• Back when George Will
signed up with Fox News, I wondered why; though he and they were both technically conservative, Will seemed too pointy-headed for people who think Fred Barnes is a sage and Steve Doocy a wit. But Will's recent
column in which he suggested ladies get raped for the street cred shows that he had a strategy. The column has raised an outrage and even gotten him
unsyndicated by the
St. Louis Post-Dispatch (who knew,
women read newspapers too!) but it has also made Will a hot ticket among the
yahoos who think Will has been punished for "blasphemy" ("this is America -- not China, not Cuba... despite the left’s attempts to silence," argh blargh etc.) and use the term "feminazi"
seriously. Years of bullshit and bad-faith arguments have sufficiently infantilized these guys that a weedy professor type like Will would just make them mad with his
fancy lingo -- unless he used it to validate their more thuggish sentiments. So goodbye ruminative considerations of U.S. policy, hello
war on women, only with a bow-tie, and the brethren may consider their cause uplifted by the endorsement of a genuine intellectual. (Camille Paglia must be kicking herself.)
• Visiting
Clickhole does not make me as happy as
not visiting it but knowing it exists. Is this the future of the web? Paging
Prof. Jeff H. Jarvis...
•
Terry Teachout has an interesting list of American artworks he would require high school students to study. The choices are intelligent and worth debating, but he prefaces the thing by telling how the UK's Tory education minister got rigorous about teaching literature and this resulted in a "predictable convulsion of high-minded outrage" in which the minister was accused of being "antiprogressive." I'd love to know how your average conservative parental units in, say, Minot, North Dakota would react to the news that their young'uns would be forced to absorb Martha Graham and Langston Hughes. Oh, one other thing, Terry -- I recommend we add Otto Preminger's
Skidoo to the film curriculum. It will teach the kids something about the 60s, and scare them off drugs.
You know, it's hard to sustain a cult when everyone in it is a martyr.
ReplyDeleteThere's no finer example of doublethink than the modern conservative: an asshole who believes that any criticism of his positions is "silencing", but then demands that *his* criticism of others be permitted because "religious freedom", all without the slightest hint of concern at the collision...
ReplyDeleteWith Clickhole, I dont' think the Onion got how much a parody of Buzzfeed would just look like Buzzfeed. Some of the shit is funny, (the "How Many of These Friends Episodes Have You Seen" quiz had me cracking up) but I can't see myself visiting it regularly.
ReplyDeleteThat lace hat fits any "intellectual" conservative you care to name.
ReplyDeleteSo goodbye ruminative considerations of U.S. policy, hello war on women, only with a bow-tie, and the brethren may consider their cause uplifted by the endorsement of a genuine intellectual.
ReplyDeleteWell, I have it on the good authority of an all-male Faux News panel that there is no Republican War on Women. However, I don't see why Will has to give up one gig for the other. There are just as many bow-tie clad violent, sexist creeps as any other sort. His ruminations over whether the ladies are just making shit up because bitches lie, can assure the rapist at Princeton and the white-collar wife beater that assaulting women doesn't make them one of the hoi polloi.
Explains Dennis Miller's "humor," anyway (at least after he dropped his writers, who actually knew humor, and embraced his inner wingnut full-time).
ReplyDeleteHe is a pig in a lace hat.
ReplyDeleteHe's got lace on his head alright, but it's a pair of panties wrapped around his goddamn face. He'll be sniffing them on live TV before too long.
Had a back and forth on Twitter with Oliver Willis and some wingnut goober. The goober called us "progressive brownshirts" because neither of us thought George Will being dropped by one paper was an example of the erosion of Free Speech! in modern America. I'm sort of proud of that.
ReplyDeleteThey tend to have a prim, schoolmarmish quality, don't they? Like Miss Havisham without the winning personality.
ReplyDeleteDon't forget all the bible-thumping Ayn Rand fans.
ReplyDeleteOf course they're the same people.
