Wednesday, October 01, 2008

Kathleen Parker Finally Gets


a good, long look at who's been signing her check all these years.

This is such one of my favorite parables I’m surprised I haven’t inflicted on you for three years:
… this insect specialist is walking around on the Near North Side during rush hour one summer day, talking with a friend. The ambient environment – near an “el” stop and hard by one of the ubiquitous construction sites – was warm-weather busy. As if someone had accidentally knocked over a bee hive full of workers dressed in bike pants, short skirts or business-casual suits and loosened ties.

It was loud.

And that’s when the entomologist stops his friend and tells him the he hears the distinctive chirping of a particularly uncommon species of cricket (BTW, feel free to re-tell this story using the ‘White House’ and Jiminy Cricket if you’d like. With a dollop of AstroGlide it fits like a pair of bunny slippers.)

His friend is dubious, to say the least.

“Quit screwing with me, Dwight (we’ll call him ‘Dwight’),” Larry said (we’ll call the other guy ‘Larry’.) “you know you can’t here a damned thing in this din.”

Ok, “din” is my word. Larry wouldn’t really say that.

Dwight shrugged, and took out a small handful of coins – nickels and pennies and a dime or two, (Possibly exactly the same combination of coins O. Henry used in “The Gift Of The Magi”) – and tossed them up and out onto a temporarily vacant spot on the sidewalk. The instant they hit and started pinging and jangling around, everyone in earshot ceased what they were doing, stopped talking, and turned to look at the source of the sound.

“It’s not how loud it is,” Dwight said. “It’s what you listen for.”
Keep that in mind while you read this from Firedoglake:
Kathleen Parker Shocked To Find Her Party’s Full Of “Vicious”, “Threatening”, Delusional Wingnuts

By: Blue Texan Wednesday October 1, 2008

Parker, who last week called for Palin to step down, now finds herself the target of a Wingnut Two Minutes of Hate.
"Allow me to introduce myself. I am a traitor and an idiot. Also, my mother should have aborted me and left me in a dumpster, but since she didn't, I should "off" myself.
...
"After 20 years of column writing, I'm familiar with angry mail. But the past few days have produced responses of a different order. Not just angry, but vicious and threatening.
And she knows vicious. Here's Parker in 2003, on the Democratic presidential candidates:
Here's a note I got recently from a friend and former Delta Force member, who has been observing American politics from the trenches: "These bastards like Clark and Kerry and that incipient ass, Dean, and Gephardt and Kucinich and that absolute mental midget Sharpton, race baiter, should all be lined up and shot."
Suck it up, Kathleen. You've been tossing red meat to a caged rabid animal for two decades. No sympathy when it finally bites you.
Now, she whines:
...when we decide that a person is a traitor and should die for having an opinion different from one's own, we cross into territory that puts all freedoms at risk.
I'm truly speechless.

UPDATE

John Hawkins, responding at Right Wing News, writes:
As a general rule, conservatives aren't as nasty and vicious as liberals...
To which I say, Amen Brother!

However I couldn’t quite place which pillar of sweet, kindly Conservative temperance Mr. Hawkins might be citing, so maybe someone can help me out here.

Was it Karl Rove?

Or Tom DeLay?

Or Newt Gingrich?

Was it Roger Ailes?

Glenn Beck?

Tucker Carlson?

Neil Cavuto?

Ann Coulter?

Pat Robertson?

Maybe Chris Wallace?

Lou Dobbs?

Dick Armey?

Robert Novak?

Steve Doocy?

Jesse Helms?

Bob Dornin?

Jerry Falwell?

John Gibson?

Sean Hannity?

Dick Cheney?

Brit Hume?

Rush Limbaugh?

Mary Matalin?

Tony Perkins?

Dick Morris?

Bill O'Reilly?

Phil Gramm?

Michael Savage?

John Hagee?

Monica Crowley?

William Donohue?

Frank Luntz?

Michael Medved?

G. Gordon Liddy?

Or maybe Laura Ingraham?


Once upon a time, in another country, all it took was a scrape of yellow cloth

to instantly dehumanize someone.

