Last week I wrote a diary about the whole Cheney shooting thing callled “The Cheney thing. We are SO lame.” It was about how ashamed I felt that the left has been reduced to wailing about Cheney’s foolishness as a typically inept and probably drunk weekend executive hunter rather than about his truly MASSIVE list of real crimes against humanity.
And Booman answered thusly. (Less than a week ago!!!):
“This is a HUGE story. It is not a distraction from other stories that have more impact. This has impact.”
Well…Google News front page, 12:17 AM, EST, Tuesday, February 21st.
Zero.
Zilch.
Nada.
BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN is a bigger story.
More below.
And what did I say, again ?
“Even if this poor overaged business hustler DIES from this mistake it probably won’t do a damned thing to Cheney’s position. They will just create another ‘reality’ and two weeks from now this story will go to sleep like the other two hundred or so much more important stories that R.I.P in the morgues of a thousand newspapers and other media chain gangs.”
Sorry.
I was wrong.
It didn’t even take two weeks.
They sent Mary Matalin out there and she took care of it all by her lonesome.
With the kind help of the media “New Reality” machine.
Which, among other things, led your co-conspirator here on this BooMachine, Susanhu, to opine:
Not just the post-9/11 Americans who get spooked everytime Bush somberly warns about them “terr’rists.” You and me too: We’re habituated now to mocking Bush, Cheney, Rummy, Condi et al, and decrying the ignorant Americans who just don’t know, so ignorant are they. We howl, we snarl, we mock, we scoff. And not just against the Bush administration and its patsies. As if that weren’t enough, we howl, snarl, mock, and scoff at each other.
“Conceit, arrogance, and egotism”: That also describes my attitude last night as I mocked the disgusting rhetoric of Mary Matalin and Ari Fleischer on the Sunday talk shows.
But the problem with my mocking is that it only satisfies you habitués here, who of course will agree with me. (Let me dare reveal that it was a safe story to write; nobody’ll get angry with me here for mashing Mary and Ari. Now, if I’d posted that at Free Republic, well. …)
However, my mockery does not go towards piercing the heavy veil of rapturous fear-induced stupor in which most Americans pass each day as they exhalt patriotism and never doubt that the evildoers are out to get us. They won’t be receptive to my tone, my words, my “attitude.”
Yup.
And then, almost as if she needed to PROVE how “habituated” she is, she copped an attitude when I congratulated her on beginning to wake up.
Sorry. This dog don’t hunt.
This left wing dog is too lame to even RUN.
Deep.
“I got yer ‘new reality’ right HERE!!!”, says Mary Matalin.
And by God…it WORKS!!!
Deep.
Mary Magdalene…errrr, Matalin.
Who’s married to…to whom, again?
James Jesus Anglestun…errr, Carville.
The DEMOCRATIC spinner.
Deep.
Bread into fishes ain’t SHIT for THESE hustlers.
They make muderers into victims!!!
Change positions on the bed of Life every NIGHT!!!
“You wanna be on top tonight, Mary? OK…But I get the LEFT side!!!”
And you think that things are going to CHANGE!!!???
Deep.
Wake the fuck up.
Too deep for me.
I quit trying.
Disgusting.
AG
I’ve got this dog.
He’s GOOD dog.
Kind of a left wing, intelligent sorta dog.
As dogs go…
But…every time I take him to the vet (A place where he invariably undergoes some sort of invasive inspection and/or other fairly painful and unpleasant procedure, because if he didn’t need that sort of thing I wouldn’t be taking him to the vet in the first place…) he gets really excited and happy, as if THIS time it’s all going to work out just fine.
Well…I see the same mentality on these blogs.
Over and over and over again.
Now…you don’t expect a DOG to wake up…
But people?
(Long pause…)
Come to think of it….
Nevermind…
AG
Arthur,
As I see it, folks like us have two options: “see a shrink” or view these blogs as a kind of knitting circle where some good conversations happen sometimes and we sometimes all get up to participate in some mindless “political” action that might have some cathartic effect for us, but rarely has any major public or policy impact (even when it does, as for example with successful campaign to squash ANWR, the ptb come in through another back door about a week later).
We be doomed.
But, as Conyers recently stated in an interview with Lewis Lapham in the March issue of Harpers, there is nevertheless some value to putting these things on paper (or recording them in the blogs):
“To take away the excuse that we didn’t know.” So that two or four or ten years from now, if somebody should ask, “where were you Conyers, and where was the US Congress?”…
Conyers goes on to say: “I don’t think enough people know how much damage this administration can do to their civil liberties in a very short time. What would you have me do? Grumble and complain? Make cynical jokes? Throw up my hands and say that under the circumstances nothing can be done? At least I can muster the facts, establish a record, tell the story that ought to be front-page news.”
So you can look at it that way too: writing what you do as a way of establishing a record. At least in the end, you have the “satisfaction” (however unsatisfying it may be) of being able to say: Toldya.
Nothing you can do if the people refuse to listen.
Sometimes cold comfort is the only comfort we get.
As you sez: not very satisfying, but it’s something.
Conyers.
My kind of man.
Yup.
Testifying befoore the future court of world opinion.
So at least SOMEONE will know that we weren’t ALL good Germans.
Thanks, star.
I needed that.
AG
Last night, for the first time in a long time, I watched Chris Matthews because he had Paul Hackett on. Later he devoted about 10 minutes to discussing with other guests how and why the Cheney shooting story WILL NOT GO AWAY.
Following on Countdown, Keith Olbermann also devoted some time to the same narrative. He even agreed with you that it’s a LAME hook but it RESONATES, it’s SIMPLE, people can UNDERSTAND it whereas they can’t follow the difficult details of Cheney’s larger and more heinous crimes.
