I find myself aggravated by The New Republic's pro-surge editorial thanks to my allergy to their brand of bold truth-telling. Similarly, an aversion to bold truth-telling undergirds my disquiet at Marty Peretz's blowjob to Fouad Ajami.
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Surge!
03 May 2007 09:48 am
Comments (23)
Ain't gonna mention Chait's almost restrained takedown of yourself?
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I beilieve the moral of the story is not to take your anti-Marty shots and pro-spackerman shots in a context where Chait is calmly waiting to respond with shots of his own.
The bball analogy would be that you shouldn't double Tim Duncan in the post, leaving Robert Horry wide open at the 3 point line. Never leave Chait a wide open shot. You know he's not going to miss.
Tim Duncan is probably one of the last NBA players I'd think of as an analog for Martin Peretz.
Well now we know where Matty's blog won't appear next.
"Tim Duncan is probably one of the last NBA players I'd think of as an analog for Martin Peretz."
Why? Neither of them are Arabs, thus both are civilized human beings. Perfect analogy.
Woot! Yglesias Vs. Chait! Bring it on!
This has the potential to be almost as good as the Axl Rose/Vince Neill public feud of 1991.
"Woot! Yglesias Vs. Chait! Bring it on! This has the potential to be almost as good as the Axl Rose/Vince Neill public feud of 1991."
Seems a bit more like Mardy Collins / Carmelo Anthony, with Matthew cast in the Mardy Collins role.
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If you're going to bring it against Chait, you'd better really bring it to have any chance of even getting a draw. If you get lost in score-settling side-shows, you'll be on the canvas and groggy before you even know what hit you. Dude's got an amazingly effective jab.
A blowjob for Fouad Ajami? How is that consistent for a magazine whose main institutional and emotional commitment is to right-wing Israeli nationalism? I just can't understand it.
See, oral sex-themed insults will only get you so far. If you want to work for Time Magazine, you gotta go straight for the ass.
If Petey's casting Chait in the Melo role, and he thinks that's a good thing (for Chait), then I think he's got a radically different take on the Collins/Robinson/Melo/whoever else fracas than I did, since to me that indicates that just as everything was calming down, Chait ran up, sucker punched Matt, mid-punch realized it was a poor idea, and retreated in horror once the deed was done, this leaving him in the awkward position of both having exercised poor judgment and also making himself look like a cowardly punk.
Why on earth are readers still forced to suffer the likes of Peretz. Didn't he sell TNR?
"If Petey's casting Chait in the Melo role, and he thinks that's a good thing (for Chait), then I think he's got a radically different take on the Collins/Robinson/Melo/whoever else fracas than I did,"
The problem is that there are so few NBA fights these days that I was choosing from a tiny, tiny, universe.
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How 'bout Chait is Jermaine O'Neal and Matthew is some punk from the stands who's wandered onto the court looking for action to defend the honor of one of the Detroit Spackerman players.
We all know how that one ended...
I read the Chait piece referenced above and have no idea what he's talking about. A drone like me can write as opaquely and tediously as that, and I'm just a technoprole.
Marty Peretz's blowjob to Fouad Ajami.
"Blowjob of," surely. Unless you mean Peretz performs a blowjob, somewhere, as a spectacle, and that it's the blowjob-as-spectacle, rather than the blowjob-as-enjoyed sexual act, that he offers Ajami. If you meant the latter metaphor, you're watching too much porn.
Petey -
that's definitely better, because I basically endorse what J.O'Neal did to said punk. But that makes Peretz who...Artest? I don't like it.
Hey, how about: Peretz is PJ Brown and Spackerman is Charlie Ward, and the rest susses out from there. If you're so set on the idea of Chait's dangerous skills, then maybe he can be 'Zo and Matt can be Jeff VG, desperately hanging on to his thigh in a futile attempt to stop Chait's...rhetorical...rampage? At any rate, I think that sets up both the complete worthlessness of Peretz* AND preserves your notion that Yglesias should somehow fear Chait.
*I've actually got nothing against PJ Brown, but in that context, what he did was just ridiculous and uncalled for and potentially quite dangerous.
dude, look up "aggravate"
I want to revert back to non-fighting hoops. The whole point is that Chait is a Robert Horry / Michael Finley kind of player who isn't up to the skills of Kobe Bryant, but has a deadly outside shot when left open.
If Matthew neglects his defensive responsibility on Chait on the perimeter to go argue with the refs or provide defensive help to another player on his team, you know the ball will rotate back around to Chait, and you know Chait will take full advantage of Matthew being out of position to drill that wide-open trey.
Petey is playing the Mark Halperin role here, focused on cheering for the more effective debater completely independent of which of them happens to be right on the merits. And yes, Jon Chait is playing the Karl Rove role in this analogy.
"Petey is playing the Mark Halperin role here, focused on cheering for the more effective debater..."
...and trying to be clever at the same time.
It's the Full Halperin.
That said, you wear it well.
This is entertaining and all, but did anyone else read the linked editorial? It's one of the more wishy-washy pieces I've read for a while, really unclear on what it's arguing for or against. It's like some kind of strange Hegelian synthesis argument: all of the opposing parties should keep doing what exactly they presently are, and this will lead to a magical synthesis, except that the synthesis isn't even a good result, it's just "far from the worst course."
Huh, it's been two days since I read Yglesias's response to Chait but I can still easily see that Chait misrepresents it in his response.
It seems that Chait thinks you can't be intellectually honest if you don't openly criticize everybody who you have any criticism of. He believes that not criticizing -- indeed, not saying anything about -- somebody who you have substantive criticism of is dishonest. Well, I'm sure he doesn't actually believe this, but he writes as if he does.
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Comments closed May 17, 2007.
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Heads in the Sand
You have an allergy to any kind of truth-telling.
Posted by pimp hand strikes! | May 3, 2007 9:58 AM