It seems like such a long time ago, when Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks, performing in England, told an audience that she was “embarrassed that the President of the United States is from Texas.”  As an Oregonian I personally was less embarrassed, but I’d been routinely apologizing to foreign friends about Bush for years; he was so deliberately obnoxious, especially internationally, that any American setting foot on a European stage had to be deeply ashamed, and simple manners would mandate saying so.  To all the world save a third or so of the dumbest Americans, the man is and was a complete and utter failure.  That plain fact lies behind the fierce and immediate manufactured outrage over Maines’ remark; Rove and his henchmen simply couldn’t have people stating the obvious about their naked emperor and what a small, well, decider he had.

Like many before and since who were targeted by similar White House smear campaigns during the Bush era, Maines learned her lesson, one that, to this day, few elected Democrats and almost no one in the mainstream media has figured out: back down to a bully, and you will never see your lunch money again as long as you live.  Republicans, having not a single policy that can be honestly sold to voters, deal only in lies, smears, and character assassination; always have, always will.  It’s simply, “pay no attention to the man behind the curtain,” updated with, “and if you do, it’s because you hate America.”  Concede to half of their kooky ideas, and they’ll still take their toys and go home, blaming you for your intransigence and extremism.  Concede to all of them, and they’ll come up with even kookier ones to demand next.  Meanwhile all the kookiness, put into action, inevitably sends the country down the toilet, and that’s your fault, too.

Why then, is Natalie Maines so much smarter than President Obama, most of the Democrats, and practically all of the liberal media?  It seems that a lot of fancy schooling was wasted on people who, tragically, weren’t paying enough attention on the playground when they were eight, and as such really oughtn’t be trusted with such responsible jobs today.  If we were to believe that the President was being honest when he said he thought he could work with the Republicans going forward, despite their loud and repeated declarations that their only goal was his political demise, then it’s time to stop talking so much about how smart he is.  That is one of the dumbest things I’ve ever heard, with or without Rachel Maddow’s laugh track, and frankly I’m again embarrassed by my president, who like his despised predecessor, is either lying or stupid.

One could forgive Obama’s touching naivete, I suppose, if he gets his information from TV news or, say, the Washington Post, who all still believe in fairies and bipartisanship, not necessarily in that order.  Each day since his election, the media has trotted out a rogue’s gallery of Republican retreads, washouts, and charlatans to predict dire outcomes from any policy to the left of Dick Cheney, and Obama has hardly disappointed them.  Though the unpopular Bush wars continue unabated, foot-stomping generals and unreconstructed neocons in and out of government still want more; ten years in Afghanistan has stealthily grown to thirteen or so, and several new wars have already been picked out for later, under a president whose anti-war stance was what catapulted him to the national spotlight in the first place.  Torture has been pushed under the rug, Guantanamo has been made permanent, illegal spying legitimized, Social Security only lamely defended, gays have not made any gains toward full citizenship (like Latinos), Wall Street and big Pharma have been each handed another multibillion dollar “get out of jail free” card, and huge, ruinously expensive tax cuts for the rich are about to be passed, paid for by “shared sacrifice,” and we all know what that means.  What, pray, could the righties want that they haven’t already gotten?  That’s the scary part, and to those of us not in the media it’s also blindingly obvious.

“Not Ready to Make Nice” would have been a nice and certainly more morally defensible mantra than “Looking forward, not back” for Obama and Democrats in the post-Bush era; Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, George Bush, John Yoo, John Bolton, and all the rest are now free, not just from jail, but to go on TV every night to refight previously lost battles, quite successfully, it turns out, while Obama looks like a vacillating, defeated cipher.  How’s that bipartisan-y thing workin’ out for ya?

Obama could learn a thing or two from Natalie Maines, who refused to shut up and sing, won respect, and sold a hell of a lot of records for it.  Notice how no one’s asking her to step down.

The process is as familiar as it is insulting.  Lefties are vilified as being afflicted with some sort of derangement syndrome and called traitors when they point out glaringly obvious facts about concrete events: the President lied us into a costly, delusional, and catastrophic war, the Republican Party revels in medieval and appalling torture, the President hands the treasury over to his cronies, and it’s MoveOn and the Dixie Chicks that end up in hot water.  Righties imagine that the President isn’t a US citizen, that he’s setting up death camps, and we’re about to become Communists, Nazis, or what have you, and Glenn Beck gets his own show and Dick Cheney’s whole family gets to go on TV to wax apocalyptic about it.  Reality, afflicted as it is with that discrediting liberal bias, lies splattered in the street like an Afghan wedding party, while fever dreams hatched in a trailer park somewhere become Tonight’s Top Story, night after dumbfounding night.  We report, you decide.

Health care is but one example: one side withholds judgement until they see that the eventual bill is just another corporate handout that creates more problems than it solves, and a small minority of them manages to launch a deserved Bronx Cheer, while the other side erupts into a frenzy of Commie/Socialism/Death Panels before any tangible legislation is produced, and darkly foretells the End of Our Freedoms.  Guess which side commands the overwhelming voice and media attention in the discussion?