Walk by a newstand today, Newsweek should be out there today with CHENEY ON THE COVER SHOOTING A SHOTGUN. They use the story to explore the ways the VP is OUT OF CONTROL.
As I commented the first day this story got rolling, it’s ICONIC. It’s such an incidental bit and yet it will follow Dick Cheney to his grave. The word Matthews, Olbermann and their guests kept using was METAPHOR. It’s a stand-in for the broader story: Cheney is reckless; Cheney is secretive; Cheney is cold and inhuman; Cheney rules the WH.
Remember Gerald Ford only stumbled twice — just two times in front of the cameras — and it became his identifier. Chevy Chase made a career out of making fun of it. Ford didn’t get to be elected prez because the public perceived him to be a stumbling, bumbling buffoon.
Lame as this story may be, it has entered the popular culture. It has penetrated the collective consciousness of people who don’t pay attention. And, it will destroy Cheney’s political power. Notice how Cheney went down to Congress to strong-arm the committees to give up investigating their little NSA problem and then two days later they were moving forward again. They defied him.
Sometimes you don’t need an elephant gun to stop a rampaging beast, you just need a silly little mouse.
I agree with you — NOTHING IS GOING TO CHANGE on the broader stage of our impending imperial collapse. But, one of the directors, back stage, tripped and fell thru the curtain and distracted the audience from the main show. Relax and laugh with the rest of us.
Ford didn’t have Rove and Fox.
CHRIS MATTHEWS!!!???
NEWSWEAK!!!???
Please!!!
Matthews had Hackett on because the story diminishes the standing of the Democratic Party.
Deservedly, but that’s not Matthews’ aim.
His AIM is to be standing when the media curtain comes down.
And ratings do that.
And Newsweak has already proven itself to be a frontrunner in ALL things. Should BushCo run some tall tale down the pike tomorrow about how Iran is planning on unleashing bird flu in flocks of passenger pigeons throughout North America and must be stopped now “BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE!!!”, there Newsweak would be (along with the rest of the media) flapping their clipped wings in full fledged panic, and the Cheney story would (also deservedly) be scrubbed and never again rear its ugly head except as some trivia question to be asked in the caves after the Apocalypse is over.
And even it the story DID “destroy Cheney’s political power”…why then they’d just run in another producer to oversee this little game show and its lame host George Butch. Who is due to be replaced at the end of next season anyyway…his contract runs out in 2008…by John McCain. (See my recent diary BREAKING: McCain to be next RePresident. for more on that.)
Ford?
If Ford had been actively engaged in ending civilization as we know it…which includes the TOTAL control of the media…he would not have BEEN seen as a stumbling fool, and Chevy Chase wouuld have ended up about as effective as the so-called left wing comics today. Which is to say…approximately 52% of the population FOR BushCo, 48% against.
No matter WHAT they do.
Four percent is a majority. They control the media, and thus they control that 52% of the people who are easily hypnotized into being Ratpubs. PLUS the other 40% or so who are equally easily hypnotized but who have been encouraged to root for the so-called “other” side so it looks like there is really a game on.
The Rats win.
Big time.
Untiil they REALLY lose.
Not by being foolish, drunken, amateur hunters.
But by completely blowing this country, its economy and its culture out of the water.
Sorry, sjct.
That’s the way I see it.
“Relax and laugh with the rest of us”?
I think not.
We are talking about bloody death here.
Part of the impotence of the left IS this “laughter”.
laughter which does NOT mean “ha ha”.
It means “I give up.”
Well…I do not.
“Sometimes you don’t need an elephant gun to stop a rampaging beast, you just need a silly little mouse”?
Bullshit.
Give ANY successful elephant hunter a choice between those two weapons and ask him upon which one he would stake HIS ass.
You are dreaming.
And IN that dream…you are already defeated.
Wake the fuck up.
AG
P.S. “You can’t judge news by google?”
MORE bullshit.
What hits the front page at Google News is EXACTLY what is being spun. And what is being spun IS the news. The “New Reality” of the day that evil genius Dr. Rover…a PERFECT James Bond villain, he could play himself….hands out on a daily basis.
From the runup to the invasion of Iraq right on through the 2004 election theft, Gannnon/Guckert, the Plame thing, the Downing Street papers, Galloway’s appearance before the Senate and all the OTHER Ghosts of Christmases Past upon which the left have hung their shallow hopes…all you fools have to do is click away from your masturbatory dream blogs for a minute and check out what Google is featuring to know the truth of the matter.
But…”You can’t HANDLE the truth!!!”
The single most iconic statement to come out of Hollywood in 30 years.
So…
Dream on.
Or…WAKE THE FUCK UP!!!
Your choice. bunky.
Your choice.
(Or IS it…???)
I agree that this is the dynamic–but it’s precisely this point that makes it so hard for me to consider it “funny.”
It’s not funny. What this says is we as a people have become really, really stupid. Like seriously nearly brain-dead stupid. If we cannot “follow” the “difficult” details of Cheney’s larger and more heinous crimes–as just about any 6th grader anywhere else in the world can clearly do–then we are in deep shit as a people and a nation–and getting America’s Dumbest Criminals out of office will only be one very small step in fixing what is wrong here.
That is what I find tragic about it: the fact that you’re absolutely right, it DOES resonate.
That’s what scares me: however you want to twist and turn this situation, what it boils down to is that we the people did manage somehow to let these criminals take over our country. Now, if we finally wake up and get RID of them, what are we going to do to stop something like this from ever happening again?
And the answer to that is going to have to include some heavy-duty intellectual and educational VIAGRA for John Q. Public.
What do we do if we realize that’s it just too damn dangerous not to be stupid?
Self-medicate?
AG