Posted on 11/04/2004 8:30:59 AM PST by quidnunc
BMP
Well, Steyn is good, but Coulter is better! Read her recent 40 Excuses & a Mule.
Mark Steyn has emerged from the 2004 campaign as the finest columnist in the world.
Yes, Moore prospered. And his stint on the Hollywood A list doubtless got him the best nookie he's ever had in his life.
What the heck.... The Whole Enchilada!
Mark Steyn: Bush hatred flops big
November 05, 2004
A COUPLE of weeks ago, Michael Moore was touring the US offering unregistered voters incentives such as free "clean underwear" in return for a promise that they would show up at the polls. I'm not sure whose underwear he was giving away - his own or someone else's - but, if it was the former, the grateful recipients evidently accepted a pair, went and camped out in them up in the Rockies, and forgot to return to town for election day.
The swollen turn-out on Tuesday -- the biggest since 1968 -- killed one of Moore's most cherished myths: that if only more people voted, the natural "liberal" "progressive" nature of the American people would manifest itself. "Slackers are going to rise up in this election," he predicted. "The slacker motto is: Sleep till noon, drink beer, vote Kerry."
Well, two out of three ain't bad.
According to Moore, there are hardly any conservatives in the US, but they do a great job of persuading all the progressives to stay away from the polling booths by putting obstacles in their path, like not giving them free underwear. So the long queues reported at polls were assumed by the media to be proof of that big pro-John Kerry youth vote we always hear about.
But, as always, the "youth vote" never showed up. Last year, I saw some patronising BBC documentary (aired on Your ABC) claiming that George W. Bush was controlled by fanatical Christian fundamentalists who believe in the Rapture. The "youth vote" is the Left's equivalent of the Rapture: it may happen one day, but not on any schedule you want to put money on.
If you had to pick a picture that summed up what went wrong for Kerry, it would be the shot of Moore and Jimmy Carter in the presidential box at the Democratic national convention. All you needed was P.Diddy, aka Puff Daddy (or vice-versa), of the Vote or Die mythical youth movement and it would have been the Democrats' equivalent of those Roosevelt-Churchill-Stalin wartime summits. That picture is the Dems in a nutshell: yesterday's politicians, today's show-biz colossi. It's the other way round at the Republican Party: yesterday's show-biz colossi (well, Pat Boone) and today's politicians -- Bush, Arnold Schwarzenegger, John McCain, Rudolph Giuliani. On the whole, that's a better combo.
The Michael Mooronification of the Democratic Party proved a fatal error. Moore is the chief promoter of what's now the received opinion of Bush among the condescending Left -- Chimpy Bushitler the World's Dumbest Fascist. There are some takers for this view, but not enough. By running a campaign fuelled by Moore's caricature of Bush, the Democrats were doomed to defeat.
Granted, Kerry was more nuanced about Chimpy: he ran an over-cautious campaign putting up his supposed "competence" against Bush's "incompetence", which naturally degenerated into reflexive anti-Bush oppositionism. Meanwhile, everyone around Kerry sounded like they'd OD-ed on Moore: his stepson, Chris Heinz, called Bush a "cokehead" and John Edwards went on about war profiteering.
Happily, The Guardian, the fever chart of the British Left, decided to arrange a controlled experiment in the effectiveness of the Bush-hating strategy. They targeted the voters of Clark County, Ohio, one of the swingiest counties in a critical swing state, by getting Guardian readers to send them letters explaining why they shouldn't vote for Bush. Antonia Fraser, John Le Carre and other celebrated Guardianistas put pen to paper and marshalled their arguments.
Richard Dawkins demonstrated the incisive forensic analysis of Bush one expects from one of Oxford's most celebrated professors: "An idiot he may be, but he is also sly, mendacious and vindictive ... thuggish ... pariah state ... brazenly lying ... cynical mendacity." Gloomy film-maker Ken Loach, who makes Moore look like Busby Berkeley, began: "Today, your country is reviled across continents as never before ..."
