because it is my favorite cat’s name, and I am noth­ing if not a crazy old cat lady.

    I agree with all of the pre­vi­ous com­ments that out­line why it’s dif­fer­ent here, and I’ll add one more. After lurk­ing for a long time and some­times offer­ing the occas­sional com­ment, I feel like I know the reg­u­lars and this has become a sort of Inter­net Cheers, a com­mu­nity if you will. I know I’m not alone in this assess­ment because there is very lit­tle nest shit­ting, as my very col­or­ful mother likes to say.

    I love com­ing here because while there are many blogs I fol­low for great writ­ing, Nancy’s is that plus a com­ment sec­tion that is every bit as enjoy­able as the orig­i­nal post.

  27. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on April 27th, 2009 at 4:15 pm

    Sack, in Stam­ford? Sherry per­haps, or a dry Madeira, spiced with nut­meg, cloves, and mace, but sack is so com­mon (plus the raw eggs whipped into it dur­ing the sum­mer gets quite stringy).

    Con­necti­cut is the Nut­meg State, after all.

  28. Gasman said on April 27th, 2009 at 4:23 pm

    nancy,
    A big first year anniver­sary thanks for help­ing to deflate that skulk­ing lit­tle turd Tim Goe­glein. He was, is, and always will be a smug, sanc­ti­mo­nious liar.

    I heard Christo­pher Buck­ley on NPR on Sat­ur­day essen­tially say­ing the same things as his arti­cle. His por­trayal of his par­ents was not always fawn­ing, but I don’t think that he should be expected to nec­es­sar­ily paint an unbi­ased por­trait.

    I never like William F. Buck­ley. He always came off as arro­gant, smug, and con­de­scend­ing in the extreme. He was also an unre­pen­tant racist and homo­phobe. He undoubt­edly had great intel­lec­tual gifts, but he was no debater. He bul­lied, he did not debate. His style was to humil­i­ate, to ver­bally evis­cer­ate his oppo­nents. He did not debate as Lin­coln did, by try­ing to sway your oppo­nents with the strength of your logic. No, he sought to demol­ish foes by pub­licly humil­i­at­ing them. He may have been charm­ing, but they said the same thing about Her­mann Goer­ing. So what.

  29. mark said on April 27th, 2009 at 4:26 pm

    gas­man, you’ve become the thing you claim to hate.

  30. basset said on April 27th, 2009 at 4:31 pm

    too true, now that you men­tion it he was a lot like Lim­baugh only left­ier and smarter.

    and, if Christo­pher had been, say, a seed-corn grower down in Greene County, we’d never have heard his story no mat­ter how inter­est­ing his par­ents were.

  31. jeff borden said on April 27th, 2009 at 4:33 pm

    The worst thing about both WFB and his son, Christo­pher, is their treat­ment of the younger Buckley’s son from an affair with a Ran­dom House pub­li­cist named Irina Woelfle.

    WFB went out of his way in his will to state that the bas­tard child Jonathan not receive one red cent. And Christo­pher has never laid eyes on the boy, who is now 8-years-old and liv­ing with his mom in Coral Gables, Fla., waived all vis­i­ta­tion rights and made his monthly $3,000 in child sup­port depen­dent on the mother never con­tact­ing him.

    I like the guy’s writ­ing a lot, but this is creepy shit.

  32. Gasman said on April 27th, 2009 at 4:51 pm

    mark,
    I never said I hated Buck­ley, I just didn’t like him. I am also pretty sure that I have not become Buck­ley. I am not racist nor homo­pho­bic. I also actu­ally enjoy ver­bal joust­ing with those who dis­agree with me, so long as they are hon­est, accu­rate, civil, and try to per­suade rather than bully. When you abide by such con­duct I even enjoy your posts.

    As to my com­ments regard­ing Tim Goe­glein, I stand by them. I do not hate him either, I just find his intel­lec­tual slop­pi­ness and his arro­gance to be tire­some. I have per­sonal his­tory with Goe­glein. We attended the same high school, Paul Hard­ing, in Fort Wayne, at the same time. He was two years behind me. I have no mem­ory of him from that time, either good or bad. I find his fundagel­i­cal sanc­ti­mony ironic for one who pla­gia­rizes. If you are going to be holier than thou, you might want to skip such obvi­ous moral short­com­ings.

