Talk about screaming the quiet part at the top of your lungs. This is so bad that even Mitch McConnell is looking for a couch to hide under and don’t be surprised if Mike Johnson suddenly goes off radar for a while. This is beyond the beyonds. Rich Lowry is the editor of the National Review. He inherited that post from none other than Willam F. Buckley. He apparently is very comfortable with the “n” word, the way it just rolls off his tongue — and then he struggles to regain his ground and correct himself. I listened to this three times and he says the entire word — and then apparently realizes what just fell out of his mouth. Go to :08 and listen close.
The editor in chief of the National Review just said the N word in regards to Haitians and Megyn Kelly ignores it. pic.twitter.com/PK9trHPOUF
— Alejandra Caraballo (@Esqueer_) September 16, 2024
Now if the name Rich Lowry is ringing a bell, good for you. That means that you remember that utterly appalling op/ed that he penned in the New York times, “Trump Can Win On Character.” That essay became an instant classic. Outlets on all points on the political spectrum began dissecting it. People on the right were horrified at the infantile ridiculousness of it and people on the left were falling over, convulsed in laughter. Let me refresh your memory.
Everything has to be connected to the deeper case that Ms. Harris is weak and a phony and doesn’t truly care about the country or the middle class. The scattershot Trump attacks on Ms. Harris need to be refocused on these character attributes. […]
Of course, Mr. Trump doesn’t need much convincing to launch personal attacks. He said this month that he feels “entitled” to them. But calling Ms. Harris dumb or questioning her racial identity does more to undermine him than her. The point isn’t to be gratuitously insulting but to make a root-and-branch argument that she shouldn’t be — can’t be — president. […]
One of his talents as a communicator is sheer repetition, which, when he’s on to something that works, attains a certain power. Everyone knew in 2016 that he wanted to build a wall and have Mexico pay for it. It would be quite natural for him, if he settled on this approach, to call Ms. Harris “weak” 50 times a day.
He was also, in the past, able to pithily and memorably nail core weaknesses of his opponents. His nicknaming may be a schoolyard tactic, yet it has often been an effective tool, whether it was “Crooked Hillary” (underlining Hillary Clinton’s ethical lapses) or “Little Marco” (diminishing Marco Rubio, a young primary opponent who lacked gravity). Even people who don’t like Mr. Trump or his nicknames would end up using these sobriquets.
This riff of Lowry’s in the Times drew the most scorn, not surprisingly, from Republicans who have become Never Trumpers. This is appalling. And Lowry’s faux pas today is going to have an even greater effect, I predict.
William F. Buckley, if you are too young to remember, was the leader of conservative thought for four decades. He was the epitome of the old school Republican. He was able to pitch the dogma of the day that the Republican party existed to “preserve the values of Western Civilization” which was a dog whistle for white supremacy, but the GOP had not yet fallen into such an abyss that it couldn’t basically defend its pillars of small government, fiscal responsibility and the rule of law. But even Buckley, back in the day, and we’re discussing the mid-60’s through the end of the century,when Buckley hosted Firing Line, was never stupid enough to make a slip like this and drop the “N” word publicly. This is simply incredible.
Twitter is aflame right now. Thank you, Mr. Lowry, for doing what even Donald Trump could not do, which is to tank what remaining intellectual credibility the Republican party had. Trump is a moron and nobody expected him, ever, to represent the “intelligentsia” of the right, but that is precisely what Lowry and the National Review is supposed to do. At least in the days of Buckley there was some actual knowledge and pedagogy being exchanged. From that we have descended to Rich Lowry suggesting schoolyard bullying tactics and now using the “N” word as a means of Trump winning this election.
The GOP is dead. This tawdry excuse for an intellectual and a writer, Rich Lowry, is actually the Republican party’s mortician. Keep shoveling, Rich. And please leave enough dirt to cover your own head. You won’t be able to show your face in public after this, spin it how you may. The GOP is done.
