Right Wing Nut House

Every once and a while, an issue jumps up and really shows the moral chasm that separates the right and the left.

Whether it’s Teri Schiavo or the cop killer Mumia, or AIM founder and convicted murderer of FBI agents Leonard Pelitier, there are some matters that bring out in the starkest relief imaginable, the great liberal/conservative divide on questions of simple, basic morality that seem so self-evident to conservatives but a mystery to liberals.

The Roman Polanski case highlights this difference in spades.

The reaction on the left to what should be a non-controversial case of a child rapist finally being forced to face the music for his horrific crime has been nothing short of astonishing. I suppose we should be used to this kind of moral blindness from people who invented the phrase “If it feels good - do it,” but for the life of me, it is boggling my mind that the Hollywood left - and their fellow travelers around the country - are singing the praises of this “artist” while excusing the bestial actions of a man who lured a 13 year old girl into disrobing to take pictures, drugged her, and then savagely raped her.

But weighed against his “accomplishments?” Tis a pittance, a non-event, or, as Whoopie Goldberg put it, “It wasn’t a “rape” rape.” That kind of sophistry deserves its own award from the Academy.

A couple of good links; first, from Allahpundit who is as discombobulated as I am about the reaction from liberals:

Needless to say, this reminds me of the left’s umbrage at conservatives daring to bring up Chappaquiddick after Teddy died. Yeah, he left a woman to drown and then made jokes about it afterwards; he was for universal health care, though, wasn’t he? Same with Polanski: Dare we deny the man who made “Chinatown” an occasional drugging and raping of a child? Sure, a kid gets traumatized for life, but on the other side of the scale: “Rosemary’s Baby.” It’d be sweet if the left could come up with some sort of mathematical formula by which we could tell whether an artist or liberal politician has exceeded his quotient of moral indulgence. I’m assuming “Chinatown” wasn’t so awesome that Polanski would be excused shooting a kid in the head at point-blank range, so evidently it’s “worth” less than that but more than a child-rape. Let’s figure out just how much of a liberal hero you have to be to get away with certain crimes.

Kate Harding writing in Salon:

Roman Polanski raped a child. No one, not even him, disputes that. Regardless of whatever legal misconduct might have gone on during his trial, the man admitted to unlawful sex with a minor. But the Polanski apologism we’re seeing now has been heating up since “Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired,” the 2008 documentary about Polanski’s fight to get the conviction dismissed. Writing in Salon, Bill Wyman criticized the documentary’s whitewashing of Polanksi’s crimes last February, after Superior Court Judge Peter Espinoza ruled that if the director wanted to challenge the conviction, he’d need to turn himself in to U.S. authorities and let the justice system sort it out. “Fugitives don’t get to dictate the terms of their case … Polanski deserves to have any potential legal folderol investigated, of course. But the fact that Espinoza had to state the obvious is testimony to the ways in which the documentary, and much of the media coverage the director has received in recent months, are bizarrely skewed.”The reporting on Polanski’s arrest has been every bit as “bizarrely skewed,” if not more so. Roman Polanski may be a great director, an old man, a husband, a father, a friend to many powerful people, and even the target of some questionable legal shenanigans. He may very well be no threat to society at this point. He may even be a good person on balance, whatever that means. But none of that changes the basic, undisputed fact: Roman Polanski raped a child. And rushing past that point to focus on the reasons why we should forgive him, pity him, respect him, admire him, support him, whatever, is absolutely twisted.

In addition to Goldberg’s dismissal of Polanski’s brutality with the cryptic defense that it really wasn’t “rape-rape,” there’s this from the Daily Mail.

In a statement, Mr Mitterand, a nephew of former President Francois Mitterand, said he learned of the arrest ‘with astonishment’ and that he regretted ‘in the strongest way that a new ordeal has been inflicted on someone who has already gone through so much’.

Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said the arrest was a ‘bit sinister’…

The Zurich Film Festival jury accused Switzerland of ‘philistine collusion’.

‘The case is three decades old and is all but dead but for minor technicalities. We stand by and wait for his release and his next masterwork,’ said jury president Debra Winger.

Other members of the film industry, including Italian actress Monica Bellucci, French actress Fanny Ardant, president of the Cannes film festival Gilles Jacob and Hong Kong director Wong Kar Wai issued a petition demanding his immediate release.

I will never watch “Officer and a Gentleman” again and not look at Winger as lower than a slug.

I don’t understand it. The idea of defending Polanski in any way, shape, or form is so far beyond the realm of any conscious thought I might imagine that it enters the world of dreams - a place where the physical laws of gravity and reality simply don’t apply and strange, surreal images float in front of your mind’s eye causing you to wake up with a start. It is then that you heave a sigh of relief because it was only a dream and such things couldn’t happen in the waking world.

Not so with those on the left who are defending Polanski. There is a hole in their soul where conscience and empathy are usually found. There is no way to patch that hole, to fill it with a moral framework that would cause these lefties to react as any normal, rational, human being would react when faced with the choice of condemning a child rapist or excusing him.

As an historical aside, a similar state of mind infected America when John Brown went to the gallows in 1859 to die for his crimes. Here, northerners condemned his actions but sympathized with his cause. That reaction drew the same kind of astonishment from southerners that we feel today at the reaction on the left to Polanski’s arrest. In fact, it hurried the day when civil war became probable as the south felt that northerners didn’t care if slaves murdered their masters in their beds as long as it was done in the just cause of getting rid of the institution. They didn’t understand the north’s moral confusion and many felt that a great chasm had opened up between the two sides.

Obviously, Polanski is no John Brown. But I wanted to highlight the fact that such radical differences in moral outlook are really quite rare in American history until recently, since we all spring from pretty much the same general background and ancestry steeped in western traditions that are based on Christian principles of personal responsibility and right and wrong. It used to be extremely rare that Americans, as a group, didn’t generally agree on the Big Questions that define the moral parameters in society, while having a common framework to discuss these questions even if there are what used to be usually relatively minor disagreements over purpose and motivation.

But since this New Morality swept America in the 1960’s - a morality that posits the idea that we are moral creatures responsible only to ourselves and our instincts - such moral flights of fancy have become somewhat more common on the left these days but are still relatively rare.

Apparently, sometimes the hard wiring that is responsible for giving us a moral conscience breaks down and we get inexplicable breaks in our moral continuity like this. To me, this is as good an explanation as any for why there has been this cognitive dissonance on the part of some on the left when it comes to the Roman Polanski case.

A lot of things have happened this week that have entered the airy cavity sitting atop my neck and floated around waiting to be recognized as conscious thought.

I can imagine all these little snippets of inner dialogue waiting patiently in some line, bitching about how slow a goose I am at moving them from the dark of my subconscious where they effect my thinking in mysterious ways, to the light of consciousness where I can examine them, caress them, milk them for their illuminating properties.

It’s easy to allow emotion to crowd out valuable insights that appear from time to time. At best, we recognize through reflection that perhaps we shouldn’t have written this, or said that, or made a mistake in judgment when analyzing something else. You end up wishing you hadn’t snapped back at your spouse, or yelled at your kid, or dismissed a co-worker’s attempt to be friendly.

I could start a blog and fill it with such reflections without any trouble - as could most of you, I’m sure. Learning from our mistakes is the essence of being human - probably the major factor in the rise of Homo Sapiens. Don’t get too close to that mammoth or you won’t come home from the hunt. Going after a Saber Tooth cat alone is not a good idea if you want to pass your genes on to the next generation. Trial and error not only advanced human evolution, it forms the basis of modern science and has led to the astonishing outpouring of creative thought we see today in everything from computers to razor blades.