~
I really enjoyed the Which Orange Is The New Black/Mad Men Character Are You? quizzes, as well as 7 Toys That Haven't Been As Much Fun Since 9/11.
ReplyDeleteIt has always seemed to me that people like Will and Coulter and even Cheney for that matter, don't actually believe anything they say about the "social" issues of conservatism. They do believe that their class - or the class they speak for - deserves all the money, all the time. And they will say anything to keep the base riled up and the money flowing. They pick and choose their moments - as Will just did - for maximum effect in that regard. Without consideration for the truth - even the truth that they themselves might hold.
ReplyDeleteListen, there's still hope for Camille. She can still buy a bowtie.
ReplyDeleteWell imagine if you were having a private conversation with adults about the nasty habits of pseudo-humans and a bunch of pseudo-humans butted in and told you not to say those things.
ReplyDeleteYou'd have a pretty good idea of how the neoCon feels about the fact we won't sit silent while they stand athwart history yelling about n-words and bitches.
The last one is hanging by one hand because there was no one left to drive the other nail in.
ReplyDeleteTraditionally, the authoritarians didn't have to resort to such tricks, but, in an age when free speech is accentuated, and violence is generally frowned upon, they don't have much choice.
ReplyDeleteNot that they haven't been trying to reassert their single unchallenged point of view. Fuckstick Ari Fleischer's "people should watch what they say." Bill O'Reilly's "just shut up, shutupshutupshutup!" Ashcroft's warnings of terrorists in our midst and that everything suspicious, no matter how small, should be reported. Etc.
They can keep trying all they want, but I don't think they're going to succeed in silencing criticism, not as long as they're sounding as stupid as they have been lately.
Sure it is. It's much easier for me to sneer at people who legitimately enjoy reading Buzzfeed listicles when I'm reading satire of Buzzfeed listicles.
ReplyDeleteIt surprises me how often establishment conservative big-shots abandon their claims to respectability these days just to earn the unwavering defense of the rabid base. Not just in terms of how any of them think they're going to maintain a political party with the support of only the craziest 25% of the country, but that they genuinely think that Ace of Spades, Godlstein et. al. are more pleasurable company than establishment hobnobbers. Sure, those high society parties can get boring, but at least they don't define "gourment dinner" as "ranch and BBQ potato chips."
ReplyDeleteWill is a lot of things, but I don't think he's a complete idiot. The reason conservative intellectualism is dead is not because there's no such thing as a smart conservative but because smart conservatives are being hunted down and either forcibly reprogrammed or exiled by the dumb ones.
I volunteer!
ReplyDeleteOh, there are smart conservatives. However, they spend all their time and effort trying to make bad ideas sound like good ideas. The sine qua non of that principle, of course, was William F. Buckley, who could empty out the entire dictionary onto just one shitty idea, in an attempt to make the idea itself invisible under the cover of multisyllabic nouns and adverbs. The tactic was to make the unpalatable unnoticed. As importantly, William Buckley wasn't trying to attract the conservative unwashed--he was most visible on PBS' "Firing Line," where he hoped to BS liberals.
ReplyDeleteThat's not a talent that the conservatives have cultivated over the years (and, admittedly, Buckley was sui generis). After all, who's pretty much the top dog at National Review today? Jonah Goldberg, whose greatest intellectual excursion has been to expand the Monty Python argument/contradiction sketch to book form.
Given that intellectualism is a preoccupation with and analysis of ideas, if you're starting off with some pretty crappy ideas, as conservatives are, you're in a conundrum. You become intellectually dishonest and defend the indefensible, by whatever rhetorical razz-ma-tazz you can muster, or admit that the ideas themselves are deficient.
As for Will, he's not an idiot, nor is he particularly gifted at what he does. Nor is he an intellectual--he's what passes for an intellectual in conservative circles. He's a lot more label than substance, as any reading of him proves. Fox bought the label, which is what Roger Ailes does.
