![]() SURPRISED ALL OVER AGAIN! Before we call the other tribe names, lets see how our own tribe has functioned: // link // print // previous // next //
TUESDAY, AUGUST 11, 2009 The New York Times discusses the foreign experience: Omigod! It finally happened! On Monday morning, the New York Times finally got around to discussing the foreign experience! Readers finally got to learn how health care works in one of the countries which has achieved full coverage, despite spending much less per person than the United States does:
Wow! Louise Clark experienced the perks of national health care firsthand. Sadly, that paragraph represents the Times full discussion of this much-disappeared topic. Remember, we live in North Korea now! North Koreans arent allowed to learn about foreign countries. So too with us rubes in this, our most-managed public discussion. Groan. That paragraph comes from an op-ed column by the hapless Judith Warner. (Warners work is usually kept on-line. This column got the hard-copy treatment.) Warner devoted one paragraph to the foreign experiencethe foreign experience in the 1980s, no less. What was her columns principal focus? Darlings! Louise Caire Clark is the actress from the famous Harry and Louise TV ads. Warner wanted to know how Clarks life has changed because she appeared in those ads! We strongly advise you to read that column. You will be reading the fatuous work of a sadly typical New York Times columnist. She helps you see the fatuous culture of the New York Times itself. For unknown reasons, all female columnists at the Times are required to sillily simper. This peculiar practice represents an astonishing cultural throwback.
The Times is our most important newspaperbut were in North Korea now. We rubes know almost nothing about the foreign experience. In our simpering, corporate-ruled culture, such knowledge just isnt allowed. PART 2SURPRISED ALL OVER AGAIN: It would be hard to overstate the stupidity of Americas discourse. At present, liberals are angry about Sarah Palins statement concerning Obamas death panel. But then, any sane person should be angry; Palins statement was monumentally stupid, and inexcusably vile. Do we still believe in the founding ideals of the western world itself? A nation which tolerates stupidity this vast is one which has ceased to exist:
Any nation as stupid as that has largely ceased to exist. So too for a nation prepared to accept the cosmic stupidity of Rush Limbaughs musings about Obamas new health care logo. More specifically, Limbaugh has mused about the startling resemblance between the new Obama logo and the Nazi swastika symbol. They accuse of us being Nazis, and Obama's got a healthcare logo that's right out of Adolf Hitler's playbook, Limbaugh recently observed. A nation which tolerates that degree of stupidity is a nation which barely exists. And yet, your nation has long accepted that degree of public stupidity. Liberals rail against this culture todaybut our leaders have helped create it. Limbaugh has been playing the public for fools for a very long time now. (Hillary Clinton helped murder Vince Foster!) Many of his listeners have no idea that theyre being treated like fools when they swallow his varied pronouncements. In part, they dont know that because liberal leaders have never much tried to inform them. And by the way: Before we liberals get too full of ourselves, might we note an unfortunate fact? Palin and Limbaugh are so far beyond the pale that the pale cant be seen from where they reside. But then, we liberals can be pretty dumb when it comes to this decades-old syndrome ourselves! This syndrome has been in place for a very long time. But our side seems surprised by the news. Consider an e-mail Steve Benen posted last Saturday. Steves reply to the e-mail is well worth considering. But we were struck by the e-mail itselfand by Steves initial reply:
Well, I'm not sure I can, Steve repliedthough he offered a post which is worth reading. For ourselves, we were struck by the question itself. After all, our public discourse has been routinely driven by crazy claims for several decades now. Last week, we listed some of those crazy claims, dating back to the widely-promoted, widely-believed claim that the Clintons were serial murderers. (This crackpot claim enjoyed tremendous currency all through the 1990s. See THE DAILY HOWLER, 8/5/09.) Steve himself posted our list of crazy anti-Clinton claims (just click here). Those lunatic claimsfrom the 1990sare a key part of our nations recent history. Lets say it again: For the past two decades, crazy claims about Big Dem Pols have constantly roiled our discourse. Similarly, crazy claims about public policy have defined large areas of public discussion. This is especially true for people who listen to pseudo-conservative talk radioand tens of millions of voters do. If we lower tax rates, well get higher revenues! Generations of conservatives have heard such silly policy claims pimped and peddled all over talk radio. But: Can you name the liberal journal, or the liberal leader, who has ever made the slightest attempt to respond to either type of claim? Who has tried to create an actual framework for a vibrant Dem Party/liberal response? Who tried to insist that mainstream media treat the promulgation of such nonsense as news? (In the case of liberal leaders, we can name a few who pushed back to some extent. Liberal journals? None.) This lunacy has been going on for at least twenty years. Steves e-mailer is still surprised by this fact. And Steve cant quite explain it either. WHAT ARE THEY SO MAD ABOUT? was the headline on Steves (worthwhile) post. I don't understand why the wingnuts are so angry, Steves e-mailer said. Incomparably, we posted this reply:
Translating: Citizens have believed the things they hear from Rush and Sean (and the like) for decades. Yet on our side, we still seem surprised by this fact! We have formulated no real attempt to push back against these public idiotsto warn those citizens that theyre being played by these big stupid hacks. Instead, we tend to call those citizens names. Then, we wonder why they wont accept our own views about such matters! Conservatives will be better off if reform becomes law, the e-mailer saidthus stating his own view of this highly complex matter. He then wondered why the wing-nuts refuse to accept his wisdom! In part, the answer is fairly obvious: By and large, people dont take advice from other people who keep calling them names. But this has been the dominant liberal approach to this phenomenon for the past twenty years. No, there are no death panels in that House bill. Yes, you have to be fairly gullible to believe such a thing. But we humans are very gulliblepropaganda notwithstanding, we really arent very smartand we tend to listen to other people who arent calling us names. We liberals have been fairly gullible toofor example, in all the bad-faith weve agreed to swallow from our own leaders during these decades. They have played us for fools, all through this period. Perhaps if we can bring ourselves to see that awkward point, we will develop a bit of compassiondare we say empathy? for rubes on the other side. We might even grasp a key point: Its one thing to go after Palin and Limbaugh. Its different to name-call the millions of voters who get fooled by these famous old types. Sorry. We human beings just arent very smart. Our own surprised side keeps proving this point. Is our side a bit like theirs? TomorrowPart 3: We see racists. Summer school/make-up session: Lets try again: The phenomenon being acted out this week has been part of our history forever. In 1964, Richard Hofstadter discussed the phenomenon in a very famous essay. Might we perhaps spell it out more clearly, so even our own side might understand? Heres how the professor began his famous piecein the month Lyndon Johnson got elected:
Thats the start of a very famous essay. It was published in 1964. Today, though, our own side is still surprised and bollixed by the patterns described in this piecepatterns which have been expanded by the rise of certain technologies and by the rise of the cultural permissiveness which now allows visible public idiots to become honored figures in media. (First we let Imus and Howard Stern in. Then, we got Limbaugh and Hannity. By the way: Our Own Frank Rich thought Imus was just soooo smart. Is Rich a wing-nut too?)
That famous essay is forty-five years old. Even at the time he wrote it, Hofstadter said the style of mind in question was far from new. Before we trash others for their stupidity, might we note the cluelessness of our own side as we announce how surprised we are by this long-standing phenomenon? By this phenomenonwhich we have done almost nothing to address?
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