Matt Yglesias

35 Responses to “Fred Barnes and the “Monkey Boy””

1. John Says:
   January 16th, 2009 at 1:48 pm

   Krauthammer and Barnes are very different terrible pundits, I think.

   Krauthammer is pure evil. He’s wrong about almost everything, and he’s an enormous dick, but one feels as though he’s actually expressing his own opinions about things.

   Barnes is a pure hack who gets directives from the Republican National Committee about what to say.

2. Nicholas Beaudrot Says:
   January 16th, 2009 at 1:48 pm

   Mort Kondracke?

3. J Says:
   January 16th, 2009 at 1:52 pm

   Let’s not forget Kristol Meth. He’s pretty hideous.

   So too tho are Glenn Beck and Rush. And Hugh Hewitt. And Malkin. And Jonah. And Hannity.

   Gosh, this list could just go on & on.

4. JimboSlice Says:
   January 16th, 2009 at 1:53 pm

   How can you leave out Friedman from the list, check out this fantastic article completely ripping apart the “green” man who owns a 114,000 sq ft house!!!

   http://www.nypress.com/article-19271-flat-n-all-that.html

5. joejoejoe Says:
   January 16th, 2009 at 1:54 pm

   Worst pundits

   1) David Frum
   2) Michael Gerson

   They have that sensible ‘I’m a nice guy’ schtick that David Brooks works in hot pants but they are both dangerously wrong about everything. Barnes and Krauthammer don’t convince anybody new, Frum and Gerson just might.

6. ed Says:
   January 16th, 2009 at 1:57 pm

   David Brooks is an elitist fuckhead. Well, he is.

7. S Says:
   January 16th, 2009 at 1:57 pm

   Fred is just sore because he didn’t get invited to the vaunted conservative dinner with Obama like Krauthammer, Kristol, Noonan, et al. But, yeah, it wouldn’t have killed him to say something like: ‘You may not agree with his policies, but racist name-calling is not appropriate.’ Meh, but that’s just what someone with a soul (or brain) would do.

8. Jim Says:
   January 16th, 2009 at 2:02 pm

   Relevant?

9. El Cid Says:
   January 16th, 2009 at 2:03 pm

   Having watched Washington Journal enough, I could believe that Barnes didn’t understand what was said, but the clip cut off on the 2nd caller who rebuked the ‘monkey boy’ phrase, so I don’t know how Barnes reacted to that.

   But the caller just reminds me how much I detest the quarter- to third of our nation who would have kept voting for this gang of anti-Constitutional thugs until they had the weird fake cowboy pseudo-fascist theocracy they crave.

   I really find that scarier than the ‘monkey boy’, though they’re related.

10. Alex Says:
    January 16th, 2009 at 2:19 pm

    Krauthammer always struck me as one of the strongest advocates for a neoconservative or generally hawkish foreign policy. I disagree with almost everything he writes, but nevertheless get the sense that his are the opposing arguments (in favor of the Iraq War, of the Likkud line on Israel-Palestine, of voting for John McCain) most worth grappling with and, as the case may be, refuting. The people J (1:52) cites, for instance, are in another intellectual and journalistic league altogether.

11. Seneca Says:
    January 16th, 2009 at 2:32 pm

    Not only is Barnes a hack, he’s a truly dumb one. Krauthammer both believes what he says and can argue for it with considerable intelligence–twisted, but not trifling like Barnes’.

12. Daniel Koffler Says:
    January 16th, 2009 at 2:57 pm

    It’s always a tight race between Barnes and Charles Krauthammer for the coveted “worst pundit in America” prize

    Nonsense. First of all, Bill Kristol is in a tight race with himself for 1st through at least 10th worst pundit in America, neatly combining every bad tendency of pundits with not just shamelessly, knowingly, deliberately, and incessantly lying through his teeth, but also being too lazy to even put on a show of genuinely believing the things he says — never mind going to the trouble of giving an appearance of being involved in the writing of the NYT columns printed under his name beyond, at most, maybe dictating some notes to a Weekly Standard underling for whom one might have sympathy were he not an employee of the Weekly Standard. (My hypothesis is that Kristol gives Matt Continetti a thesis statement/agenda to push, and then Continetti then re-delegates to somebody even lower down the evolutionary hierarchy.)

    But even taking Kristol out of the mix so that there can be a contest, I think there’s a good case to be made that people like Mickey Kaus and Gregg Easterbrook — uneducated, ignorat, dimwitted fools whose career-long bodies of work are more or less entirely predicated on elementary errors of reasoning, but are nevertheless taken seriously in intellectually respectable circles — have a claim to the title, provided ideological considerations aren’t necessarily the decisive factor.

    On the other hand, right-wing hacks a few tiers below Kristol and Krauthammer in prominence — people like Michael Goldfarb, Jennifer Rubin, and Noah Pollak — don’t have quite the polish or slickness of K&K in defending the indefensible, stoking resentment, and arguing by means of innuendo and slander, so they just make up for it with heaps of nastiness and non-self-aware bigotry. They’ve got a shot at the title, too.

