He Said It . . .
Posted on November 13th, 2008
by Clark Stooksbury |
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Jay Nordlinger, by far my favorite NRite, had an extended whine today over the results of the recent election. A couple of my favorite parts include:
12) I’m sorry, but the treatment of Bush — the demonization of Bush — is appalling. Absolutely appalling. And it says something rotten about our political culture. Think for a second about Katrina — the hurricane. I have no doubt that the federal government made mistakes, and no doubt that Bush fumbled the PR aspect. But this was a huge natural disaster — and people acted as though Bush had caused it.
Right. All complaints about Bush and Katrina amounted to blaming him for causing the hurricane. Nobody made any actual substantive criticisms of the president.
Also, Nordlinger writes:
14) I learned something in this election — maybe you learned the same thing about yourself. I learned that I’m a knuckle-dragging moron, because I admire Governor Palin. Used to be, people considered me rather sophisticated — what with the languages, the larnin’, the music, and all. Vincent Persichetti wrote me about a piece of mine when I was eleven, I think! But come to find out, in the fall of 2008, I’m just a drooling hayseed. Funny old world. (emphasis added)
Hey, he said it.
Filed under: Conservatism, Politics
My senior moment with Nordlinger came in 2004, 12 years after my moment thus with Limbaugh in 1992, when, at the beginning of ten years as a Borders bookseller, I saw firsthand the utter fiction within one crucial movement-conservative theme. Both Limbaugh on the air and Nordlinger in NR
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1282/is_18_56/ai_n13670604/print
took at face value the rogue experiences of a few disgruntled customers, some misinterpreting temporary sellouts of rightwing bestsellers as evidence of underhand leftwing plots to keep the dread authors out of the hands of paying customers. Odd, that, so in contradiction to ten years in which I and my colleagues, for little pay or social honor, went out of our way, both after explicit training by managers and by implicit professionalism, to maintain hairfine agnosticism regarding the political tilt of our customers’ requests, and stocked our shelves, tables and floors accordingly, enabling Limbaugh and dozens of authors of like orbit to ascend to bestseller status in the first place. And if, thanks to a sudden mention on-air of a favored title from the right, we sold out before dinnertime and had to wait two weeks for a publisher reprint? Let’s just say the left has no monopoly on playing the victim card far beyond the point warranted by actual evidence. Note in Nordlinger’s 2004 article no attempt to take testimony at length from book-trade veterans or staff - all of Nordlinger’s material is a virtual “you-tell-’em” transcript of bitter-ender Yosemite Sams and Elmer Fudds among his readers who may indeed have dealt with a few clueless snoots at the store’s info desks - which latter, were their unprofessional lapses made known among colleagues or staff, would have earned sharpest reprimand.
Of all countervailing evidence lying a phone call or three from the complaning Comradely surface, not a hint from Limbaugh or Nordlinger - whose claims to a grasp of “capitalism” superior to that of the median supposedly left-”progressive” (we were, even in the Washington, DC suburbs and South Portland, Maine, a remarkably apolitical lot never inclined to play favorites when sales were at stake, which is to say whenever we were on the clock, and whoever stood atop the NYT lists that week) big-box booksellers they seem to hold with pride - unlike the grasp of those charged with the nuts-and-bold enactment of “actually existing capitalism”, and in its content-laden cultural industries no less, where it turned out a dollar really was a dollar like every other, whether its object be Limbaugh one minute and Clinton the next. Such market-driven domination of sales-floor agendas - “rootless cosmopolitanism”, if you will - would seem to ally itself to true friends of the free market, and annoy only those bent on promotion of leftist dogma. But among those for whom populist nationalism and self-validating psychic tribalism sit the throne, true nobility in either style or content wither in permanent exile.
I want to like Nordlinger. His writing is easy to read, although I find that he tries too hard to be “folksy” a lot of the time.
But his mind just seems twisted to me — he has partisan blinders that are more powerful than any other respectable journalist that I can think of. His comment about how Sarah Palin wouldn’t be allowed in public life if her minister said crazy things appears to be almost willfully ignorant.
This is embarrassing for Conservatives. Somehow talk radio is supposed to represent the political right but they just seem to be puppets of the and the Bush administration and were all in for the McCain- Palin ticket. Somehow it seems to be counter productive trying to protect President Bush over Katrina and acting as if the fact that Palin couldn’t answer questions on key issues was just Liberal Media bias. No wonder the American people feel they cannot connect to the Conservative Party with the talk radio hosts representing.
Is Bush really responsible for saving people from hurricanes? Is that what conservatives really believe now, that presidents are responsible for holding hands? I don’t believe it.
http://rightklik.blogspot.com/
‘ I’m sorry, but the treatment of Bush — the demonization of Bush — is appalling. Absolutely appalling. And it says something rotten about our political culture.’
Two words; Clinton and Carter.