Althouse: "Republicans were once despised because they were anti-intellectuals and hopeless neurotics."

July 21, 2020

"Republicans were once despised because they were anti-intellectuals and hopeless neurotics."

"Trained to disbelieve in peaceful coexistence with the liberal enemy, the average Rush Limbaugh fan couldn’t make it through a dinner without interrogating you about your political inclinations. If you tried to laugh it off, that didn’t work; if you tried to engage, what came back was a list of talking points. When all else failed and you offered what you thought would be an olive branch of blunt truth, i.e. 'Honestly, I just don’t give that much of a shit,' that was the worst insult of all, because they thought you were being condescending. (You were, but that’s beside the point). The defining quality of this personality was the inability to let things go. Families broke apart over these situations. It was a serious and tragic thing. Now that same inconsolable paranoiac comes at you with left politics, and isn’t content with ruining the odd holiday dinner, blind date, or shared cab. He or she does this infuriating interrogating at the office, in school, and in government agencies, in places where you can’t fake a headache and quietly leave the table."

From "The Left is Now the Right/We laughed at the Republican busybody who couldn't joke, declared war on dirty paintings, and peered through your bedroom window. Now that person has switched sides, and nobody's laughing" by Matt Taibbi (substack).

81 comments:

Johnathan Birks said...: Is Taibbi really having a revelation or is he just steering into the skid? Either way it's a welcome development.; 7/21/20, 7:35 AM
chuck said...: One micro shuffle for mankind, a giant leap for Taibbi. He is slowly getting there...; 7/21/20, 7:35 AM
Fernandinande said...: Matt Taibbi seems to like his own straw.; 7/21/20, 7:45 AM
Kai Akker said...: It used to be great when you could condescend to those neurotic boobs who voted for other loony yahoos. When they talked about it, why, you didn't GAS and told them so. Ha, problem solved! And your buddies-in-arms were right there with you.

But now..... now some of my buddies have gone loco. And now they don't back me up anymore. Now I would have to admit I can see what the neurotic boobs were talking about, except there is no way I am going to admit that. I am just going to go on condescending to them while making a few of their points myself, except not in a way anyone else will notice, I hope! Will they? I simply could not stand it if I weren't considered one of the right thinkers among the lefty lineup any more.

Why did this have to happen? That neurotic moron Trump did it to us.; 7/21/20, 7:49 AM
Bob Smith said...: Shrug!; 7/21/20, 7:49 AM
wendybar said...: Taibbi is finally REALLY woke....Let's hope some of the other Progressives see the light!!!; 7/21/20, 7:55 AM
Mike (MJB Wolf) said...: Do these lefty fuckers ever stop projecting? Conservatism is not an evangelical movement like leftism and does not enjoy the cultural hegemony progs enjoy that creates the institutional direction so obvious in media/arts/education where conformity is assumed, and lefties ruthlessly enforce that Ideological conformity. Bake that cake! Use my new pronoun!

The right was despised as anti-intellectual busybodies? Tipper Gore, Liberal Democrat, started the movement to label and restrict sales of rock and rap music not conservatives. Progressives freaked out when a lone conservative used to take a knee at NFL games, but took up Kapernicker’s cause and enforced respect for it with religious zealousness, demanding that the NFL and its audience and all other sports allow their events to be appropriated to spread their gospel of hate and division. Homosexual progressives demand your participation in their weddings, whether the vendor wishes to or not. Campus speech codes, enforcing separatist racial policies, and other lovely retread ideas are generated in the progressive hives of academia and media, not conservative entities. And when you boil each side down to the individual the choice is COLLECTIVISM vs INDIVIDUALISM, tyranny vs freedom. Unless free association really means free to associate, then society is never cohesive.

Methinks Matt is overthinking the situation.; 7/21/20, 7:59 AM
Rory said...: "Trained to disbelieve in peaceful coexistence with the liberal enemy, the average Rush Limbaugh fan couldn’t make it through a dinner without interrogating you about your political inclinations."

