The Kristol Minor specimen is no doubt perfectly safe itself. The guru of Rio Limbaugh assures us that the New York Times Company is going to collapse any day now -- "Fly at once. All is discovered!" -- but when it does, Master Billy will still have Rupert Baron Murdoch to pay its bills, so that’s all right. Indeed, if the 318th Endkrise der Spätkapitalismus is not swiftly allayed, Master Billy may even get a raise and a staff increase and some insider tips on -- whawuzzit? -- on "troubled assets" investment capers. [3]
Itself secure and well standardised for, the señorito offers its advice about less important problems, notably how to make quite sure that the Commanderissimo of AEI and GOP and EiB, as he already is, gets safely installed as Holy Homeland Commander-in-Chief (HHCC):
| John McCain is on course to lose the presidential election to Barack Obama. Can he turn it around, and surge to victory? He has a chance. But only if he overrules those of his aides who are trapped by conventional wisdom, huddled in a defensive crouch and overcome by ideological timidity. |
Alternatively, somethin’ may turn up just by accident . . . .
But seriously: L'audace, l’audace, toujours l’audace! (Seriously?)
One sees at a glance that J. Sidney McCain has a timidity problem nowadays, but (1) is it ‘ideological’? (2) Is it anythin’ that does not afflict B. Hussein Obáma as well? Aunt Nitsy's Crisis-of-Mammon scribbler describes this Monday morning’s correlation of farces rather well:
| BOTH major presidential candidates, Senator John McCain of Arizona, the Republican nominee, and Senator Barack Obama, the Democratic candidate, GAVE GUARDED ENDORSEMENTS of the bailout plan. Both Mr. McCain and Mr. Obama had dipped into the negotiations during a contentious White House meeting on Thursday. (...) The architects of the plan said they realized they were calling on Congress to cast a tough vote since lawmakers might not get credit for averting a financial crisis since some constituents will not believe one was looming. “Avoiding a catastrophe won’t be recognized,” said Senator Christopher J. Dodd ... “This economy is not going to have a blossoming on Wednesday.” But he and others said the SUPPORT FROM THE TWO presidential contenders, Senators McCain and Obama, should provide some comfort to nervous lawmakers. |
The Fabulous Flyboy and the Senatorino from Chicagoland are had to distinguish in that very recent snapshot, and it would not be utterly off the wall to speak of their "timidity." How on Gore’s green earth should THEY know whether they are for a thing or against it before they see whether it works?
This is definitely not l’audace. It ain’t even ‘leadership’. Where, however, does the señorito from Murdochville suppose that ideology comes in? If one or both had professed himself a born-again Pragmatist, he could maintain that his timidity is faith-based and therefore protected by Amendment I. But that cannot be what Master Billy means.
Not to keep up the intolerable suspense:
| McCain’s impetuous decision to return to Washington was right. The agreement announced early Sunday morning is better than Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson’s original proposal, and better than the deal the Democrats claimed was close on Thursday. Assuming the legislation passes soon, and assuming it reassures financial markets, McCain will be able to take some credit. |
The specimen has no gift for campaign management, obviously. It does not notice that the Obamanation of Desolation can (or could) "take some credit" too. It can not even pick up its own credit-grabbin’ shtyk by the right end. As the NYTC hireling points out, there is a serious question about whether Televisionland and the electorate will be disposed to grant credit to anybody at all for rescuing them from what amounts, from their ignorant lay sheep point of view, to an invisible dragon.
Plus of course credit-grabbin’ has nothing to do with ‘ideological’.
It turns out that Master Billy knows what it wants, but what it wants is not immediately campaign-related:
| But the goal shouldn’t be to return to “a normal campaign.” For these aren’t normal times. We face a real financial crisis. Usually the candidate of the incumbent’s party minimizes the severity of the nation’s problems. McCain should break the mold and acknowledge, even emphasize the crisis. He can explain that dealing with it requires candor and leadership of the sort he’s shown in his career. McCain can tell voters we’re almost certainly in a recession, and things will likely get worse before they get better. |
Ensconced inside its hundred self-gatings, Señorito World can become a little out of touch at times. Middle-class proles may not be able to recite correctly on the Leostraussian reality of the financial crisis, but when it comes to knowing what recessio means, they are far ahead of their wannabe preceptor here.
Would it benefit J. Sidney to hype the now recession rather than minimise it? Eh bien, au moins, il serait différent! One could maintain that the strategy worked for FDR against Dr. Hoover, though to cling to the analogy requires overlooking that thirty-seven (37) months elapsed between the Wall Street crash and the next choice of POTUS -- a long stretch of martyrdom for Main Street. J. Sidney has more like thirty-seven days, probably not enough time for the Dragon of Doom to become visible to many swing voters.
