Giving the Republican Party a Bad Name (or Two or Three)

At his speech to Republican Party state chairs today, RNC Chairman Michael Steele engaged in some fascinating name dropping.

First, he invoked three conservative legends: Edmund Burke, William Buckley, and Ronald Reagan. Burke is the intellectual founding father of conservatism; Buckley was its greatest American proponent; and Reagan its most compelling American icon. The renewal of the GOP couldn’t be based on a more stable foundation, and by invoking these three, Steele demonstrated a depth sorely lacking in other contemporary conservative figures.

Steele went on to suggest that Republicans should stop attacking Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Tim Geithner, and Barney Frank and concentrate their fire on President Obama and his policies. Again, Steele demonstrated depth and directness where too many on the right have become loose cannons engaged in a circular firing squad.

Finally, Steele alluded to the two most toxic voices on the right, a “conservative talk radio host” and a “former vice president,” without actually naming them. While his criticism was implicit rather than explicit—testament to the ruthlessness and viciousness of both Limbaugh and Cheney—Steele clearly sees them as liabilities, and rightly so.

The fact that Cheney actually prefers Limbaugh over Colin Powell as the face of the party shows how out of touch the former veep has become. Limbaugh’s character alone should disqualify him from that role, while Powell’s is beyond reproach. Limbaugh is an entertainer with zero governing experience of any kind, while Powell has served as Secretary of State and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during nearly half a century of exemplary public service; how can any serious person even compare the two, much less dismiss Powell and lionize Limbaugh?

The most serious problem conservatism and the Republicans face is the success of shallow, mean-spirited, hyper partisan, McCarthyesque ideologues like Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, Glenn Beck, and Michael Savage. These entertainers aren’t fit to shine the shoes of thoughtful figures like George Will, David Brooks, Peggy Noonan, Newt Gingrich, and Pat Buchanan—the heirs of intellectual conservative giants like Buckley and Walter Lippmann.

If conservatism is to make a comeback, its leaders must go back to its roots in Burke’s foundational philosophy and Buckley’s brilliant rhetoric. Re-establishing conservatism’s intellectual integrity may be the first step towards finding its next Ronald Reagan.

With the exceptions of fundamentalists and senior citizens, the Republican Party is losing adherents across the board, but especially among the college-educated.

With a childish clown (and college dropout) like Rush Limbaugh as its most prominent voice, is it any wonder?

Newsprism

R.I.P. G.O.P.? Not Just Yet, BUT…

Barely one in five Americans now identify themselves as Republicans. In the latest Washington Post/ABC News poll, only 21% of respondents identified themselves as Republicans, compared to 35% who identified themselves as Democrats and 38% as Independents.

Now that Arlen Specter has defected to the Democrats, and with Al Franken closing in on the Minnesota Senate seat, the Democrats may soon hold 60 seats, giving them a filibuster-proof majority.

How did a party that three years ago controlled the White House, the House of Representatives, and the Senate—and arguably, the Supreme Court as well—fall so far, so fast? And what are the consequences for the GOP?

Moderate Republican Senator Olympia Snowe says it is the right-wing extremism of the GOP that has “disaffected and alienated so many Americans…” That may be the understatement of the year. Between the antics of Rush “I hope Obama fails” Limbaugh and Dick “Tortures R Us” Cheney, moderates and independents can’t run away from the party fast enough.

The Bush years were disasterous enough for the party without Cheney and Limbaugh acting as constant reminders of the incompetence and, frankly, depravity that characterized the last eight years.

Many others who make up the public face of the GOP aren’t helpful, either. Sean Hannity and Ann Coulter, for example, taint the party with their arrogance, mean-spiritedness, and absolutism. Their schtick may work on FoxNews and talk radio, but to the mainstream American, they look every bit as rabid and irrational as the leftust fringe they routinely demonize.

Worse yet, as moderates and independents leave the party, it becomes even more extremist, creating a vicious cycle that may well relegate it to regional status.

If the GOP continues down the Limbaugh-led path of exclusion, if it continues to rationalize the rigidity and depravity of the Bush years, it will ensure its irrelevance for a generation.

Peggy Noonan, with her usual grace, puts it this way:

A great party allows everyone in, and allows prospective members to self-define. If they say they’re Republicans, they should be welcomed and helped to find a place where they fit. A great party has a lot of such places. A great party is expansive. A great party has give.

Rumors of the death of the Republican Party are greatly exaggerated, but it’s becoming more and more apparent that it sorely needs to treat the tumor of exclusive and reactionary extremism.

