Hey, We Waited Until Paragraph Twelve. That's The Patience Of Job In Journalism Terms.

James Hohmann and Marin Cogan in Politico's Stewart Rally coverage:

Most signs fit with the happy-go-lucky ethos of the rally, but others were crude. One sign had Hitler mustaches on pictures of Sarah Palin, Eric Cantor, Glenn Beck and John Boehner. The message said, “Afraid yet?” This is particularly insulting to Cantor, who is Jewish and in line to become House Majority Leader if Republicans win next week.

OKAY, assuming this is so--and nobody ever says that Hitler mustaches are particularly offensive to Barney Frank or Doogie Howser, or that that Goldberg book is particularly offensive to descendants of the liberals who fought in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade--shouldn't Hitler mustaches on anyone, other than Hitler, Charlie Chaplin, and maybe that guy from Sparks, be particularly offensive to Eric Cantor? (And, granted, he's complained about Limbaugh. I'm not knocking Cantor. I'm sayin' maybe it would be easier for the guys from Politico to keep it in their pants if they learned how a zipper works.)

Putting The I In "Intuit". And The Twit.

David Brooks, "The Next Two Years". October 28

THE other day I went looking for some piece of Brooks' bio--damned if I can remember what now--and a promising Googlead turned out to be a sort of cracked mirror image of myself. It's not surprising, of course, that there are people out there who admire Brooks when he's dispensing right-wing talking points, and dislike his periodic forays into mock-reasonableness. (It is perhaps a bit surprising that anyone who thinks that way bothers with him.) What really did take me aback, momentarily, was that this guy actually buys the whole routine, and was incensed that Brooks had moderately praised Rahm Emanuel, or moderately deplored nuclear war, or something' (I'm kidding; it was Rahm. There's no way Brooks would criticize our last sixty-five years of explosive military diarrhea.) So this is not the reverse of my position, which maintains that Brooks suffers from Pernicious Reaganinfantilism, and can't identify enough of the truth to miss or bend. It is, rather, that same blasted American cultural landscape in which Coke is It, Pepsi hits the Spot, and people are interesting because they're on th' teevee. You may agree or disagree with Brooks, or Beck, or Snooki, but you are not permitted to question the integrity of either of their two dimensions. (I used to shop in the same grocery as The Teevee Weather Lady; observing the reaction she provoked you were forgiven for wondering why this country ever imagined it had to rid itself of Monarchs. This is, I think I've mentioned before, the single cultural trend, or occurrence, or whatever it is, that I would flat not have believed had you revealed it to me via Time Machine in 1972. It was, perhaps, the only point in my youth where idealism trumped the eye-opening results of growing up on the westside of Indianapolis: I was absolutely convinced, to the point of not even considering it, that a generation's familiarity with advertising, through the newfangled color teevee box, would breed a contempt so thorough that the mere hint of lying, the merest whiff of hard sell or softened soap, would be enough to bankrupt a brand forever. I knew this as certainly as I knew that a transparent boob like Ronald Reagan could never become President.)

Could you and I, O Reader, have conspired for ten minutes eighteen months ago--nay, if you matched my own cynicism, two years ago!--to write today's Brooks column for him? Historic defeat, blah blah. Generic polls blah blah blah. Big Spender, blah, out of touch with real America, blah blah blah blah blah. And, of course, the prescription: Obama must now become more like David Brooks!

Which sorta raises the question, for me, of where exactly this David Brooks was when spiteful January raised her head in 2008, and Barack Obama looked like the Republican's one chance to avoid losing to the bitchful Hillary:

Then he got defined as an orthodox, big government liberal who lacks deep roots in American culture.

Somewhere the Cracked Mirror Riley is incensed that Brooks merely suggests that Obama isn't an American, rather than owning up. And somewhere, in some parallel universe where he has the time to give a shit, Bruce Springsteen is demanding his poster back.

I, on the other hand, merely wish to point out that a couple centuries of being as rooted to a particular place as the trees they occasionally swung from didn't do African-Americans a world of good.

