Atrios reads Bobo so you don’t have to (italics is Bobo, non-italics is Atrios):
I was also struck, as in New Hampshire and Iowa, by the mood of this year’s rallies. Republican audiences this year want a restoration. America once had strong values, they believe, but we have gone astray. We’ve got to go back and rediscover what we had. Heads nod enthusiastically every time a candidate touches this theme.
I agree with the sentiment, but it makes for an incredibly backward-looking campaign. I sometimes wonder if the Republican Party has become the receding roar of white America as it pines for a way of life that will never return.
And never was, unless what you’re pining for is segregation and lack of rights for women. Which, for some, is what they’re pining for, though most are just indulging in Leave It To Beaver fantasies.
If you read Corey Robin’s “The Reactionary Mind”, you’ll see a convincing argument that conservatism is mostly about preserving power for the aristoracy du jour and that nostalgia for a time that never was is one of its most powerful weapons.
It is no coincidence that the end of Jim Crow happened exactly before the beginning of an era of conservative dominance. Most revolutions only end the power and privilege of a reasonably small number of elites, but the Civil Rights Act ended (to some extent!) an apartheid system that millions of white southerners had supported. That creates fertile ground for conservative indoctrination.
I suspect Atrios is right, that many Republicans are just indulging in Leave It To Beaver fantasies that are not openly racist, and some might even wish explicitly for a less racist version of how they remember the 1950s, but a lot of what makes Leave It To Beaver so appealing is that everyone knew their place.
redshirt
One of the more delicious ironies of this is today’s “Conservatives” are arch-radicals, intent on ripping down everything built over the past 100 or so years, whereas the so called “Liberals” are now tasked mainly with Conserving the gains of the past.
gogol's wife
I wish Leave It to Beaver didn’t have to carry all this baggage. It was a great show. It has nothing in common with Newt Gingrich & Co.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Does BoBo spell out what “values” he personally has in mind? I never get the sense from him that he much cares about abortion or fears the gai. I don’t think too many heads are really nodding that they want to go back to pre-New Deal America, a few cranks who most likely don’t understand how many different ways their own lives are not only easier but possible because of New Deal/Great Society programs. Since the only thing the Republican Party really stands for is cutting taxes, when were these “values” in place?
Villago Delenda Est
A mythical past that we must return to was a strong ideological element of a political movement some 80 years ago in a Central European country.
Ripley
Romney/Haskell 2012! VICTORY, ya big goof.
Schlemizel
If you lived in an all white neighborhood in the 50’s & worked in an all white, all male company you know there was no racism or sexism because those topics never came up! It wasn’t until we started letting melonin and estrogen enhanced Americans into OUR spaces that we had any problems. If they would just be good little boys & girls, shut up and accept the crumbs we offered there would once again be no racism or sexism in this great country of ours!
gogol's wife
@Ripley:
I want Eddie at the top of the ticket. That I could get behind.
TX Expat
Don’t get me wrong, I love living in Baton Rouge and am not planning on moving any time soon, but the Civil Rights Act only ended apartheid de jure. It’s still alive and well de facto. For example, the schools here are still segregated. I went to law school with people who had never been (and still weren’t) in classrooms with people of color. Pretty shocking to this West Texan.
Until we figure out a way to do something along the lines of a truth and reconciliation something or the other, these types of racist appeals will be potent political organizing devices.
geg6
Yeah, gotta thank you, Doug, for forcing me to buy the book just so I could participate in the book club. Got it last Friday and I had to finally put it down Tuesday night because I have been reading it voraciously every day after work. I stopped myself only because I have gotten so far ahead of the book club and I really didn’t want to do that.
This is just so, so true and obvious that I’m stunned that I never really had thought about it in just that way. And it goes across the entire spectrum of the conservative movement, each in their own little ways. The neocons with their “American Century” thinking, the Confederates with their yearning for their imaginary antebellum South, the vulture capitalist wannabes who think they will all be Mitt Romney some day, and the Christianists who yearn for George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Benjamin Franklin to be transformed into Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. And the worst of the bunch are the libertarians, who are every bit as fantastically inclined as the Christianists. I, personally, see little light between them. Both, just listening to the little voices in their heads, completely out of their minds and living in a fantasy world.
bobbo
Everyone on Leave it to Beaver knew their place. Also, too, everyone was white.
Villago Delenda Est
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
As more and more people who were old enough to live in those times die off (and their numbers are rapidly diminishing, just as those who experience in person the Great Depression and WWII) the living memory will fade and be replaced only by boring history.
Then we’ll get to relive it, even though if you bother to crack open the book, and comprehend, you’ll quickly learn that it’s all totally preventable.
dmsilev
Of course, for some odd reason they don’t want to return to Eisenhower-era tax rates and unionization rates.
Strange, that.
schrodinger's cat
Who is Beaver? What are you guys talking about? I has no idea.
gogol's wife
Everyone on every television show was white, except the “Amos and Andy” show. Why does Leave It To Beaver have to take all the criticism? It was actually a quite humane and liberal-minded show, within the historical constraints of its time.
Dork
Leave It To Beaver sounds like a good name for a lesbian pr0n movie.
Waldo
@gogol’s wife: I agree. Loved it as a kid, and my kids enjoyed watching the reruns just a few years ago.
Not to get too carried away, but I think the sense of innocence associated with the show was genuine. How else to explain the fact that the show introduced us to characters named Whitey and Beaver without a hint of irony.
gogol's wife
@schrodinger’s cat:
Theodore Cleaver, a little boy nicknamed “the Beaver,” on a family situation comedy of the early 1960s. The show (like quite a few others, Father Knows Best, Donna Reed, etc., etc.) presented the perfect nuclear family, working dad and housewife mom. But it did it with more wit and tenderness than most. I loved it. So shoot me.
Punchy
I fully support womens’ rights. The right to cook, clean, and make me a SAMMICH!
MikeJ
Freddie de Cordova was a giant, wasn’t he? Leave it to Beaver, Burns & Allen, Jack Benny, The Smothers Brothers, and of course that short lived thing he did with Carson.
Violet
@bobbo:
It’s been ages since I’ve watched Leave It To Beaver. Was there a maid or a gardener or shoeshine guy or anyone who was other than white? Or were all roles on the show filled by white actors?
