Good article by Stanley Crouch (who I seldom agree with).
The year of the Republican loon
From Boehner to Paul, the right has shown itself to be crazier than ever Stanley Crouch, NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Although this new year is just beginning, it is clear that we are still fighting some version of the Civil War, North against South, urban American life versus the rural version. Perhaps we get the most insight into our ongoing problem from the “Goon Show” tendencies that have taken over the GOP.
Those tendencies come through the influence of the Tea Party, which has no respect for compromise. We recently saw its power when some in the House of Representatives pushed Speaker John Boehner into a position on the payroll tax holiday that brought the elephants scorn from every corner of America — even from fellow Republicans like Sen. Mitch McConnell.
President Obama and his troops had the Republicans backed into a corner where they might lose at least a few of the gains that the 2010 midterm election had given them, and Republicans aware of how angry voters were over the issue did not intend to be smashed against the wall by some congressional refusal to extend the payroll tax holiday as promised. One must always stand tall, but sometimes you have to know when to slide if it is too hard to glide.
Today’s GOP reflects in detail what happened to it when rednecks left the Democratic Party and became Republicans. It was a done deal when Presidents Nixon and Reagan made it clear that being something as American as a redneck would not cause party bosses to close the door on them.
They had to drop some casual insults but would finally have a voice on Capitol Hill, Southern accent and all. They meant additional power to the elephants. More rednecks, more votes. More votes, more power. We have lived through that for a while.
Ron Paul, a Texan like Rick Perry, seems to have few qualms about the racist ideology his newsletter once harbored, just as Perry had none about using a hunting ranch that was once called “N ----rhead.”
Newt Gingrich said Paul will be rejected “as people get to know more about Ron Paul, who disowns 10 years of his own newsletter, says he didn’t really realize what was in it, had no idea what he was making money on, had no idea that it was racist, anti-Semitic, called for the destruction of Israel.” There it is.
Paul may seem comical to some, but it is important to realize that Jon Stewart’s jokes will not do what serious reporting from the media can actually accomplish. Last week in the Daily Beast, Howard Kurtz attacked the media for not looking into terrible things said in Paul’s newsletter because Paul had not placed high in the polls until recently. The common wisdom now is that renewed attention to Paul’s use of free but reprehensible speech will not harm him in the Iowa caucus.
The question facing us all and rising from the mud that covers the media is whether any side, right or left, conservative or supposedly progressive, will look hard at any candidate expressing views with which they happen to agree. The impeachment of President Clinton is an example.
Had the first President Bush loudly and self-righteously denied having sex with an intern not far from the legal age of consent, then been proven a liar, feminists would still be marching in front of the White House. But Clinton was seen as a friend of feminists and one willing to put women in positions of power and authority. Therefore, many on the left gave “Slick Willie” a pass.
This is a troubling tendency to look the other way that we might one day move beyond by growing up. For now, though, our nation still scars its knees crawling behind the so-called celebrity culture we take much too seriously.
crouch.stanley@gmail.com
Read more:
http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/columnists?columnist=Stanley+Crouch#ixzz1ibkmyuNp
