Surprise, surprise...

...The Republican Party really has become the party of the South.

The following graph breaks down by region the 'favorability rating' of the Grand Old Party:

I mean, it's not even close!

These data, culled from recent polling, were translated into graph form in a piece that appeared in The Washington Monthly earlier this month. I discovered it through a link posted on Andrew Sullivan's blog.

The GOP fraternity's quandary:What to do about Rush?

The New York Times's Timothy Egan weighed in a couple of days ago on the apparent non-news story of the moment: a game of 'hot potato' being played among various factions of the Republican Party. The hot potato they're tossing back and forth is the grotesque, meaty melon of Rush Limbaugh. Below is excerpted Egan's blog entry on the subject, titled Fears of a Clown:

Once upon a time, you could drive to the most remote reaches of the United States and escape Rush Limbaugh. But from the Mogollon Mountains of New Mexico to the Badlands of South Dakota, where only the delicious twang of a country tune or the high-pitched pleadings of a lone lunatic came over the AM dial, there is now the Mighty El Rushbo.

As someone who spends a lot of time on the road, I used to find Limbaugh to be an obnoxious but entertaining companion, his eruptions more reliable than Old Faithful. But now that Limbaugh has become something else — the face of the Republican Party, by a White House that has played him brilliantly — he has been transformed into car-wreck-quality spectacle, at once scary and sad.

Behold:

The sweaty, swollen man in the black, half-buttoned shirt who ranted for nearly 90 minutes Saturday at the Conservative Political Action Conference. He reiterated his desire to see the president of his country fail. He misstated the Constitution’s intent while accusing President Obama of “bastardizing” the document. He made fun of one man’s service in Vietnam, to laughter.

David Letterman compared him to an Eastern European gangster. But he looked more like a bouncer at a strip club who spent all his tips on one bad outfit. And for the Republican Party, Limbaugh has become very much a vice.

Smarter Republicans know he is not good for them. As the conservative writer David Frum[*] said recently, “If you’re a talk radio host and you have five million who listen and there are 50 million who hate you, you make a nice living. If you’re a Republican party, you’re marginalized.”

Apart from a couple of unconvincing conclusions that Egan reaches later in the piece, this seems a pretty decent analysis of a current political/media sideshow (that I confess I haven't been following very closely). Egan correctly identifies the 'straw-man' technique that has for the last 20 years or longer been one of the GOP's most consistent and elegantly executed tactics. The key to pulling it off -- and the reason why the Democrats hadn't been any good at it in the pre-Obama era -- is doing it with a sense of humor. Why is a sense of humor so important?

Consider that in the past, Limbaugh-hatred was either (1) shrill and way too earnest or (2) holier-than-thou and self-congratulatory. The first tendency had the effect of expanding Limbaugh's power and influence because it rewarded him for cloaking his run-of-the-mill intellectual dishonesty in an aura of mischief and insouciance. This insouciance, at once contagious and 'empowering' to his audience, was applied to the task of caricaturing ever-more-outrageously various Democratic Party sacred cows (feminism, multiculturalism, political correctness etc.). This seemed a particular thorn in the side of the Democratic Party throughout much of the 90s (in fact, perhaps beginning with Michael Dukakis's failed 1988 presidential bid): the Dems were the squares, who -- in the eyes of many a country bumpkin and many a Wall Street trader alike -- didn't "get" it. In that era, the Dems allowed Rush to frame discourses in his own increasingly ludicrous (and, spiritually, racist and fascistic) terms. The Dems lacked the savvy to respond in a way that is disposed structurally to draw attention to the very 'straw man'-ness of his 'straw man' criticisms.
Circumstances have changed. It is this very savvy that the intuitive politician Barack Obama possesses in spades. Our new president wields this powerful weapon deftly, and thus, he exposes convincingly the hysterical patchiness of the rantings of Limbaugh and ilk, and he manages to do so in such a way as to charm your mother's pants off! The talent of the Republican Party for 'messaging' and propaganda has long been superior to that of the Democrats. But, ever since the majority of the public turned against the Iraq War, it's been painfully clear that its effectiveness has run its course.

