Matt Yglesias and Atrios both take issue with Marshall Wittman’s comparison of Move-on to Tony Benn, british lefty leader of the 70’s and 80’s. Yglesias ably proves that there is very little actual policy difference between Move-on and the DLC but he gives short shrift to what I think are the underlying reasons for the comparison — style and temperament. Benn wouldn’t sit down and shut up and it drove the other Labour leaders insane as they were trying to modernize their image and transition from mild market socialism to savvy free marketers. They didn’t like the resistence and felt it undermined their goals. In those days it seemed important that the left shed its radical image.
When the Labourites were trying to change the party image 20 or 30 years ago, the Tories were, by contrast, a group of prudent yet forward thinking conservatives who had long believed that free enterprise was being stifled by outdated socialist schemes. And the economy was sick and seemed to prove their point. After the worldwide youth movement of the 1960’s reached its apotheosis, it sounded quite good to have some “grown-ups in charge.” That was the environment in which Michael Foot asked Benn to stop with the rabble rousing. We underwent much the same thing here, a little bit later, which resulted in Bill Clinton being nominated and running as a centrist in 1992. Liberals everywhere were redefining themselves in the face of a conservative backlash of one degree or another.
But, that was then and this is now. We are no longer in a period in which liberalism must tone down its radicals and burnish its management credentials. If anything, we must prove that we even exist and beyond that, that we stand for something. Even the liberal eliminationist mantra on the right has begun to sound stale and decrepit — the evil strawman they’ve created is as lackluster and dull as we are. We are in danger of simply fading away if we do not pour some some blood and nerve into our politics.
Furthermore, the consensus style of politics that the DLC depends upon to deliver its centrist vision simply is not possible in this political environment. The right has become radical and uncompromising, each of its factions growing more and more demanding. There is no middle in American politics today, as much as we might wish it to be so — and it’s not because of positions on the issues, it’s because of the zero sum politics the Republicans are playing. In order to provide some ballast, we simply must have some weight on the liberal side of our arguments or they will carry us all further to the right than even the DLC can live with. That’s where Move-on and Michael Moore and the left blogosphere come in.
This is not the kind of politics I would prefer. It would be nice if we could have some civility and comity for awhile; this is exhausting and mostly unproductive. And people in hell want ice-water. It is what it is and if there’s one thing we should have learned over the past 15 years it’s that being conciliatory with the radical Republicans and allowing them to take us further and further right is a recipe for losing. We’ve lost it all for the moment and we are barely hanging on to the possibility of getting a piece of it back.
Ralph Reed, Christian choirboy and corrupt lobbyist used to exhort new College Republican recruits back in the early 80’s repeat the famous “Patton” speech only substituting the words Democrats for Nazis. “The Democrats are the enemy!” Wade into them! Spill their blood! Shoot them in the belly!”
That is what the Republicans have been doing for more than 20 years now. These are the times in which we live, unfortunately. We didn’t create this environment, but we cannot ignore it and pretend that we are back in the Truman administration. And, even then let’s not forget that the anti-communists of that era are the granfathers of today’s liberal haters. We should have learned.
Apparently, that execratory slice of gelatinous offal, Ann Coulter, spews her Nazi vomit with police protection these days. And when some wiseacre on campus asks whether her views on gay marriage apply to men who only fuck their wives in the ass, he’s manhandled and arrested.
And, as we know, they are strip-searching 50-something female schoolteachers who protest Bush now, too.
Oh. And by the way, today is the 35th anniversary of Kent State.
He proposed that the system be made solvent by reducing benefits on a sliding scale, according to income. This utterly responsible and progressive proposition was greeted by phony bleats of outrage from leading Democrats, who proved once again that they are more interested in the demagogic exploitation of the issue than they are in the impact of baby boom retirement on their grandchildren
Joe Klein, as I have written before, is invested in the idea that private accounts are one of those issues he and Bill Clinton cooked up when they were holed up in a bull session in the late 80’s together, creating the fabulous image of what the handsome and virile New Democrat would be like. Sadly when he looked at Clinton, he seems to have thought he was looking at himself.
