Just for the fun of it, I thought I'd respond to Katha Pollit's article "After You, My Dear Alphonse" in The Nation, which I picked at random before even reading it.
Her column seems to be something she feels is a witty, well-documented response to conservative charges that liberals today have little to offer the country other than rage and the politics of personal hatred, and that liberals "can't take it" when people criticize them.
She attempts to refute these charges, not by offering some constructive ideas of where the country should go, but rather by (a) citing columns where liberals spell out why they hate Bush, (b) attempting to find some cases where conservatives have 'done the same thing' (my phrase) by demonizing liberals.
Yet in both avenues, it seems she actually makes the conservative case she thinks she is refuting: The first is obvious. In the second, her examples are so mild and tepid, and often she has to reach back a decade for supporting material, that today's conservatives come off looking almost genteel: She quotes conservatives calling people terms such as "uncivil" and lecturing them on manners. Saying the approach liberals take, or their impact on society is bad, rather than calling them names or demonizing them directly.
The picture of conservatives that emerges is akin to the englishman who is disgruntled at the barbarians overrunning his town because they don't have the common decency to stop for a proper afternoon tea.
Finally, in reaching back so long, for such mild insults, and treating them as though they were the equivalent of calling her or her kind mass murderers or racists (the kind of charges liberals often level against conservative leaders today), she leaves and impression of having thin skin which smarts under the slightest tut-tutting from her political opponents... of "dishing it out" with ease while having a hyper-sensitivity to criticism.
Time to enter Katha Pollit's alternate reality...
What's the matter with conservatives? Why can't they relax and be happy?
Are conservatives unhappy? Goodness, of course we worry about certain things: We worry that justices seem to be writing new law rather than congressmen. We worry that although we've got a Republican in office, he's spending like a Democrat. We're worried that public education keeps declining, despite larger and larger Federal subsidies...
But for a liberal to chide conservatives for being "unhappy" is like Madonna rebuking ... well, anyone ... for being tasteless. Let's think of some prominent liberals. Michael Moore? Al Franken? Barbara Streisand? Ted Kennedy? Hillary Clinton? These are our 'happy' role models?
They have the White House, both houses of Congress, the majority of governorships and more money than God.
I make less money currently than a first-year public school teacher. Most the conservatives I know are solidly middle-class or below. Conversely, most the 'liberals' I know, in the spotlight and out of it, are quite wealthy. Drive around L.A. if you have any questions.
I would be shocked if I found you made less money than I did, Katha.
As far as political power goes, yes, it's true that a lot of people with "R" next to their name control the Congress and White House. But we'd be much more pleased if they actually enacted the policies they say they believe in: More fiscal responsibility. Ending partial-birth abortion. Education vouchers. More local power, and support for small businesses.
We just vote them in because they're still better than the alternatives you offer. They're the lesser of two evils, not the ideal.
They rule talk-radio and the TV political chat shows, and they get plenty of space in the papers; for all the talk about the liberal media, nine out of the fourteen most widely syndicated columnists are conservatives.
Absolutely. But we're above-board about it. Conservatives express their arguments openly, in the editorial pages, in open debate before the public, and (currently) by making headway in the elected bodies.
From what I can see today, liberals instead seem to be using slanted reporting (L.A. Times, anyone?), controlled forums where no dissention is allowed (academia), and legislating from the bench where no public participation is possible.
It should give our readers pause that conservatives are currently succeeding in all the forums which respond directly to the public, while liberals appear to be using those which ought to have no consistent political slant (academia, news reporting, the judiciary) to extend their power.
Call it a stylistic difference.
Of course the approach taken is understandable, since history seems to disprove so many core liberal doctrines. What I can't understand is why so many of you liberals still cling to these failed policies, rather than just adapting and moving on to some better area of distinction.
Even the National Endowment for the Arts, that direct-mail bonanza of yore, is headed by a Republican now.
