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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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11/2010 won't come soon enough for me!

Semper Fi,
Kelly

1 posted on 08/08/2009 7:15:32 AM PDT by kellynla
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To: kellynla

Haha! Gotta love Mark!


2 posted on 08/08/2009 7:23:35 AM PDT by swatbuznik
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To: kellynla

>>Sen. Barbara Boxer has denounced dissenters from Obama’s health-care proposals as too “well-dressed” to be genuine.

Note to Barbie: Only stinking hippie leftists (i.e. your constituents) show up to meet with public officials wearing hobo clothing and smelling like a cat’s ass!


3 posted on 08/08/2009 7:23:57 AM PDT by Bryanw92 (Question O-thority!)
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To: kellynla

Absolutely brilliant! Steyn outdid himself this time. Thanks for posting.


4 posted on 08/08/2009 7:27:22 AM PDT by Wombat Ark
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To: kellynla

Once again Steyn proves himself to be a master pun-dit. Get it?


5 posted on 08/08/2009 7:28:05 AM PDT by AndrewB (FUBO)
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To: kellynla

Meanwhile the media keeps running stuff about Paula Abdul on American Idol for hours and hours.


6 posted on 08/08/2009 7:28:36 AM PDT by JudgemAll (control freaks, their world & their problem with my gun and my protecting my private party)
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To: kellynla

I AM SPARTACUS !!!

Marc Stein is da man!


7 posted on 08/08/2009 7:29:18 AM PDT by UltraKonservativen (( YOU CAN'T FIX STUPID!!!))
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To: kellynla

Thanks for posting. Mark Steyn excellent as usual.


8 posted on 08/08/2009 7:29:25 AM PDT by rockinqsranch (Dems, Libs, Socialists...Call 'em What you Will, They ALL have Fairies Living In Their Trees.)
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To: kellynla

Thanks for the post. Satire it may be, so true it is.


9 posted on 08/08/2009 7:29:41 AM PDT by FreeSouthernAmerican (If Only To Be Left To Live My Own Life)
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To: kellynla

So far I have restrained myself from emailing flag@whitehouse.com. I am afraid of what I might tell them about anti-American behavior I have observed since January.


10 posted on 08/08/2009 7:29:45 AM PDT by Homer_J_Simpson ("Every nation has the government that it deserves." - Joseph de Maistre (1753-1821))
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To: kellynla

Hopenstasi bump


11 posted on 08/08/2009 7:29:45 AM PDT by Free State Four
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To: kellynla

I AM SPARTACUS !!!

Mark Steyn is da man!


12 posted on 08/08/2009 7:30:35 AM PDT by UltraKonservativen (( YOU CAN'T FIX STUPID!!!))
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To: kellynla

Semper Fi backatcha

Here’s BO’s latest effort to calm his base down...

“Have I Told You Lately?” (apologies to Van Morrison and Rod Stewart)

Have I told you lately that I’m a black guy?
Can I serve you some more pie in the sky?
I gush forth “cool” and “vibrance”
Like a million fire hydrants.
Ease your guilt trip , that’s what I do

Have I told you lately that I’m a black guy?
Last year, when I said “Jump!”, y’all asked “how high”?
Damn, you folks were easy-
You’d have voted for George and Weezy.
Soothe your self loathing, that’s what I do.

Have I told you lately how I scammed you?”
Hell, I mean even my minister “God damned” you!
I could spit in your faces.
You won’t object-’cause that’d be racist.
Kneel before me, that’s what you do.

I knew the reason I’d win,
was the color of my skin.
I played you all just like a fool.
No one cared if I lied,
Or that I was unqualified.
You just wanted to feel cool.

Have you noticed lately-we’ve been stumbling?
And it’s due primarily to my bumbling
Now I need you to be patient,
As I go out on vacation.
Get my groove on, that’s what I do.

Will Iran be free? Oh I guess one day.
Now shut up, and let me eat my sundae.
I don’t give a damn ‘bout Neda-
Just listen to my, er, the Supreme Leader
I’ll vote “present”, that’s what I do.

Have I told you America, how much I hate you?
And I’m, oh so glad to eviscerate you?
I don’t see “lefties” or “righties”-
Just see a bunch of whities.
Get some payback, that’s what I do.

Yes, I know you’re stressin’
as I lead us into a depression
But that’s too bad, cause it’s too late.
As things go from bad to worse,
celebrate that I’m “diverse”.
Then bend over and accept your fate.

Now that I’m in charge, we do things my way,
And when I get done, we’ll be like Zimbabwe.
All of this liberal madness,
is gonna end in sadness.
Join the Third World, that’s what we’ll do


13 posted on 08/08/2009 7:31:11 AM PDT by Mac from Cleveland (How to make a small fortune in the Obama era--first, start off with a big fortune....)
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To: kellynla

Careful, Mark. Talk like this can render you a man without a country.


14 posted on 08/08/2009 7:31:39 AM PDT by Thommas
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To: Free State Four
Ja wohl, "hopenstasi".

.

15 posted on 08/08/2009 7:33:18 AM PDT by Seaplaner (Never give in. Never give in. Never...except to convictions of honour and good sense. W. Churchill)
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To: Bryanw92

I just sent this article to flag@whitehouse.gov

HHHAAAAA - just start sending them whatever you can!


16 posted on 08/08/2009 7:35:07 AM PDT by MissH
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To: kellynla

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.

Steyn the master word smith.


17 posted on 08/08/2009 7:35:28 AM PDT by tet68 ( " We would not die in that man's company, that fears his fellowship to die with us...." Henry V.)
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To: Thommas

If my country keeps going the direction it is, that wouldn’t be a bad thing.


18 posted on 08/08/2009 7:36:32 AM PDT by FreeSouthernAmerican (If Only To Be Left To Live My Own Life)
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To: MissH
I did too, and it bounced. Is there some sort of problem?

:-)

schu

19 posted on 08/08/2009 7:41:14 AM PDT by schu
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To: kellynla
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).

I'm laughing through the tears! Steyn just keeps getting better and better. Thank God we have voices like his and Mark Levin's and Rush's in times like these.

20 posted on 08/08/2009 7:44:57 AM PDT by Rummyfan (Iraq: it's not about Iraq anymore, it's about the USA!)
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