Via The Smirking Chimp: Garrison Keillor lambastes the Right with near-Elizabethan virtuousity.
The party of Lincoln and Liberty was transmogrified into the party of hairy-backed swamp developers and corporate shills, faith-based economists, fundamentalist bullies with Bibles, Christians of convenience, freelance racists, misanthropic frat boys, shrieking midgets of AM radio, tax cheats, nihilists in golf pants, brownshirts in pinstripes, sweatshop tycoons, hacks, fakirs, aggressive dorks, Lamborghini libertarians, people who believe Neil Armstrong’s moonwalk was filmed in Roswell, New Mexico, little honkers out to diminish the rest of us, Newt’s evil spawn and their Etch-A-Sketch president, a dull and rigid man suspicious of the free flow of information and of secular institutions, whose philosophy is a jumble of badly sutured body parts trying to walk. Republicans: The No.1 reason the rest of the world thinks we’re deaf, dumb and dangerous.
In college one of my favorite courses was on Elizabethan poetry and prose. There was a large subset of the selections we read that covered the near-orgasmic glee with which Elizabethans heaped scorn and abuse on each other. They loved the English language with a passion – and it showed in the fabulous things they wrote, especially when they were giving somebody a well-deserved literary lashing. Keillor’s essay almost comes up to that level.
I wholeheartedly agree with his assessment: the rest of the world thinks we’re an ADD-addled nation of cultural morons, armed to the teeth and full up to the eyeballs in arrogance. He’s right. The mild-mannered singing radio host from Minnesota is right. We’re better than that, or we used to be. We’re devolving into separate political species – Pithecanthropus Republicanii, and another that I call Bilittorapithecus Democratensis. And the second of our great national tribal gatherings is all set to start, complete with competing gatherings featuring the 21st centure equivalent of throwing bones in the air and dancing around enigmatic monoliths.
As a member of the second tribe, I won’t be enjoying next week’s coverage very much. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to start gathering my tribal regalia – the ABB button will definitely be worn.