This announcement of the founding of The Contrarian would be fantastic if it were a comedy sketch.

But these people are for real...

POV: You died and went to hell pic.twitter.com/N6C5J1jSvr

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) January 14, 2025

... and that's funny too.

You know, when you've made your mark in writing, as a columnist, you need to get some serious, unbiased advice about whether your material transfers well to audio and video. Jennifer Rubin is behaving on camera in such a ridiculously stilted, fakely enthusiastic manner that I have to assume she had no honest, competent adviser to help her build a social media brand.

And who's the guy? He seems like a character played by Phil Hartman on SNL years ago. He tells us he's Norm Eisen, and I look him up in Wikipedia and see he's "an American attorney, author, and former diplomat.... He was co-counsel for the House Judiciary Committee during the first impeachment and trial of President Donald Trump in 2020." He wrote a book called "Overcoming Trumpery: How to Restore Ethics, the Rule of Law, and Democracy." Why's he coming at us like a parody of a 1970s game-show host? Oh! Wait! This is fascinating:

Glenn Greenwald waves a cranky goodbye to Jennifer Rubin.

Given Jen Rubin finally quit the WashPost -- to start a blog called "The Contrarian" with @NormEisen, Senior Fellow of the Brookings Institution, totally known for contrarianism -- here's my absolute favorite TV clip from the Queen of Partisan Dreck:👑pic.twitter.com/s4QtI1mHnd

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) January 13, 2025

"... a parade of MAGA voices.... The MAGA crowd.... the MAGA cult.... Some MAGA voices.... the MAGA movement’s coordinated assault on the rule of law.... MAGA threats and smears.... MAGA calumny...."

Excerpted from "Opinion/Democrats must defend Trump’s guilty verdict against MAGA jury denial/The danger of delegitimizing jury verdicts is real" by Jennifer Rubin (WaPo).

And note the phrase "jury denial." It's like "election denial."

"If we choose former president Donald Trump, then we will see what happens when 'the checks of conscience are thrown aside and a deformed picture of the soul is revealed.'"

Writes Jennifer Rubin, quoting Ken Burns, in "The media and sullen nonvoters should listen to Ken Burns/The historian knows something about civil war — and moral responsibility in politics" (WaPo).

Burns, the filmmaker, was giving a commencement speech at Brandeis when he veered off topic to denounce Trump. Rubin, the columnist, thinks that was just wonderful.

Burns’s exhortation that “the kinship of the soul begins with your own at times withering self-examination” should sound an alarm for voters.... If voters on the right and left renounce “withering self-examination,” they at least might imagine how they would fancy a fascist regime under Trump.... Democracy defenders should hope the essence of Burns’s message reaches beyond Brandeis.... Biden’s message, like Burns’s, is simple: This is the existential choice of our time. There is nothing equal about this equation....

What should "democracy defenders" think of the Democrats' effort to fight Trump through the use of the criminal process? To say "there's nothing equal" is to suggest that this isn't a democratic process in which 2 candidates compete for the vote. It's an "existential choice" — some sort of apocalyptic battle. So, what does that mean — that you can use all weapons and fight any way that you can? Well, look around. We're already seeing "what happens when 'the checks of conscience are thrown aside and a deformed picture of the soul is revealed.'" In this "picture," who is uglier? 

"Is it possible that the prosecution thinks this works as a way to humiliate Trump?"

I wrote at the end of the last post, which is puzzling over why the prosecution has called Stormy Daniels to the witness stand. The desire to humiliate others is a very low form of self-gratification. It's a big theme in porn — or so I've read — but I won't further expound on the parallels between porn and politics.

I'm just starting a new post on this theme because the very next thing I read was a display of the desire to humiliate Trump. It's Jennifer Rubin, at The Washington Post, in "The New York trial is wearing down Trump — and it shows/His nodding off in court is a sign that he is weaker and more vulnerable than ever":

The trial is aggravating Trump’s lifelong fear of humiliation and his insistence on being the toughest bully on the block.... Any objective observer would acknowledge that things have not been going his way, to put it mildly....

The desperation is so intense, and it's only December. They can't go on like this.

