The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Who Is James Wolcott? And Why Would Anybody Want to Know? Or Care?

Posted on | March 5, 2012 | 79 Comments

Pamela Geller’s commentary about Sandra Fluke has caused a conniption on the part of — you guessed, didn’t you? — Charles Johnson. Mr. Jazzy McBikeshorts then got into a Twitter colloquy with the infamously boring James Wolcott, who decided to bring my name into it. A commenter informed me about this, prompting my Twitter reply:

News Flash: James Wolcott, who for years has had a Vanity Fair column nobody reads, now has a Twitter account nobody follows.

Because you have probably never heard of James Wolcott, it is necessary to explain that he is a cadaverous-looking college dropout who spent years as an unpopular media critic at the Village Voice before becoming an unpopular columnist at Vanity Fair. His knowledge of politics is extremely limited, as I noted in April 2008:

If James Wolcott is being paid by the word, his 3,700-word screed in the June issue of Vanity Fair is the Crime of the Century. The article is presented as describing the “vicious Clinton-versus-Obama rupture at Daily Kos” and thus an analysis of “a party-wide split” among Democrats, but it’s really nothing of the kind. In fact, it’s nothing at all. There is no reporting and very little that could be called research. Just massive paragraph after paragraph of florid prose.

So far as anyone can tell, Wolcott never ventures outside Manhattan and can’t be bothered to do any actual reporting. He has attempted to remain “relevant” by adding a blog that nobody reads to his duties at Vanity Fair, whose publisher apparently hired him as a favor to Wolcott’s wife, an editor for the magazine.

Wolcott’s most memorable contribution to the online world was a 2004 post in which he cheered for killer hurricanes — “Mother Nature’s fist of fury, Gaia’s stern rebuke” — to hit America, and thereby inadvertantly helped re-elect President Bush. 

Last year, Wolcott somehow inveigled Doubleday into publishing his memoir. Nobody read that either, mainly because the author is so notoriously dull, but perhaps also because readers had been warned via a New York Times review that Wolcott “devotes 50 genuflecting pages” of his 258-page memoir to film critic Pauline Kael.

No, I’m not kidding. Really.

To the extent that most blog readers nowadays have any inkling who James Wolcott is, it’s because he has occasionally attempted to generate traffic by taking cheap shots at Jeff Goldstein of Protein Wisdom. Is anyone therefore surprised that a pompous nobody like Wolcott seems to have found a kindred spirit in Charles Johnson?

Readers may be wondering why I would devote an entire 500-word blog post to a couple of windbags like Johnson and Wolcott, but I mainly wanted to use this as an opportunity to point out that Pamela Geller is always interesting, which is why those irrelevant losers hate her so much.

Anyway, the two latest polls — one by Marist and another by Reuters — both show the Ohio Republican primary a dead heat, and I’m thinking about heading to Columbus for the big showdown, which should be a lot more fun than sitting around blogging about James Wolcott.

UPDATE: The Man Who Named the Blogosphere observes that the list of Things Which Are More Fun Than Sitting Around Blogging About James Wolcott is quite long, and welcome, Instapundit readers!

As to the absurd “controversy” that briefly permitted Wolcott to indulge his delusions of relevance, Rush Limbaugh explained his apology to Sandra Fluke today on the World’s Biggest Radio Show.

Category: Atlas Shrugs, Charles Johnson, James Wolcott, Journalism

Comments

79 Responses to “Who Is James Wolcott? And Why Would Anybody Want to Know? Or Care?”

  1. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    March 5th, 2012 @ 2:58 pm

    Actually they do not.  But keep trying.  

  2. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    March 5th, 2012 @ 3:00 pm

    I will beat Bob this week on link whoring!

  3. timb116
    March 5th, 2012 @ 3:01 pm

    Wow, link to that for us

  4. timb116
    March 5th, 2012 @ 3:02 pm

    HAH. If I wanted to give money to a guy like stacy, I could go to Lew Rockwell’s site and buy some old Ron Paul newsletters

  5. timb116
    March 5th, 2012 @ 3:05 pm

    Says a lady so far ont he Right that she longs for the links of that kook Godlstein and RSM.  When you impress a conservative, instead of these crackerpots,  you let us know.

