Sunday Morning Comin’ Down

As today's Mouse Circus lineup still shows, until things change drastically, Sunday will forever be a Festival of Conservative Frottage.

On “Fox News Sunday”

Rep. Eric Cantor, (R) Virginia
Rep. Darrell Issa, (R) California / Cmte. on Oversight & Govt. Reform
Rep. Paul Ryan, (R) Wisconsin / Budget Committee

On “This Week”

Republican Senator-elect from Kentucky, Rand Paul.
Ronald Reagan's budget director David Stockman.
Chairman of the House Republican Conference Mike Pence

On “Face the Nation”

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.

On “Meet the Press”

Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC),
Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ)
And Good 'Ol George Bush got his book lovingly and uncritically pimped by Conservatives and Centrists alike.

Yes, there were a sprinkling of Centrist, go-along-and-make-nice-Evan Bayh douchbags here and there cringing and shuffling and whinging about the "extremes on both sides", but no one (for example) called out Karen Hughes for lying over and over again. She was not shunned or driven back into the swamp with torches and pointed sticks, because there are no longer any penalties whatsoever for Conservatives lying on teevee.

No matter how bad they shit themselves on camera, corporate twats like David Gregory will always invite them back over and over again, and never be so rude as to seat them next to anyone with an opposing view and a command of the facts that could actually make them look like the fools an poltroons they are.

And of course, across the board, the demand from Republicans is that, now that every Democratic principle going back to the dawn of time has been resoundingly repudiated forever and ever, it is only right and proper that the Losers should give up on all their silly ideas of fairness, fiscal prudence, a social safety and a restoration of the Middle Class and give the Winners everything they want.

This is called Centrism and, we are told, it is the Good and Natural order of things.

Except, of course, we are told this by the very people who got their asses handed to them in back-to-back elections, and responsed to the complete and cataclysmic failure of their ideology by spending the last two years deserting and betraying their country at the hour of its greatest need.

Instead of pitching in to clean up the mess they made, the Right and their Centrist enablers pitched one hysterical public fit after another. Instead of lending a hand, the Right and their Centrist enablers went headhunting. Instead of sobering up and facing facts, the Right and their Centrist enablers spend the rent money to buy another case of wingnut popskull off the back of Dick Armey's snake oil wagon and drank their last, few remaining shreds of conscience to death.

In short, far from following their own advice, the Losers of 2006 and 2008 dug in like deer tics, filibustered everything in the Universe including legislation they themselves sponsored, emptied out the dregs of the Bedlam to find candidates for public office, and generally spent the last two years lobbing cinder-blocks into traffic.

Weird how nobody on teevee thought to point this out to them.

Not that it would have mattered in the slightest.

Like a dab of wasabi or a squeeze of lemon, the unabashedly intelligent Liberal is occasionally permitted a few refreshing, seconds of "wacky neighbor" time front of the camera, but the people who own your media will never under any circumstances permit that conversation to take place in any serious way.

And the ongoing tragedy of this "revelation" is that it is no revelation at all.

In fact, in case you're wondering why the Left is collectively feeling a little tired these days and have lost our taste for taking prisoners, note that this is from Bill Maher two days ago:

And finally, New Rule, if you're going to have a rally where hundreds of thousands of people show up, you might as well go ahead and make it about something. With all due respect to my friends Jon and Stephen, it seems to me that if you truly wanted to come down on the side of restoring sanity and reason, you'd side with the sane and the reasonable, and not try to pretend that the insanity is equally distributed in both parties.

Keith Olbermann is right, when he says he's not the equivalent of Glenn Beck. One reports facts, the other one is very close to playing with his poop.

And the big mistake of modern media has been this notion of balance for balance's sake, that the left is just as violent and cruel as the right, that unions are just as powerful as corporations, that reverse racism is just as damaging as racism. There's a difference between a mad man, and a madman.

Now, getting over 200,000 people to come to a liberal rally is a great achievement, and gave me hope. And what I really loved about it was that it was twice the size of the Glenn Beck crowd on the Mall in August! Although it weighed the same.

But the message of the rally, as I heard it, was that if the media would just stop giving voice to the crazies on both sides, then maybe we could restore sanity. It was all non-partisan, and urged cooperation with the moderates on the other side, forgetting that Obama tried that, and found out there are no moderates on the other side.

