Talking About Fat Cats Is Boring
by digby
Today’s “Talkback Question” on CNN is about “class warfare.” Get a load of how the Village crier, Carol Costello, sets it up:
Carol Costello: If you listen to our politicians this week, you might think America is at war. Not in Iraq, Afghanistan or Libya, but right here at home in a kind of class warfare. [Excerpts of speeches by Obama, Orrin Hatch.]
From Republican Paul Ryan, Mr Obama’s speech was the same old partisan politics:
Ryan: “When the Commander in Chief sort of brings himself down to the level of the partisan mosh pit, it makes it more difficult to bring that kind of leadership.”
Costello: groan It’s deja vu all over again. Helloooo! 2008 anyone??? Will we see Joe the Plumber and President Obama calling Wall Street executives “fat cats” again?
At his inauguration Mr Obama urged both parties to rise above partisan politics. Now, says independent political analyst Jon Avlon, Mr Obama’s speech opened him up to accusations of class warfare on the campaign trail going into 2012!
Wall Street vs main Street. As long as politicians keep reinforcing it, we will never get out of that partisan mosh pit.
So, talkback question today: Is class warfare the right political fight?
Well of course not Carol! It’s the partisan mosh pit! President Obama promised he would bring everyone together and now he’s breaking that promise so it’s all his fault! Besides, all that talk about “fat cats” is soooo 2008. (Hellooooo! booooring!)
This should be a really fun campaign if the Village openly buys into the idea that any defense of the social compact amounts to class warfare. But why wouldn’t that be so — TV announcers are among the highest paid people in the country. The last thing they want to talk about is some dull tale of a bunch of old losers and their health problems. Let’s face it, this story of people being tossed out of their homes and Wall Street billionaires committing fraud and getting away with it and all this nonsense about the rich swallowing more and more of the nation’s wealth for themselves is tiresome and old hat. We’ve heard it all before, ok, so let’s move on shall we?
The new, exciting story is about how we have to slash the deficit as quickly as humanly possible by cutting spending and cutting taxes because it is the single greatest threat to America since the founding of the nation (or at least since terrorism got boring — the last greatest threat since the founding of the nation.)And folks, everyone knows we won’t get there by blaming our most productive citizens. They need to create some low paying jobs for us and taunting them about their selfishness will only make them leave New York and Washington DC and move to Beijing or Calcutta and create them there. We’re hanging on to our billionaires by our fingernails and if we aren’t careful we won’t have any.
This is the storyline for 2012. Get it straight. We’re in “sacrifice” mode. And any of you who thought that Americans had already sacrificed quite enough of their futures already what with the ongoing high unemployment, health care crisis and foreclosures, think again. You don’t know the meaning of the word. “Sacrifice” means paying more and getting less for the rest of your lives so that our productive overlords can make ever more money and employ more servants. If you object to that you are committing class warfare. Worse than that, you are boring the wealthy media celebrities, and that’s simply unforgivable.
.