Wow, that means the NEArts now has one conservative member. Probably for the first time in years. Show me some conservative artwork being produced? Oh, I don't know, perhaps a nice reverential crucifix which wasn't dunked into a vat of urine?
This is a typical liberal whine. Fail to control 100% of something, and suddenly it's "conservative".
Never mind whether conservatives deserve to run the country and dominate the discourse; the fact is, for the moment, they do.
Oh, don't be silly. Fox News appears, offering a bit of a slant to the right (sometimes, not always) and suddenly the sky is falling and conservatives "dominate the discourse".
Fox's ratings are due to this little thing, Katha, called public interest. It's the same things which lured listeners back to crappy old AM radio: It sure wasn't the big-budget special effects and glittering celebrities. It was the only place conservatives could actually have a bit of a voice -- it was the only place you'd left to them.
Don't worry, Katha, you still have ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, PBS, NPR, and the BBC to name a few. And those TV talk shows, last I checked, invited just as many liberal guests as conservative ones. Yes, I know, any conservative participation is "domination" in your lexicon, but, well, it's a refreshing change for the rest of us. It's something we conservatives call competition, and we think it's good for everyone.
We just wish your party would improve so we could have more of it.
What I want to know is, Why can't they just admit it, throw a big party and dance on the table with lampshades on their heads?
Hint: Tune into the election return coverage in California tonight and observe. True, Ahnold is not actually a conservative (though I'm sure you'd call him one), but he's at least an improvement over Gray Davis. As was most everyone on the ballot.
Why are they always claiming to be excluded and silenced because most English professors are Democrats?
No, it's not because most English professors are Democrats. It's the behavior of those specific professors when they, uh, exclude and silence conservatives. Consider this case where a conservative's personnel file was fraudulently manipulated in order to deny him a tenured position. Or go visit FIRE for many more well-documented cases of the same sort of malfeasance.
It's all that excluding and silencing, you see, which gives us the impression we're being excluded and silenced.
Why must they re-prosecute Alger Hiss whenever Susan Sarandon gives a speech or Al Franken goes after Bill O'Reilly?
Oh, you mean why do conservatives keep bringing up history? It's because (a) it supports their views, and (b) those who don't learn from it are doomed to repeat it.
If I were a conservative, I would think of those liberal professors spending their lives grading papers on The Scarlet Letter and I would pour myself a martini.
No, that's where we start worrying again. Those professors tend to hand out grades which are based on whether the student espouses the right political philosophy. That student represents our collective future. Forgive us for not thinking academia is an unimportant or irrelevant part of society. Apparently, you disagree.
I would pay Susan Sarandon to say soulful and sincere things about peace, I would hire Al Franken and sneak him on O'Reilly's show as a practical joke.
From what I can see, they do things like that already. Why pay them to do so? Oh that's right: You're a liberal, that idea makes sense to you.
You clearly have a lot to learn about thinking like a conservative.
And if some Democratic dinosaur lifted his head out of the Congressional tarpits to orate about the missing WMDs, or unemployment, or the two and a half million people who lost their health insurance this year, I'd nod my head sagely and let him rant on. Poor fellow. Saddam Hussein was his best friend, after Stalin died. No wonder he's upset.
If you were a conservative, you would let your opponents rant on and on with no response from you? That suprises me, since it's not an approach you seem to take as a liberal.
Sorry, Katha, but I feel there's a big difference between being "high minded" and silent. But perhaps you could take a bit of your own advice and embrace your own version of the moral high ground?
For some reason right-wingers do not take this calm and broadminded view. Maybe they didn't get enough love in their childhoods, or maybe they're in more trouble than we know. In any case, they've taken to lecturing the opposition on manners whenever it shows signs of life. Ted Kennedy says the Iraq war was "a fraud made up in Texas" and Bush complains that he's "uncivil." "Not civil," Condoleezza Rice agrees, "not helpful."
