![]() IN LOVE WITH WAR! Entertainers laughed at Boehners mistake. Then, they made their own: // link // print // previous // next //
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 2009 Lucy wept: It has now been five days since Stupak-Pitts hit the scene. Do you know what it says? For ourselves, we dont have the slightest idea, but we have a good excuse. You see, we read the newspapers! For example, we read this op-ed piece in this mornings New York Times, by Kate Michelman and Frances Kissling. The pair are strongly opposed to Stupak-Pitts, which is perfectly fine by us. But go aheadread their column! From that piece, do you know what Stupak-Pitts says or does? Can you even clearly make out what they say it does? What does Michelman think the amendment would do? Frankly, we arent sure. But then, we also read Jeff Sharlets piece in Salon. Sharlet makes this claim about the facts, which are said to be plain:
The facts are plainbut Sharlets presentation isnt. Is Sharlet saying that Stupak-Pitts would effectively mean that private insurers will abandon coverage for abortions altogether? That no one would be able to buy insurance which included such coverage? Wed guess that this is what he means, although his statement isnt clear. Nor does Sharlet make any attempt to show why this claim would be accurate. After reading Sharlet, we also read this piece by Kate Harding, which Salon had twinned with Sharlets piece. Harding says that Stupak-Pitts would restrict access to abortion in unprecedented waysand that certainly may be true. But go ahead. See if Harding ever explains or tries to defend the statement. In what way would Stupak restrict access? How do we know it would do so? We read all the way to the end. Harding didnt say. Last night, on Hardball, Chris Matthew was leading his latest confused discussion. As the incoherent fumbling proceeded, Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, made a reference we found ironic. Keenan referred, several times, to the Stupak languagewithout ever making any attempt to quote that language. What is the language of Stupak-Pitts? Weve watched and read a lot of discussions. To this day, we havent seen any language from the amendment actually being quoted.
What does Stupak-Pitts say? If it passed into law, what would Stupak-Pitts do? Like you, we really have no ideaand we arent the only ones tearing our hair. On Olympus, Lucy watched the cable debates with Piltdown Man last night. Despite her famously small skull capacity, Lucy eventually wept. I really thought wed be doing better by now, the fossilized figure sadly said, shaking her small hairy head.
PART 4IN LOVE WITH WAR: At least two cheers for Nicholas Kristof, who writes today about the way our health care system can affect real people. He writes about one of the 45,000 Americans who die each year from lack of insurance. And he writes about her daughter:
This mother was 31 years of age. The daughter she left is 13. In a country where this happens so often, why doesnt it produce more concern? Why doesnt it produce an insistence on universal coverage? For one thing, some people dont, and never will, care. (Check Gail Collins latest piece, which enjoys some good solid fun about New Zealands health care.) Other explanations have been offered, by Paul Krugman for exampleexplanations which are specific to American culture. Its also true that Americas career liberal world has never done a very good job bringing this problem home to the public. But then, career liberals have failed even more flamboyantly when it comes to the issue of costswhen it comes to discussing the massive looting built into our health care spending. This looting should activate self-interest on behalf of the public. But career liberalsSerious People allsimply dont raise such crude points. Most voters dont know that theyre being looted. Serious People dont tell them. Sorry, crackers! Your career liberal world is in thrall to The Interests, in ways good liberals know to ignore. Beyond that, large segments of the liberal world mainly love the endless thrill of our culture war. Leading liberals have very good health care themselves; to be honest, they show few signs of giving a sh*t about the hapless rubes who dont. Quite often, they tend to simper and play the fool, as Olbermann did last Thursday night when it came to that GOP health plan (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 11/11/09). Could anyone play the fool in a more fulsome way than this big culture-nut didshrieking and wailing and pretending that Michele Bachmann had been inciting a hateful rebellion against the rule of law and order and possibly encouraging violence against the government? Bachmann is one of the biggest fools arounduntil we turn our own fools loose! Lets recall the setting. By last Thursday, the CBOs new analysis had made it clear that the long-delayed GOP health plan was just a big rolling joke. But Olbermann mentioned this problem in passing. Drawing from that days Republican rally, he preferred to clown about Bachmanns non-existent incitement to violence. After that, he clowned like this:
Boehner had made a silly mistakea silly mistake which was also completely irrelevant to any serious discussion. But clowns like Olbermann feed off silly irrelevance. In the next hour, his silly partner played the same silly card, helping us laugh at Dumb Boehner again. But uh-oh! Even as she ridiculed Boehner, she too made a silly mistake! You see, Rep. Todd Akin had forgotten to say indivisible when he led the pledge of allegiance at the Republican rally. We got to laugh at his silly mistake, and at Boehners mistake as well. But doggone it! In the process, Our Own Rhodes Scholar made her own silly blunder!
