Holy Moles! Is Frank Luntz out for the count? Schadenfreude, not pleasure from the misfortunes of other, but great pleasure that a horrific monster who caused a great deal of misfortune for others has been brought down, permanently, I hope!
I do consider Frank Luntz to be a monster of evil.
"I've had a headache for six days now, and it doesn't go away," he tells me as we take our seats at a table downstairs. "I don't sleep for more than two or three hours at a time. I'm probably less healthy now than I have ever been in my life." He's not sure what to do. He's still going through the motions—giving speeches, going on television, conducting focus groups, and advising companies and politicians on how best to convey their message.
But beneath the surface, he says, is a roiling turmoil that threatens to consume him. He orders a chicken pot pie, then berates himself for not choosing something healthier. In recent months, he tells me, he has often contemplated quitting everything; he has spent long weeks alone, unable to sort out his thoughts. Frank Luntz, the master political manipulator, a man who has always evinced a cheery certainty about who's right and who's winning and how it all works, is a mess
.
Ding dong! The wicked witch is dead. Well, at least the witch is twitching as though in the throes of death, but not really dying, not renouncing the things that caused the crisis:
Luntz hasn't renounced his conservative worldview. His belief in unfettered capitalism and individual self-reliance appears stronger than ever. He hasn't become disillusioned with his very profitable career or his nomadic, solitary lifestyle. His complaints—that America is too divided, President Obama too partisan, and the country in the grip of an entitlement mentality that is out of control—seem pretty run-of-the-mill. But his anguish is too deeply felt not to be real. Frank Luntz is having some kind of crisis. I just can't quite get my head around it.
Bless you, Molly Ball. I adore you! But the man, the monster, is totally unable to realize that he has reaped the harvest of what he has vigorously sown:
It was what Luntz heard from the American people that scared him. They were contentious and argumentative. They didn't listen to each other as they once had. They weren't interested in hearing other points of view. They were divided one against the other, black vs. white, men vs. women, young vs. old, rich vs. poor. "They want to impose their opinions rather than express them," is the way he describes what he saw. "And they're picking up their leads from here in Washington." Haven't political disagreements always been contentious, I ask? "Not like this," he says. "Not like this."
Jaysus! Mr. Luntz! You sowed contention and argumentativeness to no other purpose but to divide our nation into hostile camps:
1. fond of or given to argument and dispute; disputatious; contentious: The law students were an unusually argumentative group.
2. of or characterized by argument; controversial: an argumentative attitude toward political issues.
3. Law. arguing or containing arguments suggesting that a certain fact tends toward a certain conclusion.
Kind of creepy to be in bed with the ghost of Ayn Rand, spawning strange, genetically-modified political entities, isn't it, Frankie Boyo?
There’s been a lot of talk lately about “job creators,” a phrase begotten by Frank Luntz, the right-wing propaganda guru, on the ghost of Ayn Rand. The rich deserve our gratitude as well as everything they have, in other words, and all the rest is envy.