I think what Taibbi was seeing there was a dinner table manifestation of conservatives just doing what liberals had been doing all along. It's about like saying that bipartisanship died in Congress in the exact era when Republicans broke the Dems 50-year stranglehold and started winning some majorities.; 7/21/20, 8:02 AM
Night Owl said...: He forgot to include that the left is now openly racist.; 7/21/20, 8:19 AM
CWJ said...: In all my adult years, I've never seen this "right wing" or a Republican president as described by opposite wing opinion writers. That they need to start every self critical column or letter with such calumny in order to soften any self critical sting is self serving on their part and infuriating to me.

Any stand up courage in writing the column is lost by having to kneel from the start.; 7/21/20, 8:20 AM
Sebastian said...: "the average Rush Limbaugh fan couldn’t make it through a dinner without interrogating you about your political inclinations."

Evidence?; 7/21/20, 8:20 AM
Mr. Forward said...: Who’s not laughing?; 7/21/20, 8:23 AM
Joel Winter said...: I'm glad to see someone else is agreeing with me. The Party of Intolerance, Upholding Standards and the Party of Offense (the Republican party of my youth) has been swapped with the Party of Nuance, of Pushing Boundaries, and Tolerance (the Dems of my youth).

The language enforcers have moved from Right to Left.

In the 80's the Right was too sensitive, now it's the Left.

A rigidity of cultural rule-following that once characterized the Right is now ridiculed by them.

The Left used to bathe in nuance and interesting/challenging interpretations, while the Right was literal--and now that's swapped as well.

The Left used to love to argue, while the Right enforced that things were "just so," not subject to argument. Flip/Flop.

I saw this happening a couple of years ago. I don't know what it means, really, other than times change, people change, and progress is constant.

It's still just the Dems/Left that smash things though.; 7/21/20, 8:23 AM
Darrell said...: Lefties always shoved their politics down your throat. Matt Taibbi's memory is as faulty as his current take is right.; 7/21/20, 8:25 AM
Temujin said...: I read this commentary by Taibbi and my first reaction was that, though he had a ton of good points and it's good to see the lightbulb continually going off in his head, he still does a lot of standard liberal projection.

The movement to harass family, split up relationships and families due to politics came from the left, and continues from the left. This was not part of the right. Hell, Obama's administration used to put out instructive videos and charts on how to speak to your family at the holidays, or how to convince your family that Obamacare was good for all. They tried to make it systemic.

At some point over the last 10 years the left quit trying to convince and just decided to shut up and shut down the people who disagreed with them. Their key idea now is to completely shut down any non-approved speech or thought. Even words have had their meanings changed and if you do not use the new meanings correctly- out with you.

Give them full power and we're liable to see a new Red Terror here in the US. Oh, it may not be taking people away at night to shoot them. But it'll most definitely turn our laws and Bill of Rights on its ears. Until the people have enough. Then all bets are off.; 7/21/20, 8:31 AM
MikeR said...: I was fascinated by some of the comments on Taibbi's twitter. They were all like, This may be true, Matt, but you are way out of line trying to make a false equivalence [italics mine] between the evil right and the left on this issue.
It was funny, because Taibbi's article is pretty clear that the left is way scarier than the right ever was.; 7/21/20, 8:31 AM
Ron Winkleheimer said...: My experience is that someone brings up politics, the leftists speak their minds, someone on the right replies, and then the leftists lose it and start acting as if they are being oppressed because someone is, "spouting Rush Limbaugh talking points!" Which are of course racist, so no refutation is required.; 7/21/20, 8:37 AM
exiledonmainstreet, green-eyed devil said...: Mike (MJB Wolf) said...
Do these lefty fuckers ever stop projecting?"

Apparently not. The anti-evolution people do not comprise a majority of conservatives. I became conservative in the '90's, I know plenty of conservatives, and never once have I sat at a dinner table with anybody who told me Jesus rode dinosaurs.

