BREAKING NEWS: Two people who serve the same masters had a nice lunch.

Glenn Reynolds tosses a 70 m.p.h. heater down the heart of the plate:

EVERYONE COMES TO KNOXVILLE SOONER OR LATER: Had a nice lunch with Jonah Goldberg, who’s speaking here at the University tonight. If you’re in Knoxville, you should check him out. Interestingly, it was the first time we’ve actually met.

What, exactly, is interesting about the fact that this lunch happened? Is it that it's the first time these two water-carriers for conservative excess ever carried water in the same room at the same time? What's interesting about two people who live thousands of miles apart never having dined together? As a rule, nothing that can be true of any one person and any of the millions of people who live nowhere near him or her qualifies as interesting. You want interesting?

I once punched Spencer Ackerman in the gut as hard as I could. Such acts of gratuitous blogger-on-blogger violence are inherently interesting. But lunch?

Does Reynolds assume that his readers think all like-minded internet ideologues regularly assemble around some second-rate Algonquin Round Table, so that each might praise the other for having reached the same tendentious conclusion? (The pair do possess two of Dorothy Parker's three requirements in a man: "He must be handsome, ruthless and stupid.") Don't let the uniformity of their independently conceived opinions fool you: they receive the same talking points and are intellectually lazy in the same way. They don't need to collaborate to draw identically idiotic conclusions.

Perhaps the fact that they dined together is supposed to be interesting, what with the Singularity being so near and all that most people assume Reynolds no longer needs to feed his meat in order to "Huh," "Indeed" and "UPDATE." (If they had any sense, his readers would assume he's long since transferred responsibility for posting on Instapundit to a tourettic algorithm that trawls the internet for perfunctory contrarianism, second-rate science fiction novels and pictures of cars. Do you know how easy it is to post like Glenn Reynolds? I do. I made a whole day of it. It was not a good day.) Maybe the niceness of the lunch is what made it interesting? Lunch with Reynolds or Goldberg would not be "nice" if I had to attend it—my Southern sense of politeness would render me mute—but those two likely yukked it up about who'd be first against the wall when they're made king.

I'm at a loss. I have no idea what could possibly have been interesting about the fact that these sad little men shared a table and a meal.

Comments

[Karl Steel]

could be "nice" in the sense of "simple"?!
(Spackerman puncher? that is interesting!)

[Endy]

Yeah, I don't believe you attacked Attackerman any more than I'd believe it if you said you'd checked out M. Carpentier's sweater puppies.

[SEK]

I don't believe you attacked Attackerman any more than I'd believe it if you said you'd checked out M. Carpentier's sweater puppies.

Hence, the link. You don't have to believe me: I'm not the one saying it.

[Glenn Reynolds]

Well, hell, I'd rather punch Spencer Ackerman than have lunch with Jonah Goldberg, too. But we can't all aim so high. Thanks for waving your superiority in my face . . . .

[Karl Steel]

waving your superiority in my face

letting your freak flag fly in the face of convention wouldn't gather any rolling donuts

[Justin]

That long of a post to say that Glenn Reynolds misused the word interesting in a way that many intelligent people do on a daily basis? I hope there's a joke that I'm missing.

[SEK]

Glenn:

I'd rather punch Spencer Ackerman than have lunch with Jonah Goldberg, too.

I'd expect nothing better of you.

Justin:

That long of a post to say that Glenn Reynolds misused the word interesting in a way that many intelligent people do on a daily basis?

1. See the previous post as to why usage errors might be more annoying than usual.

2. My point had more to do with the degree of self-importance required to say that it's interesting that you've never met some random person.

3. I thought it was pretty damn funny, else I wouldn't have written it. (And it's not that long, at least not by my standards.)

[Adam Roberts]

You know what's really interesting? Crick.... ach, you know? I'm not sure I've the heart to go through with it.

[P.T. Smith]

You know what's really interesting? Crick.... ach, you know? I'm not sure I've the heart to go through with it.

Baseball. Maybe if you had your heart in the right place, you'd have the heart to go through with it.

[Dr. H.R. Goetting]

Up against a wall!

Yes, my Dear, here is a summary about worldwide C.I.A. university espionage!

