Violation of the Club Rules

When you think about it---and you're not meant to.  The world continues on its merry self-destructive but profitable to them what's in on the deal way because we don't think about what we're not meant to think about---the clubbiness of after-hours Washington is a grotesque joke on the rest of us that even Satan wouldn't have the bad taste to perpetrate.

Milton's Satan.  Job's Satan would enjoy a good horselaugh over it, being the kind of evil entity that gets a kick out tricking the Almighty into massacring an innocent man's family, wiping out his fortune, and covering his hide in weeping pustules just to prove to the poor schnook, who never doubted it anyway, that He is the Lord God Almighty.  Milton's Satan was a sophisticated wit by comparison with the playful, puckish sense of humor of an Oxford College don on Boat Night.

But I digress.

The idea that once they clock out, unzip the coveralls, and gather together at the old brass rail, Senators, Congressmen, Presidential aides, the boys and girls of the Press, and the lobbyists buying the round are, Republicans and Democrats, Liberal and Conservative, really just a bunch of bosom pals forced by circumstances to work in different, rival departments of the same firm and what happens during the day is just the dirty job of earning a paycheck and their real lives begin after the cocktail hour is, I suppose, necessary to their sanity and useful for getting laid.

Whenever I hear a Washington insider bemoan the polarization of politics I know that person is either a Republican about to launch a vicious attack on a Democrat, a Democrat terrified of being viciously attacked, or a journalist who just hates all the muss and fuss because it makes picking which parties to attend a trickier business---choose wrong and some miffed hostess will cross your name off the guest list for a whole month's worth of A-list fiestas.

Insider Journalists seem to have found the path to their self-congratulatory "objectivity" by way of the sports pages.  At least when they appear on TV, they adopt the detachment of New York baseball writers forced to cover a crucial series between the Pittsburgh Pirates and the San Diego Padres---it's interesting because it's baseball, but it's not the Yankees, so let's not lose our heads here.

This is one of Shakespeare's Sister's themes.  They cover politics as if it is a game, as if the people involved, the "players," are players, colorful characters whose quirks and foibles make their stories funnier or more dramatic, but whose political views are no more important than a ballplayer's pet superstitions or diligent pursuit of an arcane record.  It's not just Joe Klein.  He's the model.  That Tom DeLay is a thief and a thug and he posed a real threat to the useful functioning of the government never seems to figure in the coverage of him, even as he disappears back down the sewer from which he crawled.  The Bug Man, the Hammer, he's just contemporary Washington's Ty Cobb, isn't he?

(As if Cobb's racism and sociopathy were of no real consequence.)

The assumption underlying and propping up all this chummy let me buy you a drink and we'll call it even bonhomie is that "We're all in this together."  Everybody in Washington is there for the same reason.  To do a job.  And that job is to keep the country moving.  We may have different ideas about how to get there, but finally we all want to end up in the same place, don't we?

No.

Not true.

It's probably never been true, except for, maybe, the four years during World War II, when we all wanted to beat the Nazis and whip the Japs.  But even then there were serious disagreements about what should happen afterwards.

For the whole history of the country there has been a struggle between two sides.  There's the one side that wants a democratic-republic with as much democracy as is possible without disorder.  And there's another that wants to re-establish some form of aristocracy with as much liberty for those few who have power and money as they decide they need and with as little for the rest of us as the rich and powerful can be forced to begrudge.

That second side, the would-be aristocrats, keeps switching Party affiliations.  At one time, many of them were Democrats.  But that was a long time ago.  Over the course of the 20th Century the racist aristocrats left the Democratic party and joined forces with the Big Business aristocrats who'd taken the Republican Party away from the Progressives.

These two factions, which control the Republican Party today, believe that the United States should be able to do whatever it wants in the world, that rich white people ought to be able to boss the rest of us around, that men get to boss their wives and children around but those who aren't rich must submit to bossing from those that are, that money and status and power are the definers of worth, and that we should have two goverments---or a government with two faces:  A harsh, authoritarian one that keeps the rabble scared and in line, and a genial, tame, complicitly winking one taking orders from the aristocracy.

