Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Press Corpse Zombies

Kevin Drum says what I was going to say about the completely inexplicable decision of the LA Times to publish an editorial by the discredited John Lott. If he is considered credible then there is absolutely no reason why Stephen Glass and Jayson Blair have been drummed out of the business. When you make stuff up our of whole cloth, it should have some effect on your credibility.

Oh wait…I forgot. IOKIYAR

Which leads me to this unbelievably tendentious piece of garbage by Patrick Goldstein in today’s LA Times calendar section. Apparently, Michael Moore and Jennifer Anniston offended some Republicans with their criticism of George W. Bush and that is why we lost the election.

“The Democrats really paid a price for their association with strident Hollywood activists and their palpable contempt for regular people,” says Mike Murphy, the Republican political consultant who ran John McCain’s 2000 presidential bid and now works with Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Yeah. Arnold and Maria are jes reglar folk, watchin’ NASCAR, drankin’ Dr Pepper and listenin’ to some Toby, I guess.

This construction about “regular” people comes up throughout this article in varying forms. It would appear that the 55 million of us who voted for John Kerry are not regular people. If we were we would have rejected him because he was supported by those who hold Regular People in contempt. Therefore, we are held in contempt. Interesting.

Take the case of newly minted Real American Ron Silver who evidently was raised on a potato farm in Idaho and rides the bull down at Gillies whenever he gets the chance. He says in the article, “There’s an incredibly unhealthy uniformity of opinion in Hollywood. When you’re at a dinner party and the subject of the president comes up, it’s just assumed that all 20 people are thinking, ‘how are we going to get rid of this [jerk].’ I can’t think of any colleague in the entertainment community having a serious conversation with someone who’s pro-life or a born-again Christian. There’s just a real disconnect from the rest of the country.”

Haha. Yes, darling, it’s so true that at dinner parties in Real America all twenty people engage in lively erudite political discourse in which all sides are viewed with equal interest. That’s what makes Real America so special, after all. It’s the fact that it isn’t closed minded like those disconnected Hollywood liberals. In real American, pro-choice and pro-life, black and white, Christian and Jew all break bread together. (And, they serve the tastiest little crab cake hors d’ouevres, too. Yum.)

To be fair, there were a few artists who displayed a touch of class, most notably the Bruce Springsteen-led coalition of rock stars who did Kerry concerts around the country, all without engaging in incendiary political rhetoric. If only their movie star brethren could’ve shown such discretion…Instead Jennifer Anniston called Bush “an idiot,” along with an expletive we can’t print here, while Cher dubbed the president “stupid and lazy.”

The low point of self defeating activism came at a Radio City Music Hall fundraiser at which Chevy Chase said the president had the intellect of an “egg timer” John Mellencamp called Bush a “cheap thug” and Meryl Streep, in a performance that brings new meaning to the word sanctimonious, belittled the president’s faith.

Is it any wonder that the Bush campaign tried in vain to get the Democratic National Committee to release a tape of the event? If there was one thing everyday Americans didn’t want to hear, it was self-involved celebrities trashing the president.

[…]

If the showbiz world is every going to connect with voters, it has to learn to respect them first. Just ask Kirk Wagar, a Miami trial lawyer who served as the Democrat’s Florida finance chairman. Upset over the party’s inability to speak to real Americans, he’s launching an organization devoted to helping Democratic candidates communicate a values-driven message to lower and middle income voters who have a natural affinity for the party’s economic message.

If today’s Hollywood activists want to learn how to communicate with real people, maybe they should try the [Preston] Sturges approach — go out an meet them. No preaching, just lend an ear. When you actually shut up and listen, it’s amazing what you can learn.

No preaching. What a fine idea for limousine liberals, Christian proselytizers and big city show business reporters alike. But, perhaps I shouldn’t say anything being that I’m so irregular, unreal and unusual. We odd Americans who agreed that the president is an idiot and said it out loud to anyone who’d listen at our soirees and dinner parties thought, strangely, that there was a presidential campaign going on, not a coronation. We thought our passionate opinions, and those of the hated “limousine liberals” were as valid as any other. But, we were wrong. We are not everyday Americans. All 55 million of us are not quite right, not quite real.

