RSS Feed MenuIn the late “Point/Counterpoint” godmother Shana Alexander’s 1983 bestseller Very Much A Lady (based on the Jean Harris/Herman Tarnower case, inspiring Annette Bening’s great turn as Harris for an HBO movie in 2006), there is an anecdotal scene where Alexander interviews an unnamed member of the Eastern Establishment on the background to the case. The old, WASP dowager (who made no secret of Her Crowd’s distaste for gaucheries such as Jews, Irish Catholics, vacuuming one’s own house or doing one’s own laundry, or expressing any more feelings than Mary Tyler Moore’s character in Ordinary People) gave Ms. Alexander a crash course in “The Rules” of old-money Mainline society. Everyone wanted to help her, poor thing, and felt so terribly sorry for the predicament she was in, don’t you know. But when Mrs. Harris refused to play by The Rules — The Rules made it “impossible” for them to lift a finger.
If you prefer a reference from my line of work, the late book and film critic Pauline Kael often spoke of the “grammar of Cinema” and of literary storytelling as an art. In honor of these two legendary literary ladies, I think it’s time we looked at the “grammar” of politics that cost Obama the lower-middle and working class, that cost David Frum his position at AEI, and that cost the Republican Party its greatest defeat since Watergate.
In the “race speech” that delivered Obama the Democratic nomination (following the Rev. Wright catastrophe), candidate Barack Obama offered the first honest address of both minorities’ legitimate grievances and those of downscale whites left behind by the New Economy and today’s multi-culti, post-everything lifestyle. The last two Democratic nominees before Obama, Al Gore and John Kerry, were so privileged and removed from the “average American”, they might just as well have been raised in a Bret Easton Ellis novel. Obama was raised upper-middle-class — but unlike Gore and Kerry, he wasn’t born ruling class — and because of his race and broken-home background, he had a sensitivity to those “less fortunate” of all races and classes that would have been almost impossible for Gore or Kerry to credibly carry off. Unlike Gore and Kerry, Barack Obama “got it”.
And yet, because of the Grammar of Politics — he lost it.
While his race speech was a masterstroke, as John Heilemann and Mark Halperin reveal in their bestselling Game Change, when Hillary and Bill closed in on Obama outside of his ascendant base of college activists, Hollywood figures, and educated coastal businesspeople, Obama’s people began to write off the “bitter” voters during the 2008 campaign. As John Judis pointed out in one of the best articles on President Obama, it’s “Because He’s a Yuppie” as much as because he’s black. Unlike Michael Moore’s Michigan or Michelle Bachmann’s prairies and farms, the world in which Obama was raised and had lived in ever since giving up his community-service work (where most of the poverty and discrimination was in fact race-based and specifically corresponded to black and Latino issues) wasn’t necessarily the Dynasty opulence of Gore and Kerry. But it WAS a world where “everything worked”, as David Frum himself once noted. The Lexuses clicked effortlessly shut, the lawns were always manicured, the FedExes arrived early. Obama didn’t have the personal experiences to be cynical and bitter that a downsized secretary or factory worker (who might well have also come from a considerably less advantaged broken home) did. And he was too young to have faced the overt, dogs-and-fire-hoses discrimination of his parents’ and grandparents’ generations of African-Americans.
Obama was also a prisoner of his racial background — but not just in the sense that most people mean. If I were African-American or Latino, I would be incensed if I saw the First Black President lowering his prestige and authority to do anything that even remotely smacked of pandering “ooftah” shtick to Tea Partying voters, so as to seem less “threatening.” Obama knew that he could address downscale whites’ concerns, but trying to “pal around” with them (as Ms. Palin would say), like Slick Willie or Texas Dubya, was a definite no-no
There are many reasons to have serious questions about many of Obama’s policies and plans. There are many more reasons for lower-middle-class whites to be angry, cynical, and yes, “bitter” about their lot in life — which hasn’t gotten better in any lasting or meaningful way since the days of LBJ and Nixon, and has in many ways gotten significantly worse. But just as the flag-burning hippies and bomb-throwing radicals discredited the antiwar movement in the eyes of the Silent Majority, the anger that the talkers and demagogues like Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin channeled was so poisonously close to being racially tinged, and so disproportionate, it defined the “narrative”.