Some venues do not allow for such errors. Political blogging is one of them. As ideology is set in stone and cannot be changed or challenged on either the right and the left, variance with the established themes and theses is not only frowned upon but punished severely. Here, “getting it wrong” does not mean that you are necessarily “incorrect,” only that you are in disagreement with the vast majority who march in ideological lock step. Deviate from the shining path and you are cast out as an apostate.

No matter. I came to the conclusion years ago that I could try to be honest with myself and my beliefs, incurring the wrath and disapprobation of those who consider themselves guardians of the Ya-Ya Conservativehood by challenging the underlying assumptions of their excessive and blindered ideology; or toe the line, betray my true beliefs, and enjoy the warmth of fellowship found in their ever narrowing definition of the “true conservative” path.

Lest some believe I am nailing myself to a cross by wallowing in self pity and whining about conservatives - most anyway - not taking me seriously, allow me to disabuse you of that notion. I celebrate my freedom from conformity every fu**ing day. I will lord it over those who, when confronted with a new issue, a new attack, feel lost and alone until they are told by others how they must think, be it Glen Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, or other “movement” leaders.

To be fair, most conservatives don’t really need to wait for the word coming down from on high. All they have to do is unthinkingly, uncritically, hold a mirror up to whatever the left is saying about an issue and simply reverse the image. That’s what the Limbaughs of the world do anyway. There’s no reason or rationale to it. That comes later - at least the rationale - as the right congratulates those whose “insights” are the most vitriolic and hateful.

The ideological screen through which most opinion on the right is washed has become internalized so that favorite themes regarding the left - unpatriotic, hate America, socialists, communists, liars, traitors - can be pulled off the shelf and slapped on to any “analysis” to make it conform to the “right thinking” brigades of hysterical paranoids who believe themselves guardians of Reagan’s legacy or, in extreme cases of delusional thinking, of conservatism itself.

(I hasten to add that there are exceptions to be found in the writings of some conservatives like Ed Morrissey, Allahpundit, Victor Davis Hanson, and several other independent thinkers on the right. But as a general rule, I believe my analysis stands.)

In this way, ideology at the expense of rational thought is celebrated and rewarded.

And yes, we find the exact same kind of irrational, nonsensical paranoia on the left. There is no difference. One is not worse than the other, except perhaps there is a bigger responsibility generally recognized throughout history for the majority to treat the minority with respect. But this hasn’t been true in American politics for decades so why bother discussing it?

Barack Obama, to his credit, said yesterday that opposition to his policies is not based on race, but on the fear of change:

In a number of interviews that will air in fuller form Sunday morning, the president also addressed the tone of a heated summer debate over health-care, and the contention of one former president that much of the criticism Obama faces is because he is black.

Some of the most heated opposition to the president’s initiatives are not racially motivated, Obama suggested in response to comments that former President Jimmy Carter had made earlier this week, but rather reflective of the turmoil that is common “when presidents are trying to bring about big changes.”

“Are there people out there who don’t like me because of race? - I’m sure there are,” Obama told CNN’s John King. “That’s not the overriding issue here.”

Instead, Obama maintained, it is concern about sweeping government change that has fueled much of the “passion.”

“It’s an argument that’s gone on for the history of this republic,” Obama told NBC News’ David Gregory. “Wbat’s the role of government?… This is not a new argument, and it always invokes passions.”

He is absolutely correct, of course. Not sure that “fear” is exactly the right word to describe what conservatives are feeling. Anyway, I am very glad he said this. But we must demand he go much farther in condemning the wild, out of control explosion of charges being made by his supporters that tar opposition to his policies as motivated solely by race. I realize this is very difficult for him to do because he benefits politically by this ridiculous, false, and hateful rhetoric coming from the left. But as long as his allies continue to deliberately, knowingly, and smugly raise the issue of race and use it as a political club, he will be seen as giving such deceitful arguments credence by the wink and the nudge.

In response to a comment from my brother Jim on my Mary Travers remembrance post, I tried to make the point that there are acceptable and unacceptable ways to engage in political combat, and they all boil down to this:

I joke about lefty folkies, of course - more playing to stereotype than reality. But we are of a generation that perhaps learned valuable lessons about civic disagreements and how they can truly lead to bloodshed unless we all remember that we are Americans who love our country and wish only the best for it. If only we could all start from that premise, I think a lot of the ugliness in our politics would be muted and we could get down to the business of truly addressing some of the problems facing the country today.

Does believing this make me any less passionate in my opposition to what I see are the wrongheaded, dangerous polices and politics of Barack Obama? Does not calling the president a Communist or Marxist disqualify my opinions because they are not hateful enough?

To some, yes. And those who cannot see what this kind of rigid, uncritical, self-defeating thinking is doing to our country - both right and left - may live to see the day where useful dialogue and reasoned debate become an impossibility and our country dissolves into weak, divided, quarreling bunch of ideologues who prevent us from facing vital challenges both at home and abroad.

A dragon lives forever
But not so little boys
Painted wings and giant rings
Make way for other toys.

“Puff the Magic Dragon”
Lyrics and music by Leonard Lipton and Peter Yarrow
Released in 1963

Social progress in America has never come easy. We are a nation in love with the past, wedded to tradition, and curiously schizophrenic about our notions of freedom and justice.

We were born proudly proclaiming our liberty from tyranny while at the same time, holding 3 million human beings in bondage - a situation that moved English author and compiler of the first dictionary Samuel Johnson to wryly remark during the Stamp Act controversy of 1765, “How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?”

We spent more than 150 years glorifying American womanhood while denying them the vote and other rights. We patted ourselves on the back for a 100 years about how we had rid ourselves of slavery, only to hold their children through their great, great, grandchildren in the even more insidious embrace of Jim Crow. We put on our most iconic symbol - the Statue of Liberty - words of welcome to immigrants, asking the world to send “…Your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…” — only to put up “No Irish Need Apply” and other signs, visible and invisible, to make their treatment a blot on our collective conscience.

We don’t keep our history locked in a closet, guarded 24 hours a day by CIA agents. Neither do we take that history out and dust it off often enough to relearn the lessons it teaches us about ourselves, and how social progress in America never comes cheap, or easy, or bloodless.

The point is not that we aren’t a perfect society and never have been. The point is that the revolutionary nature of our heritage and history has always held out the promise that we can be better. Not the absolute certainty of designed outcomes that enamors many on the left today. Not the “perfect” equality sought by the Utopians. Rather, simply the promise that if enough of us demand change — demand it loudly enough and long enough - progress toward making the words of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution mean what they say will occur.

These reflections were rattling through my head this morning after the news reached me that Mary Travers died. The New York Times may be decidedly biased in their political coverage, but few match them when it comes to obits of the famous:

Mary Travers, whose ringing, earnest vocals with the folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary made songs like “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “If I Had a Hammer” and “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” enduring anthems of the 1960s protest movement, died on Wednesday at Danbury Hospital in Connecticut. She was 72 and lived in Redding, Conn.

[...]

Ms. Travers brought a powerful voice and an unfeigned urgency to music that resonated with mainstream listeners. With her straight blond hair and willowy figure and two bearded guitar players by her side, she looked exactly like what she was, a Greenwich Villager directly from the clubs and the coffeehouses that nourished the folk-music revival.

“She was obviously the sex appeal of that group, and that group was the sex appeal of the movement,” said Elijah Wald, a folk-blues musician and a historian of popular music.

