The New Republic

These people really need to grow up. I suspect most Americans are not listening to these nutters, but if they were I can't see how lunatic rantings are going to help them advance their political agenda. Our country really needs to send these clowns a message: shut up, grow up, act like rational people, because if this becomes the new accepted norm for political behavior than we are sunk. A few days ago, I posted the question of who the right-wing nutters would compare Obama to in the future, now that they have used Hitler and Stalin already. My guesses were Attilla the Hun or Pol Pot. Now they have used Kim Jong-il and Saddam Hussein! Next: Barack Obama lighting the White House Christmas tree will be compared to Mahmoud Ahmedinejad.

- JEFF FREY

September 4, 2009 at 2:11pm

I got into an argument this morning with a former classmate of mine who had drunk the conservative kool-aid on this issue. She wants to shelter her child from "grown-up" topics, and prevent her from being scared and confused about the world, because a 10 year old just wants to "fit in" and be liked. And this was after I told her that the speech was about studying, working hard and the value of education. So I guess one speech by Obama is enough to turn the children of America into rampaging hordes of Hitler Youth or Red Guards, just because they want to "fit in." Another old classmate of mine was convinced that the number of czars in the government meant that Obama could strip away our Constitutional rights with the stroke of a pen. A co-worker told me that health reform is just a pretext for the government to destroy freedom and take control of every aspect of our lives. This is just leaving me slack-jawed. I am at a loss to know why people are believing such demonstrably irrational things. Do conservatives truly believe that the politics of hysteria, delusion and psychosis is the path back to power? Or should we start taking them at their word and prepare for an attempt to overthrow the government? These people seem more and more like the Black Panthers, SDS and the Weather Underground... but better armed.

- zardoz67

September 4, 2009 at 2:50pm

Back in 1988 Reagan gave a televised speech to a bunch of school students at the old executive office building, and in a question and answer period went into a long riff about how great tax cuts are. It was completely partisan, yet I could find no evidence of any Democrats acting hysterically over it, in fact it barely rated any mention at all. The worst thing about this is CNN is completely ignoring this as an issue, while Fox is putting it front and center giving the nutters their say, they then give a few seconds to someone like Juan Williams who doesn't call it for the nuttery it is but who only downplays it all. by the way, not to be an absolute smart ass, but I hope you realize that putting the word spook and Obama in the same sentence might get twisted crazily by places like the freerepublic. Now the reason it occurs to me is that I have been watching the British series "spooks" which is called MI5 in America, and I explained to a Brit collegue (who is black) the derogatory meanings of spook. She was unaware of it, as she is blithely unaware of how unhinged a large portion of America is.

- blackton

September 4, 2009 at 2:51pm

zardoz, I live in Mexico so my only contact with the states is what I see on media and read. I was kind of hoping that all of this nuttery is just pond scum floating on the surface, but most of the water is clean underneath. I thought it was crazy during Clinton's years, but at least a lot of the attacks on Clinton had some basis, like his slickness, or his debauchery. But I simply can't believe how far and how fast Republicans have sunk, and reading what you wrote just makes me even more depressed. I have got to spend more time at the beach.

- blackton

September 4, 2009 at 2:58pm

Blackton, I vividly remember St. Ronald's "crusade" for tax reform in the mid 80s. I was in college at the time and he made an appearance at the university (NC State) to whip up support among college kids for tax cuts and a reformed tax code. The man was good; you should have seen how much cheering was going on. I just watched in awe at the stupidity of it all; sure, reform the code, but cheer like it was a basketball game against UNC or Duke? Get real. And no one at that time, 1985, said anything about it being overly political. Even the sitting governor at the time, at Dem, was on the podium with St. Ronald. Flash forward to 2009. As I wrote in the predecessor to this blog post, my kids' elementary school principal had a recorded phone message that went out to parents yesterday, telling them if they want their child to opt out of hearing the speech, a non-partisan one, to call the office. This is in the Raleigh area where supposedly we have rational people. I'm convinced that a large part of the US has lost it's mind.

- tnmats

September 4, 2009 at 3:07pm

"Do conservatives truly believe that the politics of hysteria, delusion and psychosis is the path back to power? Or should we start taking them at their word and prepare for an attempt to overthrow the government? These people seem more and more like the Black Panthers, SDS and the Weather Underground... but better armed. " I think more the latter than the former. The big difference in 1968 they didn't speak like Black Panthers, SDS or Weather Underground. In 2009 the GOP "leaders" in the Senate and House are part of the hysteria. Take a look at the sitting Texas governor, publicly espousing secession from the US. Never did the top ranks of the Democratic Party become this unhinged in the 60s/70s.

