Friday, September 17, 2010

UNFORTUNATELY, IT'S NOT ABOUT TRUTH

Hopefully, the obvious lies and misrepresentation and hypocrisy of the new Tea Party darling who won the Republican primary in Delaware will ensure a Democratic victory in the Senate race there in November. But don't count on it, even if she's behind in the polls.

This isn't about what the Tea Partyers say it's about, at least not for enough of them to elect anyone. It's about identification and visceral reactions.

This new darling,Christine O'Donnell, could be one of my cousins or nieces. Her Irish mug—still pretty if not as beautiful as when she was younger—her "Irish" brand of Catholicism (whether actively practiced or not, the residue of that upbringing still resonates in most of my clan)—the delight and openness in her childlike smiles seemingly so innocent and honest, her plain-spoken conversational speaking style, her slightly widening figure as she ages, making her attractiveness more accessible, more common, more nonthreatening.

Everything in this woman's record shows what a hypocritical manipulative liar she is, and yet everything in her presence, at least on TV, makes her seem sincerely genuine and completely well intentioned. Innocently naive perhaps, but not calculatingly phony.

So when her critics raise the question of what qualifies this woman for a seat in the Senate that she says she deserves because she wants to set the nation's fiscal house in order, when in fact she has been unable to do that in her own life throughout her entire adult years so far...

...and when those critics point out that she is running as a "real" person, an ordinary citizen, against professional politicians, but that is all she has been since she was a teenager, creating and running a political organization presented as a religious one, and living (illegally it seems) off political campaign funds for years, even when those years weren't election years, etc. etc. etc....

...and when they point out all the many contradictions and hypocritical positions and actual failures of judgment and execution of almost any of what she claims she stands for...

...a lot of folks who don't read or watch any real news but just watch FOX News (and that's A LOT of folks) or listen to Rush et. al. or don't even do that but just live their lives and get their information in bits and pieces from friends and family and just don't like the way things are going or feel Obama has let them down promising hope and change but not delivering that in their experience for them because he's too intellectual and thoughtful which they read as aloof and because he's obviously handsome and now wealthy and now powerful in many ways and went to Ivy league universities and often talks and acts like he is and did...

...and because he wisely gave them a tax break that only came through as a reduction in taxes on their pay stubs which they may have never even noticed, or if they did, quickly began to take it for granted, and though economists say that's the best way to help the economy—i.e. tax cuts in what's taken out weekly or monthly in pay checks for working people, rather than all-at-once refund checks in the mail one time only, the latter is what people remember and notice, even if they don't spend it but put it away or pay off old debts with it which doesn't expand the economy etc. so they don't connect any tax break with him Obama and his fellow Democrats...

...and because as Bill Maher said in that interview on Larry King the other night, I think it was him, the Democrats have done more to help more people but the Republicans tell a better story, or as others have said, they know how to frame the issues to make themselves look good and the Dems bad, whereas the Dems get bogged down in subtleties and nuances and wonkish or just dry statistics and theories and bigger-picture explications whereas the right just keeps it simple—government bad/people good etc....

...and frankly because the Tea Party has also fielded folks who are more telegenic, like Palin and now O'Donnell, but even Joe Miller, even that nut case in Nevada is more telegenic than Harry Ried...and because most people respond, as new brain studies have shown, to simple messages that cast topics in black and white simplicity, and to faces that are pretty and childlike (O'Donnell looks sometimes like an overgrown infant or little girl and Rand Paul often looks like an excited school boy)...

...and because most people feel overwhelmed by all the information and technology that is the atmosphere we move through every day and their inability to make sense of it they not only grasp onto anything that keeps it simple and makes simple sense to them, but they also identify with those who seem to have the same troubles...

...so that O'Donnell's financial troubles don't disqualify her to handle the nation's troubles but just makes her more like them. And the Buffalo multi-millionaire who won the Republican primary for governor of New York doesn't seem crude and angry (as Rachel Maddow unsuccessfully tried to cast him in last night's show, disappointingly, even when she ultimately made it clear she thinks that's just an act for political gain and she's right about that I believe) despite his record of sending not just hardcore porn to friends and associates through e mails but bestiality etc. which would seem to put him at odds with his fellow Tea Partyer O'Donnell who came out against not just any kind of abortion including in cases of rape and incest but against any kind of sexuality outside of marriage including masturbation etc. but DOESN'T in the minds of many of the Tea Party supporters and sympathizers because it just makes Palladino seem more real, more working-class, more of a man and a regular guy even though he is worth more than more of the tea Party followers put together...