No one’s saying the industry should temper its views or stop funneling money to the democrats. After all, the GOP rakes in tons of cash from ardent conservatives, but most of its far-right supporters are shrewd enough to avoid the limelight.

That’s going to come as a helluva surprise to Rush Limbaugh’s bosses, who gave him a 250 million dollar contract to say things like this every single day to millions and millions of those wonderful Real Americans:

The left is scared to death of God. They think Bush is a believer, and they got quotes from people that say Bush doesn’t think, he just follows his instincts based on how he feels after he prays. He’s just — “this is horrible.” They’re out there and they’re scared to death because they don’t understand God. They don’t understand a personal relationship with God. They can only think it’s trouble.

The — the Kerry campaign has finally gotten a chocolate chip. The Kerry campaign has announced that civil rights activist, the Reverend Jackson, has joined the campaign on Wednesday

[O]ne of the things we’ve learned is that [Senator John] Kerry has two elements of his base. And that’s why, no matter what he says, he angers half the base.

Half the base is so-called old reasonable Democrats, and they don’t hate the military. The other half of the base hates the military, hates America, hates Bush, hates the world except for France and Germany.

Well, try to figure, just imagine Lurch from The Addams Family hanging out a bus window underneath his face is “JohnKerry.com.” He’s got this sort of weird looking grin on his face with Evita hanging over his left shoulder.

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation is reporting that the new Iraqi Prime Minister Allawi has executed six insurgents in front of witnesses, wanting to send a clear message to these people. Good. Hubba-hubba.

And before anyone suggests that he is a fringe dweller of the Right, let’s not forget:

“[I]t’s always an opportunity and a thrill for someone like me to be able to talk to somebody like you, the vice president of the United States, and so some of these questions may appear to be leading, and I really don’t mean to do that.

This entire critique of the liberal elites who allegedly don’t understand Real America, and the 55 million of us Unreal Americans who agree with them is another example of this frustrating epistemological relativism to which the press corpse seems consciously oblivious. Up is down and black is white. Entertainers shouldn’t get political unless they agree with Republicans, in which case they can have radio shows that are beamed to more than 25 million people a day in which they can viciously insult Democrats all day long. The contempt with which Rush Limbaugh holds the entire Democratic party day after day after day is down to earth and real. The contempt with which Hollywood Democrats held George Bush at a fundraiser is unamerican.

Rush Limbaugh is the voice of the Republican Party — the allegedly “Real” Americans we liberal elitists don’t understand. His swill is endorsed by the highest reaches of the GOP. If Patrick Goldstein and Ron Silver don’t believe me, maybe they’ll listen to Mary Matlin:

MATALIN: This is a — this is another reason you’re my hero, of all the reasons. I have to read these papers every day because I have to do the defense to them?

RUSH: Yeah.

MATALIN: And it’s not until I listen to you that I actually can crack a smile for the first time in the day. And the reason that they’re — I know most of the country doesn’t read them [“these papers”], but they do drive a lot of the coverage. As a for instance — not — not to pick on The New York Times, but they are particularly egregious when it comes to the Bush administration.

[…]

MATALIN: [Y]ou inspired me this morning. There’s no reason that I have to do that. I’m — and at least I think I do, but when I listen to you, I get all the information I need, and I — and I — it is — I have a confidence in the President, in the policies, in the goals. I have — I know his conviction. I know he’s right and I know he has the leadership to do it. What I don’t have, and what I can only get from you, is the cheerfulness of your confidence —

I think the picture is pretty clear here about Real America, don’t you?

There are 55 million of us freakish, irregular, unReal Americans who refuse to accept that it is a-ok for this asshole (and all of his clones) to infect this country with his hateful bile uncontested and unrebutted anymore. If that means we have to use harsh language, then fine. Real Americans are just going to have to get used to it coming from our side.

Patrick Goldstein may have been born yesterday, but some of us have been watching the Right disseminate it’s eliminationist propaganda for a long, long time. The Left isn’t shutting up because a bunch of effete “journalists” are too stupid to know when they’re being played.. Again.

Gawd, has there ever been a less insightful, less informed, more gullible press corps in history? I can hardly wait for the conservative prom this year. Patrick Goldstein will undoubtedly get the “Richard Cohen Useful Idiot” award, although it’s going to be a very competitive category.

