Blumenthal went on to compare Boehner unflatteringly with former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, saying that while Gingrich was "the natural leader of a 'revolution'", Boehner was "careworn and threadbare, banal and hollow, holding nobody's enduring loyalty."Hillary's response was just "Thx, as always, for your insights," which is perfectly opaque and boring.
"Louche" is a great word. It means — according to the (unlinkable) OED) — "Oblique, not straightforward. Also, dubious, shifty, disreputable." Sounds like everyone in government, no?
The etymology is: It's French for squinting and comes from the Latin word "lusca," which is the feminine form of the word for one-eyed.
One of the historical examples at the OED comes from George Bernard Shaw, a 1905 letter to Granville Barker: "You could play Snobby. I want a slim, louche, servant-girl-bigamist, half-handsome sort of rascal."
ADDED: For fun, I wanted to add a picture of Hillary squinting. I ran across a bit of Think Progress nonsense from 2008: "Drudge Posts A Picture of Hillary Clinton With Squinted Eyes, Says She’s ‘Feeling Japanese.'" ("Drudge seems to have deliberately chosen a picture of Hillary that hints at Asian stereotypes — slanted eyes, arched eyebrows, and prominent teeth — to pair with the caption that she’s 'feeling Japanese.'")
Oh, that's not Japanese, it's just louche. Here's a better louche Hillary picture...
... with louche Bill as a bonus.
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The most accurate intelligence estimate ever from Sid Blumenthal. But Boehner is beloved of his native Ohians. And he is a pillar of the Establishment Republicans. Vote accordingly.
False Grackle
"Hillary's response was just "Thx, as always, for your insights," which is perfectly opaque and boring."
-- Most charitably, Clinton was engaging in the same sort of soft dismissiveness that Walker engaged in in dismissing the Canadian wall question.
Being from Boehner's district, and having been to an event where he spoke, my best description of him is "used car salesman". I.E., he will tell you anything he thinks you want to hear to sell you a lemon.
As much as I dislike the whole Clinton machine...I'd say this was spot on.
Other than getting to use such a great word, why did he feel he had to write down something that Hillary almost certainly already knew?
Doubtless her husband could assess Boehner precisely for her. She probably wouldn't understand it though.
Blumenthal is a slimy, "off-the-books," political hitman, that the Clintons use to peddle smut and get down and dirty. I'm not saying this is unusual. Most powerful political figures have a few guys to do the dirty work. Sidney, though, has been identified and, hopefully, neutralized.
I bet he meant "lush" as in, can't handle his alcohol.
Grackle,
I wouldn't say he is beloved. It's more like...no one runs against him worthy of a vote. It's choose bad (Boehner) or worse (usually Dem's with 0 experience in anything).
I never vote Dem...except when voting on Boehner's seat. Then I vote against him more than for anyone else.
La Louche is the ritual of preparing Absinthe.
On the Xbox 360 game "Full House Poker," one of the poker-playing bots is named "Larry Louche." I never thought about what the word "louche" meant. The play style of that bot is bullying and aggressive.
Everyone in government? You are a government employee
From what I hear, Sid's pretty louche himself.
When I think of Boehner the word that comes to mind is tan.
Hillary had to look it up also, and when she did, there was her picture
What's so wrong with being a little loosey louche Lou. That is a niche role that is hard to fill.
He makes everybody else look like good guys. That's a valuable skill
I always thought it was another way of saying bohemian artist as The Beats were often described as louche. Interesting to think of Boehner in their company.
The chief difference with asian eyes is that the top of the eyelid doesn't jut in around the eyeball.
Louche lips sink ships.
Can't say if he is an alcoholic but the rest of it sounds spot on...
Excellent work Professor.
We absinthe devotees are very interested in the louche. Good one swirls with spiraling striations of chartreuse, honeydew, and pale jade, though some very nice blancs louche to a rather boring uniform milky calcite blue. Louche also describes absinthe drinkers generally; we're all raffish, rakish, unconventional, and slightly disreputable in a attractive manner.
Boehner is definitely not louche, he hasn't been consistently conservative enough to be raffish and unconventional.
That pose of Bill speaks volumes, does it not? The upturned face, the hint of a sneer, it's the arrogant look of a gangland chieftain at the top of his game.
The Clintons are a convincing argument for old money aristocracy.
...Boehner was "careworn and threadbare, banal and hollow, holding nobody's enduring loyalty.
Sounds about right.
never vote Dem...except when voting on Boehner's seat. Then I vote against him more than for anyone else.
A good way to make money investing is real estate is to buy property in the district of the speaker of the house early in his term. If you know who it is going to be next, better yet.
Loath as I am to agree with a shitheel like Blumenthal, his assessment seems accurate. Both Boehner and McConnell have been disappointments, but to be fair I don't lay all the blame on them, there's plenty of failure to go around.
careworn and threadbare, banal and hollow, holding nobody's enduring loyalty
Never thought I'd agree with ol' Sid Vicious, but this pretty much nails it...