The Constitution doesnt have a preamble? Even as she wasted your time with the other tribes silly mistakes, she made a silly mistake of her own! To her credit, Maddow corrected herself the next night. Being myself constitutionally incapable of leaving well enough alone, she said, I then excitedly exclaimed, not that he wasnt reading from the preamble to the Constitution, but there wasnt a preamble to the Constitution at all, which, of course, is total nonsense and which Im very sorry to have said. Our silly mistake didnt count. Maddow had just been excited. Everyone makes silly mistakes, of course, which is why they arent worth wasting time on. Unless youre really an entertaineran entertainer whos also in love with a long, dumb, inane culture war. Supposedly, Maddow makes a million dollars per year. Reportedly, KO makes five. Presumably, each has excellent health care. Perhaps thats why they tend to behave the way top-shelf pseudo-liberals have always behaved. Each seems to love that dumb culture war, which brings us around to those signs at that rally. Lets review: By last Thursday, the CBO had made it clear that the GOP health plan was a big screaming joke. Meanwhile, Bachmann had staged a small, silly rally at the Capitol, to which a few benighted souls had brought a few sad, ridiculous signs. Lets seewhich item was more significant? On the one hand, a major partys health care plan was a big, ridiculous, screaming joke. On the other hand, a couple of dummies had a few stupid signs, which they had displayed at a rally. Within our chimp-run cable culture, its clear which matter gets top billing! But then, pseudo-liberals all over the culture screeched about those sad, stupid signs. Thats because pseudo-liberals, for the past fifty years, have loved a dumb culture war. We love the idea that were the smart onesalthough its clear that we arent. We love the idea that were the moral onesthat the other tribe spills with racists. And in part because we love this war, we have been wholly unable, in the past fifty years, to build a case for health care reform. Were the smart ones, we love to insistand yet, our latest plan for health reform is melting down into a joke. (We didnt see the abortion fight coming! How strange, since were so smart!) We live with a cosmically awful health systema system characterized by needless deaths and comical levels of looting. But despite our brilliance and our moral grandeur, we cant figure out how to make voters understand the need for large-scale reform. For fifty years, The Interests have spread their false messaging all around. (European health care is a disaster! They have to wait in lines!) Despite our own acknowledged brilliance, they have beaten us blue in the process. Guess what, losers? The public isnt going to move because some fool at a silly pep rally was holding a sad, stupid sign. The public isnt going to care if Boehner makes some silly mistakeright before Our Own Rhodes Scholar makes her own, that is. And the public will respond rather poorly to invidious, race-based culture wars waged by losers like Frank Rich. Could anything be dumber than insulting a northern-border, blue-trending congressional district which supported Obama by five points because too many of its voters are white? With telling them that, because theyre white, they ought to move to Utah? But then, Olbermann and his Pulitzer Hacks ran to the same foolish card last Thursday. Forget about that bogus health plan. Most people at the rally were white! (In fairness, we like and admire Clarence Page. Wed like to see him resist the long slow slide into this kind of self-defeating nonsense.) Terrifying, Olbermann said, looking at all the white faces. Can human beings get dumber? A great deal of pseudo-liberal politics has always been about culture war. It has been about the fairly ludicrous claim that We are smarter and better than They are. But wouldnt you know it? Because we love to mock average voters, we have little success in winning them over! Faced with people inclined to differ from us in some ways, we have no idea what to say or dohow to address their different impulses. Thanks to our powerful cultural arrogancethanks to our own overpowering dumbnesswe have no idea how to address their tendency toward different strokes. We have no clue about how to persuade. We mainly know how to lodge insults. Their limbic brains arent working right! Every one is a redneck racist! Result? The liberal world is like the apocryphal fellow who cant sell ice at the equator. Given the worlds most comically awful health system, we cant even convince average people that they should favor far-reaching reform. Given a comically bogus GOP plan, we go on the TV machine and pretend that Bachmann was inciting a hateful rebellion against the rule of law and order and possibly encouraging violence against the government. And as we fail, we keep insisting that they are the ones who are dumb. Were too dumb to know, or to discuss, why the moral argumentthe argument for universal coveragehas never quite worked well enough in this country. Were too dumb to see how helpful it would be to argue the case against looting. And by the way: Your leaders all have excellent health care! Could that explain their often clowning approach to this life-and-death issue? Last night, a guest confronted Ed Schultz with this problem (more tomorrow). To our ear, Schultz didnt know what to say. We love to say how smart we areas we keep getting our keisters kicked. In truth, you cant get dumber than Olbermann and Richor more profoundly immature. By the way, did you hear about Carrie Prejeans sex tape? Crackers! Thats entertainment!
About those signs: Do you realize how many foolish signsand foolish sentimentswere present at anti-war rallies during the Bush years? We used to refer to this sort of analysis as nut-pickinguntil we adopted the practice.
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