Like a switch being thrown, a favorite teacher, neighbor or friend could become

a hated pariah.

An honored member of the community could be morphed into an enemy of the state

in the twinkling of an eye.

And it was possible ONLY because a sophisticated infrastructure of habitual, mindless, daily-repeated bigotry and rage that had been built up decade after decade was annexed by a power-mad clique of fanatics, weaponized, tanked up with rocket fuel, and then let off the leash.

Does this sound at all familiar, Ms. Parker?

Of course as long as the monster worked on your behalf -- as long as it was only gypsies, malcontents, misfits, queers, Jews and commies against whom the propaganda machine ranted by day and and for whom the jackboots came by night -- as long as the bell never tolled for thee -- everything was just fucking peaches and cream!

As long as it's just those people, Good Germans like Ms. Parker will always be more than happy to make a little bank firing up the mob. Only too willing to smirk and sneer and turn a little profit raging up the pig people in the service of demonizing anyone who doubts the infinite wisdom of the Dear Leader or the infinite goodness of the Christopath cabal that runs the GOP, ‘cause it all sounds just like sweet, sweet music…just as long as its being directed at the dirty Jews Liberals.

But now the monster has turned on its creator, and Good German Kathleen has finally heard an inkling – or an oinkling – of the baying, shrieking hordes whose bloody-mindedness we on the Left have been trying to curb for the last generation.

So, as a newly Displaced Pundit stranded in Liberal Casablanca, let me save you some time and trouble and tell you what won't work.

For about the last 30 years, we tried on the Left the sweet-reason thingie.

Didn’t work at all.

We tried the “compromise” thingie.

Got called weak and cowardly for our trouble.

We tried the “Hey, lets elect the most Centrist President we can find. A Republican-lite Southerner, that’ll give the Right almost everything they ever wanted. Welfare reform, NAFTA, DOMA, GATT, a balanced budget, surpluses, and a military victory.” thingie.

For our sins we got eight years of partisan hearings, government shutdown, slander, and impeachment, because while Conservatism might have been a movement once upon a time, too many of us failed to realize until it was too late that today's Conservatism is a moral dumpster fire of bigots, fundies, homophobes and imbeciles.

It is a disease that took over the country by screaming that everyone who disagreed with it was a god-hating traitor, and if you expect one iota of pity from anyone on this side of the moral Universe for finally getting bitten by the mad dog you’ve been feeding all these years, you can go fuck yourself with a steam hammer.

Once that disease is eradicated, we'll get right back to playing nice.

But until then, Anna Karenina, your locomotive is waiting.

18 comments:

Anonymous said...

DG- I think may have been too soft and compromising with her.






NOT.

Anonymous said...

deliberately she shrouded the the light in her eyes.Damn fine writing Driftglass.But getting back to playing nice.....Eh i will think about that after the earth has been tramped down on the republican corpse.

Melina said...

a beautiful piece...and its all too painfully true. It seems that in most of life, there is this underside always brewing. Im afraid that this behavior exhibits what is intrinsic in the human animal rather than just a problem we run into from cycle to cycle depending on how complicit the press is willing to be.
If humanity is just bad to begin with and the rest is a facade that we beat ourselves into with fabricated societal norms then what then?
xoxo drifty...you're a voice in the storm.I just wish that the path to rescuing what might be left of this big experiment didnt have to be so much of a rehash of the badness that continues on. But putting that all to bed might involve accountability so as to assure that it wasnt just crawling back under its rock for another cycle or two...

The spectre of having to listen to Palin putting a folksy face on this disaster makes me start rifling round for the old expired valium in the hopes of some relief...and yet, I am drawn there...Its like a car wreck in slo-mo; a cartoon version of what some of our worst attributes may be...are...

Anonymous said...

Surprise, surprise, surprise.

Anonymous said...

The cynical postwar term was "roast beef German": (Nazi) brown on the outside, (Commie) red on the inside.

We need a De-publican-ization process, where to be De-publican-ized, Kathleen and her ilk will have to a) disavow their own words and b) be branded on the tongue with an "L" for liar.

