Obama, Fox News, Louis Menand, Anger & George Carlin

Louis Menand, distinguish professor of English at Harvard, advises President Obama to avoid criticizing Fox News directly. "The state may, and should, rebut opinions that if finds obnoxious, but it should not single out speakers for the purpose of intimidating them," he writes in the New Yorker. "At the end of the day, you do not want your opponents to be able to say that they could not be heard."

Can you imagine Rush Limbaugh, Glen Beck, Bill O'Reilly ever claiming they could not be heard? Part of the cant of the loud-mouth right is the paranoid style, it is true, but they never claim they cannot be heard, because that might undermine their self importance. These guys all claim they have audiences of millions, silent masses raptly hanging on their every word, while the forces of darkness are always trying to prevent the truth from getting out, but never succeeding because Rush, Glen and Bill are so bravely unintimadatable.

Menand does cite an interesting number: Half of Fox "News" Channel is over sixty-three years old. "Contact your doctor if you have rage lasting more than four hours," Menand says--his best line.

Menand says Obama's attacks on Fox have left Obama's fans "dispirited."

Just the opposite, of course, is true.

What is dispiriting is watching the playground bully beat up on the fat kid who will not or cannot throw a counter punch.

Menand may speak for a group of Obama well wishers, perhaps people with whom Menand has dinner, a crowd which might be characterized as "effete." That is a loaded word, of course, harkening back to the days when Republicans began chiding Democrats as flaccid girly men who lacked backbone. Democrats are wusses who lack nerve, courage, testosterone, passion, all the things leaders ought to have in abundance.

But I speak for Obama well wishers who become frustrated and distraught by our President's disinclination to throw a punch at those who richly deserve it.

I would like to see more fire from the President for the emotional satisfaction of seeing him score points I cannot score because I am not onstage. It felt good to see Lloyd Benson's withering disdain for Daniel Qualye zinging him with that "Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Let me tell you, you're no Jack Kennedy."

This is why men watch football, prize fights--they get vicarious pleasure out of seeing someone tag a deserving target.

On the other hand, there is a question of style.

Until recently, I did not get Dana Carvey's characatur, "The Angry Old Man." I never realized some men get cranky when they get old. I just thought those old geezer were always cranky.

But watching George Carlin over the years, it is amazing to watch him get cranky as he aged. His wonderful, restrained, understated rifts on Muhammad Ali and the government's tactic of saying, "No, no, if you won't kill them, we won't let you beat them up," as he described the government saying if Ali refuses to be drafted to kill people, the government would not let Ali fight in the ring, was a wonderful jab. Contrast that to his latter day observations about the anti abortion crowd, "Did you ever notice the people who are against abortion are people you wouldn't want to f..k in the first place?" which is essentially a non sequetor.

Carlin was still funny in his cranky old man phase, but not as funny as he was in his mellow phase. He sucked you in in his mellow phase. He trusted you to see the essential absurdity in the government's argument, and in so many things about the Church. The Church granting dispensations, allowing you to eat meat on Friday if your group came in first in the scrap metal drive. Then the undoing of eating meat on Friday as a sin--completely reversing a doctrine during his lifetime--so he could remember those unfortunate souls doing eternity in Hell for the sin of eating a hot dog on Friday.

So maybe Obama is trying to be the early Carlin, zinging them better by zinging them softly. If that is what he's trying, I can tell you it isn't working.

At least not for me.

Not that zinging Rush Limbaugh is easy. To do this, you first have to listen to him and that takes a strong stomach. Even when I listen, trying to figure out what it is he is saying, there is not enough substance there to really reposite.

Listening to Limbaugh takes time--he will carry on with a lengthy imagining of Bill and Hillary Clinton having sex and the essence of this is they are both very overweight and the difficulties this would create and what the bed would sound like, groaning under their weight. This, you have to remember is coming from Rush Limbaugh, not exactly a waif himself.

But how do you respond to that "criticism?"

Or, another time, he listed each expense for the transportation of President Clinton on a trip to Chicago. He went on in excrutiating detail about the cost of transporting by airplane the armour limousine, the cost of the gas for the airplane, the salaries of the pilots down to the penny, all in a mock rage, incredulous laughter, with many asides to the effcct, "Can you imagine if the world only knew about this, how quickly they would throw this clown out of office?"

But, of course, lost in this half hour tirade about the waste of money was the underlying point whenever a President chooses to leave the White House, it costs money. So what was Limbaugh saying? The President should never leave the White House? It's too expensive?

