The conservative entertainment complex

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We like to be reassured that our beliefs are valid.  We gravitate to the news sources we prefer: the networks, MSNBC, Fox.

 

 

But sometimes we go too far.

 

 

A few weeks before the election, I saw a commercial for Bing Elections 2012, a Microsoft site enabling users to tailor the news to their own political beliefs.

 

 

Do you see anything wrong with this?

 

 

Opinion is opinion, and facts are facts. I belong to my own little group, and I believe what I believe; I groan when I read David Brooks and I giggle when I read Gail Collins.

 

 

But that’s not news. That’s opinion.

 

 

The idea that news – journalism – can be “tailored” to suit one’s political beliefs – well, that’s just repugnant.

 

 

Except that a good chunk of the electorate eats it up like ice cream, which creates all kinds of problems.

 

 

David Frum, late last week, spoke of the “conservative entertainment complex.” I knew immediately what he was talking about: the huge ungainly conglomeration of Fox News and Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin, that feeds on itself and reassures itself that it’s absolutely correct. It's the conservative equivalent of that (imaginary) construct Sarah Palin herself named "the lamestream media."

 

 

It’s not just opinion. It’s “news.” It’s Bristol Palin on “Dancing with the Stars.” It’s radio screamers like Rush and his local followers (Rhode Island and Massachusetts have their share of these, which I’m sure are mild compared to those in other parts of the USA.)  It’s Ann Coulter, the right-wing Lisa Lampanelli.

 

 

They all reassure one another (and themselves) that they’re right, and that they represent America. Not just part of America, mind you, but the whole thing. Anything that isn’t part of their world (the Conservative Entertainment Complex – let’s just call it the CEC from here on) is alien, non-American, un-American.

 

 

This leads to problems.

 

 

Here are a few:

 

 

-          Public polling in October and early November showed clearly that Barack Obama had a significant lead in swing states. No! the CEC shrieked. Impossible! And they created their own “polls,” which showed Romney in the lead. People who should have known better – Karl Rove, even Romney himself – believed those fake polls. And – guess what? – the fake “polls” were utterly wrong.

-          (Side question: why would the GOP want to lie to itself? I know that, as an Obama voter, the mere suggestion that he was behind in any state (not just my own) made me more determined to go vote for him. The GOP really shot itself in the foot with this one.)

-          It’s not just political theory that the CEC simplifies, it’s everything. Do scientists support global climate change? Then let’s vilify and ridicule scientists. Did Obama get Osama Bin Laden? Well, we didn’t want Osama that badly in the first place.

-          Do you see a black man outside a Pennsylvania polling place? According to Fox News, he’s a threat, a menace.

-          Are Hispanics a threat to America, or valuable potential Republican voters? Hmm. Not sure. Let’s talk about Hispanics  as if they’re unwelcome and highly suspicious, and then see how they vote. They’re Catholics, so they’ll vote Republican. Right?

 

 

 

And here’s another thing: studies have actually shown that liberals are more willing to explore other points of view. Conservatives are more likely to ignore opposing beliefs. Ergo: they know less about what’s going on in the world.

 

 

I read the Financial Times almost every day. It’s the British/international version of the Wall Street Journal, except it’s far more free-wheeling. I read conservative and liberal editorials every day. Also I read journalism that’s very unbiased.

 

 

It refreshes me.

 

 

Kids: read everything. Watch everything.

 

 

Don’t let the CEC (or its liberal equivalent) tell you what to think.

 

 

Think for yourselves.

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Voting cute

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There is an old truism that the handsomer presidential candidate usually wins. Sometimes it’s true: Warren Harding was very distinguished-looking, and Kennedy was certainly better-looking than Nixon.

 

 

I voted for Barack Obama last week (of course I did!), but I have to admit, to my shame, that I don’t think he was the handsomer of the two candidates. Mitt Romney, for all his wishy-washy political loathsomeness, is very good-looking, and Paul Ryan is perfectly dreamy.

 

 

Somehow, however, I managed to vote with my brain, not my hormones.

 

 

Does this really work? One wonders whether McCain’s advisors thought Sarah Palin added sex appeal to the campaign. (I honestly wonder if Romney’s advisors thought the same about Ryan.) John Kerry (who’s merely acceptable-looking) chose the soap-opera handsome John Edwards as VP in 2004. (It was only later that we discovered what a scuzzball Edwards really was. OMG! Fox News was actually right about something!) Clinton was certainly a more attractive man than either George H. W. Bush or Bob Dole.