IM
@Villago Delenda Est:
You are talking about Hungary, right?
a imaginary past has been a part of romantic conservatism since cato the younger or so.
gogol's wife
Okay, I promise not to continue this, but here’s a sample bit of dialogue from Leave It To Beaver. Beaver is doing his homework, and his father comes in. Beaver says, “Dad, was Napoleon a liberator or a dictator?” Dad says, “Well, son, first he liberated people, and then he dictated to them.” Beaver replies, “Man, he had it made!”
Krankor
Do they really want to go back to the depraved filth that was Leave It To Beaver?
I mean, this is the show wherein June Cleaver once remarked, “Ward, you were awfully hard on the beaver last night.”
redshirt
I’ve been pondering lately how much of the Republican craziness of the last 20 or so years is a response to the “PC Movement”, which arguably has been enormously successful in changing many aspects of our society.
b-psycho
Yes.
/end column
Brachiator
@bobbo:
Kim Hamilton, the only black performer to appear on the show, haz a sad.
Contemporary TV is not always better. And the show was hardly reactionary in is politics, if it even had any politics. As someone once said, “Ward, you’re being too hard on the Beaver.”
eric
The confusion in responding to this is failing to distinguish two elements of the modern GOP. The first are the 1% who pine for the Lochner, gilded-age of unfettered capitalism. There is not an emotional or psychological nostalgia, but a ruthless desire to acquire more and more power. The second group are the ones Thomas Frank writes about. These people long for the past for a different reason. In some sense they are having emotional and psychological reactions to a very real sense that their lives are less than they otherwise could be in the land of opportunity. These are the folks to whom Fox News and other propoganda outlets direct their bilge. These people are class un-conscious, in that they viscerally “understand” that they are effed, but refuse to accept the obvious and correct arguments in favor of something else — often, the something else is the “other,” whether black, gay, liberal, elite, scientist, just something other than class. So, people look backward to a “better” time as a device to avoid the conclusion that class is the root of their ills. They fantasize and fetishize a past that would have taken the others out of their paths to success and membership in the “rich.”
schrodinger's cat
BTW the funniest line in the Bobo column, that John Boehner is one his 12 year old son’s heroes, I mean really? Is that even possible or is Bobo making stuff up.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
Not sure I agree with this.
My recollection of the legislative history of the 1940s and 1950s (for example as recounted in Master of the Senate) is that it was a very conservative era, but in a bipartisan manner because of the alliance between conservative Republicans and conservative (mostly Southern) Democrats. Not much has changed since then except the party labels have been shuffled around so now most of the conservatives are wearing red rather than being split between the red and blue teams.
What in retrospect appears to be the anomaly in terms of “conservative dominance” (or lack thereof) was the narrow window of time during which Jim Crow laws were nullified, but before the backlash set in deep enough to change the dynamic in Congress back to being a very conservative institution.
Cat Lady
Racism of course explains a lot of the nostalgia, but a lot of it is also for a time when corporations knew their place too – there was an implicit understanding that you would work at the same company for life and get raises, promotions and benefits – especially health care and a pension – and make enough to raise a family, buy a car and afford to send a couple of kids to a public college on one income, while houses were by and large filled with mothers at home and kids playing in the streets. That’s the world I remember living in as a kid, and it all changed in the 80s when Wall Street was let off its leash and ran amok. Of course I don’t think that’s what Bobo’s getting at.
srv
With all these re-imaginings out of Hollywood, someone should do an updated Leave it to Beaver. Wally goes hippy and runs to Canada to escape the draft, Eddie gets drafted and KIA, June turns into an alcoholic, Ward’s job gets automated…
And the Beave turns into Bobo.
Or maybe that’s what Mad Men is about.
MonkeyBoy
The good old days when unions were large and powerful or the good old days before unions existed?
(large US labor unions basically came to existence in the late 1800s in reaction to the robber barons setting up the transcontinental railroads. I recommend Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America)
Krankor
@Violet: Who needs a maid, gardner or shoeshiner when you have June Cleaver? Nobody… NOBODY pushed a mop like June.
Seriously though, only one black actor ever appeared on LitB with a speaking role. She played a maid. Of course.
gogol's wife
@srv:
This already happened in a sense, through rumors that spread in the late 1960s, that Jerry Mathers, the actor who plays Beaver, had been killed in Vietnam, and that Ken Osmond (Eddie) was a porn star. None of it was true, but it clearly expressed some collective desire to muck up the perfect world of the Cleavers.
Beauzeaux
@IM:
I think in 1930 the reference would be to the rise of the Nazi party in Germany.
Svensker
@schrodinger’s cat:
Bobo has a 12 year old son? Oh, the poor kid. Hope he’s not as big a whiny dick as his dad.
eric
also you have correlation / causation confusion. you have the anti-bible sup ct decisions in the mid sixties, womens rights in the mid sixties, nation of islam mid sixties, pedigogical changes in 70s, sexual freedom and drug use 60s. The Right then links these undisputed facts to the other undisputed fact that American standard of living and advancement have declined . The correlation became (edit) causation and those things become anethma to the Right,
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Villago Delenda Est: I get the Tea Partiers and the head nodders. From the fetus-fetishists to more-or-less conscious racists who think all their tax money goes to them. I could swing a dead rat at any of my family reunions and hit five, from age forty to ninety. I’m mostly curious about BoBo himself. He’s an idiot, but he’s well educated (as I recall from the days I actually used to read him, he doesn’t go two weeks without telling you so) and well read, like Sullivan, a Wise Fool. He knows that he and the Tea Partiers don’t really share any “values”, that if Republicans actually ran on the George Will/David Brooks/ Paul Ryan platform, they’d lose by double digits, but he pretends, here, that he shares their longing for a return to days of “values”. I’d just love to see him have to explain this to someone who wasn’t worried about good manners
MarkJ
@dmsilev: They’ve been deluded into thinking that the broadly shared middle-class prosperity they loved about the mid-20th century will return if we just get back to whatever fundamental “values” we had back then.