    I would agree that, like Buck­ley did not, I do not suf­fer fools lightly. So long as you are not a fool, we are like the veg­e­tar­i­ans at the din­ner table: we have no beef between us.

  33. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on April 27th, 2009 at 5:14 pm

    How was WFB a homo­phobe? I won’t waste our time debat­ing whether oppo­si­tion to fed­eral civil rights leg­is­la­tion is racist (it might not be, y’know), but i don’t recall Buck­ley hav­ing a thing to say about sex­ual ori­en­ta­tion.

    He did come out in favor of decrim­i­nal­iza­tion of most drugs in his last two decades, and stayed qui­etly but firmly in that camp. But other than defend­ing a tra­di­tional def­i­n­i­tion of mar­riage . . . i think he favored civil unions, but that par­tic­u­lar lan­guage didn’t gain cur­rency until he had pretty much stopped writ­ing.

    Or are we say­ing defend­ing a tra­di­tional legal def­i­n­i­tion of mar­riage is homo­pho­bia? I favor legal civil unions for all and pitch­ing matrimony/marriage lan­guage back into the the­o­log­i­cal ter­ri­tory from whence it came — does that make me a homo­phobe? But i’m not sure WFB qual­i­fied, and i’m quite cer­tain Pat Buck­ley wasn’t homo­pho­bic, unless it was towards a gay man wear­ing white after Labor Day.

  34. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on April 27th, 2009 at 5:21 pm

    This is as far as i could find Buck­ley going, and it seems to strain a bit to call this argu­ment homo­pho­bic.

  35. ROgirl said on April 27th, 2009 at 5:42 pm

    Some of the wingnut attacks on C Buck­ley must also stem from the fact that he broke with sacred tra­di­tion and voted for Obama. His rev­e­la­tions about Mum and Pup must be more than some true believ­ers can bear.

  36. Gasman said on April 27th, 2009 at 5:55 pm

    Jeff (tmmo),
    I would have posted sooner, but I could not find my file of unflat­ter­ing WFB quotes. Once I found it, my post prac­ti­cally wrote itself.

    I am not crit­i­ciz­ing Buck­ley for defend­ing tra­di­tional mar­riage, but for mak­ing state­ments that I believe fairly qual­ify as homo­pho­bic. I’m not sure what level of proof you require for the label of homo­phobe, but I’ll offer the fol­low­ing:

    On live TV in 1968, address­ing Gore Vidal -

    “Now lis­ten, you queer, stop call­ing me a crypto-Nazi or I will sock you in your god­damn face, and you will stay plas­tered.”

    In the New York Times, March 18, 1986 -

    “Every­one detected with AIDS should be tatooed in the upper fore­arm, to pro­tect common-needle users, and on the but­tocks, to pre­vent the vic­tim­iza­tion of other homo­sex­u­als.”

    Then in 2005, ref­er­enc­ing him­self in the third per­son -

    “The objec­tive is to iden­tify the car­rier, and to warn his vic­tim. Some­one, 20 years ago, sug­gested a dis­creet tat­too the site of which would alert the prospec­tive part­ner to the dan­ger of pro­ceed­ing as had been planned. But the author of the idea was treated as though he had been schooled in Buchen­wald, and the idea was not widely con­sid­ered, but maybe it is up now for recon­sid­er­a­tion.”

    The Nation had a post-mortem analy­sis of this issue. Do those state­ments rise to war­rant the moniker of homo­phobe? To be fair, Buck­ley did have some close friends who were gay, notably Roy Cohen, who died from AIDS. His state­ments above, how­ever, do not present a man who was will­ing to accept homo­sex­u­al­ity to any real extent.

    As to WFB’s advo­cacy for the legal­iza­tion of mar­i­juana, I found a blog poster that posited the fol­low­ing:

    If you’re a lib­eral who smokes pot, you’re a stoner.
    If you’re a con­ser­v­a­tive blowhard who smokes pot, it shows a real com­mit­ment to intel­lec­tu­al­ism.

    For the record, überlib­eral that I am, I do not sup­port the legal­iza­tion of mar­i­juana. Go fig­ure.