Oh, you should see his columns, going back years, on issues of race, and sexual non-conformity. He's a piece of shit, rolling in shit.
ReplyDeleteJesus remains inconvenient.
ReplyDeleteDo not stare too long at the logical inconsistency, lest the logical inconsistency stare back into you.
ReplyDelete"progressive brownshirts" : it's like a progressive barn-dance, but with goose-stepping.
ReplyDeleteAll the Right has left is a number of stupid people's ideas of what smart people sound like.
ReplyDeletePerhaps the establishment conservative big shots are intimidated by the rabid base. After all, the rabid base has all those guns.
ReplyDeletei remember a particularly despicable column he wrote *the day after* allen ginsberg died, slamming him for personally giving birth to non-rhymey poetry and beards and for daring to sign a six figure publishing contract (because, you know, who'd want to publish allen ginsberg?)
ReplyDeleteI don't think it's even about the ideas at all anymore. I'm working on the assumption that Will wrote that column knowing it would raise peoples' ire, and that he could jump to Fox and land on both feet as the newest conservative "persecuted" by liberals. A career move, in other words.
ReplyDeleteYou'd think there would be better ways to do that then pretending you believe that women use being raped to further their social status, but that's just the way things go, I guess. People bitch about Buzzfeed, but Republicans have been writing clickbait since before there were clicks to be baited.
it's hard to sustain a cult when everyone in it is a martyr.I know, this new 'christianity' thing won't last.
ReplyDeleteGeorge Will might well be the anti-Ginsberg, so I understand his animosity. After all, Will was clean-cut, and so white he's pink, so anally-retentive that he's somehow learned to walk with a Louisville Slugger up his ass. That makes him much superior to an aging hippie queer poet who was beloved around the world for not only his poetry, but for his advocacy of peace and justice. Will was just pointing out the obvious, although not in quite the way he intended.
ReplyDeleteGeorge Will should be stripped, scourged, and nailed to a cross. Once that's done, he may then be legitimately called a martyr, but not beforehand.
ReplyDeleteTrue enough, but, if anything, that's just more proof that Will was never an intellectual in any real sense of the word. Being a climber in ConservativeLand means doing whatever's necessary to take advantage of the wingnut welfare, and Fox is the Byzantium of wingnut welfare.
ReplyDeleteThe problem is they are the "New Coke" of Christianity. Instead of sanctifying poverty and challenging the ruling class, they are saying the Romans were right all along. And no one has made a Saint out of Pontus.
ReplyDeleteNever underestimate the power of NRA wingnut money, of which they have quite a bit to spread around.
ReplyDeleteThat said, after the Cliven Bundy fiasco, even so-called "moderate" Republicans (who were never moderate, only seemed so in comparison to the current crop of flakes, feebs and fools) were getting heat for backing away from the crazies.
Guns definitely embolden the gullible.
Ah, but metaphorical martyrdom is so much more easily and quickly attained.
ReplyDeleteAnd advertised.
Seems the WaPo editors who decided that Will's column was A-O.K. are all guys.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2014/06/20/george-will-sexual-assault-column-editors-were-all-male/
Go figure!
~
Damn geese were always underfoot at them barn dances!!
ReplyDeletewell that's just creepy. I guess it fits.
ReplyDeletethe UK's Tory education minister got rigorous about teaching literature
ReplyDelete... or alternately, a reactionary jumped-up posh boy wannabe decided to drop To Kill a Mockingbird and Of Mice and Men in favor of a more properly "British" curriculum, and received pushback from pretty much everyone who isn't a reactionary with vis head up vis ass. Sweet Jeebus, does Teachout think this was another case of children being forbidden from studying the "classics" in favor of Hothead Paisan comics, or whatever it is that gets US right-wing bookburners temporarily outraged on behalf of literature for a change? Perhaps Teachout could provide a brief follow-up, sketching out why Harper Lee has no place in a school literature class. Because I know why barely-literate American neoconfederates hate TKaM, but I'd be interested to see if Teachout can shine the usual turd in a way that's ...