And if the President followed this advice can you imagine Mr. Limbaugh's umbrage at the thought of an out of touch President who never deigns to connect with the common man, with the salt of the earth in the heartland?

But I'm dating myself. I am recalling a tirade from the last time I was trapped in a car long enough to listen to an extended Limbaugh rant. And that was the Clinton administration. Since then I've been unable to keep my fingers away from the button which silences Mr. Limbaugh.

This is a problem I will work on. Trying to fashion a response to knuckle draggers.

Stay tuned.

Fox News and President Obama

David Carr, in a New York Times tried to give President Obama a little motherly advice about not responding to provocations from various Fox News sources.

Don't respond to these attacks, Mr. Carr advised Mr. Obama. Your great strength is your ability to exude "a certain cool confidence."

It's like being on a basketball court and your opponents are trash talking and everyone knows these trash talkers "Would not find much space for rent in Mr. Obama's head."

Cute imagery, but wrong.

On the basketball court, you can answer, with your own actions, by scoring and smiling wordlessly, so everyone in the arena can hear it: Take that sucker.

"Mr. Obama has also shown a consistent ability to disarm or at least engage his critics."

Actually, not.

The real history is Mr. Obama did not have to engage or disarm his critics during the campaign. He knew this. He did not respond and he leaned back against the ropes like Muhammad Ali, and let his opponents wail away at him and become arm weary. He did not have to throw a punch because George Bush had already handed him the election before any of the arguments began.

"I got this," Mr. Obama reassured his supporters who urged him to throw some counter punches.

Mr. Obama could real a poll. He could see the economy tanking and he knew it didn't matter how much Sarah Palin taunted him. People were not listening to her or to John McCain. They were looking at their accounts and their mortgage payments.

But those factors which are external to all arguments are no longer working in Mr. Obama's favor.

Now it's his economy and his budget and his financial crisis and his healthcare program.

He cannot win with Rope a Dope any more.

Now he has to show he can fight for what he believes in.

Truth is, Fox News is no more partisan than newspapers in the early years of our Republic, which were the voice of one political party or another. There was a Federalist press which attacked Jefferson relentlessly, portraying him as a rum soaked anarchist. Democratic papers savaged Abraham Lincoln.

The whole notion of a dispassionate, objective news organization with no axe to grind, a neutral reporter of the Truth, is actually fairly new.

I'm no historian, but I suspect the current ideal of a neutral press dates back only to Walter Cronkite, who appeared to report the news from Viet Nam with great neutrality. Of course, CBS news ran nightly videos of American soldiers expressing their disgust at the whole idea of even being in Viet Nam. But it was not CBS News saying those things. It was the soldiers.

The pretense of "objectivity" is, of course, a basic form of dishonesty.

At least if you let your listener know what your bias is, the listener can say to himself, "Okay, I'll hear this point of view and I'll look elsewhere for the other side."

If President Obama fails, it is more likely he'll fail because he could not man up and say, "I think I'm right about this and this is what we are going to do."

As dismal a Presidency as Ronald Reagan's at least had the virtue of leadership--leadership in the wrong direction. But at least you knew where he stood. "The nine scariest words in the world, 'I'm from the government, and I'm here to help.'" That's what Reagan said. He was the anti-government, government can't do anything well President. And under his governing practice, he proved his point.

Mr. Obama was a savvy candidate. He knew all he had to do was say nothing and ride the waves of discontentment to the Presidency.

But now he has govern.

For my money, that means not putting Olympia Snow in charge of your health care plan. That means saying, "The Republicans are in the pocket of the insurance industry. They do not want any change to their cozy, privileged world. We've tried to include them in the process of change but their only desire is to obstruct and prevent change. So much for bipartisanship. We tried that. Now we are going to do what we were elected to do. If we are wrong, then vote us out."

And while he's at it, he ought to say over and over, "The Republicans tried to kill Social Security under President Bush. They called it 'Privatization,' and what they meant was taking your safe money out of the government coffers and giving it to the stock market. And they fought Medicare. Now they are fighting health care. Why? Because they care more about money and keeping money for their friends and for themselves than they care about you. I'm sorry to have to say it, but that's the truth."

And while he's at it, he ought to single out John Boehner and that nut from South Carolina and Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck, not necessarily by their names but by quoting them, for special ridicule.

Why should this be left to Jon Stewart?

If he could do that, he could energize his supporters and put those right wingers on the defensive.

Those who oppose health care changes are either ignorant and frightened or simply selfish and satisfied and President Obama ought to be the one saying that. He ought to be throwing the punches, not relying others to do it and playing the nice guy.

