The Unbearable Lightness of Liberalism

In 2008, half the people who watched the Fox News Channel were over sixty-three, which is the oldest demographic in the cable-news business, and, according to a poll, the majority of the ones who watched the most strident programs, such as Sean Hannity’s and Bill O’Reilly’s shows, were men. All that chesty fulminating apparently functions as political Cialis. Fox News shows should probably carry a warning: Contact your doctor if you have rage lasting more than four hours.

Louis Menand in the New Yorker, Nov. 2, 2009

You’d never guess that, age, race, and gender-wise, Louis Menand is right in the middle of the demographic he holds in such contempt. In his rhetoric, and no doubt his estimation of his own virility, Menand is still the young Turk of his student days. And still, it appears, prone to the lazy logic of sophomore liberalism, which leads him to induce that Fox is bad because it attracts an audience of older white men; i.e., the bad guys.

I envy liberals the ease with which they are able to demonize their enemies while certifying their own moral machismo. Surely there’s no easier target than old white men; they’re the proverbial fish in the liberal barrel, the only ethnicity excluded from the Diversity Club. No need really to throw in the Cialis dig; New Yorker readers already share Menand’s scorn for these guys. That’s just piling on.

How nice it must be to be a liberal pundit or politician. No need to be funny or smart; all you have to do is toss off a few proper nouns from the party-approved punch list, guaranteed to put the tribe into hooting, stomping, fist-pumping delirium. Bush (Boo! Hiss!). Cheney (Aargh!). Haliburton (Hey, Hey, Ho, Ho!). Rush Limbaugh (Chortle! Snort!). In less than a dozen syllables, you can have the crowd up on their feet and ready to follow you out the door to the barricades.

Or, in this case, down to the Fox Broadcasting Studios.

Got My Bark Back

OK. I'm OK. I've calmed down. I think I'm getting my bark back. Sorry about that. Let's see, where to start? H1N1 hysteria? The Fed stimulus gusher? Presidential pussy-footing in Afganistan? Kulongoski's greening of Oregon (while fleecing the taxpayers)? Gay wedding bells?

Or how about the Issue du Jour: health care reform? Now there's something I know about. My most recent health care experience cost Mr. B. $87 for a rabies shot and a lecture from the vet about my, um, full figure (I think they're carrying this obesity thing a bit far, don't you? After all, I am a Newfie!). Health care costs at my house are going up faster than Al Gore's CO2 emissions, and I don't see anything in the 2,000 page "Affordable Health Care for America Act" that is going to reform that.

Aaargh. Grrugh. Uh oh. Starting to feel a little hoarse . . . .

Barf

That's what comes out when I start to say "bark" but end up with "arf." It happened again this morning as I was reading this alarming report in The O. Further proof, if any was needed, of the demise of intelligent life in Oregon. With our economy flatlining, public services bankrupt, and education system in the ditch, the poodles in Salem have decided to tackle a problem they really know something about: bullying. Courtesy, once again, of Corvallis Democrat Sara Gelser (see "Teechur tuchd mi brest," below), who is turning into a one-woman children’s crusade. Read House Bill 2599 and weep; words just fail me now.

The more things change . . .

Oh wait. Turns out Mr. O and the Dems do have a strategy after all: Declare war on Rush Limbaugh! That should fix things. Of course, Rush is not quite Bush. He’s not even a politician. But he is, says media muse and Clintonian Holy Man Paul Begala, “the bloated face and drug-addled voice of the Republican Party.” I guess any piñata will do in a pinch.

So the Party of Peace and Tolerance will now take a short time out from running the country to administer a good thumping to drugs, obesity, and conservatism. Democrats always were better at bashing things than fixing things. Some things never change.

Change We Can Believe In

It’s easier to be in opposition than in power, as Barack Obama and his team of geniuses are finding out this week. Heaping scorn on Bush and Halliburton was a great strategy for getting elected; not so much for running a country. It turns out that the economy, not Gitmo or warrantless wiretapping, is The Big Issue.

Alas, Democrats don’t have a clue about economics. Every word they speak and every bill they pass just reminds all the smart people to take whatever money they have left and bury it in the back yard until the grown-ups return to Washington. Fortunately, the editors of the Wall Street Journal are able to explain things (read it here), in language even Democrats can understand.

"Teechur tuchd mi brest"

Oregon school kids have a new BFF in the state legislature. Teacher’s mean? School’s boring? Dog ate your homework? No problem. Just say “He touched me there.” (Or, alternatively, “She touched me there.” We celebrate diversity in Oregon). That’ll show teacher who’s the boss, get you off the hook for any under-performance issues (spelling, for instance), and, with any luck, produce a tidy cash kickback for mom, dad and the family lawyer.

