We Have Met the Enemy ... and It Is Us the "Elites"

Bob Herbert cites Mayor Michael Bloomberg's choice for New York City schools chancellor Cathleen Black, chairwoman of Hearst Magazines, a well-to-do corporate executive with "absolutely no background in education," as an example of the "vast disconnect between the fortunes of the American elite and those of the struggling masses."

My comment once again received the old heave-ho, so here it is:

Mayor Bloomberg's choice of Ms. Black was just his way of thumbing his billionaire's nose at the rest of us. I'm sure he tells himself that "living well is the best revenge," then sleeps like a baby.

Yet it is people like Bloomberg who are largely responsible for the popularity of pseudo-populist demagogues like Sarah Palin. It isn't just Bloomberg, of course. It's most of the political class. George W. Bush resented having come down from the heights of the White House to a Dallas morning walking the dog & picking up puppy-poop. And his aristocratic mom said Sarah Palin should stay in Alaska. Palin's retort? -- something about "the blue-bloods who want to pick and choose their winners instead of allowing competition."

In fact, the right's most effective argument against President Obama -- who although he shares ancestors with the Bushes, does not share their unbroken aristocratic line -- is that he is, by virtue of his education & his richy-rich friends, a member of the "East Coast elite establishment." His detractors have a point, even if they miss the mark. They accuse Obama of bowing to foreign dignitaries, but that's nothing. It's his metaphorical kowtowing to Wall Street that is the real problem. If the President had lived up to his campaign rhetoric instead of "palling around with tycoons," the House would still be under Democratic control come January. As California Rep. Lynn Woolsey said the other day, "... if he'd done less compromising in the last two years, there's a good chance we'd have had a jobs bill that would have created real jobs, and then we wouldn't even be worrying about having lost elections."

There are leaders like Woolsey & Speaker Pelosi who will work for the people instead of the plutocrats, but until the media give these true populists their due, instead of making fun of them, or pretending to "balance" their reporting with right-wing talking points, the loudest mouths on the right will continue to dominate the conversation. Can you name me one half-governor on the left who gets the same media attention Sarah Palin does? Can you name one Speaker of the House who gets the same positive attention John Boehner does? Not Nancy Pelosi, that's for sure. She was the first woman Speaker of the House, but she didn't get her picture on the cover of popular news magazines. John Boehner did. So did Newt Gingrich. The disgraced Newt still dominates the news. When Newt speaks, the media listen. And report. Why, even former Minority Leader Tom DeLay, recently convicted of money laundering, enjoyed many press kudos last year for his performances on "Dancing with the Stars," & I saw him on at least one MSNBC show where he was treated as a serious political commentator.

We are all complicit in the sad situation in which we find ourselves, but the Lords of Wall Street, our government leaders and many in the main stream media are primarily responsible. You're a breath of fresh air, Mr. Herbert, but much of what I read in the MSM leaves a fetid odor.

The Commentariat -- November 26

Roger Cohen of the New York Times: "The unfettered growth of the Department of Homeland Security and the T.S.A. represent a greater long-term threat to the prosperity, character and wellbeing of the United States than a few madmen in the valleys of Waziristan or the voids of Yemen." ...

... You Will Be Smeared. Glenn Greenwald writes an "anatomy of a journalistic smear job" -- The Nation publishes a story questioning, without evidence, the independence of John Tyner, the private citizen whose "Don't Tough My Junk" video went viral.

Paul Krugman: "... Ireland is now in its third year of austerity, and confidence just keeps draining away. And you have to wonder what it will take for serious people to realize that punishing the populace for the bankers’ sins is worse than a crime; it’s a mistake."

In an exposé that will disgust you, Robert O'Harrow of the Washington Post "shows one way federal agencies, [in this case, the Army,] have increasingly avoided contracting competitions.... And it underscores how a small [Alaska native corporation] (ANC) subsidiaries run by nonnatives have benefitted from an unprecedented surge of outsourcing by the military at a time of war. Army officials acknowledged using [an ANC] firm to avoid competition, saying they did not have enough time or contracting workers to seek other bids."

Tony Karon of Time: "On Saturday Nov. 27, the United States and its allies will reach a grim milestone: they will have been in Afghanistan a day longer than the Soviet Union had been when it completed its 1989 withdrawal."

