Remember just scant months ago that most, if not all of you, Dear Readers, discussed with the Stiftung the Warlord’s sweeping assault on the very foundations of our liberal democratic republic? Our conversations were about profound constitutional issues or geopolitical ruminations? One article of faith and comic punching bag was the always reliable (and there is nothing worse in a pundit) Hitch and his diluted Trotsyism, nostalgia for Paris in 69, and of course, the Kurds.
So imagine the cognitive dissonance we felt reading his latest and had to agree with (except with its close) him. His point is a simple one. Our public discourse has transcended meaning and gone full circle back into the meta symbology of the pre-literate tradition. Hitch essentially recycles what Nadine Gordimer wrote before in “The Unkillable Word”:
Conservative, liberal and left-wing thinkers in contemporary schools of political philosophy agree about one thing; man became man not by the tool but by the Word. It is not walking upright and using a stick to dig for food or strike a blow that makes a human being, it is speech. And neither apes nor dolphins whispering in the ocean share with us the ability to transform this direct communication and commune between people and generations who will never meet.
What we are watching today is a march backwards from speech to the primitive cognitive capabilities of limited scope in oral traditions and basic symbols. Hitch, of course, is wrong to blame it on political campaigns. It surrounds us, envelopes us everywhere (to paraphrase Yoda). The electronic era encourages this, naturally. Even professionals such as doctors, lawyers, executives, etc. are texting each other with short hand — ‘R U 4 Lu” (Are you ready for lunch?), etc. We all know this just builds on the early emoticons and abbreviations online. But as we have repeatedly said, the Crown Prince, for all his vaunted ‘rock star’ skills, is the perfect example of a ‘leader’ taking us all backwards to that pre-literate state. If one reads his speeches they are actually quite vapid. Hitch is indeed on point (can we really be writing that???) re sloganeering.
Professor Krugman has a slightly different angle. His focus is more tactical and addresses the campaigns directly. We agree him as well. The Crown Prince really is not the progressive he wants to project according to his scant political record. And certainly, trouncing Alan Keyes is no giant hurdle for anyone. We concede that Obama is the best political counter puncher since Bill Clinton. And surely Mark Penn should refund his doubtlessly bloated fees, etc. But shouldn’t we expect more? Especially if the deal is sealed tomorrow?
Perhaps Obama is merely a sign of the times. A fish in a fish tank not realizing it is wet. But isn’t this the whole point of his political existence (such as it is)? Change? One must give the Crown Prince some space, too. Even a president, let alone a presidential candidate, has limited overall impact on a society without a function apparatus like the Warlord’s Neocon/Movement coalition. And the goal is to win an election after all. Adlai Stevenson serves to remind us all of that. Consder that aside from the overly saccharine parts in William F. Buckley tributes, the real truth is that a show like “Firing Line” would never get green lit today. Tucker! Tweety! Anderson 360! The Crown Prince as destiny?
Here’s a question for all — what’s your three word description of the state of our world?
Aldershot says
(Dammit, Comment, I’m a poster, not a poet!)
Aldershot says
…Machiavellian, Clintonian, audacious, lucky as hell…
wwz says
… cunning, baffling, powerful …
Aldershot says
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xos2MnVxe-c&feature=related
Comment says
Looks like HRC won the night., We shall see. Tweety says she sowed doubts about religion.
Comment says
Tweety trying to explain to Olberman that there is something un-American about superdelegates because Florida chads or whatever. Olberman just wants to scream at that freak. But he can’t.
Comment says
Humorous exchange tonigh on air between Buchanan and Rachel Maddow over Buchanan’s stereotyping Obama supporters as basically just blacks and professors.
Tweety still in throes of Gore hatred continues to peddle the essentially bogus GOP talking point that Gore invented Willie Horton. We have no interest in defending the oleaginous Gore, but we recall the events well. Gore never metioned Willi Horton – he just mentioned the furlough program, which included many people. It was that third party ad that dug out Horton from the furlough pile and stuck him on Dukakakis.
Dennis says
reality at bay
Regarding Obama’s wispy “change” narrative, I get the impression that the sudden groundswell of ill- and half-informed mass support (favorite Obama moment: after Iowa, an earnest, nice middle-aged white-guy Obama voter asked to name just one policy position says, “you’re pressing me here…”) is motivated by nothing so much as a profound fear of change, as in real substantive change in daily life as a result of massive imperial failure and decline. There is an unease in the air, to say the least.
We are now throwing our lot in with an unknown quantity wrapped in a mosaic of symbols and (God help me for using the word) signifiers. And deliberately.
Or maybe:
Desperation now operative
The Fly-Man says
Gasp and swoon
josephdietrich says
Same as always.
srv says
“Here’s a question for all — what’s your three word description of the state of our world?”
Waters of March.
Hitch, as always, drowns in the shallows for want of an ocean. For deeper treading into how the paradigm of change just means embracing that we have all suffered:
http://honors.uoregon.edu/faculty/profiles/data/Obama.pdf
Yes, Leo, the angst you feel is no different from that poor, unemployed minority who doesn’t know where they’ll be sleeping in tomorrows snowstorm. You need to stop feeling any guilt about that and transcend it.
