Jim Delmont’s “Critic @ Large” column in the Omaha City Weekly is always entertaining, but this week’s is particularly great. (Sadly, I couldn’t find it online, so you’ll need to pick up a copy of the OCW — with a great Beatles Rock Band cover story — to read it.)
Delmont’s work typically combines a beautiful mix of smugness and paranoia — I imagine someone in a velvet smoking jacket furiously typing while taking an occasional peek through the blinds. But his latest column, “Obama, Palin and the Future” is such a random grab-bag of conservative anger, it’s as if Delmont was worried that the nutty concerns in his fridge were nearing their expiration date and decided to toss all of them into one beautiful meal. A few tasty samples:
• It’s September 2009 and he’s still complaining about the coverage of the 2008 election and how the media completely neglected to point out Barack Obama’s inexperience, as if that wasn’t constantly referenced from approximately November 2007 through November 2008 as first Hillary Clinton and then John McCain made it a central campaign theme.
• He then launches into this sweaty-palmed McCarthesque rant about how liberals are taking over the media, colleges, high schools and now even libraries, “whose national meetings are veritable jamborees for the Democratic Party.”
• Liberals, according to Delmont, don’t believe in freedom of speech. Apparently, he says, they’re going to try to shut down Fox News and talk radio.
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