The Secret of W's Success.

March 3, 2001 11:14 PM

The Secret of W's Success.....Could it really be this simple to stymie the Dems?
posted by BGM (28 comments total)

That link is going to torque off the whiny liberals that inhabit MeFi.

You done posted a doozie!
posted by Capn_Stuby at 11:29 PM on March 3, 2001

I do believe this topic is the most blatant troll I've ever seen here. Yowza.
posted by frykitty at 12:02 AM on March 4, 2001

What does Michael J. Fox have to do with this?
posted by holloway at 12:09 AM on March 4, 2001

Oh, there you go again™! Pro-Democrat MeFi posts = attempts at reasoned, rational discussion. Pro-Republican MeFi posts = trolling. Sorry, life doesn't work that way.
posted by aaron at 12:10 AM on March 4, 2001

Amen, Frykitty. Shall we whiny liberals draw a circle around this landmine and keep walking?
posted by chino at 12:11 AM on March 4, 2001

Aaron: A troll is a troll, on either side of the fence. :)
posted by frykitty at 12:23 AM on March 4, 2001

Yeah, but you guys keep running that fog machine on your side! ;)
posted by aaron at 12:31 AM on March 4, 2001

That link is going to torque off the whiny liberals that inhabit MeFi.

"I know this approach has been criticized. But why? Is whiny beneath us? Is querulous below us? Should our party be led by someone who boasts of a heart not at all a bit peevish?"

"Bush treats liberals like small children having their first nightmare."

How charming. Papa Bush, once you learn how to read, will you read us a happily-ever-after bedtime story and make the bad dreams about Pat Buchanan and Strom Thurmond go away?

Shall we whiny liberals draw a circle around this landmine and keep walking?

We liberals are easily stymied by conservative trolls. Conservative trolls are like non-corporeal beings that we liberals just can't quite get a grasp on. We feel pretty foolish whining at this empty space which we are quite sure is occupied by a mean person saying lots of trollish things. Instead of drawing our circle of protection around the mean spirits, we fall into the temptation of talking to the trolls at their own, age-appropriate level. When will we learn to just listen to the nursery rhyme and fall off to sleep?

posted by rboren at 12:52 AM on March 4, 2001

How 'bout the dems get on one side of the cafeteria, the pubs get on the other, and we call "FOOD FIGHT!" Afterwards we can scrape the applesauce off our clothes, have a laugh, and go for a beer.

Aaron: mashed potatoes comin' your way.
posted by frykitty at 1:04 AM on March 4, 2001

In the interest of not only honesty but also irony, I should rush to add that off-air, Bill Press is one of the nicest people on TV.

Uh... when he's off-air, he's not on tv...
posted by lpqboy at 1:09 AM on March 4, 2001

I think this column's on the mark. Bush has personalized politics in a remarkable new way, not hostile in the sense "personal" used to mean, but instead making it a kind of dance of politesse: if you disagree with him now, after all his overtures to bipartisanship, you are cruelly questioning his sincerity and goodness.

Back in one of the debates, I remember groaning when Bush, faced with a straight statistics-based policy question about abysmal child health care rates in Texas, responded something to the effect of, "If you're saying I'm not a good-hearted person, you're wrong." It's evasive, it's manipulative, it's almost childish in its tactical simplicity, but it works, because no one wants to come off as "mean" and actually call him on the mismatch between word and deed. It's all about trusting him, so long as you don't actually peer too closely; that would be unseemly. You wouldn't question a good person, someone you're supposed to trust, would you?
posted by Joe Hutch at 1:33 AM on March 4, 2001

“How 'bout the dems get on one side of the cafeteria, the pubs get on the other, and we call "FOOD FIGHT!" Afterwards we can scrape the applesauce off our clothes, have a laugh, and go for a beer.”

And, once again, I’m stuck in the middle ... with a large sausage in my, uh, ear.
posted by gleemax at 4:13 AM on March 4, 2001

As Nixon said, though he curiously missed stating in the correct order: judge us not by what we say but by what we do.
A.C. is one of a bevy of young women who can say not a word bad about anything the GOP does and her record of attacking all from the Democrats is a fair enough indication of her position. Consider the very many Democrats who are to the right of center and the few who vote along with the Republicans. Clearly, there are things that either side has said, done that are good for the nation. To say that one side has been all wrong (Lincoln made a mistake in freeing the slaves; FDR made a mistake with social security) is plain foolish.
posted by Postroad at 4:31 AM on March 4, 2001

Conservative trolls are like non-corporeal beings that we liberals just can't quite get a grasp on.

