24 search results for "Wellstone funeral"

On Fits And Starts

by digby

The Politico has written a somewhat unenlightening article about Alan Grayson’s floor speech, but I can’t help but be a little bit tickled by a quote of his, which is also used in the headline of the piece. He said:

“We cannot run this institution on the basis of Republican hissy fits.

The title is “The pros and cons of hissy fits.”

I’m please by this because I think I may be the one who coined that particular phrase, or at the very least popularized it. In any case, I have characterized these phony Republican outrage fests that way for many years on this blog and wrote a piece explaining it called “the Art of the Hissy Fit” for Campaign for America’s Future blog, (reprinted here by Alternet)

The Art of the Hissy Fit

By Digby , TomPaine.com
Posted on October 25, 2007, Printed on October 1, 2009

I first noticed the right’s successful use of phony sanctimony and faux outrage back in the 90’s when well-known conservative players like Gingrich and Livingston pretended to be offended at the president’s extramarital affair and were repeatedly and tiresomely “upset” about fund-raising practices they all practiced themselves. The idea of these powerful and corrupt adulterers being personally upset by White House coffees and naughty sexual behavior was laughable.

But they did it, oh how they did it, and it often succeeded in changing the dialogue and titillating the media into a frenzy of breathless tabloid coverage.

In fact, they became so good at the tactic that they now rely on it as their first choice to control the political dialogue when it becomes uncomfortable and put the Democrats on the defensive whenever they are winning the day. Perhaps the best example during the Bush years would be the completely cynical and over-the-top reaction to Senator Paul Wellstone’s memorial rally in 2002 in the last couple of weeks leading up to the election.

With the exception of the bizarre Jesse Ventura, those in attendance, including the Republicans, were non-plussed by the nature of the event at the time. It was not, as the chatterers insisted, a funeral, but rather more like an Irish wake for Wellstone supporters — a celebration of Wellstone’s life, which included, naturally, politics. (He died campaigning, after all.) But Vin Weber, one of the Republican party’s most sophisticated operatives, immediately saw the opportunity for a faux outrage fest that was more successful than even he could have ever dreamed.

By the time they were through, the Democrats were prostrating themselves at the feet of anyone who would listen, begging for forgiveness for something they didn’t do, just to stop the shrieking. The Republicans could barely keep the smirks off their faces as they sternly lectured the Democrats on how to properly honor the dead — the same Republicans who had relentlessly tortured poor Vince Foster’s family for years.

It’s an excellent technique and one they continue to employ with great success, most recently with the entirely fake Move-On and Pete Stark “controversies.” (The Democrats try their own versions but rarely achieve the kind of full blown hissy fit the Republicans can conjure with a mere blast fax to Drudge and their talk radio minions.)

But it’s about more than simple political distraction or savvy public relations. It’s actually a very well developed form of social control called Ritual Defamation (or Ritual Humiliation) as this well trafficked internet article defines it:

Defamation is the destruction or attempted destruction of the reputation, status, character or standing in the community of a person or group of persons by unfair, wrongful, or malicious speech or publication. For the purposes of this essay, the central element is defamation in retaliation for the real or imagined attitudes, opinions or beliefs of the victim, with the intention of silencing or neutralizing his or her influence, and/or making an example of them so as to discourage similar independence and “insensitivity” or non-observance of taboos. It is different in nature and degree from simple criticism or disagreement in that it is aggressive, organized and skillfully applied, often by an organization or representative of a special interest group, and in that it consists of several characteristic elements.

The article goes on to lay out several defining characteristics of ritual defamation such as “the method of attack in a ritual defamation is to assail the character of the victim, and never to offer more than a perfunctory challenge to the particular attitudes, opinions or beliefs expressed or implied. Character assassination is its primary tool.” Perhaps its most intriguing insight is this:

The power of ritual defamation lies entirely in its capacity to intimidate and terrorize. It embraces some elements of primitive superstitious belief, as in a “curse” or “hex.” It plays into the subconscious fear most people have of being abandoned or rejected by the tribe or by society and being cut off from social and psychological support systems.

