According to Toobin, Kavanaugh disrupted the usual appearance of nonpartisanship for Supreme Court nominees by going on Fox News, AKA "Republican television." That's what's "weird"! "Go on the 'Today' show, go on '20/20'" he advised. I'd say what's weird is the pretense that anyplace is neutral.
What does "weird" mean anyway? Originally, "weird" was a noun that meant fate or destiny or someone with the power to control destiny. As an adjective, it meant having the power to control fate. Think of the "weird sisters" in "MacBeth."
In the 1800s, the meaning becomes "Partaking of or suggestive of the supernatural; of a mysterious or unearthly character; unaccountably or uncomfortably strange; uncanny" (OED). The poet Shelley wrote, "Some said, I was a fiend from my weird cave, Who had stolen human shape." And then it was "Out of the ordinary course, strange, unusual; hence, odd, fantastic." There was Charles Dickens writing, "He was a man with a weird belief in him that no one could count the stones of Stonehenge twice, and make the same number of them."
The OED recognizes the colloquial phrase "weird and wonderful" — meaning "marvellous in a strange or eccentric way; both remarkable and peculiar or unfathomable; exotic, outlandish. Frequently ironical or derogatory." Oscar Wilde wrote, "There is psychology of a weird and wonderful kind." And T. E. Lawrence wrote, "Their food is weird and wonderful." This intrigued me. "Weird and wonderful" is a standard phrase. I'll never hear "Bennie and the Jets" the same way again:
Oh, but they're weird and they're wonderful
Oh, Bennie, she's really keen
She's got electric boots
A mohair suit
You know I read it in a magazine
B-B-B-Bennie and the Jets
Oh, but he's weird and he's wonderful/Jeffrey Toobin is really keen/He's got electric news/Contemptuous boos/It's the best news I've ever seen....
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98 comments:
Toobin is pretty weird. He long ago gave up any sense of objectivity.
CNN is weirdo central.
Goblin would think normal is weird.
This is weird, "Toobin had an extramarital affair with attorney Casey Greenfield. She is the daughter of American television journalist and author Jeff Greenfield and the ex-wife of screenwriter Matt Manfredi.[21] They had a child in 2009.[20][22]"
Old Jeff must hate having to pay child support at this stage of his life. Weird-o.
Althouse comments in rhyme. Weird, but welcome... and welcome.
Kavanaugh must Dree his Weird.
1. (Britain dialectal, Scotland, Northern England) To submit to one's fate.
How dare he try to publicaly defend himself in a forum that may be at least be mildy sympathetic to him! That's just weird! Doesn't he know he supposed to just shut up and take it?
Toobin the deadbeat dad. I'll believe Ashley Kavanaugh instead.
Toobin wins the Absolute Lack of Self-Awareness award for 2018.
The competition is fierce.
I am taking great pleasure, Professor Althouse, in watching as your treasured Marxist feminist ideology implodes and exposes itself for what it is.
Improper implementation, I'm sure.
Toobin the wannabe deadbeat dad? Maybe I'll trust Ashley Kavanaugh's opinion and judgment of her husband instead, because believe the women, ya know? Also all the other women who have supported him that mantra somehow finds room to ignore.
Weird that Toobin's first choice for nonpartisan wasn't CNN.
Weird how lefties overuse 'called out'. Urban Dictionary says it means to hold someone accountable for their words or actions. What authority does Toobin have to do that?
I guess what I find strange is how anyone would consider Toobin's opinion important, or waste their time by watching him on CNN. Then again, modern day liberalism has all the earmarks of a mental disorder, and there are plenty of them around.
Not even his second choice.
I distrusted since he one of walsh's gunslinger, and wrote a book about it, then moderated around the time of oj, and subsequently with the years.
Trump has destroyed the credibility of the main stream media.
They are now vulnerable.
He has accomplished more than almost any administration in history in a very short time.
Because accusing a Supreme Court nominee of all kinds of high school /college sex crimes was pretty normal, right up til that interview...
