Rupert Murdoch Lays A Fatwa On Me

I had no idea my loyal readers included James Taranto.  Hi Jim! [waves]

Sorry I didn't get back to you earlier on this, but as you have so astutely noted, I'm lazy.

It seems Jim is all worked up over the fact that I called his favorite Steely-Eyed Rocket-Man a "Dumbass".  Imagine that. 

Apparently I'm lazy and gullible because I linked to a Reuters article about Nelson Mandela Foundation's announcement that Nelson Mandela is indeed alive despite what Chimpy said in yesterday's hastily-assembled presser.  Oh, and The Chimpster was using a "pithy metaphor"  that was taken out of context when he claimed Saddam had killed Mandela, but somehow that whizzed over my lazy head.

Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy.  If you were a true fan you would know that I read every single word Chimpy slurs between his teeth and tongue, or at least every word that is transcribed and posted at the White House.  I do a regular bit on it called Your President Speaks!, it's quite popular and exceedingly funny.

In fact, I "covered" Chimpy's presser yesterday, long before the Reuters article was written.  Hey, I even took Chimpy's Mandelacidal words out of context before Reuters did.

But -- really, Jim -- is there any argument as to whether Chimpy is a dumbass or not?  Do you want to be known as the Opinion Journal pundit who defended Chimpy from charges of dumbassery?  Because the jury has been in on this one a loooong time. The man is a dumbass.

For example, here is Chimpy's idea of a joke (from the very same presser). 

I remind people that, like when I'm with Condi I say, she's the Ph.D. and I'm the C-student, and just look at who's the President and who's the advisor.

What a dumbass.

Or what about this?

There is no question that there is some unsettling times in the housing market, and credits associated with the housing market.

"There is some unsettling times..."  Would anyone but a dumbass say something like that?  I could go on and on (in fact, I do).

Let's take a look at the quote that wadded you underoos, the Mandela death threat.  I don't want to take the dumbass out of context, oh my!  I'll use what you considered to be the full quote:

Part of the reason why there is not this instant democracy in Iraq is because people are still recovering from Saddam Hussein's brutal rule. I thought an interesting comment was made when somebody said to me, I heard somebody say, where's Mandela? Well, Mandela is dead, because Saddam Hussein killed all the Mandelas. He was a brutal tyrant that divided people up and split families, and people are recovering from this. So there's a psychological recovery that is taking place. And it's hard work for them. And I understand it's hard work for them. Having said that, I'm not going the give them a pass when it comes to the central government's reconciliation efforts.

Do you think he really heard someone say, "Where's Mandela?"  Who was that person, where did it happen and when?  I did not hear anyone at the presser ask where the Iraqi Mandela was, did you?  Was it a voice in his head (or his dumb ass) that asked, "Where  - oh where are the Mandelas?"

Who are the multiple Iraqi Mandelas that Saddam killed?  Was Mohammad Mohammad Sadeq al-Sadr, Muqtada's father, one of the Iraqi Mandelas Saddam killed?  Really?  Do you mean to tell me that Chimpy is not a dumbass, but rather a keen student of Iraqi history?  The man who did not know that there were Sunni and Shia Muslims in Iraq prior to the initiation of his Vanity War is now suddenly an expert on all the Iraqi Mandelas?

Dude, the man's a dumbass.  It's set in stone now, you can't erase it and getting into a snit won't help.

Jim, the Mandela Foundation felt it necessary to announce that Nelson Mandela is indeed alive.  The Mandela Foundation resides in South Africa, I don't know if you noticed that as you expressed some doubt that Chimpy's dumbass "gaffe" received "worldwide coverage" (it did).

Jimmy, the man regularly refers to the 9/11 hijackers as "kids".  He's a dumbass.  End of story.

Comments

[SteveLG]

I'm beginning to think maybe Taranto's a dumbass, too.

"styling himself Holden Caulfield".......Wait! You're not Holden Caulfield???? OMG do I feel like a dumbass.
---------
I agree with SteveLG...Taranto's-- Bush's dumbassery is really pure genius ploy--->that's dumbass

[spocko]

Well. I see that The President was trying to use a classic set up technique (like the Fox "Some say" or "People ask me"?) Or the "The Rumsfeld Technique"™ where you ask and answer your own questions.

But he didn't even use any of them right!
You KNOW that some writer somewhere was damn proud of himself and explaining it to the President and then just sank into a funk when the President butchered the simple technique because he left out a key word.

[CJ]

Why Mr. Caufield, you're talkin' like that just gives me the vapors.

