Frank Rich on Donald Trump's valuable public service.

But are we ready for satire of the sort requiring depth perception?

The Washington Post quotes former Bush administration official Pete Wehner, noting that "The concern is that a candidate like Trump is running a campaign based on the 1980 electorate, not the 2016 one."

The message being sent to voters is this: The Republican Party is led by people who are profoundly uncomfortable with the changing (and inevitable) demographic nature of our nation. The GOP is longing to return to the past and is fearful of the future. It is a party that is characterized by resentments and grievances, by distress and dismay, by the belief that America is irredeemably corrupt and past the point of no return. “The American dream is dead,” in the emphatic words of Mr. Trump.

We know exactly what that's like here in New Albany, where the Democrats are running an Eisenhower campaign in a fiber optic world.

THE IMPORTANCE OF DONALD TRUMP ... Far from destroying our democracy, he’s exposing all its phoniness and corruption in ways as serious as he is not. And changing it in the process, by Frank Rich (New York)

... There is indeed a lighter way to look at Trump’s rise and his impact on the country. Far from being an apocalyptic harbinger of the end-times, it’s possible that his buffoonery poses no lasting danger. Quite the contrary: His unexpected monopoly of center stage may well be the best thing to happen to our politics since the arrival of Barack Obama.

In the short time since Trump declared his candidacy, he has performed a public service by exposing, however crudely and at times inadvertently, the posturings of both the Republicans and the Democrats and the foolishness and obsolescence of much of the political culture they share. He is, as many say, making a mockery of the entire political process with his bull-in-a-china-shop antics. But the mockery in this case may be overdue, highly warranted, and ultimately a spur to reform rather than the crime against civic order that has scandalized those who see him, in the words of the former George W. Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson, as “dangerous to democracy.”

Pence, Grooms, other old bigoted white guys sadly united in both spite and cluelessness.

As so many have noted, this isn't Mike Pence's first dance as it exalts plainly purposeful discrimination, and as As the Indy Star's Matthew Tully succinctly observes, Pence is "out of his league as governor."

When you have to "clarify" a horribly damaging piece of legislation that you raced to sign, when you dodge a question on national TV about whether discrimination is legal in your state, when you deal your state a crushing economic blow, when you seem incapable of understanding the role you have played in creating this mess — well, that makes clear that you are not in the right job.

I'd place our state senator, the bizarrely oblivious Ron Grooms, in the same category. He isn't governor, so he gets a pass? He shouldn't. First tolls, now RFRA; is Grooms intent on sealing the border with the bulk of the metro Louisville market?

Back to Tully on Pence:

As a politician he is above all an ideologue, one whose actions and distractions have made clear that he doesn't truly understand what it takes to take on the state's massive challenges. He thrived while representing a gerrymandered congressional district, one where he could safely walk an ideological line and live largely in a partisan bubble. He has failed to understand that a governor's job is to represent a much more diverse state.

Old white guys living in bubbles. Spare me. Here is Frank Rich with more national ramifications of the Hoosier Stain.

Indiana, Arkansas, and the GOP’s Disastrous Anti-Gay Bigotry, by Frank Rich (New York)

... Other defenders of these laws, like The Wall Street Journal editorial page, are predictably pleading victimization: The real victims of bigotry, according to this argument, are Christians, who are being punished for unfashionable beliefs. The Bible has a long history of being cited in America to justify second-class citizenship for women and blacks, among others, in their struggles for equal rights over the past century. It didn’t fly then, and it won’t fly now. A GOP presidential field that supports transparent discrimination is not only on the wrong side of history but the wrong side of the present-day American electorate. There will be consequences far beyond the economic punishment that is already being inflicted on Indiana.

"More people own ferrets than watch Fox News."

Here's the takeaway summary:

Rather than waste time bemoaning Fox’s bogus journalism, liberals should encourage it. The more that Fox News viewers are duped into believing that the misinformation they are fed by Ailes is fair and balanced, the more easily they can be ambushed by reality as they were on Election Night 2012.

But Frank Rich's article at New York is brilliant, and very much worth the time for a full read.

