Kathleen Parker, Blut und Boden and the "culture war" (Pt 1 of 2)

"Elitist" textile workers striking in Lawrence MA back when - some of them were no doubt less than 100% Americans (by Kathleen Parker's definition)

Washington Post Writer's Group Columnist Kathleen Parker, whose specialty has long been to phrase nasty prejudices for respectable white folks to use in polite company, may be losing her touch. In Full-blooded Americans Orlando Sentinel 05/14/08, she uses an approach that may embarrass some of their disciples here and there.

Glenn Greenwald (High Standards at the Washington Post Op-Ed page Salon 05/17/08) calls it her White Power column. Although I would say that its only a slightly more egregious example than her standard efforts.

But I suppose I should be grateful to her for giving me an in-the-headlines opening for a follow-up post on historian Christopher Lasch's ideas on the "culture war". Parker's latest says - with attempted polite language, of course - that white folks shouldn't vote against Obama because he's a scary black man, but because Great American McCain has a longer American ancestry.

Here she makes a stock "culture war" pitch phrased for white folks who think of themselves as the polite middle-class:

Contributing to the growing unease among yesterday's Americans is the failure of the federal government to deal with the illegal-immigration fiasco. It isn't necessarily racist or nativist to worry about what these new demographics mean to the larger American story.

Yet, white Americans primarily - and Southerners, rural and small-town folks especially - have been put on the defensive for their throwback concerns with "guns, God and gays," as Howard Dean put it in 2003. And more recently, for clinging to "guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them," as Obama described white, working-class Pennsylvanians who preferred his opponent.

The "guns, God and gays" trope has haunted Democrats, and Republicans have enjoyed dusting it off when needed to rile the locals. It's an easy play.

But so-called ordinary Americans aren't so easily manipulated and they don't need interpreters. They can spot a poser a mile off and they have a hound's nose for snootiness. They've got no truck with people who condescend nor tolerance for that down-the-nose glance from people who don't know the things they know. (my emphasis)

The phrase I bolded makes it a nonpartisan criticism of those nasty elitists, you see. And it also let middle-class white folks who don't want to be completely identified with "rednecks" or with - mercy me! - low-class types who might join unions a way to remind their listeners that while they themselves aren't part of such a class of people, they still respect them as the salt of the earth and all as against those "elitists" in the "Democrat Party".

I posted before about Christopher Lasch's 1991 book The True and Only Heaven: Progress and Its Critics. In that book, he was addressing the question that engaged conventional wisdom so intensely at the time, of how the Democrats could ever win the Presidency again in the face of the Republicans' successful "culture war" appeals.

A large part of that discussion, then and now, missed or ignored some bedrock basics about the American political scene. Two major regional political shifts have occurred in American politics since Richard Nixon began the Republican Southern Strategy in 1968. The South now votes Republican in national elections. And California votes Democratic.

The later shift had not yet occurred in 1991. Bill Clinton carried California in 1992. And that fool Republican Governor Pete Wilson had the dandy idea to support the anti-immigrant Proposition 187 in 1994. Since the polite language of nice white ladies like Kathleen Parker couldn't hide the nativist and racial bigotry displayed by many of Prop 187's supporters, it had the effect of galvanizing Latino voters to register and go to the polls in higher proportions than ever before, a habit that has continued. It also reminded them dramatically that the Republican Party is the one that doesn't like black and brown people all that much and thinks Spanish is some kind of sinister plot against regular white Americans.

Since then, the state that gave the country Presidents Herbert Hoover, Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon has generally voted Democratic in statewide elections ever since, the Rovian political coup of Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2003 and his re-election in 2006 being exceptions.

Now Democrats cannot expect to win the Presidency without carrying California. That fact sometimes gets obscured by press discusses of "the West" leaning Democratic. But California's huge electoral vote prize and the significance of Silicon Valley and Hollywood fundraising clout for the Democrats means that the Dems have to keep California Democrats reasonably happy. And while California voters rejected gay marriage in a statewide referendum - unconstitutionally so, as the state supreme court happily just ruled - the need to keep California in the Democratic column means that the national Democratic Party can't afford to pander too heavily to conservative hot-button issues.

