I couldn’t tell what Mike Huckabee said at the end. My friend who watched with me couldn’t hear either. The sound was kind of off, what did he say?

Dude, you follow a candidate around and all you report on is his knose hair…’your a jerk-off. How pathetic are you? What’s next, you’re gonna go around following Hillaryous and document how you masterbate to pictures of her fat ass? Sad…

I mean, humanity!

I love how he keeps the camera focused in on his nose that entire time. It was perfectly surreal humor when combined with the seriousness of the issue.

Hilarious… Thanks for that, Matt!

I have deep respect for a journalist who can write so incisive and important an article as ‘The Great Iraq Swindle’ and still marvel at something as simple as Tancredo’s enchanted nose hair.

Matt Taibbi is one of the best reporters and writers that I’ve read, does he really have to dumb it down with commentary on “titties” and nose hairs? Or is he sarcastically poking fun at the people who report on things like the cost of Edward’s hair cut? This was dumb and whatever the point was, it wasn’t made. Stick to the writing, Matt. Leave the commentary for John Stewart.

Huckabee: [Iraq] gets covered pretty well when we are being interviewed or doing talk shows.

Ah thanks stamen vjkotek. About the nose hair: I kinda understand why Matt is so fixated on it. I mean, how does anybody, let alone a public figure, look in the mirror and not do something about something that looks so insanely grotesque? It may seem shallow to focus on something that involves personal appearance, but doesn’t this simply show that this man just might not be quite mentally stable?

Tim,

I can’t make up my mind…was that video a pathetic attempt at humor or was there a larger point to it that I just didn’t get?

Wonder what would happen if we rounded up all of the stupid liberals (leaving out the smarty-pants ones like Mr. Taibbi) and made a video on the Democratic campaign trail. That would be hilarious! Guess I’ll just have to watch CSPAN instead – Kucinich, Kennedy, Kerry are good enough sport.

I hadn’t heard of Taibbi before today, but now that you’ve brought his work to my attention, I’ll be sure to filter it. Thanks!

“I hadn’t heard of Taibbi before today”

So thats why you still have all those ridiculous notions. You’ve been missing out on all the great investigative journalism.

Oh, and don’t get too worked up about nosehair coverage. It’s probably Taibbis way of dismissing Tancredo for the lying trash he is.

Is that it? I thought it was just pandering to the metrosexual-vote by appealing to their sense of aesthetics.

Well written. Very well written. However, I think sometimes satire is more effective than taking the object of disagreement seriously. I cannot speak for Matt, but looking at his stellar track record, I think it is likely that he did this for a reason. Rather than going after the ludicrous positions of this candidate, he completely ignores him in favor of some ridiculous detail. I think his purpose was to show how little he thought of Tancredo, through this satire of nose hair emphasis.

agree: satire was the intention.

disagree: the satire was dispatched successfully.

this piece was neither funny nor poignant; a sad departure from the outstanding course set by matt taibbi.

Okay, let’s not forget that there were plenty of other elements in this clip, like the usual Taibbian desconstruction of campaign language & culture. He’s trying to convey his personal impression of the campaign in a short fun video clip. This isn’t exactly dissertation length, it’s a freaking blog post.

i WILL forget it, if remembering it in any way undermines my position. WORST TAIBBI POST EVER!

it’s a freaking stupid blog post

“disagree: the satire was dispatched successfully.

this piece was neither funny nor poignant; a sad departure from the outstanding course set by matt taibbi.”

Now we go beyond fact and into the realm of opinion. The heart of the issue for you is that you simply don’t find it amusing.

Well, I did. It was funny and poignant.

The only place we can go from here is to poll the people who liked it against those who didn’t and use an argument based on populism to determine if it was poignant or not.

heart of the issue,
you state the obvious as though it were a revelation. opinions are the only sentiment available here; an opinion of what’s relevant to tom tancredo and mitt romney initiated subsequent response, and you’ll notice that none of my posts are preceded by a statement declaring them as fact.
your polls, or the expressed will of the people is, for all intents and purposes, simply an opinion quantified by a number. i’ll maintain my opinions whether the masses support them or not. besides, the masses are egregiously uninformed; i’d rather my opinion wasn’t defensible solely through the support of a diluted comprehension of the issues, or, in this case, defeated by the opinions of those possessed of an unrefined concept of farce.

heart of the issue, et. al.
p.s. i respect your opinions, and i’m delighted that you have them. personally, i celebrate matt’s entire body of work, except for the unsightly nose hair that is this “campaign trail” video. sorry we can never, ever, EVER be friends.

