The Cuckoo’s Nest
UPDATE BELOW:
UPDATE II:
After reading abundant analysis about the health care speech last night, some of which said better what I might have said, I’ve decided that the most enlightening, and to a degree hopeful, thing about the speech was the boorish outburst by Neo-confederate Joe Wilson of South Carolina. ”You lie!” Hmmm. Care to diagram that sentence for me? Maybe he was attempting to speak Ebonics so Obama would understand him…. Now, aside from its, well, simplicity, that sentence fragment was itself a lie, although an embarrassed yet clueless media was predictably unable to identify it as such, although most of them were able to reluctantly concede that it was a little rude. What Wilson’s behavior shows, other than that it immediately raised $400,000 for his opponent so far, is that these righties are becoming victims of their own insularity, to the point where they don’t know what it’s like not to make asses of themselves.
So successful have they been in creating their own echo chamber, where increasingly nothing is too farfetched, contradictory, false, stupid, nor even all of the above to be left unuttered, that they’ve simply forgotten that there even is a real world, and that world thinks they’re nuts. Why indeed be thought a fool for keeping one’s mouth shut, when you’ve been continually taught by fawning spokesmodels to proudly open it, repeatedly, and remove all doubt? Twenty years of talk radio and nearly fifteen of Fox News, and these people really are, as Barney Frank put it, living on a different planet, and every time they unexpectedly find out their planet is already inhabited they’re woefully unprepared to deal with it.
Of course, this doesn’t bother them with their followers, who become increasingly dependent upon having their addled views reinforced and react to the truth like a vampire to garlic, but the public at large gapes in astonishment. All this lying, fearmongering, and hate incitement has led them into an uncomfortable-de-sac, not unlike parents afraid to admit to their children that there is no Santa Claus; building an audience of the dumbest, most resentful, and violently-inclined Americans is great for cable TV and talk radio, but in the end has given the right not just a serious credibility problem, but also some behavioral pathologies that are just too overwhelming to ignore.
The Bush Administration caught onto this problem early, and relentlessly screened audiences for anyone with a passing connection to reality, which had the unfortunate long term consequence of further emboldening the crazy: watching television, they really did think everyone believed as they did, and everyone was just as crazy as they were. Things started to go off the rails at the Palin rallies, however, when clips of psychotic, ignorant, and racist signs and statements were flashed before a broader audience, and that audience reacted predictably. The voters sending Palin back to Alaska wasn’t enough, however, to convince her to finally read a newspaper, so cocooned was she in the righty bubble that she thought she needed to drop everything and prepare for a victorious presidential run, pronto. Similarly, Glenn Beck was gobsmacked that 60 advertisers dropped his program for a little thing like calling the president racist, Hitlerian, Nazi, Commie, and on and on. Doesn’t everybody do that? Well, yes they do, at Fox, but please, Glenn, get out more. These same people who thought George Bush should be as immune from criticism as the Queen of England were now crying Hitler and sending people to rallies with guns, and they honestly don’t even know anyone who could see any contradiction in that, much less a problem.
Pretty soon, they were passing around pictures of the president with a bone in his nose, watermelon patches on the White House lawn, and calling the first daughters “ho’s.” Opposition to abortion became opposition to birth control and, really, sex in general; anti-terrorism turned to genocidal designs on all Muslims and creationism became young-earth Rapture-obsession. Why not? Before long, though, and Blanche DuBois put it best, “thousands of years of civilization and culture have simply passed them by, ” and it’s becoming embarrassingly obvious with each passing day. One wonders what Roger Ailes must be thinking about the unseemly behavior that inevitably resulted from his essentially setting up a clothing-optional commune for the deranged right, and calling it a “News” network, in hopes of turning the country to the right….. now that its main accomplishment is turning the country from the right. Oops?
One wonders.
Donations to Wilson Democratic opponent, Rob Miller, can be made through ActBlue, or Miller’s website. Let’s give the vampires some more garlic.
UPDATE: In the hour or so since I wrote this post, Miller has raised another hundred grand, bringing his take in less than 24 hours to $500,000, more than twice the $230,000 Wilson got from the health care “industry.”
