Irony, irony...it's better than macaroni!

Cato's erstwhile Vice President of Junketeering has inadvertently sprinkled his blog with an irony that remains unrealized among his circle of imagined acolytes. The incident came in a deranged tirade against Lew Rockwell for the "offense" of mocking Cato President Ed Crane's reminiscing about the time he rubbed elbows with Ben Bernanke. Rockwell's verbal jab was not entirely unprovoked, mind you, as Crane used the same anecdote to needlessly insert a backhanded insult against his "friend" Ron Paul for "hang[ing] with folks he shouldn’t," i.e. Rockwell, while feigning praise for the libertarian-leaning congressman's new book, End the Fed.

Thus began Tom's little blog dropping. Rockwell, he announced, was being "deceitful and malicious" in "smearing" Crane - a move that was "obviously deliberate" and full of unadulterated malice. Oh, and Rockwell is "racist" too. What, mind you, could induce Palmer to such a frenzied state of verbal menstruation? As with most matters in Palmertopia, a land of such extreme narcissism that its proprietor feels the need to make titular third-person references to his non-career, the occasion for taking offense was embarrassingly trivial.

Crane's comment had described Bernanke as a "Nice guy," which Rockwell transposed in an admitted paraphrase of another speaker, into "Great guy." To the sensible reader the difference is minor - and minor enough to be virtually inconsequential to the larger point being made. Not so with Palmer:

[begin lisping snarl]

Native speakers of English know that “nice guy” means pleasant and affable, but not ([fill in the blank] wise, foresighted, hard-working, libertarian, smart, whatever), whereas “Great guy” means a “great guy,” i.e., [fill in the blank] wonderful, reliable, good to work with, on target, real libertarian, whatever. “Nice guy” and “Great guy” mean very, very different things.

[end lisping snarl]

That, dear reader, was the "provocation" of his Keith Olbermann-esque outburst. And it would be deliciously absurd in its own right. But Palmer opted to give us more, hence the aforementioned irony.

Only a day prior Palmer deposited another delusional rant against Rockwellite blogger Thomas DiLorenzo, denounced as a "thick" "dullard" for finding repulsion in David Boaz's excessively jocular affinity for the Clinton Years. Since Boaz's publicly documented political history consists of little more than his campaign support for Clinton's would-be plenipotentiary in Mexico City, it might be understandable why any reasonable libertarian would take pause at his longing for the days of Bubba. But such is neither here nor there really where Palmer is concerned. Instead, he launched into his favorite back-up grievance against DiLorenzo (and one that has left him thoroughly embarrassed many times over): DiLorenzo's supposedly insensitive (and thus implicitly "racist") chiding of Boaz's Politically Correct capitulation to those who seek the removal of confederate imagery from the Mississippi state flag against the overwhelming wishes of the voters of Mississippi. The ever-deranged Palmer defended Boaz by suggesting his position had been misrepresented:

DiLorenzo accused him of “calling for the eradication of the Confederate battle flag from public places,” which was, of course, simply false. David encouraged voters to remove it from the the state flag, not from “all public places,” an equivocal term that may mean “all places open to the public.”

The problem (and I will state this v-e-r-y-s-l-o-w-l-y for the inevitable circumstance that one of Palmer's daily vanity searches leads him to this missive): DiLorenzo never used the phrase "all public places." He said simply "public places," of which the Mississippi state flag is indisputably a prime example.

As any native speaker of English knows, "public places" and "all public places" mean very, very different things.

It would seem, then, that Mr. Palmer has some shirts to irony. And probably a few sweater-vests.