I have long held that the biggest problem for Democrats is not the so-called “Vichy Congressman,” who at least has to answer to consitutents and has pressures that are not always apparent, but the goddmaned liberal punditocrisy that consistently writes trash like the quote above. Why, in Gods’ name, does any established mainstream writer have to brown nose and genuflect to the degree these liberal beltway pundits do? Common street whores don’t sell themselves so completely and maintain at least a modicum of pride.
This is the public image of liberalism, with its mealy-mouthed, enabling, sycophantic forelock tugging and constant expressions of obeisance to a GOP esatablishment that holds them in contempt. These are what the country thinks liberals are and why so many hate us so much. They think that, like Richard Cohen and Joe Klein, liberals are all a bunch of cowardly little ass kissers who don’t believe in anything, don’t fight for anything and don’t care about anything. These are the people who are killing us.
Update: And that goes for Democratic consultants, who as Atrios points out, are still partying like it’s 1994. The New Dems are now old. I know this because I am one. All the lefties put their marxist toys away a long time and nobody’s arguing anymore about whether we should have “free” markets. What we are arguing about is whether we should all be whores for big business, slaves to the theocrats, or some lukewarm version of both. Most of us learned from the past few losing elections that we cannot win by appealing to the middle with warmed over DLC talking points. It may have been fresh back in 1992, but today it has all the spontaneity of a Seinfeld re-run. The dream is over boys.
I would imagine that most people have heard of Walter Winchell, the McCarthyite radio commentator and newspaper columnist. Fewer of you have probably heard of another influential McCarthyite radio commentator and newspaper columnist of the period, Fulton Lewis Jr. But, you should probably read up on him a little bit because it’s actually going to be important in your own life right here and now:
That he was considered a controversial commentator is mostly reflected in his strong conservative stances in a time of increasing liberalism. Throughout the Roosevelt/Truman administrations, Lewis continued to defend his beliefs. In pre-war America Lewis supported and encouraged the America First stance of Charles A. Lindbergh, which espoused that America spend its money and resources on building up our own defenses and stay out of the European conflict. Lindbergh was an admirer of the military capability of National Socialist Germany.
As the medium of radio waned during the rise of television in the late forties and early fifties, Lewis’ appearance on the small screen was simply not good television. He appeared too much out of place and so he continued on radio. It was in the fifites that Lewis’ star began to wane. He was a strong supporter of Joe McCarthy, the Wisconsin Senator who presided over the committee investigating communists in the government.
That really doesn’t give you the full flavor of Lewis’s right wing hackery. He was a Drudge of his day, the happy recipient of nasty information about McCarthy and J. Edgar Hoover’s enemies and targets. And unlike Winchell, who had at least been as hostile to Hitler as to Stalin, Lewis had a bit of a soft spot for Naziism, something that the liberals of the day (as they are today) were too polite to use as a weapon against his anti-communist zealotry and character assassination. Alan Ginsberg remembered Lewis speaking of the Rosenberg case:
…especially, there was one commentator on the air, called Fulton Lewis, who said that they smelt bad, and therefore should die. There was an element of anti-Semitism in it. But I remember very clearly on the radio, this guy Fulton Lewis saying they smelt bad. He was a friend of J. Edgar Hoover, who was this homosexual in the closet, who was blackmailing almost everybody.
(This “smell” thing, which Ginsberg notes is long associated with anti-semitism, is commonly used today by fine mainstream humorists and commentators like Ann Coulter to describe liberals.)
In any case, what makes Mr Fulton, long dead and mostly forgotten, important you you, my friends, is that his ghost writer for five years was none other than William Schultz, one of the new ombudsmen for the Public Broadcasting System.
