As a public service, I thought you should be made aware of a tiny flaw in your normally-reliable column.
Hardly worth mentioning, really.
See if you can spot it.
"Stop Being Stupid"
I’ve got a new year’s resolution and a new slogan for the country.
The resolution may be difficult, but it’s essential.
Americans must resolve to be smarter...
We have behaved in ways that were incredibly, astonishingly and. embarrassingly stupid for much too long.
...
We’ve wrecked the economy and mortgaged the future...
We don’t even know if we’ll have an automobile industry in the coming year...
We should stop squandering the nation’s wealth on unnecessary warfare overseas and mindless consumption...
The mind-boggling stupidity that we’ve indulged...
...
We were stupid in so many ways.
...
We shipped American jobs overseas by the millions and came up with the fiction that this was a good deal for just about everybody.
...
We could have and should have taken the time and made the effort to think globalization through, to be smarter about it and craft ways to cushion its more harmful effects and to share its benefits more equitably.
...
We bought into the dopey idea that you could radically cut taxes and still maintain critical government services — and fight two wars to boot!
...
We were living in a dream world. The general public, and to a great extent the press, closed its eyes to the increasingly complex and baffling machinations of the financial industry, which kept screaming that oversight would ruin everything.
We should have known better.
...we at least have the option of being smarter going forward.
...we have no choice but to go much more deeply into debt to jump-start the economy.
...we have tremendous choices as to how we use that debt.
...
We should use it to invest in the U.S. — in a world-class infrastructure (in its broadest sense)….
...
We need to invest in a health care system…
...
We need to care for our environment (if long-term survival means anything to us) and get serious about weaning ourselves from foreign oil.
…we need to start living within our means and get past the nauseating idea that the essence of our culture and the be-all and end-all of the American economy is the limitless consumption of trashy consumer goods.
I could not help but note that the technical term for people who tried to suggest any of this at any point over the last couple of decades was "Dirty America-hating Liberal".
A group roundly hated, ignored and demonized by the Real Murricans on the Right, and their enablers in the press.
And in November, while nearly 69 million of us surveyed eight years of debt, theft, blood and failure and ran screaming in the opposite direction, over 58 million of those Real Murricans looked at exactly the same shattered landscape and voted for “More Please, and with Extra Palin Sprinkles!”
Truth is, Bob, there is no “we” anymore; there are those of us who look at your laundry list as a reasonable assay of our challenges and changes…and there are the Pig People, their panderers, exploiters and ringleaders.
A major reason we are still at great peril, Bob, is not that nobody knows what the problems are, or even how to tackle them, but that Conservatism’s meaty thumb still rests heavily on the cultural scales.
Here is a belief system that has proven beyond any doubt to be a oligarch’s scam -- whose adherents are botched, cartoonish failures as citizens – and yet inexplicably continues to be treated with respect. Even deference. As if bleeding with leeches were still considered to be a legitimate substitute for heart surgery, or casting out demons was still discussed as a valid, competitive alternative to psychotherapy.
Failure by failure, lie by lie, after 30 years Conservatism deserves nothing but publicly mockery as a noxious witchbag of bad religion and bigotry it has always been, and yet when I flick past C-Span this evening, who do I see but George “Macaca” Allen…
...being fêted by the Heritage foundation…
...urping up one Conservative talking point after another
...and smiling that big, fatuous, shit-eatin’ good-ol’-boy grin that is ceremonially Dremeled onto the front of every wingnut politician and preacher’s skull they day their balls drop.
- Just lock criminals up longer instead of letting them out like Liberals wanna do.
- Burn more coal.
- Don’t listen to “pompous elites”.
- Global warming is a lie.
- Americans are not addicted to oil; Americans are addicted to freedom.
- Etc. ad nauseum
So, Bob, while “we” are damned glad that some kind of tipping point seems to have been reached and damnfool ideas are losing a little of their death-grip on our public conversations, “we” will be a lot more reassured that “we” have finally decided to leave brownshirt politics and suicideonomics behind forever when “we” see the High Princes of Stupidism unemployed and ridiculed
instead of nesting comfortably in your employer's Op Ed pages.
35 comments:
Kewl. Bob Herbert has an epiphany. He must be really smart.
In the immortal words of Tonto, upon being told by the Lone Ranger that the two were surrounded by hostile Comanches: "Whaddya mean "we" paleface?"
I stopped giving a **** what Bob Herbert thought after his piece on "OMG teh SEX in VEGAS!!!" columns. Dumas.
Drifty, I am so glad that you read this shit so I don't have to!
Peace to you and yours in the new year.
