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Last updated on August 9th, 2017 at 11:36 am
A fellow named Markos Moulitsas Zúniga declares:
I wouldn’t want to be a senator or congressman. I’m able to influence politics much more effectively doing what I do. Now I can shape the national political debate. The only way I could exert more influence would be if I were president.
He’s already more powerful than Cheney! More powerful than Rove! Markos may even wield greater influence than Juan Cole, who—according to University of Oklahoma academic Joshua Landis—is known to all:
Juan Cole has done something that no other Middle East academic has done since Bernard Lewis, who is 90 years old: He has become a household word. He has educated a nation. For the last thirty years every academic search for a professor of Middle East history at an Ivy League university has elicited the same complaint: ‘There are no longer any Bernard Lewises. Where do you find someone really big with expertise on many subjects who is at home in both the ivory tower and inside the Beltway?’ Today, Juan Cole is that academic.
These people are out of their minds.
UPDATE. Hitchens turns Cole to slaw: “Professor Cole has completely missed or omitted the first reference in last October’s speech, skipped to the second one, and flatly misunderstood the third.”
He has become a household word.
uh, in his own household, maybe
Posted by benson swears a lot on 2006 06 27 at 01:39 PM • permalink
- Excuse the vulgarity, but whenever I hear or read Kos stroking himself again, I think of the old joke about the mouse humping the elephant and yelling, “Take it all, bitch!”
And Kos is, like, the mouse. And everyone else is the elephant. Or something like that.
Posted by WingDynasty on 2006 06 27 at 01:53 PM • permalink
- Nurse! Massive perspective infusions required for these two scribblers, stat! They’re fading fast!Posted by James Waterton on 2006 06 27 at 01:54 PM • permalink
- #4: We have a WINNAH! Way to go Ushie! Whenever Moulitsas starts raving and going all goose-pimply in his meditations on the greatness of his potty little self, he puts me in mind of the crazy Bogart in The Caine Mutiny. Although a more appropriate analogy might be “Cousin Teddy” in Arsenic and Old Lace (you remember: the nut who thought he was Teddy Roosevelt, and kept blowing his bugle everytime he charged up the stairs, under the delusion that he was running up San Juan Hill).
And speaking of “San Juan”, would the aforementioned Juan Cole be the fellow who was denied a teaching position at Yale, of all places? The “professor” who set aside any pretense of original scholarship in order to blog his way into notoriety? That is the heir to Bernard Lewis? Well, he’s a household word in our house, too: “All right, who left the lid on the Juan Cole up, again?”
A fellow named Markos Moulitsas Zúniga … already more powerful than Cheney! More powerful than Rove!
And some of you non-believers actually doubted Lord Rove’s power to make the absurb reality? Go forth and doubt no more!
Posted by wronwright on 2006 06 27 at 02:13 PM • permalink
- I think both Kos and Juan Cole have delusions of mediocrity. And who the Hell is Joshua Landis? Does he play football? U of Oklahoma is well-known for it’s football prowess, but I don’t remember a Joshua Landis. Maybe he’s the punter?Posted by JorgXMcKie on 2006 06 27 at 02:28 PM • permalink
Maybe he’s the punter?
I think he’s the water boy’s back up for away games.
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2006 06 27 at 02:46 PM • permalink
- Here’s a little perspective on Juanito, full of interesting links.
Landis is an assistant professor of Middle Eastern studies, apparently specializing in Syria. Here’s some background. At least one of his papers has been translated into Arabic by the “Tharwa Project”, described as “a Syrian-based think tank” – which (forgive me) conjures up an image of non-Ba’athist heads floating in a vat of formaldehyde.
The two of these fellows together haven’t produced the kind of scholarly wisdom that Lewis probably utters in his sleep.
- Come on guys-Bogie’s character was nuts, but the moral of the story is that the other officers failed in their duty to assist him in the efficient running of the ship.
Ko$ is much more like the sneaky Fred MacMurray character (the real villain of the film) who attempts to accomplish his ends with innuendo and a whispering campaign-“let the story die” and the Townhouse list.
- Has Benedict authorized the start of the Canonization process yet? Will it be St. Zuniga or St. Kos?
“…It was a little scary to carry so much responsibility on your shoulders. And it still is. I daydream about turning things over to a younger generation, but people wouldn’t allow it. Not yet.”