Just as before, the “liberal” — and profit and sensation-seeking media — played their part to the hilt. No TV news camera or headline-minded newspaper editor wanted to see a small businessman soberly worrying about the individual mandate or a bank loan officer powerless to assist her foreclosing customers. They wanted to see crying and tantrums at “town hall” meetings, protesters calling congressmen the n-word and gay slurs, and unacceptable comparisons to true incomparables like the Holocaust and slavery (“death panels”, retroactively aborting Sarah Palin’s baby, etc.)
Obama has been forced, by the grammar of politics, to become the self-fulfilling prophecy that his opponents tried to make him into, and have now evidently succeeded in doing so. Because of the race card — and because of the grotesquerie of the level of debate — reaching out to lower-middle-class white voters on their terms is now No Longer An Option. Even if he wants to.
And THIS is the real problem and tragedy of the first two years of the Obama administration, one that goes way beyond the individual mandate, 16,000 IRS agents, or Geithner and Bernanke’s smackdowns of Main Street in favor of Wall Street. By claiming to represent the issues and concerns of working and middle class whites, the ultra-right-wing media machine has discredited them and sent their issues and concerns, temporarily at least, to the ash heap of history. And Obama has been forced by the grammar of politics to essentially forfeit middle America on his end, as long as the face of middle America remains Glenn Beck’s or Michelle Bachmann’s. He’d like to talk to them (or at least send “the help” – i.e., working-class, Irish Catholic, high-school athlete Joe Biden — to do it), poor things.
But The Rules have now made it impossible.
sdspringy // Apr 4, 2010 at 2:14 pm
Otto, The Dems, back when they had some backbone, used their legislative majority to remove funding for the Vietnam War, effectively ending that conflict. Which was certainly something Harry and Nancy should have done, and you should have supported if you had any faith in their or your rhetoric
Every heard of “Jumping Jim Jeffords”, the Republican that switched parties in 2001, eliminating the Republican majority by becoming an Independent and caucusing with the Dems. Only 4 years Otto.
You can recite all the past fiscal sin you wish, you won’t find a argument from me. However you will also not find a conservative that has anything kind to say about the Republicans or Bush concerning their handling of the budget. Also the finger pointing is astounding considering for the last 4 years the Democrats have failed miserably. Please offer the excuse, “But they did it first Mom”.
Instead of the CBO, Otto, you could learn alittle from history. Since there exist no examples of fiscal responsibility, from either party, otherwise there would be no debt or deficit. And while Bush certainly exploded the debt, Obama will break all records where spending is concerned.
Churl // Apr 4, 2010 at 2:53 pm
Davidson really misses the point by yodeling about “’grammar of Cinema’ and of literary storytelling as an art.”
The tea party folks have fundamental differences of principle with Obama and have decided to organize to publicize their views. Obama’s smooth cinematic grammar of storytelling simply hasn’t convinced them that he has their interests in mind as he implements his programs.
So they continue to protest and would do so with or without the satanic machinations of Frum’s menagerie of demons (i.e. Beck, Limbaugh, Palin, and Bachmann).
Gramps // Apr 4, 2010 at 4:55 pm
sdspringy // Apr 4, 2010 at 12:48 pm ~~ Did you believe the cost estimates concerning the Iraq War?
Did you believe that TARP money would only be used to support financially troubled banks?,
Hey sd…back from fine dinner with the grand kids.
I’m not aware that Bush or the DOD ever gave any estimates for either the Afghanistan or Iraqi Wars…he and Cheney managed to dupe the compliant Congress into voting for a lie and a despicable ‘pig in a poke sack” that was supposed to deprive Saddam of the nuclear weapons, he never had.
That neocon experiment in nation building,; never had a budget, never was on budget and as far as the Bush Administration was concerned, is, and remainedoff budget!
