The Animal House conservative reveals that he is the Animal House conservative

I have long stopped reading the Animal House conservative, Jonah Goldberg, especially after I told him in an e-mail some time back that he degrades every subject he touches. I also hardly look at National Review Online anymore. But on Friday I went to NRO to check out their responses to George W. Boilerplate’s inaugural address, and noticed a link by Goldberg entitled, “I’m getting old.” How typical, I thought—one of the lead writers of this “conservative” website making his low-grade ruminations about himself the subject of an article. Out of curiosity I opened it. Since I have often condemned Goldberg as a person who has lowered conservative journalism into the toilet with his constant reference to bodily functions, indeed his reduction of everything he writes about to the level of bodily functions (and I’ve told him so), it was startling to see how literally Goldberg fulfills my description of him in the opening paragraph of the below article. Further confirming my view of him, the Animal House conservative even mentions that Animal House is one of his favorite movies, which I did not know, though I’ve been calling him the Animal House conservative for years. The main subject of this column is that college age people today no longer care about Animal House, as Goldberg does, and that this makes him feel old. As you read the following, remember that this appeared at the “flagship” website of American conservatism, an extension of the magazine founded by William Buckley and once manned by the likes of Wilmoore Kendall, James Burnham, and Frank Meyer. Remember that the contributors at NRO are pals with Goldberg (see The Corner, where their endless mutual chuminess is on display) and never register the slightest objection to anything about him or his writings, including this:

This summer I had an intern researcher drone named “Lyle.” But I tended to call him things like “meat sack,” “you,” and “the kid-whose-head-someone-used-as-a-toilet-but-forgot-to-flush.” It pained me to call him these things because he was generally a very sharp kid and I was glad to have him skulking around, eating my old pizza crusts and rifling through my garbage when he wasn’t “working.” Anyway, if you want to put a face to him, here he is.

The reason I bring up young Lyle is that he was the one who started to make me feel old. One time while we were sitting around and he was thirstily watching me drink beer, the subject of Animal House came up. He commented that he knew I was a big fan of Animal House and, yes, it’s a good movie and all. But Old School really spoke more to him and his generation. Since then, I’ve talked to lots of college kids and this seems to be the emerging consensus. Now, it’s fine to say that you like Old School—I did—and even to say that you dislike Animal House, but to say that the former eclipses the latter in quality is akin to saying Caddyshack II was a better sequel than Godfather II …

Posted by Lawrence Auster at January 22, 2005 02:02 AM | Send