Saturday, August 6, 2011

Wingnut War of Attrition! Join Now!

Over at Roy's place, Jay B. (ace blog remarker and thrower of fine barbeques) mentioned that NRO is having another of their fund-raising cruises -- a sort of Love Boat meets Ship of Fools meets Titanic mash-up, with Kathryn Jean Lopez as the Unsinkable Molly Brown, S.E. Cupp as Julie Your Cruise Director, and Jonah Goldberg as Some Unidentifiable Flotsam -- and it features many of the leading voices in contemporary conservative commentary.  Alas, if you embark on this voyage of intellectual discovery, you also have to see their faces, and I imagine most passengers' reaction will be similar to mine when I clicked over and viewed the staff's mugshots: slack-jawed stupefaction, followed by two hours of lost time.

Still, these are all Randian Übermenschen und frauen, who firmly believe that cut-throat, unregulated competition strengthens both a nation's economy and her people, so let's take these glamour shots and hold a beauty contest!

I'll arrange the portraits by category, and you vote for the winner in each one -- and feel free to come up with  your own (and no doubt better) captions.  Ready? (If not, you can just skip to the cat pictures below.)

Category #1:  Miss Smug
Tony Blankley

 Cal Thomas

Jonah Goldberg

Talent Portion:  Smiling with pursed lips.

Question:  Where Do You Want to Be in Five Years?  Leading the unexamined life.

Category #2:  Miss Old Man and the Sea
Bernard Lewis
John O' Sullivan
Fred Dalton Thompson


Talent Portion:  Storing scotch in my jowls for the winter.

Question:  Where Do You Want to Be in Five Years?  Enjoying the sweet release of death.

Okay, that's it for Round One.  Please cast your ballots in Comments, and best of luck to all of our lovely contestants!

23 comments:

M. Bouffant said...

C'mon, the picture of Jonah Zoidberg must have been taken 10 yrs. ago!

Gregor Singleton said...

Cal Thomas has a strange juxtaposition between the top and lower parts of his face. They don't seem to agree on which feigned emotion to go with. And O' Sullivan looks like he just spotted someone finger-banging his wife in the back of the room.

gocart mozart said...

Cal Thomas wins category #1. When you look up smug in the dictionary it says, "Why does Cal Thomas think he's better than me."

Category #2 is unfair to the other competitors because F. Dalton Thompson, Esq. III actually invented that particular talent competition although he prefers to use bourbon aged in the carved out skulls of tobacco farm worker union organizers. Don't ask me how I know this.

Scott said...

Don't ask me how I know this.

I won't. I'm just going to savor the entire comment, like a fine old skull-aged whiskey.

Stacia said...

Cal Thomas has that instinctive come-hither look peculiar to all old-timey Puritans -- he's not quite the sex kitten Cotton Mather was, but that's a pretty high standard to hold anyone to.

Still, my vote for #1 has to be Tony Blankley. He's the only one who caused me to blurt out "Guuuurrrlll" when I saw him.

Since Fred "Reverse Mortgage" Thompson is surely going to win #2, I'm going to vote for an underdog just to make things interesting: Bernard Lewis, who clearly ate the heart of Robert Novak when he died so he could subsume his powers.

Mentis Fugit said...

I've read enough nautical fiction that the idea of placing a Jonah on a ship fills me with a hope which I am sure is illusory.

heydave said...

So that's what my asshole looks like?

Chris Vosburg said...

Yeah, Cal Thomas in cat 1, who as Gr3gor points out, suffers from John Agar Syndrome (smile does not extend to eyes). Used to be even more smug-looking with his little mustache, but even without it, he's top.

Fred Dullton Thompson in cat 2. Now there is a ten-year-old photo; looks far older in real life, polishing up his Wilford Brimley impression for the reverse mortgage ads.

Bonus Gratuitous Jonah Poke: Roll us both down a hill, and Jonah'd surely win, wheee~! [thank you Ian Anderson].

preznit said...

can I vote for the iceberg and Coast Guard cutbacks regarding that particular rescue at sea?

preznit said...

that pic of tony blankley looks like his headshot for the Tareyton ad

p.s. word verification for the previous post was "dillemi" which IIRC is the past perfect tense of dilemma

Nom de Plume said...

I recognized most of them, but who's the Victorian death photo at the bottom?

Aimless in Florida said...

I'm getting it that all those guys have bad teeth...or none.

maryclev said...

Since I'm related to the man who is running the pagent, I am not allowed to vote.