Ms. Travers’s voice blended seamlessly with those of her colleagues, Peter Yarrow and Paul Stookey, to create a rich three-part harmony that propelled the group to the top of the pop charts. Their first album, “Peter, Paul and Mary,” which featured the hit singles “Lemon Tree” and “If I Had a Hammer,” reached No. 1 shortly after its release in March 1962 and stayed there for seven weeks, eventually selling more than two million copies.

I have written previously of our family’s immersion into the Folk revival of the 1950’s and 60’s, commenting on the passing of the Kingston Trio’s Nick Reynolds and the Clancy Brothers Tommy Makem. (My brother Jim’s emotional tribute to KT’s John Stewart can be found here.).

And now, another link in the chain stretching back to my early childhood and my exposure to the Great American Songbook of traditional folk tunes has been broken with the death of Travers. We don’t realize at the time how childhood experiences shape our lives, our thinking, or our interests. My fascination with American history surely is at least partly the result of learning and listening to the traditional Scotch-Irish folk tunes, the sea shanties, the songs to which men marched off to war, performed backbreaking manual labor, dreamed of freedom, lived, loved, and died over the centuries.

They are songs mostly about ordinary people - a social history of the United States set to music - and it fired my imagination, spurring me to discover more about an America you don’t usually find in grammar school textbooks or High School reading assignments. What really happened in Harlan County, Tennessee Kentucky? How did the Underground Railroad work? Why are the Irish so fatalistic?

Mary Travers, Peter Yarrow, and Paul Stookey sang songs that posed questions about American society - and the human condition - that demanded answers. And around campfires, and library sing alongs, our family belted out the music, harmonizing and sharing our sheer joy of being together, learning, laughing, loving. This is why the death of these folk icons are almost like a death in the family to me. The memories the songs they wrote and sang are so powerful, so sweet, so full of the things that make life worth living for all of us, that I cannot help but allow a tear or two to course down my cheek.

As a musical group, Peter, Paul, and Mary were polished, professional, and chose their music with the utmost care. Their manager/producer, the legendary Milt Okun saw to that. With his keen ear and unfailing sense of a commercially viable package, Okun made Peter, Paul, and Mary into a hugely popular act whose success lasted almost a decade. Okun would go on to manage other iconic folk groups like The Chad Mitchell Trio, the Brothers Four, and John Denver.

It was their rendition of Dylan’s Blowin’ in the Wind that launched their careers. At once beautifully harmonized and featuring a driving rhythm, the song - along with their other huge hits If I had a Hammer and Where have all the Flowers Gone - became anthems of the civil rights and anti-war movements. It is perhaps telling that Hammer and Flowers were both written and originally sung by Pete Seeger and his 50’s era group The Weavers, who were banned in many jurisdictions for their left wing sympathies.

When you’re a kid, you don’t think much about the politics of a song. You sing it because it’s good music and stirs emotions in your breast. Today, I probably don’t agree with 90% of the politics promoted by Seeger, Travers, Baez, and the rest of the folkies from that time. But you can’t argue with the fact that they were dead right about civil rights, and I still think they were mostly right about the Viet Nam War.

I learned long ago you can love left wing writers, artists, singers, and actors by admiring the talent while ignoring the politics. Barbara Streisand is a putz about politics, but an extraordinary talented singer. Joan Didion writes achingly beautiful prose (as does John Updike), but I wouldn’t give a fig for their political opinions. That’s how I feel about Mary Travers and Peter Paul and Mary.

Perhaps our favorite PPM song was not about politics, or protest, but rather the magical imagination of a little boy named Jackie Paper who conjured up a friendly dragon with whiom he had wonderful, exciting adventures. No, Puff the Magic Dragon is not about smoking dope or tripping on LSD. It is a classic American folk song rooted in celebrating a child’s imagination and how, sadly, we all grow up and move on to other adventures.

Together they would travel
On a boat with billowed sail.
Jackie kept a lookout perched
On Puff’s gigantic tail.
Noble kings and princes
Would bow whenever they came,
Pirate ships would lower their flags
When Puff roared out his name. Oh!

(Chorus)
Puff, the magic dragon
Lived by the sea
And frolicked in the autumn mist
In a land called Honah Lee. Oh!
Puff, the magic dragon
Lived by the sea
And frolicked in the autumn mist
In a land called Honah Lee.

Today, somewhere near Honah Lee, Jackie Paper read of Mary Travers death and is weeping.

UPDATE: 9/18

A shout out to all the good people at Kingston Crossroads who come here because I paid my brother Jim an exorbitant fee to promote my blog with all you left wing folkies. After all, he’s just a poor teacher, poisoning the minds of our young people with his Marxist claptrap and needs every cent he can get just so that his subscription to The Daily Worker doesn’t expire.

Don’t worry. There’s not much chance of contamination as long as you don’t breathe the air or touch anything. And please watch where you step. I recently slaughtered a few liberals and I haven’t had time to clean up yet…

Face it, my fellow conservatives. We just don’t have what it takes to play the race card effectively.

This was amply proven by that ample talk show host, cotton candy conservative, and pop righty Rush Limbaugh who took a story about a beating of a white nerd by black bullies on a school bus and tried to turn it into a spiel involving dire portents of a coming race war enabled by our president:

RUSH: Hey, look, folks, the white kid on that bus in Belleville, Illinois, he deserved to be beat up. You don’t know about this story? Oh, there’s video of this. The school bus filled with mostly black students beat up a white student a couple of times with all the black students cheering. Of course the white student on the bus deserved the beating. He was born a racist. That’s what Newsweek magazine told us in its most recent cover. It’s Obama’s America, is it not? Obama’s America, white kids getting beat up on school buses now. You put your kids on a school bus, you expect safety but in Obama’s America the white kids now get beat up with the black kids cheering, “Yay, right on, right on, right on, right on,” and, of course, everybody says the white kid deserved it, he was born a racist, he’s white. Newsweek magazine told us this. We know that white students are destroying civility on buses, white students destroying civility in classrooms all over America, white congressmen destroying civility in the House of Representatives.

We can redistribute students while we redistribute their parents’ wealth. We can redistribute everything. Just return the white students to their rightful place, their own bus with bars on the windows and armed guards. They’re racists. They get what they deserve. Newsweek magazine told us this, post-racial America. I wonder if Obama is going to come to the defense the assailants the way he did his friend Skip Gates up there at Harvard. I mean the assailants are presumed innocent due to the white racism we all know runs rampant in America. The Drive-By Media is ginning up all this criticism of Obama. Again today it’s all based in racism, the criticism of Obama’s health care plan or whatever, it’s all based in racism and so, if he’s going to apologize for America, Obama needs to apologize for the right reasons. White Americans are racists who have created what they call free markets that really just enslave the rest of America and her trading partners. It was white Americans that ran off Van Jones.

The amount of hyperbole in that snippet could fill the Superdome. There are so many straw men set up by Limbaugh (make sure you read the rest of this priceless rant), that one would think he was holding open auditions for the part of the Scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz.. Outright falsehoods, gross and unfair exaggerations, and the preposterous notion that Obama is responsible makes this sarcastic, bombastic, idiotic nonsense the reason that thinking people should not listen to Rush Limbaugh - ever. He makes my head hurt and my bowels churn when he takes off like this.

Yeah…but is it racist?

