Entitlement Reform, Please
Glenn Greenwald wrote about the problem of our hereditary overclass the other day at Salon, but every day it burns me up a little more as it becomes more jaw-droppingly conspicuous, and anger is perhaps the greatest cure for writer’s block ever imagined. As we descend further into “oligarhy,” as Glenn Beck might put it, no addlepated hell-spawn of a demented righty is too ridiculously lame and underqualified to be repeatedly splashed all over the TV; Liz Cheney and Jenna Bush only lately being the most outrageous examples. Suddenly, “Republican Strategist’ has become a hereditary title; liars are evidently born, not made, and the media is only too happy to fire real reporters to make room on camera for more dimwits to repeat the same lies their shopworn parents have been broadcasting for the last decade or so, perhaps to make our preening game show hosts of the “news” media seem smarter and more honest by comparison, albeit ineffectively. There can be no other reason.
The ridiculous “reality” show that today passes for television news has finally and irrevocably become an unwatchable victim of its own inbreeding; the gene pool grown so shallow that it makes rural West Virginia look like the Colors of Benneton. And no one watching could possibly believe them even when they talk about the weather, having learned through bitter experience that it’s wiser to look out a window instead. It’s basically impossible these days to find a network today not littered with sons, daughters, husbands, wives, along with myriad trailer-park combinations of the above, of not just each other, but naturally, those they purportedly “cover.” The Village, just like the “real Americans” they pretend to speak for, apparently go to family reunions looking for a date, too. Unlike those real Americans these days, however, they tend to end up with an overpaid job for it, too. Win, win.
Of course, money is thicker than blood, and those in the media too squeamish to engage in actual incest go for the more metaphorical kind; lobbyists, heiresses, and Federal Reserve Chairmen can be kind of cute, too, and the offspring they produce would potentially look better on TV, given the enormously broader selection. I imagine Fox News already has contracts drawn up for the 2030′s, for any fortuitous matings their hostesses can come up with, provided they choose wisely, which they undoubtedly will.
What we’re facing is a media/business/government court that is defensively circling the wagons before our eyes; faced with tough times, they’ve come to the conclusion that basically everyone now must be cut out who isn’t a Legacy. So long have they lived in their bubble; so rich have the rewards become, that they make Marie Antoinette look like Mother Theresa, Daisy Buchanan like Mildred Pierce. They’ve gone from just not giving a damn about everyone else to actively thumbing their noses at them, glorying in the idea that, well, they can. I know I’m naturally irascible, but yet I find this openness particularly infuriating. Those of us who’ve worked hard all our lives, those of us who’ve had to overcome obstacles to achieve success, are just so yesterday, and worse, when times are tough we might start yapping unpleasantly about it, so we have to be shown how irrelevant we are by seeing yet another undeserving nincompoop catapulted ahead of us, daily. Personal accomplishment has actually become a stumbling block; only the worthless need apply.
Clearly, the end result of the stunning inequality we have fostered lovingly for all this time has created the sort of incestuous yet understandably insecure overclass that America, as an idea, was emphatically conceived to eliminate, and the exalted Free Press, which was supposed to make such a recurring travesty impossible, has settled comfortably into its new job of doing just the opposite. Proudly.
And for contrast to the devil spawn of the right-wingers dominating the next generation of M$M spots, not that Aimai, granddaughter of Izzy Stone, is “only” a DFH blogger who probably had a very low hit count until a couple of weeks ago. But boy can she write:
http://nomoremister.blogspot.com/2009/09/no-seriously-dude-acolyte-its-fun-to.html
Erm, that’s “note that Aimai” not “not that Aimai”. My kingdom for an editor to fix this not-ty problem…
We’re very forgiving of dropped letters, particularly silent ones at the end of words, here at CHNN. Ownership does have its privileges.
The comment thread at both swampland and UT are like a overladen buffet table to the snark-starved, and I confess I ‘m getting a little bloated, but I can’t stop. To think I wrote this blog before I dug into those comments…
Well, I’ve found sometimes I write better — meaning: briefer — and tolerable (if not easier) to read, when I lack all the facts that fit. There’s too little time to write too many books.
So, let me here do two. Must. Restrain. Hamfisted Typefest. Of Fury.
