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

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