Anyway, Mr. Brooks: you're fifty years old. Near half a lifetime has passed since you touched the hem of Milt Friedman's garment. That's seven mid-terms ago; one--the pants-pissing contest of 2004--went the President's way. I'm more wooly mammoth than spring chicken myself, so I don't expect you not to crow about virtual poll wins and historic gobbledegook. I do expect that at some point you might pause to consider what's what, if only for the sense of novelty. You may be better off than you were twenty-nine years ago (granted, I'm no expert in assessing the psychic pits, pockmarks, and tumors of a life spent lying for money), but do you really imagine the country is? That country you imagine inherently agrees with you, except when it's misguided? Three decades, historic slashing of tax rates, historic inequities, four historic recessions, two jobless recoveries, and a political culture which has gone from corrupt, dishonest, and banal, to corrupt, dishonest, banal, and breathtakingly stupid. Now you think Americans "fear their nation is in decline"? Now we're threatened by debt, deficit, bailouts and self-indulgence? Th' fuck were you when Reagan tripled the Debt? When Bush I bailed out the S&L mess created in the hot torrents of incontinent deregulation? The historic reversal of our deficit trend under Bush II was okey-dokey by you, until after the 2004 elections, when your middling expressions of concern, safely beyond repercussion, meant nothing besides a hoped-for salutary effect on your own Moderate career.

I don't know who you think this is foolin', Dave. Okay, I do, I just wonder if you think you're foolin' yourself. I've just sat through the stupidest election cycle in Indiana history, and only 2000 and foregone conclusions have kept it from the all-time top spot. That's not my partisan opinion. It's fucking incontrovertible fact. In a state which has led the nation in Stopping Voter Fraud Which Has Never, Ever Occurred, we're about to elect as Secretary of State--the state's top voting official--a guy who voted illegally in 2008, preserving a fraudulent registration so he could keep his government job. His campaign ads depict him as a Tax Cutter; the Secretary of State has no revenue responsibilities whatsoever. He might as well've pledged to buy cheaper envelopes this time, and check the ads for toner sales. The incumbent State Treasurer is campaigning on the fact that he managed to earn interest on the money we had lying around. Unlike the last Democrat, who kept it under his mattress. Mitch Daniels is spending some of his PAC money plugging state races; being forced to watch campaign ads for state races alone should make a proud and free people rise as one and beat the shit out of him, but the remarkable thing to me is, they're all canned, like he allotted fifteen minutes for the whole process, and catch him in half-profile, which accentuates his Nixonian hauteur to near-parody. The Democrat (note: graded on a curve) running for the seat Evan Bayh is just too distraught to defend has accused the Republican of being insufficiently anti-abortion. That's Dan Coats, by the way, one of the myriad Republicans who vow to end the Socialist Obamacare in order to strengthen Medicare.

You really imagine this bunch, and this approach, is the key to rescuing Columbia Herself from the twilight tailspin into Oblivion? And maybe Bond in Seconds, Get Teeth Their Whitest, and Kill the Germs that Cause Bad Breath? Best of luck. Is it too soon to write your November 2012 column for ya?

May You Never Get Old

Matt Bai, "In Time of Change, Nostalgia Has Appeal". October 27

I B'LIEVE I'm on record as granting permission to anyone who wants to to bash "Boomers" for a multitude of real sins: opposition to the enormity of US involvement in Indochina, which lapsed as soon as the threat of conscription did (in fairness I, born in the closing moments of 1953, was eligible for the last six months of the draft; so 2/3 of Boomers, by median if not mean, never risked a government-sponsored jungle trip at all). Blame 'em for insufficient resistance to the the post-facto rewrite that portrayed that war as a fine little patriotic excursion spoiled by a few chronic grumblers and ungovernable loogie launchers; for the hypocritical descent into mindless consumerism and real estate acquisition of the Reagan/Yuppie era; for Reagan himself; for the soul-deadening shallowness that replaced the News, and our politics; for that commercial that uses Melanie's "Brand New Key"; and for everyone named "Dylan".

Here is a partial list of things you cannot blame on Boomers. In fact, let's rephrase that. Here is a partial list of thing you must either be a total idiot, a liar, or a sad-sack careerist mining the endless lode of "My Generation Uses the Internet, while Yours Had Enormous Rotary Phones and Sideburns", or all three, to blame on us:

• Boomers are not responsible for the fact that old people tend to xenophobia, terminal crotchets, and a lack of familiarity with the latest dance steps. Similarly, your generation is not to blame for inventing the extraordinarily broad and unwarranted generalization that puts your sorry, complaining, never-did-nothing-worth-spit ass in the best possible light by comparing it to something worse and imaginary.

• We're not responsible for the rise of that paranoid and post-war domestic fascism program which eventually merged with the Republican party around the time the oldest of Boomers was learning to drive.

• In fact we're not responsible for the massive propaganda campaigns which, since 1946, convinced Americans that invasion, subjugation, and forced sex with garlicky foreigners was right around the corner unless we kept our military brass crotch-deep in jet/atomic/digital-powered bombers and golf courses.

• Nor the corporate takeover of America, of roughly the same vintage.

