A reader writes:
I am a famous historian. I am also a pirate and a helicopter and a ninja, and I have to say that your book is by far the most awesomest thing ever! I’m so jealous! Your book certainly proves that everybody you don’t like is a total fucking douchebag and that you and everybody you do like farts fancy French perfume! As proven by history! Which I know!
Anyhoozle, I just wanted to say that I think it’s totally unfair how people are treating your thoughtful and serious arguments. When I see things like this, I just want to cry like a wee tiny girl. This is worse than the Holocaust, and totally proves your central thesis. And I don’t mean they’re being mean like how Crooked Timber is being mean to Jonah and making fun of him – I mean being really, really mean, and pretending you haven’t even written a book when it’s already been out for 4 hours and has already broken so much ground it’s fucking ridiculous. When the revolution against liberal fascism comes, every motherfucker who doesn’t have a dog-eared copy of your book in their bathroom is going up against the motherfucking wall.
Prof. Cap’n Airwolf Ryu
I agree with this, and would only add that you forget to hold down the SHIFT key. But don’t worry about me. The fact that I’ve been totally ignored is a sign that I’ve hit on something real. If I really didn’t matter, if I was really an idiot, people wouldn’t be afraid to buy fifty copies of my book and get the front cover tattoo’ed on their forehead. Logic tells me so. So, no, this being ignored shit isn’t fun, but it sure is amusing. This is a distinction which smart people like ourselves certainly appreciate.
January 23, 2008 at 10:55 pm
Funny, I actually am an historian and that doctoral student sounds like the kind we get every four or five years. Usually a foreign student raised on their own kind of dogma, insisting that they have seen things clearly and discovered things that are radically at odds with the established historiography — and seriously, if you want to talk about established, look at the literature on the New Deal!
To take that example, it’s wildly varied, with no one narrative in dominance. William Leuchtenburg’s take differs wildly from Barton Bernstein’s, and both differ in their own ways from Ellis Hawley or Liz Cohen or Alan Brinkley, and on and on and on. That’s the way of the profession. We historians make our chops in precisely this way — forging new interpretations based on a sound reading of the evidence — but every now and then a loon comes along with a bizarre interpretation that doesn’t seek to argue with the others but merely wave it away out of hand. When they can’t push back against the grain, they claim that we can’t understand their genius and are biased against the Great Truth they and they alone have uncovered from archives that have been pored over for 60 plus years now.
The sad truth is that this student probably got the committee to sign off grudgingly on the diss. solely because they were sick of it all and feared, as many academics now do, that the thugs of the right will single them out for the Thought Police treatment. Affirmative action for conservative victims, as it were.
But bravo, Jonah. You’ve found one (alleged) Ph.D. out there who agrees with you. The rest of the profession, despite our quibbling over details and framing and the like, thinks that your basic argument is patently childish and pathetically polemical.
And if you doubt me, please — please — take a tour of campuses so we can debate you in person.
January 24, 2008 at 12:03 am
“Stop Lasers Now.”
- A famous Ramjet innovator, an FBI Man, and a Neon Purple Jet-Ski
January 24, 2008 at 12:41 am
Next you should post a letter that says YOU R TEH SUXXOR JEWS DIE! and then offer a patient, scholarly rebuttal. Needless to say you are allowed, indeed expected, to write the letter yourself.
January 24, 2008 at 2:04 am
You forgot to mention that the political spectrum is a circle. I find that this allows for beautiful and colorful shapes to illustrate your points. Beautiful pictures move paper and glue, dog. That’s just what it be. Perhaps in the second edition due paperback summer. I’m sure “your people” have in mind a news stand glossy and/or calender. Days of the week consisting of slices of your book, really extends your big back in black earnings.
Stop lasers.
January 24, 2008 at 3:09 am
I just finished posting an insightful review of The Editors’ “Liberal Fascism”. I haven’t actually read the book yet, but I think I got the gist of it from the title and whatnot, so that didn’t stop me.
January 24, 2008 at 4:43 am
I haven’t actually read the book yet…
That’s fine, Major Woody. The rules are that only those attacking a book need to read it cover-to-cover (preferably after buying it with their own money) before saying anything about it.
Those who haven’t read it are free to boost its sales, and even attack others for not having read it yet!
January 24, 2008 at 7:21 am
The conservative political spectrum isn’t a circle. It’s a Klein bottle.