That being said, I will make this comment:

The MTA of LA has a "Transit TV" thing going on which is like tv for bus riders. ANYWAY, the best day of my commute was when TransitTV posed this little Trivia Question:

What is a group of hedgehogs known as?

The answer, according to Transit TV?

Fred Dalton Thompson

I kid you not. It was either an awesome life hack or a hilarious tech glitch. Either way? It made my day.

Anntichrist S. Coulter said...

I don't care who wins, as long as we are guaranteed each a turn @ the high-powered harpoon, to put these evil fucktards out of our misery... and yes, Jonah Teh Blubber Bag goes FIRST!

Also, never let us forget that Thompson, the worst thing to happen to television since CarrotTop and/or Sherri Lewis & Lambchop, ran the SAVE SCOOTER LIBBY FROM AN HONEST TRIAL "LEGAL DEFENSE FUND." Let his be a gut wound, so that he dies slower.

D. Sidhe said...

Cal Thomas and John O'Sullivan. Man, Jonah and Fred (and if I looked that much like a drunk and had his initials, I'd leave my middle name out of things) are just mediocre in *everything*.

Also, yes, that is a fucking *ancient* picture of Jonah. He doesn't even look like that much of an asshole there. He was on CSPAN again last weekend, and he is not aging well.

Tina said...

I pick Blankley over Thomas, and here's why: the smug "I know something you don't" smirk annoys me far, far more than the smug "I am better than you could ever be" condescending look.

I vote for Fred three names for category two, on the grounds that he reminds me of Nixon, which means he most closely resembles a DEAD PERSON.

Ivan G Shreve Jr said...

I also cast my smug vote for Tony Blankley -- in fact, whenever I would see him on MSNBC I would always get up and leave the room, muttering something about "I can't listen to this smug bastard..." He puts the "mug" in smug.

And in the Old Codger sweepstakes, it's "Lazy" Fred Dalton Thompson, if only for shamelessly shilling for AAG, a concern dedicated to bilking seniors with their reverse mortgage Ponzi scheme.

Chris Vosburg said...

Mary writes: What is a group of hedgehogs known as? The answer, according to Transit TV? Fred Dalton Thompson

As a rider myself, I'm the first to agree that TransitTV's goofy quizzes are a frequent source of unintentional hilarity. Often, they are simply wrong in a way that defies reality; a recent example to complement Mary's is the puzzler:

Q: How many colors are there in a rainbow?
A: Seven.


Everybody GOT THAT?! It's SEVEN, DAMMIT!

Brian Schlosser said...

Cal and Ol' Grampaw Fred, no question.

R. Porrofatto said...

#1 Cal Thomas has years of smug over the Boy Historian, and Tony Blankley's smirk comes from covering up Newt Gingrich's serial blowjobs, so I vote for Cal because he's got the fundie-crazy killer mugshot down.

#2 Stacia is right that Bernard Lewis is channeling Robert Novak and John O'Sullivan is trying for the Pat Moynihan look, so Fred Dalton Thompson gets my vote for being an original.

Kordo said...

1. Doughy Loadpants. Smug is such a pale word. Thomas is more in the "Bitter, Closeted" category.

2. Can't speak to this one. They all look like Old Men Lost At Sea to me.

melior said...

Cal "Smug Satan" Thomas, whose long ago column pages in the Houston Post I used to specifically select for topmost face-up parakeet cage liner duty

Frederick "atomic mass unit" Thompson, for bringing so much heartfelt hilarious get-off-my-lawn WTFitude to the last Presidential election cycle

Anntichrist S. Coulter said...

Ah, Melior... you prolly won't see this one, but on the nearby anniversary of the clusterfuck that begat "Mark Of The Beast," I hope that we can once again talk and laugh together. I just didn't have any way to correlate an online nic to the personal letter in my swiss-cheese "memory." I R DAIN-BRAMAGED, so if it was you who provided me with the picture of the Katy, TX klan rally "town hall meeting" (for ignant suburbanite white trash only!), I am eternally in your debt. I have missed you sorely, especially when I flick through the archives and remember how much fun that we used to have. If it was Mentata, I have no way of knowing without an answer from you, because I can't find ANY wisp of his having existed online at all anymore... and yes, I miss him muchly, too.

But as another former friend said, "Everybody who's not in {my} life is gone because it's {MY} fault!" Not that I believe it, but I hoped that it might assuage any residual anger/resentment/loathing against me and M.O.B., if possible. If you ever see this, seeing as how old the thread is, please at least give it some thought. You are missed.

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