From personal experience, that's true, often because campaigners on the left in Britain come to politics through "struggle"-based activism -- the unions, student demonstration, civil rights -- whereas Tories regard Westminster as a gentleman's club, an extension of the public school and the Oxford Union where debating is a game, and can't we all be friends afterwards over a glass of sherry, dear boy? (Really: I know these people. Many will be Tory MPs soon enough. Even worse, some will be Labour MPs.)

In short, there's more at stake on the left. There's more to lose (unless you see it in exclusively moralistic terms, in which case conservatism can be a kind of activism). And it's easy to be over-sensitive, too eager to take the bait, because it's an ongoing struggle against the complacency and the drollery that have held people back for decades. Which is silly, because such defensiveness masks the fact that the left quite obviously has the high-ground in every single bloody case.

Socialists can be humourless political opponents (except when dealing with their own party), because they don't regard politics as play: that's why I'm happier to recall one of the greatest British politicians of the 20th century when he said: "No amount of cajolery, and no attempts at ethical or social seduction, can eradicate from my heart a deep burning hatred for the Tory Party...So far as I am concerned they are lower than vermin."
posted by holgate at 6:32 AM on March 4, 2001

every time i see Ann Coulter, i want to ask her, "Why the long face?"
posted by cfj at 7:42 AM on March 4, 2001

My question for Aaron - and for Ann "Ariana-with-better-hair-and-fewer-facelifts" Coulter - is simple: what success? Junior hasn't had a single one of those things (tax cut, religion-based government social funding, etc.) enacted yet, so isn't it a little disingenuous to call them "successes"? They are proposals and while I can imagine some kind of tax package passing, the chances of religion-based government social funding (1) getting through Congress and (2) withstanding constitutional scrutiny are just about nil...
posted by m.polo at 8:38 AM on March 4, 2001

I know some of the same posh Conservatives that Holgate notes are so common among UK Tories ... but I must say that most US conservatives are much more like Baroness Thatcher than the posh good sports, i.e., people with a deep and abiding distaste for the left and for the cultural / academic elite with which the left is associated.

People like Bob Dole and Newt Gingrich have a gut distaste for the other side every bit as thorough as those of the most hardened, up-from-the-pits, TUC-executive-turned-Labour minister in the Clement Atlee glory days. Coulter, knowing these American rightists personally, can't quite grok the extent to which the American right often does appear "angry" and the extent to which "angry right" is a frightening thing to the electoral majority.

Bush's accomplishment is a real one ... but easy for him because he never went throgh any of the experiences that forged the angry left: here's someone who never had to spend a long political apprenticeship kowtowing to Democrats, who never had to feel looked down upon by Ivy Leaguers because of his CV loaded with 3rd tier schools, who managed at once to feel superior to (as born into a Texas aristrocracy) and a part of (as an Andover-preppred scion to a Greenwich CT banking and political family of ancient lineage) the East Coast establishment.

posted by MattD at 8:40 AM on March 4, 2001

Frankly, I can't talk to either Democrats OR Republicans most of the time...
posted by muppetboy at 10:55 AM on March 4, 2001

Bush is high on a honeymoon that has been unnaturally helped by some extremely poorly-timed indiscretions by the outgoing Clintons. I don't think that necessarily makes him "successful", particularly since he hasn't yet passed anything substantial. Coulter is entitled to be optimistic, of course.

This is just another in a long line of Republican we're-the-victim whines when they are accruing ever more power. Clarence Thomas is the prime example. He was pilloried, he says, for challenging orthodoxy; the horrible punishment he received for challenging orthodoxy was the leadership of the EEOC. He continued challenging orthodoxy, and the brickbat he was given was a federal judgeship. Challenge orthodoxy once more he did, and the way the evil liberals "lynched" him (in an absolutely disgusting perversion of a word, first by his sponsor Orrin Hatch, but later by himself), was ... appointment to the highest court in the land. If that's getting lynched, give me some.