Stop Beating a Dead Fox

The conservative news channel’s only real power is in riling up liberals, who by this point should know better.

 ... But these days Fox News is the loudest voice in the room only in the sense that a bawling baby is the loudest voice in the room.

Brian Howey: "Soul searching in Indiana and America in a post-Newtown era."

"I will not carry a gun, Frank. When I got thrown into this war I had a clear understanding with the Pentagon: no guns. I'll carry your books, I'll carry a torch, I'll carry a tune, I'll carry on, carry over, carry forward, Cary Grant, cash and carry, carry me back to Old Virginia, I'll even 'hari kari' if you show me how, but I will not carry a gun!"
--Hawkeye Pierce

I grew up around guns, and as an adult, I'd prefer guns not be around me.

To, me, firearms are roughly akin to cars, sports and Viagra as penile enhancement devices, and I already have a penis, thanks. Pieces of machinery generally are value-neutral, their performance dependent on the guiding mind of humans. Conversely, human minds infected with machismo, conspiracy theories, hatred, kitchen table formica and just plain variable mental health issues offer as much cause to be frightened as the typical armed robber, who after all, just wants money.

But: I'm no prohibitionist. My own professional world of alcoholic beverages symbolizes "legal but heavily regulated," and that strikes me as utterly appropriate. You need a gun to cope, and I need a bottle. More alcoholic beverages to redress alcoholism? I'll get right on it. Whatever gets you through your life, it's all right.

Apart from all that, I've little to say that isn't already being said. From a rotten national cultural perspective, Frank Rich hits the center of the target in terms of what is significant. In reddened Indiana, Brian Howey does the same. Here's an excerpt.

Soul searching in Indiana and America in a post-Newtown era, by Brian Howey (Howey Politics Indiana)

NASHVILLE, Ind. – A couple times a year, I invite friends to come down to my cabin here for some target practice in the valley below. We shoot into the base of a ridge.

Most of the guns brought were shotguns, .22s and pistols. But one friend brought a Chinese assault rifle with a clip and at one point, squeezed off a succession of 30 shots. After about the 10th shot, I found the sequence unnerving. The fire power was – choose a word here: awesome, spectacular, overwhelming, catastrophic . . .

My Friday morning last week seemed normal until I caught an initial, brief CNN report of a school shooting in Connecticut. Returning to the cabin about an hour later, the scope of the horror was only beginning to emerge. By Sunday, we would learn that the shooter, Adam Lanza, had used a Bushmaster .223 semi-automatic rifle to gun down 20 children ages 6 and 7, along with the school principal, five teachers and his own mother. The kids suffered three to 11 gunshots each.

So this is the first set of thoughts I've deeply pondered, taking personal experience with the utter tragedy in Sandy Hook. The assault rifle is a military weapon, designed for battlefields. It really has no civilian application. I don't know any deer or turkey hunters who would take to the field with one. You don't need firepower of that magnitude to protect your home or property. On that front, an Elkhart police chief once told me that a pump action shotgun would be best for protecting home and self. "Anyone who hears you pump that will think twice about proceeding," he said.

Money porn at the GOP confection.

There's porn, and there's food porn. Maybe even beer porn.

Then there's money porn, otherwise known as the GOP platform.

Frank Rich on the National Circus: Chris Christie, New Jersey Sun King

... This is the same patrician stance that both Romneys always take: That we, the little folk, should just “trust” them — and not worry ourselves about the fine details, whether those details pertain to their unreleased tax returns or the specifics of his policy initiatives should he be elected president. No reason to believe that this noblesse oblige tactic will fly any better today than it has so far. And as for this notion that Ann Romney can fix Mitt’s “likability” gap by giving him a transfusion of humanity, that’s a fool’s errand. Indeed, the Romney gurus seemed to have embraced a Wizard of Oz strategy for filling in the blanks of Mitt’s public persona — Ann Romney was to give her brainy hubby a heart and Chris Christie was to imbue Mr. Etch A Sketch with courage. Don’t they realize that this makes Mitt the Tin Man?

NYT readings from Rich, Friedman.

Required Sunday reading from the New York Times, and not only for Li'l Stevie and the Drifters before they embark on their Oblivious Rocks! concert tour of the 3rd council district.