You would think that if anyone would know a dumbass when they see one it would be another member of the club like James.

[joejoejoe]

I'm happy when I hear James Taranto is doing anything other than writing.

[caliph garrett]

It's hard work defending a dumbass.

[mattsmom]

Congratulations! Now even more people will come here and read the "Your President Speaks" series to learn how the president is at war with articles and plural verbs and learn that their president is . . . a dumbass. They will also be introduced to your obsession with the gaggle and discover, well, that the president is surrounded by (drum roll here) dumbasses.

You have done well, self-styled Holden. I think this deserves ever so much more than just a pony.

[caliph garrett]

BTW...has anybody bothered to point out the irony of Bush's own VP (back when he was Rep. Vader) having voted against resolutions condemning Mandela's imprisonment and recommending sanctions against SA? Even back in 1986, it was convenient to label Mandela's ANC as a terrorist organization.

"I don't have any problems at all with the vote I cast 20 years ago," said Cheney in 2000. One assumes he remains satisfied to this day.

If we're to believe Cheney, who gives a fuck whether the Iraqi Mandelas are dead or rotting in a jail? They're terrorists, and got what they deserve.

[DWPittelli]

It was insensitive and thus, for the President, a "gaffe" to allude even metaphorically to the death of Mandela, who is 89 years old and in ill health. But the only dumbass in this affair is you, "Holden Caulfield."

Reuters' article is tendentious but does not claim that Bush was speaking literally; your post on this which OpinionJournal referred to could be read this way, but in your post here you are digging yourself into a deep dumbass hole.

Do you really think that when Bush said that Saddam Hussein had "killed all the Mandelas" he was speaking literally of the Mandela family -- i.e., that Bush believed that the dictator of Iraq had the South African leader's family killed? If so, then you are a bigger dumbass than you believe Bush to be. If not, then you are being transparently dishonest.

It may be reasonable for people of significantly greater intelligence than Bush (IQ ~126) to consider him a "dumbass," but you are clearly no such person.

[Action Jackson]

Yo, DWPittelli --

Ever hear of humor?

Lighten up, Frances.

[Jim Jenkins]

So Chimpy is some kind of freakin' genius? He hides his big ole faux Texas IQ under a bushel in order to inspire the mediocre. Thanks to years of reading Holden, I know that he works tirelessly to convince those of lesser intellect and drive that they too can aspire to world domination. Don't waste your time and money on a fancy education like Condi did. Look at me. I'm a big ole dumbass and she's a PhD and look who's presidentin'.

Congratulations Holden and welcome to all of the visiting dumbasses from the Wall Street Journal Editorial Page!

[caliph garrett]

The trolls are jousting with strawmen.

Bush's comment was idiotically inappropriate, unsolicited, and flagrantly contrived.

He does this quite frequently.

It was yet another example of how Bush will glom on to anything--anything--to try to justify this clusterfuck of an occupation of Iraq. By now, every major conflict of the modern era has been invoked to prop up this disaster.

This whole literal/metaphorical debate is just a misdirection from a hack writer whose job is to distract from these embarrassing miscues, and clean up Bush's verbal and conceptual piddlings.

As Holden points out, metaphors at least need some grounding in reality in order to be valid--otherwise, you're just making shit up, which Bush does frequently.

Bush is a dumbass, ne plus ultra.

[DWPittelli]

Action Jackson,

I am cognizant of the post's attempt at humor, and I am familiar with the genre of humor concerning the stupidity of the target. It can be modestly funny if the example given actually shows the stupidity of the target, especially if the target is a powerful or pompous person.

If the example does not actually show the stupidity of the target, then we would be left with irony.

Is it your position that the post is funny because ironic (because Bush is actually smart)? Or is it your position that any idiotic rambling is funny if, read straight, it amounts to a claim that the target is stupid?

Or is it your position -- as it is mine -- that the post is an attempt at humor which fails to be funny because it does nor work whether seen as spoof, irony, biting criticism, sarcasm, or any other category of witty prose, and indeed does not know to which category or categories it belongs?

[caliph garrett]

Additionally, Bush's use of "Mandelas" would be an example of metonymy, which is not specifically a metaphor.

[oyster]

My position is that Action Jackson's post is funny because of the "Stripes" reference.

[BuggyQ]

Holden, you truly have hit the bigtime. Not only did you capture Taranto's attention, but now you have TROLLS!

The only thing left is to have someone claim that you get your marching orders from Markos.

