Coffee, Wine and Dems.

Mainstream Media Patrol: Coffee, Wine, and Dems.

Oh no! Not again! One of the most annoying MSM narratives from the ’04 election was the myth that read something like this: the reason Democrats, including John Kerry, lose elections has to do with their choice of coffee—Starbucks—and their choice of wine: white—Chablis or Chardonnay. In other words, Dems. are educated snobs, elitists, Volvo-driving L-I-B-E-R-A-L-S—or at least that’s what the MSM would like to emphasize in its framing of things.

In a week when McCain and Clinton resurrect from the dead, in a week when Mean Girl Dowd unearthed her disdain for a first lady who kept her man, the Mainstream Media excavated what? Election 2004 narrative flashback: Coffee, Wine, and Dems. And I thought this was an election about ch-ch-ch-changes.

As the other ’08 MSM narrative threads seem to diminish, I’ve smelled something familiar this way come from the pundit class. They’ve rolled out a twice told tale, and here’s how they are re-packaging it: Obama has the college crowd, the elites, the Starbucks drinkers, the snobs; and conversely—yeah, whatever, Hillary has the uneducated, the poor, working class, the Maxwell House drinkers—I suppose, the common folks. Even dark angel Karl Rove described Hillary’s win in New Hampshire in terms of how she captured “beer drinkers.”

Sure, data from exit polling reveals how candidates perform in certain demographics. Campaigns use this information to strategize accordingly. Nonetheless, it’s fascinating how the MSM frames and labels Democratic blocks of voters in such drastic, polarizing terms: “Starbucks drinkers,” “White wine snobs,” “cafeteria Catholics,” “Volvo drivers,” “elitists,” etc. Whereas the MSM framing of Republican voters—“evangelicals,” “values voters,” “suburban, strip mall folks,” “church-going”—seems far less drastic.

We all know people who drink Starbucks and who prefer white wine—hopefully, not Chablis. Some people who fall into these categories may be Democrats; some may not. At a time when the themes of change and unity dominate the political stories in the mainstream media, it’s unfortunate to see an old, manufactured myth re-awaken from the dead.

It's about 2008

It’s about 2008

As Captain LIEberman, formerly Oedipus Lieberman, formerly Joe Lieberman, Republicrat from CT, fantasizes about going nuclear in India, George Bush loses his brain. Who knows what will happen next, especially considering that Bush’s brain is also known as a turd?

But Rove’s departure should come as no surprise. It’s real simple: what do you with your party’s best campaign strategist when you have a president whose approval ratings—ooh…ah—hover in the high 20s to mid 30s and there’s no “clear” frontrunner emerging, despite rumors that troll-looking Fred Thompson can work some Hogwarts magic? Send in Rove, Karl Rove.

Sure, the media can fixate on and speculate about Rove’s departure. Pundits can and will buy into the lame excuse that blossom wants to spend time with his family—and I’m a staffer at The National Review. But the obvious reason for Rove’s timely exit stage to Texas is to get ready for 2008. That became abundantly evident in his interview for The Wall Street Journal and during his guest spot on the Rush Limbaugh show. And what better way to ceremoniously yet symbolically reveal his plans than to call Hillary a “fatally flawed candidate.” I have to admit: I do like it that Hillary is channeling her inner Pat Benatar and hitting back.

It’s about 2008, stupid! No doubt, like the hand at the end of Carrie, Karl Rove will be back.

Rove Resignation

Extra, extra! Read all about it. I thought I was hallucinating. Maybe the planets are aligning or something.

AMERICAN BEAUTY

AMERICAN BEAUTY

It’s been a beautiful week, hasn’t it? The weather has been nice, temperatures are rising, and old man winter seems to have finished his gig. Too bad ol’ Chimpy hasn’t finished his.

If you tried to keep up with all the scandals, the “masking” of real news with fake news, and the rising tensions in Iran, you’d quickly realize that while the weather gets nicer, things in D.C. get uglier by the minute and most Americans are undoubtedly unconscious.

I myself started getting the heebie-jeebies when Secretary of No Education Maggie Spellings told Dana Perino, the deputy White House Press Secretary, who must fill-in for Tony Snow, that she should “Put [her] big-girl panties on." What could Maggie mean? Is she, too, into some sort of kink like other White House folks, in the spirit of Jeff Gannon-Guckert—you know: the gay prostitute who was a part of the White House Press Corps? Or are these Maggie’s sincere words of endearment? Maybe Maggie is beefing up her resumé as a hallmark greeting card writer? Or perhaps this is Maggie’s way of acknowledging that just like American students’ test scores, No Child Left Behind is in the toilet. In any case, Maggie’s brilliance once again had me envisioning the apocalypse.