First, Frank Rich:

Rich: Weddings, Divorce and ‘Glee’

... Domestic partnerships and equal economic benefits aren’t antidotes, (David) Boies explains, because as long as gay Americans are denied the same right to marry as everyone else, they are branded as sub-citizens, less equal and less deserving than everyone else. That government-sanctioned stigma inevitably leaves them vulnerable to other slights and discrimination, both subtle and explicit. The damage is particularly acute for children, who must not only wonder why their parents are regarded as defective by the law but must also bear this scarlet letter of inferiority when among their peers.

Next, Thomas L. Friedman on the "best reaction I’ve seen to the BP oil spill," in the form of a letter written by his friend Mark Mykleby to a newspaper in South Carolina.

Friedman: This Time Is Different

"I’d like to join in on the blame game that has come to define our national approach to the ongoing environmental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.

"This isn’t BP’s or Transocean’s fault. It’s not the government’s fault. It’s my fault. I’m the one to blame and I’m sorry. It’s my fault because I haven’t digested the world’s in-your-face hints that maybe I ought to think about the future and change the unsustainable way I live my life. If the geopolitical, economic, and technological shifts of the 1990s didn’t do it; if the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 didn’t do it; if the current economic crisis didn’t do it; perhaps this oil spill will be the catalyst for me, as a citizen, to wean myself off of my petroleum-based lifestyle.

"‘Citizen’ is the key word. It’s what we do as individuals that count. For those on the left, government regulation will not solve this problem. Government’s role should be to create an environment of opportunity that taps into the innovation and entrepreneurialism that define us as Americans. For those on the right, if you want less government and taxes, then decide what you’ll give up and what you’ll contribute.

"Here’s the bottom line: If we want to end our oil addiction, we, as citizens, need to pony up: bike to work, plant a garden, do something. So again, the oil spill is my fault. I’m sorry. I haven’t done my part. Now I have to convince my wife to give up her S.U.V."

Frank Rich on the "national existential reordering."

On the same day that my former personal physician merrily foams at the mouth in the Tribune, one of the most insightful of mainstream pundits charts the dimensions of white, tea-bagging America's feverish demons. Perhaps the only question now is whether they'll secede before or after the inevitable, and whether the sensible among us should even give a damn.

The Rage Is Not About Health Care, by Frank Rich (New York Times).

... If Obama’s first legislative priority had been immigration or financial reform or climate change, we would have seen the same trajectory. The conjunction of a black president and a female speaker of the House — topped off by a wise Latina on the Supreme Court and a powerful gay Congressional committee chairman — would sow fears of disenfranchisement among a dwindling and threatened minority in the country no matter what policies were in play. It’s not happenstance that Frank, Lewis and Cleaver — none of them major Democratic players in the health care push — received a major share of last weekend’s abuse. When you hear demonstrators chant the slogan “Take our country back!,” these are the people they want to take the country back from.

They can’t. Demographics are avatars of a change bigger than any bill contemplated by Obama or Congress. The week before the health care vote, The Times reported that births to Asian, black and Hispanic women accounted for 48 percent of all births in America in the 12 months ending in July 2008. By 2012, the next presidential election year, non-Hispanic white births will be in the minority. The Tea Party movement is virtually all white. The Republicans haven’t had a single African-American in the Senate or the House since 2003 and have had only three in total since 1935. Their anxieties about a rapidly changing America are well-grounded.

Weekend reader.

I'm engaged in another of those great struggles to find a heathy weight and maintain an exercise regimen without veering too far in the direction of moderation, something that fits neither my disposition nor the current job description.

Consequently, the amazing outcome of a crazy weekend is that in spite of four beer-centered events in three days and precious little restraint, I gained no more than a pound. It helped that on Saturday, I resolved to walk to the fest grounds (located off 66th Street in Broad Ripple) from the Monon Trail hub on 96th. This proved to be an hour-long, brisk walk on a marvelously cool July day.

It is true: With regular exercise and a reasonable diet, I can lose and maintain a weight, and drink plenty of beer along the way. What I need to avoid are those year and a half long binges.