Let's just note here that, while you're so busy congratulating yourself on living in a post-racial neighborhood you've done nothing whatsoever to address the rapidly expanding implementation of the last three, with a particular note about how easy it's been to scare Post-Racial, Internet-Savvy America with the specter of brown men stealing our freedoms with shampoo bombs. Just like everyone else.

And yet, a less noticed undercurrent is pulling politics in the opposite direction, too. The latest polling suggests we may see the election of several venerable politicians to offices they held before, including some who haven’t governed since the days when “apple” and “blackberry” referred primarily to fruit. And this suggests that as much as we talk about closing the book on the last era of American politics, we may be having some trouble letting go.

Y'know, I love it when a totally artificial meme is stood on its head by the very people who perpetrate the fraud in the first place, and then the crazy juxtaposition! is displayed as some sort of glimpse at a parallel universe, which somehow then proves the original contention. It's why I try to start every morning off by reading Slate.

The poster septuagenarian for this new crop of resurrected office-seekers is Jerry Brown, who was the youngest governor in the country when Californians elected him to the first of two terms in 1974. (Mr. Brown was famous then for dating Linda Ronstadt. You can Google her, or just ask your mom.)

Okay, we're often called upon here to explain some humor basics. First, like most people, this construction (bygone cultural icon + "ask your mom" = funny) worked on us the first 6 or 7 thousand times we heard it, but since then, eh. Second, the humor [if any] really requires that Bygone Cultural Icon be someone the average audience [if any] member had at least some vague familiarity with, i.e., someone still in the public eye but increasingly seen as a tired relic squeezing out link sausages to a rapidly deceasing audience. The Eagles. Ask your mom. Bon Jovi. Ask your mom. It doesn't really work when 52% of your audience really would have to ask its mom who someone was. It doesn't work on someone whose last album/tour was twenty years ago, unless that person was the most hugely colossalest star of his time. Garth Brooks. Ask your ma.

Now then. I, Boomer, was among the first batch of eighteen-year-olds allowed to vote in a Presidential election, in 1972. This means that, in my rapidly-dwindling lifetime, I've had the opportunity to vote against Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan (twice) G.H.W.H.M.S Bush (twice), and Bob Dole. It was twenty years before I had the change to vote for one of my generational buddies, and ten more before the first (and probably next-to-last) chance to pick between two. So shut th' fuck up about Jerry Brown, fer chrissakes. Or better yet, move there, vote against him, and help the younger, internet-savvy inmates take over the rest of the asylum. Ask your mother.

By the way, has anyone calculated the odds that the sort of person who makes a career of making shit up about randomly ascribed collections of birth years will also claim that two instances of something unremarkable constitute a Trend?

Who, What, When, Where, And Nobody Likes A Sarcastic Wimp

David Brooks, "No Second Thoughts". October 26

I NEVER kept a journal back in the quill and parchment days, and my advice to the legions of up-and-coming bloggers--beyond the fact that it's not as glamorous as it looks--is to choose your bête noir with more care than I did mine.

I'm not apologizing. I've noted here before that while Brooks may not be as stupid as Erick Erickson, or as faux-incendiary as Ann Coulter--consider, Reader, how difficult it is to choose a single avatar for those conditions!--he is Your Race Leader in Hypocrisy. In fact, David Brooks is the fucking wrapper Republican Hypocrisy comes in these days, or was 'til they went with the Teabag brand, not that that's slowed him down. He's a virtual Swiss Army knife. He's the German Shepard of all-arounders. He's among the career leaders in Pretending Republican Talking Points Are the Product of Your Own Ratiocination (13,655), Facile Moralisms (43,866), Assuming the Mantle of Middle-American Worker Without Ever Living In Middle America or Working (9,427), Average Speed in Defending Republicans Doing What Should, By His Supposed Principles, Be Indefensible (1.2 columns), and Smarm. He's got nine Gold Gloves for his work in defending his supposed moderation, by having mastered the technique of half-grimacing on those rare occasions when Jim Lehrer or--heaven forfend!--Mark Shields brings up some example of the hydrophobic rat infestation which is his side of the political spectrum. David Brooks is the sort of reasonable Conservative who doesn't mind if gays marry or serve in the military! He's the sort who probably doesn't think abortion is always murder! He is, however, the sort who doesn't exactly stand up for those "principles" when his party goes a'harvesting votes from that direction.

And I am from Middle America. To me the guy with the bone-through-the-nose Obama poster is much less a danger to the Republic than the guy who's too smart to do it himself, but doesn't mind other people doin' it for him, so long as he reaps most of the benefits. It's President Palin vs. President Daniels. President Nixon vs President Brain-Damaged B Actor. They're both out to mug you. It's just that with one of 'em you can hear the war whoops two blocks before they reach you.