Sorry, no. The effect, however, as Ron Dreher points out, is bad enough:

It’s undeniably true that black males, as a group, are disproportionately responsible for violent crimes today (and blacks are disproportionately victims, too). This is important to talk about. This means something. I hate the kind of political correctness that demands we pretend not to see what we see. But as far as I’m concerned, if the Limbaughs of the world are going to be doing this kind of thing, and trying to blame, with no logical grounds whatsoever, a black president for black-on-white violence, and if they’re going to do this in an increasingly hysterical atmosphere of protest against that black president, I don’t want to talk about these things at all. Now is not the time. With this kind of inflammatory rhetoric, they are quite simply tearing the country apart.

Where do they think this is going to go?

I think Dreher overreacts a little but his point is well made. I am not convinced that the “hysterical atmosphere of protest” against the president is increasing. Seems about the same to me as it was a few months ago. I think some of the opposition is irrational but I would not refer to it as “hysterical.”

But am I reading too much into Limbaugh’s rant by thinking he is talking about some kind of race war being started by Blacks? I think not. It seems that Limbaugh believes that this one incident that police now say did not have any racial overtones (and the video proves that) is the start of a pogrom against white school children - or something. Is he joking when he says,”You put your kids on a school bus, you expect safety but in Obama’s America the white kids now get beat up with the black kids cheering,…?”

What is the purpose of this out of control, hyperbolic, loony charge?

Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Hannity, Savage - they’re all jousting for attention. This leads to a syndrome that begs the question, “How can you top ‘over the top?”

I wrote about it when examining something outrageous Ann Coulter said a few years ago:

In the end, this is Coulter’s dilemma. And the great trap she has set for herself as she has climbed the ladder of success to achieve fame and fortune. In this celebrity, media soaked age where the ravenous appetites of the news nets, “lifestyle” shows, and political talk radio are constantly demanding more and more controversy, more and more outrageous personalities to fill the time and attract more audience, the danger for any one personality like Coulter is that yesterday’s jaw droppers and head shakers can’t be repeated. She must come up with entirely new derogatory sobriquets to call her political opponents and ever more outrageous metaphors to describe her political pet peeves. By definition, she must go “over the top” on nearly a daily basis.

Limbaugh is an expert at “over the top.” He knows full well rants like the one above will draw enormous criticism on the left and Huzzahs! on the right. He is no dummy. He is a seasoned entertainer who has been hawking his wares on radio for a quarter of a century. His planned rhetorical bombs are set to go off and splatter all over the media landscape generating controversy, noteriety, and ultimately, higher ad rates.

It doesn’t matter to him who gets hurt or what emotions he stirs in his 15-20 million daily listeners. All he wants is to get their heads nodding in agreement as he plays to their emotions while deliberately failing to engage their minds. For if his listeners paused in mid-Rush-rant to think about what he was saying - I mean truly examine his thesis, his arguments, and his logic, they would understand that Limbaugh, at bottom, is nothing but a clown. A clever, articulate, experienced clown - but a clown nonetheless.

Conor Friedersdorf:

Already Mr. Limbaugh’s behavior is raising the ire of folks who already dislike him, but this transgression against honesty and prudence is so obvious and grave that his audience members should take it upon themselves to contact the talk radio host, politely articulate why his commentary in this instance is so irresponsible, and request that he never engage in such behavior again. It is Mr. Limbaugh’s listeners who have the most pull here. Those who say nothing, and continue tuning into this kind of rhetoric, share partial responsibility for worsening the country in which they live, though the bulk of responsibility will always reside with the millionaire race agitator himself.

A racist clown? I refuse to toss that epithet about as casually as the left. “Race agitator” sounds about right. But what Conor Friedersdorf suggests is unrealistic. Those who have tired of having their emotions manipulated by Mr. Limbaugh have long since stopped listening to him and have seen through the bombast, the sneering put downs that passes for humor among many on the right, and the bilious sarcasm that drips so often, and so expertly from his lips.

I will go to my grave wondering how in God’s name so many people who think themselves “conservative” can find anything of value by listening to such a pompous lout.

The sanctimonious Jimmy Carter is lecturing America again about how scummy we are. This time, he is accusing you, dear readers, of being closet Kluxers - racist pigs - for opposing anything our Dear Leader does.

“I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man,” Carter said. “I live in the South, and I’ve seen the South come a long way, and I’ve seen the rest of the country that share the South’s attitude toward minority groups at that time, particularly African Americans.”

Carter continued, “And that racism inclination still exists. And I think it’s bubbled up to the surface because of the belief among many white people, not just in the South but around the country, that African-Americans are not qualified to lead this great country. It’s an abominable circumstance, and it grieves me and concerns me very deeply.”

It is a fact: Barack Obama was not qualified to be president of the United States. It is laughable to make the case that someone with such a sparse resume of achievement, failing to demonstrate any qualities of leadership, could possibly have the skill set to be president. To say otherwise brands you as a rabid partisan whose opinion can safely be ignored.

I honestly don’t know that if Barack Obama was white, he would have been dismissed outright as a candidate. Those who make that argument assume too much. For Obama is not without ability. He is not without intellect. And some would argue he has the right temperament to be president.

Is that enough to be president? Obviously, I think not. Without the leavening of experience, none of that matters. I have said the same of GOP candidates in the past so it is not a partisan matter. I think the idea that Gary Bauer was qualified to be president is equally laughable. Or Alan Keyes. Or any one of a half dozen Republicans who, for vanity’s sake or because they are true believers, threw their hat in the presidential ring with fewer qualifications than Obama.

Carter is a putz for saying that opposition to Obama is based on the idea that no black candidates are qualified. Perhaps because it became painfully obvious to all when he was in office that Groucho Marx was better qualified to be chief executive than some peanut farmer with one term as governor of a small state, that he can’t recognize what qualifies anyone to be president.

Carter has always had that magical ability to peer into the souls of men and glean their intent - as all liberals possess to some degree. It’s why they can play the race card with impunity. They just KNOW that opposition to Obama is based solely and exclusively on the color of his skin. There simply is no other explanation because, how can you oppose a liberal? How can anyone oppose a BLACK MAN?

It’s a shame that dueling has been outlawed. If it were not, I would gladly call Mr. Carter out and challenge him to prove his charges. Spitballs at 20 paces. At dawn.

If Obama was truly concerned about being “post racial,” he would condemn Carter in the strongest possible terms. But he won’t. And the reason he won’t is because Carter, Maureen Dowd, and other liberals who are accusing the right of being racist are helping him. Playing the race card - at the moment - is politically profitable for the president. It unites his base by giving those who support him the feeling that they are morally superior to the opposition.

It is also the most damaging epithet one can hurl at the opposition and serves the purpose of putting doubts into the mind of more independent and moderate voters that if opposing the president is tantamount to being a racist, best keep their complaints to themselves. The left loves to intimdate people in this manner; like a bully who gets off on playing with their victim before beating them up. Those who might have questions about the direction the president is taking the country feel constrained about expressing themselves lest the hammer fall on them as well.

The stink of being called a racist is impossible to remove - which is the whole point. Delegitimzing any - and I mean any - opposition to President Obama by dismissing the people who are against him by accusing them of being on the same plane as the Klu Klux Klan is monstrously unfair. There is no comeback to the charges. If you open your mouth in your own defense, you supposedly prove their point. And if you remain quiet, silence equals assent. You are well and truly trapped in the briar patch set up by unscrupulous, dishonest, and immoral dogs who know full well the charges are not true, but make them anyway.

And it’s damned effective - as its practioners know. The cold calculation that goes into deliberately smearing your opponent with the one charge in American politics for which there is no answer, no possible response, should scare even some honest liberals.

