David Rodeback's BlogLocal Politics and Culture, National Politics,
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April 15, 2008My Tax QuestionsThe IRS is notorious for answering tax questions incorrectly more often than correctly -- but, either way, if you get it wrong, even by following their instructions, it's your fault. So I'm not asking them. I'm asking you.
Enjoy the day. |
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April 11, 2008Last Week an Angry Liberal, This Week a Right-wing Nut JobIn last Friday's post I recounted the morning I spent trying to be a liberal -- the angry Hillary/Nancy/Harry/Barack's-preacher kind of liberal, not the more thoughtful kind incarnated in some of my friends. In the interest of fairness and balance, today I tried to be a right-wing conservative nut job -- again, not a thinking conservative. The other kind. You've seen them. The kind of conservative the Big Media Acronyms (BMA) think all the rest of us conservatives are. If you're thinking that I'm thinking of Rush Limbaugh, the leading thinking conservative entertainer, or even Ann Coulter (far too cerebral) or Mike Adams (far too conciliatory), you're not even in the right ballpark for today's experiment. If you're thinking of George W. Bush, you really must stop drinking the Kool-Aid. I don't want to mention a lot of names, but imagine Pat Buchanan if he were deprived of 50 IQ points and his innate humanity, or consider Jesse Ventura discussing the Twin Towers (not necessarily every other subject), or Louis Farrakhan if he flipped from mostly left-wing nutty to solidly right-wing nutty. How It Went You want to know how it went? It went painfully. I ruthlessly wove the idiosyncracies of at least two dozen actual right wing nut jobs, with whom I am personally acquainted, into one earnest, studious narrative personality. Forgive me for saying so, but I think I did so with insight and humor. What I wrote in that assumed persona may have been spot on. It may have been cathartic. But I can't publish it. The collateral damage would be too high. There are two reasons for this. First, most of those two dozen sources of inspiration are people with whom I have a responsibility to maintain a continuing relationship, for familial or ecclesiastical reasons. Second, words aimed at nut jobs can hurt people with related but sensible views, especially if the latter don't read carefully (they often don't) and don't have thick skins (many don't), or if the writer's gift of clarity is imperfect (as it always is). Some of you more playful, more aggressive political types may be disappointed, but these two excerpts are all you get of the original effort. They're from the conclusion, not the toxic middle:
Now, if you have something better to do that wonder what I wrote that was so toxic, or if you're interested in some examples of potential collateral damage, you may want to read the rest of this post. You can deduce some of the former, more or less, from my discussion of the latter. If none of that interests you, I think we're done for now. See you next time. Collateral Damage Are you still reading? Okay, then. Sometimes in war you decide that hitting the target with your bombs and missiles is not worth the likely (or possible) collateral damage to unrelated -- usually civilian -- buildings and personnel in the area. Accordingly, here are some of my right-wing nut job targets, which I would happily skewer, and the expected collateral damage which protects each for the moment. Thus this blog post becomes less an exercise in channeling a nut job (as it began), and more a study of the subtle distinctions between reasonable and extreme views of the same subject, and the practical risks of one's words being misunderstood and doing unwanted damage to people who weren't targets in the first place. If you want to think a little further, you may also observe an implied lesson here on how nutty zealots who embrace an otherwise respectable cause can damage that cause and prevent reasonable people from pursuing it effectively. I divide the list by the original draft's paragraphs, which is a little weird only because you haven't read them. Collateral Damage in the First Paragraph (Take my word for it; it wasn't an especially long paragraph.) Target: People who home-school their children because they want to shelter them completely from the world, whether or not the parents are qualified, committed, and able to be home-school teachers, and whether or not their corner of the world is particularly threatening.
Target: People who judge a teacher, for example, by whether or not she teaches her students to emphasize certain words in the Pledge of Allegiance as they think she should.
Target: Parents who pump out babies as fast as the reproductive plumbing can reset itself, without regard for their responsibility to raise all the children they create, or without regard for the mother's physical and mental health.
Target: People who care more whether prayer is said in school than they care for the quality of reading, writing, and arithmetic instruction there.