....and if he isn't that lady who ran the wrestling empire with her husband who won the Republican primary for Senator in Connecticut sure can, she's richer than entire states, but because her husband also exemplifies the crude and lewd and over-the-top simplicity of fake wrestling and fake emotions and fake almost everything it seems, but she can say "yes he's colorful" and chuckle and dismiss it because "he's not running for office, I am" as she put it last night on one of the news shows, she can come across as just "real" and not a phony like that Obama who had to walk a fine line between two racial perspectives and expectations and learned to bridge gaps and defuse stereotypical perceptions and the judgements that went with them, etc. but rarely seems like he fought his way out of poverty and prejudice to achieve what he did, which he did, but comes across more like he was entitled to what he has because he's smarter and handsomer than most of us, etc...

...and because the media has turned politics into a horse race and a beauty contest and a sound bite competition for the most part and relinquished their responsibility to just present the facts which indisputably refute almost every claim the Tea Party candidates make for why they would be better at running the country...

...for all those reasons and more, don't be surprised if what the Dems and some of the media are trying to marginalize as "fringe" or "extreme" or "out of the norm" Tea Party candidates actually do decide whether the Congress ends up controlled by Republicans come November. It's not like it hasn't happened before with Reagan ousting Carter (in a party that professes to be Christian and anti-Hollywood!) and Bush/Cheney winning two terms even if illegally, the vote was close enough that they could get away with it in a situation where they should have been trounced, etc. etc.etc...

21 comments:

JIm said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Robert G. Zuckerman said...

Jim, it's good that you here admit your allegiance to liars with delibrately bad intention, over leaders who look out for your best interest in spite of the bigotry of you and your ilk.

Robert G. Zuckerman said...

A thoughtful commentary by my brother, Paul Aronsohn:

http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/commentary/now-more-than-ever-america-must-speak-with-one-strong-commanding-voice

JIm said...

Robert,
At some point you would think that liberals would get past name calling and attempt to win on substance. "Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh My"' Liars and racists and anarchists Oh My!

Once again Robert, name the lie.

JIm said...

Mike, You seemed to have lost it. Here is another one for you to delete.

"The Washington Post/ABC News poll found that a greater percentage of voters are more likely to support a candidate endorsed by Governor Palin than a candidate endorsed by Barack Obama. The pollster also found that Governor Palin's effect on Republicans was "better...than Obama’s effect on Democrats." Endorsements from Palin and Obama affect independents about the same."

Robert G. Zuckerman said...

Michael's post goes into detail but once again you ignore and fail to acknowledge any facts that don't support your position.

Robert G. Zuckerman said...

It's telling: you say "Governor Palin" and "Barack Obama" - why not "President Obama"? I thought you believed in the Constitution and the rule of law?

JIm said...

Robert, Take it up with the Washington Post; their words not mine.

Robert G. Zuckerman said...

Actually Jim, the Washington Post does refer to "President Obama," - it's the conservative source from which you obtained this quote that put its out of context slant on what was actually written.

JIm said...

My mistake. Robert, has a liberal ever said that? They have a lot that they are mistaken about. Economic history and US Consititutional government or lack there of, come to mind.

Jerome said...

Don't know about O'Donnell's popularity, but, apparently Palin is more popular as a kingmaker than a king. Recent poll shows only 26% of Americans think she'd make a good Prez:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/beltway-beast/the-unpopular-sarah-palin-/

JIm said...

Jerome, I suspect the poll is pretty accurate, but she sure can draw a crowd and as you note her endorsements carry weight.

Lally said...

Jerome, polls show Republicans and rightwing ideas come up way short in terms of popularity, but in order to win control of Congress, including the Senate where small states get just as much power (as in O'Donnell's Delaware, i.e. two Senators for each state) as states with many many more people, it's not about who the population thinks would make the best Senator, it's about who the people who will actually vote like most, and because the Tea Party activists are enthusiastic about the chances of overthrowing the last results of our democracy (i.e. "taking the country back" in their terms because they don't accept vote results unless they're in their favor, constantly demonstrating little, and often no, respect for the Constitution they often posture about "returning to" etc.). So even though I doubt Palin could be elected president (though it's a possibility), a lot of Tea Party and other rightwing Republicans can get elected if Democrats and Independents don't vote or vote against their own interests out of disappointment that their expectations haven't been met and/or they have fallen for the rightwing framing of the issues equating the Bush/Cheney bank bailout with Obama and/or believe the rightwing propaganda that the "stimulus" didn't help anyone or that healthcare reform (what they call "Obamacare" as if it was one man's dictate and not a compromise on moderate reforms many Republicans had been for before Obama even got elected, etc. etc.

Jerome said...

