The Other McCain

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

Joan Walsh Thinks It’s All About Her

Posted on | October 25, 2013 | 80 Comments

“Bitter partisanship has left this woman a hulking, steaming pile of radioactive filth. She just hates. No amount of Obama/Democrat failure will shake her from what is, for all intents and purposes, a psychotic obsession with the ‘evil’ right.”
— Donald Douglas, American Power

Sometimes it’s just your turn as scapegoat, and the best you can do in your hour of shame is to maintain your personal dignity.

Alas, nothing in Joan Walsh’s experience of marching lockstep in the liberal herd prepared her for the sudden and severe beatdown she got after Ezra Klein, leader of the “Juicebox Mafia,” decided to take a shot at her on Twitter. Walsh had gotten out of step with the “smart” liberal take on the ObamaCare roll-out debacle, and Klein’s tweet on Tuesday was the signal that started a dogpile reaction.

“And then all hell broke loose,” Walsh writes in a long, solipsistic whine of a column at Salon.com, that failed fossil of the 1990s Dot Com Bubble which has been losing $2 million a year forever.

Did I ever mention how much Andrew Breitbart despised Joan Walsh? Because he did, you know. Her name was always an epithet to Andrew.

Donald Douglas at American Power shares that loathing: “Wretched Joan Walsh Whines About How Everybody Hates Joan Walsh.”

Walsh’s reaction to her sudden ignominy among liberals is instructive for several reasons, including what it tells us about the herd instinct of liberal pundits. There is a creepy Soviet-style conformity at times: “Here is the Party line. This is all the truth you need.”

Joan Walsh is like one of those old Bolsheviks who, after decades of service to the cause of the Revolution, suddenly found themselves arrested and hauled before one of Stalin’s show-trial courts, accused of Crimes Against the People’s Republic: “Saboteur! Trotskyist!”

Public humiliation is the renegade’s reward, and there is a deep irony in Joan Walsh’s scapegoat moment, in that she has always been so compliantly eager to please her comrades. You got the idea at times she wanted to be Homecoming Queen of Liberal High School.

A pathetic craving for popularity is a weakness, and when Klein’s quick jab punctured Walsh’s balloon with shocking suddenness, she inevitably collapsed into self-pity, inviting others to join her, invoking the ritual totems of identity-politics tribalism:

You’re derided as a purveyor of “agitprop” (thanks, Andrew Sullivan) and you’re an “Obamabot” . . .
Oh, and if you’re a woman? You’re also a cunt, a bitch, a hag; you’re old, fat and ugly, with bad teeth, chicken arms, 12 cats and a big unrequited crush on Ezra Klein. . . .
The reaction to Klein’s mildly aggrieved tweet about it set off a shitstorm. Lots of people found it easy to misrepresent what I’d written. There was a little bit of dudebro-ism afoot, as I watched my young white male blogger friends high-fiving one another for their intellectual courage and honesty, as contrasted with my venal hackdom. . . .

There is much, much more in the same vein, but the way Saint Joan climbs up on her cross, declaring that she is being crucified by her “young white male blogger friends,” is the key point: Walsh thought her service to The Sacred Cause had earned her “friends,” when in fact those younger pundits were merely political allies, each selfishly pursuing their own paths of ascent on the ziggurat of ambition. If it served their interests to praise Joan Walsh, she would bask in the glow of admiration. But once it served their interests to shun her, then all her past glories were instantly forgotten: “Saboteur! Trotskyist!”

You might think she would learn a valuable lesson from this experience, but if Joan Walsh were capable of learning lessons from experience, she would not be a liberal, would she?

 


Category: Intellectuals, Journalism

Comments

80 Responses to “Joan Walsh Thinks It’s All About Her”

  1. Finrod Felagund
    October 25th, 2013 @ 3:27 pm

    I doubt Joan could troll that well, and this is only a mediocre troll at best.

  2. Finrod Felagund
    October 25th, 2013 @ 3:28 pm

    Newly-minted grad, only 26 comments so far. Wouldn’t surprise me if it’s a sockpuppet of the idiot that came around yesterday.

  3. Adobe_Walls
    October 25th, 2013 @ 3:32 pm

    Quite.

  4. Adobe_Walls
    October 25th, 2013 @ 3:36 pm

    It’s almost sad how a leftist’s life has neither meaning nor socially redeeming value. Almost.

