Genuine overstuffed naugahyde reality
Oil cans are so five minutes ago. These days, squeaky wheels get Fox News contracts and book deals.
Now Beck makes $23 million per year and Limbaugh makes even more. As they ride around the country in their private jets they may be laughing at how they are able to get the poor crackers all riled up about an imminent invasion of martians or socialists or Nazis while they take it to the bank.
But they have help: The Left, this site included, plays into their acts by reacting with kneejerk fury to everything said by these second-rate clowns, participating in burlesque that elevates trivia to crisis, inflates "nanostory" to crucial-issue proportion. For every jackass prattling about "death panels" or packing heat to a political meeting, there's a whole slew of sanctimonious denunciations of racist teabaggers and updates on Orly Taitz. Secretly, I think, we love it all (and I'm as guilty as any).
Perhaps we should remind ourselves, however, that beneath all the cheap-shot self-indulgence, the most important questions of the day, the most critical decisions facing this country, wither in neglect.
In truth, Beck and Limbaugh aren't surfing a populist revolution. They don't really get the crackers all riled up. They don't have to. They get the media all riled up. Beck and Limbaugh work for corporations invested in other corporations who want to... harpoon the health-care public option. Fatten themselves on the finanicial bailout. Divert our attention from real issues and confuse us with warmed-over, insignificant bullshit.
And like everything else in our contemporary detritocracy, we the people are held remote, far from this nattering crowd.
Ridiculous non-issues today are refabricated to be "controversial" by sheer phony theatrics. There's a reason last spring's first "tea-bag" revolutionaries couldn't articulate exactly what they were angry about. Their "uprising" wasn't over social problems or government policy, not that they couldn't be, legitimately; this phony grassroots rebellion was a self-generating, empty show - a revolution that must be televised.
We're against... something... What? Obama's heathcare reforms? Because... they're socialist. Because... they're too costly. But no, chimes in TPM, or Daily Kos, or someone with far too much time on his hands and a dorm roomate given to showers far too long, it's because you're all a buncha racist crackers!!!
On healthcare, in truth, in poll after poll, most Americans support the public option, one a month ago indicating 77 percent in favor of this absurdly communitarian idea. But pollsters rarely ask - clearly, plainly - whether respondents support the public option. This spring, before the circuses rolled into town halls, figures among those polled ran more than eight out of 10 "yea".
Indications of this "camera-angle reality" were obvious earlier this year, when a rant by CNBC's Rick Santelli on the Chicago trading floor signaled to the media a grassroots uprising had begun against the Obama economic plan. Remember? Remember his calls for "tea party"?
In what parallel universe is this propped-up hack "grassroots"? How much of this dumb-show betrays progressives' own class arrogance? Because the rabble is working-class white, the Left can't resist couching even legitimate complaints in broad, dismissive terms, and universal accusations of racism. Among American progressives, there is genuine distaste for "populism" and real hatred of these hayseed kulaks. How detached is that?
We're dulled contestants in this trivial pursuit. To the extent we engage stupid games, in opposition we validate.
The media, as the information wing of global capitalism, is fabricating reality. While the vast majority of people are sensible, stupidity reins because the sensible people are convinced that the rest of the world is fucked up.
The left is fascinated by the hysterical sado-masochism of the right. The right is fascinated by the pretensions of the left.
How can a rightwinger demand less government while working at a subsidized factory, collecting unemployment, driving on roads, supporting our troops, etc.? Because they despise what they view as controlling them.
How can a leftwinger demand less corporate power while shopping at Amazon, texting on their iphone, driving their automobile, etc.? Because they despise what they view as controlling them.
Yet, most of us can plainly see that both collude with one another and play citizens against each other by exploiting ethnic, class, and regional tensions in the form of wedge issues and symbolic controversies.
So of course TPM is riding the gravy train. It is the corporate-government-Hegelian dialectic megasandwich of easy money!!
September 24, 2009 4:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
You're right, except I think it's more a case of the Right exploiting the pretensions of the Left. The Left's quandary has always been presenting itself as championing "freedom" (whatever that may mean) while extolling government control almost smothering in its intrusiveness. The Right's great flaw is its belief that greed can be the arbiter financial standards, when greed is, by human nature, uncontrollable.
September 24, 2009 4:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, you are right.
I think I was trying to make the greater point that those who view themselves on a standard political compass are focusing their animosity on the same enemy with a different image projected upon it. There is a short story called "Faith of Our Fathers" by Philip K. Dick, where the main character takes a drug that allows him to "see" the true image of the world leader. He sees a robot that speaks with a grinding metallic voice. Others who have taken the drug see different images, 13 in total. Some see a vortex, others raging fire, etc.