As they were running us into this multi-trillion dollar, sandy, quagmire, of a war, they were placing the onus, on your and my, great grandchildren’s backs. The same one’s I just ate dinner with.
They even had the brazen, temerity to call for tax cuts…can you believe it, tax cuts, while spending multi-billions’ of dollars like drunken winos…!
I wouldn’t follow Bush or Cheney’s directions, to a slit trench; if I had to take a serious, quick, dump!
As for the TARP, I don’t believe either Bush or Paulson, ever specified; who would get it, how much they would get , how they were to utilize it and when or how, they would pay it back, if ever?
Do you have some inside intel, that Bernanke hasn’t revealed?
We do know; they gave obscene bonuses to their executive officers and staff.
Yer senile servant is… awaitin’…!
Gramps // Apr 4, 2010 at 5:43 pm
sdspringy // Apr 4, 2010 at 2:14 pm ~~ “…And while Bush certainly exploded the debt, Obama will break all records where spending is concerned.
Excuse me…Bush is the cowboy that ran his damn bulls through the china shop of Afghanistan and Iraq and then hightailed it back to Texas or Paraguay, where he owns thousands of retirement, acres.
Do you recall Colin Powell’s admonition…?
‘You are going to be the proud owner of 25 million people,’ he told the president. ‘You will own all their hopes, aspirations, and problems. You’ll own it all.’ Privately, Powell and Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage called this the Pottery Barn rule: You break it, you own it.,/em>
So now President Obama has no choice, except; to pick up cowboy, Bush’s broken pieces…!
I know, yeh still don’t get it…!
But I’m still here, awaitin’…like a big, sorry arse, senile, bird, in the wilderness…!
sdspringy // Apr 4, 2010 at 6:32 pm
Already Biden is claiming Iraq will be a great victory for their administration. But what actually did they do? Nothing but continue policies in place before they took office. And how does the current administration plan to win the war in Afghan, by using a surge. Wonder where Obama got that idea.
Cry and whine as you will, Obama has either maintained or copied every Bush policy concerning Afghan and Iraq. So if you are willing to follow this current course of action, following Bush obviously wasn’t as bad as you make it out to be.
And again if you feel so terrible about your Grandkids having all this debt, you must be a complete wreak by now. Obama has doubled the deficit spending above anything Bush tried. Again if you thought is was bad before, you should be having a fit now. But is seems you can accept any amount of crap depending on whose holding the spoon.
And I love this comment Gramps:
• As for the TARP, I don’t believe either Bush or Paulson, ever specified; who would get it, how much they would get , how they were to utilize it and when or how, they would pay it back, if ever?
The perfect government program. Legislation created by a Democrat House and Senate. Senility barely begins to describe this government program.
SFTor1 // Apr 4, 2010 at 6:42 pm
Here’s the difference, sdspringy:
Bush invaded Afghanistan with broad support from the people and national allies.
Without finishing the job there, which was to root out Al Qaeda from the country, he lost interest.
Then he invaded Iraq on false premsises. We have spent hundreds of billions of dollars there, for what exactly?
Now we have a much tougher job in Afghanistan.
We have nothing to thank the Bush Administration for with respect to these two wars.
Gramps // Apr 4, 2010 at 7:05 pm
sdspringy // Apr 4, 2010 at 2:14 pm ~~ “Instead of the CBO, Otto, you could learn alittle from history. Since there exist no examples of fiscal responsibility, from either party, otherwise there would be no debt or deficit. And while Bush certainly exploded the debt, Obama will break all records where spending is concerned.
sd…
If memory serves… and I realize that in “your opinion”, mine, is definitely suspect in that regard.
President Clinton… left President Bush #2, with a rather, exceptional and unique “budget surplus” when he assumed office?
I , considering my diminished state… shall continue to rely on your nose or is it noodle, for honest, historical, disclosure with respect to this foolish, senile, notion of mine.
ottovbvs // Apr 4, 2010 at 7:47 pm
sdspringy // Apr 4, 2010 at 2:14 pm
“Otto, The Dems, back when they had some backbone, used their legislative majority to remove funding for the Vietnam War, effectively ending that conflict.
