The Cardinal Sin: Laughter In The GOP

One would have to be disengaged not to notice that the Democratic Party, and the party's scribes in the press, are really quite angry about the ascension of Sarah Palin. But it is not Sarah Palin that has them upset; it is not John McCain or George W. Bush or Mitt Romney or Rudy Guiliani that has the left in high dudgeon. It is not any one person or defined group that has given them fits. What has them so agitated is that the very visible Republican National Convention showed Republicans doing the worst of all possible things: It showed Republicans laughing at the Democratic Party and its candidate. And there really can be no greater sin.

Please take a few minutes to read the inane (and mostly insulting) comments of New York Times columnists Paul Krugman, Judith Warner, and (inane to a lesser degree) Bob Herbert. You should also read today's piece by the Times' Frank Rich, "Palin And McCain's Shotgun Marriage." I urge you to read these pieces because they prove two things: they prove that Mr. Krugman is wrong that Democrats, at least many Democrats, do not consider themselves elite, and they prove that Republican laughter is justified.

If we simply take as a starting point Mr. Krugman's apparent incredulity at the assertion that Democrats who propose to lead this country come across as elitists, and juxtapose this with the essays mentioned above drafted by his own colleagues, we end up not merely with a glaring contradiction. What we end up with is a rousing good joke. We end up with something to laugh at (even if we are not Republican). And we end up with something to pity.

The very title of Frank Rich's piece is condescension of the highest order. It is the sort of condescension one would expect to hear in the Hamptons, or perhaps over cocktails on a Montauk veranda. McCain and Palin -- a shotgun marriage? How funny! How cute, Mr. Rich! How clever and deft! How deliciously and naughtily adroit in an ironic and pleasing "get-the-dinner-guests-laughing" sort of way! (Of course, you prove that Paul Krugman must be in another room.) And that first line, Mr Rich. How daring and devilish! Who would have thought to describe John McCain as old? Brilliant. I love to hear you speak truth to power!

Ms. Warner's statements hardly help Mr. Krugman's defense of the indefensible. Nor do Mr. Herbert's. When Ms. Warner (she found Gov. Palin's nomination "nauseating"), suggests in an essay about Ms. Palin that women "are perhaps reaching historic lows in their comfort levels with themselves and their choices," you know you are not just hearing a malicious woman, you are hearing an elitist woman. But if you can't hear Ms. Warner's elitism, perhaps this quote will shout elitism loud and clear, and in a most vicious tone:

"Why does this woman [Sarah Palin] – who to some of us seems as fake as they can come, with her delicate infant son hauled out night after night under the klieg lights and her pregnant teenage daughter shamelessly instrumentalized for political purposes — deserve, to a unique extent among political women, to rank as so 'real?'"[emphasis added]

And this statement by Mr. Herbert is surely not issued from the muted bowels of intellectual lowliness, but from the voluble summit of smugness:

"If there were any good ideas at this convention of mostly rich and mostly right-wing delegates about how to haul the country out of this mess that the G.O.P. has gotten it into, they were kept well hidden. Perhaps they were tucked away behind the more prominently displayed creationism and “just-say-no to global warming” documents."

That "creationism" pokes its head up here is as funny, as twistedly funny, as Mr. Krugman's swipe about alleged Republican anger at the convention being in part fueled by "fundamentalists" ticked off about evolution and abortion (forget those pro-life Catholics, for they suggest so much more than "fundamentalists"). Surely the truly sophisticated among us know what these columnists are doing: they are reacting from their very high places, throwing out insults and code words all designed to make the smug even more smug (and playing on elitists' fears). And Republicans do, and should, find all this rather funny.

Sarah Palin laughed at Barack Obama on Wednesday night. She poked fun at him. She mocked his ridiculously lofty rhetoric. She pointed out his condescension: she held him to account for his own words about gun-clinging, Bible-hugging, embittered townies allegedly uncomfortable with differences in skin color. And on Thursday night, John McCain did the same thing. And they both did so in language that indicates something rather plainly: Republicans made Democrats look like a joke. (And I think this is the root of Bush/Cheney hatred, as both men have been known NOT to take their critics seriously, and have had the temerity to laugh at Democratic Party ideas and tactics.)

Paul Krugman is wrong about the politics of resentment, but only in part. There has never been a columnist, in my opinion, as resentful as Paul Krugman. Resentment is what he sells. But resentment is what his party sells, too. It is the very marrow of class and social warfare; resentment politics are what this election is about. But what Mr. Krugman does not realize is that Republican resentment is bred by men like Mr. Krugman. He -- and countless other pundits and wannbe pundits -- continually portray Republicans as a joke. All the Republicans are doing is demonstrating that they are sick of the gross misrepresentations about them manifested in print, in broadcast journalism, and in film. Republicans are tired of being the media's favorite caricatures, and they fought back in Minneapolis by enjoying a good laugh or two at the big corporation built around the Barack Obama brand.

What Mr. Krugman and his colleagues don't understand is that the reaction to Gov. Palin coursing through the media like a pandemic proves that the Democrats are ultimately a humorless, petulant bunch. They can dish it out, but they can never take it. That's always funny.

And what we are discovering in this political process is that what really galls the humorless Democrats is that Republican resentment manifests itself not as a grimace, but as a very toothy grin.

©2008. All Rights Reserved.