Oh, Aren't We Liberal Intellectuals So Special!

I love watching Olbermann et all on MSNBC. Keeps me sane. But they're starting to bug the shit out of me with what can come off as a smarmy insider-ness that is unnecessary and -- I can imagine -- offensive to some people we might want on our side.

So, We all know that Sarah Palin is an idiot--a joke of a candidate. She's ridiculous, embarrassing, etc.

Tonight, however, Olbermann and his guests mock her for not knowing a single Supreme Court decision other than Roe v. Wade, saying things like, "I mean, she could have at least mentioned Marbury v. Madison or Plessy v. Ferguson or ......." Yeah, Keith--that bimbo really should have mentioned Marbury or Plessy...let's see...I have a doctorate..hmm...is that Stephon Marbury who plays for the Knicks? Or ..Plessy...gee...right...that's a real household name, Keith....what fucking idiot wouldn't--off the cuff-- know about the famous Plessy v. Ferguson, right? I remember these names from high school American History, but they're not exactly on the tip of my tongue.

So, rather than doing your circle-jerk with other liberals "in-the-know" thereby confirming the view of many that we're condescending douche-bags, you might be more discriminating about which display of ignorance Palin reveals.

Wall Street, Main Street, and LSD

30 years or more ago, my friends and I used to occasionally take LSD. When we tripped, we'd sometimes have epiphanies about life, love, and the foibles of the human race. Sometimes, one of us would key in on a word and repeat it until it lost all meaning, e.g. "Hey--did you ever think about the word scissors?" ....and we'd repeat it until the group dissolved in either laughter or profound self-congratulatory insight.

Aren't you getting tired of hearing people talk about Wall Street and Main Street. The most right-wing, business-oriented, robber-baron-istic ruthlesslessly self-centered asshole talks about the evils of "Wall Street" and what's good for "Main Street." They've lost their meaning. They're like scissors and we're all on acid nodding our heads in understanding of words that no longer signify anything.

Suck and Swallow

It's all well and good for progressives to hate this bailout and scream about welfare for the rich, but here are 2 realities at this particular moment in time: 1) businesses can't get lines of credit to start, expand, or even at times maintain their operations, and 2) this Congress isn't going to nationalize the banking industry in Sweden-like ways. #1 means that economic activity is slowing down at an even faster rate than it was under pre-crisis fucked up conditions. And "economic activity" represents not only profits but people's livelihoods and security. Outrage at the rape of the economic commons by the Wall Street profiteers feels good but is also the typical helpless flailing-about of the Left who'd rather be "right" than helpful. Even progressive economists like Krugman and DeLong took their compazine and supported the bill. So, when you read folks on the Left expressing relief or some type of moral victory at the defeat of the bill--a defeat primarily engineered by fucked-up right-wing free market nazis--I think you should tell them, no thank you--I don't reallly want to commit suicide today...

Pretty much sums up Compassionate Conservatism

in a one minute song.

Psychology and Politics

Everybody is a psychologist nowadays. Pundits raise the issue of "character" at the drop of a hat. We apparently don't really "know" Obama well enough. Bush is an idiot but has decent, albeit simpleminded "values." Bill Clinton's "character" was sullied because he was obsessed with sex. Hillary is a "ball-buster" who threatens men, but Joe Biden is a good guy because he raised his kids and takes the train home every night.

Fact is, we don't know shit, and should stop pretending that we do.

I don't even know shit, and I study character and psychology for a living.

In our culture of celebrity, everyone's an expert, entitled it seems to weigh in with psychological judgements about people about whose real personal life they know squat. Give me a fucking break! We don't "know" Obama? What the fuck do you want to know? His sexual fantasies? Whether he wipes his ass sitting down or standing up? The cute names he calls Michelle at home? You know more than enough to decide how to vote for him. So, Wolf Blitzer, quit "reporting" this as a relevant fact unless you attempt to actually understand what it really means when someone tells a pollster that he or she doens't "know" Obama. Otherwise, Wolf, you're just repeating the undigested code words and idiocy of the public as if we all know what they mean.

Fact is, we have no fucking idea what any of these folks are really like and should stop acting like we do.

Victory, Middle Class, and Angels on the Head of a Pin

So, according to the NYTimes, the Obama Campaign is running ads mentioning that McCain never mentioned the words "middle class" during the debate, while McCain's ads point out that Obama never mentioned the word "Victory." Neither of them, I want to point out, mentioned my name once--which hurts--nor the words "crumb cake" which would have offended my grandmother if she'd been alive. What a load of crap. "Victory," of course, signifies McCain's delusional jingoistic testosterone fantasies of world domination, and "middle class" signifies the focus-group tested appelation for "all of us" who are pissed off that we're not rich and goddamned-if-we're-gonna'-be-labelled-poor.

The Media Echo-Chamber

I know that we're supposed to talk about presidential politics, including the debate, like it's a sporting event--Obama "held serve," McCain threw a "hail mary" pass, etc. Here's the thing, though...these are creations of pundits and "experts" who then report them as if they were real things. They weigh in on the contest as if they're only reporting something, while in actuality they're creating it. Reality disappears. It drives me nuts. McCain, I guess, was strong because he knew some hard-to-pronounce names of countries and leaders and Obama was good because he made eye contact and didn't say something to humiliate himself. Listeners, innoculated to pundit-speak, may even mirror these silly judgments. It's like a giant echo chamber or house of mirrors, a sort of political Truman Show in which generalizations and metaphors are thrown around and offered up as if they were something real.

McCain, by all accounts, including a recent "off-the-record" account by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, is an angry and bitter guy with a hair-trigger temper who recently said to Senator Diane Feinstein to "get the fuck out of my office, you stupid bitch." He's a reckless war-monger. If he'd been President during the Cuban Missile Crisis, we'd all be radioactive today. And yet Wolf Blitzer and Andrea Mitchell can talk about how McCain was "strong" on international politics because he boasted of his travels and knew the names of the breakaway province of Georgia. What the fuck? They think they're analyzing a public perception, or speaking on its behalf, while in reality they're just reinforcing--if not creating--the goddamn thing.