"Hack Thirty." Alex Pareene of Salon lists his "least favorite political commentators, newspaper columnists and constant cable news presences, ranked roughly (but only roughly) in order of awfulness and then described rudely. Criteria for inclusion included writing the same column every week for 30 years, warmongering, joyless repetition of conventional wisdom, and making bad puns." Click back to see the whole list. CW: my friends & are disappointed that Pareene placed David Brooks at #30; we thought he should have made the first page.

We think if he'd done less compromising in the last two years, there's a good chance we'd have had a jobs bill that would have created real jobs, and then we wouldn't even be worrying about having lost elections. -- Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.), on President Obama

... Oops! Missed This One. Julie David of the AP: "Behind Democrats' decision to keep [Speaker] Pelosi as their leader after historic losses lies intense concern among liberals who dominate the party's ranks on Capitol Hill: They fear [President] Obama will go too far in accommodating the GOP in the new era of divided government, and they see Pelosi as a counterweight."

Amy Wilenz in a New York Times op-ed: Sunday's elections in Haiti "are unlikely to produce a president who can address the country’s multiple woes."

We gotta stand with our North Korean allies. -- Sarah Palin

... Huma Kahn of ABC News: "Palin's gaffe immediately caught fire on the blogosphere. Liberals jumped to show her response as evidence of Palin's lack of foreign policy expertise." ...

... Class Act. The Lede Is All You Need. Shira Toeplitz of Politico: "Sarah Palin took the media and even President Barack Obama to task Thursday in a Thanksgiving message posted online."

"There are hardly any decision points at all." Sorry, one last review of Dubya's Decision Points, this one by George Packer of The New Yorker: "Though Bush credits no collaborator, his memoirs read as if they were written by an admiring sidekick who is familiar with every story Bush ever told but never got to know the President well enough to convey his inner life. Very few of its four hundred and ninety-three pages are not self-serving.... The steady drip of these elisions and falsifications suggests a deeper necessity than the ordinary touch-ups of personal history."

Here's your presidential promo of the week. I like these for the behind-the-scenes clips. Watch for Vice President Biden's comment on the press:

Since the Times moderators have been sleeping in this morning, you can read my comment on David Brooks' column here. Brooks has been reading about the life of Leo Tolstoy, and reports that Tolstoy became a wacky crusader in his later years:

... most historical leaders write pallid memoirs not because they are hiding the truth but because they’ve been engaged in an activity that makes it impossible for them to see it clearly. Activism is admirable, necessary and self-undermining — the more passionate, the more self-blinding. -- David Brooks

Forgive me, Brooks; I am always looking for the point of your little essays.

So maybe it's, "George Bush wrote a 'pallid memoir' because he really had no idea what he was doing." That's possible. But, unlike many of my liberal friends, I think Bush knew very well what he was doing. He was waging unnecessary wars of aggression to satisfy his Napoleonic complex and at the same time reward his Haliburton-type friends. He was decimating the American economy to help out his bankster buddies. He was depleting the government larder to force entitlement cutbacks. If his memoir is "pallid," it's because telling the truth would be a confession of guilt, not a memoir.

Or maybe your point is that "activists are nuts, just like Tolstoy." It is activists who got us every societal advantage we enjoy today. Were it not for revolutionary activists, we might still be singing "God Save the Queen" (though I doubt it). If not for reformers, we might still have indentured servants (of course, informally, we do). If not for abolitionists, we might still have slaves (here is Southwest Florida, there are still slave rings, but at least they're illegal). If not for suffragists, women would not have the vote. If not for later feminists, women would still not be allowed to perform "men's jobs" and they would not be entitled to equal pay for equal work (of course, we're still not getting that). If not for activists, gays would be treated as second class citizens (oh, wait, they still are).

Activism isn't nuts, Brooks, it's a badge of honor. As you so often do, you looked at a set of facts -- in this case, your reading of Tolstoy's life -- and drew a conclusion in direct opposition to its true meaning. I suppose for those who choose to applaud the status quo, it is satisfying to observe the failures of the righteous. But your self-satisfaction is hollow. In the end, we must hope, for the sake of humankind, that the smug indifference of the privileged falls into the dustbin. In the long arc of history, that's pretty much where such thoughts now lie, sometimes scooped up & regurgitated by fools, but mostly employed in the service of historians deciphering what went wrong.

You, Mr. Brooks, are once again cheering for the team who always gets it wrong.

(My comment on Krugman came up at 8:35 am ET -- it's #2.)