What gives anyone the right - liberal or conservative - to make such an outrageous statement as Maureen Dowd makes here, and try and pass it off  legitimate analysis:

Surrounded by middle-aged white guys - a sepia snapshot of the days when such pols ran Washington like their own men’s club - Joe Wilson yelled “You lie!” at a president who didn’t.

But, fair or not, what I heard was an unspoken word in the air: You lie, boy!

“Fair or not?” Okay, MoDo, it’s not fair. Now what? Do you apologize for your rank smear perpetrated against someone you don’t know, have never met, and only assume the worst based on the region of the country he comes from? Of course not. To do so would reveal your towering ignorance and beastial judgment, not to mention a sneering elitism directed against those who you see as being beneath you.

And how about this whopper from Rep. Hank Johnson:

Making an obvious reference to the Ku Klux Klan, Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Ga., said Tuesday that people will be putting on “white hoods and white uniforms again and riding through the countryside” if emerging racist attitudes, which he says were subtly supported by Wilson, are not rebuked. He said Wilson must be disciplined as an example.

“Subtly supported?” Holy Jesus Christ on a pogo stick what the f*ck does that mean? It means anything that Johnson and his ilk want it to mean. Using his faux “moral authority” as a black man, Johnson is allowed this smear - this non-specific, egregiously unfair, and ultimately unprovable smear - because his kind of dishonesty is accepted by his liberal colleagues as “authentic” outrage against the white man.

After getting on my high horse to condemn this broad brush attack on Obama’s opponents, there will be those who will ask whether or not I believe there are any racists who oppose Obama? My answer is, of course there are. And I would gladly join any legitimate, specific, verifiable instance in which that kind of ugliness is demonstrated. There’s no room for it in American politics, the conservative movement, or the Republican party. I have already noted a significant, but still relatively small number of protestors at the 9/12 rallies who were truly fringe actors - racists among them.

But I would echo the late great Carl Sagan in paraphrasing “Extraordinary charges require extraordinary proof.” And baby, you don’t got any. There is no evidence that any but a small subset of protestors were opposing Obama because of his race. It’s just not there and for anyone to posit the notion that they can read people’s minds and peer into their heart to determine what they were thinking or feeling when protesting, I would call them a liar to their face.

But for Carter, or Dowd, or Johnson, or any other liberal to accuse the broad swath of Americans who oppose this president as being motivated by the color of the president’s skin in opposing him is impossibly dangerous to the idea of free speech, not to mention patently and grossly unfair. It’s not hitting below the belt. It is taking a pair of garden shears and cutting them off.

We must demand that President Obama make it absolutely clear that the patriots who marched on 9/12 as well as others who oppose him, do so not because of his race but because we strenuously disagree with the direction he is taking the country. And he must condemn all of his supporters who so casually, and so viciously attack their opponents so unfairly and with so little cause.

Not that he will do anything about it. But at least we’ll be able to reveal Obama as the cynical, political manipulator he truly is.

Some of this post originally appears in The American Thinker

I penned a special column for PJ Media on the 9/12 protests yesterday, pointing out the historical significance of the event; that it represents the first truly mass movement of conservatives in American history.

A sample that will no doubt bring the wrath of the right down on my head:

It is definitely an opposition movement, however. Certainly there is mass unhappiness with President Obama and his policies. And there is opposition to the Democrats in Congress. But does this really translate into electoral strength for Republicans? I am going to go out on a limb and say no. The anger here is a reaction (reactionary?) against a growing government, higher taxes, and the sense that the country that they grew up in is slipping away right before their eyes.

This is all fed, of course, by the pop conservatives on talk radio who have ginned up outrage against Obama and the Democrats. I say “ginned up” because what the president and his party have already done doesn’t need the added fear mongering being promoted by Beck, Hannity, Rush, and Savage in order for conservatives to rally. Raised taxes, cap and trade, health care reform, bailouts and takeovers, and other liberal agenda items should be sufficient to outrage anyone on the right and motivate them to protest these horrific policies. It is unnecessary to brand Obama a “communist” or even a “socialist” to realize that his policies spell disaster for individual liberty and the free market economy.

Getting caught up trying to guess the number of attendees at Saturday’s protests (as I and many others are doing today and will continue to do) is irrelevant. This is history in the making, something the United States has never seen: a genuine grass-roots conservative mass movement, activated by the new technologies, communicating effectively using the new software and hardware — and it is growing.

I received an email from a long time reader yesterday who was concerned I couldn’t see that the protests were, at bottom, “anti-American, racist, and dangerous…” There’s nothing “anti-American” about protesting anything. We are, after all, a nation born out of protest, nurtured in the bosom of contrarianism, and defining progress by going against the grain in order to right significant wrongs in our society. This is not “dangerous” by any stretch of the imagination - except to the comfort of the elites who always believe it dangerous when the hoi polloi become restless and disagree that only they in their superior wisdom are fit to tell the rest of us what to do.

As for the charge of the protest being “racist,” well, that’s nonsense. If you’re going to tar an entire movement with that epitaph based on the beliefs of a tiny fraction, then you should have no trouble referring to the civil rights movement of the 1960’s as a “Communist” movement since the CPUSA played a prominent role in the SCLC and other civil rights organizations. The same holds true for the anti-war movement where you couldn’t attend a protest without tripping over a Communist or two.

This protest movement encompasses the right in all its contradictions, it’s factions, and its various conceits. From far right nullification supporters to Rand Objectivists, conservatism in all its glory was on display. The dominant theme as it appeared to me was “Don’t Tread on Me” - the words emblazoned on the iconic Gaddsen Flag. This is both a warning and a statement of fact. The truth is, whether due to agitation by talk radio hosts or the very real belief held by millions that President Obama is going too far, too fast, in his quest to “remake” America, there is a sizable segment of the population who has stood up and said “enough.”

In their struggle to define what it is they don’t like about the direction Obama and the Democrats are taking the country, I believe they mis-identify their concerns as fighting “socialism” or “Communism.” But at bottom, I believe above all else, that they wish to “conserve” their own vision of what America is and what it should aspire to be. This vision is no more invalid than that of the presidents’ despite attempts on the left to delegitimize it. It is Burkean in its roots, and has to do with classic conservative values that have been at the root of conservative thought for as long as the republic has endured.

Change is coming to America. Change always comes to America because we are a dynamic society that stands still for no one. But the value of conservatism has always been that, in Bill Buckley’s words, conservatives “stand athwart history yelling Stop!” It is always better to manage change, to channel the revolutionary nature of our society into acceptable, and accepted paths that lead to consensual change. Any other path leads to blood and revolution. Just ask the French.

President Obama and the Democrats are moving too far, too fast. They have exceeded the comfort level for change that many Americans - perhaps most - believe is right and proper. You can argue the merits of the president’s agenda. That’s politics. But the pace of change is structural in our society. We aren’t set up for the kind of rapid, dizzying alterations that Obama and the Democrats are proposing. This is especially true because some of what the president advocates would change the fundamental relationship citizens have with the government.

“Small moves, Ellie. Small moves…” was the advice that Elenore Arroway’s dad gave to the youngster as she fiddled with the dial of her ham radio in the film Contact. By moving the dial in small increments, she was much more likely to be rewarded by making contact with another ham radio enthusiast.

Hundreds of thousands of people at the Capitol yesterday gave President Obama the same message.

John Cole of the blog Balloon Juice and I used to have a rather cordial relationship back in the day. A few angry back and forths later - not so much anymore.