On the other hand, I really had no idea, back when I started doing this, that a) The New York Times would wind up being a regional shopping leaflet; and b) that Brooks was capable of the levels of disingenuousness he's shown there. (Meaning, of course, compound disingenuousness, not the simple sort of which his career is built.)

When times get tough, it’s really important to believe in yourself. This is something the Democrats have done splendidly this year. The polls have been terrible, and the party may be heading for a historic defeat, but Democrats have done a magnificent job of maintaining their own self-esteem. This is vital, because even if the public doesn’t approve of you, it is important to approve of yourself.

Y'know, no one's gonna goad me into defending Democrats, but Reality is a different matter. The Democrats aren't in whatever situation they're in (election results are a week away; maybe we can wait that long to count the votes) because of hubris; they're where they are because they've been running from Ronald Reagan for thirty years. They found themselves, last January, with two bad choices: a compromised healthcare bill, or a failure to deliver on the healthcare promises their landslide President had made. Surprising at least one observer (me, who expected them to fold yet again), they took option A. They are now blamed for this; had the vote gone the other way they'd be blamed for that. And they are to blame, because even if they couldn't see which way the wind was blowing they could've checked in with 1992 again. They didn't lose those fights through supreme self-confidence. They lost because they thought they could win by refusing to fight. It's stupid, and when you see a crowd of ostensibly smart people doing something stupid--assuming that surprises you in the least--you look for some ulterior reason. And that reason is they're still running from Ronald Reagan thirty years later. They're afraid to propose the United States of America spend money on programs that benefit anyone other than the wealthiest 5%, for fear of being called Tax n' Spenders, and they're afraid to cut the astronomically absurd "Defense" budget for fear of being called unpatriotic. They're afraid to make corporations pay fairly, and in full, for their benefits and for the sound operation of a free and just society, and they're afraid to make them pay for shipping American jobs overseas. They're afraid of Roger Fucking Ailes. They're afraid of using the system to their advantage the way Republicans do without blinking, and they're afraid of their own constituencies. They're afraid of Ben Fucking Nelson and Evan Bugwit Bayh. Mostly they're convinced, and have been for some time, that electability is more important than being right or doing what's right, and they're convinced that corporate donations are more important than defending a belief system.

They find themselves here because they imagined, somehow, they imagined, yet again, they could deal rationally with a bunch of criminally self-serving pathological liars. Because they imagined they could compromise with the likes of you, Dave, and then you'd let them hide behind you when your people started saying mean things.

Y'know, I don't give a fuck if Dems go down to defeat next week; I think it would've been better for them if their pathetic track record in 2006-2008 led to a defeat last time, one which woke them up to the fact that "moderate" Democrats are the Möbius Band of American politics: you travel along and get nowhere but back where you started. The only thing worse than defeating deserving Democrats is replacing them with the Clown Car from Hell which is the Republican party. Y'know, Dave: the party that remained supremely self-confident as it destroyed the US economy and our military and diplomatic standing overseas. And the only thing worse than electing more of those idiots is the sort of "moderate" Republican who pretends he's not quite sure how they got seated at his table.

Olio

• We're leaking, but the good news is it can't possibly be brain fluid: four days after we got 400,000 pages on the Great Cluster Fuck in Iraq, the Times coverage--after thoughtfully including a top-of-the-Sunday-frontpage exposé of how Julian Assange Just Isn't Our Kind (Daniel Ellsberg went to a psychiatrist!)--I'm convinced, by the way, that absent Ben Bradlee and whatever honor remains among thieves, the Times would have hired Sally Quinn away from the Post years ago--the whole thing's down to a box in the corner. So Last Week! I am reminded of what I said in 2002: the main argument against our invading Iraq, or anyone, for that matter, is that this country is too juvenile to handle it. We should have picked up on this when the warfloggers blamed Life for My Lai. Now our newspapers can't handle the news.

Reggie Bush returned his Heisman. On his own. Just saying'.

• On the other hand, "Karzai takes money from Iran" has legs. Or maybe that's just to make up for "Secret donors run US campaigns: Who are we to judge?"

• My memory's going: has there been a national election since 1980 which was about anything?

• GM PAC gives Mitch McConnell $5000. In other news, Mitch McConnell accepts $5000 from GM.

Enjoy the next couple months, motherfuckers, until the Teabaggers take over.

• Somerby:

As we’ve noted, every journalist flies to Finland to examine its high-scoring (middle-class) schools. This furthers a preferred press corps narrative: Our own public schools are a mess!