It wasn’t the “values” that created the broadly shared prosperity – it was economic policy. Strong unions, sound tax policy, and public investments in infrastructure and education did it. Yet they keep voting for politicians who are against all those things. Getting the gays back in the closet and the blacks and women out of the workplace will not bring that era back.
Chris
@redshirt:
“Political correctness” has to be the most contrived synonym ever invented for “good manners.” I learned most of the things they consider “politically correct” as a kid, either from parents or from life experiences. Except it wasn’t called that, it was just called not being a dick.
(Is PC supposed to be a term invented by those who advocate it, or a derogatory term used by the cons to denigrate it? I’m 24 and I can’t remember a time when the words “PC” didn’t carry a derogatory content).
Montysano
Late last night I put Dennis G’s Atwater post on my FB wall, and then awoke this morning to a symphony of butthurt. “We’re not racist, we just want our country back!”
Self awareness: they don’t haz it.
IM
@Beauzeaux:
I was joking. You could find the same romantic conservative of nationalistic in a lot of eastern european countries then Like Hungary.
rlrr
@Montysano:
“We’re not racist, we just want our country back!”
From who? Would be my response…
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Cat Lady:
My memory too.
Looking back, it seems to me that the post-WW2 economic prosperity enjoyed by the US was bound to end at some point, given how contigent it was on what conditions were like at the end of the war and how favorable those conditions were for us but in a non-renewable fashion, and much of US politics since then has been a struggle over who gets the shiv as the economy slows down, and who gets blamed for it.
handsmile
Angry DougJ:
As the currently reigning sovereign (or perhaps just the Ward Cleaver) of the illustrious BJ Book Club, have you yet declared when us plebeians will next assemble to air our ‘greements and grievances with Dr. Robin’s diagnosis?
scav
@rlrr: I certainly don’t see their name engraved on the keychain.
eric
@Montysano: but as i note in my two posts above, for some it really isnt necessarily racism in the “superior-inferior” race way (though for some it most certainly is). The attribute the correct observation that america is in decline with other correct observations about cultural changes and assume causation such that if we got rid of the cultural changes the good things would come back.
Richard
The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.
-John Kenneth Galbraith
gogol's wife
@Chris:
My first encounter with the term was in the context of Stalinist Russia. So I think that it was transferred from that context to lend a derogatory cast to contemporary American liberal efforts to expunge offensive language from public discourse. In my experience, it originally meant following the (Communist) Party line — to be politically correct was a good thing, since it kept you out of Siberia. Now it’s been trivialized into a label for the resistance to sexist, racist, etc. language.
Gust Avrakotos
The last sentence of this blog post is quite good. Especially the very last phrase. “….a lot of what makes Leave It To Beaver so appealing is that everyone knew their place.”
I think that’s bang on and says a lot about the mindset of GOPers these days.
gex
@Brachiator: Where shows like Leave it to Beaver have their strongest influence is in the “family values” crowd. The early era TV shows presented a family as being one specific way, ignoring all the others. It has strongly contributed to the conception of “traditional marriage” that conservatives keep invoking.
ETA: Which of course was not exclusive to Leave it to Beaver.
schrodinger's cat
@Svensker: Here is the paragraph where Bobo mentions his son
Villago Delenda Est
@MarkJ:
Yup, just this. What they’re pining for is a real past that the people they vote for think was a mistake, and are determined that it never be restored.
MikeJ
@Chris:
I don’t think anybody has every found a cite of it being used non ironically. Originally it was used as an in joke among the left, poking gentle fun at themselves for over earnestness. Then the right picked it up and the gentle fun was gone.
redshirt
@Chris: They made it derogatory. But it really was a a big deal – from handicap entrances and access mandated by law to not being able to say “Nigger” anymore, or lots of other words, I wonder if this was the final straw that pushed the Wingnuts over the brink. Certainly the timing is close – with late 80’s/early 90’s peak of the “PC Movement”, followed shortly after by Newt and the Bombthrowers.
Schlemizel
Actually it could! If jobs were once again limited (mostly) to white christian men there would be a labor shortage that would drive up wages. And, having eviscerated the safety net, the cost of government would not go up – in fact the inflated wages would increase revenue to the government without the need for tax increases.
See! Its a win-win!
geg6
@Violet:
Blindingly white. Not even a token, like Buckwheat on the Little Rascals or Rochester on the Jack Benny Show. There may have been an extra or something that I don’t remember, but that show (and its clones) was whiter than I, with my English/Irish/German ethnicity, am.
rikryah
they long for the delusion of the world of Mad Men.
The Ancient Randonneur
I think Katrina Richardson writing at Salon.com probably has it right. Although she’s writing about television, it could just as well be commentary on how civil rights is handled in “post-racial” America. I mean, Barack Obama IS the President.
Besides, who wants to talk about uncomfortable things when the mortgage payment is due and the price of gas just went up–again.
Cargo
I will happily go back to the 1950s if it means a return of Eisenhower-era tax rates.
eric
@schrodinger’s cat: singularly unbelievable. there is nothing heroic about Boehner. Nothing. He is not a visionary. He is not charismatic. He is not a leader. In fact, all of the evidence suggests that he is a non-entity of the highest order. I would want to know what his son admires about Boehner, because, other than tanning and drinking, Pelosi is twice the man Boehner is.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@schrodinger’s cat:
That’s just sad. It says something about Brooks that he thinks how a professional politician treats the son of one of the most (if undeservedly) influential political columnists/pundits in the country is actually revealing.
geg6
@srv:
LOL!
And where might I deliver your internets?
Paul in KY
@schrodinger’s cat: That’s got to be one lame kid, if that is true.
Edit: Would assume the kid is just BSing the old man, Eddie Haskell style.
scav
Can’t we all just see them working together, weaving their little effigies resembling B&T-TV-iconic replicas of family life out of palm fronds and anxiously waiting for the plane to be attracted overhead, waiting for the great trickle down of cargo?
Villago Delenda Est
@IM:
No, if I were talking about Hungary, I’d have said “right this fracking minute”, not “80 years ago”.