Casey Greenfield is quite a piece of work.
Like Toobin, she is a bit sociopathic.
When Ms. Greenfield first informed him of her pregnancy, she said, Mr. Toobin questioned the paternity, balked at submitting to a test and vowed to take no responsibility for a baby he wasn’t sure was his. Both hired lawyers. Inevitably, the tabloids and gossip sites took notice of the scandal, dropping increasingly detailed hints about the behind-the-scenes drama.
“The one time you really don’t want to get pregnant is when you’re single and the other person is married and you’re working as a first-year junior associate at a law firm in a hard-core phase of trying to prove yourself to them,” Ms. Greenfield recalled last week. She said she ruled out an abortion.
Quite a piece of work; both of them.
"What does [commonly used word] really mean?" is one of those signals that you're not going to get what's promised.
It's sort of the "With all due respect..." of lexicography.
Weird pattern: CNN reporter objects 2 another reporter interviewing somebody in the news.
"Come into my parlor", said the Toobin to the Kavanaugh.
"It's so weird that you chose any parlor but mine", said the spider to the fly.
He should have gone on Dancing with the Stars. He could have done the Watusi.
Yeah, of everything that is going on, that is the weird thing...
Jeffrey Toobin of bastard spawn fame is lecturing us about propriety?
Kavanaugh should have submitted to an interview by the NYT. The Gray Lady could have waved her penis in his face.
If you've read Toobin's book on the Supreme Court, you know what a partisan hack he is. He's perfect for expert status on CNN.
I don't know, Jeffrey Toobin is coming off as a poop flinger. I don't like him and his legal commentary, especially the Russia trash, is second rate. Anyways, at least Kavanaugh had the good sense not to say Jesus saved him from a life of vulgarity and sin. I know you religious types love redemption stories, but the rest of us are kind of horrified.
"CNN Chief Legal Analyst Jeffrey Toobin criticizes Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh's decision to grant an interview to Fox News."
Shirley, you jest.
Jeffrey Toobin is to law as Paul Krugman is to economics.
"But I'm a creep, I'm a weirdo. What the hell am I doing here? I don't belong here."
When you were here before
Couldn't look you in the eye
You're just like an angel
Your skin makes me cry
You float like a feather
In a beautiful world
And I wish I was special
You're so fuckin' special
But I'm a creep, I'm a weirdo.
What the hell am I doing here?
I don't belong here.
I don't care if it hurts
I want to have control
I want a perfect body
I want a perfect soul
I want you to notice
When I'm not around
You're so fuckin' special
I wish I was special
But I'm a creep, I'm a weirdo.
What the hell am I doing here?
I don't belong here.
She's running out again,
She's running out
She's run run run run
Whatever makes you happy
Whatever you want
You're so fuckin' special
I wish I was special
But I'm a creep, I'm a weirdo,
What the hell am I doing here?
I don't belong here.
I don't belong here.
Kafka trap: where denial is taken as proof of guilt.
So, there was a writer for 60 minutes, and he wrote an Op-Ed piece for the Wall Street Journal, and Dan Rather called him out; saying " You shouldn't right for a partisan paper"
And the guy, who knew that Dan frequently wrote for the New York times, asked What about the Times?
And Dan Rather responded; "The New York Times? It's middle of the road"
I read about this back in the '90's, it was true then and it's true today. Liberals think of themselves as Middle of the Road, anything to their right is extreme: NOTHING is to their left
Toobin's the guy who cheated on his wife with a younger woman, whom he then knocked up, and offered to give her money to have an abortion, you know.
How's that for respecting women's bodily autonomy, Professor? Toobin's such a good guy he was willing to write a check to kill his bastard and save the woman the horrible experience!
Must be nice to have such allies. Guys like Toobin will fight hard to keep abortion legal and widely available since otherwise they might not have as much of an opportunity to fuck around on their wives, huh?
