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Today it’s Wacky Conservative Thesis Day.  Our three theories come from three very special Town Hall columns by three of conservatism’s deepest thinkers.  I hope you enjoy them as much as I did.

Thesis #1:  Liberals Just Want to Help Others Because Their Bad Childhoods Make Them Think This a  Good Thing To do

Yes, another conservative shrink has arrived on the scene to tell us that liberalism is a mental disorder.  But, hey, pretend that you haven’t heard it all before, and welcome Dr. Lyle H. Rossiter, Jr, MD (sure, his sobriquet isn’t as catchy as “Dr. Sanity,” but he does sound like he could be a Monty Python character).  Dr. Lyle “served for two years as a psychiatrist in the United States Army,” is the author of
The Liberal Mind: The Psychological Causes of Political Madness, and is a new columnist for Town Hall.

Take it away, Dr. Lyle!

Radical Liberal Themes::By Lyle H. Rossiter, Jr, MD 

Certain neurotic themes are dominant in the radical liberal mind’s perceptions of the world. All of them portray the citizen as a suffering child who is victimized, helpless and in need of rescue. All are evident in various liberal platforms. They represent the liberal mind’s transference of childhood dynamics into the world of adult relationships.

And that’s just the first paragraph!  Later on we get even more incredible psychological insights, such as:

These and related themes of deprivation and neglect, exploitation and abuse, domination and control, blaming and punishing, caring and caretaking, protection and security, rescuing and nurturing—all are the radical liberal mind’s unconscious projections of early childhood dynamics transferred into the political arenas of adult life. These projections define the transference neurosis of the radical liberal mind:

I think we all understand Jesus a little better now.

Thesis #2: The Reason Conservatives Aren’t Funny Is That They Are Just Too Gosh-Darned Nice

This thesis is brought to you by our friend Doug Giles in his column “It’s Time for Conservatives to Take Comedy Seriously.  Dout starts out on thin ice by admitting that “Steve Colbert, John Stewart, David Letterman, Carlos Mencia, Dave Chappelle and Bill Maher are funny hombres,” while the only conservative comics out there are “Dennis Miller, Brad Stine, Julie Gorin” — and none of them can elicit even pity giggles from an audience high on nitrous oxide.  (Okay, Doug doesn’t actually say that about his hero Dennis, but it’s implied.)  But hey, don’t shoot Doug, Brad Stine fans, since he’s just the messenger. 

Now for the explanation of this humor gap:

The secular left is an amalgam of mayhem, a veritable Star Wars bar scene, a rogue gallery of freaks, geeks, nuts, sluts, slick politco’s and skanky ho’s—and we’re letting them walk without skewering the living day lights out of them.

What’s wrong with us? We’ve become nicer than Christ.

That’s undoubtedly the explanation.  (Because even Jesus had a killer stand-up routine about the Left’s skankiness and geekdom.)

And here’s more about it:

Conservative comedians, especially Christian comedians, are not that funny. The reason why? Well, I think they’re too nice. They don’t really set the hook. They don’t really deliver the dig. For some reason, the laughmeisters of the Right are PC addled. Fear of negative press has gripped most of our funny men and women. When one is worried about what others will think they cannot really queue up to deliver a scorching and hilarious screed aimed at deflating whoever they’re after. Political correctness kills the comedian’s ability to say what needs to be said and how they need to say it. If conservatives want to compete comically they’re going to have to get raw.

I think I speak for everyone when I say that we are all looking forward to Julia Gorin raw.

Thesis 3:  America May Very Well Face Nuclear Annihilation Next Year, All thanks to Non-Binding Resolutions and Illegal Aliens

Musclehead Kevin McCullough spins this scenario for your reading pleasure.

“Why America was nuked!”

Only two weeks after the elections in November of 2008, The United States of America, a nation of former greatness lay in absolute desolate ruin. Within the previous 72 hours a series of eight successive, delayed nuclear devices had been detonated. Indescribably large portions of metro Washington D.C., Boston, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, and two thirds of the island of Manhattan have been turned into steaming craters. Millions are dead, President George W. Bush is in intensive care, two-thirds of the Cabinet – including the Vice President missing or dead.

