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Friday, July 29, 2011
What We Face
"Childish" is a
charge I can credit.
WAKE UP, NEWENS. I'm not saying we can't win. I'm just being realistic about what we're dealing with in the current political environment. Which is not good.
I'm not going to provide a lot of links, if any. You have to do the work. Because you're going to have to do a lot of work in the next year or so if we're not to lose our nation.
I'm not going to connect all the dots for you, either. Another skill you're going to have to get better at. If you want to avoid total destruction.
Watched Hannity last night. He and Juan Williams screaming at one another -- after a poignant moment when Williams acknowledged Hannity had somehow divined his firing by NPR (the subject of his latest book). "Are you all right?" Hannity asked after a taping. Well, no, Williams wasn't all right. The two are obviously friends. But then they did a screaming match, and think about it. Juan Williams is a graduate of Haverford College and Hannity was a housepainter whose bio still contains no mention of a college degree. Why Hannity congratulated Williams on his friendly interview with Jon Stewart "even though he hates me."
Then the "Greatest American Panel" came to the point of a physical blow, as Patrick Caddell, a Carter-Democrat pollster who has frequently seemed to be half-Republican these days, was absolutely quivering with rage at the fumbling, lunk-headed behavior of the Republican house he called "childish," even as conservative Romneyite Hugh Hewitt absolutely refused to shut up long enough for him to make his point. Caddell went so far as to smack Hewitt's arm. (I'd have smacked his face, but that's just me.)
Michelle Bachmann keeps telling us in her reedy voice, "I have a titanium spine strong enough not to vote for raising the debt limit." Meanwhile, the MSM is feasting on the news that her husband thinks he can cure homosexuality with prayer. No, she doesn't have a titanium spine. We've learned she suffers from crippling migraines. It's stressful being a Christian icon, isn't it?
Also saw Rand Paul last night. On Fox News. They announced he'd be on after the commercial break. I turned to Mrs. CP and did his whole sing-song spiel almost word for word right, in advance of his actual appearance. Usually, Mrs. CP doesn't like it when I do that kind of thing. This time she had to admit I'd nailed it all except for my closing line, "Whatever Daddy says."
Cut to Big Hollywood, where they're all pumped about Sarah Palin's new movie, "The Undefeated." Even liberal critics are cutting the movie a break. Wow. Things are looking up, aren't they? No they aren't. Big Hollywood is an Andrew Breitbart site -- he's also got sites called Big Government, Big Journalism, and Big Conservative Delusions -- characterized by bold conservative mission statements and really really weak writing. Big Hollywood's managing editor, John Nolte, can't write a paragraph without some major grammatical error, and the site's reviews, which should be its main attraction from a conservative standpoint, always fumble and stumble through incoherent lead paragraphs designed to convince us of what(?), the intellectual bona fides of the reviewer (though they can't seem to spell bona fides correctly), while managing to convince us that the writer is too self-absorbed to be trusted. (Except for Kurt Loder. The best living movie reviewer.) Breitbart's whole 'new media empire' is put together with spit and glue and baling wire and hardly anyone who can actually write. The conservative existential fix in a nutshell.
Where were we? The Big Hollywood braintrust thinks Sarah Palin is overcoming her media tarring. No, she isn't. How did John McCain become the Republican candidate in 2008? The MSM pretended to like him. Until he got nominated. Same process is underway with Sarah Palin. The Dems want us to nominate her. She's their favorite 2012 presidential candidate because they're certain they can destroy her. Does John Nolte know it? NO.
How stupid are we?
We are very damn stupid when it comes to politics. I'm not saying there aren't smart Republicans. It's just that the Democrats have an almost insuperable edge in terms of resource allocation.
In the old days of European aristocracy, any family with three sons gave the eldest the title, the second was sent to the military, and the third to the priesthood. Now we have rich political families. The eldest inherits dad's senate seat, the second son goes to the mass media to fight for social justice, and the third becomes a professor at an Ivy League school near you.
And, yes, there's a Republican aristocracy, too, just as numerous and just as rich. But the eldest son goes to Wall Street as a banker, the second goes to Wall Street as a lawyer, and the third goes to Wall Street as a trader. Something we might characterize as a brain drain.
Which leaves us with what? A mass media empire that can give Barack Obama a 15 to 20 point propaganda advantage in any election, while we try to counter it with sincere but dim graduates of Oral Roberts, the Barbizon Christian Barber College, the Stillwater State Graduate Business School, rich Mormons who are too friendly and virtuous to be anything but creepy, and balding, toupeed, sometimes overly bronzed white male Middle American Babbits who never quite seem to understand what a killer instinct their 'betters' across the aisle were born with. And, of course, the purely crazy ones.
Why do I always have to be embarrassed when a Republican politician speaks? Their mushmouthed southern accents. Their dopey gaffes. Their determination to interpret opposition contempt as a conversation that needs to be rejoined more productively.
I cringe when a Democrat politician speaks. He (or she) always knows the talking points, is always on message, always a demagogue. Vicious. And always forgiven by the interviewer.
Republicans? "Uh, I didn't mean to say that, I was misquoted, I resign for the good of my family."
Democrats? "I can't believe this party's obsession with returning to slavery, the death of small children through tiny cuts in the school lunch program, and the desire to subject women to the 'barefoot and pregnant' ideal of the Reagan administration. And I've already apologized for my own sexual indiscretions, so let's move on, shall we?"
To use Brizoni's locution: Really? Really?
But at the end of their screaming match, during which Juan Williams essentially accused Sean Hannity of all these positions, Hannity shook hands with him and then tossed his goddam football. Williams is still on message, delivering his talking points. Hannity is still a black Irish radio bumpkin with a low forehead. And the Dems pretend to be afraid of Fox?
Tell me what you're prepared to do not to play the fool for another season.
Wake up, kiddies. You don't win by throwing a tantrum. Not against these guys.
