LOUDMOUTH
DYKE
In
a statement due out later this month from something called
"California Triangle" magazine, Migden's words are a model
of cowardly ambiguity and gossipy innuendo: the Medusa-headed
Migden, a self-styled "big mouth," breathlessly
confides:
"Of
course, I don't necessarily have that information, and I certainly
don't want to say anything libelous or unreasonable. All I'm
saying is that we believe he has strong ties to the community
– and has for years – and hasn't been forthright about it."
GAYDAR
BREAKDOWN
Please
note that so-called "gay-bashing" – defined nowadays
as anyone who dares assert a traditionalist view of homosexuality
as an aberration – is universally condemned, as poor
Dr. Laura might reasonably attest . . . except when it is
indulged in by gays themselves. Then, and only then, is it
suddenly okay. It is deemed legitimate by gay activists to
"out" homosexuals who cooperate with those considered to be
enemies of the community, i.e. anyone on the right. But Nader
has hardly entered into an alliance with the Christian Coalition,
nor can he be considered in any sense a conservative, except
in his demeanor. Besides that, it turns out that his so-called
"ties to the community" are limited to infrequent visits to
Donnie's Unisex Hair Salon. With his usual class, the low-key
Nader told the San Francisco Chronicle's Phil Matier
and Andrew Ross: "That's like asking, 'When did you stop beating
your wife? But the answer to her inference (that I'm gay)
is no."
I
DON'T EVEN WANT TO THINK ABOUT IT
But
wait a minute, Ralph, not so fast: maybe she really means
you're a dyke, or perhaps even a member of the latest sexual
minority to be added to the victimological litany – the
Transgender community. Pretty scary, eh? Visualize Ralph Nader
in drag. I don't even want to go there!
AMMIANO
RETORTS
In
the only known instance in which Tom Ammiano's views coincide
with my own, the flamboyantly queeny President of San Francisco's
Board of Supervisors – a former (and some would say present)
comedian, who hosts a local TV cable show called "Ammiano
Retorts" – remarked that he doubted he and Nader were
of the same tribe: "But I tell you what,'' Ammiano told
the San Francisco Chronicle. "If Ralph ever calls me
for a date – you'll be the first to know. . . . If he
was sabotaging gay rights, I could see some point, [but] I
mean, what is this?"
WHAT
IT IS
What
this is is a particularly disgusting example of a more
general phenomenon, and that is the campaign to knock the
two third party presidential candidates out of the running
early in the game. In my dispatches from Long Beach, and my
speech to the Reform Party delegates, I outlined the pattern
of smear-mongering and misrepresentation by the media that
colored their coverage. All right, you say, but that's because
Pat is, well, Pat. Yet Nader is now getting the same
treatment. As the mysteriously well-funded Russell Verney
and his cohorts engage in legal maneuvers to tie up the Reform
Party's federal matching funds in court, a legal assault on
the seriously-underfunded Nader campaign is about to commence,
with MasterCard International Inc. filing suit yesterday (Aug.
17) to stop Nader from airing a commercial that takes off
on their much-parodied
"Priceless Moments" commercial. This outrageous attempt
to stifle political speech is justified by MasterCard as an
attempt to "protect" "one of the most successful advertising
campaigns, period." What is being protected here is not a
corporate logo, but the corporate lock on the electoral process.
Parodies have always been lethal weapons in the true liberal's
arsenal, an invaluable device to expose the foibles of the
powerful and incite the people to reform if not revolution.
That the corporatists are now taking aim at this venerable
literary form is a brazen display of naked power – and
a measure of their growing desperation.
THE
SELLING OF AMERICA
For
the Nader ad dramatizes an uncomfortable truth, one that our
elites would prefer that the voters not be exposed to: clips
of Bush and Gore are accompanied by an incisive narration:
"Grilled tenderloin for fundraiser: $1,000 a plate. Campaign
ads filled with half-truths: $10 million. Promises to special
interest groups: over $10 billion. Finding out the truth –
priceless." The people who really run this country –
and a good portion of the rest of the globe – are not
about to let Ralph Nader spoil their fixed election. So far,
the Green Party standard-bearer has been cut a certain amount
of slack by the media: he is, after all, a socialist, albeit
an idiosyncratic American socialist rather than a Marxist
import. This did not, however, stop the New York Times
from bitterly wondering how, in good conscience, he could
steal away all those votes rightfully owned by Gore. The spreading
panic over the Nader factor among the liberal punditocracy
is a wonderful sight to behold – and you can bet that
this latest onslaught of smears and rampaging lawyers is just
the beginning of his problems. . . .