I hope that he has a hangover, now that the Kool aid has finally worn off.
I am talking dry heaves and the cold sweats and his fucking hands shaking so bad he can't type kind of hangover.
For Christs sake, Welcome to the dark side.
Somebody better keep an eye on this guy, he just might start stopping at cross walks to let little old ladies get across the street.
I was living in New York City when Bob Herbert came to the Times from the News where he wrote the identical style opinion pieces. The were pretty stylish for a tabloid but his game hasn't changed at all. His replacement at the News, Juan Gonzalez, turned the space half-investigative, half-advocacy and did a lot more with it. I know Gonzalez co-hosted Democracy Now with Amy Goodman but I have no idea if he writes for the News anymore. I've been living in South America for the past few years.
Anybody with the gumption to take up after Bob Herbert who's so squeaky clean he needs a new set of rings and some oil from Pep Boys is a blogger who thinks.
I like this blog and I'll be checking for it daily.
The phrase "No Shit Sherlock! What was your first clue?" comes to mind whenever I read the epiphanies.
I'm saddened by the -30- when despite the overwhelming evidence, the writers inevitably acquit the perps, still dismiss the swath of folks who'd been feverishly trying to sound the alarms and insist that the tab be paid by "WE" instead of those who wined and dined on our dimes.
There's just something fucked up about that.
Thanks for saying, Dg.
I had to stop reading good ole Bob some time back when I saw the self-serving blinders go on and his reporting become a substitute for what he probably did at his church on Sundays as a guest minister (the come to Jebus moment - ya'll). He's more than smart enough to know that the culprits are not "we." He's fingered them many times in the past as all the people in power for the last eight years, excepting the people trying to expose those criminals.
And yet he continues to work where Judy Miller, Bill Kristol and David F. Brooks are lauded as visionaries - the grand old lady with her skirts up over her head.
And yes, I know Paul Krugman's columns have their home there too. I guess they have to have one columnist with integrity in order to maintain the pose.
Suzan
Whoops! Sorry, didn't mean to slight Nick Kristof and Frank Rich, both of whom also have integrity (and still write for the lady with the skirt over her head)!
Drifty,
Once again, you put the words to my fury and anger!! I've yet to find a columnist ('cept maybe Rich & Galloway) who deserves more than being a contributor to fish wrappings.
I have found numerous commentators in the so-called "liberal web" who deserve to have their words published in the "mighty" national newspapers. And you are definitely one of them!
Thanks again. And keep it up!
SP
Beautiful, laser-accurate stuff, Drift.
Happy New Year. Onward.
Golly, what an inartful attempt at implying mass culpability. One might infer that Herbert had to make a 'we-we' with all this pronoun trouble.
As a foreign infidel, let me just state for the record that the thinking majority of the rest of the world (henceforth referred to as 'not-U.S.A.') has been watching in horror while the American mass media linked tentacles and commenced this decades-long maypole dance with the Right wing of America, and have been summarily demonized (along with the breed of unwashed copulative beatniks native to your great land) whenever a negative word about the rancid pavane was heard.
Therefore, 'We' are not amused. Or liable, either.
;>)
Thanks for this Drifty, and for all the great and tireless work you've done gratis this year. Your work is greatly appreciated and read every day at our house, and at a lot of other places that I have recommended you to as well. Here's to a great year for you, and to a paying gig doing what you do best. You deserve it.
I have been guilty of mass-blaming the lumpen-prole USers at times, myself, but it is sometimes not unlike blaming the passengers of a hi-jacked airliner for it crashing into a sky-scraper.
You could make the case that anyone who was raised by televison was also raised FOR television, and that the only thing valued by 'television' is abject passivity, and extreme intellectual indolence.
Brilliant as ever. No quarter for those who have been wrong about everything for 30 years. Mock them and ridicule them and remind the world of their wilfull ignorance. It's exhausting but it must be done. "They" will never surrender the exclusivity of their version of Jeebus and are willing to burn the house down around us all. After all, for them, Armageddon means their great big "I told you so"...Why we allow these people, when the apotheosis of their faith requires a civilization ending World War in the Middle-East, to hold influence or be anywhere near positions where they can make this happen.
Good job, DG. Although when I read the article, I didn't include myself in the "we." I assumed Herbert was just being polite and not trying to be accusatory to get the "we" has was talking about to the end of his column. It's like the simpler days when we were in school and you aced a pop quiz but the rest of the class failed. The teacher berated the class as a whole but you knew he/she wasn't talking about you specifically.
Have a great New Year.
