Fever dreams of long-lost glory seem to be rising from the mists over the Republican swamp. The Washington Post had a puff piece Wednesday on a couple of Romney “mega-donors”:
It’s the third night of the Republican National Convention, and Georgette Mosbacher — cosmetics impresario and eccentric grande dame of GOP fundraising — is waiting in the lobby of the Westin Tampa Harbour Island hotel for her sister Lyn…
Georgette is renowned for political fundraisers and society bashes at her Fifth Avenue apartment, which is adorned with crystal chandeliers, faux-Roman marble busts and gilded mirrors. Another constant feature is Lyn, who has dated regulars in the Mosbacher party circuit. The gossip pages mistakenly linked her to Republican consultant Ed Rollins; she says she did go on a couple of dates with Rush Limbaugh….
Both sisters wear gold Eagle pins on their lapels, identifying them as Romney mega-donors, and a stack of VIP credentials around their necks. At the convention, they could be seen bickering outside exclusive donor powwows (“Don’t be upset,” Georgette pleaded with Lyn outside a brunch organized by billionaire Paul Singer. “It was an honest mistake.”) or giddily relaying how Ann Romney, for whom Georgette has served on the host committee for several fundraisers in New York, privately reacted to Democratic attacks on her dressage-competing mare. (“My horse has more style and more class in its hoof than they do in their whole deal,” Lyn recounts.)…
Of course, it was the Marie-Ann-Romney-tonette sneer that got the blogosphere’s attention, but my first thought was “Mosbacher? I haven’t heard that name since the first Bush administration!”
John ‘Prolapsed Pig Rectum’ Sununu is a “top Romney surrogate“, calling President Obama a “foreign pot-smoking socialist” and “the first president in my lifetime who’s decided to run a campaign on class warfare“. Sununu was also last in the public eye when references to Alex P. Keaton were still fresh. This year’s college-age voters haden’t been born when Sununu lost his highest-profile job for commandeering military jets to fly him to stamp auctions and dental appointments.
This is what I thought about the would-be First and Second Ladies at the RNC:
… both Anne Romney and Janna Ryan seem like weirdly blurred imitations of Barbara Bush and Marilyn Quayle. The thing is, while the originals were rather defiantly promoted as ‘old-fashioned’ back in the 1980s, today’s versions just seem grotesquely out of date. When Barbara Bush dropped out of college to marry her boyfriend-from-a-good-family and follow him around the country running a household totally dedicated to supporting his career, that was very much the norm… not least since Bar’s career options would have been both severely restricted and underpaid. But by the time Anne Romney was “welcomed” to the Romney compound in the 1970s, normal young women (even those who inherited and/or married wealth) were expected to show some kind of interest in being sufficiently credentialed, or experienced, to support themselves. Marilyn Quayle was a proudly vocal standard-bearer in the Schafly-era “feminist backlash”, when rightwing women made a point of “renouncing” their own hard-earned achievements (Quayle bragged that she’d had her first child induced early so she’d be able to take the bar exam on schedule) because being a wife, a mom, and a homemaker were more important, to her fundamentalist God as well as her husband’s political ambitions. It’s early days, but while there’s been a certain amount of style-section hoopla about how Janna knows “being with her children while they’re young is just too precious to waste”, even the lady-gushers acknowledge that she had a real-world career before those babies emerged, and she’ll have an active membership in the tax bar association once the kids are no longer adorable full-time props…
And now, John Cole tells us that Fox News wants to gin up another controversy about Serrano’s Piss Christ, which was quite the divisive topic back in 1989. The late Senator Jesse Helms is no longer available to support Christianity in the public forum, but perhaps (given the right inducements) Al D’Amato can take a break from his professional online poker advocacy to speak the tribute that vice pays to virtue…
It’s as though a powerful bloc of modern Republicans has never been able to let go of those glorious “Greed Is Good” days of a generation ago. I was old enough to vote back in the late 1980s, and I can assure you: Even then, the Republicans seemd to be trying, and failing, to recreate the “glamour” of the Reagan Revolution.
There is a musty smell of desperation to this year’s GOP campaign — and desperation is never attractive.
Yutsano
It just boggles their brains how they could possibly be losing to THAT ONE when unemployment is so high and the economy is just barely puttering along. Not only that, they may lose almost all their keys to power right along with it. I hate to say it, but I smell a second Civil War coming. Fine by me, I’ll gladly vote to become Southern British Columbia.
Linda Featheringill
I don’t think the Right Wing understands how much of a minority they make up. Even if the country were “center-right”, folks wouldn’t be able to tolerate the really strange RW propaganda.
The Righties didn’t form a coalition in order to find and support an electable candidate. They tried to find one like themselves and now they’re the only ones supporting him.
different-church-lady
You know who else wore gold eagle pins?
Jeez… this is just getting ridiculous now.
Montarvillois
Ann Romney has been mooching off her husband her entire adult life.
Linda Featheringill
@Yutsano:
I hope not.
I ran across something this week from Limbaugh I think. He was saying that liberals laugh at the Righties and think they’re weird. And we do. He said the Righties wanted to gain enough power to make the liberals shut up and he’s probably correct.
