I just put up a post arguing that hero worship really isn’t a normal part of politics in this country, and that started me thinking: what is “just part of politics” in this country anymore is the opposite of hero worship—what we might call villain demonization. I think the first place we really see that in recent American politics was in Edward Kennedy’s decision to throw out truth and civility in order to destroy the nomination of Robert Bork to the Supreme Court; that was succeeded by the attempt to do the same to Clarence Thomas, which failed when Anita Hill didn’t hold up as a credible witness. When Bill Clinton won the White House, those two things, combined with the memory of the Iran-Contra investigation, had the Right out for blood, and what Hillary Clinton would dub the “politics of personal destruction” were on in earnest. I do believe the impeachment of President Clinton was justified—perjury is a major felony; it is to the justice system what counterfeiting is to the banking system—but I don’t believe the investigation that produced the circumstances under which the President (stupidly) perjured himself was justified by that point, if indeed there had ever been sufficient justification for it. (Those aren’t weasel words—I simply don’t know the facts of the matter well enough to say one way or the other.)
From there, we got the disputed 2000 election and the outrage of a Left that had never seriously considered the possibility it might lose, and thus refused to accept that it had (a refusal which did, at least, produce the single most brilliant political bumper sticker I’ve ever seen: “Re-Defeat Bush”); this would, over time, build to a crescendo of political filth such as I don’t think the US has seen since the 1860s, with shots like “BusHitler” and “Chimpy McHitler” aimed at the President, and considerably worse insults directed at VP Cheney. We saw the Left advance from the level of abuse directed at the Clintons to language actively designed to debase and dehumanize President Bush and his administration—with the worst of it (aside from that dumped on the President and VP) unloaded on Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, for whom the good old Southern plantation racism was dragged out, used for the exact same purpose against her as it had been back in the day. She might well have said, as entertainer Lloyd Marcus recently did, “Because they are libs and I am an uppity, off the liberal plantation, run-away black, all tactics to restore me to my owners are acceptable.” If she had, however, I doubt she would have gotten any consideration from the Left, only more ridicule.
One advantage to the election of Barack Obama to the big chair at 1600 Pennsylvania is that his status as the first person of African descent (though not of slave descent; that breakthrough hasn’t happened yet) to assume the Presidency has made the use of that sort of vitriol against him politically disadvantageous (for now, at least), and has thus walked back the level of nastiness in our political discourse. Unfortunately, the Left seems firmly intent on undoing that advantage by treating any sharp opposition to the President and his policies as if it were that bad, or worse. Thus, for instance, the howl over Joe Wilson’s inappropriate (though arguably true) outburst—you’d never realize, listening to the sanctimony oozing from the lips of Nancy Pelosi and others, that the Democratic congressional caucus as a whole had treated President Bush far worse, and on more than one occasion. Thus as well the debasement of the words “racism” and “racist” into mere political swear words for liberals to hurl at conservatives. Thus, ultimately, the deliberate effort to exacerbate the inflammation in the American body politic for political gain, rather than allowing it to subside somewhat and hoping to draw advantage from that.
This is not to say that there haven’t been inappropriate and outrageous things hurled at President Obama (though the most ubiquitous, the Obama-Joker poster, was created by a liberal Palestinian supporter of Dennis Kucinich); but it is to say that in their efforts to paint seemingly every criticism directed at him with that brush, Democratic leaders are guilty of both the rankest of rank hypocrisy and an appallingly cynical and short-sighted attempt at political manipulation. Honestly, while the Right needs to continue to work to marginalize and weed out the nasty folks, most folks on the Left really don’t have a leg to stand on to complain about the nastiness. If they want to publicly repent of calling George W. Bush “Chimpy McHitler,” Dick Cheney “Darth Vader,” Condoleezza Rice “Aunt Jemima,” and Michael Steele “Simple Sambo,” then I’ll welcome them complaining about a portrayal of Barack Obama as a witch doctor. Until then, what more are they saying than “It’s only racist when you do it”? They’d never tolerate that sort of special pleading from the Right; why should they be allowed to get away with it?
I just can't accept your Left-only-hypocrisy arguments. Here's a good one – the "death panels" that Sarah Palin referred to existed in legislation put forward by the Bush administration in 2003 – and nary a peep was heard. But then a Democratic president proposes the same end-of-life-counseling allowance in health care reform (calling them death panels is absurd and spurious hyperbole) and suddenly Obama is going to line up grandparents and execute them personally.
