p m carpenter's commentary

Nothing personal, Mr. Limbaugh

"I did not mean a personal attack on Ms. Fluke," writes a platoon of p.r. dandies, a division of pettifoggers and an army of bomb disposal experts for their client, the big fat idiot Rush Limbaugh, although my Frankenesque description of this hayseed of a Westbrook Pegler should in no way be construed as a personal attack on Mr. Limbaugh.

Because, you see, I was merely "illustrat[ing] the absurd with absurdity," as I have done for a number of years now, often hours a days, and more frequently than not, at least five days a week.

Thus, this morning should I also choose to evoke a Platonic Ideal of Justice for the absurd Mr. Limbaugh as one of him being brutally bitch-slapped and repeatedly gang-raped by a pissy throng of iron-pumping Santorums in some Florida hellhole of an underfunded prison, you might be justified in suspecting some trifle of animus on my part toward this sack of diseased human waste.

But you would be wrong, of course. And because the "of course-ness" of that correction practically screams its own affirmative defense, I would be offended in having to even point it out.

I might have chosen "the wrong words in my analogy of the situation" -- the situation being that this sociopathic cryptofascist deserves the grimmest of temporal karmas imaginable -- but for heaven's sake how anyone protective of the big fat idiot could think that I would have meant a personal attack on Mr. Limbaugh just goes to show you how politically correct and sensitively unmanly his affiliated party of cryptofascists has become.

KEEP RUSH ON THE AIR!

Napoleon's sound judgment in refusing to interrupt his enemy whenever he was making a mistake has, in the annals of time, traveled from the merely biographical to the militarily strategic to, finally, nothing less than the politically axiomatic. When, for instance, the nation was in the grips of a Great Depression, FDR could revel in the enemy camp's tedious moralizing against helpful government intervention; many of Joe McCarthy's private critics sat back, rather than leaned forward, and watched him dig what surely was his own deep grave; and Lyndon knew he could count on his fellow white Southerners' unremittingly moronic extremism to ensure passage of civil and voting rights bills.

It is with profound bewilderment, then, that I have watched these mushroom clouds of Fire Rush! and Boycott Rush! form over this unremitting moron of a pseudoconservative talk-radio host. Whoa. This clown, literally by the hour, is driving more voters away from the Republican camp and into the opposition's than anything the Grand Old Party could ever have cooked up itself.

Limbaugh is like the Robert E. Lee of Pickett's Charge, or a deus ex machina of 'ObamaCare,' or a publicly drooling, slabbering Sen. McCarthy of absolutely no decency left.

Who to the left of center or square in the middle of any rationality could ask for anything more? If Republicans had so much as a dram of Napoleonic strategery left in their increasingly besieged heads, they'd be the ones calling for Limbaugh's sacking. Instead they've issued electorally suicidal mush about "inappropriate" language and language they wouldn't "condone" and language they themselves "would [not] have used." Zzzzz.

Republican pols are tunneling themselves to oblivion; they're frantically digging to what they hope is some light of day, but in their absolute darkness and disorientation they cannot see that they're digging in the wrong direction: down. So for heaven's sake let's not deprive them of their shovel: Rush Limbaugh.

After November, fine. Boycott away, or demand a scarlet "I" for "Idiot" be branded on Limbaugh's forehead. But from now till then, I hope Rush stays just where he is -- at the live, activist epicenter of pseudoconservative doom.

'A nice small ship of white guys'

At least some of the natives are getting restless.

Eleanor Clift quotes a former Capitol Hill staffer and "GOP activist" who says that because of mossback senators like Roy Blunt, being led by cavemen like Mitch McConnell, "Republicans risk becoming irrelevant to a whole generation of people." He adds,

[McConnell] may be running a tight ship, but it’s a small ship, a nice small ship of white guys.

Every one of the increasingly hostile activists, also on board, is looking up from the deck and seeing an immense tidal wave of both irreversible modernity and demographic changes about to wash over them -- and their party. There is no electoral hope for an organized conservatism that is no longer ideologically capable of bringing into its camp the roughly 40 percent of Americans who self-identify as conservative; they'll go Democratic, or they'll bolt Green, or they'll stay at home -- but they will not support a party that remains silent in the ugly face of a profound pseudoconservatism, such as Roy Blunt's, Rush Limbaugh's, etc. etc.

This eruption has been a long time coming; Limbaugh is certainly nothing new, he's merely a symptom of a chronic sickness -- ever-creeping radicalism, which, once begun, knows no boundaries. Until, that is, the cumulative radicalism finally caves in on itself.