Hopefully, this won’t happen. I think they’re struggling with the reality of their political situation now but they haven’t started trying to cope with how far they are from the main stream of thought. If they could, they would secede from US society and probably from the nation.
Which of course is one way to start a civil war.
Linda Featheringill
@different-church-lady:
Herrenvolk und untermenschen.
Spaghetti Lee
@Yutsano:
I hate to say it, but I smell a second Civil War coming.
Please don’t take this personally-I like your comments most of the time-but I really just don’t like this way of thinking. I see people on the left and right do this, and it always has the sort of rancid tone of glee disguised as solemnity, like you’re discussing the ‘tragic accident’ of a coworker or relative you always thought was a complete dick and had coming whatever happened to them.
If Obama’s re-elected, maybe a couple nuts will go off on bad ways. But I personally don’t see large-scale, military-intervention-requiring violence, and certainly not an actual civil war. Does anyone really, deeply believe that what’s left of the Tea Party will take up arms, form military regiments with officers and strategize with the intent of sacking the White House or something? That a bunch of Republican congressmen will flee Washington for the rebel capital of Dallas or wherever? I mean, we all know how old that demographic skews if nothing else. I don’t like ’em either, but FFS, life is not a Harry Turtledove novel.
But anyway, if people are actually predicting a real civil-war or similar large-scale violent action, could they at least focus on the millions of innocent people whose lives would be destroyed, and not make it some intellectual fucking exercise in “I’m so much better than those savage brutes” smugness?
Linda Featheringill
@Spaghetti Lee:
Path to a civil war:
I don’t think the Right Wing is going to burst into violence the day after voting.
What would probably happen is that a number of them would explore the possibilities of secession. If they amassed enough support to make this idea viable, then they’d have to consider ways to make it fact.
Personally, I don’t favor the notion of killing or being killed in order to make these jackasses remain a part of the union. Let them go. Withdraw all support from their territories. Set up borders and build walls. Cut off all interstate commerce.
And yes, I realize that cutting the Righties loose would set up a situation for conflict down the road. But it sure would feel good in the short term.
Basilisc
You’re right about the nostalgia for the 80s/early 90s. Some other examples:
– Russia as our “main geopolitical threat” (not just Romney – remember the fuss McCain made over Georgia?)
– Newt Gingrich as a respected intellectual
– Welfare reform!
– Social security is going bankrupt!
– China-bashing is just Japan-bashing mutatis mutandis.
– Kenyan socialism! Anti-colonialism! (actually this goes back to
the 60s, but it was still a lively intellectual movement in the 80s).
– Down with Castro!
– Defend Poland Czechoslovakia! (as Liz Cheney demanded recently)
Republicans haven’t had a single new idea since the 80s (and, arguably, not much was new then). But what’s really depressing is that today’s pundits mostly haven’t had a single new idea since the 80s. Hence our discourse.
Warren Terra
I get very nervous about all the gloating when this race is far from over.
Still, that being said, Texts From Mitt is funny.
Debbie(Aussie)
All that lapel pin and credentials stuff sort of screeches amw*y. (I got sucked int for a while, back in my ‘younger’ days). Too weird!
TheMightyTrowel
OT: Sarah Silverman has taken to youtube to make a PSA about voter ID laws. Not her best work, but I think it’s effective (and it might get word out to the Youngs that they need to sort their shit out before Nov)
Linda Featheringill
Romney, on Univision, apparently used the phrase “permanent solution” to the immigration problem.
http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/09/22/3014625/romney-missed-big-chance-with.html
He actually used that phrase? Wow.
piratedan
@Spaghetti Lee: I don’t see Yutsy’s remarks that way and if you’ve been paying attention, we’ve been noting these “isolated incidents” for quite some time now. The rebirth of the militia movement as mentioned by the FBI and the Poverty folks, the amplification of death threats against the Prez himself (as copped to by the Secret Service) could be footnotes or cause for alarm. The white supremacists bombing in Washington state, the Michigan militia arrests and the active duty soldiers in Ga arrested just a week or so ago in a plot to kill the President come immediately to mind.
Are the R’s using the same kind of shit that the Nazi’s did? Whipping up anti immigrant sentiment, using religion as a one stop shopping place for all of your ills… why yes, yes they are. This version is using Islam as it’s scapegoat instead of Judaism. Even seeing strains of anti-intellectualism and ‘american exceptionalism’ mixed into the message ala Leifenstahl. Granted this isn’t 1930 Germany but you don’t even have to strain to see the parallels in the game plan.
Would this country come tumbling down like a house of cards if Obama and his family are killed by some right wing nut job, I sure as hell hope not but considering you have noted media elements on the other side that would shed nary a tear if it happens and have come just short of asking for it in the open airwaves doesn’t give me any sense of glee or confidence that the other side isn’t in fact spoiling for that fight. Despite all that, based on their behavior who do you think the R’s are loyal to, their country or their party? maybe following their actions really does give credence to the concern.
