You know what most disappoints me about Obama’s victory? The aftermath has been so obvious. So rote. So canned and jejune. It’s all “Yes we did!” and “history has been made!” and “did you ever think you’d live to see the day?” and blah, blah, blah, blah. What this international mood of breathless joy really requires is the bracing, Aqua Velva-like slap of a tough-minded, free-thinking contrarian. Mr. Goldberg?
Election Questions No One Asks
Jonah emphasizes his point with a powerful gesture.
No doubt everyone is relieved to have the election behind us, even if some of us are less than ecstatic about its result. The president-elect and Democrats in Congress very much want to move forward, talk about the future and get busy on their agenda. After all, the oceans aren’t going to stop rising on their own.
Jonah likes to open with a joke; not for nothing is he considered one of the nation’s “wittiest conservatives.” So funny, in fact, that people will flock to buy tickets to a night of stand-up comedy starring Jonah that is later canceled for lack of interest.
Of course, how we move “forward” (quotation marks are necessary because one man’s forward is another man’s backward)
And one man’s “standing athwart History, shouting ‘Stop!’” is another man’s “Good Lord, we’ll need a Ditch Witch to scoop up this roadkill…!”
Was this a vote for radical leftwingery or a vote for moderation? Is the electorate pro-liberal or merely anti-Republican? What did voters have in mind? What do they expect?
The nice thing about such questions is that you actually get real debate about them, and we’ll be hearing lots of that in the weeks and months ahead. But there are other questions no one ever asks, in part because our political discourse is choked with stupefying clichés and gassy assumptions about what matters and what doesn’t.
I realize the highlighted phrase is supposed to represent criticism, but it reads more like a bulletpoint from The Corner’s mission statement.
Ever since the primaries, Democrats have been promising to be “agents of change” (which kind of sounds like a brand of James Bond villain; watch out — he’s an agent of C*H*A*N*G*E).
Yeah. Um, Jonah? Not only did The Man From U.N.C.L.E. already make this joke about 45 years ago, My Favorite Martian made this joke about The Man From U.N.C.L.E. making this joke. So while I agree that “change” is more slogan than platform, you might want to embrace its spirit when it comes to your own act.
It’s a weird quirk of our television-soaked culture that we think change is a good in and of itself. The phrase “change the channel” is a ubiquitous explanation for voters’ desire to be done with President Bush. Fair enough, but change has no moral content. Winning the lottery is change, and so is catching a ball peen hammer to the bridge of your nose. The desire for change for change’s sake is the stuff of children and attention-deficit disorder.
In other words, this wasn’t an election, it was a tantrum. And we’re just lucky Bush hasn’t given us all a time-out for acting up in front of company.
Speaking of children, the national obsession with the “youth vote” is one of the great embarrassments of deliberative democracy.
Translation: “I’m turning 40 next year, and my wife won’t let me buy any more Simpsons figurines.”
Why is the participation of youth so vital? According to “youth activists” themselves, it’s because they bring so much “passion” to politics. Passion, again, is not necessarily a good thing.
Because Jonah’s wife won’t let him bring any more of that into the house, either. Young men have passion. Old men have spleen. Middle-aged men have hobbies and porn and know enough not to bother their wife when she has to get up in the morning.
There was a time when voting was supposed to be a matter for sober, mature reflection. Now it’s more like a fashion statement. “In America,” remarked Oscar Wilde long ago, “the young are always ready to give those who are older than themselves the full benefits of their inexperience.”
I admire how Jonah manages to prove that modern conditions are far worse than the past by citing a century-old quote that indicates the past was exactly the same. It’s a comic paradox of which Wilde himself would be proud.
In fact, everyone gets to vote, or at least that’s the hope of vote-voluptuaries.
I predict this phrase is gonna catch on big! Take my advice and lock up the t-shirt and trucker hat franchises now.
The country is experimenting with ever-more-novel ways to make it easier for people to join “the process,” which makes democracy sound like a digestive phenomenon.
As opposed to Jonah’s output, which is more reminiscent of the post-digestive portion of the phenomenon.
Gone entirely is the tradition of Election Day. Now it’s Election Week or even Election Month in some states. Voting by mail, online voting, even voting by phone are increasingly in vogue, all because it’s assumed that we desperately need input from voters who couldn’t be bothered to get off the couch for a normal Election Day but can be coaxed to vote if it doesn’t interfere too much with their video game schedule.
Of course, some people who care about the issues may want their voice to be heard, but may be unable to take 4 or 5 hours off from work to stand in line, may lack transportation, may be infirm. (Walking back home after voting, I saw an elderly white man in a wheelchair, sporting an Obama t-shirt and a wide grin, being pushed by a young, equally good-humored Latina toward the polling place. And if he cared enough to get out of the house, the rest of you slugs can do the same; although the passionate twinkle in the old man’s eye no doubt would have nauseated Jonah.)
Anyway, this is one area where Jonah’s expertise is indisputable; because it’s one thing to play video games all day while “writing” a book that consists largely of outsourced research and pilfered Wikipedia entires enlivened with a secret blend of oxymorons and character assassination, but it’s entirely another thing to get help registering or casting a ballot — because that’s fraud, man, and you’re going down!
Of course, helping the infirm, the handicapped or soldiers overseas cast ballots makes sense. But do we really think the outcomes will be improved if we triple the turnout of the lazy and uninformed?
Well it certainly used to work, back when Karl Rove referred to “tripling the turnout of the lazy and uninformed” as “motivating the Base.”
Jonah then goes on to bravely ask more of the questions nobody else has the nerve to broach, like “who are these Undecided voters, and why does anyone care what they think?” He whines in a very groundbreaking and original fashion for a couple paragraphs about how the media gives precious TV face-time to these Midwestern nonentities, time that could better be spent on Published Authors and their telegenic goatees, before finally delivering a swift and merciful coup de grace to the entire phenomenon with a stiletto-like Twilight Zone reference. Then he goes on and bitches about them for two more paragraphs in order to make his word count.
Questions Asked. Nerdy allusion delivered. Column petered out to a puzzling and inconclusive end. Mission Accomplished.
Jonah has no business calling anyone lazy or uninformed. Also, shouldn’t whining about undecided voters be a column written last week?
And finally, I’m not usually one to defend cable news, but if you don’t like it, change the frickin’ channel. They’ve got to fill up 18 hours a day, so a lot of it is going to be stupid. I like sports, but I would lose my mind if I watched ESPN all day. I can think of a lot of things Jonah could do that are more productive if, God forbid, he doesn’t like what’s on television, such as:
1) exercise;
2) read a book that wasn’t published by Regency; or
3) realize he is a patheric pile of excrement and throw himself out of a window of a tall building.
Left by Mark S. on November 7th, 2008