The wars are another: one side withholds judgement until they see that the eventual decision is just another corporate handout that creates more problems than it solves, and a small minority of them manages to launch a deserved Bronx Cheer, while the other side erupts into a frenzy of Islamofascist/ terrorist-coddling/Blame America First before any tangible decision is produced, and darkly foretells the End of Our Freedoms.  See a pattern here?

It’s impossible, of course, to argue with people whose fears are so cockamamie and whose pronouncements are so deliberately misleading and bonkers, but in America’s media landscape, argue with them we must, usually in a 1-3 matchup, and the bonkers tends to win the day, because if nothing else, as that hack from Politico put it, it’s interesting.  Interesting, like a train wreck or killing spree, with which such tiresome and boring debates must compete, usually less than successfully, on the nightly news.

In our reality TV-sodden world, Ice Cream Castles in the Air are set up against dreary old facts, and everyone loves ice cream, even Dick Cheney.  But as the saying goes, shit, even when mixed with ice cream, isn’t improved, and the ice cream is pretty much ruined.  Please, someone alert the media.

It’s certainly no mystery why the GOP and its fanboys at Fox and elsewhere are always on the attack.  Aside from the fact that only 20% of Americans will still reluctantly admit to being Republicans, the other 80% are always susceptible to inconvenient facts slipping into the conversation, which would clearly make an embarrassing mess of everything if that sort of thing got out of hand.  But denying facts, as Senator (!) John Kyl did recently when he simply said he didn’t believe a Harvard study that found that 45,000 Americans die each year due to lack of health care, and making shit up, as the Cheney family is fond of doing, sometimes isn’t enough.  As Karen Finley (she of manufactured GOP outrage over her NEA grant back in the day…) once wrote, “When you’re having an argument, and it isn’t going your way, it’s time to bring out the threats.”

The GOP is very good at threats, and even better at carrying them out, not just because they’re assholes, which they are, but because they have to.  The old lawyers’ adage, that when the facts are against you, argue the law, and when the law is against you, argue the facts, has now been adopted by the GOP, with its own special twist.  When both are against you, go after the witness, guns a’ blazing.

I’ve written before about this curious, to the outsider, war on truth-tellers, but in the aftermath of the Obama/Fox News flap, which to my considerable delight shows no sign of abating, this bizarre tactic has gone into overdrive; every clown to emerge from the GOP Volkswagen has a big mallet in its hand, hell bent on pummeling the hated seltzer-sprayer du jour.  Glenn Beck was perhaps the most deliciously typical of the bunch; he went after Anita Dunn using deceptively edited video to “prove” not that what she said was false, since it wasn’t, but that she was a dirty Mao-worshipping commie trying to “control” the media.  Though patently ridiculous, for certain people, conveniently including all of his audience, annoying truths can be swatted away by saying that the person who had the temerity to utter them is a poopyhead.  So there.  Cut to commercial.  (If there still are any, that is…)

To the reality-based community, this seems kind of silly, but it’s been surprisingly effective in the past, so why not?  After all, when Scott Ritter said that Saddam Hussein had no connection to 9/11 and no WMD, he was pronounced a child molester, and when Joe Wilson said the same thing, he was declared to be a disgruntled lightweight on a junket his wife cooked up.  Oh, yeah, and she’s a CIA agent, too.  Bill Maher, Ashleigh Banfield, and Phil Donahue were all summarily fired and roundly shut down for their unseemly brushes with the truth, too.  And there you have it: multiple lives ruined, but at least that pesky truth didn’t get out, or at least gain currency, until it was safely too late.  Mission Accomplished.  Michael Moore can make movies that clearly show the corruption of the Bush Administration, the death-dealing venality of the health insurance industry, and the wanton theft inherent in Wall Street, and, well, he’s rich, and also fat, so who’s going to believe him?  The Dixie Chicks could say, on stage, that they were embarrassed by George Bush, just like most Americans, and not only are they denounced as the usual Hollywood lightweights, but traitors giving aid and comfort to the enemy on foreign soil.  Shut up and sing, indeed.

This would all be funny if it weren’t so damaging;  first, it serves to silence voices with critically important things to say that Americans need to know, second, it discourages others from speaking out, and last, the media falls for it, hook, line and sinker, every time.  Glaciers melt while everyone talks about Al Gore’s house and travel, innocents are slaughtered while pundits dwell on Janeane Garofalo’s career being on the  skids, and the country goes bankrupt while  the media dismisses Ron Paul as a crackpot.

Telling lies, in the curious media landscape of 21st century America, has become a canny career move.  You could end up with a NYT column (Bill Kristol, David Brooks), head of the World Bank (Paul Wolfowitz), or with a plum spot on Fox (Karl Rove).  Tell the truth, though, and all hell breaks loose, and you’d better hope your affairs are in order (Paul O’Neill).  Like just about everything else these days, telling the truth, especially in public, is a luxury few of us can afford.

UPDATE: Fox just had a neat little segment where their fair n’ balanced panel all agreed, well 4-1, that the secret to ending unemployment was, surprise, eliminating the minimum wage.  To what?   A dollar a day like the Malaysians?  Once again, Fox stands up for the little guy against the elites.  Not.