John Yoo's Mom Says We Have 6 Months To Grieve
Last year around this time, Mark and I got to go on the Weekly Standard cruise through the Caribbean. It was my first cruise and a pretty intense week. You're with a few hundred conservatives and libertarians on a boat, sharing dinners and beach excursions.
It's not uncommon to have a "mole" or two on these cruises -- journalists digging for dirt or trying to understand the curious "other" in their midst. It's just one of the expectations of the business.
Anywho, this year's journalist exposé of a conservative cruise comes from Joe Hagan of New York magazine. Now, it would have been nice if he would have come to understand the "other" in his midst, and he definitely doesn't, although he gets part of the way. But it's still an interesting read, both for what it gets and what it doesn't get.
This is how a New York magazine reporter describes a panel:
After dinner was a program called the “Light Side of the Right Side.” A frenetic, tightly wound man named James Lileks, a National Review columnist from Minnesota, warmed up the crowd with one-liners: “If we can put a man on the moon, we can put 50 million Democrats up there as well!”
Rob Long, a conservative Hollywood TV writer behind a TNT [sic] show called Sullivan & Son, said the party has to accept that it’s been living in a fantasy world. “It’s like The Matrix,” he said. “You can continue to live in the dream world, or you can take the pill and we can unplug you and you can see that things are actually kind of bad.”
Conservatives, they felt, needed their own cultural voice—a Letterman, a Leno, an SNL,a 30 Rock—to compete with the overwhelming liberal dominance of the culture. As the Republican image stood today, said Lileks, “we’re the stupid people, we’re the yokels, we’re the dumb, we’re the racists, we’re the hicks, we’re against everything that’s hip and cool.”
Jonah Goldberg attempted a note of optimism, garnering hearty applause when he said conservative ideas were “still salable because, A, they’re correct. Two plus two is four. You have to believe that we’re going to be proven right by reality.”
In response, the moderator recounted the litany of dreary statistics from Reed and Rasmussen earlier that day. “So therefore we should give up and burn our passports and stay on this boat forever?” said Goldberg with real exasperation.
The crowd erupted in cheers.
Ah yes, the "frenetic, tightly wound" James Lileks. We know him well.
Anyway, while Peter doesn't make an appearance in the article, you can not only read about John Yoo but see a picture of him looking absolutely smashing at the poker table (above -- also, the article has a great picture of Rob, too). And his mother, a geriatric psychiatrist(!), sounds awesome. For obvious and predictable reasons, the article ends with her analysis of the "blues cruise":
On the leeward side of the Nieuw Amsterdam, John Yoo stood next to his mother, Sook Hee Yoo, a small, elegant Korean woman in black-framed glasses. She described herself as nonpolitical, an objective observer. And she had a diagnosis.
“To protect the ego, you have a defense mechanism: denial and projection,” she told me as her son leaned in to hear over the party din. “You deny your problem, saying it’s your fault and not mine. Instead of projection, blaming other people, we have to think of a positive solution. But I didn’t hear that yet.”
“They are still grieving,” she concluded as her son winced and began to break in, fearing she’d gone too far. “I hope not for more than six months. The grieving process should only be six months. If it goes on for more than six months, it could go into a major depression.”
Guys! We have another 4.5 months of grieving the demise of our country! I can live with that! I can get cheery by May. I figured we were supposed to pick ourselves up by mid-January.
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Jul '10
Re: John Yoo's Mom Says We Have 6 Months To Grieve
Actually, We pay taxes in April, so there's at least another six months...
Jan '11
Re: John Yoo's Mom Says We Have 6 Months To Grieve
As long as the grieving doesn't take the form of surrendering on every piece of legislation that comes along, I won't worry about it.
May '10
Re: John Yoo's Mom Says We Have 6 Months To Grieve
TNT? I thought it was TBS?
Re: John Yoo's Mom Says We Have 6 Months To Grieve
Well, I was certainly tight on the cruise, but tightly wound? Huh.
May '10
Re: John Yoo's Mom Says We Have 6 Months To Grieve
Too bad NY mag doesn't do a feature on the conservatives who don't have the time or resources to go on a cruise, but equally concerned with the direction of our country.
Re: John Yoo's Mom Says We Have 6 Months To Grieve
Pretty sure I was sitting just to John's right in that photo at the Black Jack table. We spent a lot of time there.
Also, next week we'll be posting an Uncommon Knowledge with Peter Robinson featuring a discussion with John Yoo and Rob Long (recorded on the boat) in which they discuss in detail their disparate views that are discussed in passing in this piece. You'll get a much better sense where each is coming from.
Edited on December 24, 2012 at 6:49pmMar '11
Re: John Yoo's Mom Says We Have 6 Months To Grieve
Joe Hagan--so that's who it was. Didn't run into him. I had no less than five people, including an NR writer, ask me if I was the mole. True story.
