Tag Archives: James Wolcott

Tweet of the day (updated)

Posted on by at 3:39 pm


Memo to Republicans: Try running fewer rape philosophers next time.
November 6, 2012 9:13 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite
@JamesWolcott
James Wolcott

Update: By the way, you really should read this essay by James Wolcott in full. Here is a taste:

… these guys and gals [the republicans], they bought their own belligerent b.s. and constructed a Close Encounters scale mountain out of it, believing what the three R’s–Rush Limbaugh, Fox News chieftain Roger Ailes, and Karl Rove–had been telling to the exclusion of all evidence to the contrary. Once you reject science, global warming, the whole bit, why should you concern your furry little mind with poll numbers, especially when they’re being romanced by metrosexuals like Nate Silver? Everyone knows the pollsters just make things up, like Sarah Palin’s “Lame Stream Media,” in fact the two are in cahoots, and wasn’t Reagan 108 percentage points behind Carter when he ran, and look what happened, he not only defeated Mr. Peanut but led the wagon train across the great west into the sunset, which is why he’s revered today, the Margaret Thatcher of dungarees.

Well, not only was Obama reelected when the likes of Robert Stacy McCain, Michael Barone, Karl Rove, Dick Morris, Hugh Hewitt, and other caramels were insisting Romney had it locked, but the Senate races were even more of a rout for the Republicans, with the rapey-mouthed Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock losing and Elizabeth Warren knocking off Scott Brown, who might have prevailed had he not bought so many of his campaign tactics from the Jerk Store.

After every defeat of magnitude, a scouting party is immediately sent out to find scapegoats, and, having exhausted all of their scapegoat candidates in previous fear-and-loathing campaigns (uppity women, shiftless minorities, “illegals,” Muslims, atheists, gays, gay atheists, carnival folk), they had only one big lug left to point a bony finger of judgement at: the Average American, that gullible lump.

Used to be, conservatives revered the Average American, that Norman Rockwell oil painting of diner food, humble faith, honest toil, and Capraesque virtue.

Romney turns up the feisty

Posted on by at 11:09 am

Awakening from a less than profound slumber this oven-baked morning, I turned on the Sirius radio to check if there were still signs of life on molten earth and heard someone say on MSNBC that we would soon be seeing a feistier Mitt Romney on the campaign stump, that he was already showing a more feisty side in his most recent campaign stop. “Feisty”–now there’s a word that’ll strike fear into no one’s heart. It’s such an old-person word, something a nurse would say on her rounds at the senior center, “My, someone’s awfully feisty this morning,” the next step to being called “cantankerous,” and once you’re being described as contankerous, you’re pretty much at the shaking your bony fists and yelling at clouds stage.

– James Wolcott

Obama’s latest ad (updated)

Posted on by at 11:31 am

A new ad is out from the Obama campaign. I like it.

Update: Check out James Wolcott’s take:

It’s the political ad that everyone’s talking about this post-All Star game season, and no wonder–it’s a sneaky jab that completely shatters Mitt Romney’s glass jaw. What’s brilliant about “Firms” isn’t so much the way it mails home the irony of Romney murdering “America the Beautiful” with his toneless, tuneless voice on the soundtrack as info flashcards remind us of all the jobs Bain Capital shipped overseas and how much money Romney’s stashed in tax havens such as Bermuda and the Cayman Islands, though it is a clever, damaging juxtaposition that takes Romney’s chief asset as a candidate–his halo of executive achievement–and hangs it around his neck like a choke collar. Very Rovian, that.

No, what’s genius is the initial transition between President Obama striding a few steps at the White House and cutting to Mitt making with song…the contrast between Obama’s vocal and physical gravitas and Mitt’s goofiness is hilarious, devastating, emasculating. It’s like going from The Shawshank Redemption to Jerry Lewis in The Nutty Professor when the Buddy Love spell wears off, from Sidney Poitier in In the Heat of the Night to Fred MacMurray in Son of Flubber. And the fact that this ad is approved by Obama gives it much more authority and pow than if it were just something cooked up at the editing console by some bright operatives hoping the video would go YouTube viral. It’s a smackdown from the man himself, not some Democratic front group, thus sending a much stronger message.

It’s clear that the Obama campaign’s strategy is to hit Romney hard early, define and diminish him in the public imagination with cartoon clarity, and send him into the Republican convention with a Dan Quayle deer-in-the-headlights look that conveys the unbearable lightness of completely lost.

The initial response from Team Romney is that the Obama ad is making mockery of “America the Beautiful,” and thus of America itself, and therefore dishonors those great patriots who shop for mattresses on Presidents’ Day. If that’s the best these marshmallows can counterpunch, they’ll be digging up Lee Atwater before Labor Day and trying to reanimate him with jumper cables.

Note this: Obama is not a wimp. He is coming out tougher in this campaign than he has during most of his first term.

Political quote of the day

Posted on by at 7:31 am

One reason I’m such a wayward prognosticator of rightwing trends is that I’m incapable of blacking out enough neural sectors to see the world through reptilian-brained eyes, a prerequisite for any true channeling of the mean resentments and implanted fears that drive hardcore conservatives. I also make the mistake of believing that they believe what they profess to believe, which they clearly don’t, otherwise they wouldn’t be inclining to crown Newt king of the marsh. That a thrice-married Catholic convert with a history of marital infidelity would win the flinty hearts of Tea Partiers while true evangelicals such as Michele Bachmann or Rick Perry would find themselves standing on the platform as the train whooshes by, abandoned and bewildered–well, go figure. That a third-rate futurist spieler who rides every wave of pop guru bullshit and management theory would appeal to those who pride themselves on their unyielding, unchanging bedrock values also falls into the “does not compute” category. To most of us, Newt Gingrich has the mothball mustiness of a has-been who peaked with the “Contract with America,” fell from grace with the House Republicans he led, and has fed his ego and bank balance ever since.

– James Wolcott, explaining why he failed to predict the rise of Newt Gingrich. Click the link for the full essay.