So, it’s kind of a mixed bag.  (KIDDING!)

But why?

How did it happen?

It was all YOUR fault, for failing to watch enough “24″!

No, wait, Kevin wants to blame somebody else.

Turn back the clock to the week of February 5, 2007. With a courageous handful of dissenting votes against the measures, the two houses of Congress – purposefully ignore the pleas of General David Petraeus and both pass non-binding resolutions that condemn the President’s call for victory.

Yeah, Congress is always condemning victory.  It’s bad that way. 

But let’s name names.

Most disappointing in the entire sick, pathetic process are the cowardly actions of those who refuse to answer even simple questions on talk radio shows. Names like Boehner, Cantor, Warner, and McCain take actions, evade questions, and sponsor resolutions that then Secretary of Defense Robert Gates confirms will embolden the enemy.

Yes, legislators who fail to answer questions on talk radio are the very worst kind of traitors!

It matters not that at 6pm EST across America Hewitt, Levin, Gibson, and Savage tried daily to remind us all of what would come.

America, when you refused to listen to prophets like Hugh Hewitt and Michael Savage Wiener, God washed His hands of you!

Even the then “new media” known as the blogosphere rallied tens of thousands of signatures and bloggers to speak back to those in power, only to be evaded, shut down, and ignored.

As the well-known saying goes, “First they ignored the wingnut bloggers and their meaningless online petitions, and I didn’t care, because I was not a wingnut.  Then they failed to heed Rush Limbaugh, and I didn’t care, because I don’t own any pharmaceutical stock.  Anyway, it all ended up with the Nazis ignoring me, or something.”

From those resolutions the remaining remnants of Americans who knew in their hearts the importance of victory over the terrorist movement of Islamo-facisim, begin to resign themselves to the reality that the maniacal and dangerous voices from the left had achieved full victory.

Woo hoo!  We dangerous maniacs achieved full victory!  We’re number one!  We’re number one! 

But we haven’t yet heard the REST of the story. But it’s kind of tedious (Iran and Al Qaeda take over Iraq and go nuclear, then the Obama/Hillary ticket carries 39 states, so Iran bombs Tel Aviv, etc.), so let’s cut to the mushroom cloud:

Because the Congress had decided to de-fund the southern border fence there is noted increase in the number of border crossings by people attempting to get in to the United States.

With them are the final two persons needed to activate the final two portable nuclear devices in American cities.

… Beginning at 5am on Wednesday morning, Al Qaeda agents incinerate historic Washington D.C., downtown Manhattan is leveled, and the Sears Tower in Chicago sprays bits of glass as far as DuPage county.

Will we then be a nation UNITED towards victory? 

No!  Because Vice President Hillary is so just-plain evil that all true blue patriots will refuse to support her or her government even when we’re at war with Al Iran-q.  I hope that answers your question, Kevin.

So, those are our Conservative Theorems for today.  Vote for your favorite.  Or, for just $9.99 (plus shipping and handling) you can have all three!  Order now and we’ll throw in Dr. Lyle at no additional charge!

45 Responses to “Three Easy Pieces”

Inquiring minds want to know:

1) Why do “indescribably large portions” of the aforementioned cities being nuked equal the United States laying in “absolute desolate ruin”?

2) Why doesn’t Kevin McCullough turn this plot into a SciFi Original Motion Picture. Its a perfect fit for a lineup which includes such instant classics as Reign of the Gargoyles and Fire Serpent.

Dr. Lyle is objectively pro-Villainy. This is probably because he was neglected as a child.

I don’t think I’d go around saying shit like this:
The secular left is an amalgam of mayhem, a veritable Star Wars bar scene, a rogue gallery of freaks, geeks, nuts, sluts, slick politco’s and skanky ho’s

if Ann Coulter was on my side, buddy. And Carlos Mencia is funny? Who knew?

Oh, and Kevin has clearly been rereading that Newt Gingrich thing on loaded words.

Oh, sorry. It turns out I did the joke wrong. Let me try again.

And Carlos Mencia is liberal? Who knew?