#1: In an article I pored over today
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=4607
[ Profits über Alles! American Corporations and Hitler
by Dr. Jacques R. Pauwels, January 27, 2007 ]
explaining that the necessarily concomitant and always consequent politics of capitalism is fascism, (NOT ‘democracy’), comes the line: ‘Free Market’ is euphemistic code word for capitalism.
Without the hoodwink blindfold that got yanked off my eyes by that truth, when I see you say “Free Press,” Hag, I now can read it as euphemistic code words for mind control, (i.e. propaganda).
( A la’ Charles Pierce ) Part the second:
Book preview: It’s not big and it’s not clever, David Denby, The Guardian (UK), 29 August 2009
Delicious reading. By those principles, then, the veritable snark infestation is of one: Joe Klein’s gooberfest; whereas Glenn’s Salon commentary smorgasbord serves a plethora of smackdown put-him-in-his-place: journalism’s junkyard of rejected Joe jokers.
What I found so deliciously satisfying was that page after page into the Swampland comments, I couldn’t find a single Klein supporter to defend him. No wonder he envies GG’s “Limbaugh-like followers.” Klein hasn’t had any since his mom died, wishing her nebbishy son had gone into insurance.
You can put away the baseball bats, people, that horse is dead….
So the M$M are competing with the Repugs for OWE supremacy. I want to believe that both are hanging themselves while we watch. Is that too optimistic? Neither group has figured out that the Internet has changed the paradigm considerably. That figures since they love the status quo so much.
It’s funny; but as this post was gelling in my mind at work today, I hadn’t even thought about or read all the Joe Klein material, but rather how our overclass seems more exclusive and holier-than-thou by the day. Then, after I’d written, along came “Swampland.” Sheesh. If ever there were a better example of “don’t you know who I am” entitlement, I couldn’t possibly have thought of it.
I wonder who Joe’s parents were.
At least Joe did one nice thing today and for the Hag at that. I’m sure he had no idea he was helping you.
Nor did he have any idea he was helping Glenn; narcissism, like love, is blind. I bet Swampland never had so many hits….
Hag,
It bothers me that you use the old canard about West Virginia people and the entire incest metaphor while trying to use righteous indignation. It is clearly beneath you. And the left wonders why “liberals” are so hated in the south.
I find the latest posts to be correct in their own right, but going after the people rather than the acts or words of those involved. Before I get misunderstood (cue up that old song), let me show you a great take-down of Bill Kristol by Raimondo:
Hag, I could be dead wrong but it is beginning to look like we will see little of the USA’s mistakes in foreign policy under the new administration even as the costs of these brutal occupations destroys any hope of paying for “health care for all” in this country in posts by Greenwald. (or you?)
Glenn Greenwald is off on a personal dust-up; the kind he told me that mattered not at all who started it when I was involved in one at his own blog called UT. But now, domestic criticisms of news clowns is more important than the ongoing occupation of parts of the middle east and central Asia. I guess Raimondo was right; Greenwald has gone silent on the subject of war.
Sorry about that, Heru, but truth be told, I hate the South right back. For its backward, hateful politics, its militarism, its “right-to work” laws… everything. I don’t exactly make a secret of this.
Of course there are good people there, as everywhere, but clearly not enough of them to elect decent people to office, except once in a blue moon. Whine about it if you like, but the Southern Strategy, which taints our politics to this day, was not designed to appeal to either intelligence or humanity.
As for the war (s), I admit that I don’t write about them very much, but not because I’m “ignoring” them; I just haven’t had any good ideas about the subject. I’m sure that the same goes for GG.
But West Virginia? The very state was created as a reward by the north for being on the north’s side during the war between the states. Is it simply the mountains that make it such a favorite target?
Anyway, are you going to come out in favor of secession? That way the hated southern states could leave and let the rest of you build a paradise.
It was a schtick, Heru. Got it? I picked West Virginia completely at random. I should have said Alabama, I guess.
I’ve written, both here and at UT that we should have let the South go when we had the chance. Repeatedly.
I hate to be the fly in the ointment, but if we’d let the South go in 1860, heru’s family would still own slaves (metaphorically speaking, of course.)
And Jesus, if people think they need a wall on our southern border now, just imagine what they’d think if Trent Lott got the idea that he and his vigilantes could just ride north anytime they felt like it to look for their fugitive property.
History is what it is, Hag. Better we should let it lie where it fell.