Naturally it would help the J-Sidneyan cause if nobody remembers that Americans have just endured ninety-two (92) months of executive incumbency starrin’ the Party of Grant and Hoover and Goldwater and Atwater and Bush and McCain. The Fabulous Flyboy himself attaches little or no importance to his formal Big Management credentials; what does one require a Straight Talk Express™ for, after all, if not in order to Rise Above Party™? And the present specimen of weekly standardisation certainly does not itself give a hoot about militant extremist Republicanism as such. It and its candidate are probably quite right about which way American politics is headed -- towards ‘ideology’ and away from mere contemptible old-fashioned Party -- but they should probably take Mr. Mark Penn’s unsolicited advice to Senatorino Obama and "Save it for 2050!" Kristol and Kristol’s Flyboy are too far ahead of the curve of national decline mentally to manipulate current human events to their own ends most efficaciously.
Meanwhile,
| McCain can note that the financial crisis isn’t going to be solved by any one piece of legislation. There are serious economists, for example, who think we could be on the verge of a huge bank run. Congress may have to act to authorize the F.D.I.C. to provide far greater deposit insurance, and the secretary of the Treasury to protect money market funds. McCain can call for Congress to stand ready to pass such legislation. He can say more generally that in the tough times ahead, we’ll need a tough president willing to make tough decisions. |
So the specimen really must think it feasible to terrorize Televisionland and the electorate into stampedin’ to starboard in a mere thirty-four (34) days. That proposition is so improbable that one is not surprised to find that even John Sidney McCain does not believe it.
If, by some fluke of his mugwump dumbness, JSM could be persuaded of the feasibility of the Kristol Kaper, he would be placed in a lovely position to show off his dumb mugwumpery, for it is thouroughly inconceivable that Cap’n M’Cain would ever steer the course called for by Ensign Billy of Murdochville. SCARE the good folks into electin’ him? Of course not!
I daresay J. Sidney would not mind engagin’ Master Billy in a contest to see who can wedge the word ‘tough’ into a single sentence most often. Flyboy ideas of toughness are not the same as señoritoly ideas, however, so as soon as they move beyond verbiage, the two of ’em would be bound to start divergin’. "To provide far greater deposit insurance" seems a strange kind of toughness for any wingnut or cowpoker whatsoever to advocate, though naturally JSM would do it in a flash if necessary, exactly as the fiend BHO would. Why, even the former Neohampshire believes in "Live free or pay for insurance!" nowadays. Or so I am told.
The specimen further thinks its Commanderissimo ought (A) "to liberate his running mate" and (B) to out the Obamanation of Desolation as a flamin’ l*b*r*l. Unlike the Chicken Little Plan, these are thoroughly conventional forms of skullduggery that lots of people at Wingnut City and Rio Limbaugh have thought of for themselves already without benefit of weekly standardisations. Comin’ from Neocomrade William Irvingovitch Kristol, they are of interest only as evidence about the señoritoly mentality.
Governess S. L. Heath-Putin (sp?) of Alaska is to be deployed as an offensive weapon:
| In the debate, Palin has to dispatch quickly any queries about herself, and confidently assert that of course she’s qualified to be vice president. She should spend her time making the case for McCain and, MORE IMPORTANT, THE CASE AGAINST OBAMA. As one shrewd McCain supporter told me, “Every minute she spends not telling the American people something that makes them less well disposed to Obama is a minute wasted.” The core case against Obama is pretty simple: he’s too liberal. |
I suspect it seems a pity to Señorito Kristol that the little lady cannot be a literal kamikaze and disappear herself as soon as she has injected somethin’ suitably toxic into the veins of B. Hussein. On the other hand, it is a genuine klutz about the practical politics of the holy Homeland, so it may fantasise that after the Fabulous Flyboy has been respectfully squirreled away in his post-apoplexy nursin’ home -- House Number Eight and Final! -- Baron Murdoch and Master Billy will be able to weekly-standardise the Heath-Putin administration ever after. (Do they remember Mr. John Tyler of Virginia and Mr. Henry Clay of Kentucky? Probably not.)
Silly stuff either way. More important is THE core CASE AGAINST OBAMA. More important, but alas! never actually set out. For what kind of a ‘core’ does the following baloney amount to?
| On Saturday, Obama criticized McCain for never using in the debate Friday night the words “middle class.” The Obama campaign even released an advertisement trumpeting McCain’s omission. The McCain campaign might consider responding by calling attention to Chapter 14 of Obama’s eloquent memoir, Dreams From My Father. There Obama quotes from the brochure of Reverend Wright’s church — a passage entitled “A Disavowal of the Pursuit of Middleclassness.” So when Biden goes on about the middle class on Thursday, Palin might ask Biden when Obama flip-flopped on Middleclassness. |
The Sewer-of-Romulus interpretation of that passage is probably correct: the neocomrade Governess is to remind everybody of the Rev. Mr. Wright, not in genuine connection with ‘middleclassness’ but in order to get "God damn America!" and the colour black into the record without ever expressly mentionin’ either. S. L. Heath-Putin could think of that for herself, and quite probably has. In conjunction with W. I. Kristol, the only remark required is literary rather than political. Observe how the señorito indirectly suggests the use of indirect suggestion. ‘Self-referentiality’ they call it in the Eng. Lit. Dept.