Newsprism

Constructive and Obstructive Conservatives Evaluate Obama

Rush Limbaugh wants to see President Obama fail. Sean Hannity and Ann Coulter are obsessed with magnifying anything negative about the new pres. Matt Drudge runs transparently inaccurate stories trashing Obama. Why?

Because they all follow the money. The more rabid elements of the right clamor for the emotionally laden rhetoric these partisans peddle, and that’s a market easily exploited.

Now the Republican Party seems to be splitting along lines drawn less by ideology than by simple class and decency, and the stakes may be very high for both the party and the nation.

Two of the most respected conservative pundits, both of unquestioned integrity, refuse to fall into line with the pop culture conservatives who take home big bucks at the expense of our democratic discourse. Their initial assessments of Obama’s presidency, based largely on his inaugural address, parallel the president’s desire for conciliation and compromise.

Pat Buchanan, in “A Neo-Reaganite Inaugural,” calls Obama a ” a mature and serious man who knows his county is in deep water, who seems to understand what got us there and who appreciates that, on some things, the right has indeed been right from the beginning.” Compare that to the shallow accusations that pervade far right rhetoric: Obama is a socialist, a Muslim, a pal of terrorists, and worse.

Peggy Noonan, in “Meet President Obama: He begins with a serious, solid Inaugural Address,” echoes Buchanan: ”This was not the sound of candidate Barack Obama but President Obama, not the sound of the man who appealed to the left wing of his party but one attempting to appeal to the center of the nation. It was not a joyous, audacious document, not a call to arms, but a reasoned statement by a Young Sobersides.”

Buchanan and Noonan are serious thinkers and genuine patriots. They deserve a fair hearing from the right, just as the new president does.

Limbaugh, Hannity, Coulter and Drudge shouldn’t be taken too seriously. They exploit the most shallow and bigoted kind of partisanship which, though it may sell, damages the nation. Considering the challenges we face, it is incumbent on conservatives to offer constructive criticism, not mere obstructionism.

Those who voted for John McCain could learn a lesson from him about losing with grace and governing with honor; they should remember his admonition of “country first.”

If Obama succeeds in establishing a centrist administration that encompasses the more sober elements of the left and the right, the Republican Party—if it chooses to follow the blowhards—could be left in the dust.

Newsprism

New Low—Limbaugh Questions Obama’s Visit to Dying Grandmother

As if questioning Michael J. Fox’s Parkinsons’ Disease symptoms weren’t despicable enough, today Rush Limbaugh questioned Barack Obama’s motive for flying to Hawaii to see his dying grandmother.

Limbaugh suggested that Obama’s real motive may have had something to do with questions about the validity of the Senator’s birth certificate. The ridiculous accusation that Obama may not be a “real American” by birth plays right into the bigotry so evident in the fringe of the far right.

Worse, Limbaugh criticized Obama for not leaving sooner to see Madelyn Dunham, the grandmother who helped raise him and who, according to Obama, is “gravely ill…. I’m still not sure whether she makes it to Election Day.” To make political hay out of an old woman’s deathbed is beyond reproach.

Ann Coulter, who tried to score political points off the death of John Edwards’ young son and demeaned the military service of triple amputee Max Cleland, calls liberals “Godless“. Sean Hannity was caught on mic saying of liberals, “God, I hate these people,” and his latest book equates liberalism with despotism and terrorism. (Note the self-righteous hypocrisy in the title: Deliver Us From Evil: Defeating Terrorism, Despotism, and Liberalism.) Neal Boortz ridiculed disabled children on national radio—twice—and called on military personnel at an anti-war protest to “Shoot those leftist bastards dead.” Michael Savage revels in his hatred of Muslims and homosexuals and considers liberalism a “mental disorder.” Limbaugh mocked and questioned the sincerity of Michael J. Fox’s Parkinson’s disease symptoms and accuses liberals of celebrating the deaths of American soldiers.

Coulter, Hannity, Boortz, Savage, Limbaugh. Are there no limits to their depravity? Are liberals not our fellow citizens?

These arrogant infotainers exploit conservatism for profit, and in doing so, they’ve done irreparable damage to the conservative movement. As they become increasingly rabid in their rhetoric, they alienate independent voters and risk losing not only elections, but the soul of conservatism.

To his credit, John McCain has refused to sink to their level. That’s called putting country first.

It’s long past time for conservatives with a conscience to repudiate these hateful, cynical, self-serving people and their brazenly unethical tactics.

Newsprism

Read more on this subject here and here.