[PUTS ON SUNGLASSES]
... novel.
George Will's "issues of race" start with him growing up in Downstate Illinois in the '50s and '60s. Back then Downstate grew corn, soybeans and bigots, and not necessarily in that order. There were "sundown towns" all over Downstate. Some still are. Also if you were raised anything other than Protestant (like Roger Ebert) you got out of Downstate ASAP.
ReplyDeleteYes, but Tucker Carlson is unlikely to cede his turf without a vicious slap-fight, and I'm not sure Our George is up to the exertion.
ReplyDeleteYeah, it's a lot harder to sign glossy photos of yourself for your doting fans (only $29.95 each!) when you're nailed up eight feet off the ground. Only the finest of metaphorical martyrdoms for Mr. Will: he won't even have to disturb his peaceful slumber to reap the rewards of persecution.
ReplyDeleteCamille Paglia in a bowtie would be mistaken for a soon-to-retire blackjack dealer in an off-strip casino.
ReplyDeleteThat would be a step up in terms of the general perception of her reliability.
Blue blood, red neck
ReplyDeleteHard to be the martyr when you're the one piling the tinder around the stakes.
ReplyDeleteAnother example of conservative doublethink.
Buckley was a thug with a thesaurus.
ReplyDeleteAnd they'll keep on baitin'
ReplyDeleteGeorge Will Buckley?
ReplyDeletethe UK's Tory education minister got rigorous about teaching literature
ReplyDeleteUniversally imposed standards for some aspect of education. I wonder how our conservatives feel about such a thing.
Freedom of speech most certainly does not mean a guaranteed right to be published or syndicated. Just ask any struggling writer.
ReplyDeleteFor a group of people always blithering on about the "magic of the marketplace" and yelping about "entitlement culture," they sure seem to feel entitled to ignore the dictates of the market when it comes to their horrid ideas being rejected.
Regarding that Teachout article, it's a nice idea, but how is he proposing those works all get included in the curriculum? Between preparing for standardized tests and learning other necessities such as writing and grammar, they're supposed to fit in time to watch three movies, a musical, a dance, two plays, and then get around to reading more traditional literary forms in the curriculum: novels, short stories, and poems?
ReplyDeleteNot to mention, the list seems slightly stilted and stuffy. Granted, it's hard to pick films that are suitable for a high school audience and wouldn't set parents in an uproar (Chinatown and L.A. Confidential are out), but how about Psycho, Double Indemnity, Some Like It Hot, or a Marx Brothers film? Also, do the director, subject matter, and actors all have to be American, or what are the criteria for making it a uniquely "American" film worth studying in high school? Noble as it may be, I'm not convinced that "WWII film including an actor who himself was an injured WWII veteran" is a solid basis for determining a film's historical-cultural worth (unless your audience consists mainly of Tom Brokaw).
And really, one group of paintings? Like you couldn't take a week to examine a brief survey if you felt the subject was that important? No Copley, Cassatt, Whistler, Hopper, Pollock, Bierstadt, Audubon, Remington, O'Keeffe, Liechtenstein, or even Grant Wood and Norman Rockwell? How about photographers like Matthew Brady or Ansel Adams?
Not even a mention of architects like Sullivan or Wright? Not even a blurb in the curriculum about the development of the skyscraper or the ranch house (if you wanted to tie this survey into social history as well)?
As for literature... wow. The amount of great material not even mentioned in passing is stunning. Not even a "The course should study 5 of the following 25 works." And really, an American Literature survey without anything by Hawthorne is just wrong. You couldn't even fit in "Young Goodman Brown"? It's got supernatural elements that might even make high schoolers interested in reading it.