    Then there are the off-their-meds lunatics with shockingly prominent perches like Andy McCarthy.

    One shouldn’t forget the Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia crowd, e.g. Hewitt and Hannity.

    Nor should we automatically disqualify people like Stephen Hayes and Eli Lake, who, though perhaps more moderate in their politics than some of the others, have built careers by distorting the evidential record on matters of the life and death of literally millions of people.

    And I’m probably leaving out some categories.

13. kth Says:
    January 16th, 2009 at 3:03 pm

    In fairness that is not really deserved and would probably not be reciprocated by Barnes, nearly all the C-SPAN callers are total freaks, and if you stopped to call them on every idiocy and insanity they uttered, you would not be able to get to anything else.

14. ed Says:
    January 16th, 2009 at 3:11 pm

    Wait, a guy on the Republican line called Obama a “monkeyboy”? And Fred Barnes wasn’t surprised? Whoa, stop the presses.

15. Elton Says:
    January 16th, 2009 at 3:17 pm

    Gregg Easterbrook — uneducated, ignorat, dimwitted fools whose career-long bodies of work are more or less entirely predicated on elementary errors of reasoning

    At least Easterbrook comes out strong against the space shuttle and excessive blitzing.

16. Mike Says:
    January 16th, 2009 at 3:27 pm

    CK puts in a decent effort (at terribleness) today. He basically says Bush is already largely vindicated because the Dems aren’t going to immediately reverse every single decision he ever made and instantly demolish the entire security infrastructure developed since 9/11. Cuz anything short of instituting a Year Zero means we were J-K-ing about thinking Bush has been a disaster.

17. Sam M Says:
    January 16th, 2009 at 3:32 pm

    How do we judge “skill” in punditry? Seems that most people take it to mean “to what extent does Pundit X agree with me?” Does anyone seriously take it to mean, “Shows a lot of skill in presenting arguments”?

    I doubt it’s the latter. Unless someone is willing to point to a person who they think is right on almost all the issues, but is a shitty pundit.

    For instance, I wonder if MY is willing to point to the worst progressive pundit in America. Anymore than the people at NRO are willing to say, “That conservative really sucks at doing what pundits do.”

    And I don’t mean neo-cons taking on libertarians, or progressive taking on liberals. That critique basically means, “these people on my side of the political aisle are wrong about a lot of stuff.” I mean, actually saying that someone on your actual team really, really blows.

    Does anyone do that?
    Seriously.

18. pseudonymous in nc Says:
    January 16th, 2009 at 3:33 pm

    Having watched Washington Journal enough, I could believe that Barnes didn’t understand what was said

    Or was only half-listening, given the kind of callers WJ seems to allow through. The hosts have refined not-really-listening to an art.

19. cd Says:
    January 16th, 2009 at 4:30 pm

    Uhh, i thought it was accepted knowledge that William Kristol is the worst pundit in America.

20. joe from Lowell Says:
    January 16th, 2009 at 4:51 pm

    Objecting when a Republican says something racist makes you THE REAL RACIST.

    There’s nothing Republicans hate more than THE REAL RACISTS.

21. jmad Says:
    January 16th, 2009 at 5:21 pm

    Fred Barnes, Mort Kondracke, and Charles Krauthammer were the Fox News “all star” panel the other night. Kondracke went out of his way to mention Krauthammer was invited but Barnes wasn’t. Barnes was very obviously pissed.

22. brucds Says:
    January 16th, 2009 at 5:52 pm

    While we’re on the subject of stupid rightwingers, Alterman eviscerates Joe Scarborough here:

    http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2009/01/ta011509.html

23. Jasper Says:
    January 16th, 2009 at 6:03 pm

    Victor Davis Hanson.

24. Richard Steven Hack Says:
    January 16th, 2009 at 7:21 pm

    As a Transhumanist, I use the term “monkey boy” all the time to refer to humans.

    Somehow I don’t think it means the same coming from some right wing jerk, however.

25. warren terrah Says:
    January 16th, 2009 at 9:29 pm

    How could you all forget Ms. Michelle”I hate brown people” Malkin and Mistah Jonah”you Nazi Commie” Goldberg?

26. human Says:
    January 17th, 2009 at 1:24 pm

    Mr Hack,
    Sometimes you sound as if you believe that you yourself have already made the step beyond the merely human to the transhuman. Do you believe that? If so, in virtue of what fact about yourself do you believe it?

27. Richard Steven Hack Says:
    January 17th, 2009 at 11:54 pm

    Human: Not exactly. However, acting “as if” enables me to maintain the proper perspective on humans.

    Also, there’s the question of whether people who have Transhumanist ATTITUDES almost from birth are already some sort of “mutant” compared to other sorts of people. Who knows whether certain people have brains naturally oriented to that sort of thing, just like some people are born sociopaths.

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