  37. Gasman said on April 27th, 2009 at 5:58 pm

    nancy,
    I’ve noticed that since about Thurs­day or Fri­day I can­not edit posts. I remem­ber some­one else men­tion­ing the same.

    Cor­rec­tion: now it seems to be work­ing.

  38. Gasman said on April 27th, 2009 at 6:10 pm

    Here’s the infa­mous inter­change between WFB and Gore Vidal that aired on August 28, 1968 dur­ing ABC’s cov­er­age of the Demo­c­ra­tic Con­ven­tion in Chicago. Bully­boy WFB in fine form.

  39. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on April 27th, 2009 at 6:54 pm

    “His state­ments above, how­ever, do not present a man who was will­ing to accept homo­sex­u­al­ity to any real extent.”

    I’ll go with that. So why not decrim­i­nal­ize mar­i­juana? Mind you, decrim­i­nal­ize is what’s usu­ally dis­cussed, not legal­iza­tion. Or is that your point? (In the same way that oxy­con­tin isn’t legal, but a con­trolled sub­stance.)

    Test­ing by way of Gasman’s note on edit­ing — it’s been on and off the last few days. Some­times you can, some­times you can’t. [Insert "com­ment Via­gra (tm)" joke here.]

  40. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on April 27th, 2009 at 6:58 pm

    By way of Gasman’s note on edit­ing — it’s been on and off the last few days. Some­times you can, some­times you can’t. [Insert "com­ment Via­gra (tm)" joke here.]

    Just tried to add the above to com­ment 39 twice, pasted, quit page, reopened, still couldn’t edit, and made it into this new com­ment.

  41. nancy said on April 27th, 2009 at 7:02 pm

    Thanks for point­ing this out, Gas and Jeff. The plug-in is acti­vated, so I don’t know what the prob­lem is. From fol­low­ing J.C.’s Twit­ter feed, I think he may be on the road at the moment. I know he fol­lows com­ments pretty closely, so if he sees this, FYI, John.

  42. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on April 27th, 2009 at 7:13 pm

    Ah, and this hap­pened on Fri­day — after the next com­ment pops, the orig­i­nal non-appearing com­ment edit turns up (i caught it within the 30 min. limit and deleted the dou­ble pump).

    A lit­tle patience may be use­ful here, con­tra the usual inter­net imme­di­acy.

    So, an exper­i­ment, hav­ing just seen a link that seems tailor-made, so to speak, for this blog.

  43. alex said on April 27th, 2009 at 7:28 pm

    Re Vidal and WFB, I’ve always sus­pected that was the pot call­ing the ket­tle black, and really not a whole lot worse than “crypto Nazi,” frankly. I look at it as two evil sissy queens going Bill O’Reilly on each other in 1968.

    I sus­pect WFB’s atti­tude would be like that of the Cheneys or any­one else in his cir­cles: If you have wealth and priv­i­lege, you can screw whomever you please. If you don’t have wealth and priv­i­lege, sucks to be you.

  44. Old Lino Operator said on April 27th, 2009 at 7:28 pm

    Lino­type oper­a­tors liked set­ting the Buck­ley col­umn because he used one syl­la­ble words which meant they could get four space­bands in a line of type, and that meant less hand spac­ing and faster work. There can be more to a man than logic and intel­lect, and they quickly learned to ignore con­tent when work­ing on the NS edi­to­r­ial page. (The advance NS stuff was usu­ally done by the night­side, i.e., JG print­ers.)

  45. LA Mary said on April 27th, 2009 at 7:39 pm

    Some­times I worry that I assume there are a lot of Larry Craig right wing self hat­ing gays out there. I always thought WFB was in that group. Alex, thank you for shar­ing my per­cep­tion. Also, Roy Cohn as a gay friend does not give you any points in the gay tol­er­ance depart­ment.

  46. moe99 said on April 27th, 2009 at 7:50 pm

    Thanks for point­ing out Roy Cohn’s essen­tial hypocrisy, LA Mary.

  47. nancy said on April 27th, 2009 at 8:04 pm

    The old lino­type oper­a­tor wins the thread. I decree.

  48. Deborah said on April 27th, 2009 at 8:11 pm

    I have always been impressed with the NNC com­ments (and of course the blog­posts). Every once in a while I am com­pelled to com­ment here, but I must say it is intim­i­dat­ing for me to do so because I’m such a lousy writer com­pared to you all.