Toobin went to Harvard and his mistress--lawyer Casey Greenfield--went to Yale. He impregnated her when she was 35 and he was 48 so it's tough to write that off to "youthful indiscretions." She met him when she was a 20-something fact checker at a woman's magazine, though, so there's still an "older man/younger woman" power dynamic at work. Didn't Professor Althouse work at a woman's magazine when she was young? Funny.
Oh and when she told him she was pregnant he told her it couldn't be his and refused to take a paternity test---before offering her cash for an abortion I guess. That's according to the NYTimes' glowing profile of her, so you can bank on it.
Anyway Jeffrey Toobin is a shitty human being as far as anyone can tell. He's alleged to be a close personal friend to Justice Kagan, as well.
But hey: he is pro-choice and works hard to smear and drag down anyone who isn't, so to nice centrist pro-choice people like Professor Althouse I guess that's all that matters.
Toobin is a big fan of abortion. But he couldn’t talk his mistress into getting one. He’s very upset about that. Baby Daddy.
Toobin’s wife stuck with him. She is a doormat.
Toobin hates Kavanaugh because Yale Law rejected Toobin. So he had to go to Harvard Law. Kavanaugh went to Yale Law.
Toobin is a Legal Expert. He was the defendant in a paternity suit and lost. Dead Beat Baby Daddy. Not much of a Legal Expert. As a person, he’s a worthless piece of shit.
No Toobin fan but no one is bitter he had to continue another 3 years in Cambridge instead of moving to New Haven. (I didn't go to either LS and I'm not bitter!)
It would be a fair point if Kavanaugh had gone on Hannity, but Martha MacCallum is from the news reporting side of the Fox operation.
Toobin strikes me as the type of guy who whacked off a lot on Friday nights in High School.
If those weird sisters dyed their cloaks red, they'd be right in Handmaid's Tale territory. Only probably too old.
Toobin also thought the UVA/Jackie story in Rolling Stone was good reporting and believable. He's weird and gullible.
“He's weird and gullible.”
That’s too charitable. He didn’t genuinely believe the Rolling Stone article, any more than he genuinely believes Ford, or than he genuinely believed he wasn’t the father of Ms Greenfield’s baby. It’s all strategic, and all about intimidation. The worst sort of human excrement.
Toobin also confidently predicted OJ conviction on CNN after the jury announced it had decided after a couple of hours. (I remember because I had a DMV appointment the next morning and it was deserted. Folks for some reason expected conviction followed by rioting, which is what they predicted after conviction.)
What's weird is that progs get to decide what's weird, or "controversial," or anything else.
Weird not weird, if you know what I mean.
I think Jeffrey Toobin's private life is a lot weirder than Judge Kavanaugh's and indeed weirder than almost anyone whom I have known personally.
Doctor Christine Blasey Ford is very weird.
I diagnose her as a manic-depressive, Type 1 (the worst type).
I count two indications of consciousness of guilt.
1) Scrubbed her presence from the Internet
2) Refuses to testify with Brett in the room.
All the time, Toobin was telling his wife that he had to work late, that he missed his airplane connection, that his group had an unexpected meeting. He lied to his wife all the time because he was fucking around with other women.
That's why he lies so convincingly on CNN.
Bennie and the Jets.
I listened to that song while smoking a joint on the way to see "The Exorcist." That movie scared the dookey out of me. I will never forget that song.
I loved the One Step Beyond soundtrack. They always played "Weird" right at the point where the story gets...weird...
You know, I was joking a little with my “struggle session” avatar, but it seems more and more correct every day.
To "liberals" (and by that I mean of course "tax-happy, coercion-addicted, power-tripping government humpers and State shtuppers") being pro-freedom is "weird." "Normal" is bending and spreading for Big Brother.
Methinks, Inga got that whole "doth protest too much" thing wrong.
The "lady doth protest to much, methinks" line in Hamlet was about the queen (in the play within a play) who was NOT being questioned nor accused, it was her repeated vow, and that's is what made suspicious?
