Jon Stewart. Sam Seder. The Onion. Jon Stewart again. They've been called out, they've been asked to participate in this mass-media force-fed farcical debate on the "War on Christmas." And what are they doing?
They're mocking it. They're laughing at it. They're treating this like a massive prank perpetrated by FOX News and the most extreme of the wingnuts.
And it's brilliant. More on the flip...
What makes this tactic one of the most ingenious I've ever seen is that it completely nullifies the Republican strategy of sophistry: Take a conflict (real or fictional), adopt a position that seems reasonable, draw the battle lines in ridiculous ways, and immediately paint anyone who doesn't agree with them,
even about where those battle lines are properly drawn, as an extremist. Against the Bush administration's war strategy? You clearly hate America and are undermining the troops, because obviously undermining the troops would be an effective way of opposing Bush's agenda! Against the Medicare prescription drug boondoggle? You obviously hate seniors and want them to have to choose between starving and getting their lifesaving prescriptions! Against Bush's tax cuts for the ultra-rich? You obviously want to take money from hard-working Americans and spend spend spend in government boondoggles!
You get the idea. Well, here's one where the Republicans made themselves incredibly vulnerable, because the entire effort is just so silly, and not all the Republicans got themselves in marching order in time. Invent a "War on Christmas" being perpetrated by 'secularist' forces, and connect anyone saying "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas" with these forces. (Never mind that the #1 perpetrator of this phony baloney, Fox News, and the White House itself, both seemed to prefer "Happy Holidays" - as has been linked many times, so you all know this.)
Now the Republican sophists are quite used to doing this and expecting the Left to squirm - to try to argue from within the artificial constraints of the artificial arguments perpetrated by the Right. They count on it; it's how they've controlled national debate for quite a while. Sophistry is the main weapon in their arsenal.
But something changed. Either they reached too far with their new little mini-war they spun, or maybe the Left's finding its courage has progressed to this point - but the Left decided, this time, they aren't going to play the wingnut's reindeer games. And they've made a complete mockery of it.
The right, for its part, responded with horror. Powerline, that no-comments-allowed bastion of specious argumentation, linked to Brian Maloney's screaming about how horrible Sam Seder was and how he is taking CNN down with him. Wingnut Mike Bates decries the lack of seriousness taken to this phoney-baloney assault on Christmas. I could go on, and on and on.
What is this telling us? They are stunned. Horrified. How could the Left refuse to join in their reindeer games? What will they do now that the Left treats this farce like a farce?
And there, my friends, is why this is brilliant. By simply refusing to take it seriously, the Left has done two things:
- They have refused to allow the wingnuts to control the national debate, allowing attention to continue to focus on Plamegate, DeLay, Frist, and the "culture of corruption" being exposed, to say nothing about the important issues affecting America like the war, like ScAlito, and like the Patriot Act.
- They have successfully marginalized and discredited the people who are attempting to feed us this line of bull, reducing their ability to 'cry wolf' at the next fictitious assault on basic civil liberties by the Big Bad Liberals.
This is a strategy that the Left needs to employ more often. It should only be employed when the Right tries to pull stunts like this, of course; overuse could be dangerous. But in cases like this, indeed, in most cases where the Right tries to make a "culture war" tempest in a teapot, it's the absolute best strategy.
Don't be afraid to say the emperor wears no clothes. Treat a farce like a farce, no matter who in the corporate mass media is trying to make it seem important. It just might shame the media into pursuing something else... like, just maybe, actual journalism.