Target: People who get upset when public schools and other public institutions don't get all caught up in religious celebrations of religious holidays.
Target: People who try to remove Santa and Rudolph from Christmas, even as they complain about others' efforts to remove Jesus Christ from Christmas.
Target: People who want the schools to teach a specific sectarian view of sexual morality, but feel threatened when the schools teach our scientific understanding of human reproduction.
Target: Creationists (or Intelligent Designists).
Target: Zealots who beat their children.
Collateral Damage: Second Paragraph Target: People who think the White House or the CIA was behind the collapse of the World Trade Center towers -- which, as every wing nut knows, were brought down by explosives planted in the towers, not by steel severely weakened by collision with a jumbo jet and by a huge inferno fed by dozens of tons of jet fuel.
Target: People who worry more about losing our liberty to mysterious international cabals, such as the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateralist Commisson, than they fear losing it to unwise people and their elected officials who happily trade freedom for handouts, and sell the nation's security for their own political power.
Collateral Damage: Third Paragraph Target: People who think illegal aliens are Satan's plan to destroy America, and that they should all be rounded up and sent home, and that our southern border should look like the Iron Curtain.
Target: People who insert their personal political views into their religion, unwisely vesting the former with the credibility and immunity of the latter.
Collateral Damage: Fourth Paragraph Target: People who think the AMA and the pharmaceutical companies are deliberately suppressing all sorts of miracle treatments, and who completely distrust highly-trained medical professionals while embracing uncritically whatever they may read on the Internet.
Collateral Damage: Fifth Paragraph Target: People who think they are honest but still justify cheating on their taxes on (supposedly) moral grounds.
Target: People who think their tax money should only be used for policies, purposes, and projects of which they personally approve.
Target: People who will stoop to anything to shame people who make different moral choices than they do, and who demonize anyone who disagrees with them on any issue they care about.
Target: Mormons who care deeply whether their fellow Mormons drink caffeinated sodas (or use white flour, refined sugar, or chocolate, or order a double Whopper when a mere Whopper would fill the hole).
Target: People who fear the arts because some artists are homosexuals.
Collateral Damage: Sixth Paragraph Target: Parents who attempt to shelter their children from all worldly influences and every possible danger, no matter how unlikely or unreasonable.
Target: People of faith who believe that the Lord's protection means they don't have to do anything sensible to protect themselves, like fasten their seat belts.
Collateral Damage: Seventh Paragraph Target: People who blame their own evil urges on others (either Satan or the people around them), as if to excuse or justify themselves.
Conclusion Sometimes an earnest, relatively compact salvo is still too crude an approach. Something more surgical is needed, perhaps something slightly different for each target. By the way, is anyone troubled by my referring to right-wing nut jobs as "targets"? You understand that I mean rhetorical targets, right? In any case, at least this blog post is less indiscrimately toxic than the original attempt. I'm sorry to disappoint you, if what you really wanted was indiscrimate toxicity. But one's (as in my) blogging really ought to be a positive enhancement to one's life beyond the blog (LBB), not a positive hindrance to it. |
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April 11, 2008Peggy Noonan Is Worth ReadingHere is an excellent Peggy Noonan piece on a church and the remarkable men who lead it. And no, as it happens, she's not talking about Mormons. And here's a bonus: Leon Wieseltier is a Jew who learned to appreciate the beauty of the Christian church bells and choirs which used to threaten him. This is a short essay with ties to recent events. |
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April 10, 2008In the Meantime, About Moderates . . .Last Friday for three hours I tried to be a liberal -- not the thinking kind, like some of my friends, but the angry Hillary-Clinton-Nancy-Pelosi-Harry-Reid-Barack-Obama's-preacher kind, which they are peddling on television. It didn't work, as I explained at some length. I suggested at the end of that explanation that it might be fair and balanced if my next attempt was to be a right wing nut job. That seemed like a good idea. That's not working either. I have written about it, too -- at least a first draft, which I circulated among a few trusted critics. It's not ready yet. Meanwhile, here's an excellent essay by MFD, My Favorite Democrat, Orson Scott Card, about what moderates are and are not; ideological purity; and other related, incompatible topics. Enjoy. |
