PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS:

● Old and Busted: “We Are All Socialists Now.”

—Headline, Newsweek, February 9, 2009.

● The New Hotness: “Why Are All the Conservative Loudmouths Irish-American?”

Just as they used to play an outsize role in the Democratic Party’s apparatus, and in organized labor, putative Irishmen are now the face of the hard Right.

Once the biggest names, faces, and voices on television were Huntley and Brinkley, Cronkite, Murrow, even John Chancellor and Dan Rather, all sober, serious Americans—and all Protestants too.

Now we have angry loudmouths with names like O’Reilly, Hannity, Buchanan, and, lurking back there with his Cheshire smile, the dissolute but scary Bannon.

Yet no one has noticed this obvious fact, and the sheer lack of attention may be the most important thing about it. Why has the ascent of a bunch of people who in an earlier period might have been called Micks drawn no notice at all?

—Newsweek, Tuesday.

As Jim Geraghty tweets, “Go ahead, try it: ‘Why are all the [insert political label here] loudmouths [insert ethnic group]?'” Why are Democrat-monopoly publications such cesspits of xenophobic bigotry?

Steve noted earlier today that the byline of the piece notes that Van Gosse, its author, “teaches history at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.” Curiously though, CTL-F “Buckley” brings up zero results on the article.

UPDATE: Ed Morrissey, who like me is half-Irish (and like me, is named Ed) writes that Newsweek is taking its cue from Blazing Saddles: “Newsweek channels Rock Ridge: We don’t want the Irish.”

Very funny, very NSFW video at link.