Wednesday, September 9, 2009

How will the political landscape look tomorrow morning?

To paraphrase Barney Frank channelling his talmudic ancestors, let me answer my own question with a question:

How long is it going to be before someone uses Bob Somerby’s signature trope – “The supposedly liberal media trashed and lied about Clinton and Gore, indulged themselves in their own high-school stylistic preferences, told us that there wasn’t any important policy or leadership difference between Gore and Bush, and are thus complicit in the catastrophe that followed. The dead of Iraq look up at them from their graves” – and applies it to the 2008 elections, and to today?

It may come tomorrow morning -- but I'll provide a preview:

The supposedly liberal media trashed and lied about Hillary Clinton, and told us that there wasn’t any important policy or leadership difference between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, indulged themselves in their own high-school stylistic preferences, and thus are complicit in the (take your pick: (a) Third Bush Term, (b) massively missed opportunity, (c) vacuum) that has followed. The millions of foreclosed and jobless and sick-without-healthcare look up at them from the bottom of the American pyramid.

In fact, I wonder how long it is before Bob himself acknowledges this unavoidable parallel.

In the meantime, consider this a missive to Maureen Dowd, Frank Rich, Keith Olbermann, Josh Marshall, Jon Avarosis, Markos, David Sirota, Chris Matthews, Chris Bowers and many others it's too dispiriting to list.

And as to the crocodile huff that Dowd and her ilk (Joe Klein and Ceci Connolly, for chrissakes) are clowning now -- that their poster child turns out not to be a tough guy, or even any guy in particular -- I can't say it better than BDBlue at Correntewire: "Dude, You Totally Voted for Neville Chamberlain."

2 comments:

july4cat said...

Well, seems Paul likes the speech, kind of. Why not? Obama did everything Paul asked him to do, at least sort of. So we should just learn to accept our fate. We have a kinda-sorta liberal president who will deliver kinda-sorta progressive policies. Maybe this is what's supposed to be. I mean, who needs real passion in an era of hip, hype, and hope?

Falstaff said...

"Sort of" is right. It's some index of how far liberals still have to go to get back to square one that everybody's having palpitations over his willingness even to use the word. Forget that his defense of liberalism was pathetic -- as if the real meaning of Social Security and Medicare... indeed, the essence of the "American character"... was some combination of a sympathetic heart and civility.

In that sense, this is a very personal speech. For Barack Obama, remaining civil trumps everything. He has really been rattled by the crazies, and he really feels the need to appease and calm them down. Indeed, you could almost say that his political mission in life has come to be to save the Republican Party from itself… to reconstitute it with Robert Taft types, to save it from the Joe McCarthy types.

We needed FDR. We didn’t need Dwight Eisenhower.