I should probably say something more substantive about it and, in fact, plan to do so tomorrow. For now, though, let me just note that my diavlog with Ramesh Ponnuru is online and that he's damn reasonable for a conservative, justifying my contention last week in an off-the-record email discussion that we should seek to replace all currently existing conservative pundits with Ramesh Ponnuru.
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New Diavlog
13 Jun 2007 12:17 am
Comments (36)
i have to say, i'm wondering why you had your "trent lott moment" opposite your one diavlog with a brown man....
Yes, it's a shame the Derb had to go and hurt his feelings like that.
even Ross?
I think we should replace all currently existing conservative pundits with Jessica Alba, but that's just me.
Is Jessica Alba a conservative?
Ramesh Ponnuru? Reasonable? You are joking, right?
Is Jessica Alba a conservative?
Not to my knowledge. Does it matter?
Ramesh Ponnuru? Reasonable? You are joking, right?
Oh Matt just has a soft spot for Ramesh because they both made the same frivolous arguments in support of the Iraq war.
Ramesh is wrong on some stuff, but he is freakishly intelligent. He's also considerate enough to thoughtfully reply to e-mails from a nobody like me.
Ramesh is also calm, for the most part. The only time I saw him get a little heated was when a black woman caller asked him why he married a California blond (Trixie), implying that he was some sort of self-hating Indian man. Ramesh's elegantly pithy answer: "Because I fell in love with her".
Shouldn't we leave Ross Douthat and maybe Fareed Zakaia?
I sort of like that James Pinkerton guy at bloggingheads too. Not the brightest guy in the world, but decent. And that "liberaltarian" from CATO who's trying to reconcile the Summer of Love with school vouchers and tax cuts, or whatever, is okay, or at least not a jerk. Problem I have with Ponnuru is that Coulterish "Party of Death" thing. I was having trouble putting that garbage together with the almost likeable little Con in the diavlog. One thing we have to realize about some of these guys is that they're down right now - Ramesh clearly realizes most of America thinks they pretty much suck and have trashed our foreign policy, if not the country as a whole - so promoting civility is in their interest. Most of them will be back at us with knives once they think they can get away with it.
The blame America guy? Really?
He says 'Liberals', but he means America.
I think we should replace all currently existing conservative pundits with Jessica Alba, but that's just me.
best comment - ever!
Oh he's a wingnut alright--staunchly pro-torture. But, ideologically speaking, he's just an unusually honest & clear-thinking wingnut.
I too like Ramesh, he's clearly very smart, intellectually honest and willing to take on his side. I also like Ross Douthat,Jim Pinkerton,*gulp* George Will and *bigger gulp* David Brooks.
But we should be able to practice some empathy, imagine if, say, Glenn Reynolds or Malkin had a post about how great Yglesias was...we'd all view it with a little suspicion. More to the point, the liberal pundit that conservatives really do like is Kaus, who of course, these days, probably is a conservative. So, if we want to promote the ascendency of Ramesh and Ross, we should instead either criticize them constantly in highly personal tones or just ignore them. Conservatives like nothing more than pissing off liberals, so if we can convince them that we HATE Ramesh and Ross, the world will be better for it.
Ross is releasing a book in 08, let's get ready to rip him a new one
damn reasonable for someone who thinks I will burn in hell for eternity and wants to turn back the clock to 1921.
I dunno, Ramesh usually comes across as remarkably thin skinned and dickish over at The Corner. Maybe he's a nicer guy in person...
The author of "Party of Death"? The guy who thinks the Taliban is a good working model for American society? The same Ramesh who thinks al Qaeda attacked us because we're too immoral, and they were right to do so? The guy who thinks liberals and Democrats are the worst enemy to face our country? THAT Ramesh Ponnuru? Someone can be pleasant in person and still be a complete, raving wingnut, and that's exactly the case here.
Matt, this may well be the most disappointing thing I've ever seen you write, which is astounding considering you've written positive articles about the Wizards before.
Jef Hebert may think Dinesh D'Souza and Ramesh Ponnuru are the same person.
I think Fred is also getting the two mixed up. It's Dinesh D'Souza who has the blonde Californian wife. Her name's Dixie I think.
D'Souza - now there's a major-league asshole.
Jeez, can we keep our conservative commentators with funny sounding foreign names straight? Please?
Does our side have commentators with funny sounding foreign names too? Just wondering.
instead of jumping on MY for this assessment, I'd rather ask what's up with the "strange new respect" for D'Souza, and even Bill Frist (?!?!?) in recent posts.