Cole’s party switch over torture and the mismanaged Iraq War (along with GOP corruption and the excessive ideology of the base) endeared him to some on the left but I think even they may be uncomfortable with his demonstrated independence from orthodoxy from time to time. Sadly, his blog has morphed by and large into a collection of bitter denunciations directed at most conservatives who fail to meet his rather stringent ideological standards for relevance and correct thinking.

That said, now that he is a self-identified Democrat, Cole himself can be guilty of being as nasty a partisan as any on the left:

Rick Moran is a libertine the same way Glenn Reynolds is a libertarian. They are both Republicans. Moran occasionally chastises some of the obviously crazy nonsense on the right, but only when he can also include a false equivalency about the Democrats. It sometimes seems like he is making sense, but ignore his schtick of not being a party man. Ask him if he voted for McCain or Obama? For Bush or Kerry? For Bush or Gore? For Clinton or Dole?

I read him for years and finally gave up reading him regularly, because the only core principle I could ever find from him was “The Democrats are worse.”

First of all, I am a libertine the same way the dictionary defines the term:

1. One who acts without moral restraint; a dissolute person.
2. One who defies established religious precepts; a freethinker.

adj.  Morally unrestrained; dissolute.

The first definition could certainly have been applied to my behavior in my dissolute youth. And my atheism would meet the definition of defying “established religious precepts.”

But it is a large part of my self image that I consider myself, and strive to be, a “freethinker.” I make an effort to eschew a dogmatic approach to life and politics - not always succeeding but finding that it is in reaching for the goal that we learn the most and better ourselves. Some may glimpse sophistry in such an admission - nothing I can do there. You either take what I write as being what I think and feel or not.

In Cole’s case, he views my writing through the prism of partisanship. By dismissing my attempts at fully vetting a subject by presenting both sides, or pointing out that whatever nuttiness has been perpetrated on the right finds an equal or almost equally loony counterpoint on the left, Cole himself is guilty of dogmatic thinking.

It is the idea that I am guilty of “false equivalence” that betrays Cole as a less than neutral - and honest - observer. I will admit that there are times that I may, in fact, stretch to make the equivalence point. But does that make it “false?” Only if you have an agenda beyond trying to be objective. I have never knowingly perpetrated a fraudulent analogy and don’t think I ever have. Sometimes, it’s not possible to find an exact counter to the idiocy one side has engaged in. I expect if you were to really examine my 3,200 posts, you would probably find some inexact correlations on both sides. Demanding perfect symmetry is unrealistic and proof that Cole is unwilling to accept the fact that the excessive ideology and hatred of the opposition he so rightly condemns is a mirror image of the same idiocy found among his friends on the left.

Any reasonable analysis of “movement conservatives” and “movement progressives” would find a vast kinship in paranoia, the use of logical fallacies, slippery slopes, strawman arguments, as well as a quest for ideological purity, and other manifestations of a kind of absolutism regarding their political opposites that has infected our politics and made it extraordinarily difficult for presidents over the last 20 years to get anything done.

Guilty as charged, on occasion. I am not immune to emotionalism and spite and I apologize for being human. But it is dishonest for Cole to issue a blanket condemnation of my writing based on his idea of “false” equivalence when I take both sides to task for acting idiotically or saying insane things. You can nitpick my analogies and no doubt find differences in the examples I utilize to make my point. But substantively, I don’t believe you can argue that there isn’t at least a rough symmetry involved in my analyses. Denying such marks one as a partisan more concerned with scoring minor points in disagreement than in taking a hard look at the actions and beliefs of one’s own side to discern the truth.

By the way, why not voting for Clinton makes me a party man is beyond me. And Holy God almighty what conservative in their right mind would have voted for Kerry? Cole certainly has a limited idea of what does or does not constitute blind party loyalty. Perhaps John hasn’t voted much in his life. Most ballots I’ve marked in the polling booth have contained dozens of candidates for dozens of political offices. If Cole’s end all and be all definition of “party man” starts and stops with who I voted for president, that is pretty shallow indeed.

I did not vote for president in 1972 or 92, I wrote in Reagan’s name in 1976, did not vote in 88. I voted for Paul Simon twice because he was the most honorable politician I ever saw (Wellstone runs second there). I have voted for local Democrats for town and township races in the past although not in the last couple of election cycles. I vote for Democratic judges every few election cycles based on the theory that judges should not be career politicians.

I may vote for Rep. Debbie Halverson if the GOP runs Ozinga again (”Everyone in America has health care. All they have to do is go to an emergency room.”). She seems harmless enough and is thought highly of here in Streator, IL. She got on my good side when she introduced legislation when she was state senator that would have effectively killed the white elephant of an airport out in Peotone being pushed by Jesse Jackson Jr.

No, I am not a party man. I am a nominal Republican in that the GOP fields candidates more regularly who reflect my views. Give me a Democrat who does so and I will seriously consider voting for him/her as I have in the past.

For Cole, it would be interesting to find out the last Republican he voted for since he switched sides.

As my regular readers know, I have written in the past that I believe the actions of the Bush Administration in authorizing torture broke American and international law and some accounting is necessary in order for us to confront what the government did in our name.

I will not rehash the arguments for and against torture. Suffice it to say, I reject the notion that the ends justifies the means for a variety of reasons, and that I believe those who are sincere in their support of Dick Cheney’s rationale for “enhanced interrogation techniques” have lost sight of one of the things that makes us an exceptional nation; our respect and reverence for the rule of law.

That said, I have also rejected the idea of torture prosecutions - not because I believe the guilty should get off scott free but because any reasonable and fair minded person looking at the matter knows that the administration believed they were acting in the best interests of the nation, and that they honestly believed they had finessed the treaties and statutes by their stretched, and ultimately legally incorrect justifications for torture. Was it wrong for the Bushies to try to extend a fig leaf of legality over what turned out to be serious violations of domestic law and international agreements? I believe they felt they had little choice. To my mind, that doesn’t make it right, nor am I convinced (nor are interrogation experts) that non-torture techniques couldn’t have elicited the same information.

Yes, torture was probably responsible for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed spilling some secrets. But what we’ll never know is if the professional interrogators would have been able to break him down using legal methods. Rejecting the “ticking bomb scenario” as unrealistic, I and many others - including many in the military and intelligence communities who interrogate for a living - have come to the conclusion that the plots broken up because of our waterboarding KSM would probably have been foiled using perfectly legal means of interrogation.

But this doesn’t answer the question about prosecuting or not prosecuting offenders - including high level officials who ordered underlings to break the law. Fred Hiatt, writing in WaPo today, has a thoughtful, but ultimately flawed analysis and recommendation:

On the one hand, this is a nation of laws. If torture violates U.S. law — and it does — and if Americans engaged in torture — and they did — that cannot be ignored, forgotten, swept away. When other nations violate human rights, the United States objects and insists on some accounting. It can’t ask less of itself.

Yet this is also a nation where two political parties compete civilly and alternate power peacefully. Regimes do not seek vengeance, through the courts or otherwise, as they succeed each other. Were Obama to criminally investigate his predecessor for what George W. Bush believed to be decisions made in the national interest, it could trigger a debilitating, unending cycle.

By attempting to navigate between these two principles, Obama has satisfied neither. Last week his administration took another step down a path of investigation and recrimination, without coming any closer to truth-telling or justice as most Americans would understand it.