The American Revolution ended monarchism here but it did not do it by changing the minds of the local monarchists, any more than the Civl Rights movement ended bigotry once and for all.  Monarchists will always be with us because it's part of human nature.  There are some of us who like to boss, and there are lots of us who like to be bossed.

The Founders got rid of a king but they were under no illusions that they had innoculated the American people against tyranny for all time.

If any of them came back from the grave today they'd be amazed that the democrats had been able to hold out against the aristocrats for so long.  But they'd have no trouble recognizing that the two sides are still there, fighting it out.  And they'd be appalled to see that so many Washington insiders appear not to see it or be sufficiently concerned about what's at risk.

As Digby says:

I suspect that many others who are engaged in the netroots like me became radicalized in their 30's and 40's by a Republican Party that started to behave as an openly undemocratic institution. Why so many of these establishment Democrats and insider press corps aren't exercised by this after what we've seen, I can't imagine. Perhaps they just can't see the forest for the trees. This past decade has not been business as usual.

History has many examples of societies that enabled radical political factions to dominate, through inertia, cynicism or plain intimidation. It happened in Europe in the 25 years before I was born and almost destroyed the whole planet. I know it's unfashionably hysterical to be concerned about such things, but I have never believed that America was so "exceptional" that it couldn't happen here.

The stakes are incredibly high. Without the cold war polarity, the US has bigger responsibilities than ever. And instead of behaving like a mature democracy and world leader, we have been alternating from adolescent tabloid obsessives to playground bullies. This is serious business.

Which brings me to Steve Colbert.

I'm not surprised that many members of the Club, like Richard Cohen, are tut-tuting over Colbert's performance, calling it "inappropriate," suggesting that Colbert crossed some line of common decency, taste, and tact.  He violated the Club rules.  He came there and told them that what happens in Washington matters.  He told them that they aren't playing a game or watching one.  Lives are in the balance.

It'd be amusing to ask the Club members what they think someone like Mark Twain would have said if he'd come to their chummy little hoedown.  I'll bet most of them admire Twain.  Many of them probably read him and sigh out their wish to write like him with a pen warmed up in hell.  It doesn't seem to occur to them to act on the wish, but nevermind.  Think Twain would have made a couple good natured cracks about President McKinley's bald pate and called it a night?

My favorite post about the Colbert Affair is John Rogers' at Kung Fu Monkey.  Rogers has been a working comic, but he's not being funny when he writes:

As for Colbert crossing the line -- how? Did he make remarks about the President's wife? About his children? His sex life? His draft dodging, his drinking and drug use before he found the Lord? No. Every joke used a well-known fact of public-record. Does anyone deny the poll numbers cited? Does anyone deny that the government response to previous crisises have been deficient? Does anyone deny that Administration officials outed Valerie Plame (hell, even the Administration officials now have to rely on he idea it was accidental)? Does anyone deny that the Administration has actively opposed global warming discussions? Listen -- if the President could do a long routine about not finding WMD's and laughing about it, while US soldiers died in the resultant war ... then to be frank I think he set the bar. Oddly, I think that if Colbert had done the routine the President did a couple years ago, THAT would have been crossing the line for me.

If his sin was incivility, then what the audience/bookers were looking for wasn't comedy. Comedy is by its nature uncivil. Comedy is, in both linguistic structure and overall psychological impact, hostile. Sometimes overtly, often not. But there is no such thing as a joke structured like: "You know what makes me happy? Yeah, that same thing that makes everybody else happy. (sigh)" There is no laugh there.

This is how the Club thinks.  Colbert was rude and uncivil when he made jokes that told the truth, but President Bush was being a good sport when he made a joke out of the lies that were getting American soldiers and Marines maimed and killed.

The reason is that Bush's "joke" keeps the game going.  Colbert's jokes spoiled the fun of pretending it's all a game.  Besides, if the wrong person saw you laughing there goes your big speaking fee and that invite to the beach house next weekend.