But point well taken about the pervasiveness of the mythical past we must return to meme being very well worn over the centuries.
eemom
what a fool belieeeeves he seeeees
the wise man has the power
to reason away
(just cuz I CARE, DougJ)
FlipYrWhig
@Chris: I’m 40 and was in college at the inception of “political correctness” as a term. IMHO it’s supposed to evoke totalitarian regimes from dystopian fiction where the citizenry is monitored for thoughtcrimes, crossed with polite euphemisms like “differently abled” and “native American.” It’s supposed to smack of bureaucracy, social engineering, stuffiness and guilt — by sounding like something a guilty white liberal would earnestly say. That’s why Bill Maher’s talk show was called Politically Incorrect, because it was supposed to be all about confrontation and common sense rather than artificially imposed sensitivity.
schrodinger's cat
@eric: My guess is, Bobo Jr does not even know who Boehner is, this anecdote was made up by Bobo at Applebee’s salad bar.
Seanly
@eric:
Yeah, pretty much this.
Though there are still plenty of rascist crackers out there. As well as folks who are blinded by single dog-whistle issues like abortion or opposition to any environmental regulations.
joes527
@schrodinger’s cat: Dude. It takes a manly man to cry.
(I would say that having the orange man as your hero is a sign that he need to have serious therapy, but just being Bobo’s son already puts the poor kid in the high risk pool)
Elizabelle
@Paul in KY:
So Bobo has spawned one lame kid.
Glad to not have coffee anywhere near the laptop.
(For me, the juxtaposition of Tupac and Boehner: shades of Boogeyman Lee Atwater’s Strom Thurmond/BB King fixation.)
schrodinger's cat
@geg6: How are you holding up? How is Henry?
FlipYrWhig
What gets me about this Brooks lament is that he’s pretending that it’s just now occurring to him that the Republican party represents white nostalgia and paranoia. No shit. It’s been that way for 50 years. It’s called the Southern Strategy, you git.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Newt Gingrich on MSNBC just now: “People power will beat money power, every time.” I wonder if Markos will sue.
Angry DougJ
@handsmile:
I’ll check with Cory later today.
Angry DougJ
@eemom:
Great song, right? I drove seven hours with the radio on yesterday, and I heard some doozies.
Stillwater
@FlipYrWhig: The alternative – that he isn’t pretending – is too horrific to even think about.
Satanicpanic
Nobody says they want to go back to the days when life was like I Love Lucy, I wonder why that is?
eric
@Seanly: It also explains the amazingly heated reaction to affirmative action. Here is how the arguments go:
Liberal: You are getting screwed, and real health care reform would (correctly) make you screwed less.
Conservative #1: You are not getting screwed
or (since #1 is getting harder and harder to make)
Conservative #2: Yes, you are getting screwed, but the Liberal remedy is derived from the same misguided cultural values that have cause you to get screwed.
that is the form for EVERY ideological battle. Because the Right hates the “cultural values,” the Rentiers make sure to cast every possible good change in those cultural terms. So you have people voting against their interests and against the facts because they see the facts coming from the same people who push the cultural values they hate, such that those people and those facts can never be trusted.
Mark S.
@schrodinger’s cat:
Um, okay.
How do you have anything resembling a meaningful discussion if you signal security after 10 seconds? How is this not Gingrich’s fault?
The whole paragraph is pure gibberish.
Dave
I’m just not sure just who is being nostalgic. I’m 57 and my period of nostalgia is the 60s and 70s. I only saw LITB as reruns. I think most people, including Brooks, are not remembering fisrt hand reality but a false memory of reality. Maybe it is only the leftists that are nostalgic for the 60s.
Paul in KY
@The Ancient Randonneur: Read story. At bottom of the Salon page, they have a link that says ‘More Kartina Richardson…’
They have either mispelled her name, or she is actually named ‘Kartina’.
Being Salon, I go with the typo.
Villago Delenda Est
@Chris:
PC was around before you were born, but as indicated by MikeJ, it was introduced to this country by leftists making fun of their fellow leftists for being overly earnest.
I recall using it in 1990 when talking to some fellow UofO grads at a service station along I-5 in Northern California, commenting on their “politically correct” Duck bumper sticker. This was pre Nike fashion monster Ducks, mind you.
Of course, the morons of the right grabbed it, and not having any sense of subtlety, and projecting their own mindless authoritarianism on it, turned it into the derisive term we’re more familiar with now.
JGabriel
Grifters United:
Yee-haw! Grifting squared!
.
Hippie Joe
America did indeed have something once. It was faith in the future and that feeling that things were generally getting better. Maybe it was because I was younger and less cynical back then. But things seemed to feel better before Wall Street sucked all the oxygen out of the air.
EconWatcher
@Chris:
Benjamin Franklin
angry Doug;
Don’t you want to give credit to Michael McDonald?
wrb
@MikeJ:
That’s how I remember it, in the 70s. We do not describe jelly beans as colored candies. They are candies of color.
geg6
@Cargo:
Says someone who could only be a white male.
lacp
“My son, whose heroes include John Boehner and Tupac Shakur…” Anybody ever catch the YouTube of that tour they did together?
JGabriel
@schrodinger’s cat:
“Daddy, when I grow up I wanna cry just like John Boner. Am I pronouncing that right?”
.
gogol's wife
@lacp:
This is so transparently false. Where are the Times fact-checkers. Brooks is such a liar.
Paul in KY
@Elizabelle: Glad I didn’t fry your keyboard!
I’ll be here all week. Try the stroganoff…
schrodinger's cat
Bobo specializes in selling gibberish neatly wrapped in bow, all in the service of his GOP overlords. What I don’t understand is, why he has any credibility among totebaggers.
scav
@JGabriel: Just saw that too: Newtie’s got a hesitant pucker and is moving in, not sure if to go for the cheek or the smacker. HouLA!
handsmile
@Paul in KY: , @schrodinger’s cat:
I have less trouble believing that a 12-year old raised in the BoBo household would claim Captain Orange as one of his heroes.
What is truly beyond the pale, so to speak, is the claim that Tupac Shakur is another. Gangsta jus’ ain’t played in the BoBo crib.
ETA: Eric (#61) Terrific last line!
redshirt
@EconWatcher: I recall being forced to go to seminars where the appropriate way to ask a member of the opposite sex for sex was “discussed” in detail – it went like “May I put my hand on your shoulder” and move on down the line.