1) These people seem certifiably insane. As in, needing serious psychological help. I'm not exaggerating here, they seem to have completely lost a relationship with reality.
2) I laughed multiple times in this Supercut. https://t.co/FY6eXuzqnb

— Mollie (@MZHemingway) December 15, 2023

My advice, and I've said it before, is to abandon the overblown demonization and treat Trump like the political candidate he is. About half of the electorate supports him. If it's democracy they're so concerned about, let them show respect for their fellow citizens and endeavor to understand the good reasons why they support Trump and not Biden and engage on the issues.

I don't expect them to take this advice, because: 1. They're so dug in, and 2. They don't trust themselves to argue on the substantive merits.

Of all the posts I've ever tagged "Trump derangement syndrome," this is the most deserving.

IN THE COMMENTS: michaele said:

The look on poor Jennifer Rubin's face at the end of her comments (.29) is half hilarious and half tragically concerning. Her anguish at the possibility of Trump being reelected truly seems to be affecting her mental and physical health.

Yes, I noticed that too. I'll make a screen shot. If I had more skills, I'd make that portrait in the background — a portrait of her, right? — change its expression too:

"Not since Bill Clinton was asked about having sex with Monica Lewinsky and replied, 'It depends on what the meaning of the word "is" is,' has there been such parsing."

Writes Maureen Dowd, in "The Ivy League Flunks Out" (NYT), talking about the line "It is a context-dependent decision" spoken by U Penn president Penn’s Elizabeth Magill.

We were just talking about Bill Clinton rhetoric — 2 posts down, here — but that was about "I did not have sexual relations with that woman" and the topic was Biden's denials of involvement in his son's influence peddling.

Dowd is writing about the "pathetic display" put on by the presidents of Harvard, M.I.T. and the University of Pennsylvania "when they were asked if calling for genocide against Jews counted as harassment."

"'An indictment would help Trump!' is wholly premature."

Says Jennifer Rubin. 

But once it happens, it's too late to worry about what effect it will have. At that point, everyone against Trump will fight to make it hurt him and everyone for Trump will fight to make it help him. Rubin's column is an early — premature? — effort in the fight to make it hurt him. 

Rubin's first point is that Trump hasn't yet received much support from Republican politicians.

"And while Musk remains a darling of the right wing in America, European regulators are watching closely."

"NPR reports that 'The European Union’s competition czar has a message for Twitter’s new boss Elon Musk: We are watching you.' The report quotes Margrethe Vestager, the European Commission’s executive vice president overseeing digital policy, who warned: 'There is a European rulebook, and you should live by it. Otherwise, we have the penalties. We have the fines. We have all the assessments and all the decisions that will come to haunt you.' She doesn’t sound like someone Musk wants to mess with. MAGA Republicans in the United States might be celebrating Musk’s takeover as a triumph of 'one of their own,' but Democrats might be in power in the years to come. They might be tempted to repeal Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, the federal provision that protects social media platforms from liability for content published on their sites. (Even eliminating such protections for the owners of the platform could bring the curtain down on the Musk show.)"

Writes Jennifer Rubin in "Musk can trash his sandbox. The rest of us don’t have to play there" (WaPo).

I guess Rubin loves the "European rulebook" and the idea that the Democratic Party will act aggressively to push back free speech. That's rather awful. It has really been sad to see the "right wing" label slapped on everything. In my little world, I've had it happen to me. It's really awful. What does it take to make a person "right wing" these days? It seems to be only a strong position in favor of free speech! I remember when "free speech" was a left-wing battle cry. 

"In introducing the [abortion] bill, [Lindsey] Graham jerked attention away from the inflation numbers released on Tuesday."

"Why would he do this? After all, The Post reports, 'Republicans have been forced to reckon with a growing trove of data suggesting that abortion could be a decisive issue in the midterms, motivating Democratic and independent voters far more than was widely expected.' Perhaps Graham is more concerned with ingratiating himself with the far right than with helping his party regain the majority. Whatever the reason, he has certainly lent a hand to Democrats who’ve been focusing on slippery Republicans trying to deny ownership of their past radical views. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) tried to minimize the damage. 'I think most of the members of my conference prefer that this be dealt with at the state level,' he weakly told reporters. Now, the Republican leader faces a dilemma: He cannot deny Republicans’ intentions without infuriating the right-wing base, and he cannot encourage Graham without driving Democrats to vote."

