Wednesday, July 9, 2008

Joan Walsh is Back from Vacation and Ready to Bash Obama

Cue the scary horror flick music! Joan Walsh is back from vacation. AAAAAAAAAAAGGGHHHH!!!!

(Of course Joan wasn't REALLY off on vacation. She was off having lunch meetings to pitch MSNBC execs, begging them to give her a bigtime primetime teevee show so she can show off her astounding political punditry talents...)

So, Joan has more than a week off from Salon, time that you'd think she'd reflect for, oh, maybe five minutes or so between those MSNBC meetings. You know, think about Salon, its future, where its going, how to improve it -- important stuff like that.

So, first thing back, does she comes back
with a gleam in her eye and finally fire Camille Paglia? Does she tell her Mini-Me Rebecaa Traister to quit writing love letters to bacon and actually research and write something? Does she woo Steve Benen back to run War Room full-time?

No...there are much bigger slabs to fry for Joan...

Because after all that time to peruse and ponder, she doesn't come back with something new, exciting, and fresh to say?
OHHHHH NOOOOOOOOOO..... Joan Walsh -- and here, come on all, join in and say it along with us -- JOAN WALSH BASHES OBAMA.

Usually Joan is concerned by Obama, but the antidepressants are NOT working, and Joan's escalating. Now Joan is "betrayed" by Obama.

What's next? That's easy. While on vacation, Joan took along her trusty Roget's Thesaurus, looked up synonyms for concerned and betrayed, and and has mapped out enough blog post titles to easily carry her through the summer.

So, Salon readers, stay tuned, because coming soon from Joan Walsh at Salon, are the following headlines:

  • Troubled by Obama
  • The apostasy of Barack
  • Feeling anxious about Obama
  • Why we're apprehensive about Obama
  • Obama begins to beguile
  • America is fearful of Obama
  • My uneasiness with Obama
  • Obama's unsettling direction
  • Why liberals are distressed by Obama
  • Obama's perfidious politics
  • Treachery thy name is Obama
  • Obama double-crosses the Dems
  • Deceived by the dude
  • Duped by the Democratic nominee
  • Obama humbug!
  • Hoodwinked by the hysteria
  • Obambi pulls the wool over our eyes
Isn't there anyone out there who will invite Joan (and throw in Alex Koppelman too, as he's due back soon!) to your summer house for a few more weeks of summer vacation? All you need is lots of salmon for the grill, cheap white wine, and a willingness to listen to Joan explain how Hillary Clinton should have won, while Koppelman nods like a Bobblehead.

Please, someone, invite them!! Because even with the bacon stories and Greenwald doing his best Paul Revere imitation, Salon sans Walsh and Koppelman was such the nicer place.

14 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yeah, sorry, I dislike Joan Walsh as much as anyone else, but Obama fucked up with that vote. I really can't criticize her for this one. This one is on Obama.

stich said...

Agree or not about how Obama handled the FISA compromise bill, "Betrayal" is a pretty hardcore inflammatory way of describing Obama's vote. I mean what's next, Obama as Brutus brandishing a dagger, as Hillary limps away in with half dead stagger?

Anonymous said...

True Story: I steered my sister-in-law (who's quite smart, but definitively not a"literary" type) towards Salon about a year ago. Yesterday, I asked her if she'd been reading Salon....and she said "Oh no...what is it?...some sort of 'PERSONALITY' show?.."

I asked her what she meant by that, and she replied (and I'm paraphrasing) "It's like they've got 2 or 3 writers who write whatever they want on anything.... like 'The View'....'any opinion I have on anything is sooooooo interesting'. Do these women own the magazine?"

I told her that, insofar as Iknew, they didn't, but they might as well.

The joint does become interestinger and interestinger...

My boyfriend has politely inquired why I even read Salon. He's French, so I have to remind him that, like an old-skool, elderly Virginia-lady-I-know once said "Oh, I couldn't stop! I just love my Little Hates...."

Does Travy Clark-Flory actually get paid to appear in videos during which (as though she were addressing a 10th grade writing-class) she adopts her "serious" expression and says things like "Many people are taking different, POLARIZING stands about headscarves in schools. Some say it's awful. Others think its fine. I'm more of a gray-girl, myself." (at this point, furrow the famous eyebrows..NOW..lift them up in an inviting "open" expression and say:).. "What do YOU think? Write in to Salon and LET US KNOW what you think!"

And what's with Traister and Walsh? I can't help but think that someone's (them?) sat down and concluded that they can't spend all of every day out there, relentlessly policing the Mean Streets of Sexist City, blowing away (so to speak) the bad-guys...

What about showing a SOFTER, more "human" side? (Think Angie Dickenson in "Police Woman", circa 1979) ...how about making it clear that you are "buddies" with at least several men...and what about mentioning your daughter as often as possible (although there's presumably a point at which even the daughter would get fed-up with this bidness)?.....

How about cutting to a a cozy, refreshingly intimate scene in which the hands of the usually-militant-Traister's boyfriend softly-yet-guidingly mix with hers in a corner of an airy, Brooklyn apartment as they meld the warm, yielding dough into perfect,pillowy gnocchi...?

