"This year as we watched Dr. Howard Dean gain the role of frontrunner, the veins in his neck bursting, his face an angry gnarl of sneers and grimaces, it became obvious that the dynamic new force in the Democratic primary was the moron vote. That is to say the angry, stupid, political neurotic who has proceeded into middle age convinced that the world is against him-her.
These indignant morons saw Dr. Howard Dean tear off his suit coat, roll up his sleeves and approach the microphone as though he were about to chew on it, and they beheld Deliverance -- Deliverance from all the woe and perfidy that has held them back, given them lower-back pain, caused the seat of their pants to split the night they attended the professional wrestling match and brought George W. Bush to the throne."
I might be angry and neurotic, but I'm not stupid (thank goddess for that), and the world is indeed against me. How about you? The seat of my pants has never split (I don't wear pants, snakes don't), and professional wrestling matches are where Republicans congregate. Maybe Emmett was borrowing ideas from his personal history? But I do like his idea that we are morons.
It shows that Emmett as a proper right-winger hasn't stopped trying to reach his hand across the ideological chasm, hasn't stopped trying to debate politics in an adult and mature fashion, hasn't started raging and ranting like us angry liberals do. It's still "You moron, me Tarzan. WHACK, POPPLE AND CRACK!"
Ann Coulter is another polite right-winger. Here's what she says about us liberals: we are jock-sniffers:
"Cleland is making the rounds on talk TV, basking in the affection of liberals who have suddenly become jock-sniffers for war veterans..."
Dear Ann, always ready for a nice, civilized discussion on politics. But she thinks that we are morons, too
"That Bush skipped out on his National Guard service is one of liberals' many nondisprovable beliefs, like global warming"
She was talking about how we liberals don't understand that evidence has conclusively proved that George W. Bush's service with the Guard was honorable, and how we don't understand that former Senator Max Cleland isn't really a war hero, despite his having lost three limbs in Vietnam, because he lost them by picking up a hand grenade which could have equally easily happened to him in the Texas Guard. Well, I doubt that, unless the Guard had a habit of scattering hand grenades about the place, and even then only some members of the Guard might have been easy-going enough to pick them up out of pure curiosity.
It was George W. Bush's Guard service that got Tyrrell waxing poetical about morons, too:
"Now Sen. John Pierre Kerry is the frontrunner, and he has developed a fine ploy for corralling the moron vote. He and McAuliffe have stirred up this controversy about how frequently the president attended National Guard meetings three decades ago. And they have transformed their entire party into the most heroic congeries of patriots and GI Joes ever seen on earth. The morons are entranced."
Don't you think that being 'entranced' is the only way to be in this instance? The whole thing is a fascinating mystery: Where in the world was George W. Bush?
There is a smell of desperation in these paltry attempts to make us angry liberals into jock-sniffers and morons, just because we have finally run out of patience. I like such smells just fine, though, (those of desperation, not of jock straps) and I think that we should own the term 'morons'.
Onwards and upwards, you teeming masses of morons! More morons and more moral leaders!
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I got the link to Tyrrell's column from a post in Make Me A Commentator . Thanks, Bryant, for introducing me to this fascinating thinker.