But please note: No one has ever flown to Finland to explore a second question: How do they provide health care at such a very low cost? Here are the OECD data for the U.S. and Finland:

Total spending on health care, per person, 2007:

United States: $7285

Finland: $2900

How weird! Why does no one fly to Finland to examine this major achievement?

• You gotta get up pretty early in the morning to slip a similarity past a Post staff writer:

Nevertheless, the similarities to Beck's rally are just the sort of thing Stewart himself would satirize on his show if, of course, it weren't his rally and his TV show in the first place.

• No, really: Joe Frontiera and Dan Leidi, columnists, consultants, and concerned clip-art bystanders, "Don't Get Fooled Again: The Baby Boomers' leadership failure".

• Your Moment of Zen:

Admirable is he, who when he
sees lightning, does not say
"Life goes by like a flash."

-Basho

A Lady In Private And A Whore In Public

NBC News Raccoon Brian Williams:

TVNewser: It’s been an interesting month for the TV business, with Rick Sanchez let go by CNN, and now FNC’s Juan Williams fired by NPR. What do you think of all this, and what do you think of the media coverage of these controversial developments?

Brian Williams: We’ve [covered] Juan the past two nights. The other two networks led with Juan Williams last night. I didn’t think it was quite at that level. But this is ‘eye of the beholder’ stuff. This is where, as someone said on our air last night, the First Amendment gives you the right to say what you want. It doesn’t give you the right to be employed.

So, these media organizations are exerting their own right to employ or not employ these folks. But I think there has been a little bit of a thread of media people, in the public eye, saying things and paying a price for it.

Yet Brian Williams, whom NBC Brand News goes With, both teased and opened the story on Thursday by saying it "raised questions about Political Correctness", before tossing to Andrea Mitchell, who had thoughtfully interrupted her tireless pursuit of Just Who in the Brown Campaign Called Meg Whitman a Swear to cover another major story.

Then the goddam thing rates a second night! More fallout! Jesus, Brian, your name's on the fucking show. If you know the story can be summed up in a sentence, tell me why didn't you sum it up in a sentence?

Political correctness? Sheesh, the only person making it about "Political Correctness" was Juan Williams, and he had a million reasons to do so. (None of which included his integrity as a commentator, of course, because he has none, which is what NPR should have said in the first place. Like at his job interview.)

Is this the way you covered the Sanchez story, Brian? Th' fuck makes "Scary Muslims want to blow up planes" less offensive than "The Jews run everything"? Other than the fact that the Jews run everything, I mean? Why don't you dedicate the second half of your career to actually being a journalist? What's the worst that could happen? How many meals are you going to miss from here on out?

The Internets Are Now Closed

CablinasianDem, in comments at Wonkette:

Even when Juan Williams is fired for making inflammatory comments, they're dull, cliche, and uninspired.

The Nixon Revival

MAYBE the case needs to be made, before events make it for me (let us see, for instance, just how simon-pure and post-culture-war the New Republican Majorities remain as the 2012 campaign draws near). I am, the objective Reader will have noted, more interested in saying shit than convincing anyone of it.

I broke with Candidate Obama--that is, I went from potential, if reluctant, supporter back to default and grumbling Democrat--three years ago next week, when he and John Edwards helped Tim "Roasted Potato" Russert gang-tackle Hillary Clinton on the grounds that Eliot Spitzer had done something sensible in between his weekly forced-feminization sessions, and she should answer for it. I was no Hillary supporter--sorry, meant to suggest you sit down first--but was, and am, convinced that this sort of shit is precisely what's wrong with our campaigns, and hence our governance, and that a half-way sensible and decent man foregoes temporal personal gain which comes at the expense of poisoning the public drinking water. Of course, later, Nominee Obama would express his admiration for Ronald Reagan *. I lost it. No, really, before that I was soft-spoken and reasonable. Look it up.

Because, y'know, when Ronald Reagan was inaugurated, Barack Obama was a twenty-year-old college student majoring in political science. When I was a twenty-year-old college student majoring in folk pharmaceuticals, I sure as hell knew what a Dick Nixon was.

I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not.

And don't get me wrong: there is absolutely no excuse for the President to've missed what Reagan was about. I happen to think the same is true for every sentient being in this country alive at the time, and certainly for anyone who lived through it as a functioning adult and a Democrat. And the above, by the way, is from his next-day expiation.