And what had already become true in 1991 is that the South was something close to a Solid South for Republicans. And today, the Republicans are more dependent on the South, both in Presidential races and in their Congressional delegations, than the Democrats ever were.

The Democratic Party prior to the Second World War involved a coalition of Southern segregationists with Northern liberals, city-dwellers and the labor movement. That doesn't mean that there was no support for liberal economic ideas among Southern whites, on the contrary. Mississippi's Theodore Bilbo, who was to become one of the Senate's most notorious racists ever, entered the Senate as a New Deal partisan.

But while the postwar Democratic Party in the South remained the protector of segregation, the contradictions in the national party increasingly showed. Truman in 1948 faced party splits on the left with Henry Wallace and his Progressives and on the right from Strom Thurmond and the Dixiecrats. Democrats in the 1970s assumed that the recently-enfranchised African-American vote might give them a shot at holding on to the South. However we weigh the role of race and the so-called "white backlash" in the shift to the Republicans in the South, voters there clearly trended more conservative.

So as long as black voter participation in the South was relatively low compared to whites, and as long as California was presumed to be a more-or-less safe state for Republicans in Presidential elections, the national Democratic Party felt strong pressure to mitigate the effect of "culture war" issues in the South. It also meant that there was more pressure to bring swing voters in states outside the South into the Democratic column.

In other words, the idea of a massive cultural shift among working-class voters or voters in smaller cities from Democrats to Republicans nationally can be highly misleading. At least according to one count I've seen discussed recently, working-class voters (the definition of which can vary greatly) nationally vote more consistently Democratic today than 40 years ago. And that makes perfect sense. In the 1960s, the now-extinct species called "liberal Republicans" was still extant in the person of politicians like Mark Hatfield of Oregon, Jacob Javits of New York and John Lindsey of New York City (who switched to the Democrats later).

Failure to take that distinction into account leads astray a lot of the writing from the last 25 years or so on how Democrats can deal with "culture war" issues. And to a certain extent, that happened with Christopher Lasch's book, as well.

In Part 2: Liberal "elitists", race and the "culture war"

Tags: culture war, christopher lasch, kathleen parker, neoconservatives

Kathleen Parker's latest primer on how to be a respectably prejudiced white person

For those who have been disturbed about Keith Olberman's recent on-screen work, check out today's Daily Howler. Bob Somerby rakes him over the coals, in particular about his adolescent reporting on the party antics of Lindsey Lohan and other famous young stars.

Straight-talking Maverick McCain says Hamas and Daniel Ortega (the current president of Nicaragua and a boogey-man for Republicans since the 1980s) support Barack Obama.

Fortunately, we have a competent press corps that can adequately process such statements. (A little Friday evening absurdist humor there.)

No, our actual press corps is made up of pundits like one of my special favorites, Kathleen Parker of the Washington Post Writer's Group. Parker's specialty is to provide ready-made talking points for Republican white folks to use in settings where they might not want to admit to following Rush Limbaugh and Mad Annie Coulter faithfully.

In White Males Aren't Feeling the Love 04/25/08, she explains that the Presidential election is kind of like a debutante's ball. And that the Democrats' goal in this election aim to woo the Republican base. The Republican base is also what we call "swing voters". And columnist and screenwriter Nora Ephron asked in some column somewhere something that Parker understood to be a question about whether white guys hate black people or women worse. Which shows that the Democratic Party doesn't like white guys.

Or something. Trying to deconstruct one of Parker's columns can lead to serious existential confusion, with accompanying physical symptoms like headaches and dizziness. When you frame the Presidential contest like this, where can things go but into a tailspin?

In the days leading up to Pennsylvania's primary, white males - those knuckle-dragging, chaw-chompin', beer-swillin' bitter troglodytes - were suddenly the debutante's delight.

How were the Democrats to woo these crucial swing voters, known in other circles as the Republican Party base?

Now, by including "bitter", I assume she's probably trying to indicate this is some satirical comment on Barack Obama. But it's hard to tell. Obama was talking about a subset of small town voters in Pennsylvania who he said become bitter.

