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Thursday, July 21, 2005

The Purpose-Driven Bobo

Thanks to years of painstaking practice, Bobo has honed his patented rhetorical deep-throat technique to a rarefied art form that even Jenna Jameson could learn from. At this point, Bobo has distinguished himself as quite the up-and-cummer, except he needs to do a better job of wiping off his chin afterward.

Roberts nomination, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

I love thee with the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach. I love thee freely, as men strive for right. I love thee because this is the way government is supposed to work. President Bush consulted widely, moved beyond the tokenism of identity politics and selected a nominee based on substance, brains, careful judgment and good character.

I love thee because John G. Roberts is the face of today's governing conservatism.


Ugh. Let's forget for a moment the twee pastiche Bobo establishes here, prosaically twirling around the meadow in his sun dress, and consider the practical contradiction posed by the last two sentences. Do either of those sentences jibe with the empirical reality you see before you, when you read even a little about the old-school lackeys Bush has stacked his team with. Do nematodes like Elliott Abrams and Otto Reich sound like choices based on "substance" and "good character"? Do Karl Rove and Scooter Libby exhibit "careful judgment" (or again, "substance" and "good character"?), in your humble citizen's opinion? If you're a businessperson, would you want such people working in your employ?

Well, you are, bunky, and they do. America is your business, and business is....eh, not so hot right this minute.

No matter, because this kneepad-monkey is just priming the pump, squeezing and working artfully in the manner that only the well-practiced fellatrix can, making you hold it just long enough to paint the ceiling with a Krakatoa of monkey butter. Go Jenna go!


Conservatives who came of age in the 1960's did so in an intensely ideological time when it was arduous to be on the right. People from that generation are more likely to have a dissident mentality, to want to storm the ramparts of the liberal establishment, to wade in to vanquish their foes in the war of ideas.

But John Roberts didn't enter Harvard until the fall of 1973. He missed all that sturm und drang, so he lacks, his former colleagues say, the outsider/dissident mentality. By the time he came of age, it was easier for a conservative to be comfortable in mainstream institutions, without feeling embattled or spoiling for a fight.


Great, so Roberts doesn't appear to be a firebrand as of yet. This is not necessarily borne out by Jenna's (I mean Bobo's) argument as such; it may merely be that Roberts hails from a pretty meat-and-potatoes part of the country that would have little patience with some stinking hippie even if they were more-or-less agreeable on, say, Vietnam. I don't know, and Bobo's speculation indicates that he doesn't know, either.


Roberts has chosen to live in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, not the Virginia ones, where the political climate is 30 degrees to the right. He submitted his wedding notice to the wedding page of The New York Times, which is perceived as alien turf by ideological conservatives.


Rather than evidence that maybe some of these so-called "ideological conservatives" ought to think about getting a grip on the importance of where to place a wedding announcement, Bobo thinks it's evidence of Roberts' ecumenicism and commitment to nothing more than absolute ideological neutrality.

Which is bullshit. Roberts was a member of the Federalist Society, and his wife was on the board for (ahem) Feminists For Life, the name of which organization pretty much explains what they're all about. Whether he's some sort of Opus Dei knuckle-dragger remains to be seen -- and indeed, doesn't seem necessarily all that likely -- but again, Bobo's tiresome tautologies do him no great favors.

But they make a pretty, pretty summer frock. Bobo feels so fresh, he can probably ride a horse with confidence, even when Aunt Flo's visiting.


I love thee also, Roberts nomination, because now we probably won't have to endure another bitter and vulgarized chapter of the culture war.

Confirmation battles have come to seem of late like occasions for bitterly divided Catholics to turn political battles into holy war Armageddons. Most of the main Democrats on the Judiciary Committee are Catholics who are liberal or moderate (Kennedy, Biden, Durbin, Leahy), and many of the most controversial judges or nominees are Catholics who are conservative (Scalia, Thomas, Pryor). When they face off, you get this brutal and elemental conflict over the role morality should play in public life.

Roberts is indeed a Catholic (if he's confirmed, there will be four on the court, three Protestants and two Jews), but he's not the sort to spark the sort of debate that leads to bitter Catholic vs. Catholic meshugas. He's not a holy warrior, and his wife is active in the culturally heterodox Feminists for Life.


Funny how this "elemental conflict" of morality's putative "role" in the public sphere is such a recurring theme in Bobo's frilly Ĺ“uvre, yet Bobo refuses to look at the other side of this rusty coin, and maybe find an answer to the eternal dilemma.

Look at it this way -- as Bobo pointed out, Roberts' confirmation to the Supreme Court would make four Catholics, three Protestants, and two Jews. So, no atheists. This is not a small question; indeed, it cuts to the very heart of the matter. Some 10-15% of Americans claim to be atheists, or at least non-religious. Could a professed atheist -- or even someone who flatly refused to discuss his spiritual beliefs whatsoever, citing that they were personal and private -- even get approached, much less nominated, much less confirmed? Of course not. The very notion of it is utterly silly.

