Stephen Colbert nailed the connection between special-interest campaign contributions and results in Congress (in a way only he could).
In the process, he also nailed Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL), who Colbert accuses of selling out to the Payday Loan industry for a mere $10,000. Gutierrez dramatically watered down his "Payday Loan Reform Act" in a way that will make the Payday industry billions -- at the expense of the little guy.
It was a smart investment for the Payday industry. But it's horrible for our democracy.
Colbert's segment basically made the case for why Congress needs to pass the bipartisan Fair Elections Now Act, which would put in place public funding of congressional elections (while still allowing Obama-style small donations, matching them four to one).
Check out the Colbert video for yourself on the Change Congress website by clicking here. On that page, you can also take action to get Congress to pass this crucial reform bill.
(If you want to help spread the reform message to others, share this post over email, Facebook, or Twitter. #gutierrez #politics #money. Disclosure: I work for Big Reform group Change Congress.)
Or is a good laugh its own self-justification? And is this symptomatic of something deeper?
Isn't possible that--much like the grieving process--what we're seeing here is the acting out of deep psychological need? On both sides, actually. The more they lose power, the more desperate is the conservative need to re-assert that lost power in the form of ever more wild-eyed claims. And the more they insist on reminding us of the deeply insane mindset that has controlled our politics, the more we need to ritually purge ourselves of the hold they have had on us. Maybe it's simply a fact of human nature that most folks need to go through this process for a good long time before they can really refocus on the everyday joys of rational governance again.
Isn't possible that wonks are just wired differently, with a much greater capacity to quickly move on from decades of trauma over tragically inept conservative governance? In which case, we ought to be thinking more about ways to connect the two projects--that of advancing new progressive policies and that of exorcising the demons of conservative dominance.
I believe this is very much a part of Obama's political success so far. He has branded himself as the anti-Bush. Even the fact that he doesn't do this overtly, that he went out of his way to be nice to Bush, is part of that branding. Of course the refusal to "go after" Bush Administration officials for running the country like the Corleones would have is just more of the same.
This is, of course, only one possible anti-Bush. There are more certainly other, more progressive versions. Ones who, say, re-institute the rule of law. Ones who don't extend his horrendous "state secrets" claims. Ones who clean house, rather than reappointing Bushies and the Dems who love them to run all the most crucial parts of the government. Ones who actually get that global warming really could wreck human civilization as we know it, and that now's one of those odd times when being prudent means being "extreme."
And maybe integrating a healthy dose of continued conservative bashing into the mix is just a natural way to make a different anti-Bush posture more well-rounded and psychologically appealing.
From a PEW survey on American media, mostly about Limbaugh, I noticed this large difference in the ideological preferences of Stewart and Colbert's audiences:
Conservative
Moderate
Liberal
Daily Show
22
24
45
Colbert Report
14
45
36
I find this surprising, I wouldn't have expected this big a difference between their audiences. Also, I would have picked Colbert as being more liberal than Stewart. Thoughts? Mine are inside...
The only downside of the CNBC comeuppance delivered by Jon Stewart on Wednesday night is that it overshadowed this brilliant takedown of Glenn Beck's "war room" delusions from last week. Instant classic, particularly Colbert's "craziest" scenario at the end:
"But I've learned it's so -- looking back now, a sobering lesson, that a president needs to be careful in his language, but he cannot allow the kind of brittle and brutal attacks that were made on this president at certain times to go unanswered, and we probably made a mistake at times."
Colbert:
"Yes! You need to answer those attacks! An eye for an eye! A tooth for a tooth! An 'outing a CIA agent' for a 'critical editorial in the Times'! A 'right to wiretap you' for a 'having a phone'!"
I've had two big realizations this cycle, and both have to do with gender and the progressive movement. The first happened during the Obama/Clinton primary, when a good number of both male and (to a lesser extent) female Obama supporters referred to Clinton as a bitch and just generally exposed themselves as misogynistic assholes. I was surprised at the level of vitriole towards her, expressed in such charming statements as 'It's not that she's a woman, I just can't stand her voice.' Subsequently I saw this sentiment ding a lot of great progressive female candidates who were not Hillary Clinton. It should be obvious at this point that there is no substantial difference between Clinton and Obama on an ideological level. In Obama's recent interview with Bill O'Reilly (oh yeah, he did one of those), the very first question was 'Do you believe there's a war on terror', to which Obama pliantly and politely cried out 'Absolutely'.