- tnmats

September 4, 2009 at 3:11pm

Hell, I haven't had "a tenuous grasp on reality" since the day I found out Rush Limbaugh is not just a character on The Simpsons. Still, with what remains of the few marbles I have left I can assure you the right wingnuts are not exaggerating the danger to our children once Obama's Death Panels knock off all the seniors and then set up shop in our schools. For example, in a recent email between Obama and Satan [intercepted by Jesus] the immediate objectives of the plot were disclosed: 1] to tear down every elementary school in the land and have all the kids home-schooled by Rachel Maddow in a gigantic underground vault being built in a secret location at MSNBC 2] to phase out english and teach kids to speak a hybrid of Spanish, Eubonics and Pig Latin 3] to phase out all tests in order to judge children by a new standard: "from each child according to his fickle moods, to each child according to his blind obedience" 4] to allow the curriculum to put together by the United Nations General Assembly 5] to make wearing clothes to school optional 6] to ban all textbooks and encourage children to learn more organically, exchanging hip hop lyrics and daydreams 7] to make sex education mandatory from day care centers to graduate school 8] to encourage homesexual displays of affection and public intercourse 9] to quarantine all children who insist on believing in God 10] to change every student's name to the number on his or her National Identity Card gw

- iambiguous

September 4, 2009 at 3:12pm

I think one should insist on a certain consistency here. If these parents are going to demand that their precious darlings not be exposed to the president of the United States making an appeal to kids to take education seriously, then perhaps they should be campaigning to have all mention of FDR, Harry Truman, JFK, LBJ, Jimmy Carter, and Bill Clinton removed from the school textbooks. After all, if the kids get the idea that there have been quite a lot of Democratic presidents who did useful stuff, who knows where it'll end! I don't think this is nuttery so much as pure racism. They just can't bear, really can't bear, the idea that a black guy is president, and presumably during the election most of their TV sets were tuned to Fox and thus the kids probably have a skewed idea that Obama is some sort of evil mastermind and a foreigner to boot. They don't want their kids to see that he's in fact the opposite of their parents: a calm and rational character.

- ironyroad

September 4, 2009 at 3:19pm

Irony: As I mentioned in my comments on the last post on the topic, I totally agree with your assessment. I fear for the Republic.

- icarusr

September 4, 2009 at 3:35pm

I fear for the Republic as well. If this is not stopped, we are on the path to another Oklahoma City, if not another Dallas.

- zardoz67

September 4, 2009 at 3:40pm

The bottom line with this, as with other things like the Kenya crap and the other nonsense about death panels and such is this: he's the president, duly elected. And they simply refuse to come to terms with that.

- miceelf

September 4, 2009 at 6:05pm

I wonder if there is precedent for such hysterical scorched earth politics in the history of American politics? It's too late in the day to research, but I am willing to bet there is (precedent). Either change the rules of the game in the middle of play, or, failing that, walk off the playing field and start a riot.

- Tgossard

September 5, 2009 at 1:44am

I do have to agree with other commentators that what we're seeing out within the Republicans ranks is getting very scary. It is one thing when media clowns like Rush Limbaugh incite the maddening crowd but we are seeing a growing number of supposedly average GOPers screaming, carrying firearms within a short distance from the President, and state and local GOP politicians actually saying that they don't trust Obama around kids and talking about Obama tags and one right wing pastor openly saying that he prays for Obama's death! This is just crazy. And I am afraid it can only get worse. No one is the GOP seems to be calling for a halt to the craziness. I always thought that the GOP couldn't get any crazier than what we saw during the Clinton era but I am realizing that as bad as that was, the fact that Obama is black has added a whole new and very frightening element to this level of craziness. I am beginning to wonder if assassinating Obama will actually be on the GOP Party Platform in 12.