Which it is in the process of doing, as I write.

The GOP leadership blows it again

So now come the updates after all: John Boehner "obviously believes the use of those words was inappropriate," emails a Boehner spokesman; and Eric Cantor, also through a spokesman, says "It's not language the majority leader would condone."

Goodness, how scathing.

When did "inappropriate" effectively become a euphemism for "ho-hum"? And if the majority leader would choose not to "condone" Limbaugh's language, why can he not just condemn it?

Here, from Georgetown University's president, John DeGioia, is the "appropriate" wording:

[S]ome of those who disagreed with [Sandra Fluke's] position – including Rush Limbaugh and commentators throughout the blogosphere and in various other media channels – responded with behavior that can only be described as misogynistic, vitriolic, and a misrepresentation of the position of our student.

The GOP leadership had one easy shot at getting something right -- and at making something right -- for a change. It is of absolutely no surprise that they blew it.

Psychoanalyzing His Mittness

The boys at the Washington Post are having one helluva time isolating the Mittness that is Mitt.

Yesterday, E.J. Dionne took prickly issue with his "friend and colleague Matt Miller," who

wrote recently that "everyone knows Romney is basically a pragmatic centrist." No, "everyone" does not know this [snapped Dionne]. The evidence from his tax plan, in fact, is that he’s an extremist for the privileged.

Now today, Eugene Robinson levels a far more curious observation: that whenever Mitt lets flower his privileged Mittness, "The problem is that the effect ... is to dismiss the Republican Party’s activist base as an unsophisticated rabble."

This is a problem? Jesus, Eugene, it's the only lovable thing about Mitt that exists. Please don't discourage him in this hapless approach, and thus take that, too, away from us.

Robinson proceeds:

Romney’s "gaffes" look unmistakably like glimpses of the real Romney — not a bad person but a man with no ability to see beyond the small, cosseted world of private equity and great wealth that he inhabits.

Yet one could also say he's merely carrying on in the tradition of the great Wendell Willkie -- "the barefoot boy from Wall Street" -- who, as Alice Roosevelt Longworth once quipped, had "grass roots in every country club in America" (and for those quotes I thank the even greater David Halberstam, The Fifties).

My advice, which I may actually take myself for at least one day? Don't bother psychoanalyzing Mitt. Just enjoy him.

Yep, crickets

I can find no update on this story, which itself is the update:

Democratic lawmakers appealed to House Speaker John Boehner on Thursday for Republicans to rebuke conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh after he called a Georgetown University law student a "slut" and a "prostitute."

The GOP: the party of "values."

Whither the Newt?

For a Southern demagogue who therefore most closely personifies his party's zeitgeist of towering negativity and bottomless gloom and all-consuming contempt, it's a wonder Newt Gingrich so badly miscalculated the GOP primary trail's inexhaustible need for nastiness.

As Politico traces his sorry unsteadiness, Gingrich was the happy warrior in Iowa, then "went on the attack in New Hampshire," then he reversed somewhat in South Carolina, then "he exploded for a day in Florida," then it was back to "cheeriness," but "This week, Gingrich revived some of the lines he used ... in South Carolina and Florida" -- and so it has gone, up and down, over and out, but mostly out, taking Gingrich out along with it.

Still, Gingrich & Co. never lost the art of the double standard, of which Gingrich & Co. always has been and always shall be the gold standard. To wit ... "I don’t think [Romney and Santorum] are relevant because they are just politics, they are just the same old baloney," said Newt yesterday. "One is Massachusetts moderate baloney, the other is Pennsylvania big labor baloney. But they are baloney." Now the best part. "Spokesman [R.C.] Hammond said Gingrich’s recent criticism of his rivals shouldn’t be characterized as 'attacks.' "

And that of course is a bigger chunk of baloney than the old, moderate, big labor baloney -- which roundly exemplifies Gingrich's puzzling reluctance to methodically, ploddingly disembowel his opponents with a butter knife. For there is nothing -- nothing -- the base loves more than the brutal inelegance of publicly enhanced interrogations and Stalinist show trials. The dialectic is for wimps, fair discourse is for bleeding hearts, and honest exchanges are perilously close to the bugaboo temptation of compromise.

So why the reluctance? I'm pretty much stumped, so I'm down to guesswork. It's true that Newt never expected to make it this far; hence every extra opportunity for semi-nastiness is but a blessing for Newt and his imperishable thirst for publicity, nonetheless he's still a bit shell-shocked. But there's something else, I think. Perhaps his behavior hasn't been a miscalculation, as I first suggested; perhaps he's just gotten old.

