Driving for 6 hours gives you time to think, relax (depending where you are, I guess), and listen to radio. I tuned into NPR in Norfolk, VA this morning. The host of the particular show that jacked me up had "Dean Don" on the show.
Dean Don is a dick.
Why would I say such a mean, nasty thing? Because I'm sick of these pundits. And even more, I'm sick of pundits who are "professors" at colleges (Dick Don noted "... several of my students interned for Thelma Drake over the years..." - Thelma just lost her re-election bid to Democrat Glenn Nye) and are idiots.
It's not just Dick Don. There are many, many others like Dick Don who infuriate me with their stupidity. Don was very cordial and genteel. He gave effusive praise to Obama and others for their campaigns, albeit speaking from a decidedly Republican perspective. So here's my rant on the specific issues with Donnie Boy.
Declaration of Idiocy #1.
"We have 'payback time' now and that's why the decision to bring in Rahm Emmanuel to be Chief of Staff is so good." (Not a direct quote - paraphrasing his words.)
"Payback time"?! What the f**k are you talking about?! Don clarifies, 'All the groups will want to get their return - black groups, MoveOn, and others will start pressuring Obama and he'll need to deliver.'
This is where I realized that Dick Don is a Republican. He must know the, well, "relationship" between the Republican party at national levels and the large evangelical groups. And he assumes that the Democratic Party must also follow the same disastrous rules of engagement embraced by the Republican Party. We know the Clintons rewarded big donors with nights in the Lincoln bedroom among other things. We hear he even helped create K-street. But as far as deep, organizational bonding, joint strategizing/mobilization, and power-brokering goes - I'm sorry to break the news to you, the Democratic party just isn't as structurally immoral enough to engage in that sort of symbiosis.
Declaration of Idiocy #2.
When asked to convey his observations on the losses incurred by the Republican Party in this last election, he summarized by saying, "They have to learn that the country must be ruled from the 'Center.' Reagan ruled from the 'Center-Right.' I expect Obama will do well because he will rule from the 'Center-Left.'" He very introspectively added, "The country is not at the extreme right nor the extreme left."
Wow! Sounds magnanimous and brilliantly pundity, no?
But I have one question - where, or more accurately, what, the f**k is 'ruling from the Center-Left?'
If Obama keeps the Faith Ministry cabinet post, which is about as 'extreme right' a symbol as there is in the cabinet, is he ruling from the extreme right? Is that "rightness" a temporary thing? Is it perpetual? Are there degrees of that "rightness"?
If he advocates for single-payer health care, is he ruling from the radical left if he announces an endorsement of the concept? Who decided that single-payer health care for all is "left," anyway? Based on what criteria?! We have a single-payer military which protects the wealthy tax-payers just as well as the poor ones, but I've never heard the military called "hard left," have you?!
Who makes that subjective assessment of where Obama is ruling?
Or maybe we really can be objective in the assessment. I suppose he can get some sort of "grade" on a scale for each decision which gets averaged in with all the grades assigned to all his decisions?? But then we still have to pick who gives the grades! Darn! How can we do this, Professor Don?!?!
Here's the reality. There is no such thing as "center-right" or "center-left". You surely know that. You HAVE to know that. If you don't, you're a moron.
These places are one of only two things: pure intellectual dishonesty; or intellectual laziness.
Intellectual laziness is certainly ground zero for many members of the Republican party (around 64%, apparently). How else can you explain why millions of people can completely ignore Sara Palin's guilt of violating state ethics laws after an investigation led by 10 Alaskan Republicans and 4 Alaskan Democrats, while decrying "partisan politics" at the heart of the investigation? I rest my case.
So clearly, this could be Don's excuse. But since uniquely Republican bilge like "he's the most liberal Senator in Congress..." is the sort of slop that the unwashed rank-and-file Republican loyalists ravenously devour, I think it's the former. It's just another labeling scam that will be trotted out at some later date in order to paint Obama as some radical, deviating from some smart-sounding advice from brainiacs like Don.
More specifically, saying crap like "ruling from the center-left" is an admission of stupidity - either of the speaker or of the audience (or both). This phrase is just a label. "Moderate." "Liberal." "Cracker."
It's a stupid label because there are many, many policy decisions that have to be made and trying to summarize the whole of those policies into a term is unjust and illogical. As a simple example, Obama can push to spend more for something he believes will pay big dividends in the future. Two people could very likely, with equal accuracy and veracity, prove that Obama is concurrently very "conservative" and very "liberal."
As an analogy to this ridiculous concept of "center", I offer our stupid Homeland Security color codes. They do nothing. They tell us nothing. One day you could be yellow, the next orange. What does it mean? Should we all be accosting strangers on the street today if they're carrying a briefcase? Are there going to be scary people running around transportation centers that we should be concerned about?
It's just a stupid label to allow political hacks to jack people's heart rates up. They are used to prove that the Homeland Security department is working hard and doing really smart things. Because that's the only thing those codes can do. I defy anyone to prove differently.
These terms "center-left" and the rest are the same thing - chaff spewed by asshats like Dean Don to prove that he's a big-time smarty-pants, keeping tabs on how Obama's doing - while reserving the right to unfurl his later declarations that "Obama's gone to the 'left-center-left'" to spin up the Republican lemmings into a frothing stew.
Declaration of Idiocy #3.
Among his praise-gushing, were excesses that already sounded disingenuous. Calling Hillary Clinton a "brilliant legislator," followed up by an identical hailing of John McCain as a "brilliant legislator." Obama isn't a brilliant legislator - but he was tagged as a "brilliant executive." Wow, huh?!
But the one that tripped the fail-switch on the 'Giggle-Test' was when Don said, "Sarah Palin is brilliant."
Amazing. The woman who wiffle-ball thrower Katie Couric turned into a pretzel is, "brilliant."
Cheapens the other compliments just a tad, doesn't it????
Dean Don... I'm holding up one of my hand's 5 fingers... guess which one it is: extreme left, extreme right, center-left, center-right, or center?
No comments:
Post a Comment