Special report: Still amazed after all these years!
PART 1—STILL AMAZED AFTER ALL THESE YEARS (permalink): Just for the record, Rachel Maddow isn’t willing to name their names either.
The darling child is a slick career player, skillful at running us rubes. She likes to makes us think she fighting for us even as she protects her own interests. So it went on last night’s program, when Her Slickness pushed back against all those hacks in the mainstream press—very bad players whose famous names she slickly refused to name:
MADDOW (8/8/11): Of all of the Republican presidential candidates this year, all of them but one, all of them but Jon Huntsman, said they would vote against raising the debt ceiling—meaning that as presidential candidates, they are advising Republican members of Congress to vote against raising the debt ceiling. They are advising Congress to let the United States of America default.
Members of Congress, who in some cases seemed like they would be delighted to do that. Republican Congressman Jason Chaffetz of Utah quoted in the Washington Post this weekend, saying, “We weren’t kidding around, either. We would have taken it down.”
And by it, he means you. He means the U.S. economy. We would have defaulted. We wanted it to go nuclear.
If we’re talking about the risk of default, if we’re talking about playing with fire, this was not a “both sides” kind of thing. The Beltway loves to say, “Oh, both sides deserve the blame. Be evenhanded here.” This is the platonic form of, “Not both sides’ fault.”
I’m sorry if this sounds partisan to point out, but this was not both sides committing the same error. This was one side. This was Republicans alone causing this problem by saying they would not raise the debt ceiling. And it’s liberals and Democrats who have been saying all along that that take by the Republicans was dangerous.
[...]
This was not both sides. I’m sorry to tell the Beltway. I know it’s upsetting. This was not both sides.
Maddow was right about one thing, of course. It was Republicans, and Republicans only, who said they wouldn’t raise the debt ceiling. But who has been saying that it was “both sides?” Who was Maddow chastising here?
Of course! “The Beltway” has been saying that! Bravely daring to “sound partisan,” the slick career hustler went after “The Beltway.” She failed to explain how a highway can make absurd statements, then get “upset” when challenged.
Paul Krugman’s a hero and Maddow’s a hack. But will anyone ever name the names of the people who are saying that both sides did it? Will anyone ever name names like “Bob Schieffer?”
Darlings! It just isn’t done! Here’s how Kathleen Parker handled this general problem as the August 2 target date neared. Writing in the Washington Post, Parker criticized those media figures who encouraged the debt limit brinksmanship. Or did she? Prepare for some wonderful clownistry:
PARKER (7/29/11): Take names. Remember them. The behavior of certain Republicans who call themselves Tea Party conservatives makes them the most destructive posse of misguided “patriots” we’ve seen in recent memory.
If the nation defaults on its financial obligations, the blame belongs to the Tea Party Republicans who fragged their own leader, John Boehner. They had victory in their hands and couldn’t bring themselves to support his debt-ceiling plan, which, if not perfect, was more than anyone could have imagined just a few months ago. No new taxes, significant spending cuts, a temporary debt-ceiling solution with the possibility of more spending cuts down the line as well as action on their beloved balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution.
These people wouldn’t recognize a hot fudge sundae if the cherry started talking to them.
The tick-tock of the debt-ceiling debate is too long for this space, but the bottom line is that the Tea Party got too full of itself with help from certain characters whose names you’ll want to remember when things go south. They include, among others, media personalities who need no further recognition; a handful of media-created “leaders,” including Tea Party Nation founder Judson Phillips and Tea Party Patriots co-founders Jenny Beth Martin and Mark Meckler (both Phillips and Martin declared bankruptcy, yet they’re advising Tea Party Republicans on debt?); a handful of outside groups that love to hurl ad hominems such as “elite” and “inside the Beltway” when talking about people like Boehner when they are, in fact, the elite (FreedomWorks, Heritage Action, Club for Growth, National Taxpayers Union, Americans for Prosperity); and elected leaders such as Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann, Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, head of the Republican Study Committee, and South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint, who grandstand and make political assertions and promises that are sheer fantasy.
Too funny! At two separate points, Parker said we should “take names” of those who created the debt limit mess. We’ll want to remember those names “when things so south,” she said. But when it came to those “media personalities,” she found a very slick way to avoid such typing such names.
We’ll want to remember their names, Parker said. But then, when it came to this one special class, she said it was wrong to include them!
To her credit, Parker was willing to name many other names; she even correctly pounded Bachmann, a task from which Nicholas Kristof predictably shrank that week. But when it came to those media figures, no names were allowed—immediately after she said that we’d want to remember such monikers!
The clowning is general when major press figures pretend to critique their colleagues. Center-right columnists and pseudo-left phonies agree on the need to keep quiet. But then, we also emitted low mordant chuckles as we read Sunday’s New York Times editorials.
Eventually, the editors said some intriguing things. But they started like this:
NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIAL (8/7/11): A week later and we are still amazed at how the Republicans in Congress pulled it off. They held the economy hostage, won some cheap political points, and all of us will spend the next decade paying the ransom as government programs—$900 billion over 10 years in the first round—are slashed and the recovery is put at risk.
We know—it’s just a figure of speech. But why were the editors “still amazed” at the way “the Republicans pulled it off?” Why were they amazed at all? The GOP did exactly what it said it would do, acting on things it says it believes in. It was helped by familiar political narratives which have been decades in the making—and by the relentless refusal of this “newspaper” to do any real reporting.
We don’t know why the eds were amazed by the fact that the GOP “pulled it off.” But the editors seem to be amazed by most things that happened last week:
NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIAL (continuing directly): The only glimmer of hope is that the battle is not completely over—if President Obama is finally willing to fight.
Under the terms of the ill-conceived debt agreement, Congress has to propose another $1.5 trillion in deficit reduction measures by December. Just to ensure that rationality does not have a chance, Republican leaders said they would not put anyone on the deficit-cutting “super-committee” who might entertain the idea of raising taxes.
A week later and we are even more amazed by the failure of Mr. Obama and the Democratic leadership to stand up to this intransigence. If they do not start pushing back, with the same ferocity, the results will be disastrous.
We know—it’s only a figure of speech. But we don’t know why the eds are amazed by this phenomenon either. There are various ways to explain that “failure,” some of which are Obama-friendly, some of which are not. But should the editors be amazed? Given the sweep of the past thirty years, what happened was hardly surprising.
Should the editors be “amazed” when spending cuts win out and tax increases get dumped? Perhaps—if they’re living on Neptune! In fact, the editors live on a different far planet; they live on “the planet of the press corps,” a well-ordered orb with a very strange culture. One oddity among many: On that strange planet, major press figures know that they must never name each other’s names.
Why were the editors so amazed? We’ll ponder that topic all week. We’ll also review the intriguing things the editors went on to propose—until they suffered a panic attack and took back what they had said.
Darling Rachel played you last night—but such things have gone on for a very long time. How has this puzzling system worked out? And why were the editors so amazed by its predictable fruit?
Tomorrow—part 2: Intriguing ideas about taxes
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