TUESDAY STEW -- ETHNICITY, RACE, RELIGION, POWER POLITICS, HISTORY AND A TRUE AMERICAN COWARD...NO SPORTS, A PROMISE
Jewish groups are all bent out-of-shape by John McCain's continual references to America being a Christian Nation. Well, YEAH! Exactly what about anything John McCain has ever said or done would suggest that he would hold or present anything other that that point of view? Karl Rove fucking school-housed him in South Carolina in 2000. Good on ya, Karl. It was bare-knuckle politics but it wasn't dirty no matter what anyone says. Your boy was losing bad to Mr. Straight Talk and you had to right the ship. If anything, as bad as things have been during Bush's two terms, at least the world is still in one piece. Kelso cannot be certain but he'd have made McCain not a huge underdog to start a nuclear war. His policies would have been no different. Worse even. Domestic, Economic, and Foreign. Compared to McCain, Bush is kind of a human being. They are both disgraces to their family and their professions. McCain was to the military academy what Bush was to the Ivy League, a legacy admission not fit to carry his father's name. Prisoner-Of-War. Big deal. He's traded enough off that to have paid him back a million-fold. Kelso is not offended in the slightest because he never thought of McCain as anything but a fool.
The Robert Shaw line from The Sting applies to McCain as well as to Obama. It may even fit McCain better: "not only are you a cheat, you're a gutless cheat at that." Let's see. McCain's the 2nd most anti-gambling member of the Senate, yet he has a huge credit line at Caesar's Palace and his dice jones has cost him millions. After the legislation he fought tooth and nail for, UIGEA, got back-doored into law by Bill Frist, McCain opened an NCAA Tourney betting web-site in full violation of said law. Charles Keating's bitch was a campaign finance reformer? A drug warrior who could not stay away from opiates and booze? A "straight-talker" who has done nothing but lie his entire poltical career? This isn't anything to get angry about. This is funny. Karl Rove scared him so bad, that McCain won't even own up to being an Episcopalian for fear of offending the base. Big, tough John McWarhero got taken to the hoop by a doughy gay boy like Rove! McCain's such a deeply Christian man but doesn't remember what sect he's from but he thinks he's a Baptist? Well, there's quite a bit to read into that. Flip-flopper, coward and fool for starters. Why would someone born into the High Church want to switch to the Lowest Of The Low Church, especially when's there is hardly a shortage of Southern Baptists and all manner of Low Church folks among his opponents? It really would be the equivalent of some rich German Jewish guy saying "I'm tired of being a Loeb; I'd prefer to be Chaim Putz from the Lower East Side." Just lucky for McCain that his hands are paralyzed because methinks the Episcopalians are not in a big hurry to welcome him back, so good he's "manos de piedra": he ain't playing a round of golf at Shinnecock or Maidstone any time soon. Those places probably have a smattering of Jewish and Catholic members, but no matter how modern it's all become, they are in no hurry to let a Southern Baptist in.
It's a political article of faith that Lyndon Johnson "lost" the South for the Democrats with the Civil Rights Act. Maybe, maybe not. What is less spoken-of is that Barry Goldwater lost the North for the Republicans. John Lindsay did a reverse-Bloomberg in 1969 and swiched from the Republican Party to the Democratic Party to hold onto his mayoralty of NYC in preparation for an unsuccessful run for President in 1972. Though it's nothing anyone will ever see on Hardball, the 1973 publication of The Black-Scholes Options Pricing model in The Journal Of Political Economy effectively ended finance as an exclusively Preppy domain. No longer would having Mayflower ties suffice. Henceforth, Wall Street needed people who could count. That meant Jews. And Chinese. And South Asians. And street kids of all varieties. Lincoln Chaffee recent conversion to the Democratic Party is just another step in this direction for High Church Wasps. Like the Dean brothers. Like Ned Lamont. Lindsay may have figured which way the wind was blowing -- this whole Gentleman's Agreement thing had to stop and the Wasps, liberal Jews and Blacks all needed each other to hold power in the city -- but the spiritual Godfather of the evolution of the Northeastern Wasp was none other the The Reverend William Sloane Coffin, who was 100% courage and died with his boots on. So, Straight Talk is switching now from the sect that brought you Reverend Sloane Coffin to the sect that brought you Jerry Falwell. McCain really is that stupid. There is no doubt in this corner that George W. Bush is more intelligent than John McCain. It is hard to imagine a Rockefeller saying some of the stupid shit McCain says daily. Shit, if it walks and talks like a Southern Bapitist it ain't a Congregationalist.
