Deaf to Irony - Lalalalala, I Can't Hear You!

(Unfortunately, it seems that animated GIFs don't work in Blogger. Or maybe they do. You'll know if this one does. If not, imagine Mrs. Palin doing the chicken dance over there, or see it for yourself on the first page of comments on this post.)

I know, there are worse things in this world than being deaf to irony. But speaking of comments at alicublog, I admire this one, at the same place:

Well, y'know, for people who would (and do) abandon morality, honesty, decency, truth, justice, the American Way and ordinary guarded respect for criminal law in order to win, being a loser is, bar none, the lowest thing on the planet.

So, when they do lose, they are obligated by their secret code (I've seen the decoder ring) to blame someone else.

Oh, wait a minute: montag is talking about the Republicans there. He's right, it's exactly how the Republicans act when they lose an election. But it's also exactly how the Democrats act when they lose (or insufficiently win) an election: It's not our fault, not the President's fault, it's the professional leftists who made We the People stay home from the polls because the President didn't do every single tiny thing just the way they wanted it... And you know it doesn't occur to him that "people who would (and do) abandon morality, honesty, decency, truth, justice, the American Way and ordinary guarded respect for criminal law in order to win" includes Obama and his devotees.

It is mildly funny watching the Republicans go ballistic over Obama's appointment of Richard Cordray as director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, when recess appointments are as Republican as apple pie. (But it's different, says the Wall Street Journal opinion page, because the Democrats didn't like Republican recess appointment either! Even better: Obama is showing contempt for Congress!) It's like watching Republicans who use teleprompters and who worship former Presidents who relied on teleprompters mocking Obama for using a teleprompter. But the humor is merely structural: the hacks from whichever party is out of power will do this to the President of the party that happens to be in power. The only thing that concerns me is that the enabling bill for the CFPB apparently stipulates that the Bureau will be run by the Secretary of the Treasury (yep, that Secretary of the Treasury) "the Director of the Bureau is confirmed by the Senate in accordance with section 1011." But then, who reads these things anyway?

Also funny was this post at Digby's, attacking Matt Stoller's post on Ron Paul. Notice the update at the end:

Update: Stoller writes, correctly, to point out that he never said that Paul was a progressive. He's right, and I apologize for that. But the point here is that he maintains that 1) Paul holds more "progressive" positions than many supposed progressives, 2) that progressives are forced to use specious attacks on Paul to avoid confronting their own demons; and 3) that the federal reserve is somehow responsible for America's belligerence on the world stage. None of those three things are true.

Trouble is, as far as I could tell, Stoller didn't say 1) either -- he doesn't use the word "progressive" in his post at all, and doesn't say what Atkins says he said. (Atkins seems to be confusing liberals and progressives.) Nor does he seem to have said 3), though he did describe the role of the Federal Reserve in US aggression over the past century. As for 2), as Atkins' inability to address Stoller's actual positions is one piece of evidence that it's true. Compare Katha Pollitt's latest column, "Ron Paul's Strange Bedfellows" (giggle titter smirk), which begins "What is it with progressive mancrushes on right-wing Republicans?" and continues with more of the same distortions that have been turning up routinely in this controversy. I could ask what it was with middle-aged progressive women's cougarcrushes on the right-wing Barack Obama; Pollitt was a prominent case of this (she even started bashing other older women for their looks), and despite occasional restiveness, she hasn't really managed to shake it off. She was a lot harder on Bill Clinton.

I'm going out of town for the weekend. Back Monday.