UPDATE: Barack Obama and his sister just released a statement saying that their grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, died today, November 3.

A Voice of Reason on the Right: Elisabeth Hasselbeck

One is a constitutional lawyer and best-selling author, the other a ditzy daytime TV talk show host.

Who would have guessed that it would be the ditzy daytime host who’s upholding the principles and integrity of conservatism?

Sometimes the truth is found in the strangest places. Yesterday, Hollywood leftist news and gossip site The Huffington Post ran a video in which Elisabeth Hasselbeck, co-hosting The View, is compared to fellow blonde conservatives Ann Coulter (the constitutional lawyer and best-selling author) and Laura Ingraham.

Hasselbeck throws up her arms, screws up her face, and squeels in disgust,

“Wait, wait, whoa, whoa, whoa…. Please don’t put me in the same sentence as Ann Coulter, thank you very much…”

Watch the video

Good for Ms. Hasselbeck.

I’ll take ditzy over depraved any day.

Newsprism

Peggy Noonan Shouts What Others Are Whispering—Palin’s Failin’

She’d never say so, and that’s part of why she’d have made a great vice presidential choice, but Peggy Noonan would have made a great vice presidential choice. Or at least, she’d have been at least as credible as Sarah Palin, whom she skewers (along with President Bush) in her column, “Pailin’s Failin’”, today:

…we have seen Mrs. Palin on the national stage for seven weeks now, and there is little sign that she has the tools, the equipment, the knowledge or the philosophical grounding one hopes for, and expects, in a holder of high office.

Noonan is no less gentle on President Bush, whom she compares to Palin and, implicitly, to Dick Cheney:

No news conferences? Interviews now only with friendly journalists? You can’t be president or vice president and govern in that style, as a sequestered figure. This has been Mr. Bush’s style the past few years, and see where it got us.

And then there’s this classic line describing the president’s role in the economic meltdown:

George W. Bush … darts out like the bird in a cuckoo clock to tell us we are in crisis.

Noonan winds down her column with a jab at certain elements in the conservative movement, and ends with a taunt. Noting that, with founder Bill Buckley fresh in the grave, National Review pushed son Christopher Buckley out for merely criticizing Palin, she scolds,

the conservative “intelligentsia” (my quotation marks) are doing what they have done for five years. They bitterly attacked those who came to stand against the Bush administration. This was destructive. If they had stood for conservative principle and the full expression of views, instead of attempting to silence those who opposed mere party, their movement, and the party, would be in a better, and healthier, position.

Anticipating being “bitterly attacked” herself, Noonan, with characteristic grace and humor, gently taunts the vulgar right:

At any rate, come and get me, copper(s).

The center, and therefore the country, has rejected the emptyheaded Rush/Rove reacionism of the far right—including the second-rate “intelligentsia” running most conservative magazines these days as well as Limbaugh’s more vicious and vengeful, more confrontational and controversial, colleagues, like Coulter, Hannity, Savage, and Horowitz—and in so doing has cemented Sarah Palin’s legacy as John McCain’s Harriett Miers.

Noonan understands the depth and the ramifications of Palin’s, and of negative rhetoric’s, failures. Like Harriett Miers on the Supreme Court, the idea of Sarah Palin in the Oval Office is laughable.

Newsprism

Thoughtful and Thoughtless Conservatives, and America on the Brink

The financial crisis seems to be deepening: unemployment is rising, home prices are falling, the stock market has plummeted, credit is tightening, tax revenue is falling, municipal and state governments are facing sever budget shortfalls, and the sky, if not falling, is surely sagging earthward.

As I write, the House is debating the new Senate version of a bailout bill. Prudence would dictate passing the bill, as failing to do so could result in a deep recession or even a depression.

Why are so many, most notably House Republicans, holding the bailout hostage? Primarily because the public is opposed to it, and every member of the House faces an election a month from now. What a dilemma: do I vote against the bailout and risk depression, or vote for it and risk losing in November? Am I a public servant, or a self-serving demagogue?

Thoughtful conservatives should have no trouble answering such questions. While it’s a bitter pill to swallow, this bailout is sorely needed.

Thoughtless conservatives, on the other hand, are using the bailout to appeal to the basest insticts of the far right, where too many seem willing to sacrifice the nation’s security in the name of vapid populism.

Three of the most thoughtful conservatives have come to very similar conclusions in the wake of Monday’s House defeat of the bailout.