That's a lesson in ethnicity and power but aren't the McCain enablers worse in a sense than McCain himself? Apparently, there is an excellent piece in this month's Vanity Fair taking apart the execreble Maureen Dowd for this. That poor excuse for a columnist -- Dave Barry is 100x the political thinker Maureen Dowd is -- could not do enough to fuck with the Clintons and with Al Gore's campaign. McCain this. McCain that. Theh Bush this. Bush that. And of course all of the veiled anti-semitism about "Hollywood" as opposed to "real men" like McCain and Bush. Well, that was until she got some Hollywood Liberal Jewish dick stuck in her a few times and the humble-beat cop wasn't so sexy anymore. Then, MoDo became the dragon-slayer. Well, as every single protest since the war began has proved, MoDo can't slay any dragons with her limited tool-kit of lame puns and TV references. She's kind of off dragon-slaying for the near future, though. Her boy McCain is finished. But expect the old MoDo to come back when it's clear that the race is between Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani. Dowd will be back to her old tricks, harping on how this woman has the temerity to want to be President when everybody knows how much safer they'd be with a "neighborhood" guy like Giuliani. Like her stinking ass father. What was he some kind of cop? Or bartender or something. But that'll be her narrative: Giuliani's sexy like her father and the bad boys from the neighborhood whom she adored. Giuliani. America's Mayor. The "hero" of 9/11. This will absolutely be vintage Dowd in The Tissue Of Lies. Wow. A tanned, rested and ready Maureen Dowd and the Old Walrus Thomas Friedman, plus David Brooks. That is a mad strong Op-Ed page. The Weekly Standard does not have a patch on the Tissue Of Lies. The National Review is downright liberal compared with the Tissue's Op-Ed page.
And everybody wonders why we call it The Tissue Of Lies. We don't get the Tissue Of Lies in Panama. Does that Dowd imitator Selena Roberts still write about sports the way Dowd writes about politics?
Kelso's Nuts love you
16 comments:
Nice post. More drive-by history and analysis from Kelso!
Thanks OT. I'm 46 now -- middle-aged -- so the least I can do is write about what I saw, stuff you won't read anywhere else. It's what I get from everyone else here.
That's the best thing about bloggers. The truth is so much more in what you and your family talk about over dinner than what's on the news. If you're informed so much the better it's good to have context but nevertheless real history is happening to all of us every day. Stuff that you were just bullshitting about around the house a year ago might be very important to everyone in the world today. And all of that talk will have so much more currency to it in 30 years when you look back. A famous person can say anything, but your perception and opinion about what was said is more important. The best part of all is that what you write on blogs and what you say with friends and family is also totally uncensored and serves no particular outside party's interest.
I enjoyed your rant, as always, but really..."There is no doubt in this corner that George W. Bush is more intelligent than John McCain?"
Somehow, I never expected to see the words "George W. Bush is more intelligent than" ANYONE, from someone whose opinions I respect so much. I admit, I haven't heard McCain speak, other than newscast soundbites, but it seems that he is able to form a coherent sentence, without it being written down for him.
As for Maureen Dowd, I don't think I've ever had an opportunity to read one of her columns, but I did read her book, "Bushworld." She may not have slain the dragon, but she put up a darned good fight. It was very entertaining.
Harriet Miers said Bush was the most intelligent man she's ever met.
Of course up until ten minutes before meeting him, she spent her entire life in a convent.
Z: Without having heard McCain speak how can you offer an opinion? I think that Bush has some sort of cognitive problem that has gotten worse over the years and public speaking was never his forte. He's probably dislexic or has ADD or who knows, but he is a fairly quick study.
In McCain and Bush you are seeing two average minds decaying fast. I do believe that when both were "whole" Bush was more intelligent than McCain was. And has until recently been the superior or two very weak public speakers. Now, they're about equal.