It was very weird for me, but I’m super tolerant. I can only imagine how the Wingnuts took it – and remember! That first “PC” generation is now taking the lead in many areas of the national discourse – your Erick Son of Erick’s and Chunky Bobo’s.
geg6
@schrodinger’s cat:
I’m trying mightily to not think about tomorrow.
Henry is old and tired. He eats almost nothing and drinks only slightly more. I’ve been scritching his ears and telling him how much I love him A LOT. Tomorrow will be awful, but it’s definitely time.
Thanks for asking. This is why I love BJ.
Mouse Tolliver
Here’s the thing about nostalgia. It has a way of making you miss things — even if they were terrible. Example. I spent most of my teens as a depressed, suicidal basketcase, and I hated all forms of pop music. But I still can’t help but feel nostalgic for those days any time I hear a Milli Vanilli song. “Good times, good times!” as Bill McNeal would say. Whatever nostalgia is, it can’t be healthy.
gex
@geg6: Don’t forget straight!
Paul in KY
@lacp: He might have been one of the backup dancers when Tupac did that song about oompa loopas in the hood.
‘Didn’t have to drank my OJ, today was a good day’
Satanicpanic
@lacp: Oh great, first it was MLK, now the right is going to start claiming Tupac was a conservative.
JGabriel
@Chris:
I first heard it in the 80’s. It was a leftie in-joke, but more sardonic. For instance, if some wingnut was using the n-word, a leftie might say, “Well, that wasn’t politically correct now, was it?”
It was basically a dry way of calling someone a dick, or, as others have noted, a light way of mocking minor liberal infractions like drinking Coors.
.
artem1s
@gogol’s wife:
you want W back? been there, done that.
Violet
OT–There’s that number again:
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/18/g-o-p-in-congress-get-blame-for-gridlock/
Mark S.
It’s like Bobo used a random name generator for his son’s heroes. How about:
My son, whose heroes include George Will and Easy-E
My son, whose heroes include Dennis Hastert and Marilyn Manson
My son, whose heroes include Hubert Humphrey and Justin Bieber
JGabriel
@Mouse Tolliver:
That’s not nostalgia, Mouse. That’s masochism.
.
FlipYrWhig
@redshirt: We had a part of college orientation that consisted of skits whose lessons were invariably things like “the proper term is ‘women,’ not ‘girls’.” I guess some people my age, and their parents when they heard about it, thought that was grievously awful, and never recovered. Then one day they had to hear “push one for English,” and they became part of the Republican base ever after.
MildlyAmusedRainbowPerson
I suspect what Mini-Brooks actually said was “Daddy, that Bainer is one of my heroes”.
schrodinger's cat
@geg6: Virtual hugs
{{{{geg6}}}}
MonkeyBoy
I can’t see Bobo himself yearning for a return to the 50s or early 60s, though he will pimp this desire in his role of concierge to the aristocracy because that lets him feel that he is one of them.
Bobo is Jewish and proper WASPs would not hang out with Jews and had rules in place to limit their presence in elite universities.
Paul in KY
@handsmile: You are probably right. Being home-schooled (I assume), he’s probably never even heard of Tupac.
rlrr
@Violet:
27 percent say Republicans in Congress are making the same effort to work things out with the president.
Sweet Jesus, how is it possible to go through life that stupid?
MildlyAmusedRainbowPerson
@Mouse Tolliver:
I’m nostalgic for a time when Dana Loesch didn’t drop trou on CNN and Ross Douthat wasn’t allowed to cock his leg on the NYT’s rapidly disintegrating reputation.
Unhealthy, I know.
joes527
@JGabriel: Sarah who? The name sounds familiar, but I can’t quite place it.
gaz
@rlrr:
The Weimar Republic
Paul in KY
@geg6: You are a strong person who loves Henry & will do what is necessary. Doesn’t make it any easier, though. He knows it is time.
God bless you for being a caring & responsible pet owner.
JGabriel
@rlrr:
Trust funds and inheritances.
.
rlrr
@redshirt:
I recall being forced to go to seminars where the appropriate way to ask a member of the opposite sex for sex was “discussed” in detail
There is no right or wrong way, the important part is to accept the answer will sometimes be “No.”
geg6
@gex:
Oooopsie! Yes, a straight, white male.
Donut
@Villago Delenda Est:
Dude, that’s still a Godwin foul.
Dr. Squid
This is not a new idea. (released 1994)
rev.paperboy
@schrodinger’s cat:
If Bobo’s 12 year old son really does consider Bohner one of his heroes, I guessing that is a kid who gets beaten up a lot after school. By kids a couple of grades behind him. Another future neocon pundit in the making, just like George Will.
FlipYrWhig
@JGabriel: Or ordering Domino’s pizza, because they were pro-life.
When I was in grad school I realized that the safest thing to do socially/conversationally was to presume that everyone I met was both gay and vegetarian, and only change that default when faced with incontrovertible proof.
Raven
@geg6: I’m sorry to hear this but it is for the best. It’s the second best thing ya’ll can do for him and you’ve already done the first.
Violet
@rlrr:
I dunno, but the 27% is always there. Romney, as the GOP candidate, will get a minimum of 27%. That’s the absolute floor.
Paul in KY
@MildlyAmusedRainbowPerson: Maybe he said ‘Daddy, I really like boners!’ and Bobo has surpressed that statement into John Boehner being one of his son’s ‘heros’.
Judas Escargot
@redshirt:
There was an SNL skit circa 1994-5 that played out this scenario, exactly. Melanie Hutsell and someone else.
I’d go look for it, but can’t get to video sites at the moment (Praise the Company).
Calouste
@JGabriel:
This one is even better, talking about lack of self awareness the depth of the Marianas trench:
Palin:
There’s an ‘s’ missing in that quote…
wrb
@rlrr:
Some disagreed, at one time.
I recall a discussion in maybe 1980 with some young feminists who contended that the only permissible way was to directly ask for sex as anything smacking of romancin’ was manipulative and oppressive, an to employ the coercive force of the customs and habits invented by the male power structure.
Schlemizel
@JGabriel:
You may have found the key that unlocks this riddle! Bobo has overheard the boy taking about how much he enjoys his boner and assumes the Orange Crushed is who the kid is talking about.
