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Originally Posted by Mad4stevie
What is the dirt on them? I am curious . . .
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His mother is Lucianne Goldberg. From his Wiki:
Jonah Jacob Goldberg (born March 21, 1969) is an American conservative commentator, syndicated columnist and author. Goldberg is known for his contributions on politics and culture to National Review Online, where he is the editor-at-large. He is the author of Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning (ISBN 0-385-51184-1), a #1 bestseller[1].
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Goldberg's career as a pundit was launched following his mother Lucianne Goldberg's role in the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, when he wrote about the "media siege" on his mother's apartment in the The New Yorker.[4] [5]
Goldberg has spoken of his mother and the Lewinsky scandal:
My mother was the one who advised Linda Tripp to record her conversations with Monica Lewinsky and to save the dress. I was privy to some of that stuff, and when the administration set about to destroy Lewinsky, Tripp, and my mom, I defended my mom and by extension Tripp...I have zero desire to have those arguments again. I did my bit in the trenches of Clinton's trousers.[6]
These tapes became the focal point of the Lewinsky scandal. Jonah Goldberg was privy to the tapes and the conversations Lucianne Goldberg had with Tripp because he served as a vice president of his mother's now-defunct literary agency. When the scandal broke, Goldberg defended his mother and Tripp during the ensuing media firestorm.
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Some frequent topics of his articles include censorship, meritocracy, liberty, federalism and interpretation of the Constitution, his attacks on the ethics and morals of liberals and Democrats, and his disagreements with libertarians also appear often in his writings.
Goldberg is a supporter of the Iraq War and has advocated for American military intervention elsewhere in the world. He has defended historical colonialism in places such as Africa as more beneficial than it is generally given credit for; in one column, he suggested that U.S. imperialism on the continent could help solve its persistent problems. [9] When he wrote in October 2006 that going in was a mistake, he called it a "noble" mistake and still maintained that liberal opponents to the war policy wanted America to fail: "In other words, their objection isn't to war per se; it's to wars that advance U.S. interests... I must confess, one of the things that made me reluctant to conclude that the Iraq war was a mistake was my distaste for the shabbiness of the arguments on the antiwar side." [10]
He popularized and expanded on a commentary by the late Time writer William Henry III. Henry had written on the subject of multiculturalism and cultural equality, stating that "[i]t is scarcely the same thing to put a man on the moon as to put a bone in your nose." Goldberg stated that "[m]ulticulturalism—which is simply egalitarianism wrapped in rainbow-colored paper—has elevated the notion that all ideas are equal, all systems equivalent, all cultures of comparable worth." [11]
[edit] French-bashing, Francophobia, and anti-Europeanism
Goldberg has publicly admitted being a French-basher or, as he writes, being in the "frog-bashing business," using the derogatory term "frog" to designate the French: "the frog-bashing business has changed a lot since I first started just a few years ago" [12]. He has also called for "the total destruction of France" by which he means "the destruction of France as an idea" [13]. Some commentators, like Brian Dunaway, consider that Goldberg's attitude towards the French is francophobic: "The poor souls that visit Goldberg’s columns know that he has made Francophobia a favorite pastime" [14]. Other commentators, such as Timothy Garton Ash, explain Goldberg's attitude, among others, by a deeply rooted "anti-Europeanism" in the United States of America [15].
Goldberg also claims credit for popularizing the term "cheese-eating surrender monkeys" to refer to them, even though the phrase was invented and popularized by the television show, The Simpsons.