  49. Deborah said on April 27th, 2009 at 8:14 pm

    OK now I’m hav­ing the edit­ing prob­lem, I caught my error “Every­one once in a while” in my com­ment above and I can’t fix it.

  50. Deborah said on April 27th, 2009 at 8:15 pm

    And after I wrote the last com­ment the first one was fixed? I’ll stop now.

  51. Kirk said on April 27th, 2009 at 8:21 pm

    My mem­ory is that Buck­ley used a lot of multi-syllable words that most of his read­ers wouldn’t rec­og­nize, to show every­one how bril­liant he was.

  52. nancy said on April 27th, 2009 at 8:25 pm

    I once heard him in an inter­view explain­ing the dif­fer­ence between “regal” and “kingly.” He had a point.

  53. JC said on April 27th, 2009 at 8:39 pm

    I’m in com­plete agree­ment with Deb­o­rah. I come here to read the com­ments as much as the entries that inspired them. When it comes to read­ing com­ments in news­pa­pers’ web­sites, though, I’ll pass. In fact, I would love a fea­ture that allows me to turn off com­ments so I don’t see them at the end of a story. If I want unin­formed, bor­der­line racist com­men­tary on cur­rent events, I’ll attend a fam­ily reunion.

  54. Linda said on April 27th, 2009 at 9:45 pm

    Part of the rea­son the dis­course tends to be high here is that nobody wants to be the weak link. Who wants to stand out for a neg­a­tive rea­son? But also, trolls tend to infest cer­tain web­sites because nobody goes through the trou­ble to chal­lenge them. Some­times, good, well-informed snark can run them off. Even anony­mous peo­ple don’t want to look stu­pid in a pub­lic place, and when everybody’s agree­ing with them–or nobody is run­ning them off–they feel right at home, like ter­mites in untreated wood.

  55. Rana said on April 27th, 2009 at 10:10 pm

    I think a lot of it depends on the community’s – the blog owner’s, the com­menters’ – will­ing­ness to call a troll a troll, and ban them (or mock them, depend­ing on the blog’s cul­ture) as soon as it becomes obvi­ous that the per­son isn’t there in good faith.

    The orig­i­nal poster’s pres­ence in the com­ments thread seems to help a lot with keep­ing things civil as well – peo­ple seem some­what less inclined to indulge in rug-pooping if they know that there’s a fair chance that the host or host­ess is going to call them out for it.

  56. Gasman said on April 27th, 2009 at 10:13 pm

    Jeff (tmmo),
    As for my not sup­port­ing the legal­iza­tion of weed, it is because I feel the lib­eral argu­ments that I have heard so for are either intel­lec­tu­ally weak, unsup­ported, or flat out false. In my mind they amount to our lib­eral canards that don’t really with­stand scrutiny.

    1. That legal­iz­ing and tax­ing will under­cut the crim­i­nal ele­ment.
    Why this assump­tion? If there are going to be taxes imposed, I guar­an­tee that some enter­pris­ing entre­pre­neur will pro­duce weed at a lower price than the taxed prod­uct. We already have such ver­sions of tobacco that comes in from Cana­dian Indian reser­va­tions. If there is a profit to be made, crim­i­nals will do so.

    2. Legal­iza­tion will take away the “for­bid­den fruit” aspect and cre­ate less demand.
    I believe that demand would rise and do so sig­nif­i­cantly. It would also do noth­ing to lessen the use by teens. The teenage brain is still devel­op­ing and weed, espe­cially the more potent stuff grown today, has a demon­stra­bly more harm­ful effect on teenage brains than those of adults. I think any­one argu­ing that teenagers aren’t dumb enough and need chem­i­cal enhance­ment is going to have a tough time sell­ing that notion. NPR did a recent mock story – some­time last week on All Things Con­sid­ered – on what it would be like three years after the legal­iza­tion of weed. They pre­dicted that usage would increase by at least 30%, based partly upon the expe­ri­ence of the Danes. Addic­tion would almost cer­tainly increase.