Brachiator
@gex:
Don’t agree with this much at all. I think some in Hollywood raised false flags about “traditional family” shows to justify the cynical, snarkiness in some modern shows (e.g., Married With Children).
Comedians and social satirists would joke about how untraditional a lot of these famiies were. So, you had all the dead mother shows, such as Andy Griffith, The Rifleman, My Three Sons, Bachelor Father, and of course, Bonanza, which featured the serial widower Ben Cartwright.
And the absence of nonwhites was as much due to a lazy capitulation to racism as it was any desire to reflect “traditional values.” It was about money, and a fear that viewers and more importantly advertisers, would shun shows that were not lily white.
And of course, discriminatory practices within the entertainment industry created limitations on the diversity of product.
Elizabelle
@geg6:
Henry is getting a loving, peaceful end of life. If he’s stopped eating, you are not taking much time from him.
What kind of pup?
Thinking of you. Hard day, but you are doing the right thing.
Cris (without and H)
I’m going to add “What A Fool Believes” to my list of Songs I Hope Don’t Come Up If I’m A Contestant On Don’t Forget The Lyrics.
Mike in NC
@eric:
Does the kid play golf?
Schlemizel
@geg6:
So sorry to hear this. Its a horrible thing to have to go through & know you have to do it does not make it any easier. I hope you can find peace in the good times remembered.
KG
I always think of the movie Pleasantville. How happy and perfect everything was in black and white… then reality (and the horror, technicolor) gets added to the mix and everything goes to hell/becomes better, depending on your point of view.
To borrow Nixon’s old line: there is no place else, in all of history that I would rather be than right here, right now.
Change is good, because if you’re not changing, that means you aren’t learning, and if you aren’t learning, you aren’t living, and if you ain’t living, then, well, you’re probably dying.
Raven
@KG: Or A Boy and His Dog.
Comrade Dread
I agree with this sentiment too.
I’d like to go back to the days when corporations cared about creating American jobs, when they accepted unions as partners, when you were paid a fair wage for a fair day’s work, when you had real, honest to God benefits and a livable pension as a reward for your long years of service and loyalty to your company.
When we accepted that in order to have a decent middle class, those who had more had to pitch in more, and this wasn’t seen as some communist sentiment or an attack on capitalism.
When the wealthy, however far removed from the poor, still saw themselves as Americans first and foremost, and not as citizens of the great state of Mammon.
When we were confident in this great state of California that we could and should provide a free two year college education to our progeny and a state subsidized four year college education and it helped make us one of the most prosperous economies in the world.
When we believed that we, as a country, could together accomplish great tasks, be it building an interstate highway system or land on the moon, and the jobs these things provided weren’t looked down upon as a government handout.
When a mom (or a dad) could afford to stay at home with their kids, because the wage earner made enough to let it happen.
When banks were actually gorram conservative with their money and invested in the community and didn’t bet their firm’s entire liquid assets on the roulette wheel of Wall St.
Yeah, I’d like all that.
That’s why I’m not a Republican. And why I no longer fit in with conservatives or libertarians.
Because I believe in the American dream, and that dream is not “Take all you can, give nothing back”.
Roger Moore
@MarkJ:
But part of the problem is that the prosperity wasn’t as broadly shared as people like to remember. In particular, it wasn’t shared very equally with people of color. It’s a lot easier to maintain good living standards for the right kind of people if your values allow you to force those nasty others to do most of the unpleasant, dangerous, poorly paid jobs.
Eekfrenzy
@Dave:
.
You’re exactly right. Leave it to Beaver was very simplified, but some of the episodes dealt with child issues that were (for the day, network, and time) very serious. Remember, Leave it to Beaver was in the day that a married couple could not be seen sharing a bed (or even have mussed bedcovers to show that the bed had been used).
The reactionaries are remembering a version of a version of Leave it to Beaver, and creating a mindset based on a fantasy based on a fantasy version of a story. Their story has more truth to them than actual fact or history. They remember being comfy in their childhood (whether or not they actually were) when they knew what to expect. They forget all the surprises and nastiness they had to deal with as a child of the 1950s, and so figure that everything changed once they were actually paying attention (1968-present). They want to go back to their fantasy childhood, and bring the country back with them.
Cris (without and H)
By the way (this was probably already brought up in the book thread), Mark Lilla reviews Reactionary Mind in the latest New York Review, and I found his analysis surprisingly wanting. Basically, he seemed to be saying “But conservatives disagree with each other on stuff, so they can’t all have this same agenda!” before going off to ring Burkean Bells.
Tuffy
Somewhat off topic, 27% alert!
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/18/g-o-p-in-congress-get-blame-for-gridlock/
In the latest New York Times/CBS News poll, 60 percent say Mr. Obama is attempting to work with Congressional Republicans to try to accomplish something; 27 percent say Republicans in Congress are making the same effort to work things out with the president.
Mnemosyne
@geg6:
And just to show how much the world has changed in 75 years — Jack Benny had to fight like a demon to be allowed to hire Eddie “Rochester” Anderson as a regular on his radio show because you weren’t supposed to use actual black people to play black radio characters. You got white guys to do it, like the two white dudes who played Amos and Andy on the radio.
geg6
@Elizabelle:
Yellow Lab. A sweet, big lunk of a yellow Lab.
gaz
Like, half O/T:
Duane Jones – Ben in Night of the Living Dead
His role in Night of the Living Dead (1968) was the first time in American cinema that a Black actor was cast in a lead role of a major motion picture that did not specify that the part had to be played by a black actor.
If that weren’t awesome enough, the man out-acted everyone else on the screen. His acting was pretty good – unlike the rest of the cast. (this is coming from someone who always felt that earlier hollywood overdid it – everyone spoke like William shatner, basically). Better acting than many non-horror flicks of the time too, IMO.
Fvck leave it to beaver
ZOMBIES!
Cris (without and H)
And [spoiler]he lives! Brothers always get killed by the monsters, right? Not this one.
gaz
@Cris (without and H): No shit right? Romero broke several horror-flick rules in one film. heh
FlipYrWhig
@Judas Escargot: IIRC that was a real policy at Antioch College.
