Guys, You Need To Sharpen The Message A Little
L. Brent Bozell’s Media Research Center broadcasts the following terrifying action-alert:
CBS Plugs France’s Paid Maternity Leave, Subsidized Child Care
Saturday’s CBS Evening News featured a story, filed by correspondent Sheila MacVicar, which highlighted the French government’s policy of entitling all mothers to three years of paid maternity leave and subsidized child care as a way to increase the birth rate and thus provide more young taxpayers to pay for the pensions of the elderly. MacVicar pointed out that in America, “federal law entitles some working mothers to twelve weeks unpaid leave,” before cautioning that “the rest get nothing.” MacVicar relayed that French women enjoy more benefits than their American counterparts: “Take a look at what all French families, regardless of income, are entitled to: Up to three years paid maternity leave with a guarantee that mom’s job will be there for her when she returns. There’s subsidized child care, a whole host of tax credits, and for baby number three brings twice the government allowance of baby number two.”
OMG. Like, eek.
This is Republican dog-whistle politics in transition from its high-baroque period — in which operatives like Bozell whipped up gales of conservative spite among their low-information constituencies, against teh socialist MSM cheese-eating liberal-elitist John Kerry media surrender-frogs of teh foreign French Democrat Party — to a new, gestural stage in which we’re apparently supposed to understand, prima facie, that maternity leave and child care are Frenchbad.
As a service to the Media Research Center, we’ve highlighted the relevant action-words in this action item, in order to help their slower readers catch up and share the exhilaration of campaigning against their own interests:
Saturday’s CBS Evening News featured a story, filed by correspondent Sheila MacVicar, which highlighted the French government‘s policy of entitling all mothers to three years of paid maternity leave and subsidized child care as a way to increase the birth rate and thus provide more young taxpayers to pay for the pensions of the elderly. MacVicar pointed out that in America, “federal law entitles some working mothers to twelve weeks unpaid leave,” before cautioning that “the rest get nothing.” MacVicar relayed that French women enjoy more benefits than their American counterparts: “Take a look at what all French families, regardless of income, are entitled to: Up to three years paid maternity leave with a guarantee that mom’s job will be there for her when she returns. There’s subsidized child care, a whole host of tax credits, and for baby number three brings twice the government allowance of baby number two.”
Which leaves but one question:
Above: Which one was baby number three?
It’s amazing how enlightening the blogosphere is: I never realized before how very much Brent Bozell (must resist urge to make Bozo joke that would be insulting to Bozo) looks like Dr. Zaius.
Get your stinkin’ paws off me, ya damn dirty ape!
My wife just had a baby, and my company generously offers 6 weeks of paid leave for new mothers AND fathers. The result has been astounding. This is our second kid, and he’s had a much rougher infancy than our first child, but my being home to help out when he was hospitalized recently (just a cold — he’s fine) and being around each day generally has made it much easier to deal with everything that comes with a new baby.
Really, this has strengthened our family so much and made his arrival much better for the baby, my wife, me — and even our daughter. If the “family values” crowd lived up to its name, it would be pushing to make paid parental leave universal. Seriously, if gays get married, the effect on my family would be nil, but this has been just a great thing for us.
man, everybody’s nicking my L. Brent Bo-Zaius riff now.
i’m perversely happy about that.
Youppi!
Dang foreign mascots.
I wonder what it would take to convince the French (or entire E.U.) to colonize us. I say bring it on!
Noooooooooooooooooooooo!
Yeah Dave, what would it take to convince millions of europeans to flock to the shores of America?
I recommend a potato famine and several land wars.
It’s just these sorts of issues that can continue the growing split between the hyper-capitalists and the family-values crowd, unless they start claiming that being home with the baby for six weeks is bad for kids and anti-Christian.
I thought the right was mainly concerned about two things:
1. Family values, supporting the family, etc.
2. The dysgenic nightmare of the brown hordes outbreeding productive (aka white) Americans.
So, the French offer us a nice program that clearly does something about these two concerns of the righties and Bozell goes all, “Oh no! This is terrible!!! AUUGH!”
It is like they don’t actually want to implement any policy that might actually meet the goals they profess to support. Kind of explains Iraq.
Taylor: Except that he’s also Chief Defender of the Faith!
Dr. Zaius: There is no contridiction between faith and science… true science.
man, everybody’s nicking my L. Brent Bo-Zaius riff now.
But it’s one of our old-tyme riffs…!
Wow. The full-on Newspeak translation is kinda scary.
CBS Evening News: French government entitling subsidized taxpayers pay French benefits! French entitled guarantee subsidized tax government allowance!
Doubleplusungood!
jpj has the gist of this dichotomy: they want the “whites” to breed and multiply (only in state sanctioned man-woman marriages, of course) to make sure the “race” remains the majority, while trumpeting family values, snowflake babies, etc.
But if it comes to any state sanctioned actions that facilitate said goal, screw ’em.
We have capital gains taxes to pay, and we’re quite busy trying to reduce those. And babies are gross – all that poop.
The right hand has a gun in it’s hand, and the left hand….
Well, you know.
Actually, what’s even scarier is that the newspeak sounds a lot like Pastor Swank.
He put the dog whistle between his lips and didn’t even blow. He’s relying on the socialist boogeyman too much. Besides, the entitlement stuff doesn’t perk right-winger’s ears when you’re talking about white people. He could have worked in a French Muslim angle if he wanted to hit a home run. He actually makes that French policy sound good.