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April 4, 2008This Morning I Tried to Be a LiberalI tried being a liberal this morning. I've been watching the news, reading the newspapers, listening to Hillary, Barack, Nancy, Harry, assorted talking heads, and, when I couldn't avoid him, my own party's candidate, Big McJohn. So I think I know how to do this. Be advised: The candidates, other party leaders, and the BMA are pushing a flavor of liberalism that is quite different from the liberalism of my thoughtful liberal friends. The latter kind is hard to find; besides, I decided long ago that, if I am going to be thoughtful, I prefer to be a thoughtful conservative. So this morning I tried the former kind. The popular kind. The not thoughtful kind. Here's how it went. Ahem. How It Went My alarm went off much too early, about 5:00 a.m. I use my cell phone as an alarm clock. The phone is by Motorola, and the service is by T-Mobile. T-Mobile is a big company, besides being a phone company, and it exists to make a profit for stockholders. As a liberal, I am therefore obligated to hate T-Mobile. Every proper angry liberal knows it's evil to make a profit. Motorola is more complicated. It's an American-based company (good), but it's really multinational, which means they have shipped American jobs overseas (evil). It gets excellent ratings from human rights types who monitor "corporate equality" (good), but it also exists to make a profit (evil). What is a liberal to think? Here's what tipped the balance. Some of my fellow liberals claim that cell phones cause brain tumors. I even heard on the news the other day that cell phones are as dangerous as cigarettes. Ergo, I should hate Motorola, for helping to ruin the health of several hundred million innocent customers. It wasn't dawn yet, when I awoke, so I turned on some electric lights. Most of them are incandescentm, which every good liberal knows are evil, and soon to be illegal, too, in the massive liberal laboratory called California. Light bulbs of all varieties consume electricity, much of which is generated by burning fossil fuels (very evil) or by building hydroelectric dams, which flood habitats (also evil). So I must hate both the public utility itself (Rocky Mountain Power) and the society which forces me to do these evil things. The reason I was up early was to do some work, which I might not have to do in order to survive, if I lived in Europe or worked as a civilian for the US Department of Defense. It's this capitalism thing that makes me have to work for a living. I blame the Western world generally, but I especially hate Dick Cheney, Halliburton, and Wal-Mart. I have some allergies, which can be a problem if not treated, and I was out of little blue pills. So I made an early run to Wal-Mart (pure corporate evil) to get some more, thus becoming a victim of the evil pharmaceutical companies, too, who overcharge us, trash the environment, occasionally kill people with side effects, and sometimes -- most evil of all -- actually make a profit. Then I noticed that my Honda (a Japanese car, therefore doubly evil) was low on fuel. So I stopped for some gasoline, which is $3.25 per gallon, give or take -- for which I am obligated, as a liberal, to blame (and therefore hate) the evil oil companies, the evil George W. Bush, his evil puppetmaster Dick "The Dark Lord" Cheney, and, of course, Halliburton. I wouldn't have needed such an early start today, if I had been able to do some work at home last evening. But I spent that time helping one of my children with a homework assignment, which every good Utah liberal knows I wouldn't have had to do if the evil, child-hating Republicans in the Utah Legislature would give the public schools all the money they say they need. Traffic was rather heavy for my Wal-Mart run. This cost me a few minutes, for which I hate all my neighbors, with their average of about three motor vehicles per household. At least I wasn't delayed this morning as I was the other day, when I had to brush about six inches of global warming (or global cooling, or whatever's in season this week) off my car -- for which I blame and hate every creature that breathes out carbon dioxide, all cows and other mammals who release methane, and everything that uses any kind of combustion. On my way I saw someone on the sidewalk who might be homeless, for which I hate myself and everyone else with a roof and walls, not to mention all those people who, like me, just drove by without stopping to help. (I was in a hurry.) I saw a few American flags, and I hated the people or institutions who display them in simple-minded patriotism or for crass commercial gain. I hated the nation the flag symbolizes