I can't be the only personwho read that dumbass gnocchi article ("Wait! I've got a great NEW idea!...I'm gone work the hell out an extended metaphor about food/love, and how they all, like, sort of blend together and get all better...?") and thought "Didn't Demi Moore and Patrick Swayze already DO this scene, 18 years ago?"

As for the bacon article? My first reponse was "Try submitting this to ANY real magazine or newpaper." (Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker, etc...). To sum it up?:

"I didn't know anything about curing meat until three months ago, when my wonderfully gratifying new boyfriend of six-or-so-months started to learn about it himself. So, neither of us knows much at all about the business, although we did buy the two most accessible and, hence, popular books on the subject. We follow the directions in those books, and things turned out great. I feel good about that and am having fun. So is my boyfriend. I have also read Mr. Pollan's and Ms. Water's books, so I know that I need to pause every fifteen minutes or so....at which time I breathe deeple and slowly, place my hand to my breast, and consider considering the consideration that I must recognize the source of my food and my own responsibility regarding its rearing, transportration, price, preparation, and consumption. I wll contemplate these issues. I will say them out loud along with my boyfriend. I will publish them so that people know that I not only have an enviable boyfried and an airy apartment in a chic neighborhood, but am also a WONDERFUL, ADMIRABLY CONSCIENTIOUS, & VERY LIKEABLE PERSON."

Well, this has gone on for far too long. In my defense, I can say that I'm trapped here this morning....awaiting a half ton of mulch that I don't to be dumped in the entrance to my driveway (as happened last year).

Level Best as Ever,

David Terry
www.davidterryart.com

Anonymous said...

Yes, I'm disappointed in Obama's vote but the last person I want to listen to about it is Joan Walsh.

Joan's writing is makes people mad. Joan's writing does not take the issue beyond the lowest FOX news type of framing. I expect a lot more from Salon. Even Huffington looks considered next to Walsh. It is so obvious that she's full of herself from being on TV. Or, from the huge comment threads her posts provoke. Well, she's got one fewer commenters... I'm done there.

Anonymous said...

I love how it's as if she finally blew that last remaining gasket and decided that even the shallowest pretense of objectivity could finally be abandoned.

Anonymous said...

"Betrayal" and "unforgivable"? Hardly. Obama hedged, but he's setting himself up to get elected (in case of any terrorist situation), and he isn't in a position right now to say F.U. to all the Democratic leaders who lined up to endorse him. Most of Joan Walsh's other examples are phony. Obama's position on late-term abortions is actually pretty reasonable.

So what is Joan Walsh's problem? I will tell you what her problem is -- she has been slammed so long and so hard for her Clinton suck-job editorials that now she has a big, fat, long-term chip on her shoulder. Walsh will be pissed off until every reader at Salon kisses her ass, and since that won't happen anytime soon, Walsh is going to be perpetually pissed off. Plus she's trying to promote her TV persona so she can turn her Salon stint into a better-paying, more ego-stroking job. It's obvious that Walsh doesn't really enjoy editing or journalism but rather wants to be an "important" pseudo-celebrity pundit type. Too bad she sucks at it. Without the crutch of her affair with Chris Matthews she wouldn't even be on the air.

stich said...

Traister is just plain pathetic. How many pieces on pork did she put out this past week? I didn't know she wrote something about making gnocchi with her boyfriend. Making gnocchi is not too hard. It's just fucking flour and potatoes. Knead it, drop 'em in the pot, wait about 3 minutes till they rise to the top.

Anonymous said...

Regarding Traister and gnochhi?

I believe her article on that topic appeared around Valentine'
s Day, if not precisely ON this past Valentine's Day.

For some reason known only to the Innard Brains of Salon's editorial staff?...the strategy seems to be:
(1) Traister (and, obviously, the back-row pickers working the Broadsheet field) will always be appalled at how stupid (to put it bluntly) and uninformed anyone-working-or-publishing-anywhere else is. Clark-Flory will declare that she either wants to spew her coffe or "tear my hair out" or "scratch my face off" in the face of the continued and overwhelming stupidity of people who don't write for Salon or write fan-letters to it. the first time I noticed Traister's self-congratulatory and relentlessly self-referential typings was when she ended her initial (there were many more to come) munching-session on the Duke LAcrosse scandal with some dumbass, NOT-rhetorical statement....to the effect that President Brodie and the adminstration of Duke University didn't initially understand that there might be gender and racial issues involved?

How presumptuous and self-congratulatory. Presumably, she would be so much more enlightened as the president of a university to which, insofar as I know, she's never even been admitted as a freshman?

the gnocchi article went on and on about how she LOVES gnocchi,but could never make it. Sob. This seems to be her stock in trade when she writes about food....and you can feel the wheels turning..."WAIT! I could be the really smart, but charming feminist who DOESN'T intimidate folks! It's okay to not know how to cook what I'm discussing! It's REALLY INTERESTING AND FUN to read how charmingly/surprisingly self-deprecating Little Me finally did learn to make simple-f****g gnocchi!".

