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Mark Steyn: The Community Is Restless
National Review ^ | August 8, 2009 7:00 AM | Mark Steyn

Posted on 08/08/2009 7:15:31 AM PDT by kellynla

DISSENT IS THE HIGHEST FORM OF PATRIOTI- . . . No, wait, that bumper sticker expired January 20. Under the stimulus bill, there’s a new $1.3 trillion bills-for-bumpers program whereby, if you peel off old slogans now recognized as environmentally harmful (“QUESTION AUTHORITY”), you can trade them in for a new “CELEBRATE CONFORMITY” sticker, complete with a holographic image of President Obama that never takes his eyes off you.

“The right-wing extremist Republican base is back!” warns the Democratic National Committee. These right-wing extremists have been given their marching orders by their masters: They’ve been directed to show up at “thousands of events,” told to “organize,” “knock on doors” . . .

No, wait. My mistake. That’s the e-mail I got from Mitch Stewart, Director of “Organizing for America” at BarackObama.com. But that’s the good kind of “organizing.” Obama’s a community organizer. We’re the community. He organizes us. What part of that don’t you get?

When the community starts organizing against the organizer, the whole rigmarole goes to hell. Not that these extremists showing up at town-hall meetings are real members of the “community.” Have you noticed how tailored they are? Dissent is now the hautest form of couturism. Sen. Barbara Boxer has denounced dissenters from Obama’s health-care proposals as too “well-dressed” to be genuine. Only the emperor has new clothes. Everyone knows that.

Thankfully, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs has seen through the “manufactured anger” of “the Brooks Brothers brigade.” Did he announce this in a rumpled suit? He’s a press secretary who won’t press. Apparently, the health-care debate now has a dress code. Soon you won’t be able to get in unless you’re wearing Barack Obama mom-jeans, manufactured at a converted GM plant by an assembly line of retrained insurance salesmen. Any day now, Hollywood will greenlight a new movie in which an insane Sarah Palin figure picks out her outfit for spreading disinformation (The Lyin’, the Witch, and the Wardrobe).

Meanwhile, Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the House, added her own distinctive wrinkle to the Brooks Brothers menswear. She disdained the anti-Obamacare protests as fake grassroots. “I think they’re AstroTurf,” she declared. “They’re carrying swastikas and symbols like that to a town meeting on health care.”

Is this one of those Chinese Whispers things? Obama told Gibbs to tell Boxer to tell Reid, and by the time it reached Pelosi, it came out as uniforms night: Brooks Brothers. Mel Brooks. Springtime for Hitler. Swastikas. Or is the speaker right to sound the alarm about this army of goosestepping dandies? A veritable Garbstapo jackbooting down the interstate like it’s a catwalk in Milan.

Fortunately, this president doesn’t fold like a Robert Gibbs suit. He won’t give in to the attire pressure. So, on Monday, the official White House website drew attention to the alarming amount of “disinformation about health insurance reform.” “These rumors often travel just below the surface,” warned Macon Phillips, Chief Commissar of the Hopenstasi . . . whoops, I mean White House Director of New Media, “via chain e-mails or through casual conversation.”

“Casual conversation,” eh? Why can’t these “dissenters” just be like normal people and read off the teleprompter?

“Since we can’t keep track of all of them here at the White House, we’re asking for your help,” continued Commissar Phillips. “If you get an email or see something on the web about health-insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov.”

Reporting dissent is the highest form of patriotism! Is your neighbor suspiciously “well-dressed”? Is he mouthing off about cancer-survival rates under socialized-medical systems while wearing a cravat? Give us his name, and we’ll give you his spats! Just go to flag@whitehouse.gov, not to be confused with flagging@whitehouse.gov, which is the e-mail address for reporting President Obama’s latest approval rating. Go to flay@whitehouse.gov if you’d like Speaker Pelosi to walk across your back as a whip-wielding SS dominatrix barking “Vee haff vays of making you tokk less casually, dummkopf!” Go to flange@whitehouse.gov if you need parts for your new government car, or your new government hip replacement. Go to flaunt@whitehouse.gov if you’d like a special preview of President Obama’s latest bare-chested pictorial for Vanity Fair. Go to flatulent@whitehouse.gov if you’d like to report your neighbor’s cow for excessive CO2 emissions.

Better yet, just send everything on everyone to the White House. Unsure about that old hippie artist across the street? The one who said, “Yeah, I voted for Obama ‘cause I thought it’d be cool to have an African-American president. But, since the economic downturn, the bottom’s really dropped out of my hemp-tapestry market.” He seems to be starting to entertain impure thoughts about the Dear Leader’s plans for us, doesn’t he? And yet, with the best will in the world, one couldn’t really describe him as a snappy dresser, could one? It’s a tough call. So best be on the safe side, and report everyone. The administration can hire people to sift through it all, and that will stimulate the economy even more than the new cashmere-for-clunkers program: Are you an angry right-wing fop? Why not trade in your frankly effete sweater for an evening with Joe Biden?

The Washington Post’s Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite (not, as far as I know, a Brooks sister to the Brooks Brothers) says “the town hall demolition derby” is “cynically designed and carried out in order to destroy real debate in the public square over health insurance reform.” Decrying the snarling, angry protesters, liberal talk-show host Bill Press (no relation to the Corby Trouser Press) says that “Americans want serious discussion” on health care. If only we’d stuck to the president’s August timetable and passed a gazillion-page health-care reform entirely unread by the House of Representatives or the Senate (the world’s greatest deliberative body) in nothing flat, we’d now have all the time in the world to sit around having a “serious discussion” and “real debate” on whatever it was we just did to one-sixth of the economy.