The GOP sloganeering- and outrage-machine is fueled not on ideas but on sound-bites that serve as stand-ins for ideas. Once its pattern of rhetorical brinkmanship is exposed in all of its fraudulence -- as was done spectacularly in the aftermath of the invasion of Iraq -- there's no recourse to a coherent set of underlying principles or ideas. In other words, it, like Fox News, is all smoke-and-mirrors.

Obama knows how to deal with smoke-and-mirrors. All you have to do is pucker up and blow the smoke away. The Elephant will then see its own naked reflection. And it will be ashamed.

The second tendency that I outline above -- that of self-righteousness -- made the Democrats fall into the trap that their antagonist had set for them: that of embodying the very caricature that America's favorite squishy-necked pill-popper had spent all of his hate-energy expounding. This not only appeared to Limbaugh's audience to confirm the validity of what he was saying, but it simultaneously further endeared him to his fanatical audience. Remember: this is an audience that has lived through its Savior vicariously. Rush's audience couldn't help but take personally any and all insults/slights that were directed against him. His not inconsiderable talent is that of making his devoted listener feel that he has something at stake in Limbaugh's treatment among the chattering classes. The egomaniac's egomaniac, el Rushbo beckons his avid listener to see the world through Rush's beady eyes. As Limbaugh would have it, the politician or journalist who behaves dismissively toward Rush is, in fact, behaving dismissively toward them and 'their kind', however narrowly circumscribed this category (racially, for instance) might be.

Even worse for the Dems of the 90s: self-righteousness is the character flaw that conditions the ugly act of scolding, and the best way to provoke somebody's irrational fury against an amorphous 'enemy' -- especially when the somebody in question has an inferiority complex to begin with -- is to scold him.**

Now the GOP is at last forced to come to terms with its ideological incoherence, the fracturing of the myriad marriages of convenience that were holding together its recent political alliances. Inevitably, this involves lots of finger-pointing. And, sure enough, it is not now the Democratic Party, but indeed Rush Limbaugh who comes across both as shrill and as taking himself way too seriously. As Egan observes correctly, the Dems have done a masterful job of exploiting this situation, and are reaping considerable benefit. The vast majority of voters identify the Democratic Party as the party of competent adults.

True, it is primarily Obama's administration -- and not Congressional Dems -- that enjoys this deserved reputation. But with George W. Bush's parting gift, the economy, in a free-fall -- the unemployment rate, an astounding 8.1 percent, is the highest it's been in twenty-five years --, all of these idiotic "no" votes among Republicans on any and all Obama-sponsored stimulus or spending packages are likely to come back to bite the GOP in the ass.

The continuing series of callow, nakedly partisan whine-fests from the likes of House Majority Leader John "Indignant Hillbilly" Boehner contribute to the stiff scent that's in the air: that of a major political party marginalizing itself seemingly out of existence... The Democrats, as long as they don't fall back into the traps of moral righteousness, multiculturalism as practiced in the early 90s,*** and so-called political correctness, will continue to reap benefits from turning the spotlight in the direction of the GOP airing its own dirty-laundry.

Obama's Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, like him or hate him (why bother choosing?), is a good mouthpiece for talking trash about Limbaugh precisely because Emanuel's a dick and doesn't pretend otherwise. Counterintuitive as it might seem, the fact that there is obviously something calculated behind the Dems' going after Limbaugh is actually what makes it work so well. This is because it is precisely the interaction between calculation and execution that makes this and any non-news story so damned entertaining. It's like watching a baseball team pull off a sacrifice fly to score an RBI.

A brief note on moral righteousness. It is true that certain species of moral righteousness play a role in Obama's shtick, but that's not the part of his shtick that is in any way partisan. Obama reserves this righteousness for affirming values about which there is near-unanimity -- values that are no less significant for their universality.