Narcissus
I’m not too worried about the hoveround commandos
The only thing that worries me is the weird evangelism in the Air Force officer corps, but it doesn’t worry me nearly enough to expect violence
Xenos
@Narcissus: The Air Force is designed around strategic threats. How do you run a coup d’etat with a B2 bomber? You can nuke a couple cities, but then what? How long would they last against the Marines, or even the Colorado National Guard?
raven
Booogie Boogie, the sky is falling, the sky is falling.
JoyfulA
@TheMightyTrowel:Pennsylvania counties are issuing their own Voter IDs, which will help a lot. Even some Republican-run counties are considering doing it: http://articles.philly.com/2012-09-22/news/34023153_1_voter-id-requirement-id-cards-issue-cards
HRA
@Linda Featheringill:
Romney not only used that phrase “permanent solution”, he repeatedly used it. Sadly, besides his usage of it, there is a major population in the country who have no clue of it’s origin or even would care enough if told about it. Although I have carried an interest in politics for longer than I want to admit to, the end of 44 days cannot come fast enough right now.
Cargo
see seven days in may for how it would go down. All you’d need is some wingnut joint chiefs.
Bex
Another barf-inducing waste of time article about rich people from the WaPo. Why is anybody supposed to be impressed by these types? Or pay attention to them at all?
LanceThruster
Just saw Liz Cheney on C-SPAN at a Women for Romney event speak about how fortunate there’s FOX to counter the MSM’s lies.
Goebbels would be proud of this bizarro world bubble.
gene108
I really don’t get why liberals rush to defend this photograph so much.
Sticking things of sentimental value in urine is offensive. Period.
Whether it’s your grandmother’s holocaust survivors ring to your favorite teddy bear that you had as a kid, sticking it in a jar of urine is offensive (and gross), because there’s a certain amount of respect you would want to have for that item and pissing on it will never be an acceptable (I hope) way to show respect.
Soonergrunt
@gene108: Which is precisely why liberals rush to defend it.
I am a first amendment absolutist. If people are offended by something, they have every right to complain and register their sense of offense with the rest of us, under that same first amendment that allows the offensive thing to exist in the first place. But that’s where their rights end, just as the first amendment does not grant anyone the right to actually do harm to another.
I don’t see any artistic value in Piss Christ at all. I don’t see any particular value in many of the works of Robert Maplethorp. But that’s not and never was the central issue. I am deeply offended by those who would make their personal sense of offense the community standard by which works of art can or cannot exist or be displayed.
Today it’s Piss Christ. Tomorrow it’s banning burnings of the US Flag. A week later it’s declaring that protesting during a war is unpatriotic and borders on treasonous.
If you don’t like something, thanks for telling us. We’ll take it under advisement and suggest that you stop looking at it. But if you say that you don’t understand why people rush to defend something against censorship, I have to wonder on some level if you’ve been paying attention these last couple of decades.
Marc
Have you guys read the story Anne linked to? Because I have to say, that is one heartwarming tale of a Republican fundraiser and socialite who treats her sister like her long-suffering personal assistant:
Oh my god.
geg6
@gene108:
Well, I have no desire to kowtow to others’ articles of veneration, so it’s a free speech issue to me. And I seem to remember that the artist, Serrano, meant it to symbolize what too many have done to Christ’s teachings. And as Tom points out in a post below, it’s actually quite beautiful.
It’s a fucking statue of some dude murdered by the Romans immersed in a liquid that looks like but probably isn’t piss. Why should I give a shit about the delicate feefees of the rube godbotherers crying over it?
JPL
Why is everyone so pissy this morning?
LanceThruster
@geg6: I remember an email by Bill Donohue (Catrholic Defense League) patting himself (and his followers) on the back for not rioting over this like the Mooslims would. While laudible on one level, the tone was that he would really have liked to.
As an atheist, I have no problem with any sort of iconoclasm. Your expanation of the symbolism makes sense. I remember around the same time there was a fuss about a Virgin Mary depiction in elephant dung, but that it was supposed to represent life and fecundity IIRC.
Don’t like it, don’t view it/buy it.
Simple as that.
Soonergrunt
@JPL: The Sooners lost to K-State yesterday.
Yeah. That’s it.
arguingwithsignposts
I consider myself a “First Amendment near absolutist,” but I always remind people that no other country in the world has a First Amendment.
Seth Owen
Unless there’s some wingers suggesting state suppression of Piss Christ then I don’t see a problem with them criticizing it as harshly as they want. It is offensive. And they have a First Amendment right to say so.
Soonergrunt
@Seth Owen: “Unless there’s some wingers suggesting state suppression of Piss Christ”
There was quite a lot of that back in the day. Calls for its banning, demands to remove it from installations in publicly funded museums, and so forth. Just like the book bannings that happen every single year in public libraries and public school libraries all over the country.
Aimai
@Seth Owen:
But everyone is not obligated to be offended by it. Even–or especially–from a Christian perspective. The passion of Christ shows a divine figure scourged and suffering. It’s in the Christ myth that he is treated as the lowest form of criminal and given a degrading death. He hung out with and touched menstrauting women and lepers–both as serious offenses against contemporary mores, hygiene, and notions of religious purity. Showing his crucifixion compounded with anything–money, piss, pus, chocolate, is right in the Christian tradition in a very authentic way. The crowd response to Jesus’s acts and to his suffering is and always has been a big part of the authentic apprehension of the problem of the divine made flesh.
