Freedom Line Blog

Here’s the latest screed from the princess of printed prattle, a writer so prone to histrionic hysteria (not to mention hysteron proterons — look it up) that her work bears the same relationship to thoughtfulness and rationality as a rhinocerous does to gracefulness:

[Paul Ryan puts] a fresh face on a Taliban creed — the evermore antediluvian, anti-women, anti-immigrant, anti-gay conservative core. Amiable in khakis and polo shirts, Ryan is the perfect modern leader to rally medieval Republicans who believe that Adam and Eve cavorted with dinosaurs…. But, for all the Republican cant about how they want to keep government out of the lives of others, the ultraconservatives are panting to meddle in the lives of others. Contrary to President Obama’s refreshing assertion Monday that a bunch of male politicians shouldn’t be making health care decisions for women, this troglodyte tribe of men and Bachmann-esque women craves that responsibility.

The writing sins there are abundant: extreme triteness (gee, it is just so original and clever to call conservatives “troglodytes” and “antediluvians” — although one does wonder, as a matter of chronology, how we can be troglodytes and “medieval” at the same time), breathless overstatement not as intentional irony but as an actual attempt at persuasion, and blind, over-broad, demonizing assertions unmoored from proof. Hers is the same genre of bigotry as the assertions by 1960s racists that because some blacks are criminals, all blacks are dangerous criminals. One wonders if she has ever actually attempted to have a cordial conversation with a conservative Christian of any denomination, with anybody who lives more than 25 miles from a major urban hub (unless said rural resident is a Cesar Chavez-type protester), or with somebody who doesn’t think that, say, serial adultery is an ordinary feature of most marriages. If so, she gives no evidence of it — because her screeds are pure bigotry against an entire class of people.

If the New York Times had any standards (perish the thought), it would not put up with such viciousness unmoored from reason or basic human decency. Next time the editorialists at the famous rag try to lecture the rest of us about “civility,” here’s hoping they choke and splutter on their fumes of their own outrageous hypocrisy.