Who is Bitchin' Bob writing for anyway? It sure isn't those of us that have given up on the NYT doing any serious analysis of the Bush era. He seems to be striking the mandatory "post-partisan" tone that won't hold any criminal accountable for the biggest heist in human history. We'll just get our editorials from credible sources like you, DG, and save the cost of their shitty rag of a paper. They took all our damn money anyway. Fuckers
Where were these mea culpa "we" dumbfucks when they could have used their bully pulpits to stop the motherfucking insanity!?!?!? Buncha fucking assholes.
Bang on, Driftglass, perfect. Unfortunately for all of us. The right's addiction to their ideology looks more and more like alcoholism all the time... they must be able to see how damaging it is, how much pain and suffering it causes, but they're addicted, and time after time rationalize going back to it. Meanwhile destroying everything around them.
That would be the Royal "We" as we say in the colonies.
I knew we were screwed back when the nation laughed Jimmy Carter out of the White House, in part because he insisted on human rights before free trade. The capitalist types dismissed that as typical Jimmy moral bullshit, but they missed his point: if you have free trade with countries who treat their workers like slaves, either you will have to lose big time, dream up comparative advantage that no longer exists, or treat your workers like slaves. The Walmart model proves my point.
DON'T LET THEM BLAME THIS RECESSION/depression or the failure of the big 3 on the American worker.
Indeed. Without shifting my opinions all that much, I went from being a fairly conventional liberal (let's complete the New Deal agenda) to flaming radical leftist America-hater. My mainstream, Methodist upbringing - intended by founder John Wesley to make you think for yourself - became some wildly unorthodox War on the True Faith of the Fundamentalists, who used to be synonymous with bigotry & ignorance & still are, so far as I can tell (Nobody quotes scripture better than The Devil, sayeth my wise old Sunday school teachers, & we knew who they meant).
So don't blame me, Herbert. I've been stupid about a lot of things, but never so stupid as to vote for a Republican for president.
Oh my, how civil of Mr. Herbert to finally get a fucking clue about what we DFH's have been saying for literally years. That kind of timely analysis must pay some serious coin. Or perhaps it was that soul he sold?
Dear Bob,
Whatever do you mean by "we"... do you have worms?
Love,
Your Neighbor
The extent that "we" are to blame for the shit on Mr. Herbert's list is that we failed to remove the repugs from the scene. Herbert needs a bitch slap from reality.
DB,
Looks like you are in the running for the annual Best DFH Euphemism-of-the-Year award ("the breed of unwashed copulative beatniks native to your great land")!
Excellent analysis - as usual Drifty - particularly when it comes to the Fallen Lady.
Perhaps Mr. Herbert could also mention how "WE" need to do a more aggressive job policing and purging the hackery within the failed excuses for journalism that constitute our traditional/legacy media. And for that one, Mr. Herbert and his colleagues might read the "we," as "YOURSELF!"
sláinte
cl
Have you seen the little piggies
Crawling in the dirt
And for all the little piggies
Life is getting worse
Always having dirt to play around in.
Have you seen the bigger piggies
In their starched white shirts
You will find the bigger piggies
Stirring up the dirt
Always have clean shirts to play around in.
In their sties with all their backing
They don't care what goes on around
In their eyes there's something lacking
What they need's a damn good whacking.
Everywhere there's lots of piggies
Living piggy lives
You can see them out for dinner
With their piggy wives
Clutching forks and knives to eat their bacon.
Are 'we' going to prosecute this time? No? Then 'we' haven't learned anything yet.
You can't spell "we" without "W".
Yo Drifty, congrats on the NOM for 2008 Weblog Award for Best Individual Blog!!
Hope you score MORE swag, you got it comin to ya for all you've done.
If I knew who to send a good bottle of scotch to for your 'enhanced status' consideration, besides you of course . . . . *G*
Great piece. Fareed Zakaria is another one who has pulled this "we" shit in the pages of "Newsweek", and I wrote in every time to point out how bankrupt this notion is. The Bush administration has tried , and in too many cases succeeded in attractively packaging complete bullshit for eight years, and unfortunately, too many brain dead "we"s bought it.
Great piece. Fareed Zakaria is another one who has pulled this "we" shit in the pages of "Newsweek", and I wrote in every time to point out how bankrupt this notion is. The Bush administration has tried , and in too many cases succeeded in attractively packaging complete bullshit for eight years, and unfortunately, too many brain dead "we"s bought it.
Absolutely and impeccably said, DG.
The asshole motif: the orgy is MY responsibility, but its gruesome aftermath & the bill for it is OUR fault.
Nobody could have predicted the obvious (even though plenty of folks did just that)... & those little piggies went WE, WE, WE all the way home.
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