Frankensteinbeck
@piratedan:
I don’t see any glee in the ‘second Civil War’ worries, but it’s still not going to happen. It physically cannot happen. They have no military to make it happen. The militias are tiny. They are a handful of men who are not only totally disorganized, they hate each other. The political groups calling for secession are similarly tiny, they’re just loud. They’re dominated by old people who need a lot of medical care just to survive, and they’re famously, famously, almost by definition chickenhawks. The actual military is not going to back them. A few bitchy conservative officers is not a coup, and the military has gone to great and successful lengths to instil respect for the chain of command. Their ideology is absolutely fascist, but their methods are not because they have no branch of thugs to intimidate the rest of the population into keeping quiet.
It’s not going to happen. It’s never going to happen. It is not even a slight possibility. Some of the crazier legislatures might float bills to that effect, and they’ll find themselves suddenly absolutely alone. Even that’s unlikely, because conservatives love revolutionary rhetoric, but when the time comes to put up or shut up they keep whining under their breath instead.
Isolated acts of domestic terrorism are a possibility. Secession is not.
grandpa john
@geg6:
example; Todays Republican party, Paul Ryan being a perfect example
jurassicpork
Why I’d Rather Suck Mitt Romney’s Dick Than Vote For Obama, by Cyril Blubberpuss, Conservative.
Princess
@Aimai: This is exactly it. The RW hate this image of Christ because they only want the mean Jesus who will smite their enemies. They are afraid of the divine presence who became fully human — not only the nice bits like big brown eyes and a handsome face, but the gross bits too, the puss, and the blood, and the urine.
As for the rest, I feel like I wandered into some left wing through-the-looking-glass version of Free Republic, coming in here this morning with all the predictions of doom and war. Go for a walk in the sunshine, guys.
debit
@jurassicpork: Why I Pie Filter This Blog Whoring Firebagger, by debit
geg6
@LanceThruster:
Exactly. I am offended every day, by religionists, by politicians, by FOXNews, by sexism, by racism, and on and on and on. I am regularly insulted for being an atheist. But I still live my life, I’m still a happy person, and I have much love in my life. I note the insults and outrages and then I just get on with my life and put them out of my mind. I don’t go running around with my hair on fire demanding that everyone defer to my authoritah! and never criticize me. I really don’t give a shit what they think. Why do Christians insist that we should do the same to them, especially considering that they outnumber people like me by about a million to one? Their sense of persecution is hilarious and sad.
Svensker
@JPL:
Who the hell you calling pissy? Go fork yourself.
Ash Can
@Aimai: Kudos from this Christian on an excellent analysis.
Frankensteinbeck
@geg6:
Because their culture is dying, and their children are abandoning not just their religion but all of their other values and ways of life. This happens a lot when restrictive cultures are exposed to more liberal cultures, and circling the wagons and demanding that they never have to even hear about alternatives to their lifestyle is the usual tactic.
EDIT – Note that America was FOUNDED by Puritans and Pilgrims and other conservative, intolerant religious groups fleeing to an empty world where their children wouldn’t grow up speaking Dutch.
WereBear
The proper response to “that is just trying to be controversial” is probably, Yes. Because here we are discussing Christianity! And I must say, since 1989, the Godbothering wing of the religion supposedly based on his teachings has only gotten further away from them.
It’s not that they don’t get it; it is that they do.
I read an essay a few decades ago, and with things like Mrs. Ryan’s tax attorney career, I’m sure it has improved. But the basic theme was that among the very rich, women are constrained and disrespected far more than we suspect. Between innate conservatism and the embedded patriarchy of the past, they are seen as symbols far more than actual human beings.
They are Things; dressed up and paraded and watched over lest they fall for a gigolo or create a scandal. They are not supposed to do anything except from a narrow menu of choices: wife, mother, manager/terrorizer of household help, and queen bees of charity organizations.
The writer pointed out that this created terrible problems, and not just for the frustrated women themselves. The brothers in the families control the purse strings, even if the sisters are better at it. The children are pulled away from their mothers too soon, because no one respects them; and then these children have that whiny, needy tendency we see all too often. And the mothers, grown old and cranky, become hurricanes of toxic emotion.
It’s no wonder that we see how these people could mess up a sandwich. They don’t have competence, they only hire it; and if they don’t, disaster ensues.
slightly_peeved
Any bets on what the Republicans are going to expect Obama to be offended by next? The song ‘Fuck tha Police’? Mapplethorpe photos? I heartily encourage Republicans to spend their valuable and finite time in the media complaining about shit no-one else remembers.
TheMightyTrowel
@slightly_peeved: the Roman invasion of Britain. obviously.
arguingwithsignposts
@slightly_peeved: Given that Tipper Gore was head of the Parents’ Music Resource Center, I wouldn’t encourage this train of thought.
slightly_peeved
@TheMightyTrowel:
Well, they’d be accusing him of an anti-colonial mindset again, there.
arguingwithsignposts
@TheMightyTrowel: Apart from the roads, sanitation and the aquaduct, what have the Romans ever done for us?