Obama will denounce torture, for instance, but opposition to torture is still -- THANK GOD -- a defining moral principle held among the vast majority of Americans, the exceptions including some truly slimy, invidious creeps like William Kristol and Alan Dershowitz. Anyway, as long as Dems don't start to press so hard as to actually create sympathy for Limbaugh, they'll benefit from this approach.

Actually, I take that back. It occurs to me that as soon as things get to the point at which Limbaugh becomes an object of sympathy, his relevance is at that moment forever demolished.

_________________
* For the record, while I'll concede that David Frum is probably a little bit smarter than Rush Limbaugh (although certainly nowhere near as successful -- by any measure), in no way should this be confused with acceptance of the completely fallacious notion that David Frum is smart.

** See Hitler, Adolph.

*** Mind you, I'm not against multiculturalism as such. I simply dislike some of the idiotic excesses that came along with it when middle school principals, etc., started getting their unenlightened paws on it. Uh, if that sounds a little wooden, I'll just say that I do actually espouse a principled criticism, but I'm not in the mood right now to go into the details of it.

The declining political currency of outrage,Part II: Is the media literacy of younger generations obviating the culture wars?

This post proceeds from the spot at which Part I left off. Contrasting his persona and rhetoric with that of President-elect Obama, I characterized Former President Bill Clinton as follows:

Clinton demonized his enemies and inflated the scurrilousness of their charges and tactics, in effect shoring up support from 'his side', but simultaneously enraging and radicalizing his opposition. ... People sided with Clinton because he was needy of our attention and our love; he needed us to prop him up against the mean bullies who were out to get him.

Clinton's presidency coincided with eight years of particularly cacophonous culture-war waging: the far-Right devoted itself to fighting and re-fighting ad nauseum the same perceived 'social'-political battles that were seen to have sprouted during the oh-so-turbulent late 1960's and early 1970's. The battle lines were drawn not around the big issues of the period -- Vietnam, the Draft, the incendiary fretwork of Jerry Garcia -- but around some fairly slight stuff like whether or not the sexual mores portrayed in prime time television programming reflect those of everyday Joes in the Heartland. (A textbook opportunity for Heartland outrage, considering that any such television show enjoys high ratings specifically because millions of viewers in the Heartland tune in week after week, whether they're honest about it or not.) This has been the dominant cultural divide of the past thirty years; not coincidentally, it centers almost exclusively on the opinions, values and resentments of Baby Boomers, in relation to those of other Baby Boomers. The rest of us were mere spectators.

The duration of Clinton's two terms was a period during which the far-Right sated its appetite for pandering to, fueling and masterminding the direction of a host of 'anti-elite' resentments. This masterminding of direction was accomplished not only in the service of galvanizing political support, but in making loads of money. Rush Limbaugh's barely occluded racism, anti-semitism and general bigotry were pilfered from Father Coughlin's bag o' tricks. But what's most shocking of all is the amount of money the fat douche has been able to make by yelling into a microphone at millions of other fat douches.*

William Jefferson Clinton was the perfect focal point for this good-old-boy outrage, in no small part because he already in fact was an outrageous figure, every bit as invested in dusting off and utilizing the codes, metaphors and assumptions of the 1960's culture wars as was Limbaugh. Clinton practiced the politics of division every bit as shrewdly as Karl Rove would do subsequently, especially when he managed to assemble the coalition that handed George W. Bush the second term that he unquestionably didn't deserve. Clinton knew how to rally his coalition to his side; he knew how to draw people in. His travails became ours.

Enter many of the tropes, habits and labels of contemporary campaigning in our heavily (basically: psychotically) mediated lives. Entertainment and news are difficult for the common man (of which there is one somewhere inside all of us, lest you think I'm being elitist [although, I guess I sort of am, but indulge me]) to distinguish from one another.

