Letters To Deep Thinkers
Dear David,
I know we haven’t spoken in – well, never, because I tend to completely ignore you. I can’t even often find it in me to hold you in some sort of contempt, mostly because it’s hard to hate a pasty, misshapen lump attempting to pass itself off as a human being. The closest I’ve actually come to thinking about you is to wonder whether, when you cut yourself shaving, you bleed beige.
But I’m not a heartless person, and I really felt someone should tell you this. It’s sort of embarrassing for me; this is the equivalent of pointing out to someone at a fancy dress party that they have toilet paper stuck on their shoe, or the back of their skirt tucked into the waistband of their underwear or something. Please know that my saying this doesn’t mean I think any less of you; it is a mathematical impossibility for that to happen, anyway.
I know you think that men like Markos Moulitsas are dangerous radicals, and that Kos and el Che would have been running through the Guatemalan countryside together, screaming “Viva Allende” and twirling their bandito mustachios for crowds of swooning señoritas or something. And somehow, this reassures you that your placement of the American political center as being just exactly under the tip of your impeccably polished Bruno Magli loafer is as painfully correct as every other thought that passes, ever so briefly, through your brain. But I don’t even really want to talk about that.
It’s just. . .well, gosh. It’s embarrassing that I even have to explain to you how American electoral politics works.
I know you think that all of these CNN polls showing Hillary Clinton holding a — what did you call it? A “commanding lead” — in the primaries actually mean something. I guess you probably think that because it reaffirms your particular tweed-tinted view of the way the world works.
It’s just that there’s one little, tiny problem with this.
You see, it doesn’t really matter if even 95% of the American public want to see Hillary Clinton as the Democratic nominee: If the other five percent happen to be the Democratic primary voters in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina, then she won’t be the Democratic nominee. And, with that in mind, I am trying very hard to figure out how a 2.5% margin is, by any normal sense of the word, “commanding”.
I’m really sorry to have to bring this to your attention. If you can send me the name of your tenth-grade civics teacher, I’ll send an email to offer comfort and and reassurance that none of this is his or her fault.
Also, is it true that in your deepest, darkest, most hidden fantasy life, you imagine that you are Walter Mitty?
Thanks for all that you do to keep American political commentary completely inane!
Sincerely,
Jillian
I used to check in on Brooks’s columns once in a while. I stopped when he wrote that the Bush administration had a “fetish” for telling the truth (Brooks’s phrase).
Please, Iowa and New Hampshire, save us from Hillary! Do you want to hear robotic laughter and political triangulation for eight whole years? Don’t you find it suspicious that devoted Republicans like Brooks seem so desperately for Hillary to be the Democratic nominee?
Isn’t 2.5% close to the “mandate” Bush won in 2004?
Oh, Bush wishes he had a mandate as commanding as 2.5%.
Don’t you find it suspicious that devoted Republicans like Brooks seem so desperately for Hillary to be the Democratic nominee?
Brooks thinks that Clinton has been so effectively demonized by years of propaganda from the Republican party, and their proxies in the media, that she can’t win. Brooks may be correct.
Just think about all the reprehensible people that Hillary has a legitimate grudge against. Now think about what she could do with Unitary Executive powers in Time of War. If I was one of the people on her sh*t list, I’d either be purchasing land in the Maldives, or spending every waking moment trying to ensure that Hillary never gains the White House.
The shit they are saying about Hillary is remarkably similar to what many pundits were saying about Reagan in 1979. Actor, crazy old coot, can’t win.
True, she’ll inflame the 29% dead-enders, but so would Edwards. He’s a dang traal low-yer! So would Obama. He’s…he’s… darker than John McCain’s negro love-child! The assumption that the GOP asshats would be less asshole-ish to a nominee other than Hillary is crap.
If they get to pick our nominee, can we pick theirs?
The assumption that the GOP asshats would be less asshole-ish to a nominee other than Hillary is crap.
I agree, but I think the long history of demonization would make it slightly more effective against Hillary than the others – if only slightly.
If they get to pick our nominee, can we pick theirs?
I love this idea. They should run Dennis Kucinich or Noam Chomsky.
See, though, Sam, you have to do it the way the Republicans are doing it – fake-supporting the member of the other party least likely to generate enough popular support to win.
In that vein, I would like to remind people what a serious, thoughtful, committed conservative and Republican Alan Keyes is.
Alan Keyes is making sense.
Fuck David Brooks. Just fuck him in the ear.
Alan Keyes is the only true conservative running. And Ambassador Keyes is the only one with foreign policy experience. We need his experience in these dangerous times. A mayor or a one-term governor don’t have what it takes to lead America in these trying times.
Also, Alan Keyes is teh hott!!!
i second the fucking of the bobo….
fucking John Tierney was more sincere
Hmpf. I’ve been a proud supporter of Alan Keyes since yesterday.
