Mickey Kaus Has Reduced Michael Hiltzik to a Puddle of Shrillness

Michael deserves nothing but our sympathy. There, there, Michael. I know it's hard. Go out to Santa Monica and smell the flowers. It will get better. I promise.

A Platoon of Ignoramuses: You can always measure a writer's level of self-delusion by seeing what he points to as his best work. Mickey Kaus points us to the transcript of a joint appearance he made yesterday on Hugh Hewitt's radio show with Instapundit's Glenn Reynolds, in which the three of them agree heartily with each other like three bobbleheads on the dashboard of the same pickup. I don't know how else to describe this session, other than [censored].... Better to have kept this one under wraps, Mickey....

[Kaus] seems to buy into the argument that the elite media is leading the American public down the path of ignominious defeat and all but consciously aiding and abetting the enemy by signaling that they only have to wait out George Bush, and the US will withdraw. At one point Kaus unloads this amazing apercu:

Sure, the people in Iraq watch the American media often more closely than Americans do.

(It's followed by Reynolds's observation: "It's an information war. Terrorism is an information war disguised as a military conflict." To which we can all say in unison: Huh?).... Watching the right wing buffing up the argument that the liberal media are fomenting defeat in Iraq is an unedifying spectacle. It's dependent on the delusion that the war is going just spinningly, that we've got 'em where we want 'em, and it's just a matter of time before all resistance collapses--unless the virus of defeatism spreads. It also traps the rightosphere in self-contradiction: They can't claim that the traditional media are irrelevant and marginal while also granting us the influence to snooker the entire American populace into anti-war fanaticism. They can't have it both ways. The only person in America with the power to turn the country against the war is George W. Bush, and he's been doin' a heck of a job.

As for Kaus, he's certainly been flailing around lately, no? But giving aid and comfort to the enemies of coherent thought, that's a bit much...