Paul Revere by Cyrus Dallin, North End, Boston

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Saturday, October 3, 2009

CONSERVATIVE COLUMNIST, DAVID BROOKS, STICKS IT TO RIGHTWING BLOVIATORS--BUT GOOD

Link is here for the entire column.



THE WIZARD OF BECK


"In 2008, after McCain had won his nomination, Limbaugh turned his attention to the Democratic race. He commanded his followers to vote in the Democratic primaries for Hillary Clinton because “we need Barack Obama bloodied up politically.” Todd Donovan of Western Washington University has looked at data from 38 states and could find no strong evidence that significant numbers of people actually did what Limbaugh commanded. Rush blared the trumpets, but few of his Dittoheads advanced.


Over the years, I have asked many politicians what happens when Limbaugh and his colleagues attack. The story is always the same. Hundreds of calls come in. The receptionists are miserable. But the numbers back home do not move. There is no effect on the favorability rating or the re-election prospects. In the media world, he is a giant. In the real world, he’s not.


But this is not merely a story of weakness. It is a story of resilience. For no matter how often their hollowness is exposed, the jocks still reweave the myth of their own power. They still ride the airwaves claiming to speak for millions. They still confuse listeners with voters. And they are aided in this endeavor by their enablers. They are enabled by cynical Democrats, who love to claim that Rush Limbaugh controls the G.O.P. They are enabled by lazy pundits who find it easier to argue with showmen than with people whose opinions are based on knowledge. They are enabled by the slightly educated snobs who believe that Glenn Beck really is the voice of Middle America.


So the myth returns. Just months after the election and the humiliation, everyone is again convinced that Limbaugh, Beck, Hannity and the rest possess real power. And the saddest thing is that even Republican politicians come to believe it. They mistake media for reality. They pre-emptively surrender to armies that don’t exist.


They pay more attention to Rush’s imaginary millions than to the real voters down the street. The Republican Party is unpopular because it’s more interested in pleasing Rush’s ghosts than actual people. The party is leaderless right now because nobody has the guts to step outside the rigid parameters enforced by the radio jocks and create a new party identity. The party is losing because it has adopted a radio entertainer’s niche-building strategy, while abandoning the politician’s coalition-building strategy.


The rise of Beck, Hannity, Bill O’Reilly and the rest has correlated almost perfectly with the decline of the G.O.P. But it’s not because the talk jocks have real power. It’s because they have illusory power, because Republicans hear the media mythology and fall for it every time."

29 comments:

Jim said...

You start with a false premise. David Brooks is no more a conservative than SK is a communist.

Shaw Kenawe said...

Jim,

He may not be YOUR kind of conservative: thoughtful, erudite, and moderate, but he most certainly is a conservative:

"Brooks describes himself as being originally a liberal before 'coming to his senses.' In 1983, he wrote a parody of conservative pundit William F. Buckley, Jr.:

In the afternoons he is in the habit of going into crowded rooms and making everybody else feel inferior. The evenings are reserved for extended bouts of name-dropping. (University of Chicago Maroon, April 5, 1983.)
Buckley admired the parody and offered Brooks a job with National Review. A turning point in Brooks's thinking came later that year in a televised debate with Milton Friedman, which, as Brooks describes it, "was essentially me making a point, and he making a two-sentence rebuttal which totally devastated my point".[4]

Before the Iraq War, Brooks argued forcefully on moral grounds for American military intervention, echoing the belief of conservative commentators and political figures that American and British forces would be welcomed as liberators."
--Wikipedia

Hardly a description of a Liberal.

Shaw Kenawe said...

I'm just saying,

Your non-sequitur comment doesn't change the fact that former President George Bush, conservative, supported the idea of having the Olympics in Chicago.

Whether I agree with Mr. Bush's policies or not doesn't change the fact that Mr. Bush was on the same page as the Obamas, vis-a-vis Chicago and the Olympics.

You seem not to be able to grasp that simple point.

Jim said...

Hey, are the voters of Chicago that did not want the Olympics anti Obama?

SK, I hate to break the news to ya, but advocating for big government does not make you conservative, no matter what else you believe.

David Brooks has not proven to the conservative in America that he has changed his stripes. He has proven only that he is a kiss up to Democrats, thoughtful, erudite, and moderate. That is why he is a columnist for the NYT.

modampII said... said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Shaw Kenawe said...

I think that instead of deleting the sophomoric scribblings that the frontal lobe-challenged "modampll" scrawled all over these comments, I'll let them stand as a shining example of the implausible but manifestly real tragedy that passes as intellectual acuity in certain segments of the Obama-crazed loony Right.

What "modampll" wrote is, really, a masterful combination of incoherence, idiocy, and juvenile taunting.

Even jejune embarrassments, such as "modampll" was compelled to share with us, are, like the proverbial train wreck, are difficult to turn one's eyes from.

We are repulsed and fascinated at the same time by the horror of it all.

PS. Glenn Beck is still an a**hole.

TAO said...

There you go Shaw....

Leave those posts up!

Those folks are SO proud of their comments that they have to hide behind false names and hack the profiles of others....

Then its fun to watch as those on the right who have blogs attempt to navigate the stupidity of those who claim to share the same beliefs...

To the casual reader its hard to tell the difference!

CJ said...