Of COURSE they are pushing the inevitability of Hillary, based on the Conventional Wisdom™ that her overwhelming negatives will prevent her victory in the general election.
And there MIGHT actually be something to this if a.) the Republican party had not become so universally loathed by its policies, it’s lack of independence and integrity and it’s corruption and b.) the Republican candidate was something other than a two-dimensional Wily E. Coyote type cartoon.
That said, I’d really prefer John Edwards become the 44th POTUS, but if they think that any of the crackers and crackpots they’re standing up now have ANY chance to win the general, they’re gonna need a whole bunch of help from Osama…
mikey
Keyes’ effectiveness as a leader is his greatest liability. Republicans nation wide live in terror of a REAL Conservative. A Conservative that understands that a Government you can drown in a puddle can’t be handing out Billions in pork barrel projects. A REAL conservative like ALAN KEYES doesn’t play favorites like the welfare queens of the Democrat party or the Abramoff’s either!
Rev. ALAN KEYES also clearly understands who is actually in charge and bows hhis head every day.
ALAN KEYES, The only Truly Conservative Republican running!
See, though, Sam, you have to do it the way the Republicans are doing it – fake-supporting the member of the other party least likely to generate enough popular support to win.
Well, lots of people keep saying Kucinich is unelectable. I guess he would need to switch parties, though.
I suppose I’ll hop on the Keyes bandwagon – I mean, I’ve supported Keyes since 2004.
Brooks thinks that Clinton has been so effectively demonized by years of propaganda from the Republican party, and their proxies in the media, that she can’t win.
Then there’s the fact that she still–STILL–doesn’t regret voting to authorize Bush to use military force against Iraq. And she is going around saying she would nuke Pakistan if we found a terrorist base there. And she has been bought and paid for by the health insurance companies. etc.
I agree with Mikey.
Bill KKKristal is now convinced that his party will ride to victory with a wide margin, proving again that what the neocons have for brains is starting to implode, or rot, your choice. I prefer the rot idea because it implies a smell that I now associate with anything neoconish or Bushite.
This Alan Keyes seems like a guy I’d like to have a beer with.
As edifying as it will be to watch the wingnuts paint Hillary as Hitler, Stalin and Jimmy Carter rolled into one while Brooks et al complain about her dowdy clothes, her neckline and her stern visage, I too am hoping its John Edwards who runs against the effective and experienced Alan Keyes.
Only Alan Keyes wants to restore the Constitutional checks and balances that the Framers intended.
And what other GOP candidate has the proven ability to be nominated for a Senate seat in more than one state?
Alan Keyes is a reformer with results.
The last I checked Edwards was still ahead here in Iowa. I’m going to do my part and caucus for him.
Alan Keyes is like Eisenhower. He looks great in a military uniform. He looks great in that cowboy costume he wears when he goes West. And you know, there’s a real — there’s a real affection between him and the troops. He looks for real. What is it about the commander in chief role, the hat that he does wear, that makes him — I mean, he seems like — he didn’t fight in a war, but he looks like he does. Americans love having a guy as president, a guy who has a little swagger, who’s physical. You know, all those women who say size doesn’t count — they’re all liars. This was probably the coolest presidential image since Bill Pullman played the jet fighter pilot in the movie Independence Day. That was the first thing that came to mind for me. And it just shows you how high a mountain these Democrats are going to have to climb.
All we are saying
Is give Keyes a chance!
Jillian, David Brooks knows all those things and it is a big mistake to think he actually believes what he writes. David is playing a different game.
Media drives public opinion. It decides what is or isn’t cool, who is or is not qualified to lead, what you will et or what you will wear. It doesn[‘t do this by simply telling you what you should think or who you should admire. That would be pretty stupid and even worse, it simply would not work.
What does work though are the advertising techniques that have been perfected over the last 70 years ever since Bernays (Freud’s nephew) invented modern PR propaganda. It’s called Manufacturing Consent and it works extremely well when you can control all access to information.
People like David see it as their honorable duty as an elite to shape and mold us for our own good. They are keeping the wild and dangerous Id at bay and under control.
…..
You know what? Screw it, I don’t know anything any more. I’m not sure I believe this. I was going to delete this but I think I will let it go and post it. Think of this as just me mumbling to myself. It’s a theory I have believed in e.g. the media controls and manipulates the masses but hell I don’t know what I believe any more. Someone else figure it out.
Alan Keyes is making sense.
God, I laughed so hard at this.
(I think I cracked a rib)
Noen,
I think you’re exactly right. We saw this with Hackett, and Dean, and Kerry. The movers and shakers were given the narrative, and they spun it out to the media consumers. Little if any thought was given to the truth, nor was the conventional wisdom questioned. How could that much noise be generated, while truth was quietly ushered down the back stairs?
These people know they are opinion makers, and they do for the money, because they can, or because they have the power to. And that, arguably, in the hands of profit motivated corporation is far more dangerous than any politician or rhetoric.