Okay, Patting Yourself On The Back During Auto-Fellatio Is Impressive, Gymnastically. It's Just Not My Idea Of A Great Porno Loop.

Jeff Greenfield, ex-journalist, CBS: "With Edwards' withdrawal, something which would have been unthinkable just a decade ago has occurred: The Democratic Party will nominate either a woman or an African-American for President."

WHAT the hell happened to Jeff Greenfield? Yale Law, writes speeches for RFK, spends a year as the Liberal-Rationalist questioner on Firing Line, seems like a promising political affairs reporter. Gets a teevee gig as a media commentator for CBS, which seemed at a time when the mass-market media was still congratulating itself for its glorious non-role in exposing Watergate, and when Jimmy Carter was being treated nightly as the Ur-Al Gore, a new, important beat. (Consider what might have been had critiquing the news become a regular part of The News.) He starts off pretty good but then begins to develop a slow IQ leak that, somehow, never gets repaired.

(Why? Well, for one thing, the early 80s and their insistent Reagan fluffing were the apex of the network capitulation to Nixon's anti-Press campaign, which saw the elimination of news commentary, the rise of the Happy Talk/No Disturbing Unpleasantness format, the promotion of Barbara Walters up from the cosmetics counter and the (not unrelated) absorption of independent network news bureaus by Sports and Entertainment, not to mention Big Infotainment's eye on Our Digital Future & Cable Pie and a favorable merger & acquisitions climate. The networks did not wish to be part of the Librul Media, regardless of the accuracy of the charges, and as a result you had Bircher demagogy elevated to Voice of the Common Folk status, on the grounds that some of its spokesmen actually lived out there with Homer and Jethrine and thus must have a finger on their pulse, their colorful rustic rituals, or the pipette they used to inseminate hogs. Consider the clueless groping the Times has engaged in in bumbling its way along the same path in recent years. Consider that that period in network news stretches, roughly, from Walter Cronkite noticing the Light was out at the end of the Endless Tunnel, to the period when Sam Donaldson was loudly disparaged as the face of teevee liberalism. Sam Fucking Donaldson! It didn't exactly pay to be smart.)


By the end of the first year of the much-admired Reagan era Greenfield had begun to look like he'd contacted incipient Norma Desmonditis, possibly from Leslie Stahl. By the time he jumped to ABC in 1983 he was practically a Koppel Klone, meaning that IQ was down at least thirty ticks. Whenever I've seen him since he's been more unwatchable than the previous time. The last time I remember tuning him in--as opposed to bumping into him accidentally and trying to be polite--he was leading his CNN White Guy Panel in a Jenna Bush-inspired discussion of how "everybody" used fake IDs in college, and the media ought to leave the President's family alone. No one even bothered to cough up a dissenting opinion. Sure, sure, hindsight's 20/20, but don't the nose-thumbing adventures of a couple of aimless, disinterested partying princesses now seem like a harbinger of their Daddy's administration, if we'd just bothered to listen half-seriously? I mean, aside from the fact that they didn't pull weapons and change the management regime at Chuy's.

Perhaps the above is superfluous; perhaps it's sufficient to note that I walked into the room where my Poor Wife was watching the CBS Evening News, which is now delivered by a woman whose demeanor suggests she should be co-chairing the event with a cast of woodland puppets. And just as I got there Greenfield was delivering that windup about how unthinkable it is that a Woman and a Colored Fellow should be duking it out for the right to be slimed on cable news for the next several months. Sheesh, it's not even unthinkable that the Republicans might have gotten around to breaking the White Male barrier a decade ago, though it would have been the Veep slot and it would have been calculated, not earned by having the best time in the 1500 meter slime wade. Hell, internet trolls couldn't get enough of the idea that Condi Rice would replace Dick Cheney in 2004, thence to run in 2008 as that unstoppable combination of Woman and Black, setting off a nationwide series of Liberal Brain Detonations unlike anything ever seen in US politics.

This stuff borders on insulting the sainted dead and the mostly-unsung living who gave so much in pursuit of equality, and who were so often backhanded from the same pulpit where Greenfield now leads us in prayerful Thanksgiving for our own worth. And that's when it doesn't cross the line with impunity. Or is it just me? Please, someone, anyone, explain to me what difference in attitude there is between that stump-dumb notion of Liberalism being trawled across the internet four years ago and this nonsensical idea that America Has Finally Turned A Corner because a good-looking orator and a very smart lightning rod stand poised to take the Democratic nomination. In a race, we might add, which hasn't made it to the one-month mark without charges of racism and gender bias being loudly "examined" in the Press. Historical? Okay. Unthinkable a decade ago? Sure. If the decade you mean is the 1920s. Someone recently reminded me that Jesse Jackson (like Obama, a black man!) won the South Carolina Democratic Primary. Twenty years ago. And like the Lady said, it still is faux-balanced news.