In a political context this translates to a fear by liberal politicians that they will be rejected by the American people — and a subconscious dulling of passion and inspiration in the mistaken belief that they can spare themselves further humiliation if only they control their rhetoric. The social order these fearsome conservative rituals pretend to “protect,” however, are not those of the nation at large, but rather the conservative political establishment which is perhaps best exemplified by this famous article about how Washington perceived the Lewinsky scandal. The “scandal” is moved into the national conversation through the political media which has its own uses for such entertaining spectacles and expends a great deal of energy promoting these shaming exercises for commercial purposes.

The political cost to progressives and liberals for their inability to properly deal with this tactic is greater than they realize. Just as Newt Gingrich was not truly offended by Bill Clinton’s behavior (which mirrored his own) neither were conservative congressmen and Rush Limbaugh truly upset by the Move On ad — and everyone knew it, which was the point. It is a potent demonstration of pure power to force others to insincerely condemn or apologize for something, particularly when the person who is forcing it is also insincerely outraged. For a political party that suffers from a reputation for weakness, it is extremely damaging to be so publicly cowed over and over again. It separates them from their most ardent supporters and makes them appear guilty and unprincipled to the public at large.

Ritual defamation and humiliation are designed to make the group feel contempt for the victim and over time it’s extremely hard to resist feeling it when the victims fail to stand up for themselves.

There is the possibility that the Republicans will overplay this particular gambit. Their exposure over the past few years for incompetence, immorality and corruption, both personal and institutional, makes them extremely imperfect messengers for sanctimony, faux or otherwise. But they are still effectively wielding the flag, (or at least the Democratic congress is allowing them to) and until liberals and progressives find a way to thwart this successful tactic, it will continue. At this point the conservatives have little else.

What do you suppose today’s enforcers of proper decorum would say to this?

Americans too often teach their children to despise those who hold unpopular opinions. We teach them to regard as traitors, and hold in aversion and contempt, such as do not shout with the crowd, and so here in our democracy we are cheering a thing which of all things is most foreign to it and out of place – the delivery of our political conscience into somebody else’s keeping. This is patriotism on the Russian plan. — Mark Twain

At the time I wrote it, I had little hope that we would ever be able to end this silly practice because the Democrats both capitulated to the GOP’s smug sanctimonious caterwauling and refused to turn the practice back on them. But I think Grayson may have shown the way. It takes guts and it takes being willing to have Gloria “Cokie” Borger tut-tut you like you are an errant child, but if you are willing to go right at them and then refuse to back down, the Republican propensity to call for the smelling salts whenever the Democrats do the same things the Republicans do might just die out. It’s the first sign I’ve seen that it might happen.

I couldn’t be prouder that Alan Grayson used the term, which I think is appropriately disdainful of the practice. If he is showing Democrats how to beat back these destructive faux outrage fests, he will have done a service that is as significant as anything else they’ve done:

Nancy Pelosi is shrugging off GOP calls for a mea culpa from Alan “they want you to die quickly’ Grayson.

“We have to have a debate that is not distracted from… Apparently Republicans are holding Democrats to a higher level than they are holding their own members,” she said, referring to floor comments by some Republicans who have said Democratic health care reforms would lead to higher deaths among seniors.

“There’s no more reason for Mr. Grayson to apologize… If anybody’s going to apologize everybody should apologize,” Pelosi said at her weekly press conference.

If you haven’t thanked him yet, you can click the thermometer above and send him a little token of your gratitude. As you can see, those tokens are adding up.

Update: To be clear, I didn’t mean to suggest that I invested the actual phrase “hissy fit.” Obviously, I didn’t. I know many of you think I am mentally deficient bordering on catatonically dumb, but really, I’m not quite that vacant.

My point was that I thought I had coined the phrase for the particular form of faux outrage and phony indignation that’s been routinely practiced by the Republican Party of the past few years, in which they pretend to be upset by blowjobs, insults to military commanders etc., all things theyroutinely practice themselves. It’s also called political hypocrisy, but has a very specific character and forms in a very specific way.

When I use the phrase “Republican Hissy Fit” I’m referring to a particular political tactic that was not invented by them, to be sure, but was perfected during the past couple of decades. I don’t think I’d ever heard that phrase used before in that context, but if there are references to “republican hissy fits” to describe this tactic that pre-dates the blogosphere I’m happy to apologize for taking credit for populoarizing it.