I’m not kidding. The man who wrote Joe McCarthy’s stongest supporter’s newspaper column is now on the payroll of the corporation of public broadcasting as an ombudsman.
Here’s what the guy said in an interview with Rick Perlstein in 1997:
[Were you anamolous in New York?]
“well, I went to a high school where, for reasons I cannot figure out, there was a real conservative and libertarian nucleus: The Bronx High School of Science in New York. Bob Schuchman went Bronx Science, and others did who went on to positions in politics and academia. So I was not unfamiliar with it.
“As Allan said, we were journalists; Allan was, I was. I went to Antioch College in Ohio, and they had a work-study program, and I got a couple of newspaper jobs, and then I worked for Human Events, and worked for Stan Evans, who had a tremendous influence on me. Then I went to work for Fulton Lewis Jr., who was a radio commentator and columnist.
“He had a fifteen minute broadcast at seven o’clock on the Mutual Network and then a five minute broadcast at noon. And I arrived from Yellow Springs, OH, thinking I was going be his leg-man–I had never met him before–and the first thing he said was, ‘can you write a newspaper column?’ The guy who had been ghostwriting his five-day-a-week newspaper column had just went to work for Nixon getting ready for the 1960 campaign–this would have been 1959. So I said, ‘sure, I can write a newspaper column.’
“So I started ghosting his newspaper column! Then I would go back to Yellow Springs, OH every three months and write the ‘Inside Washington’ column from Yellow Springs and send it off to Washington by Western Union the time ’64 rolled around I had been writing the Lewis column for five years. So I was in San Francisco not as a delegate or an activist but as a journalist, but as one who believed fervently in Goldwater, and as I said that was the most…”
When they were out of power, the right wing insisted that public broadcasting was a commie plot and should be destroyed. It was a perennial in the GOP platform. Now that they own the government, the movement radicals of the GOP have discovered the joys of taxpayer sponsored government propaganda and they are seizing upon public broadcasting as a fine means to produce and spread it. “The Journal Editorial Report” is the likely future of Public Television. And now they have gone and appointed a real live McCarthyite as their “ombudsman.”
Media Matters has more on Schultz, and the contact numbers for him and his close personal friend Kenneth Tomlinson, the newly named Republican chairman of the corporation for Public Broadcasting who recently told members of the Association of Public Broadcasters that they should make sure their programming better reflected the Republican mandate. He later said he was joking. Except nobody laughed.
FYI, as Media Matters points out:
According to The Ombudsman Association’s code of ethics, an ombudsman is a “designated neutral” who “strives for objectivity and impartiality.”
It’s kind of hard to imagine how a Joe McCarthy fan can be considered a “designated neutral,” but then I suppose if Ann Coulter is considered good clean fun, then anything is possible.
Kevin Drum endorses EJ Dionne’s column today in which it is finally clearly set forth by someone other than the shrill Paul Krugman that the Republicans aren’t playing by any rules and therefore cannot be trusted to act in good faith on Social Security. This has been obvious for some time, but it’s good to see Dionne writing about it in a major establishment paper. Reportedly Howard the Fine was so taken aback that he said on Air America today that this charge would have to be taken seriously now that Dionne, a reasonable liberal, had brought it up. Good news. But as Kevin points out, this is hardly the end of the tale:
There are plenty of other examples of this kind of thuggish Republican behavior. Keeping floor votes open for hours of arm twisting and vote buying, for example, instead of the usual 15 minutes. Preventing Democrats from so much as offering amendments to Republican legislation. Increased use of “emergency” late night meetings. Keeping the text of legislation secret until mere hours before scheduled votes. Squeezing the time for debate by allowing no more than one or two days a week for work on real legislation. Slashing the number of bills considered under open rules. And, of course, threatening the “nuclear option” to cut off judicial filibusters. You can get more details here in Rep. Louise Slaughter’s detailed report.
