07 November 2008

Elite or is it L33t?

I was browsing through the Post today and had to check the Chucky Krauthammer column. Just had to. I wondered, what would this half-insane crank prattle on about today? Well, I was surprised in his level-headed analysis that McCain had made several strategic and tactical blunders in the campaign...here I had expected Krauthammer, longtime established right-wing crank whose columns are found in the most hated paper of the dread MSM after the NYT, to rail against the evil MSM and their unfair treatment of noble John and uncritical elevation of false god Barack.

But I found none such drivel. Truly, I was amazed. However, in the midst of his most cogent column that I've read in the past decade (HIS most cogent, not THE most cogent), he lets slip this odd bit of nonsense:
The choice of Sarah Palin was also a mistake. I'm talking here about its political effects, not the sideshow psychodrama of feminist rage and elite loathing that had little to do with politics and everything to do with cultural prejudices, resentments and affectations.

Now Krauthammer is willing to remind his readers that he himself criticized the Palin choice back when McCain made it. However, I'm not clear on what he means by the "psychodrama of feminist rage and elite loathing." First of all, it's difficult to understand how you can divorce "feminist rage" from politics when the main feminist critique I heard was about Palin's stand on abortion. Is Krauthammer against all credible evidence attempting to claim that abortion is not a political issue? (and I have to admit, I am out of touch, for I didn't see anything from feminists that I could liken to rage...for me rage has more to do with people threatening bodily violence, like you know, shouting out "kill him" or "traitor" or "terrorist" at political rallies...)

As for the further charge of "elite loathing," I'm really wondering what Krauthammer, a charter member of the Elite Club, could be talking about. Palin is a member of the elite. She's the governor of a state. The Right Wing Yacht Cruise made a port of call to see her last year so everyone could shake her hand and write loving odes to her ascendancy. Seriously, when is the right-wing going to stop pretending they're part of the media machine they constantly rail against? More to the point, when will an overwhelming majority of Americans stop buying that line of bullshit?

Seriously, though, Sarah Palin comes out on stage in designer -- vaguely "European" even -- glasses and a sharp wardrobe enhanced by $150K of Republican campaign money, and Krauthammer is talking about "elite loathing"? And here I thought the loathing came from the fact that Palin was so woefully uninformed that she couldn't handle an interview with slow-pitch softball pitcher extraordinaire Katie Couric. And now even Fox is admitting what most intelligent Americans guessed a month ago: Palin doesn't know anything about world affairs, even when that world is right next door in Canada. Can he seriously believe that such critique and revulsion is chalked up to "cultural prejudices" rather than political concerns that the person McCain nominated to be Vice President probably wouldn't make it further than the $2000 level of "Are You're Smater than a Fifth Grader?"

Give me a break. Palin is dead in the water. 2012 will be Palin free. Or better yet, how about Palin-Plumber 2012? Running on a revival of the old Know-Nothing Party ticket, chosen more for name than ideology, though ideology does dovetail.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Back in the '80s I subscribed to The New Republic. I was behind the times and had read somewhere that TNR was a leftie magazine; I subscribed to it and The Nation concurrently, and the difference quickly became apparent.

Still, I hung in there. That's where I first encountered Krauthammer, Kondracke, Barnes, and so on. Then Kinsley and Hertzberg left and things really went off the rails. It was a shame 'cause I did like some of the other writers but they were getting crowded out.

TNR may be under some kind of revolutionary regime these days. I've seen their staffers show up as sources on MSNBC, which surprised me.

cs said...

It's pretty funny, because TNR used to be on the Left, although they were always more centrist than The Nation...I'm not sure when TNR went from Left to Right...maybe during the late 30's and 40's when the Left divided over Stalin.

Anonymous said...

If Palin runs for President in 2012, at least she has name recognition going for her... but that may not work in her favor