Writes Jennifer Rubin, cogently, in "Lindsey Graham delivered a gift to Democrats: Proof of GOP’s abortion extremism" (WaPo).

The GOP position on the abortion should be to leave it to the states — good old federalism values. Leave it to the Democrats to make a uniform national law.

I see that Graham wanted to draw a line at 15 weeks, and at first glance, I'd thought it might be what I'd written about on July 11th, in "Can we — most of us — come together and agree to allow access to abortion in the first 15 weeks of pregnancy — or at least the first 10?" But I wanted a uniform federal entitlement to access to abortion in the earliest stage of pregnancy, leaving the question of later abortions to the individual states. Graham is proposing a uniform ban on abortion after 15 weeks, leaving the states to make even tighter restrictions in the period before 15 weeks. 

Maybe there's an idea of reaching a compromise, with a right of access to abortion before 15 weeks and a ban after 15 weeks, but it's hard to picture Congress compromising on this issue. 

"You know that Dick Cheney ad would be better without that music in the background"/"Oh, yeah? How much better?"

Overheard at Meadhouse.

“In our nation’s 246 year history there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our Republic than Donald Trump.” Dick Cheney pic.twitter.com/erBPBNy8ah

— Liz Cheney (@Liz_Cheney) August 4, 2022

I'm seeing that ad this morning, because WaPo dragged me in with a lurid headline: "That Cheney ad speaks volumes about the GOP’s rot." That's a column by Jennifer Rubin. Does she say that Dick Cheney used to be considered the GOP's rot and now he looks like the virtuous one, but it's just a matter of comparison, and that goes to show how rotten the GOP is?

Now, I've read the piece, and the answer to my question is no. Dick Cheney's reputation as the "dark lord" has evanesced. To refresh your memory, here's an Atlantic article that worked hard — back in August 2011 — to refresh the memory of the evil of Cheney: "Remembering Why Americans Loathe Dick Cheney/As the former vice-president releases his memoir, it's useful to recall the many reasons Americans disapproved of his tenure" (by Conor Friedersdorf):

Kamala Harris and her "really interesting" Venn diagram.

Wanting to write about something Kamala Harris had said about the overturning of Roe v. Wade, I thought I'd find it in The Washington Post. But the name "Kamala" appeared nowhere on the home page and a search for the most recent mentions of her name turned up this:

Her name hasn't appeared in The Washington Post in 20 days. If we go back as far as the beginning of May, there are 3 mentions — 2 of which are about the prospect of the overruling of Roe v. Wade.

That's hath wrought.

I'm trying to read "How Susan Collins can repair the damage she has wrought." It's Washington Post column by Jennifer Rubin. 

The "damage" she wrought was voting for Trump's Supreme Court nominees. By her own statement, Gorsuch and Kavanaugh conned her:

After the ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health was released, she asserted in a statement, “This decision is inconsistent with what Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh said in their testimony and their meetings with me, where they both were insistent on the importance of supporting long-standing precedents that the country has relied upon.” She then declared that she wanted to preserve Roe in statute, citing her support for the Reproductive Choice Act, which she introduced. (When a similar, Democratic bill came to the floor, she voted no. Her excuse: “It doesn’t protect the right of a Catholic hospital to not perform abortions.” In other words, millions of women whose rights she pledged to defend should take a back seat to … Catholic hospitals?)

Hmm. How about the damage wrought by Democrats who have refused to pass Collin's Reproductive Choice Act because they're keen on depriving Catholic hospitals of the right not to perform abortions?

ADDED: "Wrought" is archaic and it's used these days for effect, so what effect is intended? It's not jocose. Is it Biblical — a grand pronouncement? 

But I must concede that you don't have to use "hath" for "have" whenever you think "wrought" is better than "done." The OED has this quote from the Psalterium Carolinum of 1657:

The war our sins have wrought, With Peace, which Christ hath bought.

ACTUALLY: The Psalterium Carolinum had to use "have" with "sins," because "hath" is singular. That's why it's "hath" with Christ. So that quote doesn't require my concession! 

"Is it too much to hope that a broad coalition across party lines could commit to defeating candidates who have made clear they don’t respect truth or elections?"