  6. scarymatt
    March 5th, 2012 @ 3:11 pm

    You must be new here.

  7. ThePaganTemple
    March 5th, 2012 @ 3:20 pm

     Because it would be fun to see his responses. I messed with him for a while myself today.

  8. ThePaganTemple
    March 5th, 2012 @ 3:22 pm

     When the hell did I ever say that, jackass?

  9. Wombat_socho
    March 5th, 2012 @ 3:56 pm

    Ignorant AND stupid. We’ve hit our quota on those for the week already. Buh-bye.

  10. Wombat_socho
    March 5th, 2012 @ 3:57 pm

     The reading comprehension isn’t very good with these drive-by trolls, is it?

  11. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    March 5th, 2012 @ 4:04 pm

    Carl Olson, Jr.:  I wholeheartedly agree with The Pagan Temple, you are seriously a jackass.  

  12. ThePaganTemple
    March 5th, 2012 @ 5:19 pm

    Probably somebody from Chuck Johnson’s execrable e-rag.

  13. K-Bob
    March 5th, 2012 @ 5:49 pm

     Ahh, like LGF.

  14. K-Bob
    March 5th, 2012 @ 5:52 pm

     Otherwise known as “two beers.”

  15. Mike G.
    March 5th, 2012 @ 6:16 pm

     You can say it…Maher is a half wit.

  16. Doug Hagin
    March 5th, 2012 @ 7:59 pm

     Good stuff! Got you linked on this sir http://thedaleygator.wordpress.com/2012/03/05/you-know-i-could-call-james-wolcott-a-festering-blob-of-stupidity-but-that-would-just-be-redundant/

  17. frank
    March 5th, 2012 @ 8:33 pm

    So…you’re familiar with Columbus then…

  18. K-Bob
    March 5th, 2012 @ 8:45 pm

    Oh, yeah. Big, Budweiser plant and all. But mostly familiar with guys getting together for anything involving drinking!

  19. Darius Klepacke
    March 5th, 2012 @ 8:47 pm

    If I only could remember the exact date Christopher Hitchens  unloaded on hapless & witless Wolcott. Verbal brutality of high order.

  20. Sandra Fluke Argued for Mandatory Coverage for Sex-Change Surgery : The Other McCain
    March 5th, 2012 @ 9:42 pm

    […] on this chart are due to the awesomeness of Mark Levin. Any resemblance to a gesture telling James Wolcott that he is #1 is strictly coincidental./**/ […]

  21. ThePaganTemple
    March 5th, 2012 @ 9:47 pm

     What? That’s strange, I took a good look at Wolcott’s picture and he doesn’t look anything like Bill Maher to me.

  22. ThePaganTemple
    March 5th, 2012 @ 9:50 pm

    You know, the more I look at Wolcott’s pic up there, the more it strikes me that he might have a touch of Down’s Syndrome. I say that not as an insult but in all seriousness.

  23. Wombat_socho
    March 5th, 2012 @ 9:59 pm

     Unfortunately, no, he isn’t. But he’ll be on hiatus for a while.

  24. Wombat_socho
    March 5th, 2012 @ 10:01 pm

     LGF has hot babes on the cover?

  25. K-Bob
    March 6th, 2012 @ 2:31 am

    I knew I was gonna catch it for that aspect of the comparison. No0oO0o. I meant the other stuff!

  26. Bob Belvedere
    March 6th, 2012 @ 9:00 am

    Nope.  High forehead as a result of the fact that even his hair can’t stand him and vamoosed.

  27. rcocean
    March 6th, 2012 @ 6:41 pm

    James Wolcott’s one of those bad writers that one minute after you read him,  you can’t remember what he wrote.  Always a minimum of thought in the maximum amount of words

  28. rcocean
    March 6th, 2012 @ 6:42 pm

    Geez, one ugly dude.  RS, can’t you post a picture of a pretty girl?  The world can only stand so much ugliness at one time.

  29. DPTB Part VI: Odds And Ends « The Camp Of The Saints
    March 9th, 2012 @ 11:11 am

    […] -Stacy McCain explains just who James Wolcott is and proves that this knowledge is not really worth possessing. […]