The Biggest Loser

My nascent addiction to Bloggingheads is mainly driven by listening to Mickey Kaus, the dumbest person in the universe. Literally. We can end this debate. Let me present this post and the defense can rest. Might I remind you that these are all items taken from the past week. Kaus has been writing for far longer than that (indeed, he was one of the first bloggers on the Web), and like a fine wine that has been sitting open in a backyard in suburban Phoenix in August, he just gets worse with age.

Mickey infuriates me for so many reasons, but the biggest one is that he selectively picks and chooses individual incidents, studies, polls or events to "prove" his pre-ordained bits of conventional wisdom. This happens all the time. Take for example, his citing ONE Center for American Progress study as iron-clad proof that the country has "Katrina fatigue" and it didn't start a public debate on race. He'd have no problem knocking down a separate CAP study, and say it means nothing, mind you, but this one suits his needs, and so there you go. By the way, the study is a real indictment of those who want to lock up America's race problem in the closet and shut the door. What does Kaus get from that? "The MSM Katrina hype backfires on the Dems."

He relates that to how the "Murtha hype" backfired on the Dems, a made-up idea he simply decided one day, and cited as proof ONE Charlie Cook column, he who similarly is a fountain of Beltway conventional wisdom. Never mind the fact that this week Cook called the idea of Democrats taking back the House within reach, despite the fact that Murtha and Rep. Jim Moran had to turn people away in the middle of Virginia to listen to them speak in a town hall, despite the fact that a Richard Mellon Scaife paper in Murtha's region recently changed its tune and supported Murtha's resolution for immediate withdrawal to the periphery of Iraq, despite the Republican leader of the NY state Senatecoming out against the war and endorsing Murtha's view, depsite every poll showing the same dismal results for the President on the war, despite the new House Majority Leader acknowledging that Iraq could be a big problem in the midterms.

But sure, Mickey, go with the one post by Charlie Cook from 3 months ago. By the way, he re-endorsed this view this week.

When Kaus does get around to stopping the conventional wisdom train and come up which something resembling an original thought, it's frequently so stupid that it makes people's eyes bleed. Take this pearl from his Bloggingheads conversation with Robert Wright (no transcript): the solution for the warrantless wiretapping is to start tapping ALL phone calls! Great fucking idea, dude! Because I know a massive bureaucracy like the NSA would NEVER EVER misinterpret something I'd say and waste valuable time and resources trying to decipher it! And of course the NSA wouldn't use this resource for political purposes, right? Right now the NSA is reportedly looking at conversations from tens of thousands of people, and all of them but about 10 are worthy of even consideration for further surveillance. With a cool 300 million to cover, that ratio would hit about 300,000 citizens! Surely there are that many terrorists in the country!

Kaus also appears to have a hard-on for dismissing Brokeback Mountain (irony). First he said "I'll see it, but I don't WANT to see it," which is pathetic (why would anyone see what they didn't want to? What words from someone so guilty and uncomfortable!). Then he got all uppity at a Frank Rich column predicting that it would be "a runaway hit." When it wasn't after 3 weeks of playing in about 4 theaters (where it reached per-screen averages above everything out there) he calmly predicted that it wouldn't make $50 million dollars. It's well past $60 million already, and we're a month from the Oscars, but the rule of Kaus is "Kaus never admits Kaus is wrong; in other words, Kaus never admits anything, since he's, um, always wrong." So now he's admittedly "moved the goalposts," saying that now it has to do something like $75 million to be a REAL success. "I'm moving the goalposts! I'm a complete asshole!"

But it gets worse. He's now selectively picking and choosing cities where it's not doing well, like Clovis, New Mexico, cultural bellweather of the nation. Like an obsessive trainspotter, he culls data looking for any- ANY!- reason to prove that Brokeback is not doing as well as everyone thinks.

This is probably because, as he writes, "Hollywood is an isolated subculture populated by quirky egomaniacs, and movies have long lead times. They are lousy barometers of ‘America today." He really just knows he's not talented enough to get a movie made (or likely, even read), yet he lives in Hollywood, and he can't stand seeing everyone else around him living HIS dream. Must be tough. So tough.

But the coup de grace for the idiocy of a man who calls himself "kf" comes in this Bloggingheads segment, where Matthew Yglesias patiently explains to him that movie audiences typically skew left, since there aren't that many theaters in the sticks, and it's a pain in the ass to get to any of them (something so drearily obvious to anyone that's spent 2 seconds outside a major urban city. I spent six months living in the Pocono Mountains 45 minutes from the nearest moviehouse). There's probably more to Yglesias' point, but Kaus labels it a revelation, and says (paraphrasing) "Wow, I never thought of that. Must be that 'outside the industry' perspective." (you mean that industry you're not in, Mick?) Which prompts Yglesias to reply, "Actually, my dad's a screenwriter."

See, thinking humans can actually NOT be completely overwhelmed by their petty, insular worldview and come up with opinions that reach outside their own eyes and ears. Also that he doesn't even know who he's talking to. What a tool.

The prosecution rests. Will anyone defend the Kaus before I bequeath to him the "Stupidest Man in the Universe" honor?