Applause for the Daily Beast's Michelle Goldberg, whose recent non-offense committed against the woebegone "martyr" of Ann Romney earned the latter this thoughtful non-apology:
I’m truly sorry to have given the right a pretext for another tedious spasm of feigned outrage. I’m sorry to have stirred one of the teapot tempests that now dominate the increasingly dispiriting world of political journalism.
As a student of American political history, I am sensitive to the perspective that every era has come complete with a Glenn Beck, a Westbrook Pegler, or a James Callender. In that, every era has been "dispiriting" in its political journalism and commentary. But Goldberg is right to add "increasingly." When I unloaded on the Post's Jennifer Rubin this morning, it was as much a culmination of my swelling, amplifying fury at the right's generalized chronic madness--its Becks, its Krauthammers, its Limbaughs, its virtually Rubinesque everything--as it was any isolated fury at any particular Rubinism.
The right's singularly intelligent strategy is, I guess, to drive all of us as mad as the right is--to embroil us all in the right's juvenile distractions, its adolescent food fights, its infantile diversions from whatever is truly important. In time, or so the strategy goes, the civilized intelligentsia will walk away in resigned disgust, as will barely interested independent and moderate voters, leaving the political arena almost entirely to the right.
The trick to defeating such a diabolically ingenious strategy, I suppose, is to remain as calm as is psychiatrically possible and to just hang on a bit longer--within each and every day. For every day the right weakens a bit more, as its increasingly frantic volume would suggest. Because the right knows it's doomed--demographically, if in no other way. What we're presently suffering are its last, vile exhalations.
In future eras, perhaps we can get back to merely one or two Becks or Rubins at a time.
People should read more history. they really should. What passes for over the top rhetoric today would have have been considered restrained and mild criticism in many times and places. At least we do not today resort to the old remedies as they did when Mr Twain arrived in Carson, Nevada:
We were introduced to several citizens, at the stage-office and on the
way up to the Governor's from the hotel--among others, to a Mr. Harris,
who was on horseback; he began to say something, but interrupted himself
with the remark:
"I'll have to get you to excuse me a minute; yonder is the witness that
swore I helped to rob the California coach--a piece of impertinent
intermeddling, sir, for I am not even acquainted with the man."
Then he rode over and began to rebuke the stranger with a six-shooter,
and the stranger began to explain with another. When the pistols were
emptied, the stranger resumed his work (mending a whip-lash), and Mr.
Harris rode by with a polite nod, homeward bound, with a bullet through
one of his lungs, and several in his hips; and from them issued little
rivulets of blood that coursed down the horse's sides and made the animal
look quite picturesque. I never saw Harris shoot a man after that but it
recalled to mind that first day in Carson.
Posted by: Peter G | May 15, 2012 at 05:46 PM
Hey, Phil, this post of yours is prominently featured in the current front-pager at the Motley Moose!
Open Thread: Awash in Stupid
http://www.motleymoose.com/showDiary.do;jsessionid=04312B13A192945FAB4E121DC6FC6023?diaryId=3605
Posted by: janicket | May 16, 2012 at 09:48 AM