….this was over forty years ago and by the time the Dems pulled the plug deaths were at around 50,000 in a draft army as I recall (ps. I spent some time there)…..what do you think the scenario would have been in Iraq if deaths had been 50,000 instead of 4250? ….the problem Springy is that you have zero cred…..I’m in my mid sixties….not a complete idiot….basically a member of the upper middle class rentier class ….. voted solidly Republican until the mid 90’s when the GOP showed signs of loosing it’s mind…..I come from generations of New England Republicans…..the Bush admin is without question the most incompetent govt in my lifetime…..if you think the Republican party today is fit for govt that’s fine, but if you do you must have a screw loose…..it will be a cold day in hell before I’d vote for the GOP in it’s present state
ottovbvs // Apr 4, 2010 at 8:09 pm
sdspringy // Apr 4, 2010 at 6:32 pm
“And again if you feel so terrible about your Grandkids having all this debt, you must be a complete wreak by now”
…..Are you brain dead or something ….the public debt currently stands at around $10.8 trillion…..roughly two thirds of this was created on the watches of Reagan and Bush…..I’m not inventing this…..it’s a matter of public record if you have the intellectual energy to check….against this background whining about the amount of debt Obama might or might not contract by 2016 is bizarre since roughly 70% of the deficits we are currently incurring are the consequence of spending committments entered into during the Bush presidency…..do you understand this simple fact?….is it really that hard to understand ……Furthermore since the recession we are now emerging from was largely the product of policies enacted 2001-2008 you could argue that all the emergency expenditures the Obama admin has had to undertake to expand aggregate demand should also be charged to Bush but I’ll tell you what we’ll split it 50/50 so that leaves Bush responsible for 85% of current deficits…….having to explain the most basic facts of how and why we arrived at our current fiscal position becomes wearisome…..if you don’t want to believe this simple statement of facts that’s fine by me but just don’t expect me to regard you as anything other than a simpleton.
Gramps // Apr 4, 2010 at 8:28 pm
SFTor1 // Apr 4, 2010 at 6:42 pm ~~~… “…We have nothing to thank the Bush Administration for with respect to these two wars.”
…and you served where , Sir!
ottovbvs // Apr 4, 2010 at 8:32 pm
Gramps // Apr 4, 2010 at 8:28 pm
“…and you served where , Sir!”
…….with due respect….my business
Gramps // Apr 4, 2010 at 8:53 pm
Every time I made it to, Saigon, [now, Ho Chi Minh City] I managed to make it to “5 Tudo Street” and order me a cold… really, really actually cold… “ba mûói ba (bah mee bah), or more correctly:, ba”…!
Gotta luv yah…troopers…good olde “33”…sends yeh all my luv, selective M2’s and H&K’s… and all the very, very best…!
Yeh… can’t kid a kidder…!
balconesfault // Apr 5, 2010 at 12:19 am
Obama has doubled the deficit spending above anything Bush tried.
This is wrong.
From Jan 1 2008 to Dec 31 2008 our deficit was 1.4 trillion
From Jan 1 2009 to Dec 31 2009 our deficit was 1.6 trillion
The 0.2 trillion difference is largely due to falling tax revenues due to the recession, coupled with tax cuts that were included in the stimulus plan. Not to increases in spending.
rbottoms // Apr 5, 2010 at 12:23 am
“…and you served where , Sir!”
…….with due respect….my business
We soldiers usually can recognize the distinctive sound of American Conservative Chickenhawk. It’s bravery behind a keyboard is unmatched, it’s willingness to be bellicose in face of other young men’s certain death is awe inspiring.
Don’t think we ever forget that David Frum, Sean Hannity, Dick Cheney, David Brooks, Jonah Goldberg and all the rest never served a day in uniform.
As Dick-less said, he had other priorities.
