Somersby gives credit to where it's due: the Grover mon! Grover has worked extremely hard down through all these years. His dogged efforts help explain why American political and journalistic cultures tilt quite hard toward spending cuts rather than toward tax increases. Along with other skillful, well-funded players, Grover has worked to defeat the ol debbil, higher taxes—as is his perfect right.

HOW WE FOOLS GET MANUFACTURED! Chomsky described this scam long ago. He didn’t blame average people
FRIDAY, JULY 22, 2011

Norquist v. Chance the gardener: Frank Bruni appeared with Piers Morgan last night, chatting away with the ex-Murdoch hack. But first, let’s examine Grover’s Norquist’s appearance in today’s New York Times.

Grover appears on the Times op-ed page, right beneath a pointless piece in which the Times’ own Judith Warner muses about Bachmann’s headaches. As Warner piddles your life away, Grover’s column helps explain how your country got to its current place:

NORQUIST (7/22/11): Reap My Lips: No New Taxes

The Taxpayer Protection Pledge has received increased attention as the Aug. 2 deadline for raising the debt ceiling approaches. My organization, Americans for Tax Reform, created the pledge in 1986 as a simple, written commitment by a candidate or elected official that he or she will oppose, and vote against, tax increases. Over the years many candidates and elected officials have signed the pledge, including 236 current members of the House of Representatives and 41 current senators.

Nevertheless, there is some confusion these days about what the pledge does and doesn’t mean, and numerous people have tried to reconfigure its intent to somehow allow its signatories to support tax increases. But in fact the pledge has not changed—indeed, fiscal conservatives must stick to their commitment to oppose tax increases and fight to reduce the size of the federal government.

Thoreau began Walden in a similar way, explaining why he was saying the things which followed. (“I should not obtrude my affairs so much on the notice of my readers if very particular inquiries had not been made by my townsmen concerning my mode of life…Some have asked what I got to eat; if I did not feel lonesome; if I was not afraid; and the like.”) Similarly, Grover is only speaking today because “there is some confusion these days about what the pledge does and doesn’t mean, and numerous people have tried to reconfigure its intent.” At any rate, what Grover says as he starts is quite true: He created the Taxpayer Protection Pledge in 1986. And he has been pushing it very hard, with great effect, for the past twenty-five years. In today’s piece, he goes on to describe the semantics of “tax increase,” a topic he could discuss in his sleep, even when the things he says don’t quite exactly parse.

In his column, Grover says (net) taxes must never be raised. That too he can limn while asleep.

Grover has worked extremely hard down through all these years. His dogged efforts help explain why American political and journalistic cultures tilt quite hard toward spending cuts rather than toward tax increases. Along with other skillful, well-funded players, Grover has worked to defeat the ol debbil, higher taxes—as is his perfect right.

We liberals get mad at Grover for this. We think the problem lies elsewhere.

Ask yourself this: Can you think of a comparable liberal figure? For example, can you think of a liberal figure who has worked in a similar way regarding Social Security? Can you think of a liberal figure who wrote a pledge in 1986 to this effect: Social Security benefits, present and promised, must never be lowered for any reason? Can you think of a liberal figure who spent the last twenty-five years exploring every possible aspect of that basic position? Who doggedly fought the endless deceptions churned against that program?

Of course you can’t think of such a figure! For various reasons, no such liberal figure exists, which helps explain why your side is getting its ass royally kicked once again. Why everyone talks about cutting SS, while it seems to be against the law to even discuss tax increases.

This morning, Grover takes us into the weeds of no new taxes semantics. Above him, a major mainstream journalist piddles around about the meaning of Bachmann’s headaches. Then too, there was Bruni, chatting with Morgan last night.

Are the leading tribunes of the mainstream press corps any match for players like Grover? Please! Bruni may be the world’s nicest guy; he may have been a great restaurant writer. But he has absolutely nothing to say about the world’s major problems. Despite this rather obvious fact, he was recently named a Times op-ed columnist, with Andrew Rosenthal boasting about all the “big events” the guy would surely explore (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 7/5/11).

Simple story: The mainstream press corps is vastly outmatched by well-funded, dogged players like Grover. Just consider the things Bruni said to Morgan, the ex-Murdoch hack.

Morgan started in an oafish way, as you can note in the transcript. But after discussing Bruni’s status as “one of the first openly gay op-ed columnists that we've seen,” Morgan began to explore Bruni’s views on various big major issues. Bruni may be the world’s nicest guy and a top food writer to boot. But when it came to such basic political topics, he sounded more like Chance the gardener.

