1.) a servile self-seeking flatterer
Parasite, sycophant, toady, leech, sponge mean a usually obsequious flatterer or self-seeker. parasite applies to one who clings to a person of wealth, power, or influence or is useless to society . sycophant adds to this a strong suggestion of fawning, flattery, or adulation . toady emphasizes the servility and snobbery of the self-seeker
The connotation is clearly negative; a sycophant is someone who eventually becomes a pure apologist for the worst sorts of behavior.
Hinderaker has unfailingly towed the conservative Republican party line, regardless of how ridiculous. He is a proud member of the flat earth society, denying the idea of human-caused global warming (this, despite the fact that Hinderaker has no formal scientific qualifications). He believed that the Fed's 2008 policy would lead to hyper-inflation (interestingly enough, Hinderaker has written nothing about the post-election jump in inflation expectations). Other examples abound.
In 2005, Hinderaker penned a post, titled, "A Stroke of Genius?" It contains this bootlicking paragraph:
It must be very strange to be President Bush. A man of extraordinary vision and brilliance approaching to genius, he can’t get anyone to notice. He is like a great painter or musician who is ahead of his time, and who unveils one masterpiece after another to a reception that, when not bored, is hostile.
After receiving a large amount of well-deserved ridicule, Hinderker added the following to the post:
UPDATE: Of all the thousands of posts we have done over the years, this one seems to most outrage the Left, I suppose because it is so at odds with liberals’ cherished illusions about President Bush. The tone of the post is obviously tongue in cheek, but liberals never seem to notice. They are, to put it charitably, not big on nuance. More important, I’ve never seen a liberal respond to, let alone rebut, the point of the post: that President Bush’s proposal to share pollution control technology with the countries where carbon emissions are rising most rapidly made far more sense than the Kyoto approach, which combined ineffectiveness with economic disaster. That, too, is a sign of the intellectual vacuity of modern liberalism.
He obviously tried to walk back his obsequious statement, but to little avail.
Given that Hinderaker is a Republican toady, how long until he pens a similar defense of Trump?