David Brooks in “Revolt of the Nihilists” notes that the 228 House members who voted against the bailout

…showed the world how much they detest their own leaders and the collected expertise of the Treasury and Fed. They did the momentarily popular thing, and if the country slides into a deep recession, they will have the time and leisure to watch public opinion shift against them. 

House Republicans led the way and will get most of the blame. It has been interesting to watch them on their single-minded mission to destroy the Republican Party. Not long ago, they led an anti-immigration crusade that drove away Hispanic support. Then, too, they listened to the loudest and angriest voices in their party, oblivious to the complicated anxieties that lurk in most American minds.

Now they have once again confused talk radio with reality. If this economy slides, they will go down in history as the Smoot-Hawleys of the 21st century.

Brooks didn’t name names, but the fact is that Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, along with the talk radio reactionaries who follow them on the AM airwaves, have put their own fame and fortune above the good of the nation.

Charles Krauthammer, in “Catharsis, Then Common Sense,” questions the motives of those 228 naysayers in the House:

Congress has every duty to be careful with taxpayers’ money and to suggest improvements in the administration plan. But part of Congress’s reaction has nothing to do with improving the proposal and everything to do with assuaging the rage of constituents — even if it jeopardizes the package’s chances of success, either by weakening it or by larding it up with useless complicating provisions designed solely to give the appearance of sticking it to the rich.

And if no bailout is forthcoming? According to Krauthammer, the bailout is needed “to prevent the American economy from going over a cliff.”

George Will is more forgiving of the 228, but leaves no doubt that some form of bailout is needed:

It is potentially catastrophic that this crisis comes in the context of a closely contested election and a collapse of presidential authority. Congress should disconnect from a public that cannot be blamed for being more furious about than comprehending of this opaque debacle. The public wanted catharsis and respect for its center-right principles and got both with Monday’s House vote. It still needs protection against obliteration of the financial system.

As for thoughtless conservatives, few are as thoughtless, mean-spirited, dishonest, and self-righteous as Ann Coulter, who, in a column revealingly titled “They Gave Your Mortgage To A Less Qualified Minority,” blames the crisis on Clinton-era liberal Democrats and (note the racist code words) “minorit(ies)” and “welfare recipients”:

This crisis was caused by political correctness being forced on the mortgage lending industry in the Clinton era.

Before the Democrats’ affirmative action lending policies became an embarrassment, the Los Angeles Times reported that, starting in 1992, a majority-Democratic Congress “mandated that Fannie and Freddie increase their purchases of mortgages for low-income and medium-income borrowers. Operating under that requirement, Fannie Mae, in particular, has been aggressive and creative in stimulating minority gains.”

Under Clinton, the entire federal government put massive pressure on banks to grant more mortgages to the poor and minorities…

Now, at a cost of hundreds of billions of dollars, middle-class taxpayers are going to be forced to bail out the Democrats’ two most important constituent groups: rich Wall Street bankers and welfare recipients.

Political correctness had already ruined education, sports, science and entertainment. But it took a Democratic president with a Democratic congress for political correctness to wreck the financial industry.

Coulter, who knows better than to believe her own bile, takes her cues from talk radio, where it’s all about ratings and ad revenue. Liberals and Democrats are treated not as fellow countrymen with differing viewpoints, but as traitors and socialists to be reviled. The truth is irrelevant: whatever the far right will buy, Coulter and Limbaugh and Hannity will sell. In the quotation above, for example, Coulter refers to “the Democrats’ two most important constituent groups: rich Wall Street bankers and welfare recipients.” Scapegoating both rich and poor is classic populist demagoguery.

The American people deserve better. Hopefully, these cynical reactionaries haven’t gained enough influence to lead us into a depression (which, of course, they’ll manage to blame on the left.)

In the sixties and seventies, the left was discredited by the undue influence of drug-addled, radical chic musicians and anti-establishment activists, whose populist appeal led to disastrous legislation like the failed $11 trillion welfare state. Now, the right is being discredited by the undue influence of egomaniacal, faux-conservative pundits and radio entertainers, whose populist appeal has helped to enable the debacle that is the Bush administration.

The rest of us are stuck in the middle as the ground gives way beneath our feet.

Newsprism

Beyond Bias—Sarah Palin Rises to the Occasion as Liberal Journalists Sink to New Lows

Thirty or forty years ago, the liberal bias so pervasive in the American press was relatively mild and counterbalanced by a strong, principled minority led by the likes of William Buckley. Liberals and conservatives fought their ideological battles with honor, and at the end of the day they laid down their arms and socialized, much like the Union and Confederate soldiers who sang, drank, and played baseball together between hostilities during the Civil War.