Don’t even joke about such things, oh great and powerful Kos. Why, without you to guide us, the netroots will shrivel up and die and the future of our entire planet will be placed in extreme jeopardy. It will be the end of life as we know it.
Either that or progressive Democratic candidates will continue to lose elections at the same sorry rate and the nutroots will find another high priest of profundity to bow before. Twit.
I refer Markos to Proverbs again: Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall. He ought to have it tattooed on his ass.
Posted by Kyda Sylvester on 2006 06 27 at 03:04 PM • permalink
- I refer Markos to Proverbs again: Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall. He ought to have it tattooed on his ass.
Good idea, Kyda. That way, his acolytes would see it every time they pucker up (and Kos, himself, might get a close look at it whenever he decides to extract his head).
- I believe that Juan Cole was recently rejected by Yale, after Yale accepted the Taliban’s PR man.Posted by perfectsense on 2006 06 27 at 03:18 PM • permalink
- Markos Moulitsas Zúniga is out of his F’ing mind! “Influence politics effectively?” “Shape the national political debate?” Has a single Kos-endorsed candidate ever won an election?
What a soaring hiney hole!
Posted by Bill Spencer on 2006 06 27 at 03:25 PM • permalink
- The only way I could exert more influence would be if I were president.
No, it wasn’t Bogart who said it, it was Babe Ruth. (Ummm? Maybe Ruth said he made more than the President because he had had a better season?Well, maybe Kos feels the same way, but he’s 0 for 20 at bats. What would Ruth have said?)
- Do blogs have a ‘jump the shark’ moments?
I think this is it for this guy.
Anyone else think he is the spitting image of former Melbourne property spruiker, Henry Kaye?
Posted by Effing & Blinding on 2006 06 27 at 05:51 PM • permalink
- The “household word” I use to refer to Juan Cole is a**hole. That is, for that full nine or ten seconds I’m forced to think about him when reading some blog post.Posted by William Young on 2006 06 27 at 06:09 PM • permalink
- #27
Do blogs have a ‘jump the shark’ moments?
I think this is it for this guy.Yep. He’s not making the stories at the moment, he is the story, and not in a good way.
Posted by daddy dave on 2006 06 27 at 06:20 PM • permalink
- Comparing Cole to Lewis is like comparing a Swatch to an Omega Speedmaster.
Anyone who has the faintest idea what they are talking about simply doesn’t make such an absurd comparison.
Posted by Mike Jericho on 2006 06 27 at 06:25 PM • permalink
- This little piece of shit, kos suffers from delusions of grandeur.
Listed are the factors in determining delusional behavior:
certainty…(held with absolute conviction)
incorrigibility…(not changeable by compelling counterargument or proof to the contrary)
impossibility or falsity of content… (implausible, bizarre or patently untrue)
If kos doesn’t fit the above I’ll eat my latest golf hat.
BUT the dude is getting laid. Well, WAY more then he got from his Mommy, anyway.
- Back in the real world:
It is believed that Corporal Gilad Shalit is being held by Palestinian militants from Hamas somewhere in southern Gaza.Egyptian and French mediators are talking to the militant groups in an effort to win the soldier’s freedom.
But it is understood that the exiled supreme leader of Hamas, Khaled Meshaal, is refusing to authorise the Israeli’s release.
France is negotiating… Isn’t it looking good for Hamas…
- Excuse me, I have to duck out for a Juan Cole.Posted by Margos Maid on 2006 06 27 at 07:37 PM • permalink
- Actually Kos Bialystok is looking to break into showbizness…
The more I think about it, the notion of Kos and Armstrong as Max Bialystok and Leo Bloom has a certain internal logic to it:
“You know, Kos, it’s funny, but with the right candidate, you could actually make more money with a losing campaign than a victory…”
“Jerome! Here it is! Smell it! Taste it! Kiss it! A Clinton general in command during a ten-year quagmire who ordered his own troops to attack each other! THAT’S OUR CANDIDATE!”
Liberals were having trouble,
What a sad, sad story!’
Needed a new leader to restore their faded glory!
Where oh where was he,
Where could that man be?
We looked around,
And then we found,
The man for you and me!And now it’s —
Springtime for lefties
and Daily Kos!
Moobats are happy and gay!
We’re signing off our welfare checks
To campaigns run like railroad wrecks!Springtime for lefties
and Daily Kos!
Winter, for facts with no chance…Springtime for lefties’
and Daily Kos!