So, I take it Kevin is taking pointers from Orson Scott Card now?

As bug-eyed William Shatner said in the Twilight Zone’s “Nightmare at 30,000 feet” after seeing
someone walking on the plane’s wing…

“Do I look insane?”

“all are the radical liberal mind’s unconscious projections of early childhood dynamics transferred into the political arenas of adult life.”

So liberals transfer their early childhood dynamics into the political arena and they, what, want to establish universal health care; guarantee a living wage and decent retirement to workers; institute equal rights for gay, lesbian and transgendered people; open up educational opportunities; institute a fair tax structure; and protect the environment. Oh, and protect the constitution. Sorry almost forgot. Hey, that sounds like they had a pretty good childhood.

By Lyle’s Logic, when George Bush, Jr. transfers his early childhood dynamics into the political arena, he decides to fuck up the economy, suspend civil liberties, destroy the environment, start an absolutely mad and murderous war, and generally make a mess of everything in a hopeless bid to get mom and dad’s attention.

Boy, making up psychological theories is fun. Can we do Karl Rove and Dick Cheney next?

Yep, Jesus didn’t like the secular left at all. Remember this from the Sermon on the Mount:

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. But the skanky hos? Fuck ‘em. May their twats fall out.

(I may be paraphrasing…)

Actually, and call it anecdotal extrapolation or projection or whatever you want, the liberals I know mostly had shitty childhoods, just like most everybody else, except that we didn’t turn into bullies to feel better about ourselves. Extending the analogy some, we’re the abused kids who grew up and didn’t abuse, the ones who know that life can suck hard through circumstances that aren’t your fault and that you can’t always change on your own, and the ones who remember life still sucks pretty hard for other people and that it’s important to help them if you can.

Other kids grew up and became G. Gordon Liddy, killing and eating a rat to get over his fear, or Dubya Bush, drunkenly challenging their fathers to a fight in the driveway.

Sometimes, when life kicks you around, you develop a little empathy for others kicked around by life. Sometimes, I guess, you just start kicking others. I’ve never understood exactly what’s wrong with the impulse to help others, to try to be fair, to be kind, to share what you have, to even just understand and not make things worse for others than you absolutely have to. Never seen the point in “tough love”, which seems to break just as many of its intended beneficiaries as it helps. Never understood how anyone can look at someone on the streets with a mental illness and say “Couldn’t happen to me. They just didn’t try hard enough.”

Helping others may not guarantee there will be someone to help out when you need it, as we all eventually do in some way, but it seems like it makes it a little more likely. The anti-abortion argument, “How many genuises have we killed” seems just as valid here–how many great artists, brilliant scientists, fantastic leaders have we lost to workplace accidents, unsafe food or polluted water, poorly built homes in hurricane zones, uninsured but treatable diseases, exposure, starvation, domestic violence, or even just the constant, aching grind of spending eighty hours a week working and commuting and trying to take care of sick kids and elderly parents? Why is it fair to worry about the cells that may never even implant but not to give a damn about the partially realized potential rotting into nothing on our streets?

Meanwhile, the fast food chains forced an apology from some starlet’s ex for insulting their employees they spend millions of dollars a year to defeat any sort of measure that would make them pay more to. Tragedy as farce in polyester work clothes. At least they can’t outsource your fry cook job–but then, they can’t outsource Kevin Federline’s job, either, though it could be argued they just aren’t trying hard enough.

Larry Beinhart, author of the book that became the incredibly perverse “Wag The Dog”, has a new, amazingly perceptive, piece up at Common Dreams, though it may surprise him to learn it’s there, in which he argues that conservatives in power are like the pampered suburbanite kids who smoke a little dope and talk about how square their parents are while relying on their parents to bail them out when they fuck up. I’m paraphrasing. It is, I feel, appropriately perverse. Read it if you get the chance.

http://www.commondreams.org/views07/0204-28.htm

I’ve more often heard something of a variation on #1 that goes something like: “liberals want to help others because they don’t have enough faith in people to solve their own problems.”