A
GIRL'S EYE VIEW
I
somehow deluded myself into thinking that the attacks on Buchanan
would die down after the Reform Party convention, and that
I would give myself – and my readers – a respite
from my ongoing "in defense of Pat" series of articles. But
Gail
Collins in the New York Times is a case that cries
out for a response, if only to note that the bitch-goddess
of the liberal punditocracy has a style perfectly suited to
her method. Like some character out of Claire Booth Luce's
The Women, Collins' commentary is ultra-catty and highly
specialized, the voice of a feminine world from which ideology
is banished and style lords it over substance. Her's is an
esthetic critique, rather than a political commentary, focused
not on what any of the speakers said but on the bad manners
of delegates sadly lacking any fashion sense
"People,
this is what our politics has been missing: rump caucuses
and delegate challenges and speakers fighting for control
of the microphone. The process that gave you the Mensheviks
versus Bolsheviks, the nomination of Warren G. Harding and
the Chicago Seven is back!"
Oh,
those rude rubes of Reform: why can't they be more "normal,"
and sit there docilely while party leaders issue instructions?
Whoever heard of a delegate challenge at one of the recent
"major" party conventions? (Although I'll bet Collins wouldn't
have disapproved of such effrontery to established authority
when Eisenhower used it to steal the nomination from Taft
in 1952). As a defender of the political status quo, Collins
is naturally horrified when dissident voices get anywhere
near a microphone. Not since Ronald Reagan declared "I paid
for this microphone" has ownership of a major party podium
been ceded to anyone outside the Beltway establishment, and
our elites are determined that it will never happen again.
That is why Buchanan eventually came to inherit the mantle
of Reform after a lifetime in the GOP. This is also why Nader
decided to seriously campaign this time around: in both parties,
the decision had been made by party bosses and their corporate
paymasters long before primary season commenced.
WARREN
G. HARDING AND THE CHICAGO SEVEN
One
can only wonder whether Collins considers Warren G. Harding
a Menshevik or a Bolshevik, but as for the allusion to the
Chicago Seven – right on! Beneath the smug self-satisfaction
of our fat and happy elites, there is a subterranean turmoil,
a seismic shift in the making quite similar to the period
of quiescence that preceded the tumultuous 1960s. In spite
of all the happy talk and the proclamations of "the end of
history," there is a hint of revolution in the air, and the
elites, having sniffed it out early, are determined to nip
it in the bud. But the pundits are talking primarily to themselves,
and in their haughty dismissal of populist movements outside
the New York-Washington axis they reveal their own weakness
– and fear.
ALL
ATWITTER
Mischaracterizing
the Reform Party as having wrapped "itself around a single
personality" – Perot – Collins sneers at Reformers
as "a group of alienated political junkies with nothing much
in common but a tendency to peculiar displays of facial hair."
No doubt the court of King George III was all atwitter over
the tackiness of George Washington's powdered wig, and who
knows but that unshaven backwoods Continentals came in for
some criticism by Ms. Collins' colonial equivalents. The brittle
arrogance of our elites will be their downfall.
CSPAN
AND MALOMARS
Although
her column is datelined "Long Beach," to my knowledge Collins
never showed her easily recognized face in the press room,
and from her description of the events that transpired there
it looks as if she must have holed up in the Long Beach Westin,
curled up with CSPAN and a couple of boxes of Malomars. She
claims that the Buchanan forces succeeded in nominating their
candidate because they "won the critical backing of the center's
rent-a-guard service." Giddy with her own cleverness, and
perhaps a little dizzy from the three-digit weather, Collins
forgets that those rent-a-cops were paid for at the behest
of the Reform Party chairman, Gerry Moan, and other party
officers – who had ample warning of the Verney wrecking
crew's plans to stage a provocation that could end in a physical
confrontation. But never mind the facts: Collins simply can't
be bothered, and doesn't want to burden her readers with them:
as she makes clear enough: "You don't want to know the details.
Let the authorities sort it out. This is God's way of punishing
the Federal Election Commission for not doing more about campaign
finance reform." Not that the somewhat ditzy Collins –
who, like most Female Writers, feels unduly constrained by
hard inflexible facts – knows the details or cares to
know. Let's just turn these malcontents over to the "authorities."
