Okay, so this Victor Davis Hanson round-up of liberal elite and Democratic Party moral failures, including several egregious plagiarism cases such as the recent Fareed Zakaria, is Red Meat, I admit it.
But still, what is up with liberal America these days? Why doesn’t it discipline its elites more often? Or at least make some pretense of doing so?
Again, who are the Democrats of stature? Why do they make no noise when an embarrassment like Warren is allowed to remain their candidate? Why do they not denounce Democratic mayors who imply they can and will attack free-speech? Where are the Gillibrand, Cuomo, or Kaine denunciations of anyone on VDH’s list of shame? Right now around the country, there are hundreds of Democratic-voting college administrators reviewing their notes about their particular institution’s honor code, reminding themselves how to explain it to the incoming freshmen, how to define plagiarism, hate-speech, bullying, etc. But who calls for Reid and Obama to abide by any sort of honor code? Who denounces the lying-and-incivility-recommending sophist George Lakoff for claiming to be an authority on “Talking Democratic”? Who scolds his university, his publisher, and the media outlets for lending credence to this claim?
And have we heard a single scent of a rumor in all the days of this rather truth-twisting administration that key Democrat leaders or donors were not happy with that?
Seriously, as I wind this rant down, I tell you I know politics is politics, and has always been the haunt of many a scoundrel and liar, but we at least used to have a certain shame-preserving hypocrisy at work, I thought. I was never willing to fully join William Bennett in counting Democrat unwillingness to impeach Clinton as “The Death of Outrage”(man, I hate titles like that), but the shame mechanism in our politics seems no longer to spring the way it once did, and especially on the liberal and Democratic side.
August 14th, 2012 | 3:02 am
Where was the rant about Rupert Murdoch’s handling of News of the World, or of Jack Abramoff’s scandalous and criminal acts, or of Ralph Reid’s involvement? That putz only escaped charges because he didn’t implicate himself. He did take ill-gotten money, and he did later run as a republican candidate for office. And he did, for more than 30 years, hold himself up as the standard bearer of christian ethics and values. Where’s the outcry over those people? How much harm do you think he did to the cause of christianity? What’s worse?
Where’s the rant about David Barton, the make-believe historian who consults republicans law-makers across the land on make-believe American history? That’s far worse than plagiarism, but where are the conservative history professors who could set the facts straight with conservative law-makers so that children in America aren’t taught fiction?
August 14th, 2012 | 8:02 am
Honestly, I blame the media. They don’t typically know, or even want to know, about these issues. They certainly don’t hound Dems about these things the way they go after the GOP.
Look at Daniel’s talking-points response above–he brings up Abramoff’s name, which he probably remembers because NPR and other outlets did about a billion stories on him a few years back. And yet Jon Corzine, who was clearly far more in violation of a whole bushelful of laws AND was and is infinitely more important a figure, not only walks the street scot-free but is apparently STILL a major Dem fundraiser. Where is the outrage, indeed…
August 14th, 2012 | 9:37 am
Daniel, On the David Barton front, at least, there is this book by Warren Throckmorton and Michael Coulter.
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/08/genuine-christian-scholars-smack-down-an-unruly-colleague/260994/
But you have a point. There also seems to be little open disgust about shameful behavior on the right.
Back in 2009, Matt Continetti had a Weekly Standard piece called the “Age of Irresponsibility.” While his main targets were liberals, he heaped plenty of disgust the other direction too.
August 14th, 2012 | 11:14 am
Good push-back, Daniel.
As for the full Murdoch saga, I leave the overall judgment to those who know it better. It’s not that Fox News is going away, though, nor that conservatives are going to wish, “Oh, we so regret Murdoch getting it going, because of his record with x, y, and q.”
What concerns me is that the Democratic Party and the legacy media seem to have become, in age of Obama, so much more blase about these sorts of character and integrity issues. This habit of, “just ignore it when one of our guys gets caught in something and it will fade away as an issue” is getting pathological, I fear. And the pattern for it, let’s face it, comes from the top.
Abramoff and Ralph Reid are off the scene, by and large, for conservatives, effectively shunned, whereas the likes of Corzine, Sharpton, Warren, Gore, H. Reid, and this deputy Obama campaign manager Stephanie Cutter, remain very much in the thick of the Democratic and/or media establishments.
August 14th, 2012 | 11:52 am
Thanks John. We ought to expect truthful reporting which exposes bad characters in politics, no matter who they are.
August 14th, 2012 | 1:35 pm
From the guy who somehow is the Vice President of the United States of America:
“They’re going to put y’all back in chains.”
This is just despicable. This is today’s Democrat party. And the MSM will absolutely let this obscenity vanish down the memory hole–oh, that crazy ol’ Joe! Isn’t he a hoot!
August 14th, 2012 | 9:16 pm
Brian, we should demand Biden apologize or resign. Were it a first time thing, we could say, “well, dumb politician got tripped-up tryin’ to sound populist and black,” but Joe has a record of such venom. As in this case, the sheer lameness and stupidity of his delivery of it has often overshadowed the offensiveness. It really is a scandal that this beneath-contempt jerk is next in line.
August 14th, 2012 | 11:50 pm
Rudy Giuliani’s take–Biden as VP is unfit to be POTUS–
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/314016/giuliani-wonders-whether-biden-has-mental-capacity-presidency-robert-costa
I tried to find a version of Bob Dylan’s “Clothes Line Raga” online where he reports that the Vice-President has gone mad, but I couldn’t find one. In its stead, I found this nice cover version by an unknown artist Phil J. Gray. I like the mad smile the singer makes when he says the VP has gone mad. It is knowing. The recording must have been made during the Obama/Biden years. Enjoy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QuYTxmlHNhc
August 15th, 2012 | 7:50 am
Carl: Of course neither has any chance of happening. Romney runs perfectly legitimate criticisms of Obama’s gutting the welfare work requirements (the one and only meaningful policy legacy of Bill Clinton), and the media freaks out for a week about how patently racist it is. Slow Joe spews the most vile and overt race-baiting rhetoric imaginable, and it’s a big yawn. This is why most of us couldn’t care less about MSM outlets going out of business. The sooner the better, in fact.
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