Jack Welch and sprawling madness

I wasn't going to comment on the buffoonish Jack Welch's allegation of presidential interference into the Bureau of Labor Statistics' performance of its official duties--a manifestly impeachable offense, by any political or criminal-justice standard--because the allegation was, well, buffoonish.

Welch had no evidence for his allegation. In calling him a buffoon, I do, and it's the only evidence I'd ever need in a libel trial: Rep. Allen West agrees with him.

The point to be made, or rather tediously reiterated, though, is that the right's madness is unmistakably percolating up, as well as down. Ignorant hordes repeating ignorant propaganda they happen to hear on Fox News or that they read online from God only knows where is one thing. But for a former and still immensely influential CEO of a multinational corporation to amplify that ignorance simply because he doesn't like reality is something else altogether.

I suppose you could say it's the contemporary GOP's institutionalization of political madness, a kind of ruthless PartisanThink so pervasive, it's become respectable. Respectable enough, anyway, that serious political journalists now invite buffoons and madmen onto their network shows, which Chris Matthews just did with Jack Welsh, which in turn prompted my and others' writing about it, which in turn only lends more perverse respectability to all the madness, which is why I really didn't care to write about it to begin with. These idiots receive enough attention as it is, and such sober attention is virtually indistinguishable: they're idiots.

But here we are, celebrating the madness in our own perverse way--that is, by acknowledging it. It's what politics has become. When was the last time you read an in-depth piece about whatever it is congressional Democrats intend to do next year? Can't remember? That's probably because no one's writing about it, assuming "it" even exists. Because political writing is now almost exclusively devoted to gauging just how clinically nuts the Republican Party is.

Believe me, I'm not trying to come across as someone who's constitutionally above it all. I'm not trying and I'm certainly not above it. When it comes to enjoyment of wallowing in the low, pathetic filth of the GOP, I bow to no man. But good lord, we, as a nation, can't do this indefinitely. At some point we're going to have to get down to some serious work. And yet, the next several years don't look promising.

Comments

[SueMe]

I watched the NBC news last night when John Sennenu..not the correct spelling...said that President Obama was just lazy...now NBC...the GE owned network is giving voice to Jack Welch who in my estimation...as a FORMER GE shareholder... is just plain nuts!! You know what is wrong with business in America today? It is lead my midgets!

[japa21]

The real problemn with letting all these buffoons on the air to spill their paranoid fantasies (something which didn't occur in the past until Clinton became President) is that their mere appearance gives them a veneer (thinner and thinner) of respectability.
Even if the consequence is that they are torn to shreds in the process, the response is that this is merely the lapdog of the democrats, the liberal MSM, trying to cover it all up.

Even when former Republican officals say that what Welch says is patently impossible, it doesn't matter. They have just been suborned by the President and were really only RINOs anyway.

[Janicket]

It truly does worry me, just how deep and wide the paranoia and blind craziness are in this country's collective psyche. It does not augur well for the prospects of finding reasoned solutions to the massive problems facing us.

[Peter G]

jack Welch has been cooking numbers for his whole career. I doubt he can magine anyone not doing it even though in this case it is pretty much impossible.

[Robert Lipscomb]

I'll drag out my paradigm shift meme one more time and flog it.

Over thirty years ago, Reagan sold the vast majority of the electorate on trickle-down economics. Underlying this concept is that the corporate masters are the true heroes of America and all of American history. People like Martin Luther King Jr. were takers, and even people like george Washington were "just politicians' with Washington having the redeaming qualities of being a successful businessman and a general.

Not only were these titans our heroes, but they needed us to give them ever more money or relieve them ocosts like taxes or rules so they could save America and each of us.

It has been a figgin' gold mine. They lived in a boom for over thirty years. All they had to do was hire people to dig another hole and mine the gold.

Now, the term, CEO, does not equate to hero. In fact, it raises suspicion, or more likely are seen as a necessary evil. So, the vast majority of Americans no longer feel obliged to give them all the money and wait for it to trickle down as the CEOs see best.

So Jack and the rest are desperate for one more boom and for all the adulation they "deserve".

They can't believe what is happening. They just can't friggin' believe it.

[Jim Milstein]

You know, PM, it's not necessary to go as far as West for your evidence that Welch has no evidence.

Jack said so himself.

[nathkatun7]

Right wingers have totally lost it. Now they believe that the professional Civil Servants ha the BLS are all now under pressure from President Obama's Chicago mfia

[majii]

I don't umderstand any of the networks, except maybe Fox, giving Welch a platform to spread his lies and conspiracy theories. What Welch is accusing the president of doing, he actually did. When he was at GE, the books were cooked for many years, and the company was fined $50 million by the SEC. In a nation where truth and justice were highly valued, there would be no way a news network would consider him a credible source to throw lame, inaccurate accusations at PBO, or the BLS. IMO, Welch should be in prison, and it's shameful that any network would allow him to come on and disparage the president without having any proof. The tool admitted to Chris Matthews and Anderson Cooper that he can't provide proof to support his claim, and he said having no proof doesn't change his opinion. I think that the Romney campaign called on its RW associates to blunt the news of the improved unemployment numbers. It certainly looked like a coordinated effort to me because many of them were making the same claim. When Drudge tried pushing the 2007 video of then-Senator Barack Obama as proof of his racism, Think Progress and other blogs were reporting that it was a coordinated attack on the president. All of the lies and conspiracy theories that the right has been pushing the last four years have been coordinated attacks. During the health care reform debates, Rachel Maddow showed clips of republicans in the House and the Senate saying the same thing, using the same words. I've noticed for quite some time now that the RNC, Fox News, RW bloggers, RW radio entertainers, and RW politicians and pundits seem to be working together in pushing lies, propaganda, and conspiracy theories.