Last night, Stephen Colbert and Nas spent about half the show going over accusations that Fox News is racist and anti-Obama. It was a pivotal moment for the ongoing media accountability campaign that started in 2003 or so.
Stephen Colbert dedicated half his show to the Color of Change/Moveon petition delivered by Nas.
Wes Clark is really good at dealing with national security.
Jimmy Hoffa, the guy who runs the union for truckers, rejects drilling.
Orthodox men interrupted their morning prayers to catch a glimpse of the Illinois senator, reaching out to shake his hand as he passed them by. But not all were taken by the Democrat. One yelled out: "Obama, Jerusalem is not for sale!" before Mr Obama was whisked away to his waiting plane.
Schwarzeneger is trying to cut state worker pay to the minimum wage in order to deal with a budget standoff. This is not really going to set him up well for a Senate run in 2010.
(Another diary about Bill Moyers last night. There's a message here: watch his show! Failing that, the full transcript is here.)
The Republican Party is not the enemy this November. They are a pathetic wreck. Hegemony is the enemy, and the Republican Party's recent inability to enforce hegemony has been superbly compensated for by the corporate media.
Cultural hegemony is a concept coined by Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci. It means that a diverse culture can be ruled or dominated by one group or class, that everyday practices and shared beliefs provide the foundation for complex systems of domination.
Or, as I like to put it, "Hegemony is ideology in common sense drag."
A key aspect of Gramsci's theory is that various different cultural institutions each fulfills their own function, often in ways that purportedly have nothing to do with one another-and yet they are actually functioning like various different units in an army-or nowadays an integrated fighting force, involving everything from infantry to satellites in space.
The media is an excellent example of this. In the 1990s, the media led the charge to depose Bill Clinton. As Gene Lyons meticulously documented in Fools for Scandal: How the Media Invented Whitewater, the New York Times and Washington Post persistently, repeatedly, and egregiously misreported virtually every major aspect of the so-called "Whitewater scandal." When that failed, and the Monica Lewinsky scandal emerged in its place, dozens of leading newspapers editorialized that Clinton should resign. Sixty percent of the American people disagreed, but they couldn't get a word in edgewise-which is where, when and how MoveOn.org was founded.
In contrast, George W. Bush has not merely subverted the most central aspects of our constitutional order with his dictatorial theories of unchecked executive power, he has shredded the Magna Charta as well as the Constitution, and yet the media persists in lying that only the "loonie left" thinks that there's anything amiss.
That's hegemony for you. And they do it, in large part, by following the supposedly "nuetral" rules of professional journalism. Although he makes no mention of Gramsci, Jeremy Iggers does a masterful job of showing that journalism ethics itself is the problem here in his 1998 classic, Good News, Bad News: Journalism Ethics And The Public Interest. So long as people think that the trouble with journalism is Jason Blair, not Judith Miller and her editors and publisher, then Houston, we have a problem. (Iggers, writing in the 1990s uses early Reagan-era examples, but the comparative misdeeds are eerily similar.)
Stephen Colbert's satirical run for the presidency has run into its first roadblock - his bid to be on the ballot in the South Carolina Democratic presidential primary was rejected on Thursday.
The party's executive council voted 14 to 3 to refuse Colbert's application for a spot on the ballot.
"The general sense of the council was that he wasn't a serious candidate and that was why he wasn't selected to be on the ballot," said Joe Werner, the party's director. "There was discussion - I wouldn't call it a heated debate - but there was discussion about it."
There is no appeal process, Werner said, adding that the party will certify its ballot as final later Thursday with the South Carolina State Election Commission.
The Democrats had to decide whether they considered Colbert to be a bona fide Democrat who is nationally viable and has spent time campaigning in the state.
It's ironic Bush is recommending his staff read Bill Kristol's latest drivel, "Why Bush Will Be A Winner." Fortunately for Bush, he doesn't read. Otherwise he would know Kristol recently wrote this hate-filled screed:
For President Bush, loyalty is apparently a one-way street; decency is something he's for as long as he doesn't have to take any risks in its behalf; and courage--well, that's nowhere to be seen. Many of us used to respect President Bush.
Unfortunately for Bush, lots of adults do read. That is why old chickenhawks like Kristol lack credibility with the rest of us. It also explains why the purveyors of perpetual war are busy grooming a new crop of spokesmen in a futile effort to continue fooling the masses.
Like old wine in new bottles, these "fresh conservative voices" are being used to con people into swallowing the same War Party swill everyone rejected in 2006. It's an old trick that shows how desperate they are to push a poor product.
Here's the good news: We just found their Achilles Heel...