Even worse, if the wrong people got Colbert's jokes, your editors and readers if you're a journalist, the voters if you're a politician, they might ask you why you're not doing your job.
___________________________________________

Thanks to Avedon Carol, once again, for the links.

Thanks for reading.  Please help keep this blog up and running by donating to the Tip Jar in the upper right hand corner, using either PayPal or Amazon or you can just click here to go straight to Amazon.  If you'd prefer to donate by snail mail the address is Lance Mannion, PO Box 263, New Paltz, NY 12561.  Also be sure to visit our advertisers and consider buying an ad yourself through The Liberal Prose at BlogAds.

Comments

[Ryan]

Funny thing, civility... I just quit a job where my boss three days ago called me an evil asshole prick who couldn't assemble a lincoln log set with a set of detailed instructions and now for the next two weeks, I get to pretend that we're buddies.

Sometimes you just want to be a chimpanzee and chase the shits around with a big stick. Most of them need a big stick up somewhere....

[Kevin Wolf]

Is civility the next-to-last refuge of a scoundrel?

[Fred]

Ahhh, the Club. It's like watching Donahue and O'Reilly play their fireworks off each other. all the while you know they'll be at the bar latter remarking to one another how that made for good T.V.

[Karmakin]

Nice post, maybe the best one I've read yet this year.

You better believe it's not a game. In fact, it's life or death to a lot of people. What they do in DC can make lives better...or it can destroy people. And no, I don't belive either that the current Republican party wants to make things better. I think they want to make things worse...so bad that everything needs to be rebooted, and they believe they can do it "Better" this time. (The last time we had a reboot, was of course the New Deal).

[twig]

"there are lots of us who like to be bossed."

I don't really believe that, though I agree with everything else you said. I'm not sure what the other side is to the 'people who boss' but it's not people who enjoy waiting around to be kicked in the face. They certainly put up with it, but they don't like it.

[Redbeard]

No, twig, there ARE lots of us who like to be bossed. These people like to say, "I support the President," because when they fall in line to the general's commands, they can feel better than those dirty hippies who dare to wear tie-dyed shirts. These are different from the people who get kicked in the face and don't fight back because they don't have the energy, and they know they'll get it even worse if they do fight back. Some of this latter group you saw marching on Monday. See also, "Dirty Pretty Things."

Lance, I wish I'd written your post.

[Rasselas]

"Liking to be bossed" is different, but hard to distinguish, from liking to see and know that other people are being bossed. I think the latter applies to the silent majority, who are still waiting for Richard Nixon to awake from his slumber under the hill, return and put those damned kids in jail where they belong. Someone has to feel the lash, and if it's someone else, it can't be me.

[Jim]

Hear hear! A really good post. I know about five million people have already said this, but almost to a one, those people tsk-tsking over Colbert thought it was just darling when--at this same dinner a year or two ago--Bush did that 'self deprecating' piece of wit about looking all around the Oval Office for them WMD rascals. I'm reminded of the skit Jay Leno had during the OJ trial featuring the Dancing Itos. I thought it was pretty funny till someone pointed out the Itos were dancing on two corpses. Every member of the Club who laughed at Bush's little "I know they're here somewhere" skit were laughing at dead and mutilated American soldiers, to say nothing (since none of them would get the reference anyway) of those Iraqis liberated from this life.

[Jaquandor]

Oh, many of us most certainly DO like to be bossed. True-life example: a girl I knew in college was signed up for a monster course load that included an English Lit course that she was taking as an elective. A few weeks into the semester, she realized that the workload was crushing her and the lit course would have to go, so she would drop it the next day. But there she was the night before, still doing the homework. When I asked her why she was doing the homework for a class she was dropping the next day, she replied that she didn't want to look stupid in the next day's class session. When I further asked why she was even going to the next day's class session, she looked at me as though the very idea of not going the next day was unthinkable, even though she was dropping the class immediately after that session ended. Some people LIKE authority, are genuinely lost without it, and revere it. (Putting it in the supremely geeky terms of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, this is what the "Lawful Neutral" alignment is all about.)