Of course, I know anti-science people, like leftists who think there are 80 genders, a boy can be a girl if he really believes he's girl, a baby's human status is dependent on how her mother feels about her, the world will end in 12 years because of global warming, and if Trump is voted out of office, the Wuhan Flu will magically vanish.; 7/21/20, 8:46 AM
Dear corrupt left, go F yourselves said...: Except all that garbage Tiabli made up and declared about "the right" is horseshit.; 7/21/20, 8:46 AM
Dear corrupt left, go F yourselves said...: The left can NEVER point out their own anti-free speech garbage without a lead-in filled with "yeah but"; 7/21/20, 8:47 AM
Todd said...: Everything was just SO much better when the left was winning and winning and ONLY had to suffer through listening to the right complain about it and not actually do anything to win.

Now those insufferable conservatives are actually winning and I am forced to admit that they had a point AND my side is such poor losers!

He is only now noticing that the left is insufferable when they win and insufferable dialed up to 11inty when they lose!; 7/21/20, 8:57 AM
rhhardin said...: The right has always had a large social liberal fiscal conservative wing. Basically producing the systems guys vs feelings women split between right and left, once you notice what the right actually has in common.; 7/21/20, 8:57 AM
Mr Wibble said...: Taibbi is full of crap. That attitude has always been predominantly on the left, not the right. The right just wanted to be left alone and not forced to genuflect to every new progressive idea about how to make the world "better".; 7/21/20, 8:57 AM
dbp said...: Maybe Matt got his ideas from sitcoms, where an ignorant conservative like Archie Bunker would hold court. Here in the real world, my experience is that the boorish political person has, with rare exception, been a ranting left-winger.

To the extent a conservative ever outed themselves, it was always with a response to the left-winger bringing up politics. The pattern was always the same: The conservative would gently point out some fact or piece of logic which contradicted the left-wing claim. The leftist would be momentarily rendered mute: The leftist had never heard this argument and had assumed everyone they knew were in agreement--the only opposition were some troglodytes from fly-over country. The conservative knows the leftist arguments because we marinate in them, the leftist has no idea that there are arguments against their ideas because they have never heard one before.

Of course, no minds are changed. But before the minds aren't changed, the leftist will generally resort to some melange of insults in the categories of racist, sexist, greedy and ignorant.; 7/21/20, 8:58 AM
Dave Begley said...: My brother is very liberal. Lives in SF. Political activist. Fake Twitter name.

He tweeted about how a 72-year old Canadian guy got shot in Toronto and the start of it was because he wasn't wearing a mask in a grocery store.

My brother is strongly anti-gun and pro-mask. His tweet was that there had to be "consequences" for not wearing a mask and this maskless guy was a risk to other people.

I made a sly reference on Facebook to this and he blocked me on Twitter. I wasn't even following him.

I sent him an email that noted that his tweet could be fairly read to approving the shooting of people not wearing a mask.

BTW, about 20 years ago he started this whole boycott and cancel thing. He claimed that he got two KSFO radio people fired.; 7/21/20, 8:59 AM
Kevin said...: "The Left is Now the Right/We laughed at the Republican busybody who couldn't joke, declared war on dirty paintings, and peered through your bedroom window. Now that person has switched sides, and nobody's laughing'

Matt is doing a lot of pacing and leading here, hoping to persuade the left to change.

Had he begun this five years ago, he might have had a chance.; 7/21/20, 9:13 AM
Wa St Blogger said...: It is common knowledge that conservatives are racists, sexist, controlling, anti-intellectual... I hear those accusations all the time. But I never actually see specific examples. I also note that liberals always argue from these "known truths" to dismiss the conservative arguments. But what liberals never do is argue the actual fats of a issue. It's always, conservatives are bad, so any position they take must be wrong. Taibbi is starting to see the left for what it is, but he still clings to the "but conservatives are bad" trope.; 7/21/20, 9:14 AM
Michael K said...: It's helpful to remember that Democrats were the party of the KKK. If you keep that in mind, all else falls into place. Fanaticism was always their option #1.; 7/21/20, 9:17 AM
Bilwick said...: If the Republican "busybody" is primarily interested in being left alone, he's not really a busybody.

"Political tags — such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth — are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire." --Robert Heinlein; 7/21/20, 9:19 AM
Narayanan said...: Using on the left and on the right is not conducive to clear discussion : about statists v individualists which is the essential distinction to be made if freedom and rights are to be retained.; 7/21/20, 9:23 AM
Saint Croix said...: I was struck by the opening of his article, when Taibi was describing the good old days of the smart liberal.