Really? Uncivil. Yes, the demonization continues endlessly. How very un-calm. Talk about vitriolic discourse: a lecture on manners? If that's an unallowable slam, then it follows Miss Manners must be one of the rudest people one earth.
If I recall correctly, this page from the current liberal playbook would call for numerous mentions of Chappaquiddick and newphew's bachelor parties. The absense of such demonstrates the comparative, uh, civility of those charging mere in-civility.
Well, excuuuse me!
Hmmm. Try it again with a funny arrow hat, perhaps?
In National Review, Byron York obsesses about anti-Bush websites and the "one long bellow of rage" that is... MoveOn.org? David Brooks, the New York Times's new conservative Op-Ed columnist, mourns the passing of the culture wars, which were about ideas, and wrings his hands over the "vitriol" of the new "presidency wars," which are just about hating Bush as "illegitimate...ruthless, dishonest and corrupt."
I don't know... I just saw Al Franken, on national TV, being bleeped for publicly cussing with the F-word against our current sitting president. From an official Democratic podium, no less. I don't recall conservatives doing that kind of thing at all -- much less frequently -- during the Clinton years. If that's not "vitriol" or a "bellow of rage", then what is, Katha?
Exhibit A: Jonathan Chait's eloquent, shrewd and not at all vicious New Republic essay on why he hates President Bush (among other things, his triumph is an affront to meritocratic principles--well, it is!).
I guess viciousness is in the eye of the beholder. The first paragraph of Chait's essay, aside from one-half sentence, is pure ad hominem attack, based on the sort of mind-reading and dimestore-psycholanalysis which is currently so very popular among your peers. ("I know my opponent's innermost feelings and motive better than even he, and will judge him as such.")
Chait writes:
I hate the inequitable way he has come to his economic and political achievements and his utter lack of humility (disguised behind transparently false modesty) at having done so... He reminds me of a certain type I knew in high school -- the kid who was given a fancy sports car for his sixteenth birthday and believed that he had somehow earned it. I hate the way he walks... I hate the way he talks -- blustery self-assurance masked by a pseudo-populist twang. I even hate the things that everybody seems to like about him. I hate his lame nickname-bestowing... And, while most people who meet Bush claim to like him, I suspect that, if I got to know him personally, I would hate him even more.
Katha, I'd certainly agree this article is, amazingly, less vitriolic and hateful than many pieces you and your peers publish. But that it should be your top-of-the-line "Exhibit A" for liberal thought is truly sad news.
I understand disliking someone -- or even hating, which is apparently fine for those of you not bound by "love thy enemy". But what has liberalism to do with disliking Bush? Do we somehow imagine that we must lump character and political affiliation together? The things that bothered me about Bill Clinton (D) are the same things I dislike about Dan Burton (R). Conversely, I admire(d) Tip O'Neil, Paul Simon, and Russ Feingold, though I disagree vehemently with many of their policies.
Odd that you would cite such an article to disprove Brooks' contention that liberal speech is currently mostly "about hating Bush", since it's a stunning piece of evidence in support of his thesis.
Even Ann Coulter is worried that "the country is trapped in a political discourse that resembles professional wrestling." Gee, is this the same Ann Coulter who wrote that Timothy McVeigh should have driven his truck into the New York Times headquarters, whose bestselling polemic Treason argues that liberals are Commie-loving traitors who hate America? The Prozac must be working.
True, Coulter tosses off a few intemperate lines, and makes arguments you may not agree with. But are you really arguing she's less vitriolic than, say, Michael Moore or Al Franken?
As Brooks, at least, acknowledges, the right is in a weak position when it claims to be shocked, shocked, shocked by liberal speech today. Remember when Newt Gingrich blamed Susan Smith's drowning her children on Democrats? ("How a mother can kill her two children, 14 months and 3 years, in hopes that her boyfriend would like her is just a sign of how sick the system is, and I think people want to change. The only way you get change is to vote Republican.")
