EXIT MR. DELAY
One of the ideas I like to use to test the limits of people’s patience with is the concept that what is happening to conservatives today pretty much parallels what happened to the liberal left just before the great Republican comeback. Excuse me while I bore on.
At the end of “Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them” Al Franken mentions an airborne conversation with a Rabbi who explained that God’s curse on liars is that they ultimately come to believe their own lies. He didn’t quite spell it out, but to this boy, the meaning is clear: Lying ultimately becomes such an unconscious habit for liars, that, without realizing what’s happening to them, they lose touch with reality and wind up imploding under the weight of their own accumulated hooey. You don’t have to believe in God to believe in that.
Liberalism had a good 60-year run starting in 1933, but by the time the Contract with America (an excellent PR stunt, we must admit) rolled around, liberalism wasn’t just out of gas, it was off its nut. Beating back Jim Crow, supporting gay rights, accepting women in the workplace and opposing Viet Nam had made our side so addicted to the idea of its own inevitable correctness that reality checking became regarded as tantamount to betrayal. Rosa Parks was replaced by the much less satisfactory Tawana Brawley. Feminists had gone from demanding an end to sexism to stereotyping men as a bunch of violent sexist creeps who needed to be more like them, and who then topped that contradiction off by claiming to have discovered a secret international Satanic/patriarchal conspiracy that was forcing them to eat babies without their own knowledge. There were circles where one didn’t even think about suggesting that gay promiscuity might be relevant when discussing the spread of AIDS.
Borrowing heavily on the moral strength they had acquired from previous deserved victories, they denounced skeptics as racist, sexist homophobic, etc. and refused to acknowledge error when obvious problems arouse with their stories. Despite its popularity as a ploy, castigating one’s audience for not believing horseshit has consistently proven to be bad public relations. By the time Rush Limbaugh coined the term “feminazi” you didn’t have to be a Dittohead to appreciate its aptness. Remembering those dark, immensely stupid days makes me regard my advancing age almost with relief instead of dread.
Which brings us, thankfully, to Mr. Delay.
Questioning the loyalty of opponents to this stupid war, massively screwing the middle class and getting caught taking and handing out money he’s not supposed to take or hand out seemed for a while to have only impelled Mr. Delay to keep bailing water into his rapidly foundering boat. Having gotten away with lying to and bullying people all these years, he seems to have become helpless in dealing with his present situation. According to Mr. Delay the prosecutor who indicted him is a pious hypocrite on a partisan vendetta (in other words, he’s Ken Starr). People questioning his deceitful, money-grubbing ways, are—get this—enemies of Christian values. Even with a MSM that’s been bribed and bullied into the GOP’s pocket, the weight of inescapable reality has caused his political future to crumble. He may managed to come back as a lobbyist once he gets out of jail but, as a leading politician, the guy’s a dead mackerel. And for Republicans the fun is just beginning.
On a related note, only a handful of fellow politician has seen fit to stand behind Russ Feingold for making an issue of President Bush’s nakedly unconstitutional and illegal domestic spying program. Without taking into consideration the validity of his argument, the conventional wisdom has dismissed his behavior as too unusual and extreme to be taken seriously, qualifying it as an embarrassment.
Forgive the not entirely apt comparison, but that’s exactly what they used to say about Rush Limbaugh.
One of the ideas I like to use to test the limits of people’s patience with is the concept that what is happening to conservatives today pretty much parallels what happened to the liberal left just before the great Republican comeback. Excuse me while I bore on.
At the end of “Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them” Al Franken mentions an airborne conversation with a Rabbi who explained that God’s curse on liars is that they ultimately come to believe their own lies. He didn’t quite spell it out, but to this boy, the meaning is clear: Lying ultimately becomes such an unconscious habit for liars, that, without realizing what’s happening to them, they lose touch with reality and wind up imploding under the weight of their own accumulated hooey. You don’t have to believe in God to believe in that.
Liberalism had a good 60-year run starting in 1933, but by the time the Contract with America (an excellent PR stunt, we must admit) rolled around, liberalism wasn’t just out of gas, it was off its nut. Beating back Jim Crow, supporting gay rights, accepting women in the workplace and opposing Viet Nam had made our side so addicted to the idea of its own inevitable correctness that reality checking became regarded as tantamount to betrayal. Rosa Parks was replaced by the much less satisfactory Tawana Brawley. Feminists had gone from demanding an end to sexism to stereotyping men as a bunch of violent sexist creeps who needed to be more like them, and who then topped that contradiction off by claiming to have discovered a secret international Satanic/patriarchal conspiracy that was forcing them to eat babies without their own knowledge. There were circles where one didn’t even think about suggesting that gay promiscuity might be relevant when discussing the spread of AIDS.
Borrowing heavily on the moral strength they had acquired from previous deserved victories, they denounced skeptics as racist, sexist homophobic, etc. and refused to acknowledge error when obvious problems arouse with their stories. Despite its popularity as a ploy, castigating one’s audience for not believing horseshit has consistently proven to be bad public relations. By the time Rush Limbaugh coined the term “feminazi” you didn’t have to be a Dittohead to appreciate its aptness. Remembering those dark, immensely stupid days makes me regard my advancing age almost with relief instead of dread.
Which brings us, thankfully, to Mr. Delay.
Questioning the loyalty of opponents to this stupid war, massively screwing the middle class and getting caught taking and handing out money he’s not supposed to take or hand out seemed for a while to have only impelled Mr. Delay to keep bailing water into his rapidly foundering boat. Having gotten away with lying to and bullying people all these years, he seems to have become helpless in dealing with his present situation. According to Mr. Delay the prosecutor who indicted him is a pious hypocrite on a partisan vendetta (in other words, he’s Ken Starr). People questioning his deceitful, money-grubbing ways, are—get this—enemies of Christian values. Even with a MSM that’s been bribed and bullied into the GOP’s pocket, the weight of inescapable reality has caused his political future to crumble. He may managed to come back as a lobbyist once he gets out of jail but, as a leading politician, the guy’s a dead mackerel. And for Republicans the fun is just beginning.
On a related note, only a handful of fellow politician has seen fit to stand behind Russ Feingold for making an issue of President Bush’s nakedly unconstitutional and illegal domestic spying program. Without taking into consideration the validity of his argument, the conventional wisdom has dismissed his behavior as too unusual and extreme to be taken seriously, qualifying it as an embarrassment.
Forgive the not entirely apt comparison, but that’s exactly what they used to say about Rush Limbaugh.
posted by Hieronymus Braintree at 8:55 AM
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