April 16, 2009

Hint to James Wolcott: When You Look Like the Spawn of Jabba the Hut and Mr. Toad, Don't Advertise TV Appearances

wolcottasjabbatoad.jpg
Smart. Brainzzzz! "You know, I get, uh, four newspapers delivered every day!"

Once upon a time even the 4th string liberal commentators at least made an effort at cleanliness before appearing on TV, but no more. I'm sure at some time in the past, James Wolcott read one of the innumerable stories on how those close-up sweating moments on 60 Minutes indict liars, but he has evidently forgotten it. These days this mercifully brief video segment only underscores the fact that some people will do anything to get on televison; some people will even do CSPAN.

Michelle Malkin calls James Wolcott's CSPAN moment: Beclowned and she's right. But it is even more delicious than that. Wolcott seems to feel that appearing in front of a video camera is a smart and "fun" thing for him to do.

"I got up at an unfamiliar hour to the sound of sparrows to do a segment on C-SPAN, which was great fun once the caffeine kicked in."

Kicked in? The only thing that looks kicked in in the entire segment is Wolcott himself. If ever there was a poster child for the "See How Liberal Bootlicking Sucks Your Soul" crusade, it's Wolcott. He's a classic portrait of bad wannabe Ivyleague style gone to seed; a Dorian Grey for our moment. He's got it all.

There's the "Nutty Professor" tatty, ill-fitting jacket just ready for a slight puff of wind to unleash a blizzard of scalp droppings from the shoulders. Mark the pseudo-Pinks shirt of a ghastly blue plaid with a checked pattern that is far to big for a man of Wolcott's pasta-powered corpulence. There's the corpulence itself extruding from the collar, billowing up the neck, and blossoming beneath the oil-soaked skin that barely contains the slipping fat of the fallen face.

Mark well the face itself, emerging as Al Gore's once did and will again, from a sheet of flab animated only, like a clone of Clutch Cargo, by a sybarites' lips from which comes two, count'em, two voices. It's a shocking effect -- as if a frog and an alley cat were trapped in his lungs and struggling for supremacy.

The two voices give it all away and make one shudder. One seems a studied and controlled baritone quaver. A voice possibly formed and mellowed by many meetings with a media trainer. It soothes you and takes down your guard until your ear is shredded by the eruption of his authentic neuter's squeak at random intervals. It is as if Wolcott is doing all he can to keep sounding vaguely manly, but just can't quite keep his inner sissy in check. Little wonder since he obviously spends so much time riding his inner hobby horse everywhere except down the King's highway.

We won't even speak of the long and ghastly hanks of hair, since shampoo is obviously something Wolcott has long since given up in favor of smegma-infused skull wax. Instead we shall merely note these locks as a "lifestyle choice" and pass by.

In the new global cause celeb Susan Boyle we can see how character and soul give birth to beauty from unlikely vessels. In Wolcott's "I don't know nuffin' about the news lest it be in the New Yorker Times" CSPAN diatribe, we learn only that a lifetime spent dissipating yourself under Graydon Carter's desk can cause dark pustules of degeneracy to pervade your puss.

Wolcott holds, in the face of evidence placed in front of his face, that the Tea-Parties were of no consequence. But that is clearly not what he's thinking. What he's really thinking is, "David Gergen got to do tea-bagging jokes with that hunky Anderson-Cooper on MSNBC, and all I got was this lousy CSPAN slot!"

I have, in a delicate moment, decided to place the offending video of Jabba James out of view since I know this in a family blog. However, I should caution concerned parents everywhere to memorize this face and be prepared to alert the proper authorities should it show up in your neighborhood threatening ballet criticism. After all, it's a strange manchild indeed who would pair his appearance on CSPAN with the Velvet Underground's hymn to junkies, hookers and transvestites, Sister Ray. ("My special holiday washboard edition of "Sister Ray," which brings a twinkle to every eye." And a lump to his pantyhose, we imagine.)

Video coming up. Yes, it is too much information, but you've been warned.

Posted by Vanderleun at April 16, 2009 9:50 PM
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"It is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood." -- Karl Popper N.B.: Comments are moderated and may not appear immediately. Comments that exceed the obscenity or stupidity limits will be either edited or expunged.

Ok...this is why I don't blog. I couldn't compete with great stuff like this.

Bravo!

Posted by: Mumblix Grumph at April 17, 2009 2:11 AM

Wolcott should shave his head, he would look much better.

Posted by: chuck at April 17, 2009 2:22 AM

Gerard,

You got a crush on this guy?

Roy

Posted by: Roy Lofquist at April 17, 2009 5:08 AM

Hair that looks like that, gents, is not a good thing.

A shaved head is far, far preferable.

Posted by: Kim at April 17, 2009 5:46 AM

This guy looks like all the hacks down at city hall in my town.

Posted by: glenn at April 17, 2009 5:54 AM

What do you really think, Gerard? :)

Back when common sense could still be found on the coasts, creatures like Wolcott were relegated to night janitor jobs: out of the sight of decent people, contained in an orbit where no children could be frightened and no animals harmed.

