The guilty pleasure of vituperative writing

From John Podhoretz, You Suck by Matt Taibbi.  The subheading is: Neoconservatives think they've been vindicated by Ukraine, and their new Democratic allies agree. On America's most improbable and undeserved political comeback.  A piece steeped in vituperation, redeemed, at least somewhat, by its clarity.  Taibbi has no regard for Podhoretz.  

There is a degree of inside baseball in the piece.  I have always understood neocob and neoliberal to be terms of opprobrium but have never been able to arrive at a clear understanding of the full freighting of their meanings which seem to shape shift as required for purposes of condemnation.

There is clearly a lot of backstory to Taibbi's piece and I am not arguing he is wrong.  I am simply acknowledging 1) that there is more here than I have been keeping track of and 2) my enjoyment of the emotional energy of the piece when yoked to a stiletto wit.

Neoconservative intellectual, former Reagan speechwriter, and onetime Jeopardy champ John Podhoretz penned a triumphant column the other day. Titled, “Neoconservatism: A Vindication,” the Commentary piece declared architects of the War on Terror like himself back on top, world events having proven them correct about everything from community policing to war. Not only are they back on top, they’ve conquered their primary “hip liberal” foes, leaving just one pocket of dissenters remaining:

The key foes the neoconservatives face when it comes to the moral frame of deterrence—the idea that America is and should be a force for good—are no longer hip liberals but rather “traditional conservatives” who have taken their place as the leading anti-American voices of our time.

Anti-American. Let the sheer balls of that sink in. Podhoretz and the rest of the overgrown Risk-playing lunatics in his neocon treehouse — people like Paul Wolfowitz, Elliot Abrams, Richard Perle, Bill Kristol, Max Boot, David Frum, and Robert Kagan, husband to Joe Biden’s current Undersecretary of Global Dominance Victoria Nuland — spent most of the last twenty years trying to set the Bill of Rights on fire, over the objections of the very people he now decries as “foes” to the American way. In a just world he’d be wedged naked in an innertube and dropped in the Bering Strait just for allowing himself to think he gets to decide who is and isn’t American, much less publishing the idea.

Liberals and peace activists, look at the face at the top of this page and summon a memory of the Bush years: this emissary from the past just called you his bitch. To the eternal shame of anyone who’s ever held a Nation subscription or read a Carlos Castaneda novel, he’s right, as many onetime Iraq war opponents are now locking arms behind Podhoretz and his pals. If you’re a “traditional conservative” — meaning someone who probably voted for neoconservative policies most of your life — he’s fingering you as the last “anti-Americans” in the population needing taming. Haughty stuff, from the mouthpiece of a niche crew of armchair hawks who’ve been deader than Tupac politically since Iraq, a country Podhoretz conveniently neglects to mention in his “Vindication” tale.