By "protest," Gertrude doesn't mean "object" or "deny"—these meanings postdate Hamlet. The principal meaning of "protest" in Shakespeare's day was "vow" or "declare solemnly," a meaning preserved in our use of "protestation." When we smugly declare that "the lady doth protest too much," we almost always mean that the lady objects so much as to lose credibility. Gertrude says that Player Queen affirms so much as to lose credibility. Her vows are too elaborate, too artful, too insistent. More cynically, the queen may also imply that such vows are silly in the first place, and thus may indirectly defend her own remarriage.
By contrast, Kavanaugh is being questioned and accused, and he objects and denies.
"Toolbin"
Folks for some reason expected conviction followed by rioting, which is what they predicted after conviction.)
Good thinking. There would have been.
Perhaps Kavanaugh should have gone on Samantha Bee's show to satisfy Toobin- it would not have been a more hostile place than the two he mentioned.
Does anyone even watch CNN anymore? I mean, apart from airports.
When Toobin "predicted" the OJ verdict, he was relying solely on the fact the jury returned after a few hours deliberation. That was a safe guess he made.
The jury obviously had a different idea.
Which inspired this thought: Could the jury have been a precursor of the Trump presidency? Were they individuals who saw the injustice in the judicial system and said, "OJ may be a double murderer, but we can use him against the system."
Sort of like how a lot of people thought about Trump. And on the left, about Bernie.
"He may be a bastard, but he's our bastard."
What does Toobin want me to do, believe Toobin, or my own lying eyes and ears, that saw & heard the interview?
EDH wrote: Methinks, Inga got that whole "doth protest too much" thing wrong.
I was planning to explain the proper use of that quote to Ms. Abby Normal this morning (gawd, how she mangled it, far beyond the borders of comedy) but I thought pearls before swine, and went to bed instead. Why invest a Planck time of my life educating someone like Inga? She can't afford it, anyway.
I feel empowered to observe that I remember something about Toobin beating his wife. I will defend this on all 50 cable channels.
Yancey Ward: "Perhaps Kavanaugh should have gone on Samantha Bee's show to satisfy Toobin-"
To make it easier on LLR Chuck, Kavanaugh would need to go on either Bee's show or the "brilliant" Maddow's show.
What is weird is the Mega corporate alphabet press is an arm to the democrat party. It's hostile and has turned into a lynch mob against Kavanaugh.
I think it's absurd (and beyond weird) that we're now interviewing Supreme Court nominees on national television (as the Senate hearings continue) while we have a weird obsession about what the nominee might have done (and denies having done) in high school and in college.
I reluctantly voted Trump in 2016, was delighted when Hilary lost, and expect to vote much less reluctantly for Trump in 2020. Any Democrat put forth from this crowd has to be a bonehead. And weird, too.
Weird, how you two self congratulatory scholars would rather talk about me than Toobin, especially the Quackster creature.
Weirdos. And as far as being a lesser human because one has cheated on one’s spouse...Trump.
“Could the jury have been a precursor of the Trump presidency? Were they individuals who saw the injustice in the judicial system and said, ‘OJ may be a double murderer, but we can use him against the system.‘“
Jury nullification. Anyone with half a brain knew he was guilty.
Toobin is a tool. And not a Milwaukee Sawzall - more like a tiny, whining Dremel.
Folks for some reason expected conviction followed by rioting, which is what they predicted after conviction.)
Oh, they aren't too picky in the Bay Area. After Oakland Raiders games, violence broke out whoever won. BART on the Fremont-Richmond line was somewhere you did not want to be after a Raiders game.
But they are nearly all men, and nearly all black, so that doesn't count. I mean, black lives matter -- amirite? -- even if they're doing their best to kill one another. Hey, look at Chicago, guys. You've got a lot of catching up to do.
But that prediction would've been safe as houses (which, of course, aren't at all safe; that's a metaphor in need of retirement). There's a reason that Berkeley shopkeepers have a stock of specially-sized plywood in their stores at all times, and tend to break it out, coincidentally, whenever anyone to the right of the Berkeley mindset sets foot in the city.
