Good News For McCain Challenger J.D. Hayworth—He's Depressing Jacob Weisberg
07/14/2010
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Very good news for John McCain primary challenger J.D. Haysworth—he's depressing Jacob Weisberg, who writes in Slate:
I've stopped reading news about John McCain for the same reason I tune out the daily updates on Afghanistan and the BP oil spill: It's just too damned depressing....In the last few months, McCain has flipped his position on dropping the military's anti-gay "don't ask, don't tell" policy, soft-pedaled his support for climate-change legislation, and dropped his support for humane, comprehensive immigration reform. In just the past week, he has come out against Elena Kagan's Supreme Court nomination on the lamest of grounds and defended Arizona's ugly anti-immigrant law against challenge by the Justice Department.
(The Saddest Senator, Slate, July 10-12, 201O, links in original).

Weisberg is, of course, the Grand Panjandrum Editor of Slate, the Washington Post's ponderous PC attempt to adapt to the internet. And therefore he has no excuse to stop reading news for any reason: it's his job.

But I think that here he's being honest—which seems to be (I hope I say this with Christian compassion) hard for him.

I gave Weisberg a boot recently in connection in my article ”Redneckophobia”? Why Obama Is Attacking Arizona. I referred back to my critique of his mendacious review of Alien Nation. At that time, I wrote:

My theory: Weisberg is a type, common in New York, whose verbal slickness exceeds his intellectual powers. Faced with an argument that disturbs him emotionally, he compulsively lies about it, like a lunatic exposing himself to a nubile woman.
(This was too daring for National Review editor John O'Sullivan, who would only publish a bowdlerized version. Alas, Bill Buckley threw O'Sullivan under the bus anyway.)

I didn't expect Weisberg to respond to my critique, both because immigration enthusiasts never do respond to criticism and because, well, it's unanswerable. But to my surprise he tweeted:

Peter Brimelow, you're a crank and a bigot. P.S. Your cranky, bigoted website has reprinted my work without permission http://bit.ly/doZTcN
A silly response, needless to say—I'd rather be editor of a cranky, bigoted website than a boring, treasonous one. And our posting of Weisberg's childish review comports exactly with intenet fair usage. Or is he he ashamed of it?

But what is really significant here is the uncontrollable emotion that Weisberg's silly abuse betrays. You can be arrested for DWI—Driving While Intoxicated. Weisberg is PWH—pontificating while hysterical.

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