The Crowbar

With many more instances to come, I’m sure, Andrew Sullivan the Great Defender of Detained Psychopaths and Embracer of Selective Empathy openly disrespects Glenn Beck by approving of this nonsense:

While defending the National Endowment of the Arts against the latest GOP broadside, Scott Eric Kaufman coins a new word:

*beck v. trans. beck-ing, beck-ed, to be baselessly attacked by an idiot with a megaphone, then have those accusations alter your life for the worse because it’s politically expedient for your spineless superiors to demote or fire you

It’s “baseless” to attack the “non-partisan” NEA for using taxpayer money to promote a Obama’s political agenda? It’s “politically expedient” to fire someone for being uncivil AND believing that the US government is responsible for attacking the World Trade Center?

An ad hominem attack is usually the first line of defense for those who are losing the argument – badly.

It’s good to see Sullivan putting his Harvard education to good use.

From the WSJ, evidence of the prevailing attitude in DC, especially in the Obama Administration:

When it comes to greenhouse-gas emissions, Energy Secretary Steven Chu sees Americans as unruly teenagers and the Administration as the parent that will have to teach them a few lessons.

Speaking on the sidelines of a smart grid conference in Washington, Dr. Chu said he didn’t think average folks had the know-how or will to to change their behavior enough to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.

“The American public…just like your teenage kids, aren’t acting in a way that they should act,” Dr. Chu said. “The American public has to really understand in their core how important this issue is.” (In that case, the Energy Department has a few renegade teens of its own.)

Secretary Chu forgets that the American People are in charge of him, thus the origin of the term “public servant.” I’d bet most officials in the Obama Administration look down at the American people in much the same way.

The American people are right to ignore the ignorant, anti-scientific bleatings of Warmers like Chu and be more concerned with things like, you know, putting food on the table and paying the bills.