Interesting Copy

This Week's Print Edition
January 14, 2008 • Vol. 13, No. 17

I'm Sorry, I Didn't Quite Catch That. Would You Mind Regurgitating It, Eating It, And Regurgitating It Again Several More Times?

Jason Szep, "Are Democrats too confident in 2008 election race?" Reuters, October 24

SPOILER ALERT: You will scour this tree-killer in vain for any discussion of the confidence level, if any, of the Democratic party, its officials, members, affiliates, or well-wishers, or any single person living or dead, now, or previously, identified, self-identified, demographically disposed, or unfoundedly-rumored to be a Democrat or Democrat-friendly or who might have met any one who is.

POSSIBLE HEADLINE ASSUMING TRUTH-IN-ADVERTISING REGULATIONS COULD BE EXTENDED TO HEADLINE WRITING: Niki Tsongas Wins Special Congressional Election By Smaller Than Expected Margin; Someone From A Family Of Democrats May Have Voted Against Her

WHY THIS SORT OF THING IS AN IMPORTANT CONTRIBUTION TO AN INFORMED ELECTORATE: It ain't.

HOW MANY MORE SUCH STORIES WE CAN LOOK FORWARD TO READING IN THE NEXT TWELVE MONTHS: Umpteen.

HOW MANY MORE SUCH STORIES WE CAN LOOK FORWARD TO READING IN THE NEXT TWELVE MONTHS IF HILLARY CLINTON IS THE NOMINEE: Umpteen google.

BROWN (or GREEN or SMITH) IS THE NEW CABBIE: Mary Burns, disgruntled Democrat, is never actually identified as a Democrat; She reports having "a lot of Democratic friends who voted for him because he understood their concerns."

KEEP MASSACHUSETTS FOR THE MASSACHUSETS: Ogonowski issued fliers that overlapped images of Tsongas and Bush with the words "Niki Tsongas/George Bush Immigration Plan: Amnesty to 12 million illegal immigrants."

WHY THIS SORT OF THING BODES ILL FOR DEMOCRATIC PROSPECTS NEXT FALL: Because the party is so obviously in the pocket of Big Alien.

WHERE THIS SORT OF THING CAN LEAD: Straight to a Dana Milbank appearance on Olbermann, where the ultra-liberal journalist from the ultra-liberal Washington Post was so in thrall of this shocking new development he worked the following into a discussion of Republican Gaffes and Bleepers: "[Howard] Dean had a nervous breakdown in Iowa," and "the campaign against Hillary is she's a flip-flopper--they want to do a replay of the whole windsurfing thing." Except this time, when she reaches shore she finds it's been declared part of Mexico.

Today in History

"...we have won a great victory in Iraq, and an even greater one in the world. The next time we say to someone, "Don't make us come over there", they won't. America's already-great diplomatic power has now been massively enhanced, through a clear demonstration that any explicit or implicit threats of military operations we might make are not empty."

Steven Den Beste, April 11, 2003

No Man Is An Island, But Some Men Could Serve As Personal Floatation Devices Without Much In The Way Of Modification

Jonah Goldberg, "Outside the Press Boxes:
GOP candidates don't fit the media's mold". NRO, March 7

I am, actually, a bit under the weather, enough so that I seem to have imagined that taking my head for a swim via a Jonah Goldberg column might counteract an impolitic large intestine. I tried something similar once when an amusement park ride made me queasy. No luck then, either.

Maybe I’m remembering this wrong. But I could have sworn we spent the last seven years talking about how the Republican party is the party of backward red states—where hate is a family value, fluffy animals are shot, and God is everyone’s co-pilot—and how the Democratic party is the avant-garde of the peace-loving, Europe-copycatting blue states, where Christianity is a troubling “lifestyle choice,” animals are for hugging, and hate is never, ever a family value.

Jonah, thanks to the Corner, folks with stronger GI tracts than mine can actually see what you spend your time talking about, and it's not your version of someone else's idiocy as Conventional Wisdom; it's your own idiocy as Conventional Wisdom, hold the irony.

Admittedly, over time the red state-blue state thing was eclipsed by other clichés about how the GOP had been hijacked by “theocrats” or by K Street corporate lickspittles, warmongers, immigrant-haters, hurricane-ignoring nincompoops, and, for a moment during the Mark Foley scandal, cybersex offenders. I can dredge up all the relevant quotes, but if you’ve been paying attention, I shouldn’t have to.

Every week or two I check, and every week or two I'm surprised once again to learn that Goucher College hasn't faked its own death, dyed its hair, and slipped off to South America with the insurance money.