The Minstrel Boy said...

we can only hope that iraq and the current trashing of the economy do to the republicans what mexico and depression did to the whigs.

it's history that even a conservative could appreciate.

Anonymous said...

historical poetry, Drifty

Unknown said...

Inflict away, my friend. I've called Miz Kathleen every name in the book as she prepared the way for the ass-straddling Rethugs to take everything with them before they make that final exit, stage(d) right, to Dubai.

And "Republican corpse," anonymous?

It will be the rotted corpse of democratscy before they make their way to the burial ground being prepared by history for the pullulating pig people populating this placebo-loving place at the end of the (our) road.

Don't be blinded by the (Reichstag) fire this time into believing that there will be any halt to the forward movement of the Greedsters. Just a pause for a splash of refreshment perhaps (champagne, anyone?) and then . . .

After the first trillion is voted either today or tomorrow by our "concerned" representatives (who only added a few more gifties for their money-people in order to get those last tough Rethugli-Con holdouts) and everyone breathes a sigh of relief (not realizing that treasured concepts like the Social Security trust fund and much-expected Medicare aid have just been sacrified in order for bankers to be able to lend them more funny money), there will be a call in two weeks or so for another trillion - just to make sure that the first trillion wasn't wasted.

And pay no attention to the gas lines, $10/gallon gas (it's only temporary!) and $20/loaf bread.

Not to worry.

Everything is on schedule.

Keep those lines straight. (And the printing presses humming.)

Suzan

P.S. I borrowed one of your Twilight Zone clips, Dg, for my blog. It was just too seductive to leave alone.

Unknown said...

Was that entomologist anywhere near the old Demon Dogs? I think I remember those coins... or at least the dimes....

twostepcub said...

Very well written piece. I always wondered WHEN (not if) the right-wing would start infighting amongst its subgroups, but I had thought it would be after the election.

The question is, is this an epiphany for Parker or just self-pity. Time will tell...

Cheers
Ern

Joshua Trupin said...

I read a LOT of commentary around the Internets. I don't know what greater compliment I can give than this: You come closer to Steve Gilliard's raw, visceral work than anyone else I've seen.

Anonymous said...

Thank you, thank you, and thank you again. You are brilliant!

Rehctaw said...

"too many of us failed to realize until it was too late that today's Conservatism is a moral dumpster fire of bigots, fundies, homophobes and imbeciles."

who can't stand the thought that actual thinking people might object to their intolerance.

After listening to yet another Rube hick governor mangle the English language so badly, for so long that my ears and brain hurt,
reading this has given me the strength to carry on.

And yep, Gilly would be beamin'.

Unknown said...

While the repugs scream socialism what was happening was fascism...Put all money and goverment power into the hands of the few while the rest of us labor for them. They deliberately set out to bankrupt our government (except for military which goes mostly to Halliburton and those mercenaries at Blackwater...while our military families get food stamps) so the general welfare could not be. As far as the $5000.00 tax credit for insurance...mine costs $1300.00 a MONTH and my husbands is $1100.00 a MONTH so that's one big pile of bullshit form McCaim who by the way has had federal health care his entire life as have his parents and his childrn. I am pissed.

Jonnan said...

Interestingly enough "Here's a note I got recently from a friend and former Delta Force member, who has been observing American politics from the trenches: "These bastards like Clark and Kerry and that incipient ass, Dean, and Gephardt and Kucinich and that absolute mental midget Sharpton, race baiter, should all be lined up and shot."

returns "Your comment contains content that violates our discussion policy. Please edit and resubmit." on the Washington post website.

lostnacfgop said...

Kathleen Parker, meet (FINALLY) Martin Niemoller,

WereBear said...

But until then, Anna Karenina, your locomotive is waiting.

Beautiful, Drifty, as always.

The worm (heh heh) is turning. I always hoped I would live to see the destruction of the Republican party.

I didn't know they would make so much headway in only a month. But while it is by all means not over yet, the fact that they are being massively ripped off is no longer so easy to hide from most people.

ash said...

Kathleen Parker is Peggy Noonan lite. Pass it on.