State of the Outrage

Because Barbara Bush taught him to "use your words, George," her son the president, rather than actually mooning some Senate Democrats at the joint session of Congress on Monday night as he would like to do, will instead call them terrorist-lovers for refusing to give retroactive immunity to lawbreaking telecoms in the FISA bill, and he will call them partisan obstructionists for wanting to extend unemployment benefits in the economic stimulus bill now pending.

Because the political media's machismo depends on admiring cynicism as realpolitik, when the Clintons claim victory in the Florida primary this Tuesday, the mandarins will pronounce it a brilliant chess move, rather than revealing it as a desperation-borne contempt for the rules of the nomination game they had previously agreed to, and as condescension toward those who still naively care about playing by them.

Because there is no accountability in punditry -- outside, that is, of Jon Stewart and Keith Olbermann -- Rudy Giuliani's flameout in Florida, like Fred Thompson's before him in South Carolina, will occasion no reminders and no regrets for the jock-sniffing musk-addled crushes once harbored toward them by the Chris Matthewses and Bill Kristols of the political locker room.

Because there is nothing like necrophilia and hagiography to prolong our national addiction to historical amnesia, this week's Republican debate at the Reagan Library will prompt no admission that the sub-prime meltdown now dragging Americans into a painful recession, except for the nouveau gazillionaires insulated from it, is the godchild of the Reagan religion of faith-based deregulation, fundamentalist market worship, and a massive government-engineered transfer of wealth from the middle to the top.

Because "the surge is working" -- because, that is, of the indefinitely long presence of more than 150,000 American troops in Iraq, paid for by trillions of dollars that even the Bush administration no longer has the nerve to put in its budget, combined with the absence of any meaningful progress toward the administration's own benchmarks for political success, coupled with the media's inability to cover the war as anything except the kind of occasional traffic fatality story found on local TV news -- a presidential campaign that might have been a referendum on Republican deceit and incompetence, and a frank conversation about America's real security interests in the world, will instead be a moronic barrage of empty slogans about change.

And because the Framers were unable to anticipate the genius at gaming the Constitution possessed by the power-mad viceroys of a future King George named Cheney and Rove, nor could the Founders conceive of a corporate press hooked on revenue-generating junk and intimidated into abandoning its role as Fourth Estate, the year of onanistic Legacy coverage and good-poodle bipartisanship that will be kicked off this week by the State of the Union address will be left unspoiled by erased emails, unmarred by unenforced contempt citations, unsullied by unacknowledged high crimes and demeanors, and unblemished by disgraces that cannot be rectified by pardons for the past and pay packages for the future.

But hey, it's gonna be a great Super Bowl, Romney sure is good-looking, I wonder what kind of cake Jenna and Henry pick, Joe Lieberman really understands how to reach across the aisle, and did you know Obama's middle name is Saddam?

Follow Marty Kaplan on Twitter: www.twitter.com/martykaplan

Comments

[Macready]

Great post Marty .. . we need the good citizens of Brattelboro in Congress to replace pelosi and reid . . .

[Armand451]

100% on point and funny as always

[rlc41]

Speaking of the economy, when will the media or this administration realize for most of us average joes and janes it has been on a down hill slide for quite some time. What a laugh, I just love it when "the news" talking head experts are going to give us average joe and janes financial advice. The first words out of their mouths? "Review your portfolio". Portfolio my ass. Don't they have a clue? What stinking portfolio? Most people are asking what pay check? I know I got one a few days ago......but other than a glitch in the check book who would know?

[TaxTheRichNow]

Great post, Marty. Please read the following thoughts knowing that irony dominates my personality. I am after all the guy who told you about Laura Penny, the most exquisitely ironic person I've ever encountered.

Anyhow, here we go.

I'm beginning to appreciate the deep detestation that repubicans have for amerika. We are after all a country that can blow off a national debate on health care, just so we can focus on Nancy Kerrigan's fucking knee, O.J.Simpson's murdered wife and Laci Peterson's rotting womb. Faux News has a copyright on the dead white woman franchise, and amerikans keep on buying.

Fifty years ago Walt Kelly diagnosed the root of all our troubles: We have met the enemy, and the enemy is us.