Michael, Looking at the current situation from a more cultural angle: what do you make of the deeply nostalgic quality of the newest version of the Righ? Even the Tea Party rhetoric, which started more in the Libertarian vein, has become very old-time religion. I wonder if this all is expressing a sense of loss -- exemplified by bad job prospects and a continual fall in home values. Here's a quote from a homeowner via a Joe Klein piece now on Time.com:

But I guess you'd have to say I'm underwater. We bought our house for $148,000, took a mortgage for $100,000. And I think I might be able to sell it for $80,000 now."

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,2019450,00.html#ixzz0zshpQm1Y

Lally said...

Jerome, That's part of it I believe. But many of the Tea Party activists, and their leaders and financial backers are older white folks who at least have the safety net (created by the Dems and the now almost extinct moderate Republicans) of social security and medicare etc. But have suffered losses not only in housing values but in pensions and 401Ks etc. etc. So a lot of the nostalgia is actually for a time (usually an idealized version of the 1950s which ignores the social and cultural and political turmoil and racial and gender and lifestyle repression and oppression of that era) before Reagan and the rightwing Republicans began dismantling much of what made that period secure at least for whites of a certain financial level usually called "middle-class" including strong unions, a graduated income tax system in which the rich paid much more than they do now or have since Reagan which in turn kept the gap between the wealthy and the typical working man much smaller and the control of the wealth of the country was spread out more rather than the less than one percent that controls most of the nation's wealth now.

Lally said...

And Jerome, that more equal financial situation for most white working people made it possible for usually the man to support an entire family including owning a home and sending kids to college. Once Reagan began his assault on the working-class by initiating union busting and deregulating measures that had ensured the gap between rich and the rest of us remained not too great, the gap began to expand, with working peoples wages and salaries remaining mostly stagnant in real dollar terms ever since while the rich just became richer and richer and came to believe that any restrictions on their accumulation of wealth was not just aggravating for them but "unAmerican" and the think tanks and cultural icons they promoted refined that concept creating the idea that that kind of lack of restrictions on the accumulation of wealth actually IS "America" and anyone objecting to it is "unAmerican" or "other" like Obama and most Democratic politicians and a few moderate Republicans. This may seem like not answering your question Jerome, but my point is that guy decrying the de-valuation of his house and mortgage is probably blaming Obama and Dems for that instead of Bush/Cheney who contributed to the situation begun under Reagan and perfected the idea that our country stands for unfettered wealth accumulation and that is God's plan for "America" (which a few of the Founders acted as if it might be theirs too, but not the majority who believed in a more equal citizenry, wealth-wise, in which the farmer and the workmen shared in all the benefits of the country's wealth.

Lally said...

And Robert, your brother's article is a must read. Thanks for supplying the link to it.

Anonymous said...

it s just "pay-back" time for the decades of buying on credit with next to nothing down thus no equity in what we-the-people Pretend to own!

just put your monthly New Health Care premium on your credit card

the cost for the average American by 2014 or so will be $8,000 per year.

this is not about Republicans or democrats OR Tea Party IT S ABOUT OUR CULTURE OF MORONS!

JIm said...

Mike's comment about Tea Party folks not having respect for the Constitution is laughable. The reason we Tea Party Folks exist is to restore Constitutional government that has been trashed by both parties, but most recently by Obama's takeover of industries. In particular we wish to bring about enforcement of the 10th Amendment limiting the scope of the Federal Government to those specifically enumerated in the Constitution. One could make a very sound Constitutional argument for the elimination of the departments of Education, EPA and Energy. I have some sympathy for the EPA in that our enviroment is much cleaner now than 30 years ago but like all buracracies they seem to have grown out of control. I have not seen any evidence that US education is any better than it was before the Federal government began interferring with what should be an exclusivly local concern. Either way the Constitution does not give the Federal government these powers. As for Mike's lament over the power of small states to be a check on large state wishes, the Founders by design fashioned a republic to constrain a democracy. They knew and admired Ancient Sparta. They feared another Athens.

Robert G. Zuckerman said...

Jim's ramblings are beyond ridiculous. As President, George W. Bush violated the letter and spirit of the Constitution. Expansion of the Executive Branch - under Bush, in war, anything goes, and the president decides when we're at war. And by the way, as Mike pointed out the other day, there have been no attacks on our soil on President Obama's watch, however, at this point under Bush, our nation had been brutally attacked even in the wake of unheeded intelligence indicating this possibilty.

JIm said...

Robert,
I agree that George W violated the Constitution with the drug entitlement and education
polices. Michael deleted my comments on Obama's inept efforts in keeping us safe on the home front. Political correctness enabled the Ft. Hood murderer. Luck and defective terrorists saved us on Christmas day and in Times Square.