With the growth of cable news, talk radio, and the Internet, American journalism has become increasingly adversarial. Ethical standards have plummeted. Such are the vagaries of decentralized decision making in an era marked by proliferating media and a broader erosion of civility in our culture.

If liberal bias once predominated, we’ve moved well beyond bias, even beyond contentiousness, to a journalism more akin to professional wrestling than its older iterations.

Nowhere was that more apparent than in the treatment of Sarah Palin’s daughter this week. If Rush Limbaugh’s brand of sneering Machiavellianism took political commentary beyond mere bias, a new generation of cable news anchors, radio hosts, and bloggers have descended even further into a clownish, contemptuous, contrived confrontationalism that blurs the line between journalism and (sports) entertainment.

Worse yet, even the old guard has been increasingly sucked into a downward ethical spiral. Lately, the New York Times’ Frank Rich and Maureen Dowd have peppered their columns with the kind of churlish sniping usually reserved for us amateurs in the blogosphere.

Peggy Noonan puts it like this:

The old combatants were old school gentlemen, Eric Sevareid and Walter Cronkite; the new combatants are half-crazy cable anchors, the lower lurkers of the Internet, and the anonymous posters on the comment thread on the radical website.

Crazy cable news anchor Keith Olbermann, who derides Rush Limbaugh as a “comedian” and regularly lambasts Bill O’Reilly as his “Worst Person in the World,” leads the way into perdition at MSNBC, which has been drifting to the left ever since Tucker Carlson departed and Olbermann took over in prime time. (We’ve moved it four positions to the left at Newsprism.com.) DailyKos stooped lower than anyone, suggesting that Palin’s infant son Trig was actually born to her teenaged daughter. (The post has since been removed.)

The broadcast networks, CNN, and print outlets includingThe New York Times all used Palin’s daughter as fodder in an ugly ideological barrage that Gerard Baker describes as a ”frenzied orgy of chauvinist condescension and gutter-crawling journalistic intrusion…” The degree of defensiveness displayed by news executives in response to Republican protests at least suggests a sense of guilt, if not shame.

Conservatives shouldn’t be too quick to judge, either. Sean Hannity consistently lives up to the label once applied by Bill Moyers: “vile.” WorldNetDaily makes Hannity look classy, running unfounded accusations that Obama had gay sex and did methamphetamines. Then there’s FoxNews, which has inexplicably returned Geraldo Rivera to mainstream journalism. (Who’s next—Jerry Springer? If he can draw an audience, why not?)

Sarah Palin handled the attacks on her family brilliantly. She fired back at the liberal media with both force and good humor, and with her traditional principles and small town authenticity, she rejuvenated a conservative movement that has been floundering on K Street. As David Brooks writes, “(Palin) embodies the spirit of the moment: impatient, fed up, tough-minded, but ironical. Even in attack, she projected the cheerfulness of someone confident about the future.” Sounds like Ronald Reagan to me.

Pat Buchanan adds, “The war the right lives for, against the people the right truly loathes — the liberal media elite who savagely ‘Bork’ every true conservative who gets on the path to national power — has been reignited.” A double win: the base is energized with optimism while its most powerful enemy takes a firm public spanking.

Even the Mafia has a hands-off policy when it comes to family; many a journalist could take a lesson in ethics from La Cosa Nostra.

Newsprism

Bob Novak and the Knoxville Church Shooting—Hatred, Left and Right

I remember the day it was announced that Ronald Reagan had Alzheimer’s disease. I was in downtown Iowa City when I read the headline. At that moment, a leftist colleague strode up beside me, read the headline, and laughed. She was beside herself with joy.

The press reported today that conservative columnist Robert Novak is being treated for brain cancer, and literally within minutes, leftists posting at DemocraticUnderground.com were already having their fun. A sample of their hateful posts:

Karmas (sic) a bitch, ain’t it?

Brain tumor? Isn’t this kinda like a woman getting testicular cancer?

Maybe there IS a god after all.

(Brain cancer’s) Not horrible enough for Novak.

Are we supposed to make nice about this motherfucker, too? Payback time, asshole.

The Hollywood liberal news and gossip site HuffingtonPost.com, as is its usual practice when conservatives die or suffer tragedies, is not allowing posts on the Novak story. I’ve seen the same kind of vitriol at HuffPost on numerous occasions, along with calls for the torture and assassination of the president and vice president.

It was also reported today that the man who killed two at a Unitarian Universalist church in Tennessee did so out of hatred for liberals.

