Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Quite Possibly the Most Wrong Thing I Have Ever Heard

John Hinderaker has crafted perhaps the silliest blog post of all time. Seriously. It would be almost impossible to top this.

But first, some back story. John Hinderaker blogs, along with two other guys, at Power Line, one of the most respected and influential right-wing blogs. They were 2004's Time Blog of the Year.

John once wrote this of George W. Bush:

A man of extraordinary vision and brilliance approaching to genius, he can't get anyone to notice. He is like a great painter or musician who is ahead of his time, and who unveils one masterpiece after another to a reception that, when not bored, is hostile. Hyperbolic? Well, maybe.

That used to have my vote for the craziest thing ever blogged. I remember when NBC had that "blog" online that was supposed to belong to Creed from "The Office," and that made way more sense than this Power Line post.

Anyway, Hinderaker has topped himself. I give you...The Importance of Being Careful:

[George W.] Bush never gets sloppy when he is speaking publicly. He chooses his words with care and precision, which is why his style sometimes seems halting. In the eight years he has been President, it is remarkable how few gaffes or verbal blunders he has committed. If Obama doesn't raise his standards, he will exceed Bush's total before he is inaugurated.

The mind...boggles.

This is so wrong, it's the exact polar opposite of true. Sadly No!, similarly baffled by Hinderaker's astoundingly incorrect conclusion, has offered, as rebuttal, voluminous video evidence of George W. Bush's gaffes, inanities, blunders, malapropisms and general buffoonery. It demonstrates beyond any doubt both Bush's contempt for his audience and for the English language.

But it's not even necessary to go that far. No one expects George W. Bush to speak with care and precision, or indeed, to speak in complete sentences, without food in his mouth. His incoherence was a national joke 7 years ago. Now, we're all numb to it. When he's on TV, speaking to America about important issues of the day, not even small children take him seriously any more. And Americans are easy to fool. They think fucking Shia LaBeouf has gravitas.

Vociferously advocating the proposition that George W. Bush is eloquent, indeed that he should be offering eloquence lessons to Barack Obama, a man rhetorically gifted enough to become the first black president, against a Clinton, 4 years after first entering the national spotlight, is laughably ridiculous. I feel like, up until now, Power Line has all been a prank, and this is the moment Hinderaker's chosen to give the game away.

Wait a minute...you guys...you're not even really conservative, are you! What a bunch of rapscallions.

Oh...you're...you're serious.

Power Line makes me want to start an angry blog that stridently and vehemently argues for completely nonsensical propositions. Just for fun.

2 comments:

Conrad Quilty-Harper said...

How the fuck would you parody something as insane as that?! I'd republish the whole thing word for word on a separate blog, and you'd have a satirical masterpiece.

Anonymous said...

I was just thinking surely that was meant as satire!