 

 

And so on, and so on.

 

 

Does it really make a difference?

 

 

Sometimes.

 

 

In 1972 I managed to get my mother to register to vote, so that she could vote for George McGovern. (Dad registered too, and I’m certain he voted for Nixon, not that it did the country much good.) Mom got a little nostalgic. “This is only the second time I’ve voted,” she told me. “The first time was in 1948, and I voted for Tom Dewey, because he was so cute. I loved his mustache.”

 

 

So there you have it.

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Paul Ryan; or, this year's Sarah Palin

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I should open this article by saying something nice about Paul Ryan.

 

 

Okay: he has pretty eyes.

 

 

Now on to some other issues.

 

 

Ryan is a “fiscal heavyweight.” He actually concocted a budget!

 

 

(Actually, budgets are easy to create; an intelligent ten-year old can put one together. Income should equal expenditures; if it doesn’t, then you need to spend less, or earn more, or some combination of the two. The question is: what kinds of things do we spend less on?

 

 

(Oh, that’s easy. The arts. Education. Social programs. Who needs ‘em?

 

 

(Not to mention health care – which, after all, is a non-issue, since (as G. W. Bush reminded us some years back), everyone can always go to an emergency room.)

 

 

In any case, I don’t think Ryan is quite ready for the national stage. Take the following incidents as examples:

 

 

-          He appeared in a soup-kitchen photo op, madly scrubbing a pot. Turns out the pot was already clean, and the soup kitchen didn’t even want him there in the first place.

-          He made a personal appearance at a football game and made a long congratulatory speech to the quarterback. Except that it turned out he was the wrong quarterback.

-          Then there’s the whole issue of those workout photos. Remember that adorable picture of Sarah Palin wearing a bikini and holding a gun? Same thing. Except, of course, that the Palin picture was photoshopped, and the Ryan photos are real.

 

 

The Right likes to portray Joe Biden as Mister Malaprop. Perhaps they should have given their own VP choice another look this year. They have a history of choosing doofuses for the position, like Dan Quayle and Sarah Palin; I do believe they might have done it again.

 

 

But those eyes: it’s a day’s work just to look into them.

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Chicken sandwiches, gay marriage, and freedom of speech

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I wrote last week about Dan Cathy, CEO of fast-food chain Chick-fil-A, who made a big contribution to an anti-gay-marriage organization, and bragged about his morals as he did so. (He made a comment about “all of us here being on our first marriages,” which I think is pretty comical.) He and his company promptly got dumped upon, most publicly and most appropriately by the Henson Company, which broke ties with Chick-fil-A (Henson used to manufacture toys for their children’s meals).  The Hensons then contributed the money they’d received from Chick-fil-A to GLAAD, a prominent gay organization.

 

 

All of this I love.

 

 

The next part becomes more complex.

 

 

Leaders in four American cities – Denver, Boston, San Francisco, and Chicago – have talked about forbidding the expansion of the Chick-fil-A chain in their cities. Is this okay? I’m not sure. I dislike homophobes and prudes, of course, but I can’t forbid them to own businesses, and I’m not sure if I can justify zoning them out of whole cities.  If they were openly flouting the law – refusing service based on sexual preference, or something like that – I might think differently.

 

 

This is the lovely thing about America. You can be as ridiculous as you like, and no one can really tell you to shut up about it. You can be against gay marriage, or women’s suffrage, or the Emancipation Proclamation if you like, and you can even put up big banners in your place of business announcing your political beliefs.

 

 

You’d just better be prepared to lose quite a bit of business.

 

 

To be sure, the homophobes are rallying around the chicken place. Mike Huckabee, the Christian zealot, and Rick Santorum, the animated sweater-vest, have encouraged other zealots and bigots to join them at Chick-fil-A on August 1, to show their “support.” (It’s like the Civil Rights Movement in reverse: lunch counter sit-ins to deny people their rights!) I also saw a lovely photo of Sarah and Todd “Secede From America” Palin picking up their chicken sandwiches and smiling pretty for the camera. (CNN played Pink’s song “Stupid Girls” as background as they relayed the story. Excellent commentary.)