Bloggerrific

For your one stop blog shopping, check out The Daou Report.

It highlights the right thinking Left (a fine service in itself) but, it also gives you the lowdown on the wrong thinking Right, thus saving you from having to wade through the wingnut hell-broth yourself.

CAKEWALK

Fallujah in Pictures

An Iraqi nurse treats 2-year-old child Mustafa Adnan, at a Baghdad hospital, who lost a leg when his house in Falluja’s Jolan district was shelled during fighting between U.S. forces and insurgents in the war-torn city November 14, 2004. U.S. tanks shelled and machine-gunned rebels still holding out in Falluja in heavy fighting that was preventing an Iraqi Red Crescent convoy from getting aid to civilians trapped in the city for six days. (Ali Jasim/Reuters)

Eliana Aponte / Reuters

Liberation

“Destruction was everywhere. I saw people lying dead in the streets, wounded were bleeding and there was no one to come and help them. Even the civilians who stayed in Fallujah were too afraid to go out,” he said.

“There was no medicine, water, no electricity nor food for days.”

By Tuesday afternoon, as U.S. forces and Iraqi rebels engaged in fierce clashes in the heart of his neighborhood, Hussein snapped.

“U.S. soldiers began to open fire on the houses, so I decided that it was very dangerous to stay in my house,” he said.

Hussein said he panicked, seizing on a plan to escape across the Euphrates River, which flows on the western side of the city

“I wasn’t really thinking,” he said. “Suddenly, I just had to get out. I didn’t think there was any other choice.”

In the rush, Hussein left behind his camera lens and a satellite telephone for transmitting his images. His lens, marked with the distinctive AP logo, was discovered two days later by U.S. Marines next to a dead man’s body in a house in Jolan.

AP colleagues in the Baghdad bureau, who by then had not heard from Hussein in 48 hours, became even more worried.

Hussein moved from house to house dodging gunfire and reached the river.

“I decided to swim … but I changed my mind after seeing U.S. helicopters firing on and killing people who tried to cross the river.”

He watched horrified as a family of five was shot dead as they tried to cross. Then, he “helped bury a man by the river bank, with my own hands.”

Walking To Church

I want to make one little addition to my post about hypocrisy in the values laden swath of Republican Red. I think that it’s important to point out that this notion of hyperactive church attendance in the US is largely a crock.

The Gallup organization has pegged regular weekly church attendance at around 40% of the population for decades. This is a self-reported statistic, usually arrived at by asking the question “have you attended church in the last seven days” or something like it. It was largely unremarked upon until the 90’s when some sociologists decided to follow up. What they found is that people vastly “overreport” their church attendance.

This was tested in a number of ways, through actual headcounts followed up by telephone polls to checking a long term study of driving habits (PDF) that showed that people somehow “neglected” to mention driving back and forth to church every week but reported that they attended when asked directly.Religious writers have looked at these numbers and found them to be overstated, as well.

I don’t write this to indict the fine churchgoing people in this country who obviously number in the tens of millions. But, before the Democrats go off half cocked and move too far in the direction of the social conservatives, they need to insure that they are dealing with reality and not Republican hype.

I have lived in states both blue and red and towns both small and large. And it is certainly true that people tend to talk about religion more openly in the smaller, redder areas. But, this is likely because they are more homogenous than big cities where there is a lot more religious diversity and therefore a bigger chance of getting into an argument or having an uncomfortable social interaction. It’s not surprising that people in rural America are more likely to lie about their church attendance because there is more social pressure to conform to what is perceived to be required as an upstanding citizen. (It’s also possible that people in big cities lie to pollsters about their opinions about contentious issues because of the social pressure to be tolerant in places where there is a lot of diversity.) The point is that if people are actually lying about their religious fervor to pollsters there is every liklihood that acceding to a religiously based political agenda is counterproductive. For reasons outlined in my previous posts of these past couple of weeks, I don’t believe it will work in any case. It isn’t about values with “values” voters.