I’ve heard this put several ways, but that’s the gist. Of course, this invariably comes from well-off, entitled white males I know, who think economic class is purely a function of personal will. It’s no use trying to help homeless and “underemployed” people because, if they really wanted to do better, they could… and thus, all arguments against all entitlements flow from there.

It’s a disgusting, insulting argument, but it’s also all too common.

Conservative comedians, especially Christian comedians, are not that funny. The reason why? Well, I think they’re too nice. They don’t really set the hook. They don’t really deliver the dig. For some reason, the laughmeisters of the Right are PC addled.

“Why aren’t conservatives funny? I don’t know, but I’m going to blame liberalism!”

Here’s a thought on why conservatives aren’t funny:

1) Comedy tends to work better when it skewers the powerful, the rich, the entitled, etc. To most people, making fun of the poor, the sick, the injured, and similar folks is kind of like kicking a starving puppy for humor: uncomfortable and pathetic. (“Hey! Why do poor people smell so bad? Because they don’t have whirlpool tubs in their cardboard boxes! Hahahaha…yeah, whatever.”)

2) Conservatives, by definition, support the current social hierarchy, i.e., they are or work for the powerful, the rich, the entitled, etc.

3) Very few people can successfully make fun of themselves or their friends.

Dead on, Dorothy. Molly Ivins made that point frequently. In light of this, it’s adorable that the sociopathic Giles thinks that the *real* problem is that conservatives are so cowed by PC that they’re too scared to properly make fun of queers and heathens and nutjobs and cripples and commies and feminazis and bums and brown people in general. Wait, not adorable, I think the word I was looking for was “fucking scary”.

The secular left is an amalgam of mayhem, a veritable Star Wars bar scene, a rogue gallery of freaks, geeks, nuts, sluts, slick politco’s and skanky ho’s

Yo! Sign me up!

Come on, Doc Rossiter:
Didn’t we go through all this in the early 90s went Newt blamed Susan Smith’s drowning of her kids on the liberal permissive culture, and it turned out later that she was really acting out against years of horrific sexual abuse at the hands of a male relative, who was head of a Family Values organization and a major Republican fundraiser for several Gingrich campaigns?

Did you go to med school with Dr. Julius Hibbert, and got worse grades?

(btw, as I read D Sidhe’s comments about wealthy suburbanite kids I heard a long-forgotten tune playing in the back of my head — “Captain Jack” by Billy Joel.)

I see their psychoanalyses and raise them one.

“All of them portray the citizen as a suffering child who is victimized, helpless and in need of rescue.”

Dear Dr. Rossiter, Jr.,

Please replace the word “citizen” in your statement with the word “Iraqi” and you will have the current justification for one of our ongoing wars against non-Americans. See, it’s not just liberals who are neurotic.

Sign me,

Disgusted with conservative pop psychology

Neurotic themes… transference… childhood dynamics… unconscious projections… transference neurosis…
This guy is over-using the macro options on his word processor.

Actor212, I trump your psychoanalyses with the actual empirical evidence on Nursery school personality and political oritentiation two decades later.

Detroit is a steaming crater? Maybe they just won the World Series.

The idea that we can defend ourselves against nutjobs willing to blow themselves up is a pipe dream. There is no security good enough.

oops nearly forgot the “up” after blow themselves. If they could blow themselves they probably would be so quick to become suicide bombers.

Dammit – wouldn’t be so quick

HooHooHooHoo, HeeHeeHeeHee, unreal! Reading their drivel is like trying to push your head through wet concrete. Can they be anymore paranoid?

Well, except for the fact that Southern Iraq is not mostly populated by Sunnis and that I sort of doubt Muslims would nuke their third holiest city, Kevin’s scenario is a little bit plausible. Let’s support anything our Dear Leader wants.

Man, if they think the right is too nice. I’d hate to see what their idea of cruel is (probably Ann Coulter screaming “slut” at rape victims). The thing is that it’s not exactly meaness that makes left-wing commedians funny, but their wit and sense of humor. (And what makes them appealing is a sense of justice and appeal to us normal folks that the neo-cons turn their noses at.) For example, Slowpoke comics (www.slowpokecomcis.com)is prof that you don’t have the be a hateful shrew to get a laugh.