  5. Adobe_Walls
    October 25th, 2013 @ 3:42 pm

    It’s probably already well stocked with analease.

  6. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    October 25th, 2013 @ 4:09 pm

    Joan Walsh is like Ferris Bueller’s sister Jeanie, only way more bitchier, partisan, and less attractive.

  7. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    October 25th, 2013 @ 4:10 pm

    Rim Shot. Well done.

  8. joethefatman
    October 25th, 2013 @ 4:49 pm

    And a lot less likely to realize shes been a jerk and learn from it.

  9. Slow Mutiny? Lo, the Parting Waters | Regular Right Guy
    October 25th, 2013 @ 4:52 pm

    […] Joan Walsh Thinks It’s All About Her […]

  10. Quartermaster
    October 25th, 2013 @ 5:41 pm

    If it took that to remove your doubt then you are far worse off than I thought.

  11. therightplanet1
    October 25th, 2013 @ 5:59 pm

    Awww…Joan Walsh Thinks It’s All About Her: Bitter partisanship has left this woman a hulking, steaming pile of rad http://t.co/sGm861rqiT

  12. DaveO
    October 25th, 2013 @ 6:07 pm

    Blue-on-blue twittercide… pass the popcorn. The only questions are who is paying Klein, and how much $$ to take out Hillarista Joan Walsh?

  13. Horange Cones
    October 25th, 2013 @ 6:27 pm

    Who?

  14. thatMrGguy
    October 25th, 2013 @ 7:00 pm

    Joan Walsh Thinks It’s All About Her http://t.co/C24ZXnuPbc

  15. Bob Belvedere
    October 25th, 2013 @ 8:18 pm

    Yeah, but it was only a half-hearted callout. After all, he didn’t mention her uterus.

  16. Bob Belvedere
    October 25th, 2013 @ 8:20 pm

    Methinks she’ll continue to avoid looking at the Reality until her miserable little dying day.

  17. Bob Belvedere
    October 25th, 2013 @ 8:22 pm

    Brilliant analogy of the Old Bolsheviks vs. the Stalinists.

  18. richard mcenroe
    October 25th, 2013 @ 8:33 pm

    SPLITTER

  19. richard mcenroe
    October 25th, 2013 @ 8:34 pm

    But it SHOULD be all about her! ANYTHING that nasty should be told to go away as often as possible!

  20. Finrod Felagund
    October 26th, 2013 @ 2:57 am

    Looks like this cretin mostly posts on the liberal echo chambers Raw Story and Media Mutters. Probably hasn’t ever encountered an actual conservative in person in its entire existence.

  21. Da Tech Guy On DaRadio Blog » Blog Archive » Admiral Ackbar Alert! The Obamacare Website Trap
    October 26th, 2013 @ 9:21 am

    […] loaded with Tro­jans (the hack code not the con­doms) and left­ists are argu­ing about the if they should or should not admit how bad it is, and if that wasn’t enough it looks like the no-?bid con­tract for the con­struc­tion of […]

  22. Munchki Crumpkin
    October 26th, 2013 @ 3:50 pm

    lame

  23. Munchki Crumpkin
    October 26th, 2013 @ 3:50 pm

    lamer

  24. Munchki Crumpkin
    October 26th, 2013 @ 3:51 pm

    lamest

  25. Finrod Felagund
    October 26th, 2013 @ 5:28 pm

    Go back to your leftist echo chambers, pitiful troll.

  26. This Stupid Week, Dia de los Muertos Edition | Blackmailers Don't Shoot
    October 26th, 2013 @ 9:15 pm

    […] figure as Barack Obama may eventually go under the bus. Liberalism never goes under the bus. Know your role. It’s ideology first, then policy, then […]

  27. Is Dave Weigel’s Obama Mask As Offensive As Tuffy The Rodeo Clown’s Was? | American Glob
    October 26th, 2013 @ 11:02 pm

    […] Will other liberals stand by him now or will he go the way of Joan Walsh? […]

  28. Munchki Crumpkin
    October 27th, 2013 @ 12:14 pm

    I voted for Reagan once, does that count?

  29. Finrod Felagund
    October 27th, 2013 @ 2:28 pm

    It only proves that you aren’t completely brain-damaged.

  30. scarymatt
    October 27th, 2013 @ 3:53 pm

    It only proves that you aren’t weren’t always completely brain-damaged.

    FTFY