When Jon announced his rally, he said that the national conversation is dominated by people on the right who believe Obama's a socialist, and people on the left who believe 9/11 was an inside job. But I can't name any Democratic leaders who think 9/11 was an inside job. But Republican leaders who think Obama's a socialist? All of them! McCain, Boehner, Cantor, Palin, all of them! It's now official Republican dogma, like tax cuts pay for themselves, and gay men just haven't met the right woman.

As another example of both sides using overheated rhetoric, Jon cited the right equating Obama with Hitler, and the left calling Bush a war criminal. Except thinking Obama is like Hitler is utterly unfounded, but thinking Bush is a war criminal? That's the opinion of General Anthony Taguba, who headed the Army's investigation into Abu Ghraib.

You see, Republicans keep staking out a position that is further and further right, and then demand Democrats meet them in the middle, which is now not the middle anymore.
...

This is from me, almost six years ago:

Here’s what a ship that has already sailed looks like

...
In your weird fetish to be “objective”, the Republicans learned the little trick that makes you dance like organ grinder monkeys. Whatever goofy-assed idea they came up with, you’d reflexively cede them half the distance between the truth and their goal.

There was a book I loved when I was a little driftglass called, “Half Magic” by Edgar Eager, about a talisman that granted the user exactly half of what they asked for. Wish to be ten times stronger that Lancelot, you’ll get five. Wish for a million in cash, you get 500K. In the Mainstream Media, the Right Wing of the Republican Party found their Half Magic Charm. And each time you met them halfway, they moved the goalposts another twenty yards again...and you jogged right on along behind them, ten yards at a time.

The “compromise” between the truth and a lie...is a lie. The “compromise” between science and superstition...is superstition. Now, would you care to guess what the compromise between tolerance and bigotry is? Between knowledge and ignorance? Between Ann Coulter and Paul Krugman?

I don't see any easy solutions, but print, radio and television all need to take much bolder steps to reconnect with the public...

Oh goodie! Another journalist making with the sackcloth and ashes! Every few months, year after year after year, journalist/self-flagellates moan publically about how awful it’s getting and how Somebody should really Do Something! As predictable as Aldermanic indictments in Chicago in Spring. And yet year after year after year it gets worse.

We also need more diverse newsrooms. When America was struck by race riots in the late 1960's, major news organizations realized too late that their failure to hire black reporters had impaired their ability to cover America. In the same way, our failure to hire more red state evangelicals limits our understanding of and ability to cover America today.

What, you mean “Lou Grant” didn’t fix all of this stuff ?

You may have missed it, but “red state evangelicals” have their own media – its called Fox/CNN/AM Talk Radio. They have their own literature – it’s called The Left Behind series. They even have their own political party... and in case you haven’t noticed they run the country and they're coming for you with ropes and pitchforks. But hey, maybe if you just bend over a liiiittle further and waggle you bare ass just a liiiittle saucier, they wont leave so many bruises this time.

So, they are hardly underrepresented. Many of them are, however, downright nuts. It might help your credibility with the 69% of Democrats who think you’re irredeemably McGoo-myopic about Evangelicals already if you would pause to notice -- out loud and in print -- that Falwell, Robertson, Wildmont, Schafly, Dobson, DeLay are not “controversial” or “traditional” or “conservative”. They are hateful, bigoted theocrats who work diligently to pave over the Constitution and erect a State Religion in its place.

If one word can capture the public attitude toward American journalists, I'm afraid it's "arrogant." Not surprisingly, I think that charge is grossly unfair. But it's imperative that we respond to that charge - not by dismissing it, but by working far more diligently to reconnect with the public.

No, the word you are looking for is “irrelevant.” I ask my college classes what, if any, news they read. The results are terrifying. By huge margins they don’t even bother reading you any more at all. They know craven and compromise when they see it, and they’re not buying any anymore. Some do enjoy some of the talk shows...but only the ones that are amused by putting red and black ants in a jar and watching them tear each other apart.

Unless we can recover the public trust, our protests about reporters' going to jail will come across as self-serving whining. And we'll wake up one day to find ourselves on the wrong side of history.
...

Sorry, that day was in 1987 -- the day the Reagan administration invited the Fairness Doctrine over for a little lunch, took it down in the basement and shot it in the head.

When it upheld the Doctrine in 1969 U.S. Supreme Court said, in part, that, “It is the right of the viewers and listeners, not the right of the broadcasters, which is paramount.”

The rule use to be the primacy of the citizen, but then then came Reagan and his FCC Chair Mark S. Fowler. Formerly a broadcast industry lawyer, who made it crystal clear that he held in utter contempt the whole idea of broadcasters had a civic responsibility for their product or a responsibility for making sure the media was really “Fair and Balanced” in a was that served democratic debate.