(Oh, and Lance, one doesn't "unzip" overalls. One unbuckles them. What you're thinking of is "coveralls". Big difference. (The resident overalls expert))

[Linkmeister]

Jaquandor, I kinda disagree about your friend's motives for attending/doing the homework. I remember my last day(s) on several different jobs, where I continued to think about what decisions I should be making that were in the best interests of the companies, even though I was out the door that afternoon.

I'm not sure whether it's liking being bossed or self-regard. I owed it to myself to be professional; maybe she felt the same way.

[Holdie Lewie]

One of the pet phrases of Club members, whatever the club: "That just isn't done."

Being funny while telling the president and press that they are complicit in the deaths of thousands of innocents -- well, that just isn't done. Very uncool.

[sfmike]

Most of us do like to be told what to do ("bossed" has other connotations). A few excel at telling others what to do.

I've been self-employed for thirty years because I know I would be a terrible boss, and also because I don't like being told what to do by idiots, which is usually the case at most workplaces. Still, I love being told what to do by a client who has their act together, or a director who knows what they're doing, or a smart, intelligent leader of any sort. So do most people. (And Linkmeister, totally agree with the "I owe it to myself to be professional" remark.)

As for the clubbiness in D.C., that happens in all kinds of milieus. Doing employee propaganda for the CEO of a large financial institution on a freelance basis, I watched decisions being made in Board of Directors meetings that were going to affect literally thousands of people's lives in drastic ways, and none of the top executives gave that fact a single thought. It was all a game, almost as if they had gotten stuck in high school and were trying to either be the Big Man/Woman on Campus, or be one of their friends/sycophants.

And Karmakin, the "reboot" concept is wonderful, but it needs to come from us -- you, me, Lance, and the millions of people who are starting to spin this web. The nuts in charge right now haven't had an original thought in years.

[daveminnj]

nice one,lance. i wish i'd said that.

[harry near indy]

lewis lapham has said this for years in harper's magazine, so it's no big news for me. he compared the whole d.c. scene to versailles during the reigns of the later louises, iirc.

[Jaquandor]

Linkmeister: I don't think the situations are comparable at all. Giving two weeks notice and still doing a good job during those two weeks is professionalism, I grant fully (having been in that position myself). It's also common courtesy, as quitting with no notice screws one's coworkers. Here we're talking about getting a "drop" slip from the registrar and having the prof sign it, and then it's all done; nobody gets screwed if she doesn't show up for that last class before she drops (it was an english lit class, not a chemistry class, so it's not like she shafted her lab partner), and "drop slips" are flying every which way early in a semester anyway. But anyway, the point isn't that she went to class, it was her reaction to me saying, "What? You're even going?"

[fishbrake]

Why the gratuitous slam at Ty Cobb for pete's sake? He's friggin' dead forever and spent the last few years of his life trying to improve his reputation. In any case, even if he was a racist and sociopath, what consequence DID it have when he was playing baseball?

Tom DeLay was a cheater, which is ultimately why he quit. I don't think Ty Cobb cheated.

[Max Renn]

lewis lapham has said this for years in harper's magazine, so it's no big news for me. he compared the whole d.c. scene to versailles during the reigns of the later louises, iirc.

And the late, great incarnation of SPY magazine reminded us in 1990 that

a) America was being recast and sold as a theme park

b) American elites were trying to recreate Washington as a high school with cliques, etc.

In an era in which Big Pharma reps are pro cheerleaders and in which Katie Couric is the Prom Queen (sorry, most prominent news anchor to Rockin' Navy Seals), I think we can safely say that the Spy Magazine of that era was like freakin' Cassandra on crack.

[Quaker in a Basement]

"if Colbert had done the routine the President did a couple years ago"

Now THAT would have been cold, wouldn't it? If Colbert had stood up there and done the same routine, word for word?

File that under "shoulda".

[zocor]

migraine headache ultram effective http://ultramovernight.spazioblog.it/ ultram online sales