In Part I, we talked about a form of political theater that uses outrage as its jet fuel: taking umbrage. What a useful tool! We describe the media circus between the Clinton Administration and the Right in terms of lobbing accusations and insults back and forth. But the culture wars wouldn't have gotten under our skin were it simply about slamming the other guy. In contradistinction to the NBA, playing offense is itself not a good enough spectacle. I mean, attacks are exciting, but as they escalate, they become increasingly unmemorable. They blend together. After all, as outrageous as they might be, they're still just words. And if you're going to have a war of words, you may as well have it over policy issues, because words are going to bore people anyway. And debating policy issues is no good for national politics; it turns too many people off.

So it's not about offense but defense. The culture wars of the 1990's got under our skin because we identified with the participants. We took sides. We were divided up into two teams. We lived vicariously through personalities. Bill Clinton was a stand-in for you. He was on your side, advocating for you; honoring your memory and experience, and your belief in the unwavering moral imperatives that your experience taught you to hold dear. On the Right, there were a succession of demagogic good-old-boys to identify with, including politicians like Newt Gingrich and proliferating numbers of ideological profiteers who took a cue from Rush, and began yelling their outrage into microphones for some fast cash.

We observed in Part I that President-elect Barack Obama has a tremendous knack for staring-down and -- in effect -- minimizing ludicrous character attacks. This has the further effect of making the person who utters the attacks look like he is about two feet tall. It's an exhilarating part of Obama's appeal -- and one for which the Zeitgeist could not be more receptive -- that he is an adult. I would add that it is by striking this chord of responsible, intelligent (even cerebral), savvy and -- let's face it -- exceedingly cool adult-ness that Obama stands to unite the country. United in the very real sense that a majority of the country (by a mind-bendingly substantial margin) wants a leader with these very qualities.

I know what you're thinking. What's all this hippie bullshit about 'uniting the country'? You don't actually believe that stuff, do you? The answer is that I do believe it, but maybe not in the way that triggered your incredulity mechanism. What I mean is that when Obama speaks in a language that addresses rhetorically the entire nation, he is in effect -- and to precisely the extent to which his rhetoric is successful at performing this feat of unification -- uniting the country.

By contrast, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush -- both of them Baby Boomers -- were culture warriors, each of whom therefore (by definition) thrived on a rhetorical model that to a lesser or greater extent, pitted one population against another. It's possible that there'd have been no other way in which a Baby Boomer could govern (or, perhaps: no other way in which a Baby Boomer Democrat could govern and/or win an election). It's even more certain that both men are products of their time: that there's something about their personalities, certain (and contrasting) forms of Doublespeak, certain (and contrasting) forms of smugness that are in part generational timestamps. I guess the word would be immaturity.

Both Clinton and Bush are juvenile figures in exactly the sense that Obama is an adult figure. As we've discussed, as a candidate, Obama stared down the sophomoric slime-balling, whisper campaigns, race-baiting and neo-McCarthyist tactics of the McCain/Palin campaign, making their attacks them look like puny spit-balls, thrown by tiny, desperate and mediocre men. Which is exactly what they were. Both Bush and especially Clinton had talent for doing precisely the opposite: taking small problems and made them big. Each constituency identified with 'his struggle' because each constituency identified with its guy and what he 'stood for'.

Each president's constituency was united more or less by the common experience of having lived through the late 60's/early 70's cultural-political climate; a climate that was mediated in an unprecedented way and to an unprecedented extent. And that period of skyrocketing media- and advertising-saturation was distinguished by -- as much as anything else -- the magnification/amplification of small, inconsequential, abstruse and even fictitious phenomena. And, to an unprecedented extent, instantaneously! This was the period of Bush's and Clinton's halcyon youth. These phenomena are what the culture wars are all about: fashion, lifestyle, taste.

By the way, I'm not saying that this historical fact is good or bad; I'm just drawing our attention to it. I mean, an inarguable example of this explosion of commercial media is also something that is unarguably good: The Beatles, for instance. Its sudden popularity and huge influence hinged entirely on some hype and one appearance on one television show.

Media have changed. We docile consumers have too. Can you even imagine a 2008-equivalent to a phenomenon like The Beatles? Although, I suppose it was equally unimaginable in the early 1960's.

