John Cole has clearly OD’d on kool-aid:
Where do these wingnuts come up with this perception? I see the same sort of crap from the Hillary Clinton blogs and the pro-Clinton commenters- this notion that Obama supporters are somehow unaware that Barack Obama is GASP a politician.
He is a United States Senator. He is running for the highest political office in the land. He is a politician. We are aware of this. Trying to change the tone and tenor in Washington as well as how politics is conducted is not apolitical, and we are all aware of this. What we reject is the current status of our politics, not the notion of politics. What we see in Obama is a chance to change the nature of our current political mess.
What we don’t see is Obama as apolitical. That is just stupid. Some might say it is TOWNHALL stupid.
So, attention wingnuts- We are aware Obama is a politician, and your attempt at witty comments aren’t breaking news to us. All it is doing is proving that we are right to think you are a moron.
Ah, how quickly they forget. Before his CDS came out of remission John made fun of the thing he now denies exists:
BTW, for fun, I have decided that I am going to compile a list of things that Obama supporters claim he has transcended. Off the top of my head, we have race and politics.
Gee John, you had that notion a few months ago. What should we think of you?
The earlier post by Cole is noteworthy for a couple reasons. The first is that this is the post that coined the phrase “Unity
Pony.” (I Can Has Unity Pony?)
The second is that the post contained great commentary:
lambert strether Says:
I’m gonna get a pony and I’m gonna name it Fierce Urgency of Now!
And later on, Uncle David Broder’s going to come around and sniff my pony’s saddle LOL!!
I’m s-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o happy
I love my pony!
January 10th, 2008 at 2:09 pm
and
lambert strether Says:
Thank you, Justin. [lambert blushes modestly] The magic Unity Pony is so worthy of derision and mockery because there’s no basis for believing it’s going to achieve the policy outcomes Democrats prefer, and if anything it’s destructive to those outcomes. Maybe at some point Obama’s going to figure this out, and start running as a Democrat for the year 2008, instead of the second coming of Tom Daschle as of 2002. (Anyone remember how well that one worked out?)
I share Mr. Cole’s amusement at “no magic except magic.” Another excellent example is the YouTube where Obama puts Social Security “in play” as a cudgel to beat Hillary with, while claiming in the next breath that Social Security shouldn’t be a political football.
Obama’s smart, knowledgeable, can organize (see Iowa) but the vacuity of the unity message is such a turn-off for me that at this point I’m counter-suggestible on the actual policy outcomes he prefers, if any. And that his fan base seems totally immersed in Republican talking points and uses them to attack Democrats (“trial lawyer”; “special interests”; and the Hillary hatred) is not a confidence builder for me.
I’m with Barney Frank. The reason we fought the battles of the 90s is that they were WORTH FIGHTING. For pity’s sake. And you know what? All the guys we fought back then are as entrenched as they ever were, but now they’re all singing Unity, as if in chorus. Why is that, I wonder?
January 10th, 2008 at 2:27 pm
It doesn’t get any better than that.
Front page
No, it doesn't.
Thanks for posting that, miq. I’m bookmarking the page.
As far as coining "Unity Pony"....
I don’t think it was Cole, I believe it was either VastLeft or me; I know the “I’m so happy!!!!” riff was one I ran a lot at Kos, one reason they loved me so much. Cole’s post is from January 31, 2008; and here is a comment from me on January 11, 2008; a post from January 10, 2008; and January 7, 2008. As I recall, I started using it when I was in the Kos threads, in late 2007 early 2008, when ponies were in vogue. And the “I’m gonna name my pony _____ “, followed by some vile innuendo about some Conservative
who was gonna come over and ______ my pony how to _____ was just so fun to run, and made the OFB
so crazy, that I propagated it many places.
All that said, I could have read it on Cole, or VastLeft could have invented it.
[x] Any (D) in the general. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.
You know your in for disappointment
when you see the Obama-overused phrase “the notion that…”
Every time I hear that phrase, I lose a little bit of the love I had for humanity. That, or I just roll my eyes and sigh deeply. Mostly just the latter.
i'm going to name my pony ...
John Cole, and he is going to be so smart and unified that he will forget he ever said “Neigh!”
I'll have to leave that one to the archaeologists
Lambert and I were riffing a lot on unity and pony, but I’m not sure precisely when it became “unity pony.”
I think I may have been the first to introduce pony in the Obama context, but my money’s on Lambert putting it together into the phrase that pays.
Pony
, of course, has a long tradition in the blogosphere, something I played off of — once “unity pony” had entered the lexicon — in one of my personal favorites among my own posts.
So, I’m happy to declare Lambert the originator of “unity pony,” with the credit for the assist much appreciated.
Now, “W.O.R.M.
” has a kind of interesting story as well. Some months after I wrote the orignal W.O.R.M. piece — and to my great surprise, it became a minor staple in the online world — a rightwing blogger nominated it as acronym of the year. He obliquely referred to picking it up from a lefty blog, and one of his commenters created a wikipedia page for it, with proper attribution. Someone (an Obamaite, perchance?) nominated it for deletion, and in a week or so, it was removed. In the meantime, I found at least one other rightwing blogger who claimed credit for originating it. Which he didn’t.
I see that Lambert actually was the first
to use “magic Unity
Pony
” at BJ (my old haunt) where it is now commonly used to refer to Obama.
It was shortened to “MUP” which caused me to coin “MUPpet” to refer to the kool-aid drinking worshippers of the MUP.
I seem to have sprained my arm, patting myself on the back.
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Real ponies don’t oink - Patrick McManus
Speaking of home-grown neologisms
The one I’d really like to see enter the lexicon is “equivalation.”
It describes one of the most pervasive tricks that makes our world so truthy and unreality based.
Oh, and “twistunderstanding” can prove handy as well. The whole “Obama fairy tale” faux outrage was as pure an act of twistunderstanding as you’re going to see.
If you think these are handy terms, please help propagate! And thanks to all for helping catapult “Unity
Pony
” and “W.O.R.M.
”!
I am the proud author of "The Goldberg Principle"
“You can prove any thesis to be true if you make up your own definitions of words.”
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Real ponies don’t oink - Patrick McManus
I thought "news anchor" should mean the weight
used to keep the body of a bloviating gasbag from floating to the surface but the definition never caught on.
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Real ponies don’t oink - Patrick McManus
vast--it's fauxtrage
; >
Another one for your lexicon...
I can no more disown, as in…
I can no more disown Reverend Wright than my grandmother who raised me.
That ’no more disown’ sure had staying power didn’t it…about 4 weeks
don't be a 'Rube'
because you’re starting to come off as one of those ’bitter’ people.
bitter you
than me
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Real ponies don’t oink - Patrick McManus