The first step was the hardest — getting Democrats in congress to recognize what was happening. They persisted for much too long in believing in the good intentions of their Republican counterparts but it seems they may have finally come to understand what has been obvious for ages — the modern Republicans do not act in good faith. Their governing philosophy is brute force. Now there is word that the liberal punditocrisy may be catching up at long last.
That’s interesting considering that today, Howard Kurtz wrote one of his most ridiculous articles ever in which he says that liberal pundits have never been willing to give Bush credit where credit is due, like they would have in the old days:
There was a time, a million years ago or so, when pundits of one persuasion would occasionally praise pols of the other persuasion, just to show they weren’t relying on one party’s talking points. You know, I disagree with the president on foreign policy, but his environmental proposal makes a great deal of sense.
That was before the rise of shout TV and the hardening of partisanship and the growing attempts by each side to demonize the other. Conservative commentators rarely had anything nice to say about Bill Clinton (except on NAFTA and Bosnia, perhaps), although he helped move the country toward the ostensibly conservative goals of welfare reforms and balanced budgets. And liberal commentators have consistently portrayed Bush as a deceiving warmonger who wants to gut Social Security while slashing taxes for his rich buddies.
After the Iraqi elections, there was a flurry of gee-maybe-Bush-was-right pieces by some left-leaners, but on domestic policy–where the Democrats are absolutely united against W’s agenda–opposition by liberal pundits has been remarkably consistent.
That’s why I think it’s noteworthy that a couple of libs are making favorable noises about the president’s news conference last week. After all, if Clinton had proposed to protect the poorest Social Security recipients and penalize more affluent ones and the Republicans were refusing even to negotiate, wouldn’t some liberals have supported that stance?
Well, maybe, if that’s what Bush was proposing there might be some support for it. Sadly, Bush is actually sticking it to the middle class as usual, doing nothing really positive for the poor and laughing his ass off over brie ‘n cheese with his rich friends at how stupid the rubes are — and I’m not talking about rubes in the heartland, I’m talking about the cosmopolitan rubes at the Washington Post.
But it’s even more astonishing that old Howie had such a hard time thinking of examples of liberal pundit saying in the last few years something like, “You know, I disagree with the president on his domestic program, but when it comes to terrorism and national security I bow at his feet like the dog I am and worship him like a golden God.” It certainly seems as if I’ve heard that somewhere before.
Does anyone know how much a ticket to Howard Kurtz’s alternate universe costs, because I hear it’s really nice this time of year? For month after month after month, virtually every mainstream liberal pundit spoke of George W. Bush in reverent tones normally reserved for tribal deities and international box office stars. What good did it do them? Now, because every last one isn’t signing on to social security destruction like good little lemmings, the liberal pundits are accused of being equivalent to guys like Charles Krauthamer who spent the 90’s as a timorous, conspiracy peddling isolationist whenever Clinton said boo and then turned into an avenging warrior the minute Junior was anointed. Sorry, liberal pundits just aren’t that flexible.
Today you have Dionne speaking the plain unvarnished truth, which is good. But, sadly, you also have that plodding tool, Richard Cohen (who Howie didn’t mention in his kudos to “reasonable” liberals who had seen the light — Michael Kinsley and Dan Kennedy, both of whom misunderstood and jumped the gun on Bush’s plan and are now co-presidents of the Premature Ejaculator Club of America.) Here’s the reliably wrong Cohen:
It just so happens that I think George Bush is doing something interesting with Social Security. The program does need to be fixed or recalibrated or something, and he has had the guts to take it on. Moreover, I kind of like the idea of personal investment accounts if funding them does not weaken the overall program or add to the nation’s incredible debt. After all, there is something to be said for expanding the number of American worker-capitalists and having a nest egg an heir could inherit, or one that would not be eliminated by death. The idea is not all that radical, after all. It’s being done in other countries — Australia, Sweden, Chile, Britain.