[Bill]

James Taranto apparently sees himself as a dumbass:
http://www.alarmingnews.com/archives/James%20Taranto%20II.jpg

[Action Jackson]

You take yourself pretty seriously, don't you DWPittelli .

[Action Jackson]

I guess Holden's sense of humor is too sophisticated for the likes of DWPittelli.

Break out the fart jokes, Ponyboy!

[Trollboy]

I'll bet you take your marching orders from Markos!

[jimmiraybob]

I'll bet you take your marching orders from Markos!

Posted by: Trollboy

That's Supreme Comandante Marcos the Magnificent, Overlord of the Non-Dumbass Army and Master of all Dimensions. Please try harder.

And, congratulations Mr. Stylin' Holden. If anyone deserves vast herds o' ponies and hugs-n-kisses from the serious folk it's you.

PS, perhaps you could have softened the blow a little by at least being respectful of the office and referring to the petulant codpiece as King Dumbass.

[Ripley]

My favorite part:

In this context, it is clear that the literal meaning of “Where’s Mandela?” is “Where is the Iraqi who will play the role in his country that Mandela played in postapartheid South Africa?” This was a pithy metaphor, not an “embarrassing gaffe.”

So, according to Taranto, the literal meaning was a metaphor, which should be taken literally, metaphorically speaking. Or something...

Literary devices aside, Bush was working a cheap ploy to paint Hussein as the be all, end all of evil personified, in a childish effort to excuse the criminal actions of the Bush administration over the last six years. The people of Iraq are definitely not in a better place thanks to George Bush, and the world knows it.

Bush's IQ was measured at 126?

Hm. When, where, by whom, using which version of the test, and who was on the mic at the other end of the wire that day?

Dumbassery abounds.

[Dorothy]

Yesterday, I saw a bumper sticker on a pickup with Oklahoma plates (in Dallas):

GWB: How dumb is TOO dumb?

Mr. Taranto, the ruse is over: even the Okies have figured it out.

[skippy]

as i said, even if we agree that awol meant what he said as a pithy poetic image, he's still about 1 for 723 in the successful metaphor batting average.

[pansypoo]

is that dumbass, as in stupid assHOLE? cause georgie is a major prick.

[ran]

My problem with the Chimp is not so much that he's a worthless, lying moron who by his own merits would rise to be assistant night manager at a Denny's somewhere (before getting fired for showing up drunk once too often) but that he's a mass murderer, a torturer, and a war criminal who lied us into an illegal war of aggression in Iraq and who should, along with his co-conspirators, be answering for his war crimes and crimes against humanity in The Hague.

[Hoppy]

Little George is beyond any reasonable doubt dumb, but what does that say about the collective IQ of US voters? If his dumbness was well hidden before 2000, it would be one thing, but it wasn't. And, by 2004 it was as well known as the Pledge of Allegiance in this country. I would say that if little George had a 126 IQ, the collective IQ of the voters had to be about 76. That is my primary worry about the 2008 election.

[Josh Davis]

You may notice that aside from giving nicknames to people, he also has a bad habit of rarely ever saying someone's first name when referringly to them informally. I can only guess this is because he has trouble remembering what their first names are or something.

Truly yours,
Blog-commenter Davis

[DWPittelli]

George W Bush’s SAT score (1206) and military aptitude test indeed put his IQ at about 126 or 124, John Kerry's Navy test corresponds to about 120, while Al Gore was tested at 133 and 134.

There is of course some controversy about how meaningful such numbers are, how smart a President should be, and whether IQ is a good measure of real-world wisdom (Rhodes scholars getting BJs from 22-year-olds would tend to discount such), but the underlying info on these men is uncontroversial, and readily found from several sources via a Google search.

The only other objective (pre-political) evidence we have, performance in graduate schools, tends to favor Bush over both Kerry and Gore, but there is much less data correlating such matters to general intelligence than there is for the SAT and armed forces aptitude tests.

[munkihaid]

Wow! A Clenis sighting. It's been a while.

Straws. . .they're not just for grasping anymore.

[Elspeth R]

Oh, yeah, I knew it was on its way - someone was gonna throw the Clenis in there...
"Hey, my 'leader' makes a box of hair look qualified for Mensa, so I am going to dust off the old 'Clinton got a blowjob' chestnut as a "Oh yeah!?!?!"..."
Give it up Pittelli - duh-bya is a douchemook, a dumbass and a dyspeptic dipwad. Sure, he was anointed to be president, but that just means he, I mean, his daddy, had the money ('cause junior did NOT have the brains) to buy his way into the Oval Office. Or would you prefer we use the Clinton-era nom de chambre...'the Oral Office'? It seems to get all of you shrub-rubbers in a titillated state, you bring it up all the time.
I wish some self-hating, rethuglican, bald, gay man (we know there are plenty in that group) would spill the beans about gobbling shrub's nob so that we could freaking IMPEACH him already. Don't forget to bring the stained blue dress (something from the 'dress lahk mah momma' closet in shrub's secret wardrobe).