A toney Republic-of-Plato interpretation will probably interest only close students of Cloudcuckooland and the Muses and Mr. Bones and me, but here goes: it sounds as if Señorito W. Kristol has been conferrin’ with his NYTC colleague Señorito D. Brooks. Little Davey is an amateur sociologue as well as a pro agitprop artist for Boy and Party and Ideology; it specialises, not in ‘middleclassness’ exactly, but in Outer Suburbia, which is close enough for governance purposes. How, then, is Outer Suburbia to be persuaded to despise and reject B. Hussein Obáma?
An interesting question, and not an easy one. Master Billy itself does not care to be rude to the Senatorino to his face, it even tosses a meanin’less little verbal bouquet his way, "ELOQUENT memoir." I think it is actually a little afraid of the man, although the subjectivity of señoritos is always questionable and almost always unimportant. Outer Suburbia is also a little afraid of BHO, partly in the gutter-of-Romulus way, but also partly in a quite different way, a way that might be expressed as "After all, he was editor of the Harvard Law Review! Can it be that behind that polite smile he thinks I am revealing myself as a nincompoop with every word I say to him?"
Unseñoritoly neocomrades make a hash of this matter by draggin’ in the word ‘elitist’ every chance they get. To label BHO an elitist allows ’em to win the game for Rio Limbaugh High without playin’ it: ex definitione Citizen Hussein is only pretending to be better and brighter than most folks. But what if he really were better and brighter?
Outer Suburbia worries about that a little, I think, and quite legitimately. Equally legitimately, neocomrade señoritos D. Brooks and W. Kristol huddle to plan how to turn vague worries about possible superiority into firm rejection of snotty elitism. So far, so good -- but then they drag Governess Heath-Putin in, and lose me. Ninety-nine percent of holy Homelanders will be quite clear that she is not superior to anybody worth mentioning -- but how does that help the neocomrades’ Commanderissimo and the Konservative Kause?
To conclude on a trivial note, Master Billy has a serious tin ear problem. If Sarah Louise was actually to ask "So when did Senator Obama flip-flop on Middleclassness?" in so many words, first of all, how would she get the capital letter across? Secondly, would there be ten persons on the planet who didn't realize that SLH-P was recitin’ somebody else’s words? Nobody talks about ‘middleclassness’ until she has been away from Wasilla for a long, long spell. Why, Señorito Kristol might as usefully propose that she defend Blessèd Capitalism under its own name!
Happy days.
___
[1] To speak of "fifty-two-gated communities" and not just sound foolish is probably possible in philosophical languages like Heidegger German or Attic Greek. In our own holy-homelandish palaver, forget it! Perhaps we can do without it in any case, since in fact the Weekly Standardisers erect fifty-two new gates annually without necessarily tearin’ any of last year’s crop down. Call ’em ‘polypylic’ loosely, then, and move on!
[2] Rather a Marxoid claim? Perhaps, but something similar is alleged to occur in Ibn Khaldún, who can sneak in through their gates by way of neocomrades L. Strauss and M. Mahdí.
Anyway, abusin’ other people’s claims as Marxist, accurately or not, reveals that one would prefer that the claims not be recognised. On the praxis front there is no doubt at all: up-market junior neocomrades have not the faintest wish to be proles themselves personally, and when they get stuck in a tight corner and obviously have to say somethin’ nice about proles, the insincerity of their niceness shrieks to Father Zeus on Olympus.
[3] Master Billy might as well ask for its emergency compensation enhancement at once, since the tip-off shtik is already in place and functional:
| I've received phone calls in the last hour ... The huge European bank Fortis is apparently about to fail ... Congress should pass by Monday simple legislation doing two things: (1) ... (2) .... |
To be sure, Baron Murdoch’s fingerprints and corporate DNA are not unmistakably present on that evidence. Viewing the holy Homeland from across the North Atlantic, any ignorant but well-intentioned Old Euro neorightists might fancy that Kristol Minor can dictate to Congress and set out to inspire it to do just that. (I omit the sordid details, but it does rather look as if the specimen is worried about its own "principal in money market funds." But God knows best.)
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