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Many conservative bloggers went to sleep last night all butthurty and sad because Mitt Romney’s minions (Mittiots by proxy) would not take their phone calls during the Official “Newt Gingrich’s mama is soooo fat…” conference call.
Matt Lewis of Tucker Carlson’s toy newspaper explains:
As you probably heard, some Mitt Romney surrogates hosted a conference call today to attack Newt Gingrich. Because Romney is attempting to win a Republican primary — and cast Newt Gingrich as unacceptable to conservatives — you probably assume that center-right journalists or conservative bloggers got to ask some questions, right?
Wrong. Here’s the list of reporters and media outlets who were permitted to ask questions:
JOHN DICKERSON, CBS NEWS
MARK HALPERIN, TIME
LLOYD GROVE, THE DAILY BEAST
EVAN MCMORRIS-SANTORO, TPM
DAVID CORN, MOTHER JONES
PHIL RUCKER, WASHINGTON POSTThat’s it. No Townhall.com, HotAir, Daily Caller, Washington Examiner, National Review, Weekly Standard, American Spectator, or Washington Times … you get the picture.
And it’s not as though they limited it to august, mainstream publications. I mean, they took a question from Talking Points Memo…
Well, yes, Talking Points Memo did win a George Polk award whereas Mark Halperin got his job because he is Morton Halperin’s moron son and, oh yeah, Mark once called President Obama a “dick’ on the air, so it did kind of even itself out, august-wise.
After Lewis published his whiny I’m-not-mad-I’m-just-disappointed column, the Romney campaign responded by pointing out that the conservative bloggers are dull-witted and uncoordinated, kind of like that person you see on Jeopardy who is always violently throttling and pushing on their buzzer to no avail while the guy with all the money is already saying “What is Madonna’s vagina” or something like that. Lewis adds:
Romney spox Ryan Williams sends along this statement, which I post without comment:
Tonight (as we do with every call) we sent out a media advisory to our regular press list inviting members of the media to join the call. We use a phone conferencing system to manage these calls.
Participants who join the call are then invited to ask a question after the opening comments by pressing “1” on their phones. Question are fielded on a first come, first serve basis. We do not screen out any media organization. Whoever notifies the operator by pressing ”1” first gets to ask their question first.
On tonight’s call we answered every single question in the queue. Every reporter – conservative, liberal or nonpartisan – who wanted to ask a question got to ask one. Organizations that were not called on either didn’t press the number “1” or never joined the call in the first place.
I keep telling you guys…. if they ever develop opposable thumbs, they could be a force to be reckoned with.
Also, they hate Romney even more now.
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Poor, dead, William F. Buckley. To see the once prestigious (at least to conservatives) National Review as just one more wingnut outlet lumped in with mouthbreathers like Townhall.com, HotAir, American Spectator and the Daily Caller. Jonah Goldberg and the NRO hacks have really left their mark.
They’re against pressing 1, remember. Because, you know, Mexicans.
Oh, the NUMBER 1. We thought you meant the lower-case letter L. Hey, no fair.
Okay I would have gone with Mittoheads, but that works too.
Re the call, I bet if you checked Thursday’s Washington DC TV listings you’d find “Red Dawn” was being shown at around that time. Better to shout “Wolverines!” in the darkness than make a single phone call.
Poor Buckley, huh? Ever seen this?
Buckley snapped back to Gore Vidal: “Now listen you queer, stop calling me a crypto-Nazi or I’ll sock you in your goddamn face and you’ll stay plastered.”
Here’s a summary from the NYT:
A lot of people talk about how shockingly extreme and moronic our current Wingnuts are compared to this guy, but I think actually the nuts haven’t fallen far from the tree that grew them. And that first clip gives a good view of his supposed superior intelligence and sophistication.
Hilarious. Love the graphic, too.
Poor Buckley, huh? Ever seen this?
Ooohhh. Fancy prig-on-prig action. That’s hot.
“Listen you queer … I’ll sock you” is someone being a “prig”?
Not how I’d characterize it.
Just because he got all Angry Badass for a moment when things weren’t going his way doesn’t mean he wasn’t a complete prig.
prig: a person who displays or demands of others pointlessly precise conformity, fussiness about trivialities, or exaggerated propriety, especially in a self-righteous or irritating manner.
Oh he was a prig sometimes, but someone calling that clip “prig on prig action” — seems odd to me. There was nothing remotely “fussy” about him there, he was being as much a knuckle-dragging lout as any of the Breitbart gang. Which was sort of my point. You push someone a little and you see who he is at home. People think of him as moderately right wing and somewhat prissy about it, but as Gore Vidal called it immediately afterwards, that “grotesque display” showed something else entirely.
Plus, so Gore Vidal is a “prig”? That would be news to the NYT who refused to review any of his books for years because they found the open homosexuality offensive.
I just want to say that the picture of the Fisher Price toy phone is the perfect frosting for this particular snarkcake.
Oh, do tell you naughty little boy!
Were you being intellectually-twined and spoon-spanked? Did Madame McArdle tenderly brush your salt pig while you fervently fingered her fish spatula? Or was it an all-out Froth Au Lait-Sodastream Penguin orgy?
I think the best Real Time/Bill Maher I ever saw had Gore Vidal and David Frum hissing at each other from opposite ends of the table like they were cobras.
Do these people ever stop whining? I guess whatever Romney had to say was unimportant, the real story here is their personal victimization.
Actually, I suspect that the real story was their fear of sounding silly in front of the real media. Better to keep quiet and be assumed stupid then to weigh in and confirm it.
This is another case of Sock Puppet Opera of why they hate mitt.
I had that phone as a kid. With the pull string and handset cord it’s much too dangerous to give to Matt Lewis.
Romney has a spox? Who knew, though I certainly would believe it without the leading “s”.