If Keith Olbermann can eat his words, perhaps there’s hope for the Democrats even now. And perhaps Scott Brown’s stunning victory in Massachusetts will finally knock the scorn-colored spectacles off the noses of what New York Times columnist David Brooks fragrantly calls “the educated classes.”
On MSNBC, snakes and lizards poured almost visibly from Olbermann’s mouth when he said Scott Brown spoke “out of his bare bottom,” and called the Massachusetts father of two “an irresponsible, homophobic, racist, reactionary, ex-nude-model tea-bagging supporter of violence against women and against politicians with whom he disagrees.” Olbermann has apologized; Scott Brown is on his way to Washington
But the TV talker’s epithets are worth remembering, if only as a perfect distillation of the coruscating contempt, disdain, and false characterization that liberals have heaped upon millions of their countrymen since President Obama started running for the White House.
American voters who do not support Obama’s scheme to “remake” America have been disparaged for a year. They’ve been slandered, called the worst names: Nazis, astroturfers, right-wing nut cases, “tea baggers.”
Whatever politicians have thought in private before, this willingness of Democratic pols and the left-wing commentariat openly to abuse the public is something new in American political life.
And the public doesn’t like it, though only those voters in Virginia, New Jersey, and now Massachusetts have had an electoral opportunity to demonstrate the depth of national unease.
Naturally, it’s tempting for politicians to fight dirty when they’re not getting their way. The classic method is to depict one’s opponents as fools or knaves.
We are used to such tactics in the halls of Congress, where officeholders of both parties deliberately and loudly misunderstand one another, and cast one another’s views and votes in the worst possible light.
But we are not used to politicians pouring their bilious invective on ordinary citizens. And we do not like it. Since Joe the Plumber had the temerity to question then-candidate Obama, we have seen the reasonable objections of regular people turned into a kind of rhetorical weapon against them.
Obama hasn’t used the acid phrasing, but his irritation betrays him. You may recall him saying rather peevishly: “I don’t want the folks who created the mess to do a lot of talking. I want them just to get out of the way so we can clean up the mess. I don’t mind cleaning up after them, but don’t do a lot of talking.”
Republicans are not allowed to talk? American citizens are supposed to “get out of the way” of their elected leaders?
That is not right. It’s not fair. And, as Republicans found in 2008, and as Democrats are finding now, it is also profoundly politically foolish.
When in the mid-to-late 2000s, you turned on C-SPAN and every call was expressive of outrage about President Bush, something really was happening. Those calls revealed a genuine sense of anger and unease. Republicans did not, clearly, grasp the seriousness of it.
It’s the same now. When in September, American citizens peacefully assembled in Washington in the tens of thousands, it was not an expression of depravity or stupidity. That rally — actually, those rallies — and the angry town halls of last summer were public manifestation of the anxiety that has been percolating in millions of American households.
Only 15 percent of voters in Massachusetts are registered Republicans, yet 52 percent of them voted for the Republican candidate. That is not a whim, or pique; that is a temblor.
We have a government of the people, by the people, for the people. Virginia has spoken. New Jersey has spoken. Massachusetts has spoken.
Stop calling us names. We are the people. Respect us.
Examiner Columnist Meghan Cox Gurdon is a former foreign correspondent and a regular contributor to the books pages of the Wall Street Journal. Her Examiner column appears on Thursday.