Anyway, Teachout's survey ideas are an interesting starting point for a conversation, but man, is his list stunted and constipated. Seriously, I think I've learned more art history and social history from any three episodes of the Antiques Roadshow than I'd learn in Teachout's class.
Squaredancing to Wagner: The latest Progressive craze!
ReplyDeletePretty sure Thomas Sowell is the wingnut intellectual, no?
ReplyDeleteMy mind just shut down and rebooted at the thought of the Paglia-Will mashup. Aging anti-feminist contrarian, trying too hard to dress young, but also sporting a bowtie and combover, spouting prim, condescending tripe about the Dionysian force of Rand Paul and Madonna.
ReplyDeleteLook, it's different, because the Brits don't have our ennobling tradition of selective and opportunistic federalism. They're doing the best they can with their debased heritage.
ReplyDeleteGo, and do likewise.
ReplyDeleteThe quote from the unnamed editors was something like "We tried to warn him but he seemed really sure about what he wanted to say . You could almost feel the sigh of despair on your cheek as you read the words.
ReplyDeleteWTF!?!?! Just what function do editors serve if not as gatekeepers for their publication? Sometimes as an editor, you have to tell your brightest stars that their present submission is a piece of shit. Even the greatest and most brilliant writers turn out a turd every now and again. And part of your job as an editor is protecting both your publication and your star writer from those turds.
Probably because it's quite terrible, just too plain weird for broadcast, even on late-night tv, the snowmobile manufacturer sued for copyright infringement and won, or a combination of all three. I.e., who knows?
ReplyDeleteThey're masters of it.
ReplyDeleteEwwww. That's some Rule 34 I could have lived without even conceptualizing. Ack.
ReplyDelete♫ Elleman left and a do-SIEG-HEIL! ♪
ReplyDeleteWe're talking basically vampires here (non-sparkly ones). Old vampire yetis? Say, that could work.
ReplyDeleteOh, He left that scene a long long time ago. Besides John provided an (unusually) convenient out: Get Into Heaven Free! cards.
ReplyDeleteHe is a pig in a lace hat
ReplyDeleteHarrumph. What the hell did we ever do to Matt?
Thugosaurus willamsi
ReplyDeleteGood thing he is extinct, and hopefully in a place that allows Gore Vidal to punch him in the nose whenever Gore damn well feels like it.
Haven't you heard The Word, brother? It was all a mistake; a simple and slight mistranslation.
ReplyDelete"For when I was sick, did you not withhold care from me? When I was in prison, did you not keep visitors from me? When I was hungry, did you not take the bread from my hand to secure your profits? When I was naked, did you not place a hood upon my head and electrodes upon my genitals?
"For as you have done to me, so have you done to the least of my brethren. And so have you earned the Kingdom of Heaven!
"Now go, ye, and pray like a hypocrite upon the street corner, a stone ye the harlot and the homo. Especially the harlot who does not put out for you, or the homo who threatens to open your closet door."
As long-gone (and sorely missed) commenter fourlegsgood might have pointed out, not all pigs are the same.
ReplyDeleteIt's comforting to think that they don't believe the stuff they say. But they do. They really and truly do.
ReplyDeleteI have had the sad experience of spending way too much time around these people. Very, very few mouth the words and don't believe it because it's literally impossible to hang around these people for very long and keep that façade up.
Much more common, in my experience, was the true belief accompanied by unstinting judgment of all "others" for their foibles and failings. And huge aircraft-carrier size helpings of "doesn't really apply to me" escape clauses. (Like the wife of one mid-level Republican appointee who cornered me at a fundraiser to rail against the immorality of the gays--and expound on how much she liked to do housework in the nude and maybe I should come visit some time while because their house was so private.)
I see what you did there, and I'm hooked.
ReplyDeleteNoble as it may be, I'm not convinced that "WWII film including an actor who himself was an injured WWII veteran" is a solid basis for determining a film's historical-cultural worth.
