Greg Sargent Beclowns Himself

The left is sometimes so shamelessly dishonest and childish that it's difficult to even argue against them. The bad faith they exhibit is so obvious that it seems pointless to note it -- it must be obvious to they themselves, after all, and apparently they're pretty comfortable in the gutter.

Greg Sargent -- or "The Sarge," as I call him, owing to his heroic service chasing down Taliban in Afghanistan -- claimed that "values voters" ought to be greatly upset by Giuliani's "unhinged' use of the word "bullshit" at a rally.

After being the subject of great mockery and buffoonification for this idiocy, he now announces:

Memo to wingnuts: There's a little something about Rudy's "bulls#$t" moment that we know and that you don't know.

He then quotes from a NYT article, which he seems to have found at Ann Althouse's, published today, noting that during this rally many of the white cops in attendance were drunk and rowdy, and further some waved "racist" signs like "Dump the Washroom Attendant," a reference to David Dinkins, who was in fact about as competent at city management as a washroom attendant.

Then, as "The Sarge" always does, he begins demanding apologies for imagined misdeeds committed by his political opponents:

Note to wingnuts: This moment actually had great resonance for African Americans in New York for many, many years. It was a key chapter in the history of both race relations in the city and of Rudy's own rise to power. And Rudy's own campaign internally conceded that this was really, really bad -- that he'd sought to rile up an audience carrying signs saying things about Dinkins like "dump the washroom attendant" without denouncing their crude displays of racism. This is all actually common knowledge to lots of people. You could have established this basic history and context with five minutes on Google or Nexis before holding forth on it.

But let's say it's not even your fault that you didn't know anything about this. And let's even concede that we should have spelled the history and context out better in our initial post. Now that you actually know a little something about the topic at hand, isn't it time for some follow-up posts explaining to your readers whether the moment's worthy of attention and what people should think of it?

The childishness here, of course, is that Greg Sargent obviously didn't remember any of this "context" himself, or else he might have mentioned it in his post. He is therefore, it seems, demanding an apology from himself for failing to recall the "context" of a rally that occurred 15 years ago.

But of course he pretends that he knew it all along -- "I meant to do that!" -- and that when he was focusing laser-like on the word "Bullshit!" and its anathemic repulsiveness to "values voters," what he was really talking about was Giuliani's supposed racial insensitivity, his inclination to "provoke riots" in order to take over government via the putsch, and, uh, whatever else he's now claiming.

Gee, Sarge, if that was what was really important about this rally, why is that there is not a single mention of "rowdy cops" or "racial insensitivity" in your original post? Why did you only mention the invocation of the unholy profanity "Bullshit" and the incongruity of "values voters" supporting such a blasphemer? Indeed, why were you concentrating on "values voters" at all, given that what you now claim was your inexplicably-unmentioned true complaint all along was not about "values" about language and decorum, but about race relations and beer-hall putsches?

I'm supposed to apologize to The Sarge, though, it seems.

Tell you what, The Sarge: The apology is on its way, the moment you prostrate yourself before your audience for your disgusting dishonesty and self-serving claims about "what you knew" but didn't see fit to mention until a NYT article published today alerted you to it.

There is just something wrong with leftists such as Sargent. An spiritual emptiness and an intellectual insecurity that unhinged belief in partisan liberalism satisfies. If one believes in the Doctrine of the Cult, then one is transformed incorruptible, and, it seems, infallible.

Why else believe in such twaddle if not to become Jesus-like in virtue and God-like in intellect?

And damnit, even if The Sarge beclowned himself here, why, wait! He's a lefty! He can't have been wrong! Ah, it seems that there were these other things to be concerned about at this rally, and he must have meant those when talking about "values voters" and the horrible profanity "Bullshit!"

Because, you know, it's just not possible he may have erred in judgment or have been ignorant of any facts from 15 years ago.

The Sarge's new argument is not a good argument, God knows. If he wanted to inform his readers fully of the "context" of Giuliani's cop-rally, he might have shared this "context" with them as well:

Those were grim days for race relations in New York City, the early 1990s. There were nearly 2,000 murders each year, blacks and whites died in high-profile racial killings, and a riot held a divided Brooklyn neighborhood in thrall for three dangerous nights.

On Jan. 9, 1994, another match landed in this tinderbox: a caller reported a burglary at a Harlem mosque. The police ran in, and Nation of Islam guards threw punches and broke an officer’s nose.

The mosque’s minister, accompanied by the Rev. Al Sharpton, drove downtown to register their outrage with the police commissioner, a street theater ritual grudgingly tolerated by past mayors.

Except the new mayor — Rudolph W. Giuliani, fresh off his November victory over the city’s first black mayor, David N. Dinkins — decreed that no one would meet with Mr. Sharpton. No more antics, no more provocations.

“I’ve taken a golden opportunity to act like a sensible mayor rather than a mayor who will be moved in any direction,” he said. “I’m an observer of the last 10 years of this city, and I hope to God we don’t continue in that direction.”

But his new argument is at least not as riotously absurd as his last argument.

He's welcome to make his new argument.

But he's not permitted to claim his new argument was in fact his argument all along, and demand apologies (for the millionth time) from "wingnuts" who fail, according to him, to read a post about the word "Bullshit" and "values voters" as about racism and fascists marching on Rome.

Coming Next: Greg "The Sarge" Sargent claims he only wrote that hysterical (in both meanings of the word) post in order to cleverly draw attention to Giuliani's gestapo tendencies, tricking dumb "wingnuts" into mentioning it!

Oh boy, Greggie! Boy is my face red! You sure are some kind of Pointdexter Brainiac of an Einstein, I'll say that for sure!

What a clever feller. I never could keep up with those slick city geniuses. I'm a simple man with simple pleasures, like whittlin' corn-cob pipes and raping stray dogs.

Layers.

posted by Ace at 01:23 PM

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