I'm listening to Bill O Reily crack wise about how the President is blowing it. I've just spent the whole day almost 12 hrs, driving in my cab, listening to Laura Ingram and Glen Beck. And at some point today something occurred to me. All of these guys are happily engaged in what I like to call The Great Republican Minstrel Show. In the case of Laura Ingram and Glenn Beck, there's no such thing as truth: instead of information and healthy debate, there is the Colonial Conservative Imaginatorium.
Of Course, Bill O'Riley has a point: our prim and proper chosen Democratic leadership do indeed spend far too much time wringing their trembling hands, hiding from the glare of 24 hour cable news and worrying about the coming November Winds of change, nine months away.
And yet, it is the very clever Chautauqua Approach: the feeling Tea Party organizers instill in Middle Class Mayberry RFD America combined with the overall absurdity of a Tambo and Bones meets Beavis and Butthead extended old boy Guffaw, that Hee Haw populists pupeteer an otherwise innocent blue, middle and upper middle class into believing they Are being educated as well as Listened to.
There is the question: How do you fight a big lie? The big lie is that peculiar body of instant facts constructed and delivered by, oh, Tom Tancredo for instance. I'm only a cab driver but, to me, when Rudy Giuliani or Sean Hannity drone on and on in a series of skits and sound bites manipulated into an instant truth about Obama and The Homeland, I for one don't get it. In fact between Glen Beck's flattulent self-congratulation and Sarah Palin's Oh So Cute Polyanna-mania, its no wonder Mitch McConnel and Olympia Snowe jump as high a they do when this Imaginatorium produces its Popular Undisputed Truth. These guys would scare Jesus, Mary and Joseph.
They love the power of words and flash: real ideas are of course damned to the dust bin of anti-intellectual piety. Afterall, the Ghost of William F Buckley Jr. might rise from the grave and strike them dead if they spent as much time thinking of something rational instead of going for the Minstrel Spectacle of exaggeration.
And with Health Care reform: The American People did not reject anything other than the theatrical vanity of a fun house mirror on wheels which both Republicans and Ben Nelson and Joe Liberman and all the other pale blue doggie Dumbocrat-clones shuffled back and forth, with nearly everyone desparately seeking opportunity and a photo-op.
Oh, and by the way, how do you fight a big lie? The answer is you don't. You Sing a much bigger and simpler song of Common Sense. What we got going on here in this Land of the Free, is more like a hymn of Manifest Destiny and Privilege, all dressed up in a three piece suit spitting and spinning pretend knowledge.
Progressivism isn't the Poison described by Mr Beck anymore than The Tea Party is neccessarily, a euphimism for the KKK in loafers and Opie Taylor naivety. In fact both extremes are part of the same mystical, magical warm fuzzy feeling of childish and immature self-absorbtion.
The kind that comes from drooling while playing with one's toes and discovering toe-jam with the wide eyed entusiasm of a virgin on his wedding night.