I suppose that, under the circumstances, I can be forgiven for blacking out before the remark about Nixon, but the simple fact is that he missed that one, too, and Big Time: Nixon is the man who altered our politics forever, with a single speech, with, in fact, two words: Silent Majority. But Nixon was a petty thug, a war criminal, an impacted bolus of hate in America's transverse colon. Whereas Reagan was an affable dunce whose PR people had finally caught up with the Teevee Age. Nixon had B-52s and unlimited ordnance to drop on Commies, in a war which, however else it gets rewritten in the pop imagination, it is still not quite acceptable to insist was the Right Thing To Do; Reagan only had dumdum bullets and a few fleeing hippies to shoot in the back. Y'know, the sort of thing you forgive if the guy seems like someone you'd wanna have a beer with. So the Right has been able to pretend, for three fucking decades, that it just wants to return us to the simpler, gentler time of Good Ol' Gramps and his common-sense, horse-and-plow wisdom, not lock us back in the closet and give the key, and the cattle prod, to Uncle Ernie and his creepy five o'clock shadow and Beefeater breath.

There was no reason to swallow it then, and there's no reason to swallow it now. The Teabaggers are the grandchildren of the paranoid fascists of the post-war era, whose pinnacle was Richard Nixon. They are not the inheritors of the prop mantle worn by that sainted spokesmodel and Great Communicator. It's well past time for seeing Reagan for what he was; too bad that didn't happen when it might've meant avoiding the dissolution of the middle class, and re-peonage of the poor, and five-fold increase in the prison population. And it's time to start calling The Nixon Revival what it is. Unadulterated, but by no means pure.

____________
* which, of course, he was then forced to admit he meant in a gay way, not politically.

Ginni Thomas, Take Two

ONE thing you can say for the Great Nixon Revival: it's never gonna lack for Martha Mitchells.

People, And Their Facsimiles, In The News

OKAY, admittedly, I'm but a dilettante at the Law, a mere amateur rhetorician and wannabe electrician, and I'm no a Hazmat technician, I just like wearing the suits. But at this point, since he obviously can't manage to keep Lady Macbeth there indoors, shouldn't Clarence Thomas now recuse himself from any case involving an insanity defense? Can't someone explain to Crazy Ginni that words have meanings, at least they often do when sane people try to use them, and that these words are magically recorded and preserved by answering machines? And has the Thomas household been checked recently for heavy metals? How 'bout the Coke cans?

Christ, if nothing else, can't whoever's been ponying up the wingnut welfare on the grounds that, since she'd done the dirty hula with a Negro she was the one Teabagger who couldn't be called racist, stuff a sock in her or something?

Sure, Sure, A Pound Of Barnyard Sweepings And A Cup Of Sugar Might Turn Themselves Into A Chocolate Soufflé

Matthew Continetti, "Five Myths About Sarah Palin". October 17

Ross Douthat, "Tales of the Tea Party". October 17

David Brooks, "Don't Follow the Money". October 18

LAST week I got around to watching the POV documentary on Daniel Ellsberg, The Most Dangerous Man in America.

Ellsberg left Harvard to become a Marine. As a civilian military analyst he led mission after mission in Vietnam, like his friend John Paul Vann, going where the brass--let alone the politicians and functionaries--wouldn't have dared. He was a war supporter who gradually came to realize what a lie the whole thing was.

In other words, Daniel Ellsberg had more intellectual courage than the three privileged fucks listed above, their organizations, and their "movement", as well as more physical courage thanthey and the entire Republican leadership. And that's before you factor in risking life in prison to expose the vengeful war criminals who killed twenty times the number of Americans bin-Laden ever did, and millions of the Other, just to keep their Ponzi scheme profitable.

Of course, the whole exercise wound up as a sort of sick comedy, proving that it was easier, and more effective, to hand America a witless bumper sticker than a 1700-page look at what was done in its name, with its money; the reader can decide if there are still any reverberations to be heard today. Nixon won a second term in a landslide; Gene Roddenberry and Roone Arledge served as the boring insects spreading the virus to the twisted bowel of the body politic. You can get into an extended argument over Vietnam today, without effort, with people whose entire position is obliterated by the factual record. Hell, you could get into an argument with so-called Progressives during the Glorious Revolution of 2008 without them displaying the slightest recognition that the United States had ever taken a military action from any motive other than the purest, nor without heavy humanitarian heart. If you haven't heard, within the last six months, that Tet was Actually A US Victory, or that Walter Cronkite sold out the United States (or any other variation on "the media mislead Americans into defeatism"), it can only be because you don't follow the argument.