Cmm
@Marc:
That is some crazy Family dynamic there. I now have a vision of Lyn pulling the D lever once she is behind the curtain as a tiny bit of rebellion and symbolic payback.
And yeah, the only reason I know who Georgette Mosbacher is is because I used to read Spy magazine in the late 80s.
pluege
all this lefty seeing desperation in the republicans is willful ignorance. republicans are being who they are: plutocrats who have no notion of what it means to be a “real American”.
And even though they appear a bit miffed at times when they peek out from behind their mirrors and see that everyone isn’t basking in the splendor of their magnificence as superior beings, as they are, they remain cemented in their belief in the righteousness of their crusade to steal everything possible from average Americans, all of whom they hold in contempt for not being rich like them. They appear to me confident that in the end all their money and personal superiority will save the day and the clod mitt will be crowned King of America.
Or something like that.Suffern Ace
@slightly_peeved: I’ll go with two live jeff and his funky bunch and other such so called gangster wrappers.
redshirt
Can someone sum up for me how Obama has anything to do with Piss Christ?
Baud
@Soonergrunt:
I agree with what you said, although I would never call myself an absolutist, because there’s always going to be someone out there who will out-absolute me.
kay
@Warren Terra:
It has its own momentum, though, winning.
Obama’s up 5 in the Ohio newspaper poll this morning. The 9 largest newspapers in the state commission the poll so the 9 largest newspapers in the state will front-page the poll Sunday.
The part that should be scary to Romney is Obama is over 50% (51%). That wasn’t true a month ago.
mai naem
Don’t mean to sound like concern troll but I am seeing way too much overconfidence here on Obama winning(I include myself here). There’s still about 45 days to go and a lot of crap can happen in 45 days especially when Bibi Netanyahu wants Obama to lose. Wall Street Pigs want Obama to lose. Republican’s want Obama to lose. And, the media is going to want to be doing a Mitt comeback story so they’re going to be looking for stuff to bring down the Obama campaign. I wish I was old enough to remember the feeling around Reagan/Mondale or alive during Goldwater/Johnson? Did it feel like this? OTOH, the 24 hr media circus has changed stuff so that’s probably not even comparable.
pk
Marie-Ann-Romney-tonette or Mitt-annetoinette for short.
Baud
@kay:
I didn’t trust polls when they showed the race to be closer than it was, so I’m not going to trust polls now. What gives me confidence is the freak out going on in the entire Republican party right now. That doesn’t happen if this thing were close.
Mino
When are Dems gonna connect two facts? Mitt is pushing this “grow the pie” meme to counter “redistribution”. Well, for the past 30 years, everytime the pie grew(productivity increased), the rich ate it all.
Baud
@mai naem:
Overconfidence is only a problem if it leads to apathy or gamesmanship (that is, some interest group threatens to withhold support in exchange for concessions). So far, I’ve only seen greater enthusiasm by Democrats (largely, I think, because of the Congressional races, which are still close) and no real attempts at gamesmanship.
You are correct, however, that we can’t declare victory yet and there is still a lot of work to do.
Maude
@debit:
Thx.
@arguingwithsignposts:
I mention this fact and people look at me blankly.
azlib
@Linda Featheringill:
Seems that way. Romney is a perfect candidate for the 27%. I met one of those folks in person yesterday. He was the perfect embodiment of the 27%. He was absolutely impervious to reason and spouted the right wing talking points to every argument I presented. His resentment of “the other” was on full display.
Baud
@Mino:
I thought income inequality when down under the Clinton boom years.
Maude
@kay:
I heard a radio program this morning, local philly station, that was describing how to do voter ID in PA.
debit
@mai naem: I agree that it can be dangerous to get overconfident and complacent. However, I’m sure that’s not something Obama can be accused of. Still, even though money’s a bit tight for me at the moment, I still kicked in a donation to OFA yesterday.
There’s also the failure spiral to consider. The more Romney’s campaign fails, the harder it’s going to be for them to pull out of the spiral. If they had something, anything, to turn this thing around, they’d have put it out there front and center.
kay
@Baud:
It’s hard, because there’s so much spin you don’t know what’s true unless you’re actually in the state.
I read that Romney was out of MI and our OFA organizer is from MI, he worked state races there, so I said “I heard Romney is pulling out of MI” and he said “Romney has been out of MI for weeks”
He means “staff”, not Mitt Romney the person.
So much spin and bullshit.
Gin & Tonic
@arguingwithsignposts: How’d that work out for her?
Baud
@kay:
I agree. The blogs often deride “low-information voters,” but unless you’re willing and able to devote substantial time to ferreting out the truth, there no good way to determine what’s real from what’s just noise. That, IMHO, is the real cost of the death of credibility as a value in our political culture.
ETA: Or as Colbert would say, “truthiness.”
danielx
@slightly_peeved:
Hey, the wingnut base requires a consistent diet of offenses (real, imagined or twenty years old) in order to maintain a state of constant outrage and fear, or maybe just rage and fear.