For this you can thank Sara Gelser (D-Corvallis) and the other poodles down in Salem who have bravely put aside the effort to salvage the state’s wrecked economy in order to rescue Oregon school children from a menacing horde of randy teachers. They’ve cooked up no less than seven new bills to broaden the reach of the sex police and prescribe “appropriate” behavior for the rest of us (example: “Don’t invade their personal space”). They also plan to raise the age of consent to infinity and do away with any pesky policies intended to protect teachers from having their lives ruined by unsubstantiated accusations. No more of that nonsense if this legislature has its way.

It’s a big problem. According to The Oregonian (don’t you love the way They capitalize the article?), a whopping .0002% of Oregon’s 35,000 licensed teachers were convicted of “crimes involving sexual or physical contact with a child” last year. Sexual or physical contact being rather broadly defined these days, that could include anything from sodomy to a sly wink. Of course the sleuths at the O, who have been dogging this issue for several years now, believe that’s just the tip of the iceberg. If we start monitoring teacher’s emails and dissecting their Facebook pages, we might be able to get that number up to .0004%.

Imagine what these people could do if they turned their guns on a real problem. Does it really make sense to be sermonizing about the need for quality teachers while making the profession toxic to any sane person? Or screaming incessantly for more money for schools while opening the floodgates to a tsunami of costly litigation? As they used to say in Oregon, that dog don’t hunt.

Speaking of environmental justice . . .

Did no one else smell this story? Is no one shocked that a respected public servant who was trying to do his job now faces three years in jail, $50,000 a day in fines, and the destruction of his career for a mechanical error that happened on his watch and resulted in no evidence of environmental damage? Or that county taxpayers have to pick up the tab for $170,000 in fines, not to mention all future paychecks for a new “environmental compliance officer”? This, of course, after they went to the enormous expense of carefully transporting their dredging spoils to specially built holding ponds in an effort to comply with a preposterous Army Corps of Engineers regulation that prohibits simply moving the dirt from one side of the river to the other.

Wake up sleepyheads. Every time the EPA or the Corps of Engineers or any of the dozens of other agencies with some jurisdiction over the lands and waters we use decides to lower the permissible level of some obscure contaminant from 3 parts per million to 2 parts per million, companies go out of business, people lose jobs, the cost of providing public services goes through the roof (ditto our tax burden), and the entire economy is taken down another notch.

The benefit to the environment is zero. The only dogs benefiting here are the environmental activist groups and their lawyers, who grow richer and bolder with every lawsuit. This is not justice. It is insanity.

Bridge to Justice?

Oh wait. Turns out Sam Adams is not the craziest poodle on the PDX City Council. Newbie commissioner Amanda Fritz thinks the bridge planning team ought to include "specialists on health and environmental justice."

What are they putting in the dog food down at City Hall?

Bridge to Nowhere

Now I know why liberals think Sam Adams is so smart. His proclamation on the proposed Columbia River Crossing is so packed with tortured metaphors and bureaucratic clichés that it could only have been written by someone who has spent his entire adult life in committee meetings, surrounded by chart packs and earnest discussion about how many ways you can get words like “impacts” and “partnerships” and “innovation” into the departmental mission statement.

Normal people build bridges. For Portlanders, it's got to be a “performance-goal-based thermostat” that increases safety, reduces carbon footprints, actively manages daily mobility, and shows the world "a smarter way forward" (not to mention a slew of new acronyms). I can see now why the price of the Portland Aerial Tram ballooned to four times its initial cost estimate.

After reading this piece three times, I figured out that it’s just Sam’s way of saying he wants a few more lanes on the bridge, which of course will be “phased and managed” by Sam and the other smart folks at City Hall whose contribution to the science of traffic management thus far has been to jam Portland’s neighborhoods with speed bumps and curb extensions.

Back on earth, most of us think the purpose of the bridge is to get people from one side of the river to the other as efficiently as possible. Hopefully the politicians will get out of the way and let the engineers build a bridge that gets the job done. With any luck, it might even be beautiful.

Now there’s something future generations might actually thank us for.

Mad Dog

It's not easy being me. Big. Black. Newfie (mix actually; I have spaniels in my family tree). I'm loyal, sweet tempered, affectionate, love children, blah, blah, blah. But I'm not like the other dogs in the park. I think about things. And I worry. That's because I live in a crazy place. It's run by a bunch of French Poodles who spend all their time sniffiing each others' butts. These puppies are totally oblivious to what goes on in the real world.

The guy I walk with every day, Mr. B., says being conservative in Portland is like being a snowball in hell. He may be a grouchy old man, but I think he's got that right. I guess you could say I'm a dog on the hunt for common sense in a field of foolishness. If you sniff any out, let me know.