When we start to think seriously about the why behind that condition, the cold hard fact that a lot of good, smart qualified people get passed over for all sorts of public office, just because their moral code does not derive from a held-over belief in a Levantine tribal sky-god, we find our answer. The answer is simple, and belies the canard of religion being persecuted across the land -- religious people believe that atheists cannot, by definition, be as moral as those who profess belief in the sky-god. Obviously, one doesn't have to look far at all to find plenty of moral juxtapositions negating such a retarded notion. Not only that, but each religion has their preponderating view of the rest of the religions -- they all believe in God, but each "knows" that its belief is "right".

I submit that Roberts could hold the exact same opinions and beliefs he does now, but if he were a professed atheist, to hacks like Bobo, it would militate against him. This is not Bobo's fault, of course, but it is his fault that he steadfastly refuses to confront this very elemental fact of American civic life. America has come a long way, I suppose, in terms of official ecumenicism; we no longer engage in cheap Jew-baiting, and Muslims are politically active in many areas around the country -- certainly more than American Christians would be allowed to in Muslim countries.

And yet, atheism -- or even agnosticism -- remains the undrawn line, the unwritten rule. Such a person could not get nominated or appointed, nor elected, certainly not as President. People simply would not put up with it. Who would those "people" possibly be? Why, the endlessly-persecuted religious, of course. And yet the politically active religious groups view this paradigm in exactly opposite terms. Are they willfully blind to reality, or is it that this happens to be the area where the biggest profit margin is to be found, by convincing the flock that Armageddon (literal or political) is always right around the corner?


I love thee, finally, because now we'll get to see Hillary Clinton and the other mainstream Democratic presidential hopefuls define themselves.

This is going to be the first Supreme Court confirmation battle of the age of the blogger. Already the liberal interest groups, amplified by the blogs, are rolling out the old warhorse rhetoric. Already they've begun distorting Roberts's record, selectively quoting from his opinions and insisting the Senate maintain the balance of the court (which never matters when a Democrat is president).


What an asshole. What an unmitigated conservaslut. How have "Hillary Clinton and the other mainstream Democratic presidential hopefuls" defined themselves so far, huh? Hmmm? Has Hillary voted against anything having to do with the Iraq War, or for throwing good money after bad in said engagement? Has Joe Biden ever thought about telling the credit card companies anything they didn't want to hear? Has Evan Bayh ever been anything other than a solid, reliable centrist?

Those are the Democratic frontrunners, Bobo, and it is no sin that the only thing they've really put their foot down on is Bush's Social Security scam -- which, oddly, most reg'lar Merkins thought was bullshit, too.

Bobo, why do you hate America?


I suspect the Democratic elites would rather skip this fight because it has all the makings of a political loser. Anybody who is brilliant during Supreme Court grillings, as Roberts is, will be impressive at confirmation hearings. He is modest and likeable, and has done pro bono work on behalf of the environment, parental rights and minorities.

But the Democratic elites no longer run the party. The outside interest groups and the donors do, and they need this fight. It's why they exist.


Uh-huh. And the partisan groups on Bobo's side only exist to make sure his closet stays fully stocked with Lane Bryant.

Bobo's right about one thing -- inadvertently, as always. The Democrats probably will decide to let Roberts through, and perhaps they should. Barring some revelation that he's a fire-breathing wingnut, he looks to be more or less another O'Connor, which makes it a wash. As the minority party, the Democrats have to choose their battles with some care in the first place, and replacing Stevens when he retires or passes will be the real showdown, as it should be. It's just not worth going to the mat over O'Connor's seat, especially when the Democrats have a real tiger by the tail with the Rove scandal. A fight would only be a distraction, and feed freeper fantasies about obstructionism and such.

But a defining moment for the Democrat glitterati it ain't. Bobo talks out his ass so much, he's starting to grow vocal cords in his sphincter. And of course, he sticks to the script by dumping the focus-group action word "elites" in there after "Democrat" -- as if there was nothing at all elite about a Yale/Harvard-educated man running the country on an agenda that's polling about 40-60 lately.


In short, I love thee, Roberts nomination. President Bush has put his opponents on the defensive. He's sidestepped the culture war circus. And most important, he's shown that character and substance matter most.


Uh, no, Sweet Cheeks, he's shown that timing matters most, that the Kabuki theater of calling a press conference to announce his SCOTUS choice matters most. It's a diversionary tactic, and even Bobo is sentient enough (but just barely) to know it.

Hey Bobo, you got something on your chin.

Rude Pundit also has a great take on the steno pool's instant kneepadding of the hunka-hunka burnin' judge. We keep forgetting that whores, by definition, have no sense of shame.

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