PUNDIT WATCH
Douglas, Susan
PUNDIT WATCH Susan Douglas The Big Swill Ihaven't heard this much swill about American politics since the media translated Reagan's 1980 victory with 50.9 percent of the popular vote into a...
...And let's not forget how much we're going to have to listen to the likes of William Kristol for the foreseeable future...
...Of course we would stay, and fight even harder...
...Many of the margins by which individual Republicans won were, in fact, small...
...No, this election was primarily about three things: a President who has deeply frustrated the country by refusing to lead, a fragile and uneven recovery, and a vicious racial backlash...
...Shortly before the election, I faxed Erwin and Linda that if the Republicans took over Congress, it really would be time to move to an island in the South Pacific for a while...
...Which big government spending programs do people want eliminated or curbed...
...White, middle-aged men made the difference...
...Erwin would have none of this defeatist fantasy...
...The press doesn't know what to do with him...
...Fat chance...
...Who will save America from Clinton's pinko, counterculture agenda...
...Yes, he's newsworthy because he's the first Republican speaker since pedal pushers were in and he's controversial, but does this guy from Georgia really embody what happened in more than 500 elections around the country...
...Social Security reductions for those with decent pensions...
...Here I learned that the Republican sweep stemmed, in part, from the fact that Americans hate "1960s liberals...
...Thought so...
...Now, I hate the guy too, but stories like the one The Times ran on Thanksgiving Day—a tabloid-style hatchet job suggesting he didn't really believe in any of his conservative principles—are self-deluding, and don't help matters any, since they underestimate his commitment to truly reactionary politics...
...Most women and African-Americans did not reject the Democrats, nor did young people, although many certainly voted with less enthusiasm than they would have liked...
...Unfortunately, the savings here are a mere trickle when compared to the gusher that comes to the middle and upper classes from the government teat...
...The New York Times, Newsweek, and others have already gone after Gingrich with a vengeance...
...Maoists...
...The problem with these folks is that they "romanticize [such] . . . antisocial behavior" as "teenage out-of-wedlock pregnancies as an 'alternative lifestyle choice.' " Didn't I see you at a demonstration in 1969 rallying for this...
...Cuts in Medicare...
...Sure, there's a minority that wants such draconian cuts...
...In a pig's eye...
...Following the elections on November 8, 1994, we've heard and read the word "revolution" 4,692 times and have been told that the "American people" voted for Republicans and against Democrats because they've become more conservative and want the role of "big government" reduced...
...If Clinton represents the Left, what are we...
...This is hardly a mandate to replenish the Pentagon's toilet-paper supply, let alone eliminate the income tax or throw babies into orphanages...
...We desperately need—and miss terribly—his fighting spirit now.* Susan Douglas, the author most recently of "Where the Girls Are," appears in this space every month...
...Buying into Newt Gingrich's characterization of the first couple as the Abbie Hoffman and Valerie Solanas of the 1990s, the press and pundits have added to their post-election coverage enough '60s-bashing to smother ten hookahs...
...PUNDIT WATCH Susan Douglas The Big Swill Ihaven't heard this much swill about American politics since the media translated Reagan's 1980 victory with 50.9 percent of the popular vote into a "mandate" for cutting rich people's taxes, consigning poor people to cardboard boxes under viaducts, and reclassifying ketchup as a vegetable for schoolchildren...
...Many of those who voted for conservative Republicans don't want the government out of their lives...
...My personal favorite was in the Newsweek essay by Joe Klein, entitled, "Wither Liberalism...
...Reality check, please...
...Polls continue to show major contradictions between a generalized disdain for "big government" and an insistence that middle- and upper-middle-class entitlements remain untouched...
...I am soooo tired of this piece of neo-con sophistry...
...While the first two topics have gotten some attention, the last one remains severely—and dangerously— underdiscussed...
...And true to form, the mainstream press reduced the election to one person: Newt Gingrich...
...This information doesn't fit in with the latest news frame about less government and a conservative sea change...
...Clinton's biggest problem, pundits like Fred Barnes and Michael Barone insist with moronic repetition, is that he has governed too much "from the left...
...The rejection of the Democrats," Newsweek announced, was "total...
...Please...
...Martians...
...And didn't you think the greatest act of rebellion was premature, unwanted pregnancy...
...Yes, we have a major fiasco on our hands, what with Jesse Helms, Strom Thurmond, Orrin Hatch, and the witless wonder Al D'Amato running the Senate...
...Anarchists...
...they want government aid out of other peoples' lives—namely, out of the lives of Mexican immigrants, African-Americans, and welfare moms...
...Bill Clinton, added the magazine, "is immobilized, if not irrelevant...
...Tax deductions for mortgage payments (approximately $50 billion...
...A final note...
...It was based on a focus group Newsweek put together—of twelve (count 'em, twelve) New Hampshire Republicans...
...Few stories reminded readers that this alleged "revolution" was staged by only 39 percent of registered voters, and only half of them—in other words, about 20 percent of the electorate—went Republican...
...But as The Nation reminds us, exit polls done by the Los Angeles Times showed that 61 percent want increased government spending on domestic programs...
...But the conventional interpretations of the elections have been knee-jerk and have simply echoed neo-con claims that aren't easily sustained by the facts or by politics...
...Yet the endless media hype over the Republican "earthquake" (another favorite metaphor) erases women, minorities, and the young, as well as men who rejected conservatism, and suggests that, in politics as in everything else, conservative white men matter most...
...According to Newsweek, "A Quayle-Powell ticket in 1996 would be 'absolutely unstoppable.'" This assessment informed a full-page article in the magazine...
...Exhortations about smaller government and welfare reform have become code words for a race, class, and gender-based purge of entitlement programs...
Vol. 59 • January 1995 • No. 1
