Maher Analyzes the GOP

I’ve only seen Maher a few times, and each time he was fully engaged in ridicule as opposed to thoughtful analysis. I don’t have enough time to waste any of it on schoolyard tauntings and antics. But the networks and big-tree-eating news media are infatuated with such stuff (witness the guffaws about “teabagging”).

In this article, Maher admits to not understanding the conservative mindset, then he chooses the most insignificant “issues” and declares that those are the core of “Right” wing thinking. Calling names and placing labels is high up on the comedy scale, and Maher gets this done in his first paragraph:

”If conservatives don't want to be seen as bitter people who cling to their guns and religion and anti-immigrant sentiments, they should stop being bitter and clinging to their guns, religion and anti-immigrant sentiments.”

Bill, I don’t care how you see me. Or more to the point, how you wish to make your view into a caricature of me. Or what you say about much of anything, because you are merely a distortionist, a propagandist apparatchik of the Leftist Misinformation Ministry.

This piece is an indicator, a metric even, for the distortions being released into the torrents of ridicule that the Left is producing.

“The conservative base is absolutely apoplectic because, because ... well, nobody knows.”

Well certainly Maher doesn’t know. Or if he does, he certainly plays ignorant well.

But he blatantly repeats the cant produced by the Left in its attempt to reduce by belittlement. It's the Alinski way. Here’s some of the cant:

1. Obama reduced taxes; he’s a hero.

2. The wealthy will pay for the multiple trillions Obama will pour into total government. (“Obama wants to raise taxes 3% on 5% of the people”)

3. Obama hasn’t made a move to take away guns (just talks about it, lets congressmen introduce the bills).

4. The race card, can’t pass that up (“he’s a black guy”)

5. We won; you lost (“The thing that you people out of power have to remember is that the people in power are not secretly plotting against you. They don't need to. They already beat you in public.”)
6. Oh yes, Abu Ghraib: that was a conservative policy wasn’t it?

For dispassionate discussion of real issues, Maher is a complete waste of time. For a look at ridicule as a tactic (see Alinski’s “Rules For Radicals”) Maher is a case study.

Last, Maher makes this incredible statement:

”And if today's conservatives are insulted by this, because they feel they're better than the people who have the microphone in their party, then I say to them what I would say to moderate Muslims: Denounce your radicals. To paraphrase George W. Bush, either you're with them or you're embarrassed by them.”

That's what the tea parties were all about, Bill. The radical statists of both parties were denounced; you didn't notice because... why?

Saul Alinski would be proud. I am bemused, and sorry that I wasted my time on Maher and his boffo buffoonery. Is there someone on the Left with substance? Let’s talk with them instead.