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All The Way To The End

by digby

Ted Kennedy “politicized” his own funeral, in his own words, written in a letter to the Pope and read by Cardinal McCarrick at Arlington National Cemetery:

I want you to know, your Holiness, that in my nearly 50 years of elective office I have done my best to champion the rights of the poor and open doors of economic opportunity. I’ve worked to welcome the immigrant, to fight discrimination and expand access to health care and education. I’ve opposed the death penalty and fought to end war. Those are the issues that have motivated me and have been the focus of my work as a United States Senator.

I also want you to know that even though I am ill, I am committed to do everything I can to get access to health care for everyone in my country. This has been the political cause of my life. I believe in a conscience protection for Catholics in the health field and will continue to advocate for it as my colleagues in the Senate and I work to develop an overall national policy that guarantees health care for everyone.

Go ahead. Wellstone that, wingnuts.

Update: Ed Rollins just said that Senator Kennedy got the last word.

Let’s hope so.

RIP

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Remedial Hissy

by digby

Uhm, everyone recognizes that this Pelosi flap is a manufactured hissy fit, right? The point is to make the whole discussion of torture politically radioactive for Democrats in the same way that questioning the surge became radioactive after Betrayus. It’s a classic political kabuki designed to twist the Democrats into pretzels.

Here’s a piece wrote for The Big Con sometime back on the subject. It’s a testimony to the continuing success of the tactic that even in their lowest moments, the Republicans can still work up a good hissy — and that the villagers and the Democrats still buy it. Even now:

I first noticed the right’s successful use of phony sanctimony and faux outrage back in the 90’s when well-known conservative players like Gingrich and Livingston pretended to be offended at the president’s extramarital affair and were repeatedly and tiresomely “upset” about fund-raising practices they all practiced themselves. The idea of these powerful and corrupt adulterers being personally upset by White House coffees and naughty sexual behavior was laughable.But they did it, oh how they did it, and it often succeeded in changing the dialogue and titillating the media into a frenzy of breathless tabloid coverage.In fact, they became so good at the tactic that they now rely on it as their first choice to control the political dialogue when it becomes uncomfortable and put the Democrats on the defensive whenever they are winning the day. Perhaps the best example during the Bush years would be the completely cynical and over-the-top reaction to Senator Paul Wellstone’s memorial rally in 2002 in the last couple of weeks leading up to the election.With the exception of the bizarre Jesse Ventura, those in attendance, including the Republicans, were non-plussed by the nature of the event at the time. It was not, as the chatterers insisted, a funeral, but rather more like an Irish wake for Wellstone supporters — a celebration of Wellstone’s life, which included, naturally, politics. (He died campaigning, after all.) But Vin Weber, one of the Republican party’s most sophisticated operatives, immediately saw the opportunity for a faux outrage fest that was more successful than even he could have ever dreamed.By the time they were through, the Democrats were prostrating themselves at the feet of anyone who would listen, begging for forgiveness for something they didn’t do, just to stop the shrieking. The Republicans could barely keep the smirks off their faces as they sternly lectured the Democrats on how to properly honor the dead — the same Republicans who had relentlessly tortured poor Vince Foster’s family for years.It’s an excellent technique and one they continue to employ with great success, most recently with the entirely fake Move-On and Pete Stark “controversies.” (The Democrats try their own versions but rarely achieve the kind of full blown hissy fit the Republicans can conjure with a mere blast fax to Drudge and their talk radio minions.)But it’s about more than simple political distraction or savvy public relations. It’s actually a very well developed form of social control called Ritual Defamation (or Ritual Humiliation) as this well trafficked internet article defines it:

Defamation is the destruction or attempted destruction of the reputation, status, character or standing in the community of a person or group of persons by unfair, wrongful, or malicious speech or publication. For the purposes of this essay, the central element is defamation in retaliation for the real or imagined attitudes, opinions or beliefs of the victim, with the intention of silencing or neutralizing his or her influence, and/or making an example of them so as to discourage similar independence and “insensitivity” or non-observance of taboos. It is different in nature and degree from simple criticism or disagreement in that it is aggressive, organized and skillfully applied, often by an organization or representative of a special interest group, and in that it consists of several characteristic elements.

