Saturday, November 13, 2004
Doing the Wingnuts' Will
Today we launch a new feature on the Daily Aneurysm--"Doing the Wingnuts' Will," in which we will cite incidents of people who are not wingnuts themselves acting in ways that advance the wingnuts' agenda. We'll consider the decision by some ABC affilates to dump Saving Private Ryan the other night to be incident number one. Incident number two comes to us from Chapel Hill--liberal Chapel Hill--North Carolina, where a public-radio underwriter has been told it can no longer refer to "reproductive rights" in its underwriting announcements for fear that it would be considered "advocacy," and violate FCC regulations against public radio stations engaging in such speech. The underwriter has to say "reproductive health" instead. So now the word "rights" is considered too hot to say?
Incident number three comes from Colorado, where student musicians at a high school who planned to sing Bob Dylan's "Masters of War" at a school talent show this week got a visit from the Secret Service after some local wingers claimed they were threatening President Bush's life. For chrissakes, you dumbasses, Dylan wrote the damn song in 1963. Best of the Blogs' Michael Scott responds, "High school students aren't the only ones reminiscing about those lyrics lately."
These are merely (merely?) incidents of institutional wingnuttery (albeit the North Carolina case was more precisely an institutional action prompted by the fear of wingnuttery), which we saw plenty of before the election, and which would most likely have continued even had John Kerry won the presidency and the Democrats had taken back the Senate. What's more disturbing is the emboldened wingnuttery of individuals who feel their cultural superiority confirmed by Bush's reelection, and who have appointed themselves enforcers of that superiority. Institutional wingnuttery rarely draws blood or damages property. Orcinus has some examples of vandalism directed at individuals, and of the kind of right-wing rhetoric that is likely to inspire more. These wingnuts are not part of the evangelical base, which has gotten all the press this week, but like the evangelicals, they're a segment of Red America that's louder than their numbers alone would indicate. And they are just as capable of making people act--or more precisely, not act--for fear of their wrath.
Recommended Reading: Peggy Noonan was a White House speechwriter during the Reagan years, and wrote a charming book about it called What I Saw at the Revolution. Today, she writes a syndicated column in which she sounds like an elderly aunt with a mild case of Alzheimer's--one moment she's lucid, but the next, she's up at treetop level having tea with the birds of the air. World O'Crap (a smart and funny blog with a name that makes it easy for people to ignore) has some deep thoughts (by Jack Handey) about her post-election column. And finally: The Gadflyer has the first endorsement for president in 2008. Hint: It's one of the guys who wants to be head of the Democratic National Committee.
Today we launch a new feature on the Daily Aneurysm--"Doing the Wingnuts' Will," in which we will cite incidents of people who are not wingnuts themselves acting in ways that advance the wingnuts' agenda. We'll consider the decision by some ABC affilates to dump Saving Private Ryan the other night to be incident number one. Incident number two comes to us from Chapel Hill--liberal Chapel Hill--North Carolina, where a public-radio underwriter has been told it can no longer refer to "reproductive rights" in its underwriting announcements for fear that it would be considered "advocacy," and violate FCC regulations against public radio stations engaging in such speech. The underwriter has to say "reproductive health" instead. So now the word "rights" is considered too hot to say?
Incident number three comes from Colorado, where student musicians at a high school who planned to sing Bob Dylan's "Masters of War" at a school talent show this week got a visit from the Secret Service after some local wingers claimed they were threatening President Bush's life. For chrissakes, you dumbasses, Dylan wrote the damn song in 1963. Best of the Blogs' Michael Scott responds, "High school students aren't the only ones reminiscing about those lyrics lately."
These are merely (merely?) incidents of institutional wingnuttery (albeit the North Carolina case was more precisely an institutional action prompted by the fear of wingnuttery), which we saw plenty of before the election, and which would most likely have continued even had John Kerry won the presidency and the Democrats had taken back the Senate. What's more disturbing is the emboldened wingnuttery of individuals who feel their cultural superiority confirmed by Bush's reelection, and who have appointed themselves enforcers of that superiority. Institutional wingnuttery rarely draws blood or damages property. Orcinus has some examples of vandalism directed at individuals, and of the kind of right-wing rhetoric that is likely to inspire more. These wingnuts are not part of the evangelical base, which has gotten all the press this week, but like the evangelicals, they're a segment of Red America that's louder than their numbers alone would indicate. And they are just as capable of making people act--or more precisely, not act--for fear of their wrath.
Recommended Reading: Peggy Noonan was a White House speechwriter during the Reagan years, and wrote a charming book about it called What I Saw at the Revolution. Today, she writes a syndicated column in which she sounds like an elderly aunt with a mild case of Alzheimer's--one moment she's lucid, but the next, she's up at treetop level having tea with the birds of the air. World O'Crap (a smart and funny blog with a name that makes it easy for people to ignore) has some deep thoughts (by Jack Handey) about her post-election column. And finally: The Gadflyer has the first endorsement for president in 2008. Hint: It's one of the guys who wants to be head of the Democratic National Committee.
