We here at SWDBL want to acknowledge and reward exemplary d-bags for their contributions to the art and science of d-baggery. The key doctrine of d-baggery, “I deserve it,” must be constantly re-interpreted by d-bags great and small in order to set precedents for other d-bags to follow. Today the editors at SWDBL would like to acknowledge a bold intervention in d-bag philosophy by William Kristol in The White People Times today. Mister Kristol’s treatise demonstrates in every respect what d-bag writing should be. It is intentionally bland to promote its disingenuousness; it is awkward, stilted and wooden in its prose; and its hypocrisy shows an admirable d-bag contempt for the intelligence of his readers.
“I deserve it” is a principled statement of privilege. It means, “I shouldn’t have to work for it,” “You owe it to me,” and “How dare you question my authority.” Though a legitimate authority (one that has earned authority by demonstrating justice, temperance, stableness, perseverance, courage, and fortitude — but more importantly, one that recognizes the reciprocity inherent in authority) may speak of duty or obligation, a d-bag (often through ignorance, pride, and natural viciousness) asserts obligation in order to get one over on people who he wishes to swindle rather than serve or advise. The target of Mr. Kristol’s swindle are the supposedly liberal readers of the New York Times who are too credulous to think a man with a ghoulish smile like Kristol’s would be allowed to lie in the newspaper of national record.
The topic of Mr. Kristol’s intervention is Barack Obama’s commencement address at Wesleyan University. Kristol accuses Obama of hypocrisy saying “Obama failed to challenge — even gently — what he must have assumed would be the prejudices of much of his audience and indulged in a soft patriotism of low expectations.” That is, when Mr. Obama spoke of “public service” he completely neglected to mention serving in the military (which in May 2008 means fighting a neocon war in Iraq) because the rich, pampered white kids in Connecticut are too liberal and effete to perform the manly duty of remaking the world for democracy.
Mr. Kristol, the son of nationally prominent conservative intellectual Irving Kristol, graduated in 1970 from The Collegiate School, an elite preparatory school for boys located in Manhattan, but rather than volunteering for service in Vietnam he chose to go to Harvard College where in 1973 he received his bachelor of arts. Rather than serve his country by volunteering for military service in Vietnam (the conflict lasted another two years after his graduation) He went on to do doctoral work in politics at Harvard where he received a Ph.D. in government in 1979. At that point, being too old (in his opinion) to do the menial labor of dying for the flag, Mr. Kristol advocated war for other people’s children from the elite, pampered safety of his Ivy League job at U. Penn.
Mr. Kristol has been a consistent hypocrite and advocate of a strong military and aggressive foreign policy ever since, founding with Robert Kagan the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), which brought us the current fiasco in Iraq. His smug disdain for the welfare of others and devaluation of intellectual endeavor by perverting the quest for knowledge into a self-serving lie has earned him our d-bag of the day award!
This guy belongs in the D-bag Hall-of-Shame. Kristol and PNAC suck!