WE REGRET THE ERROR.
I haven’t read the whole New York Times profile of Sarah Palin... in part because I have some more pressing things on my calendar (clean out the drier lint, stare vacantly into space) and in part because I resent the transparent effort to make Sarah Palin into an intriguing or compelling personality. It’s all so manufactured, like they have a checklist she’s got to work through before she can be one of Barbara Walters’ “Most Fascinating People,” despite losing an election. I give it 50-50 she has a daytime syndicated talk show by the end of the decade.
Oops, sorry, I have misquoted Goldberg here -- please substitute "Wendy Davis" for "Sarah Palin" in every instance, and add "farrrrrrt" randomly throughout the passage.
UPDATE. The whole NRO Corner is especially nuts today. There's another Goldberg essay, about some book he hasn't read, that is literally incomprehensible. Can one of you tell me what that rap about "America, or liberals, or Jews — or all three!" is about? Also, here's increasingly mad torture enthusiast Andrew C. McCarthy's money shot for the day:
So now Obama, like a standard-issue leftist dictator, is complementing lawlessness with socialist irrationality.
For embarrassing-to-conservatives-in-retrospect-and-to-everyone-else-right-now, this is almost at an "Is Shirley Temple a Communist?" level. Also, assuming Obama evades arrest by the Freedom Commandos and continues to serve as President without actually declaring martial law, where can McCarthy go rhetorically from here? "Obama, like his dark lord Satan...." "In emulation of his best friend and spiritual twin Adolph Hitler..." "Commissar Obama... " Whoa, actually the National Review editorial board already got there in 2008. Maybe I only imagined they weren't always this bad.
UPDATE 2. Commenters, commenters, I'm only one man! I can't possibly address all the National Review crazitude (though if someone wants to pay me to do that, I'm all ears) but I do appreciate it being brought to my attention -- for example, Victor Davis Hanson's ode to Vladimir Putin, which coozledad encapsulates as "shirtless Putin is more honest than metrosexual golfer Obama," which is fair though it does miss some of the rhapsodic nuances of Hanson's prose; for example, Hanson finds "value" (Greek for "schwing," I guess) in Putin's "confidence in his unabashedly thuggish means," like how he kills dogs and does other lovable-dictator stuff, and though Hanson tee-hees that Putin is "what we should not be," his eyes say yes, we should! Balloon Juice captures it best: "Victor Davis Hanson channels his inner bottom."
Jack Fowler dishing out the institutional self-pity is also mentioned, and I must say his claim that Politico never "called" National Review for its story on them (Rich Lowry was interviewed by email) establishes new frontiers in hackdom. But I am grateful to him for bestowing on NR the slogan I shall associate with it henceforth: "a magazine that has lost money for 58 years."
UPDATE 3. Speaking of ObamaHitler, Bloomberg reports the U.S. Court of Appeals for D.C. has reversed a federal law that would have required tax preparers "pass a certification exam, pay annual fees and complete at least 15 hours of education courses annually." Here's how Charles C.W. Cooke plays it:
Court Slaps Down IRS Power Grab
More often than not, conversations about the Obama administration’s executive overreach end up with apologists asking, petulantly, “well, what are you going to do about it anyway"...
I bet when his parents give him a hard time, Cooke mutters "Whatever you say, Hitler."