Wednesday, November 16, 2011

He writes just like he talks

Jason Lewis, that is. Bombastic and poisonous. Not to mention bullying.

Alas, rarely does anyone take the time to give Jason the wire brushing he deserves. He got a very thorough one yesterday from Eric Black, though.

Here are the opening grafs:
Let’s do Mr. Jason Lewis the kindness of taking seriously his latest Strib op-ed philippic against the evils of liberalism.

The headline “Do you want equality or freedom?” certainly suggests that we can’t want a bit of both, and it also suggests that freedom and equality cannot coexist.

Of course, Lewis didn’t write the headline, but it captures the keys to his argument, and to a bit of semantic bullying in which righties engage often. [ ]
Black then proceeds to cut Lewis a new arsehole with a linoleum knife -- in the very nice Eric Black manner, of course. (I know, I know, a mixed metaphor.)

It's a great read.

I'd been thinking about writing something about the Lewis column, but now I don't have to, except to say that Black identifies the thing that is the most annoying trait that Lewis has: his absolutism. If you're an inch away from a complete eat-what-you-kill solo hunter gatherer, you're a socialist; not that the term "socialist" is anything more than a epithet to Lewis.

Many, maybe most, righties are absolutists. Some of them have sub-specialties. Jason's is economics -- although one needs to be leery about calling his overweening avarice and rapacity "economics." A serious "indisposition" might be a better description.

Katherine Kesten's absolutist sub-specialty is religion. Most of her columns contain some pecksniffery about the moral relativism of the current age and how we need to recover our "timeless values," even if those timeless values happen to include baseless bigory against minorities, women, gays, Muslims, or native peoples.

Between these two, we have a Sunday parade (as opposed to the Sunday Parade, which also comes in the Strib), a two floater showcasing individuals who are, in fact, incapable of making moral judgments.

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