MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE
by Michael Wolraich
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MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE by Michael Wolraich Order today at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop |
By George Will @ WashingtonPost.com, Aug. 4, from Birmingham, Alabama
Southern Gothic is a literary genre and, occasionally, a political style that, like the genre, blends strangeness and irony. Consider the current primary campaign to pick the Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Jeff Sessions. It illuminates, however, not a regional peculiarity but a national perversity, that of the Republican Party.
In 1986, Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III — the name belongs in a steamy bodice-ripper, beach-read novel about Confederate cavalry — was nominated for a federal judgeship. Democrats blocked him because they considered him racially “insensitive.” [....]
Comments
Looking back over the decades of George Will's work as a G.O.P avatar, the irony of his bemusement over the monkeyshines of his alma mater signals the end to his journey. As Socrates did at the end, he needs to consider whether he should been an artist or a scientist when he had the chance. The "Southern Gothic" he should have talked about was the "Southern Strategy" he spent his career wiping off the windshield of his beloved party of Goldwater.
Jonathan Chait explained the matter in his How Donald Trump Outsmarted George Will. Chait described the key element missing from Will's analysis to be:
George Will's long battle against "identity politics" worked just as hard to color in this chart as Limbaugh, Buchanan, and Rove did. He just wore a bow tie while handling the shovel.
After reading Dionne JR''s book, Why The Right went Wrong, Garry Wills expresses skepticism that George's dream of the grand old party betrayed ever actually existed:
To quote another political observer: "It hurts to set you free."
by moat on Sun, 08/06/2017 - 1:38pm
Wow, moat, you've sure got the detailed goods on the kind of things very vaguely in the back of my head that made me want to post the Will piece when I saw it. You know, I kind of hope he sees your comment.
And you've also got the key Garry Wills quote to wrap it all up. (I avidly look for anything he writes on politics, am a big fan..)
Very thought provoking. Even though we all basically knew all along that George Will was pushing a fantasy 'merca that never was, baseball and all. Got me thinking: David Brooks at least gets the ethnic multi-culti thing about this country, not a pearl clutcher like George..
by artappraiser on Sun, 08/06/2017 - 3:14pm
As another G.O.P. water boy, Brooks has also tried to reboot the party to a previous incarnation more than once. In efforts to reflect on the importance of the private wold of values and virtues, Brooks hasn't done much to distance himself from Goldwater's zero sum game of a world of free individuals versus prisoners of economic determinism. Brooks owns 25% of his cake and eats it with a fork.
Unlike Will, Brooks is a liberal elite stuck in a world he never made.
by moat on Sun, 08/06/2017 - 4:52pm
"Brooks is a liberal elite stuck in a world he never made" ???????? RU kidding?
Driftglass on Brook$: America's Most Ubiquitous Conservative Public Intellectual
Classic Brooks the "world he helped create" - Iraq War , 2003, Weekly Standard:
by NCD on Sun, 08/06/2017 - 5:46pm
No argument that Brooks helped make the world you describe. It bears little resemblance to the one he reports living in.
by moat on Sun, 08/06/2017 - 6:34pm
Driftglass portrays Brook's richly rewarded bloviations in print and on TV as a sop to the media scions of corporate America to obfuscate the reality that the Republican Party has no principles or ideology beyond exploiting the racism, ignorance, hate and anger of The Base to implement an obstructionist, amoral, unethical, and pathetically inhumane agenda.
by NCD on Sun, 08/06/2017 - 9:46pm
Yes. In the context of Gary Will's argument quoted above, Brooks put an enlightenment veneer on a reactionary enterprise.
by moat on Mon, 08/07/2017 - 6:24am
Senator Jeff Flake is another hypocrite. Flake is promoting his book "Conscience of a Conservative" a title stolen from Barry Goldwater. Flake chastises Republicans for participating in divisive politics. He criticizes b birtherism despite voting for a man for federal judgeship who posted messages supporting birtherism.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/flake-trump_us_59873576e4b041356ec07...
So far, critic Flake has voted in favor of Trump's policies.
by rmrd0000 on Sun, 08/06/2017 - 8:57pm
Flake is a Good
GermanRepublican and follows orders from The Mango Mussolini.by NCD on Sun, 08/06/2017 - 9:50pm
Where were you, Mr. Brooks, when Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush openly and vigorously played the race card to win the White House? etc
That's the same thing I was thinking when McCain made his big speech before the republican health care vote. Everyone was exclaiming how great it was that he called for regular order and working with democrats. But where was he when Obama tired for regular order and begged republicans to work with him? When he was so desperate for compromise he would have given away so much that democrats would have been pissed with him? If McCain would have worked for bipartisan compromise several other senators would have followed him there. Empty words and no action for the 8 years of the Obama presidency from the famous McMaverick.
by ocean-kat on Sun, 08/06/2017 - 9:15pm
McCain is just another GOP storm trooper who follows orders.
His nearly vestigial maverickness surfaced for unknown reasons on the recent vote.
He ain't no Lion of the Senate like Ted.
by NCD on Sun, 08/06/2017 - 9:57pm
As I am certain you already know, McCain's "come to Jesus moment on health care was 70% retribution against trump for his personal insults, and 30% due to his knowledge that he will die soon and wants to get his ducks in a row.
The reason he didn't do the right thing when Obama was President was 100% retribution and 100% not having the courage to do the right thing.
by CVille Dem on Sun, 08/06/2017 - 10:05pm