Here where the headaches begin. Are there live human being on this planet most of us inhabit who describe white men as a group as "knuckle-dragging, chaw-chompin', beer-swillin' bitter troglodytes"? The closest that comes to mind would be some snotty young woman in sorority girl describing her opinion of "rednecks". You know, the kind of young woman who might have had a debutante ball.

The rest of the column does some imitation of commenting on racial and gender factors in voting. But when the poor woman sets her fingers to typing, she apparently cannot prevent things like this from coming out:

Clinton may not be Everywoman, no matter how unflinchingly she downs a tumbler of Crown Royal. But she is a more familiar entity than someone like Obama, who, having grown up in Hawaii and Indonesia, doesn't share the life experiences of the groups that voted against him on Tuesday.

(Yes, I first read it as "Royal Crown", too, and was wondering where that one came from.) This is near the end of the column. And if you can follow her step by step without being overcome by dizziness and nausea, your constitution is stronger than mine.

Although she takes the trouble to cite a statistic or two from the Pennsylvania primary, her column actually floats in the air at a high level of abstraction. There is an actual discussion going on, an obvious and legitimate one, as to how various segments of the vote broke down: race, gender, age, rural/urban and about a jillion others.

The offending Nora Ephron column appears to be her Huffington Post entry of 04/20/08, White Men. I think this must be the first Ephron political column I've read, and it's not a particular inspiration to come back for more. It's almost as lightweight as Parker's, and that level of gravity defiance is not easy to achieve. I do think it's kind of cute, in a screenwriter kind of way, when Ephron says, "white men cannot be relied on, as all of us know who have spent a lifetime dating them." But there's nothing in it about troglodytes, or dragging knuckles, or "swillin'" beer, or "chaw chompin'". Give Parker credit: I learned an entirely new phrase, chaw-chompin', whatever it may mean.

There's nothing particularly objectionable on the face of it in Parker's "analysis" of the Pennsylvania results. Because there's not much to it. If this were an essay question on a Poli Sci 101 test, it would probably be an acceptable answer, because it shows that she looked at some set of election results and tried to say something pinpointing a few demographic groups from those results.

But her column starts out trying bravely to challenge those objectionable stereotypes of us pore white guys from those anonymous meanie liberals or whoever that call us all chaw-chompers. (That's not some kinky sex thing, is it?)

But she approaches that by analyzing primary results in the Clinton-Obama contest in Pennsylvania. And you can't make any conclusions about racial attitudes or misogyny from those. Because, despite the Clinton campaign arguments about "electability" that may have suggested a racial nudge-nudge wink-wing to some voters, there was no racial hot-button issue in dispute between the two candidates. Nor was there any women's-rights issue like abortion separating them or playing a prominent role in the campaign. Obama's supporters weren't spotted carrying signs saying, "Don't let some dame become President." Her supporters weren't out carrying posters of blacks thugs robbing terrified white people or anything along those lines.

And even she winds up concluding "Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama may not provide a clear picture" of voters' attitudes on "race and gender".

So what's the point of her little exercise? Since Parker's manifest thought processes are inscrutable to me, I'll limit myself to an observation about their functionality among good Christian Republican white folks.

The fall election will be a contest between a Democratic candidate and very, very Republican John McCain. There will be important and divisive issues. Some of them will be issues of women's rights and issues of high priority to women voters. And some of them will be issues related to racial discrimination, including the widespread segregationist-style Republican minority-disenfranchisement campaigns passing under the guise of combating "voter fraud". The virtual shut-down of the normal, legitimate functioning of the Justice Department's Civil Rights division will also be a big difference between the parties. The Republicans and those in the mainstream media who take their cues from the Republicans will slime Clinton in about every way that can be imagined. And, as Joe Conason reports today in Will McCain denounce Floyd Brown? Salon, the old racist sleaze-slinger Floyd Brown is already hard at work doing to Obama what Republicans do in Presidential elections, campaigning against scary black people.

In other words, racial and gender issues are already in play for the general election. But some respectable Republican white folks need frameworks through which to imagine that they aren't acting like low-bred Southern white trash by voting for the segregationist Republican Party. And that's our friend Kathleen Parker's specialty!