Asks Jennifer Rubin, in "We need a plan to deny the election deniers victory" (WaPo). 

But where's the line between "election denying" and fighting for a victory after initial returns indicate your candidate has lost?

In August 2020, Hillary Clinton made a strong argument for contesting election results...

... and we remember how hard Al Gore fought for a victory in 2000 before finally conceding. Should we denounce Hillary and Al as "election deniers"? 

Can we form "a broad coalition across party lines" about how much post-election fighting is acceptable? Is the term "election denying" helpful? I don't think so. To me, it's too emotional. It feels like an effort to borrow resonance from "Holocaust denier." (Rubin also uses the term "big lie" twice.) 

Labels shouldn't take the place of substantive argument. We should see that some contesting of election results is normal and desirable and that at some point we need a result and we shouldn't be dragging out the fight in a search for perfection. We need a winner, and we need a way to declare a winner and move on. Let's be rational about that.

The shared standard has to be something that we'd accept when our candidate is on the losing side. It can't be that Democrats ought to fight hard, but Republicans must stand down.

"Tom Nelson, a longtime union advocate, is running for the Democratic nomination for Wisconsin’s Senate seat as a genuine populist, not the phony kind with a Harvard degree who affects an accent."

Writes Jennifer Rubin in "Wisconsin’s Tom Nelson reminds Democrats how populists should sound" (WaPo). 

Who's she talking about — "the phony kind with a Harvard degree who affects an accent"? Russ Feingold??! (He went to Harvard, but he's really from Wisconsin, not faking an accent.)

I've been living in Wisconsin since 1984, and I don't know which politicians have affected the accent. But maybe Rubin isn't talking about Wisconsin. She's acting like she's talking about Wisconsin though, so — speaking of phony — I'm expecting her to talk about Wisconsin.

Who, exactly, is being impugned? Someone is terribly fake, apparently, but who? We're not told who this fake-accent Harvard person might be, but we are told the name of someone Nelson views as a role model: William Proxmire, who "popularized the Golden Fleece award to highlight wasteful government spending."

From the comments over there:

"How qualified do you have to be?"

Said Cory Booker, quoted in "Cory Booker demolishes GOP attempts to smear Ketanji Brown Jackson" by Jennifer Rubin (in WaPo). 

I don't know about "demolishes" — or "smear" for that matter. But I agree with the Booker's implication. The question for the Senate is basic qualification. The President has the appointments power, and the Senate isn't in the position to ask who would it pick, if it had to single out somebody.

Booker ended on a high note, quoting a Maya Angelou poem: “You may try to write me down in history with your bitter twisted lies … but still, like dust, I rise.”

Were there bitter twisted lies about KBJ? All Rubin cites is the charge that she's "'soft' on crime and child pornography." That's a characterization of the facts. It might be overdone, but I don't see the lies. And I don't think a strong stance against crime and child pornography is bitter or twisted. I loathe that sort of hyperbole. 

That's why I like Booker's "How qualified do you have to be?"!

"Republican excuses for rejecting Ketanji Brown Jackson are absurd"/"The GOP won’t be honest about opposition to Judge Jackson."

Those are 2 different pieces ranking in the top 5 most-read opinion pieces in The Washington Post. 

I'm going to read them so you don't have to. Really, I want to test my hypothesis. There's frustration that Republicans aren't presenting a bigger target. The desire is to accuse them of rejecting KBJ because of her race, but there's nothing blatant, so effort must be put into teasing out the racial insinuations. Of course, Biden was blatant about race in making his choice, but that's what makes it so frustrating that Republicans aren't jumping at the bait.

Now, I'll read.

1. "Republican excuses for rejecting Ketanji Brown Jackson are absurd" by the WaPo editorial board. Overheated headline aside, this piece just says that the Senate should always confirm the President's nominee as long as basic qualifications are met. I pretty much agree with that, but it's not surprising that Republicans are paying back the Democrats for opposing President Trump's well-qualified nominees. The WaPo editors briefly acknowledge this un-absurd reality. The last paragraph asserts that Republicans will look "unattractive... in the history books," because their "almost entirely White caucus" is "rejecting the first Black woman."

