I dislike the term ‘punching hippies’ but I am amused to discover that the Establishment media doesn’t even know what it means. They probably think that DFH’s are actual hippies. It just goes to show you how non-seriously the Establishment takes people who oppose our tendency to start land wars in Asia. We have never been wrong, yet, but that doesn’t make our ideas worthy of consideration.
On the other hand, using the term ‘punching hippies’ to mean nothing more than pushback against criticism is inappropriate. It’s not punching a hippie to say it’s retarded to spend money on defeating Blanche Lincoln. It’s punching a hippie to dismiss those of us who think we should get the hell out of Afghanistan. It’s not punching a hippie to say that the ‘professional left’ needs to grow up. It’s punching a hippie to dismiss our views on indefinite detention and extraordinary rendition. At least, that’s how I see it. I can take criticism and disagreement, even on things I care passionately about. I don’t expect the Democratic Establishment to govern from the progressive left, or agree with everything we do. But when it comes to issues of national security and civil liberties, we’ve been right every time. It’s about time people started listening to us instead of calling us a bunch of dirty fucking hippies.
We need a good chart of Hippy positions, establishment positions, and then the results. A very, very large chart.
Same goes for Dems and economic growth, the DOW, civil rights, etc. etc.
It’s much easier to pass a chart or a cutsey animation around these days than it is to ask someone to pay attention to you for more than 15 minutes without it degenerating into a parallel conversation or a tabloid-informed BS-fest.
Here’s my contribution to the DFH platform.
I can’t believe you used the word, “fucking!” How are we to take you seriously? What about the children? Why do you hate America?
(It feel like it’s been so long since I snarked here at the pond. But I still read almost every day.)
Back in the 60s at the commune we used to say “fucking” a lot. We’d say “rip off” a lot too. Like, “It’s a fucking rip-off!”
I think that people should use “rip-off” more.
Does anyone know what congress did Thursday, because this is the only place I saw it:
http://www.rumproast.com/index.php/site/comments/dems_provide_real_small_business_relief_with_small_
business_jobs_act_of_201/
This is the sort of thing that should be promoted heavily in Left Blogland, but is apparently too busy having their feefees hurt and constantly bitching and defining who is a hippy and who is not.
It would be interesting (and instructive) to find out the collected daily readership numbers of the “major” blogs that had used the phrase “hippie punching” or some variant. I’m willing to bet they’re larger than most daily corporate news sources, but still a largish echo chamber, in the end. I also know a number of friends and co-workers that never go near a Great Orange Satan or Baby Blue Cherub. The corporate media reflects them, and instructs them. I’d also be willing to bet that individual members of the corporate media know exactly what it means, but if they turn in a piece that uses the phrase that it’ll just be edited out. (And that their long-term future at the company has just started looking a little less rosy.)
Applause
at least they’re not calling you a deadhead 😉
”Nothin’ left to do, but smile smile smile…”
When I read about all of this – and especially Madrak’s take on it over at C & L…
…I thought about what you wrote a while ago on the controversy about OFA’s Vote 2010 strategy.
The intraparty controversy might have taken a while to bubble up to the surface – but it did so exactly in the form you predicted.
Well, yes, that wasn’t hard to predict.
Except that Hamsher is not in the party at all and Carville is in the party like a bunch of lawyers in firms with Republican partners and Democratic partners. The Carville-Matalins work both sides of the Village.
Plouffe’s wisdom is a major part of what’s going to keep this from being an absolute catastrophe. And might even come up winning, which would shock the media and the polls.
That they insist on giving us interviews with neo-con assholes whose premise is anything but “You’re a colossal fraud and failure. How you explain the catastrophic incompetence and corruption your ideology dumped on the world like a loaf of metamucil poo? What do you have to say for yourself?” is sufficient evidence of their basic cock-sucking nature. I’m looking at you basically everyone who works for CNN. I mean Chris Matthews is full of shit but at least he occasionally calls people out.
Honestly, I’d rather people drank tea and chatted with Cheney about fucking basketball or his heart problems or colostomy bag or whatever null subject then allowed him to have a single second unchallenged to air his abhorrent lies.