Because, hey, voter suppression, the shutdown of the Civil Rights division? For respectable Republican suburbanites who think the most important responsibilities of the federal government are to keep the war in Iraq going for 100 years and to ensure that the wealthiest people are spared the horror of paying taxes to support their country, those other issues are no problem. If such issues cross their radar screens at all, they can ignore them, dismiss them or minimize them easily. Given those other two overriding priorities, those minor distractions can be brushed away.

The problem is that a significant portion of the Republican base are white folks (not just men) who are not at all interested in being respectable to the white-wine-and-brie Republicans. They're proud of their "politically incorrect" attitudes on race and various other social issues. And Rush Limbaugh and Mad Annie Coulter and the rest of OxyContin radio function by pandering to the favorite prejudices of that market segment. This is not a segment that's open to voting for Democrats, either for the woman or for the black guy.

But come September, October, those Republican suburbanites who like to think of themselves as fair-minded, unprejudiced people will have gone for months hearing Rush and other hate radio jocks and their many fans making "jokes" about "spades" and scary rioting black people accompanied no doubt by bra-burning feminists (or "feminazis" in RushSpeak). And they may wonder if they really want to be politically associated with straight-up OxyContin Republicans like that.

But peace of mind is available! They can just google this column of Kathleen Parker's, and get ready-made alibis like this:

Race and gender do matter, of course. They enter into the human equations to varying degrees, subconsciously if not consciously, in any transaction. We have certain expectations and are all guilty of stereotyping, much as we insist otherwise. It's nature, and it's not always wrong. ...

So, yes, some percentage of Americans (or Turks or Greeks or Swedes) will always take race and gender into consideration at the polls. But Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama may not provide a clear picture as to how those issues play out in politics. Each brings too many confounding factors that distort the picture.

Clinton isn't just any woman, needless to say. People like and dislike her often for the same reason - because she's the wife of Bill. In either case, it's not only that she's A Woman, but that she's That Particular Woman.

And Obama isn't just any black man. Those who like or dislike him don't necessarily base those opinions on his skin color or ethnic heritage, except to the extent that they are tied to differences that are also cultural. ...

Do they "hate" blacks, as the Ephron School insists? Or do they prefer a familiar individual who sees the world essentially as they do? Are white males misogynistic and racist? Or are they weary of being the only group in America that is fair game for contempt, insult and blame? (my emphasis)

As much as Parker disgusts me, I have to admit a grudging admiration for her marketing smoothness in her chosen niche, providing "respectable" alibis for prejudice to "respectable" white folks.

So, let's practice what we've learned, class:

"Why, of course race and gender matter. And that's not always wrong. Sure, there are probably some trailer trash in backwoods Mississippi somewhere who are racially prejudiced. But with most people, you can't really say that. There are too many confounding factors at work.

"And this Hussein Obama guy, he's not just any black fellow, you know. His pastor is an angry black guy. And he once talked to a couple of people who were rioting hippies 40 years ago. That doesn't mean people hate him because of it. Sure, lots of people will take into account the fact that he's, you know, black. But only to the extent that it's tied to differences that are also cultural. And that's not always wrong.

"Lots of people prefer McCain because they prefer a familiar individual who sees the world like they do. And Obama grew up in different circumstances, liked he lived in Indonesia for a while, and I don't necessarily believe those stories about him being in a Muslim school, but it is different. And then he lived in Hawaii, too, where, you know, white people are a minority. People think about that kind of stuff, and that's not always wrong.

"Besides, some white guys, especially, might see some of Obama's comments as insulting and out of touch. Because us white guys just get tired of being picked on all the time and called misjenists and trogodites and stuff. Think about it. We're the only group in America that is fair game for contempt, insult and blame! And some people just get upset about that and don't want to vote for someone who thinks that way. And that's not always wrong."

It wouldn't surprise me to learn that some aspiring young Karl Rove is out there holding workshops for Republican activists based on Kathleen Parker columns. The woman has found her niche.

Tags: barack obama, kathleen parker, nora ephron, racism

Bubble thinking from Kathleen Parker

Kathleen Parker of the Washington Post Writers Group has a new column called, Oh, Allah, won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz? San Francisco Chronicle 08/20/07. It's one more piece of evidence increasing my suspicious that a significant portion of the Republican Party is operating in a bubble of willful self-deception.