Whatever the merits of personal investment accounts, they would do nothing to alter the dismal math of Social Security projections. But raising the cap would. Why $90,000? Why not $140,000? Better yet, why not raise it to $140,000 and then raise it to confiscatory levels on obscene payments such as Michael Eisner’s $575.6 million back in 1998 or — brace yourself — the $105,000 Moonves got for using his own home in New York rather than a hotel or the $43,000 Freston got for spending time in his place in Los Angeles. (Moonves is based in L.A.; Freston is based in New York.) Somewhere, ladies and gentlemen, is a CEO who’s angling to be paid for sleeping with his wife. It’s just a matter of time. Get mad, people. Get mad.
[…]
A deal can be made on Social Security. If Bush raised the cap, the Democrats could permit some sort of move toward private accounts. Both objectives make sense. What matters is not ideology or political advantage but a dependable retirement for the average American. Bush should take the first step. All it takes is making Day Two more like Day One
Nothing he says is desirable or possible. He makes a case for raising the cap on payroll taxes for millionaires in exchange for private acounts, which is like making a deal with Osama bin Laden tomorrow that if he’ll promise to stop saying bad things about America, we’ll supply him with nuclear bombs.
The liberal punditocrisy is more likely than not to support Bush’s destructive policies and always have been. Like Cohen here, who can hardly wait to punt with a string of brown-nosing paeons to Junior’s courage and dedication to the working man. Nothing new about that. Remember these immortal words?
Given the present bitterness, given the angry irresponsible charges being hurled by both camps, the nation will be in dire need of a conciliator, a likable guy who will make things better and not worse. That man is not Al Gore. That man is George W. Bush.”
I’m not sure if panic is quite the right word, but it is close enough. Anthrax played a role in my decision to support the Bush administration’s desire to take out Saddam Hussein. I linked him to anthrax, which I linked to Sept. 11. I was not going to stand by and simply wait for another attack — more attacks. I was going to go to the source, Hussein, and get him before he could get us. As time went on, I became more and more questioning, but I had a hard time backing down from my initial whoop and holler for war.
Dionne has the right of it, as do Reid and Pelosi, so far. It is patently absurd, however, for Howard Kurtz to lament the rigid partisanship of liberal pundits when you have sell-out, buckets of lukewarm spit like his colleague Richard Cohen to prove how very obsequious and servile the liberal establishment punditocrisy has long proven itself to be.
Man, we liberals can’t win for losing, can we? First we are told that we’re a bunch of immoral libertines who are trying to destroy the fabric of our nation with our nasty talk and perverted big city ways, and then John Tierney says today that we are a bunch of stiffs who don’t understand what a bunch of rollockin’, ribald partiers those real American Red Staters are.
I admit that I’m a little bit confused, but I’m sure David Brooks will clear it up for me in his next column, being the world’s foremost expert on heartland values and jumbo shrimp platters and all. Meanwhile, I guess what I don’t understand is why it’s ok for the First Lady to make horse cock jokes on television but it’s not ok for a professional comedienne to make “bush” jokes at a private fundraiser. That’s the part that seems a little bit odd to me. Remember this:
Comic Whoopi Goldberg’s sexual puns on President Bush’s name at a John Kerry fundraiser got her canned Wednesday as spokeswoman for Slim-Fast weight-loss products.
Hollyweird does NOT represent American values, or the heart and soul of our country, in any way whatsoever!!
This election is shaping up to be a contest between anyone with decent or Christian values (whatever his or her usual political leanings) and the moral FILTH and POISON represented by Hollyweird and the media and advertising community, the feminazis, and the gays. I vote NO to all of them!!!!
As for SlimFast, it doesn’t work anyway, in terms of long-term weight loss and health. Don’t beleive their hype, whether spread by Whoopi the Obscene or by anyone else. Boycott SlimFast for ALL the right reasons!!!!
By the way, I see from your screen name that you are a Christian, as I am. May God bless you!!!!