In return, The Guardian received many responses, saying things like "real Americans aren't interested in your pansy-ass, tea-sipping opinions", which was one of the more polite replies in that it eschewed observations on the defects of British dentistry. In 2000, Clark County went narrowly for Al Gore. On Tuesday, it went decisively for Bush. The local Republican chairman claimed that Fraser and co had done a grand job of rallying the county's Bush voters and getting them to the poll. Thank you, Guardian lefties! Had they launched Operation Massachusetts, Kerry would have lost his own state.
Bush hatred flopped big on Tuesday. That's not a problem for The Guardian's editors, who have to sell papers in Britain, but it is for a Democratic Party that has to sell itself in the US. Michael Mooronification damages everyone who gets it.
Look at the recently resurrected Osama bin Laden. Three years ago he was Mr Jihad, demanding the restoration of the caliphate, the return of Andalucia, the conversion of every infidel to Islam, the imposition of sharia and an end to fornication, homosexuality and alcoholic beverages. In his latest video he sounds like some elderly Berkeley sociology student making lame jokes about Halliburton and Bush reading My Pet Goat.
The lesson of Moore's underwear, P.Diddy's "Vote or Die", Bruce Springsteen's "Rock the Vote" and all the other celebrity props of the Democratic Party is very simple: having the most popular figures in popular culture on your side does nothing for your popularity. Every time Kerry was seen cavorting with Hollywood A-listers, he was alienating the Z-listers -- the American people.
On election day, I was driving through Vermont and found myself behind a car with a Kerry-Edwards sticker and an Instead of Being Born Again, Why Not Grow Up? sticker. Fair enough, the feeling's mutual: the secular, coastal, libertine Democratic Party has zero appeal to born-again Christians. The problem is the crude numbers: 40 per cent of Americans identify themselves as born-again. So right there you've written off 40 per cent of the electorate. What have you got in return? The gay vote? Five per cent? And Bush got a quarter of that.
Another significant sliver of their vote doesn't care much for the holy rollers but recognises that on the big issue -- the war -- the Republicans are right.
Feisty internet blogger Michele Catalano put it very well in her election day declaration: "I voted for George Bush. I am not a redneck. I do not spend my days watching cars race around a track while I drink cheap beer and slap my woman on the ass. I am not a Bible thumper. In fact, I am an atheist. I am not a homophobe."
In their desperation, the Democrats have wound up damning a big chunk of the American people as stupid, bigoted and a bigger threat than Saddam Hussein and al-Qa'ida. This is ridiculous. As Catalano continues: "You will not be thrown in jail for the sole reason of being a liberal. Your child's public school will not suddenly turn into a centre for Christian brainwashing. Your favourite bookstore will not turn into puritan central."
She didn't add to that list of phony terrors my own choice gem from this election season, courtesy of that eminent political analyst Cameron Diaz, who advised Oprah Winfrey's viewers: "Women have so much to lose. I mean, we could lose the right to our bodies. If you think that rape should be legal, then don't vote. But if you think that you have a right to your body, then you should vote." Poor Cameron. The scary people won. She's just lost all rights to her body. Unlike Alec Baldwin, she can't even move to France. Her body was grounded in Terminal D.
As long as Democrats prefer phantom enemies to real ones, they will be increasingly irrelevant. If I were a Dem, I'd support any candidate who pledged to de-celebrify the party and disown the paranoid Left. That's the big lesson of this election: on Tuesday, the bottom dropped out of Moore's underpants.
Ping!
The Johns have been flushed!
ROFLMAO Can't agree with you, I like Ann, but Steyn is simply the best.
Bless you for posting that.
Michael Who?
LOL!
"An idiot he may be, but he is also sly, mendacious and vindictive ... thuggish ... pariah state ... brazenly lying ... cynical mendacity."
I'm thinking this is almost as good as the line about the "fierce, war-like band...". ;-)
So? Like he'd ever be able to see what she was doing. Oh, OTOH, he is a cameraman (glorified).
Huzzah! Steyn Strikes Again!
Yeah - I caught that one too. The Dems listen to Zell Miller or they continue to lose. I don't care which.
"Has anyone considered that MOORE is olde english for ISLAMIC?"
MOORE =MOOR(s)*
*(As in the Old North African Muslim Moors that attacked Christian Spain)
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