The article goes on to lay out several defining characteristics of ritual defamation such as “the method of attack in a ritual defamation is to assail the character of the victim, and never to offer more than a perfunctory challenge to the particular attitudes, opinions or beliefs expressed or implied. Character assassination is its primary tool.” Perhaps its most intriguing insight is this:

The power of ritual defamation lies entirely in its capacity to intimidate and terrorize. It embraces some elements of primitive superstitious belief, as in a “curse” or “hex.” It plays into the subconscious fear most people have of being abandoned or rejected by the tribe or by society and being cut off from social and psychological support systems.

In a political context this translates to a fear by liberal politicians that they will be rejected by the American people — and a subconscious dulling of passion and inspiration in the mistaken belief that they can spare themselves further humiliation if only they control their rhetoric. The social order these fearsome conservative rituals pretend to “protect,” however, are not those of the nation at large, but rather the conservative political establishment which is perhaps best exemplified by this famous article about how Washington perceived the Lewinsky scandal. The “scandal” is moved into the national conversation through the political media which has its own uses for such entertaining spectacles and expends a great deal of energy promoting these shaming exercises for commercial purposes.The political cost to progressives and liberals for their inability to properly deal with this tactic is greater than they realize. Just as Newt Gingrich was not truly offended by Bill Clinton’s behavior (which mirrored his own) neither were conservative congressmen and Rush Limbaugh truly upset by the Move On ad — and everyone knew it, which was the point. It is a potent demonstration of pure power to force others to insincerely condemn or apologize for something, particularly when the person who is forcing it is also insincerely outraged. For a political party that suffers from a reputation for weakness, it is extremely damaging to be so publicly cowed over and over again. It separates them from their most ardent supporters and makes them appear guilty and unprincipled to the public at large.Ritual defamation and humiliation are designed to make the group feel contempt for the victim and over time it’s extremely hard to resist feeling it when the victims fail to stand up for themselves.There is the possibility that the Republicans will overplay this particular gambit. Their exposure over the past few years for incompetence, immorality and corruption, both personal and institutional, makes them extremely imperfect messengers for sanctimony, faux or otherwise. But they are still effectively wielding the flag, (or at least the Democratic congress is allowing them to) and until liberals and progressives find a way to thwart this successful tactic, it will continue. At this point the conservatives have little else.What do you suppose today’s enforcers of proper decorum would say to this?

Americans too often teach their children to despise those who hold unpopular opinions. We teach them to regard as traitors, and hold in aversion and contempt, such as do not shout with the crowd, and so here in our democracy we are cheering a thing which of all things is most foreign to it and out of place – the delivery of our political conscience into somebody else’s keeping. This is patriotism on the Russian plan. — Mark Twain

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Still waiting for an apology…

I just want to say this before everybody moves on to bigger and better things and forgets Old Trent and all the hoopla around the sudden “revelation” that he had been a racist all of his life.

I was very moved by Peggy Noonan who seemed so puzzled and disturbed by Lott’s unfortunate statement. She wrote:

…when Strom Thurmond ran for president in 1948 he ran explicitly as a segregationist who would attempt to stop the civil rights revolution. He never, ever should have been elected president of the United States. It is truly weird for a person who lives in our world, in the modern world, to say otherwise

She goes on to tell a little story about a Democrat who fought for civil rights back in the 60’s. She feels his pain.

It is very painful, our racial past. We made blacks and whites and all other colors equal in this country at great cost. A lot of feelings got hurt; a lot of people got hurt; a lot of people died. To pick only one of the millions of examples: Harold Ickes, the political operative who worked for Bill Clinton and now works for Hillary Clinton. I can’t imagine agreeing on too many political issues with Mr. Ickes, but back in the ’60s he helped organize the Freedom Riders to desegregate the South. In Louisiana he got into a fight with some local bad guys. He was beaten so badly that he lost a kidney. He’s still walking around with only one kidney. He’s just a middle-aged white lawyer who’d pass you by on the street in a shirt and a tie, but in this respect, in terms of what he did 40 years ago, he is a hero. There were a lot of heroes in those days. It was all wrenching, but in the end we did the right thing

(Did we, now.)