2. "The GOP won’t be honest about opposition to Judge Jackson" is a piece by Jennifer Rubin. She speculates "that the GOP base is so infused with white supremacy that any vote for a Black woman would simply be unacceptable to the MAGA crowd." Doesn't the "MAGA crowd" love Clarence Thomas? Rubin's last paragraph begins: "We should not be surprised that in service of making Democrats appear to be an existential threat to America, Republicans will say anything to justify their opposition — the more venomous the better." Yeah, but we also should not be not surprised when, in service of making Republicans appear to be an existential threat to America, Democrats will say anything to justify their opposition — the more venomous the better.

"Instead of guessing — or worse, allowing politicians to favor explanations that fit their political agenda — it behooves us to find out the cause or causes of this phenomenon."

 Writes Jennifer Rubin, in "We should not have to guess why Americans are quitting en masse" (WaPo).

She says that right after asserting: "We know what is not a cause: unemployment benefits."

She proceeds to say: "Academics, private pollsters and government researchers need to get cracking." But why didn't she wait before asserting that government benefits are not sapping people of their will to work. 

And she goes on to suggest the very explanations that, unlike government benefits, would serve what I think is her political agenda:

Have more women than men quit? Have retail employees and others who deal with the public (e.g., airline attendants) had enough of the epidemic of rotten manners and even physical abuse they receive?... If the issue is child care, then the president’s Build Back Better agenda is essential... If the issue is fear of covid-19, the administration needs to start suing states that are attempting to ban lifesaving mask and vaccine mandates....

I certainly want accurate understanding of the causes of problems and well-designed solutions, but I don't trust Rubin — or the academics, private pollsters, and government researchers she calls on — to do anything that's not skewed by the quest for political power.

Elsewhere in The Washington Post, I'm seeing "Why is everyone quitting, and how do I know whether it’s time to leave my job?/Waves of Americans are leaving their jobs as part of the ‘Great Resignation.’ Here’s why."  This is a big topic because we just learned that 2.9% of the American workforce quit in August!

Why so many people find Jennifer Rubin an easy target.

She writes columns like "Why so many people find Biden an easy target" (WaPo). 

If Biden had known the intelligence community estimate for how long the Afghan government would last was wildly wrong, they argue, he could have started a mass evacuation sooner. But they cannot explain precisely how an earlier mass evacuation would not have brought down the Afghan government even sooner. The Biden administration made specific errors.... Nevertheless, expecting a flawless exit from a quagmire one perpetuated over two decades is unfair — and cowardly. Reporters who have themselves been spun about the war’s progress might be more candid about what the administration is achieving despite the chaos. Ah well, it seems there’s no market for that message during a pile-on.

But the media had been protecting Biden for so long, so uncritically, and the media, including Rubin, piled on Trump for his entire presidency, whether things were looking chaotic or he was pushing back chaos.

Andrea, Jennifer, and The 2 Williams.

I assured you that I would write this post. It's something that should be very fun for me, but I've made it obligatory. I said "It's one of my favorite stories ever." And then, fooling about in the comments:

Every task seems like more fun than the subject I regard as the ripest of the week, Andrea, Jennifer, and The 2 Williams. 

What is wrong with me? I just got up to make my 5th cup of coffee! 

Did William Shakespeare drink coffee? Did William Faulkner?... 

"He didn't have coffee, he didn't have vanilla, he didn't have cocoa. Imagine writing Hamlet without a cup of coffee. That's amazing."... 

Faulkner drank, but not so much coffee. 

"Jeezus Christ! Have you ever heard of anyone who drank while he worked? You’re thinking of Faulkner. He does sometimes—and I can tell right in the middle of a page when he’s had his first one"

So, yes, the "2 Williams" are Shakespeare and Faulkner. They were in the news last night because Andrea — Andrea Mitchell, the NBC News chief Washington correspondent — tweeted something so mind-bogglingly stupid — stupid, evil, and hilarious — and Jennifer — Jennifer Rubin, the WaPo columnist — lunged horribly after Andrea's tweet. These people — Mitchell and Rubin — are supposed to be the elite, but they are not even elite enough to keep from stumbling over a high-school level literary reference or even to think of making sure — with the quickest Google — they're not making a gaffe. 

Andrea saw what looked like it might be an opportunity to mock Ted Cruz.