Just more of what Phil Agre has noted is a Republican semi-Freudian projection of their own actions and attitudes onto others. Coulter sees a "mean" Bill Press and a "happy" Pat Buchanan. Personally, I always thought the two of them got along fine, and I can't remember Press actually scowling. Seems to me this is a somewhat unscientific observation.
posted by dhartung at 12:12 PM on March 4, 2001

i just love that she's trying to get us to see pat buchanan as Mr. Happy Fun-Time Party Clown. "where's the anger?" oh, maybe in comments about subjugating gays and blacks? perhaps?
posted by pikachulolita at 1:06 PM on March 4, 2001

Now that this place is crawling with compassionate conservatives, maybe one of them can answer a question:

What has Ann Coulter ever done to merit being taken seriously as an author or commentator? Although she calls herself a "constitutional scholar," as far as I know her only real life accomplishment is impersonating a harpy on any TV show that would have her.
posted by rcade at 4:26 PM on March 4, 2001

Dan - please tell me this is just semantics, but is there such a thing as a well-timed indiscretion? If you were speaking of anyone but Clinton, I wouldn't have even given it a second thought, but given Clinton's history...
posted by schlyer at 4:41 PM on March 4, 2001

rcade fired the first salvo:

"What has Ann Coulter ever done to merit being taken seriously as an author or commentator? Although she calls herself a "constitutional scholar," as far as I know her only real life accomplishment is impersonating a harpy on any TV show that would have her"

And you are a person that posts on a sparsely-read blogger board. What makes your opinions any more or less valid than hers? The fact that she says things that you don't agree with? I know you're not trying to be an author or commentator, but if anyone wants to be taken seriously, they've GOT to rise above the level of personal attacks. It's juvenile, but it's the bread und butter of every big-profile Democrat and a lot of posters here.

Is this some kind of nursery?
posted by Capn_Stuby at 5:23 PM on March 4, 2001

they've GOT to rise above the level of personal attacks.
And you are a person that posts on a sparsely-read blogger board.
Is this some kind of nursery?

Mr. Pot, paging Mr. Pot...
posted by darukaru at 5:44 PM on March 4, 2001

... they've GOT to rise above the level of personal attacks.

I don't think it's a personal attack to ask why someone should be taken seriously. If Ann Coulter showed through her writing or her television performances that she was either bright or witty, I could overlook her glaring lack of expertise on anything other than being telegenic and shrill.

You can make this into a partisan issue, but I enjoy Peggy Noonan, Jonah Goldberg and some other conservative pundits I disagree with on every issue that matters. Coulter, though, is wretched, ham-handed, and shows absolutely no knowledge of history. She seems to have been educated entirely by watching talking heads on television.

Incidentally, for someone who has only been here two weeks, you are breaking all of our records for complaining about MetaFilter. You really need to pace yourself better.
posted by rcade at 6:31 PM on March 4, 2001

Stuby, if you call the posters here children, by insinuating this board is “some kind of nursery,” calling other comments “juvenile,” and adding that ad hominem attacks are the “bread und [sic] butter of every big-profile Democrat and a lot of posters here,” how can anyone take any of your comments seriously? You’ve got rise above the level of personal attacks.

Rogers, add to that conservative writer list Chalmers Johnson. He’s conservative in the classical sense, not the neo-con definition that to be “conservative” one has to defend the rights of the super-rich at all costs. Conservatives used to rail against the concentration of wealth as anti-democratic some 80 years ago. I wonder what happened.
posted by capt.crackpipe at 7:10 PM on March 4, 2001

If someone presents herself as a commentator and makes her living that way, she probably ought to expect a higher level of scrutiny than the average poster on Metafilter. But even if Ms. Coulter were subjected to a lower level of scrutiny, she wouldn't fare all that well. The majority of the postings, from all points along the political spectrum, that I've seen here were far more balanced than Ms. Coulter's.

The notion that liberals have cornered the market on name calling is hogwash. While it's true that some liberals have falsely labeled conservatives anti-art for wanting to abolish the NEA, what about all the conservatives who call liberals anti-American if we disagree with an anti-flag burning amendment, or requiring children to recite the pledge of allegiance? Isn't it just possible that we have legitimate reasons for our positions, instead of simply wanting to turn the whole country over to whichever reds still exist? The old "America, love it or leave it" canard is surely as heavy-handed as whatever the liberals have come up with.

I also agree with rcade that it's somewhat hypocritical to call us "whiny liberals" on one hand and then complain that we're making ad hominem attacks against Ms. Coulter.

If we liberals are as childish and simple-minded as she and some here suggest, why do conservatives seem to fear us so much? Most of the liberals I know do make an attempt to see other points of view but are unable to reconcile those points of view with logic and our own values. Most of my conservative friends (and I have some) don't even try: they just reject what we say out of hand. Certainly that's what Ms. Coulter is doing.
posted by anapestic at 7:27 PM on March 4, 2001