We need more than a nice guy right now.

He cannot depend on me to say it.

Nobody reads my blog, anyway.

But he's got an open mike. He has to use it, not just hum along.

Paul Pillar, One Eye in the Land of the Blind

(Edward Hopper)



Watching TV, the various Americans touted as wise men can be seen testifying before Congress, at the Brookings Institution, on Jim Lehrer's New Hour, I feel, momentarily transported back to the city of my birth and longtime home, but things look so different from the land where I have immigrated, New Hampshire.

From up here, where so many are simply trying to figure out how to pay the mortgage, pay their taxes (such as they have taxes in New Hampshire) and send their kids to school or, more often up here, send their kids out into the work world, the whole issue of Afghanistan and Iraq looks different.

There are two perspectives up here: 1/ How does this war effort affect me personally? 2/ If it doesn't affect me personally, what makes sense for the country in these overseas efforts?

About half of the people I meet every day consider the military efforts from the point of view of employment. It affects them because the military is often one of the most viable options for employment for their kids, after high school. They mix that in with a little talk of "Patriotism" but the parents are looking at potentially losing their kids forever and so they get past the patriotism stuff pretty quickly. One attraction of the military is it's a reasonably secure job without much prospect of getting laid off and it does remove the worry about supporting your kid financially. When you've got five or more kids and you are making a living at the Portsmouth boatyard, that can be a pretty attractive prospect.

If your kids are not likely to need that option, then you tend to think in more general, almost academic terms, with the intellectual remove of the academic. Not that this means you think originally. Many of my fellow townsmen fall back into patterns of thought acquired during their youth--America should not "Cut and Run." America should "honor its obligations," or countries like Iran will disrespect us and make more trouble for us down the line.

That "Disrespect" argument is actually pretty interesting. It's a motivating force for all sorts of crazy actions you see in inner city culture. You can read about it in the novels of the inner city by George Pelecanos (Washington, DC) or you can see it in The Wire (Baltimore.) Presumably these writers base their depictions on what they actually knew about the culture of the inner city, where a fourteen year old boy is shot to death because he "Disrespected" someone with a gun, for the grave offense of making a disparaging comment about the shooter's sneakers.

How much more sophisticated, restrained and smart are those who argue the USA cannot withdraw from Afghanistan because Iran or Somali or Yemen or North Korea will see that and conclude we are too cowardly to defend ourselves? We got to shoot that Afghanie because if we countenance disrespect, we open ourselves to loss of fear from our enemies.

Watching Paul Pillar, the Georgetown professor, former CIA analyst, answer this argument, calmly, is quite amazing. He says, actually, that's not what happens in the world beyond our shores: If we withdraw from Afghanistan that doesn't guarantee a chain reaction of testing attacks from our enemies. Just as Russia's antagonists in countries it had under its thumb did not immediately rise up and attack Russia when it withdrew from Afghanistan, we are unlikely to face any emboldened enemies. Others watching a big power withdraw simply conclude Afghanistan didn't mean enough to America for America to bother with it.

Our enemies are at least that sophisticated.

We got out Somalia and the entire continent of Africa did not rise up to test us.

We got out of Viet Nam and all the dominoes of South East Asia did not fall.

As for allowing safe havens, Pillar calmly pointed out the 9/11 attackers did not have safe havens in Afghanistan or Somalia or Yemen. Their save havens were in apartments in Germany and hotel rooms in Florida and Portland, Maine.

Pillar notes quietly Al Qaeda does not need geography, it does not need a land base or an aircraft carrier. All it needs is the internet. It needs a credit card, a cell phone or maybe a boat or a ton of fertilizer, or a stolen nuclear bomb. But safe havens, forts, flags, factories to stitch together uniforms, not so much.

But nobody in those Congressional hearings seemed to hear Professor. He didn't have any punchy or memorable lines to quote. His lines were all understatement and unemotional reason. Sitting next to him in the hearing room were much more colorful advocates of bringing the fight to Al Qaeda, of "Fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them in the streets over here," of not falling into the weak kneed posture of submissiveness, of "Cut and Run" policies.

Even at the Brookings Institution, where he sat on panel with a Congresswoman and a couple of Brookings Institution gurus who also worked for some high power sounding institutes of policy analysis or centers for strategic studies or something equally grand sounding, Pillar was politely given time to say his piece and ignored.

He was ignored in Washington, but I heard him up here in New Hampshire.

Trouble is, I'm not sure how many other people in New Hampshire, or elsewhere across our continental sized nation, were tuned in.