Perhaps we can even have them arrested for disorderly political
conduct.
THE
PUNCHLINE
The
real point of Ms. Collins' vitriol is to make sure that Buchanan
and the Reform Party are locked out of the debates,
"Actually,
this whole convention is an excellent demonstration of why
Mr. Buchanan should be kept out. The debates are for candidates
who have to accept the discipline that comes with seriously
attempting to win the support of half the voting population
of the country. The Reform Party is currently not only a cheesy
fringe operation, but a fractionalized cheesy fringe operation,
torn between a man whose greatest political triumph was winning
slightly more than a quarter of the vote in a New Hampshire
primary and the guy from the Maharishi University of Management.
Let them sink into obscurity in peace and quiet."
THEIR
CHEESINESS, AND OURS
Accept
the discipline imposed by the elites – corporate ownership
of the parties and a bipartisan internationalism – or
else we're not going to let you into the electoral game. In
a paragraph containing not a single reference to political
ideas – or ideas of any kind – Collins employs the
vocabulary of a fashion columnist to characterize the targets
of her scorn as beneath contempt, and certainly not worthy
of serious consideration. What was "cheesy" about the Reform
Party convention was that it didn't have the lush corporate-sponsored
parties, where big donors queued up for the chance to meet
and mingle with the Hollywood glitz-ocracy and delegates got
to literally eat their way through a corporate cornucopia
of food and drink. I have my doubts that Ms. Collins ever
set foot in the Long Beach Convention Center, but regardless
you can rest assured she turned out in person for that Dionysian
festival of corporate liberalism in Los Angeles. In the last
days of a decadent empire, it is only natural that a party
convention should be a modern bacchanal, and it was only natural
that Ms. Collins would be out of her element in Long Beach.
The Reform Party convention was a reversion to an earlier
time, when politics was concerned with ideas, and contention
was expected and even celebrated as a symptom of vitality.
This is what conservatives mean when they say, proudly, that
they want to turn back the clock.
MASTER
OF DISCIPLINE
Ms.
Collins' account of what happened in Long Beach cites not
a single word uttered by any of the speakers from the platform,
including Buchanan, although her critique of the stage set
is telling: "decorated with cranky-looking American eagles
and lots of bunting, all paid for by you the taxpayers with
federal funding." Naturally, federally-funded extravaganza
– to the tune of some $30 million-plus – that Ms.
Collins is even now enjoying, as the guest of the DNC, is
perfectly legitimate, as was the GOP's Philadelphia
shindig on the taxpayers' dime. After all, they have accepted
the "discipline" of their betters, the elites in government,
business, and most importantly the media, including such arbiters
of political taste as Gail Collins. From her pulpit at the
New York Times, Collins lectures us as if she were
the Miss Manners of American politics, who has reduced policy
questions to matters of etiquette. According to the Emily
Post school of political commentary, since there was a real
debate in Long Beach, this automatically puts Reformers in
the "fringe." Debate is loud, and rude, and "cheesy," it conjures
visions of Bolsheviks and Mensheviks: apparitions of the Chicago
Seven disturb the normally dreamless sleep of Ms. Collins.
THE
NIGHTMARE COMETH
On
the left as well as the right, there are signs that Gail Collins'
worst nightmare – another turbulent era in the history
of our nation marked by the rising influence of radical movements
for social change – is about to come true. Let them try
to keep Buchanan and Nader out of the debates. Let them rig
this election so brazenly that whatever legitimacy the regime
has on Inauguration Day will be swept away in the gale of
the first crisis – a crisis, as I have been saying for
months, that will undoubtedly be a war crisis. The legitimacy
of a government in wartime is beyond question – if it
isn't, then defeat is certain. But war itself can often serve
to legitimize a regime that has come to power – or maintained
power – via methods considerably less than democratic.
As the Marxists used to say, "it is no accident" that Buchanan
and Nader are hostile to foreign interventionism and globalism
in general, with the former making an explicitly antiwar and
anti-imperialist theme the linchpin of his campaign –
and that both are under attack on the op ed pages of the nation's
newspapers as well as in the courts. Will the corporate oligarchs
who control both parties succeed in snuffing out the competition
through a combination of dirty tricks and outright repression?
As Matt Drudge famously says: Developing . . .
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