Monday, February 23, 2009

How Far Are We From Peak Wingnut Again, John?

John Cole, 13 October 2008:

As I look around the blogosphere, and view memeorandum, it occurred to me that we may have hit and passed Peak Wingnut.

In his defense, he quickly recognized the error of being optimistic about that bunch.

John Cole, 29 October 2008:

My Peak Wingnut theory has got to be an early front runner for the von Hoffman award of the year.

(NB: The von Hoffman award is not a Good Thing.)

The election came and went, as did Inauguration Day, and the snarky comments piled up, prompted, of course, by external events.

John Cole, 28 Jan 2009:

I think I need to delete my peak wingnut post before it is used against me every day for the rest of my life.

John's a good man, so of course he wouldn't. Still, it's hard not to keep teasing him, especially when today, I'm trying to decide which is the wingnuttiest thing I've read in the last five minutes: Alan Keys saying, "Stop Obama or the US will cease to exist," or Glenn Beck and a panel of Fox News-hired military shills, "wargaming" the looming civil war. Yes, in this country.

4 comments:

John Evo said...

How could there not (eventually) be a civil war in this country. You think "reason" and "rationality" are going to win the day with the theocons?

John Evo said...

Allow me to answer my own (2nd) question (even though I forgot the question mark for the first one).

Bahahahahahahahaha!!!!

James Briggs Stratton "Doghouse" Riley said...

By the way, the idea of Sully using Nick von Hoffman--or anybody else, for that matter--as the paragon of bad predictive abilities is even funnier than naming an "award" for Yglesias and having it honor anything other than being this year's up-and-coming well-born yammerer who voluntarily abstains from spell-checking. Or, as Matt says...

bjkeefe said...

JE:

Never gonna happen. We'll be bickering until the Rapture, but we are not going to have a civil war with the Christianists. You wouldn't be able to get more than five or six of them out of their comfy chairs, and none of them would show up to fight the first time it rained.

DR:

You're right about the von Hoffman Award, and about Sully's own less than unblemished record for predictions. Good zing.

As for the Yglesias Award, while I think Matthew's gotten more predictable lately, not to mention less entertaining -- the cool kids call him Big Media Matt now, I understand -- the spirit of the award still stands, I think. I started reading him regularly precisely because of his frequent habit of posting good and unorthodox thoughts.

But yeah, that refusal to run a spell-checker, when he's being paid to write, no less -- he deserves a beating for that. I mean, damn, they're built right into the browsers these days.

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