What was that I said about fundamental dispositions? Meanwhile, here is a collection of recent readings, with links.

*New local fundraising ideas?

Rush for tickets to posh sex parties: The organisers of last week's masked ball in a stately home are on the lookout for new venues, by Jamie Doward and Matthew McCullogh (The Observer).

Voorvaart said there were strict rules forbidding guests from having sex in front of others (they are told to retire to more discreet locations), but admits: "It was not possible to stop them."

*Think before you buy?

'Cheap', by Laura Shapiro (New York Times Books)

Ellen Ruppel Shell concludes that lower prices do not necessarily translate into bargains in the chain store, or along the food chain.

*The blessed Frank Rich in the Sunday NYT:

They Got Some ’Splainin’ to Do (July 19)

The Sotomayor show reduced the antics of Washington’s clueless ancien-régime to a spectacle as ridiculous as it was obsolescent.

She Broke the G.O.P. and Now She Owns It (July 12)

As the Republicans’ lone charismatic performer, Sarah Palin has come to represent a dwindling white nonurban America that is aflame with grievances.

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Speaking of marginalized white, nonurban, antebellum folk aflame with grievances, we last witnessed Professor Erika at last week's city council soiree. Her latest blog rant is worth perusing, as it creatively combines the words of a blogger (attributed, for once) with her own customized New Albany-centric fills and venom spewing.

Enough is Enough, at Freedom to Screech.

For every person you brainwash into the "Progressive" ideology, we will teach ten others about the Miracle of America and the Freedom & Greatness of Individual Freedom!

I’m guessing that Jason Bradley is the same nutjob here at this dully repetitious blog.

Frank Rich: "A 40-year exodus for these ayatollahs."

Delicious. Can someone forward to Healthblogger?

The Culture Warriors Get Laid Off, by Frank Rich (New York Times).

... Here, at last, is one piece of good news in our global economic meltdown: Americans have less and less patience for the intrusive and divisive moral scolds who thrived in the bubbles of the Clinton and Bush years. Culture wars are a luxury the country — the G.O.P. included — can no longer afford.

Sunday newspaper delivery shuffle.

Our household subscription to the Sunday edition of the Courier-Journal is history. Louisville's once great, now perhaps irreparably degraded newspaper has been replaced by the New York Times, courtesy of Sunday home delivery.

We continue to subscribe to the Tribune on a daily basis.

Today's NYT includes another marvelous op-ed piece by Frank Rich. With regard to the impending departure of the current occupant, undoubtedly the worst president in American history, there's simply no such thing as piling on.

A President Forgotten but Not Gone, by Frank Rich (New York Times).

The last NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll on Bush’s presidency found that 79 percent of Americans will not miss him after he leaves the White House. He is being forgotten already, even if he’s not yet gone. You start to pity him until you remember how vast the wreckage is. It stretches from the Middle East to Wall Street to Main Street and even into the heavens, which have been a safe haven for toxins under his passive stewardship. The discrepancy between the grandeur of the failure and the stature of the man is a puzzlement. We are still trying to compute it.

Frank Rich: "The emperors of morality have in fact had no clothes for some time."

Reading Floyd County Chairman Dave Matthews’s latest Englandophobic comments in yesterday’s Tribune brought to mind a conversation at the bar a few weeks ago, when the previously reticent Matthews first broke on the local scene as chief interpreter for the otherwise silent mayoral candidate, Randy Hubbard.

I was asked by a blog reader if Matthews represented the old-fashioned fiscal rectitude GOP, or if he had consumed the Kool-Aid on behalf of theocratic “values” wing of the party so assiduously courted by the spectacularly failed Bush regime.

My response was, “I’ve no idea.”

Perhaps all will be revealed at some point in the future. Since taking an interest in local affairs, it has been a matter of morbid personal curiosity as to when someone finally would seek to revitalize the typically moribund Republican Party hereabouts by injecting the divisiveness of religious and cultural wars. We have seen in such a strategy financed by outside money in the previous Sodrel for Congress campaigns, but is hasn’t seemed to tinkle down to the grassroots.