Sheese, 30%'ers defending their warlord...we gotta fix that.

Elspeth

[caliph garrett]

Isn't there some sort of Godwin's corollary for Teh Clenis?

W00t.

[serge]

Dumbassery knows no bounds. I always believed that trolls lived under bridges. Has there been an affirmative action program for them recently? I think that's a subsidy that's unfair to the rest of us.

[DWPittelli]

Elspeth R,

My "defense" of W was narrow and specific and factual, as was my critique of WJC. Perhaps you should sober up, or get some schooling in reading comprehension and having a point, before attempting to write a public refutation of anything.

As it happens, I cringe at W's stupidity every time I hear him speak, so I avoid listening. (But this has been true for me of every President since Carter; except for Clinton, whose speaking made me cringe because of his transparent dishonesty.)

I agree it would be nice if the President of the United States were smarter. It is not my fault that the Democrats chose someone even less intelligent than Bush in 2004.

While it is initially tempting to propose a requirement for some high IQ such as 150 (99.9th percentile) to be elected President, memories of my actual experience with most such people quickly eliminate this temptation. Further, old studies showing the difficulty that most people have in communicating with those with IQs more than 30 points less than their own possibly explain why parties do not tend to nominate such people, and why a party choosing such a person would put itself at a disadvantage.

The one advantage I see in a Parliamentary system is in the formal question period which some have for the Prime Minister. This does tend to give more of an advantage to intelligence. It is hard to imagine Bush (or Kerry or Gore, for that matter) performing at anywhere near the level of a typical British PM.

[pansypoo]

so let's steal gordon!

[Elspeth R]

Yeah, when's the cutoff for the World Leaders Free Agency period? Could we trade the whole shrub cabal for one good leader of another country? I mean, if boosh were a quarterback, he would pretty much be David Carr - all hype and no good results. But, upon further review, at least Carr didn't hurt (let alone kill) anything/one besides the Houston Texans' win percentage - so, in the words of Emily Litella, "nevermind".
;)
Elspeth

[everybodyherelikesfudge]

Hey, this is where all the fudge packers are!

[Elspeth R]

Yeah everyfudgepacker, just look at all the trolls that have swooped down on this site. Holden has totally made the big time. Pony! Pony! Pony!!! :)
Trolls darken the doorway to defend the mentally defenseless idiot-in-chief as ardently as blowflies descend upon a fresh corpse. At least the flies are helping the decomposition process. Trolls? Well, they just smell like decomp and louder and more obnoxious than the insects.
Elspeth

[caliph garrett]

Jeez, Professor Troll is still going?

If you want to introduce dishonesty into your "narrow" calculus, fine...but I'm afraid Bush has that in spades, too. This ineloquent, dishonest dumbass has proven to be a lethal combination...but as long as he didn't get a blowjob, I guess it's all sunshine and smiles for the pecksniff set.

EHLF, you forgot to include a link to your place.

[MIkeInOhio]

Holden, I gotta say, I love you man (in a Jesus' General, totally heterosexual way, of course).

I am laughing my freakin' ass off.

Word!!!

[thepoliticalcat]

Holden, Holden, Holden. You are just too kind. The man is not a dumbass, not even a douchemook. He is the ne plus ultra of dumbassery and douchemookage. He is so deeply and bone-chillingly stupid that anyone with an IQ over 100 points suffers brain-freeze when listening to him or reading his words. You know, like biting into a huge chunk of hard-frozen ice-cream when all your teeth are chock-a-block with metal fillings. I must thank you for dissecting his posts. My head explodes too regularly when faced with his brutal assaults on language.

D.W. Pitelli, you're sadly out of place here. Return to your bridge, little one, it misses you.

[smitty werbenmanjensen mclovin]

Bush is a dumbass, Taranto's a fatass.

Not really, Jim, what you are is a smug idealogue with the inability to separate fact from "principles" even when it is empirically obvious to all but the most stubborn. But he and the rest of the Bush dead-enders can continue to sit in the bleachers of the coliseum, like so many members of the People's Front of Judea, while the events cascade past them .....