Reading some of the back and forth on Twitter. Serious question: Do people not realize that the word “libtard” does not make a person sound mature or intelligent?
(Same, I think, tends to go for “Rethuglican,” and I really don’t like Replicanism. Just can it, already. Grow up.)
ETA: “Replicanism”… Holy typos, Batman.
I’m going to leave this here.
Are you trying to find out if she votes Replican, or she’s a lesbian, Mr. Abe?
No, no they should not. As the saying goes, better to keep one’s mouth shut and be thought an idiot than to open one’s mouth and prove it.
Sadly, they do not. Not to mention acting as a bright and shining signal that these folks want nothing to do with actual discourse–it’s just petty shit-flinging.
Also: Rachel makes me feel all funny-like down in the pit of my stomach. I…I’d be okay if she wanted to vape-cloud me…
Whole-heartedly agree, middle-school taunts are so weak compared to real moral condemnation, which many of our leaders deserve. Crypto-Nazi is so much more impressive than queer.
Hannity can’t recognize a Buckley quote because he is uneducated. Know what they call educated Republicans?
Democrats.
Hannity’s a bit like Trump, in this respect: strangely, blithely ignorant of conservatism except as abstraction and ideal.
More like, “except as a label for his own opinions, whatever they may be at the moment.”
Agreed, except that I have no problem when the wordplay is accurate.
As in “Rethuglican.”
Their principles and policies really are thug-like. And some of them really do act like thugs. And when they do, many of the rest of them express approval.
What I don’t get about “libtard” is why it’s supposed to be clever wordplay. In wordplay, the idea is to modify a word very slightly, perhaps changing a vowel or a consonant, to create a secondary sense (or, to use a very similar word in place of another one for the same reason). It can play off the ambiguity of semantics (“time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana”) or quirks of phonology and morphology (“It’s unpleasantly like being drunk.” “What’s wrong with being drunk?” “Ask a glass of water.”).
The word “liberal” and the word “retard” have no shared phonemes that would make this a clever phonological wordplay. “Rethuglican” at least shares the vowel, although that too strikes me as weak and not very clever.
Political humor in general always seems a bit watery to me. I rarely find it funny, even when the comedians share my political views, because it often hinges too much on what Critchley calls “the humor of superiority.”
To quote my grandfather, “You sound like a complete libtard.” 
IOW, people who use the word wouldn’t actually listen to at least 90% of what you just said. They listen mostly to what words sound like, instead of what they mean.
Edit: I think “libtard” also works for them like “lamestream media” and “feminazi” do – the wordplay includes offensive additions that throw “political correctness” back in the faces of supposedly hypersensitive “libtards.”
You have it precisely. I have never heard Hannity once express an insight to anything about Republican politics or the conservative movement that was not completely obvious to anyone already following it. In fact, if you removed the Republican talking points from Sean Hannity, he would look about like this. And the Yangs would still understand the Constitution better than him.
I would be extremely wary about going down the road of reporting on what Sean Hannity is unaware of. It’s the kind of project that could consume most of one’s time.
For a second I thought that was going to be a photo of the dead woman found in his office. Then I remembered that was a Joe Scarborough scandal, not a Hannity one. I often get those two interchangeable white-guy blowhards confused.
And as we know, Democrats never leave their staffers to die.
Yay. Are you going to remind us next that Lincoln was a Republican?
Pretty much all those white-guy blowhards look alike…
Buckley was history’s greatest monster for any number of reasons, including the fact that he could be provoked so easily.
But I grudgingly respect that while he was delivering that tough-guy line, he never dropped out of his bluest-of-the-blue-blood accent. If anything, it got thicker. Most people couldn’t physically speak through teeth that tightly clenched.
Not in 1968
This was filmed in New York City in 1968 for showing on National TV – a year before Stonewall.
Homosexual acts could still be criminally prosecuted, as affirmed in the Governor’s signing notes of the 1965 New York State criminal statues. Homosexuality was still a recognized psychiatric disorder, which many mental health professional still thought should be “treated” with drugs. Violence towards homosexuals was culturally acceptable and widespread. Homosexuals were “others” to be treated poorly for their own good
A light-hearted way to convey the complete “other-ing” of homosexuals in that era is to watch the “elevator scene” in Mel Brook’s 1968 comic masterpiece “The Producers.” That deeply offensive, homophobic scene was considered riotously hilarious and appropriate for family entertainment.
Calling someone a “queer” in public was incredibly rhetorically aggressive. Since the charge against Vidal was true, Safire’s verbal attack would have immediately de-legitimatized Vidal as a “man” and undercut any hope Vidal had of persuasion for most of the audience. Buckley knew exactly how devastating that attack was when he made it.
Of course, such a “calling out” would have put a person of less stature than Vidal at considerable personal, legal, and medical risk. Evan Gore Vidal was not really safe – he lived in Rome for a reason.
1968 was a very different place. The music was great, but be glad you didn’t have to live there.
Here he is… joking about smashing in Noam Chomsky’s face… charming.
(if I were more talented, I’d change that to where WFB’s head explodes at the end of the gif… by the power of James Baldwin’s MIND!!!)