Yep, found it thanks to The Google. Antioch code.
gogol's wife
@Cris (without and H):
As I recall he was shot by the police in the last scene. Am I dreaming? I’ve seen the film about 1000 times, but quite a while ago, maybe 30 years.
gaz
@Roger Moore:
And yet they want to deport all of teh messicanz…
I never really understood that. Actually I do. But I wish I didn’t.
Edit: a couple of times so people don’t have to work too hard to understand my snark.
Cris (without an H)
@gogol’s wife: Is he? I don’t know, it’s been a long time for me too, and Wikipedia is blacked out.
Edit: aw shit
gaz
@gogol’s wife: I think you may be right now that you mention it, it might be after the credits start, audio only. Or I’m thinking of one of the TCM movies…
meh.
gaz
also too:
“It never occurred to me that I was hired because I was black. But it did occur to me that because I was black it would give a different historic element to the film.” (on being cast as Ben in “Night of the Living Dead”)
Fvcking Excellent work, Mr. Jones.
Mark S.
@Cris (without and H):
Wow, that was a terrible book review, if it could even be called that since he barely talks about the book. It’s mostly a “No true Scotsman” piece where the only real conservatives are Burke and Oakeshott and not rabble-rousers like Palin and Beck.
gogol's wife
@Cris (without an H):
I had the same problem, but a commenter at ImDB seems to confirm my recollection, although it may be a posse, not police. I think it was some kind of statement about racism in America that Romero wanted to make. The zombies couldn’t get him but the Man did.
I just have to say that I still love Leave It To Beaver. I don’t know why it catches all the flak when there were a thousand other shows that also had all-white casts.
gaz
@gogol’s wife: by virtue of it’s ubiquity I’d guess.
Although I dissed LI2B because it was just so damned cheesy. zombies are cheesy. but of a different sort
I may be much younger than the median at BJ?…
Tom Q
@Brachiator: Just to muddy the water a little more: I’d argue Leave it to Beaver was more subversive than most of the shows (Father Knows Best, Donna Reed) with which it’s generally grouped. Supporting characters like Whitey and Larry Mondello were always trying to lure Beaver into bad beahvior — and god knows Eddie Haskell was an acknowledgement of a sleazy but common type no other show would feature. Childhood on Leave it to Beaver was a virtual minefield…it was a miracle Beaver got home every day without being arrested or killed. I really think the show’s squeaky-clean rep comes from people with only the most surface awareness of its subject matter, which was of course much limited by the time in which it aired.
Benjamin Franklin
@gaz:
Speaking of Zombies…I give you SOPA
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120117/12563317437/its-baaaaaaaaack-lamar-smith-says-sopa-markup-to-resume-february.shtml
“Stop Online Piracy Act Markup to Resume in February
Washington, D.C. – House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) today said that he expects the Committee to continue its markup of the Stop Online Piracy Act in February.
Chairman Smith: “To enact legislation that protects consumers, businesses and jobs from foreign thieves who steal America’s intellectual property, we will continue to bring together industry representatives and Members to find ways to combat online piracy.
“Due to the Republican and Democratic retreats taking place over the next two weeks, markup of the Stop Online Piracy Act is expected to resume in February.
“I am committed to continuing to work with my colleagues in the House and Senate to send a bipartisan bill to the White House that saves American jobs and protects intellectual property.”
There had been some talk that, due to Rep. Eric Cantor telling Rep. Darrell Issa that he would not take it to the floor, the bill was “dead.” But, we knew all along it was only “delayed.” Especially given the Senate’s planned vote next week. This really is zombie legislation. It will not die… because some businesses that don’t want to adapt want to make sure it never dies.”
Cris (without an H)
’cause nobody remembers Ozzie and Harriet any more.
gogol's wife
@Tom Q:
You are correct, sir.
gogol's wife
@Cris (without an H):
Now that one I hated.
Cris (without an H)
That’s kind of a hallmark of New York Review pieces, and generally it’s what I love about the publication. They get reviewers who are real experts (e.g. Freeman Dyson is a regular contributor regarding science books) and let them use the work under review as a jumping off point for broader discussion.
But yeah, the pitfall is that it can easily turn into “here’s the book I would have written.”
PurpleGirl
@Dave: Did your parents not let you watch TV as a really young kid? I’m 60 and do remember watch LITB as original shows; I also watched Burns and Allen, December Bride, Batchelor Father, Gayle ??? Show, among other shows of the late 50s. I also watched Open Mind with David Susskind, Brother Theodore, and a bunch of other liberal talk shows whose names I’m spacing. My parents didn’t really know what I was watching… and the TV warped my mind. (I remember the period but I don’t want to return to it.)
Cris (without an H)
So what we’re learning here is that not only do conservatives long for a 1950s that never was, they want it to be like a Leave It To Beaver that never was.
PurpleGirl
@JGabriel:
Am I pronouncing that right?”
Yes/ Yes, you are.
gogol's wife
@Cris (without an H):
Right. They really are thinking of Ozzie and Harriet.
Mary
@rikryah:
Have they ever actually watched the show? Because all of those characters are miserable.
PurpleGirl
@rlrr: Remember half of the population has of intelligence quotient below 100. They are that stupid.
AxelFoley
Mad props to The Notorious D.O.U.G.J. for the Doobie Brothers reference in the thread title.
Comrade Dread
Damn, stuck in moderation hell. I didn’t even use the dreaded S word.
Mnemosyne
@gaz:
Jones’ other starring role was in a really interesting little cult movie from 1973 called Ganja & Hess that G and I got sucked into on TCM Underground one night.
Imagine for a minute that Terrence Malick was black and made a vampire movie with an all-black cast that was an allegory for race, addiction, and class and you’ve kind of got what Ganja & Hess is like. Just make sure you find the restored DVD, because it got hacked to pieces by the distributors when they figured out that they weren’t getting a Blacula rip-off.
Fun story about Jones from IMDb:
burnspbesq
@Krankor:
And nobody picked up on the double entrendre at the time. Yes, it was a different world then.
Brachiator
@Tom Q:
Great points. I’ve seen some essays about the show which suggest that it was little more than propaganda for the Patriarchy. But I agree that it had a subversive edge.
