OurFuture.org Blogs: Rick Perlstein

And the most unfortunate sentence of the decade award goes to...

Rick Perlstein — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 02:22:50 -0500

...Michael Scherer of Time magazine, on the novelty of a comedian entering the Senate:

Franken has spent his life as a sort of intellectual terrorist, a rebel in open war with the mores and power structures of America.

The stupid-beyond-stupid quotient comes not merely in the carelessness of the language, but in the lameness of the attempted argument: is not clowning around at the expense of authority figures, after all, also an American more? Michael Scherer's America: no rebels need apply.

PalinPorn

Rick Perlstein — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 15:37:24 -0500

Google "slatternly innuendo." Go ahead. I'll wait.

I'm proud to say that particular linguistic delight is of my very own coinage. I used it to describe an email from the far-right website NewsMax headed "Ann Coulter Gone Wild," taking off from the late-night mail-order videos of college girls taking their tops off: "Open it," I wrote in a New Republic cover story on conservative culture, "and there stands Ann in a come-hither, skin-tight dress on the cover of her latest book — the one where she (courageously) accuses September 11 widows of being 'witches' and 'harpies.'"

My argument in that piece is now fairly well familiar: that with the only real substance uniting conservatives being the mock-defiant will to bug liberals, the symbol and substance of conservative political activism becomes ritual displays of liberal-bugging. These rituals, as I noted, can be virginal: "In some Christian right communities, a new kind of prom has sprung up, not for high school seniors but for prepubescent girls. They dress up in party dresses and take their fathers as dates. After the fox trot, the daughter reads to her father from a card: 'With confidence in His power to strengthen me, I make a promise this day to God, my family, myself, my future spouse, and my future children; to remain sexually pure until the day I give myself as a wedding gift to my spouse." The father responds: 'I, (daughter's name)'s father, choose before God to cover my daughter as her authority and protection in the area of purity.'"

Or they can be slutty (see Coulter, Ann, above. The starkness of the contradiction doesn't matter. Or rather, is possibly the entire point. Forming their own esoteric political culture that baffles people outside it has become the decadent core of the conservative movement in its dotage. That's the logic of a political tendency in decline: as it becomes smaller, it becomes purer; as it becomes purer, it becomes smaller; so on and so forth until you're celebrating the esoteric as an end in itself, as a token of the fantasized immortality of the very thing that is dying before your eyes.

And so the Republican Party readies to split clean in half. On the one side will be the Obama Republicans: the ones who actually care about figuring out a modus vivendi with the new governing realities in the nation. On the other: the Palincrats, who'll

Fortunately for the party of sanity, the Palincrats are winning: how else to describe the lusty spirit with which the candidates for RNC chair are competing for another to pronounce the most loudly that they're the most pure?

And speaking of "lusty," how else to describe this booming market for products like a, yes, "Hot Sarah Palin Calendar"?

She's a whore, she's Mother Mary—she's both, with a shotgun to boot. And the more the rest of the universe find all this simply bizarre, the more ritualistically the Palincrats will keep plastering the walls of our national debate with her chirpy visage.

Hot Sara Palin porn. I say: long may it prosper.

Frost/Nixon

Rick Perlstein — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 09:46:54 -0500

William Shakespeare's plays King John, Edward III (attributed), Richard II, Henry IV (Parts 1 and 2), Henry V, Henry VI (Parts 1, 2, and 3), Richard III, Henry VIII, and Sir Thomas More (attributed) are, all of them, dishonorable distortions of history.

My thoughts about Frost/Nixon here and here.

(And, for good measure, here's an outstanding essay on that dishonorable distortion of history, Milk.)

Leon Panetta

Rick Perlstein — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 17:12:55 -0500

Folks have been praising the novelty of a director-designate of the CIA who has unequivocally denounced torture. Good to remember, too, how the name "Leon Panetta" first came to national prominence, in 1969, when he resigne from the Nixon administration in protest against the Southern Strategy. From NIXONLAND:

The Fifth Circuit had ordered thirty-three Mississippi school districts integrated before the opening of the school year. The districts filed the court-mandated plans; HEW approved them. Then Nixon ordered HEW Secretary Finch to send the judge a letter with language dictated by Mississippi senator John Stennis: the September deadline would bring "chaos, confusion, and catastrophic educational setback" for children "black and white alike." The judge moved back the deadline to December; whence, perhaps, it would be moved back some more. The NAACP Legal Defense Fund took out a full page ad in the New York Times: "On August 25, 1969, the United States Government broke its promise to the children of Mississippi. The promise was made in 1954. By the highest court in the land." Roy Wilkins accused the Administration of actively helping the South prolong segregation, and said that if Nixon was serious about civil rights he'd fire John Mitchell. HEW's civil rights chief, Leon Panetta, a 31-year-old former aid to Thomas Kuchel, did what he thought was his job: he piped up that Nixon was serious about civil rights, just like he'd said at his inauguration.

Panetta immediately got a call from Ehrlichman: "Cool it, Leon!"

Silly Leon. HEW general counsel Robert Mardian, a top operative in Barry Goldwater's presidential campaign, marveled: "Doesn't he understand Nixon promised the Southern delegates he would stop enforcing the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts?"

That was in 1969. By 1970,

In the Administration, a bureaucratic mutiny took shape.

On January 19, 1970 President Nixon announced his next Supreme Court nominee, G. Harrold Carswell, a good ol' boy from South Georgia. An ad that Carswell had taken out advertising his run for state legislature in 1948 was discovered: "I Am A Southerner By Ancestry, Birth, Training, Inclination, Belief, And Practices. I Believe That Segregation Of The Races Is The Proper And the ONLY Practical And Correct Way Of Life In Our States." Staffers in the civil rights division of the Department of Housing, Education, and Welfare took in the situation with disgust, and watched their boss for a response.