ReplyDeleteBut it does give you an excuse to show Wrath of Khan as James Doohan ("Scotty") was shot six times and lost a finger during the D-Day landings.
Or Green Acres reruns. Eddie Albert didn't get that Bronze Star climbing the telephone pole to answer a call.
ReplyDeleteI don't think it's possible to underestimate Tucker Carlson's ability to screw up a sure thing. George has a fighting chance.
ReplyDeleteDressed in the height of Roman fashion, no less!
ReplyDeletehow much she liked to do housework in the nude
ReplyDeleteDon't we all? That episode with the vacuum-cleaner, just an accident.
Jeff Jarvis is still alive? What about Doc Searles?
ReplyDeleteYou were expecting 9 graphs, uncut?
ReplyDeleteStop trying to make Yeti porn epics happen.
ReplyDeleteYou have to let them happen.
ReplyDeleteHe'd probably file a tort.It's that what the kids are calling it now?
ReplyDeleteGeorge Will has learned that being a weedy Casper Milquetoast in a bow tie need not keep you from riling up the base with knuckle-dragging sentiments. He should really send Tucker Carlson a bottle of good wine.
ReplyDeleteEastwood may be a wingnut, and he's definitely a bad boyfriend. Still, he's a lot higher than Will on the scale of having genuine talents and marketable skills.
ReplyDeleteFuck, doesn't he know that a bearded homosexual with a taste for non-rhyming poetry wrote Leaves of Grass. Actually given Will's puddle-shallow commitment to the greats of Western culture he might not.
ReplyDeleteIt does have credits sung by Harry Nilsson. That's worth something.
ReplyDeletePerhaps no more absolute proof that they have no respect for, nor understanding of the First Amendment is the way in which they use it in their defense. First, of course, is that they would like everyone to think that the First Amendment immunizes them from criticism. Second, they would like the public to think that the First Amendment prioritizes their speech over that of others, and third, certainly, that the First Amendment broadly applies to their commercial speech.
ReplyDeleteIt's not at all difficult to spot the authoritarian impulses in all these postures. In a way, I think this might explain the over-the-top reaction to almost everything said by someone not conservative--the aim is to exclude speech, to enforce the monoculture. When Obama says something bland, say, "kids ought to eat their vegetables," the outrage is immediate and outsized: "Impeach him!" It's not because he said anything untoward. It's because he said something. Then, when someone reacts, "you want to impeach him because of vegetables?--that's nuts," oh, heavens, that's a violation of the conservatives' free speech rights--because, of course, someone else not a conservative said something.
That tendency will always be with the 27%, and because the government won't enforce it for them, they're going to go on thinking they've got to do it themselves. The only antidote is to keep laughing at them.
It also has Groucho Marx as God.
ReplyDeleteWhich also might be one more reason it's not in syndicated circulation. Groucho ain't George Burns....
Blue nosed, red faced and white knuckled.
ReplyDelete- how much she liked to do housework in the nude and maybe I should come visit some time while because their house was so private -
ReplyDeleteDear National Review, I never thought that this would ever happen to me....
I'm sure they'll be able to get one of our well-known and well-paid religious grifters to take care of that. "Ralph Reed, come on down!"
ReplyDeleteInternet, we love you.
ReplyDeleteAh, but this is Fred Hiatt's shop, where polishing those turds has been raised to an art form.
ReplyDeleteThey really and truly do.
ReplyDeleteIt is comforting for liberals to believe that the right wing is only in it for the money. For one thing, it's damned unpleasant for a liberal to contemplate the internal logic of conservative beliefs -- it's easier (and lets be honest, it's appealing to our self-regard) to believe conservatives are just idiots. And for the relatively even-keeled, open-minded left to attempt to inhabit the mental space of a right-winger, with its constricted sense of belief and its aching need for hierarchy, is just painful.
