Thursday, June 18, 2009

Those Poor, Persecuted Conservatives

URGENT: If your senator is on the HELP Committee, call or write them to support a strong public option as part of any health care reform legislation. Details here...

Pity the oppressed conservatives, writes Leonard Pitts. After all, a bad joke about Sarah Palin's daughter is easily the moral equivalent of the shooting at the Holocaust Museum. On the mark as usual, Pitts writes that
...modern conservatism is defined by an Alice-through-the-looking-glass incoherence: small government except when it is growing larger than ever, fiscal restraint except when we are spending like Michael Jackson in a Disney gift shop, foreign policy pragmatism except when we are trying to transform the Middle East.

Indeed, sometimes it feels as if it is no longer defined by principles at all, nor by energy and ideas, but rather, by a limitless ability to feel put upon and slighted. To be a conservative these days is, or so they would have you believe, like being black in Birmingham in 1952. It is to be the victim of media, culture and law that hate you just for being.
If there's anything consistent about modern conservatism, it's hypocrisy. These practitioners of victimology are the first to blame the victims (see: Dr. George Tiller, the people of New Orleans) when it suits them.

Then there's the sheer number of sex scandals, the proportion of which has reached the bizarre. To be sure, it's none of my business whether John Ensign (R-NV) has an affair with a campaign volunteer. But it is the people's business when the practitioners of an ideology that both asserts its moral superiority in everything from so-called "family values" to foreign policy and decries its opposition as treasonous moral lepers put themselves above their own standards. That's rank, sordid hypocrisy and we must continue to call them on it.

Something for which I say "thank God for the blogosphere." If newspapers had been doing their jobs, they wouldn't be whining about about what we "lose" as they shrink and close down. If the blogosphere had been as widespread and effective in 2004 as it is now, John Kerry might well be entering his second term: Liberal bloggers would have made the Swift Boat smear about Republicans instead of the bogus "story" about how Kerry responded to something so unthinkably low....


NOLA Happenings: Start your weekend tomorrow night at Concerts in the Courtyard with Steve Riley and the Mamou Playboys...Saturday, check out the Bywater Art Market ("affordable art by New Orleans artists") before heading out to Abita Springs for the Louisiana Bicycle Festival...

8 comments:

Ima Wizer said...

RIGHT ON!

Sylvia K said...

Oh, RIGHT ON!! indeed! I'm sooooo sick of their whining and the hypocrisy! When is this country going to wake up!!! Hurray for the blogosphere indeed!

Roy said...

The right wing of Christianity (evangelicals and pentecostals) is like this, too. If anybody complains about their non-stop attempts to impose their belief system on non-believers, they assume the fetal position and start screaming "Victim!" For some reason I've never quite grasped, they seem to believe that saying "no" to their proselytizing is somehow a violation of their First Amendment rights. I wrote an article on Gather.com about RI's long tradition of freedom of religion, going right back to its colonial charter, and i was immediately inundated in comments by angry evangelicals who seemed to think that religious pluralism is somehow a violation of their rights as both a citizen and a Christian. Weird people!

K. said...

The religious right influence on the Republican party is part-and-parcel of conservative victimization.

As for the misplaced fears about freedom of religion, this is the most religious country in the western world. If that's a measuring stick, the wall between church and state has been a spectacular success.

RobinB said...

Hi K--Great post--just got off the phone with Patty's office in response to your urgent plea re: healthcare. Thanks so much for the headsup. Hope it helps!

K. said...

Way to go, Robin! I've written both her and Maria Cantwell.

Annette said...

We have to really push this Health Care or we risk losing this. It is dire right now. The Senators have been bought and paid for by the Insurance Companies and they are trying very hard to stop this public option. If we can't have the single payer, and there is no way it looks like we are getting that, then public option is our best bet, we are going to have to work hard for it. Thanks for pushing it.

Unknown said...

The whole issue with Letterman's joke about Bristol Palin is ridiculous to begin with. Like it or not she became a public figure and potentially subject to ridicule as any other figure when her mother decided to parade her on stage for political reasons.

One could argue that at the end of the campaign she was no longer a fair target, but since then she has become a "teen ambassador" for The Candie's Foundation, a group that fights for abstinence only education in public schools.

As long as she is in the spotlight (and making a fool out of herself to boot) she's a fair target.