How To Make Enemies And Influence Nobody

by tristero

For many reasons, Maddow’s report on Bush’s first big gig out of office is painful to watch. First, and foremost, the worst president ever – the veritable poster child for the term “miserable failure” – is being touted as an inspiration for America’s businessmen and women. There’s something seriously, gut-wrenchingly horrible about that.

That said, I don’t think for a second that George W. Bush has disgraced the high office of president of the United States by “stooping” to the level of a motivational speaker. No. His failure to protect the country, his egregious foreign policy blunders, his enthusiastic embrace of torture, his corruption of the Department of Justice, and on and on and on and on: those were the actions Bush took that disgraced the office.

Unfortunately, as cringeworthy as the idea of Bush The Inspirer truly is, Maddow’s report is equally embarrassing. This is classism and elitism at its worst, sneering not only at Junior and the hucksters perpetrating this trash – who surely deserve our scorn – but also at the people who attend these kinds of events – who most certainly don’t.*

I like Rachel Maddow a lot, but this was not her finest moment. Perhaps the best way to explain my reaction is to say that the people attending this seminar are just people, like Maddow, filled with hopes and aspirations and worries and insecurities. Some are sent their by their companies, some pay their own way. Some are smarter than others, some are less successful than others. They are people who, whatever their faults deserve far, far better than George W. Bush to speak to them. They deserve to hear from someone like…well, like Rachel Maddow.

By sneering at the attendees, Maddow made an amateurish mistake: She bought into the conservative movement’s cynical efforts to erect a false dichotomy, pitting “us” – Middle America – against “them” – liberals like Maddow (and me). It would have been just as easy for her to have sidestepped it. And she should have. These people are being sold a thorough bill of goods, often forking over their own hard-earned cash, and for what? To hear a thoroughly spoiled and pampered patrician, that paragon of elitism, George W. Bush, run through his utterly phony Man o’ The People act one more time, that’s what. And meanwhile, he gets paid – for a lousy 45 minute talk – 3 to 4 times the amount of money the typical attendee probably makes in a year.

But behaving the way she did, Maddow distanced herself from these ordinary people and made it all that easier for Bush and friends to bamboozle folks into thinking that they – not liberals – are the only ones on their side .

Maddow’s smarter than this.

***

*For those amongst you who will assuredly point out that Maddow never made her contempt for them explicit, calling the attendees “losers” or whatever, her contempt, as I perceived it, was most clearly revealed in her tone of voice, especially as she paid her guest the backhanded compliment of saying he could sell Texas without the help of that motivational seminar. Perhaps you didn’t hear her the way I did, but I’m not one to react quickly to this kind of classism. If I took Maddow’s attitude that way, I’m pretty darn sure a lot of other folks did as well.