There might even be a through line from Eddie Haskell to Bart Simpson.
WaterGirl
@geg6: I have been thinking about you and Henry but haven’t connected on a thread at the same times you.
If you want some treats Henry might still eat, may I recommend the things my dog Bailey would still eat on his last night?
Pill pockets for kitties (chicken flavor)
Bil lJac liver treats for dogs (miniature size, rather than bigger bites)
Friskies party mix for kitties.
Friskies party mix for cats also comes recommended by my kitty soul-mate Quiver, also. That was the only thing he would eat on his last day and he gobbled those down.
You can buy all 3 at any pet store – Pet Supplies plus, PetSmart, etc.
You might also try Eggo waffles – the little mini-size. Sizzling, just out of the toaster.
Sending good thoughts, love and peace your way,
WaterGirl
Mark S.
@Cris (without an H):
I agree; sometimes those can make for entertaining essays. I like Robin’s thesis (that conservatism is basically a defense of privilege) and I found this “refutation” to be seriously wanting:
Why isn’t being for glacier-paced change essentially a defense of privilege? Conservatives aren’t against all political action, just those that benefit the lower orders. It’s easy to argue for decades- or centuries-change when you’re not the one getting shitted on.
burnspbesq
@Benjamin Franklin:
Yanno, that’s really just the way the legislative calendar works in an election year. Are you three years old, so that you’ve never seen this before?
It’ll die if Harry Reid wants it to die. If enough Democratic Senators start whining to Reid about the phone calls and letters they are getting, Reid will decide that he wants it to die.
And if Reid doesn’t kill it, Obama will drive a
stakeveto pen through its heart.gelfling545
@Violet: There is, to me anyway, an interesting tidbit about the number 27%. When I was teaching I determined through completely unscientific means that it was the number below which it was almost impossible to score on an exam in a class in which you had done no work, maybe had only attended about 21 days out of the year and were only taking the exam because your probation officer or your mother was standing in the hall. If you bothered to write anything, it usually came out to 27%. It was reliable year after year. I found it very odd. In other words, it is the amount you know when you know nothing. This always comes back to mind when I see reports of 27%.
Auldblackjack
Benjamin Franklin
@burnspbesq:
You really are a nasty little trollop. Don’t you get tired of being a prolapsed vagina?
Hungry Joe
@geg6:
I’m going to disagree with you about Rochester (Eddie Anderson) on The Jack Benny Show. Rochester was Benny’s manservant/valet/chauffeur, true, but he was a solid cast member — a lot more than a bit player — and an audience favorite. In every exchange with Benny, he got the better of him. Benny gave him all the punchlines, too.
Omnes Omnibus
I read the title of this thread and Michael McDonald’s voice started running through my head.
b-psycho
@Benjamin Franklin: …how close are we to a bill mandating the kicking of puppies because of all the Veterinarian jobs it could create?
Scott
@PurpleGirl: Gale Storm. I watched, as reruns, I Love Lucy, Dick Van Dyke and a couple of others. Also a lot of cartoons, Rocky and Bullwinkle, Crusader Rabbit, etc. Original shows I watched: Addams Family, Jetsons, Flintstones.
mtboy
“… and everyone knew their place.” The internet sure screwed that up.
AA+ Bonds
Robin’s book is great but anyone who misses Roger Griffin’s Nature of Fascism, specifically its definition of palingenetic ultranationalism, will have trouble understanding today’s Republican Party
AA+ Bonds
Make no mistake, America’s Republicans are closer to Mussolini than Burke
AA+ Bonds
@Mark S.:
The main problem with “Burkean conservatism” is that the institutions Burke sought to defend simply do not exist anymore – anyone who claims that title is either psychotic or a liar
Kathleen
@PurpleGirl: Gayle Storm – My Little Margie. Our Miss Brooks, I Remember Mama, a show starring Betty White (cannot remember name). OK. I’ve got to run. The dining room in the home is serving Twinkies and Sanka.
jake the snake
@Brachiator:
There was a huge controversy when Petula Clark took Harry Belafonte’s arm while they were singing a duet on tv in 1968..
http://www.pophistorydig.com/?tag=harry-belafonte-petula-clark
And I can remember my step-grandmother complaining about Leslie Uggams being “uppity” on the old “Sing Along With Mitch” variety show.
Brachiator
@jake the snake:
Yep. A very shameful occurrence.
Of course, the performances of black singers and musicians were often neatly cut from movie musicals in the 30s, and 40s, when the films were exhibited in the South, so that delicate white flowers would not be agitated.
DanielX
Yes. Warning: this post will include politically incorrect and offensive terms, but only for illustrative purposes.
Have said it before, but it bears repeating. What the 27% want is return to that mythical golden age prior to the Civil Rights Act, artificial contraception and, leave us not forget, before the dirty fucking hippies. (But NOT going back to the days when 30% of American workers belonged to unions, god forbid.)
What they want is a return to things the way they remember them being back then and the way they think things should be now. When white men ran everything and had decent paying jobs for the asking, and when women, children, niggers and spics knew their place and by god kept to it…or else. The way things ought to be according to Rush…and what the Southern Strategy was designed to cater to.
Ruckus
@Cat Lady:
Late to the post but this may be what a lot of the old white folks are thinking about. A time of relative comfort, job longevity, pensions…
That there were few to no POC in those visions is a side light and explains why many never saw it as racist. It was the relative stability of life that they remember. The”great” war was over, Korea was an after thought, Vietnam had not started, jobs were available, homes could be brought, cars were starting to be less stodgy, high schools still taught enough to get a job. Life was livable for everyone(OK white everyone but that’s the frame of reference here).
We started to get liberal policies(civil rights, medicare) and poof we lose a war, jobs are harder to get, life starts to become a little(or a lot) less liveable for many.
I don’t aspire to this view myself but many old white folks do.
PanurgeATL
@Cargo:
I notice lots of this among some liberals. There’s a certain strain of GenX liberal that blames the DFHs just like the right wing does, partly because for some reason they’ve bought into the conservative line that it’s the rebellious thing to do (and, it seems, partly because they were from broken homes that they imagine wouldn’t be broken if not for the DFHs). I ain’t gettin’ no fuckin’ haircut, thanx.