Doesn’t matter what the offenses are – brown people, soshulism, the War on Christmas, art that they dislike, teh ghey menace, birth control, abortion, the dirty fucking hippies, the Sixties, ATF Nazis coming to take away their guns, whatever. In some cases, mind, theirs fears are not only real but justified – the Bush II and Obama administrations have pissed all over the Bill of Rights and laid the foundations of a police state, end of story. Of course, this has been going on for decades in the form of the War on Drugs, in the name of which any violations of the 4th, 5th, 6th and 8th amendments were and are justified.
That’s been pretty much a bipartisan process which was hyper accelerated by the Patriot Act and various other legislation. However, there’s a strange dichotomy at work – a lot of the same folks who start frothing at the mouth at a hint of gun control legislation are silent when it comes to clear violations of the other amendments. Of course, violations of the other amendments don’t pose threats to their psychological courting tackle.
If they didn’t have various cultural menaces ginned up to occupy their attention, they just MIGHT start noticing that the Republican Party is about one thing, when all is said and done – protecting the interests of the 1%, and most particularly the interests of the 0.1%.
MrSnrub
@pk: We just call them Queen Ann and Prince Consort Mitt.
scav
At some point, the rising chorus of Mrs. Danvers clones all whispering in Mitt’s ear might prove troublesome for him.
NotMax
Say good-bye to spontaneity, say hello to the swan song of being beholden to the principle of a free press as Fourth Estate.
The League of Women Voters’ plain spoken candor was refreshing and notable when they stepped away from running the debates in the late 80s, and their statement of rationale at the time is, if anything, even more relevant today (from the same article):
PurpleGirl
@redshirt: The photo is going back on display at a Manhattan gallery this week. It is a privately owned gallery. Serrano created the photo originally after winning an NEA grant. (He “used” federal money, oh no!.)
Also, supposedly President Obama used some $70,000 in taxpayer money to move against that video clip.
Therefore, President Obama is against the American family or something like that.
ETA: Note that my Google search turned up all RWNJ sites with the story.
Schlemizel
@Soonergrunt:
I’d add to your fine post that I have never heard anyone defend Piss Christ. I have heard many people defend the artists right to create and show it but not a word in defense of the work itself.
Now its true that I don’t travel in art critic circles so there may be some people who have written stirring hosannas to the thing but thats really not the point is it? When the anger and controversy of you work completely over shadow the work itself you are a failure as an artist.
MrSnrub
@Maude: Here is a link. Kay: I just emailed it to you.
PA Voter ID loophole exploited by counties
jwb
@mai naem: I don’t see it as overconfidence. I see it as strong confidence. And you’ll notice what folks here are doing with that confidence: they are talking about how to push toward Senate and House races, how to ensure that the victory is as large as possible. That is not the (over)confidence that is going to get you into trouble by bringing on complacency; this is instead the confidence that might, just might put the Democrats in a position to accomplish some more stuff.
Richard Fox
Overconfidence is always a danger, in my view, as I want potential and actual Obama voters not to become complacent, lazy, etc. –that is certainly true. But there is an impression I DO want out there, and that is, being part of a winning team. In this political contest there is a a great deal to be said with spooking your opponents, and from the mental breakdown I am witnessing on the part of the hard core right wing– I can only say– let them become depressed. Let them feel demoralized. They have inflicted so much harm, so much ignorance and petty do nothingness — they deserve to feel like losers and let that become their self fulfilling prophecy.
Chris
@Linda Featheringill:
Cut them loose and you’re condemning any minorities and/or poor people who don’t manage to move before the secession to virtual, maybe even literal slavery in short order. And as you said, it creates a hostile nation right on our border which will probably lash out again as soon as their economy starts going downhill (the time-honored tactic authoritarian thugs use to distract the public), either against us or some hapless Latin American country.
And it wouldn’t even solve the problem, because within a few generations a new group of RWA freaks would appear within the U.S. and start causing trouble. It’s not a cultural thing – these people exist everywhere.
So put me down as not wanting us to allow secession, for pretty much the same reason that I wouldn’t have wanted it allowed in 1861. (It’s a moot point anyway. As many have pointed out, it’ll almost certainly never happen).
Chris
@Frankensteinbeck:
Oh, I’d say acts of terrorism are certain, and they might not even be so isolated. Ideologies can spawn these things when they’ve lost the battle in the political arena and just go batshit – and movement conservatives are certainly a promising candidate for “going batshit.” But I agree, secession – nah.
Jennifer
The reason for the 80s retreads is really rather simple: screeching about the 60’s doesn’t work anymore, because a large majority of the electorate wasn’t sentient during that time. They played it all the way through 2004 (with the swiftboat nonsense) and tried to play it again in 2008 (with Bill Ayers) and it didn’t work, because most voters weren’t stupid enough to believe that an 8-year-old Barack Obama could plausibly be linked to radical leftist violence in the 1960s. So now they’re on to the 80s. Not a surprise. In the 80s they harkened to the golden age of the 1950s, before the blahs and the wimmins got all uppity. But there aren’t enough people who remember the 50s who are alive and still voting for that to be effective anymore. So now the 80s will be the new golden age, when St. Ronnie saved ‘Murca from the commies and libruls. All that’s left to update the new model is to find a new era to demonize…my guess is it will have to be the 1990s, because that’s when the most librul president ever (until Obama) got a blow job in the Oval Office thereby almost destroying America and rich people suffered under the untenable burden of a 3% higher income tax. Oh, the humanity!
danielx
Republicans just can’t let go of those glory days of the 1980s, and they’re about as relevant now as high school triumphs of the same time period. Or as relevant as the 1960s, with which Republicans are also still obsessed. Never mind that St. Ronnie couldn’t get nominated to the Republican ticket today no matter what kind of endorsements he had.
