I drew a pretty negative reaction when I wrote:
I have yet to meet an academic over 50 who doesn’t think that Bobo Brooks is a thoughtful, reasonable conservative with lots of sensible ideas.
When I said “meet”, I meant in everyday life, not at Netroots nation or on the internet, so none of you count as people I’ve met. The fact is that my parents, my parents’ friends, my aunts and uncles on the NPR side of my family, and all of my colleagues like David Brooks and the Snooze Hour and, to some extent, Tom Friedman. It could be that people I know are unusually stupid. In fact, I’ve always suspected that this is the case.
There are those that say there are bigger problems than the fact that so many tote-baggers think that Bobo and Charlie Rose and Tom Friedman aren’t full of shit. I disagree.
The fiction that George W. Bush was a smart, serious leader was toxic to our national well-being. And the fiction that Mike Enzi and Jim Cooper and George Miller are serious health care thinkers continues to be toxic. Assholes like Bobo perpetuate this bullshit and when otherwise intelligent people take these assholes seriously, the bullshit gets perpetuated that much more.
Glenn Beck may be a fraud and a clown, and some of his followers may become domestic terrorists. But he’s not going to get us into a war with Iran or North Korea or Russia. Kaplan, TNR, and the Weekly Standard might, if and when we get another Republican president.