Jonah Goldberg: Media Putz

http://mediaputz.com/08/03/putz0313.html

Honoring reporters who just can't handle the truth!
March 13, 2008
Jonah Goldberg
For reporting that is an embarrassment to the profession of journalism, and for being beholden to corporate paymasters rather than the citizens of America.

Too bad Lucianne Goldberg reached her zenith of infamy during the Clinton impeachment, because she would make a terrific BuzzFlash Media Putz recipient. But we can rectify that by recognizing the ongoing and significant contributions to the degradation of journalism made by her son, Jonah Goldberg.

His pedigree of Putzdom is unchallengeable. Just consider his recollection of his role in the pass-off of dirty linen from Monica Lewinsky to Linda Tripp to his Mom to Drudge to Ken Starr:

My mother was the one who advised Linda Tripp to record her conversations with Monica Lewinsky and to save the dress. I was privy to some of that stuff, and when the administration set about to destroy Lewinsky, Tripp, and my mom, I defended my mom and by extension Tripp... I have zero desire to have those arguments again. I did my bit in the trenches of Clinton's trousers.

Employed by the National Review Online, Jonah is one of those right-wing media shills who resides somewhere between Ann Coulter and David Brooks. You just don't know which side of him is going to show up at any given time when he regularly appears on the television "news analysis" programs or in his writings.

Take, for instance, his recent book whose title owes much to the Coulter school of sensational language: "Liberal Fascism." Its subtitle is "The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning." There's one of those annoying smiley faces on the bright red front cover, except this one has a Hitler moustache. Okay, was Jonah tripping when he came up with this book, or just drunk?

Because it just doesn't make any sense. I don't think anyone ever heard the words liberal and fascism attached before, let alone Mussolini included in a secret leftist history of America. That must have been some blotter acid Jonah, eh?

As a right-winger, you know that you have a problem on your hand when the "American Conservative" pans your tome: "Liberal Fascism reads less like an extended argument than as a catalogue of conservative intellectual clichés, often irrelevant to the supposed point of the book."

In the American Conservative article from January 28, 2007, the first paragraph gets to the heart of the absurdity of Goldberg's concept of "liberal fascism": "Not without reason was Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism widely expected to be a bad book. As many predicted from the title, Goldberg does not content himself with rebuking those who call anyone who disagrees with them a fascist. Instead, he invents reasons of his own for calling anyone who disagrees with Jonah Goldberg a fascist. Liberal Fascism confirms anew George Orwell's remark -- cited by Goldberg without irony -- that fascism has no meaning today other than 'something not desirable.'"

Robert Morse of Indianapolis, Indiana, nominated Jonah Goldberg as the BuzzFlash Media Putz of the Week for connecting Hitler to liberals. In fact, Goldberg contends Hitler was a liberal.

Next time you see Jonah peddling his "views" on television, remember that he's living proof that the more you don't make sense, the higher your value rises in the right-wing punditsphere. "Right-Wing Fascism" would have made too much sense as a title, but then again Goldberg appears to specialize in fiction.