Side story for a second. My favorite movie moment from last year was the dinner between Jason Schwartzman, Mark Wahlberg and a family headed by a strangely bearded Richard Jenkins (the dad from Six Feet Under) in I Heart Huckabee's. I won't give too much of it away, but Schwartzman plays an activist, and Jenkins an electrical engineer, and within minutes of first meeting they are at each others throats.
Both are coming at issues from such completely different starting points that it is impossible to imagine them being able to talk about anything – sprawl means waste to Schwartzman; fighting it means communism and no jobs to Jenkins.
A few minutes later they are thrown out of the house, and that little side-mini drama captures the high level of discourse this past year over everything.
A vote for or against Bush wasn't a vote for or against supple-side economics or interventionist foriegn policy; it was a vote for or against a complete way of seeing the world through faith-based lens.
As such, everybody on both sides spent a good part of 2004 yelling at each other. This award could go to any single one of them, but your Rush Limbaughs were convincing us that liberal are destroying everything for a decade now. So instead I'm naming it the best liberal breakdown and giving it to the person whose change for this year stands out the most: Lawrence O'Donnell.
I'm a "The McLaughlin Group" junkie since high school, and he's been my favorite guy on it for the past few years. He's a nice, polite, smart and clever democrat. His resume has all the things you'd expect in the defender of the democratic party: Senior Advisor to Senator Moynihan, Democratic Chief of Staff of the United States Senate Committee on Finance in the early-to-mid 90s, prodcuer of the West Wing (where he won a few awards for co-writing an episode about the death penalty).
Being on a show with Pat Buchanan, you'd expect him to match his level, but instead he would contain himself. Until this past year. Here are two instances of his year-long meltdown.
First off, the first Mclaughlin Group after the Kerry loss (airdate nov. 5th):
MR. O'DONNELL: But the big problem the country now has, which is going to produce a serious discussion of secession over the next 20 years, is that the segment of the country that pays for the federal government is now being governed by the people who don't pay for the federal government.
MR. BLANKLEY: Did you say secession?
MR. BUCHANAN: (Laughs.)
MR. O'DONNELL: Yes, yes.
MR. BLANKLEY: Are you calling for civil war?
MR. O'DONNELL: Ninety — not war; you can secede without firing a shot.
MR. BLANKLEY: Not if you have a Lincoln in the White House.
MR. O'DONNELL: Ninety percent of the red states are welfare client states of the federal government. They collect more from the federal government than they send in. New York and California, Connecticut, the states that are blue are all the states that are paying for the bulk of everything this government does, from the ward of Social Security to everything else, and the people in those states don't like what this government is doing.
MR. BUCHANAN: (Off mike.)
MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Let him finish!
MR. O'DONNELL: That cannot hold.
Going to one of my favorite commentators days after the Kerry loss (remember how sad of a day that was?) and having him call for a civil war did not cheer me up one bit. The rest of the commentators were a bit stunned. But I should have known that he was going to be intense that day, because I had seen over the internet him tear apart the head of the Swift Boat Vets on Scarborough Country (with guest host Pat Buchanan). Trust me – watch this video. Keep in mind that this man writes and produces The West Wing – 99% of the time he is smiling politely while discussing poltics. Not this time (follow the image link through to the media file):
Although Buchanan issued an apology, I cheered after seeing that clip, but that was before the election. After the secession talk, I was a little worried about Mr. O'Donnell, and he wasn't on the Mclaughlin Group for about two months – thankfully he was there for the Year End special, in which his resolution for 2005 was to not call people liars, unless they deserve it.
Good to have the man back.
jenn says:
LIAR LIAR LIAR LYING DISGUSTING BOOK JOHN O'NEIL LIAR
That was hysterical.
I used to watch the McLaughlin Group constantly, with my Uncle Al. Even though he's a conservative Republican who once voted for Pat Buchanan, his favorite "character" is Eleanor. Sweet!
Ed says:
I like how the sense – and it is an accurate sense – that there's nothing to do except tell these people to fuck off and wait for them to die has infiltrated to the highest levels of commentary.
J. Dryden says:
Can we also have an award for Best Conservative Meltdown of the year, and, if so, can I nominate Zell Miller's televised spiral into spittle-flecked lunacy during the GOP convention, capped off by an only thinly veiled on-air death-threat to Chris Matthews?
Ed says:
Much like Charlton Heston in "Bowling for Columbine", I think we're all going to feel bad if we make fun of Zell now and then in 3 months they announced that he has had brain damage or Alzheimers all along.
J. Dryden says:
Touche. Damn. Well, there's always the back-up nomination of Bush in that first debate.
jenn says:
I am returning to point to comment #2 (aka Ed's comment #1) and say, What Ed said!
mike says:
i thought of a "best conservative meltdown", but they sounded the same as they've always have. Hannity, et al were just as angry as they were when they controlled no branches of the government.
I did think of doing a "best conservative asskissing" – which would have been hannity's pre-election interview of president bush. I can't find a link to it, but it was an hour of him creating straw-men democrats for Bush to knock down ("President bush, democrats are saying you knew about 9/11…", "President bush, democrats are saying that you will revoke all benefits of social security…"). i sadly can't find a link.
Ed says:
I really hope we can start some sort of movement in which he can become known as Lawrence "That Cannot Hold" O'Donnell.
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