David Brooks, in his online conversation with Gail Collins, observes of the upcoming rally by Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart:
By the way, I’m totally confused about what the political impact of Stewart-stock and Colbert-palooza will be. On the one hand, watching their shows I get the impression they are generally mainstream liberals. On the other hand I do think their shows are unintentionally conservative. Just as the show “60 Minutes” sends the collective message that political institutions are corrupt, so the Comedy Central shows send the message that politicians are buffoons. Both messages undermine faith in political action and public sector endeavor and so cut right against the intentions of their founders.
But normally their audiences are self-selected, largely liberal viewers who enjoy the collective experience of mocking conservatives. So they don’t really do damage to their “cause.” Their goal is more cultural than political: to reaffirm that they are cooler, smarter, and more clever than those dim-witted right-wingers.
How that comes off to the “public” – that is, a larger audience that is not in on the joke but rather the butt of the joke — is what has so many liberals nervous. The title of the event — the Rally to Restore Sanity — tells it all. Like Obama (but funnier), Colbert and Stewart are quite certain that Americans, after demonstrating sheer brilliance in 2008, are suffering from some mental affliction. If the comedians really wanted to restore sanity, they’d start with those on the left who are convinced that foreign money, Karl Rove, and Fox News are to blame for their party’s woes. But I don’t see that happening.
The alternate theory is that this story serves as a pre-emptive strike that, in addition to inflicting whatever immediate damage, also preps all the trolls and super-trolls in the event that some rumored, possibly very juicy Mrs Government material comes out (no, not the “whitey tape”). Articles like this get all manner of well-meaning conservatives on record getting huffy about the off-limits-ness and irrelevance of candidate spouses. Second, they familiarize operatives with a range of lame comebacks and pseudo-equivalencies to be called upon if counter-noise is the only option.
Has anyone else noticed that Obama seems to have peaked in the polls? Last week the national tracking polls were in the range of a 7-10 point Obama lead and now it’s down to 4-7.
And the state polls usually trail the tracking polls by about a week so it will be interesting to see what happens this week and next.
It looks like McCain is going to go with the redistribution of the wealth line of attack – Good.
Now he needs to tie it to the Pelosi and Reid – do nothing Congress along with Palin’s outside of Washington appeal and maybe…..
It’s really hard to get mad at “The Gray Lady” anymore as she is clearly on her last legs. I seriously doubt she will be around (as a newspaper) in ten years. RIP.
The NYT’s status as an adjunct of the national Democratic Party goes back for several decades now — at least to the Nixon years. So the attack on Cindy McCain is not that great of a surprise, in and of itself. Even so, the NYT’s pure viciousness is a wonder (of sorts) to behold.
The ongoing, inexorable collapse of the newspaper industry in general is a double-edged sword, and in some ways I will be sorry to it go. But contained within that collapse is the specific wreckage of the NYT and its smaller-market liberal cousins scattered around the country — and to bear witness to that wreckage is a great joy.
edit, “sorry to *see* it go” etc.
Not for the first time, I say: your lips to God’s ears, Jennifer. I would love to see a revolt of sensible people who are tired of being told that what is clear to them is bad, wrong, racist, a distraction, etc. And Colin Powell can suck wind, too.
Jen, my theory is that the NY Slimes has swung to the defense of Michelle ObamACORN-Lobster.
You see, the African Press International is indicating it plans to release a taped audio recording of a telephone interview they conducted with Michelle.
In that taped interview, as the transcript indicates, Michelle used some incendiary language as she lashed out at the “American White Racists” who are trying to steal the election from Barack.
The African Press International indicates that the release is imminent and very soon. They have first called on Michelle to come forward and discuss the interview as opposed to their flatly denying it took place (the ObamACORN’s present position).
Does the NYTimes just manufacture stories:
“Cindy McCain was new to Washington and not yet 30 when she arrived at a luncheon for Congressional spouses to discover a problem with her name tag. It read “Carol McCain.” That was the well-liked wife John McCain had left to marry Cindy, to the disapproval of many in Washington.”
Who knew “many in Washington” (not to mention the Gray Lady) disapproves divorced politicians?! Ted Kennedy? John Kerry?
