Jonah "Doughy Pantload" Goldberg In My Star?

Thursday’s Anniston Star has an opinion piece entitled “Why a cease-fire makes no sense” from Jonah Goldberg of Tribune Media Services that I’ll just let you read for yourself should you choose. Using "no sense" is one of Jonah's classic approaches to complexity. I wanted to educate my few readers on young Jonah and his "qualifications" on geo-politics, military strategy, international relations, history, …

While I don’t outright dismiss some of Jonah’s “thinking”, as every once in a while he'll do tolerable work, I can’t help but ponder on what makes Jonah, or George W. Bu$h for that matter, smarter than others who have walked this same rocky and perilous ground.

Young Jonah’s first brush with fame, beyond his infamous mother Lucianne Goldberg, came from his access to the Linda Tripp (You remember her as the older "friend" of Monica Lewinsky don't you?) tapes. Inda Schaenen, in Salon, described him as “The Jester of Monicagate”. Perhaps he earned the title via his genes as Mom was rather the gossip fan from telling of how LBJ would twist a nipple in the elevator and then going after the Clenis and … She even admits to creating a fake news organization to earn press access to the McGovern campaign while being paid by one of Tricky Dick’s operatives to keep the Nixon team up to speed. Genetics? My Old Daddy used to say, "Blood will tell boy." Yet Jonah's environment, one of wealth and intrigue and ..., has to have something to do with his current approach doesn't it?

Jonah got his start in the right wing machine at the American Enterprise Institute working for Ben J. Wattenberg. He is now a Contributing Editor to The National Review (Online) and a frequent contributor to TownHall. He is even a columnist for the LA Times after they headed right by replacing Robert Sheer with young Jonah.

Juan Cole, an actually scholar on the Middle East that speaks three dialects of Arabic, has a long-running conflict with Master Goldberg for his lack of knowledge of this region. Yet, from my understanding Professor Cole is most perplexed why Jonah is treated as even a casual observer by much of the media. Likewise, young Jonah is willing to cite “truthiness” to his readers in a role as climate change denier, going so far as to suggest a few changes of degrees might have some pleasant consequences. “Bugged” immediately after Christian Science Monitor reporter Jill Carroll was released, I understand, but cannot readily locate links, that Jonah joined with fellow NRO “talent” Katherine Jean Lopez in various fantasies of her ordeal, both pre and post-release. Young K-Lo got her start with The Heritage Foundation. Do you see a pattern here?

Jane Hamsher of FireDogLake wrote her “All in the Family” post on second-generation “talent” like Jonah, known around the lefty blogosphere as “Doughy Pantload”, with a portion of her writing as follows:

I bitch about this a lot so don’t expect me to pass up a golden opportunity. This is exactly the kind of second-generation junk thinking being produced on the right by people like Ben Domenech, Jonah Goldberg and George W. Bush — people who vault into to (sic?) highly paid, influential positions despite a complete and utter lack of talent or skill purely because of who their parents are and their willingness to say just about anything. Badly. A group who have tragically confused the wingnut welfare system for some kind of meritocracy, who think their megaphone comes as the result of skill and don’t acknowledge that both privilege and think tank underwriting are largely responsible for the opportunity to appear on the stage in the first place.

I always like the articles these pissy rich kids write about the welfare state and how it doesn’t encourage people to refine themselves and their ideas by engaging in competition. One need look no further than this article and those by people like Herbert Spencer scholar Jonah Goldberg (oh and let us not forget his work on Upton Sinclair) to see the utter hypocricy involved in this argument by those who are usually making it: nobody would pay for their crap if it wasn’t being underwritten by someone with a political agenda, and there is no need for their work to rise to anything above sub-mediocrity in order to keep getting subsidized.

This childish world view, unsullied by any contact with people from other cultures or life experience, scornful and elitist and promoted beyond anything it would earn as a result of its own merits, exists not only on the page — it is running the country and playing Army Men with the Middle East. No doubt they resent it mightily when Professor Cole shows up to puncture their delusional bubbles and deliver, in the words of Wolcott, a "righteous punk smackdown." Once again they send the second-rate and intellectually shiftless to defend the fort.

Jonah’s warmongering is of special note in that he offers up excuse after excuse why he can’t go fight. 101st Fighting Keyboarders indeed! To have him celebrating a delay in ending death and destruction makes me want to Ralph.

That Jonah Goldberg’s opinion is being published is fine, even in "my Star", yet I at times wish a reader could quickly obtain backgrounding on “authorities” or “columnists” so readers might be a little better informed. Young Jonah, actually just a few years younger than I, seems to hardly be an expert on much of anything yet he surely does appear willing to claim the truth. Peace …or War!