Jonah Golberg, "stupid rather than evil"?
August 03, 2009 9:18 am ET by Eric Boehlert
First of all, note the complete coincidence that Goldberg was invited to be on Glenn Beck's program just days after Goldberg went to bat for Beck and announced the demented Fox News host had nothing to apologize for for calling out President Barack Obama as a "racist" and claiming Obama had a "deep-seated hatred of white people."
Jonah was totally okay with that, and voilà! he quickly got tapped to be on Glenn Beck. What are the odds, right?
But honestly, I"m glad Jonah was on Beck's show because the segment he appeared in may have been one of the funniest of the year; one of the looniest and just plain idiotic. And that was Jonah, the pride of NRO, signing off on yet another Beck caper.
Basically, Beck made the mistake of taking seriously a tip from one of his tin foil hat radio listeners who claimed to have uncovered a sweeping, Big Brother government conspiracy--buried in the "cash for clunkers" program--by which the Obama administration will take control of your computer!!!! For life!!!!
Not quite. Daily Kos' Jed Lewison details the nonsense here. And Ryan Witt at Examiner.com notes:
Beck is showing a website that['s] not the cars.gov website but instead another government website which can only be accessed by car dealers who are screened and registered for the CARS program. So it is only dealers who are using the government program that have access to the website. Furthermore, it makes sense that the government have access to the dealer's computer since it is a government program handing out billions of dollars that has the potential for fraud.
But since when have the facts deterred Beck? So first he turned to Fox News legal expert Kimberly Guilfoyle who didn't even understand the basics of the "cash for clunker" program (She thinks the cars are being donated to charity. Whatever.) And then Beck called on Goldberg and unintentional hilarity ensues:
The thing is, is that we can separate out what the intent might or might not have been. I mean, maybe it's just someone being really stupid in the federal government...Look, as a conservative, you always have to hold out the possibility that government people are just stupid rather than evil.
You can say that again.
UPDATED: Do I even have to mention right-wing bloggers like Hot Air and scores more obediently bought the Beck foolishness? Because c'mon, who wouldn't automatically embrace one of Beck's far-fetched anti-Obama conspiracy theory? It's not like he has a spotty fact-checking record....
UPDATED: Newsbusters thinks Beck deserves "credit" for uncovering the "cash for clunkers" scam.
Behold conservatism in America.
He's written more books since then, and each one seems to be getting less rational, more angry and more petty, hence making him a perfect match for Beck. I imagine that his credibility level these days is about the same as Malkin minus Coulter, divided by Savage. You need an electron microscope to find it.
Jonah Goldberg's the one who wrote the book with the smiley face with a Hitler mustache, claiming libruls are really Nazis. So we are talking similar levels of wit and intellectual honesty between the two Goldbergs.
I hate to think I just gave Bernard that much more publicity. Yecch.
Eric, I give you credit. I don't know how you stomach visiting such vile and obtuse websites like hot air and "news"busters. You are a man among boys.
The piece then goes on to whine and complain about how difficult it is to destroy engines and how people who want a deal on a used car can't buy old engines. Never mentioning that the whole frakin' bloody point of the program is to get polluting cars off the road!!!! If people turn in a polluting auto and the dealer simply re-sells it, that removes one of the reasons for the program to exist in the first place!
The stupid! It burns!!!
Whoa, Eric, that's going too far. I still have hopes that the genuine conservatives in this country (as represented here by Jeter, Bruce, Oscar, and occasionally Tommy) will take back their party from the neocons. Real conservatives have too much sense to fall for any of this.
"Behold neoconservatism in America" fits just fine.