They sound thrilled. My city was going to be the site of the bicycling events. At least someone in the US is happy at the bad news.

Dave Miller said...

I love it. Before I get a chance to even read the comments, Jim slams long time conservative David Brooks because he does not believe the same things.

Jim, how does a party expand the base when there is only one accepted viewpoint?

Let me pose a question before I go on to read the others comments.

Would you rather keep the GOP pure, and lose elections, or win elections with less "conservatism?

dmarks said...

Jim: If you measure from the center, Brooks does indeed come out on the conversative side.

That he was formerly a liberal merely makes him one of the actual "neoconservatives".

I don't have much respect for him because his main "journalistic" distinction was being editorial writer and film reviewer for one of the newsletters of the "Moonie" cult. (Yes, Dave Miller, that is my reason for slamming him. Why would a serious journalist associate himself with the newsletter of a big scam run out of prison by a felon convicted of fraud?)

A Friend from SoCal said...

I see the sandbox crowd is back here throwing their usual hissy fits and resorting to calling you a poopy-head.

Keep it up, shaw. It pisses them off that you're smarter than they are. And apparently a good detective.

LOL!

A guy named Dave said...

shaw,

i didn't know cockroaches could type, did you?

that "marcia pelham" has hilarious sexual fantasies that she/it needs to share with the world. must be awful to be a shut-in and the only activity she/it has is speculating on other people's sex lives.

keep up what you're doing, it's driving the wingnuts mad!

Shaw Kenawe said...

to A guy named Dave,

Actually, there is a cockroach who can type. His name is Archy. When you wrote that, it reminded me of him:


The Return of Archy the Cockroach
Last updated 4/13/00


Don Marquis' famous typing cockroach is back for the internet age.

Archy Answers Critics of Harry Potter

Millenial Cockroach

Archy Applauds Advertising

Catching Up with Archy

On the Information Age

Archy at the Grocery Store

Archy's Review of "The Lost World"


However, I don't believe "Marcia Pelham" is as clever as Archy is.

Jim said...

dmarks my measurement is from the Constitution. From that viewpoint the Founding Fathers were radicals and that makes today's radicals something else indeed.

Those folks are SO proud of their comments that they have to hide behind false names and hack the profiles of others.... TAO

O, you must mean octopus.

Jim said...

But then again TAO, you seem to be hiding as well.

Shaw Kenawe said...

Jim,

(O)CT(O)PUS has never hacked anyone's name.


Please don't write things here that are not true.

Shaw Kenawe said...

If you're referring to using blog names, that is acceptable in blogdom and on the internet. Most of us have used the same blogging name over the years and stuck to it.

I did use my real name once, and then was bothered by a stalker. That's why I choose to use a blognym.

Shaw Kenawe said...

BTW, you're a student of US history, so you know about the use of the name "Publius," which was used by both Alexander Hamilton and James Madison.

Dervish Sanders said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Dervish Sanders said...

David Brooks makes some seemingly vaild points... Rush didn't like McCain. So how did he end up as the nominee?

On the other hand the talking points of the "Rightwing Bloviators" and Republican politicans are EXACTLY the same.

I think they both represent the interests of an increasingly shrinking minority, yet idiots like "garlic milkshake" Boehner -- who is unaware that 57 percent of his own constituents support a government-run health insurance option -- will probably be re-elected.

dmarks said...

Jim said: "dmarks my measurement is from the Constitution"

Whatever. The Constitution says nothing about liberal vs conservative, left vs right.

Jim said...

(O)CT(O)PUS has never hacked anyone's name.

I didn't say octopus did. I was commenting, and I am sorry that I did not make it plain, on the use of little cute pictures most commenters to this post use. They snipe from behind these logos and strange names.

Here's an analogy from the trucking world where CB radios are in all the trucks.

It's easy to be a big man on your side of the mike!

SK, as do you, I don't hide behind a false front. Click on my name or picture and you get the real deal. Warts and all! ;-)

Jim said...

BTW, you're a student of US history, so you know about the use of the name "Publius," which was used by both Alexander Hamilton and James Madison.

True indeed, but do you know why that practice was used?

Shaw Kenawe said...

It's been a while since I read about Hamilton and Madison, so, no I don't remember exactly why they chose the Roman Publius Valrius or Publicola "friend of the people."

I also forgot that John Jay used Publius as well, but, IIRC, he wrote only one or two Federalist papers. Madison [who is known as the Father of our Constitution, and Hamilton [a genius IMHO] wrote the majority of them.

Enlighten me.

dmarks said...

The "shoot the messenger" comment about Brooks' stint with the Moonies has nothing to do with this column of his. I've had this complaint about him regardless of and before columns like this.

Jim said...

The reason for using false names in newspaper articles back then was to avoid a challenge to duel with pistols. A practice men used to protect honor.

The most famous duel of the time was between Aaron Burr and A. Hamilton. Burr discovered Hamilton's identity behind the name of a very blistering article.

Jim said...

w-dervish you left out the second sentence of your reference:

Ohio voters support 57 - 35 percent the idea of giving American consumers the option of buying health insurance from a government-run plan. But by a much larger 68 - 24 percent margin, voters don't believe the President will be able to keep his promise to pass a health care overhaul that does not add to the federal budget deficit.

A slightly different perspective of your resource.

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