McCain married Cindy in 1980, and was first elected in November 1982 for a Congress that convened in Jan. ’83. So Cindy is the only wife Congressman McCain has had, but a luncheon for Congressional spouses gets her name tag wrong–and this is revealing of something…?
Pathetic.
That’s really disappointin for Jodi Kantor wrote a number of very good article in 2007 about Obama’s problematic relationship with his pastor/mentor/inspiration Jeremiah Wright as well as about
Obama’s vote for Cheney’s 2005 energy bill and others….
I guess this is the kind of trash the NYT is assigning her these days… Sad.
O/T but quite revealing take a look at this picture:
http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/obamazakaria.jpg
I quote:
“” The picture is of B. Obama carrying a book that he is obviously in the middle of reading.
Want to guess what the book title is?
-’The Post-American World’ –
It was written by an Islamic from India and contains his view of how America
will fall from power as other nations and groups, including Islam, come to control the world markets.”"
CK, typically astute and succinctly explained speculation there on the possible pre-emptive nature of the odd and lame NYT article in question. Capt. America may have ID’d one of the potential “threats” out there for which the Cindy piece is a pre-emptive measure.
Wasn’t it just a week ago that the NYT attempted to shape the battlespace with its hilariously limp apologia, er, article re Ayers, at a time when the rumor mill was rife with fairly sensible-sounding speculation that McCain was about to “go there”? This would fit that pattern exactly.
Good reminder here, re Mrs Senator Government, what an almost implausibly bad and vulnerable candidate Obama is. Even his spouse – not just normally “off limits” in a campaign sense but of little interest to voters – is an electoral nightmare. If you haven’t heard her speeches from the pre-duct tape days, during the primaries – just wow. A strikingly ignorant, entitled, arrogant, bitter person – embarrassing as a candidate’s wife, unthinkable as First Lady (well, if she didn’t completely change her tune).
There is now some fairly impressive opinion survey evidence that the public is largely aware of how completely off-the-rails the press has become. Will that hard-won perspective combine with disgust at the increasingly vicious and bizarre ad hominem m.o. of one side of the spectrum and produce any sort of backlash? Obviously it has already done so WRT Palin – among those already likely to be fans of the governor – but will that backlash “break out” into independents? If it does, it would be one of the ingredients that would confound the Dewey-beats-Truman consensus of, well, just about everybody.
Rod
I am hoping for a McCain victory as much as anyone but to say that the book was written by an Islamic from India is a little silly.
Fareed Zakaria is a well known writer for Newsweek and alleged “expert” on foreign policy.
Clearly Zakaria is in the tank for Obama based on his recent articles, as Obama mirrors his hope of further engagement with other countries, even exporters of terrorism like Iran, without preconditions.
So it is not surprising that Obama is reading that book
But it is another piece of evidence of how I differ with Obama’s world view.
Rod, that was an interesting photo. I assume it’s genuine because it didn’t come from the AP, and that book is an anti-American piece of trash–exactly what I expect an anti-American piece of trash like Obama to read. Would you tell me the web address you linked it from?
Tghanks.
Are you guys sure of all this? Maybe it’s all a misunderstanding, and the Times was talking about one of the candidate’s first wife-something about infidelity, a life-threatening auto accident and all that family values stuff which people here hold so dear.
When is the last time that you’ve seen anyone walk around with a newspaper? I can’t remember the last time I bought one.
Jay from Texas: I agree but thought should quote the description of the blog where the picture came from.
I agree with all the rest that you wrote as well
Rod, I checked on the author of that book. The title sounds ominous, but the writer is considered moderate. Obama wouldn’t be holding anything damning in public.
Capt. America, If Michelle actually called the API and said those things, she must have been high on crack cocaine.
Rininger:
I got it from a friend so I don’t know. The link reads tnr and the plank ( as in The New Republic, The Plank) but since these are Obama loving & McCain bashing 24/7/365 my guess is that someone must have posted it in the comments section. It didn’t come from of of the TNR stories; that’s a bet.
I am still voting for John McCain so don’t call a radical lefty but when he started talking about vouchers at the debate it caught may attention. That is an issue that I have questions about.
Why do some people especially some conservative/Republicans want vouchers for school choice?