- MrCookie1

September 5, 2009 at 1:44pm

It is dead wrong to object to Obama being beamed into American schools saying some andoyne things. The objections range from the preverse to the overly abstract. Such a few words as his form an wholly unobjectionable instance of the bully pulpit being preached from to kids in a way as compelling as is the preacher, who is compelling indeed. The people thinking that such few words are a tendentious attempt at making America Socialist are nutty. And one stricture I heard elsewhere is that the few words need to exemplify critical thinking or have some specifically curricular and pedagogic core so as to justify depriving the kids from running and jumping for a few minutes or from their reading exercises or getting deep into the foreshadowing in Romeo and Juliet or whatever is straight up obtuse. That these few words are part of a strategy of a "Dear Leader" cult of personality is beyond bizarre to me and is a manifestation of something aberrant in your country, a country I quite admire in so many ways. That there is a racial component to these objections seems like a correct assessment, as someone above noted. I would make the same point if W. had said a few words. That there is a racial component to these objections seems like a correct assessment, as someone above noted. I'd draw the line at Clinton speaking after we all found out that Monica Lewinsky had been blowing him in the Oval Office and he was leaving stains on her blue dress and such like. As a digression I find this site significantly less interactive since it was reconfigured

- basman

September 5, 2009 at 3:22pm

itz, Yes, the traffic since the change a week ago has been down significantly. Whether this is a long term declination is yet to be seen. I say that if the comments were easier to read - make them darker - it might help. Still, except for a few indefatigable die hards, tnr commentary has taken a nose dive since the change over and I see no sunlight on the horizon.

- MrCookie1

September 5, 2009 at 4:59pm

Texas seems to run on it's very own set of rules, laws, mores and morality. Some Texans wish to instruct all non-Texans on "a thing or two" concerning how to run our lives and what we should think and hold dear. "Don't mess with Texas!" is the popular refrain. This attitude is getting tiresome. Our duly elected President and Commander-in-Chief is the supreme elected official of the land; including all the States of the Union. He merits our respect and civility, if not agreement on the issues of the day. Socialist values have become mainstream over the decades. It is public education after all, largely molded on the ideas of John Dewey, a preeminent American pragmatist, strongly influenced by America's own social democrats. The parents protesting the loudest are sending their children to democratic socialist inspired public institutions, paid for by tax dollars. If they are so fearful of indoctrination, by the President of the United States, no less, they should consider homeschooling. As for the anti-socialism of Texas' conservatives, perhaps the Texans should return to the Federal Treasury the value of all the support they have willing taken from the Federal government, since New Deal days. Put your anti-socialism where your mouth is, old boy. Ironically, socialism has become a code word used by racists. My god, what would poor Norman Thomas think if he were alive today? Coincidentally, it was Socialist Thomas who was the most outspoken critic of FDR's internment of Japanese-Americans, during the Second World War. American socialism has always had a strong civil libertarian tendency. No concentration camps on American's socialist conscience. It is not even the American socialists the POTUS is compared with but the insane totalitarians of North Korea and the Baathist Saddam Hussein. How stupid as that! Fear and loathing, Southern-style. Let's just say, "You have a problem, Houston!"

- LawrenceGulotta

September 5, 2009 at 9:40pm

Ken you are right. In my case alone it may be just as well. I find I don't have too much to say to anyone these days. What can I tell you?

- basman

September 5, 2009 at 11:52pm

itz, At least we had Paris... Ken

- MrCookie1

September 6, 2009 at 1:07am

Ah, that small apartment with the balcony on Rue des Poseurs . . . And the neighbors! The inseparable M. Basman and M. Blackton; Mme. Noga, never without her Jane Austen novel; and that strange M. Walton who used to talk to himself on the stairs.

- ironyroad

September 6, 2009 at 11:46am

Sacre bleu! I fail to remember! It was of course the M. Cookie (his name was, how do you say, fluid) who was the faithful companion of M. Basman. Je suis desolé!

- ironyroad

September 6, 2009 at 11:50am

In addition to the Reagan example, I'd like to point out that on the second Tuesday in September of his first year in office, George W. Bush likewise spent his morning speaking to schoolchildren to encourage literacy and study habits. Now, I can see how people might not want to repeat the experience of that day and all that followed from it, but I do not recall anyone at the time or afterwards objecting to the idea of the president encouraging schoolchildren to read and study. Far as I'm concerned, people who are freaking out about Obama's webcast either cannot distinguish between the president's two roles as a political actor and as the ceremonial head of state, or they are actively opposed to his message regarding the importance of hard work and study. So either they are bad citizens, or bad parents, or both. And yes, I felt the same way about the jerks who booed President Bush when he threw out the ceremonial first pitch to open Nationals Park last year.