It was after this meeting in October, 2004 that a passage about teaching “gaps/problems in Darwin’s theory” was inserted into the curriculum. The science geeks fought back, however, and roughly a year later I sat in a packed courtroom with overeducated reporters from all over the world who came to gape at the spectacle of rural ignorance showing its rump in an American courtroom.

When a Christian attorney named Robert J. Muise tried to cross-examine the smooth-talking Superstars of Science who’d flown in from places like Brown and Harvard to denounce “intelligent design,” journos murdered their thesauruses looking for new words for “hayseed.” The chuckling press section felt like front row of a comedy club.

And yet it's Christianity that teaches us we are all children of God. Atheism teaches us that genetics controls everything. Race theory and Darwin worked hand-in-hand for decades. Are you really shocked that the Darwin worshipers are revealing their racism now?

Taibi is shifting right as he's getting older and wiser. But when he looks back on his past, he's not seeing his own mistakes. His claim is that he hasn't changed, everybody else has. And yet, if you see education as indoctrinating the stupid, you shouldn't be in education (or writing about it). It's so weird to describe education as if it were a professional wrestling match, with the Superstars of Science verses the Ignorant Hayseeds.

Of course there are gaps and problems in Darwin's theory. We're supposed to question things, that's how we learn. To say we can't question Darwin, it's illegal, is bizarre.

Atheists worship Darwin. There's no other word for it. He's a faith substitute. That's why he's not to be questioned, ever. How many scientists have their own bumper stickers?

Christianity doesn't fall apart if Darwin is 100% right. Does atheism fall apart if Darwin is wrong, even a little bit? Apparently.; 7/21/20, 9:40 AM
NorthOfTheOneOhOne said...: Johnathan Birks said...

Is Taibbi really having a revelation or is he just steering into the skid?

He's setting himself up so he can say; 'I warned you!', when the whole edifice comes crashing down.; 7/21/20, 9:45 AM
Mark said...: Trained to disbelieve in peaceful coexistence with the liberal enemy, the average Rush Limbaugh fan couldn’t make it through a dinner without interrogating you about your political inclinations.

??????????????

Where in their rabies-fevered minds do these people come up with this? What actually has happened is the exact opposite, with conservative-minded people laying low and keeping their cards close to their vest while then-liberals, now-progressives, jump right in and assuming that everyone agrees with their radical ideas and hate.; 7/21/20, 9:47 AM
Yancey Ward said...: I like Taibbi-I have read his columns for many, many years- but he is rewriting history with his discussion of the Right vs Left. The humorlousness and nasty partisanship hasn't changed political identity- it has always been this way- what has measurably changed is that the media that promotes it all for the left has thrown away all pretense of balance.

Were Tim Russert still alive today, where do you think he would be working?; 7/21/20, 9:48 AM
Mary Beth said...: I remember decades and decades where news organizations told their readers/listeners what talking points they should cover during the holiday gatherings. They were not Republican talking points.; 7/21/20, 9:48 AM
iowan2 said...: Do we get to make broad generalizations like "average Limbaugh fan"? The average black coming out of Chicago public schools cant read at grade level. Put that into the highest black on black crime equation. 70% of blacks are born into single parent families.
This is fun, and productive. I just saw a clip of the Mayor of Chicago demanding the "gun show loop hole" needs to be fixed. Not reading, not single parent families. Restricting a constitutional right is the answer... in her mind.

I don't see the protestors defining a problem. Only demanding actions. Its impossible to improve something you cant even identify.; 7/21/20, 9:49 AM
Michael said...: Progressive logic:

Your speech is violence; my violence is speech.
Your facts are talking points; my talking points are facts.
Etc.; 7/21/20, 9:52 AM
Wince said...: Is this part of a larger cultural-political do-si-do reversal going on between extremist right and left?

Men's Rights => Gender Abolition

Science => Religion; 7/21/20, 9:53 AM
Narr said...: I guess I don't know many average Rush fans. Even off-campus in a Southern city I can't think of an incident such as Matt T describes. But I can recall many--scores probably--of anti-Rushites who were eager to broadcast their superiority to anyone within earshot.