Nixon made it at a press conference on January 30, asked if he still would have nominated Carswell if he'd known. "Yes, I would," the President responded. "I am not concerned about what Judge Carswell said twenty-two years ago when he was a candidate for state legislature. I am very much concerned about his record...as a federal district judge."

The Post reported on that record the next day: two-thirds of his decisions had been overturned by higher courts. Then it came out that in 1956 Carswell had schemed to make a public golf course private to keep blacks out. Two weeks later Leon Panetta picked up the Washington Daily News and read an article about himself: "Nixon Seeks To Fire HEW's Rights Chief for Liberal Views." He dutifully submitted his resignation that Tuesday. Then he delivered a speech to the National Education Association: "The cause of justice is being destroyed not by direct challenge but by indirection, by confusion, by disunity, and by a lack of leadership and commitment to a truly equal society." Six of Panetta's subordinates resigned in solidarity.

Minnesota Dreaming

Rick Perlstein — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 15:49:54 -0500

Digby's done great work on the Republican National Lawyers Association, basically an organized election-stealing conspiracy. Here's what they're up to in Minnesota:

To grasp just how dishonest this project is, see here.

God and Gaza

Rick Perlstein — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 20:17:39 -0500

We don't do Mideast politics here at Campaign for America's Future, so I just wanted to quickly point out an intersection where it abuts Big Con politics, and let people draw the conclusions they wish: before the U.S. let Israel do what it wanted to do with the Gaza Strip, it held political-cum-theological consultations with American doomsday Christians.

NIXONLAND in the New Year

Rick Perlstein — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 10:00:48 -0500

Milwaukee's WUWM recently rebroadcast what I think is the best radio interview I did on what NIXONLAND is all about, which reminds me to thank all my colleagues and readers here for your support that helped make 2008 such an exciting and humbling year for me. All told, NIXONLAND appeared on the following "Best Of" lists for the year:

• The Economist
• Amazon.com
• Los Angeles Times
• Stephen King's Entertainment Weekly pop culture column
• New York Times
• Christian Science Monitor
• Washington Post
• The Onion's AV Club
• TimeOut Chicago
• CNN.com's The Marquee Blog
• Entertainment Weekly
• NPR's Best Political and Current Affairs Book
• Reason magazine
• Louisville Courier-Journal

Today's Mail Brings a Novelty

Rick Perlstein — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 19:09:53 -0500

I'm used to receiving legal documents in the mail from people begging me to pay them money I owe them, but I've never had a creditor tell me they can't pay me. Then comes this from the owners of a certain daily fishwrap in Chicago to which I've occasionally contributed "content":

As an important supplier/vendor to Tribune Company [ed.: Thanks!], we are writing to inform you we have made a strategic decision to restructure our debt and to file for protection under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code. This business decision was necessary to strengthen Tribune's financial foundation for the future. Tribune will continue to operate while it restructures, and we are not going out of business.

Our partnership with our vendors is important to our success, and we are committed to maintaining strong relationships with our vendors for the long term.

We elected to file Chapter 11 in light of the dramatic and unexpected operating conditions we've encountered this year. We have had the perfect storm—a precipitous decline in revenue, and a tough economy coupled with a credit crisis that makes it extremely difficult to support our debt. Tribune is continuing to operate its media businesses, including its newspapers, television station and web sites.

The Bankruptcy Code provides a priority status for post-petition purchases, which means that we can and will pay for all goods and services received from your company after the date of the filing.... Unfortunately, bankruptcy law prohibits us from making payments from many goods purchased or services provided prior to the filing date at this time. Once a reorganization plan is developed and approved by the Bankruptcy Court, we will be authorized to make whatever payments or distributions are called for by that plan.

You will be notified when a deadline is set to file a Proof of Claim for any goods purchased or services provided prior to the filing. You can learn more about the company's filing at http://chapter11.epiqsystems.com/tribune. If you would like further explanation of the Chapter 11 process or have a specific question, please contact our vendor hotline at (888) 287-7568.

Thank you for your continued support. We look forward to working with you.

TRIBUNE COMPANY

In other news, a not-for-profit publication I've written for has informed me they can only afford to pay me a third of what they paid me last year. Welcome to the new era. Feel free to share your yuletide tales of financial woe in the comments.

Weyrich on Drugs

Rick Perlstein — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 22:14:50 -0500

Folks have been asking me my thoughts on the passing of conservative movement pioneer Paul Weyrich. I haven't had much to say, other than that he seemed an exceptionally creepy guy. Thanks, however, to my friend Jeet Heer, I can report with a bit more specifics. Here's what Michael Lind wrote in his article "The Death of Intellectual Conservatism" in the the winter, 1995 issue of Dissent:

One aspect of conservative complaceny has been a growing toleration of the vicious lunatic fringe. the 'no enemies on the right' policy has been symbolized in recent years by annual conservative 'summits' in Washington --- small, private dinners bringing togehter people like Bill Buckley, Irving Kristol, Norman Podhoretz, Charles Krauthammer, and the far-right activist Paul Weyrich. At one of these meetings, Weyrich criculated a proposal (which I have held and read) that the federal government secretly lace illegal drugs with substances like rat poison and release them into the black market. Drug addicts would be more easily identified and punished, Weyrich reasoned, if, in public, they went into sudden convulsions. None of the other conservative leaders at the meeting walked out in protest, or insisted that this man be ostracized. On the contrary, at subsequent summits Weyrich has been welcomed by the same conservatives who criticize the NAACP for meeting with Farrakhan.