Conservatism Lives!

You might think I’m talking about the fact that most of the country’s major newspapers are either bankrupt or heading there fast. You might think I’m talking about the fact that a growing number of people admit to getting most of their news from shows like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, and yes those are both Comedy Central productions. (I’ll even admit to watching Colbert on a regular basis. Let’s face it. There are few things quite as good as his “Better Know a District” segments. That is, of course, unless he’s interviewing someone from the Brady Campaign.)

No. I’m not talking about outdated business models for news networks or our increasing propensity to want some satire with our news. I am talking about the elimination of the free press entirely. According to ABC News, the Obama White House has decided to create their own news division and report on themselves while not allowing “outside” news agencies to do so. (I especially like the little White House News logo.) The first such incident revolves around a relatively trivial matter of a college basketball team visiting the White House. So you might say, “who cares?” But seriously, the entire point of  “freedom of the press” clause of the first amendment of the Constitution is to provide the citizens with a supposedly unbiased (insert MSNBC and or Chris Matthews and or Keith Olbermann joke here) source of information about our government and elected officials. In short, it is a stop guard designed to attempt to keep them honest. The moment we allow our government to “report” on itself and shut out our press, regardless of how biased we believe that press to be, journalism is truly dead and our freedom won’t be far behind.

We conservatives are oft heard referring to the threat of incrementalization– what is commonly known as “the slippery slope”. For instance, if it makes sense to help the poor and unfortunate by forcing their employers to pay them eight dollars an hour, why not nine? Why not fifteen? Why not fifty, with full medical benefits, child care, and a brand new Prius for them to drive to work? Or in another common example: if it is incumbent upon the government to grant marital benefits to homosexuals, then why not to vegesexuals? Or people who want to marry their pet marmosets? Why should they be excluded? And don’t try to suggest such people don’t exist. We all know they do, and if it’s OK to marginalize them now, it won’t be once we begin to slide down the– say it with me– “slippery slope”.

What I am beginning to wonder, however, is if the slippery slope has already come and gone, probably sometime during the Clinton years. What if there was a cliff at the bottom of that slope, and we’re already off it, falling, speeding toward terminal velocity, beyond any hope whatsoever of going back? Pretty hopeless, eh? I’d sure like to think otherwise– I’m a generally optimistic guy– but I think it may indeed be too late. Here’s my evidence.

The other day, I heard a very well-known conservative talk show host (not Rush Limbaugh, thankfully, but one of his fill-ins) agree with a caller on the following point: the Democrats won the last election because people no longer cast their votes on ideas and issues, they cast their votes based on which candidate their favorite comedians, singers and actors say is cool. Therefore (this caller claimed) we should embrace this new reality and send out our own army of comedians, singers and actors, intent on making conservative candidates cool enough for these dolts to vote for.

The host, woefully, agreed whole-heartedly.

I don’t need to tell you what is wrong with this, but there are probably a few others who don’t see the point, which is this: for the first time in the history of planet earth, people are making their most important life decisions– decisions about their leaders, about their spirituality, about what to stick in their mouths, heads and hearts– without depending on critical thinking, a study of the issues, or conversations with people of different perspectives. For the first time in history, these weighty decisions are being made based on peer pressure, cool-factor, fictional representations, and the opinions of people paid to pretend to be other people (actors). This is bad enough. What’s worse is that our own leaders are not suggesting that we fight this tide of intellectual laziness, but that we embrace it.

Take, for example, the recent announcement that supreme court justice Souter is planning to retire. Conversation immediately turned to who Obama might choose as his replacement. One would assume the conversations might have centered around any potential candidate’s legal and intellectual qualifications. Perhaps there might have been some in-depth analyses of the candidates’ experience, record, writings, education, etc. In short, one would have expected that the main issues would revolve around said candidate’s ability to actually perform the duties required by the highest court in the land. Alas, this was not the case. What, instead, has been the meat of the discussion about Justice Souter’s replacement? Whether this person will be a woman. Or a black. Or maybe a hispanic.

This should seem utterly preposterous to our leaders– a superficial mockery of what the office of Supreme Court justice stands for– and yet it apparently doesn’t. These ridiculously meaningless and insignificant considerations are debated with utter seriousness by the “watchdog” media. No Republican leader, so far as I know, has said “Wait a minute. Shouldn’t we actually be discussing this person’s legal qualifications a bit more than their gender or the color of their skin? I thought judging people on those details was wrong and racist?” No GOP leader is saying that because if they did they’d instantly be called wrong and racist. That, however, is no excuse.

This, unfortunately, is the reality of the post-Obama-election-age. The country’s first MTV president has finally firmly established the fact that a slim majority of Americans now vote for a presidential candidate based entirely on what the TV tells them. And I’m not even talking about the news media. I am talking about singers and actors, about fictional representations of the world as seen through the lens of programs ranging from The Daily Show and Saturday Night Live to Family Guy and Gossip Girl. We conservatives get sidetracked complaining about the “liberal media”, but the sad reality is that Americans aren’t getting their political views from NBC News, CNN, and the Washington Post. They are getting them from Brian Griffin (the dog on Family Guy, for you uninitiates), Sheryl Crow, and Tina Fey. They are abandoning their most important decisions to fictional characters, from Stephen Colbert to Matt Damon (and yes, he is a fictional character; all of his lines are written by moveon.org and George Soros). Most Americans believe– subconsciously, if not overtly– that Sarah Palin is a character played by Tina Fey. They have no more idea of what Ms. Palin has actually said than they do the words of the actual consitution of the United States.

