Dumbass quote of the day

The reason we pay attention to Beck is that he both comforts and flatters his audience; he makes them feel good, and good about themselves. And by "them" I mean the two groups that obsess over Beck the most: tea partiers and liberals. Tea partiers are driven by the belief that the America that elected Barack Obama isn't their America, and Beck comforts them by telling them they're right: that the America they love, the America they now feel so distant from, the America of faith and the Founders and some sort of idyllic Leave It to Beaver past, is still there, waiting to be awakened from Obama's evil spell. And he flatters them by saying that the coastal elites are too stupid or too lazy to figure out what's really going on; only his loyal viewers are perceptive enough to see the truth and, ultimately, to save the nation. In other words, Beck makes the tea partiers feel, as ["The Paranoid Style in American Politics" author Richard] Hofstadter put it, as if they are "the Elect, wholly good, abominably persecuted, yet assured of ultimate triumph," which is better than feeling disenfranchised, marginalized, and looked down upon.

For liberals, Beck serves a similar purpose. In an era of massive problems and extreme change—the Great Recession, the health-care overhaul, etc.—liberals can avoid the difficult question of whether Obama is leading America in the right direction by simply telling themselves that the only alternative would be someone like Glenn Beck: hyperbolic, demagogic, irrational, and slightly unhinged—"just like all conservatives." This is comforting. And by choosing to argue against Beck's patently absurd insinuations instead of, say, the legitimate policy proposals of someone like Rep. Paul Ryan—the progressive fact-checking site Media Matters posts about 15 anti-Beck items a day—liberals can flatter themselves into believing they're smarter and better informed than anyone who happens to disagree with them.

-Andrew Romano, "Unified Theory of Glenn Beck,"
Newsweek, April 13, 2010

Ah, I loves me some false equivalence after lunch. It's reasonably clear that Romano isn't too enamored with Glenn Beck--much of his article consists of an unsuccessful attempt to parody a Beckian conspiranoiac blackboard rant and Romano begins his piece by talking about his efforts to ignore Beck. But having criticized Beck's conservative fanbase by suggesting they're ignorant and paranoid, he has to show how fair and balanced he is by finding something similar to say about liberals--so he decides to accuse them of intellectual laziness and looking for an easy way to avoid grappling with controversy.

And this, dear friends, is an example of how liberals and conservatives can find common ground in agreeing that much of the mainstream media sucks.

There are a lot of liberal sites I just don't hit very often or at all. I can't say what goes on at Daily Kos, a place that has never impressed me and that I only visit when someone else links to it (indeed, I'm so apathetic, I'm not bothering with a link). I don't read HuffPo too often because their coverage of science and medical issues pretty much poisons the whole site as far as I'm concerned (I'm sorry, but if your perspicuous political policy piece is followed by some crazyass Lanza TimeCube crap or medical scholarship from an ex-glamour model/gameshow hostess, I won't be reading it there). There may be a lot of rah-rah pro-Obama kneejerking and bandwagoneering out there, I don't want to say there isn't. But what I certainly can say is that the liberal sites I do frequent, including Salon and the center-left Slate both do plenty of handwringing over Obama policies and are willing to offer strong questions about Obama's leadership choices.

Furthermore, I don't know of anybody who takes comfort from the idea that Beck viewers are unhinged; in point of fact, that's the entire reason liberals are "obsessed" with Beck in the first place. Nobody who is undertaking the laborious and time-intensive task of fact-checking Glenn Beck or digging into his background and connections is doing it dismissively, the idea is patently ludicrous. Nor is it a matter of someone who simply "disagrees"--to pick an example from amidst the low-hanging fruit, Barack Obama is either an American citizen or he isn't, a statement that he isn't is either objectively true or objectively false. You don't "agree" or "disagree" with such a statement, you are either correct or incorrect; you do not "have an opinion" on the matter, you are either right or you are wrong. A suggestion that this is merely a difference of opinions between liberals and conservatives is laughably childish.

You know, I find George Will to frequently be misinformed, factually inaccurate and generally disagreeable, but I can say this about George Will's readers: they mostly seem to be well-read and thoughtfully engaged, and if they're a bit stubborn, well so am I; we can at least have a reasonable discussion, however heated, and it's at least possible one of us will change our mind or that we'll stumble onto a middle ground somewhere or at least have something to think about. (I almost hesitate to mention Will, because my Dad and I end up having arguments about him; my Dad thinks I give Will too much credit, which puts me in the awkward position of having to offer a half-assed defense of somebody who I don't necessarily find defensible). Similarly, William Buckley was, in many respects, an awful human being who said some awful things (although, to his credit, he retracted some of them--which almost makes my point for me, try imagining Beck retracting something, anything, sometime); but at least Buckley and a lot of his readers seemed intellectually engaged and like people who wanted to be reasonable even when they might happen to be pig-headedly wrong about some particular. The point being it's never been a waste of time to engage Will or Buckley (or their followers); even if nobody changed anybody's mind, you could usually walk away knowing your own steel had been tested and was hopefully stronger for it.

That Beck's followers, on the other hand, might be ignorant, paranoid and bigoted, capable of harming other people or even themselves is not a comfort. I don't read something from Cesca or up on Salon or wherever and pat myself on the back, smugly thinking about how awesome I am (and I am, don't try to deny it, some things are objectively verifiable facts, remember). No, I find myself a little frightened and intimidated--like many stereotypical liberal city slickers, I'm afraid, I don't like guns unless they're appearing on a split screen with three other Ghost Recon characters or attached to the cabinet by a wire and you reload by pointing up in the air and pulling the trigger while the zombie horde moves in. Should any of Beck's fans actually go for broke and decide the revolution is not merely nigh but in progress, I fear I may be capable of doing little more than asking them to please desist.

Finally, as for Romano's challenge to engage Representative Paul Ryan's "legitimate policy proposals"; it might actually be telling that Romano offers a link to Media Matters but not to the House Budget Roadmap page as I did in the sentence you're reading now. First, because his assertion that nobody is engaging Ryan is about as true as everything else in Romano's paragraph--liberals are indeed arguing with the House Minority proposals, and second... well, because I'm not actually sure how much engagement is frankly necessary.

I wanted to step in here and take Romano's challenge, I really did. (One reader, I expect, will say he's disappointed.) But, y'know, how many times can you hear a Republican say "tax credit," "tax reform," "repeal the AMT," etc. before it starts sounding like the teacher in a Peanuts special? Basically, as far as I can tell, Ryan's "legitimate policy proposals" are a rehash of the usual post-Reagan talking points that every American has heard for the past several decades. Glenn Beck, in claiming that disgraced Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy was a hero and American hero Theodore Roosevelt was some kind of commie stooge (both true on Beck's native planet, Htrae¹), at least scores some points for original (if highly disordered) thinking.

Basically, the "Roadmap Plan" can be summed up as: "If we cut taxes and let the private sector take over, magic gnomes will make everything awesome like it was before the entitlement programs which 'are not in question' even though they caused an 'Erosion of American Character.'" And the argument against the "Roadmap Plan" can be summed up as, "There's no such thing as magic gnomes."

There. Happy now?

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¹On Htrae, Glenn Beck am smart, handsome and funny.