If there is still a meaningful distinction to be made between low-brow, middle-brow and high-brow rightwing writing, Parker falls into the "middle-brow" category. Her shtick is to present the sneering prejudices presented in a rawer form by Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage and so on in the voice a respectable white lady. It's kind of like listening to a narrow-minded country girl who learned in a college sorority had to make the same nasty stuff sound respectable, at least to other sorority girls of a similar background. I don't want to denigrate sorority members as a group, though, by equating them all to Kathleen Parker. That would be unfair.

Let's assume for the sake of taking her column on its own terms that her basic reported fact is more-or-less accurate and not absurdly taken out of context. It's seems that a retiring Catholic bishop in the Netherlands named Tiny Muskens has suggested that Christians worldwide should start calling God "Allah" as a way of making a gesture of peaceful intent and solidarity with Muslims. Or, as she reports it:

"Allah is a very beautiful word for God," Muskens said on Dutch television a few days ago. "Shouldn't we all say that from now on we will name God Allah?"

Muskens pointed out that in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country where he spent eight years, priests use the word "Allah" in Catholic Mass.

Not surprisingly, Parker devotes her column to ridiculing the idea.

Somehow, though, she never gets around to mentioning that "Allah" is the Arabic word for God. Christians in Arabic-speaking countries use "Allah" for God because, well, they speak Arabic. Kind of like people in Spanish-speaking countries call God "Dios" because that's, you know, the Spanish word for God.

I have no idea how it came about that in Indonesia, Catholics apparently use "Allah" for God. Has "Allah" been taken over from Arabic into Bahasa Indonesia, the country's national language? Actually Indonesia has quite a few languages. The island of Java has three languages; Sumatra has 15.

Parker's column is devoted to attempts at humor over the idea that are mostly a polite-white-lady version of the crude sneers at which her more low-brow fellow Republican commentators specialize. But then she ventures beyond trying to come up with ditsy-sorority-girl political humor, which is groan-inducing enough, and tries to say something about theology, reacting to a Muslim who made the statement of FOX News that "Muslims, Christians and Jews all worship the same God". Parker writes:

Contrary to Hooper's one-God claim, Christians and Muslims don't really worship the same God. Although both religions are monotheistic - and if there's just one God, there's just one God - Christians believe Jesus was the Son of God and Muslims think otherwise.

That's not a small doctrinal difference. In fact, at the risk of exhausting the obvious, Christianity doesn't exist without, um, Christ. Of course we could rewrite the Apostle's Creed to include Muhammad: "I believe in Allah the Father Almighty... and in Muhammad, his favorite prophet ..." The possibilities are infinite, really. Alternatively, we could pretend to be sane and suggest that everybody go to his or her own house of worship, pray to his or her own version of the Creator, and otherwise get a grip.

Can divine intervention provide Kathleen Parker with "a grip"?

Now, Christian fundamentalists don't believe Muslims worship the same God. For that matter, fundamentalists tend to believe that even most other Christians don't worship the same God they do. Or, at least that they worship God so inadequately that they're all going to Hail with the Jews and Muslims, and Hindus and Buddhists, etc., etc.

Still, though it's unlikely to shine a light into the mind of the grip-less Ms. Parker, Muslims, Jews and Christians all believe that they are worshipping the God of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament), the God of Abraham.

But, gee, when you're trying to achieve the snotty-suburbanite tone Parker goes for, trying to dig a snarky remark out of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity is something you would think even she wouldn't attempt. But you would be wrong. I won't belabor her near-incomprehensible comment on it except to say that there's a reason that theologians call the doctrine of the Trinity "a mystery". And that all she managed to display is that she has no concept at all of what Christian monotheism means. It's probably best if she just tries to avoid those big four-syllable words like "monotheism".

The whole real point of her column, though, is that Muslims are scary heathens. And they probably want to turn our good ole American hymnbooks into Muslim chants. Or something.

The amazing and sad thing is that ditsy nonsense like this is what rates as Big Punditry these days. Can democracy actually survive with a press corps this clueless?