for failing to live up to its ideals, for taking almost a century to abolish slavery, for sending its military around the world to kill people and break things in the name of freedom and cheap oil, for being mostly filled with white people, and, perhaps above all, for being disliked by all the fashionable countries of the world. I also saw several commercial jets in the air, on approach to Salt Lake City International Airport. I paused to hate them, too, and the companies who fly them and the passengers sitting in them, for squandering fossil fuels, creating noise pollution, and destroying the ozone layer. I drove past a couple of churches, which as a hard-core angry liberal I'm forced to hate because they oppress and deceive people, take their money, and teach them to be bigots -- all this while resting comfortably on their tax-exempt status. Three Hours Was Enough Just before 8:00 a.m., I was back in my driveway. That's where it happened. I quit trying to be a Hillary/Barack/Harry/Nancy liberal. I couldn't take it any more. I'm not man enough, or woman enough, or whatever. I simply cannot contain or dispense all the hatred this particular brand of liberalism requires. There is too much to be happy about and grateful for, and there are too many productive things to do with the time and energy I would waste showering the world with my fashionable liberal hatred. Moreover, I'm altogether too distracted by facts. For example, I cannot escape the knowledge that an oil company's profit from a gallon of gas is only about one-fourth as much as the government takes in taxes. I'm all too aware that carbon dioxide is what trees and grass breathe in, and I like trees and grass. I can't quite bring myself to hate the industry that invented my allergy pills and, with the help of large retail chains, got their cost to me down to about 20 cents a day. And when I see a flag or a church, I tend to think of good people sacrificing for things higher than themselves, not . . . all that other stuff. Denouement Maybe you think I tried the wrong liberalism this morning, and therefore have been grossly unfair here to thinking liberals everywhere. But I warned you about this. I told you at the beginning that I tried the liberalism I've been learning on television and reading in the newspapers, the brand presidential candidates are peddling, not the liberalism of my thinking liberal friends. I tried it for three whole hours. That was more than enough. I like my thoughtful liberal friends. I'm content with my own thoughtful conservatism. Now, for three whole hours, I have tried the cheap, angry, hateful brand of liberalism which national Democratic leaders and candidates are hawking. Do you think I should try being an extreme right-wing conservative nut job sometime soon, just to be fair and balanced? I will ponder this. |
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April 2, 2008It Wasn't Supposed to Be Like ThisHere's how it was supposed to work: Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) was supposed to be more or less the consensus candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination. Few other candidates could or would dare to launch a serious challenge, for fear of being run over by the Clinton machine. Upstarts like Barack Obama (D-Illinois) would never get close enough to go for the jugular, and would be content just to be mentioned in the same paragraph and appear at a few debates with The Hillary. The word coronation has been used; it seems apt. Thus she and her checkered past would escape carefully scrutiny during the primaries, after which, as the Democratic nominee, she would be insulated from serious damage by the mainstream media, enjoying the free pass the Big Media Acronyms (BMA) have given her and her husband for years. It hasn't worked out that way. In a close race, she's behind in the delegate count, which matters. She's behind in the popular vote, which only matters indirectly. She's running out of money, and Barack Obama isn't. He's the new and interesting candidate in the picture; she's the pant-suited ghost of circuses past. Worst of all, for her, that free pass from the BMA apparently doesn't work during close primary races. She's not getting away with her fictionalized account of a time when it was too dangerous for President Bill Clinton to go to Bosnia, so she and her daughter went instead, accompanied by a comedian and a popular singer. She said there was sniper fire . . . then CBS played actually footage showing that what really happened was a ceremony, complete with a poetry reading, right there at the airfield. It's like the time last month when I saved a ten-dollar Office Depot coupon to use on a new toner cartridge for my excellent Hewlett Packard printer, only to discover in the fine print, at the last minute, that the coupon wasn't valid for HP toner cartridges. But even if Senator Clinton had read in the free media pass's