As I look at the situation as it’s likely to play out over the next four years, I think that with the theocratic, authoritarian Right in ascendance, an old fashioned freedom cry of “Mind Your Own Business” might have some salience in the libertarian southwest and mountain states. Everything from the Patriot Act atrocities to corporations selling your personal information to compelling you to adhere to specific religious teachings goes against the western grain. The key to this would be to continuously highlight the corporate and extremist religious right’s stranglehold on a Republican Party that seems to believe that the president is the public’s boss instead of its servant. This does not sit well with the individualistic strain of the west. Combine it with a critique of their trashing of the environment without consideration of local concerns and their overwhelming fiscal irresponsibility and you’ve got the beginning of a helluva wedge. (This oft cited article about the Montana governor’s race is instructive. This blog post from Left In The West is even more so.)

Here’s the hook. Democrats believe in freedom. The Republicans believe in forced conformity and injecting themselves into every aspect of their citizens’ lives. Turn their own libertarian message against them. Clearly, they were full of shit about everything but the tax cuts. If there are any libertarian types out there who value their personal freedom as much as their money (and I think there are more than few) our message might just speak to them. Nobody likes the IRS, but unelected preachers and businessmen using the power of the state to tell you how to live is against all first principles of what it means to be a free American.

I am a left libertarian by philosophy and temperament. I’m big on civil liberties and the Bill Of Rights. I don’t think that reasonable taxation comes anywhere close to being as coercive to the individual as unregulated business, theocratic political factions or an unfettered police state. I think there are some people in the current Republican coalition who might hear that message and I think they are far more likely to be open to it than the (largely hypocritical) “values” voters who are fighting a tribal war for dominance. The west isn’t about dominance or submission. It’s about live and let live. They consider themselves true independents. We can do business with these people.

The Pageant

Atrios is full of ‘tude these days and rightly so. This nonsense about finding leaders who are immune from GOP criticism is just ridiculous. I thought we all understood that the attack machine has no relationship to the truth. There is no such thing as an acceptable Democrat anymore. There isn’t even such a thing as an acceptable moderat republican anymore. Look what they are doing to Specter.

I simply cannot believe that after the last twelve years any Democrat still believes that there are limits to what the Republicans will say to assassinate someone’s character or how far the SCLM will go to promulgate it if the story is juicy enough. Perhaps Mr Nelson needs to make a run for the presidency and see if all that Red state love sees him through.

And ditto what Josh said, too. Loyalty is a principle, guys. Not blind loyalty, but that good old fashioned notion that you don’t trash your friends for personal gain. If there is one thing I admire about the Republicans is that they treat their candidates with respect. As far as I’m concerned, any Dem who goes out there against the Republican attack machine and puts himself or herself on the line for us deserves at least that.

Marshall also makes some good points here.

…Democrats don’t do anywhere near as good a job at telling a story with their politics.

If you want an example think of a movie with great acting and set-design but no discernible plot.

Yes, you’re for this and that policy and you have this, that and the other plan. But what story or picture does it all amount to? What things does it say are important and which things less important? What does it all amount to in terms of who we are as Americans and who we want to be?

I think I can tell you what the Republicans are for and without referencing hardly any policy specifics. They’re for lowering taxes in exchange for giving up whatever it is the government pretends to do for us, (at a minimum) riding the brakes on the on-going transformation of American culture, and kicking ass abroad.

That’s a clear message and a fairly coherent one, whatever you think of the content — it’s about self-reliance and suspicion of change. And Democrats have a hard time competing at that level of message clarity.

I think it’s true that our movie just isn’t as good as theirs. But rather than being a great production without a plot, I think we are one of those disjointed, arty films with lots of great moments, but afterwards you really can’t explain what it means to someone who hasn’t seen it.

The Republicans do big technicolor blockbusters with a big predictable plot. It’s called “They’re Comin’ Ta Git Ya!” (Parts I through XX.) It’s a franchise in which the government or the blacks or the gays or the liberals or the terrorists are trying to tear apart your way of life and the Republican party is all that’s standing between you and them. It’s not about self-sufficiency, it’s the opposite. It’s about being a perpetual victim.

Democrats can make a wonderful, big budget picture for the whole family, called “America.” It’s about freedom and courage. It would be an uplifting tale starring ordinary individuals working together for common goals and achieving success through equal opportunity and hard work. Our heroes insist that the community should help the less fortunate because it is the right thing to do. Period. They are Americans who live by the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights — individual liberty, inalienable human rights and an equal playing field. When those ideals are attacked from without or within they fight like hell. In the end, we all live together peacefully because our freedom, rights and responsibilities as Americans to live as we see fit are what make us strong. Our democratic government becomes a force for good because it reflects those values. It reflects us.