There's no question that a lot of conservatives are pretty dumb, nor that the leaders are grifters. But it is still projection when we tell ourselves that they're like us, only dumber. They're not like us, they really believe that shit, and furthermore, they've been very successful over the past couple decades. Contemplate that, liberals.
Man, I just looked at George Will's NRO column. That Obama, he's so lawless! Doesn't love the Constitution in that special way that guys with bowties and toupees do! The comments are all written by people who are quite outraged, but were apparently in an enchanted slumber from 2000-2009 and seem a little unclear about some of the origin stories in George Will's Constitution Expanded Universe.
ReplyDeleteGUYS, SKIDOO IS ON DVD NOW. Amazon has it. There's also a fancy Otto Preminger blu-ray collection that inexplicably contains it.
ReplyDelete. . . they've been very successful over the past couple decades.
ReplyDeleteThis is a very salient point, and one too often overlooked. I think a large part of the appeal that conservatives have for the average voter is that their proscriptions are straightforward, simple, and easy to understand. You don't have to think very hard to understand "cut spending and lower taxes!"
Most liberal/progressive policies take a little empathy and a bit of thought. For example, what to do with "excess" money in the federal treasury. The conservative position is "give it to the job creators and they'll make jobs!" Easy to understand, even if it's complete bullshit in reality (wealthy invest their money in the Big Casino on Wall Street--they do not "create jobs" with it. Not even yacht-polishing jobs). The liberal position is "give it to people who are poor and struggling because those people spend it immediately and, in so doing, will boost the economy, which leads to less unemployment which in turn leads to fewer people competing for work, which means that you will likely get a raise because your labor has become more valuable." That's quite the chain of understanding you're asking someone to indulge in--and that chain gets wiped clean away by the conservative response: "What!?!?! Give money to underserving welfare queens!?!?"
The lesson I always tried to impart to my Democratic clients was "Say it simply." Few took that to heart.
"Say it simply."
ReplyDeleteI find allowing oneself to be a bit angry (and stepping away from the left-wing language purification rituals) can help. May I ask, are you a political consultant of some kind, that you have Democratic clients?
Joe Conason referred to Will as a "dyspeptic Tory." We should use that more, I think.
ReplyDeleteNow all my friends know what they're getting for Christmas.
ReplyDeleteIn a previous life, I spent about 7 years doing political consulting. Oddly enough, most of my clients were Republicans. They had lots of money, and their messages were stone simple to communicate. However, the overriding callousness of their ideology is what made me quit the business.
ReplyDeleteI had a handful of Democratic clients. With few exceptions, they were horrible to work with. Their hearts were in the right place, but trying to get them to settle on anything was impossible. Most feared taking a position on an issue because they could then be called upon to defend that position. Why that was a problem, I could never discover. Many simply could not come to a coherent position--the Democratic variant of "two Jews, three opinions."
And here's one very weird Stockholm-Syndrome aspect of our current politics that I saw firsthand: Everyone in politics at every level I dealt with (up to U.S. Senate) has internalized the idea that taxes can never, ever be raised and must always be cut. That's true of both Democrats and Republicans now. And funding even those parts of government both sides deem as crucial (i.e., defense spending) can never be accomplished by tax increases--only cuts to other spending will do.
Stockholm-Syndrome
ReplyDeleteI'd like to capture this comment and hold it until it can come to see things my away! Absolutely agreed on that super-frustrating aspect of US politics today.
Best Christmas EVER!!!
ReplyDeleteRecently Letterman recalled one of Groucho's gems: On You Bet Your Life (I assume) a contestant had 14 kids, to which Groucho replied, "You know, I love a good cigar, but I do take it out now and then."
ReplyDeleteEh, I'm holding off until (1) Jenn actually writes it, and (2) there's an anime adaptation.
ReplyDeleteNothing says "Happy Birthday, Baby Jesus!" quite like a DVD bargain bin Preminger catastrophe.
