Blah Blah Blah Hates America

Even the more respectable members of the conservative commentariat seem susceptible to the strange game of parsing the political significance of pop culture for the sake of determining whether x is good or bad for The Cause. The newest question: is The Bourne Ultimatum anti-American? Yes, really -- that's the question.

The whole thing begins, as so many delightful discussions do, with Bill O'Reilly, who complains that, in the film, "the CIA guys are bad, bad, bad," and also Matt Damon and Julia Stiles are communists in real life. Fulfilling his role in the ecosystem of hackery, Micky Kaus apes O'Reilly's ravings from his own faux-centrist "contrarian" perch:

The problem is the film is unredeemed by any sense that America or the American government ever stands for or does anything that is right. It is a big hit overseas. ...

From here the debate moves into tonier intellectual quarters, as Ross Douthat ponders whether Paul Greengrass's film wanders too far into the "large gray area between generic 'corruption in high places' films that don't have a broader anti-American message and exercises in explicit Amerika-bashing like Dogville."

Ultimately it's left to neo-paleocon Daniel Larison to tamp out the fires of conservative outrage:

The first mistake anyone who flings the “anti-American” accusation makes is to equate the government with the society as a whole. If someone or something is critical of the U.S. government, it is very often deemed anti-American or, if the person doing the criticising is American, unpatriotic. This plays by the state’s rules: it makes patriotism dedication to the state, rather than the country, and it makes the state into the embodiment of America. This is simply not true, and it’s a very good thing at times that this isn’t true. That doesn’t mean that the citizens don’t have some small part to play in the dreadful policy decisions made by the state (it is our government, after all), but the decisions being taken in Ultimatum are the sort that the public is never supposed to know about because the average citizen of this country would still probably be horrified at ordering the deaths of foreign journalists in the name of protecting some part of the behemoth security state. [...]

Mickey Kaus’ main complaint is that “the film is unredeemed by any sense that America or the American government ever stands for or does anything that is right.” Here’s the crucial point, since the movie is not concerned with America in general, but is very specifically concerned with one nasty corner of the American government.

I'll give Douthat a mulligan on this one. But it's fascinating that the very basic level of nuance Larison brings to the debate is completely beyond the grasp of people like Kaus and O'Reilly, who, for whatever reason, are unable to differentiate between certain people in a government and a nation in toto. Meanwhile even the smartest conservatives find themselves spending their intellectual energies in pop culture controversies drummed up by knuckle-dragging shouters and their vapid enablers. I suppose that's the price you pay for an attachment to a political movement that believes in the primacy of culture. But it looks pretty silly.

Labels: Bill O'Reilly, culture war, Daniel Larison, Mickey Kaus, Ross Douthat

  ¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 2:05 PM 0 comments

  Is Mickey Kaus the World's Worst Blogger?

There are a lot of bad bloggers out there. But only Mickey Kaus seems to have that special talent for swallowing vacuous talking points and attempting to dress them up as incisive and original commentary. At least the folks at the Corner are obviously working for the Cause. Kaus, though, is the world's most widely-read concern troll.

Today, we get an Obama-related double whammy. The ever-insightful Kaus not only worries about Obama's supposed lack of "substance," he faithfully reminds us that Obama has not yet had his Joe Klein-approved "Sistah Souljah Moment." And we all know how Very Important for Democrats that is.

On the first point, Kaus acknowledges some of Obama's wonky legislative work. But, he says:

It's not the same thing as confronting deeper, bigger, less easily addressed problems: How to structure the health care system, how to pay for entitlements, how to confront the terror threat, the rise of China, the problems of trade and immigration, the increase in income inequality at the top.

Okay, that's fair enough. We do need to hear these things, considering that Obama failed to solve them all during his first two years as a Senator. But, uh, why aren't we hearing such loud demands that any other candidate - Republican or Democrat -provide clear answers to these questions? Do you automatically earn "substance" the longer you're in the Senate? Does "experience" exempt you from having to explicitly address the big questions of the day? Quick, without looking it up: can you tell me what plans Hillary and McCain have to tackle each of these issues?

Or is this just the line on Obama?

In fact, I do think that the Democrats have a number of smart, accomplished candidates, and I'll certainly grant the need to hear more from Obama. But considering that he hasn't even officially begun to campaign yet, I figure there's a little bit of time for that.

Meanwhile, there's plenty of time for Kaus to yammer on about stupid things like "Sistah Souljah moments." Kaus asks: "What's the word for trumped-up contrarianism?"

Why, I do believe it's "Mickey Kaus."

(Paul)

Labels: 2008 elections, Barack Obama, Mickey Kaus, Sistah Souljah

  ¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 2:23 PM 0 comments