Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Before You Get on Your High Horse...

Douthat thinks he's figured it all out about the liberal media... the hate on display at Palin rallies is merely a product of liberals' imaginations just as the Christian right is merely a figment of liberals' imaginations. And look over here! The libs are haters, too!

Street art in Brooklyn is not Nazi propaganda. It is self-conscious, self-referential, part of a complex aesthetic universe rife with anxieties of influence and influences of anxiety. It is ironic. Its audience is ironic. To ignore the fact that highly stylized, silk-screened poster art in Brooklyn might (like the Warhol prints whose aesthetics they mimic) contain some irony, might be deliberately provocative as an aesthetic gesture, is frankly idiotic.

Whatever defenses ("John Gotti doesn't exist!") can be mounted for statements like "kill him" and "terrorist" and "sit down, boy" at McCain-Palin rallies, I don't think you can say they are ironic and self-mocking.

Enough with the "yes, but..." crap, conservatives! The base of the Republican Party is awash in filth, and it's time to move from denial to acceptance and get on with the serious business of reforming the political party that ostensibly represents you.