Mrs. Teasdale Joins the Revolution: Frank Rich and the Dictatorship of the "Downtrodden" Snobs

The Rubin Report ^ | Thursday, April 22, 2010 | Barry Rubin

[dmitrybystrolyotov]

Margaret Dumont whose best-known character was as Mrs. Teasdale in the Marx Brothers movies; Chatsworth Osborne Jr.; of the Dobie Gillis show; Richie Rich of comic-strip fame; the Howells of Gilligan’s Island; and countless others.

They're stock characters in American culture. Rich, society people who speak with exaggerated accents, look down their noses at the masses, and take their privileges as being due to their superior virtue. This is a particularly American response to class difference: laughing at these pretenses. Communist cartoons portrayed fat, top-hatted plutocrats in hope of stirring a proletarian revolution against privilege; Americans ridiculed its pretensions.

Yet what if those very people were to take over the revolution, seize control of the left, and laugh at the masses who suffer from their policies? That's what's happened.

[dmitrybystrolyotov]

I could have done without the praise for LBJ (Great Society/War on Poverty) and FDR (New Deal, Yalta Accords), two of the worst and most damaging presidents in US history. Also, he could have mentioned the use of Third World immigrants in the process of electing a new people. Still I think this is a reasonably sober analysis of the revolution that has been foisted on Western whites.

[Intolerant in NJ]

Quite good analysis - I’ve thought of the Marx Brothers- rich lady analogy in slightly different terms - as Groucho et al as the Tea Partyers savaging the pompous elitists in the White House and Congress - surely no good leftist could object to that.....

[wildbill]

devastating analysis of Rich by someone who grew up with him.