The hatred for liberals so rampant on the right, especially in conservative talk radio, is worn as a badge of honor by the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, Ann Coulter, and Sean Hannity. Limbaugh accuses liberals of celebrating at the deaths of American soldiers; Savage considers liberalism (but not autism!) to be “a mental disorder“; Coulter accuses liberals of treason and godlessness; and Hannity was caught by an open mic referring to liberals with the oxymoronic phrase, ”God I hate these people.”

Then there’s Neal Boortz, who on March 14 of this year encouraged military personnel present at an anti-war rally in Pittsburgh to “Shoot those leftist bastards dead.” (Boortz should watch out for the ricochet.)

Most Americans, left and right, are decent people whose points of view may vary, but who harbor no ill will towards those on the other side of the ideological aisle. Such moderation and simple human decency are largely missing from the left wing blogosphere and the right wing airwaves.

Moderation and decency don’t attract large lucrative audiences, however. Hatred and extremism, it seems, do.

Newsprism

Ask Not What Your Country Can Do for You—Ask What Your Press Agent Can Do for You

Barack Obama’s now infamous pastor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, is milking his fifteen-minute flash of fame for all it’s worth. This weekend he spoke with Bill Moyers in a televised interview, delivered a televised sermon in Dallas, gave a televised speech to the NAACP, and this morning he’s speaking (you guessed it—televised!) to the National Press Club.

The Reverend understands the mass media marketplace at least as well as he understands racial division. Controversy sells. Give the media controversy, and you can expect significant media coverage. If that controversy is timely, so much the better, and if it fits into the ideological template of the journalistic pack, you’re as good as gold.

No issue generates as much controversy in the US as race. Liberals in the media love to shine a spotlight on racism, real or imagined, in order to bask in the afterglow of their moral superiority. Conservatives in the media love to shine a spotlight on reverse racism, real or imagined, in order to further their political agenda.

 During his speech to the NAACP on Sunday, Reverend Wright invoked John Kennedy’s famous line, “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country” and mocked JFK’s pronunciation of “ahsk.” The idea was to “ahsk” why it’s okay for JFK to pronounce a word so oddly, but not for black children to pronounce it, “aks.” That’s a valid, if utterly petty, point.

What should be clear to all is that Wright is no longer furthering a philosophy. He’s furthering his career; a book deal is surely in the works. Mocking a liberal icon like Kennedy is straight out of the playbook of Ann Coulter, who says outrageous things just to keep herself in the media spotlight. A similar dynamic drives Britney Spears and Paris Hilton to do outrageous things. (Paris’s favorite fashion accessory, her chihuahua Tinkerbell, actually had a book published. Ka-ching!)

Give the media something to cover, no matter how trivial, perverse, or cynically self-serving, and they will. Give the publishing industry a low-risk title, and they’ll publish it. With cable news, talk radio, and the Internet lowering editorial standards, and with the demands of a 24-hour news cycle, a critical institution in our society has been dragged down into the cultural gutter alongside Jerry Springer and Geraldo Rivera.

Jeremiah Wright may have some important ideas to contribute to our national discourse. He holds two master’s degrees and a doctorate, and he served this country in the Marine Corps and the Navy. The cartoon version of the Reverend that’s being bandied about in the media doesn’t do him justice.

The fact that he’s so hard at work capitalizing on that cartoon doesn’t do the rest of us justice.

Newsprism

The Worst of the Wild, Wild Web—From the Left, HuffingtonPost

Hollywood leftist news and gossip site The Huffington Post combines a buffet of cheesy far-left commentary from notable writers, politicians, activists, actors, scholars, more actors, and relatives of actors with a daily dish of celebrity gossip. Add in a lively and very functional reader comment section and you have a highly succesful formula.

Unfortunately, the news judgment of HuffPo can best be described as amateurish, and the editorial stance leans so far left it’s staggering.

A quick glimpse at today’s headlines proves the point:

Cindy McCain, The Recipe Thief, Says The Intern Did It—omigosh! Cindy McCain’s intern may have stolen recipes from The Food Network! Hold the presses, hold the presses!

Jenna Bush Tries Not To Flash the Pope—holy Marilyn Monroe moment, a gust of wind almost (almost!) blew Jenna Bush’s skirt up as she shook the hand of Pope Benedict XVI!!!!!

“Dancing With The Stars” Eliminates The Oldest Contestant—that’s right, Priscilla Presley, the “62-year-old actress” (she acts???) was eliminated because her “rumba was dull and technically imprecise…”

Thought Process Flowchart: Dr. Phil—Drs. Freud and Jung take note: here’s a peek inside the mind of Dr. Phil McGraw!!!!