Mychel Massie clutched his pearls and bravely held back the tears as he related the horrors on World Net Daily:
I am profoundly offended by Kerry’s foolish and base support of such filth – and America, you should be, too.
What type of future does Kerry envision for America if he applauds the rawest of trash as “the heart and soul of our country”? How does Kerry view the voters, his church, the family and education if he postulates those things as “values inside you”? To laughingly support such an extraordinarily tasteless, vulgar, public display, one must ask not only how Kerry views the office of president, but exactly what respect has he for himself?
Republican leaders, if you’ll recall, demanded an apology from the Kerry camp. Junior made the line “my opponent likes tah say that Hollywood is the heart ‘n soul ‘o America. but I think the heart ‘n soul ‘o America is right here in _______, heartland USA” one of his rapturous applause cues throughout the campaign.
That was a different time. Now it seems that the moral Red Staters have finally decided to admit that they love a good horse cock joke as much as the next guy and that’s just fine with me. I always knew they did. We’re all about horse cock jokes in this country, from sea to shining sea. Nothing makes a First Lady more downhome and fun than talking about horse cocks on TV. Bring ’em on. Horse cocks for everyone.
But I’d really appreciate it if they’d can the phony sanctimony from now on and shut the fuck up about “Desperate Housewives” and dirty talk on TV. If it’s ok for the First Lady of the United States to joke publicly about her husbands limp dick and jerking off farm animals then it’s ok for Whoopie Goldberg and everybody else to make Bush jokes.
Ezra makes the same point but without even one horse cock reference, a weakness I often notice in his writing.
I missed this one. Apparently, two female schoolteachers in their 50’s who had the nerve to attend a public Bush rally without the proper Republican approvals were arrested and strip-searched.
Alice McCabe and Christine Nelson, both in their 50s, were among five protesters arrested at the Sept. 3 rally. The pair were handcuffed, taken to the county jail, strip-searched and charged with criminal trespass. The charges were dropped months later.
“I believe the federal government behaved very badly in this situation,” said David O’Brien, the women’s attorney.
The lawsuit claims the strip search violated constitutional protections against unreasonable search and seizure. Typically suspects are searched only if authorities have cause to believe they possess a weapon or illegal drugs, O’Brien said.
“We don’t think they had a reasonable belief that these two, 50-year-old school teachers had a weapon or contraband in their possession that day,” O’Brien said, whose clients requested a jury trial and unspecified damages.
A spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Cedar Rapids said the office had not yet seen the complaint and could not comment.
McCabe and Nelson — described in the lawsuit as political novices motivated by their opposition to Bush administration policies in Iraq — attended the rally at a city park, where McCabe held a sheet of paper urging, “No More War,” and Nelson wore a John Kerry button.
A Secret Service agent allegedly told McCabe, who was on a sidewalk near the rally, that she was on private property and would have to move. When they moved to a parking area, the agent approached again and repeated the order.
After asking why, McCabe was arrested by a state trooper. Nelson was arrested later by another trooper, according to the lawsuit.
Obviously, strip searching these women was an intimidation tactic, the same kind of tactic used to such great effect at Abu Ghraib. Sexual humiliation seems to be quite the rage among the macho these days. It was probably done by some cops who worship the phony Codpiece and think that American citizens who don’t are traitors. Why, all you have to do is read TIME magazine at the dentist’s office and you’ll see Ann Coulter on the cover telling the whole country that. Or just turn on the radio.
Arthur Silber wrote about the hilarious South Park Republican Rush Limbaugh the other day on the anniversary of the revelation of the Abu Ghraib scandal. Here’s a little of what Rush had to say:
CALLER: Just to keep you with the season, I want to wish you a Happy Abu Ghraib. And I apologize that I didn’t get my Abu Ghraib present in the mail. I was wondering what I could get you for Abu Ghraib this year and how are you going to decorate your Abu Ghraib tree sir?