For the first time in history, average Americans now judge entire populations of people — specifically conservatives and Christians — based entirely on their fictional representation, rather than on actual observations of any specific conservatives or Christians. Try this: ask any liberal what a conservative and/or Christian is like. They will give you some variation of the popular stereotype, i.e. they are anti-science, bigoted, homophobic, hate-filled, brainless, hayseeds and rednecks. Nod wisely, and then, as innocently as possible, ask them this: do you know conservatives and Christians like that? Can you name names? Prediction: the liberal will hem and haw a moment, and then blurt out the name of Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck. You may choose to remind them that they probably don’t know those people (and likely have never even listened to their shows), but such a reminder would be pointless and will probably just get you fired, ostracized, and called a bitch by some gay gossip columnist. In short, it really isn’t worth the effort, because your liberal friend is utterly convinced that the representation he/she has seen on TV is true and accurate, even if they don’t personally know anyone like that.

I think the people that propose that we conservatives embrace the “popularity contest” mentality of the post-Obama age recognize the truth of what I am proposing. They know that we are over the cliff– there’s no turning back. It is no longer possible to appeal to the masses based on logic, experience and debate. Thus, these leaders tell us, if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.

The problem is, conservatism will never be “cool”. Conservatism relies on a moral, intellectually honest, logic-based worldview. It cannot be tranformed into something that is merely shallow, hip, and rooted in instant emotional gratification. Even if we wanted to, we cannot promote conservatism in the same way that Democrats can hype liberalism. It’d be like trying to hawk broccoli at a baseball game: “GET yer nuTRICious BROCK-leee! Steamed FRESH and HOT! GOOD and good FOR ya…” It’d be funny, but nobody’d be buying it. If we can’t convince people to eat their veggies by getting them to actually care about what’s good for them, then there is no hope whatsover. In the same way, if we cannot convince the country to vote conservative based on what is best for themselves and the country, there is no way we will get them to vote conservative based on how yummy it is. Liberalism may be an abject failure in terms of effectiveness and intellectual soundness, but its got the market cornered on yumminess, and that’s pretty much all anybody cares about anymore.

This is why I fear that the argument for the “slippery slope” is now officially moot. That argument only works when there is time to stop the slide. I fear that that time is now past. Take a look around. The slope is history. We’re off the cliff now, falling into the abyss. All that’s left now, I suppose, is to enjoy the ride.

Wheee.

Promotional Shot of AF1 Buzzing the NYC Skyline

I am reminded of the scene from the movie Close Encounters when the Air Force general presents a picture to a crowd of agitated citizens and says “This… is a UFO.”  They all begin to babble excitedly, and then the General pulls the photo back and tells them the truth: it’s actually a photo of a pie plate thrown into the air by his son.  I like that scene.  It cracks me up a little.

Today, I get to be like that Air Force General.

A week or so ago, citizens of New York City were understandably thrown into a momentary panic when a large jetliner was seen buzzing the city.  The jetliner in question was not, however, being operated by terrorists (technically).  It was, in fact, Air Force One, the official plane of the President of the United States.  So what was it doing swooping ominously over the New York skyline, unannounced and apparently so secretly that President Obama himself said he didn’t know about it?  Well, according to the official administration explanation, they were taking promotional pictures of it.

Here is a sample of one of the pictures taken during that shoot.

Looks pretty good, doesn’t it?  I mean, that’s obviously the New York skyline behind it, majestic and bustling, lit with the new sun of a bright spring day.  And there, of course, is the great jet itself, swooping grandly along the coast, angling gently toward JFK airport.

Or not.

No, it isn’t a pie plate thrown into the air by my son.  It’s a composite I made in Photoshop.  It took me about twenty minutes, and that includes doing a quick online image search to find usable pictures of both Air Force One and the New York City skyline (post 9-11, of course).  Granted, I am a graphic artist.  This is what I do for a living.  It was kind of fun, but not much of a challenge, really.

Which brings me to my question: If the administration’s explanation of that bizarre, unannounced flight over New York is true, then it seems like a rather preposterous length to go to get a photo that, arguably, might actually look better when faked in Photoshop.  Fishy?  Or just incomprehensibly inept?

Frankly, I think this is just a fabulous, blinding example of why the government is so shamelessly awful at running things.  So someone decides that a cool PR shot of the President’s jet over NYC would be cool.  What’s the most obvious way to get that shot?  Well, you send that mofo up, dammit, along with a contingent of fighters with photographers in the copilot’s seats.  So it costs $328,000 or so.  That’s nothing to an organization that measures its budget in the trillions, right?  Does it even occur to someone to consider a cheaper (and saner) alternative?  Pfft.  Why would it?

Granted, I’m not the cheapest graphic artist out there, but I’d have been happy to help the government out in this endeavor.  They could have kept AF1 on the ground, saved the population of New York from nearly losing their breakfasts, and in the end gotten some arguably better promo shots.  I could have even airbrushed the jet up a bit, just like they do with the supermodels on the SI swimsuit edition– taken off a few of those extra pounds here and there, maybe given it a sexy, thinning highlight along its fuselage.

I wouldn’t have charged $328,000.  Heck, I’d have done it for a measly $250,000.  After all, it’d be government work, right?