On the substance of the Dutch bishop's suggestion, it doesn't really make much sense to me. But I don't want to knock this bishop, who I don't believe I've ever heard of before, just on Kathleen Parker's description of him.

Tags: kathleen parker

Defending the Dean

Rightwing columnist Kathleen Parker, who specializes in providing white folks a "respectable" vocabulary to whine about blacks, turns her attention to David Broder's column on Harry Reid and the surprisingly united response of the Senate Democrats to it in Banal outrage San Francisco Chronicle 05/04/07. What Parker learned from that episode is ... bloggers are mean and uncivilized.

Creative, you say? Not really. It's just the standard complaint of journalists about bloggers, particularly liberal bloggers. What was interesting about Parker's complaint is that it shows how nervous she is about the Senators' response. She's about as explicit as one could expect, surprisingly explicit I would say, about her nervousness over the fact that Senate Democrats saw the need to fight the press over false "scripts" that aid the Republicans.

You'll recall that David Broder, the Dean Of All The Pundits, did a column in which he compared Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to the very memory-challenged Republican Attorney General, Abu Gonzales: The Democrats' Gonzales Washington Post 04/26/07. His column opened like this:

Here's a Washington political riddle where you fill in the blanks: As Alberto Gonzales is to the Republicans, Blank Blank is to the Democrats - a continuing embarrassment thanks to his amateurish performance.

If you answered "Harry Reid," give yourself an A. And join the long list of senators of both parties who are ready for these two springtime exhibitions of ineptitude to end. (my emphasis)

Now, I can't claim to do a daily representative survey of the liberal blogosphere. But the Democratic bloggers I saw addressing this column focused on two things primarily. One was what a lame-brained comparison it was on the face of it. The other was the clear implication that Broder knew in his esteemed role as Dean Of All The Pundits that there was a "long line" of Democratic Senators who were eager to have Reid alleged exhibition of "ineptitude" end. This strongly implies without precisely saying so that some Democratic Senators are ready to oust Reid as leader.

I realize I'm covering some of the same ground as I did in an earlier post. But the Dean's pronouncement on Harry Reid is a gift that keeps on giving.

Problem is, when other reporters went out to follow up on this, astonishingly they couldn't find any evidence of this widespread discontent with Reid's leadership among Democratic Senators! And then the Senators themselves sent a letter to the Post expressing confidence in and support for Reid: Sen. Reid's Fine Leadership 04/27/07. The Dean Of All The Pundits got caught more-or-less making s*** up, in other words.

In the exotic corner of reality which Kathleen Parker's consciousness inhabits, David Broder is part of the Liberal Press Conspiracy against George Bush the Commander Guy, the Republican Party, and all other things godly and wholesome. But pundit solidarity summoned her to the battlements to defend the Dean against those dirty hippies in the blogosphere, in the Senate Democratic Caucus and wherever else they might rear their hairy heads. And when I referred to Parker's corner of "reality", that wasn't a typo. Because she did show in this column that she is actually capable of registering the reality outside her head, at least this one time:

From the assault subsequently directed at Broder - from other journalists, political operatives, left-wing bloggers and even the entire 50-member Senate Democratic Caucus - you'd have thought Broder had had an intimate encounter with an intern. ...
Broder committed no such dastardly deed, but merely did what he has done for the past 35 years. He called it as he saw it - just as Reid claims to have done, and that his defenders seem to find so refreshing.

Nevertheless, the 50 Democratic senators felt compelled to respond. Doesn't the U.S. Senate have more important matters to attend to than David Broder?

Of course, her actual perception of reality is nearly smothered by being wrapped in Bill and Monica - these people are just never going to stop drooling over the Starr Report porn, are they? But she actually managed to see what happened, if only through a glass darkly.

And that is, the Democrats fought back against Establishment press misconduct. If they hadn't, by the time the Sunday morning gabfests rolled around, the phony Broder script would have had taken on a life of it's own, and we would have been seeing things like: "How Serious Is the Democratic Revolt Against Harry Reid?" "Harry Reid: On His Way Out as Leader?" "Can Harry Reid Recover From His Missteps?"