In the 2000 election, Bush the Lesser (and that's an achievement!) was touted as the candidate people would most enjoy having a beer with. Well, as my former baby sitter, Kitty Kelley, revealed, Junior is a mean drunk. But amerikans just saw the affable guy, the idiot who chewed tobacco at Harvard Busyness School and bitched about John Steinbeck being a goddamned commie.

Amerikans would prefer to have a beer with this nasty drunk. Amerikans love a rich thug.

So you see, having total contempt for "amerikans" is getting to be really easy. They manage combine maudlin sentimentality with towering narcissism in a grotesque national personality.

Maybe next week I'll join the repubican party.

[cylindar]

Well life is all bullshit anyways. So whatever!!

[chendri887]

"the sub-prime meltdown now dragging Americans into a painful recession, except for the nouveau gazillionaires insulated from it, is the godchild of the Reagan religion of faith-based deregulation, fundamentalist market worship, and a massive government-engineered transfer of wealth from the middle to the top."

Preach on, Brother Marty, preach on!

[Herrington]

In 1968 I was still a year too young for the draft. I was drafted anyway, by the John Birch Society. They talked at me, showed me propaganda films of beheadings by Middle Eastern communists. Somewhere, deep in my psyche, I turned and walked away. To this day I cannot articulate any thought that led me, other than that it was phony.

It has always been out there. Lies.

And periodically one must squeeze the pus out of the ragged ulcer that will not heal. Thanks for a brief relief Mr. Kaplan.

With perspective, and the ability to communicate in mostly complete sentences now, I can say I was there during the fledgling years of the Republican lie factory. Nixon had just invented ’Dirty Tricks’. Eisenhower was a conservative you see, but not a lying gutter snipe prick like Nixon. I even have wistful memories of Goldwater, a hard man, but not a liar. You could strike a deal with conservatives then.

But somewhere, somehow, the John Bircher propaganda like disinformation mill seized the imagination of the Republican party. Public education is enemy number one. They painted a picture of a world in which only the Republicans, only the 144,000 survive, through fear, intimidation and aggression. What a happy place!

This you see, reflects what is in the hearts of the men who facilitate it. They are so afraid of you, you and FDR, that they sought to re-educate you. They have succeeded enough to have visited their version of happiness on America since Reagan, and Iraq in the opening of the new century.

Consider that I, as barely a young man, was lucky enough to see the deception. How lucky must your sons and daughters be to see through a lie machine with 40 years more practice?

[streettabby]

How dare this charlatan pretend to offer us the "State of the Union"? If anything, we should sit him down and tie him to a chair and tell him OUR version of "State of the Union." And wave some hot fraternity brands in his face to make him sweat . . .

[xargaw]

I think the nation has reached the point that when "W" says something is bad, we know it is good. He credibility is totally shot and he is becoming more irrelevant everyday. America's goal is to simply get his term over with without another War. Wouldn't it be nice if he spent the next 12 months at the ranch and Cheney was undergoing some health procedures that kept him off work.

[kirotahoe]

what i think is so sad, is that mccain, romney,rudy, hillary and barak are all owned by the same folks who own the main stream media. it's possible edwards and hucklbee may not be bought yet, but let one of them get too close to winning and they will recieve an offer they can't refuse.i know this is incredibly cynical, but why else would all news networks be so biased against the same candidates. if media were independent, shouldn't there be some variety of opinion. but if you'll remember all the networks were telling us who would win before a single vote was cast in this primary season.
that's why they are so confused and surprised when their entrance and exit polls are incorrect.until there is public financing of all elections, no election will be fair or believable.

[PoliticalAnimal]

amen brother marty!

[kvass]

tell barbies boy georgio to sit down and shut up!
there is something about redundancy they must
at some point understand.

[cheshyre]

State of the Outrage? What outrage? If you're outraged it's because you're partisan, a radical, don't want to bring us together, a troublemaker and - worst crime of all - paying attention. But when I open my morning paper, I see no outrage. There's always some malcontents out there mouthing off about something. The dam is breaking? Who cares? No one until they're under water it seems. Keep screaming, Marty. But it seems America has no interest in any unflattering truths.

[Unsui]

Bingo.

[provgrays]

Wordy, even by your standards, but devastatingly true.