The Confederacy lives!!!
The Confederacy and “Western Civilization” have been used interchangeably, wink wink, nudge nudge. This is not a good look. Megan Kelly doesn’t look so hot after this, either.
Legends in their own minds!
Far be it for me to defend Lowry but, I’ve listened several times and all I heard was him fumbling the word “migrants” in a really unfortunate way. More important to me was just seconds before, Kelly and Lowry agreed that on 9-11 Trump didn’t BRAG that his building was the tallest again. Poor attacked Trump was “just mentioning factual information about the relative height of buildings in NYC.” OMG!! Yah, just making chitchat on the day when 2 of the tallest buildings in the world just kinda disappeared all of a sudden!! Ma-fucking-larkey!!
Don’t know if u wear hearing aids…he clearly used the n word then corrected to migrants.
I just went up and listened to it a fourth time and I heard every letter. N-I-G-etc. He was so caught up in his tale that he didn’t realize until it was out of his mouth that it had slipped out. That tells me how often and how easily he uses it.
I don’t know if you remember the fracas over “the other n-word” a few years ago. That word is “niggardly” and I literally whispered that the day the story broke. In my world nobody uses the n-word or even the “other” n-word, which means miserly.
When an educated person uses the n-word like that, it shows what moral scum they are. Even William F. Buckley would see this for the eff up that it is.
You are right that it is almost surely the “n” word.
I find NR has gradually become way too shrill. I used to read it because it had some RW writers who could explain the RW views, and it wasn’t dominated by RWNJs (except in the comment section). However, it has gradually drifted more and more toward RWNJs because there are so many of those type in the readership.
That said, in the Buckley tradition and reporting, I would hedge that the reason why Lowry used that word was because, when asking the officials, it would be read by them as “code” that “it is ok to talk”. So the “n” word could be because it was quoting what he used to ask, not his opinion of black people. The NYT reported that a local sheriff is a blazing bigot, so I can imagine a reporter using that strategy. The fact that even that did not elicit a coded response means there really was nothing.
After years of the KKK and their spooky white sheets killing/with torture random black folks and raping their daughters, the movements to change that scene were followed by the media of the time … It became obvious that problems centered in the south part of the states …
However, the GOP and their permissive cult apparently don’t give a shit who says what/where in the Trump world, I guess what hurts me most, is the idiots like Cruz, are so blind to the kill tole on the children in their supposed SAFE schools … Proper restrictions on sale and availability of military grade killing machines would take those high-power weapons out of the hands of the crazy/freaks and younger population, maybe a limit on sales of ammo, no one should be able to purchase large quantities of ammo for the AR SERIES of rifles without generating red flags …
There won’t be a simple solution especially with dumb-ass parents giving AR style rifles to their 13 year old kid for Christmas, there are no words to say how stupid that was …
Take care out there and if you see something, hear something that might point to a mass kill, do NOT be afraid to notify the local police …
Trump NEEDS to be in prison NOW …
Some of these parents are going to prison now. The Crumbleys in Michigan, I believe it was, are behind bars with their son. And then this latest one. (Was it in Tennessee? I literally cannot remember all of these mass shootings.) The fact that that’s the case shows you how out of control our culture has become.
And I’m trained in the use of handguns. I’ve never held a rifle or anything bigger, but I was a good shot with a handgun back in the day. Self defense is one thing, arming yourself with a military weapon is something else.
von shitzi cannot represent the intelligentsia of the right because such a thing does not exist: this lowry fool just proved that.
The intelligent people on the right jumped ship long ago. Charlie Sykes, Mona Charen, the whole crowd that makes up the Bulwark all used to write about Romney, McCain, etc., in a different era.
Laura Loomer viciously went after Charlie Sykes the other day. She called him a “washed up radio host” among other things. (He called her a “freak” and I guess that triggered her.) We are a lonnnng way from the era of McCain, Romney, all that.