It’s true that we have lost sight of how to tell our story. Indeed, we are still consumed with the idea that if only we adjusted our positions on the issues, then we would win — even though we already poll higher on most issues that people say they care about. But this has gone way beyond issues. It’s about what people think we stand for vs what we actually stand for. We have not recognized that we are living in brand America and we have to sell people on the “idea” of our brand. Civics isn’t even taught anymore and nobody knows jack about history. What they know is story and we have to tell them ours.

And one thing simply cannot be overlooked again, by those of us on the left who tend to blame our party and those in the middle who ….. also blame our party. This is the fact that we are competing with an organization and a movement that has no limits. If we tell our story perfectly with total clarity and beauty and we present it with the finest production values and the best candidates in the world to embody our national character, we still have to contend with a professional character assassination machine that is not hindered by any if the so-called morals and values they pretend to revere. This is a formidable obstacle and one that we will have to learn how to deal with before we can hope to break through this morass.

Therefore, we take this on from both angles if we expect to win this war. We must disable their noise machine and we must put on a bigger, better pageant. Both of things will be required to break through the static and get the attention of those people in the country who are part of OUR story but have been subsumed in propaganda and programmatic rhetoric for so long that they think that we don’t have one.

One of these requires a willingness to go for the jugular and another requires a big creative vision. They aren’t mutually exclusive but this might be a case for some division of labor. Any ideas?

Mediawhores, Heal Thyself

Robert Parry is absolutely right about this. These snotty articles in the SCLM tut-tutting blog conspiracy theories are a bit rich coming from the very papers that slavered and drooled over the most massive conspiracy theory perpetrated on the American Public in recent memory — Ahmad Chalabi’s Tales of the WMD. Talk about chutzpah.

Expressing Ambivalence

NewDonkey says that Democrats get it wrong when they say that economic populist approaches will work but that changing our position on social issues is right. He’s right about the first part (more on that later) and, as anyone who’s been reading this blog the last few days knows, I believe he is wrong about the second.

He quotes Tom Coburn Senate Nominee from Oklahoma who says:

For the vast majority of Oklahomans–and, I would suspect, voters in other red states–these transcendent cultural concerns are more important than universal health care or raising the minimum wage or preserving farm subsidies. Pace Thomas Frank, the voters aren’t deluded or uneducated. They simply reject the notion that material concerns are more real than spiritual or cultural ones. The political left has always had a hard time understanding this, preferring to believe that the masses are enthralled by a “false consciousness” or Fox News or whatever today’s excuse might be. But the truth is quite simple: Most voters in a state like Oklahoma–and I venture to say most other Southern and Midwestern states–reject the general direction of American culture and celebrate the political party that promises to reform or revise it.

New Donkey says:

We’re the “wrong track” party when it comes to the cultural direction of the country, and we have to decide whether to bravely swim upstream out of loyalty to hip-hop and Michael Moore and Grand Theft Auto IV and Hollywood campaign contributions, or do something else, like at least expressing a little ambivalence about it all. Changing the subject is cowardly and insulting no matter how you look at it.

I agree with Carson that these so-called cultural issues transcend economics for a bunch of reasons that I’ll go into over the week-end hopefully. However, that does not mean that the Democrats will ever gain anything by denouncing popular culture. Carson doesn’t believe it is a false consciousness and maybe it isn’t. Perhaps it is just sheer hypocrisy, I don’t know. But, the fact is that somebody in the red states is watching Will and Grace and somebody is watching Girls Gone Wild and a whole bunch of somebodies are downloading pornography. I’m sure they tut-tut those terrible liberals while they pass the popcorn and laugh over The Bachelor’s latest catfight.The biggest hit of the TV season is the sexually adventurous Desperate Housewives and it ain’t just because people in new York and LA are watching it. The National Enquirer and the Globe are hugely popular in Middle America with their fascination with Hollywood dirt.