Even with the best of intentions - and I do not grant the Obama administration that desire based on the rank partisanship they have demonstrated from top to bottom - any prosecution would necessarily be perceived as being politically motivated. The same holds true for any congressional hearings. The idea that the Democrats could conduct anything approaching non-partisan, or at least fair hearings on this issue, involving the Bushies, is laughable. The pressure on Democrats in Congress to turn the hearings into an inquisition from their rabid, partisan base would be overwhelming.

Hiatt suggests a presidential commission:

There is a better, though not perfect, solution, one that the administration reportedly considered, rejected and should consider again: a high-level, respected commission to examine the choices made in the wake of Sept. 11, 2001, and their consequences.

Such a commission would investigate not just the Bush administration but the government, including Congress. It would give former vice president Dick Cheney a forum to make his case on the necessity of “enhanced interrogation techniques.” It would examine the efficacy of such techniques, if any, and the question of whether, even if they work, waterboarding and other methods long considered torture ever can be justified.

Some on the left would object because the goal would not be prosecution and punishment; as in South Africa, amnesty might be promised in exchange for truth-telling. Some on the right, and some in government now, would worry about damaging national security with public airing and rehashing of past misdeeds.

Hiatt bases the idea for this commission on what he believes is a pre-requisite for such a body to be effectve: that “the two political parties compete civilly…” I don’t know where Mr. Hiatt has been spending his days these last couple of decades but it certainly hasn’t been in Washington if he truly believes what he wrote.

There is no civility between the parties. It is all out partisan warefare on any and every issue of consequence - and usually on trivialities as well. Both sides blame the other for this state of affairs, which would be amusing in any other context. The parties are locked in a death grip, driven to hold on with bulldog tenacity by their rabid, uncompromising, unforgiving bases of support whose influence is all out of proportion to their numbers.

But these hysterical party men are also their most reliable voters, as well as being a significant source of volunteer campaign help, and a wellspring of donations for the member’s re-election. It doesn’t take much for the base to turn against a member and given how organized they have become, can turn out a primary candidate to challenge the member on a whim.

For civility to return to politics, there must be a basic recognition by both sides that the other side has the best interests of America at heart. This does not seem possible when the leadership of both parties toss around epithets like “evil mongers” or “culture of death” to describe the other side.

A presidential commission of the kind suggested by Hiatt might succeed in gathering relatively non-partisan members, but couldn’t help being caught up in the vortex of partisan wrangling. Every finding, every witness, every statement made would be filtered through the unique prism found in the base of both parties. It would be marginally different than a select congressional committee and much better than prosecutions. But it would ultimately fail to satisfy either side because it’s mandate would not be to score political points but to find some elusive “truth.” Rather than serve to illuminate what happened and heal the nation, such a commission would eventually be seen by both sides as favoring the opposition.

We live in a different country than existed at the time of the 9/11 Commission. The undisguised hatred of President Bush and the virulent reaction of his supporters to defend him by trashing the opposition over the last 8 years has made the atmosphere in Washington worse than it was in 2002.

It may be that Hiatt’s idea will turn out to be the best option in a universe of bad choices. But it is not a solution as long as neither side trusts each other enough to put aside the massive distrust each holds for the other and see the wisdom of trying to come to grips with this unique, and to my mind, tragic interlude in our nation’s history.

Maybe she phrased it wrong. Maybe liberal blogger Melissa Lafsky writing in Huffpo this morning had a brain cramp and wrote something she didn’t want to.

Maybe aliens made her do it.

Somehow, some explanation must be given for this kind of incredible, tone deaf, idiocy:

We don’t know how much Kennedy was affected by her death, or what she’d have thought about arguably being a catalyst for the most successful Senate career in history. What we don’t know, as always, could fill a Metrodome.

Still, ignorance doesn’t preclude a right to wonder. So it doesn’t automatically make someone (aka, me) a Limbaugh-loving, aerial-wolf-hunting NRA troll for asking what Mary Jo Kopechne would have had to say about Ted’s death, and what she’d have thought of the life and career that are being (rightfully) heralded.

Who knows — maybe she’d feel it was worth it.

I’m sure the 29 year old woman was comforted by the fact as she was gasping out her last breaths in that air pocket that formed when the drunken sot of a senator steered his car into the tidal pool and left her to die a terrifying death, that her passing would launch “the most successful senate career in history.” Kopechne was, after all, a good liberal - civil rights worker, RFK volunteer, and the kind of dedicated young person who would gladly sacrifice their life for the cause.

Except that liberals (despite what some of my righty colleagues may think) are people too. I’m going to take a wild guess here and say that Mary Jo Kopechne, when she realized that no help would arrive in time to save her, was, if she was thinking about anything except the dwindling supply of oxygen and screaming and shaking and crying as her lungs began to burn from the excess CO2 in that tiny space, may have cursed the living daylights out of Kennedy for being responsible for her impending death.

And if, by some miracle granted by God, she had been able to see the future, what would have been her reaction to Kennedy’s story of what happened that night? The attempts to get his cousin Joe Gargan to lie for him and back his bogus claim that Kopechne was alone in the car? What would she have thought about the fact that after extricating himself, he went back to the party he had just left? What would she have thought of Kennedy going back to his hotel, complaining to the manager that he couldn’t sleep because of a noisy party, and then having the balls to say at the inquest, “I almost tossed and turned and walked around that room…?”

Almost describes everything Kennedy did that night - except he was mostly drunk and tried to concoct a plan that would have absolved him of any responsibility for Kopechne’s death.

I think it much more appropriate to ask what Mary Jo Kopechne would have thought about that, rather than her views on Senator Kennedy’s glorious senate career.

I don’t know about you, but I sure would rather be alive and kicking than being the “catalyst” for the notion that Kennedy could never be president because of my death and this was somehow a good thing because of all the good my killer did during the rest of his life, being forced to abandon his presidential aspirations and serve in the senate.

Mary Jo Kopechne - Martyr to Kennedy’s failed ambition.

Of all the millions of words, tens of thousands of articles, blog posts, and other scribblings by liberals over the death of Ted Kennedy, this may be the most amazingly shallow, myopic, and ultimately self centered sentence that has been written. To write, to hint that Kopechne would have somehow preferred to be dead rather than alive in any circumstance, for any cause, or for any person in her life at that time is ghoulish, and bespeaks an extraordinary callousness toward life that calls to mind the absolute worst that ideologues of either the left or right are capable.

I do not wish to generalize, and indeed, I know there are many liberals who are shocked by this as well.   But it does highlight the mindset of some liberals quite well, don’t you think? To left wing fanatics like Lafsky, human life does not belong to the individual, but to the higher cause of the collective good. For Lafsky, of course Kopechne would, if she had a crystal ball and been able to see the future, have sacrificed herself on the altar of social “progress” rather than live a full life filled with friends, family, kids, and a fulfilling career.

What a despicable thing to write.

Liberals are licking their chops at the prospect of using the death of Ted Kennedy to unite the party and get a health care reform bill passed.

Is exploiting the death of Kennedy a rotten, shameless, despicable thing to do? In politics, nothing is rotten or shameless - unless you’re on the other side taking advantage of an obvious political gambit. The only consideration is if something works or not. And baby, the Dems are going to milk the death of Kennedy until they wring every last ounce of political capital they can manage from his rotund carcass.

They are going to bend every effort to tie the emotional attachment with the late senator sincerely felt by the vast majority of Democrats directly to the health care bill with the hope that it will give some of the Blue Dogs, and liberals the cover they need to come to an agreement. In short, using the memory of Kennedy and good feelings elicited when appealing to his ghost, the Democratic leadership hopes it makes party members more willing to compromise to achieve the goal of creating KennedyKare.