That was the moment for you to make your Glorious Stand!

Fowler peddled the ludicrous doctrine that forcing people who were getting Crazy Rich using the public airwaves the make sure that both sides of important issues were heard would somehow actually stifle Free Speech, because if you knew you might have to let the other side get a word in edgewise, then you might be less inclined to shoot your mouth off.

And Jimney Christmas, you also might be less inclined to hit a guy you disagree with in the face with a snow-shovel if you know a cop might toss your ass in jail…and you might get sued out of your split-level ranch and into a packing crate on Lower Wacker Drive.

But as with every single aspect of the GOP agenda – from speech to ethics to impeachment – the Republicans have no interest in a “fair fight” or in a marketplace of ideas. They’re interested in WINNING and since the Republican party cannot win in a straight fight, winning means cheating. Or, rather, raping and razing the rules once they come to power so that they’re no longer bound by any recognizable concept of “fairness”.

In other words, why risk jail time pounding someone’s face to steak tartar, if you can just pass a law that you now have the legal right to beat him senseless whenever you fucking well feel like it…and HE’S the one who can be jailed or sued if he fights back?

But how does one get away with such villainy? I’m glad you asked. Enter Reliable Republican Judicial Stooges #1 and #2: Reagan appointees to the D.C. Circuit, Judge Robert “Baby Face” Bork and Judge Antonin “Fat Tony” Scalia. Their 1986, 2–1 decision dodged around the whole question of the Constitutionality of the issue completely. By the interpretation of the nuanced use of ONE WORD (“under” instead of “by”) they declared that whole thing was an administrative matter, to be decided at the discretion of the FCC.

And in 1987, Dennis Patrick, Reagan’s new FCC chair, pulled the plug on it. Later that year, Reagan vetoed a bill that would have reinstated the doctrine, and in 1991 a movement to try again died why Bush 41 threatened veto.

And in 1988, Rush Limbaugh was off to the races.

For over 20 years, the Right Wing has gotten fat and rich and powerful running the same scam on you buffoons over and over again. No matter how batshit crazy their position is, you’ll concede half the stage, half the clock and give them the benefit of the doubt. Which give them an automatic victory. They showed up at the table with little more that bad-acid delusions, and now the control 50% of the battlefield because you defaulted it right into their laps.

And when you don’t completely capitulate to 100% of their insanity, they turn right around and feed that into their own Pravada Media as Further Proof of the evil left wing media conspiracy.

“Victim,” they shriek. “Anti-religious Bigot!” They rant this from the rooftops because of the tiny bit of sane ground you did not surrender...and you jellied eels dependably cave in even more.

And thus they have led you – and the rest of the nation you whose common interests you were supposed to be serving -- by these half measures, right into the foyer of your own slaughterhouse.

To which I can think of no better ending now than the line I ended on in April of 2005:

It’s really quite an amazing story.
Too bad we don’t have a press anymore to report it.

The reason the Left has collectively lost interest in the gentle art of patient persuasion and compromise is -- as we have noted over and over again, year after year -- that they do not work.

And they will never work as long as the misery their idiotic ideology leaves in its wake does not affect the Right and their craven, Centrist enablers deeply and personally -- or as long they are permitted to retreat into the FoxNews/Hate Radio bunker and shunt the blame for their failures onto the backs of hippies, gays and a Whitman Sampler of scary brown people.

The simple, sad truth is that their addiction to ever-higher doses of paranoia, bigotry and rage has rendered the Modern Right incapable of responding to anything but Fear and Pain.

History teaches us that the Confederacy did not surrender because of an attack of conscience -- because it suddenly woke up to the fact that it was defending to the death an ideology that was despicably indefensible.

The Confederacy surrendered because it was crushed by a superior force. Because, having exhausted every possible alternative to avoid conflict, the collective might of the Union was finally brought down on the CSA like a hammer until there was not enough left of it to fight for.

Looking back, it is clear that nothing less could have done the job.

And looking back over the unmistakably ruinous and hateful trajectory the Modern Right has followed for the last 40 years -- a perspective that has finally used up the last reserves of the patience of the very patient Left -- it is equally clear that until fearful amounts of Painful Accountability are dropped on their brainwashed little heads over and over again for supporting despicable, imbecilic ideas, the Right and their craven, Centrist enablers will never give up being despicable imbeciles.