 

 

The natural response for the gay and gay-friendly communities is to boycott Chick-fil-A. Some organizers, more interestingly, are organizing “Gay Day at Chick-fil-A,” to be held on the same day as the Huckabee/Santorum hate rally. This will create, um, an interesting dynamic.

 

 

Myself, I’m with the boycotters. This will be easy for me, because there are no Chick-fil-A franchises in Rhode Island.

 

 

(I was never much for chicken sandwiches, anyway. I’m more of a burger queen.)

 

 

The "gotcha" question

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Back during the 2008 election period – especially after the selection of Sarah Palin as McCain’s VP candidate – I became exceptionally sensitive to the issue of the “gotcha question.”  A reporter asked Sarah a question about (I think) Pakistan, and she gave an honest and unguarded answer (which happened to coincide with Candidate Obama’s stand on the issue).  She later retracted her answer angrily, saying that she’d been asked a “gotcha” question by the media.

 

 

Speaking as someone who interviews people from time to time for a living, here are some comments on this, and on the current election cycle:

 

 

1)     There is no such thing as a “gotcha” question.  If you’re thinking of something like: “Have you stopped beating your wife? Answer yes or no!”, then you are living in a Marx Brothers universe.

2)     Asking a presidential candidate a question about politics, or foreign affairs, or economics, is perfectly fair.  All of these fall within the job requirements, you see.  Presidents have to work in all of those areas.  If you’re hiring someone for a job, you want to see how well they’ll do under stress, and if they know their stuff.  Sometimes you ask them hard questions.  “Why are you so great?” is a pointless question.  So is “Why is your opponent so wrong-headed?”  Both questions are just opportunities to let the candidate recite his/her talking points. 

3)     Tough questions are what it’s all about. Presidents get asked tough questions all the time.  Presidential candidates who whine about being asked tough questions aren’t really thinking about the job they’re seeking.

4)     Presidents are noted for handling tough questions with good humor and candor.   Really good presidents are able to defuse their questioners with charm and tact.  Roosevelt did it; Truman did it; Kennedy did it; Clinton did it; Reagan did it.  This is a valuable skill (see foreign relations, above).

5)     This one is for Herman Cain: being asked the capital of Uzbekistan is maybe a little bit of a Jeopardy! question, and not so much a foreign-policy question (although, ahem, even I know the answer to that one).  However: being asked about American flyover privileges or airbases in Uzbekistan is perfectly okay, since it has to do with what you will (maybe) be doing for the next four years.

6)     Only stupid people want a stupid president.

7)     Why would a clearly unintelligent / uninformed / untrained candidate (like Rick Perry, for example) run for the Presidency?  Presumably because someone told him that he could learn as he went along.  He’d be able to rely on his advisors and staff for the stuff he didn’t know, and he could rely on his gut for the important stuff.  Sound familiar?  Yes, I thought so. 

8)     Watch the Funny Or Die GOP Presidential Debate.  It says all this better than I ever could.  With Patrick Warburton and Leslie Jordan and Larry King yet.

9)     Presidents work for us, not us for them.  We’re the supervisors; we get a say in hiring them.  We get to ask the hard questions in the interview process.

 

 

I hope I live through this election year.  I honestly hope Romney gets the GOP nomination; he’s not electrifying, he’s like the Republican John Kerry.  If it’s someone (god forbid) like Santorum or Gingrich, I may have to drink strychnine. 

 

 

But don’t worry, everyone – the world ends in December, only a few weeks after the election!

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Sunday blog: Getting political

 

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I had a nice light-hearted little Pointer Sisters video all queued up for today, but real life came crashing in and made it seem irrelevant.  

 

 

As of this writing, on Saturday evening, Representative Giffords has made it through surgery, and the doctors appear to be optimistic.  I hope she makes it.   I am so sorry for those who died in the shooting, and for their families, and I send best wishes for the recovery of all of the other victims.

 

 

I thought it would be appropriate today to share the above picture with you (if you can't see it clearly, I've made it available here online).  This illustration is taken from SarahPac.com, Sarah Palin's political-action committee's website.  After the tragic shootings in Tucson on Saturday, the worms at SarahPac.com thought it politically prudent to remove this image from their website.

 

 

But some of the rest of us - quite a lot of us, actually - are determined to keep it alive on the web.  

 

 

Please recopy this freely, and spread it as widely as possible.

 

 

Hey, Sarah: how's that shooty-shooty thing workin' out for you?

 

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