Now he is rewarded for his oleaginous tripe. Truly the media man for the Obama era, and the jester of hell for the disciplined of mind.

Posted by: askmom at April 17, 2009 6:09 AM

I'd venture to say that Mr. Wolcott always smells like ass, through the patchouli fumes.

Just a guess.

Posted by: teresa at April 17, 2009 8:28 AM

Someone please tell me what this man's appearance and personal hygiene have to do with the merits or otherwise of what he has to say?

Attacking the person rather than the argument is a rather underhanded rhetorical technique. I confess to not knowing what it's called. Ad hominem?

Posted by: Fletcher Christian at April 17, 2009 8:43 AM

Fletcher, if you avert your eyes and just listen to the words, he still comes across as an ass. By which I mean, calling the tea parties Fox News rallies demonstrates a mind like an iron trap - rusted shut and impervious to being open to anything resembling truth. Namely, that people were gathered not because Fox News told them to do so, but because they are angry and frustrated, and they have decided it is time their voices were heard.

That he is also unappealing visually, while not obviously relevant to what he is saying, undeniably makes the viewing experience even more unpleasant. However, his words would be just as odious if he were an Adonis.

Posted by: Julie at April 17, 2009 9:13 AM

Dear Fletcher,
"Ad hominem?" Good guess. Yes. That is precisely what it is. It makes no bones about it from the headline on out.

People online always cycle around to this label as if that were a bad thing. It's not. They're like that old western feller Gabby Hayes staggering in the middle of a range war, bodies and smoldering ruins everywhere, and saying, "Why must there always be fightin' and killin'? Why can't there be peace in the valley?"

To paraphrase Gabby again, "Son, there's great ad hominem and there's good ad hominem, but there ain't no bad ad hominem.... 'cepting when it's aimed at you."

Posted by: vanderleun at April 17, 2009 9:30 AM

I forgot to "gradulate" Gerard on being a favored target of Wolcott. By our enemies we are known, and it's a great honor that he was attacked by a slimesucker who also hits below the belt at women like Neo and The Anchoress.

"Ad hominem" attacks are always bad, Fletcher? Any computer user understands "GIGO." If Wolcott was genetically disfavored or economically devastated, it would be a classless gaffe on Gerard's part to detail his flawed appearance. But like those other wealthy liberal gasbags, Rosie O'Donnell and Michael Moore, Wolcott brought about his own ugliness. He made free will CHOICES that have resulted in him looking like the bottom of a very wide garbage pail. Gerard and others simply point of the obvious.

Wolcott could fix it all in three months with careful diet, walks in the fresh air, good hygiene, dockers and clean shirt, boring tie, standard haircut, knocking off the booze and drugs. Vanity Fair surely pays him enough to afford it; in fact ANY normal American can afford to look respectable, but apparently Mr. Wolcott is so dissipated he doesn't even try. All decent citizens have a right to despise him for that.

Wolcott took out after me once too. His attack was based on the kind of quick and dirty misreading of my blog that you'd expect from a CBS reporter. He never apologized or corrected his clear and obvious error. No, he is far too full of his own importance to worry about truth or accuracy. He deserves all the pus he's generated for himself, and it will not surprise me if he comes to a sad and ignoble end.

Posted by: askmom at April 17, 2009 10:31 AM

Saith Mumblix Grumph: "Ok...this is why I don't blog. I couldn't compete with great stuff like this. Bravo!"

Sir, you really should reconsider. Your name alone is blogworthy. I bet you would even give Gagdad Bob a run for his money in the newly minted word coinage department.

Posted by: Jewel at April 17, 2009 11:59 AM

Oops! I assumed Mumblix Grumph was a sir, when the suffix might indicate another gender altogether! Sorry if I am mistaken.

Posted by: Jewel at April 17, 2009 12:05 PM

Someone please tell me what this man's appearance and personal hygiene have to do with the merits or otherwise of what he has to say?

Oh, I don't know. The idea of Ken Shabby promoting himself as a scion of journalism for a fashion magazine, might work better with an occasional shower and some clean clothes that actually fit.

Posted by: bustoff at April 17, 2009 12:14 PM

Please. Ad hominem means "attacking the man." Now, I ask you: is that a man?

Posted by: Gagdad Bob at April 17, 2009 12:37 PM

Also, I'm trying to figure out why a man would wear a gingham table cloth. Perhaps it's for camouflage when stealing food at Italian restaurants.

Posted by: Gagdad Bob at April 17, 2009 12:42 PM

That was GREAT.

I intend to steal every single line you typed and use them in a future post as my own exact words.

Posted by: The Mayor at April 17, 2009 1:45 PM

Steal away. I'm like the Grateful Dead of bloggers. I fire and forget but my readers help me to remember.

Posted by: vanderleun at April 17, 2009 2:10 PM

Wolcott's the guy who said he loves it when hurricanes come ashore and smash everything, including people.