    3. Legal­iza­tion would aid those seek­ing med­ical mar­i­juana.
    I think that most of the “med­ical” mar­i­juana advo­cates are sim­ply look­ing to get that par­tic­u­lar camel’s nose under the tent. For many that make this argu­ment it is sim­ply a disin­gen­u­ous way to legal­ize weed via the back­door. There have been very few legit­i­mate dou­ble blind med­ical tests con­cern­ing marijuana’s effi­cacy in any clin­i­cal appli­ca­tion. Also, very few physi­cians would advo­cate smok­ing as a deliv­ery method for any drug. Smok­ing any­thing is just about one of the worst things that you can do to your body, espe­cially if your health is already com­pro­mised. I would need to see seri­ous med­ical stud­ies that con­firmed these asser­tions that it helps. Med­ical advance­ments have to be on the basis of more than just anec­do­tal evi­dence.

    Is our cur­rent drug pol­icy flawed? Hell yes, but that doesn’t mean that legal­iza­tion is going to actu­ally solve any­thing. We could cer­tainly alle­vi­ate a sig­nif­i­cant bur­den upon our legal sys­tem, but we could also do so by legal­iz­ing mur­der, assault, rob­bery, etc. Legal­iza­tion will not make these prob­lems go away.

    If were going to seri­ously con­tem­plate this notion of legal­iza­tion, let’s be hon­est in our dis­course and thor­ough as we con­sider all of the ram­i­fi­ca­tions.

  57. grapeshot said on April 27th, 2009 at 10:31 pm

    I post a com­ment here occa­sion­ally, usu­ally late at night, long after every­one has left. (Always late to the party, I am.) I use a nick­name because I have a day job, and all things con­sid­ered, I would pre­fer to keep it. I know that a nick­name won’t keep a deter­mined searcher from find­ing my iden­tity, but it does afford me a sort of thin veneer of pri­vacy, allow­ing me to feel as if I can com­ment in a pub­lic forum with­out feel­ing as if I’m expos­ing my pri­vate being to crass drive-by’s. It cer­tainly sounds high-minded to swear to never post anony­mously (as if that’s really pos­si­ble), but only some­one who’s never worked for a thin skinned, neu­rotic indi­vid­ual and who doesn’t have to worry too much about food and shel­ter can afford such trans­parency (and the result­ing vul­ner­a­bil­ity.)

    I should stip­u­late that I do not at this time work for any such indi­vid­ual or orga­ni­za­tion, but I have in the past, and it has left me with a healthy para­noia.

  58. Gasman said on April 27th, 2009 at 10:37 pm

    Jeff (tmmo),
    I just reread your ear­lier post regard­ing legal­iza­tion vs. decrim­i­nal­iza­tion. I would open to a dis­cus­sion of either, but would demand hon­esty in both dis­cus­sions. There cer­tainly could be vast dif­fer­ences between the two. How­ever, the lack of address­ing the per­ni­cious real­ity of addic­tion is a seri­ous flaw in either argu­ment, in my hum­ble opin­ion.

  59. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on April 27th, 2009 at 11:18 pm

    And, IMHO, the fact that we’re still largely guess­ing when it comes to addic­tion treatment/recovery/rehab. That’s the prob­lem for each option in its own way, whether the so-called “drug war,” decrim, or straight legal­iza­tion.

    12 step seems to have the best results, but even they can’t tell you why, or many details about how. But on TV, hav­ing your rehab cen­ter in Mal­ibu is a real plus for sell­ing books out­lin­ing a treat­ment plan.

    I think the arrest/incarcerate cycle in most com­mu­ni­ties has as much to do with anti­so­cial behav­ior rubbed raw by poverty as it does with addic­tion, so decrim­i­nal­iza­tion would largely mean local police and patrolling sher­iffs would have to find other pre­texts for pre-emptive arrests vs. wait­ing for DUI jus­ti­fi­ca­tion or pick­ing them up on a war­rant after the fact.

  60. basset said on April 27th, 2009 at 11:41 pm

    Well, if smokin’ that stuff is going to be at least semi-legal, we bet­ter put this guy on speed dial:

    http://​slice​.seri​ouse​ats​.com/​a​r​c​h​i​v​e​s​/​2​0​0​9​/​0​4​/​a​n​-​e​v​e​n​i​n​g​-​w​i​t​h​-​p​a​u​l​i​e​-​g​e​e​-​g​i​a​n​o​n​n​e​-​p​i​z​z​a​-​m​a​d​m​a​n​-​o​f​-​w​a​r​r​e​n​-​n​j.html

    Never been to New Jer­sey, ever, or cared to, but now I have a rea­son. Make that a mis­sion.

