The Sentinel of Xanadu

This is the first piece in an ongoing EtD feature I'm going to call "Object of Ridicule and Scorn." Today's Object of Ridicule and Scorn is Helen Thomas, a partisan windbag with clear opinions. You'd think she’d be my type of writer. Sadly, she has eschewed coherence at virtually every turn. So in an homage to the late, great baseball blog “Fire Joe Morgan,” I’m going to mercilessly parse her latest column, entitled “An Eloquent Defense of American Democracy.”

AN ELOQUENT DEFENSE OF AMERICAN DEMOCRACY by Helen Thomas

I know this is going to be fun because, as any grade schooler with a civics class under his belt could tell you, there is no such thing as an American democracy, and for good reason. Now, I understand that for whatever reason, democracy has a leg up on representative republicanism in the P.R. department (I’ll leave you to meditate privately as to why), but the disparities between the two are not trivial, particularly when one uses the specifics of the definition to make a political argument. It’s not without condescending bemusement that I ponder how both Helen Thomas and Barack Obama—to whose speech Ms. Thomas’ title refers—managed to elude this very basic premise of American governance.

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. is so divided that it seems to me that the nation has lost its compass.

Remember this. Thomas believes America has lost its compass. We’re going to come back to odd pessimism from a writer who is a staunch supporter of a party who controls the Oval Office, the House of Representatives, and the Senate. (And arguably has disproportionate influence in the judiciary.)

Even in times of national crisis, including the Great Depression, World War II, the Vietnam War and a string of scandals such as Watergate, the political center has held together. 

The prosecution will generously so stipulate, despite the defense’s failure to even try to support the claim.

But now I’m not quite so sure.

President Barack Obama has been most conciliatory as he seeks the middle ground on a host of issues, even to the point of caving to the political opposition. 

Thomas made it a whole 91 words without uttering a mind-boggling absurdity. Personally, I’d set the line at 50 and taken the under. Let me know if you want in on the action for next week’s column.

But when not one Republican in Congress could vote for the health care reform legislation, one has to ask: Who do these lawmakers really represent? Themselves?

Those cold-hearted bastards just refuse to support our young (and articulate!) President! Nevermind that Republicans in both the House and Senate were locked out of the drafting of the bill. (To be fair, the Democrats didn’t have enough booze for both the Republicans AND the lobbyists, and you just can’t write legislation of the magnitude of Obamacare while sober.) Nevermind that the majority or Americans, by a not insignificant margin, opposed the bill (Thank goodness we live in a representative republic, where the right of the minority to pass legislation in opposition of the majority are preserved!) Nevermind huge electoral wins in Massachusetts, Virginia, and New Jersey—all blue states in 2008—that were largely referendums on Obama’s keynote social initiative. Nevermind that Republicans were belittled, marginalized, and then ignored at Obama’s kabuki-theater Health Care Summit (which, by the way, is where my mancrush on Paul Ryan really blossomed). Nevermind that Nancy Pelosi made the calculated decision to walk through a crowd of peaceful detractors holding a giant—and none too subtle—hammer. Nevermind that the only thing bipartisan about Obamacare was the opposition…Not that I mind any of the contentiousness or conflict. Let’s just keep an accurate historical narrative of who started it, and who escalated it. (Hint: both have “D” next to their name on C-SPAN.)

Especially surprising to me is the fact that the Republican women in Congress voted with their male colleagues against the health legislation.

I’d love to bypass the twisted machinations of Helen Thomas’ mind rather than try to make sense of her subtext, but this is simply too contorted to let pass. We've already established that all Republicans had the good sense to oppose Obamacare, but Thomas takes the time to single out the women specifically, which seems sexist to me. Keep in mind, this is all subtext because Thomas doesn’t have the stones to say what she’s thinking (Is it inappropriate to use testicular subtext when referring to a female writer?). There’s only one reason why women—whose life expectancies exceed those of men by over five years—would need greater access to healthcare: child-birth and reproductive care. And in a morbid word association, that means “abortion” to Thomas. Not only is health care largely about abortion, (don’t tell Bart Stupak!) but Thomas believes that being pro-choice isn’t a choice for women.

The Republicans have become the party of ”NO,” even to congressional efforts to rein in Wall Street, whose greedy excesses led to the Great Recession.

I particularly enjoy flippant references to the nefarious “Wall Street” collective by those who think risk mitigation is a board game strategy. To be just as brief and unhelpfully explanatory as Ms. Thomas, this statement is too wrong to even parse.

The federal government has become the target of intense hatred from conservatives, except of course those conservatives in states around the Gulf of Mexico who now are asking the federal government to help people and businesses devastated by the continuing oil spill. Suddenly, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Interior Department, the Coast Guard and other federal entities don’t look so evil as they go about the job of cleaning up the mess and helping people in need.

Evil? No. Excessive? Wasteful? Incompetent? Yeah, I can get behind those.

In an under-noticed May Day address at the University of Michigan commencement, the president dealt head-on with the ignorance and destructive consequences of the current atmosphere of name calling and partisanship.