Obama Offers Hanna Montana Treasury Secretary Job—just in case you’re a ten-year-old girl, or have the mentality of one, here’s a serious story about a skit from the Country Music Awards!!!!

Jon Stewart Mocks Obama “Bitter” Controversy—real news about fake news about real news … and the fake news was better than the real!!!!!

In terms of commentary, HuffPo gives our finest political thinkers (Alec Baldwin, Margaret Cho, Norman Lear’s little granddaughter) a platform from which to enlighten us. This sampling should get you up to speed:

Pope Should Start “Spiritual Renewal” With Bisexual God—those sexist Catholics are sooooo paternalistic, they should get God two lovers, one male and one female, or better yet, give God both male and female sex organs, to make up for all those centuries of patriarchy. (Here’s the definition of bisexual, HuffPo.)

The Alabama of Pennsylvania Mirrors New Hampshire—a media elitist slurs working-class Pennsylvania by comparing it to (and slurring) Alabama. To paraphrase Lynyrd Skynyrd, we Southerners don’t need you Hollywood and NYC fly-over types around anyhow.

How Many “Gaffes” Equal Incompetence? and One Candidate Has Failed the Commander-In-Chief Test—Twice—that no-good John McCain accidentally confused Shia for Sunni (and who hasn’t done that?) Then McCain “seemed to say that General Petraeus is the top military commander of our Armed Forces, telling the Associated Press that he wouldn’t shift the focus of the military from Iraq to Afghanistan ‘unless Gen. [David] Petraeus said that he felt that the situation called for that.’” SEEMED to say? And it took two HuffPo bloggers to make that SEEM like a gaffe.

Then there’s the running gag called “Dickipedia,” described as “a wiki of dicks,” and its latest Dickipedia entry on John McCain. The entry calls McCain “cowardly” and an “asshole” and describes his wife as “freakish-looking over-plastic-surgery’d wife Cindy.” Then there’s this gem: “Though he once called religious bigots like Jerry Falwell ‘agents of intolerance,’ he now eagerly gets on his knees to fellate them to completion ask for their support.”

To top it all off, HuffPo asks the question, Is the Pope Even Relevant? At least as relevant as, say, Priscilla Presley, Hannah Montana, Dr. Phil, David Hasselhoff, Rob Lowe, comedian Keith Olbermann, and a topless Ann Coulter.

So that’s one day in the life of The HuffingtonPost—a big hit on the wild wild web, and a signal moment in the resurgence of yellow journalism.

Newsprism

Pop Culture Conservatism—The Shallow Going Off the Deep End

American conservatism has been dealing for decades with a rift between the social conservatism of evangelical Christians and culture warriors on the one hand, and the libertarian conservatism of free-market individualists on the other. Part of the genius of Ronald Reagan was his ability to energize both factions while smoothing over their differences. Too many conservatives today are altogether ignorant of this rift and therefore risk widening it. 

Over the last couple of decades, another rift has been opened, one that has benefitted conservatism significantly but may at the same time have begun an erosion of its core principles in favor of the superficial and the marketable. This rift separates intellectual conservatism—that practiced by Bill Buckley, Newt Gingrich, George Will, and Pat Buchanan, for example—and a more populist strain that dominates talk radio, the popular book market, and cable news. Instead of “populist conservatism,” however, I think it would be more accurate to label it pop culture conservatism, since its primary home is in the popular media.

Pop culture conservatism emerged out of a long era of American journalism in which liberalism dominated public discourse. The Media Elite, an influential 1986 study of political bias, found that nearly 90% of leading journalists had voted for Democratic candidates in prior presidential elections. When Rush Limbaugh demonstrated in 1988 that a huge audience of disaffected conservatives was ripe for the picking, pop culture conservatism burst onto the scene, and it’s been flexing its muscles ever since. Now, slickly-marketed popular figures like Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, Michael Savage, and Laura Ingraham exert far more influence over the conservative movement with their confrontationalism and intemperance than more substantive and measured voices do with reasoning and balance.

Intellectual and pop culture conservatism worked together brilliantly in 1994, when Newt Gingrich’s “Contract with America” consolidated the Republican base and swept Republican candidates into majority positions in both Houses of Congress. The result: the Clinton administration was forced to control the growth of government, so that by the time George Bush took office in 2000, the federal budget was in surplus.

