07.17.07
Language, the Eternal Lie
Here’s a funny thing over at Salon about John and Elizabeth Edwards (emphasis mine):
By most accounts she has always been the campaign’s leading strategist and still is. But lately she has emerged as its leading risk taker, too. At the end of June she won the nation’s attention — and the gratitude of many — for confronting right-wing provocateur Ann Coulter live on MSNBC’s “Hardball,” after Coulter called John Edwards a “faggot” at a conservative conference in January, and joked in June about wishing he’d be assassinated.
She “won the nation’s attention”? On fucking Hardball? Think about how “meta” that is. Hardball itself pulls in about three or four hundred viewers a night. Mostly shut-ins and widow-women. But the clip of that manufactured “confrontation” —as scripted as a campaign ad— has probably been seen by a million. From there, including people like myself who have never actually seen the clip, it’s merely discussed by a few million more. What a sick snowball. Out of a nation of 300 million, a tiny fraction catch wind of some media-made shit-stir of a very minor celebrity candidate and Joan Walsh says the nation’s attention was “won”? When did that happen?
Oh, just about the time that phrase entered Ms. Walsh’s mind.
John Edwards’ recent demonstrations of the old adage that there’s no such thing as bad publicity are truly appalling. Be it the cornpone or the luxuriant locks, he really is, after all, no different from the sickening John Kerry: a user of women or emotions and even resumes —all in the pursuit of money and renown.
These are lightweight men. Folded doilies of masculinity. Their presence in the modern Democratic Party make me nostalge for stronger minds. Roosevelt, Truman, and Johnson. Dean Rusk and Henry Jackson. Substantial Democrats in foreign policy…
No. The nation’s attention has not been won.
I fear a calamity.