In a later column she writes

But it would be best for the Republican Party–and the country–if Republican senators were utterly brutal and moved to fire him before then. This would be a Christmas present to the country: Jim Crow’s long, gasping death is finally over. If they do not move before Jan. 6 they certainly must fire him as leader on that date.

She goes on:

“… we believe completely in our hearts and minds that all races are equal and no one should be judged by the color of his skin. And then some guy comes along and speaks the old code of yesteryear and seems to reinforce the idea that those who hold conservative positions are really, at heart, racist. We are indignant, and we have been for a long time

In the Lott scandal our indignation reached critical mass. A lot of conservatives, many of them 50 and under, decided enough is enough, let’s end this, let a new party be born. And by the way, in the particular case of Trent Lott, it didn’t start yesterday. Stanley Crouch just surprised me by sending me a column he wrote almost four years ago for the New York Daily News. It was about a Lott appearance before the Council of Conservative Citizens, a white-supremacist group. I said it was springtime and it’s time to throw out the garbage, and Mr. Lott should go.

How inspiring. But I’m a little bit confused about one little thing and I sure wish Peggy would take the time to explain it. If Peggy felt so strongly about this topic, if she’s been indignant for a long time, if Trent Lott represented the last, gasping breath of Jim Crow, then I would really like to know where in the hell she got off tendentiously lecturing Democrats like her hero Harold Ickes about how they had “lost their souls” because a few people in a crowd of 20,000 booed this despicable racist bastard at a tribute for a guy whose entire life was about social justice?

Why did she say that booing a known racial bigot at a memorial tribute for the man who was Jesse Jackson’s Minnesota campaign manager in 1988, a man who in 1997 retraced Bobby Kennedy’s 1967 national poverty tour (which started in Mississippi) was “just envy and revenge and resentment?”

Why does she demand that the GOP leadership be “utterly brutal” and fire Lott for his racist statements, which she admits had been out there for at least 4 years, (and we all know his sentiments haven’t exactly been a secret for nigh on to 35 years now, don’t we Peggy?) when just 6 weeks earlier she had the ineffable chutzpah to write the following:

Imagine Trent Lott dies, and there’s a big memorial back home in Mississippi in some big auditorium. Half the Senate shows up to show respect: Trent was a nice guy. But they show up for another reason too: to show solidarity with democracy. To show we’re all Americans together, and we respect the ballot together, and we are big enough to feel regard and respect across party lines.

[…]

When you’re in politics not to live life but avoid it, you become especially susceptible to a kind of polar thinking. You become convinced you’re with the good team and the good people over here. You become convinced anyone who doesn’t want the same policies you want must be bad. After all, you’re good, so if they disagree they must be bad. When you’re polar like that you dehumanize the people on the other side. And when you dehumanize them–well, then you wind up booing them at a funeral..

Yeah, that’s true. Trent Lott was booed at the funeral because some of the grieving Democrats there “became convinced” that Lott’s known support for things like Thurmond’s 1948 campaign platform was “bad.” They were downright “polar” about it. They “dehumanized” poor old Trent and wound up booing him.

But, just 6 weeks later, without even a trace of embarrassment, Peggy is indignant that Lott is even associated with the Republican Party.

Seriously, I just hope she can live with herself for turning the pain and anguish in the Wellstone family into a cheap, political talking point. I hope she will find it in herself to examine how she could use a totally righteous display of disgust at a man like Trent Lott, who stood for everything that Paul Wellstone fought against in his life, into a campaign strategy that deigned to lecture Democrats about the “goodness” of the man she demanded the leadership of her party “brutally” fire less than 2 months later.

Here’s some advice for Peggy, in her own words:

…you need to stop, sit down, think, question yourself, look at your actions and ponder what you’ve become. And how somehow love for your side in the fight became hatred for the other.

Let me be very candidly specific. …You need to get a good psychologist and a good holy man or woman, a priest or rabbi or minister–or how about all three–and figure out why you’re turning everything in your life into politics. Because I have to tell you what I know: Politics is the biggest, easiest way in all of America to avoid looking at yourself, and who you are, and what fence needs fixing on your own homestead.