Milo Yiannopoulos came to Berkeley on 8/5, just as we were leaving it. He and about 20 supporters were confronted by 400 so-called "antifa." Who all claimed to be "nonviolent," but quite apart from the fact that they were all masked, somehow managed to smash the windows of 21 cars whose misfortune was to be in the same parking lot with them. Nothing else. This despite the total ban on weapons, including rocks, which despite Protester Woman's insistence that hers were just to anchor the bottom edges of her banner, I am inclined not to believe. Who smashed the cars? With what? Who set the Dumpster fires? I am certain that all of these offenses -- and they are offenses -- can be laid to one side only.
Kavanaugh only wanted reliable Republican voters to hear him. That’s why he went on FNC. That’s the only America he is interested in reaching .
harrogate said: "Kavanaugh only wanted reliable Republican voters to hear him. That’s why he went on FNC. That’s the only America he is interested in reaching"
That's the only America he can reach without publicly vowing to uphold Roe v. Wade.
The other half of America that you're talking about won't accept any jurist who won't support abortion rights. No matter what that jurist says or does.
There is an inverse relationship between how much you know what you are talking about and how often you get on cable TV. Toobin has not known what he has been talking about for 20 years. He merely pops his mouth about matters he know nothing about.
And, pray tell, who the hell is Toobin to refer to anyone as weird? That is one strange dude. Heck, he burst on the scene through stealing documents from the Lawrence Walsh investigation, getting fired, and writing a book based upon stolen materials. And we are not even at his knocking up chicks while married.
He has been wrong about everything and finds integrity incomprehensible. Why do we give their guy the time of day? (I view Avenatti the same way but that s for another thread . . . )
I've seen Toobin flat out lie about the recounts done by the newspapers in the 2000 election in Florida. He has no credibility.
Would you want Jeffrey Toobin to coach your little girl's basketball team?
For a while, they tried to sell the meme that there was something uniquely sexist and evil about Fox News. That got overtaken by later events. The Fox babes got more substantial settlements than the women on the other networks, but there doesn't seem to be a huge variance in the behavior of the execs and talent among the different networks. If I were a woman, I'd prefer to be harassed by Les Moonves rather than Roger Ailes. There's that. Maybe they can claim that Fox News pervs are uglier than the other pervs on the other networks.
Anna Quindlan, former Shrew Coulmnist at The NY Times, complained that Clarence Thomas posed for a People Magazine photo back when he was confirmed.
Anna thought it was gauche. People Magazine.
Unlike the silly fucking wedding announcements in the Times.
Thomas had his finger on the pulse of the US. Anna was another who thought she was Elite.
She wasn’t.
The Catholic Church doesn't get a lot of love for the way it has handled its sex scandals. But say this for them. They at least know to STFU when it comes to the sex scandals of other organizations. The Pope may preach against global warming, but he doesn't go on about how the sporting authorities really messed up with the US gymnastic team. In like way, Hollywood and the news organizations, given their record in this field, should refrain from preaching to us about sexual harassment.
A mohair suit
'er ma has too
Learn something new everyday on the Althouse blog.
harrogate is explaining to us why we don't watch television. Good job harrogate.
Horrogate - CNN is the Clinton-Democrat Party Network of bullshit and lynch mob. Why would any sane person use up their credibility on that fake "news" outlet?
I do hear Brennen the commie clown and Mia Farrow are up next. Then Weistein and Streep... and Hillary.
Hahahhahaha! CNN and MSNBC got punked along with Avanetti. So yeah, complain more about Kavanaugh going on Fox, Toobin.
Kavanaugh had to go on TV to humanize himself (and satisfy Ford’s demand that he “go first”).
But this entire thing has had me in a deep funk for days.