- rhubarbs

September 6, 2009 at 12:18pm

...and that strange M. Walton who used to talk to himself on the stairs... I can attest to this from the actual experience of chortling just 17 seconds ago: the above is laugh out loud funny. They don't call him Ironyroad for no thing.

- basman

September 6, 2009 at 4:40pm

..Far as I'm concerned, people who are freaking out about Obama's webcast either cannot distinguish between the president's two roles as a political actor and as the ceremonial head of state, or they are actively opposed to his message regarding the importance of hard work and study.... I think I 'd take this one step further. According to some commentary I heard just today while watching television (only because it was on while I was giving some one mouth to mouth recussitation, Saint and ministerer that I am), the objection had its genesis in some federally suggested lesson plan where kids were asked to write Obama as to how they could help him or him them or inspire him or him them or some such. And I heard some liberals concede that this was overstepping and marked the intrusion of politics on ceremony according to the terms of the just above distinction. I disagree. Apart from not believing that's from whence the outcry arose, the suggestion is ceremonial and suffciently general and anodyne in my book not to make for brain washing and co-opting the young and inculcating Mao and Marx and Fidel and Michael Jackson in them and other such tripe. It's a bit of innocuous symbolic writing to the President of the United States, the country's leader, that may give the writing kids a bit of civic feeling and connection. I don't find any line has been crossed in the suggestion. And for this parents were--the request has been withdrawn--going to keep their kids home and many still are regardless of the that withdrawal? It's hard me for to understand or take your country's depth of polarization, though I can clearly believe that polarization to be racially tinged.

- basman

September 6, 2009 at 5:04pm

Ironyroad here's amomgst three I owe you. I'm not going to chapter, page and verse though I could: 1. http://www.amazon.com/Hamlet-Poem-Unlimited-Harold-Bloom/dp/157322233X 2. http://www.amazon.com/Shakespeare-Invention-Human-Harold-Bloom/dp/157322751X/ref=pd_sim_b_1 3. http://www.amazon.com/How-Read-Why-Harold-Bloom/dp/0684859076/ref=pd_sim_b_3 I make no apology for these being essentially later Bloom in his incarnation as populizer. The point still stands I'd say.

- basman

September 6, 2009 at 5:15pm

Irony, The story about reappearance of mrcookie1 is simply that when tnr went to this new format, they must have used the data that CanWest had for us when marty sold it to CanWest a few years ago. I have heard from several sources that no one really liked by boulevardier interregnum anyway and for many, it was cookie and will always be cookie. So be it.

- MrCookie1

September 6, 2009 at 5:53pm

cookie, now I remember -- you said something about that on an earlier thread. Well goodbye jaunty, you did your job. Jaunty we hardly knew ye! But what do I see here? Basman has just left three large books by Harold Bloom in the doorway. Jeez I'll never be able to move those. I'll have to climb over them. [grunts, breathes heavily, feels out of condition] OK done. Damn! Now I can't get the door closed.

- ironyroad

September 6, 2009 at 6:38pm

Youse guys with your ambitious reading list. Me, I prefer holiday weekends with inferior fiction and frosty librations.

- MrCookie1

September 6, 2009 at 8:22pm

In the early 60s I attended a New Jersey high school in a bedroom community for many of the areas leading academic institutions. We had weekly "seminars" to which various outside speakers were invited -- including, once, the UN representative for the Soviet Union. It was a national, hysterical, screaming headline-type scandal -- commie speaks to American school kids!! OOOOOOOOOOOOH Of course that guy really was a commie. It was the height of the Cold War. He did speak directly, in person, to the entire student body. How odd it is, close to a half century later, to see exactly the same hysteria exhibited over a duly elected President's speech to the nation's school children. Expressed as fear of the same, now ancient and supposedly discredited, boogie man. There is something beyond political partisanship at work here (and beyond racism too). It is obvious that, much like many did a half century ago, a large number of American's today feel unmoored and confused by cultural, economic and social change. But why, now, focus on some kind of domestic "red" scare? Do they (the Right) just not have enough imagination to come up with anything new?

- esmense

September 7, 2009 at 2:05pm

to me Cookie will always be Mr. Biscuit, which is how most of my Mexican students translate the word Galleta.

- blackton

September 7, 2009 at 3:04pm