How many of the well-respected punditasters above do you imagine has ever cracked open a copy of The Pentagon Papers? They do not want to know; they do not want to be forced to apply their easy moral pronouncements to issues that aren't predecided for them. Th' fuck did we get here? Well, we got here because the realities of Vietnam were so ugly, so destructive of the national mythology, that a wide swath of Americans simply decided that talking to themselves was preferable to facing reality. Meet their children. There was certainly an element of this in the opposition to the Civil Rights movement, but that opposition was allowed to show itself plain and in public for many years to come (Bill Buckley was still writing those "King was too a Commie" pieces in the early 80s). Vietnam is to "Conservatism", and its party, what On the Origin of the Species is to backwoods fundamentalist magic.

This is how you get, not only some two-bit whore to shill for Sarah Palin, but a supposed major newsource to publish it. Palin "didn't hurt McCain" because a CNN exit poll of Republican voters says so; what prodigies of illiteracy would this sort of thing evoke in a sane conversation? And that represents the single "fact" offered in "busting" Five "Myths". The rest of the thing is a Bunny Ranch price list for a selection of tawdry corporate sex acts. You know; the Weekly Standard's stock in trade. (I don't care if you imagine that La Palin has her finger in the light socket of some vast Middle American power grid; ignoring her obvious mental incapacity just because she's on your side is beyond the pale. It's no longer a question of what, if anything, can be said to excuse Palin, or O'Donnell, or Angle, or Bachman, or Beck; it's how they come to feel so at home in a major political party that they could walk in and help themselves to the remote. Ask the same goddam thing about Reagan, whom the Right was beginning to criticize in its darkest days, or Bush, whom it now treats as some accidental houseguest, half-remembered only because he left an embarrassing stain on one of the towels. Look: God Knows I'm not exactly thrilled with my own end of the political spectrum, and, especially, its appointed spokescreatures. But there's a clear distinction, at least, in that Glenn Greenwald has been holding the President's feet to the fire since the primaries; compare this to "Palin's uneven performance on the campaign trail". Uneven! The Party of Burke won't even criticize a moran in its midst. Unless it thinks the mic is turned off.)

Which brings us to Douthat, who'd clearly be the village idiot in any decently-educated village. The man made his bones--inexplicably (paging Mr. Moyers!)--by writing, two years ago, that the Republican party needed to become the party of New Ideas; today he writes that Dumb as Dirt is actually pretty insightful, provided you squint just right and are congenitally disposed to believing the last thirty years of economic disaster must be someone else's fault. [Not to mention that the goddam thing recapitulates Continetti's drivel, except Ross Boy could only come up with Four Myths and zero phony facts. Great minds think alike. So they can, too. At any rate, the whole exercise ("For one thing, I never said the downstairs bath had to be Early American") sounds like a strategy session with the divorce lawyer just in case That Cheatin' Bastard tries to keep the House. Which sorta puts the lie to the whole "What Republican Rift"? routine.]

Like Brooks, Douthat for some reason believes arguing with imaginary liberals is a lifetime sinecure. Brooks, who could just as easily be ignored as the rest of this stuff if it weren't being taken seriously by the country's last surviving newspaper, of course, has made the same sort of "peace" with his new, or "new", 300 lb. bunkmate as Douthat; today he's busy swimming in the vast pools of anonymous Republican campaign contribution cess, and pronouncing the stench not so bad if you stand far enough away. Brooks comes up with one-one, (1), O-N-E--example of a race where Democratic outside interests have slightly outspent Republican outside interests, proving for all time that money doesn't influence politics. He points out that in the most heavily contested races Democrats have outspent Republicans. Which is like noting that the Texans at the Alamo had an unfair advantage in interior lines.

I'm long inured to this sort of thing passing for Thought. I just don't know how much longer it'll be before I can understand how it passes for analytical thought.

Extrapolations From The Obvious, Poured Appetizingly Over A Shingle

David Broder, "A tentative step toward the Oval Office by a GOP policy guru". October 17

FIRST, I hope you enjoy this as much as I did:

When she vanished, police questioned Condit, making the story even hotter.

The Levys, perhaps inadvertently, fueled the flames, holding vigils and news conferences, hoping to help find their daughter.

Like the time they inadvertently demanded to know why police hadn't searched his apartment.

Hey, didn't Ann Coulter solve the crime? She doesn't get enough credit. Dean?

[I]n a party where a candidate such as Angle can be the nominee against the majority leader, brains are clearly a precious commodity. What we saw in Washington on Thursday night was a reminder that despite the occasional appearance, Republicans do not lack in that regard.

Three guesses.

Back in Washington, the luxury of having a thoughtful presidential contender was striking for everyone hearing Daniels. The onetime Reagan White House political director and Bush White House budget chief is not your run-of-the-mill intellectual. His style is to be down-home, but his record of accomplishment is dazzling.