And this is somehow worse than alleging Bush is worse than Hitler, who tortured and murdered 6 million Jews? Or that "Bush knew" and planned to kill thousands of Americans on 9/11, a charge which came from within congress itself?
Further, if your case about conservative speech "today" is so strong, Katha, how come you must reach back nearly a decade to prove it? Or are you now conceding that discussing history is a legitimate way of getting a grip on the present?
Or do we just change the rules whenever it suits us?
Never mind that Smith had been molested as a young girl by her stepfather, a South Carolina Republican Party activist with close ties to Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition.
Wow, Katha, you're right: what Gingrich did was so bad that you've gone and outdone him. Yeah, well Republicans are child molesters: good retort, that.
Does it escape your attention that you're easily topping him while trying to offer him as a top example of conservative vitriol?
Do you see how neatly you make the case you are trying to disprove?
Apparently, not.
Remember when Gingrich called the Democratic Party "the enemy of normal Americans," and Dan Burton, chairman of the House Reform Committee, called President Clinton a "scumbag"? (Committee spokesperson Will Dwyer defended this epithet as "straight talk.")
I've expressed my own disapproval of Burton. But again, as your worst case, is "scumbag" really equal to or worse than what the left is using today? Are you really making this argument with a straight face?
During the Clinton years you could turn on the TV and watch Jerry Falwell hawking videos "proving" that Vince Foster was murdered--a view promoted repeatedly by the Wall Street Journal editorial page and even entertained by Brooks's Times colleague William Safire. (And Foster's was only one of the many murders the President was supposed to have arranged.)
There are a number of odd anomalies about the Foster 'suicide', Katha. But the very fact that you don't cite examples of conservatives taking the next step and directly blaming Clinton (or Hillary) again undermines your position. Again, in constrast, consider how Bush has been cited as one of the prime movers who planned 9/11.
You could hear Rush Limbaugh declare, "Bill Clinton may be the most effective practitioner of class warfare since Lenin"--Bill Clinton, the best friend Wall Street ever had!
Okay, Katha, there's something we need to straighten out here.
First, liberals do engage in class warfare. If you disagree, re-read your own "Exhibit A", above, and look for class-based hatred. On this charge, you're clearly throwing stones from a glass house. Further, given that the charge is true, what's so incorrect about pointing it out? Are certain facts to be omitted from discourse because they're unflattering?
Second, there's quite a difference between disagreeing with someone's actions, tactics, or worldview, and hating or demonizing them personally. The fact that the distinction so completely escapes you in this example goes a long way towards explaining the current tenor of debate.
Ancient history? It was only two years ago that Richard Lessner of the Family Research Council asked in a press release, "What do Saddam Hussein and Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle have in common?" Answer: "Neither man wants America to drill for oil in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge."
Who? Richard Lessner? Who is that?
Are you so desparate to prove your case for conservative vitriol that you have to quote people none of us have ever heard of?
Even so, you could do a bit better. Showing Daschle and Saddam have a common interest is pretty tepid stuff. Perhaps you could produce something where an equally obscure conservative would say Daschle was "worse than Hitler", or that he loved to cause suffering and death for personal gain?
I'm waiting, Katha.
And you refute the charge of "ancient history" by going back ... uh ... two years. And finding a minor player. Katha, the things I cite in response to you only need to go back four weeks and involve people in the spotlight.
Just this September, Tom DeLay accused Ted Kennedy of "extremist appeasement," charged that "national Democrat leaders this year have crossed a line and now fully embrace their hostile, isolationist extreme" and called opposition to the Miguel Estrada nomination "a political hate crime."
Appeasement? This is your charge of demonization from the right, appeasement? Oh please, Katha, that's hilarious. Liberals practically exude the charge Republicans cater only to the rich, and you have an apoplectic fit over the word "appeasement" being linked with your folk once, over a year ago?
(You'll notice--a small but telling point--DeLay continues the Gingrich-era intentionally rude substitution of "Democrat" for "Democratic.")