And for every rightie friend, relative, or acquaintance who sends me unsolicited political messages, there must be five from the left.

Narr
IDGAS mostly; 7/21/20, 10:00 AM
Brian McKim and/or Traci Skene said...: Taibbi lives in a bubble, obviously. The ONLY holiday dinner I EVER saw turned into an uncomfortable situation over politics was when an older, dyspeptic dinner guest piped up, appropos of nothing, and said that anyone who listens to Limbaugh is an idiot (I paraphrase). He insulted at least two other dinner guests.

And once, at a holiday dinner at a friend's house, while guests were participating in a sortofa secular "bless this dinner" thing, someone piped up and invoked the name of Paul Robeson. I kid you not. "And God bless Paul Robeson," said a guest, at a Thanksgiving dinner. In, like, 2004 or so.

If Taibbi thinks that any significant number of Limbaugh listeners felt in any way comfortable-- at any point along his three decades on the air-- to even mention his name in polite company, he is engaging in a fantasy. If he thinks that, at any point in the last 30 years, right-of-center people felt comfortable in harassing lefties at dinner parties, he's merely projecting.

The "How to handle right-wingers at your next holiday gathering" articles were like confrontation porn, a manual on how to deal with something that likely never happened nor was it ever going to.; 7/21/20, 10:02 AM
Howard said...: i'm glad you people feelz better about yourselvz now. low self esteem is a bad look for phony tough macho men as you are just one insult away from killing a federal judge's kid.; 7/21/20, 10:05 AM
Douglas B. Levene said...: I can't talk to my daughter about current events without her bursting into tears and my wife is furious that I don't hate President Trump. Do I need any other reasons to despite the Orwellian left?; 7/21/20, 10:10 AM
Bob Boyd said...: “The flock gets sight of a spot of blood on some chicken and they all go to peckin’ at it, see, till they rip the chicken to shreds, blood and bones and feathers. But usually a couple of the flock gets spotted in the fracas, then it’s their turn. And a few more gets spots and gets pecked to death, and more and more. Oh, a peckin’ party can wipe out the whole flock in a matter of a few hours, buddy, I seen it. A mighty awesome sight. The only way to prevent it—with chickens—is to clip blinders on them. So’s they can’t see.” - Randle McMurphy; 7/21/20, 10:12 AM
Jason said...: It was projection all along.; 7/21/20, 10:15 AM
n.n said...: Methinks Matt is overthinking the situation.

Progressives project (PP). #PrinciplesMatter; 7/21/20, 10:15 AM
n.n said...: Trained to disbelieve in peaceful coexistence with the liberal enemy

Liberalism is a divergent (e.g. generational) ideology. However, people should be wary to exercise liberal license to indulge diversity (i.e. class-based inclusion and discrimination) dogma. Lose your Pro-Choice, selective, opportunistic religion. #PrinciplesMatter; 7/21/20, 10:18 AM
Static Ping said...: Taibbi apparently knew very few conservatives.; 7/21/20, 10:26 AM
Kirk Parker said...: This has just become a predictable verbal tic of the remnant of the left who is trying to remain sane: when discussing an obvious problem on your side, you have to start by saying, "The other guys do it worse/did it first, but..."; 7/21/20, 10:46 AM
PM said...: So what if Taibbi's old school Republican tropes rub the wrong way. He's not writing to please conservatives. He's face-slapping unconscious liberals.; 7/21/20, 10:49 AM
Jupiter said...: I think the phenomenon Taibbiis describing is that, in, say, the 80's, people on the right talking with Leftists regarded ourselves as representatives of American culture -- a superior culture, combining most of the best features of its predecessors -- confronting chuckle-headed boobs with bizarre miseducations. I can well remember how the sleek young urbanites at my friends' parties in NYC would gape in astonishment at the rube from Oregon who mocked their PC pieties and openly boasted of voting for Reagan. I had not the least concern that the bankers who employed me might fire me if my voting habits were brought to their attention. The modern Leftist has the cancel-culture club in his hand, and the bit in his teeth, and few on the right care to argue. It has dawned on us that these guys may be completely full of shit, but that doesn't mean they're funny.; 7/21/20, 10:54 AM
Yancey Ward said...: St Croix wrote:

"Taibi is shifting right as he's getting older and wiser. But when he looks back on his past, he's not seeing his own mistakes."