I know that goes against received wisdom but that's my opinion. We are not talking about Einstein and Joyce here. We're talking about two inarticulate men we're forced to listen to now and then. Bush was not always like this. He was pretty nimble as governor of Texas and don't forget that he really stomped Gore in every debate.
Maureen Dowd is a bloody disgrace. We're talking about the same Maureen Dowd, right? The one who writes that teenage diary fluff on the TISSUE OF LIES Op-Ed page. The one who was blown away by Washington's amazing new "rock star," Donald Rumsfeld? The first one to thank God "the grown-ups are back in Washington"? The one who uses sitcoms and movies as hooks for every column? That one, right? Go into the New York Times archive and read her columns about the 2000 election. Or her columns during 1998 when Clinton was all jammed up. You won't find much to like there. In fact, her politics then were not terribly different than Ann Coulter's but she lacked both Coutler's bite and wit.
What she did show was a pitiable Electra complex, trying to find shades of her father in every Republican and using that to dump on Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton and especially Al Gore. Lord knows, I have bones to pick with all three, but they are on matters of policy not style. What a shame you didn't read the columns. She was the prude's prude with regard to Bill Clinton.
As for "Bushworld," I'm glad you enjoyed it. I wouldn't waste my time. But the tone of the columns up to the toppling of the Saddam Hussein statues and those that began popping up six months later were quite different. Here's my prediction, given what I perceive to be a sexual obessession with her father, she will naturally identify will Giuliani and will be unsparing in her mocking of Hillary Clinton. If that's your bag, mazel tov. Expect to see a compendium of such columns as I've forecasted in 2009 in her forthcoming "POCKETBOOKWORLD" which will doubtlessly have on its cover the ugliest picture of Clinton they can come up with.
Given that MoDo has not been shy about her anti-semitism in the past making reference to "Hollywood," "Wall Street," "Loony Liberals," "The Upper West Side," "psychiatry" and so on ad nauseum. I don't feel shy in the slightest about quoting from what was a satirical song about bigotry called "White Noise" by STIFF LITTLE FINGERS. Somehow, it doesn't come across as satire when I think back on the body of her work: "Paddy is moron/Spud thick Mick/Breeds like a rabbit/thinks with his pick/Anything floors him if he can't fight or drink it/round 'em up in Ulster/tow it out and sink it." Go back and read her shit about McCain and Bush and "the humble beat-cop" and you'll see the stereotype SLF makes fun of really is her ideal man. She's basically a prude and a square.
FAIRLANE: I didn't say he was smarter than YOU. I said he was smarter than McCain.
Z: I probably didn't get to the essence of what's so bad about Maureen Down. Go to VANITY FAIR and read the piece on how the media trashed Gore and her complicity in it. Here are the full lyrics to SLF's "White Noise" and I do not have a single doubt that as far as these issues of immigration and ethinicity go, she and Pat Buchanan are kissing cousins. This is the way they think about everyone else. In that time in the UK, however, at least in the opinion of SLF Ms. Dowd's co-religionists were considered not better than Blacks, Pakistanis or Jews by the British. Not a doubt in my mind these harsh satirical words are EXACTLY how Maureen Dowd really thinks.
"White Noise" Lyrics
Rastus was a nigger. Thug mugger junkie.
Black golly gob. Big horny monkey.
Pimp pusher coon. Grinning piccaninnies.
Send him home soon. Back to the trees.
Black wogs. Black wogs. Face don't fit.
Black wogs. Black wogs. Ain't no Brit.
Ahmed is a Paki. Curry coffee queer.
Ten to a bed. Flocking over here.
Tax-sponging canker. Smelly thieving kids.
Ponce greasy wanker. Worse than the yids.
Brown wogs. Brown wogs. Face don't fit.
Brown wogs. Brown wogs. Ain't no Brit.
Stick together we'll be alright me and you
The only colours we need are red, right and blue.
Paddy is a moron. Spud thick Mick.
Breeds like a rabbit. Thinks with his pick.
Anything floors him if he can't fight or drink it.
Round them up in Ulster. Tow it out and sink it.
Wow, Kelso. I clearly have some research to do. Picture me with head hanging in shame. As I said, my only real contact with MoDo's writing was with "Bushworld." She was delightfully anti-Bush, et al and anti-Iraq war, and had an engaging writing style, so she was AOK with me. I will try to summon up the ambition to find some of her despicable columns on-line. I trust you and I respect your opinions. You are infinitely more informed on political matters than I could ever hope to be. I tend to form opinions with too little evidence and have been caught short more than once. Thanks for setting me straight.