ReplyDeleteThere's also a pretty pompous New Yorker review of the Skidoo DVD, containing words like "visually balanced, dialectically charged compositions" and so forth. I suspect the New Yorker review guy has about 12 paragraphs that he uses interchangeably to generate all the reviews, and then does a find-and-replace on the name of the movie. You could probably parlay that technique into a pretty good gig at NRO.
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/movies/2014/01/dvd-of-the-week-skidoo.html
"Enchanted slumber" is the term, alright. I remember about six months into Obama's first term getting into a discussion with a rightwinger about how "Obama's bankrupting the country because he wants to make the debt go up." When I pointed out that the unbridled spending of Bush must have made him really outraged if he so concerned about the deficit, he just gave me this completely blank look.
ReplyDeleteBush instantly became the "unpresident" who will be purged from conservative history. He'll be seated right next to Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush as presidents the right has had to completely disown. St. Ronnie is getting close to that treatment, but vigorous whitewashing efforts ("Reagan never raised taxes! He only cut taxes!") keep the dream alive. Which is a good thing for Republicans. They'd have to go all the way back to Teddy Roosevelt to have an acceptable president--and even he's not top notch (established those national parks and broke up all those trusts).
Scorecard:
Bush the dumber: Disowned for obvious reasons
Bush the smarter: Raised taxes and presided over a bad recession.
Reagan: Raised taxes, suggested working with Democrats. Still, so popular at the time that he's gotta be a saint!
Ford: Failed to bring country out of stag-flation, hated by most when he left office.
Nixon: Only president in history to resign office. Talked to the commies. Bad.
Eisenhower: Spent money on interstates, warned against military-industrial complex. Probably an under-the-counter commie.
Hoover: Great Depression.
Coolidge: Set stage for Great Depression.
Harding: Died before being impeached over Teapot Dome.
So, not many viable Republican presidents over the last 100 years.
Yetis with tentacles?
ReplyDeleteHey, thanks for the link.
ReplyDeleteI liked the video clip about the movie on that page. It made me very curious to see the movie, if only to see Groucho Marx playing the role of God.
True, but I am thankful for his concise definition of a conservative as a "a fellow who is standing athwart history yelling 'Stop!'"
ReplyDeleteIt was a remarkable honest thing for him to say, and it conveys nicely the utter futility of the aims of the conservative movement.
Yes, the conservatives benefit greatly from their presentation of simple solutions to complex problems.
ReplyDeleteI've just spent the last several minutes trying to find a link to a study I heard mentioned on a podcast I've heard (to no avail.)
In the study, various questions about societal problems were presented to test subjects, and they were given decreasing amounts of time to answer each round of questions. The researchers found that the less time the subjects were given to think about the problems, the more conservative their answers tended to be.
Funny how W has pretty much disappeared from the public eye (his crap paintings notwithstanding), leaving also-rans like Romney and McCain to take potshots at the POTUS because they have no records of their own to compare with Obama's. Guess we all know the answer to "Miss me yet?", huh?
ReplyDeleteOr anything with Clark Gable or Jimmy Stewart. Hell, even Gene Roddenberry got a Distinguished Flying Cross.
ReplyDeleteI find Bush's artistic efforts interesting. The guy doesn't really have much talent--certainly his paintings don't even rise to flea-market quality. Yet, he insists on showing them to the public.
ReplyDeleteI can only guess that he's surrounded by people who act like they're his friends, but really don't like him. "George, that painting's gorgeous! You really need to go on the Tonight Show and hand that to Leno!"
That's... an interesting list. While some of those towns surely deserve the reputation (arguably, Pekin, whose high school teams were still known as the "Chinks" until 1908, still does), a lot of that is pretty thin gruel.
ReplyDeletePure gold: https://twitter.com/ProfJeffJarvis/status/480095197662294016
ReplyDeleteDoing my best David Bowie as Pontius Pilate homage.
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