Morgan’s first question was almost comically broad. So was Bruni’s answer:

MORGAN (7/21/11): What's your take on America right now? We had an interesting interview with Prince Alwaleed bin Talal from Saudi. We have talked to some senators. Obviously, America's got big problems. Let's just face up to this. It's in massive debt. You've got these no-longer emerging countries, China and India are here, Brazil. America's status as the sole super power is in real peril, isn't it?

BRUNI: It is. The world has changed a lot in that regard. And I think in some ways, it feels like we're at that pivot of empire moment, when the arc is a little downward.

I think there's a sort of dislocation and apprehension about that. That is one of the things being manifested in Washington, with all this bickering and all this gridlock.

We have got to become more mature in Washington, certainly. And we've got to become more reasonable if we're going to get through this moment and have a country as strong on the far side of it as we had coming into it.

Huh! According to Bruni, we need to become more mature and more reasonable. And China is on the move! Morgan moved on to a paint-by-the-numbers Bruni piece concerning the end of the space shuttle:

MORGAN (continuing directly): I liked your column about the sort of lack of ambition when you see the space travel being dramatically reduced and that kind of dream ending. I think, when you and I were younger, you remember these amazing explorations into space. And they were fantastically ambitious and exciting. And they kind of motivated everybody.

What worries me about what's going on now is that everything’s been cut back. The great aspiration that America always stood for doesn’t seem to be there so much now. People aren't, I think, living that dream in the way they used to.

BRUNI: You know, the space program was always a great metaphor for our belief in this country, that we could do anything we set our minds to, that the future was going to be brighter than the past. What's really interesting, when you look at public opinion surveys and when you listen to people, is that sort of bedrock American belief that my kids will do better than I do, that's gone away.

And American confidence is on the wane. And I think what's happening in Washington right now is not helping that at all. It is compounding those fears and that anxiety greatly.

Interesting! American confidence is on the wane—and what's happening now doesn’t help!

By now, it was time to seek “the answer.” Blather in, blather back out:

MORGAN (continuing directly): What's the answer, do you think, Frank? When you look at your country, you have a great platform to talk about all the problems. What's the answer?

BRUNI: Well, part of the answer is an end to the kind of polarized politics and bickering that we have. I think when you talk to people, when you talk to your friends, everyone looks at what's going on in Washington with a significant measure of disgust.

The fact that we're coming this close to the deadline without any agreement about raising the debt ceiling, despite what the consequences of that would be, it's kind of surreal and mind boggling and nightmarish.

If we were able to follow his chain of reasoning, Bruni thinks our “polarized politics and bickering” would have to be part of the answer. And don’t even get this columnist started on the wild ways we spend:

MORGAN (continuing directly): How much do you blame the American public for being reckless with their own spending?

BRUNI: We've all been reckless. The baby boomer generation has been reckless. But right now, I think the problem is in Washington and not elsewhere in the land.

Although, you know, when we go to the ballot box and we exert our will, we need to be grown up and informed and intelligent about that. But I think we all want a better caliber of politics than we get from Washington. And I don't think it's the American people's fault that what's going on in Washington right now has the kind of tenor it does.

According to Bruni, we Americans “need to be grown up and informed and intelligent about” something when we vote—perhaps about excessive spending.

At this point, Morgan asked about Presideent Obama’s leadership, producing one more fuzzy reply. And then, Morgan told Bruni what they’d discuss when they Came back from a break:

MORGAN: We're going to have a short break, Frank. When we come back, I'm going to talk to you about Casey Anthony, about Harry Potter, about restaurants. And I want to ask you the greatest meal you've ever had and the worst.

BRUNI: OK.

Having disposed of the world’s major problems, the pair would move on to dessert.

Bruni may be the world’s nicest guy. But he has nothing whatever to say about the nation’s various problems. Question: If the New York Times was a real newspaper, would they ever have hired this guy as a twice-weekly op-ed writer? Next question: If CNN was a real news channel, would an empty suit like Morgan have been hired there?

In your country, you have an aggressive, well-funded plutocrat movement—and you have Potemkin news orgs. Grover Norquist is very determined.

Your nation’s “press corps” is not.

Coming Monday/speaking of Murdoch hacks: To see a photo of Murdoch testifying, click here. Question: Do you know who that fellow is right next to Murdoch’s wife?