I’m glad you find ad populism arguments distasteful. That was the implied point I had in mind, that there was no ’solution’ to the true value of the satirical approach. Which returns back to what I was getting at by saying such a sarcastic statement about polling peoples opinion.

It is understandable that you missed the subtle hint(I admit I was slightly mimicking your similar statement) that saying things like “it was funny” or “it wasn’t” is silly in context of argument. Since neither side can go further than opinion, those claims seem overly strong. To say “this piece was neither funny nor poignant” sounds like a factual claim to me, so you’ll hopefully excuse my misunderstanding as well.

Similarly, it is understandable that you would misinterpret what is ‘revelatory’ to me. Text alone leaves out so many subtle signs of speech. Let me be clearer: Seeing as how it is rare that one makes arguments which are “preceded by a statement declaring them as fact”, I was under the impression that your opposition stemmed not from poor execution, but rather that “he obviously phoned in this moronic claptrap”. I was under the impression that you were making a factual claim about quantifying his effort in making this video.

That I pointed out that your true concern with the video was one of opinion only was due to the wording you used which implied to me that you saw it as fact. Knowing full well that people rarely preface factual claims with a statement announcing such, it seemed reasonable to assume this.

Seeing as how you make statements like this: “besides, the masses are egregiously uninformed;”, I hope you can appreciate that I will continue to assume you don’t actually preface your factual claims, by identifying them as such. Even though you make another factual claim (quite contradicting yourself) that “opinions are the only sentiment available here”.

Simply put, you can’t have it both ways. You do make factual statements (even if they are false) and you don’t preface them as such(even though you imply you would). So you can see why I would seem to “state the obvious”. It is because you didn’t seem to be aware of the obvious yourself.

What no one one here seems to understand is that Tancredo’s nose hair is a metaphor for the Iraq War. An unsightly mess that hangs around in plain sight yet it’s impolite to talk about it. That’s what Iraq is to the entire Republican candidate field.

The post was funny. Grow a brain and find a sense of humor.

Wow, who would have thought that the most enlightened discourse of the week would regard nose hair?

Certainly not I. We can only hope something of substance emerges today else The Bluebird Of Happiness shall be released.

Fact: egregious nose hair gone untrimmed for an extended period of time = mental infirmity.

Or maybe nobody loves him enough to tell him “either you trim that thing, or I’m attacking you with a tweezer”

I’m just saying, how can we trust a man to govern our country, when he can’t govern his own nose bush?

didn’t think I’d be happy that my firewall prevents me from seeing the video. Amazing that a little nose hair would cause this much controversy, but the apparent destruction of the only planet capable of sustaining human life is pretty much ignored and ridiculed as ‘imagined’. Rather telling of american’s priorities huh?

that’s some artful spin; i’ll yield that you have me at a disadvantage in this regard. but why focus just on me? did you read what virginia wrote? “The sound was kind of off…” oh, virginia, i’ll see you burn for that! can you back up your statement with fact? you seem awfully sure of yourself that you could not hear the sound very well, and you say it with such conviction, stifling the opposition welling up within us all when faced with such incontrovertible proof. i will rejoice watching you fall from your lofty tower of personal experience and tympanic deficiency.
i think dan throws the word “hilarious” around with reckless abandon; i wish he would temper his statement with a little sensitivity for the benefit of those of us who didn’t have access to the same empirical evidence he acquired proving that he did, in fact, find this piece hilarious.
and you, misinterpretations abound, in all your various, incisive incarnations would have us ALL believe that you really thought something i wrote earlier was “well written.” but you took it even further, didn’t you… you weren’t satisfied declaring that you thought it was just “well written,” you had to say it was “very well written.” i am severely distraught by the certainty of your statement, presented as though it were unquestionable fact.
no, sir or madam, i have not made factual statements here. i have articulated what is true to me, as i’m sure everyone else here has; other than stamen quoting what huckabee was heard to say on the video, i haven’t seen a post here that implies anything they’re saying is a fact. if you believe i’m implying my opinions are fact, i encourage you to spend an inordinate amount of time deconstructing every statement made in this forum to presume authorial intent. sorry, i mean spend more time deconstructing everyone else’s statements, holding everyone, including yourself, to the same standard you’re requiring of me. whether you do a thorough job of designing implications from what i’ve said or not, i still think this piece sucks; you don’t have to speculate any further.

virginia, it is my opinion that your last post initiated a series of gratifying chuckles that issued forth out of what i believe, in my opinion, to be my mouth.

