I miss the old days.
You know, the old days, back in 2005 and 2006 when Time columnist Joe Klein would get excoriated regularly in these parts for his laughable pronouncements of stupidity.
Now, he's mostly just ignored.
* sigh *
But, hey! Guess what! He's baaa-ack! With a doozy! w00t!
The issue that has brought [the left-wing blogosphere and the right wing] together is opposition to the Senate's health care–reform bill, which makes some sense on the right, but none at all on the left . . .
[T]he historic conservative opposition to universal health care isn't news. The dyspepsia of the left blogosphere is less easily explained, though. It has its roots in an issue the left got right and almost everyone else got wrong:
-- and where, pray tell, Mr. Klein, o Oracle of Great Political Truth, might those dyspeptic roots, the foundation of the left blogosphere's collective and (one can only assume) single-minded anger about the Senate's healthcare bill be found? I'm sure it must be easy to deduce, since there is, of course, only one issue "the left got right and almost everyone else" - yourself excluded, of course, Mr. Klein - "got wrong," right? And the root of that dyspepsia, according to you, Mr. Klein, is --
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No, I just can't do it.
I cannot in good conscience as a compassionate human reprint the concluding phrase of that sentence from Mr. Klein's commentary.
I could not be responsible for the results that might ensue.
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All right, I'll tell you. According to Joe Klein, the root of the left-wing blogosphere's "dyspepsia" about the Senate version of the healthcare bill is --
may god have mercy on my soul --
the war in Iraq.
I am sure that Nataline Sarkisyan's parents will be relieved to know this.
And in answer to your next question, no, I do not believe that Time Inc. even has a Department of You Can't Make This Shit Up, so, no, I'm not sure in what other department they might squirrel Mr. Klein away.
*
sigh, again *
Okay, here are a few more smackerels of what you'll be missing by not reading Mr. Klein's latest opus (unintentional irony and other hilarity noted in boldface):
In the snarkier precincts of the left-wing blogosphere, mainstream journalists like me are often called villagers. The reference, so far as I can tell, has to do with isolation: we live in this little village on the Potomac — actually, I don't, but no matter — constantly intermingling over hors d'oeuvres, deciding who is "serious" (a term of derision in the blogosphere) and who is not, regurgitating spin spoon-fed by our sources or conjuring a witless conventional wisdom that has nothing to do with reality as it is lived outside the village. There is, of course, some truth to this. Washington is insular; certain local shamans are celebrated beyond all logic; some of my columnar colleagues have lost touch with everything beyond their armchairs and egos [but not Mr. Klein, one can only assume].
But there is a great irony here: villager is a trope more applicable to those making the accusation than to those being snarked upon. The left-wing blogosphere, at its worst, is a claustrophobic hamlet of the well educated, less interested in meaningful debate than the "village" it mocks. (At its best, it is a source of clever and well-informed anti-Establishment commentary.) Indeed, it resembles nothing so much as that other, more populous hamlet, the right-wing Fox News and Limbaugh slum.
If points were awarded for missing the point, Mr. Klein would be ahead by four touchdowns.
[B]oth the left and right opponents of health care reform are drinking from the same watercooler.
Know what I think? I don't think the reason the left blogosphere is so pissed about the state of healthcare reform in the Senate is because they were right about Iraq. I think there might be other reasons.
No, that is not it at all, I think. In fact, if anything, I think a careful reading of the above paragraphs makes diagnosing the source of Mr. Klein's astonishingly wide-of-the-mark analysis fairly easy:
It is clear that Mr. Klein has a chronic case of Trad Media Butt-Hurt.
In other words, I think the reason Joe Klein is so pissed at the left blogosphere is because he was so wrong about Iraq (and everything else) - and the left blogosphere reminded him - and the world - about it, often and everywhere.
Unfortunately for Mr. Klein, Joe Lieberman's healthcare plan does not cover that particular pre-existing condition.