SALON

Wednesday, Dec 29, 2010 8:01 PM UTC

Today in incredibly stupid things Jonah Goldberg wrote

Gay marriage will be Bad News for Liberals, Jonah argues, because liberals hate monogamy and ABC sitcoms

By

Topics: National Review, War Room, Don't Ask Don't Tell, Gay Marriage, LGBT,

Today in incredibly stupid things Jonah Goldberg wroteJonah Goldberg and "Modern Family" cast members Jesse Tyler Ferguson and Eric Stonestreet.

Jonah Goldberg has a doozy of a syndicated column today arguing that the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell” and the inevitability of gay marriage are both Officially Good News for Conservatives, because they are Bad News For Liberals, because now the gays are bourgeois. As we all know, what liberals have always actually wanted is not “equality” or “equal rights,” but for our radical bohemian values to undermine society until it crumbles and we can erect a glorious anarchic state built on free-gay-child-love. But gay marriage will ruin our plans!

A smart person could write a good column about the trajectory of the gay rights movement, the long journey from Gay Liberation to NOH8, the story of how America deals with radical movements by eventually allowing formerly marginal minorities to join mainstream society. But Jonah Goldberg is not a smart person and this is not a good column.

The column encapsulates Goldberg’s pathetic conservatism: It’s a philosophy defined entirely by opposition to whatever those stupid liberals want. There’s no principle beyond the adolescent desire to be contrary.

Two decades ago, the gay Left wanted to smash the bourgeois prisons of monogamy, capitalistic enterprise, and patriotic values and bask in the warm sun of bohemian “free love” and avant-garde values. In this, they were simply picking up the torch from the straight Left of the 1960s and 1970s, who had sought to throw off the sexual hang-ups of their parents’ generation along with their gray flannel suits.

As a sexual-lifestyle experiment, they failed pretty miserably, the greatest proof being that the affluent and educated children (and grandchildren) of the baby boomers have re-embraced the bourgeois notion of marriage as an essential part of a successful life. Sadly, it’s the lower-middle class that increasingly sees marriage as an out-of-reach luxury. The irony is that such bourgeois values — monogamy, hard work, etc. — are the best guarantors of success and happiness.

Any sources or citations for quote for any of this? (Monogamy is the best guarantor of success! QED!) No. But don’t worry, he has a really good example coming up:

The gay experiment with open bohemianism was arguably shorter. Of course, AIDS played an obvious and tragic role in focusing attention on the downside of promiscuity. But even so, the sweeping embrace of bourgeois lifestyles by the gay community has been stunning.

Nowhere is this more evident — and perhaps exaggerated — than in popular culture. Watch ABC’s Modern Family.

Yep. “Gay people are all bourgeois now, I learned it on a TeeVee show I watch. Liberals stink!”

No but seriously:

The sitcom is supposed to be “subversive” [no it isn't] in part because it features a gay couple with an adopted daughter from Asia. And you can see why both liberal proponents and conservative opponents of gay marriage see it that way. But imagine you hate the institution of marriage [only cartoon caricatures of radical leftists go around consciously "hating the institution of marriage" but OK] and then watch Modern Family’s hardworking bourgeois gay couple through those eyes [but if I hate the institution of marriage why the hell am I watching "Modern Family"?]. What’s being subverted? Traditional marriage, or some bohemian identity-politics fantasy of homosexuality? [Can a "bohemian identity-politics fantasy" be "subverted"...? Does anyone read these things before they're published?]

Goldberg goes on to note that Republicans love family but Democrats love murder, according to science:

By the way, according to a recent study, Modern Family is the No. 1 sitcom among Republicans (and the third show overall behind Glenn Beck and The Amazing Race) but not even in the top 15 among Democrats, who prefer darker shows like Showtime’s Dexter, about a serial killer trying to balance work and family between murders.

That study seemed like nonsense (conclusion: self-proclaimed conservatives like high-rated popular television shows slightly more than self-identified liberals do, and liberals also like less highly rated shows) but its methodology has nothing to with its relevance to Goldberg’s point, which is none.

And we end on this note:

Personally, I have always felt that gay marriage was an inevitability, for good or ill (most likely both). I do not think that the arguments against gay marriage are all grounded in bigotry, and I find some of the arguments persuasive. But I also find it cruel and absurd to tell gays that living the free-love lifestyle is abominable while at the same time telling them that their committed relationships are illegitimate too.

Jonah goes on to explain what he means when he says gay marriage will be both good and bad, and he elaborates on which arguments from gay marriage opponents he finds so “persuasive,” despite his obvious sympathy for the cause of gay marriage. Oh, wait, no he doesn’t. He doesn’t do any of that, he just ends the column with a dumb attempt to coin the term “HoBo.”

So I’m guessing that he doesn’t actually have any reason at all to think that gay marriage will be bad for anyone, but he has to pretend that he does, because otherwise K-Lo will cry, or something. Who knows.

I thought this would be the dumbest thing I read at the National Review Online today, until I read this, which notes that Mexico has only one gun store and comes to the conclusion “Less Gun Stores, More Crime”; and this, another episode of the on-going series “Andrew McCarthy proves that liberals love Islamofascists” (tonight’s smoking gun: a New York Times profile of a Lebanese newspaper editor); and this astounding single paragraph from someone named Charlotte Hays that insists that snow will make people conservative, because it proves that government doesn’t work. (Did the private sector plow Park Slope yet…?) Ms. Hays wrote a similar piece the last time it snowed, about how snow proves that the government doesn’t work because the USPS website didn’t announce that post offices would be closed. (“A murmur of approval greeted my suggestion that he call his boss and urge USPS to post information about delivery on their website, as any normal, unsubsidized business would have done by now.” Tell that to every New York restaurant on SeamlessWeb, lady.)

Alex Pareene

Alex Pareene writes about politics for Salon and is the author of "The Rude Guide to Mitt." Email him at apareene@salon.com and follow him on Twitter @pareene More Alex Pareene.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 146 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

vote
Journalists file suit against Manning's trial secrecy: Plaintiffs including Glenn Greenwald and Julian Assange demand press, public access to trial and documents
139 points140 points | comment
vote
Report: Nearly a quarter of Americans struggle to afford food
122 points123 points | 12 comments
vote
Kaitlyn Hunt refuses plea offer, will go to court over high school relationship - The 18-year-old rejected a deal that would have labeled her a sex offender and placed her under house arrest
118 points119 points | 85 comments
vote
Kaitlyn Hunt refuses plea offer, will go to court over high school relationship - The 18-year-old rejected a deal that would have labeled her a sex offender and placed her under house arrest
107 points108 points | 29 comments
vote
Ted Cruz against the world - How the Junior Senator is igniting the GOP civil war
78 points79 points | 19 comments

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: Chekhov's story mirrors Russia's own

Recommendations