I’m afraid we are still not understanding one another. While I cannot prove to you that this is
true, I did in fact think it was well written, and still do.

Any criticisms of what I saw as overreaching were due to respect for what I read. I would not emphasis so little a detail if I thought the writer were not able to understand and (if it was really a flaw), correct it.

Which is why I continue to debate any point I notice that is unsound. This idea you imply that I am at fault for stating opinion as fact is one such point. I never made any argument that one should or should not. I only pointed out your contradiction in insisting on only taking things as factual claims that you preface by identifying as such. It was your argument that one should do so(by implying that since none of your posts were prefaced by claims that they were factual, they could never actually be factual), and your contradiction by not actually doing it.

So simply put, I am not the one that has held anyone to the standard of stating ones intent before presenting an opinion or fact, you were. I am however willing to argue that one can make factual claims without saying so. And that implicit through the english language, one can state opinion without saying so as well.

That, I think, is where we are at odds. I would argue that opinion and factual claims both may be stated without identifying them. Opinion, such as “very well written”, doesn’t need to be prefaced with “I think that is” because it is an opinion. Similarly with fact, “i have not made factual statements here.” needs no “This is a fact: ” claim before it, because you can imagine that this would then recursively require the preface to be prefaced ad infinitum.

I hope you can appreciate why I bring this up. While we are picking apart each others words, I find that you keep saying you are not making factual claims. This is what I am trying to address, not that you or I have opinions. You are making factual claims, and some of them are incorrect. This is “obvious” issue I’ve been trying to elucidate.

Saying things like “Well written” or “that’s some artful spin” is fine, both are opinion, even if they don’t do much for a discussion(imagine two simple posters saying”this video sucked” and “this video rocked”). Saying things like “i’ll maintain my opinions whether the masses support them or not.” is also fine, and I respect such a statement, but you have to understand it is a factual claim, so you must realize that you are making factual claims, and when you say you are not, that is incorrect. Just as I was incorrect in misinterpreting some of your earlier opinions.

Lastly, I’m sorry if this is bothering you. While I am taking inferences from what you say, I am trying not to “design implications” other than what is reasonable to assume.

i am so deeply bothered by this discussion that i can’t even type a response without punching the kitten doll next to my keyboard. i am imagining this kitten doll is you and your baseline logic that continuously eludes me. and then i see the picture of that fu**ing nose hair and i become so enraged that i spit – literally SPIT – in locations i have explicitly designated as places where i should never spit under any circumstances. that’s a fact!
seriously though, i think you’re just nitpicky, the same way i am. you can spare both of us further frustration if you just admit you’re wrong about everything. i’ll do my part to settle this dispute by agreeing with you.

I’m sorry that you find this so onerous. That was never my intent. I take an interest not in argument itself, but the outcome(when properly applied): the truth.

So, if this discussion does not lead us to it then stopping it does seem reasonable. Seeing as how our intended semantical meanings aren’t always recognized, we find disagreement over use of words that, had we known what the other meant, we would have otherwise agreed upon.

Still, I will not admit being wrong about everything as I do not believe it was the truth(although I did make a few mistakes by not fully fleshing out certain points or arguments. Some of my statements were downright tautologous because I forgot to finish writing what I was thinking…ugh). I’d rather be proven wrong before agreeing to something I think is false.

In any case, do not feel you are obligated to continue this. Whether wrong or right, you’re discontinuation won’t change that and I don’t want to see your poor kitty suffer any more simply because I am too sloppy with making the logic to my arguments clear.

What’s the difference, the Repubes all merge and morph when it comes to their “War is Working Well” chant.

Giuliani, McCain, Romney, Thompson, etc.

All the little soldiers sticking to George Bush’s sorry story lines…

“Tomorrow”!

Poor vidio quality-the humor is sick but funny.