Obama grew up at a time during which people had already become acclimated to television and radio. He is a member of the post-Baby Boomer generations, in which all of us are, to a lesser or greater degree, habitually savvy media critics. Watch video footage some time of Tricky Dick Nixon. It's not -- I don't think -- merely the benefit of hindsight that makes him such an obvious phony. It's that we know instinctively how to read media; we're equipped with conceptual tools and interpretive devices that simply could not have been available to the vast majority of Boomers. Is it any surprise that so many people from that generation and older fell for George W. Bush's ludicrous I'm-from-Texas routine? Or that slime ball neocons were able to manufacture a groundswell of support for the Iraq War out of a combination of half-truths, Doublespeak, fear tactics and 'patriotism' talk?

Among all of the voters who participated in the presidential election of 2008, the only so-called demographic of which a majority supported John McCain was white people over the age of 65. The generations that fall under that heading are going to hold on tight and continue voting for the duration of old age. They're likely to become really really old, too. They have most of the money, they have huge numbers, and they represent myriad special interests to which elected leaders will continue to be beholden. Try as they might, they probably don't have the best interest of younger generations in mind.

The way to curtail their power is to continue making progress on what was started with the Obama's electoral and popular majority. How much do you want to bet that the divide will over time cease to be cultural and will become generational. That means that if we're smart, we can continue electing candidates cut from the same cloth as Obama. Candidates that resist and even condemn demagogy, that speak plainly, practically and in a manner that respects the electorate.

If the Republicans continue confining themselves to the backward, resentful, provincial niche they have carved out for themselves, the Democrats have a real opportunity for continued dominance. Now that we've seen that it can work, the new Democratic coalition can only become stronger. If the Republicans wise up and drop their weirdo social conservatism/pro-racism platform, it might save their party, but it would do so in a way that -- we can hope -- has a chance of pulling the country back from the dangerous precipice upon which it currently finds itself perched.

If voters continue to send a message that they won't fall for totalitarian, neo-McCarthyist, fear-mongering shenanigans, then politicians will respond by getting in line. We need to keep demanding that the Constitution be respected and not distorted, that the Bill of Rights is not negotiable in times of 'war', that we won't stand for declarations of war against vaguely defined enemies, with no discernible objectives. In other words, if younger generations hold firm to their media literacy, the message it sends to politicians is clear: don't fuck with us, Old Man. Don't fuck with our rights.

(Heh heh heh.... I think I just had to get that out of my system. Which is, after all, the point of having a blog.....Don't mind me....)


_______________

* For the benefit of readers uninitiated to urban slang: the term "douche" is here used as an abbreviation for "douche-bag."

The declining political currency of outrage,Part I: The Taking of Umbrage

For the duration of the recent -- for a while, seemingly interminable -- election season, the day-to-day coverage of the cable news-ish punditocracy was dominated by discussion and analysis of a blow-by-blow succession of statements, gestures and reactions, usually embodied by the candidates themselves, whether on 'the stump' or in a television studio, and sometimes simply written-up in a press release in rapid-fire fashion.

Some examples. Criticisms and denunciations: 'Senator McCain strongly criticized Senator Obama for his tax plan, ridiculing it as "socialism"'; 'Senator Obama's campaign shortly thereafter fired back, releasing a statement denouncing Senator McCain's allegations as "more smear tactics from the Karl Rove playbook.'" And, of course, the 'gaffes', the 'favorability ratings', 'raised questions about', etc. That kind of thing.

My favorite of these gestures, by a landslide, was umbrage-taking. It was at once among the most frequently cited gestures on the campaign trail and easily the most ill-defined. It often seemed simply to be imaginary. You were never quite sure who it was who was taking the umbrage, and on whose behalf. Nobody ever announces himself as having 'taken umbrage'. He just takes it!

