Obtuse Angle and Punxsutawney Bob
If Harry Reid loses his senate seat to flaming kook Sharron Angle this fall, it will be all Rachel Maddow’s fault. No, really—that’s respected (in some quarters) media critic Bob Somerby’s take:
For various reasons [because she’s a flaming kook!—ed.], Angle is a highly vulnerable candidate, even though Reid has low approval ratings in Nevada. But uh-oh! Since last Thursday night, an unpleasant thought has played in our heads: If anyone can get Angle elected, it may be “the bad Rachel.”
Since Angle won the GOP primary, the bad Rachel has been mocking her in predictable ways. As with other top-shelf liberals, Maddow never seems to understand how her attitudes may be perceived by people who aren’t from the clan. (That is, by the bulk of voters.)
It seems our Rhodes Scholar has been making fun of Angle for wanting to abolish Medicare and Social Security and advocating a return to Prohibition in a state that’s chock-full of drunken Medicare and Social Security recipients. Tut-tut.
What the fuck is Maddow thinking? Doesn’t she know mocking a candidate who posits her own election as the only alternative to armed insurrection and calls for deregulation to solve the Gulf oil spill catastrophe could offend Real Americans?
Trapped as always in the amber of the year 2000, Somerby evaluates Maddow’s criticism of Angle through that prism—he has no other!
For example, we were struck by this typically self-assured comment from last evening’s program:
MADDOW (6/14/10): Privatizing social security is so unpopular that you couldn’t sell it to the public if you called the “Basket of Puppies and Sky Full of Rainbows” bill. But Sharron Angle will not give up. She will not back down.
Angle favors some form of privatization… But is this position politically toxic in the way Maddow seems to believe? Maddow is always quite sure of herself when she declaims about such matters. But we’ve followed this topic with some interest, dating back to the year 2000, when Candidate Bush made Social Security reform a central part of his first campaign for the White House…
Times are different now. But when Candidate Bush ran on “personal accounts,” the mainstream press corps hailed his greatness and savaged Gore for his opposition…
As of the year 2000, personal accounts had polled well for years. Are you sure the position is toxic today? Maddow seemed very certain last night. The analysts groaned and complained.
“Times are different now.” Well, yes, they certainly are. To cite just one way in which times are now different, consider that we recently experienced an epic stock market meltdown that would have wiped out retirees’ “personal accounts” had the Bush plan been in force as surely as it ravaged us still-working folks’ crappy 401(k) plans.
Privatizing Social Security was a dumb idea in 2000. It’s an even dumber idea now: It’s akin to hiring the Deep Water Horizon safety crew to establish operating parameters for future offshore drilling sites (which in fact isn’t so far from Angle’s stance on that issue).
Why shouldn’t Maddow point out the howling lunacy of Angle’s positions and describe them with the all the derision such notions deserve? She should shout it from the rooftops, and she is. Good for her. And screw the ever groaning, complaining “analysts” who are doomed to relive Gore’s rogering forever and ever, like some luckless rodent trapped in a fake tree stump.
Posted by Betty Cracker on 06/16/10 at 12:45 PM • Permalink
Categories: Politics • Election '10 • BushCo • Nutters • Teabaggery • Our Stupid Media •
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