Come on, Greenwald, go into your dance!Posted by richard mcenroe on 2006 06 27 at 08:39 PM • permalink
- Unlike 35 years ago when these folks were the only game in town, we now have alternate methods of getting information.
It seems to me that this generation’s crop of moonbats has been isolated to a few latte enclaves, the media, and a bunch of colleges.
They talk to only to each other, monitored by compassionate caretakers so they don’t get taken too seriously, and think that they are the sum total of reality.
It’s cute really, they try so hard…it’s like watching kittens tumble over a ball of string.
Good thing the adults are in charge.
- When did Kos turn into Boss Tweed?Posted by Pat Patterson on 2006 06 27 at 09:09 PM • permalink
- #2 – that is a gold line. You are so right.
What the hell is with Cole’s line “The final defeat of the Baath Party will be seen as a defeat of its ideals, which include secularism, improved rights for women and high modernism”. Ummmm, ok?
Is Cole getting the Baath party mixed up with something else? Clearly so.
Posted by The Best Infidel on 2006 06 27 at 09:19 PM • permalink
- I,ve said it before and I’ll say it again, WOMFT!.Posted by Daniel San on 2006 06 27 at 09:33 PM • permalink
- #12 – The_Real_JeffS – Maybe he’s also a Guard & and End…sits on the End of the bench & Guards the Gatorade?
Gawd, that joke is so old I’ve now thoroughly embarrassed myself.
Kos can’t be much, I never heard of him till I started reading THIS blog. Strikes me as divorced from Reality, he does…maybe I’d feel sorry for him if he wasn’t so pathetically arrogant!
- Posted by your deponent in another thread, but perhaps more appropriate here:
This predeliction for public self-immolation, this perverse and frankly pitiable exposure of themselves to obloquoy, derision and reproach — whether mild or acerbic — from their intellectual and literary betters in the blogosphere (damnable word) and prticularly in this place is an attribute of the leftist contributors that sickens me (almost) beyond words.
Is there none among them capable of acquitting themselves effectively within this arena for the causes they purport to hold so dear?
What has become of us all that challenging, reasoned discourse appears time and again to be the sole province of those with whom we already largely agree—in principle if not in detail?
Must we continue to filter through the noisome dregs of this tainted cask that passes for dialectic from the left — devoid of spirit, unleavened by thoughtful consideration or rhetorical rigour?
I grow tired of the “plonk”, the “beaujolais nouveau” that is continually served up by ces arrivistes. Bring me something with a rich & fruity turn of phrase, something underpinned by generous amounts of smoky, oaken profundity; nicely structured tannins of wit and penetrating ripe cherry nuances—a maieutic mead to refresh and reinvigorate my mind.
Posted by MentalFloss on 2006 06 28 at 12:02 AM • permalink
- I … I sense that you’re trying to say something … but what?Posted by Huck Foley on 2006 06 28 at 12:25 AM • permalink
- Perhaps, Huck, my currently fevered brow and the sickening sound of pustulent bronchioles bursting explosively with each racking cough have obscured the clarity of my prose.
A cool draught of reason from the left is what I crave. Some indication that our engagement in rational discussion, that is, of every discussion undertaken in the search for truth should exhibit certain principles. I list hereinunder three examples:
1. The principle of fallibility: perhaps I am wrong and perhaps you are right. But we could easily both be wrong.
2. The principle of rational discussion: we want to try, as impersonally as possible, to weight up our reasons for and against a theory.
3. The principle of approximation to the truth: we can nearly always come closer to the truth in a discussion which avoids personal attacks.
I am merely noting that these three and other, lesser principles—both epistemological and ethical —are largely absent in the contributions of those “across the aisle”.
It pleases me to say that, here, among other things, we practice toleration: if I hope to learn from you, and if I want to learn in the interest of truth, then I have not only to tolerate you but also to recognize you as a potential equal; the potential unity and equality of all somehow, to me at any rate, constitute a prerequisite of our willingness to discuss matters rationally.
I guess I just bemoan the lack of an adequate adversary.
Posted by MentalFloss on 2006 06 28 at 12:54 AM • permalink
- Markos’ slimy, sneering meglomania is nothing new: during the run-up to the 2004 Presidential Election (at the Democratic National Convention, IIRC) he claimed on C-Span that there were “maybe 2 or 3 people” with his “skillset”, whatever the fook that’s supposed to mean. His “mad skillz” have resulted in exactly ZERO election victories.Posted by Spiny Norman on 2006 06 28 at 01:00 AM • permalink
Kos has the ego of Napoleon Bonaparte and the social graces of Napoleon Dynamite.
