Jonah Goldberg, multi-tasker: lowering the Times’ standards while dissing Jimmy Stewart

“I’ll stand by what I said, Senator — Jonah Goldberg is an idiot!”

Doughy Pantload, securing his post as the Los Angeles Times’ village idiot, can be found parading his ignorance on yet another subject about which he knows nothing:

HOLLYWOOD HAS yet to make a “great” movie about Washington. This is the cinematic corollary to the even hoarier cliche that the United States has yet to produce a great novel about the nation’s capital. These cliches reign supreme because they happen to be true.

Is that so? Or is Pantload’s “true” just the kind of “truthiness” for which twits like Pantload are famous?

It sort of happens that the American Film Institute put out a list a few years ago of the 100 GREATEST AMERICAN MOVIES OF ALL TIME includes the following titles:

29. MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON

Gee, that would be one of the GREATEST AMERICAN MOVIES OF ALL TIME, and it even has “Washington” in the title.

And there are more films on the list which tackle Washington:

26. DR. STRANGELOVE

Kubrick’s great political satire takes place in a Washington Bunker and features the unforgettable character, President Merkin Muffley, uttering the equally unforgettable line, “Gentlemen, you can’t fight here! This the War Room!”

67. THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE

The great political thriller, involving a Senator, a spy, and Presidential ambition.

In his typical lazy fashion, Pantload attempted to prove his ill-conceived proposition that “Hollywood has yet to make a ‘great’ movie about Washington” by dull misdirection, pointing to a bunch of mediocre movies to demonstrate the lack of greatness: “Dave,” “The American President,” “Bulworth,” “Wag the Dog,” “Air Force One” and so on.

Which is kind of like pointing to a few Harlequin Romances as proof there are no Great American Novels, or pointing to a bunch of fast food restaurants in Temple City to show that Los Angeles has no great restaurants. He puts about as much thought into his column as my dog puts into leaving his piles on the lawn, and end product is about the same. Here, the only goal of his column was seemingly to pimp his friend’s movie, and fluff his boss at the National Review. Why is the Times paying him for this crap?

This man is an embarrassment to the Times. When are they going to finally pull the plug on Pantload?