What the narrator comes to find out is that the world leader is an alien entity that devours human energy and tampers with human affairs the way a cat plays with its prey.
Which leads, of course, to Network:
"You have offended the FORCES OF NATURE!"
While we on the right and left are championing ideas and ideals that are centuries old, the real world seems to exist apart from these concepts...
September 24, 2009 5:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, you're absolutely right. These people should just be ignored:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jbzG_BlkG2Hfc818EPRRn1bBlP6gD9AT8QC80
September 24, 2009 5:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ignored? How about prosecuted? Then... all the self-important anti-racist, pro-choice, lab-rat liberation crusader blogs we can stomach. In the affluent West, our ideals feed our egos more than calibrate our real-world moral vision.
September 24, 2009 6:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
Face it, we're putty-heads. As I kid I really resented it when they changed the name of "Nutty Putty" to "Silly Putty," but either will do. When I hear or read folks complaining about being duped by mass media, I think of a quote from an art critic whose name I can't remember: "The theory of modern art is a theory of consumption disguised as a theory of production." In other words, the "originality of modern artists" wasn't so original, and they were recycling stuff we already knew in a different package, fooling us into thinking it was new. As a species, we like to "know" things. It's a source of great pleasure. The greatest pleasure, however, is when we "know" something without realizing that we know it. Like the advertising message: around the late 60s Ad men realized that they didn't have to say "this product is good" any longer. It was irretrievably embedded in the act of advertising itself. So the new challenge (if you could call it that) was for advertisers to associate the product with any sort of "desiring structure" that was handy. Like what came into my mind just now as I wrote was a white tropical beach and a bottle of Corona Light with a lime wedge stuck in the top.
Good blog, Curt. You've convinced me.
September 24, 2009 7:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ah, I feel the sharp dagger in my side...(grabs his stomach, reels back and forth stooped over)
He is an idiot. But he gets his own show on cable and three hours of time on the radio. He confirms or affirms what tens of millions of people believe along with rush and sean and weiner savage....
People need to respond to him. Not bring him into the conversation or deliberations.
September 24, 2009 7:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
Why don't we turn him into a cuss word?
"Beck you, Dick Day, you can kiss my Beck, you Bekkerhead!"
haha
September 24, 2009 10:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
hahahahahaha
beckerhead. Oh hell I hereby award you the Knightly Line of the DAy Award for this here TPMCafe Site, given to all of you from all of me.
I aint lettin this one go
hahaha
September 24, 2009 10:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
Beck jumps HLN to join Hannity as Fox's neo-Bowery Boys. Now HLN is given over to The World's Angriest Women - Nancy Grace, Jane Velez Mitchell... "Hollerin' Harridan TV".
Oops, wait a minute, gotta scrape some Beck off the bottom of my shoe...
September 25, 2009 9:51 AM | Reply | Permalink
Good post, and I generally agree, both about the "society of the spectacle" that is mediating our interaction with for-profit images, and with your comment about left-wing arrogance.
But I take my leave on your making racism into merely an example of this. Yes, the way racism is used by liberals is often arrogant and classist. Blaming the vast inchoate anger percolating against power on racism is wrong, arrogant and classist. And advocating more and more power to the very government run for profit as a medicine against corporate control is hypocritical.
But racism is a huge factor in this spectacle. Just as liberals use racism to prove their class superiority, the right-wing media uses racism to shield corporations from populist anger. So the two sides of the spectacle are in perfect harmony, both using racism for defending the class hierarchy, and both therefore getting what they want, either with the racially coded language of Beck and Limbaugh or with the way these are denounced and ridiculed around here.
There can be no principled position on this without recognizing the way race shapes the conversation on justice and the way ideas of solidarity and equality are "othered" and coded as threats to white identity.
September 25, 2009 6:07 AM | Reply | Permalink
That's one of the most insightful thoughts I've ever encountered at this site. Thanks for joining in.
September 25, 2009 10:01 AM | Reply | Permalink
How much of this dumb-show betrays progressives' own class arrogance? Because the rabble is working-class white
Where do you get this data from? I don't think it's accurate. I think the teabaggers run the gamut from working class white to solidly middle class professional to well off retired. Our side is the same. You may not be showing arrogance here but I do think you're making an assumption that isn't true. Just because someone believes nonsense about politics and policy doesn't mean they're helpless fools about everything else.
And of course we think they're ignorant, they're still listening to the same rodeo clowns and lying politicians that have promised them they could have their cake and eat it too for decades now.
