Wednesday, December 14, 2005

Liberals, Fox News Knows Our Weakness

So, it's true that many liberals are patronizing, sanctimonious jackasses. It's hard not to be patronizing when we're so clearly right most of the time, but the trouble always has been that we're not just patronizing about the stuff we're right about--it's better to be good to each other than to our wallets, our commander in chief misled us into war, Andrew Dice Clay never was that funny--we're patronizing about shit that doesn't matter, like where people live. There's a reason that "liberal elite" caught on so quickly. Not because liberals in general think we're better than everyone else, but that it's clear that there's a noisy faction of us who thinks that, if you don't live on one of the coasts, you live in a vast cultural wasteland that must only be observed from either up in a plane or while being guarded by folks who will show you what the local customs are, but protect you from actual locals. Once you become acutely aware of this coastal elitism (and, if you watch any Hollywood movie about the center of the country, how can you not think that we're all semi-retarded, even if we might be nice enough), I just don't think it's such a short leap from "coastal elite" to "liberal elite," even if such a leap is unfortunate. Former Fox producer, Charlie Reina outlines the clever ways Fox News helps folks make such a leap, especially by manufacturing some "war" against Christmas. Joe Conason has a nice take on this nonsense as well. I especially like his closing paragraph:
Honoring old traditions, respecting newer arrivals and maintaining constitutional freedoms is often difficult. The important thing is to seek that balance in a spirit of kindness and decency rather than promoting anger and suspicion. For those who profess to honor the prince of peace, particularly at this time of year, that ought to be obvious.

7 Comments:

Blogger Ted said...

Man oh man.

Thank you for saying something that's been niggling (niggling, I tell you!) at me for a while now.

Just because yeah, some liberals are elitist pains in the posterior, most of us are genuinely caring people whose only agenda is taking care of one another. Not by some mysterious (and rarely encountered) "trickling down" of kindness, but by genuine caring.

The same rules apply in opposition, of course. The fact that one is a conservative doesn't make them unalterably self-centered and, well, wrong. Odds are good, though.

And man, Dice really never was that damn funny.

This is an excellent blog (and now on my short list of bookmarks).

12/14/2005 12:39:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hey, the midwest is wicked scary. We've been there. So, 4 people were murdered in the basement of a Boston home last night. The deep south? Nashville?! Gun racks and James K. Polk and Jack Daniels? ((shudder...))

Signed,
The Boston Redsox

12/14/2005 01:38:00 PM  
Blogger Exador said...

Liberals were right about something? When did this happen?

You can't claim the Dice thing. Everybody knew he wasn't funny.

Remember, his shtick was that he was a New Yorka, then he went to LA. From one Liberal coast to the other.

12/14/2005 02:37:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

My friend Kev wrote a really great letter to O'Reilly about this. Read it at:
http://www.xanga.com/karamat
You'll have to scroll past his tree picture to get to it.

12/14/2005 05:52:00 PM  
Blogger Aunt B said...

Dear Boston Resident, someday y'all are going to hear how New York talks about you behind your back and it'll be on between the two of you.

Come now, Boy Scout. We all saw the mullet. No man who ever had hair like that has much credibility when denying he ever liked Clay.

Ted, glad to have you here.

PPB, your friend is a riot and right.

12/15/2005 09:07:00 AM  
Blogger Exador said...

I can't believe you'd throw the mullet in my face. That's low. It was the 80's, and it got me laid.

I'm sure there are some stunning pictures of you from highschool, you just don't have the ovaries to post them. Send me your mom's number. She'll do it. She's got a thing for me anyway.

12/15/2005 09:19:00 AM  
Blogger Aunt B said...

Except for the one Thanksgiving when I looked like some deranged reject from a Depeche Mode video, I can assure you (and Shug can attest) that I've just always been this cute.

It's true that my mom was charmed and delighted by you, but I'm not giving you her number. You had her giggling like a school girl after just five minutes. Five minutes more, you'd have her talked into just about anything.

12/15/2005 10:14:00 AM  

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