Don't form opinions based upon what I write. Read the VANITY FAIR piece. Listen to some of Sam Seder's archived radio shows. That's where all the good stuff on Maureen Dowd is. Media Matters ought have to some stuff. Crooksandliars too. I'm just giving you a recap.
I don't personally care for her writing style at all, but that's a matter of taste. I don't really follow pop culture that closely so I don't get a lot of laughs from the references. A lot of people love her and she has plenty of imitators, so what do I know?
mccain is a media creation --- plain and simple --- his straight (to hell if you ask me) talk express was such crap --- it was the media in love with the POW, the anti-bush, the one GOP fuckwad that stood up to the Religious Reich.
i truly think McCain is not a stable person --- and he is (like bush) incapable of telling the truth -- but he is actually smarter than bush.... then again i really dont think it takes much to be smarter than bush.
i forgot for a moment that mcinsane was involved with the Keating mess....no matter -- i really think, like my picture, mcinsane is toast.
MANOS DE PIEDRA may be toast but your picture hardly isn't. You and I and Fairlane and Spartacus and MathMan and O'Tim and Fred Schwartz and I forget who else are PINUP BOYZ on D-CUP's LiberalBlogHottie 2008 calendar.
The most I'll concede on this Bush/McCain intelligence thing is a tie. And both are losing it at a rapid pace. Bush in 2000 was nobody's fool. He killed Gore in those debates. When exactly did McCain say anything extemporaneously that made any sense at all. Bush never exactly lied. They wrote up shit for him to say and he said it. McCain never fails to lie. And it doesn't matter whether he's lying or telling the truth he still sounds as inarticulate and boorish as Bush does.
The Senators who have IMPRESSED me with their intelligence are in some geographical order: LEAHY, SANDERS, WHITEHOUSE, SUNUNU, CLINTON, SCHUMER, WEBB, GRAHAM (SC), SHELBY, PRYOR, BROWN, DURBIN, FEINGOLD, KOHL, LEVIN, HARKIN, GRASSLEY, BROWNBACK, HAGEL, BINGHAMIN, WYDEN AND SMITH.
The ones that you'd expect to be bright but are kind of boneheads are: COLLINS, SNOWE, KERRY, LIEBERMAN, BIDEN, MILULSKI, NELSON (FLA), LANDRIEU, LINCOLN, LUGAR, OBAMA, BAUCUS, CANTWELL, MURRAY, FEINSTEIN, AND BOXER.
But I guess of anyone in recent memory the most impressive person all around wouldn't be any of the usual suspects. For general intelligence, fearlessness, and ability, I don't think there's been anyone to compare with George Shultz. Good thing Reagan got him in there and kept him there all the way because that was really his only chance at the big stage. And I cannot imagine what Reagan might have gotten up to without him there. His views were too nuanced and he was just too sensible to win an election of any kind in any district. My favorite Shultz moment in a career that had many good ones, was right after Nancy Reagan made "the war on drugs" her top priority, Shultz, then Secretary Of State, I think, appeared with Baltimore mayor Kurt Schmoke at a drug-legalization rally. No Democrat would do that today, let alone a Republican.
I could whine that you wear my ass out with your smarts. But I won't, but you do.
I will say that Maureen Dowd is over-rated. Plain and simple.
Great post, as usual. And thanks for leaving the damned sports out. Bad enough that I had to wade through math talk half the day.
I think you are blowing Maureen Dowd's importance WAY out proportion. She's the token woman on the NYT's editorial page, a page, and a newspaper, that has been notorious for racism and sexism with regard to its hiring and promotion policies in the past (and probably to this day) and her modus operandi has been very much to poke fun at that, to be a kind of high-brow purveyor of chick-lit. And if you read between the lines (as it seems you have attempted to), you will sense that deep down she doesn't take herself all so seriously. Despite the fact that she won a Pulitzer Prize.
And, one might argue, one can't have it both ways. But in truth, many people do. Things are not, and cannot be, black and white all the time. Maureen Dowd is a contradiction. So what.