Whoa! Call the FCC -- get this kind of language banned!
Coulter's Treason sits on the bookshelves alongside right-wing ravings with titles like Bias, The No-Spin Zone and Useful Idiots... Very high-minded, very rational!
Err, Katha, Bias was written by a liberal. And "No-Spin Zone"? yeah, how irrational a title is that. So much less vitriolic than "Stupid White Men" or "Lies, and Big Fat Idiot Lying Liars who Lie Them."
Strange that you should bring up the phrase "useful idiots", since it came out of the mouth of a socialist. Forgive us for being so uncivil as to put quotes from those advocating the socialist policies you promote on our book covers.
Well, they wanted state power, and thanks to the Supreme Court Five, they got it.
Trace it back, Katha... figure out how many Republicans were in that chain of decision making. First, there were the Broward County three -- all Democrats. After that, the next level of the judiciary. Not sure on that one. Then there was the Florida Supreme court -- again all liberals. Then the Supreme Court, where the deciding vote was Sandra Day O'Conner. Hardly a stalwart conservative, she.
But unfortunately, running the country turns out to be harder than it looked when Bill Clinton was killing off Hillary's lovers between Cabinet meetings. He made it seem so easy!
Oh, is that who did Foster and why? I hadn't heard that before from conservatives. Thank you for clearing that up.
Now, unemployment is way up, the government's awash in red ink, Iraq is a mess. So, everything has to be someone else's fault--mean liberals who really, really want to win in 2004, Osama-loving pranksters who forward e-mail jokes about the President's IQ, Bill and Hillary, still magically pulling the strings three years after leaving the White House, having thoughtfully arranged for 9/11 before they departed.
You spend your entire article charging conservatives with ghastly crimes against discourse -- quotes where they say liberals "appease" or are "uncivil" or promote a system which hurts people -- painstakingly documenting each lukewarm reproach (while providing not a few worse ones yourself.)
Then, when it gets to the real meat of your argument -- you toss it off and close, without a lick of documentation. Where are the conservative allegations Bill and Hillary are secretly pulling the strings in the White House? Where is the conservative charge that Bill and Hillary planned 9/11? (After all, the same charge has certainly been leveled against Bush repeatedly.) Where is the "Iraq is a mess?" evidence?
This is sort of like testing the door hinges on the car to a great degree of precision, and then tossing in the engine at the last moment.
Finally, your closing line, your piece de resistance:
They can dish it out, but they sure can't take it.
What are you talking about? Any conservative knows what it's like to be called "Richer than God" (see above), when in fact they are middle class or lower. Or called "racist", or a "neaderthal", or a "hater", when we're simply trying to oppose policies and ways of thinking which we believe are determinental to the ones they're support to help.
Every evening, we can turn on the TV and obtain your point of view, unless we carefully restrict our viewing to one channel -- Fox News -- and avoid all their debate shows, where liberals get 50% of the screen time.
We're quite familliar with the charges y'all frequently level against us. We can "take it" pretty well. And we don't have to reach back ten years to find supporting quotes. Usually, yesterday will provide ample fodder.
You don't flinch when your own hurl obscenities, in political forums, against a sitting president, and publicly charge him with being worse than one of the greatest mass murderers in history. Liberals bald-facedly caricature conservatives as upper-class hypocritical racists. And you yourself add a charge of child molestation?!
Meanwhile, you're still smarting from a Gingrich quote from 1993 which charges liberals with creating a dysfunctional system? You're offended Bush said certain promiment liberals are uncivil? You rail against us for, really now, lecturing you on manners? Or daring to even mention your consistent use of class warfare? Your entire argument seems to boil down to nothing more than: How dare you point out that I call you names!
Who can't take it, Katha?
You're my "Exhibit A".
Well argured, sir. Well argued.
Posted by: Steve on October 11, 2003 06:33 PM