Focusing on the the most outrageous freaks in the media sideshows of the current debate isn't productive, I agree with you there. But in case you haven't noticed, on the other side the main actors, Republican senators and house reps have adopted their same language. And it's not like we can get away from their self promotion when the msm aids and abets it. Beck just got a puff piece write up in TIME and an interview with Katie Kouric.
But the good news is the most important questions of the day, the most critical decisions facing this country, aren't withering in neglect. Congress is moving ahead with health care legislation more or less on the same schedule laid out in the spring.
We can't ignore the other side or those who don't know what to think. I engage them whenever I can in substantive discussions about issues. I have a lot of success because facts and reality are on our side.
September 25, 2009 9:31 AM | Reply | Permalink
You are right that talk-radio followers are not exactly "working class," some are, but neither are they are spread uniformly, and low income seems to be a correlation.
Here is what one insightful guy has to say:
so we have two messages targeting people with low income ( debt and obesity) and two messages targeting males (balding, ED).
September 25, 2009 11:39 AM | Reply | Permalink
Bald, chubby and plagued with indebtedness...
You mean Bernard Madoff is a Rush fan?
September 25, 2009 12:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
you forgot 'and defflated'
;-)
September 25, 2009 7:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
I suppose it depends on where you live. Back in the 1990s when I lived in NJ near Philly I'd tune in to Limbaugh every now and then to see what he was up to. A local Volvo dealership was advertising during his show.
September 25, 2009 1:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
I suspect quite a number of Rush's listeners are left-of-center and chipping for an outrage high.
September 25, 2009 2:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
So... what will their future look like? ...In reality.
September 25, 2009 10:08 AM | Reply | Permalink
Crumbs that fall off Rush Limbaugh's table.
September 25, 2009 1:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
Actually, Congress moves ahead on the "most important questions of the day" whether we are paying attention or not. If we're looking the other way, however, it makes their job much easier.
September 25, 2009 10:28 AM | Reply | Permalink
I have actually heard some of the Libertarian tea-partiers aarticulate their fear and dislike of the fusion of Congress and corporations. On that, I can agree with them. Where we part ways is on, say, health care public option choices. Most of them hate government so much, they are willing to hand over even MORE money to insurance corporations. "Disconnect" is the rather over-used word for it.
That Glenn Beck is on the Time cover and on Couric says something about MSM that I am uncomfortable with, but I haven't thought it through. I watched a clip of Beck on crooksandliars this morning about the proverbial boiling of the frog slowly (he actually did it, then claimed it was a rubber frog) as a metaphor for the US succumbing to "collectivity" in government as far back as Teddy Roosevelt. John Bolton was his guest there to blast Obama's speech at the UN Security Council.
Now Beck is demonstrably insane, a completely different sort than O'reilly and Limbaugh. And his star is rising fast; that worries me. I see it every day in my valley: he is quoted a lot around here. There are lots of Mormons around here, and I wonder what they think that Glenn is now one of theirs? I'm guessing "not much."
People present at the business event in China were said to be split 50-50 on whether she was the Real Deal or an embarassment worthy of walking out on. 50-50. My stars.
Sometime today, please ask yourself: Are you absolutely, positively, 100% sure that Sarah Palin could never me the 2012 nominee for President, or that she could EVER be elected?
Full disclosure: after this week, I am no longer 100% sure, and even the 1% or @5 makes me queasy.
(Okey dokey, mock away!)
September 25, 2009 10:58 AM | Reply | Permalink
Interestingly, Mormons were the most persecuted religious minority in this country's history. In many ways, there remains an across-the-board aversion to them, whether it be progressive mistrust of their conservatism, or Southern Baptist contempt of there Christian "heresy". Eye of the beholder, I suppose.
Many Libertarians fall into the same trap as Marxists, Freudians and flat-earthers: Protecting their dogma becomes more important than dealing with reality. A "pure" free market cannot exist without drowning itself in human greed - but they keep pining for their "ideal". Odd.
And Beck? We have one salvation: We tire quickly of our clowns.
September 25, 2009 11:47 AM | Reply | Permalink
I think Beck's excoriation of Teddy Roosevelt will backfire on him. That's the second Beck mention of him I've seen. In that interview with Kouric he called McCain a "weird progressive" like Teddy Roosevelt who would have been an even worse president than Obama.
My guess is Teddy Roosevelt is one of our more popular presidents though most people couldn't say why or name any of his accomplishments. He's been dead since 1920, his reputation is cast in amber, the history hasn't changed but now Beck wants to rewrite it? It's sort of like attacking apple pie as some socialist plot brought over by European immigrants to rot our teeth. At some point even Beck lovers realize this guy is a revisionist historian with an agenda that's way, way out there.
September 25, 2009 1:24 PM | Reply | Permalink