It's also worth remembering that although the Dean Of All The Pundits was picking up on a Republican/FOXist/OxyContin-radio meme about Reid's "lost" comment, the Dean added his own twist to it: the Senate Democrats want to get rid of this guy. It's not just that he was echoing a Republican partisan theme, which he was. It's that he was adding his impeccably Establishment primature as the Dean Of All The Pundits to a claim that was false, that there was some kind of live sentiment to get rid of Reid as Majority Leader that not only was happening but was comparable in intensity to Republican dismay of Abu Gonzales' meltdown.

Again, this wasn't "the rightwing" inventing this story. This was the Dean Of All The Pundits writing in the Washington Post, our Pravda on the Potomoc. And the Senate Democrats realized that this was malicious enough and potentially enough enough damaging to their message that they stomped it out. Right away. The Democrats are going to have to fight the Establishment press scripts like this for a long time if they are ever going to be able to do the things that need to get done.

Naturally, Kathleen Parker doesn't process it exactly that way. She is so shocked, shocked to see the Democrats giving so much attention to shooting down a dysfunctional and phony press script that she apparently blocked out all memory of the constant, non-stop, often-hysterical ranting from Republicans for the last, oh, 40-some years about the Liberal Press! Liberal Press! Liberal Press! But let's give her a break. That's become such a part of the landscape that it's practically background noise. But Democrats taking on our "press corps" for their dysfunction - that is something that's more unusual!

Parker said that their reaction was "unusual, if not unprecedented". She's gasping in astonishment. But she tsks-tsks that it "betrays a disturbing hostility to legitimate criticism." No, this is not the Onion. After the antics of the war cheerleaders these last several years with their blasts of venom at anyone daring to criticize Dear Leader Bush and his war of liberation in Iraq, we can only marvel that the Senators' straightforward, brief statement calling out the Dean for just making stuff up shows Parker a "hostility to legitimate criticism."

My favorite comment in this column is Parker's shocked, "Though Broder is a great political writer, he is not the president of the United States." Lord only knows what sort of firing of neurons in her brain produced that cryptic statement.

What does all this have to do with mean bloggers, you ask? Well, I was going to explain it. But when I looked again at how she got there, it doesn't make much sense. It's something about how bloggers are often anonymous, and this led Paul Begala to criticize the Dean Of All The Pundits, even though Begala wasn't anonymous, and, well, you know, bloggers are bad. Especially the liberal kind. And we need lofty-minded thinkers like Kathleen Parker and the Dean Of All The Pundits to sort through this complicated political stuff for us:

One wonders where these same [dirty hippie blogger] thin-skins were when Broder was leveling his sights at the Bush administration. Was Broder a gasbag when previously he lambasted the Bush budget deficit, the tax cuts for the rich and the mess in Iraq?

You hippie bloggers didn't realize that the Dean has been an aggressive critic of the Bush administration and the Iraq War, did you? Like I said, in Parker's world, the Dean is part of the Liberal Press Conspiracy whether or not any real live liberals think of him that way.

A fair treatment [from legitimate journalists, not hippie blogging "thin-skins"] of Broder's recent column would consider the broader context of his body of work, but fairness is missing from this debate [because the doggone dirty hippies in the Senate and the blogosphere are mucking it all up by putting their tie-dyed nonsense out there]. Also [missing] is respect for those, like the Pulitzer Prize-winning Broder, who have toiled long in the fields to earn the kind of forum others [you know, hippies, thin-skins, flower-power protesters] merely feel entitled to.

The absence of fairness and respectful dissension [from the dirty rude hippies] - and the decline of civility wrought by our nation's [hippies running-wild] unhinged narcissism - now there's something worthy of outrage.

Yes, why can't those dang blogging hippies be civil like Kathleen Parker? Look at how she started off her column. She didn't even use the word "blowjob" when she brought up Monica Lewinsky and Bill Clinton out of the blue. Yes, we disgusting bloggers could learn some manners, and high-minded political thinking, too, from our betters like Parker and the Dean.

Does that mean we get to make stuff up, too? If not only Rush but the Dean Of All The Pundits can do it, it must be all right, huh?

Tags: david broder, kathleen parker