Exactly. And it is really odd because he lays it all out there so that it is easy to see that he really does seem to have changed himself as he got older. Maybe it really is a blindspot, or as a commenter above suggested, he has to lie openly to persuade the Left to listen. All in all, though, I find this need to bend the knee before proceeding to be self-defeating- just like the Harpers letter and its signatories.; 7/21/20, 10:55 AM
Michael K said...: Liberalism is a term that referred to a defunct philosophy in which all ideas were to be respected and those who disagreed with our own ideas were to be allowed to disagree in peace. One expression of this dead philosophy was "It's a free country," which of course is no longer true.; 7/21/20, 10:55 AM
jnseward said...: The only way Matt Talibi can bring himself to criticize liberals is by saying that they are just as bad as conservatives. C'mon Matt. Couldn't you have managed to write the article without the obligatory false equivalence? Sigh. Keep going. You're getting warmer.; 7/21/20, 11:00 AM
effinayright said...: Whatever you might think of their politics, no one could ever claim with a straight face that William F. Buckley, Murray Rothbard, Russell Kirk, George Will, Milton Friedman, Walter Williams, Thomas Sowell, James Burnham, Phyllis Schlafly or Friedrich Hayek, for instance, were "anti-intellectual".; 7/21/20, 11:14 AM
hombre said...: We are all amused by Taibbi’s awakening to the dangers of the Democrat left an their pet leftmediaswine. The next logical step would be for him to give up his residual stereotype of the “Limbaugh right.”

“... once despised because they were anti-intellectuals and hopeless neurotics.” “They were??” How about, “they were accused of ....” The anti-intellectual rap derived from the Christian view of creation and the abortionists’ false message about the beginning of life. The former continues because academia and “science” will not permit the philosophical materialism of Darwinian evolution to be challenged and because without such suppression the argument cannot be won by either side. OTOH, the science of human embryology has long since held the baby killers to be the science deniers.

The “neurotic” characterization is not worth rebutting. Anyone who has followed “Limbaugh’s liberals” for decades has seen the proof of the neurotic pudding, or is it the kool-aid, among them.; 7/21/20, 11:27 AM
Sam L. said...: The Left is, like China, ASSHOLE.; 7/21/20, 11:32 AM
Gospace said...: Projection. Always projection with the left.

Already said above- but, it is true- Projection. Always projection with the left.; 7/21/20, 11:48 AM
Michael K said...: Static Ping said...
Taibbi apparently knew very few conservatives.

That was probably true but there is also this parent child thing that is a significant part of leftism. I have five kids. Three are lefties. Two of those are lawyers and they think this makes them smarter than old Dad. The third is into the art world and has degrees in Anthropology, a near fatal brain virus. She recently had a baby and is doing some thinking. She asked me if I could give her another gun and she owns property in Idaho. My conservative fireman son is the only one who owns his own home and is making plans to get out of CA.; 7/21/20, 11:53 AM
DEEBEE said...: One of these days the mob will come for Matt. Then he will try to cash the chips that presumably he is collecting by gratuitously beating up the right, even though his main target is the left.

Same goes for the Harper’s letter writers.

When the left criticizes it’s own then it gets framed as a two-handed endeavor. Criticism of the right must be easy for needing only one hand; 7/21/20, 12:13 PM
Cassandra said...: Tabbi: "Trained to disbelieve in peaceful coexistence with the liberal enemy, the average Rush Limbaugh fan couldn’t make it through a dinner without interrogating you about your political inclinations."

Gosh. Remember when the President of the United States asked his followers to get in their friends' faces and argue with them? (this, in response to that noted right-wing extremist, John McCain). October of 2008:

"I need you to go out and talk to your friends and talk to your neighbors. I want you to talk to them whether they are independent or whether they are Republican. I want you to argue with them and get in their face," he said.