Following are excerpts from New York Times op-ed columnist Frank Rich, who devoted his Sunday column to a discussion of Rudy Guliani’s presidential prospects.

OP-ED COLUMNIST; Rudy, the Values Slayer (October 28, 2007)

… That this same Rudy Giuliani would emerge as the front-runner in the Republican pack six years later is the great surprise of the 2008 presidential campaign to date, especially to the political press. Since the dawn of the new century, it has been the rarely questioned conventional wisdom, handed down by Karl Rove, that no Republican can rise to the top of the party or win the presidency without pandering as slavishly as George W. Bush has to the most bullying and gay-baiting power brokers of the religious right …

… There are various explanations for this. One is that 9/11 and terrorism fears trump everything. Another is that the rest of the field is weak. But the most obvious explanation is the one that Washington resists because it contradicts the city’s long-running story line. Namely, that the political clout ritualistically ascribed to Mr. Perkins, James Dobson of Focus on the Family, Gary Bauer of American Values and their ilk is a sham.

These self-promoting values hacks don’t speak for the American mainstream. They don’t speak for the Republican Party. They no longer speak for many evangelical ministers and their flocks. The emperors of morality have in fact had no clothes for some time. Should Rudy Giuliani end up doing a victory dance at the Republican convention, it will be on their graves …

Right on, Frank.

Frank Rich on George W. Bush's "fundamental cowardice."

Each week on Monday, or occasionally Tuesday, my good friend Jerry provides the Confidential household with a gently used copy of the previous Sunday’s New York Times.

The very first thing I do is profusely thank Jerry. The second is to read Frank Rich’s op-ed commentary. Usually I reread it at least once. To me, Rich is the man, and not just because I’m in complete agreement with histypically scathing assessments of the failed Bush administration.

It’s because he writes extremely well. Last Sunday, Rich once again hit the middle of the target.

A Profile in Cowardice, by Frank Rich (The New York Times; Sunday 08 July 2007).

There was never any question that President Bush would grant amnesty to Scooter Libby, the man who knows too much about the lies told to sell the war in Iraq. The only questions were when, and how, Mr. Bush would buy Mr. Libby's silence. Now we have the answers, and they're at least as incriminating as the act itself. They reveal the continued ferocity of a White House cover-up and expose the true character of a commander in chief whose tough-guy shtick can no longer camouflage his fundamental cowardice.

While we’re on the topic, and not to exclude other executive branch worthies, here’s the latest from filmmaker Robert Greenwald.

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Dear activists, colleagues and friends,

That's right, we said the "I" word. And you should be saying it too -- to your family, your friends, your neighbors, your pets and the hearty 26% of Americans who somehow still believe the Bush/Cheney team more worthy of sitting in the Oval Office than an undisclosed location stripped of all authority to further damage the country we love.

You'll want to say it even more after watching our video with the evidence for impeachment right there: http://impeachcheney.org/?utm_source=rgemail

Dick Cheney has been a malevolent force on the checks and balances of American government for over six years. He has subverted government processes to lead us into this tragedy in Iraq, and is now seeking to do the same with Iran. Two countries, mind you, he did business with while CEO of Halliburton.

We are at an important moment in American history. For if we don't take action in light of the High Crimes and Misdemeanors committed by one Richard Cheney, we might as well throw the word away. Because there will never be a time when it is more justified.

Sign the petition: http://impeachcheney.org/petition.php?utm_source=rgemail

14 representatives already support H. Res 333, the articles of Impeachment against Dick Cheney. Your signatures will be used to get other House members to to sign on. We are working with a substantial and growing coalition led by Democrats.com and AfterDowningStreet.org.

Let's make this travesty a turning point in our history. Please join us in restoring democratic principles to our government by IMPEACHING DICK CHENEY.

Sincerely,
Robert, Cliff, Paris, Jim G and the entire Brave New Films team

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Did someone mention a troika?

Or more precisely, will Mike “Hot Wheels” Sodrel again call on George W. Bush and Dick Cheney to preach to the Ninth District’s conservative cadres as part of his next campaign against Baron Hill?

The GOP had best break out the Kool-Aid. The faithful are going to be needing it.