There are few things in any professional life more physically and mentally grueling than the campaign trail, and it is that upon which Newt has stumbled and staggered, because, it would seem, of exhaustion. Anymore, he just doesn't have what it takes -- what the GOP base, that is, requires: spectacular, enthusiastic, full-time malevolence. In short, it's not so much that Newt is reluctant as he is incapable.

But, one never knows; Newt may get his umpteenth wind yet.

Sorry, but I won't join the jackals

Anytime someone who is hyperpolitical dies, I brace for impact -- from the vile onslaught of puffed-up ignoramuses who haven't the foggiest fucking notion of when to keep their inhuman mouths shut. Sure enough, within minutes of reading about Andrew Breibart's death, I happened upon some "liberal's" online mention of "dancing a jig." There you go. Make us proud.

Politico surveys the instant bile:

FireDogLake’s David Dayden ... tweet[ed] "I’m sad that @andrewbreitbart isn’t around to retweet any stray gleeful comments about the death of @andrewbreitbart. RIP."

Slate’s Matt Yglesias tweeted that "Conventions around dead people are ridiculous. The world outlook is slightly improved with @AndrewBrietbart dead."

And a popular refrain on Breitbart’s death for some liberal users was concise — "good riddance." @daveexmachina tweeted, "Honestly, good riddance. He helped poison the country where I live and we are better off without him" and @TahitiNut joined in, writing "Forgive me, God, for I have sinned. I err on the side of being pleased with a death ... of Andrew Breitbart. Good riddance."

Did I ever agree with anything Breibart ever wrote, or "tweeted," or so much as ideated? God no. But the day of a human being's death -- any human, that is, who spread mere opinions, not Nazi genocide -- is scarcely the day for joyful malice.

What the hell is wrong with this country, that its politics -- and politicos -- have become so twisted and sick?

***

postscript:

This here ol' man jus' lived a life an' jus' died out of it. I don't know whether he was good or bad, but that don't matter much. He was alive, an' that's what matters. An' now he's dead, an' that don't matter. Heard a fella tell a poem one time, an' he says, "All that lives is holy." Got to thinkin', an' purty soon it means more than the words says.

--Preacher Casy, The Grapes of Wrath

'I am not what I am'

I knew there was something familiar about Romney.

Mitt:

We’ve seen throughout the campaign if you’re willing to say really outrageous things that are accusative, attacking of President Obama, that you’re going to jump up in the polls. I’m not willing to light my hair on fire to try and get support. I am who I am.

Iago:

For when my outward action doth demonstrate
The native act and figure of my heart
In complement extern, 'tis not long after
But I will wear my heart upon my sleeve
For daws to peck at. I am not what I am.

I recall my first encounter with those last six words, from Othello; I recall it because -- and I do not mean this figuratively -- a chill, as only Shakespeare can chill, went up my spine. Like Hitchcock with a camera, the Bard with his pen reveals the villain early in his play so that the audience can knowingly (but helplessly) strain to warn the victimized innocent. Nonetheless, one feels a certain sympathy for Iago, for just as Shakespeare permits all his villains, Iago is allowed to explain why he feels he's been wronged, and why revenge should be his.

Because Romney operates in the ill-schooled, ill-reasoned democracy of the GOP base, he, contrary to the Shakespearean method of "perhaps you'll understand," is necessarily debarred -- or so he thinks -- from any approach except that of dumbing things down to their absolute dumbest level: "I am who I am." There's not a soul alive who believes that, least of all Romney's; nonetheless there he stands, feeling he can do no other but dissemble.

The irony is that we have all been in on Romney's deceptive joke from the get-go: "I am not what I am" has been the thunderously manifest yet most intensely self-concealed theme of his candidacy. Had Mitt Romney been as demonically undisguised in his early soliloquies as Shakespeare's Iago -- had he, that is, artfully and dramatically explained that all his civics training once pointed to an intellectuality of one direction, but that the voices of the ultraconservative Everyman had since converted him emotionally to another -- we might have felt, might have felt, some sympathy for him.

That his party's base has gone crazy is as plain to us all as Sarah Palin's mental instability; thus Romney, in a way, has indeed been wronged. He never possessed an alternative: an Iago-esque deception was his only route. But good God, he could have taken it with a little class, a little flair, a little bit of winking, Shakespearean style. Instead, he gave us Mortimer Snerd.