Dayhoff Westminster Soundtrack: Rand Paul’s Bizarre College Fraternity By Matt Taibbi

Saturday, October 23, 2010

Rand Paul’s Bizarre College Fraternity By Matt Taibbi

MATT TAIBBI

A Rolling Stone contributing editor, Matt won a National Magazine Award for his coverage of the 2008...

Rand Paul’s Bizarre College Fraternity

Posted: October 21, 2010 8:57 A.M. EDT| By Matt Taibbi

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/matt-taibbi/blogs/TaibbiData_May2010/223948/83512

[Editor’s note: Ya know, ya can’t make this stuff up. Of course, we all went to college and observed folks behaving in a bizarre manner. It’s called youthful indiscretions. And we have all been amazed to find out years later that many of these same individuals are now the captains of industry, lawyers, doctors, judges and Indian chiefs. Go figure…]

Last week Ben Smith at Politico did a story about some material that's been dug up about Rand Paul's college pseudo-fraternity, the "NoZe Brotherhood" - I have a few things to add to the same story today.

First, some background. The "NoZe" was like a fifth-rate Southern wannabe version of George Bush and John Kerry's secret "Skull and Bones" society, a group of wiseass kids from Baylor University (from whence Paul, incidentally, never graduated before heading off to medical school) who got together and smoked herb, pulled dumb pranks and published a very strange newsletter.

[…]

Here's the thing about this stuff: though we know for sure that Paul was a member of the NoZe during the time period in question, Paul's name isn't on any of these articles. Paul's camp isn't commenting on any of these pieces, which is not surprising (though what is mildly surprising is that he has yet to deny the essential facts in the "Aqua Buddha" story). None of this proves that Paul is a racist, or that he hates Christians. But it does prove that in his college years, Rand Paul chose to spend his time with a lot of really stupid and unfunny people. There are a lot of things to criticize about Rand Paul, and a lot of liberal critics have focused on his far-out views on the Civil Rights Act and pegged him as a closet racist, but to me that's not the key with this guy. Far more important is that he just seems like an overgrown adolescent and a dick.

One reporter I talked to in Kentucky put it this way: "He's just the prototypical spoiled college douchebag," the reporter said. "He's every rich kid you knew in college who read The Fountainhead once and loved the idea that sharing is immoral."

The hokey comments in The Rope are one thing, but the sneering, intellectually superior tone of Paul's society-brother newsletter is the one thing that to me seems still relevant to Paul's campaign. If you follow Paul enough and go to enough of his events, you won't be able to miss how much smarter he thinks he is than everyone else; he puts even Al Gore to shame in this department. If you ask him to explain some of his old comments, or something from his father's old libertarian newsletters, as I did, he's liable to roll his eyes at you. He apparently finds the whole answering questions and explaining himself thing very tiresome, and seems put out that he even has to bother with it en route to the Senate. If you read these NoZe articles, you might get an idea of where some of this comes from… http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/matt-taibbi/blogs/TaibbiData_May2010/223948/83512

20101021 RS Taibbi Rand Pauls Bizarre College Fraternity

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