Kirchick gets his facts wrong on the ‘reality-based community.’
Kirchick gets his facts wrong on the ‘reality-based community.’
In a Politico op-ed yesterday, Jamie Kirchick accused liberals of embracing “religious extremism.” Kirchick opened his argument by attacking the fact that some liberal bloggers call themselves the “reality-based community,” which he cast as a “direct response” to the “faith-based community” represented by President Bush’s Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. But Kirchick has his facts embarrassingly wrong. Here’s the actual source of the netroots “reality-based community” moniker:
The source of the term is a quotation in an October 17, 2004, New York Times Magazine article by writer Ron Suskind, quoting an unnamed aide to George W. Bush:
The aide said that guys like me were “in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” … “That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he continued. “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”[1]
Last week, Kirchick had another embarrassing error when he attributed John F. Kennedy’s famous “bear any burden” quote to Harry Truman. Publius has more on Kirchick’s Politico op-ed here.
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29 Responses to “Kirchick gets his facts wrong on the ‘reality-based community.’”
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Kirchick must be using Bill O'Reilly's fact-checker.
May 7th, 2008 at 9:08 pmAnyone want to bet that the source of the "reality-based community" was Karl Rove?
May 7th, 2008 at 9:26 pmRalph, I'll place $1 million on that wager.
May 7th, 2008 at 9:29 pmWell, it couldn't be based on the lies that this administration constantly tells us, now could it?
Nope. It's all about religion. And the admin doesn't lie, lie, and lie some more.
That's reality, nuckfit!
May 7th, 2008 at 9:30 pmI pointed out to him the erroneous nature of his word origins in a comment on that post. We'll see what happens to that comment.
May 7th, 2008 at 9:36 pmJust keep "creating your own realities" you neocon nutjobs and eventually you're going to back off a cliff or into the path of a train, meeting true reality in all its undeniable splendor. In fact, I think I've heard a few thuds lately(Abramhoff, Cunningham, Ney come to mind right off the bat).
May 7th, 2008 at 9:37 pmThe question is .. who defines reality.
May 7th, 2008 at 9:44 pmnot who but what. RIP Albert Hoffman
May 7th, 2008 at 9:50 pmI have hoped, for a long time now, that Suskind would reveal who that "aide" was. Frankly, as extreme a thinker as Rove is, I don't really think this was him. Someone even worse.
May 7th, 2008 at 10:10 pmThis ultimately led to one of the best true lines of all the books exposing the travesty's of BushCo.
"I'm a neocon who has been mugged by reality."
Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone by Rajiv Chandrasekaran
May 7th, 2008 at 10:37 pmWhat a mendacious dumbshit.
May 7th, 2008 at 11:22 pmLook at this from Wikipedia!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality-based_community
The same interpretation is laid out, right over the Ron Suskind quote! That's ridiculous, the quote has nothing to do with faith, it's about ego and power drunkenness.
Can anyone edit this Wikipedia entry? It's false.
May 7th, 2008 at 11:36 pmThat's funny about Kirchick's facts. Can anyone be surprised when a Republican just makes it up as he goes along?
But it gets better. First off, this is the same James Kirchick who blamed those evil liberals for his inability to find a liberal gay man in Boston who would put up with his wingnuttery. Could it have been his winning personality? Halitosis? The infamous tendency of Bostonians to wait five years before saying hi to a newcomer? Nope. It was the liberalism. Had to be.
Beyond the piteous whining and victim pose, isn't it interesting that Kirchick would voice his complaint in the pages of The Boston Globe? Given that he's a Log Cabin Republican, why not make the accusation in, say, The Boston Herald or The National Review or Human Events or one of the many and sundry other wingnut pubs ordinarily eager to throw down the gauntlet at the libs?
Could it be that the friendship of Kirchick's friends stops at the love that dare not speak its name? Someone should ask him about that sometime. Has he written any articles concerning his own homosexuality in the right-wing press? And no, I'm not talking about obscure right-wing gay blogs. I'm talking about the big dogs.
And then there is the inspirational source for the flawed article in Politico. Kirchick found one defense of Rev. Wright in The Nation, and used it to smear everyone to the left of Attila the Hun. Sound familiar? Maybe Kirchick was channeling Roy Cohn?
In the past, we godless lefties would ignore absurd fools like James Kirchick, confident that they'd fall of their own weight. Well, now we can see where that got us. I think it's time to take notice of these goofballs, lest they wind up as pundits on the latest Murdoch acquisition.
May 7th, 2008 at 11:42 pmWhy not? O'Reilly certainly isn't using him!
And someone needs to get the Wikipedia entry corrected.
