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« No Slowdown for Ramp-Up: Businesses Plan Even More Hiring in Third Quarter | Main | What's the Deal With Drudge? »
June 15, 2004

Go Read Kaus

Kaus' postings today are all compulsively readable.

One thing I don't like about the amateur leftist newsletter Slate is the artificial and strained attitude they force into their pieces. Most magazines, even amateur leftist newsletters, strive for some sort of defining style; Slate has decided its defining pose is Revenge of the Dweeb. Its tone is smug and nasty and stinks of adolescent revenge fantasy, i.e., One day I'll have a cool job at a cool magazine and I'll get back at all those jocks and swells who called me "gaywad."

If Maureen Dowd's pose is the feathered-earring-wearing cool-chick-who's-also-clever shooting spitballs at the teacher's back, Slate's collective pose is the arrogant, despised nastygeek picking his nose and wiping it on your sandwich when you're not looking and then writing about this great triumph in his Dream Journal.


Now, Mickey Kaus sort of has that smug tone, too. But he actually manages what the nastygeeks never can, which is remaining charming while sticking in the dagger.

Kaus tears apart that idiotic New York Times puff-piece so relentlessly promoted by Drudge last week. He finds that there's absolutely nothing of value in the whole piece:

Does Even John Kerry Deserve Jodi Wilgoren? Jodi Wilgoren's Sunday front page NYT piece goes beneath the surface to uncover the

"many facets of Mr. Kerry's style and personality that [are] all but invisible to most voters in this era of stage-managed politics, where authentic insights into the people who would be president are precious few."

There's a self-puffing, expectations-raising billboard graf! And what does Wilgoren come up with after her "observations on the campaign trail over several months, combined with interviews with politicians and aides who spend time by his side"? Kerry polishes his speeches. He talks a lot on the phone. He went to an aide's wedding! Wow! That's journalistic gold. ...

P.P.S.: I forgot--Kerry also bowled an orange down the aisle of his campaign plane! Gee, no candidate's ever done that before. When a reporter resorts to describing the "orange bowling" ritual that's been going on since at least the Hart campaign of 1984, it's a sure sign of desperation. .

...For that matter, Wilgoren doesn't tell us any of the "multisyllabic uppercrust" phrasings she says Kerry uses, or any of the "pop culture" he's "up on," or any of the "unfamiliar words" a campaign intern had to look up (as his "main responsibility"--another "authentic" detail that reeks of B.S.). Doesn't the NYT have an editor with the power to write "Example, pls"?]

What Tim Noah and the rest of the nonentities at Slate don't realize is that sarcasm has its time and place; not every fucking sentence you write either should or can drip with sarcasm. They attempt to disguise the fact that they have nothing interesting to say by writing in an "edgy," "highly-attitudinal" style.

It's like listening to Richard Belzer deliver a eulogy to Reagan. "Yeah, right. Reagan. Star Wars. Right. Yeah. Ronny Ray-Gun. Right. Ketchup is a vegatable. Yeah, right. Oswald shot Kennedy. Yeah, right."

There's a time and place for sarcasm, and Kaus, unlike the rest of the useless crew at Slate, seem to understand that restriction.

Anyway, back to the article Kaus disses. I love that she fills the piece with so many general claims, and yet doesn't provide the specific, tangible examples that would make her generalities come alive. Specifics are the lifeblood of reporting, but apparently this reporter didn't get that memo. As Kevin Pollack might say, she was absent the day they taught journalism at j-school.

Oh wait-- she did nail down one specific. There is that hi-larious orange-bowling incident.

Great takedown. The NYT is, of course, the greatest newspaper in the history of the world.

Now, if only Kaus could cure his bad case of the slammies, and knock it off with that "isn't this cute?" back-and-forth repartee with his editor... [But don't you find that the editorial banter is part of his defining style? -- ed. No, I don't. I think it's a distraction. And, by the way, who the fuck are you? I don't have an editor. Oh, right, sorry.-- ed.]

posted by Ace at 03:03 AM
Comments



Ace: I believe it is spelled vegEtable.

P.S. The Belzer bit was hilarious.

Posted by: Kerry Is Unelectable on June 15, 2004 07:19 AM

Good piece. Hits all of its marks.

Posted by: Nicholas Kronos on June 15, 2004 08:22 AM


>Maureen Dowd's pose is the feathered-earring-wearing cool-chick-who's-also-clever

Make that cool-chick-wannabe

Posted by: milkmaid on June 15, 2004 09:12 AM

"Slate's collective pose is the arrogant, despised nastygeek picking his nose and wiping it on your sandwich when you're not looking and then writing about this great triumph in his Dream Journal."

I have a thing about boogers. I can no longer eat at Subway after reading that.

Posted by: Golden Boy on June 15, 2004 10:40 AM

John Cole exerpted another part of this NYT piece that jumped off the screen at me. (I know, Ace, the sarcastic/snide/post-ironic Slate schtick wears thin.)

Anyway, in the continuing prose/fellation, the reporter gushes that Kerry spends time "strumming on a Spanish classical guitar" and he's "learning a new (old) song, 'This Land Is Your Land.'"

Astounding. Utterly astounding.

First, how long does it take to learn three chords? Major chords--not minor, dimished, augmented, seventh, ninth, etc. Straight I-IV-V progression. All right, non-musos can pass on that one.

Second, why would this song be "new (old)" to Kerry? I'd wager that anyone who's ever posted on any of Ace's threads could come up with a few lines of this old chestnut. Didn't we all sing this song in elementary school? C,mon, this song has been in the American music pantheon for probably 75 years.

This incredibly lame attempt to portray Kerry as complex but down-to-earth guy only succeeds in unwittingly revealing that Kerry's priviledged, Swiss boarding school upbringing is about as far removed from the average american's as his gold-digging wife's.

More vomit and effluvia from the NYT.

Posted by: kelly on June 15, 2004 03:43 PM

This land is your land
This land is my land
From California
To the New York Islands
From the Red Wood Forests
To the Gulf Stream Waters
This Land was made for you and me.

Posted by: Vickie on June 16, 2004 02:04 PM
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