This is during the time when "Obama fans" organized to intimidate speakers they disagreed with:

That’s what Obama supporters, alerted by campaign e-mails, did when conservative Stanley Kurtz appeared on Milt Rosenberg’s WGN radio program. Kurtz had been researching Obama’s ties with terrorist William Ayers in papers in the Richard J. Daley Library in Chicago – papers that were closed off to him for some days, apparently at the behest of Obama supporters.

Obama fans jammed WGN’s phone lines and sent in hundreds of protest e-mails. The message was clear to anyone who would follow Rosenberg’s example: We will make trouble for you if you let anyone make the case against The One.

Other Obama supporters have threatened critics with criminal prosecution. Last month, St. Louis County Circuit Attorney Bob McCulloch and St. Louis City Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce warned citizens that they would bring libel prosecutions against anyone who made “false” statements against Obama. Similarly, the Obama camp called for a criminal probe of the American Issues Project when it linked Obama to Ayers.

How soon we forget.; 7/21/20, 12:17 PM
effinayright said...: Anyone remember when conservatives were considered "square"?

Doesn't quite sound the same as being "hopelessly neurotic", does it....

If you want "hopelessly neurotic" from that era, I give you Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsburg, Madeline Murray O'Hare, Timothy Leary, Charles Manson, Baba Ram Dass....

(see how easy it is to play that stupid game?); 7/21/20, 12:26 PM
rcocean said...: THis sounds like complete fake nonsense. So, the Left has become horrible because they're now like Rush Limbaugh fans? Really? What universe does this guy live in? Or maybe he thinks its still 1990 and not 2020. Oh wait, the guy is a journalist who:

...began as a freelance reporter in the former Soviet Union, including a period in Uzbekistan, and later worked as a sports journalist for the English-language newspaper The Moscow Times. He also played professional baseball in Uzbekistan and Russia as well as professional basketball in Mongolia.

Taibbi returned to the United States in 2002 and founded the Buffalo-based newspaper The Beast. He left in 2003 to work as a columnist for the New York Press. In 2004, Taibbi began covering politics for Rolling Stone.

IOW, this guy wouldn't know a Rush Limbaugh fan from a bowl of borscht.; 7/21/20, 12:28 PM
narciso said...: against the avalanche of left idiocy, rush pushed back, the left pushed back harder and became less bound by more like john stewart and his gang, michael moore and his pack of lies, (although roger and me, had a grain of truth,) but columbine, fahrenheit,) the war against Fox, which raised some resistance,; 7/21/20, 12:45 PM
Earnest Prole said...: The libertine, libertarian left of fifty years ago has been eclipsed by progressive puritanism, so you will now be made to care.; 7/21/20, 1:51 PM
bagoh20 said...: Complete bullshit about back in the day. I watched Rush's entire career happen live, and have lived among friends and foes of his the entire time, and Taibbi is delusional or lying. It was never like that. I do remember many Democrats who hated Rush, but couldn't tell you exactly why with any facts. The only times I remember Rush being brought up in mixed company was by "liberals" expressing some form of hatred for him or his listeners. I never saw any Rush fan bring him up, and the reason was the hatred it would bring from people who were not fans. It was just best avoided.; 7/21/20, 2:13 PM
Birkel said...: Short and more accurate Taibbi:

I used to believe the lies the MSM spread about conservatives. However, my cognitive dissonance now overwhelms the narrative (READ: lies) spread by that same MSM.

But I must still say the reflexive anti-conservative words to absolve myself for seeing reality plainly.; 7/21/20, 2:30 PM
Jim at said...: the average Rush Limbaugh fan couldn’t make it through a dinner without interrogating you about your political inclinations.

Admittedly, I haven't listened to Limbaugh since 1993 or so, but there has never been a single instance - in my entire life - where something like this even remotely happened. Ever.

If any political conversation was started, it was by someone on the left side of the spectrum. Every time.; 7/21/20, 2:31 PM
Leland said...: Matt Taibbi may be more convincing if he stopped with the "whataboutism" as a precursor, especially when the "they do it too" anecdote lacks honesty.; 7/21/20, 2:56 PM
Robert Cook said...: Well, my younger brother is one of these people, and he's a Trumper/right-winger. In other words, he's a traditional asshole.; 7/21/20, 3:24 PM
Robert Cook said...: "Conservatism is not an evangelical movement like leftism...."

