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"If Culture11 folded because it told conservatives things they didn't want to hear, the real fault lies with those who couldn't handle the discomfort."
-- Jonathan Schwenkler
This he writes in defense of Culture11's repeated attacks on Sarah Palin. If you want to build a political movement based on "the public is always wrong," good luck with that. The GOP nominated a presidential candidate who got only 47% of the primary vote, and yet this fanatical obsession with blaming the "Wasilla hillbillies" -- a rejection of the grassroots Republican voters who adored Sarah Palin -- still consumes the elite mind.
That Palin fared poorly in the Couric interview, that her media rollout was generally botched, that she was perhaps unready as of Aug. 29 to be first in line behind a 73-year-old commander-in-chief -- these are all criticisms that are worth discussing. But viciously undercutting her as an anti-intellectual dimwit in order to make her a scapegoat for the failure of others, when she is yet arguably the best hope for preventing the four years of Obama from becoming eight years of Obama? No.
If somebody genuinely wants to go to hell, they're free to go, but I'm not volunteering for carpool duty on that trip.
Schwenkler seems to argue, as do so many of Palin's critics, that there is something fundamentally wrong with the Republican Party seeking the support of voters who don't have college diplomas. The anti-Palinites don't merely reject "populism," they reject the people. We have heard these voices before. From "poor, uneducated and easy to command," to "bitter [people who] cling to guns or religion," for many years we've heard these outrageous liberal slurs of ordinary Americans.
Slurs from liberals we've come to expect, but when people who style themselves "conservative" begin running down red-blooded, Red State, grassroots conservatives . . . Hey, buddy, I'm Merle Haggard and you're on the fightin' side of me. You are badmouthing my family, my friends, my neighbors -- some of the most courageous, generous people anyone could ever hope to meet -- and it is my duty and honor to defend them against the calumny.
Go ahead, look down your nose at the hicks in the sticks, tuned into Rush Limbaugh, Michael Reagan and Laura Ingraham. For all their faults and failings, those hicks are better people than you are -- and that's why you hate them so much.
Get Yourself to Mass
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It’s Christmas Eve and with one son sick the schedule we had for today was
disrupted but there is one thing that’s going to happen no matter what. I’m
gett...
4 hours ago
One of the biggest surprises I had during this election was learning how intensely mainstream conservative commentators hated actual conservatives.
ReplyDeleteI think a lot of them see their roles as trying to explain the conservative viewpoint to elite liberals, rather than trying to explain politics to conservatives.
--See-Dubya
Absolutely brilliant and dead on commentary !!
ReplyDeletenice post RSM
ReplyDeleteSlurs from liberals we've come to expect, but when people who style themselves "conservative" begin running down red-blooded, Red State, grassroots conservatives . . . Hey, buddy, I'm Merle Haggard and you're on the fightin' side of me. You are badmouthing my family, my friends, my neighbors -- some of the most courageous, generous people anyone could ever hope to meet -- and it is my duty and honor to defend them against the calumny.
ReplyDeleteThis is what I love about your writing style and point of view. You are an outlaw at heart! And as Dylan said, "to be an outlaw you must be honest". Gonzo journalism on the right. I love it.
Infidel
I'm new to your blog, so you'll have to forgive me if I have a distorted sense of things, but you seem to devote a lot of space to bashing Culture 11.
ReplyDeleteWhile I found features like the American Idol recap perplexing, there was plenty there to like.
As far as attacks on Palin go, you are right to reject those that are based on her status as an outsider when compared to pedigreed beltway dwellers.
However, there are plenty of us 'hicks in the sticks' who looked at Palin and saw a complete inversion of Biblical Womanhood and that is the reason we couldn't support her (or the other McCain).
There are many conservatives that feel equally repulsed by the influence of ivy league scribblers and feminism. And don't like to see their movement diminished by either.
Hear, hear.
ReplyDeleteI've never even bothered with Culture 1-10, so I gave Culture 11 a skip..
ReplyDeletedidn't want to walk link in and not know what was going on.
Robert Stacy McCain, this is too much. Since you linked to my piece calling for Sarah Palin's ouster from the ticket, I presume that you read it.
ReplyDeleteAnd you say this yourself: "That Palin fared poorly in the Couric interview, that her media rollout was generally botched, that she was perhaps unready as of Aug. 29 to be first in line behind a 73-year-old commander-in-chief -- these are all criticisms that are worth discussing."