They are all bums // Apr 5, 2010 at 1:51 am
I would like to hear the opinion of some of you who have served in the armed forces on our current military budget of 663.7 billion dollars for the year. Russia and China will each spend roughly a tenth of that. I’m not suggesting we use thier budgets as a guidline, we don’t really know how accurate those are anyway. I just wonder how much we need to spend to stay secure and be in a leadership position.
We have 800 military bases on foreign soil. No doubt some of these have great strategic value, but do we need that many? It appears that the war profiteering in Iraq was on a scale never seen before. One of the first Halliburton contracts was a seven billion dollar contract with an automatic 25% markup. This was a no bid contract with terms that encourage reckless spending. It is easy to pick on them but it seems like there were bad deals made with many suppliers. It is hard not to resent these sweetheart deals when we hear about the lack of kevlar vests and properly armored support vehicles for men in combat. What do you guys think about some of this, are the stories exaggerated?
SFTor1 // Apr 5, 2010 at 3:10 am
Gramps, I served two years in the Norwegian Coastal Artillery, about 30 years ago.
I was called back from furlough when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan. At that time they left tracks from their APC’s way into Norwegian territory. As we know Norway was never invaded. But I was ready to do my bit.
Hope that helps.
ottovbvs // Apr 5, 2010 at 4:23 am
balconesfault // Apr 5, 2010 at 12:19 am
“Obama has doubled the deficit spending above anything Bush tried.”
….this is as you point out is complete nonsense…..The problem is that Springy and all these other Republicans complaining about fiscal probity, debts for grandchildren etc, are like whores complaining their clients are spreading VD after they gave them the disease. The facts are simple. In the past 65 years there have been three apparent “deficit crises” when gross public debt and annual deficits grew to an alarming proportion of GDP…..they were at the end of WW2, at the end of the Reagan presidency and at the end of Bush Jnr’s presidency. Over the last thirty years Republicans have sat in the WH for 20 of them and about 70% of the gross public debt at the end of 2009; and rather more of the annual deficits going forward; are the consequence of fiscal profligacy during Reagan/Bush presidencies……this is the brutal, inescapable fact as this rounded summary of gross public debt (in 2009 dollars) demonstrates:
1945……3.75 T
1950……2.50T (it then stayed in the 2.25-3.50 range for the next 30 years)
1980……2.25 T(Reagan presidency begins)
1988……6.75 T(end of Reagan presidency)
2000…..7.00 T(end of Clinton presidency)
2008…..11.00T(end of Bush presidency)
2009…..12.00T
……Clinton cleaned up the Reagan mess and Obama is going to have to clean up the Bush mess and he’s going to do it by the same method…..principally by taking the annual tax take back to around 22% of GDP where it been for most of the past 65 years by a)allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire b) raising additional revenue (ie. higher taxes) once the recession is over c) expanded tax receipts from economic growth ……….and secondly by using modest annual inflation of 2-3% to devalue the debt
InfiniteThoughts // Apr 5, 2010 at 6:42 am
I am surprised that the American public is neither patient not inquisitive enough to understand that the backfired policies of the Bush admin will take more than 2 years or even a term for Obama to clean-up. And i am not even talking of the climate bill or immigration reform. Just getting economy back on track, controlling the war costs in iraq & afghanistan and healthcare reforms will take more time. It is sad that America gave 2 terms to Bush to plunder the country but no more than 2 years to Obama to fix it!
Republicans can have the laugh in the coming mid-term elections but they are going to let the country down in the long term. When China, India and other emerging countries go past US, historians will point to the Bush regime as the start of the slide.
As an independent, i cannot add more.
Gramps // Apr 5, 2010 at 7:52 am
SFTor1 // Apr 5, 2010 at 3:10 am ~~ Gramps, I served two years in the Norwegian Coastal Artillery, about 30 years ago.
Thank you for your service, SFT-1. The last allied troopers I corresponded with were some of those “wild and crazy” … Aussi, SAS, gentlemen. Occasionally we patrolled the Saigon bars together and exchanged challenge coins. Some fun…!