Obviously, I was speaking metaphorically, but the South’s chip on its shoulder really gets my goat, as do their politicians, their racism, and proud ignorance. I’m generalizing, of course, but their poisonous thinking has infected the whole country, and when Bush got “elected” I couldn’t help but question who ended up winning that war.
WT,
My family was in Ireland during the war between the states. And further, there was only one country in the entire world that fought a war to end slavery (620,000 dead) during the century that slavery ended. Can you guess which one it was? Can you guess why? Americans are violent are they not? I think
I would like to see the USA broken up into various smaller states, much like Europe, so that the world would not be under the boot of the American Empire. But that seems unlikely in my lifetime. More likely is complete economic collapse due to foreign wars.
And hag, those of us in the south really, really don’t like the condescending bull shit about fucking your sister and such. Know that it is as hurtful as the bigoted put-downs of gays and should be avoided. I worked with the mountain folk for two decades and they are some of the nicest folks I have ever known. (a very independent breed)
Mmm…so parts of the world — very large parts — weren’t under the boot of the British Empire, or the German, Dutch, Belgian, Portuguese, French, Russian and Italian empires?
Heru, size may matter in those e-mail ads you get all the time, but when it comes to one man’s oppression of another, it’s irrelevant — as is much of the couturier history you’ve stitched together to support your advocacy of a political system which will — thank God — remain forever fanciful.
And this, with apologies to all, is my last word on the subject here. Heru, over to you.
Thanks co-anchor. (I was done, but you invited)
I think little governments (or ones of any size) can be very brutal just as you point out. The more powerful the government, however, the more it can project brutality outside its boarders. This would seem hard to argue against. In my lifetime, the USA has done some horrible things and I would like to see the USA at peace for a few decades — but empires are never at peace. What now? Well, a breakup seems the only way out.
Over to you if you want. …
I usually like to think of myself as a sail, not an anchor, but at my age, this is possible only if you stay away from mirrors. (I’ll have to speak to the Hag about the full length spectacle which ambushes the unsuspecting as they enter the CHNN powder room.)
I always leave my glasses at the door, WT….
They are far more virulently anti-gay (and every other minority) than I am anti-South, and please quit whining about ONE SENTENCE in a much more nuanced post; it’s unbecoming and Palin-like of you to continue to do so. You need to understand what a culture like that looks like to an outsider who has had to live with the likes of Jesse Helms and Strom Thurmond, and about a hundred other imitators all these years. I’ve met many Southerners that I like and admire, but their votes don’t count for much down there.
I thought that you would notice my typo (boarders v. borders) although both seem to work in the sentence.
Oddly, I just went on a diet and I am 4 weeks into it. Down 11 pounds and only 51 to go. Please have hag hide the mirrors until I am at 210 again.
Especially if we’re talking about the supposedly golden age of the 14th and 15th centuries, when the entire south coast of europe was depopulated by North African raiders, and its villagers sent off to row the Ottoman galleys. Venice and Spain returned the favor, of course, and the whole miserable mess went on for another century, even after the battle of Lepanto, until sailing technology advanced far enough to make galleys more trouble than they were worth.
I can not rule out a golden age in China because Lao Tzu refers to one that was ancient even in his day. Most view this age as myth, but I can not say if it was a myth of Lao Tzu’s or not. But, I think I can safely rule out any golden age in the western world. Certainly not the 14th or 15th centuries.
On the other had perhaps there was a tiny area in the Languedoc region of France and some other parts of Europe in the 12th and 13th centuries that had a “golden age” but the pope and the king of France put an end to that. (the Cathars were destroyed)
Come to think of it, if one can define the area small enough there has been a few “golden ages” of man. Unfortunately, they have been destroyed by other men each time.
And so it goes, as a famous pundit liked to say.
(and off I go to read a little on my latest book; my but micro-biology has progressed in the last decade)
Congratulations, Heru. It’s very tough to lose weight, but my theory is that mirrors actually help, especially near the refrigerator. (and in another five pounds or so, they will become a big encouragement….)
I went from 307 to 210 several years ago and then held at 225 for a long, long time until an accident prevented me from exercising. This time I’ll stick with diet only.
I eat all I want as long as it is lean meat, fruits, and non-starchy vegetables plus a few nuts once in a while. No sugar, starch, cereal grains, legumes, or processed foods. As a hillbilly, I miss pinto beans the most. (I truly am just poor white trash)
Well, see all later — I must really get to reading now.