I would fully expect the Republicans to do the exact same thing in similar circumstances. Of course, that would be an impossibility at the moment since no Republican living, dead, or in between has that kind of pull with the party, nor is there an issue that Republicans could rally around even if such a mythical beast existed. The appeals to Reagan’s memory may engender fond feelings of nostalgia, but the wellspring of actual political power that the Ghost of the Gipper can wield is just about dry.

So the question isn’t should the Democrats exploit Kennedy’s death, but rather what is the best way to go about doing it to achieve success?

Renaming the bill in honor of Kennedy won’t do much. Nice symbolism but hardly enough to break, what most media reports have said, is a titanic log jam of proposals on reform where several committees and individuals are working at cross purposes. Getting a bill out of this mish mash is going to take a lot more than simply calling the monstrosity something else.

In order to rally the Congress, more substantive and public demonstrations of both real and manufactured emotionalism will have to be employed for the gambit to work. Kennedy is going to have to first be beautified, and then named as a civic saint - a party icon that can be invoked with such reverence that “What would Teddy want?” becomes a rallying cry for reform leaders.

It starts today with a “carefully orchestrated” procession from the Kennedy’s beloved Hyannis Port, through the streets of Boston where the political and emotional symbolism will fairly drip from old imitation gas streetlights in the city’s historic North End:

A procession will leave Hyannis Port at 1 p.m. today, accompanying Kennedy’s body to Boston for a final journey through a city indelibly marked by his family.

At about 2:15, the procession is expected to wind its way through downtown, first passing through the North End, where his mother was born, then crossing the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway on its way to the State House, and ultimately passing the Bowdoin Street residence of President Kennedy when he first ran for Congress and the federal building that bears his name.

Crowds are encouraged to gather on Hanover Street along the Greenway, on City Hall Plaza, and on the Boston Common in front of the State House.

The procession will end at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, where Kennedy will lie in repose and visitors will be invited to pay their respects today and tomorrow.

There will be a massive outpouring of people who will want to view the remains, reminding members of Kennedy’s enormous popularity not only in the party, but with the average working American as well. TV images of the procession passing these Democratic touchstones will also serve to connect Ted to his martyred brothers thus making a direct appeal to generations of Democrats.

This is powerful stuff, and the news nets will milk coverage was well, seeing that events such as these will bring millions of eyeballs to their broadcasts who might not normally be watching.

Same thing happened when Reagan died, and for the same reasons. National tragedy is the honey that attracts millions of extra viewers and there’s no reason to complain about it.

There will apparently be no less than 3 memorial services; an invitation only event tomorrow night at the library (no word on whether it will be televised, although I can’t imagine it not). Then, the actual funeral mass at a Basilica on Mission Hill. Here, there will be “limited press access” which is probably short hand for pool reporting.

From there, more symbolism will be used as another procession will form, taking the casket to Logan Airport for the trip to Washington and a late afternoon burial at Arlington Cemetery.

President Obama is scheduled to give the eulogy on Saturday and will no doubt give it his usual best effort. How hard will he hit the meme of passing health care reform in Kennedy’s name? Hopefully, the guy isn’t completely tone deaf and will refrain from hammering the world wide audience over the head with references to it. However, it would be perfectly legitimate for Obama to specifically tout reform since Kennedy himself is quoted as saying the issue was central to his public life. Republicans will complain no matter what but the president must still strike a solemn balance between honoring Kennedy and taking care of politics.

A couple of interesting side notes. First, why no lying in state in the rotunda of the Capitol? It could be because they would then have to move the funeral mass to Washington, D.C. as protocol would dictate that any lying in state be conducted before the funeral rites. Plus, the funeral would have to be moved to a Sunday which, while permissible, is atypical in the Catholic church.

Secondly, there has been no announced Wellstone-style Congressional memorial service. It may not have been planned yet. Or, Democrats might be a little hesitant considering the grief they got following the tribute to Wellstone after his death from a plane crash in 2002.

Surely Al Franken is being disingenuous at best when he writes in HuffPo about that Wellstone tribute:

A pained Limbaugh asked his audience the day after the memorial: “Where was the grief? Where were the tears? Where was the memorial service? There wasn’t any of this!”

This was a lie. I was there. Along with everyone else, I cried, I laughed, I cheered. It was, to my mind, a beautiful four-hour memorial.

I didn’t boo. Neither did 22,800 of the some 23,000 people there. This has been a much discussed, much lied about aspect of the memorial. A number of Republicans, like Peggy Noonan and Weekly Standard writer Chris Caldwell claimed that 20,000 people had booed Trent Lott. (Caldwell claimed that 20,000 people booed a whole litany of people who weren’t booed at all.) We’ll never get an actual count - but I’d say about two hundred people booed Trent Lott when his face came on the Jumbotron. This was about a minute after 23,000 people cheered for Bill Clinton when his face appeared on the Jumbotron.

How does that square with an account from someone a little less partisan, William Saletan of Slate?

But the solemnity of death and the grace of Midwestern humor are overshadowed tonight by the angry piety of populism. Most of the event feels like a rally. The touching recollections are followed by sharply political speeches urging Wellstone’s supporters to channel their grief into electoral victory. The crowd repeatedly stands, stomps, and whoops. The roars escalate each time Walter Mondale, the former vice president who will replace Wellstone on the ballot, appears on the giant screens suspended above the stage. “Fritz! Fritz!” the assembly chants.

“Politics is not about winning for the sake of winning,” Wellstone declares in a videotaped speech shown on the overhead screens. “Politics is about improving people’s lives.” But as the evening’s speakers proceed, it becomes clear that to them, honoring Wellstone’s legacy is all about winning the election. Repeating the words of Wellstone’s son, the assembly shouts, “We will win! We will win!” Rick Kahn, a friend of Wellstone’s, urges everyone to “set aside the partisan bickering,” but in the next breath he challenges several Republican senators in attendance to “honor your friend” by helping to “win this election for Paul Wellstone.” What can he be thinking?

Franken is right. I watched the entire memorial service (I admired and liked Paul Wellstone even though I vehemently disagreed with him on almost everything he stood for.) It is true that 20,000 people did not boo Trent Lott. But unless those 200 phantom booers mentioned by Franken were right next to a microphone and had their numbers seem inflated, my guess would be more like 5,000 booed Lott, with even louder boos for Jesse Ventura, then governor. I seem to recall Denny Hastert also receiving a healthy round of boos but am not sure he was even there.

At any rate, Saletan’s description of the “Memorial Service” is spot on. Numerous speakers trashed Republicans - not just the two he mentioned. It could very well be that Franken - as rabid a partisan who has ever served in the senate - has an entirely different idea what partisan speechmaking is all about than normal people like you and me.

Whether it was planned to be a pep rally is not the point. That’s what it became and Democrats would do well to recall the reaction to press reports - including those bastions of right wing lying, the New York Times, and Time Magazine that led to at least a mini-backlash that could have cost Mondale the election.

But such an event might be a topper to what Democrats obviously hope will be an emotional outpouring in memory of Senator Kennedy which might translate into the political muscle necessary to ram through KennedyKare. In fact, one might expect the Democrats to try and stampede the issue into passing once Congress is back from their recess after Labor Day.

Would it work? The stampede, probably not. But I don’t see how the death of Ted Kennedy and the Democrat’s exploiting the emotional context of remembrance and history that will be on display, can do anything except help President Obama and the Congressional leadership realize some kind of health care bill before Thanksgiving.