I was intrigued by the “SF” portion of your handle; it has special significance in the US Army.
“Persevere”… all my fine Aussi chaps, where ever you are out there and throw another shrimp on the barbie, for me…
HOOAAH…!
Simpleton // Apr 5, 2010 at 8:43 pm
What an interesting mishmash of gobbledygook and Palinspeak being peddled as analysis!
Obama has dark skin, black.
The tea bagging crowd are at their core comprised of racist white social conservatives who couldn’t care less about national debt or high taxes or corporate bailout or anything else they portray themselves to be for.
The national debt soared first under Reagan when it went from 780 billion to 2.1 trillion
It was moderately contained under Clinton, and rose much less dramatically
It then exploded to 10+ trillion from about 5 trillion under W.
I’d quote figures, but others have done an adequate job.
So, if the tea bagger were concerned about the deficit, they were sleeping for at least the last eight years.
It ain’t the deficit.
Next up. “Taxed to death”.
Taxes today (under Obama) as as low as they were under W, and lower than they were under Clinton, Bush Sr., Reagan, Carter, Ford, Nixon, LBJ, JFK, Ike, Truman, …
Under Ike the top tax bracket was 92%
Under Reagan, for the first six years it was 50%
Under Obama it is 35%.
http://www.ntu.org/tax-basics/history-of-federal-individual-1.html
So it ain’t the taxes, either.
What’s left? Can’t be health care since the tea bagging started way back at the beginning of his term.
His skin color.
The tea-baggery movement is racist, and exists only to get the black man out of the White House. Frum realized this, and in his attempt to instantly gain credibility bailed on the GOP, which is increasingly tea baggery at its finest.
cschwab // Apr 6, 2010 at 9:58 am
WHEN FEAR TURNS TO RAGE
Ethan B. Ellis
I’ve been denied a public education, jobs I was qualified for, been called names, mocked, jeered. No, I’m not African-American or gay, just a white guy with cerebral palsy born 76 years ago. Those things happened so long ago that I’d almost forgotten they’d happened to me, began to believe they only happened to other people.
Until last August.
Then the town meetings on health care began, and the uglies came out. At first, they were just shouters, 50,000 medical/industrial complex employees bussed from meeting to meeting to disrupt any attempt at open discussion. Then the name-calling began. A woman with MS was booed because she tried to explain why she couldn’t meet her mortgage payments and pay her medical bills, too. An African-American had to be escorted out of a meeting by the police for his own safety.
Last week, a man with Parkinson’s was mocked by a tea-party crowd because he wanted health insurance. This week, Congress passed a bill to give him some and black congressmen were called “niggers” and spat on. Then white congresspersons had their offices vandalized and got death threats.
Now I remember, not just my history, but History.
I was born in the Great Depression. Back then, people divided up into tribes and looked for some way to turn their fear into anger, for somebody to blame beside themselves. In this country, Father Coughlin preached on the radio that “Someone Must Be Blamed” while the KKK lynched and burned in the woods. In Germany, industrialists gave money to the Nazis who stirred up a murderous hatred that tore up society and killed millions, including 200,000 people born with disabilities like me.
In today’s Great Recession, fear walks the world again, looking for some way to turn itself inside out, to convert itself into rage. Health care reform has been the perfect converter. The medical/industrial complex fed fear more fear. Fear of losing a job and a home was compounded by rumors of death panels and ‘killing Grandma.’
Then its money stoked the flames, turning fear into anger. Tribalized by that fear, angry gangs are looking for someone to blame, the weak, the alien, the different – the same people they blamed seventy-odd years ago.
I am one of those people. I’m terrified by what I see, by how it resembles my early years, the last time fear walked the world.
I’ve lived long and led, so I fear for my tribe as much as me. Last time, we weren’t a tribe, just individuals alone, easy to pick off one by one. I wonder whether we’ve become tribe enough to sense the danger together and ward it off in union with others similarly endangered.
I hope a lot. I worry a lot.