January 24, 2008 at 7:24 am
hmm…I guess hotlinks get eaten. Here’s the addy
http://aycu12.webshots.com/image/39931/2003392377492076503_rs.jpg”
Looks too skinny to be Pantload, but they’re topologically identical.
January 24, 2008 at 7:41 am
I ordered mine! I can’t wait until it gets here, even though I already agree with whatever it is you wrote. Mostly I just bought it to boost your sales rank, because that’s really what matters.
January 24, 2008 at 7:57 am
I just ordered as well. Why don’t more bloggers put their awesome comics in print like this? Are you listening, Digby?
Speaking of bloggers, Nim, what happened to your blog?
January 24, 2008 at 8:10 am
Masthead should read: The Best Book Ever?
That question mark makes the magic happen. How controversial you’ve become when suddenly your period gets hijacked by a crazy ass question mark. How?
January 24, 2008 at 8:13 am
Soros should start handing these out like candy-flavored condoms.
January 24, 2008 at 9:48 am
t’s worth the $5 for everyone who reads this site to have a printable file of the Poor Man Institute’s founding document. So go download it. For those who always have space for a new book around the house, there’s plenty of cause in its 80 pages for any self-respecting coffee table to have a nicely printed full-color copy of the thing laying about, is what I’m saying. The price of the printed copy is considerable, but not as considerable as its reader’s return on investment. It is so funny. It’s all collected in this edition, all the eagerly awaited episodes of the Keyboard Kommandos as originally featured here on this site, and pages and pages of bonus written material by The Editors culled from the same source, including, yes, “Poker with Cheney,” “The Truth About Mark Foley,” and “Blogofascism.”
The other book with the same name came out recently, but give it no mind. This book by The Editors is the Liberal Fascism the world needs.
</blurb>
January 24, 2008 at 10:04 am
The World needs this book like a nice piece of fish and the Sunday Times at breakfast.
I am a famous famous man, and I approve this dust jacket quote.
January 24, 2008 at 10:04 am
True.
January 24, 2008 at 10:04 am
Is the boiling water for pasta post included??
January 24, 2008 at 10:21 am
So far my favorite file from Goldberg’s “This email is from an academic, so in your face, lefto medieval academic guild members!” folder is the one from the military historian who can’t understand why the discipline has left him behind.
Yes, I too wonder why.
January 24, 2008 at 10:36 am
Volume 2 you let the fans pick the posts, baby! By the way, which one’s Pink?
Everyone else is greedy. Have you seen the charts? It’s a hell of a start, we could make it into a monster if we all work together as a team.
January 24, 2008 at 10:50 am
Sweet harmony. Goldberg has now posted an email from none other than Jeff Goldstein, renowned expert in all things wrong with academia.
January 24, 2008 at 11:07 am
It was like a great disturbance in the farce force when this site went AWOL.
Glad to see you’re back. ;-)
January 24, 2008 at 12:02 pm
I’m holding out for the audio book version, read by the Magma guy.
January 24, 2008 at 12:38 pm
It does seem very liberal fascist of this website to allow comments.
January 24, 2008 at 12:44 pm
That is too awesome.
January 24, 2008 at 1:16 pm
I refuse to go to the other Liberal Fascism blog. Has Goldstein threatened to slap anyone else’s kid sister with his c**k yet?
January 24, 2008 at 2:09 pm
I haven’t yet read Jonah’s book…
Hasn’t read it?! I hope Goldberg chastises Goldstein heartily for this deeply unserious review.
January 24, 2008 at 4:29 pm
When critics are silent, that can only be taken as assent.
When critics attacks, that means you’ve hit a nerve.
January 25, 2008 at 3:11 pm
Airwolf is Jewish?
February 25, 2008 at 8:20 pm
That’s funny, I actually am an historian too. (Well an historical anthropologist.) And I urge Jonah Goldberg not to waste his time touring campuses to debate the existence of Liberal Fascism. Does one debate water with a fish?
When I first saw the title of his book, I assumed he’d written a history of the campus “Culture Wars” of 20-25 years ago. “Good idea,” I thought. “You could delimit the subject easily by taking, say, Dartmouth and Stanford circa 1985-90, and it would all be there! Goose-stepping Liberal Fascism!”
What a great way to end a career. Ave atque Vale.