Duck Theathon!

I was trying to think of what to say about the passions of the Frum, sacrificed to Conservative Shibboleths, then realized there aren't any conservative shibboleths left. Oh, maybe one new one: Don'tCriticizeTheGOP (harder to pronounce than you'd think). As Frum pointed out in the blog post that cost his job at the American Enterprise Institute (and presumably his AEI Diners Club discount card):

But we do know that the gap between this plan and traditional Republican ideas is not very big. The Obama plan has a broad family resemblance to Mitt Romney’s Massachusetts plan. It builds on ideas developed at the Heritage Foundation in the early 1990s that formed the basis for Republican counter-proposals to Clintoncare in 1993-1994.

Yeah, it's uncomfortable when one of your own points this out. I guess tough love hurts. The entire episode recalls last September, when the conservative establishmen went similarly apesh*t after Frum wrote the following (that time, in a column):

On the one side, the president of the United States: soft-spoken and conciliatory, never angry, always invoking the recession and its victims. This president invokes the language of “responsibility,” and in his own life seems to epitomize that ideal: He is physically honed and disciplined, his worst vice an occasional cigarette. He is at the same time an apparently devoted husband and father. Unsurprisingly, women voters trust and admire him.

And for the leader of the Republicans? A man who is aggressive and bombastic, cutting and sarcastic, who dismisses the concerned citizens in network news focus groups as “losers.” With his private plane and his cigars, his history of drug dependency and his personal bulk, not to mention his tangled marital history, Rush is a walking stereotype of self-indulgence – exactly the image that Barack Obama most wants to affix to our philosophy and our party

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The maxim: "Do as we say we say, not as we said." All of which reminds me of that old Bugs and Daffy saw:



During the last election (and throughout the healthcare debate), I was dreaming of a day when there would be principled conservative arguments that found airtime in the public forum. Perhaps I'm wistful for something that never happened -- think Bill Buckley's challenging interview of Noam Chomsky on Firing Line. Sure, there are Ross Douthat, and Reihan Salaam, and (formlerly) Frum -- but I was waiting for the day when their distinctively marginalized ideas received a broad airing in conservative and republican circles (I mean in a New Big Tent, not the New York Times). Looks like I'll be waiting a while.

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Zadie Smith at Delphi

There's an amazing essay by Zadie Smith over at the New York Book Review. It's about Obama, and speaking in tongues -- that is, with many voices. Please read it for yourself, it's so sharply written it could prick your eyes, and it's equally smart.

But I was floored by this line:

"The idea that one should speak one's cultural allegiance first and the truth second (and that this is a sign of authenticity) is precisely such a deformation."

She's talking about Jesse Jackson and how some members of the Black community feel about dealing with their identity with regard to whites. What is stunning is how clearly and cleanly she expresses this, and how well it describes we're seeing in Rush Republicans right now. She attributes such "deformations" to living "through a bitter struggle, and bitter struggles deform their participants in subtle, complicated ways." So what was Rush's bitter struggle? Where was Michelle Malkin's, or Charles Krauthammer's great testing?

But what is so striking is how pithily she expresses the incoherence here -- authenticity is tied directly to willing distortion. You place party before truth in order to demonstrate how true you are.

That, my friends, is one wicked pen. I think I'll go drown the week in White Teeth.

P.S.> And I wholly agree that Obama draws freely from the James Baldwin fount. Who wouldn't?

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The "Democrat" Party

I was reading an article in the Washington Times about the Limbaugh CPAC speech, and as loopy as it sounded, it insisted that this was THE conservative speech of the year. This was seconded by Ross Douthat over at The Atlantic -- a sober-minded conservative who happens to be young AND think the Republicans are currently jumping off a cliff.

So I decided to watch the speech in its entirety -- and I'm about halfway through now. I was wondering if it would contain anything different from his radio show (which I listen to pretty regularly. Know thy shock jock.) But it's the same mix of COMPLETELY (and knowingly) misleading statements with an occasional dash of honesty. But I'll only take one thing up -- his insistence on using The "Democrat" Party. That says everything necessary about the essential lack of seriousness among these conservatives. Leave alone whether they have substantive disagreements on policy -- many wouldn't know because they're not even willing to recognize with any honesty the positions of their liberal opponents. They're not even willing to call them by their actual name. Name calling, as we all remember from our earliest years, is a synechdoche for stupid, threatened behavior. And if you're behaving like a toddler, you'll think like a toddler, and you'll sound like one.

What ALWAYS amazes me, is that every once in a while Limbaugh will make a true statement, i.e., "Obama is spending money he doesn't have -- he's spending wealth that has yet to be created" and there's NO applause. Then "He wants to get everyone in the soup kitchen. Why? Because he doesn't want them to learn what they need in order to succeed on their own" -- followed by rabid, slavering cheers.

What's striking to me, is that at some level, I don't think any of them believe that last statement. They know he's doesn't really want people to stay ignorant and poor. But another part of them directly conflates what they see as the outcome with his own desires. Hence the childishness.

In psychology they talk about a developmental transition called "the mirror phase." In it, the child comes to recognize that those other creatures (mommy, daddy, puppy) are independent entities--they are not extensions of the kid, but creatures with distinct thoughts, feelings and desires, creatures that don't feel or think the same way. Rushlimbaughian rhetoric can only work if Republicans are able to turn that insight off. Hence the screaming scrum of toddlers. "He agrees with us, because everyone thinks the same way, because we are right. So if he says that, he must want to destroy America. And the Jonas brothers were teh awesome last night."

P.S.> I realize many Republicans felt that the Obama fanatics thronging at his campaign events were the same way -- swept to sea in a teenagery cult of personality. But CPAC isn't a bunch of fans. It's the best and brightest conservatives have to offer -- the leaders, the luminaries, the lucid. And this is what the sober conservative adores and respects.

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T. G. I. M.

It may be that Monday has the highest average rate of heartattacks, but the weekends are slow news and blog days. Now that the work week is back, we return to the gripping "he said ... she said" stories that constitute political coverage: "Republicans are sounding down in the dumps ... Dems say bring it on." I'm just waiting for "Republicans advise caution ... Dems say Get 'er done."

Tipplometer: lets make that five commiserating drams of Wild Turkey for distraught repubs, and a jack and tobasco shot for the dems. Tipplometer total: 6.0

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