  61. MaryRC said on April 27th, 2009 at 11:54 pm

    Thanks for the link to Christo­pher Buckley’s arti­cle. I agree that if you are going to write, you have to write truth­fully. Jes­sica Mit­ford had a con­ver­sa­tion along these lines with her sis­ter Nancy and I can’t remem­ber which of them said this. They both wrote about their fam­ily (there was a lot to write about) and one of them asked the other whether she would write frankly about some aspect of their par­ents’ lives. The other sis­ter said more or less what Nancy has said, that if you are going to write about them at all you have to write the truth.

    The arti­cle was par­tic­u­larly inter­est­ing in com­par­i­son to a recent Van­ity Fair pro­file of Pat Buck­ley which gushed over how mar­vel­lous she was but also hinted that she could be dif­fi­cult, hard on her friends and a heavy drinker. This was left between the lines, for exam­ple toss­ing in an anec­dote about how she and Bill Blass became estranged after he spread rumors that she drank, leav­ing you to guess whether the rumors were true or not. Unlike the VF writer Christo­pher didn’t pussy­foot around, did he?

    I thought it was an affec­tion­ate mem­oir. That story about Christo­pher being aban­doned on his grad­u­a­tion day, though … ! That still stings, you can tell.

  62. Mosef said on April 28th, 2009 at 12:21 am

    The NN com­men­ta­tors do get a plus for civil­ity, which is not to be under-rated. But as to con­tent… “you need to get out more” jumps to mind.

  63. joodyb said on April 28th, 2009 at 12:32 am

    i’ve been read­ing nn.c since near-beginning, and my heart still leaps daily at an inge­nious con­struc­tion or POV.

    we come here because it’s reward­ing. it’s the odd vis­i­tor who shouts into the void. heh.

  64. Gasman said on April 28th, 2009 at 12:48 am

    Aside from his rather nar­row views on race and sex­ual ori­en­ta­tion, William F. Buck­ley was a huge fan of Joseph McCarthy. From the title of his book McCarthy and His Ene­mies, you can tell how he felt about old Joe.

    WFB set the tone for mod­ern con­ser­vatism, and I do not mean that as a com­pli­ment. While he exuded a cer­tain amount of charm even when he was most pompous, WFB’s lat­ter day acolytes tend to be devoid of his charm, intel­lect, or com­mand of lan­guage. Thus the snark­fest that is too often the first line of con­ser­v­a­tive rea­son­ing.

    I did like two Buck­ley quotes in par­tic­u­lar. Although I did not like the con­text in which he made it – advo­cat­ing decriminalizing/legalizing mar­i­juana – I love to quote it out of con­text:

    Con­ser­v­a­tives pride them­selves on resist­ing change, which is as it should be. But intel­li­gent def­er­ence to tra­di­tion and sta­bil­ity can evolve into intel­lec­tual sloth and moral fanati­cism, as when con­ser­v­a­tives sim­ply decline to look up from dogma because the effort to raise their heads and recon­sider is too great.

    Pos­si­bly a recog­ni­tion of the intel­lec­tual light­weights that were ris­ing to the top of the con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment? What would WFB have thought of Sarah Palin?

    The other quote was his real­iza­tion that our Iraqi mis­ad­ven­ture was a blun­der on sev­eral lev­els:

    One can’t doubt that the Amer­i­can objec­tive in Iraq has failed. …

    He went on to cite the mul­ti­ple ways one could mea­sure our fail­ure. He clearly blamed Bush and Cheney for drag­ging us into this quamire.

  65. moe99 said on April 28th, 2009 at 3:29 am

    http://​www​.2008​elec​tion​pro​con​.org/​p​d​f​/​U​S​_​v​_​L​ee.pdf

    The Rea­gan Depart­ment of Jus­tice pros­e­cuted a Texas sher­iff and sev­eral oth­ers for water­board­ing pris­on­ers. Isn’t that inter­est­ing?