A conservative Republican president inheriting a budget surplus should have set the foundation for a serious, measured restructuring and contraction of our imperial federal government. Instead, Bush has grown the government from a $2 trillion “enterprise” to one that will spend well over $3 trillion in 2008, with disastrous economic and monetary results. The numbers speak for themselves:

The federal government’s budget has grown from under $2,000,000,000,000.00 to over $3,000,000,000,000.00 per year!

The very core principles of conservatism—limited government, individual responsibility, individual liberty, market dynamics, free enterprise—have been buried under an avalanche of big government programs and out-of-control spending. It was Republican Senator Ted Stevens and Republican Representative Don Young who tried to push through billions in funding for Alaska’s infamous Bridges to Nowhere.

Intellectual conservatives have strongly condemned this liberal spending spree, but their voices aren’t being heard over the loudmouthed shouting of the pop culture talking heads.

Pop culture conservatism has created a class of citizens and politicians who don’t seem to value or understand the historical and intellectual foundations of classical American conservatism. These surfacy conservatives just spent seven years in power in the White House, most of that time with like-minded Republicans controlling Congress, yet they have done more damage to the institutions of free enterprise and individual liberty than any liberal in memory.

Shallow creatures of the media going off the deep end have helped put conservatism at risk of drowning in the warm, therapeutic waters of liberalism: naive idealism, spiraling debt, and dependence on government.

Newsprism

The Distance Between Influence and Integrity

They’re household names: Rush Limbaugh, Matt Drudge, Geraldo Rivera. It’s undeniable that Limbaugh and Drudge have become media giants exerting substantial influence on American politics and journalism, and Geraldo has made his own contributions.

Earlier this week, I compared (without irony) Limbaugh’s influence to that of three of America’s most renownded media figures: editor Horace Greeley (of “Go West, young man” fame,) publisher William Randolph Hearst (the subject of Citizen Kane,) and Walter Cronkite. Rush’s influence has taken on a life of its own; his opinion is news in an of itself. Despite being a relative recluse, through his voice and “ditto-cam” image, Rush has been all over the mainstream media during this election cycle—not as a newsman, but as a newsmaker.

But Rush has some competition. In the wake of Drudge breaking the story that Prince Harry has been fighting in Afghanistan, Great Britain’s Telegraph is calling Matt “the most powerful journalist in the world.” Where Limbaugh draws 20 million a week, the DrudgeReport gets 20 million visits a day. After the British press had kept the Prince’s secret deployment a secret for ten weeks, Drudge ran the story, forcing the Brits to bring Harry back home.

I admire both Limbaugh and Drudge for their accomplishments, but there are a couple of distinctions that should be made.

First, neither is a journalist. Limbaugh is equal parts commentator and entertainer; Drudge is primarily an editor/publisher, but also a gossip peddler in the tradition of Walter Winchel and Hedda Hopper. NBC’s Andrea Mitchell nailed it last week when she described the Drudge Report as ”news and gossip.” It was a little-known self-styled gossip columnist named Drudge, after all, who who broke the Monica Lewinsky story after Newsweek had spiked it. Drudge broke it, but the affair and attempted coverup were uncovered by investigative reporter Michael Isikoff, not Drudge.

Second, influence and integrity are two very different things. Limbaugh has no scruples whatsoever when it comes to demonizing liberalism; he regularly accuses liberals of wanting to see more American soldiers killed in Iraq, for example. And after years of cheerleading for the War on Drugs and ridiculing “dope-smoking hippies,” Rush’s longstanding  narcotics addiction revealed the deepest kind of hypocrisy.

But in exposing Prince Harry’s whereabouts, Drudge put lives, and potentially a mission, in jeopardy. It’s one thing to act as a gadfly countering the biases of the mainstream media. It’s quite another to undermine a military operation.

Which brings me to Geraldo. Once a serious network investigative reporter, Rivera took the low road when he left ABC to host a daytime TV talk show a bit closer to Jerry Springer’s than to Phil Donahue’s. That infamous brawl between white supremacists and black activists (which Geraldo seems proud of!) was tabloid television at its ugliest.

But Geraldo reached his lowest point in 2003, when he revealed the position and plans of American troops in Iraq, leading the Pentagon to give his employer, Fox News, an ultimatum: yank him out of Iraq, or we will.

When Katie Couric took over the CBS Evening News, she chose to invite Rush Limbaugh to appear where Cronkite and Edward R. Murrow once sat. The Drudge Report is now a must-read for a whole new generation of American journalists. 

And Geraldo is still employed by Fox News.

Either American journalism has lowered its standards considerably, or Geraldo has raised his. You decide.

Newsprism