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The liberal media’s passive-aggressive condescension toward Reagan and America
The Washington Post is learning to write like the New York Times, sneaking these little disparaging adjectives into what are supposed to be news stories in order to make America look negative and despairing. The Post’s Joel Aschenbach, after describing the hundreds-mile long journeys that some people have taken across the country to pay their respects to Ronald Reagan at the U.S. Capitol building, continues:
The longest and most dramatic journey was that of Dutch Reagan. He came from a bleak childhood [italics added] in small towns in the Midwest all the way to Lincoln’s pine-board catafalque in the Rotunda of the United States Capitol.Bleak? Sure, there were problems, particularly his father’s alcoholism, but no account of Reagan’s youth ever described it as bleak. He had a wholesome, Midwestern, all-American childhood and it produced the fine man that he became. And what about that notion of America as “drab”? This is the inside-the-beltway liberals letting us know that America is really an awful, grim place, that life itself is really awful and grim, and that it’s only pathetic dreamers and fantasists, like Reagan and the people who admire him, who imagine it to be otherwise. Posted by Lawrence Auster at June 10, 2004 11:12 AM | Send Comments
The mask really slipped there, didn’t it? The loathing that inside-the-beltway liberals have for America between Washington-New York and LA comes through in this piece. Posted by: David on June 10, 2004 11:27 AMIt’s projection on the part of the snively whiners who become journalists. That’s how they see America because they’re losers and didn’t get picked first in gym class or some such. So they become “people of thought” and form an insular world where the here and now is bunk, and everything would be okay if only they could get their way etc. They especially hate to see a man like Reagan - strong, handsome, commanding, confident - get so many accolades. Sour grapes and nothing more. Posted by: Jason on June 10, 2004 12:16 PMThe core of the motivation is as Jason describes. Unfortunately, there’s more to it than that. This is not just a personal expression of the personal resentment of snivelling liberals. This is part of a concerted, long-term, remorseless effort (1) to maintain and stoke the alienated world view of the liberal base, because the political and cultural viability of liberalism depends on the continued alienation of the liberal base; and (2) to demoralize the American people as a whole. Posted by: Lawrence Auster on June 10, 2004 12:52 PMThe words Mr. Auster italicized are snide and condescending, fine examples of Northeastern urban liberal snottiness. (I’m willing to bet a substantial sum that the alienated Mr. Aschenbach originates in what Noo Yawkahs call the “tri-state area”: that strange zone whose denizens are notably clueless about what actually goes on out there in America, even if they belong to the shrinking proportion who were born here.) I’m surprised that Mr. Auster did not also italicize the entire third paragraph of the quote. The derision of the notion that advancement is possible for ordinary people in America; the contempt for sucker Americans who could believe that; the backhand at Reagan for believing it: the essence of the affectedly alienated liberal’s condescension for good and ordinary things. What makes me laugh at Aschenbach’s pose is the idea that it was stupid for Reagan in particular to believe this; Reagan’s life is pretty good evidence of its possibility. I wonder if Aschenbach doesn’t share some of the moral confusion of Thomas Mann’s character who bears his surname. Is Aschenbach well-named? Posted by: Howard Sutherland on June 10, 2004 2:20 PMI think it’s more subtle than that. They don’t simply deride America or the belief in America. They thrown in (as how could they not?) Reagan’s successes. This is what enables them to get away with their game. Thus, while some people at Lucianne saw through the article, others thought it was a fine article. The subverting element of it goes right past them. That’s the nature of the modern liberal media which inserts these demeaning, downputting messages into what otherwise seems like legitimate coverage. The New York Times perfected this disgusting technique over the course of the 1990s, and now it has spread out to other parts of the liberal media as well. Meanwhile, conservatives barely noticed it. Sure, they noticed it when the Times would engage in outright leftist lies and propaganda. But they didn’t notice the more subtle and insidious propaganda, the manipulation of feelings, that was inserted into one article after another. Also, there’s no use in personalizing it to Aschenbach. It is a technique used systematically throughout the liberal media. Aschenbach is only one example of the type, as Mr. Auster notes. Still - given Death in Venice - I could not resist the dig. Bad manners, perhaps. HRS Posted by: Howard Sutherland on June 10, 2004 2:48 PMI’m cheered the one lady chose to take the train, albeit from New York. (City, I presume.) Not the most scenic of Amtrak’s routes, but efficient. The others probably used the Interstate system, but I suppose they could be forgiven for this as time is precious for working people. However, the coastal snobbery towards “flyover land” is echoed in the common people’s own insistence on using airlines and Interstates to take them to Orlando, Vegas or Cancún. They apparently don’t feel much connection with the real America, either. They ought to read William Least Heat Moon’s “Blue Highways” to learn how to travel the great land they’ve inherited. I’m a train buff to begin with, and am pleased to say that my one sighting of Reagan in the flesh was his speech from a caboose in Perrysburg, Ohio, in 1984. Posted by: Reg Cæsar on June 10, 2004 4:09 PMNotice the parallel to Howell Raines’s recent piece in the Guardian - it is an article of faith with the left that the idea that one can make one’s way in the world with application and a willingness to work is a cruel snare and delusion. This basic truth runs against their view of the world as a structure of oppression in which anyone who succeeds is guilty of wrongdoing, or at best, just has luck. Here in the greatest land of opportunity the world has ever seen, what a cruel thing to inculcate such notions into the heads of the young. Posted by: thucydides on June 10, 2004 7:16 PMI think your thoughts on the left are good, thucydides, but perhaps in need of one small addition. Note how the left, so filled with scorn for those who have succeded in industry, showers praise upon those who succeed in entertainment. I think this is because the left thinks of actors/musicians/writers as having some kind of divinely bestowed power that one either has or lacks. It is viewed as not being the kind of thing one can simply work at and achieve. Captains of industry, on the other hand, have no such obvious talent from the gods. They are really not terribly different from you and me, except that they have worked harder and had better ideas and follow-through. Therefore, leaders in various fields of business exist as a perpetual slap in the face to the liberal, whose principle goal is make sure that we all realize that his miserable, impotent existence is not his fault and certainly not within his power to correct. Posted by: Dan on June 11, 2004 1:55 PMI can’t let Mr Sutherland’s phrase “contempt for sucker Americans” pass without duly noting that Ronald Reagan was quite literally a “Sucker American”. As are less worthy examples such as Dennis Hastert, Rod Blagojevich, Richard Daley, George H. Ryan, Dan Rostenkowski, Hillary Rodham Clinton, John Anderson and Jesse Jackson, Jr. Reagan wouldn’t be the first “pride of the Suckers so lucky” in the White House, though he was the only native: By some accounts the term was disparaging at first, but was borne with pride during the Civil War. It led to this wonderful title: http://books.reviewindex.com/reviews/0890295298.html Some etymologies for those interested: |