But a sick, deranged, un-American mob has put an end to all that moderate and reasonable steamrollering by showing up and yelling insane, out-of-control questions like, “Awfully sorry to bother you, your Most Excellent Senatorial Eminence, but I was wondering if you could tell me why you don’t read any of the laws you make before you make them into law?”

The community is restless. The firm hand of greater organization is needed.


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Editorial; Government; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: conservativism; gop; marksteyn; republicans; steyn
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To: kellynla

“11/2010 won’t come soon enough for me! “

Nor for me!!!

Call for REAL REFORM in 2010!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


21 posted on 08/08/2009 7:48:30 AM PDT by SumProVita (Cogito, ergo...Sum Pro Vita. (Modified DeCartes))
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To: kellynla

“Apparently, the health-care debate now has a dress code.”
Mark is a riot!! Remember to dress casually all you town hallers


22 posted on 08/08/2009 7:49:15 AM PDT by timetostand
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To: UltraKonservativen

And Obama is Crassus!

23 posted on 08/08/2009 7:51:19 AM PDT by Rummyfan (Iraq: it's not about Iraq anymore, it's about the USA!)
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To: kellynla

it would be even funnier if it wasn’t true


24 posted on 08/08/2009 7:51:19 AM PDT by paul51 (11 September 2001 - Never forget)
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To: kellynla
This neighborhood 'poll watcher' is simply some guy hanging out, helping voters make the 'correct decision' in the Philadelphia area during the November elections. He's no threat, according to Eric "The Coward" Holder. Look! He is dressed for success. Note the couture accessory known as a "billy club" - necessary accessory for the thug-about-town!

25 posted on 08/08/2009 7:55:32 AM PDT by SERKIT ("Blazing Saddles" explains it all.....)
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To: kellynla
a new “CELEBRATE CONFORMITY” sticker, complete with a holographic image of President Obama that never takes his eyes off you.

LOL!

Sadly, I think 2010 will be too late.

26 posted on 08/08/2009 8:00:06 AM PDT by livius
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To: MissH

Can I sign them up for junk mail and email viruses?


27 posted on 08/08/2009 8:04:27 AM PDT by GeronL (Guilty of the crime of deviationism.)
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To: leilani

28 posted on 08/08/2009 8:15:17 AM PDT by leilani (This post has been rated 'F' for Fishy by The White House Czar for for the Suppression of Dissent)
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To: SumProVita

At this rate, the real reform in 2010 we will be calling for will resemble a real civil war.


29 posted on 08/08/2009 8:17:27 AM PDT by PIF
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To: SERKIT

You failed to note the styish boots he is wearing and made for stomping.


30 posted on 08/08/2009 8:19:24 AM PDT by PIF
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To: PIF

Violence is not necessary. We have more brains and logic on our side. ;-)


31 posted on 08/08/2009 8:21:19 AM PDT by SumProVita (Cogito, ergo...Sum Pro Vita. (Modified DeCartes))
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To: kellynla
“Casual conversation,” eh? Why can’t these “dissenters” just be like normal people and read off the teleprompter?

Giggle. I love Steyn.

I agree, 2010 can't come soon enough.

32 posted on 08/08/2009 8:24:49 AM PDT by MaggieCarta (We're all Detroiters now.)
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To: Homer_J_Simpson

From one Simpson’s character to another, send them the text of 5 USC ss522a from your available email addresses.

Who cares if they get your name...it is federal regulation that you providing them.

I sent it with the subject of “Is This Right-wing Propaganda?”


33 posted on 08/08/2009 8:25:57 AM PDT by Cletus.D.Yokel (Palin shrugged.)
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To: kellynla
Just go to flag@whitehouse.gov, not to be confused with flagging@whitehouse.gov, which is the e-mail address for reporting President Obama’s latest approval rating.

Giggle.

34 posted on 08/08/2009 8:27:26 AM PDT by MaggieCarta (We're all Detroiters now.)
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To: PIF

Ah...good point. Those were probably New Black Panther Party-designed black leather jack boots. Note: the word “black” here has no racial connotation.


35 posted on 08/08/2009 8:30:25 AM PDT by SERKIT ("Blazing Saddles" explains it all.....)
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To: kellynla
I often think that GK Chesterton must be reading Mark Steyn up in heaven, and smiling...


36 posted on 08/08/2009 8:30:42 AM PDT by Joe 6-pack (Que me amat, amet et canem meum)
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IF middle America is full of people like the town of "Jericho", Obama stands NO chance.

Let's hope it's not just fiction.

37 posted on 08/08/2009 8:32:38 AM PDT by Jakarta ex-pat
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To: SumProVita
Usually not... but sometimes it is - like when Hussein decides opposition is not to be tolerated - oh wait, he just did. Or when peaceful protesters are shot en mass - as the Feds did in the 30s when WWI vets wanted help. Logic and brains then become useful for taking the bad guys out, without falling for a phony solution - FDR sent those vets on a nice train ride to Key West, and a hurricane solved the problem - you used to be able to see the steel rails sticking up as you crossed the Key bridges.
38 posted on 08/08/2009 8:36:34 AM PDT by PIF
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To: SERKIT
“Note: the word “black” here has no racial connotation.”

Of course not! The New Black Panther Party is very diversified racially; you have your inner-city blacks, your southern blacks, your east coast blacks, your west coast blacks, and so on. On a side note, the Party is equally diversified in religious affiliation.

39 posted on 08/08/2009 8:41:45 AM PDT by PIF
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To: MissH

Just create a mail forwarding rule and forward all your spam to that address.


40 posted on 08/08/2009 10:02:57 AM PDT by MrsEmmaPeel (a government big enough to give you everything you want, is big enough to take everything you have)
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