I don't think MY's lost his compass. I think instead what you're seeing is that some smart, wrong-headed people are compelled to *play* utter assholes on the national scene by the dynamics of the wing-nut market to which they are playing.
they aren't as bad as the base to which they pander. which makes them more amoral, more wrong-headed in a certain sense.
but it also explains how, when face to face with a reasonable person who will call them immediately on their lies, sc. MY, they dial it down a notch.
it is funny how people confuse party-of-death-Ponnuru and lets-hug-mullahs-D'Souza. They don't look or sound alike at all.. at least to another South Asian like moi. But both are major a**holes. D'Souza much more than Ponnuru.
I think MY is falling for style. Ponnuru is very articulate and calm in person. But maybe one should focus on what he is saying verses how he says it. And what he is saying is pretty extreme.
I always thought Ponnuru was pretty reasonable. As for the book, hey, those wingnut welfare checks don't just write themselves.
But the episode of his hit job on Laurence Tribe, if anyone recalls that, really turned me off. It was just so deeply, unbelievably, hackish. But he clearly had his marching orders.
There's no contradiction involved in being a reasonable conservative (although it always amuses me that Fred, the guy who talks about "non-black work ethics," thinks he's one of them). But I'm pretty sure there's a contradiction in being a reasonable MOVEMENT conservative. Fealty to the movement just involves too many lies and smears if you want to remain in good standing.
Apologies, you're of course right, Canadian. I tend to confuse the two of them; after a while the hate-mongering and Christianism all runs together in my head.
To clarify, Ramesh wrote "The Party of Death". Both men are Christianists and as far as I can tell hate both liberals and Democrats, but it was Dinesh who sympathizes with the Islamists, not Ponnuru. Those references were incorrect and I apologize for the error.
I think we should replace all currently existing conservative pundits with Jessica Alba, but that's just me.
this is totally sexist and biased against gay men. my counter-proposal is that we replace half with Jessica Alba and the other half with Idris Elba.
Well, both Ramesh and D'Souza got reamed by Colbert. Speaking as an Indian-American, I find both of them embarrassing. Why are the major Catholic Indian-American political faces such jokes? That includes Congressman Jindal. I blame Goa's crazy political culture.
2cynicalbyhalf wrote:
"I think MY is falling for style. Ponnuru is very articulate and calm in person. But maybe one should focus on what he is saying verses how he says it. And what he is saying is pretty extreme."
And that is a foundational point. David Brooks looks "reasonable" on TV, but he thinks badly. George Will also looks reasonable, but he's not.
I'm further perplexed by the idea of blogging tv. This nice thing about blogs is that (when done well) they eliminate the tv kinds of appraisals and focus instead on the arguments alone.
2cynicalbyhalf: "I think MY is falling for style. Ponnuru is very articulate and calm in person. But maybe one should focus on what he is saying verses how he says it. And what he is saying is pretty extreme."
That's probably true. I like Ramesh, though, because he is at least willing to present the opposite side of the argument from time to time, and he's at least polite. I can like and respect people who have very different views from me; that's the great thing about America.
That said, Ramesh is a beneficiary of the soft bigotry of low expectations on this one. There's not a lot of competition for the Conservative Commentator Most Willing to Treat Liberals as if They Were Humans. The cocoon effect has really created some terrible effects there.
Which makes me think it may be a good thing for there to be more group blogs with a divergence of opinion, to prevent Left Blogistan from degenerating into the National Review.
"I think Fred is also getting the two mixed up. It's Dinesh D'Souza who has the blonde Californian wife."
Sorry, my bad. To the Indian fellow who asked why we mix the two up, since they don't look alike: In my case, I wrote that before viewing the Diavlog, because I didn't want to wake my girlfriend with the sound. Had I watched it first, I probably would have recognized it was a different guy.
I tend to confuse the two of them; after a while the hate-mongering and Christianism all runs together in my head.
LOL. yeah.
"Soft bigotry of lowered expectations" I think is right. The ability to entertain fairly and honestly an opposing argument is a minimum necessary requirement for rational civil discourse. If you can only do that once and a while, then you shouldn't be allowed at the big kids' table.
Does it follow that you will be just as happy the the conservative pundits are replaced by the Ponnuru worshipper Jonah Goldberg?
Methinks you like Ponnuru because he does not look like the run of the mill blond blue eyed conservative with shitload of hair on his head.
Comments closed June 27, 2007.
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Heads in the Sand
"The Party of Death"?
Posted by otto | June 13, 2007 12:46 AM