"University Spy - A True Story"

The C.I.A.’s covert action arm has ended up as America‘s extra-curricular Education Ministry and universities around the world have little recourse!

Behavioral science teaches that small changes in a heterosexual man’s sex-life can have large and unsavory effects on keeping horrific secrets!

These all-out investigative interviews will plunge you, the reader, into the murk of the abnormal psychology and mind boggling career of W. B. Paterson from hell-bent taxi driver to hysterical C.I.A. Chief-of-university-spies!

Malicious Chief W. B. Paterson is the inheritor of American multi-billion dollar conglomerate Paterson Inc., a globally operating university supplier which doubles as a C.I.A. espionage contractor. Never, ever trust an American!

This emotional zeitgeist-book is scripted on man-to-man pillow interviews with the coarse Chief Walt Blair Paterson, a source of untreated and disease-laden sewer language and behavior, stranger than fiction. The fat-cat attacks academics with racial and religious hate-speech as if suffering from multiple mental illnesses!

Not even my diplomatic skills were able to put an end to his temper tantrums. Let‘s go for an audio-visit to one of the Chief’s great moments - and I promise he never used more lofty cross-references: “University people are late-term abortions who crawl out of classrooms“, he screamed with all the subtleties of a rhino!

As is becoming for an objective reporter, I use the method of dramatizing and narrating each authentic quotation from the Chief, reflecting the ugly history of Paterson Inc. and America - the Can't Do Nation!

The disgusting behind-the-scenes tales are based on ‘embedded’ rent-boy reporting at its best, serving up from the bedside the whole truth about the C.I.A.’s university espionage brigades. It’s scary, very scary!

The unvarnished truth was spilled while the Chief wobbled back and forward like a drunken tip-over doll - his insufferable lips loosened by gallons of whisky!

The juicy revelations of the Chief going anal are off the record; Walt Blair Paterson’s real name, gonzo company, position and location were changed and rendered anonymous - to protect my ’deep-throat’ for legal reasons!

Paranoid and violent U.S. university espionage is closely related to institutional brutality. Haunting American abuse of power has reached a critical mass and is the central theme of this book. Will it come to the point that battered students call for ’social unrest’ at beleaguered universities in opposition to the academic waterboarding by Paterson Inc.?

Every Paterson Inc. product sold at universities bears the chill of a torture whip on the back of a kidnapped victim in a secret C.I.A. jail anywhere around the world. Saddam‘s torture chambers were multiplied, put are under new U.S. management and staffed with perverted, sex-starved male and female Americans!

C.I.A. espionage contractors such as Paterson Inc. are NOT SUBJECT to the Freedom of Information Act!

An obscure law allows the C.I.A. to block all congressional and public inquiries into the secret files, the budget, the number of agents and the entire power structure of the Pater$on Shadow Company, the recipient of vast amounts of U.S. government money!

Who are the Chief’s unpredictable Washington masters? Their names read probably like a Who is Who of instable American corporate and political power. The world’s biggest borrower is busy scrounging around the world for more billions of dollars and cannot get above water!

Who are the shameless American ’scholars’ and at which benighted U.S. universities do they work, these dim-wits who helped dreadful C.I.A. & Paterson to conceptualize the hellish ‘intellectual’ framework for global university espionage?

If the burly men from beastly Paterson Inc. tilted the global academic playing field in favor of U.S. scientists, and if this helps explain America’s unparalleled share of Nobel prices during that curiously energetic U.S. ’research’ period of the past five decades, synchronized with the C.I.A.’s university espionage history, then so be it!

All this I took in like a spy, interrupted only by the emasculated Chief’s demonstrations of affection and while his hands fondled among my pants!

This compelling study shows Paterson Inc. is unfit as a university supplier! America’s university espionage is on trial. The undeclared U.S. doctrine of large-scale targeted research theft has to be stopped with a cool ’nyet’!

As a spot of shit the ugly bedside interviews with the talkative Chief are positioned to hit the proverbial fan to spread his vulgar whispers fast and far!

Yours, Truly
Dr. H.R. Goetting

scribd.com/doc/21672611/University-Spy

amazon.de/University-Spy-Helmut-Richard
Goetting/dp/3000295607/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1258101736&sr=1-1

[The Modesto Kid]

Now that's interesting!