Cynicsm for Fun and Profit

Glenn Greenwald is dis­cussing the stun­ning hypocrisy of Republicans, as they decry the viciously par­ti­san Democrats for out­ing a gay Republican — osten­si­bly because drag­ging per­sonal sex­ual con­duct into pol­i­tics will drive good peo­ple from governance.

Color me cyn­i­cal, but why is this such a shock? This is the same crowd that spent a large chunk of 1992 decry­ing Clinton’s admis­sion that he was too stu­pid to use a weed bong in 1968 — and then turned right around and claimed that Bush’s arrest for dri­ving under the influ­ence of cocaine in 1979 was OK because he later claimed to have found Jeebus.

I mean, come on. Clinton says he almost smoked weed (“It was Joe’s weed, Dad, and I didn’t even inhale!” fol­lowed by the sheep­ish pseudo-boasts to friends later “…but I wish I had!”), and gets trounced as com­pletely inca­pable of being President. Bush did coke often enough to get arrested for it, but that’s dif­fer­ent, because (like most stun­ning hyp­ocrites and ass­holes) he played the Repentence Card with the Jesus Enhancement (+5).

Meanwhile, the Democrats didn’t really say much about Bush’s coke usage, because they had pre­vi­ously defended Clinton exactly the same way that the Republicans were defend­ing Bush. The Democrats had shame (albeit mis­placed — coke is a hard drug, weed isn’t) and the Republicans had none.

Of course, for that to play a part in the elec­tions, peo­ple have to remem­ber what hap­pened more than a month ago, and let that knowl­edge affect their deci­sions. Which is what the Republicans appear to be count­ing on their fol­low­ers skip­ping this time around as well.

3 Responses

  1. The Future Rev. E. L. says:
    2006-10-19 at 11:19 am

    You make an inter­est­ing point about longevity of mem­ory…
    and those who for­get the mis­takes of the past…
    well, you know how that goes.

    I’m not sure if the drug itself is what makes the dif­fer­ence, or if it’s more the cir­cum­stance… there is a poignant dif­fer­ence between youth­ful indis­cre­tion and a hard core addic­tion. Rare indeed are the pot­heads who will hurt some­one to get a fix, but the crazed junkie is com­mon enough that its become a stereo­type. Potheads build things; junkies break things.

    I must con­fess a stun­ning dis­be­lief when I see this kind of thing in action; you are exactly right, it’s as if any­thing that hap­pened more than two months ago never happened.

    So…how do we jog their mem­o­ries? How do we jus­tify ethics with the need to win? At what point does it become okay for the blue team to play smear tac­tics like the red team does? Bah.

  2. James Cape says:
    2006-10-19 at 3:07 pm

    Jogging mem­ory is really the job of the news media. In oppo­si­tion lies the profit motive, which tries to squeeze out as much infor­ma­tion in favor of enter­tain­ment as it can; reporter’s self-censorship, such as the NYT refus­ing to pub­lish infor­ma­tion about var­i­ous ille­gal pro­grams lest it “influ­ence the elec­tion” — because, ya know, an informed pub­lic is dis­as­trous for democ­racy — and career con­se­quences for not self-censoring, such as los­ing out on all future inter­views if you remind peo­ple of incon­ve­nient his­tor­i­cal fact.

    In short, any news media that reports real­ity and con­ducts in-depth analy­sis will be destroyed if it attempts to oper­ate as a for-profit entity.

    Eliminating ethics means you elim­i­nate the entire rea­son to fight — it’s the same grotesque cal­cu­lus as tor­tur­ing for lib­er­a­tion. Smear tac­tics — such as Edwards’ “CHENEY’S GAY DAUGHTER” dis­play at the VP debates — are usu­ally counter-productive any­ways, because it’s a trans­par­ent smear when Democrats do it. Republicans, on the other hand, have con­vinced every­one they are crazy enough to believe the shit they spew.

    That said, anger is not a smear tactic.

  3. The Future Rev. E. L. says:
    2006-10-19 at 4:19 pm

    Noted, that anger does not con­sti­tute smear tactics.

    I think you addressed the point rather well; peo­ple who are likely to notice Democratic cam­paigns at all are more likely, it seems to me, to think that smear tac­tics are for jerks. There’s this thing my mass­comms pro­fes­sor was talk­ing about, selec­tive pro­cess­ing… The basic idea is that once you have a mind­set, you’re more likely only to assim­i­late that infor­ma­tion which already coin­cides with your mind­set. It’s as if the species has this ten­dency to be blind to opin­ions that don’t agree with their own, or, in other words, to ignore cog­ni­tive dis­so­nance instead of resolv­ing it. So rather than see­ing unfair tac­tics as what they are, some peo­ple are busy assim­i­lat­ing the arti­fi­cial con­tent, to rein­force the exist­ing belief. …suckers.

    I think you nailed it on the head; as long as jour­nal­ism is moti­vated by the bot­tom line, it’s going to remain a flawed insti­tu­tion. A press oper­at­ing in fear and greed is hardly free. So if the media insti­tu­tions are not account­able to the pub­lic beyond the dol­lar, where’s their impe­tus to behave hon­or­ably? If speak­ing the truth serves them not, what moti­va­tion besides ded­i­ca­tion to truth itself impells them? If the media’s pur­pose is about writ­ing to make the most money, why aren’t they call­ing it marketing?

    Enough yeahyeahs; rid­dle me this:
    How can anger be made into an effec­tive tool for change?
    Despair, solv­ing noth­ing, begs the ques­tion; if not despair, then what?
    And how?

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