A Random Quote says
“A cheap coat means a cheap man under the coat.”
~Pres. Benjamin Harrison (1892)
Comment says
Point of disagreement – Go and read some of FDR’s rhetoric in the 32 and 36 election – Totally without content – Yet sounds great on radio clips. JFK repeated the same tested applaude lines at every campaign stop, but now there is an illision that he gave great speeches new and fresh all the time because the vast cache of stump dreck is down the memory hole. Now we have our memory hat on, we will reach back to the 1890 chant of Grover Cleveland:
Grover! Grover!
Four more years of Grover!
Out they go!
Then we’ll be in clover!
Comment says
Say what you will about that bourgeois notion about incarceration, but we just flicked on MSNBC for a second, at the end of Olberman, and we noticed they had one of their horrible DocBloc shows start running about American prisons. The people who run that TV network are as bad as Imus said they were.
A Random Quote says
“It’s [prison stay] not the least bit stigmatising – This bourgeois theory that it’s a frightful blotting of the ledger is a lot of nonsense. It didn’t happen to Martha Stewart. And besides, I am innocent.”
~Lord Black
Anon says
First Epistle of Lord Black to The Neoconservatives of Chambers St in New York
http://www.nysun.com/article/72187
Comment says
Tweety is not really parodied on SNL – Hammond pulls punches and just doesn’t really parody Tweety in a cruel and accurate way. We have a friend who does a vicious hilarious imitation of Tweety and were it not for his potential fallout for his career, would post it on Youtube in a skir.
Obviously he likes the Hammond imitation – it’s like having a Hirchfield caricature in Lindys or that damm steakhouse in DC near Akin Gump. It means he exists – he is a personage. But is he?
Comment says
Hillary was reasonably funny on SNL and Daily Show (tonight) – That’s the real inner joke that SNL missed. The un-funny faux-defense of HRC by overrated Tina Fey defended HRC as a bitch. HRC always had a good sense of humor, but her real persona has been buried and buried over so many comflicting coats of paint since she went to Wellsley – She should have tapped into that older “ecstatic” “penetrating” woman who gave that commencement.
NY Sun today reviews her books “Village” and “Living History” and compares them to Obama’s work and she just comes up short against Obama as a writer. It didn’t have to be that way – she could have been a great writer, but she picked up those bad professional pol habits – Mark Penn type stuff – thaq squeezed the authenticity out of her campaign personality. People just sense it
In November, when Williams Jefferson Clinton goes into the voting booth and closes the curtain to secretly vote for John McCain, we will be beginning the end of an era.
Comment says
Tweety a while back kept repeating a falsehood about Obama having Islam heritage, whatever that is, on his mothers side – His maternal etc.
Tweety knew that was false – He repeated it long after his staff had time to correct him on it. Everyone knows what he was doing and why. HRC did not even come close to insinuating anything, which is hard to do in the heat of a campaign.
Tweety admires ratf***ing in campaigns – He smiles and get all nostalgic when he hears and relays those stories about Nixon and Pat and Company using Muskie (his old boss) stationary to calumny McGovern,
In his book “Hardball” he celebrates George Smathers tricking Florida panhandle rubes about things.
He is a hollow man
Dr Leo Strauss says
Perfect description of Tweety today. He was doing it as you say. His manic need to keep mentioning that he too has been parodied by SNL speaks to some profound inner issues. Which in a way makes all of us his encounter group.
Saw that about $10 MM. Even in a cynical world it is a head turner. One wonders if he indeed knows something in his desk drawer. Out Shruming Shrum is no mean feat.
Agree on the game analogy. We’ll just have to see.
Comment says
Mark Penn made about 10 million so far off of Hillary and he kept his full time job at Burston. Mission accomplished.
Who knows? HRC mayt still win. Tomorrow is up for grabs and Obama is not good at jump ball on the court. But he is all net from the outside
Comment says
Tweety still trying to spead Muslim rumors about Obama whilst pretending to defend him on this and blame Hillary for what he, Tweety, is trying to do. Matthews bad grammer and weird phrasings on this issue give him away. It’s no accident most people we meet who are filled with misinformation watch his show.
Comment says
re Obama as counter-puncher – Stephen Harper sure started to worry about that, it seems. How else to explain his plaintive backtracking after some bully comments about Alberta oil becoming scarce etc. John Howard got a week of bad press in Australia when Obama whacked him after he interjected himself against Obama.
Comment says
Hitch wanted to take a shot at Sidney Blumenthal (he may be jealous of Sid on same level – Blumenthal is a better stylist) and he built his column around that central ideal – Camoflaging the real intent with some criticism-gauze.
Derek Baker says
Senility’s always young.
Lagavulin says
By the way, I can find no evidence of Frau Professor Doktor Samantha Power having ever published in a refereed academic journal. Is this correct?
The Pulitzer is impressive, but I thought it was part of our societal tradition that Professors at elite universities were scholars.
3 more words:
Clash of Utopias
Lagavulin says
Mostly Not American