When We Define Our Politics Primarily Through Loathing

This is mildly amusing. Jamie Kirchik:

Just when you thought Joe Lieberman couldn't frustrate and perplex liberals any further, he is going off to become chief sponsor of the most significant piece of socially progressive legislation that Congress will deal with this year.

Myself, I don't find it frustrating at all that Holy Joe has decided to sponsor DADT-killing legislation. Perplexing, yes; it's bloody difficult, from day to day, to try to figure out precisely where Holy Joe's Independent Moral Compass is going to lead him, but it's generally sensible to bet on "evil." In any case, however, I suspect that the central problem is that Jamie is mirror-imaging liberals. Jamie has made a career of anti-liberal contrarianism; he's not terribly bright and doesn't have any ideas of his own, but when he can manage to successfully figure out what progressives think, he astutely takes the opposite position. While this doesn't differentiate him from most other contemporary conservative journalists, he is almost striking in his emptiness; there's literally nothing there beyond the hatred for whatever he believes liberals want. As such, it's very hard for Jamie to understand that anyone could be motivated by an actual policy concern. Most progressives, however can distinguish between a policy they like (ending DADT), and a politician they don't like (Holy Joe Lieberman).

Conservatives.... not so much. Indeed, (and this is just a crazy thought experiment) I suspect that if liberals came out against something as nasty as, say, torture, that conservatives might even be for it...

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Contrarianism

Daniel Davies clearly knows a thing or two about playing the contrarian. His rules for contrarians post is, unsurprisingly, a must-read:

The whole idea of contrarianism is that you’re “attacking the conventional wisdom”, you’re “telling people that their most cherished beliefs are wrong”, you’re “turning the world upside down”. In other words, you’re setting out to annoy people. Now opinions may differ on whether this is a laudable thing to do – I think it’s fantastic – but if annoying people is what you’re trying to do, then you can hardly complain when annoying people is what you actually do. If you start a fight, you can hardly be surprised that you’re in a fight. It’s the definition of passive-aggression and really quite unseemly, to set out to provoke people, and then when they react passionately and defensively, to criticise them for not holding to your standards of a calm and rational debate.

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Contrarianism Approaches Rock Bottom

Next week: Celine Dion is really a better singer than Billie Holiday -- ignore the "cognoscenti," just look at the sales figures!

...UPDATE [from davenoon]... Behold proof of Creed's rockitude one of the worst videos ever made, wherein God attacks a pondering Scott Stapp with a hail of meteors before driving him into a gigantic phallus; wherein a bell that DOESN'T FUCKING KILL SCOTT STAPP opens up a portal into some kind of septic tank; wherein Scott Stapp is purified by baptismal sewage.

...UPDATE THE SECOND [SL]: Getting further into Slate self-parody, note that his archives seem replete with examples of the same article applied to a different awful band (Limp Bizkit were really good! The Killers are good exactly because they're so emptily pompous! Thank God Coldplay are great again!) So if you're interested in cashing a Kaplan paycheck you may want to submit an article arguing for the misunderstood greatness of Starship or Matchbox 20...

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