Bored yesterday I was trolling around looking for something interesting. I saw this posted on NRO by Jonah Goldberg. He was taking the lunatic writer to task for her foaming at the mouth rantings. It is a favorite of both Left and Right to pick out a ranting from the other side and then rant about its alleged shortcomings. Lunatics pretend that deviations from orthodox liberalism are violations of the laws of physics. That allows them to be excessively smug, in addition to condescending.
The sheer volume of really terrible and inaccurate responses to the Supreme Court decision in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. has been kind of astonishing. Every few hours, a new piece of conservative flotsam washes up and demands to be taken seriously. They all go something like, “This is a victory for religious freedom. You can’t make your boss foot the bill for your choices. Contraception is ‘recreational,’ not medical. Cave man mad grumble sexual intercourse grumble procreation grumble.” It seems that nothing gets the right riled up quite like a victory for corporate personhood and the tantalizing prospect of punishing and humiliating women.
Katie McDonough is listed as “Salon’s politics writer, focusing on gender, sexuality and reproductive justice.” According to her resume, Katie is a 30-something woman from an upper middle-class family. Rather than finding a husband, she has been living off her parents while pretending to be a writer in NYC. She also appears to have developed an unhealthy obsession with her lady parts.
I have nothing to say about her column. It is full of the abracadabra words hive minded lunatics like Ms. McDonough find appealing. Hers is a life full of signaling. Like all herd animals, she is obsessed with the borders between her group and those outside her group, the folks we call normal people. Scanning her writing, I see repetitive chanting, defining the line between her gang and an array of bogeymen she imagines are threatening to seal up her barren uterus.
Anyway, reading along for a bit, I noticed down at the bottom right a little block suggesting other stories on the site I may like. There was this one, written by another womyn, about how she has closed the doors and windows of her life to avoid anything that contradicts the tenets of her politics. Looking into her bio, I discovered she is just another type of spoiled crazy person rich countries have elected to indulge. Her ailments may be real, but her melodramatics are pure theater.
Then I see this story pop up. It is now featured on Drudge, who enjoys showcasing the hard thumping crazies of the Left when it is a slow news cycle. The writer is one of those old pseudo-radicals that grows increasingly deranged as they hit their dotage. He sat out the fun stuff in college like storming Dean Wormer’s office or banging the radical hippy girls. He tried to make up for it by carrying the radical flag from the comfort of his university office, but now is just a nuisance.
Having missed the last revolution, he is forever predicting the next one is around the corner. I recall reading similar rants to this one in the 1980’s, during the Reagan years. Here we were in the midst of a great economic boom and a period of cultural peace and these aging hippies were talking about the brewing revolt. Given the current times, it is just as funny to hear a lefty talk about the coming revolt, given that the Left is full control of the nation. The lack of self-awareness with these people is stunning.
Anyway, I realized I was reading Salon and recalled how it was one of the first webzines. Slate was another, backed by Bill Gates. Salon was emblematic of the late 90’s in that it was a business with no revenues, but a sky high stock price. They were convinced that hits would translate into dollars, which never happened. In the 90’s, it was typical of the Left during the Clinton era. They published boutique liberalism aimed at the sort of people who wrote max checks to the local Democrat.