Jan '11
Re: John Yoo's Mom Says We Have 6 Months To Grieve
I read the whole thing, and some of the quotes given from the cruisers were pretty bad. People saying stupid dumb things fit right into the stereotype of republicans as old, white, bigoted, and out of touch. I'm would guess that 99% of what he heard was innocuous and interesting, but that doesn't matter when you're writing an article.......
Sep '10
Re: John Yoo's Mom Says We Have 6 Months To Grieve
That other boring stuff would not be news. Besides, the magazine's readership would be incredulous that conservatives might have something interesting to say.
Jun '10
Re: John Yoo's Mom Says We Have 6 Months To Grieve
James is sharp and funny, but frenetic and tightly-wound? You can't be tightly-wound and create world-class segues. That requires a person to be smart and flexible--frenetic or tightly-wound won't work.
Aug '10
Re: John Yoo's Mom Says We Have 6 Months To Grieve
Mollie Hemingway, Ed.
Guys! We have another 4.5 months of grieving the demise of our country! I can live with that! I can get cheery by May. I figured we were supposed to pick ourselves up by mid-January. · · 3 hours ago
6 months seems a bit excessive. I don't think I can take much more pouting from our side. But, who am I to argue with John Yoo's mom?
May '12
Re: John Yoo's Mom Says We Have 6 Months To Grieve
I don't remember Cal Thomas saying that we should stop paying taxes on the cruise. It caused me to do a little googling.
He did write a column advocating a tax revolt, but it consisted of things like deliberately not making over $250K and thereby get taxed at a higher rate.
That's a passive aggressive revolt, a form of tax avoidance, and isn't the same as refusing to pay taxes. He was either misquoted, or quoted out of context.
Aug '10
Re: John Yoo's Mom Says We Have 6 Months To Grieve
Also: John Yoo as James Bond? No wonder he was looking into purchasing a gun.
Jan '11
Re: John Yoo's Mom Says We Have 6 Months To Grieve
John brought his Korean immigrant mom to the cruise? You, sir, are a far braver man than I.
Ain't no chance in hell my small, elegant feminist theologian mom would ever be invited to a Ricochet cruise. Ever.
:D
Merry Christmas to you all.
May '11
Re: John Yoo's Mom Says We Have 6 Months To Grieve
While I don't intend to stop grieving (I mean, the corpse is getting cold; what's the point?), I was thinking about trying the Nero approach. Is 4.5 months enough time to learn to play the fiddle? To paraphrase Richard The Lionhearted, "When schadenfreude is all you have left, it matters a great deal how you do it."
Apr '11
Re: John Yoo's Mom Says We Have 6 Months To Grieve
The photo of Cal Thomas, right next to the one of John (007) Yoo, contains three Ricochet members. My wife is one of them, and she is horrified! The best I can say about the article is that it could have been worse. And just when did being over 60 and white become dishonorable?
May '10
Re: John Yoo's Mom Says We Have 6 Months To Grieve
No self-respecting liberal journalist would deign to stoop to such an assignment. It's bad enough to have to rub elbows with all the conservative cretins on a cruise ship on an expense account. Can you imagine the horror of having to mingle with an even lower class of conservative cretins who are unable to conspicuously consume, and whose company you'd have to keep on your own dime at some local watering hole? It's enough to send chills down the spine of anyone with serious pretensions to the elevated ranks of the literati.
May '12
Re: John Yoo's Mom Says We Have 6 Months To Grieve
Speaking of liberal cruises, I wonder what happened to this one?
http://www.tcacruise.com/tnr/
Feb '11
Re: John Yoo's Mom Says We Have 6 Months To Grieve
Get over it by May? I'll put that on my calendar and check back to let you all know how it's going.
Actually, I went straight for the "major depression" thing - why wait? Besides, since I believe the country is headed for one I might as well get used to it. Maybe I'll be ahead of the trend for once.
Edited on December 25, 2012 at 9:04amNov '12
Re: John Yoo's Mom Says We Have 6 Months To Grieve
For many years I have lived in or near the northern CA mostly-wealthy, ultra-liberal community called The Sea Ranch (TSR). The “conservatives are racists,” Hagan-type BS is something I’ve heard many times from my liberal acquaintances. Ironically, TSR is 99.9% white. Are the TSR liberals racists because they choose to live in an almost all-white community? No. But then, neither were most of the people on the cruise.
I heard many compliments from fellow cruise passengers about the hard work, professionalism, and courtesy of the Malaysian crew. Hagan predictably ignores such comments and prints one or two statements that most would agree were demeaning and racist. I heard no such statements and actually doubt they were said. They sound too much like what liberals think conservatives would say. Hagan was a “hit man” for his magazine and did what he was paid to do - - write an article that makes conservatives look as bad as possible.