fine print, "Not valid during close primary races against charismatic African-American Democrats," it would not have mattered. She still would not have expected to need it. She could have weathered Spitzer-gate easily, even though it reeked strongly of the ribald days of Clinton I. She wasn't directly involved, of course, but she had to be suffering a little. At this point, any reminder of her husband's extreme mentoring and its aftermath is bad, if you're his wife, the candidate. She could have dismissed the sniper fire thing as a one-time misstatement with partial success, trusting that most people wouldn't check their facts and discover that she had said it at a number of events in recent months. And she could have weathered her husband's weekend temper tantrum in the presence of those all-important California superdelegates, because she wasn't there, and because there may not be videotape. But if a story that hit the presses in a small way Monday ever makes the big time, she may be finished. (Okay, I admit, I don't know how many silver bullets it takes to dispatch a she-werewolf, or how you bury the undead, especially when the surname is Clinton. I said she may be finished.) Dan Calabrese published a story Monday at NorthStarWriters.com which has Ms. Hillary Rodham's former supervisor in the Watergate investigation, House Judiciary Committee general counsel Jerry Zeifman, telling stories that are not favorable to the candidate. According to him, she and others looked for a way (a) to deny an impeached president (which Richard Nixon would have been, had he not resigned first) the right to legal counsel and (b) to prevent the cross-examination of witnesses. This alone would be unthinkable behavior by a Democratic attorney, if the prospective victim had not been a Republican president. But the problem here is a lot bigger than that: She tried to hide a recent opposing precedent by removing the files which recorded it and hiding them away, then denying in her brief that there was any precedent. Had the House Judiciary Committee filed her fraudulent brief with a judge, says Zeifman, who is "a lifelong Democrat," he thinks Rodham (now Clinton) would have been disbarred. It doesn't help the beleagured candidate at all that Zeifman says he has a detailed diary of those days, and -- apparently -- he's not afraid to allow it to be examined. If this story checks out, it makes the sniper fire fabrication part of an unmistakably clear pattern. It also smacks loudly (is that the right adverb?) of those missing, illegally obtained FBI files at the White House during Clinton I, among other records. Worse, all those memories of the Clinton I Circus come flooding back. I doubt a majority of Democratic superdelegates will vote for a Clinton II Circus with the first one so firmly in mind. If you want to watch the story spread, watch this Google News Search. My expectations count for little, but I don't expect Candidate Clinton to go quietly or soon; she will fight back. Speaking of which . . . The current favorite movie in the Rodeback home is Disney's Enchanted, a clever, well-executed near-classic which blends live action and animation and, more significally, juxtaposes reality-based and fairy-tale world views. I saw it a few days ago on DVD, courtesy of Netflix. Apparently, I am not thoroughly politicized yet; it was this morning before I drew a parallel between the movie's ending and the foreseeable, eventual end of the Hillary Clinton campaign. (Warning: spoiler follows.) After the handsome prince's "true love's kiss" has failed to rouse Amy Adams' lovely Giselle from her dying swoon, and the nice Manhattan single-father-guy's kiss has succeeded, the other New Yorkers at the ball applaud what they think is a theatrical production presented for their entertainment. Hearing them praise the ending, the witchy, evil Susan Sarandon queen character shrieks something like, "Ending? I'll show you an ending!" Fire, explosions, and assorted property damage ensue, and she turns into a dragon. I'm told it's a deliberate borrowing from Snow White. What dawned on me this morning is that this is approximately what I expect Senator Clinton's defeat to look like, if she is defeated in the end: pyrotechnics and destruction all around. It won't be pretty; it won't be fun; and there's no one in this picture who is as easy on the eyes as Amy Adams. All of that is okay with me, as long as the dragon meets her political end before the show is over, preferably no later than the end of August. After she's gone, we'll deal with the frogs that are left. I expect them to be a bit singed but still hopping. David Rodeback comments (4/2/08): I have lately learned that Jerry Zeifman has been telling this story for a while. He even has his own web site and books. (Thanks to HotAir.com for the link, and to TheModerateVoice.com for the link to HotAir.com.) |
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