Secession and civil war – that shit was settled with the rednecks and peckerwoods in 1865, and it’s not going to happen again*. Not that what losing Mississippi wouldn’t be a net gain to the country…but anybody favoring it might want to read about the gentle attentions of Maj Gen Phillip Sheridan to the Shenandoah Valley in 1864.
*As noted in one of my favorite pieces of BJ artwork featuring of my favorite mean bastards:
https://balloon-juice.com/2010/12/20/as-the-scv-celebrates-slavery/
cintibud
Oh, I guess I am late to the new “Civil war” discussion. While I can certainly see acts of domestic terrorism occurring after an Obama win, there will certainly be no real talk of succession. BTW, that is also true for solid blue states if the R’s take over everything. Imagine, a state votes to succeed. No violence needed by the feds, they just put up barriers over all the interstates and block all traffic in and out until they go through “customs” with “proper documentation”. (Other roads could remain “unchecked” as a short term safety valve). All federal offices are shut down in that state and all federal money and activities – paychecks, social security, medicare, medicaid, contract payments, mail, etc, stop. All military assets are evacuated.
That would be a crushing blow to the country’s economy, but the succeeded state would quickly collapse into total chaos.
McJulie
@Schlemizel: Really? Okay, I’ll defend Piss Christ as art. I remember hearing about it before seeing what it looked like, and I pictured something that was simply in-your-face with its ugliness, like a crude political cartoon. But when I saw that it was so beautiful, suffused with this golden light, I began to find it very thought-provoking.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@azlib: Your mistake was reasoning with him, not mocking his close mindedness.
Example; the wingnut at work was ranting about Obama was the worst president ever, so I walking him into saying Obama was worse than Jimmy Carter and Jefferson Davis. That shut him up.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@cintibud:
There’s already talk. Has been for years. It might get to the point of some nutter introducing a bill in the Texas lege. But they’ll be surprised at how little support they’ll actually get.
I’m worried about some militiaman or sovereign citizen losing his shit and trying to start one, not an actual shooting war. I think you’re spot on with the best Federal response to any actual secession attempt.
Mino
@Baud: Scroll down a bit and see the graph. Even Clinton did not change the trend. http://currydemocrats.org/in_perspective/american_pie.html
arguingwithsignposts
@Jennifer:
All the 80s bands are on reunion tours.
Xecky Gilchrist
It’s as though a powerful bloc of modern Republicans has never been able to let go of those glorious “Greed Is Good” days of a generation ago.
These dinosaurs haven’t let go of the dirty-hippies-and-Black-Panthers-and-bra-burners-ruined-everything days of a generation before THAT. And that’s the young ones! The rest of them are going on about Commies like they’re digging fallout shelters in their backyards.
ETA: @Jennifer: screeching about the 60’s doesn’t work anymore
You’re right – but now I think they’re finding screeching about the 80s didn’t work either so they’re reverting to the 60s again. It’s a flopping around that reminds me of the robot death scene in Terminator 2, where the T-1000 quickly assumes scary distorted versions of all the forms it took throughout the movie before it dies.
Pen
@cintibud: the entire west coast, Minnesota and Wisconsin, and Texas, among others all pay more in federal taxes than they receive back. They also have the advantage of being border state. I have a feeling that, in the extreme chance that any of then actually seceded, they’d find a way to make it work. It would fuck the country, they’d be rating for a while, but they’d ultimately be fine
. This is especially true, if unlikely, if the west coast decides they’ve had enough of the South’s shit and go their own way. Their economy’s already large enough to be a world power by itself and there isn’t a nation on the planet that old mess with an American border nation. Their only threat would be us.
different-church-lady
@gene108: I really don’t give a crap about Piss Christ. It’s things like the NEA I’m more concerned with defending.
Jay C
@cintibud:
BTW, the words are “secede” and “secession”, not “succeed/succession” – and as we learned in the 1860’s, the two terms don’t necessarily go together….
I think, though, that while an 1861-style secession movement is unlikely to attract more than a tiny bunch of fringe wingnuts, a sort of “internal secession” – of which I see more than a few disturbing signs of already.
We make a great deal out of the disconnect from political and/or cultural “reality” that so many right-wingers have from living in that epistemically-closed RW media “bubble” (which paradoxically, the spread of the Internet has aggravated). My feeling is that in the event of President Obama’s reelection and/or a loss of Congress by the Republicans (either this year or 2014) – those furthest out on the Right will simply withdraw even further into their closed-system “bubble”; become even more rigid and intolerant; purge even more “moderates” from their branches of the Republican Party, and veer off into a political wasteland not substantively different from classic European Clerico-Fascism ; albeit with an Evangelical Protestant, rather than the tradition Roman Catholic orientation).