Some of the reasons are:
a. They don’t agree with the agendas of the public schools
b. They want their children to receive an education that reflects their religious, philosophical and moral views and they would like the money that they pay for school taxes (or at least some of it) to be put back into their hands so they can support the educational institutions of their choice .
c. Sometimes the public schools in some areas have rough elements and don’t have an adequate academic program.
Our society has decided that it is in the interest of the greater society to fund public education though local and/or other public forms of taxation depending on where one lives.
But the folks who send their kids to parochial and or private schools resent that they have to support the public schools which don’t reflect their beliefs and needs.
Additionally one could look at the folks who keep talking about vouchers and maybe even giving some tax payer funding to parochial schools, in my opinion are the same folks who don’t like socialism but wouldn’t mind it so much if the socialism helped to pay for their kids education.
And how about the folks who don’t even have any kids or whose kids are no longer in school? If the parents of kids who want to send their kids to parochial or private school can take a portion (or maybe all) of the the taxes that they would have paid that would have been used for public schools and fork it over to their parochial/private schools, why shouldn’t people who don’t have any kids in school be allowed to put their education tax money toward the institutions (educational and otherwise) of their choice.
I sometimes think that it might be better and fairer if we would totally scrap the public education system as we know it and just let everybody fend for themselves or pay for the schools they want to pay for.
Rininger:
I did a little Google and the NYT has a story back in May’ so does TNR:
http://papercuts.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/05/21/what-obama-is-reading/
Dalibama; yes he is “moderate” and goes to Charlie Rose and has its own program on PBS and such.
The book seems to argue the US hegemony will decline b/c the rest of the world should rise.
Nothing wrong with that in principle. But Zakarias approach is very much atuned to Obama’s idea
of getting all along just fine and sitting at the table without preconditions with Iran, North Korea et. al
I am sure Obama finds quite a bit of inspiration in it.
Dream on, Trust Fund Jenny. There is no such thing as a conservative “irregular voter.” Ask Karl Rove.
“attack the spouse and belittle the little people”
Can someone, somewhere tell me once and for all whether Jennifer Rubin considers herself a)little and belittled, b) little but not belittled, c) not little (unlittle?, big?) but belittled, d) neither little nor belittled, or e) all of the above.
Nobody but Obama supporters read the NY Times anymore. I get the feed by e-mail and look at the headlines. I read the piece and, frankly, did not see the point. It was dull and read more like a Vanity Fair BDS piece than news.
The best explanation I’ve seen for all this is here. It is absolutely on target.
Bostonian-
I knew Jenny Rubin in college. She has a multimillion $ trust fund, she is not one of the “little people.” All she cares about is Israel, the rest is an pretend politics.
Certainly one of several related $1 trillion questions. The whole cultural pill being forced down our throats by Senator Government and his friends could finally induce the equivalent of a massive gag reflex. It may already be doing so, but we won’t know until election day, and in the meantime I don’t pretend in the slightest to be able to judge objectively, since my own nausea is long past the dry heaves stage.
“She has a multimillion $ trust fund, she is not one of the “little people.” ”
Jenny, your credentials are impeccable, as are your views. Contact me any time. First date, you buy.
CK- ad hominem? Accusing a US Senator of being a terrorist is the definition of ad hominem.
We remember Swiftboating, we remember Whitewater and Vince Foster, we’re not going to wait for conservatives to act first, you’re gonna get it every hour of every day in every hole.
Dupage- check out the picture first, some things even money can’t help.
It’s always helpful to understand just how it is the media spins and manipulates public opinion.
http://blog.topicaltopics.net/2008/09/media-bias-the-tricks-and-techniques/
And for an examination of the NYT article on Cindy McCain cited.
http://blog.topicaltopics.net/2008/10/another-look-at-media-bias/
Understand how it’s done and you can filter it out and fight against it.
I wonder if Cindy McCain’s response (i.e., why haven’t the Times reporters looked into Obama’s drug dealer?) will get any play, be ignored, or be derided as racist.
The only reason I still have a paper subscription is so I have something to read in the morning when I take a crap. Other than that, paper MSM is worthless.
You could rip out pages of Commentary and use them when engaged in the same function – this time in back of you.