In fact, it almost has more to do with what you don't do than with what you do, in fact, do. After The New Yorker ran its inscrutable cover portraying Senator and Mrs. Obama as black-power activists/terrorists/Muslims/whatever -- and by the way, re that cover: yes, of course we 'got' that it was an attempt at parody...the trouble is that that's not the same as it actually being funny -- Obama's campaign released a statement denouncing the cover as being in poor taste. But the denunciation was worded vaguely, if with all requisite rhetorical passion. And Obama himself didn't seem to personally care all that much about it, soon thereafter going on the record saying that it wasn't really a big deal.

This is leading me to a couple of points which foreshadow the meatier portions of this discussion (which will follow when I post Part Two):

Despite the near-constant perceived and actual taking of umbrage that occurred throughout the campaign, neither McCain nor Obama were all that convincing about it. It's almost like they were going through the motions. I think that in McCain's case it was unconvincing because he was bullshitting us, and McCain -- despite having tried repeatedly to the point of embarrassing himself and everyone else during his weird campaign -- has never been a good bullshitter. By contrast, in Obama's case, I think that the minimizing of umbrage-taking was part and parcel of the political and rhetorical values on which his campaign was based.

It's not that Obama undertook so lofty and impractical a goal as to transcend the tit-for-tat politics of ridiculing the other guy and taking umbrage when he tries to ridicule you. If you think that either Obama's campaign or his nascent administration contains so much as a speck of the impractical, you're ignoring all available evidence. No: the aspirational aspect of Obama, his espousal of our nation's founding principles and his articulation of the dream of achieving better future, this is not pie-in the sky idealism. Rather, it represents specifically the undercutting of the assumed and unquestioned antimonies between our capacities and our ideals.

One of the practical methods by which Obama undercuts these polarities is encapsulated in my final observation in this post: the difference between Obama's style of umbrage-taking and that of Former President Bill Clinton.* Clinton's style was to make his critics look bigger and meaner and more sinister than they already were**, in effect garnering the sympathy and support of the electorate, or anyway of the slight majority of it that was in his camp.

Clinton demonized his enemies and inflated the scurrilousness of their charges and tactics, in effect shoring up support from 'his side', but simultaneously enraging and radicalizing his opposition. Obama's style is exactly the opposite. He deflates the scurrilousness embedded intentionally in the rhetorical excesses of his opposition (of which, lest we forget, there was tons of the most reprehensible and even dangerous sort imaginable). Instead of demonizing his opposition, he stares it down, as though the would-be demon is revealed to be nothing more than shadows in the bedroom of a child afraid of the dark.

People sided with Clinton because he was needy of our attention and our love; he needed us to prop him up against the mean bullies who were out to get him. People side with Obama precisely because he doesn't need a babysitter to watch over him. We are drawn to him not because he needs us, but because we need him. And when it comes down to it (and part of Obama's brilliance is that he recognizes this even when many of us fail to), we don't need him because he's Barack Obama.

We need him because he's an adult.

Think that's small beans? Not if you consider that the last three decades -- and, arguably, the last half century -- has placed us under the leadership of whiny, needy children.

In comparison to Reagan, Bush Senior, Clinton and Bush Junior, Barack Obama is not only an adult, but he is a paragon of practicality. Think about it. How many things can you name that are more juvenile, more pie-in-the-sky/fantasy than:

• "Star Wars" (aka: Strategic Defense Initiative)
• "trickle-down economics,"
• "a thousand points of light,"
• "the era of big government is over,"
• "government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem,"
• "Ownership Society,"
• "Mission Accomplished,"
• "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."
• "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job,"
• "No one anticipated the breach of the levies,"
• "We do not torture"....

.... ??

I rest my case. Part Two of this item, coming up.



___________
* And actually, during the primary, Hillary perfected a style of umbrage-taking that was -- adjusted for constituency, gender and political climate -- taken straight from of her husband's playbook.

** Although, to be fair, among many of his critics, certain GOP gadflies and thugs, Clinton's characterizations of them proved prophetic and even tame. Ken Starr, for instance. What a weaselly little motherfucker that slight, puffed-up specimen of grandiose Bible-Belt foppery turned out to be!