The fast boat crusade

One place Jonah Goldberg will never go, on patrol in Iraq.

One of the odd things about Jonah Goldberg getting his ass kicked all over the blogs, is that one should reasonably ask why the man is an editor of a magazine of opinion. He obviously doesn't do research, I mean basic shit like finding out someone's ethnicity or cv when posted online. He's not a particularly good writer or thinker. In fact, if his mommy wasn't the aging queen bitch of the hard right, he'd probably be toiling away at ad copy in Manhattan and shlepping to Brooklyn Heights every day. It's not a bad trip, Jen made it for years, I used to do the reverse for stories, but it's not the same as going on CNN and spouting off on any shit which crosses my mind.

Contrary to opinion, I may have unpopular opinions, but they don't come from my ass. You may disagree with me, but I usually do some research on them to make sure my opinions about facts are related to reality. My criticism of Apple's marketing comes from checking sales figures, just like criticism of Salon came from reading their 10Q's. If I say Apple has 4 percent of the market, I've seen that figure recently. Just like when I note the poor intel in Iraq. That's not just my opinion, but comments from ex-servicemen on various sites. I would be embarassed to get someone's race wrong just to make a point. But not Jonah and his friends at NRO, Opinion Journal and the rest.

I think we've let them get away with too much for too long.

I know they have Race and Reason Regnery Press for their hackwork, but we need to start printing their sales figures, and their Ingram numbers. Ingram is the large book reseller. Also, it's time to start tagging their books on Amazon and object to them, and when Amazon pulls them, bitch and moan to the American Booksellers Association and the American Library Association. In short, we cannot let them get away with lying any more.

More importantly, we need to use the word LIE. Not wrong, or mistaken, but LIE. When Max Boot goes on about the joys of imperialism, he's no fucking scholar, in fact much of what he's saying is contradicted by the current scholarship. But people don't know that. They assume that he does due dilligence in his writing, when he clearly does not.

It's time to turn up the heat on these people. Hammer their syndicates when they print obvious falsehoods. Write op-ed pieces opposing them, call into C-SPAn when they're on and ask hard questions.

See, the right pundits exist because they live in polite Washington society, a place where Chris Hitchens can swan around drunk with his pregnant mistress, while still married and got help from his "friends", who he then turned on like Kim Philby. It's a little club where everyone drinks with each other and their kids go to the same schools.

We are not part of that world. We hate that world. We want to destroy that fake civility and bring real accountability to their work. But to do that, we have to challenge them.

Now, this isn't a one day thing.

Here's the deal: I want as many of you as possible to write op-ed pieces and submit them to your local paper. The first topic is social security. The person who writes the best essay, judged by me and or Jen, will win a copy of The Political Machine. Usually, they have to be between 3-700 words and should be focused.

The deadline for this isOctober February 21, 1200 PM EST.

You have to show me that you either e-mailed or mailed the op-ed piece to a daily newspaper. No blog postings here.

We are looking for a fight, and this is the first punch.

I'm calling this the Fast Boat Crusade.

Why? Because of John Paul Jones words "I shall need a fast boat for I intend to sail into harm's way".

We need to fight these people, every day, and no one else, not the Congress, not Howard Dean can do it for us. We have to confront them, and stop them. It is up to us, not someone else.

posted by Steve @ 11:31:00 PM