A woman lobs a salacious accusation at a man at the pinnacle of his career, 35 years after it happened (give or take a year on either end), she has no idea where it happened, or who was hosting the gathering, the witnesses she named have no idea what she’s talking about, she won’t release her polygraph results, she can’t decide whether to testify, she will dictate who questions her and which press outlets have access if she does testify, she’ll decide if and when she’ll testify when she’s damn well good and ready, she’s managed to monopolize the news cycle on every network, and she’s brought the entire country’s SCOTUS nominating process to a halt.
A Kavanaugh-supporting senator and his wife, out for dinner in DC, are mobbed and accosted.
And half the country seems to think all of this is not only acceptable, but totally normal. We are so deep into bread and circuses that I’ve lost all appetitie for anything.
I’m more disappointed in my countrymen than my gov’t representatives — known dolts and opportunists — for putting up with this insanity. That said, how would we stop it? Nonetheless, it seems like half the country has lost its mind and the other half doesn’t much care. And speaking of caring, if there “were no stakes” as Althouse put it, I might believe the woman, too. Why not? There aren’t any stakes. And after all, when there aren’t any stakes, the accuser has no possible dog in the hunt. She has no reason to lie. And how awful to even contemplate a woman would be so knowingly evil (or, knowingly careless). When there are no stakes, who cares — much less cares about anyone’s opinion on the issue? But the stakes here are enormous (including, in Ford’s estimation, the survival of Roe) now, and for future generations of men and women.
Oh, but this embarrassing debacle, now complete with claims of “rape trains,” just goes on and on and round and round. It’s sickening. It degrades the honorable, moral, and civil society we’ve worked so hard to build and fortify. And it’s embarrassing. “Idiocracy” is now a documentary.
“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, except women.” ~ Romans 3:23 (Millennial Standard Version). Seriously, is this where we are now?
Avanetti is the perfect guest for CNN and MSNBC. Perfect.
Blaqsey-Ford's story keeps shape-shifting and yes - the timing is the most suspect. Also are her lies about fear of flying. Ford is also a known leftist who hates Trump with a vengeance. Ford has some serious negatives as a professor, with students warning others NOT to take her class because of the crazy and the instability.
It goes on and on.
Funny - every democrat operative with a byline on the corporate press(D), including fraud and former Clintonista George Clintonopolis. buys her BS - because they want to.
It's desperation time at camp D, and the media are filled with rage and fear.
I have fond memories of playing "Bennie & the Jets" in my dormroom. I'd blast it with the door open, so it reverberated down the hall. B-B-B-B-Bennie and Jets. My neighbor - this hot freshman girl from Encino -- loved Elton John so much, she'd run to my room whenever I played it, dance around singing it and then go straight for my johnson.
I really liked college life. But I didn't study as hard as Brett Kavanaugh, that's for sure.
In New Prude Leftwing Fascist Land, you'd be arrested and forced into re-education, Bay Area Guy.
Bad news is all the leftists on the re-education staff get away with whatever they want.
Toobin's sneer makes him look as if he has a turd permanently implanted under his nose.
Toobin's sneer makes him look as if he has a turd permanently implanted under his nose.
They don't call Pottymouth Toobin fer nuthin'.
Jane Mayer is actually on Twitter retweeting comments from classmates of Kavanaugh's at Yale contesting what he said about his virginity. This is crazy pants, people.
I’m surprised he didn’t accuse him obstruction of justice for defending himself. That seems to be the progressive line, it’s what they mean when they talk about Trump.
CNN is weird.
I believe women.
I just believe CREDIBLE women.
If the Left can find any, let me know.
“The one time you really don’t want to get pregnant is when you’re single and the other person is married and you’re working as a first-year junior associate at a law firm in a hard-core phase of trying to prove yourself to them,” Ms. Greenfield recalled last week. She said she ruled out an abortion.
You know how you avoid that, you stupid slut? You don't fuck married men. See? Magic!
Why can't you see what Toobin's saying? Kavanaugh's a conservative, so he should have gone on 20/20 or Today to seem non-partisan. Instead, he went on FOX in an effort to seek comfort.
What's so hard?
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