Dominionists and their political enablers may be a small fringe right now: but I wouldn’t bet against their being able to influence local polities even up to the State level: do we really think RWNJ Christianists couldn’t become the major power bloc in, say, the Kansas or Oklahoma State Legislatures?
Won’t be pretty….
A Humble Lurker
@McJulie:
I don’t know. I mean, if it’s supposed to be symbolic of corruption of Christ’s teachings, should it be beautiful? Doesn’t that kind of give a mixed message? Or can you see it as ‘prettying up’ something that’s inherently ugly? (i.e. the corruption i.e. the piss)
Chris
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism:
Exactly.
It’s just like al Qaeda. I’m not worried that they’ll actually succeed in imposing a psycho Worldwide Caliphate. I AM worried that they’ll kill a lot of perfectly good people in the attempt.
(In both cases, they already have).
redshirt
@PurpleGirl: That’s it?
Wingnuts are insane.
central texas
Yes, along for the faux Americana of Leave it to Beaver and Mutually Assured Destruction, they pine for those simple, shared, magical rhetorical crutches like comsymp, Chicom, pinko that automatically marginalized one’s opponent and made thought unnecessary.
I have acquaintances who company I shared less and less frequently, who can barely begin, let alone complete, an argument without one of these magic incantations.
Brachiator
@Anne Laurie:
I don’t quite understand why you are reiterating this bit, when you know or should know that it isn’t true. Barbara Bush’s background was even more privileged and prominent than her husband’s. Her father was wealthy and she was part of the WASP Ascendancy (one of her ancestors was President Franklin Pierce). There is not a chance in hell that her career options would have been limited had she not married George. Her destiny was to be the powerful wife of a powerful man.
The other purported connections between Bush and Qualye and the wives of Team Romney are equally weak, apart from the idea that the image these women push as docile helpmeets is contradicted by the reality of their lives and choices.
gene108
@Soonergrunt:
I can understand the defense on 1st Amendment grounds. I’m with you on that.
The basic premise of sticking something in urine should be accepted as offensive, but the person has a right to do it via the first amendment.
The defense of this work by people on the left doesn’t accept the premise of urinating on something as being offensive, which is why I don’t get the defense of the work.
To me a simple statement defense is “yes pissing on a crucifix is offensive to many, but we live in a society, where people have the right to create works others find offensive. If you find it offensive don’t look.”
I think there’s a strong “evangelical” streak of atheists/agnostics amongst liberals, who enjoy sticking a “shiv” in the sides of “godbotherers” and get some satisfaction from offending them.
I myself don’t get a lot of art and symbolism, but I feel the defense of Piss Christ goes beyond simply standing up for first amendment principles for many on the left, because they deny the basic critique from Christians that pissing on something a group considers sacred is offensive.
Pen
@gene108: Art is entirely subjective, and unless it involves human or animal rights abuses my general response of offense is simply: “You’re offended? Good for you, have a cookie.” Giving them any more legitimacy than that is nothing short of the road to blasphemy laws.
cintibud
@Pen:
It is unquestionable that the states you mentioned, particularly CA would have a huge advantage due to their large economies. But it’s still a pipe dream. Economies are simply too interdependent. They would simply be able to cause more damage to the rest of the country before they fell apart. They don’t have an IRS, Social security admin, USPS, etc. They don’t have a means to direct air traffic (FAA). CA depends on water from other states – imagine if the water was controlled by a “hostile” country. And on and on. The fact that they pay more taxes than they consume won’t help if they don’t have the infrastructure to provide services formally provided by the feds.
Now if secession is a necessary, mutually agreed proposition, then things could be negotiated to reduce the shock on the US and the new country. That might happen in some post apocalyptic world in which the federal government is too far away and powerless to help distant states, but not in the current world of deep partisan differences
cintibud
@Pen:
It is unquestionable that the states you mentioned, particularly CA would have a huge advantage due to their large economies. But it’s still a pipe dream. Economies are simply too interdependent. They would simply be able to cause more damage to the rest of the country before they fell apart. They don’t have an IRS, Social security admin, USPS, etc. They don’t have a means to direct air traffic (FAA). CA depends on water from other states – imagine if the water was controlled by a “hostile” country. And on and on. The fact that they pay more taxes than they consume won’t help if they don’t have the infrastructure to provide services formally provided by the feds.
Now if secession is a necessary, mutually agreed proposition, then things could be negotiated to reduce the shock on the US and the new country. That might happen in some post apocalyptic world in which the federal government is too far away and powerless to help distant states, but not in the current world of deep partisan differences
Pen
@gene108: Art is entirely subjective, and unless it involves human or animal rights abuses my general response of offense is simply: “You’re offended? Good for you, have a cookie.” Giving them any more legitimacy than that is nothing short of the road to blasphemy laws. We’ve been down that road and I’ll fight light hell against it on principle.
Darkrose
Seriously? “Piss Christ”?
The late ’80’s called, and they want their controversy back.
Ruckus
@Frankensteinbeck:
The puritans didn’t leave because of religious intolerance against them, they left so they could practice it against others.