Dazzling, in the same sense in which David Broder is the Dean of American political analysts. Which, in some sort of mystic cosmic alignment or other, is precisely the same sense in which Mitch Daniels is an intellectual.

Okay, it's Broder; it's like getting upset because Tom Brokaw thinks George Patton won WWII. And it's America, where "intellectual" means "might not embarrass himself on Jeopardy!, provided they used dumbed-down celebrity questions". Still, where does this come from, and why's in it the air for Broder's corpse to latch on to? George Bush's nickname for Mitch? Got a favorite Daniels quote? Dean? Anybody? A Daniels article that changed your perception of the world? His five favorite books are Ayn Rand Action Comics, vols. 6-10. (He might as well said Jesus is his favorite philosopher, though the campaign's just getting started, folks.)

Let's leave aside the fact that "Libertarian intellectual" is a contradiction in terms; could we at least admit, in the spirit of toughening our educational standards across the board, that it's about as ridiculous as saying someone is a Traffic-flow intellectual, or a Cosmetics intellectual? Daniels has a pocketful of pre-packaged answers to everything, the way a pederast might have a pocketful of candy, but he certainly hasn't answered the major question, which is why those answers have led, over the past thirty years, to America becoming the world's most pitiful, impoverished Superpower.

[Incidentally, the Daniels Miracle has gone from Mantra, to Empty Mantra, to Meaningless Collection of Nonsense Syllables. Or make that "back to" meaningless nonsense; the state will soon begin paying interest and penalties on the $1.8 billion it's borrowed to cover unemployment benefits ("We're still better than Michigan!"), because it hasn't repaid the loan on time. $100 mil in interest, plus $21/worker in penalties, a penalty that doubles every year the loan goes unpaid. Candidate Daniels made hay out of the $200 million state budget "deficit" in 2004. Just for comparison's sake. (Actually, he made pork tenderloin sandwiches; he pounded the thing so thin it spread to $500 million, then $800 million, depending on who ordered it.) So Penny-Pinchin' Mitch seems to've been remarkably profligate with other people's money when it came time to preserve, or "preserve" the $billion surplus, or "$billion" "surplus" he was going to run for President on. Deadbeat Indiana is going to have to find $100 million next year to pay for Mitch Daniels' Presidential aspirations. Somebody alert Dean Broder.

And so it turns out that Daniels, like his idol St. Ronnie of the Shucks, has quadrupled the budget while claiming to fight it, the difference being that, so far as I recall, Reagan never tried to claim he'd miraculously shrunk the thing. But then Reagan was no intellectual.

And Daniels' answer to all this? The Next Republican Majority should forgive the debt, thereby increasing the Federal Deficit Which Threatens Our Very Way of Life. That's something. Not intellect, but something.]

The Hudson Institute gave a dinner honoring its former president, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, with the award named for its founding intellect, Herman Kahn.

The coveted "Mein Führer, I'm Too Vell-Fed To Valk!" Award.

[Incidentally, the Hudson Institute soaked up the government largess in the Hoosier state for twenty years, while all her citizens benefited from its particular brand of Bullshit Futurism as a Front for Corporate Rapine. This means I'm long since familiar with the legendary stories of Kahn's abiding affection for cabbies. It also means I've searched the streets for three decades trying to locate one he'd've fit in. Unsuccessfully.]

It was in every respect the opposite of the spectacle that came out of Nevada. There, Democrats and Republicans alike cringed as they watched their supposed champions mangle policy questions and personal exchanges in a fashion that would have been embarrassing for high school debaters. How did Nevada end up with two such inept candidates?

How? How? Say, just whose political reporting are you Dean of, anyway? How do we wind up with Sharon Angle vs. Harry Reid? Fuck, tell me how we ever wind up with anything even marginally better.

Tell me who eats this shit with a spoon, Dean, shingle and all, if not your profession? If not you. Who writes this sort of by-the-numbers dreck? The Daniels campaign is the desperation of a roomful of second-generation Nixonites and Reagan Privateers suddenly concerned, four decades later, about the roosting habits of the toothless inbreds they embraced for the sake of temporal political gain. How is it we miss that? And while we're feeling so intellectual an' all--again, I suppose it's a good thing that Irony died before she had to see the standard of Intellectualism! raised on the GOP barricades--maybe we could ask what these people have actually done for us in the sixty plus years since Nixon-Gahagan. Maybe we could ask how people with no morals got outflanked by people with no morals or brains, and why we should suppose that giving control back to the former would make a spit's worth of difference. Maybe we could ask why this den of thieves thinks fooling a Hoosier qualifies you for President.