That’s beautiful, ushie!
Posted by Spiny Norman on 2006 06 28 at 01:04 AM • permalink
- If you’re telling people you influence national debates, then it’s a sure sign you’re not.
Is University of Oklahoma academic Joshua Landis prepared to bet that not even one-fifth of the American adult population has a clue who Juan Cole is?
A household name! Christ, there are people who don’t even know who Markos Moulitsas Zúnigais is, and he’s running the country!
- You guys are reading it all wrong.
From the excerpt:Juan Cole has done something that no other Middle East academic has done since Bernard Lewis, who is 90 years old: He has become a household word.
My family use the word “he” all the time, so I would definitely say he has become a household word. My grandparents used to use the word he all the time as well, prior to Juan’s popularity rising. so I’m unclear why Juan Cole was given credit.
(There’s a lesson in there about good punctuation).
- #30 Mike Jericho – I think you are being unfair to Swatches, which are reasonably well made and reliable timepieces.
Perhaps an Omega Speedmaster versus its “genuine fake” Far-Eastern namesake is a more appropriate comparison.
Posted by James Waterton on 2006 06 28 at 04:56 AM • permalink
- #16 Kyda,
Will it be St. Zuniga or St. Kos?
It will be St. Kos, pronounce a la Britain, “Sinkus.”
#20 Bill Spencer,
“soaring hiney hole”
Being a polite thief, I’ll ask if I may steal that.
MentalFloss, I know what you mean. It is especially disheartening when one is ignorant as dirt one’s own self and still can’t find anyone who knows what he ought to know. I think it is the lack of plain good-will, and the manners that follow, as much as it is that they are disturbingly bereft of critical thinking skills, that discourages one.
I hope you start feeling better soon.
- I am so not with it today, or at the least need new glasses. I read Tim’s post as:
Juan Cole has done something that no other Middle East academic has done since Bernard Lewis, who is 90 years old: He has become a household worm.
Posted by Nilknarf Arbed on 2006 06 28 at 05:12 AM • permalink
- #53: As Ozzy Osbourne once sang: “Steal Away.”Posted by Bill Spencer on 2006 06 28 at 11:10 AM • permalink
- “Cole is a minor nuisance on the fringes of the academic Muslim apologist community.”
I think Hitchens exaggerates Cole’s true slaw-iness. He’s truly a minor carrot shred on the fringes of the political slaw bowl.
Posted by robert speirs on 2006 06 28 at 11:10 AM • permalink
- 91B30 — Actually, IIRC, Queeg was nuts AND he ran under fire from the enemy.
I understand that Dean is looking for his contact information.
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2006 06 28 at 11:23 AM • permalink
- Richard-yes, that’s true (and where the “old yellow stain” comment comes in). But the staff failed in their duty first by undermining the commander to the crew and then by failing to report their concerns to higher (remember the scene where they are aboard the Aircraft carrier waiting to talk to Halsey or Nimitz and they chicken out).
At the end Jose Ferrer’s character says something like “you have to stand behind the captain, because he’s got the job” and damns the officers for failing to do so.
Now, if I have all this straight, Dean is Queeg (the raving loon in charge), Ko$ is Fred MacMurray (working to undermine the captain’s authority), Tom Maguire is Jose Ferrer (pointing the accusatory finger at MacMurray) and Glenn Greenwald is Van Johnson (foolishly doing MacMurray’s bidding).
Sigh-I love all those old actors and it makes me sad to associate them with anyone listed here except Maguire.
- Kos: ”…It was a little scary to carry so much responsibility on your shoulders. And it still is. I daydream about turning things over to a younger generation, but people wouldn’t allow it. Not yet.”
—-Yeah, please wait until the “younger generation” is out of diapers, we don’t want a repeat of the same mess as we’ve had with you.
- How old is Kos? The picture Tim Blair has been using makes him look about 24.Posted by Harry Eagar on 2006 06 28 at 12:56 PM • permalink
- But I thought that Cole was an expert on wiping up?Posted by andycanuck on 2006 06 28 at 01:49 PM • permalink
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Ah! But the stawberries! That’s where I had them, and I’d have proved it too, using geometric logic, if only they hadn’t all conspired against me . . . rolls steel ball bearings nervously in hand to ward off anxiety. Ok, Ushie, name that flick and the nutbucket who uttered those lines.