As for Dennis Miller, it’s a sad thing what he became. As a teenager, he was one of my first introductions to liberal ideology who said to “look into your heart” to determine if abortion is right or wrong. (That and I actually got a lot of his obscure refences.) Then he jumped ship and it all went to hell.

You mean Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, and Rush Limbaugh aren’t commedians? – Their serious? Ohhh man . . . . ;)

So… why don’t liberal comedians fear the PC police?

I mean, anybody who thinks Mencia or Chapelle are “PC” is certifiable.

For that matter, what makes him think Chapelle or Mencia are even liberal.

The only schtick I’ve ever seen on “Mind of Mencia” involves Mr. Mencia making 60-year old racist and sexist jokes in a retard voice.

How the hell is that “liberal”?

Honestly, I’m pretty sure tha Giles just can’t comprehend the idea of a non-liberal minority.

As for Thesis #1, I’m pretty sure that that’s an excerpt from Marvel Comics’ “What If…” No. 481, What if Sigmund Freud Wrote for Townhall?.

I’m pretty sure I saw Uatu in there, somewhere.

Okay, psych students: What does it tell us about Mr. Rossiter that he did not see the need to explicitly explain what about the liberal view was incorrect? Can it be linked into the idea of “dogwhistles” in political speech?

One of my pet theories once again:

Everyone who made your life a living hell in high school grew up and join the Republican Party.

I dunno what Giles is talking about, conservatives are hilarious. I laugh at them all the time.

So according to Musclehead, America was nuked, Michael Savage puked, and Ann Coulter fuked (OK, that last one didn’t quite work) because

the two houses of Congress – purposefully ignore the pleas of General David Petraeus and both pass non-binding resolutions that condemn the President’s call for victory.

waitaminute:

… and both pass non-binding resolutions…

non-binding resolutions…

NON-BINDING resolutions…

Um, yeah.
The equivalent of a declaration of civil war from your pillow’s dust mites rained nuclear hell and desolation — twice upon DC and Chicago — on the good ‘ol US of A; and the Hillarobama duo, apparently unaffected by nuclear fallout because of their super-powers gained from some unknown madrassa headed by Dr. Doom, cackle in the distance.

And then the obligatory sex scene starts.

I think I now understand why Republicans stopped debate on this — and I didn’t need Dr. Rossiter’s peer review!

Neurotic themes… transference… childhood dynamics… unconscious projections… transference neurosis…
This guy is over-using the macro options on his word processor.

Well, considering that neurosis was removed as a diagnostic category two decades ago, that next to no one believes in an unconscious anymore, and that all of the above have been abandoned to psychoanalysis–rarely practiced in the US Army, by the way–one seeks out Dr. Rossiter, Jr’s, CV and is surprised to find it fairly impressive, assuming you are the sort of person who’s impressed by psychiatry. What one does not find is any mention of psychoanalytic training, though there is this:

Integrated psychoanalytic, psychodynamic, self-psychological, cognitive-behavioral, and interpersonal modalities

suggestive of an entire hodge or two’s worth of podge. Dr. Rossiter currently earns his living as a board-certified forenisic psychologist for hire; should you find yourself in the dock on the opposite side of his services I suggest that Townhall article be entered as an exhibit.

I have to admire McCulloch’s effort just for the sheer loonitude of it. That, and because only a right-wing nutcase in full nostil-flaring frenzy could write something as self-revealingly ludicrous as In a gesture of unspeakable generosity…

D. Sidhe: Carlos Mencia, nee Ned Holness, is about as unfunny as Dan Whitney, before and after his metamorphosis into the Cable Cockroach.

And when are you getting your own blog? Much as it’s rewarding finding your astute remarks planted in so many different comment sections, it’s tough to keep up.

God knows we wouldn’t want any of that caring and nuturing stuff. I mean, c’mon.

There may be a level of publishing further away from peer-reviewed medical literature than Townhall, probably in a supermarket check-out lane or on Dr. Phil. Way to trash your rep, Dr. Lyle.

No D. Sindhe. You told that joke exactly right.

