Stay classy, Frank.
Full disclosure: I went to college with Frank Rich. He gave me a rave review for a performance once. When he turned into the vicious, biased, hateful jerk he reveals himself to be in his not merely progressive but irrationally hostile to conservatism op-ed columns and, prior to that, his vitriolic and hyper-critical theater reviews for the Times, I don’t know. Maybe if I had befriended him back then, he would not be the bitter misanthrope his is today. Maybe just an outstretched hand, a kind word, or a sharp, “Why don’t you stop being such a dick?” would have turned the tide of his life around. Alas, we shall never know.
Here is what Rich tweeted yesterday, upon learning of the guilty verdict handed down against former Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell and his wife:
Isn’t that classy? A prison rape joke. At least Rich had his political correctness alarms set to sufficient levels of sensitivity that he didn’t make the equivalent “joke” about McDonnell’s wife, who is also, absent a successful appeal, headed to prison. Joking about a woman’s rape, even when the butt, so to speak, of the barb—although come to think of it, I’m not sure about this:I need to ask Debby Wasserman Schultz—is a conservative Republican woman, is a career-ender, but joking about the hilarious, light-hearted phenomenon of prison rape involving men is just good fun.
Naturally, Rich has never made a similar crack about convicted Democrats, like Jesse Jackson, Jr., or Eliot Spitzer, because the outpouring of outrage from Rich’s fans, patrons and allies, Democrats and their “base,” would force New York Magazine to punt him out on the street to earn his meals reviewing puppet shows. But he knew he was on secure ground, because he recalls how his equally hateful and biased former colleague when Rich was being a vicious, partisan creep in the pages of the New York Times, Charles M. Blow, repeatedly made anti-Mormon comments to slime Mitt Romney, and was never even required to apologize.
Let’s see, what is the standard that is emerging for respected pundits in the left-slanted news media? You can call Republicans cunts and twats (HBO’s Bill Maher’s specialty), you can ridicule their religious beliefs, you can joke about them being anally raped, just don’t say you want them to be force-fed shit, and your job is secure. This makes no sense to me, particularly with pundits like Rich. Once you have revealed this level of personal hatred and disrespect based on nothing but ideological animus, what reason is there for anyone to believe that a columnist’s views are based on reason rather than pure, wretched, emotion? Readers can’t possibly trust him to be objective; they can only trust him to deliver biased conclusions that bolster their own. What good is that?
I’m really, really sorry, Frank, if I had any part in making you this way when we were in school together.
But, boy, you are such an asshole!
______________________
Source: Twitchy
Ethics Alarms 
I don’t know. Frankly, I think that any pundit or commentator or reporter or whatever who stoops to such low-brow self-conscious oh-so-clever faux humor (and Bill Maher is at the top of that list) reveals themselves to be of such low class that no one should bother with them. Unfortunately, there is a significant segment of The Public that seems to enjoy low-brow self-conscious oh-so-clever faux humor. I blame American under-education. And I blame my fellow liberals for tolerating it.
Low-brow self-conscious oh-so-clever faux anal rape humor.
The McDonnell’s defense gave a lot of material to anyone wanting to make a pithy observation on this duo. Is this the best that Rich could do? Pedestrian cliches aren’t funny.
There are a lot more where Frank Rich came from. You can find his “disciples” all over the internet. There can be little in the way of honest political dialogue any more precisely because this mentality has become dominant in the so-called media.
I was pretty dismayed by all the prison rape jokes in the wake of McDonnell’s conviction. On one hand, all the forced trans-vaginal wanding he was proposing lends itself to those jokes. But prison rape is a serious issue, and I hate the way we as a society think of prison rape as a just occurrence, an extra-judicial punishment that the convicted deserve to be subjected to, rather than something which should be eliminated.
Frank Rich and Bill Maher mock and destroy their political victims because they are carefully screened for minimum push back from the public.
It’s not that different from the causes of Ferguson/St Louis as described in your other post.
If victims are not seen as human they are relentlessly destroyed using any means necessary because “who cares?”