And if you watch her in interviews, what comes across is a very shy (yet,granted, narcissistic ... again, so what) woman, not hugely articulate, and who doesn't really see herself as a power player.
If anything, perhaps she doesn't belong on the Op-Ed page of a newspaper of such influence as The New York Times. But, then again, Clarence Thomas probably doesn't belong on the Supreme Court. And Kennedy Jr. doesn't belong in the House of Representatives. Thems is the breaks. At least she, for the most part, worked pretty hard, through the ranks, to get where she is.
Of course she's got her demons (as I believe you have too, Kelso). Although, she's been critical, highly critical, at times of the men you claim with whom she's experiencing an "electra" complex (Bush I and Bush II, and others). Let's not oversimplify here. And, I think she had every right to go after the hypocricy of Bill Clinton's feminist supporters. They WERE a pretty pitiful bunch.
Finally, I think you are wrong in going after her as an anti-semite. You seem to take great joy in finding them in every nook and cranny of society. "Wall Street,", "psychiatry," "Hollywood," and "liberal" may have been code for "Jewish" in the past and who am I to say if they aren't to some extent, with an oder generation, today. But I think you've gone overboard on that issue that with Maureen Dowd.
Maybe Anna Quindlen should have stuck around. I don't know.
This is exactly why you have to lace 'em up and get back on the ice, Anita. You paid very close attention to what I wrote and found the weaknesses in the argument. One of your points, I agree with. The other I disagree with, although from a national perspective it's not that important for the very reason you are right about point #1.
Maureen Dowd is irrelevant in a material and instrumental sense. This is exactly why I used the Dave Barry analogy. The difference is that Dave Barry is a populist humorist. He does not pretend to be at the nerve center of anything. Quite the opposite. Maureen Dowd waits and jumps on the pile once it's established. Her facile style is ready-made for that. She doesn't affect the way anybody thinks about anything. And she certainly doesn't belong where she is, and if you ever go back to the archives and read some of her stuff when she was head of Washington bureau during Bush Sr administration, it will be clear she didn't belong as a bureau chief or even a reporter. I gave her way more attention than she deserved but she was on my mind after having read the Vanity Fair piece and listened to the Seder show about it.
I believe you are wrong, though as to my Dowd-ology. Bill Clinton's feminists for one were not at all hypocritical. Do I really need to tell YOU OF ALL PEOPLE THAT? You think he REALLY harrassed anyone? Or obstructed justice intimidating any women? Please. Not that he didn't have the means. Shit, Cheney muscles people around for grins.
Clinton was SEXUAL and his "feminists" responded to that in a positive way which speaks well all around. If MoDo was as "inside" as she thinks, she would have known that. Or maybe she knew it and decided to take some easy pot shots. She's either a fool or a knave. Or, I think, a little bit of both.
I don't just have issues, Anita, I have the whole subscription. I'm one of the most fucked-up people on the planet. Full confession. No bullshit. That doesn't mean I'm wrong that she's used anti-Semitic code words when the political narrative of the day dovetails with her particular Electra complex and irrational class neuroses. She does shift into that mode from time to time, si o no? Do you mean "Hollywood" and "Wall Street" and "psychiatry" are NOT code words? You know better than that. Are "urban", "inner-city" or "overly dependent on government" NOT also code? You very well know what ethnic power politics are like on the East Coast.
But it doesn't really matter because things are how they are. Big events like war and the economy will settle political questions. But how the populace shakes out from a social scientist's point of view forms the underlying structure.
A couple more footnotes, Anita.
The code-words carry currency because they have some basis in fact. Doesn't mean they aren't used with malign intent.
I personally am ALWAYS trying to HAVE IT BOTH WAYS. It's an essential tool in debate and like a "finesse" at bridge, it's great when you can get away with it.
ANEEEEEEETA: Vo vilst du? What's the fun in winning every debate by DQ? You won't have a perfect record with your own blog, nobody does. But your viewpoint and scholarship are essential.
sorry, sorry ... kelso, i'll be back ... been meaning to respond ... but, i've been, to quote a famous blogger i know, "velly velly" busy ...
off to south jersey to visit my dad in his 'assisted living villa' (or as he likes to call it ... the 'prison' where he is an 'inmate' ...)
;)
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