Well, it was intended to be a two parter. I was aiming for clever, something I don’t do all that well with a migraine, and, some would say, ever. I should have left out the Gingrich thing in the middle, in retrospect.

And hey, I *have* a blog. http://hdsidhe.blogspot.com/
I even have six comments, three of them from someone who not only isn’t me, but isn’t even one of the voices in my head! As far as I know. My advice is, don’t encourage me to update it or anything. I’d give it a week before it turned into a headache diary, which based on past efforts will be tedious. It exists merely to allow me to comment at Doghouse’s place, and also to provide a reasonably reliable way to find my email address should anyone be interested in mocking me one-on-one.

Is the effort to paint political thought as mental illness possibly a precursor to forced treatment? After all, this guy was a military shrink:

http://www.newint.org/issue132/taking.htm

If you ever see the Republicans pushing for increased funding for mental health treatment, keep an eye out for suspicious rewrites of the DSM.

D.Sidhe,

Okay, well here’s a suggestion that might not be too taxing. If concocting slick posts with titles and fancy schmancy pictures and all the usual blogaphernalia is a pain, why not just re-post on your blog some of the more substantive comments (like the one above) you make at various sites with linkies to the original post you were responding to. A little cut and paste et voila! A lantern for the moths!

What’s wrong with us? We’ve become nicer than Christ.

Bwah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha1!!1!!one
Oh, dear!
[wipes tear from eye]
Heh. Well, Doug Giles really made me laugh just then. Hee.
But, Doug, no.
Really, no.

So, wait a minute why is Iran working with Al Queda instead of say Hezbollah, SCIRI or some other group which doesn’t regard a Shiite Theocracy as herectical and a abomination to be destroyed (after the secular regimes and the U.S. perhaps, but not too long after). I mean yeah the Ayatollah’s could could into some sort “Non-Aggression pact” with AQ but hey, if the American’s are gone from Iraq, why not simply butcher AQ and rule the entire nation by proxy without having to work with a group that’s already blown up one of your (shiite) holiest sites and contiunally kill’s countless numbers of your fellow shiites.

Heck, even if this NAP somehow came to pass why would the Iranians give AQ a WMD that they just turn around and use in Tehran.

Anyone else get the idea that our boy Dougie is trying to get into a new career here? Guess ministering at the Holiday Inn just isn’t satisfying his need for constant attention.

Conservative comedians, especially Christian comedians, are not that funny. The reason why?

Because Conservative audiences don’t get it for many funny jokes.

All right, that’s it, I’m totally going to write “Blow’d Up: A Poorly Written Liberal Fantasy That Validates All Your Preconceived Notions.” I mean, it’s obviously really easy–Orson Scott Card wrote his in like four minutes.

Herr Doktor Bimler,

I’ll see your longitudinal study, and raise you a case study.

Well, R, all I can say is, if you really have a compelling urge to read my comments, I can direct you to No More Mister Nice Blog, where I’ve managed to be a spectacularly stupid asshole in just the last couple days. It should cure those weird urges.

Beyond that, I’m a creature of habit, and you can spot me here, at Sadly, No!, Tbogg, Bats Left Throws Right, Outside The Tent, NMMNB, The Biomes Blog, and occasionally at Julia’s pad or The Good Roger Ailes. (Also, the Andromeda Chuckle Hut. Try the Bachelor Chow.) Occasionally I comment elsewhere, for reasons that rarely hold up over even small periods of time. Once I got called a fucking troll at Pharyngula, though, which managed to keep me amused for days. Really, I should at least have a blogroll so people who manage to stumble across my blog can be diverted to something useful. I’ll work on that, I think.

I really am a No Footprints kind of gal, though. If I thought about people reading what I have to say, I’d probably just yell it at the TV like I usually do. It’s not that I don’t appreciate the kind words. I do, and am in fact preening, which is admittedly less than attractive. But I can hardly expect people to only notice when I’m being witty or insightful, and not when I’m being mean or stupid, so I like to pretend that no one notices anything I do.

A blog would possibly strip me of my insignificance, although it’s even more likely it would confirm it, and I suspect either would suck. It’s a delicate balance.

D., see yer blog.

Something to say?