I read the article and wondered why in the world anyone would be interested. I recall her referring to Marcella Hazan's (the authority on such things) "nazi" instructions regarding gnocchi......and I thought "Well, gnocchi are SIMPLE...so, no...gnocchi are not interested in your ideological entrenchments....just do what Hazan says to do, and you'll be fine, or at least your gnocchi will be..."

Trasiter's self-posturings are all very transparent....including the gratuitous (and, once again, self-congratulatory/begging-the-praise) reference, in the recent bacon article, to the pack of cigarettes in her refrigerator......left over from last year when she QUIT!

Isn't that wonderful?! She has cigarettes(not that she would smoke them anymore), and she can't cook...but she loves food, and her boyfriend shows her how to do it (although she does suddenly strain to gratuitously emphasize that she spent five very "HAPPY" years in her own apartment...wouldn't want to compromise her "feminist" credentials...)

Oh well...it's obvious that several of the writers and the editor of Salon have gotten together and just decided that, if they push it hard enough, they'll just BE the next Sarah Vowell..regularly invited to be on NPR and to voice-over movies, and to show up on television...and to be known by NAME! Just stick that name out there regularly enough, whether youhave anything to say or not.....Salon's got a captive-audience!

Salon&Co seem to forget that, as is the case with a Sarah Vowell or David Rakoff, you also have to be really intelligent, write well, be genuinely funny (faking it never works)...and you should never step out on stage (so to speak) thinking "This is really going to wow them! Because they LIKE me! I'm a Real-Somebody to them! all I have to 'do' is to be Me! "

Ugh...suddenly, I'm recalling Hilary Clinton's campaign......no wonder Walsh and Traister voted for her......

gotta go,

David Terry
www.davidterryart.com

stich said...

Traister is as shallow as she is hokey, any fuckwit with half a brain can prepare something as simple as gnocchi. I used to make it with my mom. Yeah, it's a mess, but as far as making pasta goes, it's an easy success. Hey, you don't even have to be Italian to make it! Remind me to tell Traister about my challenging recipe for preparing pigs in a blanket, as I can see that her passion for pork parade is still going strong like a pig lover's banquet. See, it's so simple, all you need is lots of all filler franks, a doughy loaf of Walsh's 100% bleached flour, all white, Wonderbread, and a little dose of Rebecca's relish on the side, just to keep things cutesy, precious, and childishly snide.

Anonymous said...

She's doing her job. You've got one of those, right? Here's an idea: Stop reading Salon. But then you'd have nothing to write about to make yourself feel clever.

Madame De Stael & Friends said...

Dear Anonymous July 10, 2008 9:12 PM, also known as JOAN WALSH!

Thanks so much for stopping by. We'd heard through the grapevine that you were periodically dropping by the Parody to see what's what, but I believe this may be the first time you actually posted in our comments thread.

Unlike you, I won't be deleting your comment, much less closing the thread! We not only don't think telecoms should have immunity, bu we also believe in free speech around here!! Who'd have thought.

Anyway, thanks for visiting! But I know you must be busy, what with running Salon into the financial ground, and trying to recruit the Pork Producer's Council as a new advertiser!

Cheers!

Anonymous said...

TO "ANONYMOUS"
to "reply"...?

(1) Q:"She's doing her job. You've got one of those, right?"

A: Is gutting a formerly respected publication with a loyal following referred to as "dong one's job"? Apparently so. And, yes, I have a job. I've had several in my life. I would have been fired if I were so blatantly promoting my own "name-brand" at the expense of the organization or publication's former credibility.

(2) "Here's an idea: Stop reading Salon."

A: Well, I might....but, in my particular and doubtlessly self-involved case, they just took fifty bucks out of my bank account without asking. so, I'll keep reading. In any case, there's nothing so fascinating as a burning house or sinking ship.....

(3) "But then you'd have nothing to write about to make yourself feel clever."

A: Speaking just for this one, middle-aged, and rather small Salon reader?...I got a thoroughly free-ride through a B.A., two masters, an M.Litt, and a doctoral program (at, respectively, Sewanee, Middlebury, Oxford, and Duke) by the time I was 34 (which would be sixteen years younger than Walsh is right now and exactly the age when Traister has finally learned how to make a f****g boiled tater&flour dumpling)

all that aside?... it's been at least a decade since I worried about "feeling clever".

I just don't like bad/self-indulgent/lazy writing, and I have a loathing for journalistic careerists (Salon.com has at least four) that I usually reserve for cheap shoes, movie "re-makes" of old television shows, and pectoral-implants.

What's your next smart question, "Anonymous"?

Sincerely,

david terry
www.davidterryart.com

stich said...

Wishy Walshy! Wonderful to see ya! When are you gonna publish your next exciting piece? - "Obama Gets Dumped in a Vat of Hot Grease!"

Villemar said...

I'd recognize that utterly humor-free flat affect anywhere!

Hey Madame check your email, I've sent you a funny.