Something occurred to me when I looked at the last photo of Bill: Hillary is one of those weak sisters who always go for the bad boy and thinks it makes her tough. (Or even worse, who thinks she can change him, or channel him for her own purpose.)
No wonder I've never respected her.
Newt LaLoosh famously said, "I love winning. It's like, . . . better than losing."
Being a skilled assessor of persons is a tool to be used to target enemy's weak spots.
In Trump's case he has so many targets showing that his enemies get confused and hit all of the weaknesses except the real one. Then he counter punches a 10 ring on them.
Blumenthal was a threat to Obama's gang as they saw his skill. He is like a great Recon man painting targets with a laser for artillery and smart bombs.
The irony of someone telling the Clintons that someone else is "dubious, shifty, disreputable" is... the word escapes me.
It is likely that a confidante of Hillary would recognize an alcoholic when he sees one...
It's to Hillary's shame that she associates with someone like Sid Blumenthal. It's to America's loss that she let Sid talk her into war in Libya.
The first and only use of "louche" I saw was in one of Manchester's books on Churchill. He apparently had a side of him that liked gambling, shady characters and showgirls. He would have loved Las Vegas.
When you looked up the definition of louche, was Sid Vicious' picture there? Talk about projection.
One of the worse things about the Clintons is this miasma of odious characters that they carry with them, like Pigpen's cloud of dirt - Blumenthal, Begala, Podesta, Carville, Philip Reinnes, David Brock (!), Huma... An army of Renfield's.
I'm sure you meant '...with louse Bill as a bonus'
The massive irony doesn't make Sid wrong. Highly ironic, but not wrong.
It's to Hillary's shame that she associates with someone like Sid Blumenthal. It's to America's loss that she let Sid talk her into war in Libya.
A) A good slut basher like Sid Vicious is hard to find.
B) Her judgement is what is under discussion here.
Dems yearn for the days of Bill, when a lying, amoral, woman abusing, adulterous president stymied the best efforts of theopposition to remove him from office for legal offenses associated with his dick.
Repubs yearn for the days of Ronnie, when the US overcame international opponents peacefully and made the world a better place.
And people ask me why Dems win, and I cannot answer, except to lose hope for humanity.
An army of Renfield's.
A-Hee Hee Hee Hee Heeeee! Great comment, CTmom, though I don't think the possessive case is warranted.
I'm just glad to see Quaestor was able to make it back to this blog. I was worried that R&B might have been correct that Quaestor was "at the bottom" of the bell curve!
BTW, per Ctmom4's comment: "One of the worse things about the Clintons is this miasma of odious characters that they carry with them, like Pigpen's cloud of dirt - Blumenthal, Begala, Podesta, Carville, Philip Reinnes, David Brock (!), Huma... An army of Renfield's."...everyone is still waiting to see who precisely hired Craig Livingstone..
Livingstone. He of a thousand raw FBI background files on republicans.
Which, interestingly, was just before "interesting" info about those republicans began trickling out into the press.
"Unexpectedly".
At a dinner party last weekend some French friends were talking about buying a house in Burgundy on the River L’Ouche. I was trying to explain what the word louche meant in English and finally said “like Bill Clinton” and they understood perfectly.
I always thought of Boehner as having a light footstep. I'm surprised at the amount of enmity he inspires. Think back to Denny Hastert. There are worse flaws than being louche......Or ponder the moral complexity of Nancy Pelosi. I would like to hear Sid's thumbnail description of her. Can women be louche?
Blumenthal seems to have thought a lot about his writing acumen. Do you get style points for memos when you're at the State Department? Or was he playing Hillary, thinking, "Louche! This will send her to dictionary.com for sure"?
Hillary! would never go to dictionary.com. She'd email Huma and ask her to look it up, as soon as she's finished checking on whether there's a Cabinet meeting this week.
Dear Clinton Family:
Please go away. Fade into history.
Regards,
MadisonMan
There is another definition of "louche;" it's the milky green precipitate formed after adding ice water to absinthe: link.
I'm not sure about its etymology, but its association with alcoholics is clear.
More about absinthe here from yours truly.
Pshaw. I'd like John Boehner a lot more if he really were louche.
More about absinthe here from yours truly.
Absinthe has many puzzling and inexplicable effects, one is the famous lucid inebriation, so fondly treasured by artists and writers. However there is an effect that is even more inexplicable yet little known, which is the faculty of absinthe drinkers to aim their flatulent emissions.
We all have them, those embarrassing emanations of odiferous intestinal gas, but by drinking absinthe on a regular basis one gains the ability to "re-direct" those emissions so that they seem to emanate from some other person's rump. This benefit of absinthe has been memorialized in a familiar aphorism: Absinthe makes the fart blow yonder.
I bet that's a popular parlor game at DC paries.
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