I figured he'd be physically repulsive, but my poor imagination chugged to a halt at a point about 50 times less ugly than the man is in true life. I'll bet even his internal organs are horrendously ugly, too. At his autopsy, the coroner will feel hot goose pimples of empathic mortification, the same sensation you get watching American Idol.

Posted by: Tom W. at April 17, 2009 10:12 PM

Nonsense. The character in the video is really a bum who had spent the previous night on a park bench outside the CNN headquarters with three cans of Sterno and a rabid squirrel.

The real James Wolcott is an urbane Manhattanite who watches birds and keeps ocicats as pets. He writes articles for a classy fashion magazine. His writing style is breezy and sophisticated; sort of Alexander Woolcott-ish, albeit with a slightly more girly flavor. Any fool can see that this man was an impostor.

The program was a nasty prank on the part of some junior CSPAN staffer who will soon be sleeping on a park bench himself.

Posted by: Person of Choler at April 18, 2009 3:29 AM

Wolcott is it? Weren't you that guy who gushed: "I root for hurricanes. When, courtesy of the Weather Channel, I see one forming in the ocean off the coast of Africa, I find myself longing for it to become big and strong--Mother Nature's fist of fury, Gaia's stern rebuke. Considering the havoc mankind has wreaked upon nature with deforesting, strip-mining, and the destruction of animal habitat, it only seems fair that nature get some of its own back and teach us that there are forces greater than our own."
Yeah, that was you, I thought so.
Good to know we still have fools like you to contrast with.
From now on I will think of the act of blatant and willful denial as "pulling a Woolcott"
And Dude, one last thing....the hair

Posted by: at April 18, 2009 7:26 AM

Perhaps the spirit of ordinary human kindness should assert itself at this point.

James Wolcott suffers from several maladies, the enumeration of which is not really relevant to this screed. Primarily, he's desperate to remain part of the what's-happenin'-now current, a shaper of the Zeitgeist whose opinions, agree or disagree with them as you prefer, constitute a marker buoy in the discourse of our time. His problem is that what he has to say has all been said before, usually by persons with more palatable styles. When put into practice, his notions have been disproved. A sterner judge would rule that the tides of history have passed him by, that he serves entirely as a reminder of how stubbornly men will cling to their errors.

Let him orate in silence.

Posted by: Francis W. Porretto at April 18, 2009 2:24 PM

All around the country there were protests. Maybe all of these people from all around the country (I wonder how many that would be) should go to washington to march! Maybe we could set up buses like they did for the inauguration and give them rides to washington. Maybe then they would listen!

Posted by: lynn at April 18, 2009 3:52 PM

I fear they would only listen to the distant rumble of approaching cannons.

Posted by: vanderleun at April 18, 2009 4:44 PM

"...smegma-infused skull wax..." Dude, you're working over time. I'm gonna giggle about that one for a while.

Didn't Wolcott cover the punk-rock music scene at one time? I seem to remember reading that about him. I can't imagine that seeing that picture.

Posted by: Eric Blair at April 18, 2009 4:55 PM

"I get four newspapers a day..." He left out "and they're all liberal NY papers that are about to go belly up because no one reads them." I love how the success of a rally is based on how much RAGE is present. Fatman, conservatives don't usually resort to rage or scatology or other liberal sophomoric behavior. We're law-abiding (usually), respectful (usually), and fight back in more effective ways than screaming in front of a TV news camera like ACORN rebel-rousers do. Boycotting sponsors who televise and agree with anti-conservative hacks and voting the weasels out of Washington are just two of the powerful tools we can and will enlist.

And, those rallys for legalizing illegal aliens that had tens of thousands of people in attendance? How many of them were unemployed, so attending on a week day was not a problem? I used a vacation day to attend the Phoenix tea party (estimated 8,000 to 10,000 in attendance, and there were 18 tea party protests in the state), but many people I knew who wanted to go couldn't miss work. They had responsibilities they couldn't ignore, although they said they were at the protest "in spirit." Weird, huh... conservatives who take their jobs seriously.

This guy is a statist moron who works for an out-of-touch-with-reality magazine who's had one too many Krispy Kremes... and his shirt scares me.

Posted by: ClassicFilm at April 18, 2009 5:32 PM

Even when presented with facts, the truth is still hard to fathom for this hack.

Posted by: Kini at April 19, 2009 3:18 PM

He looks like the town drunk.

Posted by: Mikey NTH at April 20, 2009 10:40 AM

"...shampoo is obviously something Wolcott has long since given up..."

Unfair! You obviously are too unsophisticated to appreciate the his pomade made from oil of ocicat.

Posted by: pst314 at April 20, 2009 7:20 PM

Now THERE'S a dissing for the ages! I feel barely eligible to be BLESSED with this moment in time to have this brilliant prose put before me.

I bow to thee, oh great one, and thank you.

Posted by: Patvann at April 29, 2009 7:24 PM