Yes, they are worth discussing, and they are also precisely the criticisms that I made in my piece. If I may quote myself: "Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, a candidate who asserts that proximity to Russia is itself foreign policy experience, whose supposed aversion to pork barrel spending is at best inconsistent, and who cannot even reliably state the approximate share of American energy that comes from Alaska, despite claiming energy policy as her particular area of expertise.
So long as she remains on the ticket, her candidacy dooms GOP partisans to the full-throated defense of an unqualified candidate. Should it succeed, the United States risks giving the reins of government to an incurious neophyte who apparently lacks the intellectual agility to face down Katie Couric, never mind a head-rearing Vladamir Putin or a potential economic catastrophe."
Let me quote another part of my piece: "I'd rather that Governor Palin withdraw than stay on the ticket, but it is no slur against her if she, like most smart, ambitious people, lacks the perspective to assess her present limitations."
My God, did I just call Palin smart and ambitious? I think I did!
Later in your post, you talk about the kind of Palin critic that riles you: "Slurs from liberals we've come to expect, but when people who style themselves "conservative" begin running down red-blooded, Red State, grassroots conservatives . . . Hey, buddy, I'm Merle Haggard and you're on the fightin' side of me. You are badmouthing my family, my friends, my neighbors -- some of the most courageous, generous people anyone could ever hope to meet -- and it is my duty and honor to defend them against the calumny.
Go ahead, look down your nose at the hicks in the sticks, tuned into Rush Limbaugh, Michael Reagan and Laura Ingraham. For all their faults and failings, those hicks are better people than you are -- and that's why you hate them so much."
It seems to me that I am criticizing Sarah Palin on the very grounds that you yourself deem legitimate -- and that you are nevertheless citing my criticism of her as an example of an illegitimate critique.
I leave you with one further excerpt from the piece you quote that explicitly respects the base you imply that I disrespect: "Perhaps those who fear a conservative revolt respect the base less than I do, imagining that it is mostly composed of people who confuse the admirable decision to birth a Down Syndrome baby with wisdom in matters of public policy, or who regard moose meat as so much more American than arugula as to select their presidential ticket based on cultural cues. It is true, of course, that some folks like this exist.
In Barack Obama's formulation, these voters make their decisions based on bitterness rather than principles. But I suspect that even many whose votes are informed by cultural cues -- and who supported Palin because of them -- are open to persuasion. They'll listen to conservative opinion-makers whose bonafides they regard as beyond question. It is these elites who need to make the case that Palin's replacement is best for the movement.
Thus I call on conservative elites to repudiate the Palin candidacy without delay, for the sake of your intellectual tradition and your country. Forcefully argue to your audiences that good values are a necessary but insufficient qualification for a capable executive. Tell them that even those who think Sarah Palin is more experienced than Barack Obama can acknowledge that is no great hurdle, and that the GOP has an opportunity to significantly improve the qualifications of the team that may enter the White House this January, never mind what the Democrats are doing."
My God, did I just call Palin smart and ambitious? I think I did!
ReplyDeletein a rather back handed way..
Well, I do like Gov. Palin. However, she is no more qualified for the presidency then Barack Obama.
ReplyDeleteHer primary problem is her rather unfortunate support of neoconservatism, i.e. globalization and foreign interventionsim.
But people have epiphanies and pneumatic irruptions so there's always hope.
As a former Culture 11 blogger who has crossed swords with John Schwenkler I must say he is no elitist.
Slurs from liberals we've come to expect, but when people who style themselves "conservative" begin running down red-blooded, Red State, grassroots conservatives . . . it is my duty and honor to defend them against the calumny
ReplyDeleteElitism, in one sentence.
Or as Larison accurately states: "Behind all of his endless blather about being duty-bound to defend the common people, McCain is helping to enable every habit in the modern GOP that works to harm them and their communities."
No genious is required to diminish the significant, nor to elevate the trivial. The reason you "repudiate Palin" clowns will be elbowed aside is that both the common man and the intellectual know executive experience is rare, difficult to obtain, and harder to keep. Like property, It also has value.
ReplyDeleteCriticism is cheap and plentiful.
Governor Palin need waste no concern over the self-important few who try to gain relevance via "insulting upward.".
And I did notice I misspelled "genius." No elitism for me. Damn.
ReplyDelete