Sure it is.; 7/21/20, 3:27 PM
JAORE said...: The Democrats are the party of science.

That has been BS for decades.; 7/21/20, 3:36 PM
JAORE said...: "...the average Rush Limbaugh fan couldn’t make it through a dinner without interrogating you about your political inclinations."

Wait. Isn't it the left that spews forth numerous articles before every holiday season about how to address/attack your conservative/racist/Neanderthal relatives?

Why yes, yes it is.; 7/21/20, 3:38 PM
M said...: Even when I was an “anything goes” libertarian I always saw the Democrats in my family and coworkers as the insane, can’t let it go, can’t take a joke group. I have never known a conservative who acted like that. I have never heard of a conservative who acted like that outside of a sit com.

I have seen many, many Democrats over the last thirty years who everyone walks on eggshells around because they will,pitch a fit if they are triggered.; 7/21/20, 3:53 PM
Michael K said...: Robert Cook said...
Well, my younger brother is one of these people, and he's a Trumper/right-winger. In other words, he's a traditional asshole.

Evidence that assholes run in families. Not that politics has anything to do with it.; 7/21/20, 5:52 PM
gpm said...: Ugh. Taibbi used "most everyone." That's about a 15 on the (1 to 10) garner spectrum of awful English usage.

--gpm; 7/21/20, 6:29 PM
Gospace said...: exiledonmainstreet, green-eyed devil said...
Mike (MJB Wolf) said...
... and if Trump is voted out of office, the Wuhan Flu will magically vanish.

That last part is actually very very real. Hence the photomemes that all say the same thing- but with different characters. My favorite:

McCoy, when will this wuhan virus end?
I don't know Jim. I'm a doctor, not a politician.; 7/21/20, 6:32 PM
Big Mike said...: This post has bothered me ever since it went up. Taibbi openly equates being a Republican with being anti-intellectual, and his “proof” is a small group of fundamentalists who took over one particular school board. Because only people well to the left of center can ever truly be intellectuals since the only true solutions to the world’s problem are solutions that proposed by lefties. It wouldn’t surprise me if Althouse herself didn’t deep down buy into this belief.

We aren’t going to solve any problems or address any issues until lefties like Taibbi, and (probably) Althouse, develop enough humility to accept that they, and the left in general, do not have a lock on the world’s knowledge.; 7/21/20, 8:44 PM
daskol said...: Taibbi was busy being a drudged up enfant terrible during the era he accuses the right of the current woke aggression on goodness, so his memory is probably a little unreliable. But at least he’s seeing straight today, despite his kooky analogies.; 7/21/20, 10:06 PM
Etienne said...: My wife does not allow politics or pornography in our home. She says the only difference between the two, is which side of the brain is deformed.

I have no idea what that means, but when we were dating many decades ago, she threatened to kill me with a butter knife when I mentioned Idi Amin.

I'm always waiting for one of her friends, or a guest to mention anything political or sexual, as I enjoy the look on her face as she begins to think through how to dispose of the body.; 7/21/20, 11:15 PM
Nichevo said...: Howard said...
i'm glad you people feelz better about yourselvz now. low self esteem is a bad look for phony tough macho men as you are just one insult away from killing a federal judge's kid.

7/21/20, 10:05 AM

Phony tough macho man, forsooth.

Whose kid, Sullivan's?; 7/21/20, 11:57 PM
Martin said...: I like and admire Taibbi's recent work, but I do not recall ever encountering or even hearing about a Rush Limbaugh listener haranguing anyone in the way he describes, certainly nothing organized or encouraged like what the Obama Admin started to foment back around 2009 about using Thanksgiving dinner as an opportunity to browbeat relatives about health care. (The original "pajama boy" meme.)

The left and Dems turned Limbaugh into some sort of radical bogeyman that he never was. Heck, in 2009 the whole executive branch of the USG was enlisted to demonize him as part of the Obama Admin's "devil of the week" messaging at the time.; 7/22/20, 9:32 AM