  66. alex said on April 28th, 2009 at 7:49 am

    The Douchehat debut:

    http://​www​.nytimes​.com/​2​0​0​9​/​0​4​/​2​8​/​o​p​i​n​i​o​n​/​2​8​d​o​u​t​h​a​t​.​h​t​m​l?_r=1

    And to think they got rid of Mr. Kris­tol because he was bab­bling inco­her­ently.

  67. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on April 28th, 2009 at 9:04 am

    Alex, he’s not say­ing Cheney would have or should have won . . . plus i think name-twist mock­ery is right up there with “so’s yer mama.” Of course, my mom had a name so easy to twist into deri­sion she never used it.

  68. brian stouder said on April 28th, 2009 at 9:28 am

    I clicked Alex’s link and bailed after two sen­tences, but then Jeff’s com­ment sent me back there again (as often hap­pens), and the guy’s arti­cle was at least not ridicu­lous.

    But truly, if I were an opin­ion colum­nist, I wouldn’t want the byline beneath my head­line to make peo­ple say “doubt that”.

  69. alex said on April 28th, 2009 at 9:29 am

    All name-twisting aside, it’s a pretty unim­pres­sive effort from the bal­ly­hooed new voice of neo­con­ser­v­a­tivism. But I’ll give him points for deftly diss­ing the fringier ele­ments of the Repub­li­can party while using Cheney as his stooge.

  70. Jolene said on April 28th, 2009 at 9:36 am

    I agree. It was inter­est­ing enough as an intel­lec­tual exer­cise to con­tem­plate the idea of Cheney as a can­di­date, but, as a debut col­umn, this seemed pretty under­whelm­ing.

    I’d have pre­ferred a “talk directly to the reader” approach in which he intro­duced him­self and talked about how he hoped to use the space.

  71. coozledad said on April 28th, 2009 at 9:36 am

    Alex: Thers says it’s pro­nounced Doo-hat. Is the Times scour­ing the edi­to­r­ial pages of prep­tard school papers for peo­ple with such a lack of self-awareness they refuse to change their name from Hal Fore­skin or Deb­bie Fis­tula?
    I’m awed by the sheer alabas­trine den­sity of these peo­ple.

  72. Jolene said on April 28th, 2009 at 9:40 am

    Actu­ally, cooz, he says it’s pro­nounced “Dow-thut”.

  73. nancy said on April 28th, 2009 at 9:48 am

    I pre­fer the sopho­moric “douche-hat,” m’self.

    And Cooz — Lucille But­tlicher was a class­mate of my dad’s.

  74. coozledad said on April 28th, 2009 at 9:49 am

    Thanks, Jolene. You know that gave his gram­mar school teach­ers a headache.

  75. coozledad said on April 28th, 2009 at 9:53 am

    There’s always the alter­na­tive pro­nun­ci­a­tion dodge. “It’s pro­nounced BOOT LE SHAY, you pro­les!”

  76. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on April 28th, 2009 at 10:01 am

    After 12 years of “Gill­fish,” said Jeff Gill, i feel sym­pa­thy for any name-mockery vic­tim. But­tlicher, though, just calls for a Pro­bate Court fil­ing, $50 fee, and a legal name change to some­thing safe and short, like Putz or Schmuck or even Hitler.

    South of here in Pick­away County, OH, they dis­cuss chang­ing Hitler Road every cou­ple of years, but the fam­ily goes back to 18-oh-something and still lives in the area, and the signs stay up . . . until stolen, which is the real rea­son the county wants to change the road name.

  77. LA Mary said on April 28th, 2009 at 12:19 pm

    Douche hat is a great name. So visual. Didn’t we deter­mine he was in the closet last time we dis­cussed him?

  78. caliban said on May 7th, 2009 at 8:18 pm

    Nancy. But can you define louche? I think it’s William Hurt. Or John Hurt. There;s blood lust refardibg the tor­tur­ers. How about humil­i­at­ing all those ass­holes, Cheney and the stovepipe included. And if Cheney keeps blow­ing his hole, put him in revolv­ing stocks. to tour the coun­try.

    The deal is fairly clear. Cheney is the piece of shit. HUMILIATE THIS SAD EXCUSE FOR A HUMAN BEING.

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