What does it say about the readers when they want and defend this stuff? My one-time best friend from college, a brilliant Ph.D. in classics, used to post his attack articles during the 2008 campaign with pithy comments like “Frank Rich nails it again.” The highly intelligent and the sophisticated are as vulnerable to blind partisanship as anyone.
That was more or less my first thought upon hearing of the verdict. Is there some way, I wondered, that a trans-something-or-other wand might be involved in his punishment? But I think maybe you need to be a woman or someone capable of empathy with women, to understand this.
Yes, that makes no sense, logically or ethically. His punishment for using his office to enrich his children, wife and himself should be based on the fact that he opposes abortion? Anyone who doesn’t think a man should be anally raped for advocating measures that he believe might better inform women so they decide to allow their gestating child to have a chance at life lacks empathy for women?
You are insulting, absurd, and wrong. But it’s helpful and illuminating to see the kinds of minds Frank Rich’s viciousness appeals to, so thanks for that.
I rest my case. Corruption is a crime. Not toeing the NARAL/Planned Parenthood line is not. Yet this woman wants to inflict physical torture on someone who dared not do so. Being dumb and vicious is a toxic combination.
Newsflash for Mr. Marshall: Jesse Jackson and Eliot Spitzer do not support policies that force women to undergo a horrifically invasive procedure in order to undergo a legally protected one. Rich’s tweet was in bad taste, no doubt, but it consists of words, not actions. You could say the same about a lot of Maher’s humor. Were your shock and disgust aimed at some of the actual policies your side of the aisle inflicts on women and a lot of men, too (voter suppression, for one example), it might be easier to take you seriously. Meanwhile, I’ll forgive Rich his rude tweet.
1) You have no idea what “my side of the aisle” is, and your assumption is based on laziness and ignorance.
2) The ultimate policy agreed upon by McDonnell and the legislature made the wand procedure optional—that’s why we have policy debates, to arrive at better results.
3) The proper sentence would be “require women to undergo an invasive procedure before they are permitted to exercise their legal right to kill their own gestating child.” I know “your side of the aisle” thinks eliminating potential life is like a walk in the park, but it’s a bit more important than that. The conclusion that the wand procedure meets utilitarian ethics standards—easily–if it makes such decisions more informed is not the monstrous or indefensible position your snotty comment presupposes, and no thoughtful analyst would presume so.
4). Because I don’t think someone who advocates the procedure requirement should be anally raped does not mean I support the policy. Or McDonnell. I don’t. You are too dense to be able to comprehend that, apparently. Maybe there’s a less sophisticated website you should master first.
5). A tweet is an action—it’s a publication. A publication that encourages hate and callousness toward rape is unethical. Rich’s “side of aisle” and mine (how can that BE???) pillory anyone who trivializes rape—and correctly so. Rich’s action, therefore, is called “rank hypocrisy,” a breach of integrity. You flunk Ethics 101. I have a list of some of those websites, by the way.
6). I have nearly 5000 posts here, jerk, and when you’ve read them all, you can speak authoritatively about what policies I support or don’t support. meanwhile, you can find your favorite rationalization under #22 on the EA list.
7). Your response to this reply, if you have one, begins with an acceptable apology for beginning a dialogue with an attack on my integrity, a false presumption of bias, and a rude greeting (Newsflash…) or it gets spammed, and you get banned. We don’t begin discussions that way, my pompous friend, on this blog. Try again, do better, or go to Hell.
How I love waking up to hyper-partisan creeps in the morning…
You’re wasting your time, Jack. This person didn’t come here to look for an informed discussion. He/she (can’t tell from the handle) came here to “school” you, and probably now considers you to have been “owned.” Frankly I don’t get why people bother making these “drive-by” attack posts, it’s not like one nasty paragraph written by a twentysomething is going to suddenly change someone’s mind.
I don’t care it it’s drive by, if it’s also honest, well-argued and persuasive. My mind is changed all the time….by facts and analysis I didn’t know about or hadn’t considered. This kind of knee-jerk partisan invective is useless.
Agreed, this is just slinging anger.