RUSH: You want to know what to get me for Abu Ghraib? You know what? That is a good question. I don’t really want anything for Abu Ghraib. The Democrats, that is who we need to get presents for. One thing, have you thought about handcuffs? Those have multiple uses for Democrats. A whip. You know, to go along with the handcuffs. Dawn says a good present would be to give a Democrat a digital camera so that he or she can document their own atrocities. All you have to take it to a Madonna concert. You got the whips, and the handcuffs and chains right there on stage and people are paying for this.
CALLER: They may have military intelligence, Rush. Who knows?
RUSH: That is a great question. What kind of gift to give Democrats here on the anniversary of Abu Ghraib. I’m glad you called, Christopher.
We’ll think of more as they, as they come up. You know, you might give them a little pyramid game, something that is in the shape of a pyramid. Wire tap kit. Could borrow that. Ted, actually could borrow one from Raymond Reggie, a wire tap kit. What else? Autographed picture of Mary Mapes. Boy, if you could score, come up with an autograph of Mary Mapes, she’s the mother of the Abu Ghraib scandal. Jumper cables. A pair of jumper cables—superb idea, Mr. Maimone. And these are things we all have lying around the house, folks. Just get rid of it. It is junk. Give them a German shepherd. Oh, yeah, a German shepherd dog, little German shepherd puppy. You can train yourself.
Gotta love that jumper cable stuff. Whew. That’s a good one. He does some side-splitters on waterboarding, too. Read all of Silber’s post for the full rundown. That’s just an excerpt of the psychotic ramblings from that day.
This is what more than 20 million Americans listen to constantly. This is their entertainment and their religion.
Get ready to be strip-searched America. Rush Limbaugh and all his little sick clones are training ever more people to believe that you deserve it. And worse.
I’m depressed today. Don’t expect any inspiring words from me. The worst elements of our culture are on the rise. We have delivered massive government police power into the hands of authoritarian freaks whose followers are being told every day that liberals are a greater danger than terrorists are. Middle aged schoolteachers are being strip searched for protesting at a political rally.
This must be what that freedom they hate us for looks like.
So I watched the show “Super-Nanny” last night to get a sense of this “Focus on the Family” shill job. The ad is perfect for the show, which featured a very dysfunctional family on the verge of chaos — the two kids (aged 3 and 7) were rude, undisciplined and out of control and the parents were in way over their heads. The FOF ads were very slick; they could have been a clever government sponsored spot, like those produced for Partnership For A Drug free America. They appeared to be connected to the show — and one would guess that the show endorsed the program by the way it was presented. The show featured a couple of very undisciplined brats which the ads, featuring little demon children saying they are going to wreak havoc on their parents’ lives, seemed to indicate the FOF program could cure. I bet they got some calls.
Having read Dobson’s torture manual “The Strong Willed Child” however, I can say that after watching the show, they bear no relationship to one another. Dobson’s book is extremely heavy on corporal punishment and strict authoritarian control. The nanny show consisted of common sense approaches like setting rules, scheduling activities and play time, communication and consistency. There was no hitting, although there was the expected sturm and drang over discipline, which had been a total disaster up to that point. The biggest problem in this family, it seemed to me, was that the mom didn’t seem to relate very well to small children, which is not unprecedented I would think. Why would every woman automatically be good at such a thing? (Not that the Dad was much better, but he seemed a little more natural around them, even if he was a putz and a control freak.)
It was obvious that she loved them, but she was frustrated by her inability to be herself, which appeared to me to be a somewhat reserved type of person who wasn’t very interested in kid stuff. She seemed quite depressed, or at least worn down, and she probably felt guilty for not liking the kid games she was being asked to do. The structure the nanny gave the mom appeared to give her something to hold on to, but I suspect she might be more comfortable as a mother when her children get a little bit older. I thought this was one family that could have benefitted from sending the kids to day care, where they could be around other little kids and grown-ups who are into playing with them.