But what really put me over the edge, though, was Rove the Rapper. WTF? Has the The Big K been reading 1% More Conscious? Was he a fan of “The Hollow Men?” Wishful thinking—I know, I know, I know. But, man, with Maggie Spidiot cheering and The Big K frontin’, I definitely saw the horsemen of the apocalypse comin’. So I did a little diggin’, some readin’, and a whole lot of thinkin’ to find that things are really fubar’d, or at least so they seem.

After listening to Karl Sampson say he couldn’t remember/recollect a thing, including whether or not he took a dump the morning of his testimony, only an idiot wouldn’t recognize that team Bush has grossly and unethically handled the justice department. Saudia Arabia, one of our few friends in the Middle East, has openly criticized our operations in Iraq and in the rest of the Middle East. Gas prices are once again soaring. The Iranians have captured members of the British navy, and the Internets (s intended and dedicated to: Chimpy) is abuzz with the prospect of a bombing campaign in Iran on April 6th known as Operation Bite. And poor Pat Tillman’s mother suspects that he was actually murdered because he became increasingly vocal against Chimpy’s war once he was in Iraq.

Meanwhile, most Americans are oozing out of March Madness, dealing with their taxes, and/or figuring out how to finance their kids’ college education now that most acceptance letters are out. Yet we are being informed about Marie Osmond’s divorce (who gives a shit?) and Courtney Love’s new body (yeah, she’s switched from heroin to other drugs). You’ve got to be kidding me?

So when Maggie talks about big-girl panties and The Big K has two turntables and a microphone, you know where it’s at: like the film American Beauty reveals about our culture, things are much, much uglier than what they seem.

THE HOLLOW MEN

THE HOLLOW MEN

If you heard one Republican apologist this week, you heard them all. It’s been like listening to a bad record skip all over the media with these stuffed men paying homage to their party rather than their country.

There were so many talking heads justifying, analyzing, talking about, explaining, parsing, explicating, comparing and contrasting why this administration does the things it does (pull down options):

A. Screw up.
B. Create a scandal.
C. Mismanage government, a war, and foreign policy.
D. Respond to a natural catastrophe.
E. All of the Above

Hell, let’s go with all of the above. It almost seemed like Karl Rove was re-mixing material for an RNC rendition of rapper’s delight. Can I get a beat for grandmaster spin, flavor munster Tony Snow? Hip-hop-hooray…ho…hey!...T-o-n-y…Snow…yea!

This all started with the latest scandal plaguing the administration: the politically-motivated firing of completely competent, Republican (yes, Republican) US attorneys who were apparently not aggressive enough in pursuing the political enemies of Chimpy Company: any and all Democrats. The first problem for these attorneys was that they were competent; only the incompetent & Republican survive in Chimpy’s world. The second problem was they wouldn’t do what several other stuffed people do: put party over country.

But let’s get our beat back: Enter Fab Five Fredo Gonzales, who’s really B-A-D with memorizing his rap because it’s become abundantly apparent he’s lied. So now that Fredo Gonzales might be getting whacked, as Franck Rich has beautifully noted in his column today, every RNC idol worshipper has booked appearances on every show imaginable to doublespeak this mess. Let’s take a look at the most and least tolerable performances to see which rap makes sense.

Andrew Sullivan on Olberman this past week gave Sullivan the RNC most tolerable performance, as Andy went where few RNC storm troopers go: Countdown. Seriously, it was a good interview—he got his dig in on Hillary. But rather than blister with the Republican colic, a disorder that paralyzes the likes of Michael Savage, David Horowitz and others, Andy admitted what most level-headed people know, including true conservatives: the conservative movement is almost dead thanks to Chimpy and Company, Ronald Reagan is rolling and crying in his grave, and Mann Coulter needs to stop calling people fags because there are many respectable gay republicans, like Sullivan himself. Like it or not, Sullivan made sense.

While Sullivan showed that some RNC troopers can be faithful to their country over their party, David Frum busted out from the American Enterprise Institute, the gansta’ spot of neoconservativism, to deliver the least tolerable, Vanilla Ice rap of the week. Ice-icing crap with his rap, Frum tried to spin his shit by fronting on Real Time with Maher. This was beautiful political theater, as Davey Fly Frum just stuck to the RNC rapper’s delight script: lie, lie, baby. The war isn’t as bad as we think, there’s nothing wrong with firing these attorneys and then lying about the firing of these attorneys, and Chimpy has every right to be a Darth Imperial leader in a democracy. Needless to say, Frum made no sense other than proving John Dean’s thesis in Conservatives without a Conscience: sometimes the blind just follow the blind.

Frum was perhaps the least tolerable performance among a group of hollow men—and many women—who don’t quite realize that we have to stop idolizing Mistah Bush who would rather end things with a bang, not a whimper.