Keep in mind: the guy who insists that we have a democracy is the same guy who's going to cure us of our ignorance.

Speaking at the same campus where President John F. Kennedy announced the creation of the Peace Corps and President Lyndon B. Johnson unveiled his plans for a “Great Society,” Obama told the Michigan audience: “Before we get too depressed about the current state of politics, let’s remember our history.” 

You don’t have to go to Columbus to know that the University of Michigan is a crucible for terrible ideas and wrong-headed do-goodery. You’d think they’d be more receptive to Rich Rodriguez importing the spread offense to the football team, if only for the sake of tradition.

“What troubles me is when I hear people say that all of government is inherently bad,” the president said. “One of my favorite signs during the health care debate was somebody who said: ’Keep your government hands out of my Medicare’ -- which is essentially saying ‘Keep government out of my government-run health care plan.”

So, following Obama’s rhetoric (which seems to pass as coherent logic to Thomas), there are only two possible detractors to the current administration: a) the anarchist, or b) the buffoon who’s too confused to even know that he’s suckling at the governmental teat. So by labeling, mischaracterizing, and marginalizing his opponents, the president sidesteps an entirely legitimate discussion of the proper role of government in a free society—nothing less than the single most important issue in the history of American politics. In the middle of making a point about the need to be kind, collaborative, and receptive to political opponents in order to maintain decorum, the President actually has the audacity to insult his detractors. The rhetoric would be brilliant if it wasn’t so transparent.

“When our government is spoken of as some menacing, threatening foreign entity, it ignores the fact that in democracy, government is us.” 

True, except we don’t live in a democracy, you colossal jag, so government is actually you.

“We. The people. We the people hold in our hands the power to choose our leaders and change our laws and shape own destiny.”

At least, we do as long as Helen Thomas decides we’re doing it nicely.

Obama also took note of the harshness of public discourse.

“To keep our democracy”… 

Again, we don’t have a democracy.

… “healthy is to maintain a level of civility in our public debate,” he said. “It’s important for everyone to join in the debate. But you can’t solve all our problems if all we do is tear each other down.”

Well, to be blunt, we’d solve a lot of problems by tearing the President down. Moreover, tearing each other’s ideas is an essential part of vigorous, solutions-oriented debate, and tearing people down personally is both necessary and productive when people insist on tying themselves to their ideas.

“You can question someone’s views and their judgment without questioning their motives or their patriotism". . .

Sure you can, it’s just not as effective.

… “Throwing around phases like ‘socialist’"...

He is.

… “and `Soviet-style takeover’” …

It is.

… “and `fascist’”…

He wishes.

… “and `right-wing nut’”...

If he threw that in for the sake of balance, does that mean that the opposite of “right wing nut” is a “socialist Soviet-style takeover using fascist tactics?”

… “may grab headlines, but it also has the effect of comparing our government, our political opponents, to authoritarian and even murderous regimes.”

“This democracy…”

Oh my God! Still not a democracy, you unforgivable dolt!

… “we have is a precious thing. For all the arguments and all the doubts and all the cynicism that’s out there today, we should never forget that as Americans we enjoy more freedoms and opportunities than citizens in any nation on Earth. 

So these spoiled Americans shouldn’t actually miss the freedoms and opportunities we’re sacrificing to sate the president’s ego.

“We are free to speak our mind and worship as we please. We are free to choose our leaders, and free to criticize when they let us down.”

Thanks for your permission. You’re still a colossal jag.

Not all political speeches are created equal. We should stop the music..

Helen Thomas actually has a rare medical condition that makes her hear Dreamweaver by Gary Wright every time Obama speaks. That’s what she’s talking about there.

… for a brief interlude and think about these remarks.

I believe historians will look back on that speech as one of Obama’s best. It’s a message of optimism and of fundamental truths that all too often seem to be ignored in these super-heated times. 

After showing the colossal laziness to spend half of her column recreating Obama’s thin-skinned rant against meanie conservatives who just don’t like him, Thomas actually has the audacity to assert that Obama’s laughable plea for decorum was a) optimistic, and b) articulated fundamental truths. If the message was so damn optimistic, why is the town of Thomas’ own writing (sparse though it may be) so glaringly pessimistic? Let’s go to the instant replay. Yes that’s right, Thomas asserts that the country has “lost its compass.” (See, I told you we’d come back to that.) It’s not even buried in the column! It’s the first damn sentence and central thesis, until she remembers it contradicts the Obama narrative. What’s more, I can’t find a single fundamental truth in Thomas’ snippets of Obama’s narrative, although I did find the fundamental falsehood that America is a Democracy mentioned three times—and this is only the edited-for-Helen-Thomas version.

In summation: either Obama’s a fool, or he thinks the members of the U of M class of 2010 are. (Incidentally, I’m with him on that.) Helen Thomas, swooning for our young (and articulate!) president, is irrefutably an idiot. Finally, Fire Joe Morgan was a great blog that I miss dearly.

He're's a link to Obama's obnoxiously foolish speech in its entirety. Video if you can stomach it.