UPDATE II: $591,000 as of 6:00pm PST.
Way to go, Wilson; you’re my new hero.
Late reports today indicate that Wilson is wrong about illegals getting coverage; so he appears to be putting his foot in his mouth AND misrepresenting the president’s position on the issue. Neat trick that.
An impulsive compulsion …
The id has completely taken over with these guys. It’s both funny and sad.
Perhaps it’s because they spend so much time trying to repress the id. Not their own, just everyone else’s. ;~)
I love the story about the California righty spanking the oil industry lobbyist…. Usually it’s the other way around.
Really?! I didn’t hear about that one! Do tell… maybe I’ll find it on google. Will your phrasing work as search terms? ;~)
It’s at Rawstory,com, under “nation.” He resigned and everything after being caught on a live mic bragging about it.
Karen M, here’s the story of Mike Duvall (the self-described “warrior for family values”), as told on CBS last night by talk show host Craig Ferguson:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unzAQxrgsFI#t=2m24s
That was hilarious, sysprog! Thanks for the link. Ferguson is a much better storyteller than the reporter whose story I read.
He really knows how to string it out.
Truthfully, I wondered if Duvall was telling the truth, too, and then Ferguson saw his face, and I realized then why spanking seemed like such a good idea.
and then Ferguson “showed us” his face… [yikes]
Great link sysprog, thanks. I know you wish he’d spank you, Karen… don’t be coy.
Frankly, due to my childhood, I’m not especially fond of spanking, but I do admit that Ferguson has a certain kind of appeal. But not for spanking… it’s probably his voice.
I don’t often watch him. He’s on much too late for me.
I’ve always responded negatively to spanking. It seems like being punished even when one is clearly complying. And as far as being the spanker, no one I’d like to spank would ever see anything erotic about it.
I found it! What a doofus! Has no one in congress learned that mikes are often still “on?”
Not that I’m trying to defend what he did. That was wrong, too. Even more than being caught.
[I just finished listening to the last few chapters of Mansfield Park by Jane Austen, one of her more moral tales, though not without some wit.]
Now he’s only admitting to “inappropriate storytelling.” I’ve never heard it called that before. I doubt he reads Jane Austen.
That plus the sad and dangerous reality that these sorts of men are unwilling to respect this president – a black man.
This is now coming to the surface. Wilson is personifying that as well.
What’s interesting is they have no rebuttal to such a charge.
All I know is: I swore an oath to respect the president – the office more than the man or woman. But I respect the man or woman, no matter who he or she may be, unless there’s cause not to.
A person’s race is not sufficient cause.
Well, dirigo, for these types oaths are selective things; like reality, etc.
No, they are not.
Well, reality has a liberal bias…
Robert Creamer on HuffPo …
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-creamer/wilson-is-the-poster-chil_b_281918.html
Great article, Dirigo, and all too true. Who are the “grownups” again?
A “grown-up” question may soon be: Who is promoting sedition?
Would that this were new… Remember all the people Clinton “killed?” This bunch takes both winning and losing equally badly, as we’ve seen.
It is new if the “loyal opposition” can’t exercise a morals clause of some sort.
It may be, absent such a skanky charge, that the only logical conclusion will be that the effort to discredit the Democratic president this time is based on his skin color. Bill was and is very pink.
That would be a precedent, if such a charge against them were to stick.
I read that one, too, Dirigo. He was absolutely merciless. Justifiably so, too.
A blow against seditious spanking maybe …
I’m having a hard time visualizing that…
It wouldn’t be advisable to work too hard at it… Hurl Check wouldn’t begin to cover it.
Believe me, I’m not trying very hard.
One last thing… check out this other senator, a Republican, of course, and btw, a doctor, too, who says that you will have to ask your congressman for permission to see your doctor.
Notice how he passes the buck to the congressman, but, then there are only two senators per state, so it might be a real backlog if he and his senatorial colleague were taking those calls themselves.
http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/8030
I couldn’t bear to watch it, but there is some video.
Blog commenting for fun and profit!
CBS sent me another payment so here’s some more publicity for them.
David Letterman’s “Top Ten” for Thursday night is . . .
. . . Congressman Joe Wilson’s top ten excuses.