That whistle could have been an air horn if he talked about frogs, effete males, being smart, foreignness, surrendering, or smelling bad. The right-wing base reacts to stuff like that. His comments sound wonkish. Where’s the red meat?
Go France! (…certainly puts Canada to shame.)
FLASH! Brent Bozell is French. Just look at his striking resemblance to Youppi! over there.
You missed a key action word, Women. Women aren’t supposed to work, they stay home and do all that domestic shit. See, what do they need entitlements, benefits and rights for if they are taking care of business at home.
And they get Sheila to report, fucking bonus.
my head hurts
MacVicar relayed that French women enjoy more benefits than their American counterparts…
Oh Gavin, I think there’s been an error. It’s fringe benefits, not French benefits.
Good thing I was here to clear that up…
Come and rock me Dr. Zaius!
Where’s Falco when we really need him?
Troy McClure stars in “Stop the Media Research Center, I want to get off!”
This is a real shot across the bow to those who would have Bozell broaden his appeal beyond his cherished .25% cranky old bastard demographic.
What made me laugh about this is that I really wasn’t sure where he was going to come down, “it’s French and helps women, so BAD” or “Encouraging more babies, so GOOD”. That is your modern day conservative, ladies and gentlemen. No core principles. They can stand for anything!
I hate every ape I see
From chimpan-a to chimpan-zee
No, you’ll never make a monkey out of me
The conservatives are wondering why they should be paying women maternity leave when they should already be at home doing it for free…
Think of the (right wing wackjob Godly)men women could leave if they had 3 years of paid maternity leave! This is probably what has their chubby whites in a knot.
Actually, the baroque period followed the mannerist:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mannerism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baroque
Fair enough. Thanks! I’m going to have to rethink that analogy.
Rococo perhaps might do you.
I changed it to ‘gestural,’ because what they’re doing now is setting these messages out as though telegraphically, in abstract form.
One of these future days, there’ll be action alerts that just say ‘MSMbad,’ ‘Michael MooreFat,’ ‘liberaltraitor’…
we’re apparently supposed to understand, prima facie, that maternity leave and child care are Frenchbad.
The fact that people actually believe this shit makes me want there to be a nuclear war.
But do French women (or men) get pecker choice?? (combining comments threads, sorry).
Well of course allowing a woman to be with her new-born and providing safe affordable child care is against “family values”. At least to the America hating bushite wingnuts!
We should certainly take advice from a country that got run over by the Germans… and we were the only ones who could save them… Let’s go with what works, which is the American system, were hard work is rewarded, thus turning America into the most advanced country in the world in almost every catagory. The French are still pretty much useless…
“We should certainly take advice from a country that got run over by the Germans… and we were the only ones who could save them… Let’s go with what works, which is the American system, were hard work is rewarded, thus turning America into the most advanced country in the world in almost every catagory. The French are still pretty much useless…”
Myth #1: The French got run over by the Germans.
Truth #1: The French were still recovering from World War I and were not expecting an invasion. When they appointed a hero of that war to lead them, he betrayed his country by collaborating. Which leads us to:
Myth #2: The United States saved France.
Truth #2: The European theater of WWII was won by the Soviets. Period. Stalin broke the German army’s back. The western front was won by an assortment of American, English, free French, and other troops. Furthermore, the French Resistance was invaluable in undermining the Nazi regime and in protecting Jews.
Myth #3: The American system works.
Myth #4: In America, hard work is rewarded.
Truth #3: The United States has the worst health care coverage and the worst child poverty rate in the industrialized world. The next worst country in child poverty is Mexico. The US has a substantial lead over all other first world nations in child poverty, with nearly triple France’s rate.
Truth #4: The United States also has the industrialized world’s worst life expectancy.
Truth #5: The earning gap between the rich and the poor in the United States is far wider than any other democratic, industrialized nation, easily rivalling the inequality of kleptocracies like China. As an added bonus, class mobility is more rigid in the United States than in any continental European nation.
Myth #5: The United States is the most advanced country in the world in almost every category.
Truth #6: Take a look at your cell phone. Is it an Ericsson? A Nokia? A Motorola? The United States is #12, at best, in broadband penetration — and it’s losing ground. Europe — especially the “socialist” Scandinavian nations (and Finland) — far outstrips the United States in terms of wireless coverage and infrastructure. East Asia, especially South Korea, continues to lead in high-tech and biotech fields. As far as scientific and technological progress goes, the United States is at best one among many. The only concrete field in which it leads the world is in amount and sophistication of arms stockpiled.
Myth #6: The French are useless.
Truth #7: Airbus might disagree with you there.
“The only concrete field in which it leads the world is in amount and sophistication of arms stockpiled.”
Djur – last I checked, America produces the most porn in the world.
USA! USA! USA!
Wheat, porn, and missiles.
Shorter Bozo:
“Having babies makes you a cheese eating, surrender monkey.”
Of course i mostly made that comparison out loud back in the early 90’s when i first heard of the guy since he showed up in the news shrieking like the beeyatch that he is back when NYPD Blue first came out on TV , but since you guys put it on teh internets before i ever thought to, i will concede.
it’s good enough to know i’m not alone in thinking it.
Can I just say that “frenchbad” is a terrific construction that will find its way into my conversations now? Thanks.
Before I took a closer look at him, I thought the middle guy was Bob Keeshan , a.k.a. Capt’n Kangaroo. My bad.