Anyway, these kids were the children from hell, but anybody could see that it was because the parents were completely inept. They were the ones who needed guidance and I suspect that this is usually the case. There seemed to be a lot of improvement during the course of the show, but who knows how much these shows are edited for dramatic purposes. Still, these seemed like decent people who love their kids so they’ll probably be ok.
If they had taken Dobson’s advice, however, they would right now be indulging in child abuse instead of patience, discipline and understanding. His view is that children must be taught to obey because they must observe the hierarchy of the family which means that father, then mother are always to be obeyed without question. The point is not to raise happy, healthy people, but oppressed, subservient kids who turn into rigid authoritarian adults. He is in the business of creating Nazis, not normal human beings.
I pity the many poor little children who are going to be subjected to Dobson’s torture after their desperate parents saw that slick ad last night and called the FOF number. Those parents are going to learn that they are justified in being angry at their children and that violence is the proper way to express that anger, “for the good of their child.”
And I pity the country that takes another step back into the dark ages when torture was considered acceptable. We are now one of the torture cultures. That’s quite an achievement.
Update: For some very thoughtful commentary on this subject, read the comments to this Patrick Neilsen Hayden post on Electrolite.
JOE SCARBOROUGH: Why don’t we just show a clip of “South Park” to help define what “South Park” conservatives are.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, “SOUTH PARK”)
UNIDENTIFIED ACTRESS: Kids, this is the Costa Rican Capitol Building.
This is where all the leaders of the Costa Rican government make their…
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: Oh, my God, it smells out here.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTRESS: All right, that does it. Eric Cartman, you respect other cultures this instant.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTRESS: I wasn’t saying anything about their culture.
I was just saying their city smells like ass.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTRESS: Wow. Staying in a place like this really makes you appreciate living in America, huh.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTRESS: You may think that making fun of Third World countries is funny, but let me…
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: I don’t think it’s funny. This place is overcrowded, smelly and poor. That’s not funny. That sucks.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
Lord knows South Park Conservatives know what ass smells like — their heads being buried up there and all.
Seriously, my friends, this a deep and meaningful lesson, not just a puerile, unfunny swipe at poor people. You see, the SP conservatives are just pointing out that it sucks to be poor. And they do it in a lighthearted, funloving way that makes everyone understand that it is better to be an American because our cities smell like vanilla cookies and lemon Pledge. Because we’re better.
I feel sorry for this generation. We had MAD magazine (the greatest influence in my life.) They have this.
Not only are Hollywood actors liberal and wrong — they don’t even know how to act! Jane Galt must school them in empathy!
She says:
America enjoys Forrest Gump, but it’s not really that hard to learn to deal with someone who talks a little slow. Where are the movies covering the people who seriously discomfort us–the unverbal, or inappropriately verbal, or whose verbal skills just aren’t up to sermonettes on love
She’s right, you know. We certainly don’t see enough characters whose skills aren’t up to sermonettes on love. And I have the perfect project to correct that. Just imagine George Clooney playing that dreamy he-man John Galt with Nicole Kidman as the sensual yet plucky industrialist Dagny Taggert — in the big Hollywood remake of “Atlas Shrugged: The Rapture.”
Haven’t I? — he thought. Haven’t I thought of it since the first time I saw you? Haven’t I thought of nothing else for two years?. . . He sat motionless, looking at her. He heard the words he never allowed himself to form, the words he had felt, known, yet had not faced, had hoped to destroy by never letting them be within his own mind, Now it was as sudden and shocking as if he were saying it to her…Since the first time I saw you…. Nothing but your body, that mouth of yours, and the way your eyes would look at me, if…. Through every sentence I ever said to you, through every conference you thought were so safe, through the importance of all the issues we discussed…. You trusted me, didn’t you? To recognize greatness? To think of you as you deserved — as if you were a man?