I don't think you see right-wing hypocrisy as clearly because it is a bit closer to your own viewpoints; the same reason I'm sure I fail to decry leftward hypocrisy. Drawing on our deeply racist past to vilify Condoleeza Rice was disgusting, for example, as well as unnecessary. It's an easy task to assess the Bush administration and find it deeply wanting on all fronts.
"in their efforts to paint seemingly every criticism directed at him with that brush, Democratic leaders are guilty of both the rankest of rank hypocrisy and an appallingly cynical and short-sighted attempt at political manipulation."
No, Rob, I'm sorry, they are engaging only in very pedestrian, run-of-the-mill rank hypocrisy. Replace 'racist' with 'unpatriotic' or even better, 'terrorist' and that is incredibly familiar language aimed at people on the left, even the moderate left, for eight long years. Personally, misusing racist makes me angrier, but in part because words like patriotic and terrorist have been so stripped of meaning in the recent past that I don't experience them as any more than noise at this point. I don't want racist to go the same way because I feel this country still has a lot of racism to grapple with, and we have way more minorities than we have terrorists…
unless you ask Sean Hannity that is.
Here's another piece of hypocrisy on the Right that came to me while walking the dog. I lost track of the thousands of times I heard, on TV, even from the White House itself, that anyone who doesn't support the president in a time of war is a traitor and is supporting terrorism. This accusation was leveled time and again whenever anyone dared question what Bush was doing, even using the terms "giving aid and comfort to the enemy", which is language drawn from the definition of treason.
So Dems are just using "racist" in the same way that the GOP used, and uses, "traitor". It's just from the donkey's mouth rather than the elephant.
Wow I'm about to write something I never thought I'd write. I agree with Doug Hagler…mostly…
The bumper sticker attacks, Quasi news of Hannity, Fox et. al. is not racist. It's infantile. I'm embarrassed by the immaturity of attacks on the citizenship of our President.
Anyone think that if he WASN'T a citizen McCain might have something to say about it? DUH!!!
I'm saying this as a registered and one who usually votes DEMOCRATIC. I expect immaturity on the part of the Dems. Remember the anti-Goldwater commercials and the girl picking flowers?
The GOP has usually, up till they lost been issue people but they've become just as nasty, juvenile and petty as the worse conspiracy theorists around.
Theologically this is called Sin and we see the first and greatest example in Genesis where Adam said, "The President you elected…" and Eve complained, "Fox news reported that…" and God said to them.
GROW UP IDIOTS…
IMHO
Peace
Alan
No, the "death panels" to which Gov. Palin referred did not exist in the Bush administration's legislation. You keep pushing this canard, and I keep telling you it's bunk; it's based both on a phony reading of what Gov. Palin was talking about and about a spurious equivalence between Bush 43's legislation and Obama's. "Death panels" are panels of bureaucrats that are empowered to make the rules on what care shall be authorized and what shall not be authorized–this isn't talking about the attempt at mandatory end-of-life counseling sessions, but about things like the Independent Medicare Advisory Commission. Gov. Palin did not say that "Obama is going to line up grandparents and execute them personally"–that sort of language came from President Obama in a deliberate attempt to mischaracterize Gov. Palin's point.
Also, I'm not by any means claiming that only the Left is hypocritical; I am saying that they're taking it to new levels. I don't think that the misuse and abuse of "treason/traitor" language by the Right over the preceding presidency was hypocritical in the slightest. I do not by that mean to excuse it; it was, equally, the conversion of a meaningful word into a political slur, and it was equally reprehensible. It was not, however, a matter of the Right doing to the Left something which the Right had previously decried, and so the charge of hypocrisy as such doesn't apply. That doesn't mean it was any more defensible morally, though.
Oh, and one other thing: It's an easy task to assess the Bush administration and find it deeply wanting on all fronts. Sure, if you start from radically different presuppositions. You're going to find that administration "deeply wanting on all fronts" just as I'm going to do the same with this one, and for the same reason. That's a statement of political disagreement, nothing else.
Alan, don't even get me started on the idiot "birthers." Barack Hussein Obama is an American citizen for the same reason John Sidney McCain III is an American citizen, and for the same reason my eldest daughter is an American citizen: he was born to an American citizen. Only one in his case, but so what? Those . . . no, seriously, don't get me started, I've vented quite enough about those morally-cretinous imbeciles.
Though I will note, more of them are Democrats than Republicans; that vertiginous nonsense came out of the Hillary Clinton camp, and a lot of prominent "birthers" are also 9/11 "truthers." Seems strange, but it's so. I'll also note that the majority of major conservative pundits have disowned those morons, though I'd like to see more articulation of the reasons why their idiotic assertions are not only factually wrong, but constitutionally irrelevant.
*sound of steam coming out ears*