Tuesday, February 5

And Who Emails This Shit?

Shorter David Brooks: I'm not a Hillary-hater, but here's an anecdote about the cold, calculating, absolutist bitch that might give you pause.

Why we're congenitally incapable of doing "shorters", or being succinct: Health Care! 1993! John "Blue Dog" Cooper, the last man to lose an election to Fred Dumbo Thompson! The Educated Class rooting against Hillary!

Money Shot: "Cooper is, of course, a man who has been burned in the past. But it is legitimate to wonder if adults can really change all that much. A defter politician would have reached out to Cooper and made an attempt to address the concerns he represents."

"If adults can change that much!"   "A defter politician reaching out!"  That's rich, really, coming from someone who voted for Bush twice. And the "concern" Cooper represented was the insurance industry, not thousands of Tennesseans worried that they might be forced to receive affordable healthcare.

Is Brooks so stupid as to believe this? No. He's got a terminal case of Reagantotism, made that much worse by the fact that he, like a certain Presidential candidate Cooper has endorsed, was actually in his twenties when this magical land of Ponies and Unity was unrolled. It was made that much worse when the soft bigotry of low journalistic standards bestowed the phony title of "The Conservative Pundit Liberals Love" on his passive-aggressive AV-nerd chatter.   Now he's left trying to pickup Blue Dog Democrats in a seedy dive by repeating the only line that ever got him laid, even if it was twenty years ago.  

Skinny: Healthcare, of course, is the sine qua non of the Hillary hater, the intersection of Republican Entitlement Boulevard and Sexism Street, and its astonishingly long life is all one needs to justify throwing Brooks to the ground, grabbing his wrist, and making him hit himself until he cries, "Okay, I'm a Hillary Hater!" three times. The fact that Mrs. Clinton was tabbed to head her husband's task force was--and is--offered as evidence of some insidious take-over plot, and Mrs. Clinton was--and is--portrayed as some sort of power-mad harpy who dared presume herself the equal of Our Elected Officials. The plan was defeated thanks to the efforts of Democratic insurance-industry mouthpieces like Cooper and Pat Moynihan, after a massive industry-financed scare campaign which has kept national healthcare off the agenda for nearly twenty years.   A more vindictive man than myself could possibly be hoping that a sizable percentage of the people who helped stem the tide of reasonable concern back them find themselves lacking heath insurance today. And needing it.

If the cupidity of the Reaganauts was ever more in evidence I, for one, can't think of where. If we need a finer example of the will of the people being thwarted by the unequal access of big money concerns to our whorish politicians you'll have to find it for me. And yet! As Brooks, no Hilary-hater! tells the tale fifteen years later, on Super Dooper Times Three Tuesday, coincidentally, the whole matter boiled down to Mrs. Clinton being rude to John Fucking Cooper. It was the Congress of the United States that botched healthcare. It was Bill Clinton's program, not his wife's, just as Iraq is George Bush's war, not, well, Bill Clinton's wife's. That it was mishandled in its public-relations effort, and insufficiently ardent of the rectums of puffed-up politicos like Cooper are items we may put forward for discussion. But the clear winners were the people who owned their votes, and a generation of Hitlery biographers, and the clear loser was democracy.

While We're At It, Gimme Your Lunch Money: Assuming he's within shouting distance of the truth, something we would not necessarily assume from John Cooper's public record, how many politicians have told opponents "We'll bury you," in private? Of how many males is it quoted back as evidence of rapine, or suggested as something simply beyond the pale of politics? I have refused to support Senator Clinton's campaign, but if she'd like to borrow a shovel I'll be happy to oblige.

6 comments:

  1. You might want to retract an
    earlier declaration
    when I tell you that David Brook's On
    Paradise Drive
    was a text I assigned in a college course on modern
    American history a few years ago. The man can turn a phrase even if his ramblings are little
    more than smoke-filled warm air (at least, that's what my students said). I
    might be counted among those Hillary haters if my own health care protest narrated
    elsewhere
    is a clear indication.

    Your ongoing screed against Brooks brings an almost daily dose of sanity.
    Keep it up.

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  2. Yeah, sure he can turn a phrase and you know Hitler was really good to his dogs, too.

    I know I lost all moral high ground when I said "Hitler." But we are talking about Brooks, aren't we.

    I hate him and I come here after he publishes so Doghouse can get my head screwed on straight again.

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  3. Anonymous6:44 PM EST

    Mmm, this is tasty stuff. Good going, Doghouse.

    But I could do without the imagery evoked by your phrase "...If the cupidity of the Reaganauts was ever more in evidence..." I know it's February, and I am looking forward to getting your Valentine, but please god oh please god this is that thing called typo, yes?

    Larkspur

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  4. Anonymous6:32 AM EST

    cu·pid·i·ty /kyuˈpɪdɪti/ [kyoo-pid-i-tee] Pronunciation Key -
    –noun eager or excessive desire, esp. to possess something; greed; avarice.

    Where's the 'typo'?

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  5. Anonymous7:49 AM EST

    Just a generous "thank you" for all the typically intelligent fulminations you set down on screen. I, too, come here post-Brooks as an escape valve for my blood pressure.

    Cupidity is a mild word for the Reagan plutocracy's contemptible selfishness. It's embarrassing that the U.S. still hasn't entered the 20th Century healthcare-wise, but it should come as no surprise given their exalted born-again winner-take-all I've-got-mine-so-fuck-you governing philosophy.

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  6. Anonymous10:49 AM EST

    OMG, I have done learnt something. Thank you, postalval and r. porrofatto. "Cupidity" is entirely appropriate, and is in fact a damn fine word.

    Sorry, Doghouse. But I think maybe I am not the only one who previously failed to appreciate the meaning of "cupidity", so I take some small solace in imagining that one or two others have been edumacated as well.

    Also: hi, Jaye.

    Okay, pardon the OT. Back to Our Mr. Brooks.

    Larkspur

    ReplyDelete