It was so much fun watching the ACORN people try and spin their way out of oblivion for the last couple of weeks. After the first video was posted on Big Government.com they, of course, claimed it was an isolated incident and that the filmmakers were kicked out of numerous other ACORN offices. When that proved to be false, they tried in vain to claim that the videos were faked and that their employees were the victims of CGI or something and not of their own stupidity and corruption. When that didn’t work they claimed that the filmmakers, Andrew Breitbart and the entire Fox News network were racist. Yawn.
Monday, we have the NEA under the microscope. The Obama Administration was caught red-handed (is that “racist”?) funneling tax payer dollars into an official propaganda department. I can’t wait to see what the excuse will be this time.
These people have mastered the art of defending the indefensible.
Let’s set aside the stupidity of this move. Anyone familiar with the NEA knows that it pretty much exists to fund leftist propaganda disguised as art. Officially coordinating it is a bit redundant.
Let’s also set aside the brazen arrogance. Despite rejecting and dismissing charges that this administration is attempting to turn the United States into a South American Banana Republic, these folks keep doing things that make Hugo Chavez envious. State run propaganda through the NEA, silencing critics with the stigma of “racism,” setting up official channels to rat out your neighbors for “thought crimes” with flag@whitehouse.gov, and restructuring our economy with wealth redistribution schemes like socialized medicine and cap and trade are just a few of their moves right from the Trotsky play book. And they do it all with righteous indignation. They claim that we students of history are too ignorant, too blinded by our prejudices, to really see what’s going on.
No, let’s focus on the inevitable excuses that will flow from the mouths of the White House spin doctors and the true believers that make up the mainstream media. If I, from the outside, can predict their next moves, it’s pretty obvious that their excuses aren’t genuine.
They are just another act in this grand play of leftist tomfoolery.
Phase one will be complete silence. The story won’t be picked up by the state run media. Crickets. Crickets. After about a week of red faced Glenn Beck monologues, daily Rush Limbaugh pontifications (thanks, by the way, for the shout-out last week El Rushbo, the family was very impressed), Sarah Palin facebook posts, and Andrew Breitbart expertly rolling out more information, they will be forced to respond.
Phase two will be what I like to call “The Oz Effect.” Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. What’s the big deal, after all? The President, through the positively Grima Wormtongue-like Robert Gibbs, will “not really be aware of it.” There are bigger issues after all. Americans are concerned about the greedy insurance companies and the doctors trying to amputate their feet for some extra scratch, not about what happens at the NEA. David Shuster, the poor man’s Keith Olbermann, will point out that the people involved have already been reassigned. Isn’t this just another Republican shot in the dark? Don’t these people have any real ideas? Aren’t the conservatives in disarray? Who is their leader anyway?
Phase three will be the “offense-defense.” David Frum will talk about the risks that conservatives run by offending artists. Going after the NEA will just prove that we don’t like creative things. CNN will air segments featuring inner-city kids finger painting, explaining that the NEA’s $50 million cut of the stimulus money paid for those paints. You don’t want to take away finger paints. do you? Evil conservatives. The President will tout the importance of the arts in our community, the hope and joy it brings to so many. Sure, there were some bad apples, but they were just cowboys acting without official orders. We need the NEA. Just like we need ACORN, socialized medicine, and cap and trade.
Phase four will be justice. Riding high on the conservative smack down, bills will come forward in the House and Senate to freeze the NEA’s budget or defund it all together. A few lone whack jobs will vote against it, but it will pass with a fat majority.
Breitbart and company can claim another scalp. And to quote Aldo Raine, “I want my scalps!”
At no point will any member of the administration step forward and admit that it was wrong, un-American, or dangerous for democracy. The mainstream media will never pile onto the story and dig deeper.
These lame excuses and political posturings come with a high cost. Each time we do something like this, and they respond as outlined above, their credibility drops a few points. Every time this sort of thing happens, another person on the fence looks at the evidence and joins the right team.
There is a reason why conservative blogs are full of charts, facts, figures and quotes from history, while liberal blogs ramble on about conspiracies and charges of racism. There is a reason why conservatives use their understanding of economics to build companies and empires, while the left has to resort to trickery and emotional arguments to fund their pointless projects.
It’s because we “get it.” They don’t. Their edge has always been their stranglehold on the media; but that is slipping away like star systems through Grand Moff Tarkin’s fingers. Conservatives, being the smart entrepreneurs that we are, created our own parallel media. We have filled this new media with facts, intelligence and passion. The response from the opposition has been demagoguery, excuses, and misdirection. Bad form. Bad form indeed.
So good luck digging your way out of this one, hippies. 2010 and 2012 can’t come soon enough. Leftists, you are on notice. Your orgy of power and stupidity will be brief and soon you will be gone.
Oh, and on your way out, take the mainstream media with you. You are both useless.