Ed
May 7th, 2008 at 11:57 pmKirchick knows even less than he says and that's saying a lot.
-AF
May 8th, 2008 at 12:02 amAndrew Sullivan Is A Fraud
.
If my Christian belief system is too liberal and extreme...
THOU SHALL NOT KILL...
TREAT YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOU WOULD HAVE HIM TREAT YOU...
JUDGE NOT LEAST YE BE JUDGED...
R E M E M B E R:
THEY(sic) HUNG JESUS FROM A CROSS BECAUSE HE TOO, WAS A LIBERAL EXTREMIST.
Somehow, I get the impression that Jamie Kirchick does not practice any one of the THREE Abrahamic Faiths.
.
May 8th, 2008 at 12:40 am.
Reality is an inconvenient truth that is easily ignored when one needs to "FIX FACTS" around policy, in NeoCondria...
.
May 8th, 2008 at 12:45 amEd Drone Says:
Kirchick must be using Bill O’Reilly’s fact-checker.
Why not? O’Reilly certainly isn’t using him!
May 7th, 2008 at 11:57 pm
I know. BO's fact-checker is a Critter at TheZoo, and he's never reported to work -- not once. ;)
May 8th, 2008 at 12:58 amThe Age of Modern Propaganda: create your own reality. Al Qaeda really is who we a fighting in Iraq. Social programs really do cause poverty and despair. War does equal Peace.
So sad to say the unnamed souce quoted by Suskind was absolutely correct. There really is a Vast Right Wing Conspiracy but only in the minds of those who believe it to be a reality.
May 8th, 2008 at 6:36 amThe Republican Party has become a massive public health threat to America and the world. The only solution is to herd them all into Utah, where they will quickly die.
May 8th, 2008 at 7:35 amInteresting. People create their own reality and foist its terms on others and then this reality is distributed and after a while it gets back to the original NPD people and they of course believe it whether they believed it originally or not and before you know it the whole community suffers from Narcissistic Personality Disorder and reality is a distant memory and an inconsequential matter for fear of having made a mistake which is one thing that started the whole process. Or some such thing like this......my head hurts.
May 8th, 2008 at 8:09 amRove? No. That little "-- judiciously, as you will -- " is pure, unadulterated Cheney.
Listen carefully. "I think they're in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency."
May 8th, 2008 at 8:47 amhttp://www.cnn.com/2005/US/05/30/cheney.iraq/
What a maroon, this guy has not a clue. If I could make reality all of the neocons would be in Iraq and our soldiers would be home. The Reich does not know anything about the Left and our religious values, because we believe in a just God and they believe in reality that they are Ambassadors of god and his Warmongering, greed, and corrupt beliefs, that`s their faith based horse$hit.Our reality based community does not believe in illegal war,illegal wire tapping and corrupt gov`t, reality would have this whole administration in Iraq
May 8th, 2008 at 9:31 amand our citizens would not be losing their homes because of corrupt banking,47 million Americans would have health insurance that covers an illness ,I could name hundreds of atrocities that this "faith based community in Washington has committed under the so called guise of god.
khuigens Says:
Rove? No. That little “– judiciously, as you will — ” is pure, unadulterated Cheney.
Listen carefully. “I think they’re in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency.”
http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/05/30/cheney.iraq/
I think you may be right. Check this out from the White House's own website. Cheney used the phrase "if you will" 9 times in this single interview. It's not "as you will," but close.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/vicepresident/news-speeches/speeches/vp20010916.html
May 8th, 2008 at 10:05 amkhuigens Says:
Rove? No. That little “– judiciously, as you will — ” is pure, unadulterated Cheney.
Listen carefully. “I think they’re in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency.”
http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/05/30/cheney.iraq/
May 8th, 2008 at 8:47 am
Ah, nice catch. Interesting...
May 8th, 2008 at 10:15 amYou might be right. It's a little high-falutin' for Rove now that you mention it.
May 8th, 2008 at 10:23 amI don't think it's Cheney. A journalist would never refer to the Vice-President as an "aide". He would probably have said, "a White House official" or something like that.
I still think it's Rove. It's a James-Bond-villain kind of speech. I imagine Rove sitting like Blofeld, stroking a white Persian cat as he explains the whole evil plan to Ron Suskind.
May 8th, 2008 at 10:43 am“Kirchick gets his facts wrong on the ‘reality-based community.’”
Truth hurts :D
May 8th, 2008 at 12:13 pm" . . .when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”
This reminds me of:
“Fascists have the word ‘action’ on their lips from morning to night.”
May 8th, 2008 at 12:32 pm--Wyndham Lewis, Time and Western Man