Glossary of Pseudo-Intellectual Hacks
Who are enamored of their own (non-existent) cleverness
JONAH GOLDBERG
The editor-in-chief of this newsletter. Goldberg wrote Liberal Fascism in 2008 and continues to be wrong much of the time. He is very critical of Tucker Carlson and Fox in general, and he occasionally says mean things to pro-Donald Republicans so that’s something.
GLENN GREENWALD
Greenwald proves every day that there is little daylight between the far left and the far right. I’m not sure how to characterize him, although I have no doubt he thinks he’s a righteous bomb-thrower. Suffice it to say that during the four disastrous years of the Trump administration Greenwald thought the best use of his time was to criticize Democrats on Fox. Since 2017 he has appeared on the network over 80 times—over half of those on Tucker Carlson’s show.
ROBERT F. KENNEDY, JR.
A leading anti-vaxxer and spreader of misinformation, just imagine what else he could have been doing with his family’s considerable fortune.
BILL MAHER
A long-time, unrepentant Islamaphobe, Maher has recently decided the best way for him to stay relevant is to pander to the right by attacking the left. He seems to be quite happy that he has suddenly become popular on Fox.
ANDREW SULLIVAN
It’s hard to pin down Sullivan’s political ideology. I don’t even think he knows what it is. But he’s a trans-phobe who helped popularize The Bell Curve, a racist 1994 book that claimed a connection between IQ and race. Again, he’s not on the same end of the spectrum as Berenson or Greenwald, but he is very often wrong or misleading.
MATT TAIBBI
Taibbi had Glen Greenwald on his podcast to speak about “censorship” because, apparently, neither of them knows what the word means. (The dude-boring that was going on nearly killed me.) Taibbi likes to think of himself as a “Gonzo” journalist in the mold of Hunter Thompson.
BARI WEISS (aka the “Substack grifter,” in the words of Press Run’s Eric Boehlert)
Weiss, who clearly fancies herself a sophisticated polemicist, seems to offer nothing but bad takes—almost always at the expense of facts. On a recent appearance on fellow-traveler Bill Maher’s show she said, “Continuing extreme pandemic measures like school closures or mask mandates will someday be remembered as a ‘catastrophic moral crime.’” Anybody who thinks the “moral crime” is the measures taken to prevent children from getting sick and dying not the willful and malignant actions of the previous administration that led to the completely avoidable deaths of almost one million people, is a person nobody should be paying attention to.
DAVID WOLFE
A flat-earther (and you don’t even want to know what this guy thinks about gravity), Wolfe is an anti-vaccine, anti-mask, COVID-is-a-hoax conspiracy theorist who pushes colloidal silver products on Facebook even though they are ineffective and unsafe. Thanks, Mark Zuckerberg!
Excellent list, and agree 100%. What a confederacy of dunces!!!! Thank you Mary, for all you do!
I agree with you one thousand percent. Mahre is an old man yelling, 'Get off my lawn!' btw, his opening monologues are NOT funny and he suffers from the same self-aggrandizement that DJT suffers from; they are both self-righteous narcissists. He is deluded if he thinks he is radical for criticizing the Dems, and worse pretending he cares about things he has no comprehension of (parenting and children being one of them. He loves to wax on about helicopter parents, etc. then rails on about how he glad he is he doesn't have any [children]. I am glad he doesn't either he would probably drown them). Also, if you haven't, read his book, True Story: A Comedy Novel which is loaded with his misogynist comments on women and how many he laid. UGH, no wonder he is single, who would want him?
Greenwald said while never citing any proof or even a 'sentence' from the Mueller report, that it was all hogwash. DID HE READ IT? I listened to it on audio, and it seems to me the real crime beyond the obvious, yes, Trump was in cahoots with the Russians, was Mueller not making 45 testify, which has always reeked to me of cronyism. The whole 'you can't indict a sitting president' is NOT A LAW, it's a memo. How many times have all of us read a memo and said phooey to that, then went on to do whatever it was the memo forbid? GOOD GRIEF.
Please comment on Dinesh d' Souza's gross tweet about Putin Dinesh D'Souza
@DineshDSouza 5h
I notice the witless progressives are trying to de-platform and de-bank #Putin in the same manner they have done to Nick Fuentes. The problem is that the little plastic swatter that works on a fly doesn’t really work on a grizzly bear #Ukraine
I am sickened.