Here’s the interesting bit: The GOP rank and file is steadfastly refusing to play to type. The frontrunner in most polls is Rudy Giuliani, a pro-choice, anti-gun, immigration-expansionist former mayor of the capital of Blue America, New York City. Just last weekend, Giuliani finished a close second in the CPAC straw poll of conservative activists (and first if you add the activists’ first-choice and second-choice ballots).

Okay, I have been saying for the past four years that the Religious Right, having caved in on Republican nominees between 1988 and 2000, before adopting George W. as one of their own, resulting in severe burns, would name the 2008 nominee or die trying, since it wasn't going to get any easier after that. In 2004 they bought into the Values Voters schtick, which, as I recall, was a cliché much prized by the Em Ess Em and the right punditocracy (I can dredge up all the relevant quotes, but I don't want to), plus the genesis of a humming little cottage industry for a couple of left-wing Catholic girls. Then rest of the country got to know Mark Foley the way the Republican leadership knew him. The religious right had enough power in January 2005 to interrupt a Presidential vacation, something a Category V hurricane wouldn't be able to do nine months later. When the anti-Schiavo backlash hit some of your more savvy Tax Cut Republicans woke up, smelled the last quarter century, and reacted with alarm (either mock or sham; the jury's still out). The Metaphysical Certainty wing of the Party That Knows Best reacted in standard GOP fashion when confronted by uncomfortable, undeniable realities: it doubled down, and took out Bill Frist and Jeb Bush before the campaign ever started, just for pique. And of course you've had Ted Haggard and Ralph Reed and Pat Robinson helping raise public awareness in the interim. It looks like Do or Die will wind up as the latter, don't it?

But let's hold on, here. Hain't nobuddy cast a vote yet, 'cept by tellerphone, and already two of the three Republican frontrunners have swerved so far right we'll have to identify their charred remains from the dental records. McCain is dead, he just hasn't fallen down yet, and with all that money in back of him that won't be for a while, barring utter humiliation early. And he's assembled the same team that pummeled him to death in South Carolina in 2000. Remember? Or is everybody on the Right suddenly civil in public now?

McCain's folks think Rudy will be coming back to the pack once voters get to know him. I doubt they imagine that will happen without some assistance on their part. Mitt already has indicated an understanding that he can't wait forever for his Jim Rockford-esque 180º to pay off. It is perhaps enough to note that at this point there aren't many Republican candidates veering leftward.

To which Rudy, wisely to this point, has said little beyond that "strict constructionist" gag he apparently thought would mollify 25% of anti-abortion voters and verbally confuse the remainder. He's been especially lucky in his choice of Bumbler McCain as his major opponent (no less a spokesman for the Red Meat wing than Rick Santorum recently said, "Anybody but McCain", despite the fact that McCain has the closest thing to Santorum's voting record this side of Sam Brownback). Will he get away with that for eighteen months? Will "Values Voters" forget the whole Gay Marriage Misunderstanding in order to vote for the Soviet-heroic statue of Mr. 9/11? I doubt it, but then I took the Persians at Thermopylae and gave the points.

(Speaking of Brownback, what he's up to is anybody's guess but he hasn't Rudy's name recognition, and he hasn't been raising money unhindered by public office or private morals for the last six years. He could do worse than stand back and let everybody else snipe at Giuliani through the rest of the Hot Stove season. Maybe there's at least one Republican who's learned something from the Iraqi insurgency.)

Still there's a couple of things. It's a nice "conservative" wet dream to have Rudy waltz through the primaries with his electability intact, which he will only do if it's decided early. But if it's decided early the Religious Right will not be on board (the rank and file anti-Queers- and Dirty-Hippies-voters may not know Rudy yet, but the James Dobsons sure do, and they'll take that flesh in one-pound packages, thanks). And, Jonah, the whole point is you can't win without 'em. They can't guarantee a win, but they sure can guarantee a loss.

This is the final pre-conscious spasm of the Rudy Wet Dream, that the Republican party can jettison all those rabid-right voters Jonah wills into invisibility until he needs them again, and govern from the Center without otherwise moving a muscle. And may I say (oh, shit, I almost forgot I'm obligated to give you the Grand Weasel Flambé Finale:)

Lastly, perhaps the GOP is self-correcting. The exaggerations notwithstanding, perhaps the rank and file is reining in the party establishment. The Republican party is undergoing a seismic shift, prioritizing foreign policy in ways not seen since the height of the Cold War. In response, the usual rules are being rewritten.

Or maybe it’s just too soon and this is all about name recognition. But whatever the real story is, you can be sure that won’t be the story line you hear from the press.

Happy, now? Is the GOP self-correcting? Or just out of options? Wake me when they're willing to admit when they're wrong. I could use the rest.