Thursday, October 23, 2003
Lest We Forget...
The GOP media has been trying out various anti-Clark scripts lately, tossing them like spagetti against the wall to see what sticks. They've marched a gaggle of ex-military talking hens out to take potshots at Clark's character--most of which have been either transparently false or transparently green-eyed.
Clark, of course, was a Rhodes Scholar as well as a four-star general, so expect the right-wing poop-throwers to toss the same anti-intellectual stinkers they always do when they're running a mentally challenged or flat-out incompetent candidate. Some recent examples may come to mind.
It does work. Most people don't like "eggheads", and while I suspect Wesley Clark would beat up any two or three guys that called him that, the GOP will undoubtedly try to turn his academic achievements into some sort of sneered insult, just as they did with Al Gore--who was defeated as much as anything by the fact that he knew what he was talking about, the smug bastard.
America is in love with the idea of itself as a tall, quiet cowboy--the strong silent type who takes a licking and keeps on killing Japs, Nazis, Vietcong, or hippies, depending on the movie. When it looks in the mirror the country wants to see--according to its age or mood--Gary Cooper, John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, or in an ironic sign of the times, Russell Crowe--staring back.
This "mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the toughest of them all" game always requires some suspension of disbelief. But America often sees what it wants to see, and that includes when it looks at its President--which these days takes a suspension of disbelief worthy of Norman Bates.
Indeed, it sometimes seems as if the only person who truly believes the President's PR is the President himself. His handlers surely know his image is crafted; after all, they crafted it. But it's not always clear he himself does. At times it appears he actually believes that he's a cowboy, a fighter pilot, and a regular guy who went to public high school in Texas.
If so, it's what we call "believing your own press clippings", and it's never pretty to watch. It's one thing to play the part of the Lone Ranger for the benefit of the voters, as Reagan did; it's another to have "Kemo Sabi" embroidered on your bathrobe. But that's the danger of being the boss' son: no one ever tells you the ugly truth--they just pretend to laugh at your jokes, and drink a lot when they go home at night.
In any event, the quiet tough guy is the ideal American, we collectively agree; he's the man who settled the west, forged the steel that won the war, beat the Nazis back to Berlin and the bad guys off the streets of San Francisco, and always got the girl, even if, as in High Plains Drifter, the girl wasn't so sure she wanted to be got. Ah, she'll come around.
There's no denying this load of mostly Hollywood-created rubbish has its appeal, and is based to a degree on reality. America was a wilderness that took enormous courage and fortitude to tame. Also more than a little cutthroatedess. But hey, this is the wild west--there's no room for eggheads.
Except for the little fact that the founders of this country were some of the most brilliant men who ever lived. And we're not talking frontier smart, we're talking book smart. Jefferson, Madison, Adams, Franklin...with the possible exception of Jefferson none of these guys would be much help in a bar fight or on the gridiron. You could make a case for Washington, but let's face it, the first President George was the high school quarterback of the founding fathers; he may have ridden on the lead float at the homecoming parade, but he wasn't exactly writing policy papers for the student government.
The fact is, the men responsible for building the framework for the most successful democracy in history were a bunch of book smart eggheads. Diplomats, writers, inventors, so called "gentleman farmers"--those were the men that created America.
We won't hold our breath waiting for a country song glorifying brainiacs; it's much easier and more profitable to sing about lonesome cowboys and truck drivers. But when the right-wing smear machine gears up its attack on Wesley Clark's being a Rhode Scholar--and it will--bear in mind that the America our strong silent types fought so strongly (and so silently) for was created by a group of brilliant eggheads with wills of iron and nerves of steel.
Clark, of course, was a Rhodes Scholar as well as a four-star general, so expect the right-wing poop-throwers to toss the same anti-intellectual stinkers they always do when they're running a mentally challenged or flat-out incompetent candidate. Some recent examples may come to mind.
It does work. Most people don't like "eggheads", and while I suspect Wesley Clark would beat up any two or three guys that called him that, the GOP will undoubtedly try to turn his academic achievements into some sort of sneered insult, just as they did with Al Gore--who was defeated as much as anything by the fact that he knew what he was talking about, the smug bastard.
America is in love with the idea of itself as a tall, quiet cowboy--the strong silent type who takes a licking and keeps on killing Japs, Nazis, Vietcong, or hippies, depending on the movie. When it looks in the mirror the country wants to see--according to its age or mood--Gary Cooper, John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, or in an ironic sign of the times, Russell Crowe--staring back.
This "mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the toughest of them all" game always requires some suspension of disbelief. But America often sees what it wants to see, and that includes when it looks at its President--which these days takes a suspension of disbelief worthy of Norman Bates.
Indeed, it sometimes seems as if the only person who truly believes the President's PR is the President himself. His handlers surely know his image is crafted; after all, they crafted it. But it's not always clear he himself does. At times it appears he actually believes that he's a cowboy, a fighter pilot, and a regular guy who went to public high school in Texas.
If so, it's what we call "believing your own press clippings", and it's never pretty to watch. It's one thing to play the part of the Lone Ranger for the benefit of the voters, as Reagan did; it's another to have "Kemo Sabi" embroidered on your bathrobe. But that's the danger of being the boss' son: no one ever tells you the ugly truth--they just pretend to laugh at your jokes, and drink a lot when they go home at night.
In any event, the quiet tough guy is the ideal American, we collectively agree; he's the man who settled the west, forged the steel that won the war, beat the Nazis back to Berlin and the bad guys off the streets of San Francisco, and always got the girl, even if, as in High Plains Drifter, the girl wasn't so sure she wanted to be got. Ah, she'll come around.
There's no denying this load of mostly Hollywood-created rubbish has its appeal, and is based to a degree on reality. America was a wilderness that took enormous courage and fortitude to tame. Also more than a little cutthroatedess. But hey, this is the wild west--there's no room for eggheads.
Except for the little fact that the founders of this country were some of the most brilliant men who ever lived. And we're not talking frontier smart, we're talking book smart. Jefferson, Madison, Adams, Franklin...with the possible exception of Jefferson none of these guys would be much help in a bar fight or on the gridiron. You could make a case for Washington, but let's face it, the first President George was the high school quarterback of the founding fathers; he may have ridden on the lead float at the homecoming parade, but he wasn't exactly writing policy papers for the student government.
The fact is, the men responsible for building the framework for the most successful democracy in history were a bunch of book smart eggheads. Diplomats, writers, inventors, so called "gentleman farmers"--those were the men that created America.
We won't hold our breath waiting for a country song glorifying brainiacs; it's much easier and more profitable to sing about lonesome cowboys and truck drivers. But when the right-wing smear machine gears up its attack on Wesley Clark's being a Rhode Scholar--and it will--bear in mind that the America our strong silent types fought so strongly (and so silently) for was created by a group of brilliant eggheads with wills of iron and nerves of steel.
