Landesman Gets the Big League Fisking he Deserves

It could be… It might be… It is!

Yesterday Floyd gave NEA Director Rocco Landesman an apropos and skillful dressing down based on Rocco’s comments in a recent speech.  Today Jonah Goldberg teed it up and (no offense to Floyd) knocked it into the cheap seats.  Floyd and Jonah have pretty much guaranteed Landesman will be met with outbursts of laughter whenever he appears in public, and muted, smooching sounds when he walks in private through the halls of power in our nation’s capital.

Here are some of the juicier bits, but I highly recommend reading the whole thing.

Instead, Landesman embraced a timeless tactic of power politics. He debased himself with incandescently vulgar obsequiousness to his supreme leader. “There is a new president and a new NEA,” he proclaimed. “This is the first president that actually writes his own books since Teddy Roosevelt and arguably the first to write them really well since Lincoln. If you accept the premise, and I do, that the United States is the most powerful country in the world, then Barack Obama is the most powerful writer since Julius Caesar. That has to be good for American artists.”

First, isn’t “debased himself with incandescently vulgar obsequiousness” the coolest way to say, “he kissed his boss’ *ss that you’ve ever heard?!  Thanks for that one, Jonah.  I will use it in the future.

Mr. Goldberg goes on to write:

Let us pause to reflect on Landesman’s odd — by which I mean absurd — historical analysis. Obama has written two books, one good, the other a plodding concatenation of political clichés and bromides. Ulysses S. Grant’s memoirs, published by Mark Twain, were a literary triumph. Woodrow Wilson wrote many books of great import but of less literary worth. JFK won a Pulitzer for one of his books — the one he didn’t write, alas. But Richard Nixon wrote plenty, as did Herbert Hoover, including two definitive texts, one on mining, the other on fishing.

Oh, and Lincoln never wrote any books.

So, let’s stop for a tally…  Jonah slams Obama’s prose (and he’s not alone), lists several other Presidents more prolific, varied and critically acclaimed for their writing, then, to add a spritz of whipped cream and a cherry to his take down of Mr. Landesman Jonah subtly reminds him that Lincoln never wrote any books.

Think about the authoritative tone Rocco Landesman used in his praise of President Obama.  Now think about the complete lack of any validity in everything he claimed.  Our tax dollars pay this guy’s salary and this was a major speech for him.  Did he bother to even do the minimum of research to verify anything he was stating was true?  No.  But I guess his fact checking was close enough for government work.

If Rocco Landesman had any sense of self decency he’d be embarrassed to cash his paycheck.  This would all be more funny if it weren’t paid for by our hard work; our tax dollars.  Mr. Landesman can “debase himself with incandescently vulgar obsequiousness” all day long.  He’s got nothing to fear.  He’s got a big pile of our tax dollars to keep him in lip balm for the next 7 years.

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