George Carlin
 

JOHN AVLON @ THE BEAST

Criticizing Limbaugh is not the same thing as demonizing him. We can recognize that he is a talented broadcaster, a popular political entertainer for folks on the far-right. He also helped create a big part of the problem in our politics today. He uses conflict, tension, fear and resentment to drum up his ratings, appealing to a narrow but intense (and aging) niche audience by using the old trick of dividing Americans into "us" vs. "them," perpetuating the polarization he profits from. That’s why it’s a little absurd to hear Limbaugh point out disapprovingly that my book Wingnuts itself uses a label to describe the use of fear and hate by hyper-partisans. Its funny how quickly people who throw around labels for a living ("feminazi," for example) cry foul when a term like Wingnut is directed at them. But bullies are always shocked when you punch back.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-12-16/my-war-with-rush-limbaugh-by-john-avlon/

 

George Carlin

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cr7ePrCAqzo

One view is positive, the other negative.

Avlon pisses me off and Carlin does not, if I can speak frankly.

But Avlon offers hope and Carlin offers nothing but nihilism.

I accidently juxtaposed these two links and now I see my dilemma.

Avlon, even in this composed diatribe, compares Ed Shultz and Keith O to Rush Limbaugh once again and my head is on fire. I am so angry it is hard to contain myself and I am sitting here alone in my pajamas listening to Law & Order.

The pure racist rant of rush alone, should give Avlon some pause. And yet I know that I could sit on a panel with him and discuss issues, something I could never do with Rush.

SO WHAT IS A MOTHER TO DO?

Now the tables have turned so now a Democrat is in the WH.

Every fucking day rush either talks about reparations, or notes my President’s race, or attacks all democrats as terrorists, or categorizes all the unemployed as minorities who abhor work … http://mediamatters.org/research/201012140031

Then I look at Ed or Keith. I cannot understand how Avlon comes to his conclusions. DO YOU UNDERSTAND THAT I CANNOT GRASP THE PARALLELS?

Yet now I look at myself, a failure from any objective perspective:…

Cos you're the joke of the neighborhood

Why should you care if you're feeling good

Take the long way home

Take the long way home

But there are times that you feel you're part of the scenery

all the greenery is comin' down, boy

…

When lonely days turn to lonely nights

you take a trip to the city lights

And take the long way home

Take the long way home

You never see what you want to see

Forever playing to the gallery

You take the long way home

Take the long way home

…..

oh, calamity, is there no way out?

Does it feel that you life's become a catastrophe?

Oh, it has to be for you to grow, boy.

When you look through the years and see what you could

have been oh, what might have been,

if you'd had more time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtIBl131BIM&feature=related

You know, personal responsibility creeps into all of this.

I am a nobody. Ulysses was a nobody once, but became the greatest hero of all time. At least to the Western reader.

Clint Eastwood played nobody many times in his career, but everyone knows Clint. By the way, has anybody ever met someone else named Clint? What kind of name is that anyway? Ha

Do real nobodies have a say in all of this?

Is Carlin right? I mean do we, the nobodies, have any real choice, really? Are we given more choice in bagels than in politicians? Are we given more choices with regard to coffees than with regard to cable news hosts?

 Is Avlon the nihilist or is George?

The logical conclusion from Avlon’s ramblings is that there are twenty or thirty million people in this country who despise minorities, who would like to go back to segregation de jure, who would to see the end of unemployment insurance, who would like to see the end of Social Security, who would like to see the end of Medicare and Medicaid, who would like to see poor people languish as they die of curable diseases like cancer, who would like to pack heat wherever they go, who would like to see the end of all welfare programs including food stamps, who would like to see corporations in charge of people’s lives….

And those tens of millions of people deserve to have a voice out there and rush and savage and beckerhead and a host of others supply that need.

And therefore rush is to be considered a bright, talented, and wonderful man who should be heard.

Truman is a real study in politics. He was dirty and part of the Tom Pendergast’s machinery in Missouri, the state of Mark Twain.

But he sat on the Senate Committee dealing with defense contracts and he made a decision. He saw graft everywhere, and graft was everywhere. And he decided to do something about it.

The graft was on a level much lower than graft today because the grifters were afraid and cowardly most of the time. Take too much and you could find yourself in a mess of trouble.

Not like today. We have bold grifters who steal hundreds of billions of dollars with nary a repercussion.

Then, Harry found himself at the helm. I still do not have the faintest idea why Truman was so surprised to find himself at the helm. Surely he had met FDR in person many times and knew the man was sicker than a fifteen year old three legged dog.

And yet, this man who liked to use the word ‘n&^%&er’ desegregated the armed forces with one stroke of the pen.

Now taking Avlon’s model, we can see Harry as being assaulted from all sides. The socialists were against him. The corporate repubs were against him. And the racist Southerners were against him.

But Strom Thurman was WRONG; not just in error. Strom Thurman was WRONG.

Would Avlon just note that Thurman had a right to his opinion; that putting one’s heel on the neck of a member of a minority race was a valid perspective?

Is Rush just a gifted radio personality who has the right to hold his own views?

When was the last time that Keith O or Ed or Rachel or Lawrence made a fully racist statement or asked people to riot in the streets in front of one of the party conventions or slammed the President for being Black, or slammed Colin Powell for being black, or blamed the powerless for all the sins of the world?

When was the last time that a Democrat (since the 60’s) stood on the House Floor and called the sons of Black Farmers rotten worthless drug dealers?

When was the last time that a president thanked the Good Lord that his most important constituents were the richest pricks in America?

When was the last time that Michael Moore called for a revolution of armed insurrectionists in America like Beckerhead does all the time?

Where did Michael Moore skew statistics in the manner of Fox News?

I am drawn again to the song that Avlon eschews:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfWzLa1faLA

The problem with George Carlin is that if you buy into his nihilism, there is no place to go. He lectured us that there was no point to the election process at all. He proffered that the U.S.A. has always been nothing but a power hungry state seeking to conquer the world. And that all the power in this country was in the hands of a few corporate bastards.

Avlon offers you an out. Like the snake oil salesman at the carnival of old, Avlon would tell you that if you buy his bottle of elixir, things will get better.

I wrote about my hope that Snow and her sister Senator Collins in Maine would bring sanity to the Senate; two years ago. Well those two never showed up—or rarely showed up. They just voted for filibuster after filibuster using the ruse of Cloture.

Oh children must be fed, and clothed and tendered to when they are sick but my party calls to me. That is the message of the two sisters. Clotured and cloistered.

Few links today.

Just not so random thoughts with no conclusion.

Previous version of this at: http://onceuponaparadigm.wordpress