It Aint No Sin to be Glad You Rolled Five
No Oscar commentary from me, but all this talk of Hollywood did bring me back to a quote from a couple of weeks ago.
Like hungry jackals at a carcass, factions have already begun fighting over how best to spend the $800 billion stimulus. One of the tastier goodies will be an allotment for high-speed rail connections in various parts of the country. Republican Senator Jim DeMint seemed particularly upset at the prospect of a Los Angeles to Las Vegas connection:
The President has a point that taxpayer money should not be used to pay for Wall Street fat cats to fly to Las Vegas but why is it okay for taxpayer money to be used to help pay for Hollywood elites to get there on a fancy gambling train? And why are we subsidizing leisure in a stimulus bill rather than encouraging work and greater productivity?
A few points here. Does anyone really think a genuine Hollywood elite would take the train? Also, can’t we imagine that down-home productive plebeians would find plenty of uses for a rail connection between two major population centers? (As a side note, does anyone even pretend that “Hollywood elites” isn’t dog-whistle for “Jews”?)
Finally, why is it that politicians believe they can get so much mileage out of demonizing certain parts of the country? The examples in recent (or semi-recent) politics are numerous:
- The 2004 ad that stated, “Howard Dean should take his tax-hiking, government-expanding, latte-drinking, sushi-eating, Volvo-driving, New York Times-reading . . .” says the husband. His apple-cheeked wife interrupts to say, “. . . body-piercing, Hollywood-loving, Left-wing freak show back to Vermont [Dr Dean's home state] where it belongs.”
- The 1988 attempts to saddle Michael Dukakis with the label of “Taxachusetts” based on the policies of his home state.
- More recent efforts to lambaste Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi for her “San Francisco values.” (No mystery about the dog-whistle target there.)
In any case, Matthew Yglesias asks a similar question:
For whatever reason, conservatives are constantly allowed to get away with this business of summarily dismissing vast regions of the country as unworthy and never get called on it. But this sort of thing is leading the movement on a direct (albeit, non-rail) route to a Dixie-only ghetto.
This idea put reader BPM in the mind of the Federalist Party in the 1810s, which was more or less a New England-only ghetto. Historians have argued endlessly about the degree to which nineteenth-century political parties were regionally based. And it remains to be seen whether the Republican party will wind up being confined to the South and the Plains/Mountain West. Regardless, this sort of rhetoric does appear to be self-defeating. Shouldn’t each party claim to be the better representative of all America? Why single out some locations as more American than others? (I mean, I think I know why, but it’s worth asking the rhetorical question.)
The latest grandstanding by southern Republican governors to reject significant pieces of their states’ share of the stimulus bill, almost entirely on ideological grounds, is just further proof of how out of touch the GOP is, and how they almost seem intent on securing their own demise while clinging obstinately to party orthodoxy.
Jindal’s opposition is completely senseless, as it would bring his state three years of expanded aid to the unemployed, which he rejects because continuing the expanded coverage after that would require raising business taxes THREE YEARS FROM NOW. Never mind that the state could simply revert to the current level of coverage in three years, by which time the recession will probably be over anyway.
American voters have spoken out quite clearly that they’re fed up with the ideology-over-reality that the GOP prefers, and for the party to willfully ignore it is just incredibly stupid. (Though, as a liberal, I heartily welcome it.) When the dust settles, the only Republican states remaining will be Texas, Wyoming and Alaska, and the GOP will have only itself to blame for ignoring the needs and wishes of the vast majority of the population.
Comment by Pete — February 23, 2009 @ 12:14 pm
I always thought “Hollywood elites” was dog-whistle code for “gays”, myself, but I can see the “Jews” argument. Maybe gay Jews?
Comment by Annie G. — February 23, 2009 @ 9:59 pm
Most of what we have been seeing is a continuation of the base-riling politics that defined the Bush-Rove years, only now focused on a different set of issues because there is a different administration. Now it’s domestic spending the GOP is trying to get their base frothing about instead of the War on Terror and immigrants. At this point, it is a holding action to keep their core supporters in the South and the rural Midwest committed and energized while they hope for Obama to fail. Probably neo-Hooverism is a loser, but complaining about bail-outs actually has some resonance and even white suburbanites facing economic troubles themselves have been heavily trained over the past decades to think of government spending as inherently wasteful and directed toward undeserving others, even though neither of things have generally been true. The hypocritical, out-of-context complaints about particular spending items (like DeMint’s) is a throwback to the 1970s GOP playbook. The suburbs are convinceable on domestic spending, though probably not on the question of refusing money that is obviously needed nor on accepting all the far right baggage of current GOP standard-bearers like Governors Jindal and Palin. As long as Obama can avoid visibly flopping in his efforts to manage the economy, a la Jimmy Carter, the Democrats should be fine.
The post-1800 Federalists are a good analogy because they too fell back after their national defeat and defended their base region by demonizing the majority party and the other regions of the country where it was stronger. In that case, it was “Virginia nabobs,” religious “infidelity,” the Louisiana Purchase, and sometimes, in limited ways, slavery, that they complained about, though never to much national electoral effect. Base-riling did allow the Federalists to stabilize their base once Jefferson and Madison started visibly failing, in ways that were extremely detrimental to New England, with the Embargo of 1807-1809 and the unpopular war that followed.
Comment by Jeff Pasley — February 24, 2009 @ 12:23 am
It provides multiple perspectives—from politicians, diplomats, missionaries, business people and tourists—and documents many of the key events that happened in this period
Comment by dini videolar — August 7, 2011 @ 8:58 pm
This online collection includes substantial collections of unique manuscript materials and rare printed materials including missionary periodicals, atlases and books which help to contextualize the other sources.
Comment by rüyada görmek — August 7, 2011 @ 8:59 pm