This is mass consumer culture and it plays very successfully all across that great swathe of red. Somebody’s watching all this stuff and buying all this stuff and consuming all this stuff. I’m sure that many believe it’s a problem, but I’m just not sure it’s our problem. After all, these are the salt of the earth individuals who believe in taking personal responsibility, unlike us Hollywood and east coast elites. And let’s not forget who’s making the profits selling all this decadent culture to these innocent, God fearing folk who are evidently hypnotised into buying it. Republican Big Business.

I agree that economic populism isn’t going to work. But, we have proven that adopting socially conservative positions doesn’t work either. These people pretend to be morally superior even as they indulge in all the dirty hanky panky they hypocritically pray over in church. It’s not about what they actually do, it’s what they say they do — not the same thing at all. If they were so concerned about moral values they wouldn’t be chuckling along while the drug addicted Rush Limbaugh makes jokes about pornographic images with a knowing nod and wink. They wouldn’t so easily forgive their leaders who are divorced two and three times in ugly and cruel circumstances. They wouldn’t stand for media personalities who call female employees on the phone and regale them with sexual fantasies. These are the icons of their Republican party and media elite. Yet, they are held to a much lower standard than Michael Moore, who may have said inflammatory things but never to my knowledge actually did anything blatently immoral or illegal.

If these people were truly concerned about moral values you’d think they’d start at home.

Nope. This is a marketing ploy set forth by the Republican party to exploit the tribal differences between the red and the blue the urban and the rural by creating a very convenient illusion of middle American (read: Republican) moral superiority. It’s a crock. They consume just as much of this allegedly toxic culture as anybody else in this country. They just lie about it.

Pandering to hypocrites is a fools game — as Brad Carson found out when he was beaten by the crazed wingnut doctor, Tom Coburn, who had hallucinations about lesbians in elementary schools. Obviously, “expressing ambivalence” about Hollywood values will never be able to compete with something like that.

Correction: I made a huge mistake and thought that the above quote was by the democrat Brad Carson. It has been corrected to reflect it was Tom Coburn, the very wingnut doctor who won with his fantasies about grade school lesbians.

This makes Kilgore’s point even less salient. If we are “listening” to guys like Coburn explain why they won then we are bigger fools than I thought. They have absolutely no reason to be sincere about this.

Correction II: Yes, I realize that I screwed up. The quote is Carsons after all. Sorry for the confusion. Mea maxima Culpa. Posting and running is never a good idea.

Wingnut Kool-Aid Acid Test

If anyone wants to see a mere shell of a formerly asute cultural observer, check out this video of Tom Wolfe on The Daily Show.

He’s noticed that boys and girls cohabitate outside the sanctity of marriage nowadays. The parents don’t know what to do when the boys and girls come to visit. It didn’t used to be this way in his day. Who knew?

Wedge Issue

James Wolcott learns that whenever a liberal bi-coastal elite makes fun of Lil’ Andy he is branded a homophobe by the Alan Simpson Man Boy Association.

A racist-t-shirt wearing professor of Creationism at Wayback University who goes by the handle of Instapundit claims that if a Republican had written what I did about Andrew Sullivan’s phantom creeper on Real Life on Bill Maher, it would have been considered “homophobic.”

I found this out myself when I once pointed out on the late lamented mediawhores online that the swaggering George W. Bush gave Lil’ Andy and Leslie Stahl a fit of the maidenly vapors. Andy himself called me a “leftist homophobe.” (It was the first I’d heard any rumors about Stahl but I guess Andy would know.)

Anyway, it was one of my proudest online moments. I still think of it fondly. Back then, Howard Fineman and Lil’ Andy and Jay Nordlinger could rhapsodize for days about Junior’s macho swagger, his fabulous chin, his equally perfect comfort in ermine or epaulets. It was a lot like like listening to people talk on the bus when I lived in San Francisco in the late 70’s. It made me feel young again…

What’s interesting is that Instapundit seems to have joined the chorus about leftist homophobes. With all this PC sensitivity towards gays in the wingnut set these days, you’d think it was the liberals who just won an election with the help of a bunch of mouthbreathers who seem to think that if gay people are allowed to marry then Real American heterosexuals will be required to perform fellatio. (This is, needless to say, what the Concerned Women For America are most concerned about.)