Ann Friedman explores the issue. The results don't wind up looking too pretty. Personally, I find his views reminiscent of Charles Lindberg's.
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Why is Jonah Goldberg Anti-Choice?
16 Oct 2007 06:30 pm
Comments (21)
I'm sensing there's a sick joke in this somewhere based on the fact that Lindbergh lost his infant son in horrific fashion. Maybe not, and Goldberg is not a persuasive writer.
Zing! How long have you been waiting to use that on Jonah, MY?
That is, when did he first compare you to Lindbergh, has it been over a year yet?
fnook,
It is an inside joke, but has nothing to do with the Lindbergh baby. It is because Goldberg regularly compares Matt to Lindbergh and accuses him of being an anti-semite.
Personally, I'd rather be compared to Captain Cook Ernest Shackelton, or Lewis and Clark, but Lindbergh's not bad.
If the comparison is based on Lindbergh’s low double digit IQ, then I get it.
Jonah falls in the David Broder category: silly and vacuous. Their ideas do not deserve to be published or read, let alone analyzed.
Maybe he's not really anti-Choice, he just pretends to be lest they kick him off the GOP pundit plantation and take away his five-star rightwinger card. I suspect a lot of GOPers would welcome abortion (keeps the welfare rolls down you know) if they weren't afroad of anathemas thundering down from James Dobson and company.
you know, there are a lot of things about being a republican or a conservative that must suck right now.
for starters, having supported the worst president ever, and having him turn out to be such a pathetic loser.
but among the things that must really be a source of embarrassment is the fact that a mental midget like goldberg is one of the public faces of your movement.
of course--this would only suck if you were smart enough to realize what a mental midget he is, and possessed of any sense of shame.
and if you had any intelligence or any shame, you would have stopped being a republican or a conservative by now.
Had Lucianne chose to keep her legs closed, the world would have been a better place. Or at least there would have been more Cheetos...
I knew the Lindbergh reference, being an in-joke, would inspire confusion, but sadly I was neither confused nor surprised to see that Steve Sailer doesn't understand why the Lindbergh comparison was intended, and taken, as an insult.
Here's a hint: Goldberg wasn't suggesting that Yglesias was a pioneer in aviation.
P.S. all Lindbergh references, click Matt's link to the Ann Friedman post. Vapid really doesn't stretch to cover Goldberg's reasons.
I think JonF basically has it (although I would put it in less vituperative language). Goldberg certainly could not have secured his place in the right-wing commentariat without claiming to be pro-life, and so he is. His reasons, funny enough, are some of the exact same reasons I am pro-choice-- i.e., I have no idea about the moral status of the fetus, and I intuit that a 9th month fetus has a much greater claim to being a human person than a 6th week fetus. What I do know is that restricting abortions is very bad for living, breathing female persons. As a result, I give the claim by actual persons far greater weight than the claim by potential or possible persons.
The only logical conclusion, assuming that Goldberg seriously believes his argument, is that Goldberg simply doesn't think that avoiding catastrophic harm to actual female persons is important enough to risk even a potential compromise of nascent life. There's a term for that-- "anti-feminist".
Of course, when that poor mother forced to have her baby comes looking for healthcare assistance Jonah will insist it was her choice and bad decision to have the child...
If conservatives were pro-choice, Jonah would be enthusiastically pro-choice. Since the Republican Party is anti-choice, Jonah is timidly anti-choice. These conclusions can't be proven, but if accepted, it follows that he's actually a pro-choice conservative masking as an anti-choice conservative. Either way, he's still an idiot.
I agree with the others that say that Jonah is anti-abortion because he wants to be a part of the whole conservative movement thing. This is the real danger (to the evangelical rightists) of Giuliani getting the nomination--he then officially makes it okay to be right-wing and pro-choice.
I heard a rumor once that Goldbergh slept in the same bed with his mother until he was 27. I suppose it's just vicious nonsense but I heard it somewhere, so I'm putting it out there.
I hope he refutes it.
Like many people whose ambition seems to outstrip their smarts, Goldberg appears to be incredibly neurotic and desperate for approval. Unfortunately, given his family background and social position, this Freudian vicious circle has produced a mind capable of comparing liberals to Italian fascism in book-length form.
More unfortunately, modern America has produced someone else willing to publish it.
"Personally, I'd rather be compared to Captain Cook Ernest Shackelton, or Lewis and Clark, but Lindbergh's not bad."
There's always hope, Steve, but you're more likely to be compared to Fatty Arbuckle, Squeaky Fromme, or Carlile R. Stevens
Re Yglesias
When is Mr. Yglesias going to learn how to spell Charles Lindberghs' name correctly?
Re Jonah Goldberg
Somebody should ask Mr. Goldberg if his mother had Harry Truman wear a condom during their alleged assignation.
Not knowing much about Mr. Goldberg, is it possible he's anti-choice because he feels that "choosing" to murder a human being isn't really a "choice"?
"Not knowing much about Mr. Goldberg, is it possible he's anti-choice because he feels that "choosing" to murder a human being isn't really a "choice"?"
No, I really think he's willing to kill for Cheetos...
Steve was spot on. Talk about your obscure and misplaced historical analogies! As for Lindberg being an anti-semite, I guess he was considering that the label is applied to everyone and anyone from James F. Cooper to Robert Novak.
Comments closed October 30, 2007.
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Heads in the Sand
I think the problem is that he doesn't actually have a reason. Well, maybe "because my mother says so."
Posted by MattF | October 16, 2007 6:43 PM